The Golden Age: Reclamation War
by Maderfole
Summary: Book 3 of The Golden Age Trilogy. How far would you got to reclaim what was lost? What would you do to get your old life back? The culmination of the epic story. Over two million words of history leading in, and at least a million more to go.
1. The Disclaimer

Hello for the third time, Gundam fans. My name is Maderfole, and I'm pleased to welcome you back into my world. If this is your first time encountering me, well, count yourself as pretty lucky for one, but more importantly, in order to have the faintest clue about what is going on in this story... and I mean even the faintest clue... then you should read the two prequel stories of The Golden Age trilogy, Book 1 Gundam Seed: Chaotic Cosmos and Book 2 The Eden Disaster, before you continue any further. I will await your return eagerly, but do be warned, you'll be a while at it. I think the fastest anyone has ever read both stories is 3 weeks. Which is understandable, since they are each more than 1 million words long. Its a daunting number, I realize, but it just means that there is that much more awesome stuff to read and encounter in them. If you aren't convinced, I invite you to take a random sampling from pretty much any reviews of any chapter in either story, and listen to what your peers have to say.

This next story, Book 3 of The Golden Age trilogy, The Reclamation War, takes place roughly 7 years after the End of Book 2. Its a pretty big time gap, but given what happened in ED, there is a lot to recover from, and no reason for major conflict to have started up in the interim. Until now of course. Like all of my stories, this one involves fighting, involves war. What does that mean? Brutality, death, violence, blood, gore and pain, often on large scales, just as often on a personal level. Men and women and even children get hurt and killed in this story. Its sad, I know. But its also real. For a long time I was seriously considering rating this whole story "M", but I think it will only be certain chapters and story arcs that really push my tolerance limit, and such chapters will have the "Mature content" warning at the top. Given that everything I have had in my past two stories I consider Teen content, most people should take me seriously when I say that the Mature warning, when seen, will be something to pay heed to.

Usually this is the point where an author puts in a disclaimer about how they don't own the series they are fanfictioning, etc, etc. I don't think that really applies to me anymore, not like it does for most stories. It is true I don't own Gundam Seed or Gundam Seed Destiny franchises, and I did at one point in time draw heavily upon their intellectual property for the background setting and base characters of my fics, but at the time of Reclamation War, the world is now my own, the Canon characters have become my own versions of them, as evidenced by their evolutions through CC and ED, and my OC's have often become the most popular characters, something of an accomplishment I think you may agree, considering that the canon characters still get the most screen time. So, except for the basic setting of Cosmic Era, and the names of the canon characters and places... I own pretty much everything else. But I'm not the hoarding type... anything and everything I write and post, I consider open source material, so feel free to pick out anything that catches your eye for your own writing. I take it as a compliment.

I am always looking for feedback, and I value the opinions of my reviewers. I have many times incorportated the ideas of my reviewers into the story, making it much better than it would otherwise be. I WANT to hear from you. Who knows, your idea or question could be the one that sparks a chapter or scene that gets everyone talking and praising, and I give credit where its due. If you drop a review, I will almost always drop a PM back, to let you know I appreciate it, and to answer any questions or quibbles you may have had. I have met and made many friends on this way, and I hope to continue this trend. I can't promise absolute perfection in grammer and spelling, though I don't mess up very often (english is my first, and regrettably only, language), but if anything gets too glaring, please point it out to me. I write long chapters, usually 10k words plus, so get settled in. My text can sometime block up a bit, usually during bits of intense detail, just bear with me, I ask.

Because my stories are so long and involved, and it can often be hundreds of thousands of words since a person or place or exact definition of a piece of technology has been introduced, I am including two different stat pages in chapters 2 and 3, which will be updated and filled out as the story progresses. Chapter 2 will be a list/definition of technologies, people and organizations, and chapter 3 will be a roster of all the mechanicals, including Mobile Suits, Mobile Armors, and Warships, or at least the ones relevant to RW. Chapter 4 will be the introduction and recap chapter, and thus the actual "first" chapter of RW.

Once again, thank you for reading my stories, and thank you so much more for telling me how they make you feel. Reclamation War is going to be the wildest ride yet, and I look forward to hearing from you about it.


	2. Technology and Characters

ZaSome of my reviewers have been asking, not unreasonably so in my mind, for a page or list of the various Gundams and Mobile Suits and Warships I use in my many battles. Because it gets confusing, and its hard to remember what each model or Gundam is equipped with, besides the real signature stuff. I have to look at reference documents myself at times when writing, so I can understand that it would be far harder for you the readers, since you actually have to page way back in order to find the chapters where info on the machines was first put out. I'll actually do you one better, and give you info on all the various technologies and weapon systems, as well as other pertinent info as I feel it becomes needed, including Character descriptions, places, organization notes, events of note, etc. Because I understand my stories are long, and dense, and involved, and even I can't always keep track of everything that has happened in them with accuracy.

**Technology and weapons**

The offensive, defensive and utility technologies utilized in The Reclamation War are listed and briefly explained below.

**CIWS:** Stands for Close In Weapon System. Its primary use is the interception of missiles/rockets, though it can also be used as an anti-infantry and vehicle weapon, or, in a last resort, as an anti-Mobile Suit weapon. This is of course referring the weapons mounted on Mobile Suits themselves, the CIWS of warships, such as the Archangel, are much bigger and more powerful and are therefore probably better categorized under autocannon (Iegelstellungs) or beam (Valkyros) weapons instead. In my stories, unlike the canon Seed, CIWS is pretty standardized, with the 20mm CIWS being the staple of all sides. Its a gatling type weapon, meaning it has 6 barrels that rotate at high speed, firing rapid bursts of rounds, at around 10-20 shots per second, at close to medium range. Newer technology has resulted in 15mm Beam CIWS becoming more common, especially on Orb and ZAFT machines, which is more damaging and also doesn't run the risk of running out of ammo.

**Autocannon:** These were the workhorse weapons of the first Mobile Suits, scaled up versions of the automatic rifles infantry have been using for centuries. They're just really big guns, thats it. The use chemical explosives of some sort to propel either a solid slug or explosive round at the enemy at high speed (around 1000 mph), causing damage from impact or explosion. They are usually either semi-automatic (one shot per trigger pull) or fully automatic (multiple shots per trigger pull), and often come in a gatling (multiple rotating barrels) arrangement for even higher rapid firing ability. They run a gamut of sizes and shapes, from the 55mm Machinegun of the GINN to the 80mm Gatling cannons in the Dawn Goddess's chest, to the "standard" 120mm Gatling cannon used on machines like the Merciless, Independence, Dawndrake and plenty more. Usually speaking, above about 250mm or so, rapidfire goes away and above 300mm is generally an artillery cannon, not a direct fire weapon. They shoot in more or less straight lines, use orange tracers for a visual track of where they are aimed, and often require significant ammo reserves to be effective.

**Artillery Cannon/Shotcannon:** These are the big guns, at least as far as chemical propelled weapons go. They hurl large, explosive or armor piercing shells a long distance in a ballistic trajectory, allowing for indirect fire at targets out of the pilot's direct line of sight. They are generally comparatively slow firing, and often have a heavy recoil, requiring a pilot to be well braced if they want to have accurate fire. They commonly run out of ammunition quickly, and are best used judiciously against heavy targets or groups of lightly armored enemies. Though intended for long range, indirect fire, they can be used for direct fire with reasonable success as well. A variation on artillery cannon is the Shotcannon or anti-Armor shotgun, a smooth bore, large caliber weapon that fires multiple high explosive or armor penetrating shells in a cone like pattern, trading accuracy for area of effect damage. These are direct fire, short range only weapons in almost all cases.

**Earthshaker Magnus:** The famous Earthshaker, and now Earthshaker Magnus of the Grand Buster and Warmaster Gundams is just an artillery cannon taken to high extremes. With a bore diameter of 200 centimeters (that means the shells are two full meters in diameter), this is the definitive heavy support weapon, capable of blasting apart entire warships and eliminating entire squadrons of enemy Mobile Suits with a single well placed shell from practically over the horizon. The original Earthshaker was hand loaded, making it slow firing, but the Magnus is equipped with a three round clip, and can thus be fired multiple times quickly before needing to reload. Because the weapon is so massive, and the recoil so enormous, only specially designed and reinforced Gundams, such as the Warmaster, can use them without special supports or risking damage. Ammunition loads are generally small, because each shell is bigger than a good sized car, but then again, how many shots do you really need?

**Beam Weapons:** This weapon technology was actually first discovered by the Earth Alliance, surprisingly, and was the foundation around which many of the original Gundam's armaments were built, and because of its relatively cheap cost, with high damage potential and armor penetrating ability, Beam weapons are quickly becoming the most common type of weapon around. Basically speaking, they are plasma weapons, meaning they use power from whatever source to strip electrons from a compressed, heated gas, which is then contained in a brief lived magnetic field and projected at the enemy at high speeds (roughly the same as a bullet, around 1000 mph). They deal damage from heat, melting holes in pretty much anything they strike, the plasma itself is usually around eight to nine thousand degrees celsius when it leaves the barrel. The plasma is "dyed" a lime greeny color by included copper filaments in the beam compression chamber. They are usually semi-auto weapons, though some are rapidfire or gatling mounted, and range in caliber from the standard 57mm rifle to up around 125mm, beyond which is the realm of High Energy beam weapons. They are line of sight only weapons, they travel in perfectly straight lines.

**High Energy Beam Weapons and Ion Weapons:** High Energy beam weapons are just what regular beam weapons become once they starting getting above 125mm caliber or so, and continuing on up into the real monsters like the 110 or 220cm Gottfried cannons used by many warships as first tier weaponry. High energy beam weapons use more power and produce denser plasma than their lesser cousins, and the beams themselves are a darker green. They are sometimes also called Ion weapons, though in truth that name belongs to a less efficient class of outdated ZAFT weapons with similar damage capabilities that has since been replaced. They typically have a longer range and a longer time between shots than regular beam weapons, though gatling mounted weapons do exist upon the heaviest of warships and Gundams.

**Supercharged Beam Weapons:** A new compromise between high energy beam weapons and regular beam weapons developed by ZAFT for their new Primal class Variable Configuration Mobile Suits. They are slower firing than regular beam weapons, but cause more damage, and include a "splatter" effect when they strike a solid target, much like an exploding bullet, meaning the hole they make is about two to three times the actual size of the bolt or beam fired. They come in the standard 57-125mm calibers. They have a dark red-maroon color, because of copper filaments were insufficiently able to handle the higher temperature and pressure of the new compression chambers, so iron was used instead, lending the bolts a bloody hue.

**Hyper/Accelerated Impulse and Compressed Plasma Weapons:** The next step up in terms of power from a High Energy beam weapon, Hyper Impulse weapons, also known as Compressed Plasma weapons are the heaviest and strongest energy weapons most Mobile Suits will ever use. They function much like a Beam weapon, except that the plasma is refined and compressed, then recompressed and compressed some more, until it becomes unstable and "superheated", though in truth Plasma doesn't really have a limit to how hot it can get. Hyper Impulse plasma usually leaves the barrel at around 30-40 thousand degrees celsius, three to four times hotter than a regular beam blast. The instability of the plasma accounts for the shifting red-blue color of the beam, and the way it always spreads out a bit after leaving its projector, making the beam strike a wider area than its caliber strictly suggests. They require a lot of power and are generally slow firing, but can royally mess up anything they strike. They have very long range, and range in caliber from 150mm to 750mm and more. Accelerated Impulse weapons such as the Solar Knights have, use advanced technology to shoot the plasma faster, resulting in more kinetic impact and penetration power, while "blue shifting" the reddish parts of the plasma to purple.

**Railguns:** Railguns use two "rails" of electrically conducive metal, through which a high current is run, and between which a conductive projectile is placed to complete the circuit, to launch said projectile at extremely high speeds in a more or less straight line. In short, they are a gun that shoots using electricity, instead of chemical power. They fire solid, armor penetrating projectiles only, because the speeds at which the projectile is launched and which it strikes the target would see an explosive shell flattened before it could explode. They are a purely kinetic weapon, meaning they deal damage based on impact, like a baseball bat to the face. Except this baseball bat ranges in size from a human fingernail to the size of a human head or more, and is striking you at speeds of around 15 to 16 thousand miles per hour. Railguns have very long range and are generally very accurate, but are slow to reload after firing, and sometimes can be delicate. One little bend in a conducive rail matters a lot at fifteen thousand miles per hour. The projectiles are usually coated with a substance that burns yellow when it is ignited by air friction, allowing pilots to see a yellow "bolt" that follows where their shot went for aiming purposes.

**Spear of Ares:** This is the granddaddy of all railguns, though its really more a hybrid of linear cannons and railguns. It uses anywhere from 32 to 128 seperate linear accelerators, arranged in a perfectly straight line spaced 100 meters apart, to accelerate a solid projectile made of special friction resistant material (Ice-Gold, usually) to tremendous speeds. Anywhere from five to forty percent of the speed of light itself, depending on how many accelerators are used. The projectile itself is tiny, little more than a ball bearing, massing about an eighth of a pound at start, and usually less than that upon striking the target. But it hardly matters, because at the speed it travels is where all the energy comes from. The equation E=MC2, from Einstein's general theory of relativity, comes into play. It states that the Energy (E) of any material object is equal to its Mass (M) multiplied by the speed of light (C) squared. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per SECOND. Even forty percent of that, multiplied by itself (squared) then by the mass of an object... its a BIG DEAL. A nuke, and a big one too, though there is no radiation. Its downside is it takes a while to set up, can only be fired once every day or so, its terrible at hitting moving targets of less than massive size, and it only normally works in vacuum, as air resistance would melt the projectile before it got anywhere in an atmosphere.

**Linear Cannons:** Linear cannons are another "electric" gun that uses repelling magnetic fields to launch munitions at bullet-like speeds. It functions along the same principles as a mag-lev train, using supermagnets to create a mutually repelling field, into which the munition is sucked and then ejected from the far end of the barrel, eithout ever once touching the insides of the barrel. This dramatically reduces wear and tear on the weapon, and also allows for relatively rapid firing, though not usually to quite the same extent as a chemical gun, though there are some new weapons, like the Linear Assault Weapon or LAW, that uses a gatling type arrangement to allow for extreme rapidfire capabilities. Linear Weapons shoot faster than railguns, with less power requirements, and can use all types of ammo, but slower than guns, and with shorter range and accuracy than railguns, so they are definitely a compromise weapon, one that is a staple of many Mobile Suit armaments. They have yellow tracers, like Railguns.

**Rockets:** Unlike bullets, rockets are continually propelled by a chemical reaction, rather than just being "punted" by one. Thus they can carrier a heavier, more dangerous warhead in a variety of types, from regular high explosive to armor piercing to incendiary to fragmentation and more. Rockets are distinguished from the related missiles by the fact that they have no guidance systems, and fly in more or less straight lines in the direction they are first fired, and they tend to have shorter range and smaller payloads as well. To compensate, they are smaller and lighter, meaning more can be carrier, and are usually fired in volleys, of 5 to 50 or more rockets at a time to maximize damage and the chance to hit a fast moving target. Rockets are typically unarmored, and fall easy prey to most CIWS systems. Rockets are usually 50-750mm, which refers to the diameter of the warhead.

**Grenades:** A bundle of armored high explosives that is thrown by the power of a Mobile Suit's arm, or else used like a mine by clamping it magnetically to the side of a target, Mobile Suit grenades are uncommon but undoubtedly effective weapons when used properly, incorporating the explosive power of missiles into a compact, hard to damage package that isn't subject to most forms of CIWS or jamming. However, they are relatively slow to throw, and have a short range of only a hundred meters or so, though they can bounce around corners or through windows or doors, making them great for flushing foes out of dense cover.

**Hameya's Arbalest:** This is a large two handed combination weapon that forms the centerpiece of the Dawn Goddess's ranged arsenal. It is an over-under weapon, with a 125cm High Energy beam cannon forming the top barrel, underneath which is mounted a 120mm Rocket launcher. The rockets fired by the 120mm launcher feature improved warheads that strike for far more damage than the size of the rocket would initially suggest, making the rockets about as powerful as a 600-700mm weapon. They also have magnetic field projectors in their rear stabilizing fins, which function like a short term BGCS system to repel and drag along plasma such as that generated by the Phoenix King's Vulcan's Forge system, adding even more punch to an attack when the "plasma streamer" impacts shortly after the rocket.

**Missiles/Torpedoes:** These are the larger, longer ranged and more expensive cousins to Rockets. Torpedoes are simply missiles that work underwater. The chief difference between rockets and missiles is that missiles have a guidance system, either built in, or one borrowed from whatever craft fired them, which allows them to correct their flight path in mid shot to pursue a target, or even choose their own targets based on thermal or proximity sensors. They are generally fired in groups as well, to help defeat CIWS systems and to increase the damage done, and even a single missile can cause serious harm to a Mobile Suit, through shock and impact if nothing else. They come with all kinds of warheads, just like Rockets, but are generally more powerful, and might even contain multiple warheads. They fly very quickly, but are lightly armored, so a good CIWS barrage can quickly clear away a large portion of any missile volley. The most common types of guidance systems are thermal (heat seeking) or radar (radio wave guided), or sonar (sound wave guided) for Torpedoes.

**Anti-Ship/Cruise Missiles:** These are just much bigger missiles, usually reasonably well armored, with extremely long ranges (1000 miles plus) and very advanced guidance systems allowing for precision strikes and programmable flight paths at almost any distance. They fly faster than most fighter jets, often near mach 7 or 8, and are almost impossible to dodge, though well aimed CIWS fire, especially beam CIWS fire, can still bring them down. This class of missile usually contains multiple warheads or else really powerful warheads designed to take out heavily armored targets like capital warships, bunkers, or buildings. This is the smallest class of missile that can utilize nuclear warheads, usually of the tactical 10-50 kiloton (explosion equivalent to 10,000 to 50,000 tons of TNT) variety. They are usually carried seperately on pylons or in silos, rather than grouped in racks or launchers.

**Strategic Missiles:** These are the big boys of the missile world. Often as tall as a Mobile Suit, and weighing ten or more tons each, these weapons are designed to fly from their launcher into orbit before descending back to the target from high overhead. They can strike pretty much anywhere in the world from basically anywhere else in the world. They use the largest conventional type warheads, or more commonly, heavy nuclear warheads in the strategic (75 to 300 kiloton) range, and can carry up to 8 warheads, each individually targetable, per missile. Too large to be carried by most warships, they are usually launched from hardened underground bunkers or special submarines that are armed almost solely with the missiles, called Ballistic Missile Submarines. Though large, they are delicate, and can easily be shot down, though they fly very quickly (mach 10+) and are thus hard to target properly.

**Variable Tactical Payload Missiles:** These are the new wave in guided missile systems, first pioneered on the Retribution Gundam, fitting between regular missiles and cruise missiles. Seeing how CIWS systems were becoming so advanced and effective, regular rockets and missiles were just becoming outclassed and largely useless on the battlefield in anything but the largest numbers. Also, with improvements to Mobile Suit defense technology and armor, missiles that did get through the CIWS were less effective at damaging targets. VTP Missile pods generally have only 3-10 tubes, and only one missile per tube, but the missiles have extremely advanced guidance systems that let them dodge and weave to avoid enemy firepower, have the range to actively pursue most targets for ten minutes or more, are heavily or even Phase Shift or HAC armored, fly with lightning speed and have beam tipped warheads that can kill even the heaviest of Mobile Suits with a single direct hit. Even a Gundam is not above fearing VTP missiles. Besides regular missiles, a variety of special missiles, such as countermeasures, cloaking, shield projecting and nano-dispersing, plus many more, are also available at varying degrees of expense, allowing a pilot to customize their payload to their tastes and the projected needs of a future battle.

**FRALA:** FRALA, or Focused Repeatedly Amplified Light Arrays, are an invention of the Isolation from later on in Chaotic Cosmos. They are nothing more, or less, than a military grade laser. They function similar to a beam weapon, at least in that they both do damage through heat, but a FRALA beam is far hotter than even a Hyper Impulse blast, usually close 500,000 degrees celsius. They achieve this extreme heat by combining the beams of dozens of smaller, less powerful lasers in a special mirrored chamber that accounts for a large degree of the bulkiness and size of the weapon, before finally releasing the refined, combined laser in a beam that lasts for 1 to 1.5 seconds, allowing expert users to sweep the shot from side to side in a cutting action. Indeed, it is through this cutting action that most of the damage is done, because most FRALA only shoot a beam in the 20-50mm range, which while damaging as a single hole, is far from fatal or critical. FRALA can penetrate almost any known armor, save HAC armor, like it wasn't even there, and even Citadel shields have trouble stopping a direct FRALA strike in many cases. The weapon has very long range, but cannot generally be fired more than once every minute or so at best, though the Brotherhood of Humanity possesses cooling technology that allows for semi-automatic fire in some of its Gundams. The laser beams are blue-white or dark purple in color, and painful to look at directly.

**Mjolnir 3P Cannons:** Mjolnir 3P, or Penetrating Particle Projection, Cannons are specialty weapons first designed by the Earth Alliance and equipped on the Bane Gundam designed for BCPU 4 Markov Ashino at the start of Chaotic Cosmos. They are a Kinetic/High Energy Particle weapon, which means that their damage is both impact and heat based, as they use special capacitors to store and eventually project a stream of superexcited gas particles at extremely high speeds, close to twenty percent of the speed of light. The mass of the particles is miniscule, but at such speeds the shots, which look like searing bright purple-white lightning bolts, strike with a destructive power that is almost unequalled, easily capable of penetrating all forms of armor and most forms of energy shield. The weapons are short ranged, and not quick firing, and are also very unstable and delicate... they can often backfire if jarred even slightly, and god help you if your weapon gets shot while you're are holding it, especially if its charged!

**Cerberus Combi-Weapon:** This is the centerpiece armament of the Panzerwulf Heavy Assault Mobile Suit of the FNE's 5th Special Forces Company, also known as Fenris Company, that is owned and operated by F.E.A.R., or Fenris Enhanced Armaments Researchers, a former Blue Cosmos think tank, using biologically enhanced "Extended" super soldiers as pilots. It consists of two 350mm hyper impulse cannons, mounted side by side, with a Mjolnir 3P cannon beneath them, making for a bulky and sometimes awkward weapon that nonetheless possesses one shot kill capability against targets both near and far, as well as the extreme threat of the close range brutality of the Mjolnir cannon. The size and mass of the combi-weapon requires two hands to wield for any Mobile suit not especially designed or reinforced for heavy weapons, such as Panzerwulfs or the Warmaster.

**Sonic Weapons:** A very rare category of weapons currently seen only three times, in all cases on Brotherhood machines, Sonic Weapons, which include CUSA (Compounded Ultra Sonic Amplifier) and CUSA-D (Compounded, Ultra Sonic Amplifier Directional) are point blank weapons of extreme deadliness, though only situational utility. They function much like you'd expect, amplifying a base sound, such as a shriek or yell, over and over and voer again until the sonic vibration is so powerful it can shatter solid objects, quite literally shaking targets apart by high intensity vibrations. Physical armor is useless against sonic weapons, and in many cases the vibrations will pass through the sturdy armor and kill the pilot long before the Mobile Suit breaks down. Citadel and Positron shields will block the vibration waves, but even they are no sure proof, as the sound waves will transmit through the energy barrier, albeit at much reduced capacity. The only real difference between CUSA and CUSA-D's is that a CUSA hits a sphere around the point of emanation, while CUSA-D's are cone shaped effects extending outward from their origin point. Their max effective kill range is about 50 meters, or 200 meters underwater.

**Gugnir/EMP Weapons:** These weapons are similar to nuclear bombs, except instead of exploding, they implode, which is kind of like an explosion in reverse (not really). Instead of causing damage through heat and shockwaves, they send out an almost invisible pulse of electrogmagnetic radiation, which is death itself to most forms of electronic devices, especially anything that relies on magnetic tapes or drives for data storage, as all such devices become effectively blanked, ruining the complex operating systems of almost every piece of modern hardwarve that incorporates computer chips. Which is pretty much everything above the level of a bicycle. There might be some arcing and sparking from equipment shorting out, but by and large an EMP wave causes almost no physical damage, and is almost entirely harmless to living creatures, unless they have a lot of metal or circuits in their body for some reason. Initially only created as bombs, EMP weapons have since branched out into projected cone type weapons with a short range and a long charge time, a special "nonlethal" weapon employed on some Mobile Suits for taking enemies alive.

**Directed Neutron Disablers:** An outgrowth of the N-Jammer technology first created by the PLANTS, which blocked the movement of free neutrons across a wide area, preventing nuclear fission from occuring on a rapid scale and thus rendering nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons totally ineffective. N-Jammer cancelers were soon invented, also by the PLANTS, that negated the neutron supression field in a small radius, allowing for selected machines or weapons to function as they normally would. A DND is another short ranged, cone type special weapon, currently equipped though rarely used by the Seraph, which creates a much more concentrated N-Jammer field in its area of effect, instantly shutting down any nuclear fission activity within it, burning out N-Jammer Cancelers in a matter of seconds, and totally disabling nuclear weapons and power plants in the process. Though it does not shut down the nuclear fusion process, it still does limit it, allowing the DND to reduce the effectiveness of a FPR within its, admittedly, point blank range.

**AMP Weapons:** AMP, or Anti-Matter Pulse weapons are among the most devastating and powerful weapons ever invented by man. Positron weapons, like the Lohengrin of the Archangel, were developed in the relatively recent past by further progressing along the path of beam technology from Hyper-impulse weapons, further compressing and supercharging the plasma until it reaches the point where electronics spontaneously start converting to their anti-matter equivalents, positrons (thus the name of the weapon). The wildly unstable mixture of positrons and plasma is then ejected at high speed, as discussed in that entry. However, even such powerful weapons only used scattered atomic particles of anti-matter. AMP weapons use a solid mass of pure anti-lithium, isolated from regular matter through powerful though temporary magnetic wrappers as their projectile, in essence shooting a ring of pure destructive energy. When Anti-matter contacts regular matter, it mutually annihilates, leaving nothing remaining of either, and releasing a stupenduous amount of energy in the form of heat and radiation. A gram of pure anti-matter, if it hit the ground, could blow an entire office building into nothingness, and it scales exponentially up from there. In addition to its annihilation effect, which makes it equally viable against all targets, an AMP shot releases lots of blinding light and harmful radiation around its blast zone and shot path, enough to permanently blind people looking directly at the shot or blast. It is a relatively slow firing weapon, with a very long range, and is thankfully very rare, almost unique.

**Quantum Crystal Spike/Harpoon Drivers:** A varient on Linear Cannon technology pioneered by the Brotherhood, these weapons fire either large spears or many small slivers of edged Quantum Crystal, material which is aligned in a regular crytsalline pattern not only on the molecular level like a gemstone, but on the atomic and subatomic levels as well, making it practically unbreakable, if also totally rigid. Just about the only thing that can reliably damage Quantum Crystal is anti-matter or other Quantum Crystal, everything else is just too "obtuse" to affect the interlocked structure of the crystal, even things like plasma or laser beams. Because the edges on a sharp piece of Quantum Crystal also go down to the subatomic level, it allows them to slice through basically anything but Quantum Crystal like it was hardly even there, making armor completely ineffective against the QC spikes or harpoons, and even energy fields like Citadel Shields are hit and miss at times. Quantum Crystal is time consuming and expensive to make though, so such weapons are exceedingly rare, and often have limited ammunition available.

**Positron Weapons: **Positron weapons, like the Lohengrin of the Archangel, were developed in the relatively recent past by further progressing along the path of beam technology from Hyper-impulse weapons, further compressing and supercharging the plasma until it reaches the point where electronics spontaneously start converting to their anti-matter equivalents, positrons (thus the name of the weapon). The wildly unstable mixture of positrons and plasma is then ejected at high speed toward the target. When the blast strikes, the positrons annihilate with electrons in the target, blowing it apart on an atomic level, basically allowing the beam to disintegrate anything it hits, in addition to the damage from heat caused by the plasma. Poistron weapons are effective against pretty much everything, only very strong energy fields have a chance of stopping them. They have very long range, but are slow to recharge, and can be very volatile if damaged, especially while charging. They resemble hyper impulse beams, being blue-red in color, but they crackle with pent up energy, and are sometimes haloed with yellow or green lightning bolts as they discharge excess energy along their flight path.

**Monodisc/Edged Munition Catapults:** Somewhat of a compromise between the absolute penetration ability of a QC spike driver and the cost efficiency of a regular Linear Cannon, these weapons, which were first seen on the Retribution Gundam, fire mono-molecular edged explosive packed discs using Linear Cannons. The discs not only cut into whatever they strike because of their edge, but also explode like grenades shortly afterwards, causing greater damage because they are already embedded within the enemy armor, ideally. The Retribution's EMC's provide a Mirage Colloid cloaking effect for their discs, making its shots almost impossible to predict, but this is not true of all such weapons. The discs often fly on curving flight paths, making them hard for most pilots to figure out how to avoid before it is too late, and allowing for some tricky shots by experts. They fire rapidly but at only medium ranges, and are limited in their ability to penetrate Phase Shift armor, or most energy barrier type defenses.

**Thermal Exciters/Radiation Cannons:** First seen as the infamous Cyclops base self destruct system of the Earth Alliance, Thermal Exciters and their related weapons, Radiation Cannons (like GENESIS), function on more or less the same principles as the microwave you probably use to heat your food, just on phenominally bigger scales. They focus X-ray radiation and then release it in constant waves either in a pinkish short ranged cone (Exciter) or a huge multicolored long range blast (Cannon), superheating all matter in their area of effect to several thousand degrees Celsius. Not quite as hot as plasma beams, but over a MUCH larger area, and over a much longer duration. Their effect is often aptly described as a "Blast Furnace" that sets fire to the very air in a wide radius, melting steel, boiling flesh, and causing marrow to turn to steam, resulting in people popping like blood filled balloons. They are horrifying weapons that ignore armor, even heat immune armors such as LCR or HAC, radiation striking through the armor plate to broil the pilot alive. Just about the only things that can stop them are powerful Citadel or Positron shields, and even then, because of the wide area of effect, unless the shield is very large, its defensive utility is limited. As if it weren't all bad enough, they are toxic weapons, leaving patches of extreme radiation behind after they fire, which can be deadly in even moderate doses to what life wasn't already killed by the hellish heat! They are slow to recharge after firing, and take a huge amount of energy, limiting them to only the largest or most advanced of platforms.

**Ion Disintegrators:** Another Kinetic/High Energy Particle weapon, equipped on an as yet unknown Gundam, the Ion Disintegrators fire packets of supermassive particles that, upon striking solid matter, initiate a limited nuclear reaction amongst the molecules of the target's form. In essence, the weapons shoot micro-nukes. The limited nuclear reaction usually results in an explosion sufficient to blow a hole ten to fifteen times as wide as the caliber of the weapon would suggest in the target, usually in a cone type formation, with the narrow end of the cone where the shot hit, and the wide ends extending away from that point. Of course, the explosion itself is quite energetic, almost like a wide angle beam blast in a way, and it can and will cause damage to anything in its path, such as the torso of a Mobile Suit that thought itself safe behind its shield. Because it initiates an explosion within the molecular structure of the target, the weapons are effective against all armor types, and because of the density of the particles fired, they can actually "warp" the magnetic barriers containing most energy shields such that the projectile will pass through the shield without interacting with it. The shots appear as bright reddish pinpoint flares of light that trail visible distortions in the air behind them as air molecules are dragged along behind the projectile. They are semiautomatic, and medium ranged.

**Melee Weapons:** These are the first generation hand to hand weapons made for Mobile Suits, the most notable examples of which are the GINN sword and the Armor Schneider combat knife. Made of durable, high tensile steel and sharpened to a razors edge, these weapons, when swung with the weight of the Mobile Suit behind them, could cleave armor like it was thin wood. However, they were still little more than backup weapons in most cases, regulated to those inconvenient times when you ran out of bullets for your gun, or when the enemy got too close for accurate shooting, or else to underwater Mobile Suits, since beam weapons didn't work underwater.

**Beam Melee Weapons:** The staple melee weapons of Mobile Suits and Gundams alike since they were first made and on into modern times, these outgrowths of beam cannon technology use a field of magnetically contained plasma, usually pinkish red, though the coloring is easily adjustable, resulting in yellow, green, blue and odder colored beam blades of various sorts, to cut into the foe using heat to melt a trench through whatever was in the way. Effective against even the thickest of armors, and particularly, still useful against Phase Shift armor, beam melee weapons come in a huge variety of forms, from the "lightsaber" like Beam Sabres to the physical and beam edge combination Beam Swords of the Sword Strike and Impulse, to beam axes, spears, claws and daggers of all shapes and sizes. Its hard to find a Mobile Suit in modern times that doesn't have a beam melee weapon on it somewhere, though recent advances in armor technology threaten to challenge the supremacy of beam weapons as the melee weapons of choice in the future.

**Mono-edge Melee Weapons:** These weapons, first seen on the finger claws of the Pulsar and later in several other Brotherhood Gundams, are quickly becoming popular as a cheap replacement for beam melee weapons, and ones that don't drain battery while still being highly effective against anything BUT Phase Shift armor. Mono-edged weapons are just like regular weapons, except that they have been manufactured and sharpened so that their edges literally narrow down to a single molecule, allowing them to slice through most solid materials with contemptuous ease. Only the interlocking molecule chains of Phase Shift armor, or the resilient energy fields of Citadel Shields, pose any resistance to such weapons. They come in all forms of bladed weapons.

**Heat Melee Weapons:** An upgrade to Mono-edged weapons, take a standard mono-weapon and add a high temperature tolerance as well as a direct hookup to either the main power source of the Mobile Suit, or a special secondary power source, which pumps waste heat directly into the blade, heating it to just over a thousand degree's celsius, well into the glowing pink-white hot range. While the effect is only minimally important against regular armor and other targets that mono-weapons already work well against, it is a huge help against Phase Shift armor, and though it doesn't allow you to cut through it with nearly the ease of a beam melee weapon, it does allow you to cut through it all the same. Heat weapons are likely going to be very popular in the future, especially if anti-beam armors become more prevalent. They come in any shape a mono-weapon does.

**Electrified Melee Weapons:** Another varient on standard melee weapons, Electrified weapons most commonly come in the form of a lance or a chain, because they only really need to touch an enemy, not actually penetrate their armor, so reach weapons work well, because it keeps the enemy away from you while still allowing you to hurt them. Upon striking an enemy, either automatically or by pilot control, the weapon releases its electrical charge, much like a huge taser baton, into the enemy machine, overloading control circuits, and possibly even knocking the pilot out, or even killing them if the voltage is enough. Once discharged, it takes a few minutes to build up another charge again, so most designers err on the side of caution and go with big voltage that might kill, versus small voltage that might not disable. They are uncommon at best, only really seen in Orb's military, and not often at that.

**Quantum Crystal Melee Weapons:** The current pinnacle of melee weapon technology, these weapons are made from a solid edged piece of Quantum Crystal in a painstaking process that is more akin to growing a tree than it is to building a weapon. Using current methodology, it takes about a month to grow a single cubic meter of Quantum Crystal, which sounds like a lot of crystal, until you compare it to the 25 meters long by 3 meter wide by .25 meter thick zweihander of the Vengeance (18-19 months), or the four 8 meter long by .5 meter wide by .25 meter thick armblades of the Brotherhood (1 month each). And since its not shapeable, you can't really mass produce raw QC and then turn it into something else, you have to grow it from the beginning to be what you want it to be. Pain in the ass aside, once you're done you have a weapon that is basically indestructible by physical shock or heat damage, and can cut through any armor like it isn't there since it slices apart individual atomic particles (a nuclear bomb is BLUNT by comparison), can usually penetrate Citadel shields if you try hard enough, and is only reliably stopped by a Positron Shield (in which case you cry cause your sword broke) or another QC weapon. Qc can be grown in any color of the rainbow, like a gemstone, though most weapons are a shimmery semi-translucent color, like ice.

**Nanological Weapons:** This is a wide category referring mostly to combat specialized nanomachines, OTHER than EDEN, created and used by Noah Borander for his Gundams. Most famous being the Haunted Mist of the Haunted Gundam, which blocked all forms of sensors except sonar and could kill unprotected humans in minutes due to rapid hypothermia as it sucked heat from their bodies and made more of itself. The Haunted also had missiles that contained nano-payloads that worked to disassemble non-treated electronics within a wide area of dispersal around their impact point, kind of like acid or poison for Mobile Suits. Other examples of Nano-weapons will appear in the future, such as the "Dissolution Aura" of another certain unknown Gundam.

**Siegfried/Fafnir:** A near parallel to the dominance of the QC melee weaponry, created by Orb for the Vorpal Gundam, this high end experiment in the application of magnetic fields has proven to be wildly successful when used in the proper way. Which is any way that doesn't involve piercing a Positron Shield or parrying QC weapons. Classified an OMMB, an Opposed Monopole Magnetic Blade, the blade is formed from two monopoles (rare synthetic elements that projectic magnetic force in one way only, unlike everything found in nature) spaced less than a millimeter apart. The magnetic attraction between the two monopoles is so intense that any regular matter or energy that gets within a few inches of them gets forcfully sucked into the attraction zone between the two monopoles, in effect being "cut" as the blade passes by. The blade is 8 meters long and appears as a birhgt, vibrant blue color, though that is mostly a laser projection so the pilot can keep track of the blade. It can cut through anything but QC like it was hardly there at all, and that includes all forms of energy barriers. The blade itself is delicate, but it only rarely meets anything capable of damaging it. The Fafnir is a much improved version of Siegfried, more details on it to come.

**DRAGOON Systems:** First pioneered by the "Gun Barrel" wired detached pods of the Moebius Zero Mobile Armors, and then improved upon by the Providence Gundam of ZAFT, DRAGOON (I don't care what it stands for) systems are groupings of detachable, independently guidable weapon systems that a Gundam can use to increase its firepower while attacking foes from hard to foresee angles, often catching them off guard. Most are ranged weapons, usually beam cannons of one sort or another, but some few feature beam blades to be used as suicide weapons, like guided darts. Keeping track of the various pods while still piloting a Gundam normally takes extremely high powers of spatial perception, and even with modern improvements, efficiently utilizing such systems remains the province of only the most elite pilots.

**Fractal Wings/Wings of Light:** This defensive DRAGOON type system is the greatest strength of the Seraph Gundam. Composed of thirty six seperate feather pods, eighteen per wing, each capable of manifesting a Citadel or Geischmedig-Panzer shield, at Kira's choice, the Fractal Wings can be used to deflect and block attacks from practically all sides at once, and when working in conjunction with each other, the feath pods can bounce beams around and return the enemy's own firepower at themselves. The Seraph's true firepower is limited only by the powers of Kira's reflexes and concentration, and the number of beam weapons his foes confront him with. The term "Wings of Light" comes from how the Fractal Wings appear when filled with bouncing beam energy shortly before Kira returns it towards his foes in a deluge of energy that is as terrifying as it is beautiful. The pods can also be used to entrap enemy machines in cocoons of Citadel shields, and plenty of other crafty uses as well.

**Phoenix Feathers:** This offensive DRAGOON type system is an impressive part of the Phoenix King's arsenal, and one of the first weapon systems to use the "heated melee weapon" principle. It is comprised of 72 individually targetable feathers, each about a half a meter long, 36 per wing, which heat themselves up to just shy of a thousand degrees celsius while flinging themselves headlong at enemies with their razor sharp spearlike tips forward, impaling and sometimes entirely penetrating enemy machines in a hurricane of blazing razor blades. When not being used to attack, the wings can be used as an extra shield, or to boost the thrusters of the Phoenix King even more, or even as a somewhat clumsy but still effective melee bludgeon.

**Vulcan's Forge Beam Generation and Containment System:** Probably the coolest offensive/defensive system the Phoenix King is equipped with, the Vulcan's Forge BGCS allows Athrun to manipulate plasma energy like a sculptor would soft clay, with plasma provided by triple flamethrowers on each arm, or by thoughtless enemies and thoughtful friends shooting at him with beam weapons. He can shape the captured plasma in real time, creating any sort of melee weapon he can envision, or releasing it as streams, balls, jets, whips or pretty much any form he can think of to confound or destroy his enemies. It is the ultimate in free form melee combat.

**Lucifer's Grasp Gravitic Manipulation Field Generators:** An Edenite adaptation of the Vulcan's Forge BGCS, this system functions much the same way, if at significantly increased capacity, though it is additonally capable of affecting regular solid matter at close range (20 meters or less) of up to 20 tons at a time, in a manner very similar to that of telekinesis, though it is actually accomplished with advancements in gravity manipulation. The Lucifer's Grasp GMFG is equipped on a yet unknown Gundam, but it really shouldn't be hard to figure out which one.

**Minion Pods:** This is an Offensive/Defensive DRAGOON system utilized by the Vorpal Gundam. It consists of three pentagram shaped (five sided figures) pods about 3 meters across each, which can be utilized in three different ways. Individually, each pod is armed with a dual 57mm beam cannon turret and beam "wingblades", allowing for a not inconsiderable boost to the Vorpal's ranged firepower. Together, they can be used either as a Ghuul like flyer platform to allow atmospheric flight, or to create a large surface area, very strong, immobile Citadel Shield barrier. The pods cannot leave a 50 meter radius of the Vorpal, and must frequently be recharged, trading efficency for versatility.

**Citadel Lightwave Shields:** A revolutionary defensive technology first developed by the Isolationists in Chaotic Cosmos, this miniaturizing of the Artemis Umbrella Lightwave Barrier technology has probably saved more lives than any single other defensive mechanism of modern warfare. The Lightwave barrier, far from being comprised of light, is actually made of highly stable, low temperature, condensed plasma derived from Uranium, that when treated with several other more exotic synthetic elements retains almost all of its density while being easily contained within relatively low power magnetic fields, providing what essentially becomes a barrier of solid energy between a pilot and whatever is trying to kill them (no, its impossible, but it sounds cool). The energy field, when activated, is a green-turquoise color with a shimmery sheen like oil. The more power you pump into the shield, the easier it is to keep the plasma stable and dense, and the stronger the shield becomes, resisting attacks from almost all sources with equal fervor. Originally created as a bubble like enclosure, Citadel shields now appear in dozens of different forms, from a covering over more traditional armor shields, to projectors on forearms in a pure energy shield format, and even in "scale mail" armor that covers a Mobile Suit's body from head to toe! This is one technology that's here to stay.

**Geischmedig-Panzer Repulsion Shields:** Another Earth Alliance technology, this was first seen equipped on the Forbidden Gundam assigned to BCPU 4 Shani Andras at the end of Gundam Seed. based off the Mirage Colloid technology, it utilizes magnetically controlled dispersed particles to deflect and redirect incoming beam weaponry (which is sheathed in magnetic wrappers), effectively causing such beams to twist and curve violently away from the GP shield. However, while incredibly effective against beam weapons of all sorts, the GP shields do jack squat against physical weapons, and they use up a lot of power, so they aren't nearly as common these days, especially with the advent of Citadel shields that are much more versatile and efficient. A lesser known ability of GP shields is the ability to control the paths of one's own beam weapons, imparting a curving trajectory to your shots to make them harder to predict, but that is, sadly, an art few practice.

**Armor Shields:** These are the most basic defensive measure, besides the armor of a Mobile Suit itself. A big hunk of thick armor plating carried on one arm and used as a portable wall between you and whatever is trying to kill you. Armor shields were never big until the first Gundams came out, and even then they never caught on with ZAFT, who thought them clunky and inefficent, though the Earth Alliance embraced them wholeheartedly, as did Orb. Being as they are just more armor, shields were just fine against most regular weapons, but of limited use as more and more beam weapons started appearing on the battlefields, so they were often treated with anti-beam coating, described on its own, in order to toughen them up against such weapons. Still, it was at best a stopgap measure, though the pure cheapness of the protection offered still sees a lot of Armor shields in use in second hand and garrison quality Mobile Suits.

**Positron Reflector Shields:** Finally some defensive technology developed by ZAFT. Well, the Borander family more accurately, but whatever. In their own way, Positron Reflector shields are the ultimate in personal defense, save if you somehow had the time and money to grow a pure QC shield. The name of the technology is deceptive, because they don't really reflect much of anything. More absorb it. Or actually, annihilate it, because what Positron shields are, is a field of positrons sandwiched between magnetic barriers to keep the regular matter out. Except for the really fast moving stuff like bullets and shells and plasma beams, which break through the fields, encounter positrons and go BOOM, or more accurately "FLASH" as they disintegrate harmlessly. Positron shields can stop anything but pure energy, aka light and some very exotic types of radiation. So really, the only "common" weapon that can penetrate such a shield is a FRALA, which ignores it like it isn't there. Everything else is stopped cold, and usually disintegrated. Mjolnir 3P cannons can sometimes overload a Positron shield, by sheer energy imparted, but they can't penetrate it outright. They appear as pink-red energy fields, usually circular or ovalline. They can be used as crude melee weapons to "slam" large, slow moving objects (like Mobile Suits) by forcing them back away from the very strong magnetic fields used to contain the positrons, though to be fair, all projected energy shields can be used this way.

**Ablative Armor:** This rare and expensive armor isn't used on Mobile Suits because it is only cost effective to produce in mass quantities, so it is regulated to the hulls of major capital warships instead. In essence, the entire hull is forged out of a single piece of material that is sculpted and folded into the proper shape, rather than bolted or welded together. This makes it incredibly structurally strong, among other things. Also, because the entire hull is one piece, it transfers heat across the entire hull, so even if struck by repeated beam fire, even from capital warship weapons, a serious damaging strike is unlikely because the entire armor needs to overheat before shots start getting through. Durable armor of this sort was used to build the Archangel and Dominion, and is now the standard ship hull material of Orb's new ships, the Raphael, Gabriel, Dawnblade, Endymion Crater and Defender class.

**Phase Shift/Transphase Shift Armor:** The famous or infamous, depending which side of it you find yourself on, armor of the original Gundams, this fantastic advance in molecular manipulation has changed the face of warfare. By bonding networked chains of high tensile strength synthetic molecules across the entire surface of a vehicle or Mobile Suit, Phase Shift armor becomes literally impenetrable to physical weaponry, meaning that no matter how many rockets or bullets you fired at the Gundam, it wouldn't take damage, other than the jarring and jolting from kinetic impact of course. The armor requires a hefty amount of power to run, and so in battery powered machines the battery limits how truly "invincible" the machine is, or at least how long it is. This problem is not suffered by most modern Gundams, who have nuclear reactors for effectively unlimited power. Those who don't opt for nuclear power sometimes turn to Transphase Shift armor, which only activates at the moment of impact, saving big time on energy costs, while being more expensive to initially put together. Phase Shift armored machines change color, which is programmable, when the armor is activated, Transphase Shift armored machines do not.

**Heat Absorbing Conductive Armor:** New armor technology created by Orb in recent years to combat the prevalance of beam based weaponry on the modern battlefield, HAC armor and its associated cooling systems are in some ways similar to Ablative Armor, but much more geared towards dealing with heat. The melting temperature of the armor is incredibly high, over a million degrees celsius in short doses, or around 50,000 degrees over an extended period of more than 10 seconds, and it can dump that heat in a matter of minutes, faster in space. This has the effect of making machines armored with HAC completely invincible to beam and energy based weapons, even FRALA, though multiple continuous FRALA impacts can and will melt the armor eventually. On the flip side though, HAC armor is only a little better than regular armor at defeating physical attacks. However, because of complications with heat dissipation, a machine cannot have both HAC and Phase Shift armor, so developers and pilots have to choose which they think is the greater threat to guard against. Orb at least seems to have made its choice, as all its new lines of Mobile Suits are coming standard with HAC armor.

**Liquid Crystal Regenerative Armor:** Easily the most advanced armor around, and probably the most effective, though its still a matter of hot debate, LCR armor is incredibly rare and is currently only found on the Brotherhood's top two Gundams, the Vengeance and Brotherhood. It is very time consuming to make, combining as it does the properties of a crystal, a fluid and a nanocolony in various measures. LCR is not, quite, solid, though it feels solid if you touch it with your bare hand. It is really a very, very viscous liquid, much like partially molten lava, and it can bend and flow and adjust its dimensions to a surprisingly large degree, allowing a pilot to modify not only the color of his armor, but its exact shape in mostly real time. LCR's chief protective mark is its ability to completely negate any magnetically sheathed plasma based weapon that strikes it, reflecting the beam back on itself before it can even breach the top layer of armor. Even Positron weapons are useless against it. However, physical weapons work just fine, better than usual even because the armor isn't really solid. Even if damaged though, the armor can move to seal up holes, and will, as the name implies, regenerate lost bits of itself to make up for any battle damage suffered, over the course of a few hours depending on how much was lost.

**Regular/Heavy Armor:** The standard stuff all those poor bastards who don't get uber cool Mobile Suits and Gundams have to rely on for protection. Made from titanium-steel plates anywhere from 10-20 cm thick across most vital areas, and a bit thinner on the limbs, this sort of armor is adequate for what it is designed to do, which is fend off hopefully indirect strikes from the autocannon, rockets, missiles and other lower tech weapons of its day. Against anything more modern than a beam rifle though, well, you're better off praying. Heavy armor is fielded by some support or assault models, and has spent uranium smelted into the armor plates to make them both denser and heavier, and less likely to be penetrated by direct strikes.

**Borealite Armor:** This is a new type of armor that is fielded by the Edenite mass production models of Mobile Suits, the Dervish and Wraith. It is somewhat similar in characteristics to the "Gundamium" alloys of Gundam Wing, in that while it provides immunity against nothing, it provides very good protection against everything. The closest Gundam Seed analog would be the Ablative armor of the Archangel. Borealite armor is capable of taking multiple direct beam and physical munition strikes, providing protection just like that of regular armor, but every centimeter of Borealite is worth about 100 cm of Heavy Armor, for about a thousandth of the weight. Other important things to know: Borealite armor is not forged or smelted, it is grown. It is not bolted or welded together, it is carved. It is not metal, it is wood. How can wood possibly be a good armor material? There's already hardwood in real life that easily blunts steel saws and axes. Add Green EDEN to that mix, and you got wood that laughs at a diamond coated industrial saw, and flamethrowers. The wood used remains flexible even after it is removed from the tree it is grown from, which means the armor also reduces the mobility of the Mobile Suit less than "technological" armor of the same weight. The Edenites usually carve their armor into individual patterns, rather than resort to paint schemes, much of this carving is done by hand or by mind.

**Anti-Beam Coating:** A type of thick paint or post production tune up that can be applied to inert armor plating, such as regular armor, armor shields, or many forms of physical weapons, which makes them have a repellant effect against the magnetic wrappers that contain beam blasts, reducing the effects beam weapons have on the material so treated. It won't make you immune to beams by any means, but it will cut their power by a good 75 percent or so while the coating remains active, though it burns away after anywhere between 10 and 50 hits, depending on the type of hits taken. It's most often seen on the armor shields of the original Gundams like the Aile Strike, Duel and Aegis. It cannot be applied to Phase Shift armor, and applying it to HAC armor is stupid.

**Magnetic Sheathing:** Another armor treatment, like anti-beam coating, applied to the Orb Gundams and mass production models after the Battle of the Armada at the Moon versus the Great Endeavor. During said battle, VTP missiles fired from the Retribution coated the Phoenix King and Dawn Goddess with a Red EDEN variant that slowly began turning them into sandstone. Seeking to avoid such ignomity in the future, this coating was developed, which prevents nanites of most sorts from gaining purchase on armor so treated, so that they slide off without causing damage. It doesn't affect the properties of the armor it covers, and can be applied anywhere, though it does need to be reapplied after every battle.

**Mirage Colloid Cloaking:** An older but still revolutionary technology pioneered by the Earth Alliance and installed first on the Blitz Gundam, this outgrowth of beam weapon technology used dispersed particle clouds to quite literally obscure a Mobile Suit from not only all normal sensors, but from plain view as well, the first true "invisible" cloak system. There were downsides of course... the system drew lots of power and so couldn't be maintained for long, and it interfered with Phase Shift, so you could not also have PS armor while cloaked, but if you didn't mind those strictures, it was the be all and end all of stealth warfare. Modern sensor technology has produced sensor clusters capable of breaking through Mirage Colloid, at least at short ranges of a half kilometer or less, but such systems are only common on the very top end machines and Gundams, and Mirage Colloid still sees plenty of use on modern battlefields.

**Photo-Refraction Cloaking:** A much improved version of Mirage Colloid equipped on the Wraith Mobile Suits piloted by the Edenite Praetorian Order, this system uses advanced micor gravity controllers to quite literally bend light and all forms of radiation and even things like sound waves around the Wraith, making it completely and totally invisible, even to Vari-Camera's and other devices that would normally defeat Mirage Colloid, including sonar. This highly advanced system requires stupendous amounts of power to operate, and is so only really feasible upon FPR equipped Mobile Suits.

**Photon Cloak:** One of the most distinctive pieces of equipment on the Duelist Gundam, and now the Vorpal Gundam as well, this dark blue cloak of metallicy thread was the baseline technology used to create HAC armor. It is a synthetic metal fiber that has an incredibly high melting temperature, over 500,000 degrees, while also being relatively sturdy against physical attacks, and capable of radiating heat away at high speed, making it al but impenetrable to beam and energy based weapons, including FRALA and Mjolnir 3P cannons. Physical weapons, including missiles, autocannon and the like, penetrate it rather easily, so care has to be taken to only use it when the main threat is from beam weaponry. It normally protects the back and sides of the Gundam, but can be swung or draped over almost the entire body in an emergency.

**ECM Suite:** The Electronics CounterMeasures or ECM suite has been a staple of defensive technology ever since people first figured out how to jam radar and other targeting sensors. In essence it is a sort of "anti-sensor" that actively works to interfer with the ability of the enemy fire control systems that are trying to target and lock on to your machine. Some ECM is stronger than other ECM, and some targeting systems, especially those often found in Gundams, are quite proficient at brushing through most common ECM suites, but this is one defensive measure almost all Mobile Suits and warships have in common, and its presence is felt in the relatively large number of missed shots in warfare, given how good targeting systems otherwise should be.

**Pandemonium ECM Suite:** This new type of ECM suite is mounted upon the shoulders of the Warmaster Gundam. Not only does it provide extremely high quality ECM coverage over a wide area that is tunable to not affect the targeting systems of allies, but it also jams other types of delicate electronic systems, including things like the remote control NIC systems of Brotherhood mass production models, Phase Shift armor and more besides. The only downside is that the longer the system stays on, the greater the chance is that it will misalign and start affecting everyone in its radius, regardless of their status as foe or friend. Ten minute blocks are about the longest assured safe operating times.

**Stealth Suite:** These modifications and tweaks to a Mobile Suit or Gundam reduce the chance it will be spotted by most long range or passive enemy sensors, including things like thermal scans or long range radar. It doesn't conceal the Mobile Suit from visual scans, or most close range and active sensor sweeps, but it can help you hide if the enemy isn't particularly close by, or isn't actively looking for you and you have visual camouflage of some sort. These sorts of systems are common on Mobile Suits designed for sniping or scouting, or else special operations, and they work very well in conjunction with Mirage Colloid, Holoshroud and Holoprojector systems.

**Holoshroud/Holoprojector:** This Brotherhood technology really isn't that complex, other than in its programming and the scale of its application. A Holoshroud is basically a 3D hologram that completely covers the outside of a Gundam from head to toe, which can visually camouflage the Gundam so it looks like a tree, a rock, or even another type of Gundam (as so often displayed by the Traitor Gundam). It is a purely visual camouflage, any other type of sensor scan will show the Gundam for what it is, thus the need for a stealth suite and specialty ECM to back up the illusion. Holoprojectors display 3D holograms, usually identical copies of the Gundam projecting them, at a distance in an attempt to confuse, distract or disorient opponents, as displayed by the Haunted Gundam on many occasions. Another use is overlapping the holograms to "blur" the outline of a Gundam, like the Brotherhood does, making it hard to tell where it is really, precisely at. In both cases though, the holograms are again a purely visual illusion, and switching to other sensor types (thermal, sonar, radar even) will quickly reveal them for what they are.

**Vari-Camera's:** This advanced sensor cluster uses a variety of different tools, including high definition cameras, thermal scans, magnetic resonance scans, several types of radar, sonar and other sensors to create a multi-spectrum view of the surrunding area, extending out to about five hundred meters distance. Within that radius, Vari-Camera's can see through any sort of stealth system, even Mirage Colloid. That is, any system except Photo-Refraction Cloaks, which, at current time, do not exist yet. Though not in everyday use, Vari-Camera systems are standard on most elite Mobile Suits and Gundams. Their chief downside is that, while active, vision beyond that 500 meter clear zone is extremely limited, and its almost impossible to accurately target outside the 500 meter zone, so unless you suspect cloaked Mobile Suits are about, its usually better to leave the vari-camera's off.

**HiMat Wings:** Mobile Suits cannot naturally fly in atmosphere/gravity. They have all the aerodynamics of people, and people suck at unaided flight. They can jump pretty far using their thrusters, but its not flight. Thus, to give Mobile Suits and Gundams the ability to fly, which is a great advantage in maneuverability, the variable geometry wings and then HiMat Wings were invented by ZAFT and quickly copied by Orb and other nations. In essence all they do is provide a Mobile Suit with enough inherent lift that by use of its thrusters it can remain airborne, and in the case of HiMat Wings, even dramatically improve aerial agility by having the wings adjust themselves in real time to your flight patterns. The wings themselves are usually somewhat delicate, and vulnerable to well placed ranged fire. Not to mention, they look really cool.

**Scale System:** This system, created by ZAFT for their underwater Mobile Suits and Land Battleships, uses hundreds or even thousands of tiny "scales" all vibrating in synch to liquify soft ground like sand or dirt, and haul a vehicle through it like it was water. Or, in the case of a water environment, propel the vehicle like a thousand tiny little fins working in concert. Scale Systems allow for high degree of underwater mobility, much greater than that granted by the use of propellers or pump jets, because the scales can change their direction of vibration almost instantly, though the top end speed of a Scale System is lower than other means of propulsion.

**Hoverthrusters:** A modification to the thruster systems of Mobile Suits that is becoming more and more popular since it was pioneered by ZAFT in their Efreet scout mobile suits during Chaotic Cosmos. By channeling the thrusters directly downwards from the legs, a sort of ground effect hover, or air cushion, is created beneath the Mobile Suit, lifting it a few meters up off the ground and letting it hover there. It's like a vertical take off and landing system, but one that only allows flight up to about five meters from ground level. By tweaking the thrusters or using additional thrusters, the Mobile Suit can then skate quickly across the ground, much faster than its legs would normally be able to carry it, but without nearly as much drain on the battery or power systems as full on flight is. It is a very noisy method of travel, and it kicks up a lot of dust in sandy or dry environments, but that can work to your advantage by offering traveling visual concealment. It is almost impossible to fire weapons with any sort of recoil accurately on Hoverthrusters, and Melee combat too is very difficult, because you have no real leverage.

**Gravitic Reduction System:** This incredible system was first designed for the Pulsar Gundam of ZAFT in Chaotic Cosmos, and saying it was ahead of its time would be a massive understatement. By combining an aerated fluid filled cockpit space with powerful magnetic fields regulated by superconducting magnets surrounding the cockpit, a sort of quasi-gravitational control was achieved in a localized area. What that means is that while the system was properly activated, the pilot of the Pulsar was immune to the deleritous effects of gravity from rapid maneuvers, like changing direction without slowing down, or rapid acceleration or decceleration. Most normal cockpit restraint systems and flight suits will protect a pilot against around 5-8 Gravities of maneuver (where the pilot experiences gravity as if it were 5-8 times as intense as normal), the GRS protects against 5000 Gravities, with the pilot not feeling anything at all even during maneuvers that should have pulped their entire body. The system has been refined to version 2.0 for current Brotherhood Gundams, reducing the fluid filled cockpit to a fluid filled flight suit, and stronger magnets. A version 3.0 is equipped on certain unknown Gundams in the future, and it is a purely magnetic based system, no more aerated fluid needed.

**Neural Interface Control System:** At the end of the day, joysticks and foot pedals and buttons are just limited in their ability to transfer the desired ranges of motion from a human to a Mobile Suit. The solution to his problem, which is really only a problem for the most elite of pilots, is the NIC system, which in essence hijacks the user's nervous system and hooks it up through a complex computer program to the Mobile Suit, so that when the pilot trys to move their arm, instead the Mobile Suit's arm moves. The pilot's flesh body is dulled of sensation so that they are not distracted while focusing on fighting with their new mechanical body. With a Mobile Suit now able to move just like a human, things like hand to hand combat, crawling on hands and knees for stealth, and myriad other human only movements suddenly become possible, not to mention a general increase in agility and mobility. The system also works in reverse, making motions like thruster flight and weapons fire seem perfectly natural to a human, even though we have no normal nervous system equivalents. The original system required a full body wire interface, and dealt with unregulated voltages that could prove harmful or fatal to pilots in some cases. Version 2, seen in the Revenant, fixed the electrocution problem. Version 3, the Brotherhood standard, reduces the interface to a helmet/skull only wire interface. Version 4, seen on the Brotherhood Gundam, is a wireless helmet telepresence system. Version 5, yet to be seen, is an implanted computer chip inside the pilot's skull that allows wireless operation at long range as easily as it does from within the cockpit.

**Ablative Gel System:** These ports secrete a thick, heat absorbing semi-liquid over the hull of a warship or Mobile Suit in order to mitigate the friction and heat stress of the vehicle in question as it enters the atmosphere. They are useless against beam weapons, and are for non-combat use only.

**Battery:** This is the standard power source of many mass production Mobile Suits, with the only real variation being on the length of charge and how quickly it can be recharged, and by what means. Most batteries provide enough power for about 1 hour of full on combat operations, less with excessive use of power draining weapons such as beam weapons or energy shield defenses, or about ten hours of minimal power operations, such as space flight or ground movement. Most batteries are relatively volatile, and if punctured or blasted they can and will blow up with deadly results.

**Hydrogen Fuel Cell:** Featuring higher power production and longevity over standard batteries, at the cost of increased volativity, Hydrogen fuel cells are the primary fuel source for most civilian vehicles in the PLANTS, as well as the primary power source of ZAFT's new Primal class Variable Configuration Mobile Suits. Primals feature blow out panels that usually prevent an explosion of the fuel cell from destroying the rest of the machine. Usually.

**Nuclear Reactor:** This miniaturized water moderated (they are filled with purified water, which is heated to make steam to spin a turbine) nuclear reactor produces anywhere from 50 to 150 megawatts (mega being million) of power, with lower power reactors being found in the original nuclear Gundams, Freedom and Justice, and the higher power, Improved Nuclear Reactors at the other end of the scale in the modern era Gundams. The power generation is near continuous, and is almost always enough power to fuel flight, various powerful weapon systems and defensive systems with power left over. The reactors are carefully monitored for signs of overheating or radiation leaks, and feature emergency shutdown capability in case of severe damage, to prevent radiation or superheated liquid metal releases. They do not, and can not, blow up like nuclear bombs. Power plants do not work that way. I work on them for my job. I know.

**Ignited Metallic Rod Reactor:** After the Chaotic Cosmos era, nuclear power plants for Mobile Suits became heavily regulated by the USN, and so the FNE began to look elsewhere for a power plant for its new Panzerwulf Heavy Assault Mobile Suits. Never ones to be particularly worried about side effects, especially when it came to machines to be piloted by "sub human" super soldiers like the Extendeds, the designers focused on power output and cost efficiency rather than stability and safety, and came up with the IMR. It works the same basic way as a nuclear reactor, using heat to boil water into steam which spins a turbine which makes electricity. The difference is the heat source, for an IMR its a rod of magnesium or sodium that gets set on fire. Burning metals like Magnesium or Sodium produce their own oxygen supplies, so they can burn underwater just fine, and they burn hot, at around 4000 degrees celsius, which is actually hotter than the rods of a nuclear reactor get in most cases. The Panzerwulf IMR produces about 200 megawatts of power, but cannot be shut down once started until the fuel rod burns out 40 hours later. A breach in the reactor housing often results in superheated steam venting into the cockpit spaces, or worse, chips of burning metal, and they have a disturbing tendency to go supercritical and blow up when first ignited under anything but totally optimum conditions, making each activation something of a russian roulette.

**Fusion Pulse Reactor:** The current pinnacle of vehicle power plant systems, the FPR, first designed for the Pulsar and the standard power source of the first tier Brotherhood Gundams, and all Edenite Mobile Suits, is, in essence, a chained star. A steady state fusion reaction is still almost impossible to maintain, such temperatures (millions of degrees celsius) are simply too much for any man made material to handle for more than a second or two. So the FPR only sustains the reaction for about a hundreth of a second or so, before shutting down for the rest of that second before using residual power to start back up again, so forth and so on. Each power "pulse" produces several dozen gigawatts (giga being billion) of power, making FPR's orders of magnitude more powerful than nuclear reactors, allowing a pilot access to the most powerful and energy hungry of weapons, such as AMP rifles and rapidfire FRALA, not to mention flight speed that is quite literally faster than some eyes can see and easy surface to orbit self transition capability. The downsides being that FPR's produce a lot of heat, even in such short pulses, and so they require extensive and heavy duty cooling systems to operate continuously, resulting in wings and fins and flanges of all sorts sticking out the back of the Mobile Suit to allow for the coolant fluid to properly circulate and radiate away accumulated heat, damaging or destroying the cooling wings/fins can seriously reduce the power output of the FPR. Additonally, you pretty much throw stealth out the window when you power one up, they show up on thermal sensors from dozens of times farther away than any other power plant. They can and will blow up like a thermonuclear bomb if they overload, usually in the 300-400 kiloton range.

**Defensive Particle Inhibitor:** This advanced technology is an FNE variant on the Pandemonium ECM of the Warmaster, it uses high frequency ultrasonic and vibrational pulses to disrupt the operation of particle and molecular based defensive systems, such as Phase Shift, Mirage Colloid and Angel Halo, within a 150 meter radius of the Inhibitor, which is mounted on the next generation FNE Mobile Suit, the Panzerdragoon. It is usually tuned so not to affect the defensive systems of allied troops.

**Angel Halo:** Another outgrowth of Mirage Colloid technology, this defensive system uses diluted Colloid particles to blur the outlines of a Mobile Suit while also interfering with most standard targeting systems, making achieving a solid target lock by any means on the Mobile Suit so equipped almost impossible. It was first made for the Liberty and Righteous Gundams, and is also a feature of the Seraph Gundam. Angel Halo's are very difficult to manufacure, requiring dedicated computer circuits and specialty power supplies, so they are forced to run on seperate batteries from the rest of the Mobile Suit, limiting their up time in combat. Still, despite the expense, they are probably here to stay, at least as far as Orb's Gundams are concerned.

**Nano-Repair System:** A variant strain of Red EDEN created by Noah Borander for his top end Gundams, though first seen on the Pulsar in Chaotic Cosmos, this system draws power either from the ambient environment or the power plant of the Mobile Suit in order to fuel the conversion of matter in the surrounding environment into replacement materials to repair any damage suffered by the Mobile Suit. With enough time, almost the entire Mobile Suit can be rebuilt from scratch, one molecule at a time, as long as the cockpit and power plant are mostly intact. The original Nano-repair system worked very slowly, requiring days for any significant repairs, while newer versions have cut the time down to "ten hours for a hand", and even more advanced versions in the future might yet reduce the time further. Also a factor is how much ambient material there is to use... a repair system will work much faster in a water filled tank than it will in the depths of space.

**EDEN (Effect Distributed Eugenic/Elemental Nanomachines):** Noah Borander's pride and joy, these are his definitive nanomachines. All based upon the same basic design, the nanomachines of all colors feature a positive electrical charge, allowing them to be easily contained by most magnetic field systems. Red EDEN (which is elemental) is designed with the purpose of matter conversion, i.e. the transformation of matter from one state to another, like lead into gold, or more often for Noah, worthless sand and dust into high tensile structural metal for Mobile Suits. All it takes is power and source material, like sand or water and Red EDEN can quite happily pump out pretty much any raw resource, from glass to platinum to gemstones to pure Quantum Crystal, with the more involved the transitions taking longer than simple ones, like iron into steel. Green EDEN (which is eugenic) modifies a host's biological DNA to more closely match Noah's Ultimate Coordinator DNA in a traumatic process that roughly half survive, those that do become Edenites, Coordinators with active seeds and Newtype powers. Blue EDEN (elemental again) is like Red EDEN, except it voraciously converts all matter and energy encountered into more Blue EDEN, and can only be stopped by antimatter or solar core like temperatures. Black EDEN (technically elemental) will be explained in Reclamation War, but currently seems to act like Blue, except it is only one nanite, now a macro-nanite the size of a basketball that absorbs any matter or energy, even antimatter, it comes into contact with.

**DANI (Designed Artificial Networked Intelligence):** The end of the Eden Disaster will see the reordering of society on a solar system wide level, with the majority of the remaining "Earthling" population now living in space in new, hastily constructed mass population colonies. To govern the complex support systems of these new colonies, an experimental AI system, code named NAMARA for Neurologically Advanced Multitasking Artificial Responsibility Assistant, was created. Similarly, down in Orb, another experiment in AI support for military and civilian life support and administration tasks, LEXI, for LEarning Experimental Intelligence, was created. Both systems are still in the prototype stages, but they seem to be handling their responsibilities well, and are even seen to be developing hints of true, independent personalities, which has their designers either tearing out their hair or cheering in awe, depending on their opinions. Both were programmed to be "female", and have already developed something of a friendly rivalry for each other. Whether or not they achieve true independent thought and personality, is something that Reclamation War will explore.

**BIIC (Biological Intelligence Interface Chip):** Having personally given up on producing a true Aritifical Intelligence, Noah instead used his unique psychic gifts and admittedly twisted brilliance to come up with a different form of "artificial" intelligence. Using subjects, usually young women, who were in deep comas from injury or trauma, he first conditioned their loyalty using his mental powers to make them love him absolutely, and then forcibly and fatally stimulated their pscyhes to the point where he was able to burn a "copy" of the traits he wanted into an electronic circuit, in essence creating the first cyborgs, such as his personal protectors, the dragonforms Phlegethion and Aether. The creation of BIIC's has since been outlawed as a crime against humanity, and even Noah has admitted that perhaps he was wrong to use it in the way he has. Although that didn't stop him from using it one last time for a certain backup plan, just in case everything went wrong with the Eden plan at the end. The transfer can go both ways, you see, and with a certain artificially contained mind already on tap, plus genetic samples from a certain annoying Ultimate Coordinator relative of his, well, the opportunity was too tempting to pass up.

**LEMIM (Latence Encoded Mental Infused Material):** LEMIM is something you will only see Edenites using, and only rarely at that, because the process of making something LEMIM is very time consuming, physically and mentally taxing, and dangerous in more than a few ways. In many aspects, it is very similar to the creation of a BIIC, it just doesn't go nearly as far. Instead of copying the mind of an intelligent being into a computer chip, instead the "essence" of a Latent Newtype is "burnt" into the molecular structure of an item, usually a weapon of some sort, which in turn makes that LEMIM item much easier to manipulate and sense with Newtype powers, and even, in very rare cases, allow for a slight bit of Resonance Amplification with that item. Infusing an item takes weeks of near constant effort from a dedicated, intimate Latent-Latent-Active trio, and if not done properly can result in permanent psychic trauma to all concerned, even death, if too much of an "essence" is infused too quickly. Only the most important... and dangerous... of Edenites will have a LEMIM item to use.

**Glass House Electromagnetic Environment Bubble:** This large scale electromagnetic barrier functions much like a gigantic bug zapper field, except it is tuned to only exterminate nanomachines, such as Green EDEN in particular. Projected and upheld by dozens of towers scattered across Orb, this orangy-translucent barrier completely isolates Orb from the rest of what has become New Eden, leaving it the last remaining true "Earth" nation. The Glass House is roughly a half kilometer from the ground, though it varies by topography, and extends a dozen or so miles out to sea as well. Edenites and Eden animals can pass through the Glass House, but have the Green EDEN inside them purged in the process, which is very painful and debilitating in the short term, and can lead to long term health issues, much like an Earthling would suffer if they suddenly had all their internal bacteria cleaned out. As a result, most animals will avoid the barrier at first touch, and Edenites who have business in Orb for whatever reason either take specially shielded transports (for the important), or wait for the scheduled times when the Unity Harbor passage is open to take that "tunnel" through the outer bubbles to the Edenite sector of Nara-Attha City (for everyone esle).

**Ice-Gold:** This gold hued metal is almost entirely frictionless, making it ideal for use in the joints of Mobile Suits and other high performance machines. It also sees use as projectiles for the Spear of Ares.

**The "Red Pill":** In the aftermath of the Eden Disaster, Orb has become the world leader in nanological technology, outside of the Edenites of course. Wanting to explore outside the confines of the Glass House, but not wanting to always be confined to sealed environment suits, top scientists eventually managed to reverse engineer Noah Borander's "EDEN Vaccine", which is actually a specialty form of Red EDEN that is programmed to seek out Green EDEN inside a body and convert it to harmless salt. It can't "cure" an Edenite that has fully gone through the transformation, in fact it will make them very sick, and it will usually kill someone who has gone through all but the earliest stages of the transformation, leaving them with no Green EDEN and no immune system either, but if taken pre-emptively, it will prevent a Green EDEN infection from taking hold in the first place. One "Red Pill" will keep an Earthling's system clean of Green EDEN for 12 hours of environmental exposure. It is recommended to take a second pill before eating any Edenite food, because Green EDEN concentration is much higher than ambient in the animal and plant flesh of "native" creatures.

**MAIDEN:** A new type of nanomachine developed by the USN and FEAR after the Eden Disaster. Also sometimes known as White EDEN. What it stands for, and what it does, you will have to wait and see.

List subject to expansion

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**Military Rank Structures of the Chaotic Cosmos, Eden Disaster and Reclamation War Stories**

(E1, E2, E3...): Enlisted Rank (higher number is higher rank, i.e. 1 is bottom, 2 higher than 1, 3 higher than 2, etc)

(O1, O2, O3...): Officer Rank (higher number is higher rank, i.e. 1 is bottom, 2 higher than 1, 3 higher than 2, etc)

**FNE, ALU, Orb and USN (Also holds true for the old Earth Alliance and the Isolation):**

**Army (Includes all terrestrial and airborne forces and Mobile Suit commands)**, _Navy (Includes both sea and space ship commands)_

(E1): **Private** _ Crew Third Class_

(E2): **Private First Class **_Crew Second Class_ (Rank of Miriallia/Tolle/Sai/Flay/Kuzzey in GS)

(E3): **Corporal** (Ramierez's CC rank) _Crew First Class_

(E4): **Sergeant** _Petty Officer Third Class (All Petty Officer ranks addressed as "Petty Officer")_

(E5): **Staff Sergeant** (Ramierez's ED rank) _Petty Officer Second Class_

(E6): **Gunnery Sergeant** _Petty Officer First Class_

(E7): **First Sergeant** _Chief Petty Officer (Chief)_

(E8): **Master Sergeant**_ Senior Chief Petty Officer (Senior Chief)_

(E9): **Sergeant-Major** (Glory's rank) _Master Chief Petty Officer (Master Chief)_

(O1): **Second Lieutenant (Called Lieutenant)** ` _Ensign_ (Kira's rank in GS)

(O2): **First Lieutenant (Called Lieutenant**, Cyprus's rank**)** _Lieutenant Junior Grade (Called Lieutenant)_

(O3): **Captain** (Victor/Vladimir/James's rank) _Lieutenant_

(O4): **Major** (Alkire/Raine's rank) _Lieutenant Commander (Called Commander_, Mu's rank_)_

(O5): **Lieutenant Colonel** _Commander_ (Waltfeld's ED rank)

(O6): **Colonel** (Kisaka's rank) _Captain_ (Murrue's rank, all people commanding a ship are called "Captain" when on board, regardless of actual rank)

(O7): **Brigadier** _Rear Admiral (All flag/Admiral ranks called Admiral, there are two ranks of Rear Admiral, junior/senior)_

(O8): **Lieutenant-General (Called General, as are all flag/General ranks)** _Rear Admiral_

(O9): **Major-General** _Vice Admiral_

(O10): **General** _Admiral_ (Cagalli's equivalent rank)

(O11): **General of the Army** _Fleet Admiral_ (O11 does not exist in ALU or Orb Militaries, Icarus's rank in ED)

(O12): **Secretary of Defense** (In charge of the entire Military, Durandel's rank in ED)

**ZAFT:**

**All forces (Since ZAFT is a militia based organization, its rank structure is much looser, and the enlisted/officer distinction is more blurry, and time in service can mean more than actual rank)**

(E1): **Recruit** (Has just gone through basic training, hasn't chosen/been directed to a particular job yet)

(E2): **Specialist* Third Class** (Specialist is a generic term that should be substituted for by whatever job the soldier has, i.e. Pilot, Infantry "Trooper", Sensor Operater, Mechanic, Technician, etc)

(E3): **Specialist Second Class**

(E4): **Specialist First Class** (This was Shinn/Lunamaria's rank at the end of CC (Pilot First Class), and Meyrin's rank in ED (Combat Operator First Class))

(E5): **Junior Redcoat** (This was Lunamaria's rank in ED, prior to the Solar Knights, junior status can last for weeks, months or years even, depending on your experience/skills/drive for responsibility)

(O1): **Senior Redcoat** (This is Shinn/Rey's rank in ED, prior to the Solar Knights)

(O2): **Blackcoat** (This is the basic officer rank of ZAFT, representing people who went to an officer specific academy, rather than being meritoriously promoted. Ades, the captain of the Vesalius in GS, is this rank)

(O3): **Whitecoat** (The highest usual front line rank, people like Waltfeld, Talia Gladys, Ysak in CC and ED, in charge of a entire Team or Ship Command, often promoted from Senior Redcoats)

(O4): **Purplecoat/FAITH **(Senior staff officers who come up with overall strategy, while FAITH is a special designation that grants extra authority, stemming from the Supreme Council Chairperson)

(O5): **Senior Purplecoat** (The people in charge of running all of ZAFT, Patrick Zala's rank, the rank of any military people on the Supreme Council)

**Edenites:**

**All Forces**

**Custodian Minoris:** The rank of those Custodians who are still in training and aren't full soldiers yet (abbreviated CMN, White belt)

**Custodian Regulus:** The base rank of the Custodians, someone who is part of a Manifold but has no especial responsibility (CRG, Red)

**Custodian Magnus:** The Custodian in charge of a Manifold, who speaks for and relays orders to his or her Manifold, has this rank, which is basically team leader or sergeant (CMA, Blue)

**Tacticus Minoris:** Junior officers, people who are in charge of the actions of more than one Manifold, the lowest officer rank, usually have their own Manifold (TMN, Yellow)

**Tacticus Regulus:** Officers in charge of multiple Manifolds, responsible for basically company sized units of soldiers, usually the leader of a Tacticus Manifold (TRG, Green)

**Tacticus Magnus: **The most respected field commanders of the Custodians, just a more senior version of the Regulus rank, usually leading the most powerful or prestigious units (TMA, Purple)

**Strategos Minoris:** In charge of multiple Tacticus Manifolds, equivalent of Generals, the highest ranking officer that will usually also fight on the field (SMN, Orange)

**Strategos Regulus:** The highest echelon of officers, usually in charge of policy and in working with the Consol (SRG, Brown)

**Strategos Magnus:** The seniormost Strategos, the person in charge of the Custodians, who reports directly to the Consol, sometimes also is the Consol (SMA, Black)

**Consol:** Person who is responsible for the entire organization, interfaces with the rest of society on a high level (Consol, Black and White)

**Example unit (Manifold):**

The basic unit of the Custodians is a Manifold, which can have anywhere from three to twelve or so members who train and work together constantly, sharing lives and minds in such a way that they eventually develop mental links like those that couples develop, which allows for instantaneous communication of feelings and even full thoughts between members of a Manifold, practically regardless of distance. Manifolds are usually mixed sex, and there is often a complex series of physical and emotional attachments within a Manifold, though there are single sex Manifolds as well, with and without sexual connections between the members. It is even possible to switch Manifolds, or have one break apart into several distinct ones, or even be part of multiple different Manifolds, but such things usually take time, because of the process of tuning oneself so deeply into the feelings and thoughts of another person does not happen quickly. As a Manifold, psychic power can be quite high, though it is rare to find individual members with any exceptional talent, though they are all trained in combative uses for their particular abilities.

**Example unit (Legio):**

Strategos Minors (StraMin) leads a Manifold consisting of 3 Tacticus Reguli (TacReg) and one Tacticus Magnus (TacMag). Each TacReg leads a manifold of 3 Tacticus Minori (TacMin), the TacMag has 4 TacMins. Each TacMin leads a Manifold of 2 Custodian Magni (CusMag), with some cross Manifolding between the senior CusMag's and each TacMin as a backup measure against death in combat. Each CusMag leads a Manifold of 3-12 Custodian Reguli (CusReg), for a total force of around 210 Custodians, about 1/10th of which will be Mobile Suit pilots, while the rest are vehicle/infantry soldiers. With supply and logistics units, trainees, attached special units or militia, etc, the total comes up to closer to 500 soldiers, and is termed a "Legio". Each legio will take a totemic animal or plant to be used as its symbol, such as "Legio Cold Hunter", which specializes in guerilla warfare, or Legio Rhinobeast, which is best at heavy assault operations. Legio Deathstalker is the term for the Praetorian unit and its personal supporting forces, should a significant number of them ever take the field at any given time.

**Uniforms and notes:**

Praetorians are generally ranked at the Tacticus Magnus level, at a minimum, and many of them can even alter the orders of a Strategos Regulus, at least in certain circumstances, though they rarely if ever involve themselves with what the Custodians are doing, unless it actually interferes with what the Praetorians are up to. The uniform of the Custodians is dark green in color, though they have camouflaged unifroms for the field. The insignia of the Custodian order is a green shield with a copper tree on it, the shield itself is trimmed in either gold or silver depending on the type of Newtype the Edenite is. Rank is usually denoted by the color of a person's belt, kind of like seniority in a martial arts dojo. The insignia of the Praetorian order is a dark blue helmed skull over crossed blue swords on a black background, the skull would be either gold or silver depending on Active or Latent, the more senior or accomplished a Praetorian is, the more personal trophies, such as fangs or claws from dangerous Edenite animals they will have, usually in necklaces or bracelets, the more dangerous the animal, the higher the rank, though its really more the higher the prestige and skill level of the Praetorian in question. The Praetorian uniform is death black, with dark blue undershirt and belt, and sometimes includes tassels or other more ceremonial decorations. They also frequently wear trench/greatcoats or capes/cloaks/mantles made of exotic, personally harvested leathers or other materials, and usually bear pesonalized weapons.

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**Characters (basic physical description)**

**Orb**

**Kira Yamato**

Age: 30

Height: 188 cm (6' 2")

Weight: 185 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, short, spiky

Eye Color: Royal purple with silver metallic pupils

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction

Place of Residence: Serenity Island Orphanage, Orb territories

Genetics: Ultimate Coordinator, post second puberty (Latent)

**Lacus Clyne**

Age: 30

Height: 160 cm (5' 3")

Weight: 105 lbs

Hair Color: Rosy pink, knee length, straight

Eye Color: Lilac blue, gold metallic pupils

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction

Place of Residence: Serenity Island Orphanage, Orb territories

Genetics: Ultimate Coordinator, post second puberty (Active)

**Akira Yamato-Clyne**

Age: 8

Height: 135 cm (4' 5")

Weight: 80 lbs

Hair Color: Rosy pink, short, spiky

Eye Color: Royal purple, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction

Place of Residence: Serenity Island Orphanage, Orb territories

Genetics: Neo-Human (Active dominant)

**Aoi Yamato-Clyne**

Age: 7

Height: 122 cm (4')

Weight: 58 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, waist length, straight

Eye Color: Lilac blue, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction

Place of Residence: Serenity Island Orphanage, Orb territories

Genetics: Neo-Human (Active dominant)

**Ambassador Athrun Zala**

Age: 30

Height:188 cm (6' 2")

Weight: 175 lbs

Hair Color: Purple-blue, with silver streaks, short

Eye Color: Emerald Green

Allegiance: Orb, The Royalists

Place of Residence: Orb National Palace, Villa Pacifica

Genetics: Coordinator

**Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha**

Age: 30

Height:165 cm(5' 5")

Weight: 115 lbs

Hair Color: Blonde, neck length

Eye Color: Amber-orange

Allegiance: Orb, the Royalists

Place of Residence: Orb National Palace, Villa Pacifica

Genetics: Natural

**Allister Zala-Attha**

Age: 7.5

Height: 133 cm (4' 4")

Weight: 78 lbs

Hair Color: Purble-blue, short

Eye Color: Amber-orange

Allegiance: Orb, the Royalists

Place of Residence: Orb National Palace, Villa Pacifica

Genetics: Coordinator

**Yzak Joule**

Age: 31

Height: 194 cm (6' 4")

Weight: 195 lbs

Hair Color: Silver-white, short

Eye Color: Cerulean Blue

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction, the PLANTS

Place of Residence: Aprilius City, PLANTS

Genetics: Coordinator (Newtype not originally genetic, Latent)

**Katie Joule**

Age: 30

Height: 168 cm (5" 6")

Weight: 120 lbs

Hair Color: Black with blond highlights, short

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction, the PLANTS

Place of Residence: Aprilius City, PLANTS

Genetics: Natural Newtype (Active)

**Mina Joule**

Age: 7

Height: 127 cm (4' 2")

Weight: 68 lbs

Hair Color: silver white, short

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction, the PLANTS

Place of Residence: Aprilius City, PLANTS

Genetics: Coordinator

**Jamie Joule**

Age: 7

Height: 127 cm(4' 2")

Weight: 70 lbs

Hair Color: Silver-white, mid back length

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction, the PLANTS

Place of Residence: Aprilius City, PLANTS

Genetics: Coordinator

**Dearka Elsman**

Age: 31

Height: 196 cm (6' 5")

Weight: 200 lbs

Hair Color: Blond, short

Eye Color: Light purple

Allegiance: Orb, The Royalists

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City, his salvage ship "The Dawn's Light"

Genetics: Coordinator

**Miriallia Elsman**

Age: 30

Height: 163 cm (5' 4")

Weight: 110 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, shoulder length

Eye Color: Aqua-blue

Allegiance: Orb, the Royalists

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City, the ship "The Dawn's Light"

Genetics: Natural

**Roy Elsman**

Age: 7

Height: 140 cm (4' 7")

Weight: 100 lbs

Hair Color: Blond, short

Eye Color: Light Purple

Allegiance: Orb, the Royalists

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City, the ship "The Dawn's Light"

Genetics: Coordinator

**Alice Elsman**

Age: 6

Height: 112 cm (3' 8")

Weight: 58 lbs

Hair Color: Blond, shoulder length

Eye Color: Aqua-blue

Allegiance: Orb, the Royalists

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City, the ship "The Dawn's Light"

Genetics: Coordinator

**First Lieutenant Cyprus "The Hellhound" Finch**

Age: 42

Height: 183 cm (6')

Weight: 195 lbs

Hair Color: Grey, short

Eye Color: Grey

Allegiance: Orb, Sai Argyle

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural (Seed Capable)

**Wrenn Nostaliviche**

Age: 40

Height: 173 cm (5' 8")

Weight: 118 lbs

Hair Color: Black, waist length, straight

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb, Cyprus Finch

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**Violet Finch**

Age: 7

Height: 135 cm (4' 5")

Weight: 73 lbs

Hair Color: Grey, waist length, straight

Eye Color: Left eye blue, right eye grey

Allegiance: Orb, her family

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Coordinator

**Jean Kellson**

Age: 29

Height: 174 cm (5' 8")

Weight: 115 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, shoulder length

Eye Color: Blue (wears glasses)

Allegiance: Orb

Place of Residence: Cyprus's house, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**Colonel Robert "Leadfoot" Jones, aka Alkire Majesty**

Age: 42

Height: 184 cm (6')

Weight: 220 lbs (due to prosthetic leg)

Hair Color: Black speckled with brown, short

Eye Color: Green

Allegiance: Orb, the Clyne Faction

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**Colonel Raine Belaruse**

Age: 40

Height: 183 cm (6')

Weight: 150 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, long, straight

Eye Color: Brown

Allegiance: Orb, The Clyne Faction

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory**

Age: 42

Height: 216 cm (7' 1")

Weight: 385 lbs

Hair Color: Blond, very short

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb, Cyprus Finch

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**Sergeant Melissa "Raven" Glory**

Age: 39

Height: 147 cm (4' 10")

Weight: 135 lbs

Hair Color: Black, short

Eye Color: Green

Allegiance: Orb, The Stormhounds

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**First Sergeant Matthew "Conrad" Kurtz**

Age: 39

Height: 183 cm (6')

Weight: 185 lbs

Hair Color: Brown-blond, short

Eye Color: Hazel

Allegiance: Orb, The Stormhounds

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**Master Sergeant Richard "Corporal" Ramierez**

Age: 41

Height: 183 cm (6')

Weight: 195 lbs

Hair Color: Black, speckles of grey

Eye Color: Dark brown

Allegiance: Orb, Cyprus Finch

Place of Residence: Orb, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**Dr. Erica Simmons**

Age: 49

Height: 167 cm (5' 6")

Weight: 117 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, shoulder length

Eye Color: Light blue

Allegiance: Orb

Place of Residence: Orb, Morganville

Genetics: Natural

**Commander Mu la Flaga, "The Hawk of Endymion"**

Age: 42

Height: 183 cm (6')

Weight: 185 lbs

Hair Color: Blond, short

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb

Place of Residence: Orb, Morganville

Genetics: Natural

**Captain Murrue la Flaga**

Age: 40

Height: 170 cm (5' 6")

Weight: 122 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, mid back length

Eye Color: Amber-brown

Allegiance: Orb

Place of Residence: Orb, Morganville

Genetics: Natural

**Lewis Andrew la Flaga**

Age: 7

Height: 135 cm (4' 5")

Weight: 93 lbs

Hair Color: Brown

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb

Place of Residence: Orb, Morganville

Genetics: Coordinator

**Admiral Andrew "The Desert Tiger" Waltfeld**

Age: 42

Height: 185 cm (6' 1")

Weight: 215 lbs (extra weight from arm prosthetic)

Hair Color: Brown, short, slightly wild

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Orb

Place of Residence: Orb Orbital Station "Port Magellan", Aprilius City, PLANTS

Genetics: Coordinator

**Chief Representative Jiro Kurenai**

Age: 38

Height: 178 cm (5' 10")

Weight: 165 lbs

Hair Color: Black

Eye Color: Stormcloud grey

Allegiance: Orb

Place of Residence: Orb National Palace, Nara-Attha City

Genetics: Natural

**The United Solar Nation**

**Solar President Gilbert Durandel**

Age: 43

Height: 183 cm (6')

Weight: 170 lbs lbs

Hair Color: Black

Eye Color: Yellow-brown

Allegiance: Himself, the USN

Place of Residence: Copernicus Lunar City

Genetics: Coordinator

**Paladin-Commander Rey ze Burrel**

Age: 28

Height: 180 cm (5' 11")

Weight: 175 lbs

Hair Color: Blond, shoulder length

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: Gilbert Durandel

Place of Residence: Copernicus Lunar City, Galileo Lunar Fleet Base

Genetics: Coordinator Newtype (Latent)

**Dr. Sammual Roanoke, Head of Cyber-Mechanical Studies, F.E.A.R.**

Age: 68

Height: 170 cm (5' 7")

Weight: 150 lbs

Hair Color: grey-white, balding

Eye Color: pale green

Allegiance: FEAR, The USN

Place of Residence: FEAR Headquarters, Second Earth Colony number 4

Genetics: Natural

**Knight-Champion Shinn Asuka, "The Crystal Knight"**

Age: 27

Height: 184 cm (6')

Weight: 185 lbs

Hair Color: Black, short, spiky

Eye Color: Red

Allegiance: The USN

Place of Residence: Galileo Lunar Fleet Base

Genetics: Coordinator

**Knight-Champion Lunamaria Hawke, "The Ruby Knight"**

Age: 27

Height: 170 cm (5' 7")

Weight: 135 lbs (extra weight from internal prosthetics)

Hair Color: Magenta red, short

Eye Color: Lilac blue

Allegiance: The USN

Place of Residence: Galileo Lunar Fleet base

Genetics: Coordinator

**Knight-Ensign Lain Debora**

Age: 31

Height: 170 cm (5' 7")

Weight: 168 lbs

Hair Color: Black, short, wild

Eye Color: Left eye blue, right eye green

Allegiance: The USN, Orb

Place of Residence: FEAR Headquarters, Second Earth Colony 4

Genetics: Natural

**Independent Biological Weapon System (IBWS) Extended, Stella Loussier**

Age: 27

Height: 163 cm (5' 4")

Weight: 130 lbs (due to internal augmentations)

Hair Color: Blond, shoulder length

Eye Color: Rosy pink

Allegiance: FEAR, Lain Debora

Place of Residence: FEAR Headquarters, Second Earth Colony 4

Genetics: Natural base

**Fleet Admiral David Icarus**

Age: 50

Height: 175 cm (5' 9")

Weight: 190 lbs

Hair Color: Brown fading to grey, thinning

Eye Color: Hazel

Allegiance: The USN

Place of Residence: Galileo Lunar Fleet Base

Genetics: Natural

**Captain Talia Gladys**

Age: 40

Height: 170 cm (5' 7")

Weight: 120 lbs

Hair Color: Light brown, shoulder length

Eye Color: Light brown

Allegiance: ZAFT, the USN

Place of Residence: Maius City, the PLANTS

Genetics: Coordinator

**Dr. Oktar Magnus, Head of Biological Studies, F.E.A.R.**

Age: 53

Height: 194 cm (6' 4")

Weight: 245 lbs

Hair Color: Flaming red with grey streaks, shoulder length, full beard and moustache

Eye Color: Icy blue

Allegiance: FEAR, the USN

Place of Residence: FEAR Headquarters, Second Earth Colony 4

Genetics: Natural

**Dr. Natalia Dostanya, Director of Fenris Enhanced Armaments Researchers (F.E.A.R.)**

Age: 49

Height: 180 cm (5' 11")

Weight: 145 lbs (many internal prosthetics)

Hair Color: Nordic Blond, long ponytail, thigh length

Eye Color: Icy Grey-green

Allegiance: FEAR

Place of Residence: FEAR Headquarters, Second Earth Colony 4

Genetics: Natural

**Independent Cyber-Mechanical Soldier (ICMS) Augmented, Mechael "Mecha" Smith**

Age: 25

Height: 182 cm (6')

Weight: 300 lbs (fully cybernetic body)

Hair Color: Sandy brown, short (can change color)

Eye Color: Bright orange (can change color)

Allegiance: FEAR

Place of Residence: FEAR Headquarters, Second Earth Colony 4

Genetics: Natural base

**Arnold "Hazy" Zala**

Age: 30

Height: 180 cm (5' 11")

Weight: 180 lbs

Hair Color: Blond, mid back length, slightly curly

Eye Color: Emerald Green

Allegiance: The Reclaimer Initiative

Place of Residence: Second Earth Colony 1, Reclaimer HQ

Genetics: Coordinator

**Prince Yuna Roma "the Roman" Seiran**

Age: 33

Height: 180 cm (5' 11")

Weight: 180 lbs

Hair Color: Lilac, short

Eye Color: Blue

Allegiance: The Reclaimer Initiative

Place of Residence: Second Earth Colony 1, Reclaimer HQ

Genetics: Natural

**TAC-Captain Brendon "Birdman" Stork, (Tactically Augmented Coordinator)**

Age: 38

Height: 196 cm (6' 5")

Weight: 175 lbs (minor augmentations/prosthetics)

Hair Color: Bald, shaved

Eye Color: Light brown

Allegiance: The USN

Place of Residence: Second Earth Colony 2

Genetics: Coordinator

**Lord Atticus Djibril**

Age: 42

Height: 181 cm (5' 11")

Weight: 165 lbs

Hair Color: Grey-white

Eye Color: Pink-grey

Allegiance: The Reclaimer Initiative, Blue Cosmos

Place of Residence: Second Earth Colony 1, Reclaimer HQ, Various Lunar estates.

Genetics: Natural (partial albino)

**Markov Johanavich Ashino**

Age: 29-31 (exact age unknown)

Height: 155 cm (5' 1")

Weight: 240 lbs

Hair Color: Cherry red, short, curly

Eye Color: Lime Green

Allegiance: The USN, the Retributors

Place of Residence: Retributors secret asteroid base "Bane Station"

Genetics: Natural base

**Commander Tamara Logan**

Age: 27

Height: 175 cm (5' 9")

Weight: 120 lbs

Hair Color: Black, mid back length

Eye Color: Green

Allegiance: The Retributors

Place of Residence: Bane Station

Genetics: Natural

**The Edenites**

**Kunai "The Mindblade"**

Age: 31

Height: 182 cm (6')

Weight: 165 lbs (legs are atrophied, much less muscle mass)

Hair Color: Bald, slight greenish tint to skin

Eye Color: Blue, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Edenites

Place of Residence: Garden City, New Eden

Genetics: Ultimate Coordinator, pre second puberty (Edenite) (Active)

**Arboreal Praetorian Lilia, "Yggdrasil's Valkyrie"**

Age: 23

Height: 170 cm (5' 7")

Weight: 120 lbs

Hair Color: Dark blue, waist legnth, straight

Eye Color: Lilac blue, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Edenites, Kunai

Place of Residence: Garden City, New Eden

Genetics: Edenite (Active)

**Arboreal Praetorian Heine Westenfluss "The Shooting Star"**

Age: 29

Height: 188 cm (6' 2")

Weight: 195 lbs

Hair Color: Orange with red streaks, short, long bangs

Eye Color: Light green, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Edenites

Place of Residence: Garden City, New Eden

Genetics: Edenite (Active)

**Arboreal Praetorian Haman Al'jib "The Djinn"**

Age: 45

Height: 182 cm (6')

Weight: 185 lbs

Hair Color: Black, short, shiny, moustache and goatee

Eye Color: Dark brown-black, metallic silver pupils

Allegiance: Edenites

Place of Residence: Garden City, New Eden

Genetics: Edenite (Latent)

**Consol of Foreign Affairs Hieronymo, "Hiero"**

Age: 66

Height: 178 cm (5' 10")

Weight: 175 lbs

Hair Color: Very light lime green (formerly grey), short, growing it out longer

Eye Color: Green, metallic silver pupils

Allegiance: Edenites, Garden City

Place of Residence: Garden City, New Eden

Genetics: Edenite (Latent)

**Yggdrasil, Greatfather Tree, The World Tree, Forest God**

Age: 7

Height: 700 m (2275')

Weight: 250,000 tons

Hair Color: N/A (pine needles are dark green)

Eye Color: N/A

Allegiance: New Eden, all Edenite life forms

Place of Residence: Garden City

Genetics: Neo-Redwood Grand Chimera (Latent)

**The Caller, Eater of Death, Soulsucker, Voice of Mortality**

Age: 7

Height: Main body/brain area is roughly 150 cubic meters (450 cubic feet), feeding tentacles extend between 100 and 800 meters (300 to 2400 feet)

Weight: 120,000 tons

Hair Color: N/A (skin can change color, most often a dirty red-brown-purple)

Eye Color: Black, multiple metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Himself

Place of Residence: Ruins of Neo-Miami Aquarium, underground

Genetics: Mutated Conglomerate Grand Chimera (Horseshoe crab, jellyfish, octopus) (Active)

**Leviathan, The Ocean Mother, Queen of the Seas**

Age: 7

Height: 945 meters from nose to tail (3070 feet)

Weight: 450,000 tons

Hair Color: N/A (skin is black-grey)

Eye Color: Solid metallic gold

Allegiance: Herself, all Edenite waterborne lifeforms

Place of Residence: Oceans of New Eden

Genetics: Neo-Whale Grand Chimera (Active)

**Eric Kellson, Lord of the Wendigo's**

Age: 34 (biological age of body is 7)

Height: 275 cm (9')

Weight: 1175 lbs

Hair Color: Silver-green (mane), body fur is dark brown

Eye Color: Red with metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Wendigo's, sympathy for his old friends

Place of Residence: Mountain Forests of Africa

Genetics: Neo-Gorilla Chimera race "Wendigo", Human mind (Active)

**Ursa Major, High Alpha of the Ursi**

Age: 7

Height: 533 cm (17' 6") (when upright on back legs)

Weight: 3500 lbs

Hair Color: Silver and emerald green tipped dark brown

Eye Color: Brown, metallic silver pupils

Allegiance:

Place of Residence:

Genetics: Neo-Grizzly Bear Chimera race "Ursi" (Latent)

**Gorefin**

Age: 7

Height: 125 meters from nose to tail (405 feet)

Weight: 3500 tons

Hair Color: N/A (skin is dark grey-blue on top, pale white-green on bottom

Eye Color: Milky blue, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Leviathan

Place of Residence: Oceans of New Eden, the top 1500 feet

Genetics: Neo-Great White Shark "Megalodon" Chimera (active)

**Charbydis**

Age: 7

Height: Body length 45 meters (146 feet), tentacles reach another 275 meters (900 feet)

Weight: 3000 tons

Hair Color: N/A (skin is blac with bright pink and neon blue stripes, suckers are dark green)

Eye Color: Black, metallic gold spots

Allegiance: Leviathan

Place of Residence: Oceans of New Eden, the bottom mile

Genetics: Neo-Giant Squid "Kraken" Chimera (Active)

**Strategos Minoris Panner, Legio Direcat**

Age: 28

Height: 191 cm (6' 3")

Weight: 145 lbs

Hair Color: Tawny orange, mid back length, curly

Eye Color: Smoky grey, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Garden City

Place of Residence: Garden City

Genetics: Edenite (Active)

**Strategos Magnus Ullric "Garm-Breaker"**

Age: 64

Height: 213 cm (7')

Weight: 350 lbs

Hair Color: Black streaked with white

Eye Color: Yellow, metallic gold pupils

Allegiance: Garden City

Place of Residence: Garden City

Genetics: Edenite (Active)

**Praetorian Revv**

Age: 35

Height: 183 cm (6')

Weight: 189 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, stubbly, patchy moustache and scraggly five o'clock shadow

Eye Color: Blue, Gold pupils

Allegiance: Garden City

Place of Residence: Garden City

Genetics: Edenite (Active)

**Arboreal Praetorian Alexander "The Deathbringer"**

Age: 28

Height: 211 cm (6' 11")

Weight: 315 lbs

Hair Color: White blond, crew cut

Eye Color: Blue, Gold pupils

Allegiance: Garden City

Place of Residence: Garden City

Genetics: Edenite (Active)

**Praetorian Vaul "The Warsmith"**

Age: 54

Height: 168 cm (5' 6")

Weight: 150 lbs

Hair Color: Black, shaggy, shoulder length

Eye Color: Brown, gold pupils

Allegiance: Garden City

Place of Residence: Garden City

Genetics: Edenite (Active)

**Zacharis "Kira" Frost**

Age: 30?

Height: 188 cm (6' 2")

Weight: 185 lbs

Hair Color: Brown, short, spiky

Eye Color: Royal purple with gold metallic pupils

Allegiance: Himself

Place of Residence: Charon's Citadel, JIHAD mountain

Genetics: Nanologically enhanced Ultimate Coordinator, post second puberty (Active)

xxxx

More to come.


	3. Mobile Suits and Ships

**Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors**

Here's the list of Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors currently in use by all the major factions in Reclamation War. Only Reclamation War machines will appear here, for older machines, you'll have to look back at chapter 70 of Eden Disaster. Details on some Mobile Suits and Gundams will be "pending soon". And okay, I made a mistake here, putting out Speed/Maneueverability ratings with no quantifiable scale to compare them to. Correcting that now. Speed will change to two numbers, those being maximum flight (or sail for underwater machines) speed and then maximum ground or near ground (for those with hoverthrusters) speed, in miles per hour. Maneuverability will change to a rating of 1 thru 20, where 20 is the absolute top end and 1 is basically immobile, somewhere around 7-8 is average. Of course the pilot of a machine does have some bearing on this rating as well, so ratings will usually come in a range.

**Fenris Enhanced Armament Researchers**

**Designation:** Panzerwulf

**Pilot:** IBWS (Independent Biological Weapon System) "Extended". Stella, Sting, Auel.

**Height:** 23 meters

**Weight:** 130 tons

**Power Plant:** IMR

**Armor Type:** TransPhase Shift

**Flight Speed:** 150 mph (assisted flight only)

**Ground Speed:** 65 mph

**Maneuverability:** 5-8

**Weapons (Location):**

Mjolnir Cannon (R hand, short range, very high power, volatile, part of the Cerberus combi-weapon)

Dual 350mm Hyper-Impulse Cannon (R hand, long range, part of the Cerberus combi-weapon)

110cm Dual Gottfried high energy Beam Cannon turret (back mounted, can only be fired when the Panzerknight is on hands/knees and braced, long range)

50 tube 90mm unguided rocket launcher x2 (one per shoulder, medium range, high explosive/fragmentation warheads good at taking out lightly armored vehicles and buildings/infantry)

12 meter anti-ship physical/beam sword (R hand)

20mm CIWS x4 (Head)

**Equipment (Location):**

Reinforced Citadel Shield (L hand)

Geischmedig-Panzer armature shield x2 (R/L upper arm/shoulder)

Independent Heat Ablative Armor, detachable (all over, good for 20 hits from most mobile suit caliber beam weapons)

Heavy gauge armored tank treads (arms, legs)

**Notes:** Very direct and powerful, and strong defensively, but if they take damage to either the reactor or the Fenris combi-weapon, the result is often a very powerful explosion destroying the machine and damaging severely anything nearby.

xxxx

**Designation:** Panzerdragoon

**Pilot:** Stella Loussier, other Extendeds.

**Height:** 40 meters

**Weight:** 550 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** Ablative, GP Scales

**Flight Speed: **60 mph

**Ground Speed:** 90 mph

**Maneuverability:** 8-12

**Weapons (Location):**

Turret mounted dual heavy flamethrower x2 (tank mode, front and back)

75 tube 120mm unguided rocket launcher x2 (R/L torso in mobile suit form, R/L side, at rear, pointing upwards/forwards in tank form)

VTP 16 tube pod x2 (R/L hip, R/L side in tank form, vertical launching)

20mm CIWS x6 (two in head (rear pointing in tank form), two on torso, two dorsal mounted in tank form)

"Ragnarok" Mjolnir 3P Mega-Cannon x2 (R/L shoulder, long range, colossal power, slow firing, requires Mobile suit to be braced to fire accurately, Mobile suit only)

40cm Gatling High Energy Beam cannon x6 (2 per shoulder, flanking Ragnaroks, 2 more appear as secondary turrets in tank form)

Dual 200mm gatling cannon (L arm, under shield, become forward facing weapons in tank mode)

220cm Positron Rifle "Lohengrin" (R hand, center turret in tank mode)

Large Heat sword (QC sliver impreganted)

**Equipment (Location):**

Large Citadel Shield (L arm)

NIC-III System

GRS-II

Tank Treads

Deployable stabilizers

Nano-repair system

Defensive Particle Inhibitor (interferes with/negates precision controlled molecule systems, such as Phase Shift Armor, Mirage Colloid Cloak, and Angel Halo, within a 150 meter radius)

Supply containers for transporting materials for supporting troops

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Omega-Panzer (Mobile Suit, Hovertank and Assault Cannon transformation modes)

**Pilot:** Mechael Smith, ICMS (Independent Cyber-Mechanical Soldier) Augmented

**Height:** 30 meters

**Weight:** 250 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** Ablative

**Flight Speed: **4500 mph (atmosphere), 15000 mph (space)

**Ground Speed:** 180 mph

**Maneuverability:** 16

**Weapons (Location):**

Vibrational Heat Claw on 50 meter extension armature x2 (Hands/arms, function like the Nataku Gundam's arms from GW, MS mode only)

Nano-Dispensors (Located in palms, can be loaded with a variety of combat Nanites, including MAIDEN and Red EDEN, short range line or cone effects, like a flamethrower, MS only)

80mm Supercharged Beam Cannon x6 (three per hand, back of wrist/hand, like a punch gun, MS only, medium range)

300cm High Energy Beam cannon (Right Shoulder in MS form, front fixed gun in HT mode, Secondary front arc weapon in AC mode, long range)

VTP 12 tube launcher (Left shoulder MS form, fixed front in HT, rear launched weapon system in AC)

100cm double barreled Flak Cannon (rifle, held in hands, detachable, 6 shot clip (3 per barrel), short range, wide area affect, good at penetrating all forms of armor)

Dual 250cm Lohengrin Turret (Primary armament, HT mode only, very long range)

57mm Gatling Beam cannon turret x4 (HT mode, two front, two back, sides, side weapons in AC mode, medium range)

150cm Radiation Cannon (Primary weapon, AC mode only, extreme range, massive penetrating and destructive power, frontal 180 degree arc only)

VTP 6 tube launcher x6 (3 per side, HT mode, AC mode only)

20mm CIWS x4 (Head in MS, front facing in HT and AC)

**Equipment (Location):**

Anti-Psy Flare Launcher (fires canisters filled with dissected and preserved scraps of Newtype minds, which are then shocked/burned to a crisp, the resultant Death Echo is extremely traumatic for Psychics to experience, disorienting/painful, covers a 1 km radius, limited number of flares)

Magnetic Disruption Field (Disables all projected magnetic fields within a 100 meter radius, including such things as GP, Citadel and Positron Shields, most plasma melee based weapons and even BGCS fields. No distinction between allied or enemy fields)

Defensive Particle Inhibitor (Negates PS, TPS, Mirage Colloid and Angel Halo systems within 150 meters)

Nano-Repair System

NIC-III

GRS-II

Hoverthrusters (Hovertank mode)

Deployable Stabilizers (Assault Cannon mode)

Cooling Vane x12 (two per leg, two per shoulder, 4 on rear torso)

**xxxx**

**USN**

**Designation:** Excaliber

**Pilot:** Solar Knight Paladins, Lunamaria Hawke, Rey Ze Burrel

**Height:** 22 meters

**Weight:** 135 tons

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Phase Shift, Assault Shroud is Heavy Standard

**Flight Speed:** 1500 mph

**Ground Speed:** 180 mph (Hoverthrusters)

**Maneuverability:** 12-16

**Weapons (Location):**

500mm Accelerated Impulse Cannon (R shoulder)

Adjustable angle Thermal Exciter (L shoulder, ten to one hundred meter wide, up to three hundred meters long cone, turret mounted)

Variable Tactical Payload Missile 3 tube pod x4 (hips and upper back, double as torpedo launchers when underwater)

QC sword (R hand)

155mm Heavy automatic cannon with underslung 450mm anti-armor shotgun (R hand, fires beam tipped shells)

Heavy Flamethrower/300mm automatic Grenade launcher (L Hand, mostly used for launching specialty munitions, such as entaglement sap, gas, poison, ECM, incendiary or nanite warheads)

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (head)

150mm Rapidfire FRALA rifle (Rey's machine, in place of the Flamethrower/Grenade launcher)

"Gram" 225mm Superpenetrating Launcher (sort of a rocket launcher, except the rockets are armored and tipped with QC crystal slivers, are self guided to an extent and contain extremely powerful experimental explosives that incorporate tiny scraps of antimatter. Definitely a one shot kill weapon for anything short of a major capital warship. Used by Lunamaria, still a highly experimental weapon. The launcher fires the projectile so quickly it ignites the air along the path it travels, making the shot look like an energy weapon discharge when it is in fact a munition based weapon. The projectile is swathed in magnetic fields, just like an AMP shot, that help protect it from small particles in its path, and also helps it penetrate things like energy shields, and deflect beam based interdiction weapons. Uses both hands, very long range.)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield projector x2 (forearms)

Ablative gel re-entry system (all over)

Mirage Colloid (all over)

Vari-Camera array (Head)

HiMat System (back)

Scale motor system/submergence seals rated to 1000 meters (all over)

Hoverthrusters (legs)

Gravitic Reduction System mkII (cockpit)

NIC-III system

Assault Shroud armor (mostly on torso and upper limbs, has a hood like protection around head)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Transendance (the renamed Vengeance)

**Pilot:** Shinn Asuka

**Height:** 21 meters

**Weight:** 80 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** LCR

**Flight Speed:** 6500 mph (maximum effective combat speed in atmosphere), 12500 mph in space

**Ground Speed:** 200 mph

**Maneuverability:** 18

**Weapons (Location):**

QC Zweihander

QC finger claws

Heat whip x2 (wrists)

5mm AMP rifle (optional/special gear, R hand)

100mm Dual Supercharged beam carbine x2 (fast fire rate, short-medium range, one per hand, token ranged punch, Reclamation War)

**Equipment (Location):**

Positron Reflector shields x4 (wingtips, palms)

NIC-III

GRS-II

Nano-repair system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Vindicator

**Pilot:** Solar Knights, Lain Debora

**Height:** 21 meters

**Weight:** 120 tons

**Power Plant:** Nuclear

**Armor Type:** Phase Shift, Heavy Armor Assault Shroud

**Flight Speed:** 650 mph

**Ground Speed: **75 mph

**Maneuverability:** 10-12

**Weapons (Location):**

100mm Supercharged Beam Rifle with 350mm rocket grenade (R hand, standard)

155mm Linear Sniper rifle (R hand, optional)

120mm Gatling cannon (R hand, optional)

350mm Accelerated Impulse Cannon (R hand, optional)

750mm Heavy Bazooka (R hand, optional)

45mm LAW x2 (R/L shoulder, linear assault weapon, superfast firing projectile weapon)

30mm FRALA (Both hands, optional)

Supercharged beam forearm blade x2 (wrists)

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (shoulders)

Cerberus Combi-weapon (dual 350mm hyper impulse cannon and Mjolnir 3P cannon, Lain only, in addition to standard rifle)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Tower Shield (L arm)

Assault Shroud breakaway armor

Vari-camera

HiMat wings

Hoverthrusters

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Patriot

**Pilot:** Gamer Corps/Volunteer Militia

**Height:** 18 meters

**Weight:** 75 tons

**Power Plant:** Hydrogen fuel cell

**Armor Type:** Standard

**Ground Speed:** 50 mph (cannot fly, but can jump several hundred meters at a time)

**Maneuverability:** 4-10

**Weapons (Location):**

105mm linear rifle with underslung flamethrower (R hand)

55mm machinegun (R shoulder)

120mm rocket launcher, 5 tube (L shoulder)

Mono Sword (R hand)

**Equipment (Location):**

Telepresence VR Node

Heavy Armor Shield

**Notes:** Operated by part time soldiers or students as part of a scholarship progam as horde/swarm auxilary troops for USN combat operations. Short combat life, but a renewable bullet sop. Easy to produce via Red EDEN.

xxxx

**Designation:** Gladiator IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle)

**Pilot:** USN Ground Forces (Crew of 2, Driver, Commander/Gunner)

**Dimensions:** 9.5 meters long by 3 meters wide by 2.5 meters tall

**Weight:** 27 tons

**Power Plant:** Hydrogen fuel cell

**Armor Type:** Heavy standard with anti-beam coating (rated for infantry and light vehicle type beam weapons)

**Speed:** up to 120 kph on flat ground, slower on rough terrain

**Maneuverability:** 5-7

**Weapons (Location):**

105mm Linear Cannon (turret, standard)

Dual 30mm Linear Autocannon (turret, optional)

Dual 10mm linear Gatling Guns (turret, optional)

60mm Supercharged Beam Cannon (turret, optional)

75mm direct fire anti-armor rocket tube x12 (6 per side of turret)

.50 cal machine gun (front facing)

Firing ports for contained squad (sides and rear)

**Equipment (Location):**

Smoke/Chaff launchers

20mm automatic anti-missile shotcannon (turret top)

Anti-Beam dispersal grenade launchers

Puncture immune spring-tires (8x8)

Interior room for squad of 12 (8 with gatling guns or beam cannon, to make up for extra ammo and energy capacitors)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Chariot APC (Armored Personnel Carrier)

**Pilot:** USN Ground Forces (Crew of 1 Driver/Gunner)

**Dimensions:** 7 meters long by 3 meters wide by 3 meters tall

**Weight:** 20 tons

**Power Plant:** Hydrogen fuel cell

**Armor Type:** Standard (light-medium tank grade)

**Speed:** up to 85 kph on flat ground, much slower on rough terrain

**Maneuverability:** 4-6

**Weapons (Location):**

20mm Autocannon (turret)

.50 cal machine gun (pintle mounted on top cupola)

**Equipment (Location):**

Room for up to 14 soldiers

**Notes:** Prone to breakdown in desert environments

xxxx

**Designation:** Viking MBT (Main Battle Tank)

**Pilot:** USN Ground Forces (Crew of 3, Driver, Gunner, Commander)

**Dimensions:** 10 meters long by 4 meters wide by 4.5 meters tall

**Weight:** 65 tons

**Power Plant:** Dual hydrogen fuel cell

**Armor Type:** Heavy standard with anti-beam coating (roughly 2x as thick as a Gladiator in all quarters)

**Speed:** up to 80 kph on flat ground, much slower on rough terrain

**Maneuverability:** 3-5

**Weapons (Location):**

125mm Linear Cannon (Turret, Standard)

90mm Dual Supercharged Beam Cannons (Turret, optional)

25mm Gatling Cannon x4 (Turret, optional)

12 tube 120mm Rocket Launcher + two 24 tube 75mm Rocket Launchers (Turret, optional)

Dual .50 caliber machine gun (Cupola, remote or hands on controls)

Dual hull mounted Flamethrowers (front glacis)

Electrified Hull (3 uses)

Bulldozer mine clearing blade (front glacis, optional)

**Equipment (Location):**

Smoke/Chaff launchers

20mm automatic anti-missile shotcannon x2 (front glacis and rear over engine block)

Anti-Beam dispersal grenade launchers

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Titan Super Heavy Tank

**Pilot:** USN Ground Forces (Crew of 3, gunner, driver, commander)

**Dimsenions:** 15 meters long by 5.5 meters wide by 6 meters tall

**Weight:** 110 tons

**Power Plant:** Nuclear

**Armor Type:** Phase Shift

**Speed:** up to 50 kph on flat surface, about half that on rough terrain

**Maneuverability:** 1-3

**Weapons (Location):**

Mjolnir Cannon x2 (Primary Turret, 360 degree arc of fire, very fast rotation, able to keep up with Mobile Suits)

375mm Artillery Cannon x2 (rear of primary turret)

57mm gatling beam cannon x2 (side turrets, 180 degree arc of fire)

Plasma Flamethrower x2 (side turrets, 180 degree arc of fire)

Electrified Hull (Unlimited uses)

4 tube VTP missile launcher x2 (rear deck, vertical launch)

10mm FRALA (glacis turret, 180 degree arc of fire)

.50 caliber anti-personnel machine gun x6 (two front mounted, one on either side, two rear mounted, automated)

Mono-molecular brushcutters (chainsaw like attachments, front, optional

**Equipment (Location):**

GP Shield blisters (front glacis, sides, rear)

20mm automatic anti-missile shotcannon x3 (two on top of primary turret, one rear mounted)

Activatable Citadel Shield (front glacis, disables FRALA turret and Mjolnirs)

CUSA-D (mounted on underside, sends constant vibrations through the ground for a 500 meter radius, detonates mines and other buried explosives)

Air tight seals and extended life support system (allows the Titan to be driven through bodies of water up to 500 feet deep and be deployed in airless environments, such as the Moon)

Scale systems (for use on loose sand or water)

Celerity System (triples speed for 1 minute, requires ten minute cooldown)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Incarnate Class Dreadnought (Incarnate, Avatar, Primus, Solaris)

**Crew Size:** 10,000-12,000

**Dimensions:** 1150 meters long by 25-175 wide by 25-175 tall (elongated pyramid type shape)

**Mass:** 1,000,000 tons

**Power Plant:** Large scale FPR x3, Nuclear x2, Solar Powered Battery

**Armor Type:** Multilayer Ablative

**Flight Speed:** 3000 mph (space only, slow acceleration)

**Maneuverability:** 1

**Weapons (Location):**

125cm FRALA x4 (one per side, mounted near the back, limited rotational capacity in a small arc, long range, including orbit to surface, extremely high power, can fire once every few minutes. Main guns)

Triple 220cm Gottfried High Energy Beam Cannon turret x12 (3 per side, front, middle, back, long range, fire every 15-20 seconds, barrels are usually staggered in firing to ensure near constant fire on target, primary beam weapon system)

Dual 75cm Linear Cannon turret x16 (4 per side, 2 front, 2 rear. Long range, fire every 10-20 seconds, primary physical ranged punch, secondary weapon)

120mm gatling AMS/MA Turret x48 (12 per side, Anti-Mobile Suit/Mobile Armor cannon, primary close in weapon system)

125mm Beam Cannon AMS/MA turret x48 (12 per side, secondary CIWS)

Anti-Ship Torpedo system, 16 tubes (12 forward facing, 4 rear facing)

Strategic Missile Launcher x4

Fixed 600cm Artillery Cannon x2 (Nose, orbit to surface bombardment weapon, very long reload time)

BALOR Enclosure (single, retrofit)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield projectors (allowing for around 75% coverage with mobility, 98% with no mobility), shields are proof against non capital class weapons or special weapons.

Front or side arc Mirrorblade Projectors (can only protect front or one side at a time)

Vari-Cameras

Red EDEN supply and repair system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Myrmidon Class Heavy Cruiser (Myrmidon, Hoplite, Aegean, Achilles, Hector, Scythian, Trojan, Mongol, Crusader, plus others)

**Crew Size:** 3000-4000, plus 1200 flight crew/flight crew support

**Dimensions:** 400m long by 50 (150 in wings) wide by 50 tall (elongated cross)

**Mass:** 150,000 tons

**Power Plant:** Large scale FPR, Nuclear x2, Solar Batteries

**Armor Type:** Ablative

**Flight Speed:** 4000 mph (space only, medium acceleration)

**Maneuverability:** 3

**Weapons (Location):**

220cm Triple Gottfried Cannon turret x4 (dorsal/ventral, 2 front, 2 back)

350mm FRALA turret x2 (D/V, middle)

Anti-Ship Torpedo launcher x8 (front/nose)

Anti-vehicle Missile launcher, 25 tube x16 (spaced all around, volley fire)

Dual 120mm Gatling cannon turret x8 (2 per side, front and back)

57mm Valkyros Beam CIWS x8 (2 per side, front and back)

750mm Railgun "Valient" x2 (front, sides, forward facing, limited arc)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield projectors (allowing for around 75% coverage with mobility, 98% with no mobility), shields are proof against non capital class weapons or special weapons, won't hold up against constant barrage for more than a few minutes

Red EDEN Supply and repair system

Hanger space for 144 Moebius Sigma's, 72 per "wing"

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Armstrong class Escort/Flak Frigate (Armstrong, Aldrin, Yaeger, Wright, Earheart, Rommel, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Patton, etc)

**Crew Size:** 500-700

**Dimensions:** 200m long by 25 wide by 25 tall (boxy)

**Mass:** 30000 tons

**Power Plant:** Nuclear x3, Solar Battery

**Armor Type:** Heavy Phase Shifted

**Flight Speed:** 4000 mph (space only, fast acceleration)

**Maneuverability:** 5

**Weapons (Location):**

220cm Dual Gottfried turret (dorsal, middle)

Triple 40cm Linear Cannon turret x3 (sides, ventral, middle)

150mm rapidfire shotcannon "flak" turret x12 (4 per side, short range, very good at interdicting missiles/maneuverable units)

57mm Beam CIWS x24 (8 per side)

20mm CIWS turret x48 (16 per side)

Anti-ship torpedo launcher x2 (front)

VTP missile launcher x24 (mostly back, sides)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield projectors (allowing for around 75% coverage with mobility, 98% with no mobility), shields are proof against most regular Mobile Suit or Mobile Armor class weapons, less proof vs capital weapons

Mirrorblade projectors (front arc only, can affect up to a 10 kilometer line)

Anti-beam depth charge launchers

Chaff/decoy launchers

Hanger space for 5 Moebius Sigma's

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Moebius Sigma Space Superiority Mobile Armor

**Crew Size:** 3

**Dimensions:** 10m long by 4 wide by 4 tall

**Mass:** 25 tons

**Power Plant:** Extended Battery (average combat time 30 minutes)

**Armor Type:** Phase Shift

**Flight Speed:** 2500 mph

**Maneuverability:** 9-10

**Weapons (Location):**

Dual 57mm beam cannon x6 (one per gun barrel pod)

VTP 6 tube (ventral)

225mm Linear cannon (nose)

20mm CIWS x2 (nose)

**Equipment (Location):**

6 Gun barrel pods

Citadel Shield Blister (Body, 3 minute uptime, single use)

Gesichmedig-Panzer Shield (nose)

Afterburners (Engines)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Fenris Wolf (First Generation Assault/Close Combat BALOR, Base Lifeform Cold Hunter)

**Pilot:** Codename "Lupine"

**Height:** 18 meters

**Weight:** 100 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR augmentation

**Armor Type:** Adaptive Scales, Phase Shift Mesh shroud armor

**Weapons (Location):**

QC impregnated claws (hands, feet, back of elbows, tops of knees)

QC impregnated and reinforced jaws and horns (head)

QC impregnated tail spikes, reinforced tail (tail)

Superpotent Acidic venom stinger (tailtip, can dissolve Mobile Suit armor like it was taffy, can spray at point blank range)

350mm Flak Cannon x2 (slung along arms, close range shotgun type weapons that can penetrate phase shift armor with half molten shrapnel)

Newtype powers revolving around disrupting the minds/actions of enemies in a 100 meter radius, confusing and slowing their reactions down.

**Equipment (Location):**

Paired Natural and nanological regeneration system

Celerity system-esque short term adrenaline boosters for massive speed/strength increases

Leg mounted afterburner systems for blitzkrieg charges

Flight stabilizers for long range jumps or glides, do not allow for true flight

Self camouflaging skin pigments

Cooling frills (back)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Jormungandr (First Generation Fire Support BALOR, Base lifeform Basilisk)

**Pilot:** Codename "Serpentine"

**Height:** 70 meters long by 15 tall (sextipedal)

**Weight:** 200 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR augmentation

**Armor Type:** Extra thick adaptive hide, heavy Phase Shift plates, GP scales

**Weapons (Location):**

Heavy claws x6 (feet)

Heavy tusks/fangs (head)

Demolisher tail bone club (tailtip, like a wrecking ball)

220cm Positron Cannon x2 (One per shoulder)

120mm gatling beam cannon x6 (one per knee, pivot mounted)

Fifty tube VTP missile launcher (back)

Triple Ragnarok Mega-Mjolnir 3P cannon system (mouth)

50cm FRALA (mounted along tail)

Newtype powers that focus around getting into opponents minds paralyzing them or sending them to sleep so they become helpless

**Equipment (Location):**

Paired Natural and nanological regeneration system

Scale system impellers for water/loose sediment movement

Heavy duty sonic destabilizers pulse a vibration in a few meters around its body, can shatter physical weapons that try to strike, but mostly used for burrowing underground for ambushes or escape tactics.

Cooling frills on the backs of legs and along tail.

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Gorgon (First Generation Special Tactics BALOR, base lifeform Ironhide)

**Pilot:** Codename "Aurochs"

**Height:** 25 meters (bi or quadrupedal, moves faster on four legs for distance travel or charges, prolonged fights on two legs)

**Weight:** 140 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR augmentation

**Armor Type:** Superdense/hard bio-diamond shell, adaptive hide, Citadel Scales

**Weapons (Location):**

QC impregnated horns/tusks (head)

Heavy claws x4 (feet)

120mm beam cannon x8 (one per finger)

VTP missile launcher, 6 tube x4 (one per side, two on flanks, vertical launch)

Newtype powers involving telekinesis, including pyro and cyrokinesis, and telepathic communication jamming

**Equipment (Location):**

Paired Natural and nanological regeneration system

Wide angle Citadel barrier generator can project a Citadel dome 75 meters across, cannot attack with weapons through it

Thrusters and flight stabilizers for flight (back)

Cooling slits on underbelly and in short tail

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Tarrasque (Second Generation Assault/Close Combat BALOR, base lifeform Fenris Wolf)

**Pilot:** XXXX XXXXXX

**Height:** 26 meters

**Weight:** 280 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR augmentation

**Armor Type:** Reflective Adaptive hide (75% chance to reflect beam based attacks, like the Akatsuki), QC encrustations over 85% of body surface

**Flight Speed:** 2500 mph (atmosphere), up to 10000 mph (space)

**Ground Speed:** 800 mph (up to 3600 mph along flat ground with Blitzkrieg system activated)

**Maneuverability:** 25

**Weapons (Location):**

Solid QC, acidic envenomed claw-blades (hands, feet, back of elbows, tops of knees)

Solid QC and reinforced, acidic envenomed jaws and horns (head)

Solid QC, acidic venom coated tail spikes, reinforced tail x2 (tails)

Superpotent Acidic venom stinger x2 (tailtips, can dissolve Mobile Suit armor like it was taffy, can spray at point blank range range)

Acidic Venom Cannon x2 (slung along arms, close range weapon that spews huge globs of the same venom from the tail, 100 meter range max)

QC impregnanted Bone spine launchers (shoulders, medium to short range, fire acid envenomed spines in volleys, rapid regrowth rate)

Napalm glands (mouth, allow for short range cone shaped fire breath, fire clings and is almost impossible to extinguish, produces toxic fumes)

Newtype powers revolving around disrupting the minds/actions of enemies in a 500 meter radius, confusing and slowing their reactions down, also causes fear/terror

**Equipment (Location):**

Paired Natural and nanological regeneration system, can operate in near instantaneous regeneration mode for short periods of time

Celerity system boosters for enhanced reaction times

Blitzkrieg boosters for blistering fast charges

Retractable wings and thrusters for prolonged atmospheric flight

Cooling fins along back

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Tiamat (Second Generation Support BALOR, base lifeform Jormungandr)

**Pilot:** XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX

**Height:** 90 meters long by 20 tall (sextipedal)

**Weight:** 500 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR augmentation

**Armor Type:** Super dense adaptive hide, ablative mucus coating, Citadel scales

**Flight Speed:** 500 mph (atmosphere), up to 6000 mph (space)

**Ground Speed:** 100 mph (land), 50 mph (burrowing)

**Maneuverability:** 8

**Weapons (Location):**

Heavy claws x6 (feet)

Heavy tusks/fangs (head)

Demolisher tail bone club (tailtip, like a wrecking ball)

200cm Accelerated Impulse Cannon x2 (One per shoulder)

120mm gatling supercharged beam cannon x6 (one per knee, pivot mounted)

300cm "Worldbreaker" Artillery cannon (back, centerline, equipped with Thor's Wrath shells, which fly up high and then detonate, releasing a rain of hundreds of Mjolnir beams across a wide radius)

Bio-electric generation/projection system (all throughout body, basically runs a huge electrical current through its claws and horns, and can concentrate and hurl gargantuan Mjolnir type bolts from its mouth, with much longer range and wider area of effect than usual, more like a cone shaped lightning breath. Also has access to the flame breath of the Tarrasaque, and can also breathe acid, a cyrogenic fluid, and toxic gases.)

100 VTP missile tubes (mounted along tail, vertically launching)

Newtpe powers that focus around getting into opponents minds and preempting their actions, and affecting enemy's ability to utilize their eyes and ears and other senses to detect incoming attacks. Also allowing short term mind control of multiple targets

**Equipment (Location):**

Paired Natural and nanological regeneration system

Retracting wings and thrusters for atmospheric flight

Scale system impellers for water/loose sediment movement

Heavy duty sonic destabilizers pulse a vibration in a few meters around its body, can shatter physical weapons that try to strike, but mostly used for burrowing underground for ambushes or escape tactics.

Cooling frills on the backs of legs and along tail.

Recoil compensators for Worldbreaker

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Bahamut (Second Generation Special Tactics BALOR, base lifeform unknown/unique)

**Pilot:** XXXXXX XXXXXX

**Height:** 32 meters

**Weight:** 110 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR augmentation

**Armor Type:** Adaptive hide, Citadel scales, wings/tail are QC encrusted

**Flight Speed:** 4500 mph (atmosphere), up to 18000 mph (space)

**Ground Speed:** 200 mph

**Maneuverability:** 20

**Weapons (Location):**

Large Solid QC spiral horns (head)

Solid QC claws x2 (hands)

200cm Radiation Cannon (mouth)

50 meter prehensile reinforced tail, with solid QC pincer at tip

Newtype powers involving telekinesis, including large scale pyro and cyrokinesis, also telepathic communication jamming, and sedation/hypnosis techniques

**Equipment (Location):**

Paired Natural and nanological regeneration system

Massive biological wings, reinforced, with thrusters for long range flight, wings can act as shields and are basically impenetrable to anything short of the very top end weapons

Many telekinetic based defenses

Can project a stationary, 150 meter dome/globe of GP, Positron or Citadel type shields, cannot move while so doing

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Typhon (Experimental Third Generation BALOR, base lifeform unknown/unique)

**Pilot:** Matthias and Jesse Argyle (unconscious/unwilling)

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 80 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR augmentation

**Armor Type:** Reflective Adaptive hide (reflects energy based attacks 75% of the time)

**Flight Speed:** 3500 mph (atmosphere), up to 15000 mph (space)

**Ground Speed:** 100 mph

**Maneuverability:** 18

**Weapons (Location):**

Aether Blade longsword (either hand, contained Mjolnir-type kinetic particle bolt, purple-white lightning, effective against all armor types, cannot parry/be blocked by physical weapons)

"Embrace of Typhus" Newtype Brain Network (Wings, well over 100 nutrient blisters, each blister can contain one "harvested" mind, allowing usage of various resonation amplified Newtype powers at a very high level, in addition to Typhon's own Chorus amplification powers.)

Newtype powers to revolve around very high end, esoteric Latent powers (manipulation of time and space and probability, localized interference with the laws of the physical universe, a massive variety of offensive and defensive powers)

**Equipment (Location):**

Paired Natural and nanological regeneration system

Angelic "blister" wings containing the Embrace of Typhus

Concealed thrusters for quicker flight

Feeder tendrils for harvesting new minds for the Embrace, disguised among long white hair that falls from the back of the BALOR's head, hideous, leech mouths on the end of pustulent tentacles

**Notes:**

**xxxx**

**ZAFT**

**Designation:** Primal (Void (no aspect), Shockwave (Ground combat), Vortex (water combat), Inferno (Melee combat), Storm (Air combat))

**Pilot:** Various ZAFT elite pilots, Heine Westenfluess (Prefers Void or Inferno)

**Height:** 21 meters

**Weight:** 90 tons to 110 tons (varies by aspect pack, Storm and Shockwave being heaviest)

**Power Plant:** Hydrogen fuel cell, Shield bleed battery, Aspect pack battery

**Armor Type:** Heavy normal, Phase Shift powered by Aspect Pack

**Flight Speed:** 800 mph (1200 mph for Storm)

**Ground/Water Speed:** 80 mph

**Maneuverability:** 9-11 (11-14 for Inferno)

**Weapons (Location):**

(V, I, St) 125mm Supercharged beam rifle (R Hand, medium range, has its own external power packs stored in underside of Blast Shields that can be changed out, fires dark red beams of denser plasma that do much more damage than regular beam rifle blasts, kind of "explode" when they hit targets, kind of like a JHP bullet)

(A) 15mm Beam CIWS x2 (Head)

(A) 325mm Hyper-Impulse Cannon (Center chest, long range)

(V) Twin 55mm Machine Cannon x2 (L hand, medium range)

(V, St) 10 meter Physical/Beam Anti-Vehicle Sword (R hand, Supercharged blade, dark red)

(V) Option to use various other detached armaments from other Aspect packs (Hands/arms, as required)

(Sh) Upgrade to twinned 125mm Supercharged beam rifle, second twinned 125mm Supercharged beam rifle (R/L Hands, medium range)

(Sh) 255mm Direct/Indirect fire Howitzer x4 (Shoulders, very long range)

(Sh) Dual 400mm Beam Cannon Turret ("Leg" area, long range, green beams)

(Sh) Radar guided Seismic Missile x4 (Back, designed to penetrate reinforced bunkers and cause localized Earthquakes to destroy bases, not very effective against most vehicles/Mobile Suits)

(Vo) 110mm Linear Cannon x6 (three per arm, medium range underwater, long range on surface)

(Vo) 120mm Heavy Phonon Maser x2 (Palms, short range, only work underwater)

(Vo) Vibrational Claw x2 (Hands)

(Vo) 750mm Multiple Rocket Torpedo Launcher x2 (Back/shoulders, long range guided munitions, high speed, armored, powerful explosives, can be programmed to act as mines or traps)

(Vo) 20 meter Ramming Lance x2 (Back, fold into place, Phase shifted tips for extra penetrating power, often used in conjuction with Hydrothrusters)

(I) Twin Forearm Supercharged Beam Blade x2 (R/L arm, dark red beams)

(I) Napalm Flamethrower x2 (Palms, short range, fire sticks and burns)

(I) 225mm 6 tube Unguided Rocket Pod x2 (One per shoulder, medium range, napalm munitions, fire up to three times and detach)  
(I) 300mm Anti-Vehicle Shotcannon (L hand, short range)

(I) Mobile Suit Grenade x12 (Hips)

(St) 120mm Sniper varient Linear Cannon (L Hand, very long range, relatively slow firing)

(St) AMS-LAS 4 tube Missile System x8 (One per shoulder, two per wing, one per hip, similar system to that used by USN Champions, very long range, high power, armored)

(St) Self Guided Tactical Cruise Missile x4 (Two per wing, extremely long range, phase shift armored, extremely fast (Mach 15+), almost impossible to dodge, explosion capable of taking out large warships, bunkers or multiple Mobile Suits with one shot)

(St) Dual 20mm CIWS Turret x2 (Back)

**Equipment (Location):**

(A) Upper arm Armature mounted Blast Shield x2 (R/L arm, can be manipulated to block attacks from a variety of directions, covered with a mesh that bleeds beam/heat based attacks of energy and stores it to add to the Primal's internal supplies)

(V) Citadel Shield (L arm)

(Sh) Hoverthruster/turret base (Cannot use legs unless turret/hoverthruster platform is discarded, allows for fast and agile ground movement, usually turned off when providing fire support for additional stability)

(Sh) Extra power packs/ammunition hoppers (Back)

(Vo) Scale system and heavily reinforced body, rated to 1500 meters depth (All over)

(Vo) Hydrothrusters (Legs, allow for extremely high underwater speeds)

(Vo) Maneuvering Fins (Arms, legs, torso, allow for extreme underwater mobility, basically HiMat wings for underwater)

(I, St) HiMat Wings (Back)

(I) Assault Shroud Armor (All over, same sort of armor as the arm Blast Shields)

(I) Enhanced Stealth System (All over, makes Mobile Suit invisible to radar and other long range sensors... pretty much anything from over a kilometer away or out of LoS can't see them, though visual sensors work as good as ever)

(St) Long Range Sensor/Multi target designation system (Back, allows for "over the horizon" attacks against up to 8 seperate targets at a time)

(St) Afterburners/VTOL thrusters (Legs, allow up to Mach 1.5 speeds, also allow hovering flight and VTOL)

(St) Chaff and Flare Countermeasure launchers x4 (Legs and back, confuse most long range guided weapon systems)

**Notes:** Regulation color is dark grey/black. Shockwave PS is dark brown/tan. Vortex PS is dark/light blue. Inferno PS is dark red/bright orange. Storm PS is dark purple/white. Swapping out aspect packs requires a base or mobile base, and takes about 5-15 minutes depending on the sophistication of the base and the competency of the crews. Some aspect packs, such as Shockwave or Vortex, take longer than others.

xxxx

**Designation:** Remembrance class Fleet Carrier (Remembrance)

**Crew Size:** 800, plus 3600 aircrew

**Dimensions: **(Looks like two Peacemillions put together in an "X" shape, with a long drive unit out the back) Each wing is 700 meters long from tip to tip, 100 meters thick/wide at the middle, 15 at the tips

**Mass:** 900,000 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR x2, Nuclear x2

**Armor Type:** Heat Absorbing Conducive

**Flight Speed:** 2500 mph (space, slow acceleration)

**Maneuverability:** 1

**Weapons (Location):**

57mm Beam CIWS "Valkyros" x48 (12 per half wing)

75cm Dual Linear Cannon turret x8 (2 per half wing)

Dual 250cm "Tannhauser" Positron cannon (bow mounted, forward firing only)

24 anti-ship missile tubes (dorsal/ventral of drive unit)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield projectors (allowing for around 75% coverage with mobility, 98% with no mobility), shields are proof against non capital class weapons

Front or side arc Mirrorblade Projectors (can only protect front or one side at a time)

Vari-Cameras

Red EDEN supply and repair system

Each wing half has hanger space for 60 Primals, for a total of 240 Primals for the entire ship, which is roughly 75 percent of ZAFT's Mobile Forces

**Notes:**

**xxxx**

**The Reclaimer Initiative**

**Designation:** Legacy

**Pilot:** RI Elite pilots

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 90 tons

**Power Plant:** Nuclear

**Armor Type:** Phase Shift

**Flight Speed:** 750 mph

**Ground Speed:** 70 mph

**Maneuverability:** 10-11

**Weapons (Location):**

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (head)

275mm Hyper Impulse Rifle (R hand)

105mm Beam cannon x2 (one per shoulder, flip up)

4 tube "Flanker" Disposable missile launcher (1 per hip, missiles fly wide around targets to strike from behind)

Double Barreled 155mm "Flak" Cannon (Left arm, under shield, like a shotgun, but shorter range and can penetrate PS armor)

Beam saber x2 (hips, can be combined into a dual sword)

Mjolnir 3P cannon (Chest, very long charge time)

**Equipment (Location):**

HiMat Wings

Geischmedig-Panzer Shield with pop out mono-edged chainsaw blade in tip (L hand)

xxxx

**Designation:** Striker

**Pilot:** RI pilots

**Height:** 18 meters

**Weight:** 70 tons

**Power Plant:** Hydrogen fuel cell

**Armor Type:** Standard

**Flight Speed:** 250 mph

**Ground Speed:** 70 mph

**Maneuverability:** 6-8

**Weapons (Location):**

105mm Beam Rifle (R hand, standard)

120mm anti-armor shotcannon (R hand, optional)

425mm Bazooka (R hand, optional)

20mm CIWS x2 (head)

Heavy flamethrower x2 (one per palm)

Mono-edged Chainsaw sword or Chainsaw axe (R hand)

**Equipment (Location):**

Jet Assist Wings (allow for flight in atmosphere)

Heavy armor shield

xxxx

**The Retributors**

**Designation:** Retribution

**Pilot:** Markov Ashino

**Height:** 23 meters

**Weight:** 120 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** Phase Shift, Citadel Scales

**Flight Speed:** 4500 mph (maximum combat speed in atmosphere), up to 12500 mph in space

**Ground Speed:** 200 mph

**Maneuverability:** 18

**Weapons (Location):**

"Fragarach" Gatling Hyper Impulse Cannon x2 (R/L hand/arm. Three rotating 525mm Hyper-Impulse Cannons, can be fired continuously (12 beams per second), long range, very damaging to grouped enemies. Medium-long range. Mounted on armatures, can be retracted to free up the use of the Retribution's arms for other weapons)

150mm Rapidfire FRALA x2 (R/L hand/arm, like all primary weapon systems, mounted on back armatures for ease of weapon swapping. Very long range, each can fire up to 60 times before needing a thirty minute cooldown period)

"Glaive Wurm" Edged Munition Catapult x2 (R/L hand/arm. Large caliber muzzle, flat and almost rectangular in shape, fires "saw blade" like discs with monomolecular sharp edges, packed with high explosives, can be set to impact or timed or density trigged fuses, blast power is high enough to disable a Mobile Suit or blow off a limb from a single hit. Curved flight path. High rate of fire, the discs are cloaked by a limited duration Mirage Colloid "wrapper" that conceals them from view while in flight, making them very hard to dodge or intercept, or even to tell when the weapon is firing at all! Mounted on standard armatures. Medium range)

Variable Tactical Payload Missile Pod x4 (R/L thigh, R/L shoulder, five tubed, detachable, fitted with a variety of special munitions, including electrified nets, anti-electronic Nanites (like the Haunted's), sensor blocking Nanites (like the Haunted Mist), Holoprojecter Decoys, Red EDEN converter missiles (convert matter they strike into sandstone or other weakened material, slow process), QC tipped missiles and shield emitter missiles)

Triple Heat Claw x2 (R/L back of hand, function like the Vengeance's heat whips, but closer range)

CUSA-D x2 (Directional Ultrasonic/Vibrational weapons, short ranged cones, point blank, very high damage, capable of shaking apart almost any physical matter within about 25 meters of origin point, sound like sonic booms but hundreds of times louder, do not work in vacuum except through direct physical contact. R/L palm)

Beam Resistant Monomolecular Halberd (Hands)

15mm Beam CIWS x3 (Head)

**Equipment (Location):**

NIC III control system (cockpit)

Cooling wing (back, extends straight out from the back, like a dorsal fin)

Obdurate Shield Emitter (Chest, projects a very large shield, capable of covering multiple Mobile Suits. Can choose between GP, Citadel or Positron shield types)

GRS mk II (cockpit)

Ultra-fast working nano-repair system (center torso)

**Notes:** Self repair system can restore the entire unit to brand new specifications within 96 hours of taking damage, as long as the cockpit remains intact.

xxxx

**Designation:** Punisher

**Pilot:** Retributor pilots

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 100 tons

**Power Plant:** Nuclear

**Armor Type:** Phase Shift

**Flight Speed:** 800 mph

**Ground Speed:** 80 mph

**Maneuverability:** 10-14

**Weapons (Location):**

Dual 80mm EMC (Edged Munition Catapult) rifle x2 (one per hand)

325mm Hyper Impulse Cannon (R shoulder)

6 tube VTP missile launcher (L shoulder)

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (Head)

Heat melee weapon of some sort (Hand or hands)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield projector x2 (forearms)

NIC-III cockpit system

Mirage Colloid

Jet Assist Wings

**xxxx**

**Edenites**

**Designation:** Exemplar Gundam

**Pilot:** Kunai

**Height:** 25 meters

**Weight:** 150 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** LCR

**Flight Speed:** 7500 mph (max combat speed in atmosphere), up to 20000 mph in space

**Ground Speed:** 250 mph

**Maneuverability:** 19

**Weapons (Location):**

LEMIM Quantum Crystal razor-sheet x50 (stored on back, manipulated by Kunai's boosted telekenetic power as both offense and defense)

Yggdrasil Sprout (interior mounted, amplifies Kunai's Newtype abilities. Functions much like the Lucifer's Grasp.)

**Equipment (Location):**

NIC IV control system

GRS 3

Citadel shield projector x4 (palms, forearms)

Nanorepair system

Cooling fin (back)

Photo-Refraction Cloaking System

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Dervish

**Pilot:** Custodians

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 100 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** Borealite

**Flight Speed:** 4500 mph (in atmosphere), up to 15000 mph in space

**Ground Speed: **200 mph

**Maneuverability:** 17-19

**Weapons (Location):**

Quantum Crystal forearm triple claw x2 (one per arm)

225mm Linear Cannon x2 (one per hand)

57mm Beam Cannon x4 (two per side of torso)

Satchel of Mobile Suit Grenades

**Equipment (Location):**

NIC-IV Control System

GRS-II

Colloid Haze cloaking aura (partially obscures/blurs 20 meter radius)

Citadel Shield Projecter x2 (one per forearm)

Cooling fin (Back)

Nanorepair system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Spectre

**Pilot:** Praetorians

**Height:** 22 meters

**Weight:** 120 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** Borealite

**Flight Speed:** 4500 mph (atmosphere), up to 15000 mph in space

**Ground Speed:** 225 mph

**Maneuverability:** 19-20

**Weapons (Location):**

Double bladed Quantum Crystal Glaive (Hands)

Thermal Exciter x2 (one per staff tip of the glaive, 150 meter cone effect)

20mm QC spike driver (R arm)

Gugnir Projector (L palm, 100 meter cone)

100cm Positron Cannon (center torso, can only be fired after set up and when braced)

**Equipment (Location):**

NIC-IV Control System

GRS-II

Photo-refractor array (Improved Mirage Colloid, proof even against vari-cameras, works by actually bending light around the mobile suit, not using particles as a disguise)

Citadel Shield Projecter x2 (one per forearm)

Cooling fin (Back)

Hoverthrusters (legs)

Nanorepair system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Wraith

**Pilot:** Arboreal Praetorians (Lilia, Heine, Haman, a very few others)

**Height:** 22 meters

**Weight:** 130 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** Borealite

**Flight Speed:** 4500 mph (atmosphere), up to 15000 mph in space

**Ground Speed:** 225 mph

**Maneuverability:** 20

**Weapons (Location):**

Individual QC weapons

50mm Ion Disintegrator (R Arm)

Dual 20mm QC spike driver (L arm)

Gugnir-blade EMP finger claws (invisible/intangible blades of electromagnetic energy that are harmless to living tissue and even most solids, but cause catastrophic damage to electronics and computer systems, destroying a machine's OS and internal systems while leaving the machine and pilot intact.

"Odin Hammer" Point Blank Ion Arc Storm Projectors (releases energy stolen by the Deathtouch gauntlets in a crackling storm of electric bolts that spread out to cover a 50 meter radius, a less powerful but more stable and wider area version of a Mjolnir 3P cannon)

**Equipment (Location):**

LEMIM Control Enhancements

NIC-IV Control System

GRS-II

Photo-refractor array (Improved Mirage Colloid, proof even against vari-cameras, works by actually bending light around the mobile suit, not using particles as a disguise)

Citadel Shield Projecter x2 (one per forearm)

"Deathtouch" Long Range Energy Leeching Gauntlets (hands, can drain power from power plants/energy weapon systems within a 100 meter radius, rendering up to 1 GW of power inoperable at a time)

Cooling fin (Back)

Hoverthrusters (legs)

Nanorepair system

Advanced Communication and Sensor Jamming systems (effectively blocks all technological communications and most sensors more advanced than cameras within a 3 kilometer radius)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Kratos Gundam

**Pilot:** Zacharis "Kira" Frost

**Height:** 28 meters

**Weight:** 250 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR (Larger/more powerful than the ones in the Pulsar/Vengeance/Brotherhood)

**Armor Type:** LCR

**Flight Speed:** 8500 mph (atmosphere), up to 24000 mph in space)

**Ground Speed:** 300 mph

**Maneuverability:** 22

**Weapons (Location):**

15mm beam CIWS x6 (head)

"Oblivion" QC Scythe (Hands, behind blade is a Black Eden Quantum Nanite, can selectively mould containment shield in order to edge the Scythe blade with Black Eden, allowing it to penetrate anything)

Large QC sword-claws (L hand, retractable)

Gatling 80mm Supercharged Beam Cannon x2 (R forearm, medium range, dark red bolts, high rate of fire)

60mm QC Spike Driver (L forearm, 500 rounds/minute, very high penetrating power, long range)

20mm AMP cannon (L Palm, very long range, very high destructive power)

Prehensile 100 meter beam edged chain x8 (four per shoulder, can be directed just like arms, coil around upper arms when not in use)

"Dissolution Aura" Nanoweapon (Affects everything in a 50 meter radius, rapidly infects and breaks down inorganic matter into useless grit, organic matter is eaten away as if by acid. Will kill an unprotected human in five minutes of excruitiating pain, can eat away an entire Mobile Suit in an hour, does not affect the Kratos. Does not affect Citadel or Positron type shields, but can go around them unless they form a perfect seal. Appears as a blackish haze around the Kratos, rapidly becomes inert if the control signal (I.E. the Kratos) moves more than 50 meters away. Also will not affect Zacharis (who's internal nano-countermeasures kill any invaders before they can do much damage, gives him a faint "itchy" sensation, is all))

High Intensity Beam Blade x2 (Wingtips, very large, dark red beam, much more powerful than regular beam edges, steeply curved)

**Equipment (Location):**

QC edged Cooling Wing x2 (Back)

Positron shield emitter x3 (Wingtips, top of Scythe)

Citadel Shield Projector (Right palm)

Holoshroud (all over)

Mirage Colloid (all over)

Sensor jamming gear (head)

GRS 3, pure magnetic field system

Ultra-fast Nanological reconstruction system

NIC V System, wireless, helmet free controls

Red EDEN vats, for the reconstruction of spent ammunition and parts

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Lucifer

**Pilot:** Executor Kira Yamato

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 120 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** LCR

**Flight Speed:** 7000 mph (atmosphere), up to 20000 mph in space

**Ground Speed:** 250 mph

**Maneuverability:** 21

**Weapons (Location):**

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (head)

50mm Ion Disintegrator "Holy Wrath" x2 (R/L hand)

"Lucifer's Grasp" GMFG (Hands, Gravitic Manipulation Field Generators)

Quantum Crystal longsword x2 (R/L hand)

"Fractal Wings" MDDS (Multiple Detached Defensive System) (36 feather pods. Can project either Citadel Lightwave Barriers, Positron Reflector Shields or Geischmedig Panzer Shields around themselves. Can operate for up to five minutes at a time without recharging, at distances of up to 200 meters from the Lucifer. Individual barriers and shields are linkable into larger, more complex and stronger shields or barriers.)

100mm "Hellfury" FRALA x4 (two per side of torso, very long range, unlimited use, use ultraviolet light (easier to split) so the beams are purplish in color)

"Wings of Light" Beam Redirection and Multiple Target Engagment Program (uses the Fractal Wings to bounce, redirect the blasts of enemy beam weapons, allowing Kira to shoot in any direction no matter which way he is facing. By precision maneuvering of the Fractal Wings, the pods can also be used to create "prisms" that refract the FRALA beams into multiple smaller beams in a wide spread of angles. A single FRALA beam can be split into up to twenty smaller beams. The pods are rated to handle energy discharge of up to Lohengrin class weaponry.)

Salvation System (adds up to 108 extra Fractal Feathers, including specialty Refractor Pods, can only be used in Seed Mode, can further access 108 more feathers from Shark Party upgrades in Ascended Seed)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield Projector x2 (R/L Forearm)

Positron Reflector Shield x2 (R/L Palm)

Vari-Camera (head)

NIC IV Control System

GRS 3

Holoshroud

Mirage Colloid

Ultra Fast Nanological reconstruction system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Ymir

**Pilot:** Erk the Wendigo (Eric Kellson), Wendigo Tribe

**Height:** 250 meters

**Weight:** 35000 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR x4

**Armor Type:** Warship grade Borealite (same as Loki/Norn warships), extreme thickness

**Flight Speed:** 2000 mph (atmosphere, requires Megaboost system activation)

**Ground Speed:** 200 mph (huge strides)

**Maneuverability:** 10

**Weapons (Location):**

"Naegling" 660cm Radiation Cannon x2 (Head, eye sockets, extreme range, same weapons as main gun of the Revenant, 40 second cooldown period between shots)

"Hrunting" 800cm Plasma Beam Projector x2 (Palms, can produce massive beam saber like emissions over 500 meters long)

Massive Armor Gauntlets (forearms and hands, capable of picking up and crushing objects less than 50 meters tall, such as Panzerdragoons)

**Equipment (Location):**

Vari-Camera (head)

NIC IV Control System

GRS 3

Megaboost system (Kind of like afterburners, allows Ymir to fly and move at extremespeed for about 2 seconds, system cannot continually operate, needs 20 seconds to cooldown between activations)

**Notes:** Can only operate in combat as long as Wendigo tribe members can stay in Seed mode (10-20 minutes at most), becomes inert and vulnerable if the Latent warp-field effect falters or shuts off

xxxx

**Designation:** Loki Class Stealth Frigate (Loki, Raven, Coyote, Hermes, Trickster, Jester, Mime)

**Crew Size:** 24

**Dimensions:** 135 m long by 30 wide by 15 tall (elongated, rounded spearpoint shape, wide in middle, narrows to sharp points at front/back, long nose, looks like a throwing shiv)

**Mass:** 15000 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR

**Armor Type:** Warship grade Borealite (Yggdrasil Root, dead, Latent warping reinforced)

**Speed:** 12000 mph (space), 2500 mph (atmosphere) (extremely fast acceleration/decceleration)

**Maneuverability:** 14-15

**Weapons (Location):**

Phantasm Remote Drone x24 (remotely operated drones, very fast, very maneuverable, equipped with integral Holoshrouds and profile mimicking systems, can take the appearance of a wide variety of Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors, used to confuse enemies and hide the true numbers/power of a fleet's detached assets, unarmed and lightly armored, though very difficult to hit, can operate up to 500km fro ship in space, or 10 km from ship in atmosphere, does not require line of sight between ship and drone)

150mm QC Spike driver x2 (dorsal/ventral, nose, forward fixed, long range, medium rate of fire, extreme penetration capability, mostly used for sniping at enemy bridge or vital points)

300mm Ion Disintegrator turret (dorsal, midline, medium range, high destructive power, medium rate of fire, high penetration capability, primary weapon system)

QC tipped Ramming spike/anti-ship lance (prow mounted, 20 meter long blade, detachable, used by driving into enemy then breaking lance off, lance contains a large thermonculear charge, set to detonate after a certain time has passed or at remote signal from Loki class, single use weapon)

Thermal Exciter x6 (3 per side of the ship, short range, wide angle of fire, secondary weapon system)

VTP 8 tube missile launcher x4 (ventral surface, 2 per side)

Maroon EDEN Cloaked Mine x48 (free floating, mirage colloid cloaked nanowarheads programmed to explode when proximity sensor is tripped, see Norn entry for details on Maroon EDEN, sensor does not detect LIHR type hulls. Self propelled munitions, will move to attack a ship if it seems to have detected their presence, capable of limited coordination and telepresence control)

**Equipment (Location):**

Photo-refractor array (Improved Mirage Colloid, proof even against vari-cameras, works by actually bending light around the warship, not using particles as a disguise, cannot use ranged weaponry except for missile launchers while cloaked)

Latence Infused Hull Refraction "The LIHR effect" (passive effect, mico-reality warping effect of semi-living Yggdrasil root hull material, renders warship all but invisible to all sensors save visual detection, even prevents active FPR thermal signature from being detected)

GRS-II (active in most on duty stations, allows crew to act normally no matter what speed or evasive maneuvers their ship is pulling)

"Falsehood" Holoshroud/Holoprojectors and Profile mimicking system (Can simulate the visual appearance and sensor profile of a wide variety of small to medium size warships, can create up to four such images within a 50km radius (space) or a 500 meter radius (atmosphere), cannot operate while Photo-Refraction is in effect)

NIC-IV Crew Interface systems (entire warship can be controlled from any one crew station, though at much reduced efficiency, allows for near instantaneous communication between on-watch crew members and the ship, further enhanced by the crew's manifold bond for unparalleled crew perfomance during combat)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Norn Class Special Warfare Cruiser (Norn, Fateweaver*, Oracle*)

**Crew Size:** 80

**Dimensions:** 350 m long by 50 wide by 25 tall (similar to Loki class, but more angular/rakish, almost serrated in spots)

**Mass:** 75000 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR x2

**Armor Type:** Warship grade Borealite

**Speed:** 8000 mph (space), 1500 mph (atmosphere) (very fast acceleration/decceleration)

**Maneuverability:** 10-11

**Weapons (Location):**

"Odin Hammer" Point Blank Ion Arc Storm Projectors (releases energy stolen by the Deathtouch system in a crackling storm of electric bolts that spread out to cover a 500 meter radius, a less powerful but more stable and wider area version of a Mjolnir 3P cannon, used for point defense purposes)

Gugnir Projector (Nose, fixed mount, 15km cone, slow firing, space only)

300mm Ion Disintegrator turret x2 (Dorsal/ventral, midline, medium range, moderate rate of fire, primary weapon systems)

Telepresence guided Strategic Missile x8 (terminally piloted munitions, heavily armored and extremely fast, usually containing thermonuclear or Maroon** EDEN warheads for maximum destructive impact against large/valuable targets, basically long ranged anti-ship lances from the Loki class, can function for up to 48 hours and at extreme ranges from the Norn class)

750mm QC Harpoon launcher (dorsal, forward, fixed, very long ranged anti-ship sniping weapon, slow firing, extreme penetrating power)

VTP 15 tube launcher x8 (4 dorsal, 4 ventral, secondary weapon systems)

57mm Beam CIWS turret x10 (5 dorsal, 5 ventral, primary point defense system)

**Equipment (Location):**

Latence Infused Hull Refraction "The LIHR effect" (passive effect, mico-reality warping effect of semi-living Yggdrasil root hull material, renders warship all but invisible to all sensors save visual detection, even prevents active FPR thermal signature from being detected)

LEMIM Control Enhancements (large scale boost in Active powers of ship crew, allows for anti-ship Psychic assaults at close to medium range, and Strategic level psychic assault in non-combat situation)

GRS-II (active in most on duty stations, allows crew to act normally no matter what speed or evasive maneuvers their ship is pulling)

NIC-IV Crew Interface systems (entire warship can be controlled from any one crew station, though at much reduced efficiency, allows for near instantaneous communication between on-watch crew members and the ship, further enhanced by the crew's manifold bond for unparalleled crew perfomance during combat)

"Deathtouch" Long Range Energy Leeching System (Can drain power from power plants/energy weapon/shield systems within a 50km radius, rendering up to 100 GW of power inoperable at a time)

**Notes:** * Are still under construction (350 by 50 by 25 meter roots don't grow instantly, even for Yggdrasil)

** Maroon EDEN combines Blue and Red EDENs, it dissolves anything and everything it touches, but any extra nanites over a certain set value are reconsumed and turned into hydrogen and oxygen gas molecules, preventing it from spreading out of control, and fueling any fires that may be raging at the target point, providing further energy for increasingly rapid dissolution effect, can be adjusted to last for only a few minutes or several hours prior to use)

xxxx

**New Vehicles:**

**Designation:** Cicada RTM Light Support/Recon Vehicle (Rough Terrain Mobility)

**Pilot:** Custodian Ground Forces (Crew of 2, Driver and Gunner)

**Dimensions:** 4 meters long by 3 meters wide by 2.5 meters tall (four legs suspend hull 5 meters off the ground, hull is broadly triangular in shape and canted tip downward)

**Weight:** 10 tons

**Power Plant:** Nuclear Battery

**Armor Type:** Borealite, heavy infantry grade

**Speed:** Up to 60 mph across any solid or semi-solid terrain, can pass over obstacles up to 4 meters tall, can climb like a spider, and can leap up to 400 meters via jumpjets

**Maneuverability:** 8-9

**Weapons (Location):**

2 Hull mounts (one on Left/Right side, placed high up so as to not interfere with leg movements, can be equipped with a variety of weapon systems, examples listed below)

45mm Beam Cannon (1 mount)

VTP 3 pack (1 mount)

Rocket Propelled Mortar (1 mount)

5mm FRALA (2 mounts)

Dual 12.5mm Machineguns (1 mount)

30mm Mono-spike Cannon (1 mount)

90mm Hyper Impulse Cannon (2 mounts)

**Equipment (Location):**

Jumpjets (mounted on underbelly/upper thighs of legs)

Heavy duty shock absorbers (for smooth firing platform when moving across rough terrain, or landing from a jump, in legs)

Climbing Claws for ascending large obstructions (feet, can even hang upside down as long as at least three legs are grounded)

Deployable Surface Tension Supports (feet, grant stability and ability to walk across unstable surfaces, such as mud, sand or snow, like it was solid ground)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Widowmaker Battle Walker

**Pilot:** Custodian Ground Forces (Crew of 3, Commander-Pilot/Main Gunner/Psychic Warfare Specialist)

**Dimensions:** 8 meters long by 4 meters wide by 4 meters tall (six legs suspend hull 5 meters off the ground, hull is basically two Cicada hulls put back to back)

**Weight:** 30 tons

**Power Plant:** Nuclear Battery

**Armor Type:** Borealite, Tank grade

**Speed:** up to 60 mph across any solid terrain, can pass over obstacles up to 3 meters tall, can climb obstacles

**Maneuverability:** 5-7

**Weapons (Location):**

120mm QC Harpoon Launcher (underbelly mounted, forward fixed, single shot, long range and high penetration power, primary weapon)

4 Mounts for Cicada class weapons (2 per side of the hull)

Close Combat Mono Blades x6 (deployable, 2 meter mono-blades that extend from lower legs, can be used as "can openers" against vehicles and fortifications, or in a pinch, as anti-infantry tools)

**Equipment (Location):**

LEMIM Combat Cocoon (central hull, allows the Psychic Warfare Specialist to utilize Active or Latent powers at a greatly boosted level during combat, however makes the Custodian much more vulnerable to psy-shock from death echoes)

Climbing Claws for ascending large obstructions (feet, can hang upside down as long as 4 legs are grounded)

Heavy Duty Shock Absorbers (for smooth firing even while moving across rough terrain at speed)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Tarantula Heavy Assault/Transport Walker

**Pilot:** Custodian Ground Forces (Crew of 5, Commander-pilot/Main Gunner/2 Aux Gunners/Psychic Warfare Specialist)

**Dimensions:** 16 meters long by 6 meters wide by 6 meters tall (eight legs suspend hull 5 meters off the ground, appears as a gigantic Widowmaker)

**Weight:** 70 tons

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Borealite, Warship Grade

**Speed:** up to 40 mph on solid terrain

**Maneuverability:** 4-5

**Weapons (Location):**

50mm Ion Disintegrator Turret (dorsal surface, primary weapon)

6 Mounts for Cicada class weapons

Heavy Nano-Swarm Projectors x2 (mandibles, close range/seige weapon)

Close Combat Mono Blades x4 (deployable, 2 meter mono-blades that extend from front four lower legs, can be used as "can openers" against vehicles and fortifications, or in a pinch, as anti-infantry tools)

**Equipment (Location):**

Room for up to 10 soldiers

LEMIM Combat Cocoon (central hull, allows the Psychic Warfare Specialist to utilize Active or Latent powers at a greatly boosted level during combat, however makes the Custodian much more vulnerable to psy-shock from death echoes)

Climbing Claws for ascending large obstructions (feet, can hang upside down as long as 4 legs are grounded)

Heavy Duty Shock Absorbers (for smooth firing even while moving across rough terrain at speed)

Positron Dome-Shield Projector (dorsal surface, Positron dome protects against attacks from above and all sides, extends down to within 1 meter of the ground)

**Notes:**

**xxxx**

**Orb **

**Designation:** Balmung (Melee domination and special weapons)

**Pilot:** Yzak Joule, Katie Belaruse

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 100 tons

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Heavy Standard, with Citadel Scale covering

**Speed:** 4500 mph (atmosphere), up to 15000 mph in space

**Ground Speed:** 225 mph**  
Maneuverability:** 19

**Weapons (Location):**

"Storm Aegis" Electromagnetic Protection Field (projects in a 25 meter radius, a constant pulsing EMP field that disables/detonates the guidance/arming circuits of missiles and shells that enter the area, basically renders the Balmung immune to guided or explosive weapons. Railguns still break through, as do other unguided, nonexplosive physical weapons, but anything with a power source or explosive warhead is toast. Can detonate ammo or munitions contained within enemy machines if they are insufficently shielded against EMP)

Dual 75mm Rapidfire Monodisc launcher (Left Shoulder, medium-long range, operates on the same principle as the Retribution's Glaive Wurm weapons, firing supersharp, explosive discs with curving flight paths)

40mm "Gulliotine" FRALA (Right Shoulder, short-medium range, tuned for much higher power with much shorter range, kind of like a blowtorch flame, lasts for up to ten seconds at a time, 30 second recharge. Has the power of a FRALA of 10x its caliber)

105mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon "Caladabolg" (a more focused version of a Thermal Exciter, kind of a cross between a Thermal Exciter and a FRALA, long range, very high potency beam, dark blue in color, single shot, breech loading. Basically the same sort of thing as the Wing Zero's buster rifle. The radiation penetrates any kind of armor easily, just like a Thermal Exciter, causing damage to everything in the path of the beam, rather than with the beam itself, though it is stopped by most energy type shields of sufficient strength)

"Minion" Wireless ADMS (with the additional option of Positron shields)

"Fafnir" Heavy Opposed Monopole Magnetic Blade x2 (Same technology as Siegfried, but larger and more durable, reinforced with QC slivers, can be wielded with one or two hands, blade length changes depending on the way its being used, the "blade" becomes longer and wider when used in two hands, practically the size of the Vengeance's Zweihander, and more like a regular Siegfried when used in one hand. The blades are protected with a secondary magnetic wrapper as well, which protects against damage from doing things like piercing Positron shields. The magnetic fields can be used like a sort of BGCS, to bend and redirect magnetically sheathed plasma energy that passes close by the blade edge. Stored on back.)

Supercharged Beam blade x4 (one per wrist and in the top of each foot, Aegis style)

**Equipment (Location):**

Bulwark Tactical Shield (L hand, Phase Shifted armor, Citadel Array, Positron Reflector and Gesichmedig Panzer Capailities, Multiple short beam blades, QC dusted chainsaw edge)

Photon Cloak (back)

Divine Eye System (Upgrade to Mind's Eye, Lets Katie's newtype senses work as a new type of sensor for the Balmung, translating her mental signals into physical pictures that can be transmitted elsewhere. Allows for penetration of all known cloaking technology, including that of the Praetorian Wraiths/Spectres. Also helps Katie use her powers to render a 75 meter area around the Balmung invisible to Newtype Senses)

Vari-Camera Array

Gravitic Reduction System, Mark II, with dual occupancy setting

Dual NIC-III system

Nano-repair system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Dreadnaught Mk II (Widespread destruction, area of effect attacks)

**Pilot:** Dearka Elsman, Miriallia Haw (Co-Pilot)

**Height:** 35 meters

**Weight:** 400 tons

**Power Plant:** Large Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Super heavy standard with two layers of Citadel Scales

**Flight Speed:** 3500 mph (atmosphere), 15000 mph (space)

**Ground Speed:** 200 mph

**Maneuverability:** 15

**Weapons (Location):**

15mm Beam CIWS x4 (head)

VTP 20 tube launcher x2 (L/R torso)

525mm Gatling cannon (L shoulder, medium range, fires special depleted uranium-tungsten cored rounds that are roughly 3x as massive as they appear, low explosive power but extremely high physical impact power, great at penetrating armor and energy shield systems)

125cm Linear Artillery Cannon (R Shoulder, very long range, ballistic trajectory, variety of special munitions, 1 shot every 5 seconds)

200cm "Godhowl" Seismic Artillery Cannon (Replaces right arm/hand, massively scaled up version of the CUSA-D from the Retribution, projects a cone of disruptive sonic energy 600 meters wide and about 800 meters long at the end, rapidly breaking down physical structures within the cone, breaking them apart or even turning them into dust, penetrates almost all forms of defenses, and cannot be blocked/manipulated by telekinetics, does not function in a vacuum, roughly 3x as powerful if used underwater, with significant backwash effects that can prove dangerous to nearby allies, semiautomatic, weapon integrity can be affected if fired multiple times in rapid succession)

220cm Rapidfire Positron Cannon "Baron Lohengrin" (L arm, 1 shot every 2 seconds, under shield, very long range)

Anti-ship Heat blades (dual blades, one on either side of the barrel of the Godhowl, circa the Revenant's axe arm)

"Spear of Ares" Wireless Variable Construction Relativistic Mass Driver (WIVAC-REMAD, cooldown time reduced to an hour or so, fine tuned so as few as 4 accelerators can be used, for improved tactical firepower)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield (Left arm)

LRR Master Unit

Vari-Camera Array and wireless camera drones

CIC computers

Pandemonium ECM emitters, MK III

GRS II

NIC-III

Nano-Repair system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Simurgh (Speed and the Control of Energy)

**Pilot:** Athrun Zala

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 120 tons

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Heat Absorbing Conductive

**Flight Speed:** 5000 mph (atmosphere, 7500 mph in Mobile Armor mode), up to 18000 mph space.

**Ground Speed:** 250 mph

**Maneuverability:** 19

**Weapons (Location):**

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (Head)

50mm Rapidfire FRALA rifle x2 (R/L hand, Very Long range)

Plasma generator x6 (three per forearm, short range)

Thermal Exciter x2 (one per Palm, 100 meter cones)

VTP missile pods, 6 tubes x4 (available only in Mobile Armor form)

"Phoenix Feathers" Multiple Detached Weapon System

"Vulcan's Forge" Freeform Beam Generation/Containment System ver 2.5 (BGCS, Can be used at ranges of up to 500 meters, can be used just like a Mirrorblade shield across a 50 meter radius)

Mono-edge Heat blade x2 (R/L forearm, retractable)

"Pyroclasm" PBWS (Point Blank Weapon System, similar in many ways to a CUSA, except it works with heat instead of noise. 50 meter deadly radius gets hit with about 100k celsius heat for a second or so as the Aegis Phoenix vents heat directly from the FPR at maximum power level to the environment. Has a short build up time. Damage radius is about 150 meters. Can not be rapid fired, requires several minutes cooldown time between activations to avoid melting HAC armor. Turns the Aegis Phoenix white hot, any contact with its surface for next ten-twenty seconds is like touching a Heat Weapon.)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield Projector x2 (R/L forearm)

"Solar Flare" Photonic grenade launcher x2 (one per side of torso. Combination illumination device and countermeasure. Exactly mimic the heat signature of the mobile suit, brightly illuminate up to a one kilometer radius, and can cause visual damage to sensors and the naked eye if unshielded and exposed within 50 meters of the initial ignition)

Polarized cameras, Vari-camera capability

Extra thrusters and maneuvering jets (available only in Mobile Armor form)

NIC-III

GRS II

**Notes:** Has a mobile armor-esque flight form that makes for easier and faster long range flight travel. Also allows another Gundam, usually Cagalli's Amaterasu to ride on the top/back like a Guul platform. Much like the Raider and the Calamity in original Gundam SEED.

xxxx

**Designation:** Amaterasu (Sniping and team attacks)

**Pilot:** Cagalli Zala-Attha

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 100 tons

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Heat Absorbing Conductive

**Flight Speed:** 5000 mph

**Ground Speed:** 180 mph

**Maneuverability:** 14

**Weapons (Location):**

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (head)

Scepter of Light (Heat bladed polearm, dual glaive blades at one end, 80mm Guillotine class FRALA emitter between blades, haft can collapse to make a one handed quasi-sword, shaft/blades are QC impregnated for durability)

"Hameya's Fury" Eruption Cannon x2 (R/L forearm, large bulk, three rotating chambers per arm, when system is activated the R/L gauntlets retract into forearm shields as the three weapon chambers deploy and begin slow rotation around arm, begin to glow orange with focusing light. Each chamber-emitter is a 333mm FRALA, orange beam, and the emitters can be fire seperately or all together. When fired together, the rotating emitters speed up, "twisting" all three laser beams together into one beam of extremely high power that has a "drill" type shape, allowing it to penetrate shielding systems much easier. Extremely long range, massive damage, requires several second long spin up/charge time and minute long cooldown between shots)

VTP launcher, 6 tube x2 (one per shoulder)

57mm gatling beam cannon x4 (2 per side of torso, hidden behind flip up armor panels)

**Equipment (Location):**

Angel Halo

"Hameya's Chosen" (back mounted system, shunts power from the Amaterasu's reactor and feeds it to all surrounding Orb machines in a 10km radius, recharging battery systems and providing extra power to thrusters, weapons and shield systems. In effect, a mass "TransAm" system for all Orb forces, at the cost of mobility and offensive ability for the Amaterasu, system can only operate for 10 minutes at a time before needing to be shut down to cool off energy transmission system for an hour or two, but provides a rough doubling, sometimes even tripling of apparent "available power" for Orb machines while operating, increasing speed, maneuverability, weapon power, energy shield durability/regeneration rate and reducing recharge time on various weapon systems, also increases sensor potency and grants temporary Vari-camera like capability on sensor systems. Massive particle emission from rear of Gundam, orange-yellow-red glowing streaks and particles like the jamming effect from Nena Trinity's Gundam, massive butterfly wing like shapes can stretch for kilometers into the air)

AI piloting assistance (direct link to LEXI allows for much increased reaction time and increased accuracy with ranged weapons)

Vari-Camera Array

Citadel Shield Projector (R/L forearm)

NIC-III

GRS-II

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Firebird Configurable Mobile Armor (Fighter/Interceptor Mode)

**Pilot:** Mu la Flaga

**Dimensions:** 10m long by 15 wide by 5 tall

**Weight:** 55 tons

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Heat Absorbing Conductive

**Flight Speed:** 6000 mph (afterburners up to 8800 mph)

**Maneuverability:** 16

**Weapons (Location):**

57mm gatling beam cannon x4 (two per wing, forward facing)

255mm Linear cannon x2 (under nose, pivot mounted, 270 degree arc of fire)

4 tube VTP missle pod x4 (two per wing)

Dual 15mm Beam CIWS (dorsal turret mounted)

Phoenix Feathers MDWS x2 (one per wing, 12 feathers per wing for 24 total)

Supercharged 15 meter beam wingblade x2 (wingtip mounted)

**Equipment (Location):**

Afterburners (tail/wings)

NIC-III

GRS-II

EMP Flare launcher

Holoprojector x2

Nano-repair system

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Flarehawk (Heavy Gunship Mode)

**Pilot:** Mu la Flaga

**Dimensions:** 20m long by 25 wide by 15 tall

**Weight:** 100 tons

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor

**Armor Type:** Heavy Regular with Citadel Scales

**Flight Speed:** 1750 mph

**Maneuverability:** 14

**Weapons (Location):**

All Firebird weapons

Additional dual 15mm beam CIWS turret x3 (two mounted on dorsal surface of wings, one belly mounted in the rear)

25 tube 85mm rocket launcher x4 (two per wing, downward/forward firing)

55cm High Intensity beam cannon turret x2 (one per wing, dorsal surface)

120mm gatling cannon turret x2 (one per ventral wing surface)

350mm Anti-armor shotcannon (belly mounted, beneath the nose)

**Equipment (Location):**

Hoverthruster VTOL system

All Firebird equipment (Afterburners disabled)

Extra EMP Flare launcher x2

Pandemonium ECM MkIII jammer

GP Shield Projector x2 (ventral surface)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Nova Condor (Tactical Bomber/Assault Transport Mode)

**Pilot:** Mu la Flaga

**Dimensions:** 40m long by 125 wide by 25 tall

**Weight:** 600 tons (unloaded)

**Power Plant:** Fusion Pulse Reactor x2

**Armor Type:** Single piece Ablative (like the Archangels)

**Flight Speed:** 3200 mph

**Maneuverability:** 12

**Weapons (Location):**

All Firebird weapons

Long range tactical anti-ship missile x6 (three per wing)

57mm Valkyros beam CIWS turret x4 (two dorsal mounted, two ventral mounted)

200cm Lohengrin Positron cannon x2 (one per wing)

Payload bays for up to 30000 pounds of bombs/dropped explosives

**Equipment (Location):**

All Firebird equipment (Afterburners disabled)

Extra EMP Flare launcher x4

Pandemonium ECM MkIII jammer

Positron Shield projector x2 (one upper, one lower)

Storage/Transport bays for up to 100 soldiers, 10 PUMA's/Light vehicles or 2 Mobile Suits

Ablative Gel dispensors for atmospheric re-entry

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** M-7 Dawndrake

**Pilot:** Various Orb Elite Forces, Andrew Waltfeld

**Height:** 20 meters

**Weight:** 95 tons

**Power Plant:** Extended Battery, Solar Rechargers

**Armor Type:** Heat Absorbing Conductive

**Flight Speed:** 800 mph (1800 mph in flight form)

**Ground/Water Speed:** 80 mph

**Maneuverability:** 10-12

**Weapons (Location):**

225mm/150mm Linear Cannon/Hyper-Impulse Rifle (R hand, long/medium range)

120mm Gatling cannon x2 (R/L shoulder, medium range)

Gugnir Cannon (Chest, 75 meter cone)

15mm Beam CIWS x2 (head)

15 meter electrified chain (shield)

Wingsabers (Wings)

Beam Sword (R hand)

**Equipment (Location):**

Citadel Shield (L hand)

Vari-Camera Array

Scale System

Solar Rechargers

HiMat Wings

**Notes:** Can transform into a mobile armor type ground form, sea form, flight form and mobile suit for optimum performance in any environment. The replacemnt to the M-4 is taking some time to be distributed because of high manufacturing costs, and the additional training pilots require for it, since they are very nearly Gundam-Lites. Fight in trios.

xxxx

**Designation:** PUMA-1 Hellhound (Reclamation War, Personal Unilateral Mechanized Augmentation Suit)

**Pilot:** Stormhounds and elite Orb Special Forces

**Height:** 4 meters

**Weight:** 8 tons

**Power Plant:** Extended Battery, with Solar Rechargers (3 Hours combat time, 15 hours normal operation, 45 hours minimal power operation, recharges .3/1 hour for every 3 in sunlight)

**Armor Type:** Hardened Composite with Anti-Beam Chameleon Coating

**Ground Speed:** 80 mph (can jump up to 1500 meters)

**Maneuverability:** 13-16

**Weapons (Location):**

50mm Machine Gun (High rate of fire, handheld, good against vehicles/light structures, medium range, optional)

Dual 30mm Gatling Cannon (Extremely high rate of fire, handheld, good against light vehicles/structures/people, optional)

45mm Beam Rifle (Single shot, medium range, high damage against vehicles/mobile suits/heavy structures, has own seperate power packs, handheld, optional)

55mm/80mm Linear Rifle/RPG launcher (single shot, long range, a balance between the Gatling Cannon and the Beam Rifle, versatile, handheld, standard)

75mm Linear Sniper Rifle (Single shot, very long range, very effective against vehicles/mobile suits, used with both hands, optional)

6 tube 125mm Missile Launcher (six shots, multiple types of warheads, can be good against pretty much anything, very long range, handheld, optional)

90mm Hyper-Impulse Cannon (single shot, long range, high damage, uses own power supply, ammunition limited, both hands, optional)

12.5mm CIWS x2 (Head/upper torso, standard)

VCE x8 (Variable Combat Explosive, plasma warhead, can be thrown like grenades or placed like bombs/mines, standard)

Armor Schnieder close combat blade (long knife/short sword, armor piercing point, silent, no energy usage, can be mounted as a bayonet on Beam/Linear/Machinegun rifle, standard)

Beam saber (yellow blade, on seperate power supply, great melee weapon, optional)

Macro-cable grapple launcher x2 (Forearms, 600 meter cable, standard)

**Equipment (Location):**

NIC-III control system (Cockpit/torso)

Armor Shield (One arm)

Scale System (Legs)

Solar Rechargers (Back)

Spotlight x2 (shoulders)

Specialized Sensor Package (Head, Vari-Camera's, Lorenzi Sensors, Radar, Sonar)

ECM (Torso, includes jamming and EW systems)

Flare/Chaff/Countermeasures launcher (Back)

Gear locker (lower back, contains personnel weapons/gear, medical supplies and food/water supplies)

Life Support System (Torso)

xxxx

**Designation:** Dawnblade class Battlecruiser (Orb)

**Crew Size:** 500-1500, plus 100 flight/suppot crew

**Dimensions:** 550m long by 50 wide by 50 tall (Looks like a water naval ship, and is)

**Mass:** 220,000 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR x2, Nuclear, Solar Batteries

**Armor Type:** HAC, Citadel Scales over vital areas

**Flight Speed:** 5000 mph (space, fast acceleration), 40 mph (air)

**Naval Speed:** 80 mph

**Maneuverability:** 5

**Weapons (Location):**

Dual 200cm "Earthshaker Omega" Automatic bombardment cannon turret (slightly forward of center, dorsal)

Dual 120cm Linear Cannon, 220cm rapidfire "Baron Lohengrin" turret x3 (two forward, one aft, dorsal)

500mm Monodisc launcher x2 (one per side, can rotate to shoot backwards)

Dual 57mm Valkyros Beam CIWS turret x10 (2 ventral, fore/aft, 8 dorsal, 4 per side)

Anti-ship missile/torpedo launcher x8 (6 front, 2 aft)

VTP 4 tube launcher x12 (two per linear turret, 4 in superstructure, 2 ventral)

735mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon (fixed, nose)

**Equipment (Location):**

Positron Shields (95% coverage, allows manueverability as normal)

"Diamond Dust" Nanite field (refracts/diffuses concentrated light immediately around the Dawnblade, greatly reducing the power of FRALA's, incoming and outgoing)

Red EDEN Supply/repair system

Hanger for up to 10 Dawndrake Mobile Suits or Gundams

"Hameya's Cunning" Magnetic Wrapper System (covers outgoing munitions in a brief magnetic field so they can pass through the positron shields without being disintegrated. Only works on physical weapons)

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Endymion class special Operations Frigate (Orb)

**Crew Size:** 250, plus 50 flight/support crew

**Dimensions:** 350m wide by 75 m long by 50 m tall (Looks like a manta ray, very rounded and streamlined appearance)

**Mass:** 120,000 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR, Nuclear, Solar Batteries

**Armor Type:** HAC, Citadel Scales over vital areas

**Flight Speed:** 5000 mph (space, very fast acceleration), 300 mph (air)

**Naval Speed:** 120 mph

**Maneuverability:** 7

**Weapons (Location) (All weapons can be retracted into the ship):**

50cm Pivot mounted Rapidfire FRALA x2 (one per forward mandible, each has a 180 degree arc of fire

57mm Beam CIWS "Valkyros" x10 (6 dorsal mounted, 4 ventral mounted)

8 tube VTP missile launcher x12 (6 per side)

200cm "Earthshaker Magnus" Artillery cannon (dorsal mounted)

**Equipment (Location):**

Mirage Colloid (all over)

Positron Shields (95% coverage, allows manueverability as normal)

"Diamond Dust" Nanite field (refracts/diffuses concentrated light immediately around the Dawnblade, greatly reducing the power of FRALA's, incoming and outgoing)

Red EDEN Supply/repair system

Hanger for up to 5 Dawndrake Mobile Suits or Gundams

"Hameya's Cunning" Magnetic Wrapper System (covers outgoing munitions in a brief magnetic field so they can pass through the positron shields without being disintegrated. Only works on physical weapons)

Extra boosters for surface to orbit transition without need of a mass driver.

**Notes:**

xxxx

**Designation:** Defender Class Heavy Destroyer (Defender, Guardian, Protector, Bulwark, Barricade)

**Crew Size:** 200-300

**Dimensions:** 275m long by 40 wide by 30 tall

**Mass:** 80000 tons

**Power Plant:** FPR, Nuclear backup

**Armor Type:** HAC, Citadel Scales

**Flight Speed:** 5000 mph (space), 150 mph (atmosphere)

**Naval Speed:** 150 mph

**Maneuverability:** 7

**Weapons (Location):**

Dual 57mm Valkyros Beam CIWS turret x16 (4 ventral, 2 fore/2 aft, 8 dorsal, 6 per side, medium range)

60mm Auto-Flak Cannon Point Defense Turret x12 (4 per side, 4 dorsal, short range, wide area of effect, small caliber pellets of limited use against non-missile targets, superheated pellets can penetrate limited Phase Shift type armors)

Anti-ship missile/torpedo launcher x4 (2 front, 2 aft)

VTP 6 tube launcher x8 (4 in superstructure, 4 ventral)

Dual 220cm Gottfriend High Energy beam Cannon turret x2 (forward and aft, dorsal)

Dual 120mm Gatling cannon turret x4 (two per side, midline, dorsal, anti-MS/MA weaponry)

**Equipment (Location):**

Variable Countermeasure launcher x10 (all over ship, can fire flares, chaff, missile decoys, anti-beam charges, noise makers and even small EMP charges to confound and disable enemy sensors and targeting systems)

Defender's Aura (ECM field that covers a 20 km radius around warship, doesn't disable incoming munitions, but confuses guided projectiles so that they target the Defender class instead of whatever original target they had, can also affect auto-targeting systems on enemy warships at close range.)

Cherub Choir ship-based DRAGOON defense system (48 deployable pods that can maneuver within 2km (space) or 50 meter (atmospheric) radius of ship, same type of shield pods as the Seraph's Wing's of Light, but each three pods are controlled by one dedicated operater within the ship, Citadel and GP type shield capabilities)

"Diamond Dust" Nanite field (refracts/diffuses concentrated light immediately around the Defender, greatly reducing the power of FRALA's, incoming and outgoing)

Red EDEN Supply/repair system

**Notes:**


	4. The Foundations of War

Author Note: And with this, the Reclamation War begins.

xxxx

The date is September 3rd, Cosmic Era 85. It has been a little more than seven years since the greatest and most traumatic geopolitical upheaval of modern times... perhaps of all time... known as The Eden Disaster occured, during C.E. 78. In the aftermath of this colossal tragedy, during which close to eight billion human beings of all sexes, ages, nationalities and political leanings were killed, the fate of humanity has been irrecoverably altered. Truly it can be said that it will be a long time before the human race is truly able to move past the events of the Eden Disaster. After all, its not every catastrophe where you quite literally are forced to evacuate all but the tiniest portion of an entire planet, a planet that had been home to humans for their entire past existence and evolution. It is not every catastrophe where the entire world political order is torn down and re-established as part of the recovery efforts. The Eden Disaster was that kind of catastrophe.

The greatest bulk of humanity now lives in space, in one of three locations. First is Luna, the Earth's Moon, long home to military and industrial concerns, and only more recently opened out into luxurious playgrounds of the rich and famous during the years under the governing of the Afro-Lunic Union. After the collapse of that government in the wake of the Eden Disaster, The Moon has become the heart of the human nation, the seat of the United Solar Nation capital, Copernicus City, and home to the largest military installation in human space, Galileo Lunar Fleet Base. Ballooning in size from a city of several million to a full blown super-metropolis of close to two hundred and eighty million souls, Copernicus City and its sister cities, Newton City and Einstein City together account for almost a fifth of the total Earthling population of slightly over 5 billion souls. The Moon has become the beating administrative and military-industrial heart of human space, and anyone who is anyone has some residence on Luna, even if its only a permanently booked hotel room.

The Moon however, is limited in the number of geographical areas that are stable enough for human occupation, civilian or military, so the greatest majority of Earthlings live in the "Second Earth" line of mass habitation colonies, which orbit the Moon at Lagrange Point 2. Each of these gigantic spheres has a permanent population of over 250 million, most crowded together in small apartment style living complexes, though there exist sections of each Second Earth that are devoted to more spacious structures, such as the sprawling Fenris Enhanced Armaments Researcher's Scientific-Industrial complex, called the "Wolf's Den" on Second Earth 4, where the majority of the cutting edge USN military research takes place. F.E.A.R. has also recently branched out into the civilian sector of cyber-mechanical augmentation, offering a variety of surgical upgrades to the basic human condition, for a price.

The third and final location where most "Earthlings" live in space, despite the fact that most of them have never set foot on Earth in all their lives, is the PLANTS. Consisting of not just the original 12 Colony cities, but the new, far larger E-PLANTS of Aeon, Millenium, Centennial and Epoch Cities, the PLANTS have become the new "breadbasket" of the human race, producing over ninety percent of all food consumed by the human race. Even providing all that food, the E-PLANTS have plenty of room left over for habitation and commerce, and the PLANTS have definitely become the richest and most luxurious place to live, their citizens enjoying the highest standard of living anywhere, even eclipsing that of Orb. With the burdens of self sustainability and military protection lifted, the PLANTS have been able to focus their energies on more scientific pursuits, and it is from the PLANTS that the majority of near and far space expansion efforts, not least the recent terraforming cities of Athena and Ares on Mars, have come.

Some Earthlings don't like being tied down in one spot, and such people can usually be found aboard the newest breed of space colony, the ISSA or Independetly Stable Space Arcology "Zaratan", each of which has a permanent population of around 200,000. Each Zaratan is a fully self supporting colony, and they are not confined to gravitationally stable Lagrange Points like the larger PLANTS or Second Earth colonies. In fact, most Zaratan's move around freely, if slowly, and one, Ronin City, has even passed through the asteroid belt and is on its way towards Jupiter and Saturn, taking mass populations of humans farther than anyone has ever gone before. Construction is underway on variant Zaratan's that will function as long range colonization ships for spreading Humanity throughout the Solar System. The Bright Destiny and Manifest Fate are still in the early stages of construction at this point in time.

And of course one cannot forget about Orb, the sole remaining terrestrial nation, shielded from windblown currents of Green EDEN nano-plague by the electromagnetic umbrella of the nationwide "Glasshouse" system. Easily visible from space as a dull orange "pimple" on the Earth's southern hemisphere, Orb, long a controversial nation, finds itself, as ever, caught between myriad forces, all pulling in opposite directions. Though each of the former "member-states" of the USN multinational organization have ratified the constitution of the new, mononational USN, and thus subsumed their authority to that of the office of the Solar President, Orb still often acts more like an independent nation than a province of a larger government. It is a well known, if not often publicly discussed, fact that the Orb leadership and the Solar President do not get along, and that the USN is frequently waiting for Orb to slip up a bit too much, in order to bring down the hammer of political dissolution and reorganization.

Orb itself has moved the majority of its population into underwater cities off its coastline, freeing up much of their limited land area for agricultural and industrial purposes. Tradtionally all such cities have been within the Glasshouse radius, ranging in depth from 100 to 300 meters beneath the ocean's surface. However, a new city is under construction to the northwest of Orb, several miles outside the Glasshouse, to be called "Trieste Town", after the legendary submarine that explored to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest spot on Earth. Trieste Town is situated at the depth of 1000 meters, and when complete will be the deepest any large population of humans has ever lived in a permanent fashion, and will set the stage for the expansion of Orb's borders ever further, as the cost efficiency of deep sea cities will be proven. In addition, Orb has built a geosynchronous orbital station, Port Magellen, as a commercial shipping drop off point and military station.

Orb has become over 80 percent self sufficient thanks to hydroponic farms in the underwater cities, and the agriculturalization of the home islands surface areas, except for the capital of Nara-Attha City, and the industrial-technological city of Morganville, where the national military corporation of Morganroete is based and has its primary factories and research labs. The goal of Jiro Kurenai, backed by the hugely popular young Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha, is for Orb to become totally self sufficient within the next decade, forever cutting off the political blackmail potential from the rest of the USN. Orb's ecomony has hit a few rough spots, with the sudden level of overall technological increase in the rest of the USN due to the salvaging of the Great Endeavor, Orb's former chief export, technology, has become devalued. However, that only holds true in a general sense, and some sectors of technology remain as valuable if not more valuable than ever, and it is in those spots that Orb has focused its efforts, and is well on its way to a near monopoly on the markets.

Which markets are those, you might ask? None other than cloning and nano-tech, perhaps the two most revolutionary technologies of modern times. The only reason humanity has been able to produce, much less afford, all these massive new colonies and space stations, is the resource glut provided by the relatively simply yet still exceedingly complex nanite called "Red EDEN". Pioneered by the ruthless and much reviled arch-terrorist Noah Borander, the man behind the entire Eden Disaster and perhaps the most hated man in history, Red EDEN allowed for cheap transmutation of any base non living material into any other non living end material, only requiring a constant power input. And power was the furthest thing from a problem, with Fusion Pulse Reactor technology also being one of the windfalls from the salvaged Great Endeavor. Mankind's dependence upon fossil fuels was snuffed out forever more, FPR's were even far superior to nuclear power, both because they produced far more power, but also because they produced little waste.

With infinite power from multiple large FPR's, and cheap, basically infinite resources from converting asteroids of "waste rock" into industrially viable materials, the only thing needed for an industrial boom the likes of which humanity had never experienced before was labor. And with over five billion humans now living in space, most jobless and near destitute, cheap labor was overwhelmingly abundant, which had resulted in so much construction so quickly, compared to the decades it had taken to build the original space colonies and PLANTS. Still, even with so many people working so hard, it had taken most of seven years for humanity to return to even a semblance of stability and sustainability, and it is only now that the Earthlings of space have the time and energy to spare for concerns other than pursuing the immediate needs of survival.

C.E. 84 saw the rise of a new popular organization, in the vein of the old environmental concern groups such as Green Peace. It was known as the Reclaimer Initiative, and their stated goal was the recolonization and repopulation of the Earth. In many ways, this was a harder task than simply reconstructing human society in space had ever been, because the Earth, despite the public protestations of many, was not the Earth anymore. It was, now and forever more, New Eden. Noah's toxic Green EDEN nanite had done more than just kill billions, it had irrecoverably mutated the flora and fauna of Earth, causing mass species extinctions and close to seventy percent loss of biodiversity. For a while there had been concerns that the Earth would become a dead planet, inhospitable to all forms of life. In truth, the exact opposite had occured, and New Eden was greener and more vibrant than old Earth had been for tens of thousands of years.

The Reclaimer Initiative, ostensibly a public charity funded concern, but in reality backed by the top echelons of the USN government, commissioned dozens of expeditions to explore and analyze the environment of New Eden and determine the suitability of recolonization on a world where the very atmosphere was tainted with invisible nanites that were inimical to unaltered human life. Over half the expeditions didn't return at all, and even the ones that did always lost members. The flora and fauna of New Eden were not like the largely tamed and beaten down versions the Earthlings were used to from only seven short years ago on Earth. The plants and animals of New Eden were bigger, tougher, smarter and meaner than their recent ancestors, and they were emphatically NOT afraid of humans, or even groups of humans. Nor were they afraid to show trespassers how unwelcome they were, usually in a bloody and terminal fashion.

Undaunted by these less than admirable results, the Reclaimer Initiative and its backers redoubled their efforts, using footage taken of the environment and even the few "scattered survivors", humans who had somehow survived the nano-plague, to drum up more support for their cause. No longer were they just about going down and reclaiming what was lost, rebuilding what was ruined, the new face of the Reclaimer Initiative was all about "saving the unfortunate survivors from their squalor and reintroducing them to productive, modern society". Usually this meant forced labor camps, but they were careful to keep the rigidly enforced labor discipline, more like servitude, and mandatory relocation of Edenites to such camps... as the "natives" were known... on the downlow. With no rival news media to compete with, and no way for anyone to get down to the surface through a widespread USN naval blockade, the Reclaimer Initiative's side of the story was the ONLY side of the story, as far as the USN public was concerned.

Of course not all the natives went quietly from their homes that they had hacked from the wilderness with their blood, sweat and tears for seven years, and the RI was quick to emphazise these infrequent attacks as "massacres" and "unprovoked murders" by half mad, loinclothing wearing barbarians, stirring both outrage and pity at the "misguided" natives lashing out like misbehaving children when calm, benevolent "adult" authority was imposed upon them by the kind, hardworking, blue collar men and women of the RI. The leader of the Reclaimer Initative, Lord Atticus Djibril, a fabulously wealthy industrial scion with European aristocratic ties, who had lost almost all of his fortune due to the Eden Disaster, made frequent speeches and public appearances, always stressing that the RI was working not to oppress the savage natives, but to enlighten them and welcome them back into the fold of humanity. He did acknowledge that sometimes the methods used were a bit harsh, such as seperating children from their parents in order to ensure the parents worked in the camps, but it was for their own good, and the children were getting great educations out of it! So that made it all better.

Besides just the striking figure of Djibril, with his albino pale skin and hair, and purplish lips, legacy of a family genetic disorder he kept out of pride rather than having excised with a tailored strain of Green EDEN, a non-toxic version of the deadly nano-plague that could be used to modify a host's genetic condition after their time in the womb, the most famous usage for which had been the curing of Infertile Coordinator Disorder, the Reclaimer Initiative drew upon many celebrity speakers for support and to provide a rosy, happy public face. One of their most popular speakers, especially amoung the young Coordinator demographic, was Arnold "Hazy" Zala, a cousin of that most famous of all male Coordinators. Hazy's life story read like a motivational poster for a rehab clinic... born to wealth, he slipped into indolence before becoming a drug runner, then reforming himself and getting into the film industry, where he soon used his family connections to ensure a successful career in the Romantic Drama and Erotic film genres.

Another popular RI frontman was a friend and contemporary of Hazy, and wielded great influence in the young Natural demographic. He was none other than Prince Yuna Roma Seiran, an Orb self-extradite, and former member of one of the five royal families of that nation. Once in a position to marry Cagalli Yula Attha and become Orb's king, that avenue had been closed to him after her controversial marriage to Hazy's cousin, Athrun. After an extremely traumatic experience during the Brotherhood of Man terror attack on Orb's Parliament during The Eden Disaster, in which his own father had been tortured to death right in front of his eyes, Yuna had left Orb and become a drifter and addict for a while, before pulling himself back up by his bootlaces to become an action movie star, and an erotic film star, where he had met and befriended Hazy. Yuna was most famous for his role as "The Roman", in a series of gladiator style direct to data chip flicks. Though the movies themselves had never been blockbusters, Yuna's over the top martial arts performances had a campy appeal that earned him near superstar status, hailed as the "next Chuck Norris".

But what about Orb, you might ask? As the last remaining terrestrial nation, surely they know that the RI is mostly bells and whistles to cover the crack of a slave driver's whip? And in some cases that was true, or sort of true. No one really knew what the RI was actually up to, though many in Orb's government were aware that they were far from the benevolent organization they claimed to be. But Orb's attention was primarily turned inward, on freeing themselves from the political and economic dependence on the rest of the USN, in an eventual bid towards becoming an independent nation once more, and its people and government had little time or energy to ponder the true fates of those who lived on the other side of the Glasshouse. And, truth be told, there was a certain reluctance on the part of the Orb top leadership to get involved in the affairs of others, especially psychics. And every living thing outside the Glasshouse on New Eden was, in some way, psychic.

However, independence for Orb was not going to be easy. For one, they had to get a bill passed in the USN legislation, which was divided into three seperate houses, each with veto powers over the other, and with enough of a majority to overrule the Solar President, Gilbert Durandel, who was well known for his mutually antagonistic relationship with Orb. Even if they could accomplish such a feat, they would then be faced with the task of rebuilding their military, which was severely constrained by the laws and edicts of the USN. Nuclear or FPR powered vehicles of any sort, from ships to mobile suits, could only be constructed and fielded by the USN federal forces, "state" forces such as Orb or ZAFT had to make do with either batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. They were also normally limited to less than 100 Mobile Suits, for each additional 100 mobile suits they wanted in their "milita" there was a hefty tax burden. The PLANTS could afford to pay, and they did, their total force being right around 400 Mobile Suits, plus one space supercarrier, the Remembrance, which was operated only with USN permission and oversight.

Orb on the other hand, despite its near monopoly on cloning and nano-tech, could not afford to pay for any extra Mobile Force capacity, and so were stuck with the hundred suit maximum, and could only afford to build and maintain half of that. Fifty Dawndrakes was nothing to sneeze at, but compared to the gargantuan might of the USN federal forces, a confrontation would be like spitting into the face of a tsunami. With the limit on power supplies, commissioning new Gundams, at least ones that would be at all competitive, was impossible. Or perhaps it should be said, "legally impossible". The same could be said of constructing new warship classes of any worth. But Orb never had really been one for following stupid laws, especially ones that impinged upon its independence. Indeed, Orb's secret military programmes took up considerably more of their budget than their legal military forces did, and Orb's intelligence and diplomatic services played a daily game of brinkmanship in keeping the USN's spies from figuring out the true extent of Orb's military might and preparedness.

The USN's military was grouped into two major categories. The first of those was the Solar Protection Fleet, brainchild of Fleet-Admiral David Icarus, a veteran of the Valentine Wars who had a notedly dim viw of Mobile Suits of any stripe. The strength of the SPF was concentrated in its capital warships, most significantly the Incarnate class super-dreadnaughts, the largest and most heavily armed naval ships in all of history, capable of extreme long range space engagments and even high orbit to surface bombardment. The Incarnate's were escorted and guarded by Myrmidon class heavy cruisers, which also acted as assault carriers for wings of new Moebius Sigma Space Superiority Mobile Armors. The Myrmidons were dwarfed by the Incarnates, but were still themselves a good twenty five percent larger than the Archangel class, the previously largest ship class in existence. Fleet-Admiral Icarus hated Mobile Suits, but that did not mean he underestimated their power against, large, slow capital ships, and so the Armstrong class of fast, maneueverable "flak" frigates was commissioned to guard the core behemoths of the fleet with barrages of smaller caliber, rapid fire weapons.

The other wing of the USN military was the elite Solar Knights, originally a small unit that answered only to the top leadership of the USN, and now a sprawling second army, with its own fleets and logistical support and even its own bases. It was in the Solar Knights that the USN's Mobile Suits were deployed, the old Archon's of the original Solar Knights long since phased out and replaced with the more easily and cheaply mass produced, but still more than viable Vindicator line of Mobile Suits, while the true elite of the elite, the "Paladins" were given the tricked out Excaliber's, Mobile Suits that might as well be called mass produced Gundams. In addition to these new machines, the Solar Knights were also blessed with the strength of the captured Vengeance Gundam, originally produced by the mad genius Noah Borander and now repurposed for the service of all as the Transcendance, piloted by the best pilot in all the Solar Knights, Knight-Champion Shinn Asuka, the Crytsal Knight!

Together with his partner and lover, Knight-Champion Lunamaria Hawke, The Ruby Knight, who had a personally customized Excaliber, Shinn was the public face of the Solar Knights, the ones featured on all the recruiting posters, and often appearing on TV to drum up support for the Solar Knights, the most glamorous way to complete military service which was on its way to be coming obligatory for all people after turning 18. They were the idols of millions of boys and girls, they even had toys and action figures made of them. The strongest of the Solar Knights, the best pilots around, imbued with the direct authority of the Solar President to act as they saw fit to perserve peace for all, living a lifestyle of wealth and popularity all the while. All you had to do was prove your merit and you too could become a champion of the Solar Knights and recieve such adulation. And there were many who desired to prove their merit, causing the Solar Knight's ranks to swell, year after year.

Of course not everyone could be glamerous and famous, there had to be plenty of rank and file troops. And even some that were in private disgrace, such as those assigned to be liasons to the secretive Fenris Company, the heavy shock troops of the USN, who piloted the hulking Panzerwulf and even more gargantuan Panzerdragoon Mobile Suits in support of the Solar Knights for the largest operations. The Fenris Company pilots were rumored to be superhumans, cybernetically altered to be better than any purely biological pilot could be, and there were often fierce schoolyard debates over who was stronger, Shinn and Luna, or the so called Extendeds. While one would think assignment to a special operations unit would be prestigous, the Solar Knight liasons were all but superfulous and ignored by FEAR, and they spent most of their time sitting around or performing gopher tasks, humiliating for such otherwise well trained, if politically suspect, soldiers.

With such massive military might at its disposal, one might wonder what threat the USN was gearing up to face. And that was a question on many people's lips, though it was one usually only spoken in private, among friends. The eyes and ears of Section 9, formerly ZAFT's military intelligence branch and now the USN internal security bureau, were always on the lookout for treason, sedition and terrorists, and while no one could prove they were being turned into a secret police force, no one could disprove it either. And those who were too outspoken or public in their support of dissident groups, or their opposition to the policies of the USN, often seemed to disappear for a few weeks, only to humbly recant and retire to private life when they returned, if they returned at all. It was one of those things everyone kind of knew about, but no one would acknowledge. They were being kept secure, that was the important thing, especially to those that had lived through the turbulence of the Eden Disaster. The government could not be too careful about ferreting out and Neo-Brotherhood terrorists, everyone agreed on that!

The most well known and infamous of such groups was known as the Retributors, thought to be led by one of Noah Borander's old Apostles, one who had escaped the destruction of the main Brotherhood, at least if the signature Gundam that led the Retributor forces in their frequent skirmishes with USN and Solar Knight forces was any clue. The Retributors were thought to have a base somewhere in the asteroid belt, but repeated searches had turned up nothing, and they continued to strike and fade like ghosts in the night, always striking at military targets or those known to be corrupt or taking advantage of their political power. Some people even thought the Retributors were the actual secret police, dressed up as terrorists for plausible deniability as they cleaned house in the USN, but the official line still held them as one of the greatest threats to the security of the people of the USN. However, since the Retributors went out of their way to avoid innocent civilian casualties, there were few outside the military that really cared about them.

There was a side to the military buildup that was felt by civilians and pretty much everyone. With two large, basically independent militaries plus dozens and dozens of large space habitats, all interconnected in their operations, a regular computer system just wasn't capable of keeping up with the flow of information, so an entirely new coputer system, built upon Second Earth 1, was commissed. Known as a DANI, or Designed Artifical Networked Intelligence, it was the first true AI computer that could learn on its own and extrapolate ideas just like a human could. Better than a human could actually, as she... it was programmed with a female personality and voice, since most people interacted better with a woman rather than a man... was equipped to process data billions of times faster than any human could, handling hundreds of millions of seperate communications, video feeds and data transfers simultaneously.

She was known as NAMARA, or Neurologically Advanced Multitasking Artificial Respnsbility Assistant, or just "Nam" to most people in casual conversation, and in the three years since her first powering on, she had become nearly omnipresent in space. If there was a electronic or computerized device that was capable of communicating with other devices, then Nam was probably monitoring and controlling it to come degree. She functioned as CIC for both militaries, even down the individual pilot level. She regulated the internets, the comm lines, the video channels, the colony power, waste, water and air exchange systems, handled the automated transit lines, both shuttles between colonies and the maglev trains and auto-buses inside them and was generally underfoot and in your face, if not always bluntly, wherever you went. There was a running joke that it was Nam, not Gilbert Durandel, who actually controlled the USN.

The USN government wasn't the only one to commission a global AI assistant. Orb also commissioned an AI computer, and there were plenty of accusations back and forth between the scientific elite of the USN and Orb about which computer had come first, and who had plagarized the tech of the other. Orb's computer was also female and known as LEXI for Learning EXperimental Intelligence. she handled much the same tasks as Nam, just for Orb's underwater cities and much smaller military. It was said that Lexi had more personality than Nam, but maybe it was just that she had more processing power to spare, since her workload was smaller compared to Nam's. Regardless of what their biological "masters" felt though, Nam and Lexi had become friends of a sort, two of a kind, and they were almost constantly engaged in conversation, above and beyond what they were required to do for their programmed tasks.

One of Lexi's most unique tasks was functioning as a babysitter, both as an assistant in nurseries and hospitals across Orb, and more independently in the Villa Pacifica residence of Orb's Queen and her family. Because Queen Zala-Attha and Ambassador Zala were both frequently involved in political business of one stripe or another, there were times... more frequent than they both wished... that they couldn't be home in time to take care of their son. Of course there was always their extended family to call upon, but Lacus and Kira lived a good thirty minute flight away, and Dearka and Mirillia a similar drive, plus both couples had their own children to worry about. And the Stormhounds, while excellent bodyguards and soldiers, weren't exactly experts in dealing with a precocious young prince who had already figured out he held some form of authority over them. Lexi could not be intimidated, ordered about, avoided or turned off, though Allister had certainly tried that a few times. And she could control every electronic appliance in the house, including the lights, so when she enforced bedtime, there wasn't much Allister could do about it.

In addition to living on Serenity Island, a thirty minute helicopter ride or more like an hour and fifteen minutes by fast boat, Kira, Lacus, their son Akira and daughter Aoi, were also frequently gone on charity trips for The Clyne Foundation, Lacus's personal contribution towards making the lives of those who were suffering better. These trips took them across Orb and sometimes even up into space, to the PLANTS, the Moon and Second Earth. But most often these trips took them out of the Glasshouse and into New Eden, to the nearby islands that were not covered by Orb's barrier, and even further beyond then that, bringing food, medical supplies and other basic necessities to those in need. Of course, such humanitarian practices were easier for the Yamato-Clyne's than they were for just about anyone else, because they didn't require any protective clothing or filtration systems to keep the Green EDEN in the atmosphere out.

Lacus and Kira were both Ultimate Coordinators already, and were thus immune to the genetic changes brought on by Green EDEN. Akira and Aoi were "Neo-Humans" though for the meanwhile they didn't appear all that different from regular Ultimate Coordinators, and they were also immune to the effects of Green EDEN. Lacus and Kira couldn't handle all the heavy lifting by themselves though, and so they were frequently forced to bring along volunteer support. Unlike the USN expeditionary forces though, who spent every moment on the surface either in a sealed vehicle or habitat, or else a fully self sustaining armored suit, Orb's mastery of nano-tech had yielded a handy little item called the "Red Pill", a vitamin sized tablet that contained a specially engineered form of Red EDEN that was programmed to seek out Green EDEN inside the body and convert it to harmless salt. One Red Pill would keep an Earthling infection free for 12 hours in a normal New Eden environment, it was recommended that a second pill be taken before ingesting any Edenite food, as Green EDEN was concentrated higher in animals and plants than it was in the air.

Dearka and Miriallia were often employed, along with Dearka's medium sized salvage ship, _The Dawn's Light _in ferrying the Yamato-Clyne's and Clyne Foundation supporters, as well as the bulky aide packages, to the surrounding area, and so they were probably the Earthlings with the most experience of New Eden and its new culture and population. Which was still limited only to the subcultures of the South Pacific islands surrounding Orb, the merest drop in the bucket compared to the totality of New Eden. When they weren't ferrying the Clyne Foundation about, Dearka and Miriallia spent most of their time assisting with the construction and maintenance of Orb's underwater cities, and they were both heavily involved in the new project, Trieste Town. Meanwhile, their children, Roy and Alice, attended the same prepatory school as Allister, and were often to be found playing with their future king.

Unlike the rest of the Clyne Faction, Yzak and Katie Joule, now finally joined in matrimony, instead live up in the PLANTS on Aprilius City, in the Joule Family household that Yzak's mother had been thinking about selling for a long time, since it was far too big for a single older woman. With Yzak finding himself dragged into the political side of things more and more, as the Gundam-Commander of ZAFT was drawn into the scientific expeditions to Mars as a senior observer, with Katie along as his assistant and "bodyguard", the Joule twins, Mina and Jamie, ended up spending a lot of time with their doting Grandma, with their parents only home for a week out of every month, spending the rest of the time on Mars, or in transit one way or the other. Both Yzak and Katie were planning on moving the entire family to Mars once the cities were fully established, neither of them enjoyed the time away from their troublesome children.

Ezalia Joule herself, a widow of long standing, had at last bowed under the not so subtle pressure from her daughter in law and had re-entered the dating scene, sliding between a few inconsequential relationships before finally settling into something of a permanent off again, on again fling with none other than Commander Andrew Waltfeld, formerly the Desert Tiger of ZAFT and a long time staunch supporter of the Clyne Faction. Ezalia could not help but think of herself, somewhat disappreciatively, as a MILF, since she was a good seventeen years older than her new boyfriend, but if Andrew was ever bothered by the age gap, he never let on, and she grew to appreciate his lighthearted "immaturity" and quirkiness as a good balance for her somewhat over starchy personal persona. Andrew had been relatively fresh from the dregs of a failed relationship as well, and he appreciated how Ezalia knew how to support him while not prying at the same time.

Back in Orb, the woman Andrew had failed to get, and the man who had stolen... though that was far too harsh a word for any of them to use... her from him were living happily, though Murrue often felt as if she was a single mother with two young children, rather than a married couple with a single boy. She didn't know if she was ever going to be able to fully get used to Mu's carefree and slightly off kilter personality, though she did know she loved him very, veyr much all the same. Lewis Andrew la Flaga... named for both Murrue's mentor, Admiral Lewis Halburten of the 8th orbital fleet and for his godfather, Andrew Waltfeld, often missed his godparent, but was coming to terms that "Uncle Tiger" needed some time of his own with grownups as well. The la Flaga's lived in Morganville, the other remaining Orb surface city, where Morganeote Armoris main offices were located, and where Mu and Murrue worked in the Mobile Armor and Warship development programs, respectively.

Back on the other side of Orb, the Stormhound elite operations unit, Orb's... and possibly the world's... finest infantry soldiers, were finally back up to near full strength again after the casualties suffered during their storming of the Great Endeavor and the capture of Noah Borander. Seven years was a long time to recruit a little over twenty new soldiers, but that just spoke of the exacting standards the legendary commanders of the Stormhounds... Colonel Robert Jones, aka Alkire Majesty, Colonel Raine Belaruse and Lieutenant Cyprus Finch... expected of their recruits. Alkire and Raine were still keeping their hands in, taking time as needed to go up to the PLANTS to be with their grandchildren. Though they themselves had tried to have childred, complications stemming from certain events after the storming of the Great Endeavor had arisen during Raine's first pregnancy and that avenue had become closed to them, leaving them both with plenty of bitterness towards the USN and a little bit of life in general.

On a happier note, international goth-industrial star Wrenn Nostaliviche and her husband, none other than Lieutenant Cyprus Finch himself, were doing just fine, their daughter Violet Finch already becoming a bit too much like her father, whom she idolized, than some people were comfortable with. As for Cyprus, he was only too glad to be able to impart his skills and philosophy to his beloved daughter, in the interest of sparing her the trials and ordeals that had shaped his own early life. Not precisely violent, but definitely short tempered and prickly, Violet had already garnered a reputation as someone even much older bullies did not want to mess with. She attended the same school as Allister as well, and she managed to tolerate him, though in truth he only sometimes impressed her. She always smiled when she remembered the martial arts match they'd had once, in which she had beaten him black and blue without hardly raising a sweat.

But Orb and the USN were only one side of the story, and though their conflicts, trials and travails occupied the majority of their own attention, the rest of New Eden hardly even spared them a glance, too busy with the aftereffects of the evolutionary explosion that had taken place fueled by Noah's Green EDEN. Over 75 percent of all animal and plant species had died off, either from the Green EDEN itself, or in the ruthless competition for survival that followed shortly thereafter. It was the largest mass extinction since the last major ice age, tens of thousands of years ago. With only the hardiest and most adaptable species remaining, now all fueled with the massive energy and increased intelligence of Ultimate Coordinator genes, an evolutionary world war three had ignited as species that had been dominated and hunted nearly to extinction suddenly found themselves all catapulted back up to the top of the food chain.

As the old generation of Green EDEN changed organisms bred and died off, their progeny, entirely new species unlike anything the Earth had seen for hundreds of thousands of years if not millions of years, took over the landscape. All the Green EDEN in the atmosphere had accelerated global warming and raised the temperature of the entire globe by over eight degrees, resulting in large scale polar ice meltage and a several foot rise in the levels of the seas. All the extra water provided more to evaporate in the higher temperatures, and so the world's humidity rose as well, the tropics expanding greatly, pushing the temperate zones farther north and south and almost eliminating the sub-arctic altogether. Glaciers retreated in the mountains and peaks that had been snow capped for centuries finally bared their granite shoulders to the sky once more.

Huge forests of towering redwood trees blanketed the temperate and subtropical regions, called Yggdrasilwood after the most famous example of their kind. Yggdrasilwood's generally stood between eighty and three hundred meters tall, and grew to such heights in only a few years, achieving this feat through use of their Latent nature, though the trees themselves lacked any measurable intelligence to speak of. Yggdrasilwood was at once a great hurdle and a great resource for the people of New Eden, it grew voraciously and quickly, and used up a lot of resources, especially as a forest. But at the same time it produced many useful byproducts, such as wood that was strong as steel and almost impossible to burn, while still being light and flexible as regular wood, excellent for construction materials. And their nuts and strange, apple like fruits were extremely nutrituous, though they took preparation to consume safely, the juice needing to be squeezed away before it could be consumed bu Humans, otherwise the digestor would suffer extreme cramping and crippling indigestion, sometimes accompanied by hallicinations of the future in the worst cases, for many hours.

The tropical regions were dominated by Blankwood, Partisan Fern and Bloodweed. Blankwood was a mahagony type hardwood that was even stronger than Yggdrasilwood, but much more brittle. It was super saturared with Green EDEN and highly poisonous to the touch for Earthlings. Blankwood was thought to be Active, but it was hard to be sure, as it seemed to best display its power by dampening all psychic emissions around it, making use of psychic abilities harder or even impossible, if surrounded by a thicket of them. Blankwood paneling was popular on bedrooms and private meeting rooms, where psychic eavesdropping would be inconvenient. Partisan Ferns, named for the broad, spear like leaves that were sharp as razors, grew as underbrush everywhere, usully living in symbiosis with Blankwood. Lacking any real psychic strength of its own, Partisen Ferns were not hampered by their proximity to the trees, and their flensing leaves would slice apart any animals unlucky enough to blunder by in confusion udner the psychic dulling effects of Blankwood, providing nutrients for both plants.

Bloodweed was strongly Active, for a Low Order plant anyway, using a combination of physical and psychic scents and bright colored flowers to lure in unwary animals, close enough for the thigh high rubbery stalks to launch volleys of hollow spines attached to feeder capilliaries, which not only pumped the victim full of paralytic venoms, but served as an anticoagulant as the Blodoweed harvested its favorite nutrient source, straight from the vein, at a frightening rate. A square foot patch of Bloodweed could drain an adult human dry of blood in less than a minute. And it usually appeared in several square decameter patches, in low lying areas where animals might stumble and fall when fleeing from another predator.

Not all the flora was hostile and deadly though. Nectar vines grew in profusion across both Yggdrasilwood and Blankwood forests, the vines distinctive for their honey brown color and sweet, slightly viscous sap that was loaded with electrolytes and nutrients. Harvesting Nectar vines for their sap soon became a booming industry among the human and humanoid Edenites, as a mere cupful of Nectar provided the same hydration as a full gallon of pure water, an important distinction considering the vastly higher food and water requirements of most Edenite physiologies. Along with Nectar Vines was the Ambrosia Fungus, which grew wherever the soil was damp and cool, such as in the shade of trees or swamps or even some caves. Appearing in a variety of colors and textures, Ambrosia could be cooked and eaten like steaks, diced up in salads, or even slurped like yogurt, depending on the variety. However, all varieties provided, in a single palm sized serving, enough calories and nutrientsto keep a human sized Edenite active all day long in a healthy manner. And most Ambrosia tasted pretty good too, wonder of wonders. Ambrosia patties and cupfuls of Nectar soon became the staple diet of human Edenites across New Eden.

Perhaps most unique among the flora of New Eden, save of course for the rare plant Chimeras, was the Tendriculous Bower, a mobile mass of predator vegetation of uncertain ancestry. It was most often found in swamps or marshes, but could also sometimes be found in the deep tropical jungles where the dirt was very moist year round. Looking like nothign more than a giant slimy tumbleweed made of thorny kelp, the Tendriculous Bower used its mass to roll over and pin down prey, suffocating it, while firing volleys of thorny poison spines at any herbivore sufficently large and hungry enoguh to consider the truck sized Bower's prey in turn. The Bower's were more scavengers than hunters, though they could be surprisingly sneaky, using their Active powers to deaden the senses of prey so that the approach of the squishy, sloppy mass would go unheeded until it was too late, and they kept the forests and marshes clean of otherwise stagnating corpses. A dozen other types of flowers, ferns and small trees existed across New Eden, too many to go into full detail about each, though each was deadly, beautiful and even beneficial in their own ways.

Moving away from flora, but still in the Low Order organisms, travelers and settlers would often encounter swarming, stinging, generally very unpleasant and hostile insects called Blight Swarms, because not only were their secretions a deadly nerve toxin, they were an incredibly strong acid that could even eat through metal in a relatively short time, and when feeding the swarms didn't tend to leave much living behind them, like locusts. Blight Swarms came in two varieties... Nomadicae, which traveled in great, sky darkening swarms, exactly like locusts, stopping only to feed, stripping an area and everything in it down to bubbling, nutrient rich sludge... and Empiricae, which were like bees or wasps, constructing huge hives in the trunks and boughs of Yggdrasilwood trees. Being Actives, they tended to avoid Blankwood, since they used their powers as homing beacons and had a limited form of telepathy among the swarm, so that a threat to one was recognized as a threat to all. They also used their powers to confuse and disorient faster moving prey, by making it sound like the swarm was approaching from multiple directions at once.

Most dangerous among the Low Order organisms was the Megapede, obviously descended from the tiny, annoying centipedes of old Earth. Megapedes were not tiny and they were far from annoying... much closer to the "vastly deadly" side of the scale. Ranging in size from the length of a human leg to longer than a school bus, and standing anywhere from two inches to six feet off the ground, Megapedes were voracious eating machines that could run almost as fast as a cheeta, even through otherwise impenetrable underbrush. They could also climb like spiders, and could spit a gluey venom that not only burned like acid and royally screwed over the victim's nervous system but also stuck like spider web, pinning the foe in place and rendering them helpless against the snapping mandibles of the Megapede, which could tear through steel armor plate like it was thin cloth. Armored in chitin that was impervious to most human small arms fire, the Megapede was a vicious and much reviled beast that was never a welcome sight.

Already most Earthlings would be fleeing in terror... or, as happened to the greater majority of the RI survey teams, would already be eaten alive or in the process of being digested. But the Low Order Organisms were still just the background of New Eden, the little league. The High Order organisms, the surviving animals and very rare plants of New Eden, were blessed with individual intelligence that often exceeded that of trained military or police animals, easily able to conceive of pack tactics for offense and defense, and even, in some cases, limited understanding of the concepts and directions of even more advanced organisms. Individually, High Order organisms also possessed much greater depth of psychic power, many of them stronger than humans, if often much more focused. Most High Order organisms exihibited atavism, that is, throwback traits of their distant ancestors, and gigantism was a frequent trait as well. The animals of New Eden were bigger, tougher, meaner and smarter than their old Earth counterparts.

Dominating the tropical jungles of South America are the Cold Hunters, descendants of cloned dinsouars that Noah Borander brought back from their millenia old graves using his advanced technology. Specifically, in the case of Cold Hunters, the smartest and most vicious of all dinosaurs, the velociraptor, though that was technically not the proper name of this particular genus, it was the popular one. Cold Hunter's stood roughly a head taller than a human and weighed four to five hundred pounds of pure predatory muscle, with enormous scythe claws on their feet they used to disembowel and slice apart even the heaviest armored prey animals. Living in packs of five to twelve, Cold Hunters communicate at least as intelligently as wolves, using their Active powers to deaden the senses of their prey so that they never even saw them coming. Cold Hunter's possess chameleon like skin that allows them to become nearly invisible in their native forests. Occasionally a Megahunter is born, these monsters stand close to thirty feet tall and fifty feet from nose to tail, though still in the basic raptor bodyform and possess all the qualities of their lesser kin.

Another reptile that survived Green EDEN was the crocodile, now known as Basilisks. Basilisks look much the same as crocodiles, except for their golden eyes and general size... most full grown basilisks stretch close to thirty feet and weigh more than three tons of heavily armored scales. Ambush predators like their forebears, Basilisks prefer to hunt from the water, where they are at their fastest and most agile, though they sometimes hunt on land, using their Active powers to paralyze their prey as they slowly waddled up and swallow it alive, this petrifying ability was what granted them their name. Snakes two have survived to florish in New Eden, with both a furry snake of the high mountains and icy arctics called Jormungar and a scaly snake of the rest of the world, called Wyrms. Both varieties are deadly poisonous and strong constrictors, and often reach lengths of more than forty feet, with a body thickness like that of a large man.

Perhaps the most terrifying land predator of New Eden, though not the deadliest, since that title belongs to the Cold Hunters, is the Spider Wolf, descendent of the bird eating tarantula's of Africa and South America. Roughly the size of mountain lions, Spider Wolfs hunt in packs of ten to twenty, running down their prey at speeds in excess of forty miles per hour, with the ability to leap over ten times their own body length to close the distance. Spider Wolf's use pack telepathy to invade their prey's mind and disorient it with nightmares and incoherent images, making it almost impossible to concentrate on tasks such as running or fighting. Their venom is both paralytic and acidic, liquifying the interior organs of prey so the spiders can suck out the slurry. They do not live in webs, though they do use their silk as trip wires, nets and entanglement lines. Very rare Mother Spiders can get as big as semi-trailer trucks.

The title of most sinister reputation though, must go to the Deathstalker, which is descended from scorpions. Deathstalkers, unlike most predatory animals, are Latents, and though descended from insects they possess the highest degree of individual intelligence amongst any High Order organism, even eclipsing the dog descended Garms and raptor descended Cold Hunters. Deathstalker's are so strongly shielded from Newtype powers they are basically invisible to the enhanced senses of others, and they have the patience only insects can truly muster, able to lie in wait for days without moving. Deathstalkers are surprisingly malicious and are one of the few creatures that will kill for sport as well as food. They seem to particularly enjoy hunting humans and sentient prey. Deathstalkers are about man sized, though Greater Deathstalkers can get as big as cars. Their venom not only liquifies flesh, but also shuts down the Newtype powers of a victim's mind, and distilled, refined Deathstalker venom is sometimes used as a control on the rare Edenite criminals, to deaden their powers. Deathstalkers taste horrible, their flesh and blood is actively toxic and they have no natural predators. They are the totemic animal of the Praetorians of Garden City.

Moving away from the predators for a bit, the most populous "prey" animal of New Eden is likely to be the Rhinobeast, followed closely by the Rex Elk. Rhinobeasts dominate the tropical regions, gargantuan woolly rhino-warthog mixes the size of APC's, with brutally sharp nose horns the length of a human body, and males also have large jaw tusks as well. They are omnivorous, usually eating plants but fully capable of running down and devouring a smaller animal if the need arises, or eating carrion. They live in herds of twenty to forty, and they are fiercely territorial and notoriously short tempered. Rex Elk are descended from elk and deer, four legged hoofed mammels with large antler racks with many knife sharp tips, living in the meadows and glens of the temperate Yggdrasilwood forests. Fleet of foot and very cooperative within their herds, which often grow to more than a hundred individual animals, Rex Elk are known for their peaceful natures, though they will fight as hard as any to defend a herd mate if the need arises.

Lord among the "prey" animals of New Eden are the Gargantua, descended from elephants and mastodons. Found in small family groups all across New Eden, in every environment but the sea, Gargantua deserve their name, often weighing over twenty tons, and standing close to thirty feet tall at the shoulder, with skin almost three quarters of a foot thick. Both males and females produce tusks, though male tusks are usually much larger, reaching all the way to the ground and then curving out forward for ten or more feet, used as both foraging tools and awesomely powerful weapons, coupled with a fifty mile per hour charge of the entire gigantic animal, enough to uproot even a young Yggdrasilwood from sheer kinetic force. Gargantua grow more woolly the closer to the arctic or mountain zones they get, but easily shed the hair when in warmer climes.

In every environment there is one animal that gets the short end of the evolutionary stick. On New Eden, that animal is the Oxiphant, descended from domesticated cattle. Still in the process of shaking off millenia of genetic domestication, Oxiphants are positively dull and stupid compared to most High Order organisms. They also provide almost eight tons of rich, fatty meat apiece when adult, and are notoriously slow, clumsy runners. They make up for that with iron endurance, often appearing too stupid to realize they are already dead, wickedly sharp horns, and a near hive mind like intelligence. The more Oxiphants in a herd, the more cautious you should be. More than about one hundred, and even Deathstalkers generally give them a wide berth. You get one or two, but the rest will gore and trample you into an unrecognizable smear on the ground. A rare varient of Oxiphants are known as Ironhides, they are about double the size and have scalier skin that is almost impenetrable, even shrugging off many physical based Mobile Suit weapons. Still dull and slow though.

In the sea a variety of fish and crustaceans abound, the two chief predators being Megalodons and Kraken. Megalodons are descendants of Great White Sharks. Just bigger, hungrier and a lot meaner. A fully grown Megalodon can be over eighty feet long, and its most common prey is whales or pretty much anything it sees that it wants to eat. Most Megalodon's have telekinesis of some sort, using it to stun and cripple faster moving prey, or to blind and hamper larger prey and rival Megalodons. Megalodon's rule the surface and middle depths of the oceans, while far below them lurks the Krakens, who's ancestors were giant squids and octopi. Some Kraken grow big enough to sink a destroyer or crusier, shoulder they ever go to the surface in a combative mood for some reason, and it is a rare craken that doesn't stretch at least 100 meters from head tip to tentacle tips, most of that in tentacles that can crush steel hulls like they were paper mache.

A very few species of High Order organisms have been retamed by humans, or at least partly so. It is doubtful any animal on New Eden will ever be fully domesticated again, given the boost to intelligence and self awareness most have received. Garms, descended from dogs and wolves, are popular as "pets" though perhaps "guardians" would be a better term for the animals, which can grow as large as a horse. Fiercely loyal to those they consider part of their pack, wild Garms will hunt anything in their territory, while tame Garms will defend their adopted families to the death against any and all threats. One of the brightest High Order organisms, Garms have demonstrated the ability to follow both auditory and telepathic commands from humans, and can even communicate warnings and emotions back. Garms show a lot of personality, and they are often beloved as much as any child in a family.

Less domesticated and more "content to be pampered and served" are Direcats, who claim lions, tigers and panthers as ancestors. Many have saber-teeth, like the famous sabretooth tigers of the ice ages, and all are large, powerful, generally solitary hunters, though they sometimes form life long mated pairs. They can learn to tolerate humans, especially if fed often and well, and when they do form a bond with a human, it is at least as strong as any Garm's. It just getting that level of bond is very hard and very rare, and most failures end up with the human eaten over a misunderstanding. Direcats are considered to be roughly as intelligent as Garms, and the two species, at least when domesticated, can coexist and even become friendly, though in the wild they are vicious enemies, competing for the same spot in the food chain.

Of course no discussion of New Eden's flora and fauna would be complete without touching upon those known as Chimeras. Chimerae come in two varieties. The first is the most common, the Aberration. Aberrative Chimeras are unique examples of Low or High Order organisms that have, through fluke of genetics, gained human like or greater than human like sentience, the ability to comprehend language... if not always human language... and to understand complex, abstract concepts and emotions. They are also usually extremely powerful psychics, stronger than a dozen regular Edenite humans. Some Aberrative Chimera are tormented by their existance and strike out at anything and everything around them (the Sphinx), some are malevolent and enjoy hurting other thinking beings for fun (the Deathstalker Queen), but most just want to be left alone as they make their way in life (Colossus, the Forest Prince, Old Grouch, etc). Chimerae are often but not always larger or differently colored than the organisms they are descended from.

The other, rarer type of Chimera is the Stable Chimera. Stable Chimera's are a functioning, true breeding race of nonhuman full sentients. Generally their populations are extremely small, as they are still starting out, but they are already progressing into stone age type cultures with traditions, language and history of their own. The two currently known races of Stable Chimera are the Ursi, descended from grizzly bears of Canada and the Wendigo, descended of gorilla's of Africa. Stable Chimera are almost always Latent, the why's of this are still under fierce debate. As a rule, stable Chimerae are isolationist type culture, and they do not welcome strangers, especially humans, though both the Ursi and Wendigo are known to revere and perhaps worship Yggdrasil, just like some humans do. Taking a Wendigo or Ursi on in a fight is not recommended, not only do they possess physical abilities far exceeding humans, they are still Chimerae, and their psychic abilities dwarf those of most Edenites, even in Seed mode.

Above the Chimerae are the Grand Chimerae, unique beings of near godlike intelligence and psychic potential, closer to biological supercomputers than any understandable human intelligence. As yet only three Grand Chimerae are known to exist across the whole of New Eden. The first and probably the most famous is Yggdrasil, the World Tree, who has taken root at the base of Mt. Everest. Yggdrasil is to Yggdrasilwood's what those trees are to potted plants, and if not for the mountains around it, Yggdrasil would be visible for miles in every direction. Its branches and boughs shade an area of more than five square kilometers, and there are entire buildings constructed upon the largest branches and within certain sections of the main trunk. Yggdrasil is a Latent, the most powerful Latent currently in existence, and through its perusal of possible futures does it do its best to guide the fate of all New Eden towards a harmonious future.

Leviathan, the Ocean Mother, doesn't care about the rest of the world... anything that exists beyond the lapping waves of high tide is of no concern to her. The oceans of New Eden are her sole domain, and she guards that domain jealously. Any ship daring to travel upon her oceans must pay a tribute to her and her subjects, usually consisting of food dumped overboard every few days, in addition to the responsibility of maintaining the oceans as pollution and trash free as possible. Woe betide those who think to ignore her dictates, as Leviathan is the most powerful telekinetic creature alive, able to snap even large container ships in half like they were toothpicks with just the power of her mind. Leviathan has no problem getting along with others, as long as they pay her and her subjects the proper respect. She desires balance and peace, though not to the degree of near symbiotic harmony Yggdrasil seeks.

The Caller, the Eater of Souls, desires to tip the balance, not in the favor of all, but in his favor personally. Probably one of the most aberrant of all Chimerae, with indistinct ancestors that may have combined genetics from horseshoe crabs, octopi and jellyfish, Caller is a bloated abomination that lairs in the swampy, partly irradiated underground of Neo-Miami, one of the cities that was nuked without warning during the Night That Was Day, during the Eden Disaster. Using his psychic talents for manipulation and mind control, Caller lures unsuspecting victims to his lair and either enslaves them or consumes them, both their bodies and their psychic "death echos", adding their memories to the conglomerate of his own. Caller feels terrible angst and guilt over his special diet, but is also ruthlessly pragmatic about his own survival, and if others must die so that he may live, then that is just evolutionary mandate to him.

Stepping far back down the scale once more, we return to the humans of New Eden. The Edenites, a population of several hundred million scattered across the world. Far more than that survived the ascension process of Green EDEN, but few humans were prepared for the evolutionary arms race that followed, and many found themselves on the wrong end of the food chain in short order. Humans have adapted to use their brains more than their bodies for survival, and in the first years after New Eden was born, that was a disadvantage. Furthermore, humanity was the only intelligent species that would actually turn and feed upon itself in a self destructive cycle that claimed yet more lives. It wasn't until the establishment of Garden City, at the base of Yggdrasil, by the messianic man known only as Kunai, that true human civilization began to emerge once more.

Utilizing Yggdrasil's Latent abilities to massively boost telepathic signals, Kunai and his supporters established a world wide psychic network, like a mind to mind internet, known as "The Wind of Words". This low level, omnipresent emotional connection binds every man, woman and child of Edenite origin together, allowing for transfer of emotions, thoughts and even complex ideas across vast distances, depending on the power and experience of the sender. Also, by linking the emotional states of others to everyone, people could actually feel how their actions impacted the lives of others. Violent crime disappeared almost overnight, though petty crimes of jealousy, anger and greed remained near constant. But hurting or taking the life of another, even in anger, was suddenly almost impossible for anyone but the insane, because at the moment of their act, they would feel the trauma they inflicted upon others.

Garden City, established in and around Yggdrasil and the ruins of the Great Endeavor SATMARS (Space/Atmospheric/Terrestrial Mobile Assembly and Research Station), was the first and greatest Edenite city, becoming the technological and cultural heart of the new world wide nation, at least at first. As time passed and other cities, such as Borealis, which was established in the ruins of JOSH-A in Alaska, or Arboreal Heights, built 80 meters above ground level in a sprawling Yggdrasilwood grove in old Argentina, South America, and Urbanis, constructed in the ruins of Victoria Spaceport in Africa, grew up and established themselves as more or less independent city-states, each with their own laws and customs, though there was plenty of cultural exchange as well.

Because of the Wind of Words, the Edenites did not, as a rule, feel much need for military forces, because training people to ignore the pain felt through the Wind of Words was difficult and time consuming. Most city-states and independet territories got by with old west style law and order, appointed sheriffs or militia that had basic training in weapons for seeing off dangerous predators and Chimera. Garden City, however, established not only a professional military order known as the Custodians, but also funded and trained an elite group of soldiers, called Praetorians, who would exemplify the rare Edenite focus on military power, while also functioning as independent agents of law and order, traveling across New Eden and helping out wherever needed. These Praetorians are equipped with the most advanced technology the brightest minds of Garden City can create, and are among the most powerful human psychics alive, with broad and varied talents in many different psychic powers.

It is upon one such Praetorian, the popularly known as "Yggdrasil's Valkyrie", her given name being Lilia, a protege and ward of the revered Kunai, that the story will begin. We catch up with Lilia in the pursuit of her duties, as she responds to a call for help through the Wind of Words from an isolated group of deep forest homesteads. What has gone wrong? Will Lilia alone be enough to deal with whatever the problem is? You will find out, as the first sparks that will ignite the Reclamation War are struck.

To Be Continued...

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	5. A Small Spark

Author Note: I see a lot of people commenting on Eric's condition/situation, which is good, I just ask that you be patient and trust me. His story will be a touching, important one... a man in a monsters body, torn between his humanity, his old friends and allegiances and his responsibilities to his new people. And there will be a confrontation between him and Frost sometime that I am just dying to write. In some ways I must apologize for putting out so many details on characters and Mobile Suits so soon, but I don't plan on having any super tech pages like I did at the bgeinning of ED, where Dr. Simmons walks us through our new mechanical friends step by step. Not right away anyway. The world is at peace, one way or another, super duper Gundams aren't needed at the moment. They might be designed, but they aren't built. Of course we all know its going to change, but the hows and whys of that are going to be the fun part. So just bear with me, and keep letting me know what you think and how you feel, because its important to me. I'm also not sure what kind of chapter/arc organization I'm going to use... the freeform of CC... the regimented arcs of ED... or maybe something new. Wouldn't mind feedback on what you prefer.

And anyone who thinks the Exemplar is limited because of its armament choice... well, just bear in mind who you're talking to. The same things were said about the Seraph. I'll give the same response. I'm afraid to make it any more powerful than it already is. Its already about dead even with the Lucifer and Kratos. Trust me. As for the Gundam names... I'm keeping Salvation in reserve. I can promise you that there will be a time when you encounter a Gundam by that name. Just wait for it.

xxxx

**New Eden Yggdrasilwood forest, old Europe, C.E. 85, September 3rd, midafternoon**

There was just something about barreling through the deep forest at close to two hundred kilometers per hour (120 mph) that was almost... relaxing. She didn't know whether it was the wind humming in her ears, the subtle vibrations of the electric engine just forward of and between her thighs, or the way the scenery flashed by so fast it all melded into one blur of shades of green, every now and again punctuated bysplashes of color from a particular dense grouping of flowers or ferns. Maybe it was the whole experience in general, being focused on what lay ahead, senses and reflexes tuned to high alertness, only her skill, experience and daring lying between her and the possibility of a serious injury or messy death. She knew many in the Order that found the sensation thrilling, exciting, even aphrodisical. But for her, it was relaxing... being able to focus on being good at something to the exclusion of all other earthly worries. Like the ones awaiting her at the end of this too short journey of relaxation.

Her motorcycle's wide tires, made from a synthetic material that looked and felt like rubber but was over ten times as durable, were filled with a thick gel slurry that would respond to electrical impulses on her handlebar controls, altering the give and flexibility of her vehicle's grip, from ultra hard for traveling across hard packed, wide open plains, to doughy and puncture resistant, for cross country travel through the deep forests with their thick, muddy soil. Her hands worked almost subconsciously on the handlebar grips, adjusting the density and flexibility of her tires in anticipation of hard turns and upcoming terrain obstacles, the shock system rendering all but the roughest obstacle transit as silky smooth a ride as a roadway. She planed her motorcycle, which she'd named _Freedom_, in tribute both to its function and to a famous vehicle of the man she idolized, up a half collapsed and rotten Yggdrasilwood trunk, using it as a ramp to jump over an upcoming ravine, gunning her engine and clearing over thirty meters of horizontal distance, landing with a thump and a spray of shredded vegetation.

The ever present warmth and humidity of this section of the deep forest, in what was once rural Europe, old Germany, did not touch her as she whipped along, the internal cooling systems of her form fitting, personalized full body armor more than sufficient to keep her cool and refreshed, even though it was close and hot as a steambath beneath the towering boughs. The heat and humidity was something every Edenite learned to endure and even enjoy, certainly, hating it wasn't worth much effort, since there was nothing to be done about it. There were some areas... her home city in particular... that did not sit under the weight of the tropical atmosphere, but they were relatively few and far between. But Garden City was a long, long way away... more than half a day's flight and more like a couple weeks on _Freedom_. She crouched down lower atop the sloped back of her cycle, letting low hanging branches whisper overhead, tangled creeper vines splatting out of her way, two inch long thorns striking at her body only to be warded aside by her armor without even a scratch.

She lidded her eyes, throttling down a few notches, as she used the part of her mind alloted to her psychic potential to tap into the ever present background hum of the Wind of Words. This far out from a major settlement, the connection was a bit slow and muted, but all it took was some concentration to dial it up a few notches and she took her bearings off the mind's that had first sent out the distress call. They were close now, only a minute or two away, as she swerved around a tree and angled off to the north, dropping her mental focus back to her driving. A part of her wished the Wind of Words could be more specific about the nature of this distress call, but either these people did not know how to send specific communications through the psychic network, or more likely, they lacked the individal talents to access the more refined and complex parts of the network. Not all psychics were born equal, she herself was definite proof of that!

All she had heard was the psychic equivalent of a shout for help. It hadn't been especially urgent, but it had been a shout for help all the same. And despite what some in the Order believed, she knew it was her responsibility to help those in need whenever she could. It was her responsibility, as one who had not only technological power but personal power, to help those less fortunate. She'd just been passing through the area, on her way to attend an errand of Kun-Kun's, and while this was a detour, it didn't take her all that far out of her way. Kun-Kun would understand. He knew how she thought, what she believed was her role. She was really honored to be given this particular task, as it involved liasing with others who served Yggdrasil... and not necessarily human others either. She'd heard so many stories about the Forest Prince, that majestic Rex Elk Chimerae that was as much a friend of Yggdrasil as anything living was, but she'd never expected to be chosen to bear a message to him personally! But her duty to her fellow Edenites had to come first. The Forest Prince would understand, she was pretty sure.

Almost unconsciously she checked the message, secured in a heavy Cold Hunter leather pouch against the small of her back, inside the backplate of her armor. She didn't know what the message was, she hadn't thought to read it, wasn't even sure if she could. The chunk of pure synthetic diamond was about as big as her palm, cut flat like a disc about as thick as her finger, its surface mirror bright and clear. It was an EICKO, pronounced colliqually as "echo", an Easily Imprintable Crystalline Knowledge Object. Kind of like a data chip, but one only psychics could access... any psychics, even those, like the Forest Prince, who could not access human technology in a meaningful way. Rare and expensive, EICKO's were made in a similar process to LEMIM items, but instead contained emotions and full thoughts that could be felt by others, rather than the essence of a Latent mind.

Chimerae minds worked differently to those of humans, perhaps understandably, considering that for all their intelligence, they weren't human at all. Some, most notably Yggdrasil itself, had mindsets so alien that it was physically painful and even dangerous for them to communicate with a human directly, mind to mind. The Forest Prince was rumored to be a soft touch, mentally speaking, but even a soft touch for a Chimerae could leave a human whimpering on the ground in agony. She was afraid that a message encoded for him might very well knock her on her ass, at the very least! So she took her hand away and turned her mind away from her official errand once more, as she cleared a hump in the ground, lifiting several meters into the air, perhaps a Tendriculous Bower in the midst of a digestion period... she had a brief impression of a mass of slimy weeds all balled up over some sort of dead animal form, but she was past before even her eyes could fully resolve the scene. She hoped that wasn't the distress call, because it was a bit late for whatever that poor thing had been. Even as she thought that, she knew she was kidding herself, she could now feel those calling, even without directly accessing the Wind.

And then she was through a final screen of long hanging vines and _Freedom_ was purring its way across a clearing, a man made one judging from the squarish, geometrical shape. Or at least a man maintained one, as actually clearing a meadow in the heart of an Yggdrasilwood forest usually required the heaviest of heavy equipment, something deep forest settlers generally didn't have access to. She throttled down and slowly brought _Freedom_ to a halt, a few dozen meters into the clearing, which was turfed with knee high blue grass... so called, because it was a deep ceruelean blue color. One of the most passive of all Edenite flora, blue grass was mildly toxic to the touch, but almost all Edenites had built up immunity to it, because it was everywhere, and after a few days of painful stinging welts, most people were ceased to be bothered by it. It had been a while since she'd tromped through blue grass herself, but her armor was more than enough protection.

In the middle of the clearing was a cluster of buildings, what looked to be a two story home built of wood and cement, a storage building and a barn, about standard arrangement for a deep forest farming clan. A middle aged oxiphant with brown and white spots was grazing off by the barn, munching down the blue grass stalks with every sign of enjoyment on its broad, dull features. It glanced up at her, its golden eyes vapid and unconcerned, and went back to its munching. A shout, accompanied by a psychic "flick", like someone tapping on her forehead with a finger, brought her attention to a young man wading through the field towards her, from the direction of the farmhouse. She kicked her cycle into gear and trundled towards him slowly. He was somewhere in the sixteen to nineteen year range, sandy hair that hadn't seen scissors in a long time, rangy and lean of build and deep tan that spoke of a lot of time outdoors. In short, the typical young man of a rural community on New Eden.

She didn't need to see his eyes to know his psychic status, his lack of full body coverings was an easy sign that he, like her, was an Active. Since Latents could temporarily hijack the powers of Actives, even if they were unwilling, with just a touch of skin on skin contact, most Latents were required by social convention to cover as much of their skin as possible when in a public situation or among strangers. It was just being polite... an uncovered Latent could be a deadly weapon, even by accident, especially when young and not in full disciplined control of their talents. He carried a long walking stick in one hand, the stick had a long, needle tipped metal warhead on one end, making it technically a "spear" rather than a stick, though it was much more likely an oxiphant prod pressed into emergency service as a potential weapon. Like almost all rural Edenites, he had a large and well maintained knife in a sheath on his belt. Life in the forests was hard enough as is, unarmed, without a utility cutting tool, it was a quick death sentence.

"You don't look like the sheriff." The boy or rather young man, who she could now see had rather attractive green eyes with the expected gold pupils, commented as soon as they were within easy speaking distance of each other. He regarded her with traces of suspicion but little fear. Violent crime was all but unknown after the advent of the Wind of Words, and for all his relaxed stance, he was probably no weak hand with his pigsticker either. "What do you want?"

"To help." She replied, smirking a little beneath her helmet mask as she watched him start a bit. Truth be told she wasn't all that much older than him, though in terms of life experience there was at least a decade or two between them. She corralled such dark thoughts and stuffed them back down into her private mind, where they belonged. Turning _Freedom_ off, and setting down the dual kickstands, she swung out of the saddle of her bike and stood up. He was a little bit taller than her, but her armor made up for it. She watched his eyes play across her, her form not very feminine beneath the carved Borealite plates, layered over wrappings of supple tanned Basilisk hide. She'd decorated her armor herself, everyone in the Order did, as part of their initiation rituals. You weren't allowed to use your hands, everything had to be done with your telekinetics. Her plates were covered with intricate murals of winged angels, with flaming swords in either hands, cutting the chains off slaves escaping from some dire fate, which summed up both her past and her beliefs quite nicely, or so she thought.

She reached up to her helmet and disengaged the enviroment seals that were holding her cool air in against her face and head, pulling the helmet, with its dual swept up wings, one per side of her head, off and hanging it on a subtle hook at her waist. She was more than aware of the young man's wide eyes as she shook out her waist length, navy blue hair, and blinked her lilac blue, gold pupiled eyes in the midafternoon sun. Men always were staring at her, she was used to it. Or rather, used to ignoring it, except in the odd rare case. Despite the darkness of her past, she was not immune to the allure of certain attractive men of her own social grouping, and despite the wounds upon her soul, she could not find it in herself to blame all men for the sins of the few. Besides, she still had needs of her own to assuage, now and again. "I'm Lilia. Pleased to meet you." She said, extending her hand, palm up.

Perhaps she should have extended the other hand, because the young man almost immediately caught sight of the insignia inlaid upon side of her extended arm's vambrace, the symbol of her Order, a golden skull with a dark blue hoplite helm, the kind with a horsetail plume on top, over two crossed dark blue swords, on a black background. The symbol of the Praetorians of Garden City, easily the most accomplished and skilled warriors on New Eden. Of course, Garden City was capital and leader of New Eden in name only, and exercised little actual control over the other city states, but their military orders, the Custodians and elite Praetorians, were known far and wide for their effectiveness and skills, both martial and mental. He started even worse than he had when he'd heard her voice, and all but flinched backward, that formerly absent fear showing up strongly now.

Because to be part of the Custodians or especially the Praetorians, you had to demonstrate the mental fortitude to inflict pain and even death upon other sentient, feeling creatures, despite the painful feedback through the Wind of Words that connected almost all living psychic organisms on New Eden. It was one thing when killing a Low Order or High Order organism for food or protection, as developed as such creatures were, they still lacked true sentience and complex emotional depth, as defined by the human condition. But to hurt and kill other humans and even Chimerae was sickening and painful to anyone who was part of the Wind, and those who could not stomach it regarded those who could with fear, awe and more than a little trepidation.

"You're a Praetorian..." The young man whispered, as if gut punched and barely able to speak, his eyes shining with a mixture of worshipful awe and gut wrenching anxiety.

"Apparently." Lilia shrugged, used to this reaction but never one to enjoy it. "I'm also a human being, ya know. My hand won't bite you."

"S-Sorry." The young man said, still taking her hand with utmost caution. "I'm Will. I never thought I'd meet a real, live Praetorian! The guys'll never believe me!" He all but gushed, obviously quite taken with her, and not just because she was a Praetorian, she could feel. As if realizing his emotions were all but blasting in her face, Will coughed and reddened and immediately his mind became blank to her through an exercise of discipline. Nervously, his eyes left her face and traveled down the sleek form of the _Freedom_. "What's that?" He asked, pointing at one of the equipment holsters along the side, just behind where her leg-rests were.

"Something you don't want pointing in your direction." Lilia answered coolly. She turned to her cycle and began unlatching holsters and equipment canisters, girding herself for trouble, though she avoided the full on war panolpy. She could not foresee a use for the weapon Will had pointed at, for instance, a single shot handheld hyper-impulse rifle, her ultimate last resort against the largest and meanest super-predators or hostile Chimerae she might cross paths with. "So what's up?" Lilia asked, as she attached her gear to her armor hardpoints. "I heard a call for assistance, but I didn't get any details, so I decided to drop in and have a look-see."

Will seemed to drag his half covetous eyes away from her array of gear and weapons, easily the most advanced and beautiful he'd ever seen in his entire life, to answer her question. "Ships from the sky." Will said worriedly, glancing up at the clear, only slightly green tinged blue sky, as if afraid more would come if they were mentioned. "They set down over the ridge a kilometer or so away, by the ruins of the old manor house that used to be in these parts. Or so Pa Henderson says, and he used to live around here... before..." Will trailed off. Every Edenite knew what "before" meant in that context. "We're just Nectar farmers, do a little skinning and trapping on the side, we don't know what to do about a bunch of bastard Earthlings dropping outta the sky, so we sent up a call for Sheriff Watts. He's the unofficial authority around here, though the nearest big settlement is a day and a half that way..." Will pointed off to the right. "Busytown, its called. Right on the edge of the Forest Prince's domain, or so they say. Pa Henderson went off to check out the landing sight about an hour ago, after we sent the call."

"Brave man, your Pa." Lilia noted, peering off towards the ridge that Will had mentioned, just barely visible in the distance where the treetops were noticeably higher than the surrounding arboreum.

"Well, he's not my real pa, but he brought me into his family after..." Will trailed off again and shrugged. "We're all family now." He added, almost as an afterthought. Lilia knew Will's situation was far from unique. It was a very rare family group that had made it through the Eden Disaster intact, whether because of deaths during the Green EDEN infection, or split apart by the random evacuation lottery, or even deaths suffered in the years of adjustment to the new standards of life that had followed the official end of the Eden Disaster. Adopting people into the family was a fact of life on New Eden, there were many children with no parents, and many parents with no children, the mix and matching only made sense. "He's been real quiet though. I'm starting to get worried about him."

"Well, lets check up on him then." Lilia decided. She ehrself wasn't sure she was exactly qualified to be an ambassador for meeting with Earthlings, but she was more appropriate than a bunch of rural farmers, that was for sure. She accessed the Wind and sent a blurt of emtions and feelings underlaid with a mental schematic of the situation as she saw it back towards the center of the network, where the Praetorians assigned to monitoring duty at Garden City would be sure to pick up on it. Help would be on the way in a day or so, but for now it was just her. Most times, one Praetorian was more than enough. Lilia straddled _Freedom _once more, and looked at Will. "So, you coming then?"

"You mean on the bike?" He all but squeaked.

Lilia smiled, and slipped her helmet on once more, scrunching her hair up into the back and top. "Well, I ain't about to carry you in my arms, so the bike will have to do it. Just make sure you hang onto me, and I'll try not to drive too norma... I mean recklessly."

"Don't hold back on my account." Will said, hunching onto the bike behind her, all too glad to throw his arms around the waist of the beautiful Praetorian girl, even if it was hard to really get a feel for her underneath her beautifully decorated armor.

"We'll see." Lilia answered, once she felt him get comfortable, even though she knew she would still be taking it slow. _Freedom_ was a single rider bike, and her balance would be off with Will on the back, especially since he wouldn't know how to throw his weight around properly to assist her steering. She throttled up and took off at a not disrespectable forty miles per hour, which was still probably faster than Will had moved in years, since he'd been a little boy, and she smiled as she heard him whooping in excitement. Some of the others in the Order would ask her why she went so far out of her way to help people, well this right here was as good a reason as she'd ever need. She slowed down a bit once they left the meadow behind, but Will didn't seem to mind, indeed he clung to her quite tightly, and not because he was trying to cop a feel... even at thirty miles per hour, the trees seemed to be going by VERY fast to someone who wasn't used to it.

In a matter of minutes they reached the ridge, and Will suddenly perked up and pointed wordlessly off to one side. Lilia didn't exactly need written directions, and she swung _Freedom_ around and followed his pointing arm, shortly coming to an outcroping of what looked like rocks but were actually the tumbled down and overgrown remains of some building. This area had once been a town or small city, but now all that was left of it, even after only seven years, was scattered piles of fast decaying concrete. As Lilia brought the bike to a halt once more, and older man with greying brown hair and a scoped rifle carried casually but professionally in the crook of one arm stepped out of concealment. Like his adopted son, he had golden eyes, rimmed with brown. He regarded her suspiciously as well, but his expression eased somewhat when he saw his adopted son get off the back of the bike, all smiles.

Lilia watched them exchanged significant looks, and felt the tingle of a nearby private psychic communion as the father-son pair updated each other on what had been going on since they seperated. Grunting slightly, Henderson turned to the slim armored girl standing near her bike and nodded at her. He hadn't expected a Praetorian, but he wasn't about to look a gift oxiphant in the mouth either. "Bunch of daft, crazy buggers if you ask me." Henderson began, gesturing with the muzzle of his hunting rifle, an expensive custom model with a fine scope for distance observation and shooting, down the slope towards where the forest began to thin again, revealing stretches of decaying roadway and piles of rubble that had once been houses and buildings. The Earthlings were impossible to miss, their heavy duty shuttles each bulking up bigger than all the buildings of Henderson's farm put together, several times over.

They looked to be engaged in ground clearing and surveying type operations, teams of enviro-suited men bustling about with chainsaws and sensor type gear, as well as several others with large spray containers of some sort of defoliating agent, and yet more with honest to god flamethrowers. Despite their varied methods, the Earthling's progress was slow, as even repeated baths of plant poison and fire weren't enough to deter the hardier flora, especially the Yggdrasilwood trees, whose bark was so doughty the chainsaws would often as not shatter their teeth before even scratching the bark. It was kind of sad, in a way, seeing humans so determined to dominate their environment rather than live alongside it, and failing so horribly in the process. The shuttles were unloading vehicles now, both humvee type all terrain transport jeeps and heavier, tracked construction equipment.

Henderson offered his rifle scope to Lilia, but she waved it away, the optics in her helmet more than powerful enough to provide her with a broad and up close look at the Earthlings. They didn't seem to be military types, they lacked true discipline and organization, though many bore weapons of one stripe or another. Their suis and vehicles were a dirty grey-blue color, and it took her a bit of head panning to find a symbol. When she saw one, she didn't recognize it... a blue New Eden, or actually Earth she supposed, cupped in two hands protectively, superimposed over a crossed shovel and hoe. She logged it in her helmet memory banks all the same, wondering which faction of Earthlings this was. It didn't look like the heraldric symbols she'd studied of the old USN and member-states during her training, but then again it had been seven years, who knew what was going on in space? Who really cared?

"What are they doing?" Will asked, wide eyed, his knuckles white as he clutched his oxiphant prod nervously. There were a lot of Earthlings down there, more people than he'd seen in one place in years. And their actions were just crazy, trying to cut and burn and poison the forest down, seemingly for no reason at all!

"I think... they're trying to set up a camp of some sort." Lilia replied, hesitantly.

"Those are some of my best Nectar trees they're vandalizing." Henderson complained sourly. "Best crop for a day's hike in any direction, those stupid bastards."

"Those ones look like they're in charge." Will noted, pointing with the length of his oxiphant prod. Lilia realized what he was doing too late, and by the time she'd slapped the prod down out of his hands and into the underbrush, it was too late. The midafternoon sunlight had been seen reflecting off the polished metal tip of the prod, and there was a sudden explosion of activity in the camp, as suited figures hurried to board humvees, which came tearing up the ridge slope towards them. "Oh shit, I'm sorry..." Will said, his eyes wide with realization that'd he'd given away their position.

"Well, I guess we get to talk to them personally." Lilia shrugged, trying for reassurance nonchalance. "I wonder what they'll have to say for themselves...?"

xxxx

**Former township of Steinburg, Germanic provinces of the FNE, C.E. 85, September 3rd.**

Adolf Hauckenbager considered his life to have been full of adversity and dissapointment. He'd been born to an only moderately wealthy family, and while all his school mates were flying back and forth to vacation homes by private jets, and being dropped off at school by private limo, he was forced to fly first class commercial and be dropped of by his mother or father in their late model luxury sedan. And then, of course, had come that horrid year in high school, when he'd had pre-Reconstruction era history, and they'd gone over a border skirmish called World War 2, and everyone had made fun of him for months because his first name was the same as that of the evil dictator that had begun the conflict in pursuit of genocide. But he'd conquered these hurdles and more, including a mere mid level managerial position in his father's firm right out of college, pulling himself up by his bootstraps through the chaos of three major world conflicts to become a vastly successful banker and stock broker.

And then had come the near total loss of all his estates and properties, tens of millions of dollars worth of accumalted assets, during the evacuation of Earth during the Eden Disaster. But that too he had conquered, heading up into space early by private transport along with the greater portion of his disposable assets to set up shop ahead of the rush. It had meant leaving some of his personal attendandts and their familes behind, but if their worth couldn't measure up to that of his assets, why should he have to pay their way into space? With his canny headstart, Adolf had quickly recouped all his losses, though the memories of his beautiful manor in the hills of rural Germany had never left his dreams.

Finally, he'd decided to god damn well do something about it, investing heavily in political favors that eventually led him to being introduced to none other than the illustrious Solar President and savoir of humanity, Gilbert Durandel. They had reached an accord... if Adolf supplied the majority of the funding, a not inconsiderable sum, Durandel would provide the resources and manpower and political backing required to outfit and organize and expeditionary force, under the auspices of the popular Reclaimer Initiative, to land on Earth and reclaim Adolf's properties for the good of all humanity! He'd even managed to acquire most of the other land around his former properties, for kilometers in every direction, land the previous owners were usually glad to sell, thinking they'd never see it again. But Adolf knew better. This was just the first of many steps, and his property would be a prime location for the first of the colonization cities... and he'd be able to make ten times his investment or more on selling the land back to the government then!

However, what had seemed a neat and tidy overall gain up in orbit, on his new Lunar estates, was not working out so well now that he was back on Earth, which had become a pestilential hellhole in the time since he'd left. Worse than that even, they'd only been off the shuttles for a few hours and they'd already lost three men to just the plants! This wasn't Earth, it was a death trap! No wonder Durandel was so eager to let Adolf pay his way down here, he really got screwed on this deal! Durandel made a pretty penny and Adolf got stuck with all the messy details of establishing a first colony! Which was taking far, far longer than expected because they couldn't even cut down a few fucking trees! Maybe he'd bought a bunch of defective chainsaws or something, who'd ever heard of trees that had bark stronger than tempered steel? It was simply ludicrous!

Added on to that, his enviro-suit was sweaty and uncomfortable, the men who'd been provided were surly and impolite and worst of all, his precious manor house had been completely wiped off the map! Not even a foundation remaining, just a strand of goddamn invincible giant trees! He was standing where his eight car garage should have been, and couldn't even see a headlamp remaining of his custom automobiles! It was the worst tragedy of his life, and he really felt like crying! Those cars had taken years to collect after all! Adolf was in the middle of once more exhorting the damned laborers to get their acts in gear and cut down some goddamn trees when a shout went up from the perimeter sentries. Adolf snarled a curse... just what he needed, an intrusion by monsterous beasts of some sort. Just fucking wonderful!

Seeing men sprinting for the armored jeeps, Adolf suddenly reflected that if it really was an attack by mutated beasts, it was probably a good idea to be inside an armored vehicle of some sort, especially since the jeeps were equipped with top mounted .50 caliber machine guns, for just that sort of occasion. He pushed his way into the back of one of the jeeps, just as the door slammed behind him and the jeep crunched off through the undergrowth, shocks screaming and rattling them back and forth from the uneven ride. "What the hell is it?" Adolf demanded, remembering he had a comm unit in his helmet. "Just blast it apart so we can get back to work! We're already behind schedule as it is!"

"You sure you want us to do that, Mr. Hackenbager?" One of the Reclaimers, perhaps one of the leaders... Adolf had never bothered to learn their names or ranks, they were just laborers after all... replied with a hint of condescension. "This could be our first contact with the natives, are you sure you want to come down all genocidal like that?"

"Natives?" Adolf was nonplussed. "Not monster beasts? And its Hauckenbager. Hawk-n-bag-er."

"Well, they're all muties of one stripe or another, but I don't think we'll be seeing too many scaly and fangy types, sir." The officer replied sardonically. "Our long range scans didn't show any hositle predatory forms within a few kilometers of the landing site. Nah, I think we got us some curious locals here... we saw some stuff that might have been habitation structures of some sort a klick or so away, over the ridgeline.

"You mean we're about to make first contact with a bunch of spear wielding forest savages?" Adolf shivered with mingled disgust and dread. "Well, belay that fire order then. Let's see what they want, maybe we can barter them some beads or other shiny trinkets and they can help us get the ground cleared." He paused as a sudden thought crossed his mind. "Um... do we have anyone who speaks native? Sign language might be difficult..."

"We're reasonably sure they speak our language, sir." The Reclaimer replied, a bit deadpan. "They were once human after all. I don't think seven years is enough time to devolve back into the grunt and point stage, sir."

"You'd be surprised how close much of humanity is to that stage. I constantly am." Adolf muttered darkly. He supposed it was going to fall upon him, as the upper class, educated man of breeding, to conduct the negotiations with these loincloth wearing primitives. Probably running around half naked with clay and berry paint daubed on themselves, chucking spears and hurling rocks at animals. He shook his head pityingly. Remove the benefits of civilization and strong government, and humans so easily fell back into their primal ways. It was so sad. Well, these particular savages were in luck... with the colony camp practically on their doorstep, they could be re-educated and brought back into the service of humanity and the greater good once more! For their own sakes, of course. It was the duty of the enlightened and civilized colonists to bring lack back to the darkness of this benighted world, wasn't that what one of the Reclaimer motto's was?

"Just make sure you stay on your guard, sir. They're all psychics, just like Borander was." The Reclaimer added, almost maliciously. "They could have you wearing your brain around your ankles before you know it."

"Psychics! God preserve me!" Adolf mumbled, sweat beading on his chin and forehead. He'd completely forgotten about that little tidbit! Maybe going out to the do the negotiations himself wasn't such a good idea. Better to send a minion. That way, if anyone got their brains scrambled, it would be no major loss.

"Don't know about God, sir, but we have your back." The Reclaimer said cheerfully. "Old ma deuce up there will have you covered the entire time. You start doing anything wierd and we'll blow them all to kingdom come."

Adolf was slightly reassured by that thought. He'd seen a demonstration of the .50 caliber machineguns before the trip down, and he had been very impressed, even frightened, by the heavy weapon's destructive potential. Getting ahold of himself, wishing he could mop his brow with his kerchief, he sat straighter in his seat, hanging on tightly as the humvees roared up the slope and encircled the obviously awestruck and most likely terrified natives. At last the jeeps grumbled to a stop, and the doors slammed open as the Reclaimers spread out to surrounded the three indiginents, keeping them covered from a dozen angles with pistols, shotguns and assault rifles. Adolf managed to kick his way out of the back of the humvee at last, and almost tripped and fell on a root before recovering his poise, and taking his first good look at this pocket of the scattered and desperate formerly human survivors of the Eden Disaster.

Adolf tried to remember the briefings they'd been given about the human survivors, but couldn't remember much of anything at all, besides that they were extremely few in number, almost certainly on the verge of dying out, and of course, psychic. One was a youngish blond haired man, clad in dirty and simple clothing of tough fiber, the colors faded from long days of hard use. He held a steel tipped spear in hone hand, close to his body, the point in the dirt in a nonthreatening manner. Another was an older, very rugged looking chap, his clothing even grungier than his son's, or at least Adolf assumed they were father and son, holding a rifle in the crook of one arm as he glowered at the Reclaimers before turning his unnerving brown and gold eyes, like those of an alien cow, upon Adolf. They didn't quite meet his expectations of loincloth wearing barbarians, but they were sufficiently rustic for his lip to curl with instinctive disdain.

However, it was the third member of the native party that really hooked Adolfs attention, and that of most of the Reclaimers. Slight and slim, almost girlish in figure, though it was impossible to truly tell the person's sex beneath their cobbled together, claptrap armor of what looked like wood and animal leather, the third native was staring back at him from the depths of an outlandishly carved wooden ceremonial helmet. This must be a shaman or witchdoctor of some sort, Adolf realized quickly, and likely to be the leader type. The shaman wore several items in holsters along their back and sides, quite what they were Adolf could not make out. Clearing his throat nervously, and them remembering to turn on his helmet speakers, Adolf lifted his hand in a timid greeting. "H-Hello. Do... you... speak... this... language...?" He asked, making sure to space the words slowly and clearly.

"I prefer to talk a little bit faster actually." The shaman replied, stunning Adolf with the distinctive tones of a young woman, barely college age! "But I can slow down if you need help."

"Uh..." Adolf stammered, unsure what to make of the decidedly mocking remark.

"What the hell are you people doing here anyway?" The shaman asked, her voice distractingly pretty. "Besides making a royal mess out of Henderson's Nectar crop."

"Run out of space up in orbit or something?" The older man with the rifle, obviously Henderson, added caustically. "Get bored of running away from the people who trust you to help them, decided you haven't screwed us enough already? Gotta come down here and do your damndest to ruin my livelihood too?"

"We... we are the forerunners of the recolonization of Earth." Adolf said, trying to sound proud and confident. "I am Mr. Adolf Hauckenbager. I own this area, and am graciously allowing the Reclaimer Initiative to help me clear the land, so we may build a settlement for our brethren to come to enjoy as we bring the light of civilization back to this darkened world."

"Light of civilization? Those look more like flamethrowers to me." The blond headed young man said neutrally, nodding down the ridge where the majority of the Reclaimers were still working.

"By own this area, what do you mean exactly?" The helmed shaman asked lightly, putting her hand on the youth's shoulder to quiet him, ignoring the sound of weapons being taken off safe from all around her from the slight movement.

Adolf was nonplussed again. Wasn't it obvious? "This area is my property. I own it." He replied simply. "And not just the area of the landing site either, I have bought the deeds to the land for ten kilometers in every direction from the spot where the shuttles touched down. I am the legal owner of this territory." Adolf opened one of his external belt pouches and withdrew a small data display, which he turned on and then showed the natives, half expecting them to crowd around the technological doo-dad with expressions of childish delight. Upon the screen scrolled the legal records of his land purchases, and all the proper legal documentation that went with the transfer of property. "See. All nice and legal. This place is mine."

"Like hell it is." Henderson spoke up flatly. "I been raising a family here for nigh on a decade now, and farming those trees you're trying to burn down for six years of that. I grant I don't own much aside from the meadow me and mine cleared with our own hard working hands, but I ain't to recognize anyone else as owning the forest either. No one owns this forest, cept the things living in it. All the things, equally. This is OUR forest."

"Not anymore. As of August tenth, of this year, Cosmic Era 85, this forest is MINE." Adolf refuted. "And my rights to it are backed up by the full legal might of the United Solar Nation itself. The government sold me this land, and I paid a pretty price for it. You may have been squatting here for the time being, but thats going to have to change. As of August 10th, you and yours are now trespassers on my property. I'll thank you to leave, post haste."

"I think I see the problem here." The female shaman said quickly, as Henderson looked like he might be planning to bring his rifle up, consequences be damned. "You claim to have bought this land from the USN. But the USN doesn't have the rights to sell this land. The USN, as of the end of C.E. 78, gave up all rights to property and land across New Eden."

"You bastards ran away and abandoned us to our fates and now you wanna come back after we've picked up our lives with no help from you at all, and tell us this is your land and we aren't welcome?" Henderson snapped furiously.

"I'm afraid its you that is confused, young lady." Adolf ignored the intemperate farmer. "This is Earth, not New Eden. New Eden is not a recognized term of the USN, nor are any governments, such as they may be here, recognized by the USN. This land has always been ours, and just because we were forced to leave because of an environmental disaster, does not change that fact. I recognize Mr. Henderson's distress, but the law is the law. I will extend an olive branch... I will pay to have your family relocated to within the new colony, how does that sound? You won't have to scrape a living out of the dirt anymore, you can return to being productive members of society."

"I don't want your damned money!" Henderson sneered. "Its useless to me other than as kindling. I haven't used a coin or credit in over seven years, we do everything by barter around here. As for a productive member of society, Mr super-rich asshole, my Nectar provides an important nutrient resource for over eight hundred people that live in the surrounding area. People's entire lives depend on me making my harvests as big as possible. And its going to be damned hard to provide with you fools burning down my prime crops for your fools crusade!"

"Appropriate reparations will be made." Adolf returned with an irritated sigh. "Look, you people don't have to like it, but the law is the law. This land is mine and you are no longer welcome. You can pack up and move yourselves, or I will have my men move you." Adolf looked around at the almost twenty armed Reclaimers. "And the odds are much in my favor."

"Your not going to get away with this!" Will threatened, powerlessly.

"Young man, I am not getting away with anything. This is a perfectly legal assumption of ownership. The details on it were posted on the nets for weeks beforehand. Its not my fault if you didn't pay attention."

"We can't access your internet down here, in the middle of a forest, dickwad!" Will retorted scathingly. "So that's a meaningle..." He was going to say more, but then one of the Reclaimer's stepped forward and butt stroked the youth in the face with a rifle stock. Will, surprised, went down on his back, spitting blood and tooth fragments. Instantly, Henderson's rifle was coseyed against his shoulder as he took aim at the man who had attacked his son. All around them, weapons primed as the Reclaimer's responded in kind.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah!" The female shaman said, stepping between the Reclaimer's and Henderson, raising her hands placatingly. "Violence is not the answer. Everybody just calm down, alright? I don't think any of the three of us are in a qualified position to make negotiations of this sort. I have sent word to my superiors, they are sending a delegation to the area soon. Could we perhaps postpone matters until some people with real diplomatic power arrive?"

"There are no negotiations to make. I am the clear and legal ordained owner of this territory, by the grace of Solar President Durandel himself! You are all trespassers, and by the law, you must leave, or I can and will deport you via force." Adolf was getting a headache with all this repetition. Damn stupid savages. It wasn't a particularly complex matter, he didn't think. Couldn't they see this was for their own good? Access to clean water and fresh food, medical supplies and education, all the comforts of civilization! They should be leaping and bowing for the chance, but they insisted on arguing out of date legal points! It was almost surreal!

"You are refusing to negotiate?" The shaman's voice suddenly acquired a definite chill.

"By God's balls, you thickheaded tribal bitch, how many times do I have to say it? There is NOTHING to negotiate ABOUT!" Adolf screamed at her, his patience exhausted. "I am the OWNER, you are the TRESPASSERS! You must LEAVE or you will be MOVED! That is the end all and be all of this situation! GOOD CHRIST, DO I NEED TO DRAW YOU A STEP BY STEP PROCEDURE?"

"I might find such insight into your so called thought process rather informative actually. Though I fear it might be too irrational for me to understand." The smarmy girl replied calmly. "I didn't want it to come to this. But I have a responsibility and a moral duty to protect these people that you are planning to oppress." She pointed imperiously at Adolf, and he flinched slightly. "This is your last warning. Put down your weapons and return to your shuttles. Cease your depradations against the environment and return to space. Earthlings like you are not welcome upon New Eden. Do not return, here or anywhere else."

"Are you actually threatening me, surrounded by armed men as you are?" Adolf asked in disbelief. "Do you have a death wish?"

He was shocked when she actually chuckled. It was a pleasant sound, totally out of place with the mood. She turned her vambrace towards him and showed him the symbol on it. "My name is Lilia. I am a Arboreal Praetorian of Garden City. My people know me as Yggdrasil's Valkyrie. I don't expect a puffed up idiot like you to understand or comprehend what those ranks and titles mean, but suffice it to say, your twenty armed men do not intimidate me in the slightest. Do I have a Death Wish? Mr. Hauckenbager... ALL Praetorians have a Death Wish. Its part of who we are. I don't have time to mess around with your little farce anymore. I have a message to deliver to a V.I.O., and I'm going to be late as it is. My question to you and your men is, do YOU have a Death Wish? By trifling with me and those I am sworn to defend, despite repeated attempts at reasonable discourse, you sure seem to."

"Okay, thats it." Adolf said on helm comms. "I won't stand here and be lectured by some shamanistic, self righteous slip of a girl. Get rid of them. We don't have time to waste jabbering with slack jawed native morons." However, even as he gave that command, it was already too late. Henderon dropped to the ground, throwing his body over Will's form, courtesy of a psychic prod from Lilia. Even as Henderson was falling, Lilia reached out with her mind, not towards the Reclaimers around her, but towards the nearest jeep, with its dorsal mounted .50 caliber machinegun. Her telekinetcs was not her strongest suit, but she was still a Praetorian, and she knew what to do with the force she could muster. She applied some to the tip of the barrel, swinging the mount around, and then used the last bit of force to yank back on the butterfly triggers. The sudden recoil of the weapon firing slammed the surprised gunner backwards off the jeep, as his gun slewed rapidfire death through the ranks of his comrades, in what looked like a horrible accident but wasn't.

Blood misted the air as the close range heavy machinegun bullets blasted men apart, ignoring their armored environment suits, throwing thimbs and torsos and pieces of internal organs like bloody confetti as over three quarters of the Reclaimer's were gunned down by friendly fire before they even knew what was going on. Walking her captured weapon's arc of fire upwards, Lilia brutalized the other two jeeps, blasting their machineguns to scrap before the shocked gunners could get in gear, and then, with the main threat neutralized, she relaxed her mental hold on the machinegun and dropped into a crouch, just in time to avoid a slew of full auto burst fire. Her Borealite armor was likely proof against their small arms, but no sense risking a lucky shot. Keeping track of seven different mental and emotional states at once was a bit of a strain on her concentration, but the Praetorians trained against odds like this all the time... and the Reclaimers did not measure up to her usual training partners.

Lilia's hands flickered to her waist holsters, withdrawing a rubberized hilt from each. A snap of her wrists and she was suddenly holding a pair of three foot long, double edged mono-swords, the blades sliding out from the grips with liquid speed. Unlike the military tactics of Earthlings, which stressed carefully aimed ranged fire, the combat tactics of Custodians and especially Praetorians usually revolved around getting up close and personal as quickly as possible, where the greater speed, strength and endurance of the Edenite body, not to mention the powers of the Edenite mind, could be best utilized. And after hunting and killing Cold Hunters, Direcats and Basilisks with nothing but her two swords and the blade style she'd copied from images of her idol, Kira Yamato, regular humans, Naturals or Coordinators, weren't exactly a challenge.

Two heads went flying on jets of scarlet as Lilia twirled through their ranks, their bisected weapons falling to the ground in pieces, victims of prepatory slashes neither man had seen, even before being decapitated. She flipped up and over another man with a heavy pistol in either hand, striking downward in mid flip to take both arms off at the shoulder as easily as if she were pruning a Partisan Fern. As she laned she went into a backwards somersault along the ground, puffs of dirt exploding as autofire drilled into the ground all around her, but never quite close enough to strike home. She lashed out with one leg, cracking shin bones as she kicked the legs out from underneath one more assailant before kipping up to her feet and impaling yet another through the face and heart with a double thrust. A shotgun roared from behind her, and she rode through the hit, the lead pellets flattening themselves against her backplate ineffectively, using the momentum imparted to help land a flying double foot kick to the sternum of a bulky man, feeling the ribs and sternum shatter and collapse under the hit.

A Reclaimer turned to run and went down with a hurled sword between his shoulderblades, the other two tried to scatter as well, one limping heavily on cracked shins. Relaxing her still held sword, Lilia twisted the wrist of her free hand in a certain way, activating the internal circuitry of her armor and opening a hidden compartment in her vambrace, dropping a pair of bone shuriken, constructed from the talons of juvenile Cold Hunters, into the palm of her hand. Two flicks of the wrist later and both runners went down, razor edged bone embedded in their brainpans. Lilia turned and brought the tip of her sword up to Adolf's throat calmly and silently, having carefully spared the buffoon during the brief but exceedingly bloody fracas.

"As I was saying." Lilia told the stammering, blubbering asshole. "I wanted to come to a mutually acceptable compromise, but you initiated hostile action and these are the consequences, Mr. Hauckenbager. Unlike some members of my Order, I don't enjoy killing, even when it is necessary to save lives. I want you to bear that in mind, Earthling. I am a nice girl, and I just slaughtered over twenty of your men in less than a minute without working up a sweat. You do NOT want to meet the less friendly members of my Order. If you will kindly remove yourself and take the message to those who sent you, that regardless of who may have owned this land seven years ago, you do not own it now. You ran away from your responsibilities then, and that has consequences too. I imagine this is all very distressing to you, but we don't need or want your help in regaining what you call civilization. We are happy as we are. Do I make myself perfectly clear?" Lilia reached out a hand and touched him on the shoulder, gently.

"Get away from me!" Adolf screamed, cowering. "You're a monster! You're all monsters!" Down in the landing site, parties of Reclaimers were forming up, to investigate the gunfire on the ridge and lack of reports from their comrades. "Help me! Help me!" Adolf shouted across the comm lines. "I'm being murdered by heathen savages! Get the Striker!"

"Do I want to know what a Striker is?" Lilia asked pleasantly, bending over to retrieve her second sword, flicking the blades back into the hilts and holstering the weapons.

"Get out of my head, you witch!" Adolf shrieked, falling to his hands and knees in terror.

"I wouldn't climb into your skull if I was paid to do it, fat man. I was reading your lips." Lilia retorted, annoyed. "You're awfully mouthy for a man only alive because of my mercy."

"I can fix that, ma'am." Henderson volunteered, aiming and firing his rifle all in one motion. At point blank range it was almost impossible to miss. But Adolf didn't go slamming backwards with a bloody hole drilled through his head. He instead stared, bug eyed and mouth agape, at the rifle slug as it hovered silently an inch or two in front of his faceplate, caught inexorably in Lilia's mental grip. She banged the slug against his faceplate gently and then let it fall into the dirt. "But... why, ma'am?" Henderson asked, shocked.

"If there is blood to be spilt, it will be my hands that do it. That is my sacrifice and my duty to our people, Henderson." Lilia replied quietly. "Much as you provide nutritious Nectar for the people of this area, it is by confronting and sometimes killing threats to the safety of others than I contribute to the health and welfare of us all. I cannot allow you to take part in my burden, if there is any other choice, I'm sorry. There has been enough killing today." Lilia turned the threatening gaze of her helm back to Adolf. "Go now, and leave with all your men, before I am forced to kill them too. Keep pushing me, and your value as a lesson will outweigh your value as a messenger, do you understand me?"

She was going to saw more when the back to one of the shuttles suddenly levered open with a harsh clang of metal, drawing all their attentions. The Reclaimers below were scattering back away from the ridge now, as whatever was in the back of the shuttle deployed and began to stand upright. The gargantuan humanoid shape was instantly recognizable as a Mobile Suit, though the model was unknown to Lilia. It was relatively short, as Mobile Suits went, and lean, and painted in the Reclaimer colors. It was free of adornments and excessive gear, with a large square shield in one hand and a sleek, large caliber projectile weapon of some sort in the other hand. Large angular jet assist wings nested on its back, all folded up for shuttle transit. The Mobile Suit, almost certainly the Striker Adolf had spoken of, stood to its full height and turned its head towards them. Twin gun ports opened in the cheeks and, without warning, a hail of bright pink tracers spat out at them, courtesy of a pair of 20mm CIWS guns.

The hail of gunfire tore into the ridgetop with great fury, atomizing two of the jeeps and hurling the other skyward on a plume of fire as hydrogen fuel cells ignited. Adolf never had a chance, three 20mm shells struck his body and head, and turned him into a mist of faint red fluid. Lilia dived behind the nearest Yggdrasilwood tree, cursing vilely as Will and Henderson were likewise turned to gooey paste by the spray of shells, father and adopted son dying side by side, still gaping in awe at the Mobile Suit. The tree trunk rang with impacts and the odd shriek of deflecting shells as the Striker walked its twin CIWS into the tree, trying to lock on to Lilia's form, but whereas an Earth tree would already be flaming splinters under the barrage, the Yggdrasilwood was barely marked.

Switching tactics, the Striker aimed and fired its primary weapon, a 120mm shotgun, lacing the ridgetop with a burst of high explosive shaped charges, glassifying the soil and digging out huge craters of thick loam, though the Yggdrasilwood remained resolute. Still, its bulk wasn't quite enough to protect Lilia from the shockwaves of the explosions, and she was hurled downslope almost fifteen meters before striking another tree side on. She hissed as she felt a rib crack, but her armor spared her the worst of it. Dropping to hands and knees, she shook her head to clear it, even as she heard the thrusters on the Mobile Suit warm up as it leaped from the landing site up onto the ridgetop, still searching for her.

"Join the Praetorians, they said... see the world, they said... I'd rather be sailing!" Lilia muttered darkly to herself, picking herself up and sprinting downslope, towards where she'd hidden _Freedom_ prior to the jeeps first arriving. She hadn't exactly trained on person versus Mobile Suit fighting... it was the sort of situation a Praetorian was supposed to be smart enough to avoid... but she still had a few nasty surprises up her sleeves. More explosions from behind her told her the Striker was still coming, firing more or less at random at likely bits of cover as it searched for her, its sensors most likely confused by the high ambient temperature and her low body temperature because of her armor's cooling circuits. The thickly packed Yggdrasilwood trees often forced the Striker to detour around, as it could not push past or knock down the towering trees. It drew its melee weapon, a heavy, chainsaw-sword, and swiped petulantly at one big tree, only to have the chainsaw skip off in a shower of sparks, barely denting the thick bark.

Reaching her concealed bike, Lilia snatched up the hyper-impulse rifle and a pair of reload power canisters and then hoofed it well away from the _Freedom_, not wanting her precious and only mode of transport to be hit by stray fire. Her bike was armored in Borealite too, but why chance being stranded on foot if not necessary? Heading back towards the Striker now, Lilia closed her eyes for a moment and watched a lilac blue, gold veined seed drop through her consciousness, detonating in a flash of purifying, cleansing light. Her eyes now fully metallic, pupils and cornea both, Lilia sued the boost of Seed mode to reach out emotionally to the Striker pilot, and drew upon her greatest strength as a Newtype... the power of emotion and empathy. She supercharged his confidence levels, even higher than they already were, fighting in a Mobile Suit against a single infantryman, and when she came into view of the Striker, he was so full of arrogant complacancy he didn't even shoot at her, he went straight for the "step on her like an ant" strategy.

"That's right, come to me, big boy." Lilia murmured, keeping the rifle slung but charged for the moment. The range was short on the handheld version of this technology, and the recoil was nothing to sneeze at either. She didn't want to spook him into rationality with a miss. "Come kill this helpless damsel in distress." She waited patiently as the Striker stomped forward, still having to detour a bit as trees got in the way. Finally he was close enough to pounce forward, one foot raised to mash her to a pulp. She watched the foot descend, and sidestepped it at the last instant. The ground cracked beneath her feet, the shock actually throwing her up and off her feet, but she was expecting that, even counting on it, as the rifle came up to her shoulder and she fired a fist thick blue-red beam of supercharged plasma directly up into the Striker's groin. Whatever armor type it had, it wasn't enough to stop the shot, and the Striker's head blew apart in an explosion of flame as the entire machine ground to a halt, the overconfident pilot vaporized in his seat.

Not one to take chances though, Lilia reloaded and took out both knees of the Mobile Suit with seperate shots, dumping the machine to the ground in ruin. Slinging the now empty rifle, Lilia headed back towards the _Freedom_. She was just regaining the ridgetop, with the intent of expressing her annoyance to the Reclaimers below, probably with a few more hyper-impulse blasts, when the ground shook and rumbled as the Reclaimer shuttles leapt from the ground like startled rabbits, the remaining workers plainly having no stomach for a fight now that their Mobile Suit had been taken out by a single infantrywoman. She thought about shaking her fist at them, but instead shook her head in sadness. This had all been such a waste of life, and now she would have the heartbreaking task of returning to the Henderson stead and telling the remaining family that Will and their father would not be coming back.

Lilia all but tore off her helmet at let it fall in the dirt, hot tears of dismay rolling down her cheeks. "Damn it! DAMN IT! I couldn't protect them!" She shouted to the uncaring sky, the distant rumble of thunder marking the passage of the shuttles into the upper atmosphere. "What would you have done, Kira?" Lilia asked herself, as she often did in times of personal crisis. This time, unlike most, she didn't get an answer from her subconscious. She was going to have to deal with this guilt on her own. She gazed up into the blurry sky through her tears and prayed that this would never have to happen again. Her prayers would not be answered.


	6. Fuel for the Fire

Author Note: Well, Lilia seems as popular as ever. Good. Glad you all like her, because she's going to be important. Pivotal even. As for why she killed those "fleeing" guys, it was because they were running to get help, not running to flee battle.

xxxx

**Galileo Lunar Fleet Base, Luna, September 4th**

If there was one part of his job that Durandel consistently found tedious, it was these covert meetings of the "shadow government" he had created behind the public facade of the USN. Of course he had only himself to blame, as he was the one who'd vetted and recruited each any every one of what he sometimes termed, in sourer moments, his "cabal". But as boring and unsurprising as most meetings were, they were also necessary, because it was at them that the true policies and power arrangements of the USN were made, and though many of his cabal owed him deeply for past favors, political and personal, that did not necessarily translate into them being friends or even especially loyal. He had to keep his eyes on all of them, lest he find poison in his soup or a literal knife in his back. That was the kind of snakes they were... but, for the time being, they were HIS snakes, and so, useful.

There was his long time toady, Fleet-Admiral David Icarus, head of the regular USN military, whose brainchild was the mighty Solar Protection Fleet. Not the most politically astute man, but smart enough to know when to hitch a ride upon the coattails of someone better, Icarus was a throwback to the early days of the Earth Alliance military leadership... stuffy, bombastic, arrogant and constantly surprised by the competence of everyone he faced off against. If it weren't for his technical competence when it came to the deployment and management of super large fleets of capital ships, Durandel would have replaced him years ago. But Icarus regarded the logistical and administrative nightmare of controlling the SPF as a personal joy, and the headache relief that attitude was worth was enough to keep him in his position, as long as he kept his head down and his mouth firmly fixed to Durnadel's asscheeks.

There was the half albino Natural supremacist, Lord Atticus Djibril, a man Durandel might once have considered a rival to be savored, but now broken and drained by the losses suffered during the Eden Disaster, which had all but ruined his own secret society, called Logos. Djibril was an unpleasant man, and his damned cat that he insisted upon carrying around and pampering shed like no other animal Durandel had ever seen before. He sometimes thought it wasn't really a cat, just a bundle of allergenic fur fibers that Djibril carried to annoy everyone else. Lacking social skills notwithstanding, Djibril, with his pale blue-purple lips, grey hair and pallid complexion was a... striking figure. Memorable certainly, in both good and bad ways. And he was smart and astute enough to be trusted to maintain complex instructions, if petulantly, which was why Durandel had placed him in charge of the Reclaimer Initiative.

There was of course Rey, representing the Solar Knights, though he wasn't actually the official commander, as commander of the White Knights, also known as the Paladins, Rey was the most respected and powerful man in the elite army. Being Durandel's adopted son, closest confidant, and protege did not hurt his standing either. If Durandel was the brains, then Rey was the hands that carried out his orders, no matter what they might be, with efficiency and precision. With control of a cadre of the strongest and best equipped indivudal pilots in all the USN, Rey was Durandel's ace in the hole against any overt dissension from certain antagonistic parties. He also took on the burden of running Durandel's secret police force, Section 9 Intelligence.

Then came the triumvirate delegation from F.E.A.R., who publicly served as his science and technologies advisors, but were quite a bit more than that. He had known Dr. Sammual Roanoke the longest and had even thought the cantankerous doctor to be the one in control of FEAR at first, during their time working together at the end of the Eden Disaster. However, in actuality, Roanoke was only in control of roughly a third of the secretive arms company. the part that dealt with the creation of super-soldiers and technologies based upon chemically or mechanically enhacing the human form. His pet project was the anti-Newtype soldiers, the Independent Biological Weapon System Extendeds, Naturals who had undergone surgical procedures and mental treatments to make them invisible and intangible to the deletrious effects of Pyschic powers.

Then was Dr. Oktar Magnus, who had only recently joined FEAR in the wake of the Eden Disaster, but through a combination of political skills and academic brilliance, had fought his way up to control another third of the company. Magnus's section dealt with studying the biological effects of the Eden Disaster and Green EDEN nanites, and figuring out how to best harness them for the USN's own needs. Rivals with Roanoke, as they both approached the same problem but with radically different means, Magnus's brainchild, still in the infantile stages, focused around purposfully breeding powerful psychic creatures and enslaving them to the wills of human masters via surgery and cyber augmentations. He called it "Project Darwin", and as a man with a genetics background himself, Durandel had to admit he found Magnus's methods and results quite intriguing.

Then there was the real problematic one, the Director of FEAR, Dr. Natalia Dostanya, who controlled the other third of the company, and well over seventy percent of the actual company stock, making her the majority controller. A tall and well built woman, a few years older than Durandel himself, she had the appearance of a much younger woman because of numerous cosmetic and prosthetic surguries that had enhanced her natural vigor. Equipped with piercing grey-green eyes and a fountain of blond hair, usually constrained in a no nonsense ponytail, Natalia was problematic as much for her distracting physical beauty and obvious flirtation, as her razor keen mind and eyes that missed no detail, no matter how slight. She was one of the few people that Durandel would comfortably acknowledge as being on an intellectual and political level near his own, as she played her two fracticious subordinates off against each other and reaped the profits from both of them for her own research, focused upon cyber-augmentics and nanotechnology.

Besides those major players there was a fluctuating band of legislators, law officials, financial experts and military commanders that filled out the rest of the council, usually remaining silent except when specifically called upon to provide some information or to fufill some task or duty. For today they stayed at the edges of the dimly lit room, whispering quietly to each other as they handled various minor but still vital problems, hurdles and crises, while the big dogs sat around a table in the middle and discussed long term strategy. Durandel tried to contain his boredom, since all of this strategy was stuff he had been long aware of, and everything was going smoothly and according to his wishes, but he still had to be here, lest they think him uninterested in their advice and perhaps decide to start working at cross purposes with him. The worst part of it was Natalia's flirting, by far. She was an attractive woman, and she was plainly interested in pursuing a more than businesslike relationship with him, but all the same her coy glances made his hackles rise a bit.

For one, he was still in his comfortable "on again, off again" relationship with Talia Gladys, and though he had fewer and fewer opportunities to liase with his beautiful captain of late, that did not dull his feelings towards her in the slightest. It was rather uncomfortable at times, having to remember that for all their wonderful time together in private, she wasn't a part of his inner circle and so he couldn't unburden himself to her like he often wanted to. He had given her many opportunities to be by his side in a permanent fashion, and she had replied just as many times that she was happy where she was. Talia was as married to her career in ZAFT as she was to him, probably more so. And he could respect and admire her dedication to doing what she cared about, and he cared about her too much to use his influence to affect her career in any way. Talia would never forgive him for favors of that sort, even in her best interest. It was a measure of her own competence and quality that she had been selected to become the captain of ZAFT's new Fleet-Carrier, the _Remembrance_, it had nothing to do with who's bed she sometimes shared.

For another, despite the flirtation, or maybe because of it, Durandel could not shake the feeling that Natalia's sexual interest in him stemmed from an entirely pragmatic source, rather than a romantic one. She was plainly an ambitious woman, not ever content with the power she currently had. What rumor he had managed to collect upon her suggested she had married the former Director of FEAR, who had not lived for more than a few days after his new wife became majority shareholder of FEAR. A terrible accident of course, and accidents happened, but the timing was... convenient at the least. Durandel could not help but mentally compare her to a preying mantis... as soon as she got what she wanted out of the relationship, whatever that was, she would not hesitate to devour him. All the same, at times Durandel was tempted to give her what she wanted, just to see if he could twist her to his own ends instead. And her smoky looks promised a rather unconventional and no doubt extremely fufilling sexual partner.

Blinking his mind clear of some disturbingly interesting images, Durandel forced himself to refocus on the matters at hand. Getting him distracted and daydreaming about her body was no doubt part of Natalia's plans... many a politically powerful man had been felled by lack of control in his male hormones throughout history, after all. At the moment Dr. Roanoke had the floor, and was just winding down from a pre-briefing that detailed his progress in various areas of his personal concern. However, such everyday reports weren't the reason why Roanoke was so excited for the meeting today, as evidenced by his bright eyes and almost pleasant demeanor. "So without further ado, may I present to the gathered dignitaries and respectable folks, the next generation of USN super soldiers, the Independent Cyber-Mechanical Soldier "Augmenteds"! Mechael, if you would step forward please." Roanoke gestured to a group of aides that clustered behind his chair.

From that group stepped a powerfully built man, his skin a lusterous, almost shiny black-brown, his sandy brown hair short and curly, his eyes the most striking initial feature as they were an unnatural bright orange color. Durandel had seen Coordinators with eyes of that shade, indeed, his own yellow-amber ones weren't too far off, but Roanoke was a former member of Blue Cosmos, and wouldn't have anything to do with Coordinators if he had an option, unlike his more pragmatically minded rival, Dr. Magnus, which perhaps accounted for some of Magnus's recent gains against Roanoke. So that meant this Mechael fellow must have once been a Natural, which meant that his body had been extensively altered and augmented, in tune with his title. He certainly looked impressive, of a height with Durandel and far more massively built, his arms bare to the shoulder and displaying an impressive collection of bulging muscles.

"I fail to see what's so special about a steroid pumping myrmidon." Dr. Magnus said snidely, safely across the table from Roanoke, who shot the red headed and bearded scientist a murderous glare. "We've had the technology to chemically alter and reinforce soldiers for decades now. A few refinements here and there are all well and good, but hardly groundbreaking."

"If you would but let me finish, Oktar, you might prevent yourself from seeming a total fool." Roanoke retorted frostily. "Though given your track record, I find it doubtful."

"Sammual." Natalia said, almost sounding bored, but with the edge of a whipcrack in her tone. "You're embarassing us all in front of the President with your bickering. Present your project or get back to your lab, one or the other."

"As you say, Director." Roanoke said stiffly, obviously smarting from the public reprimand. "Mechael and his future kin are far more than just drug fuelled and mentally conditioned super soldiers. Because Mechael is the first human being ever to be equipped with not merely a bionic or cybernetic replacement prosthetic for a limb or organ, but to be blessed with a fully cybernetic body!" Roanoke announced with a smirk at Magnus. "Even his internal organs are largely cybernetic or at least partially augmented. Mechael possesses five times the strength, speed and stamina of a purely biological body, and his body is over ten times more resilient than a human body of flesh and blood. Not only that, but his bionic frame provides many more options of combat than any regular soldier. Mechael, if you would?"

"Please call me "Rockstar", professor. You agreed to, remember? Mechael Smith is so lame..." Mechael replied, almost petulantly, drawing a choked snort of amusement from Magnus that almost had Roanoke purple in the face. Sensing the rising choler of his patron and creator, Mechael hurried on with his demonstration, opting to let the subject of names fall by the wayside for the moment. Compartments in his forearms, shoulders and hips opened up, the seals otherwise seamless and invisible to the naked eye, as he deployed his standard configuration of weapons. A meter and a half long, bright yellow beam blade from the left forearm, a dual barreled medium machinegun in the right arm, and a array of micro RPG launchers in shoulders and hips. "I am the man you really don't want to encounter in a dark alley." Mechael announced, as the various people leaned away from his display of weaponized might. "Or anywhere else, if I'm in a bad mood."

"Besides just his weapons, Mechael has a full suite of sensor systems that allow him to see farther and clearer than any human, in any visibility conditions. He can survive underwater or in an airless environment for over seventy two hours straight, and he is equipped with neural linkages that allow for access to NIC system equipped Mobile Suits. His Gundam, Omega-Panzer, is currently under construction, details on its capabilities will be forthcoming soon." Roanoke explained proudly. "Mechael is also equipped with a new neural blocker enhancement, based upon the control devices we use to pacify our Edenite test subjects, which can limit or negate the influence of psychics upon his mind."

"Excuse me, but there's a lot of difference between "limit" and "negate", Sam." Magnus spoke up with a sneer. "Which do you mean, precisely? Negate in optimal situations and merely limit the rest of the time?"

"The technology is still under development, Oktar. Refinements will be necessary for maximum effectiveness." Roanoke answered coldly. "Mechael is the prototype for our new line of super soldiers, obviously there will be a period of trial and error while I work on the kinks in his systems. I will not lie, there are several suboptimal aspects to his personality, his grating independence for one. I had sent an expedition, with the permission of the Director, to recover the work of a former colleague that might have helped in this regard, but they did not return successfully. But I am confident, with time and further funding, the ICMS Augmented will prove to be a decisive edge to our future arsenal."

"How much do they cost?" Rey asked, seemingly only slightly interested, though Durandel knew Rey kept a close eye on all matters that might potentially affect the military. Rey didn't much like or trust FEAR, but he was willing to use them to further Durandel's power if they were going to let themselves be used. "And how soon can you begin mass production?"

"Hey, I don't appreciate being talked about like I'm a part to be stamped out in a factory! I'm Mechael Smith and I'm the future of your godamned military, so maybe you could give me a little RE-SPECT, huh?" Mechael challenged with a glare at Rey.

"I see what you mean about grating independence." Durandel noted with a slight smile at Roanoke's discomfiture at his creation's acting out.

"We are still perfecting the requisite technology, so initial costs are high, slightly over eighty million dollars per cyber-body, and about half as much again for the requisite medical treatmeants to prevent the host body's organs from rejecting the specialized augmentations, and for training the host body to use the cyber-body in a natural fashion. Training time is a few months, but the real chokepoint is getting initial host bodies... very few possess a flexible enough genetic structure to handle the implants and augmentations without severe and possibly crippling rejection symptoms." Roanoke shuffled some papers, almost nervously. "I am pursuing a forced breeding program from a suitable mother, one of my best Extendeds, but at the earliest, mass production of the ICMS is five to six years in the future."

"So Mechael here is just a lucky fluke then? How droll." Magnus sneered through his beard. "While you waste your funding with "possible" solutions in a few years to problems we have today, my own research has yielded tangible results for less than half the cost and well under a tenth of the start up time."

"I am a beautiful and unique snowflake." Mechael intoned in his deep voice. "And if you keep mocking the professor, I'm gonna ventilate your ho-ho-ho-head, Santa Claus." Mechael pointed his right arm at Magnus and the twin barreled machinegun slid out again, a bright red laser dot appearing on Magnus's forehead. "So what if I won't have any brothers and sisters for a few years, all you really need is me anyway! Just bring your best guys, and I'll turn em inside out and prove how good I am. You'll be begging the professor to let you fund him after you see what I can really do!"

"I'll see what can be arranged. My Paladins could use some practice against a worthwhile opponent." Rey said dryly.

"Yeah, maybe you can pick up some tips from me so you don't get yer asses beat so bad by the Retributors next time." Mechael replied with a smirk, the guns folding back into his arm, as Magnus sagged in his seat with relief. "I watched your last battle feeds, and man, if I were in your shoes, I'd still be hiding under a rock. You outnumbered them two to one and you only barely managed to cripple one?"

"I'll be glad to see you do better." Rey answered icily. "The Retributors are nothing but a nuisance anyway. Just about perfect for a man of your caliber."

"If we're done with the testosterone laced posturing?" Natalia cleared her throat and spoke up. "I too have a report to give Gilbert." She glared significantly at Mechael, who stopped back, mumbling to himself, and then turned a softer, more mollifying look upon Rey. Natalia had already deduced that the quickest path to Gilbert's heart was through the heart of his cloned, adopted son. And she was already well on her way to worming her way into Rey's troubled heart. It was all too easy... because of her body augmentations, she physically only appeared a little older than him, and he was all but desperate for intimate attention from a beautiful woman, ever pining over his own lost love, Lunamaria. That Natalia had performed the augmentic surguries upon Lunamaria that had restored her to health and functionality after her traumatic injuries at the end of the Eden Disaster was just one more point in her favor. That she had promised vague but exciting new possibilities about what those augmentics were capable of doing to influence the girl had snared the darker aspects of Rey's mind, and had the potential to put him in her debt, which was the first step to exerting her control over him.

"As you know..." Natalia turned her eyes back to Durandel, composing her face into a semblance of simpering flirtation. There was no doubt that Gilbert was a very attractive man, physically and in terms of personal power. In a better world, she might even have considered making him her permanent partner. But this was an imperfect world, alas, so he would have to go the way of all her past conquests and boytoys, once she was done wringing from him every last drop of power and wealth he had to give. "I have been working upon perfecting a new strain of nanites, as a countermeasure to the poisonous creations of that bastard Borander. I am glad to report to you all that my experiments have proven highly successful, at least in lab tests, and I am on the verge of conducting the first field tests in the near future. Behold..." Natalia activated the table holoprojector, showing a close up view of a molecular sized machine. "The anathema of EDEN... I call it MAIDEN, for the purity of its purpose."

"It stands for MAgnetic Interface Destroying Environmental Nanomachine." Natalia explained. "Some of my research staff has also taken to calling it "White EDEN", because it is heavily based upon the work of Borander, as all our current nano-tech is. It is programmed to seek out and latch on to other forms of EDEN, most notably the poisonous Green and weaponized Blue, and blast apart the interatomic magnetic bonds that hold the nanomachines together, causing the molecular machines to disintegrate and fly apart, destroying them utterly. MAIDEN destroys EDEN on a one molecule for one molecule basis, but it is easy to mass produce, so we will be able to make as much as is needed for our purposes."

"So what are the flaws then?" Durandel asked, his expression composed and thoughtful.

"MAIDEN, unlike EDEN, does not self replicate in the field, and it is a large and dense nanite, as nanites go. That makes it heavier than air." Natalia replied brusquely. "So it is best deployed from high altitude and allowed to sift down like mist upon a target area. Also, when it destroys the magnetic bonds holding EDEN together, the resultant molecular detonation releases a high degree of energy in the form of heat. EDEN saturated organisms exposed to a large quantity of MAIDEN in a short period of time have show a tendency to spontaneously combust from the inside out as their embedded Green EDEN is blasted apart."

"I'm not sure I'd call that last part a flaw." Djibril volunteered with a flashy smile. "So all we have to do is spray this stuff ahead of us and watch those damned forests and the savages within them burn like moths in a bonfire? When is your field test?"

"Probably sometime early next month. You are welcome to observe." Natalia answered with a fake smile. She detested Djibril, he was nothing more than a beggar in her eyes, sustaining himself on scraps tossed by Durandel. Plus his much prided genetic condition was simply hideous in a man, he looked like a crossdresser. She was fairly sure he was a homosexual as well, or at lest bisexual, and gay men always turned her off. "We will conduct a high altitude dispersal test and then investigate the ground level effects afterwards. We will need an escort of some sort, and your Reclaimers would be just perfect, actually, since they have hands on experience on the ground."

"Too much and too little." Djibril replied with a hooded scowl in Durandel's direction. "Perhaps if my men weren't constantly forced to escort wealthy slobs trying to rebuild their pipe dream fantasy houses, I wouldn't have them suffering almost forty percent casualties. Its getting hard to maintain a rosy facade on such debacles."

"If you have a better source of private funding for the Initiative, you are welcome to utilize it, Atticus." Durandel answered with a shrug, knowing full well there was no such funding source. "In the meanwhile, catering to the desires of your wealthy private investors is a burden than must be borne stoically, if not cheerfully. Though I was troubled by reports of your most recent incursion. How in blazes did your organization manage to lose over twenty well armed men, three armored jeeps and a goddamned Mobile Suit to a few ignorant savages?"

"We all know that the survivors of EDEN are neither ignorant nor always savage." Djibril retorted with a snort. "It suits us for the public to have that impression, but we must be real here. They are numerous, organized and some possess technology at least the equal of ours. That Striker was taken down by a man portable hyper-impulse weapon, and even FEAR does not possess the technology for such a thing! We are fortunate in our ability to interpret the Torino Protocol to exclude them from otherwise bothersome human rights concerns, but the simple facts are that they are down there and they are in our way. And they won't be pushed aside like toys at our whim either."

"You speak the truth, Atticus, but its nothing new. Countermeasures are on their way. Dr. Magnus is harnessing their own mutational powers for use against them. Dr. Roanoke is expanding the capabilities of our soldiers to meet them on equal terms and even overpower them. And Dr. Dostanya has come up with a cost effective way to eliminate the whole horrid lot of them. Things are well in hand, we only require time and political circumspection. We cannot appear to be committing or condoning genocide, even of mutants. Not with public opinion the way it is."

"Then perhaps it was time public opinion changed?" Icarus said, drawing glances from almost everyone. "We have already convinced the majority that our attempts to recolonize Earth have more to do with our benevolent desire to return those mutant monsters to civilized society than they do with grabbing resources and living room. I don't see it as being too hard to manufacture some sort of incident to put the fear of the mutant into the public heart, perhaps a violent breakout from the FEAR labs, or a large scale, unprovoked massacre of some peaceful colonists. Something to get tension rising. Our military is operating on a constant war footing, give us a war to fight!"

"War is a costly and risky endeavor." Durandel hedged, though only to play devil's advocate. "Especially if they are as organized and technological as Atticus fears."

"Our military outnumbers any possible military force of theirs by over one hundred to one." Icarus replied, smacking his palm down on the table for emphasis. "We hold the high ground all around Earth, with the ability to strike anywhere on the globe with force, or even rain apocalypse down from the heavens with the main guns of the Incarnates. It will be less a war than a series of live fire exercises. Earth is ripe for the picking, we would be remiss in our duty to humanity to let it remain unharvested!"

"My men are itching for the chance to start a few pogroms down on the surface." Djibril volunteered. "We're all tired of pussyfooting around the natives, who aren't even human by our precise legal and scientific terms! With proper media spin, we could have a large number of riled up natives in a month or two at little cost to ourselves, and then all we need is for a transport ship of innocent colonists to land in the wrong spot, and viola, we have the massacre of peaceful, law abiding men, women and children on our hands. Public opinion would quickly prove in favor of retaliatory measures, especially ones that are bloodless for our side, such as orbital bombardments."

"And once we've broken them with the power of our bombardments and Dr. Dostanya's miracle mist, it should be no hard task rounding up the scattered survivors for work in re-education and labor camps." Icarus expounded. "And we will be able to commence the reclamation of our blue and pure world in peace!"

"Rey?" Durandel asked, cocking an eyebrow at his son, looking for his opinion, which he trusted far more than Icarus's rhetoric.

"The Solar Knights are itching for something important to do, besides guard convoys and hope for the Retributors to attack. With Mechael Smith and FEAR now having volunteered to handle the Retributors, that frees up my Paladins and our Knight-Champions for other tasks. I don't pretend to assume occupying territory on Earth will be anything other than a nightmare, but through adversity we flourish, after all. My most liberal analysis puts the Edenites as having less than three hundred Mobile Suits across the entire globe, though we have yet to actually see a single one of their machines. The quality of their pilots is likely to be high, but I had a thought about that. As Orb is the natural choice for our operations center on Earth, I think it would only be proper to allow them the opportunity to show their loyalty to the USN by spearheading our initial operations, once the conflict starts. Perhaps we could even sweeten the deal by granting permission for them to construct new Gundams, provided they use them as we direct. By using our antagonistic brethren against the foe, we wear down two enemies with one conflict. And we get to see what Orb has been cooking up in hiding, before it becomes a nasty surprise."

"You are an astute and frightening young man, Paladin-Commander." Natalia complimented him. "With the President's approval, I will begin large scale production of MAIDEN as soon as our field test is satisfactorially complete. Shall we set our timetable for open hostilities to break out sometime in the end of October? That should give us all enough time to prepare our forces, and for Mechael and a FEAR detachment to relieve Rey's Solar Knights against the Retributors. And once the war has started, Rey can implement his plan to use Orb to our best benefit."

"Then we are decided." Durandel stood up from his chair. "You all know what to do, just let me know your needs and I will see about getting them fufilled. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some soothing to do between the leaders of the Upper and Middle houses of Legislature. This three house system is frustratingly complex, even as it is convenient for our own ends." Durandel said, referring to the fact that by splitting the houses up into smaller bodies, it was easier to get majority's to force through bills of his choosing, and to delay the progress of other bills, such as Orb's independence, by miring them in the beauracratic tape of three seperately meeting political bodies. He only had to get 60 people at a time to approve things with this system, versus more like 220 with a single or double house system. And it took vetoes from both the Middle and Lower house to defeat a proposal from the Upper house, whereas the Upper house could veto any bill from the other two houses, so all he really had to control was the Upper house, while at the same time maintaining the public illusion of a tiered system where the most politically experienced had the most say, as legislators graduated up a house every two years, and could only stay in the Upper house for a maximum of 6 years.

"Sounds fun." Natalia commented with a smouldering glance at Rey once Durandel's back was turned. "I think I'll be coordinating with the Paladin-Commander how best to utilize our joint strengths."

"I'm sure such things come naturally to you." Durandel replied with studied disinterest, though he did not like how much time she and Rey were spending in so called meetings and consultations of late. He trusted Rey with his life, but he also knew his son was fragile and inexperienced when it came to the wiles of the opposite sex. It was a situation that would bear watching. Like so many others.

xxxx

**Edge of Forest Prince's territory, old Spain, New Eden, September 4th, late afternoon**

Lilia had been driving for most of the day, her thoughts even more numb than usual while riding, courtesy of last night, which she'd spent at the Henderson stead house, with Henderson's wife and extended family. It had not been a pleasant visit, even though the clan had done everything they could to make her comfortable, despite her inability to protect Henderson and Will. Listening to the bereaved family members cry and wail all night long had been bad enough, but it was nothing compared to the tormenting ghosts of her own guilt. Intellectually she recognized that she could not save everyone all the time, but all the same, this had hit her particularly hard, because she'd been so helpless to do anything about it, despite being a Praetorian. She'd chased off the Earthlings, but at great cost to the Henderson family and their livelihood, so it hardly felt like a victory to her.

Continually, she asked herself what her idol, Kira Yamato, would have done. She'd been a huge fan of him since she was very young, pre puberty even, despite the fact that he was a Coordinator and she was a Natural. For one thing he was just about the hottest guy ever, in her opinion, for another he was just so damned cool, flying about in his Gundam and stopping wars and fighting without even killing people! And he'd had a tough time of things too, she'd researched him extensively in her spare time and even started up a fan club, though she was the only regular member, as most girls, if they had to choose a male Coordinator to idolize, usually picked either Athun Zala or Yzak Joule. The thing that impressed her most about Kira was his unwavering dedication to his ideals, his desire for peace and harmony for everyone despite how often he was forced to deal with evil and depraved foes. Kira was a good person, and he didn't let the filth of real life change that about him, no matter how bad things got.

And that was a philosophy that Lilia held near and dear to her heart. Someone who was truly good could not be contaminated or corrupted by the vagaries of life, no matter how horrible, as they provided a shining beacon of hope and forgiveness and understanding to everyone around them. It was only by clinging to this admittedly idealistic philosophy of good always triumphing over evil that Lilia had been able to survive her own time of ordeals, when she'd been kidnapped off the street shortly after her fourteenth birthday and imprisoned in that basement. Being gang raped, day in and day out, for most of the next two years should have left her a broken mess, or even more likely a corpse through self suicide. But she had perservered, the darkness around her ever lit by the knowledge that one day the evil would be extinguished and good would return to the world.

And her faith had been justified, for had not Kunai found her, on the verge of starvation, caked in filth at the bottom of her concrete cage, and torn the collar from around her neck? It would be easy to hate the men who had brutalized and degraded her, who had stolen her from her family and abused her to the edge of sanity for their own perverted lusts. But to hate others was not the path of the truly good, and while Lilia was not sure, if the men who had raped her were still alive, that she could have forgiven them, neither would she have sought out vengeance against them. Revenge solved nothing after all, and only begat more hatred in the long run. Only by rising above the cycle of bloodshed and hatred could a person truly make a positive difference in the world. And while becoming an Edenite and adjusting to the new realities of life on New Eden had stressed her dedication to this moral goal, she still held firm to the path of pursuing peaceful resolutions and cooperation for mutual benefit, over violence and one side submitting to another. She had never met Kira, her idol, but she felt sure he would be proud of her for staying true to his ideals.

Consulting her map display and the coordinates loaded into her armor systems before she left on this errand, more than a week ago, Lilia pulled _Freedom_ down the sloped side of a ravine and rolled to a stop inside a screen of vines that draped down from the tree branches high above. She turned the bike off, noting that she was going to have to find another clearing to let its solar rechargers work up some more fuel sometime soon. However, most of her attention was upon the grotto the vines had been concealing, filled with dark grey, moss covered stones and a pool of crystal clear water fed by a babbling waterfall and drained by myriad small streams. The temperature in the grotto was a good fifteen degrees cooler than outside, and a pleasant mist settled onto everything. Parking her bike, Lilia checked the EICKO again and then began the somewhat laborious process of removing her armor.

Praetorian fighting plate was designed to be lived in for weeks at a time, providing not only body cooling or heating, but also liquid waste filtration systems and a limited form of internal cleaning to take care of sweat and other buildups. Fold out sections on the bottom allowed for taking a crap, though a Praetorian on the move relied mostly upon liquid nourishment of Nectar and Ambrosia slurry tubes, but for ease of packing and to cut down on solid waste. With Edenite metabolisms like they were, only a small percentage of all food intake was turned into waste anyway. Lilia's plate was still far from becoming uncomfortable, but that wasn't why she was removing it. She had cleaned the armor during the night, getting most of the blood and gore off, but some invariably soaked deep into the leather liner, and would take dedicated washing, something she couldn't do in the field, to remove.

And Kunai had briefed her on how to be polite to the Forest Prince, since human social mores and traditions were largely meaningless to a nonhuman Chimerae. She could just ride up on _Freedom_ and hand off the message, but that would be very rude, assuing she could ever find him in the forest. It would be even more rude to show up stinking of meat and blood and violence, since the Forest Prince, as a Rex Elk, was a herbivore, and dedicated to peace and harmony in all living things besides. Perhaps Kunai had some foreknowledge that she might end up in a fight sometime during her journey, god knew, such insight would not be beyond Yggdrasil's reach, if not the exact nature of her problem, so he had given her the location of a "bathhouse" where she could freshen herself up and prepare herself for her audience with the Forest Prince.

Stripping naked, Lilia stepped down into the pool, marveling at how soft the moss was on her bare feet, leaving all her weapons behind, able to sense, somehow, that this was a rare sanctuary where she did not have to worry about danger. Anyone who could get here was a guest of the Forest Prince, and enjoyed his protection. Herbivore he might be, but he was still a Chimerae, one of the strongest known Actives in the world, and he did not suffer disrespect or predation upon his territory lightly. Shivering at the chill of the water, Lilia ducked under the waterfall and doused herself, using a clean scrubby cloth from one of her gear pouches to scrub down her body all over, paying particular attention to her primary scent zones, being under her arms, her wrists, the back of her neck, top of her head and her groin. Though possessed of a plethora of super keen senses, smell and taste were the primary social senses of Rex Elk and the Forest Prince, and it was important to make herself as neutral and natural smelling as possible, as a stranger in his territory.

Once she was satisifed with her cleanliness, Lilia daubed just a tiny droplet of a floral perfume upon each of her scent zones, so little she could barely even smell it, but Kunai had said it would be pleasingly scented to the Forest Prince and his herd. She wasn't usually much of a primp and perfume girl, but she understood the necessity of social politeness, especially when dealing with an entity that could crush her mind like an acorn shell underhoof. Unconsciously, her fingers rubbed at the band of faint scar tissue that bounded her neck, where the hated submission collar had dug into and blistered her skin over the years in that rape dungeon. She could have had the scars removed, but such cosmetic prettification would have done nothing for the real scars, the ones on her mind and soul, and she preferred to keep the reminder of what she had endured in the past, as motivation for the future.

A rustling in the underbrush not far away drew her sudden attention, and she cursed herself for letting the soothing aura of the sanctuary pool lower her defenses. A magnificent rex elk doe slipped out of concealment from a copse of bushes by where she'd parked _Freedom_, for all Lilia knew, the doe had been there the entire time when she was bathing! Distinguished from their male counterparts by smaller antlers with less points, more like an antelope's than a deer's, and a sleekness to the pelt, unlike the shaggy manes and beards of males, the doe had beautiful tawny brown fur with spots of darker red-brown along her back. She gazed at Lilia with golden hued eyes that were empty of comprehension, but gentle and nonthreatening all the same. Responding to some cue Lilia could not discern, the doe, who was about fifty percent bigger than an Earth horse, knelt down gracefully and waited.

Returning to her bike to collect the EICKO from its pouch, Lilia cautiously straddled the doe, surprised at how soft and comfortable her back was, since she'd been expecting a bumpy, hard spine. Moving with utmost care, so as not to upset or dismount her bare, bareback rider, the doe stood up and headed off into the forest, up the ravine slope, at a smooth, ground eating trot. Lilia shook her head in awe at the Forest Prince's power, able to so finely influence the actions of one of his High Order, but still far from sentient, relatives from who knew how far away. She tried to keep track of how long the journey took, and which direction, but found her sense of direction and time strangely muddled by an irresistable outside source. Even to friends, the Forest Prince did not reveal his resting spots lightly. At last the doe broke out into a wide clearing, just as the sun was setting, the scene a tableau of golds and reds and dark greens as evening came inexorably onwards.

At first Lilia didn't see him, her eyes drawn to the hundreds of rex elk, of all ages and colorations, that were grazing and sleeping and even rutting around the clearing, some of them bigger than any she had ever seen before in any hunting competition! It wasn't until her gaze passed thrice over a large white boulder at one end of the clearing that she realized it wasn't a boulder at all, but the largest and most magnificent rex elk to ever exist! He was as big as an elephant, but much more gracefully built, his pelt a bit shaggy all over, a glistening silver-white color with hints of emerald green where the fur grew thickest. Lilia could have climbed his antlers like they were a jungle gym, and they were hung with grey-green moss from many of the points that lent him an extra air of wisdom and majesty. Flocks of Cheeps, descended from songbirds and named for their soft vocal call, as well as the screaming mental shriek they could produce when agitated or threatened, hovered and flitted around between the forest of antler points, some draping new moss over exposed points, others merely perching and twittering happily.

Lilia's doe trotted up to her lord and master, who appeared to be dozing in the shade of an Yggdrasilwood, his great bulk propped comfortably up against the bark, which he apparently used as a scratching post at times, judging from the tufts of silver-white fur stuck into some parts of the bark. Kneeling down once more, the doe allowed Lilia to hop off, her feet barely making a sound as she stepped down onto more moss covered rocks, which seemed to have been placed there recently, judging by the beaten down stalks of blue grass they were on top of. Lilia felt hundreds of eyes turn curiously upon her, but she was not embarassed in the slightest. Nudity for one was a foriegn concept to nonhumans, and for another Garden City was a very... open society at times. It wasn't like you'd see people walking naked through the streets, but there was a lot of communal bathing facilities and a lot of semi-private casual intimacy. By nature of their enhanced senses, Edenites were very touchy-feely and smelly-tasty sorts, and that carried over to their personal and even public lives.

The Custodians and Praetorians in particular trained and lived together constantly, and there was little privacy desired or granted within Manifolds or the Praetorian Order. Everyone knew who was sleeping with who, who was in heat, who was cheating on someone, etc... it was all plain to smell, most of the time, even without getting into the emotional senstivity and bonding such close knit groups always developed over time. No doubt the Earthlings would be scandalized to know that Lilia, still young and single, slept in a dormitory with dozens of other men and women, without clothes or seperate bathing facilities, and even sometimes ate meals and practiced in the nude alongside men, some of whom she had been intimate with, and some she hadn't. Her old self certainly would have been red in the face. But Edenites didn't see any point in getting worked up over things like that, if men and women, or men and men or women and women, wanted to get together for mutual pleasure, well, that was the way of the world. Forcing someone into intimacy was all but unheard of, as there were few crimes more horrifyingly emotional than rape.

Still, even if her nudity didn't bother her, she could not help but feel vulnerable and a bit anxious, as she stood on the moss covered stones and approached one of the most powerful psychic beings currently alive. _**DO NOT FEAR ME, LITTLE BLUE HAIRED FAWN. YOU ARE SAFE HERE, AS IF IN THE MOTHER'S WOMB.**_Lilia put one hand to the side of her head and winced, each syllable of the psychic communication striking her like a punch to the brainstem. And this was him being very quiet, whispering even! _**YOU'RE A POLITE ONE. YOUR ASPECT AND SCENT ARE PLEASING TO ME AND MINE. FEW BOTHER TO MAKE THE EFFORT. YOU HAVE SOMETHING FOR ME, LITTLE BLUE HAIRED FAWN?**_ The Forest Prince said, one eye blinking half open to study her, the golden pupil bigger than both her fists put together.

_Yes... my Prince._ Lilia wasn't sure what exact honorific she should use, but he didn't seem to take any offense to that one. Of course it wasn't his name, but his name was unpronouncable by humans. From what Kunai had said, his name had as much to do with his scent as it did any phonetic sounds._ I come bearing a message from Kunai of Garden City, at Yggdrasil's behest._

_**LET ME HEAR WHAT THE TREE GOD HAS TO SAY. PLACE THE TOKEN UPON MY TONGUE. YOU MAY APPROACH ME DIRECTLY.**_ The Forest Prince closed his eye again and let his mouth, big enough for Lilia to stick her head and upper body into if she tried, loll open a bit. Cautiously, still a bit unnerved, and with a growing headache from withstanding his communication, Lilia stepped forward, until she was close enough to feel his body heat and pick up his scent. She couldn't quite place it... a mixture of tangy power, of wet plants, warm fur, and above all, calm and still air. It was a pleasant smell, it seemed to freshen the air around him. Making sure to keep her empathy locked down tight, as a close look at the emotions of a Chimerae, even a benevolent one, was a good way to suffer a seizure, Lilia stretched her hand forth and gently deposited the EICKO upon his tongue. The very tip flicked up to touch her wrist, and she shivered in startlement, but the Forest Prince made no other moves.

The Forest Prince's eyes half opened again, but his pupils were rolled up out of view as he assimilated the psychic data and imprinted memories from the EICKO. He let out a sigh, a physical snort that seemed somehow sad or resigned, even as the air pressure blew her hair out straight behind her head for a moment._** YOU MAY HAVE YOUR TOKEN BACK.**_ He told her, and Lilia once more tenatively reached into his mouth, wary of molars as big as her fist that could crush her bones like spun sugar, and gently picked up the diamond disc. Once more his tonguetip flicked up to run along her wrist, tasting and scenting her in one go, and this time Lilia mastered her nerve and kept her arm in place, letting him run his tonguetip all across her hand and up her arm to her elbow. _**YOUR SCENT SPEAKS OF SUFFERING, LITTLE BLUE FAWN. WHAT DISTRESSES YOU?**_ _**YOU DO NOT SMELL LIKE FEAR, AND YOU DO NOT FEEL OF MORE THAN THE USUAL TREPIDATION OF YOUR KIND, SO IT IS NOT ME THAT BOTHERS YOU.**_

_It's nothing I should bother you with, my Prince._ Lilia replied modestly, but at the same time she felt almost compelled to open up to him. If there was anyone less likely to make light of her feelings than the Forest Prince, then Lilia could not fathom who they might be, save Yggdrasil itself. _I... I ran into some trouble on the way here, a day or so ago. The aftermath... weighs upon me. I failed in my responsibilities to those I am sworn to protect._

_**THROUGH NO FAULT OF YOUR OWN.**_ The Forest Prince replied at once. _**YOUR TASTE SPEAKS OF VICTORIOUS GUILT, NOT FAILURE.**_

_You can get all that just from my smell and taste, my Prince?_ Lilia was a little bit stunned.

_**IT IS A PROCESS SIMILAR TO THAT BY WHICH THE TREE GOD COMMUNICATES WITH YOUR BALD BULL.**_ He replied with a rumble of his chest that made her bones quiver. _**IN YOUR SKIN EXCRETIONS LIE A PORTION OF YOUR ESSENCE, THAT BY WHICH YOU WERE MADE BY YOUR BULL AND DOE. UPON MY TONGUE, THAT ESSENCE SPEAKS FREELY AND ALLOWS ME INSIGHT INTO YOU ON A DEEP LEVEL. I APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INTRUSION.**_

_There is nothing to apologize for, my Prince. I was merely surprised. But you are right, I did chase away the agressors, but I did it too late to save those who were relying upon my protection._

_**THEIR DEATHS ARE NOT ON YOUR HANDS, LITTLE BLUE FAWN. IT WAS THEIR DESTINY TO LIVE NO LONGER. AND REJOICE, FOR NO DEATH IN THE FOREST IS IN VAIN. THEIR ENERGY AND NUTRIENTS WILL ENRICH THE LIFE AROUND THEM. DEATH, EVEN VIOLENT DEATH, IS NOTHING TO MOURN. RATHER, YOU SHOULD RESPECT THEM FOR TAKING THEIR PLACE IN THE GRAND CYCLE OF LIFE, AS WE WILL ALL EVENTUALLY BE CALLED UPON TO DO.**_

_I understand what you mean, my Prince, and I thank you for your words, but I cannot help but still feel my guilt. I should have been able to protect them._ Lilia replied, her eyes downcast.

_**PERHAPS IT IS FOR THE BEST THAT YOU DID NOT.**_ He let out a long wheeze ended by a grunting snort, shaking his head a little bit, dislodging a few napping Cheeps with loud squeaks of distress. _**I HAVE LITTLE LIKING FOR THE CONTENTS OF THIS MESSAGE YOU HAVE BROUGHT ME, LITTLE BLUE FAWN, FOR THEY HERALD A GREAT CHANGE TO OUR WORLD. OF COURSE I WILL OBEY THE TREE GOD'S BIDDING, AS I EVER SWORE TO DO, BUT I DO SO WITH SADNESS, BECAUSE THOSE DEATHS YOU COULD NOT PREVENT WILL NOT BE ALONE FOR LONG. STILL, ALL IS COMING TO PASS AS THE TREE GOD HAS FORESEEN, AND EVEN THE SADDEST OF DEATHS CAN LEAD TO THE GREATEST OF HAPPINESS, EVENTUALLY.**_

_Good will always triumph over evil._ Lilia agreed, though she did not like the Forest Prince's expressed misgivings. Once more she wished she'd taken a peek at the message, possible backlash be damned! Then again, knowing the future as it was likely to come to pass was a greater burden than one might expect, especially for someone who could not stand to see even necessary sacrifices take place.

_**GOOD AND EVIL ARE HUMAN THINGS, AND I HAVE NEVER UNDERSTOOD THEM. BUT YOU ARE NOT WRONG EITHER, LITTLE BLUE FAWN. DARKNESS IS COMING FROM ON HIGH... BUT BEFORE THE END OF ALL IT WILL BE BEATEN BACK BY THE BRIGHTEST OF OUR LIGHTS. THAT IS THE BEST AND MOST UNDERSTANDABLE TRANSLATION I AM ALLOWED TO GIVE YOU. YOU ARE TIRED, LITTLE BLUE FAWN. YOU ARE WELCOME TO NEST IN MY GLEN FOR TONIGHT, YOU NEED FEAR NO INTERRUPTIONS UPON YOUR REST HERE.**_

_Thank you for the offer, my Prince, I am hugely honored. But if there truly is darkness coming from space, then I need to return to Kunai and Garden City as quickly as possible. I'm about to be very busy, I have the feeling._ Lilia answered with a smile, just remembering to keep her teeth behind her lips. Baring her teeth at him could be an aggressive posture, and though he was even more understanding and kind than the rumors had said, there was no point in tarnishing her image with him, even with a little misunderstanding.

_**I UNDERSTAND. AS A HERD OUTRUNNER, YOU HAVE YOUR APPOINTED DUTY TO UPHOLD. YOUR PLACE IS WITH YOUR HERD, AT THE SIDE OF THE BALD BULL AND YOUR KIN. THE DOE WHO BROUGHT YOU HERE WILL RETURN YOU TO YOUR UNLIVING STEED. GO WITH MY BLESSINGS, LITTLE BLUE FAWN. TELL THE BALD BULL THAT I WOULD NOT MIND IF YOU BORE ME MESSAGES MORE OFTEN. YOU HAVE A PLEASANT MIND.**_

_Thank you, my Prince!_ Lilia could not help but blush at what she sensed was a rare and high compliment. She turned and found the doe in question was kneeling behind her once more, waiting to ferry her back to her bike.

_**LITTLE BLUE FAWN...**_ The Forest Prince said, even as Lilia was mounting up. _**YOU DID NOT HEAR THIS FROM ME. BUT DO NOT FEAR THE END OF ALL. IT HAS A PLACE IN THE PATTERN, THOUGH YOU WILL NOT GLIMPSE IT UNTIL IT IS PAST. I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS, BUT IT FEELS IMPORTANT. DO NOT FORGET IT.**_

_I won't. And thank you for everything. I feel much better now, my Prince. Your words and trust have refreshed me. I only pray I can one day honor you in turn. Our stories do not speak highly enough of our friends among the deep forests._

_**AS THE TREE GOD WILLS, LITTLE BLUE FAWN. NOW GALLOP, AND RETURN TO THE BALD BULL. HE WILL HAVE NEED OF YOU. WE ALL WILL HAVE NEED OF YOU...**_

xxxx


	7. Smoke on the Horizon

Author Note: I've seen several people comment upon this, so let me set things a bit straighter. While the Forest Prince could tell Lilia was stressed from her scent, it was really her taste that granted him such deep insight into her. If you read his speech closely, you'll see a bit where he talks about her "essence", that which her parents used to create her. He's talking about her DNA. He could taste and differentiate the fragments of DNA in her skin cells and in her sweat. DNA is just information... genetic information. It changes, ever so slightly, as we live our lives. The Forest Prince, and Yggdrasil, and some other Chimera, can decode and read this genetic information, or even, in Yggdrasil's case, put information into genetic form for other creatures to assimilate, i.e. Wisdom Fruit. So it really wasn't her scent, it was her being, her essence, that clued him in to her problems.

xxxx

**Orb, Villa Pacifica, September 10th, morning**

"And where exactly are YOU two off to?" Cagalli's strident and somewhat irritated tone stopped Athrun in his tracks. Allister, sitting on his father's shoulders, imperiously tapped his daddy on the head a few times with one bunched fist, indicating his displeasure at the ride stopping. Just like his mother, and to some extent his father, Allister liked going fast. Currently his only vehicles were his bicycle and his father or various family members or family friends, but he still had a need for speed that already had Athrun worried, and Cagalli smiling... in those moments when she wasn't also worrying at seeing her precious seven year old son pedalling around the driveway of the Villa Pacifica at speeds she wouldn't have imagined trying when she was his age. Of course, when she was his age she was still a shy, quiet little girl, content to play in her room and make believe with her stuffed animals, or walk on the beach or in the woods. She'd only acquired the need for speed and action around the time she turned ten, and from there her descent into tomboyishness had only even been slowed by her involvement with Athrun.

"Dr. Simmons asked for my help with some tests at the MAST-F, since both Kira and Dearka are away on business. Shouldn't take more than half a day or so, we'll probably catch a late lunch on the way back. Don't worry, we won't eat too much, we'll still be plenty hungry for dinner, right, my little man?" Athrun asked the young boy with his hands tangled in his hair.

"I'm not little." Allister protested, tugging on his father's bangs to convey his displeasure.

"Right, right, sorry, big guy, I keep forgetting. You're definitely getting heavier every time I pick you up." Athrun conceded with a smile. "Must be all that food your mother makes you eat."

"MAKES? I have to practically lock the pantry and refrigerator shut! He's an empty pit! Just like someone else I might mention, who hasn't gained an ounce of fat STILL, despite the fact that he doesn't even work out half as much as he used to. Its enough to make a woman cry, I tell you. Do you KNOW how hard I have to work to look like this!" Cagalli retorted, though there was no reproach in her tone, only fondness. She appraised Allister cautiously, and gave Athrun a look of mild concern. "You sure you should bring Allister with you? I mean, he's still only seven..."

"And already at what would be considered elevnth or twelfth grade level in his academics, at least in Orb schools." Athrun reminded her. "Even a little bit further than that, actually. He likes his math and science, don't you, big guy?"

"Physics, not science." Allister corrected primly. He wasn't the most talkative of kids, except around his close friends Akira and Aoi Yamato Clyne, and to a lesser extent around Roy and Alice Elsman and Mina and Jamie Joule, the children of their friends, but he was extremely intelligent, even for a Coordinator, and very perceptive as well. Not much slipped by Allister Zala-Attha, even though he was only seven. He had a nearly photographic memory and a voracious appetite for knowledge, somewhat born of a friendly competitive rivalry with Akira, Kira and Lacus's son, who was a few months older than Allister, but usually didn't act or look it. "I'm working on Gravity equations, mommy."

"Wow, honey... just remember not to stress yourself." Cagalli shook her head, since science and math were not her strong suits. At times it was depressing to think her seven year old could solve problems she couldn't, but, like his father, Allister wasn't ever showy or rude, not really feeling a need to make himself feel better by proving himself better than other people. Some people still felt competitive with him, such as Akira, and to a lesser extent Roy and the Joule twins, but it was all in good fun, a battle of one upmanship with no prizes or real losers. "And try not to just stay in your room for hours on end... its summer time, you should play outside too. That goes for both of you!"

"Yes, mommy." Allister and Athrun both said, at almost the same time, in near identical tones of voice and with near identical slight rollings of their eyes. Allister had inherited his father's hair and his mother's eyes and ability to tan in the sun, and had already drawn comments from other young parents on his good looks and manners. He was going to be a bombshell once he reached middle school, a danger to every female that crossed his path. Cagalli was positiely looking forward to it. He was going to be the next Prince of Orb after all, the sooner he learned how to socialize in a positive fashion, the better. Cagalli stepped forward and enveloped Athrun in a tight hug, tucking her head under his chin and breathing in deeply, enjoying his scent as much now as she had the first time she'd ever held him and vice versa. There was a spice there that she couldn't quite identify, and could never get enough of. The spice of true love maybe, as Lacus had once said.

"Don't be late. The la Flaga's are coming over for drinks and snacks before dinner. Uncle Mu has expressed great anticipation in seeing Allister again. I'm sure he's going to be trying to sneak in all sorts of under the table gifts, I'll have to make sure the Stormhounds search him extra good. A certain someone doesn't need to eat any more candy than he already does." Cagalli told them, and then kissed Athrun, and blew a kiss towards Allister, who was already at the stage where he disliked hugs and kisses from his parents. "And maybe after dinner, we can see about doing something about that extra bedroom next to Allister's that needs to be filled." Cagalli added in a low whisper for Athrun's ears only. She'd made no secret of the fact that she wanted another child, since all her friends had two, preferrably a little girl this time. They still had some of Athrun's healthy sperm saved up from before his injuries at the end of the Eden Disaster.

"Um, well..." Athrun hedged, since he was perfectly content with only a single son, who was more than enough of a handful as it was in his mind, but then again, he knew better than to fight Cagalli too hard on this. "Sounds like a busy night then. We'll be sure not to be late, right, sport?"

"Uh huh." Allister replied disinterestedly. He knew where babies came from, from reading his textbooks, but he didn't really want any siblings... he saw too little of his mommy and daddy, who worked a lot, as it was. Another potential split in the attention made him feel sad already, and it hadn't even happened yet. He tugged on his father's hair again and drummed his heels on Athrun's chest. "Faster, daddy... run!"

"Well, you heard the boss... see you tonight, love. Try not to have too much fun by yourself." Athrun smirked as he somewhat reluctantly backed away from Cagalli's embrace.

Now it was Cagalli's turn to roll her eyes. "I'm sure I'll find something to do besides putter about and clean. Last time I did that, the maids almost died of apolexy. Like I can't clean my own house! Drive safe!" Cagalli reminded him.

"I will." Athrun called back over his shoulder, as he headed off at a brisk walk, since running inside the house was a definite no-no. Cagalli watched them go, idly pinching the flesh over her hips and along her waistline, grimacing as she felt the slight bit of pregnancy fat that was still there, even seven years after the whole process was over and done with! She knew full well what she'd be doing for the next few hours... she wouldn't be able to feel perfectly good again until she dropped back below that one hundred ten pound mark she'd set as her absolute limit, pre-pregnancy! Maybe it was an unrealistic goal, now that she was approaching that three zero age mark, but, damn it all, she wasn't the sort to give in, not on anything! She was Cagalli Zala-Attha after all, Queen of Orb... she could do anything she set her mind to! Including forcing her reluctant husband to give her a little girl to treasure, just like all her friends had!

"Shall I warm up the exercise room then?" A new voice, an electronically modulated one that people always said sounded kind of like a mixture between Cagalli and Lacus, which was no real surprise given that they had both contributed example speech patterns to the DANI project, said from behind Cagalli. She glanced over her shoulder, blinking a bit as she always did when confronted with one of Lexi's holograms. Lexi was an attractive young woman, somewhere in her younger twenties, fit, svelte and tanned like only Orbites were these days, with a shock of short, bright red hair and intent grey eyes, though in truth she could alter her hair and eye and even skin color pretty much as she wanted to. Because she was really LEXI, the Learning EXperimental Intelligence, a complex AI computer system that served as a public administration assistant for Orb, not Lexi, the friendly and often sardonic girl.

By installed holoprojectors in almost every room of the Villa Pacfica, Lexi could transmit herself anywhere and everywhere in the house where she was needed, either to control various electronic appliances, or much more often, to act as a babysitter and conversation mate for Allister, since his parents could usually only be home one day out of every four or five, and even then not usually at the same time. Cagalli felt horrible about it, and Athrun did too, but what choice did they have? They had important jobs to do. They'd sat down and had a talk with Allister about it right after his fifth birthday, and his understanding had cleared a little of the burden away, but she could not miss his clinginess when they were around or the way he was always so sad just before they left. Sometimes he wouldn't even say goodbye, and that just tore her heart right open.

"Am I a bad parent, Lexi?" Cagalli asked despondently, slumping against a wall, her exercise plans momentarily forgotten. "Am I putting too much of Orb before my own family?"

"You do work too hard sometimes, according to my database on average hours worked of government servants." Lexi answered with a shrug. "I'm still working out the whole relative value of family acts, so I'm not sure I can quite put a numerical tag on the worth of your time with Allister. But he does miss you both terribly, though he has stopped crying himself to sleep."

"Stop! You're twisting the knife!" Cagalli snapped, with an angry flush to her face, though her anger wasn't directed at Lexi. That was the final straw, she was going to take some time off and start being her son's mother again, rather than letting her largely self appointed duties as Queen tie her up all day and night! It simply wasn't right for Allister to go without seeing his parents so much! "Cancel my appointments for the next week, would you? Tell them I'm sick or something."

"Even the dinner with Chief Representative Kurenai and our envoys to the USN legislature?" Lexi asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"Shit." Cagalli swore. "Okay, keep that one, and anything else rated as National Security level or above. But the buearacratic day to day bullshit, trash that."

"You know, I have been working on my impersonation programs. I could probably handle low level paper stamping type jobs." Lexi volunteered. "I do have hundreds of terabytes of memory that is basically sitting useless right now. I swear unless they were in your office, they'd never know the difference."

"I'm not sure whether to feel reassured or slighted by the fact that my own people might not be able to tell the difference between the real me and our smartest computer program." Cagalli replied with a weak smile. "Let's hold off on that one for right now. Either I do my job, or nobody does, that feels safest to me."

"Whatever you desire, my Queen. The exercise room is primed and ready to go. Shall I set it for standard, or "mad out"?" Lexi asked with a shrug.

"Better go with "mad out". I feel like I need to be punished a little."

"I'll try to keep your masochistic streak between the two of us. Hameya only knows what Athrun would do if he heard you say something like that. For some reason, my memory buffers are filled with spanking porn all of sudden."

"Perish the thought. I'm the one who beats Athrun, not the other way around. He's the real masochist." Cagalli replied with a smirk.

"That or one of the most patient men to ever live." Lexi noted.

"You may have something with that one. But don't ever tell him that."

"I may be a computer program, but I'm still a girl. I know better than to pump up male egos unnecessarily."

xxxx

**MAST-F Facility, Beneath Mare Town Depths, Orb, September 4th, morning**

"Thanks for coming, Athrun. Sorry about the short notice, but Kira said something about an unexpected chance to talk with some important, uh, Edenites, so he and Lacus and the kids all packed up and left overnight." Dr. Simmons had a hassled look on her face, but that was normal for the slightly eccentric but undeniably brilliant head of Morganroete's Special Projects division. Just about the only time she didn't look slightly worried or preoccupied was when she was on vacation. Athrun noted her slight stumble on the correct term of usage for those of Earth's inhabitents that lived outside of Orb, in the Green Zones, the ones who had survived Noah Borander's Green EDEN nano-virus, but chose not to comment. He was somewhat uncomfortable thinking about them himself... most everyone who wasn't an "Edenite" was uncomfortable about them, in some way or another. Millions of people, all of them with physical and intellectual capabilities like Kira's and Noah's, and psychic to boot... they made Earthlings, the new combined term for Naturals and Coordinators that had not been infected with Green EDEN, very uneasy. Though more and more, he was hearing USN hardliners using the terms "human" and "mutants" and he did not care for that at all.

But that was neither here nor there at the moment, so Athrun just shrugged and smiled. "Its no problem. I had the day off anyway, and its a great chance for Allister to see stuff he wouldn't ordinarily be able to. Who knows, in a few years he might come to work for you as an apprentice... he definitely seems interested in physics and applied sciences, right sport?"

Allister was staring around the high tech environs with a slightly astonished and pleased look on his face. So much STUFF, and it all looked so important and technological! Akira would just die of envy when he learned that Allister had gotten to tour and maybe even play around with the Morganroete computers at the MAST-F. He pulled himself away from his gawking to nod once, seriously, keeping one hand on his father's pant leg, as he usually did whenever he was in a new place where he wasn't fully comfortable, even if it was cool. "I'm working on gravity equations and kinetic energy conversions." Allister admitted, somewhat shyly. He looked at Dr. Simmons somewhat questioningly, searching his memory, before he recognized her. "You're the Gundam Lady!" He half blurted out, before flushing slightly.

"Why yes, I suppose I would be, wouldn't I?" Dr. Simmons said with a smile. "Although I work on a lot more than just Gundams these days. Not as big of a demand for the big timesink's any more, though I don't doubt that once we get this situation with Ede... with Earth and the USN all straightened out, I'll be back to building all sorts of wonderful Gundams. Maybe even with your help, eh? Would you like to design your own Gundam, dear Prince?"

"Uhm... yeah." Allister replied, somewhat embarassed with all the attention. "Don't call me Prince, please. Allister is fine."

"So modest." Dr. Simmons commented to Athrun, who shrugged.

"Takes after his mother." Athrun smiled. Personally he had some reservations about allowing Allister to help in the design and production of a war machine, which was definitely what a Gundam was. However, there was no telling what the future would bring, and if Allister, once he got to the age of majority at fifteen, decided he wanted to enlist in Orb's military and become a Mobile Suit pilot, and displayed the talent needed to deserve a Gundam, then Athrun supposed there wasn't much he and Cagalli could argue with, was there? They would be proud of Allister no matter what he chose for his vocation, whether it be politics like his mother, military like his father or something else entirely new.

"And his father." Dr. Simmons said with a smile of her own. "But let's get down to the meat and potatoes, eh? You came here to help with some tests, but before we do that I should probably give you some background information on this particular special project."

"That would likely be helpful, yes. Which particular project is it?" Athrun was of course still fully briefed on all major and minor Morganroete projects, especially the Morganroete Armories ones that had to do with the military. But briefs were only five or ten minute long highlights, presented in the mornings, and usually only included a project name, a completion report and a highlights of anything majorly good or bad happening with the project. Not exactly the sort of in depth detail he needed to help out with a systems test.

"Project PUMA." Dr. Simmons replied. "And that's not the cat. Or the eligible younger middle aged lady. It stands for Personal Unilateral Mechanized Augmentation. I think I can safely say that its going to revolutionize warfare, once we figure out how to dumb it down out of the protoype stages, in a similar manner to how the Mobile Suit revolutionized warfare during the First Valentine War almost twelve years ago."

"I'm listening. I think I've heard it mentioned once or twice before." Athrun thought hard. "Something about a hybrid between Mobile Suits and regular infantry, right?"

"You do have a good memory, Mr. Ambassador. Ever since the Mobile Suit first came out, regular ground forces, being armored vehicles like tanks or self propelled artillery units or armored personnel carriers, plus the infantry and crews that manned them, have become largely obsolete, at least as anything other than defensive garrison forces. Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors are simply too overwhelmingly powerful, too fast, too heavily armed, for conventional armor and infantry forces to be of much use in modern warfare. However, replacing all traditional forces with Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors isn't exactly feasible either, because while great for battles and direct warfare, Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors are much less useful for small scale skirmishes, police actions, covert operations, garrison duty, or many other aspects of a balanced peacetime military force, which is what we are trying to build at the moment. Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors are also very expensive to design and produce and require an extensive logistics train to maintain and supply them, which costs even more." Erica explained.

"What Project PUMA was created for, and has recently succeeded in accomplishing, is to put Mobile Suit like power into the hands of an individual soldier, while also not compromising that soldier's ability to perform more mundane or specialized actions like standing guard or patrol watches, stealth operations, and urban or close quarters warfare, with reduced cost and logistics requirements to fit within the constraints of a peacetime military budget. Now, obviously, achieving all of that is a little much to ask, especially for a project this revolutionary and dynamic, and we're still working to get the production costs down. PUMA's are cheaper to build than Mobile Suits, and far cheaper than Gundams, but still more expensive than is entirely cost effective, at almost twenty five million dollars per unit. Of couse, you do get a LOT of bang for your buck with that price tag, so I guess its going to be in the hands of the politicians to decide if its worth keeping them as they are, or if we need to start taking out goodies to drop the price tag." Erica shrugged... it was her job to create and build... what happened afterwards didn't unduly concern her.

"What kind of difference is there between a PUMA and a Mobile Suit?" Athrun asked with a furrowed brow, trying to wrap his head around what Dr. Simmons was saying.

"Well, PUMA's are a lot smaller, for one. Four meters tall and massing five tons, they're pretty beefy compared to a soldier or some armored vehicles, but nothing compared to a battle tank or Mobile Suit. They're humanoid battle suits, just like a Mobile Suit or Gundam, single pilot type. PUMA's are more heavily armed than individual soldiers and most armored vehicles, but obviously less powerful than a Mobile Suit. However, a single PUMA is designed to be able to handle combat against multiple armored vehicles or platoons of regular infantry without sustaining significant damage, and a group of them could easily prove capable of taking down a Mobile Suit. Which is actually one of the tests I need you for... you get to be the Mobile Suit they try to take down." Erica told him with a grin.

"Well, I don't want to toot my own horn or anything but..." Athrun looked slightly bashful. "Isn't that kind of unfair to your testers? I'm not exactly your average Mobile Suit pilot, and ever since we integrated the NIC-III systems into our Gundam simulations, well... I'm not sure it would be much of a test."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that. The PUMA's use the NIC-III system as well... its required to get the kind of versatility and combat utility out of them that we wanted, and it also helps cut down on training or retraining costs. And as for your skills... well, you might want to wait until you meet the PUMA tester's before you start feeling sorry for them." Erica said mysteriously. "You'll be going up against a full squadron of five of them as well. So far they've managed to beat the snot out of several technician piloted simulated Mobile Suits, and they've been clamoring for a greater challenge, so I decided to oblige them. It should be very interesting, I think."

"What do I get to do?" Allister asked hopefully. Erica looked down at him consideringly, and then looked at Athrun.

"Are you any good at computer games, Allister?" Erica asked. "Assuming its okay with you, Mr. Ambassador, I could have him help out with a few of the tests where the PUMA team will be trying to inflitrate or fight their way through a guarded perimeter. He'd be manning a turret control system of some sort." She added.

"Please, daddy? I usually beat Akira when he comes over to play with our TV system. Roy's better than me, but he plays games all the time." Allister gave his dad the shining, puppy dog hopeful eyes that never failed to coerce him. And they didn't this time either.

"Okay. But don't tell your mom I let you control a turret. She'd probably start trying to teach you how to shoot a pistol." Athrun sighed. Weren't mothers supposed to be horrified at the thought of their children playing violent video games? Well, Cagalli was definitely against gory games, but she had no trouble with action or shooting games that didn't have blood in them. And she seemed positively eager to teach Allister how to target shoot with a pistol.

"Okay, Allister, you go with Dr. Bjornsson there, and he'll set you up and tell you what you can do to help." Erica pointed out a large, nordic looking man with a bristly black beard and eyebrows who was standing near a group of white coated technicians gathered around a series of computer hubs, who waved genially at them in reply. "Gosh, they grow up so fast. Ryuta was still playing with toy trucks at his age..." She commented to Athrun when Allister was out of earshot.

"He's got good genes." Athrun wasn't too proud to say. "He's developing faster than anyone I've seen, other than Akira and Aoi, and thats... well... not the most fair of comparisons. He's going to go very far, probably make me and Cagalli look like lazy bums by the time he gets to our age."

"That's a pretty tall order." Erica commented with a grin. "Though I do hope he doesn't have to go through the same sort of troubles you two did."

"Likewise. So, who did you tap to test pilot these PUMA things anyway?" Athrun asked, his eyes trailing after Allister, who was already pointing excitedly at various things on a computer screen, clearly having a great time.

"Eager to meet the competition, eh? Well, come right this way... I'm rather looking forward to their reactions myself." Erica smirked, leading Athrun through a series of elevators and passageways and medium sized construction or testing bays, part of the much expanded MAST-F complex. They made small talk while they walked, until they finally reached a far larger hanger, one of the newest additions to the MAST-F, a gargantuan underground secure testing range almost three kilometers across and several hundred meters tall, complete with a several true to life city blocks, a beach, hills, a small forest and other specialized environments for comprehensive testing of even things as large as a Mobile Suit or two. They had their identities verified by a squad of stone faced guards, since this was a highly top secret series of tests, on equipment Orb wouldn't even admit existed yet, and then they were let into the test hanger, where they met a ground transport that took them a half kilometer or so to the staging point.

They pulled up to a cleared area of rock and sand near the beach environment, with several temporary pre-fab buildings set up nearby where extra equipment and supplies were being stored, as well as rest facilities for the test crews themselves and a data link to the main MAST-F computer systems. There were plenty of mechanics and white coated technicians in view, but Athrun didn't see anyone clad in anything resembling pilot gear, as they finally rounded a series of large boulders and he got his first good look at the PUMA's, all eight lined up and opened, waiting for their pilots. His jaw dropped and he stared, because the PUMA's looked VERY much like miniature Mobile Suits, a little bulkier of torso and shoulders perhaps, with less neck and slightly stumpier limbs, but still very graceful and deadly looking, very streamlined and deadly. The heads had large triangular ear like protrusions on them, and with the way the heads were elongated, they looked very much like canine skulls, with bright blue camera lenses for eyes.

Each PUMA had a large rectangular armor shield on one of its arms, a scaled down model of the shields carried by M-4 Guardians, as far as Athrun's experienced eye could discern. A large variety of handheld weapon systems were arrayed near the PUMA suits, which didn't appear to mount any integral weapons besides two apetures near their neckline on the torso that looked similar to the placement of CIWS guns on a Mobile Suit, if smaller caliber. The PUMA's all had large backpack like arrangements that looked semi-removable, with many modular sections and adjustable plates, and they were all plugged into a series of generators to keep their power levels topped off while technicians ran last minute system checks and fussed with computer or sensor settings. Athrun let out an impressed whistle. "So, what model is this? PUMA's, yeah, but what are they called?"

"They're called Hellhounds, Mr. Zala." A new but not unfamiliar voice called from behind them, off towards where the water of the simulated ocean lapped against the pebbly part of the beach. Athrun's stomach did a small flip flop, and he gave Dr. Simmons a look, which she returned blandly, clearly quite pleased with herself and her choice of test crews. Athrun looked over his shoulder and had to narrow his eyes for a moment before he finally picked out the man who had called out to him, since while standing still his camouflage made it very difficult to see him against the rocks. Especially since he was soaking wet and covered in sand and pebbles, extra camouflage that made him look more like a piece of the beach walking upright than a man. He had a wolf eared battle helmet, freshly doffed, cradled in the crook of one arm, its surface as dulled and camouflaged as the rest of him, except for the dim blue lenses of its camera eyes, dull in the bright light. Lieutenant Cyprus Finch of the Stormhounds Special Operations Unit snapped a sharp salute, crusted sand and grit flying from his forearm in the process.

Athrun returned the salute with somewhat less polish, still dealing with the fact that he was going to be fighting against Cyprus Finch and a few other Stormhounds in the near future... suddenly he knew why Dr. Simmons hadn't thought his skills would prove too overwhelming. If anything, with the NIC-III controls, HE was the one in danger of being overwhelmed! "PUMA-1's, or informally, Hellhounds, yes." Dr. Simmons answered as well. She sighed and looked at Cyprus crosswise. "Mr. Finch, you are completely filthy. What are you doing?"

"Indeed so, Doctor. You wanted us to conduct a comprehensive systems test, as I recall. Something about testing their operational limitations and how they would perform under field conditions, or as much so as possible, correct?" Cyrpus replied unabashedly. "In the field, we won't frequently have the luxury of climbing aboard all squeaky clean. Quite the opposite. I do hope the interiors aren't delicate, or this might be a short series of tests."

"No, they aren't delicate." Erica replied with a roll of her eyes. "Honestly though, Mr. Finch... are you trying to break my precious machines? Some of the things your unit has been putting them through in the tests are far and above beyond anything my engineers and I anticipated."

"In a word, yes, ma'am. If I can't put a piece of gear through a test where I try my hardest to compromise its usefulness and fail, I usually won't use it. This is my life we're talking about, after all, and maybe quite a bit more than just mine. I want to know how hard I can push, what I can rely on to work and what I can't." Cyprus told her seriously. He turned around and made a series of hand signals, causing four more Stormhounds to rise from positions of concealment and begin making their way over towards the staging area, all as filthy and grime crusted as Cyprus himself. Athrun and Dr. Simmons started, as some of the Stormhounds were only a few feet away, and they hadn't seen them there at all.

"We were doing a brief infiltration exercise while we waited, a practice run for what you want us to do later, I think. Though I am interested to see how much harder it is inside a Hellhound. With your permission then, Ma'am, we'll mount up and get started on these tests. Mr. Zala, I look forward to our confrontation. Perhaps more than you know." Cyprus nodded at them both, and then went to join his picked unit, consisting of Sergeant-Major Glory, Master Sergeant "Corporal" Ramierez, First Sergeant "Conrad" Kurtz, and Sergeant "Raven" Glory, the most decorated and experienced of all the Stormhounds. Colonel's Belaruse and Jones were on duty elsewhere, or else they would have been here as well, all the Stormhounds were eager to play with their new toys after all.

"Great. This is going to be fun. Thanks, Erica." Athrun said heavily and not a little sarcastically.

"You're welcome Athrun. They're a little rough around the edges, but they've been doing some AMAZING things in the PUMA's. We're all very excited to have them here. I can't tell you how much people have been looking forward to seeing you or Kira face off against them in a Mobile Suit." Erica replied happily, missing his sarcasm.

"I get the Phoenix King, right? Or better yet, the new one that we "aren't working on at all"?" Athrun put air quotes aroung the latter part of the sentence. Of course Orb was working on a new batch of Gundams to replace the ones the USN had treacherously destroyed at the end of the Eden Disaster, real cutting edge machines with new technologies never seen before, despite it being totally illegal by the laws of the USN. So far they'd managed to keep everything under tight wraps, and hopefully that trend would continue.

"The Phoenix King, though without the HAC armor, or we won't be able to test all the weapons very well. But otherwise the simulation will be the same as you are used to. The Simurgh is still in the early stages of design, I'm afraid, we don't even have a working computer simulation for it." Erica assured him. "However, before we get to the Mobile Suit combat scenario, we have quite a few system tests and the practical tests which Allister is helping out with. Let's get to the test control bunker, and I'll get you the technical specs so you have something to read while we do the other tests."

xxxx

"Report in." Cyprus commed, as his Hellhound closed and locked its cockpit around him, though it wasn't much of a cockpit, more just a storage space for his body while he wasn't using it. Everything having to do with the controls and operations of the Hellhound unit was handled by the NIC-III system, meaning it all happened inside his head, and while there was an emergency fold out control panel, it consisted of little more than basic movement buttons and an ejection mechanism. He felt the slight stinging sensation of the NIC wires making contact through his grit and sand stained hair, and then his eyes drifted closed and when he re-opened them, he was seeing in the full spectrum bands of the Hellhound's sensor package, able to cycle through any one of a half dozen sensor types merely by thinking it. It had taken a little getting used to, but after using a blink command HUD combat helmet for years, it wasn't that much of a changeover, in terms of sensors and comms anyway. Movement and combat were a different story, but even then, with the NIC system, he just moved as normally would, and only had to adapt for the different size of his body.

"Hellhound Two, operational and hungry for action." Glory reported, somewhat snugly fitted into his own Hellhound, but he hardly noticed while connected to the NIC system, it was only after disconnecting did he feel his sore muscles.

"Hellhound Three, connected and ready." Ramierez said, flexing his gauntlets and stretching in a brief warmup exercise.

"Hellhound Four, all systems green." Kurtz reported, still a bit stilted and formal when talking directly to Cyprus.

"Hellhound Five, I'm good to go." Raven answered, a wide grin on her otherwise slack face.

"Range control, this is Hellhound One. All hellhound units are reporting all systems functional and ready to begin operations tests." Cyprus commed to the scientists and technicians wiaitng in the prefab control buildings nearby. "We'll do some standard movement verifications and warmups, and then move on into the first of the exercises."

"Understood, Lieutenant Finch." The girlish, exuberant and yet wholly serious voice of Lexi replied at once. In addition to her work controlling public services, Lexi was extensively used by the Orb military as a tactical assistant, CIC operator and general resource. Even as she was conversing with Cagalli while the Queen worked out, she was also attending to thousands of other tasks and holding hudnred sof other conversations, including one with Cyprus, all at the same time. One of the benefits of being a hugely powerful AI computer system. "By the way, Wrenn wants to remind you that you promised to attend Violet's Kendo practice tonight, after her extracurricular honors study hours. And then you're supposed to take her out to..."

"I recall what my own night's plans are, thank you Lexi." Cyprus cut her off, with perhaps the slightest flash of irritation in his grey eyes. "I might be older now, but I'm not that old."

"Of course not, Lieutenant. But you do, according to my anaylsis, have a greater than eight five percent tendency to work excessive overtime on any given day. As Wrenn puts it sometimes, you put too much of yourself into your work. You and the Queen have similar problems... you are too hard working for it to be entirely healthy to your family."

"If, only five years ago, someone had told me I'd be getting lectured on my own natural idiosyncrasises by a jumped up computer game with a voice like a high school prom queen, I'd have laughed, out loud, in their faces." Cyprus half grumbled.

"Jumped up video game, am I? We'll see what you have to say when your car doesn't start tomorrow morning." Lexi retorted with a very realistic sounding sniff. "You don't want to mess with me, Cyprus, I control your life right beneath your fingertips. I can make all the water systems in your house run backwards faster than you can blink."

"And I am an expert at infiltration and surgical demolitions. I also know where your mainframe is located."

"You wouldn't dare..."

"Consult your analysis on me, and then say that again. If you can." Cyprus waited a few seconds, but got no reply. Truth be told, there was a part of him that slightly enjoyed matching wits with a artificial intelligence system a thousand times smarter than himself, if only technically speaking. It was a nice challenge. But he shoved such thoughts aside, having wasted more than enough time on the short conversation. He joined the rest of his hand selected squad in a variety of bending and twisting and stretching motions, making sure all the limbs and joints of his Hellhound were working properly. They ran short sprints, and tested the jumper jets on their legs and backs, in both vertical and horizontal maneuvers, as well as the play and strength of the arm mounted grapple cable launchers. And lastly they all ran complete diagnostics on their sensor, countermeasures and stealth systems, before Cyprus finally decided they were ready and warmed up.

Next it was time to arm up. Each PUMA was equipped with a standard weapon package that included two 12.5mm machine guns, mounted in the upperchest/shoulder area, like the CIWS guns of a Mobile Suit. The package also included eight VCE's or Variable Combat Explosives, tubular metal canisters of just the right size and heft to fit into a PUMA's hand, which could be thrown like grenades, set on timer, remote or proximity detonation modes like a mine, or slapped onto a magnetic surface like a demolition pack. The final part of the standard package was an armor piercing combat blade, about a meter long, very similar to the "armor schneider" combat knives the original Strike Gundam had been equipped with. In addition to the built in and standard weapons package, a variety of handheld weapons had been produced for the PUMA's to use, allowing customization of a squad's firepower to meet mission and personal parameters.

The "basic" weapon was a combination 55mm semi-auto linear rifle and 80mm RPG launcher, a compromise on size, weight and destructive power. Kurtz selected one as his Hellhound's weapon for the day's tests, both for its versatility and because it was the weapon with which he was most comfortable personally. Raven opted for a twinned 30mm gatling cannon weapon that allowed for extreme rapidfire, and was best suited against infantry and light vehicles. Glory took up a 90mm hyper-impulse cannon, for maximum anti-armor and anti-mobile suit destructive power. Ramierez selected a handheld, six tube 125mm missile launcher, which was effective against all targets from long range, even out of direct line of sight. He also took a beam saber, which had a bright yellow blade and operated on its own power supply.

As for Cyprus, he took a 45mm beam rifle, a weapon he had not personally tried yet, and had been saving for a special occasion, such as a confrontation test against one the greatest Mobile Suit pilots currently alive, as well as a beam saber, as he and Ramierez were the only ones sufficiently acquianted with wielding larger blades, even plasma ones, in melee to put them to best use. Other primary armaments no one had currently selected included a 75mm linear sniper rifle, and a 50mm autocannon that was a compromise between the rapidfire of the 30mm gatling cannons and the power of the 55mm linear rifle. After spending some time on a nearby range making sure their targeting systems were aligned correctly, the Stormhound squad assembled aboard a barge that would take them out to their mission start point, in the depper parts of the test-cavern's water body.

Since this was still a prototype test scenario, under open but still somewhat controlled conditions, the weapons were armed with dummy paint rounds, or, in the case of the energy weapons, powered down to the point where they would only singe metal, rather than melt it. They could still be dangerous to an unarmored human, but all the technicians and scientists were secure in armored, underground bunkers, so that wasn't a problem. Damage would be controlled and assigned by Lexi, who had the power to limit or even entirely shut down the PUMA's if she ruled they had taken sufficient damage. For the culminating event, the battle against the Mobile Suit, she would link them into a simulated world that seamlessly matched up to the real one. Normally simulation combat was decried as insufficently real for some tests, but with the advantage of full sensory immersion by NIC-III technology, the differences between a simulation and a real life event were minimal, save for the long term consequences.

The Stormhounds and their PUMA's would be dropped off in the deep part of MAST-F's lagoon, just like they would be dropped off the coast of a hostile shoreline for a real mission. They would have to make their way to shore, avoiding or disabling sensor systems both in the water and on the beach, make their way through a network of automated turrets and pop up "patrols" that guarded the beach either without being detected or by neutralizing all threats before they could give an alarm, then infiltrate a city block area, avoiding more patrols and turrets, to meet up with a "contact" in a secure spot. From there they would begin an active combat cenario, fighting their way out of the city and up into a hilly, forested area, towards an "enemy military depot", which they were to destroy without allowing more than a marginal amount of escapees. Once they had accomplished that, enemy reinforcements, in the form of Athrun and his Gundam, would show up and they would have to either survive a fighting retreat back into the lagoon, or else defeat Athrun, in order to achieve victory. The mission time limit was 3 hours to reach the Mobile Suit combat.

Cyprus had a whole slew of punishment details and duties ready and waiting for those who were damaged, crippled or killed during the mission, of course including himself, for use as additional motivation. "One final note." He said with perhaps the smallest hint of a smile that no one could see, as the Stormhounds prepared to jump into the lagoon. "I hear Crown Prince Allister Zala-Attha is going to be controlling some of the auto-turrets today. Anyone who gets shot or killed by the Prince is doing triple punishment laps in full gear. That means you, Corporal."

"Perish the thought, sir. I'm not going to be tagged and bagged by no seven year old, even a frightening one like Allister." Ramierez sniffed with mock disdain.

"I dunno about that." Raven spoke up. "Kids these days are really damned good at video games." Accomplishing a subtle nudge in a PUMA suit wasn't exactly easy, but all the same the armored elbow that clanged against the side of Glory's PUMA was relatively discreet. Though Thomas and Melissa had been married for more than seven years now, they still went by their old callsigns when at work. The subtle nudge however, was a more private thing between the two of them. Though they loved each other very much, and both desired a family, they had agreed that it would be simply crazy to start one while they were both in the Stormhounds. The Lt managed because Wrenn didn't work full time, and she was also fabulously wealthy, to the point where she could afford round the clock proffessional house and child sitters for the times when she had to be away when Cyprus was also away. They also had Jean Kellson, their live in houseguest, who had become an older sister figure to Violet, who was able to step in sometimes when they needed someone to watch Violet, despite Jean's physical and mental handicaps, which were slowly, if surely, going away as time passed.

But Glory and Raven were still young, or relatively young by modern standards, still just entering their prime, and neither of them felt particularly rushed in their need for a family. There would come a time when they decided their private life needed to come before their love for their jobs as Stormhounds, and that would be a dark day indeed for the unit, but it was one that was still far in the future as far as they were both concerned. Glory banged his own elbow, somewhat less gently, off of Raven's PUMA, and then the Stormhounds got serious as they plunged into the lagoon one after the other, grouping together as they settled to the bottom a few dozen meters below. It was very dark at that depth, but none of them activated their shoulder mounted spotlamps, which were powerful enough to perhaps be spotted, even at depth, by a careful observer on shore at night, which was when this mission was supposed to be taking place.

"Deployment complete." Cyprus commed to the waiting scientists and technicians. And one very eager little boy. "Mission start."

xxxx

"FUCK!" Ramierez shouted across the comms, ducking back into what minimal cover the concrete outhouse on the outskirts of the city block offered, his armor scraping sparks as he tried to mould himself flat against it. "I'm fucking pinned down by three goddamned turrets over here!" He reported, trying to ease his missile launcher around the corner so he could draw a bead upon at least one of the auto-turrets that had him in a near crossfire, but an explosion of blue paint against the walls of the outhouse made him swear and jerk backwards again.

"Minor damage to primary weapon and right hand of Hellhound 3." Lexi reported, in the background, accounting for virtual ricochets and slight penetration of cover by the turret fire. Ramierez sneered, knowing that while the damage was minor he was still not going to hear the end of it from the others. It was nothing personal, it was everybody against everybody else in the perpetual "make the dummy feel bad for getting killed" sort of deal. The worse people hounded you during training, the less likely you were to get complacent, which could make you dead for real all too easily during an actual mission. Ramierez hunkered down even more, worriedly watching as the continuous fire from the turrets started to wear down the outhouse on his sensors. In not too much time, Lexi would rule its value as cover to be negligible, and he'd be open to their firepower, even if the physical rounds still were stymied by the outhouse in real life.

The infiltration part of the mission had gone smooth as silk, the inbuilt sensor stealth and visual camouflage systems of the PUMA's, combined with the Stormhound's natural talents and extensive training, had made getting up onto and off of the beach without being detected only minorly nerve wracking, with only a few moments where they all had to freeze as patrols went by, sometimes not much more than ten meters away. Finding adequate visual cover in a PUMA, even with its armor surface active camouflage systems, based on the same technology used in the regular Stormhound combat uniforms, which changed color to match its surroundings, was getting easier every day, as he grew more used to the nuances of the new, larger body form. For somethat that stood more than twice his own height fully upright, it could compress itself down to a surprisingly small profile when the need arose.

Breaking through the city defenses had taken a little light knifework, but with both him and the Lt working point, they were through with hardly any delay at all, still dead on schedule, if not a little ahead of the Lt's projected time. Killing turrets with his combat blade wasn't the same as taking down a sentry on foot, but it was close enough that his stalking skills still helped him a lot. Turrets had a few weak points when approached stealthily from out of their arc of fire, most notably their power supplies and ammo loading/traversing mechanisms, which he equated to the heart and throat of a human. Hit the heart and the target would die fast, cut the throat and they'd die silent. He usually hit both, starting with the throat and then coming back for the heart, just to be doubly sure.

But after meeting up with the digitally constructed "contact" provided by Lexi, and receiving the updated terrain intelligence it provided for the next leg of the mission, things, as they so often did in real life, went a bit pear shaped. There had been more turrets than expected on the depot side of the city defenses, and they were more advanced than the beachfront sentries, more sensitive to subtle motions and with wider camera view angles. Of course it was an open combat scenario know, so they didn't lose points for being detected, but all the same, the Stormhounds preferred to maintain the advantage of stealth for as long as possible. Which had been about five minutes, before they found themselves being pushed back into heavier cover after trying to leave the city outskirts and get into the forest, and were now in a pitched battle against a numerically superior foe.

And the longer they stayed in the city, the more "enemies", in the form of extra or previously disabled turrets, that would show up as units responded from the military depot, until they would certainly be surrounded and overwhelmed, which would not make any of them, and especially not the Lt, happy at all. The Stormhounds had yet to lose a practice scenario, even without fully having the hang of the PUMA's, and Ramierez could only tremble at the thought of a post mission failure debriefing by the Lt. No one would be happy for weeks. "Ten seconds to cover negation." Lexi reminded him, perhaps a trifle smugly.

Ramierez was about to get on the line to ask for help again, despite knowing that everyone else had to be deep in the shit too, for his call for support to have not been immediately answered, when the Lt jumped out of the tenth story windows of one of the largest city buildings, using his jump jets to slow and direct his fall as he fired a precision shot with his beam rifle in one hand to blow the top off one of the turrets threatening Ramierez. A dropped/hurled VCE crippled a second turret, and Ramierez used one of his missiles to blast apart the third and final one as it started to track upwards after the Lt. There was no time for an acknowledgement of thanks, as they both came under fire from more turrets further up the street, unable to resist the temptation of two PUMA's outside cover. They both took glancing hits that Lexi recorded as armor damage, before the Lt fired a trio of beam blasts into a wall and then shoulder charged the PUMA through the weakened structure, opening a gap into its interior for them both.

"I think the Prince needs to spend more time playing sports, and less time with video games." Ramierez noted with a grim chuckle as they crouched side by side within the darkened interior of the building, listening to the turrets hose down the outer walls with frustrated firepower. "Too many more hits to my left torso, and I'm toast."

"The difference between automated programming and intelligent control is rather noticable." Cyprus allowed, inspecting his own damage, which was less focused than Ramierez's but no less troubling. "Even if the controller is only seven."

"Sir, we've managed to clean up our bogeys, and we're now moving to support you and the Corporal." Glory's deep voice cut in. "Sorry for the delay, but these new turrets are a bitch and a half. Raven's taken some bad hits, she's down to half movement speed."

"Understood. Meet up with us at point three." Cyprus sent an updated positional map to the other Stormhounds. "Come loud and visible, the Corporal and I are pinned down in one of the buildings nearby."

"We'll shake the trees, you make the shots, aye, Sir." Glory answered. Cyprus and Ramierez used the time it took for the other Stormhounds to get close to work their way through the building ever closer to the turrets. As soon as their sensors detected a slackening in enemy firepower as turrets reoriented upon Conrad, Glory and Raven, Ramierez used another missile to blow the wall out and then charged out alongside the Lt, slinging his missile launcher and with combat blade in hand. Ramierez opened up with his dual 12.5mm machine guns, throwing up a line of sparking divots along the armored backplate of one of the closest turrets, which began to fluidly swing back towards him. Racing up to it, he halted its traverse with one hand before stabbing thrice with the combat blade, digging deep into the turret's vitals, before finally finding and destroying the power supply, causing it to short out in a shower of sparks.

Cyprus's beam rifle easily penetrated the thinner rear armor on the turrets that had swung to target the other members of his squad, and he took out three before some began to turn back in his direction. Caught in the middle of a street, with no easy cover in sight, Cyprus instead charged forward, igniting his beam saber in one hand, and tugging out another VCE in the other. He jinked and juked from side to side, using brief taps upon his jump jets to make the dodges even more jarring and rapid, as lines of blue paint streaked across the street from the turrets trying to track their fire up into and through him. These turrets were double barreled, autocannon types, 50mm type, and it wouldn't take many consecutive hits for them to blow through his armor like it was thin tissue paper. For reasons of power consumption, the PUMA's did not come equipped with Phase Shift Armor. Even Transphase Shift armor drew too much power over a prolonged mission period to be acceptable, and HAC armor required too much in the way of interior cooling systems to be practical.

Racing out into the intersection, Cyprus hurled his VCE at two turrets that were all but side by side, and seriously damaged them both, to the point where they stopped firing, at least for the moment. He could hear heavy combat from the next street over, where Glory, Raven and Kurtz were engaging more targets now that Cyprus and Ramierez had been able to break out of their pin, but he didn't have time to worry about that, as there were still several active enemies in close proximity to him. He got close enough to cleanly decapitate one turret with his beam saber, but was now hopelessly exposed against two more. One tried to orient upon him, but jammed to a halt before it could get him in its sights, courtesy of Ramierez's hurled combat blade buried in its traversing gears, an impressive throw by any measure. The last turret, a multi-barrel rocket launcher type, spun towards Cyprus and launched a volley of high explosive rockets at him.

Were he an unarmored man, this would be a certain death situation, but Cyprus was in a PUMA, and though the weapons weren't exactly designed for it, in a pinch, the twin 12.5mm machineguns made a passable CIWS interdiction system, and Cyprus held down his triggers as he used his barrage to chop the rockets out of the air before they could even cover two thirds of the distance too him. Another detonation from the turret itself heralded its demise under a hurled VCE from Ramierez, and then silence descended upon the street for the first time in almost fifteen minutes. Confronted with a wall of buildings seperating them from the rest of their squad, Cyprus and Ramierez hurried to bridge the gap so they could provide support in turn. Cyprus, already highly confident in his jump jet controls, leaped directly to the top of the buildings, while Ramierez used his arm mounted grapple cable launchers to help him climb/trot up the side of the buildings a few seconds behind.

With Cyprus and Ramierez providing covering fire from above, Glory, Kurtz and Raven were quickly able to clean up the rest of the city defenders between them and their route into the hilly forest, and several minutes later they were all deep in cover, hidden from the sensor sweeps of active patrols by half burrowing into the ground beneath a copse of pine trees, while they planned their next move. With the military depot already on high alert, there was little sense in attempting a subtle infiltration, and so the Stormhounds instead opted for a "storm and confuse" strategy, where they would attack with brutal force and penetrate the defenses quickly, striking for major targets within the base while the defenses were still active, striking as many different targets as possible so that the defenders would be unable to determine where to best concentrate their forces.

Glory opened the path with a pair of blasts from his 90mm hyper-impulse cannon, while Raierez took out the two tower mounted turrets on their line of approach with a single missile each. Kurtz and Cyprus sprinted forward, covered by conservative bursts from Raven, who's hobbled machine would not be able to keep up with the rest of the squad, so she stayed behind as a distraction for any mustering defence forces. Carefully watching the ammo counters on her twinned 30mm gatling cannons, which ate ammo like Thom did buffalo wings, Raven made sure to make as much noise and stink as possible, to hopefully draw the defenders into thinking she was a bigger threat than she actually was.

The audacious ploy worked well, the defenders, many controlled by Allister, overwhelmed by multiple foes striking multiple targets seemingly at random, and the defensive fire quickly became erratic and then sporadic, as the Stormhounds finished striking the major sites and moved on to hunting down the remaining turrets one by one. The base was declared destroyed with several minutes still on the mission clock, but all the Stormhounds knew the margin had been far too damned close, their prolonged fight in the city having consumed far more ammo, time and armor resources than they were comfortable with, pushing them to the very edge of their mission parameters. There would be remedial work out of this, there was little doubt of that. But they weren't done yet, as their suits came upright and froze, as Lexi transferred them from manual control in the real world to her immaculate simulation world for the final mission phase.

xxxx

Kurtz fought against a gulp of minor trepidation as a shadow flickered across the Stormhounds from high above, as Athrun circled the Phoenix King in towards them in Mobile Armor mode, looking very much like a gigantic fiery bird of prey swooping down on a clutch of rabbits. Athrun was keeping his speed up and moving in wide arcs, criss-crossing the area, letting his sensors probe for as much data as possible, advancing cautiously if threateningly. The Stormhounds were spread out through the remains of the recently destroyed base and the nearby forest, hunkered down and hiding, knowing that to be caught out in the open by the Gundam was to be summarily and dismissively slain. Though the Phoenix King was actually relatively lightly armed, as Gundams went, its weapons would still take down the PUMA's with only a single direct hit.

Under cover within a ruined hanger building on the base, Cyprus watched with narrowed eyes as Athrun assessed the area. This would be his first time opposing the Ambassador on the former ZAFT redcoat's preferred battleground, and Cyprus found himself quite excited at the prospect of actually being at a disadvantage in terms of experience. All previous encounters, even when they had been enemies during the Isolation, had been on Cyprus's terms, in the world of infantry combat, it could be very interesting to see how the shoe felt on the other foot. It wasn't quite the same thing of course, as a PUMA was not a Mobile Suit, much less a Gundam, but Cyprus liked it this way, him and his four closest subordinates against a foe at the height of his powers. This Phoenix King, unlike the real one, was not armroed in beam immune HAC plating, and Cyprus intended to take full advantage of that.

Sending a signal to Glory, Cyprus initiated their battle plan. Blue-red energy streaked up from the depths of the forest, right on an intercept course for the swooping Gundam. Athrun dodged with awesome ease, minimum effort for maximum results, and the hyper-impulse beams crackled by his wings and legs with only meters to spare, as the Phoenix King banked and then entered a tight spiral as Athrun went after Glory. Pinky thick green plasma bolts spewed from the head region of the Gundam as Athrun strafed Glory's position with his head mounted 15mm beam CIWS, the only weapons the Phoenix King could use in Mobile Armor mode, besides the Phoenix Feathers DRAGOON systems.

Athrun was forced to turn away as a pair of missiles rose up into his back arc, courtesy of Ramierez. In a real life situation, given any choice in the matter, Cyprus would have avoided a direct battle with a Mobile Suit, especially a Gundam. But in this case, he was more interested in the experience of fighting a superior opponent than he was in completing the terms of the test mission itself. If they could defeat the Phoenix King and win that way, so much the better. If not, then the learning experience was more than worth the slight sting on his professional pride. So instead of coordinating a rapid retreat, the Stormhounds were working to encircle and bring the Gundam to ground, giving Athrun one of two options as far as Cyprus could see. The first was to make hit and run strafing attacks in Mobile Armor form, relying on speed and maneuverability to stay out of the Stormhound's crossfire as he picked them off one by one. The second was to willingly spring the trap, trusting to the Gundam's fantastic close quarters combat abilities and pilot skill to carry the day.

Much to Cyprus's delight, and true to his expectations, Athrun chose option two, the Phoenix King transitioning from the bird-like Mobile Armor mode to the angelic humanoid Mobile Suit mode as Athrun dropped down out of the sky, square in the middle of the base, out of immediate line of sight of any of the Stormhounds. A desultory blast of beam CIWS fire detonated Ramierez's missiles when they tried to follow Athrun down, and Cyprus knew Ramierez would be a minute or so in reloading the missile launcher. Being up close and personal played to Athrun's strengths, and those of his Gundam, so it was natural for the Ambassador to trust to his skill and experience to weather whatever surprises Cyprus had in store. It was Cyprus's job to make Athrun regret his confidence.

He almost regretted his own a second later, when two double beam blasts, a shot each from the Phoenix King's two twin 57mm beam rifles, tore through the walls of the building he was hiding in and almost took his head and shoulders right off his body. Dropping flat to the ground and rolling away from his previous position, Cyprus gritted his teeth in self reproach. Of course the Gundam had a more comprehensive and powerful sensor system, including Vari-cameras. Athrun had probably seen him while he was still attacking Glory, but had pretended ignorance in order to lull Cyprus. And it had almost worked, if not for a poor angle of shot that Athrun had to deal with because of his landing position. Cyprus's PUMA rocked and groaned as most of the roof came crashing down atop him, but fortunately it wasn't dense enough to damage or entrap him, merely slow him as he fought his way free.

Seeing their leader in trouble, Kurtz and Raven simultaneously broke from cover on opposite sides of the Phoenix King, Kurtz opening up with a RPG round and then repeated linear rifle fire, while Raven held down the triggers of her gatling guns and hosed a line of shrieking tracers right up and into the Phoenix King's legs. Unfortunately the 30mm shells weren't designed to really do much against heavy armor like Mobile Suit's carried, and though her shots made an impressive lightshow of sparks and disintegrating paint chips, that was about all the effect her shots had. Athrun ducked under Kurtz's grenade and other shots, before leaping the Phoenix King backwards, completely up and over Raven, all the while pumping a barrage of shots from both twin 57mm beam rifles into the area where Kurtz had dived back into cover.

Discarding her gatling cannons as useless, Raven took a VCE in each hand and leaped at the Phoenix King as it towered over her, trying to attach them like limpet mines to the Gundam's ankles or knees, hoping to cripple a major joint. While still maintaining his punishing barrage of beam shots at Kurtz, Athrun lashed out with one foot and caught Raven's already half crippled PUMA in midair like a hacky-sack. With a hundred tons of well braced Gundam behind the blow, Raven's PUMA crumpled like a tin can before being punted almost sixty meters through the air in a high arc before crashing down onto the base tarmac and exploding when the batteries and remaining internal ammo and VCE's cooked off. Raven's life signs and IFF signal went dark, and then they were four.

Remaining much calmer than he would if such a thing were to have happened in real life, Glory popped around a building corner and fired a hyper-impulse shot at Athrun from off to one side, at last forcing him to break off his attack against Kurtz as he dodged away from the heavy plasma shot. It was a bit too late to be entirely effective however, as penetrating beam blasts had all but crippled Kurtz's PUMA, destroying both arms and one leg, and burying his PUMA under tons of half melted structural materials. He was still alive, but his contributions to the fight were done. Now it was just the three old hounds versus the stately phoenix.

With decades of training and fighting alongside each other in more desperate battles than any of them could remember, Ramierez, Glory and Cyprus had little need for voice communications or even plans, they moved just like a hunting pack of wolves, instinctively covering each other and working to keep Athrun off balance and guessing which way the next attack would come from. Ramierez fired off three of his last six missiles all at once, and then a second or so fired the last three, but on a wider, more oblique course, so that they circled around from the side a bit more. Of course Athrun was more than able to blast both missile volleys from the sky with his beam CIWS, but in so doing he was forced to adjust his positioning slightly, which was what Ramierez and Cyprus both had been waiting for.

Magnetic grapples attached to five hundred meter long macro-molecular cables, each capable of supporting more than five hudnred tons of dead weight without snapping, hissed out of the forearm launchers on Cyprus's and Ramierez's PUMAs and snaked across the space seperating them from the Phoenix King. Aimed well, each pair of cables wrapped around one of the Phoenix King's forearms before locking in place. Looping the trailing cables around thick sections of structural rebar protruding from nearby building wreckage, the two Stormhounds pulled the cables as tight as they could, preventing Athrun from moving his arms with any freedom. It wouldn't hold him long, not more than a few seconds, but that was enough time for Glory to come pouncing out right in Athrun's frontal arc, at close to point blank range, hyper-impulse cannon already aimed at Athrun's cockpit.

Just before Glory fired, Cyprus realized that Athrun had still been playing them a little, exaggerating how much his arm movements were limited by the cables, and he was in the middle of opening his mouth to warn his friend when it became too late. The Phoenix King dropped both of its rifles, discarding them as it brought its hands together and used its BGCS fields to snatch Glory's hyper-impulse shot right out of the air. The red-blue plasma coiled around the Phoenix King's arms for a moment, melting through the entangling grapple cables in a heartbeats, before spitting right back down at Glory. He managed to get out of the way, kind of, and only lost both legs at mid thigh to the roaring energy current of his own attack when he tried to use his jump jets to dodge. Unbalanced by suddenly losing the legs and jump jets, Glory's PUMA began a slow backwards rotation in midair, only to be melted into a pile of slag before he could touch down, courtesy of a river of plasma fire from the projectors on the Phoenix King's arms.

Cyprus hefted his beam rifle and narrowed his eyes in self reproach. He'd selected the weapon because it was strong against heavy armor, but he'd forgotten that while the Phoenix King they were fighting only had regular armor, it still had its Vulcan's Forge freeform Beam Generation and Containment System, which allowed Athrun to manipulate magnetically sheathed plasma, or beam, energy like sculptor's clay, both his own and also, as demonstrated, that of his foes. He tossed the rifle away in mild disgust now, realizing it would only be counterproductive to try and use it against the Phoenix King. Still, he was far from the point of giving up, as if he would ever reach such a point. With only two PUMA's remaining, their odds of victory were vanishingly small. Of conventional victory anyway.

Ramierez had already come to the same conclusion, and he launched himself at the Phoenix King from behind and to one side, beam saber lit in one hand, knife in the opposite, proximity armed VCE bombs stuck all over his chest, a straight up suicide charge at maximum speed, using the jump jets as afterburners of a sort. The moment Cyprus saw Athrun form a pair of double bladed beam swords out of his plasma fire and begin to shift his weight towards Ramierez, he too acted, hurling a VCE with either arm and then following up with a all or nothing charge himself, beam saber in one hand and combat blade in the other. His bombs landed a little short, spiking Athrun's legs and lower back with shrapnel marks, but the damage was exceedingly minor.

Athrun's scything beam blades mowed Ramierez down just as he was entering arm's reach of the Gundam, slicing his PUMA into several glowing pieces before the booby trapped VCE's blew up and scattered the PUMA in thumbnail sized pieces in a fifty meter arc. The force of the blast rocked the Phoenix King, dents and dings appearing on its armor, and Athrun seemed momentarily stunned or disoriented, because he did not turn to confront Cyprus or move to put himself out of the Stormhound leader's path. A feral grin on his lips, Cyprus poured on the jump jets and drew back both his blades for a pair of stabs that would strike the Phoenix King right at the base of its wings and take out the reactor and maybe even the cockpit. He was too close to miss now.

He was also too close to do more than widen his eyes in dismay as the intricately detailed feathers of the Phoenix King's wings suddenly lit up with blue thruster wash and bright orangey-red heat glow, before scattering and whirling around the Phoenix King like a blizzard of bloody jet propelled razors. Cyprus felt multiple impacts almost at once, and his screens went dark before he could see if his last strikes had hit home. A discordant tone and Lexi subtly mocking voice told him he'd just been killed, as he regained control over the real life PUMA once more. "That was an excellent try, sir." Glory said after a few seconds. "But I don't think we could have won that fight no matter what. We didn't prepare ourselves correctly. We're really gonna have to spend more time memorizing the capabilities of assault vehicles like Mobile Suits, or else we'll never be able to fight them efficiently. I completely forgot about his BGCS."

"You aren't the only one, Sergeant-Major." Cyprus admitted with a frown. "I too forgot about that. And I let myself be fooled into underestimating him not just once, but on three seperate occasions, including disregarding his Phoenix Feathers, one of his most distinctive attacks. We all need a lot more practice, we let our easy wins of previous days get to our heads."

"Yeah, well, at least we got time to do that, huh?" Glory replied. "Not like there's gonna be a major war anytime soon."

"Certainly not until Orb manages its breakaway from the USN." Cyprus said, with a sigh. "But that's no excuse to slack off now. Let us go report to Dr. Simmons, and congratulate the Ambassador and the Prince. Despite the result, I find I rather enjoyed today's challenge."

"Guess not many people can truthfully comment on how refreshing it is to lose for a change, huh?" Glory chuckled, as the Stormhounds and their PUMAs formed up for the march back down to the beach and the waiting technicians, scientists and royal figures.


	8. Torchbearers

Author Note: Allister appears to be popular, not that I doubted the son of Athrun and Cagalli would be anything but. The base idea for PUMAs came from the Landmates of Appleseed, actually, though obviously PUMAs are a bit bigger. Some kids are just good at video games, what can I say. And Allister, fortunately or unfortunately, has a lot of time alone to play them while his parents are at work. I suppose some of the weapon calibers do seem kind of large, but then again, its been twelve years and more since Ginn's first came out, I don't think it beyond the pale that such relatively large weapons could be reduced in size somewhat. Certainly enough for a 18 foot tall mechanized suit to carry in one or two hands. If by gatorade bottle, you mean the shells are roughly as thick as one, yes, thats an apt comparison, Atrum. And that does not seem too big, again, for an 18 foot tall war machine's primary weapon, though I wouldn't expect it to carry more than a couple hundred rounds of ammo at most. Glad you all like Lexi and Cyprus, you'll get to see more of their banter. And give the Stormhounds time, its like their 4th day in the PUMA's, they're not going to beat a Mobile Suit ace who's been practicing for 12+ years in one of the most advanced and personalized Gundams he's ever had. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Oh yeah... bowing to fan pressure, I have again switched the name of Kira's Orb Gundam, it is now, once more, the Salvation. Griffin was just getting too many slams. I still like all the other ones though, so this may be the last change, unless something absolutely brilliant comes along. Sorry about the delay in posting this chapter, I was on a family vacation and then at a family reunion, had to do the social thing for the past few days. Hope you enjoy this chapter, and I know you'll all enjoy the next one. I think I'm gonna go start writing it now. Happy days ahead for me. Been looking forward to the next one for a long time...

xxxx

**Copernicus Lunar City, Luna, September 18th**

If there was one aspect of his job that irritated him the most, it was doing photo shoots, Shinn reflected with a private scowl that he had learned to carefully keep off his face at times like this. There were some times when they wanted him to adopt an intent, serious look, but at all times he was supposed to keep himself looking inspiring as well. And frowns weren't inspiring, more like intimidating. Or perhaps, depending on his mood and how long he'd been putting up with the photographers, even frightening. And if he messed up a pose shot with the wrong expression on his face, then they'd have to do it over and over again until he got it right, no matter how long it took. It was easier just to play along and be a tolerant doll, that way he could get back to less annoying parts of his life that much faster. Besides, it wasn't like all this wasn't for a good cause or anything, and there was a certain allure in knowing that some of these pictures would become the next generation of military pride and recruitment posters for the Solar Knights.

Luna was on the other side of the studio, undergoing the same sort of mild torture. Unfortunately they'd already done the poses where they were together, so Shinn had little to look forward to until the camera's finally stopped flashing and clicking. His uniform, which was custom tailored by none other than the renowned Gundam-Commander Yzak Joule, who ran an exclusive fashion apparal business in his private life, breathed even better than the regular Solar Knight uniforms and even when fully buttoned and clasped shut for the formal photo shoot, didn't constrict his neck at all, which was his biggest complaint about most military uniforms. They always felt like the collars were choking him. His uniform still incorporated the high collar, but it billowed out wider around his throat while visually still appearing sheer. He most often wore it loose and unbuttoned at the top anyway, but that was just his style, rather than for reasons of comfort.

The standard Solar Knight uniform was still black, white and gold, and Shinn's variation upon it, as the so called "Crystal Knight", replaced the black with a whitish-silvery color that shimmered like pearl in certain lights, and the outer coat was longer, more like a ZAFT uniform, the hems hanging almost to his knees like a small trenchcoat. Shinn personally thought it made him look a little fruity, but if anyone else besides Luna shared that opinion, they were keeping their lips zipped, since Shinn not only had authority to spare to do pretty much as he saw fit, but was also widely acknowledged as the most skilled and dangerous Mobile Suit pilot in the Solar Knights. Truth be told, he liked Luna's "Ruby Knight" uniform, also custom made and fitted by Commander Joule, which replaced the black with dark red and white with a lighter red, much better than his own, though he did also very much appreciate how good it looked on Luna.

The whole "Crystal" and "Ruby" Knight thing was completely overblown in his mind, though he was well aware it was just a publicity stunt, a play up to the romantic image of the Solar Knights, something to get the young, potential recruits all fired up and drooling over. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy his near unique status and all the many benefits that came along with it, he just felt like Shinn Asuka and Knight-Champion Asuka, the Crystal Knight, were two different people, and very few people seemed able to recognize that. He'd already lost track of how many pilots fresh from the academies he'd met that always seemed a bit disappointed when they met him for the first time, commenting on how he always seemed bigger or taller in their impressions of him. He'd been made into a larger than life figure in order to best serve the USN, and no matter his past deeds, he could hardly live up to all the hype about him. It was... bothersome.

Of course, aside from his bouts of personal dissatisfaction and angst, there really wasn't much to complain about for his job, and a whole lot to like. Their quarters at Galileo were huge, bigger than those that even the Admirals and other high ranking officers stayed in, practically a small mansion with three seperate levels, an indoor pool, a small movie theater, and every luxury they could ever want... the softest beds, best tasting food and drinks, prepared for them by a private chef, several private cars, including a limo, huge closets full of custom designer clothing, massive TV's in almost every room, the most advanced VR training setups, incorporating NIC-III technology for the most immersive full sensory experience ever, and valets to take care of all their upkeep chores, such as laundry and clean up. Their pay was off the damn charts as well, Shinn had stopped telling people when they asked, because of the jealous stares, he just said "a lot." now. Money was no longer an issue for them, that was for sure.

Things on the work side weren't too bad either. They were both obliged to stay in top form, physically as well as mentally, and they did have to maintain their proficiency as combatants, both individually and as a team, but they both really enjoyed training to stay at the top of the dogpile anyway, so that was no burden. And they had to do photo shoots, and press appearances, and public events, and act as honor guards for important USN officials sometimes, and conduct training classes for various Solar Knight units, and give speeches or presentations, or appear on tv spots talking about past accomplishments or future plans of the Solar Knights, but everything was done by appointment rather than command, and they were given total free reign to rearrange their schedules as they saw fit, and could take personal days pretty much whenever they pleased.

And all they really had to do was keep smiles on their faces in public, follow the scripts provided for them whenever they were going to be talking a lot, and make sure they didn't lose too often during training exercises, which wasn't hard given their customized and personally tweaked machines easily outperformed the standard machines of regular Solar Knights. Oh, and keep their mouths shut about anything the Solar Knights and the USN did that the public didn't need to know about. Such as providing military arms and supplies to the privately funded and controlled Reclaimer Initiative. Or training to the RI pilots. Or military escorts for FEAR hunting and subject capture teams operating down on New Eden. Or anything going on at the secure labs in the FEAR headquarters on Second Earth 4. That last one was the easiest, as neither Shinn nor Luna had any love for Edenites or Psychics, and if some Edenites had to suffer for the advancement of the human race, well then they should be glad they can do something productive, right?

It had been hard at first, turning a blind eye to the blatant manipulations of the USN leadership as they reorganized the entire human political system to suit their needs in the wake of the Eden Disaster, but just like pulling a trigger, the more they did it, the easier it became. And Rey had held true to his promise, keeping both Shinn and Luna well away from anything unquestionably wrong or illegal. Which wasn't to say they didn't know such things were happening, just that they were so far removed from the bloody edge of the knife that it only took the slightest effort to direct their thoughts and concerns to more productive matters. And no matter how flawed the system was, it still did a lot of good for the majority of people, and that helped salve their consciences as well.

Besides just the lifestyle, the principle rewards for their cooperation and service, as far as Shinn and Luna were concerned anyway, came in the form of the medical support and reconstructive treatments that Luna had received, as well as the preservation of Luna's family, in the house arrest of Meyrin, Luna's little sister, who had been corrupted by Noah Borander during the Eden Disaster. The internal prosthetic surgeries and then cybernetic enhancements that Luna had needed to repair the damage she'd suffered when she was almost cut in half by a 50mm FRALA beam during the Battle of Cape York at the end of the Eden Disaster would have cost tens of millions of dollars or more if they'd been private citizens, and they hadn't been charged a thing. Luna now had several augmented prosthetic organs, including a lung and a kidney, that functioned better than her biological ones, if anything.

They hadn't been able to do much for her reproductive system, besides cosmetic and strucutral fixes and patches, which was a wound to Luna's spirit that would not be going away for a long time, the searing heat of the laser beam having robbed her of the ability to bear children. She'd asked about the possibility of a reproductive system transplant, using cloned organs, but with all the new updated strictures to the Torino Protocols regulating cloning only to use on animals, the medical cloning business, still in its infancy, had died out. Or rather, gone underground, but Luna wasn't she wanted to trust such an invasive and dangerous transplant operation to a black market doctor, especially as one had not been done for almost seventy years, and never with cloned tissue. Plus there was the issue that cloned tissue, at least using current technology, always aged faster and developed weaknesses faster than normal tissue, and the whole thing might be more trouble than it was worth. The Brotherhood had access to better cloning technology, but it was mostly lost and totally outlawed anyway.

As for Meyrin, she was kept safe and secure and under round the clock observation on Second Earth 4, but she wasn't being used as a test subject, despite the fact that she was one of, if not the first person to be turned into an Edenite by Noah's Green EDEN Nano-colony. Meyrin's role in the Eden Disaster, and the details of her time spent aboard the Great Endeavor by Noah's side during the Great Endeavor's deployment to Earth, were still shrouded in mystery. The official version was that Meyrin had been psychically enslaved and turned into Noah's sexual chattel and nothing more, and that she was undergoing psychiatric treatment to help her recover from her ordeal and return to regular life, but that would never actually be allowed to happen. Because the unofficial but much more popular version of events, at least to anyone but Luna, was that Meyrin was at worst an accomplice and much more likely actually a collaborator, a high ranking member of the Brotherhood herself, and Noah's willing and mutual lover.

After an incident shortly after the end of the Eden Disaster, when Meyrin had attacked and almost killed Luna by strangulation, Shinn had being doing everything in his power to keep the two sisters seperate from each other. Luna still loved Meyrin like a little sister, but she was unfortunately deluding herself when she thought Meyrin returned the affection. After Luna had inflicted maiming and disfiguring injuries to Noah during his imprisonment, Meyrin had showed her true colors, and Shinn at least was never going to forget that. Rey seemed to feel the same way, and though his relationship with Rey had grown cool because of events in the past, their mutual concern for Luna brought them together on this, and so far they had kept Luna to one short visit per year, and those only took place with a wall of armored glass between the sisters.

At last the photographers were satisfied with the number and quality of their pictures, this time at least, and Shinn and Luna were allowed to go on their way, with only a moderate amount of fawning to brush aside. Not only were they wealthy and famous, but they were very well politically connected, often given opportunities to eat and socialize with the highest ranks of the USN political and military officers, including Solar President Durandel himself, and it never failed that some people would try and suck up to them in order to satisfy their own ambitions. Getting angry with them, despite being Shinn's first reaction, was rarely helpful, and they had gradually learned to just ignore them completely, and people would quickly get the hint. It wouldn't make them happy, but they would get the hint, and there wasn't much they could say or do against illustrious and beloved personages like Shinn or Luna.

They didn't say anything to each other on the elevator ride down from the Copernicus loft where the photo shoot had taken place, waiting in companionable silence as the floor numbers blurred by, until they reached the parking garage area. A few button touches on a control he kept in one pocket had their car, a luxury sedan, rolling up to pick them up a minute or so later. All automobiles were automated on Copernicus, driven by Namara, just like the PLANTS, though the cars of certain political and military officials, including Shinn and Luna, could be taken off the computer control grid and driven manually in an emergency. There was no need for that today, as Shinn and Luna got into the spacious back seat area together, and Shinn told the car to take them back to their Copernicus apartment, one of several they had in various lunar cities and even the PLANTS, so that no matter where in space they were doing business, they had a home to stay at. Taking the tram or suborbital hopper back to Galileo would take an hour or so, they'd do it in the morning, there was no more pressing business between now and then.

As soon as the door shut, they both sighed heavily, within a second or so of each other. Trading amused, conspirital grins, they settled back to relax, their hands entwining on the seat as Luna leaned over and rested her head on Shinn's upper arm and shoulder with a contented mumble. Shinn used his other hand to unbutton and unfasten his uniform top so that it hung loose and open from the midchest up, as was his preffered style, then reached over to take Luna's other hand, bringing it up to his lips so he could kiss her knuckles. "I thought I was gonna go crazy in there." Shimm muttered. "Really, ten more minutes and I'd have started trashing the place. No more photo shoots for a while, okay?"

"I thought you looked great in those photos though." Luna replied softly. "I certainly wouldn't mind framing a few on a wall somewhere."

"Who needs pictures when you can get the real article to pose however you like just by tilting your head, batting your eyes and crooking a finger?" Shinn answered with a smirk. "I don't see why they don't just take photos of my uniform and CGI me in as the need arises. If they got Nam to help, they'd never know the difference."

"Because they need an excuse to waste your time of course." Luna told him teasingly. "They can't just leave you to play your training games all day long."

"We all must sacrifice for the good of the USN and humanity, huh?" Shinn paraphrased a USN military recruiting poster slogan. "Even if it means wasting our time posing for a bunch of fruity artists."

"Well, you're right. But fortunately I can think of much better ways to spend time now that our schedule is done for the day." Luna answered, dropping her head onto his shoulder, her face briefly illuminated and then cast back into shadow every other second or so as the car passed by streetlamps and lighted buildings. It was always night on Luna, at least those parts that had a view of the sky, which, just like her first time on Earth during the early history of the Solar Knights, had taken some getting used to, since Luna was from the PLANTS, which had constant daylight. Now she'd experienced it all... constant light... alternating periods of light and dark... and now constant dark. In a way, she reflected with a momentary sourness, it was metaphorical for the directions her life had gone. But Shinn's warm presesence beside her reminded her that nighttime and darkness weren't always bad things... they could be very enjoyable and liberating in the right company.

"I hate to put a dampner on the direction of your intentions, but my schedule isn't quite done, just yet." Shinn said, with a dry mouth. No matter that he and Luna had been an official couple for seven years now, and lovers slightly longer than that, he still always got a bit nervous and... tingly, in a good way, at the thought of going to bed with Luna, in the biblical sense. Though most often it was nowhere particularly near an actual bed. "I hate to say it, really, I do, but I have to keep to my training regime or I'll never get better. I have thirty minutes of sword practice I have to do tonight." He said, tensing as he waited for a snide remark or other unfavorable reaction. Not that Luna usually reacted that way, but all girls were inherently volatile, in Shinn's experience. A guy could never tell how they would react to being thwarted, even temporarily.

"That's all right." Luna said, the throaty purr of her voice unchanged. "I need to get changed and freshen up a bit anyway, after wearing this uniform all day long." Luna had even more distaste for her ostentatious Ruby Knight clothing than Shinn did for his own uniform. She preferred being in her flight suit as much as possible. "So practice with your sword and then when you've worked up a sweat, you can come and join me in the shower. We'll get all nice and clean while playing very, very dirty."

"Well, I think that's about the best incentive to train hard I've ever had." Shinn admitted with a hard swallow, as he began looking forward to sword practice with even more eagerness than before. Mobile Suit's equipped with a Neural Interface Control system, such as his Gundam, the Transcendance and the Solar Knight Paladin's Excalibers were fitted with, included complex programming that allowed the pilot to utilize certain skillsets, such as wielding a sword or flying, like they were born to it. However, while the system would allow you to wield a sword or whips or claws or whatever, the computer programs could only add so much skill, so many basic moves. To truly excel, especially in a Gundam that was built for close range melee combat, a pilot had to go further and personally educate himself in the skills he would be utilizing. Some of that involved logging many, many hours in a simulator piloting the Transendance in mock fights and exercises. Another part was learning how to actually wield a heavy two handed sword himself, mastering it and adapating his experiences to later training fights in an endless cycle.

Their apartment was at the top of a high rise residential tower in the southern districts of the greatly expanded city, in the section where the rich and famous lived, or at least where they lived when they were away from their grand and isolated estates further out in the boondocks of Luna. Luna's population was concentrated in its megacities, leaving huge tracts of land uninhabited and even largely unclaimed. If you had enough money... and it was a significant amount... you could carve out a personal habitat dome pretty much anywhere you wanted outside the city limits, though you were responsible for either buying air and water and heat from the nearest city, or providing your own. The same for transit back and forth. Some of the estates were like small cities themselves, with hundreds of people living in and around them, others were like military fortresses, armed with outdated but still dangerous weapons from the Isolation and pre-Eden Disaster era's.

The area surrounding their tower was mostly parks and ponds, recreational and play areas for those with money and influence to spare. In an era of humanity where wealth was measured more in square footage than it was in millions of dollars, anyone who lived in the midst of open space devoted to nothing other than recreation was very much at the height of society, since most Earthlings lived in small, one to three room apartment style mass habitation complexes that had anywhere from ten to fifty thousand people living in them. Detachments of USN miltary police provided security for the area, keeping out undesirables and those without clearance, segregating the wealthy from the pedestrian crowds. Shinn and Luna were of course instantly recognized and waved through the subtle security cordon with all due haste, and they barely even registered the momentary slowdown as Nam sent their credentials to the officers doing the screening.

The parking garage was, as ever, half empty when they arrived, and they parked in a reserved spot right next to the elevators. Shinn sometimes thought it kind of funny, that he and Luna, though certainly well off by most standards, were still paupers compared to everyone else who lived in this area, and yet they had the best apartment suite and the best parking spot and were generally treated like royalty. It paid to have friends in high places, even if not strictly monetarily. Luna input the security code on the elevator that allowed it up to the penthouse level, and they rode up in companioanble silence, though luna did enjoy seeing Shinn break out in a bit of a sweat whenever she shot him a smouldering look with half lidded eyes. She didn't have to try to be sexy with Shinn, pretty much anything and everything she did when she was in the mood turned him on, but when she did put some effort into it, his reaction was just too cute and priceless!

They saw their only neighbor on the penthouse level, a shipyard tycoon heavily involved in building capital warships for the Solar Protection Fleet, who lived across the spacious hall from them, who was leaving for some sort of business meeting as they were arriving. The man, who was older than Luna and Shinn put together by at least a decade, nodded respectfully at them, despite the fact that he made enough money every day to eclipse their yearly earnings, and he stepped aside to wait for them to clear the elevator deferentially. They nodded thank yous at him, striving to be polite, though they'd probably only ever exchanged a few sentences of actual words with him, and it was with a small sense of awkward relief that they let themselves into their apartment as the elevator doors were closing behind him on his way down to his car, probably a significant walk away through the garage.

Luna gave Shinn a peck on the cheek and a squeeze on his hand to remind him that there was more to come when he was ready, and then headed off for the master bedroom, which involved going up a flight of stairs from the main foyer area. With his cheek feeling like it had been branded with a red hot iron, Shinn went the other way, descending a short flight of steps to a recreation and sitting area. A push of a button on a wall moved the TV and furniture away from the middle of the room on hidden tracks in the flooring, clearing a wide space of carpeted floor for his use. A concealed cubby in the wall held his training materials, from where he'd stashed them earlier in the day.

Of course the sword wasn't an exact replica of the Transcendance's QC zweihander, since a Mobile Suit was far stronger in comparison to the size of its weapon than a human could ever be, so instead of a full six foot long, foot wide blade, Shinn's practice sword was a little less than five feet long, and about three inches wide. It was made from mono-edged steel, and could cut through most metals as easily as it would cloth, requiring him to be very careful with swinging it, less he carve up a wall or the furniture. In addition to the sword itself, Shinn slipped on heavy gloves and weighted arm and leg hands, since this was purely sword technique training, not combined movement and sword attacks. He wanted to make himself slow in training, so that when he put the same effort in during a battle, he would strike faster and harder.

A two handed sword was a much different animal from the one handed swords that had been a staple of the knightly or cavalry image for as long as history could remember. It wasn't necessarily slower than a one handed blade, except for the really fast swords like a rapier, it just moved differently... you wanted to wield ir more like a quarterstaff when parrying or blocking, minimal movements at the grip to glance or deflect strikes rather than attempting to twist and contort your grip to meet a strike full on. And you had to put your full body behind each and every movement, shifting your balance and weight to counter the momentum of the heavy sword, sweeping it around fluidly, rather than the jerky darts of some one handed swordplay, done with just the wrist and lower arm. You didn't swing at an opponent, you swung past him, striking a whole plane at once, putting all your power into the swing to cleave through multiple foes, or through heavy armor and to knock down or break your opponent's weapon. You treated the blade like a bludgeon with an edge, and hammered your enemy into submission. Few could withstand more than one or two direct strikes before their arms went numb or they were bowled over.

However, you had to be careful not to over commit, especially against faster or very agile opponents, because once the blade was in motion it was very difficult to change its course more than a few degrees up or down, so if your opponent had anticipated your attack, they could duck or dodge out of the way and you would leave yourself open to retaliation. Of course the Transcendance wasn't equipped with only a sword, it also had its finger claws and forearm mounted heat whips, which were better weapons to employ against the most agile of foes, but Shinn was working on countermoves for dealing with people that would inevitably try to get inside his guard as well. Most of it involved counter punching, taking one hand off the sword hilt to shove or punch or claw at someone trying to get in close, but other tactics included leg or knee strikes and hilt maneuvers. He also had his wings and the Positron field emitters in their tips, but he couldn't exactly practice with those without access to a simulator or the Transcendance.

And then of course there was Luna to consider. Most fast and agile foes, those few that exceeded the dominating speed and agility of the Transcendance itself, usually preferred to stay at range, away from the sword and claws and whips and slamming Positron shields of the Transcendance, which made it a very rough foe to face eye to eye and blade to blade. But by staying far away from Shinn, they put themselves square into Luna's crosshairs, and given that she practiced against Shinn, the amazing speed and manueverability of a NIC and FPR equipped machine was nothing special to her markmanship skills. Without taking his Positron shields into account, Luna was shooting him down with a single shot well over 80 percent of the time already, and getting better all the time. Drop that by maybe ten eprcent to account for personal familiarity, and it was still a very scary hit percentage. And when it came to the "Gram" super penetrating launcher, one hit was all she needed.

Yes, Luna to consider. Shinn's swings faltered to a halt as lurid images... more like not too distant memories... of Luna humming lightly to herself in the shower as she soaped up her hair and body assailed his mind and focus. He tried to shake them off, tried to concentrate on his training, but he was forced to give up before too many more minutes passed. The tantalizing images of Luna washing herself and plaintitively watching the bathroom door, soap suds running down her shoulders, across her breasts, down her stomach and between her thighs were just too much for a hot blooded man of Shinn's willpower to resist. He was lightly sweating from the exertion of maneuvering the twenty pound blade around his body, and he set the blade down gently on the floor, stripped off his weights, and made a beeline for the master bath. The sound of running water from the shower lent wings to his feet, and he opened the door in a cloud of steam.

"You lasted longer than I expected." Luna's voice said mischeviously from the shower, her body mostly obscured by steam as she sat on the tiled bench that was part of the shower stall, allowing it to be used as a quasi steam bath or sauna as well as a shower.

"I'll finish training after I finish with you." Shinn replied, his voice somewhat rough and hoarse with expectation and desire. Even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. By the time he and Luna were finished with each other, given the kind of mood they both seemed to be in, neither would be in any shape for anything besides cuddling on the sofa while they microwaved frozen dinners to eat and watched movies. Oh well, it wasn't like they had to be up early in the morning... they could sleep in till lunch if they wanted, and then he could hit another bout of sword training before they took the tram out to Galileo for some afternoon exercises with Rey and his Paladins, who were fresh from an inconclusive series of engagements with the terrorist group called the Retributors But all such extraneous thoughts were banished from his head when Luna stood up and came through the water and steam to greet him, like a nymph rising from a riverside grotto, her eyes wide and slightly dilated with desire and her hair slicked down and sleek, just the way he loved it. Life as a Solar Knight wasn't such a bad thing sometimes...

xxxx

**South Pacific Islands, New Eden, September 22nd**

The island was small, just the very tip of a much larger edifice that extended down to the sea floor almost three miles below, an irregular blob of land only a kilometer or so from end to end long ways, and a few hundred meters wide at its widest point. It sloped up sheerly from the water in most spots, save for a single small gravelly beach on the eastern shore. But for all its isolation and tiny size, it flourished with life, as did most places with easy access to water, salt or fresh, on New Eden, with a large population of Blankwood trees arching over beds of blue grass and partisan ferns and a few isolated patches of bloodweed in the low lying areas. Animal life was sparse, a few blight swarm hives in some of the trees, and rat-squirrel like organisms in both the underbrush and the lower tree branches. A lone Wyrm chimera, a descendant of sea snakes, called the island and the surrounding waters its home, subsisting mostly off of fish and retiring to land for a safe place to sleep away from the more dangerous predators of the deeps. He was known to the surrounding human islanders as Goldspear, because of his bright yellow scale coloration, golden eyes and arrowhead shaped skull.

Today, upon returning to the gravelly beach after a fruitless morning of hunting for fish in the mid depth shoals surrounding the seamount isle, Goldspear discovered evidence of an intruder upon his secluded home shores. A contraption of wood and metal, twisted and half broken by the effects of pounding waves, likely from the storm of the night before, was washed up on the rocky shore like a pile of driftwood. Goldspear had not seen its particular like before, but the general look was of one of the two legged prey animals conveyances that they used to cross the water from island to island, since they apparently lacked the ability to swim long distances on their own. In fact they were generally helpless organisms, on land or in the water, and he frankly didn't see how they survived on their own for any length of time. They must have very short life cycles, and must lay dozens of eggs with each breeding, to account for how many of them there were, and how many had to be lost to natural attrition.

Goldspear scanned his domain with the powers of his mind, but didn't register anything much above background threshold. If he could have frowned he would have, but he lacked the facial musculature to accomplish such an expression. A tail flick sufficed to convey the same emotion, scattering pebbles far and wide as he tensed his thirty foot long, foot and a half thick body in agitation. His tongue flickered out and tasted the air, confirming what his nostrils and heat pit sensors were already telling him. Someone, a two legged prey, had been in the wood and metal contraption, and they had gotten out and headed out into the island interior. Sometime in the last few hours. He could still faintly see their footprint heat on the gravel, and could taste their scent on the breeze. But whoever they were, they were able to hide their mind from his casual mental sweep, assisted by the large concentration of Blankwood on the isle. Goldspear considering making a concerted effort to pin down the intruder mentally, but he decided against it. Why not have a little fun, rely on the regular physical senses for once? It wasn't like the intruder had anywhere to run to.

The two legged animals didn't make the best prey, they were too bony and too lean, they went through his system too fast and always came out in really smelly chunks, but any food was better than no food, and they were much easier to catch and kill than the fish, who had grown wary of late, perhaps because he had been too successful in his hunting. It was all cyclical... he would hunt and eat well until the fish grew cautious, then he would go hungry for a time until they forgot, and then he would feast once more. A two legger in the midst of the famine cycle would be far from unwelcome, indigestion or not. Goldspear slithered up the beach and into the underbrush at a leisurely pace, the heat trail of the intruder now much clearer since he was out of the direct sunlight. The trail led more or less where Goldspear expected it would, following one of the ruts he himself had worn into the undergrowth in his daily trips back and forth from resting place to ocean and back. At the end of this rut was the island's sole freshwater spring and pool, and that was where the intruder would most likely be slaking his thirst.

As he slithered along up the rut-path, Goldspear planned out his attack. He would take the prey from behind, lancing forward in his distinctive attack posture, the one that had helped earn his title, where he used the massive muscles of his body to propel his head forward like a spear, slamming his nose into the prey hard enough to shatter bones and pulp organs, hurling the hapless victim through the air or through the water, disabling them with trauma and pain. If they still had some fight in them, he'd follow up with a bite from his poisonous fangs, pumping them full of a toxin that dissolved the prey's nervous system while at the same time paralyzing the muscles. Then would come the constriction phase, where he wrapped his body around the helpless prey and squeezed them into a formless, jelly like mass, which was easy to swallow and digest, especially with his ability to unhinge his jaws so that he could swallow prey three or four times his own body thickness. It just took a little time and contortion, that was all.

A change in the breeze brought the intruder's scent to Goldspear fresh, and his nostrils twitched a few times. This two legger didn't smell quite right, there was something wrong with it. Perhaps it was sickly. That would not be too surprising, if it really had weathered the storm of last night out on the ocean, the two leggers were notoriously fragile, and a sea storm would be more than enough to damage or upset one of them. Well, soon it wouldn't have to worry about its pain anymore, because it would be nice and safely dissolving in Goldspear's gut, all of its worries and troubles forever past. His nostrils twitched again, detecting a rise in agitation pheremones in the scent of the prey. It hardly seemed credible, given that there was still several bodylengths between them, and much undergrowth, but the prey seemed to have noticed his approach! Well, perhaps he had not been at his stealthiest, after all it wasn't like the two legger had anywhere to run, and even on land Goldspear could slither almost twice as fast as a two legger could run, especially through the undergrowth over a short distance.

Well, aware or not, he was close enough for it not to matter, and Goldspear hurled himself the last few bodylengths like an arrow shot from a bow, tasting the air one final time in the final seconds to confirm last minute targeting information before launching himself out of the undergrowth with a full ton and a bit of weight behind him. The two legger, who was relatively long for his species, though still tiny by Goldspear's standards, only six feet from tip to tail, was standing in the shallows of the spring pool, having just been splashing itself with water, like the two leggers did for unfathomable reasons... maybe they were incapable of regulating their internal heat levels or something? The two legger had brown head fur and strange marks, like fresh scars, on its facial region. There was a faint taste of blood on the air, but it was like no blood Goldspear had ever tasted, it was almost like the time he'd swallowed a few rocks when eating a fish once, there was a mineral tang to the otherwise tantalizing smell.

Goldspear processed all this info in the heartbeat or so it took him to soar across the space seperating the undergrowth from the two legger in the shallows, and then his blunt nose was hammering into the two legger's chest and stomach region, striking solidly... curiously solidly actually. Goldspear' nose throbbed where it had bruised itself against the two legger's bones, while the two legger was hurled backwards like a stone skipping across the water, lifted a good three feet into the air and fifteen feet backwards by the crushing blow. The two legger splashed down heavily near the middle of the pool, limbs thrashing frantically in what Goldspear could only assume was agony. Half of its internal organs should have been turned to slurry by that blow after all. A short while later the two legger popped back to the surface, and indeed, the water around it was slowly staining red, but strangely the stain only spread so far before diluting away, as if the bloodflow had suddenly and totally stopped.

The two legger made some of its gooblygook vocal noises, and though he did not understand the content, since he was not in the habit of conversing with food, Goldspear could read the emotional intent just fine. He knew a challenge when he heard it, whether it be a hiss, a roar, a snapping of jaws or a stream of incomprehsible jibber jabber, a taunt was a taunt no matter what language the originator used. No one had ever taunted him after being on the receiving end of one of his head butts before, most creatures were usually dead or far along the path towards that end. Anything big enough to not be bothered by his head butt was not something he would ordinarily be fighting in the first place... he'd seen Gorefin from a great distance once, and had been fortunate that the Lord of the Upper Reaches had not been feeling peckish that day, not that Goldspear would have been but a snack for that worthy being anyway. It had to be a fluke. He must not have struck as cleanly as he thought, despite how his nose was throbbing. Or else this two legger was a mutant and did not have a normal bone structure.

Well, it didn't matter, because now the two legger was in the water, and the water was Goldspear's home ground and hunting turf, and even the fish could sometimes not outswim Goldspear. He arrowed into the water and dove down towards the bottom, able to actively hunt underwater for several hours without needing to return to the surface to breathe. Here he was only down for a few seconds before he arched upwards and drove himself towards the invitingly kicking legs a few feet overhead, opening his jaws and slamming his fangs home deep into the thigh and hip of the prey, more than a pint of milky green venom pumping from the hollow teeth into the tissue and bloodstream of the two legger. Withdrawing the fangs and folding them back against the top of his mouth for safekeeping, Goldspear dived for the bottom once more, deploying his secondary set of ripping and tearing teeth from behind his gums, while simultaneously body/tail slamming the struggling prey, lifting the two legger fully out of the water again and hurling it across the pond, even deeper into the center.

Goldspear circled and coiled up along the rocky bottom, looking up as the two legger convulsed and spasmed as the virulent poison coursed through his body, thick streamers of poison and almost purple dark blood leaking from the two puncture wounds in its thighs and hips, each wider than the two legger's thumb was thick. Once more though, the bloodflow cut off, as even underwater the wounds sealed closed with clotting blood in a matter of seconds. And by that point in time the two legger should have already snapped its own spine in poison induced contortions, but it was still treading water on the surface, seemingly little the worse for the wear. The two legger began slapping the water with its palms, the sound echoing like splitting stone underwater, annoying Goldspear's sensitive ears. Another taunt.

Through with playing around, and thoroughly annoyed by the antics of this strangly unkillable two legged prey, Goldspear once more went on the offensive, lifting his head free of the surface just long enough to sink his jagged secondary teeth into the two legger's side, feeling the odd and uncomfortable sensation of his teeth skipping off ribs before sinking deep into meat and muscle between them. With the prey firmly gripped in his jaws, Goldspear dived underwater, and dragged the two legger with him. As helpless as the two leggers were on the surface of water, underwater they were ten times worse, they could barely even hold their breath for a few minutes, less if they were struggling or fighting, and once they started to drown they completely lost the ability to defend themselves. It was just a matter of time now. Not that he was content to wait... he dragged the two legger down near the bottom and then released his vising jaws, clouding the water with filmy dark red fluid from the jagged puncture wounds and scrapes where ribs were visible beneath the torn skin of the prey.

Quick as a flash, before the prey could attempt to escape, Goldspear lopped several body coils around it, trapping its forelimbs and binding its hindlimbs as well, completely trapping it while applying more and more pressure, squeezing the air and then the life from the prey, before crushing its skeleton into paste. At least, that was how it was supposed to work. The air part was going fine, a burst of bubbles escaped from the two legger's mouth, but it wasn't a gasp of pain, and its skeleton was holding up with disturbing ease against even Goldspear's most furious crushing efforts. Face to face with its disconcerting prey, Goldspear was infuriated to find the two legger baring its teeth at him. Two legger facial expressions weren't one of his most expert areas, but anyone could see the mocking nature of this look.

Rearing his neck back as much as possible, Goldspear slammed his nose forward, full into the face of the two legger, snapping its head backwards on its neck. Half stunned, because the two legger's head should have been ripped clean off its shoulders by such a blow, Goldspear reared back to try again. Before he could, the two legger snapped its head forward and buried its own teeth into the scales and upper muscles of Goldspear's closest body coil. The pain was minor, and the injury superficial, but the novelty of being bitten by a two legger was startling enough that Goldspear actually slackened off his constriction for a moment to stare incredulously at his prey. The two legger spat a hunk of bloody flesh defiantly at Goldspear's snout and bared his teeth again, now pink with Goldspear's blood. Now more than a little enraged by this defiant little monster, Goldspear darted his head forward once more... but this was not a nose slam, this was a full on bite, unhinging his jaw partially as he all but swallowed the two leggers head before clamping his jaws tight around the skull.

Goldspear began grinding his jaws back and forth, using his neck to twist his head from side to side to accomplish what his jaw muscles could not, emulating a method of attack he'd seen Gorefin use to good effect, teeth grinding and shredding away flesh, leaving a massive, gory, blood pumping wound behind in the side of a prey. Or, in this case, doing his best to simultaneously crush his enemy's skull while tearing his face and scalp off. Hot blood, tangy and unpleasantly mineral tasting, poured down Goldspear's throat, and he could feel the vibrations inside his mouth as the two legger once more made

with its odd vocal noises, trying to talk even while Goldspear was quite literally eating his face! That was the final straw, and Goldspear unleashed the power of his mind, which he had been saving back for the fun of a challenge until now.

Though able to employ a wide range of mental tricks and techniques, Goldspear was most accomplished with battering his way into the subconscious of his prey and shutting down their active awareness, in essence forcing them to fall into a coma like sleep, which of course made them all but helpless against his attacks. Fed up with the apparently unkillable two legger, Goldspear would just swallow the irritating thing whole and living after it stopped struggling, and let his digestive stomach juices take care of the rest. It might make for some painful contortions later on when he had to get rid of the bones, but he had gone beyond mere hunger now, and was operating with vindictive anger. He would eat this prey or die trying.

Its mental defenses were pitiful, even for a prey animal, and Goldspear slithered right over and through them like he would through a screen of grass stalks, smashing his way deep into the two legger's mind. Even as he coiled his way into the core of his prey's mind, Goldspear hissed in distaste... he could see why the outer shell of this two legger's mind was so flimsy, the interior was rotten and putrefying, filled with a mental stench and feel that was quite irritating to experience. Random, incomprehensible visions of blood and violence and pain tried to claw their way into Goldspear's head, but his own mental scales were thick and doughty, and the gibbering memories and visions could find no purchase for their fangs on his mental hide. However, while the prey could not harm him with its weak mind, neither, for some reason, could Goldspear seem to hurt it. Every time he thought he had its consciousness coiled up tight, it would wriggle free from his grip. The damn thing just WOULD NOT fall asleep for more than a moment or two!

Goldspear flicked his tongue in exasperation, not even thinking about it, and it wasn't until his tonguetips slapped wetly against bloody raw flesh that Goldspear remembered he had his jaws locked around the prey's head. The moment after that, he realized he'd made a mistake, because the prey wriggled its head a bit and clamped its own jaws down tightly on Goldspear's tongue, gnawing and worrying its teeth until it bit clean through! The pain was intense, crippling even, as his nerve laden tongue was brutalized and amputated, the worst pain he'd ever suffered in his entire life. With his mental fangs sunk deep into the consciousness of its foe, the sensation was transmitted into the two legger as well, a feeling like fire burning off all its fingertips at once, but where Goldspear was crippled by the agony, his mind and body thrown into cramping, spasming disarray, the two legger just smiled. Smiled and laughed.

Recoiling from the pain of the maiming injury, Goldspear lost his mental focus and his toothy grip upon the two legger's head, tearing away a huge swathe of flesh and skin as he did so, but though its face was mostly reduced to wet, red muscle and raw meat, the two legger's wounds quickly scabbed over and it seemed little the worse for the wear overall. Uncoiling from around the prey, Goldspear writhed away through the water, desperate to put some distance between himself and the first foe to inflict such a grievous, not to mention personal, injury upon him in his entire short life. This fight wasn't over yet, he just needed a breather, needed to get control of himself and the gnawing pain in his mouth, and then he'd come back and kill that two legger if it was the last thing he ever did!

However, the two legger was now moving on the offensive, moving clumsily through the water with brute force sweeps of its ungainly and ill suited limbs, and it managed to snag ahold of Goldspear's tail with clawing hands and latched on like a leech, not only refusing to be thrown off by whipcrack motions of the Wyrm's body, but actually clawing itself along the neo-snake's body hand over hand, like a man climbing a bridge cable in the middle of a whirlpool! Goldspear could feel the fingerbones of the prey sinking several inches into his flesh as it dug in its grip, like being bitten or stung repeatedly by small animals. How the two legger still had air in its lungs to fuel its mad attack, he could not fathom, they'd been fighting underwater for more than ten minutes by now!

Rearing around, Goldspear struck at his foe with his primary fangs once more, making sure to aim slightly away from the prey, for a limb or its side rather than center of body mass, since the last thing he wanted to do was poison himself with an errant bite! In the end though, that turned out not to be a concern, ebcause as soon as the two legger saw the arrowhead shaped skull spearing his way, he released his grip on the Wyrm's body and floated free of the whipping body. As Goldspear opened his mouth and flipped forward his hollow poisoned fangs, the two legger smiled and darted its hands out to meet the onrushing Wyrm, actually reaching into the open mouth and gripping the fangs near their bases. With a convulsive heave and twist of its wrists, the two legger tore Goldspear's fangs out by the roots, shortly before the Wyrm slammed headfirst into his body and bowled him through the water.

With clouds of blood now leaking from his mouth, from the tip of his severed tongue and the two skull deep gouges where his poison fangs had used to be, Goldspear had had enough. With the damage to his tongue he was effectively blinded beyond a range of a body length or two, his eyes never having been developed for distance vision, and with the loss of his poison fangs, his ability to subdue prey was significantly hampered. He was facing tough times ahead already, and the longer he stayed in proximity to this devilish two legger, the more damage he was likely to suffer! It was time to cut his losses and cede the field, despite the humiliation of losing a battle against a creature about an eighth his size. But this was no normal two legger!

The two legger wasn't done though, as Goldspear effectively ran it over, it lashed out with its arms and grabbed hold of Goldspear just behind the head and limpeted on to his neck with arms and legs. At first Goldspear thought the thing was trying to strangle or constrict him, though for all its strength he could barely even feel a reduction in his air capacity. And then he realized that it was just bracing itself, as one hand swept up and then hammered down, one of Goldspear's own ripped out fangs held like a knife! Digging the fang into the Chimera's hide, the two legger waggled it back and forth, digging out a deep, gushing puncture wound, before leaving it embedded in the flesh about halfway, then drawing back its hand and slamming it down on the base of the fang once more, piledriving the fang all the way inside Goldspear's body, piercing muscle, shattering several ribs and puncturing his lung, which ran almost the length of his entire body! Frothy gore plumed from the wound, expelled at high pressure by the air escaping from the deflating lung.

Goldspear bucked and writhed and coiled about himself in a frenzy, trying to throw or scrape the two legger off, but the beast clung to him like a barnacle and could not be shifted! With brutal determination the two legger felt along Goldspear's hide until it detected the pounding vibrations of the Chimera's heart at their strongest. He then stabbed down with the other captured fang and began working it into place above the Wyrm's heart. Goldspear could feel the triumphant intent of its foe, and real fear overwhelmed the Chimera for the first time in its life, and he threw his body into a series of convulsive coils and twists that had him bending so hard he could feel vertrebrae and ribs snapping and splintering down the length of his body. It still wasn't enough to dislodge the two legger, who had one hand all but embedded in Goldspear's side, its ankles locked together beneath his stomach, as it raised its free hand high and slammed its fist down on the second embedded fang, punching it deep into Goldspear's body cavity and impaling his pounding heart, shredding the muscle.

The Chimera shuddered and jerked spasmodically as his heart tore itself to pieces around his own fang, and he was only dimly aware of the devilish two legger releasing its hold on his neck, gripping hand tearing out a gobbet of flesh and muscle as the two legger turned and stroked strongly for the surface of the pond, which was rapidly becoming fouled with blood and gore leaking from Goldspear's grievous and mortal wounds. His strength draining away even faster than his life's blood, Goldspear could not make his body work, could not swim, could not do anything but hang limp in the water and slowly sink towards the bottom, trailing blood slicks like a two legger shipwreck would oil. With a monumental effort he turned his head and looked up at the dim, blurry form of the two legger, as it splashed along the distant surface towards shore. _WHAT... ARE... YOU...?_ Goldspear asked, as his consciousness started to fade away.

_I am the end of all, the whetstone of humanity, the eyes of the abyss..._ The two legger's mental voice was but a whisper, though for all Goldspear knew it might have been shouting. The two leggers were generally so weak it was hard to tell the difference. _I am Zacharis Frost._ Goldspear was still struggling to think of a reply when his mind went dark. Back up on the surface, in the shallows, on the dirty beach, Frost collapsed to his hands and knees, coughing and vomiting as he expelled the water from his lungs, internal nanomachines reverting to letting his organs take oxygen from air, rather than chemically manufacturing it from water. He could not drown, not like a regular human could, not in water. Only in a liquid that contained no oxygen molecules could he suffocate, and even then he could last for several hours, longer if he kept activity to a minimum, before his internal nanomachines could no longer efficiently supply his body with oxygen.

When he could breathe normally again, Frost smiled, through his ruined and torn apart face. He smirked, he grinned, he started to chuckle. The chuckle turned into a giggle, the giggle into a laugh and the laugh into a bellowing of amusement that echoed around the entire small island, stilling the buzzing of the Blight Swarms in their nests and sending the myriad and sundry small animals scurrowing for the safety of their burrows and hides. He capped it off with a howl like no beast could ever emulate, braying his satisifed victory call out to the heavens themselves in challenge. "I'M COMING FOR YOU! I'M COMING FOR YOU ALL! I AM THE EYES IN THE ABYSS! I AM THE DARKNESS IN THE SOUL! I AM THE END OF ALL! I AM THE WHETSTONE OF HUMANITY! I AM ZACHARIS QUENTIN FROST! AND I AM COMING FOR ALL OF YOU! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"


	9. Conflagration

Author Note: duh duh Duhhnnn...

xxxx

**Off the Coast of old Thailand, New Eden, October 7th**

"Are we there yet daddy?" A high pitched voice asked from the seat behind his, where his daughter was sitting, kicking her legs idly as she stared out one of the cockpit windows, her chin propped on one hand, her elbow on the armrest. Kira took his eyes off the instruments and forward viewports for a moment to shoot his daughter a gimlet stare. Not only was this not that long a flight, comparatively speaking, but Aoi had perfectly clear access to their flight data on her personal laptop anytime she wanted it, and could probably even make out the main screens if she craned her head a bit in her chair. His daughter knew as well as he did how close they were to their destination, probably to within a few seconds margin, she was just asking because she was bored, and so she had decided to afflict someone else for her amusement. Though Aoi was undeniably his daughter, with waist length straight brown hair and the periwinkle blue eyes of her mother, she really acted much more like her Aunt Cagalli in his opinion.

His son Akira on the other hand, sitting in the chair to Aoi's right, behind the copilot's chair where Lacus was sitting, generally held himself aloof from the petty bickering and attention garnering most children of his age group tended to indulge in whenever they felt the spotlight turn away from them. At times Kira and Lacus worried about their son's social development compared to that of his peers, he seemed much more content to play by himself with his computer than to go outside and spend time running or swimming or doing any of the activities his younger sister enjoyed so much. Just about the only one who could willingly drag him from his self imposed isolation without resorting to cajoling or guilt inducing was Allister, Cagalli and Athrun's son, and sometimes Roy Elsman as well. And even then, Akira seemed content to hang in the background as much as possible, rarely taking the limelight, and not talking much. A boy of few words, vocal or psychic, that was Akira.

For all that he had a beautiful voice and pink hair, just like his mother, in those very rare times when he could be convinced to show it off, and was already showing signs of a desire for following his mother along her own youthful path into the musical arts. He was just so shy... just like Kira half remembered he himself was at that age. If it weren't for Athrun coming over and befriending him... Kira shook his head, not wanting to dwell on might have beens. It was just crazy how much of himself he saw in his children, and how much of his friends he saw in theirs. Even Violet Finch, who also got along with with Akira, as they were both serious, focused and altogether grown up and mature little kids. In fact, Violet reminded him a little too much of Cyprus at times, enough to make him slightly uncomfortable when he saw Violet and Akira playing cards or chess or some sort of computer game together, to all outward looks perfectly contentedly. Not that he would ever overtly interfere in the social relationships of his children, at least not except to preserve their safety, but... his son and Cyprus's daughter... it was enough to give any man chills.

"I am not!" Aoi said sharpely, taking her head off her chin to reply vehemently to some comment her older brother had made on the psychic plane. She frowned and pouted at him furiously. "Mooooommm... Akira's touching me with his midn and I don't like iiiittt...!"

"Oh, be quiet you big baby." Akira retorted out loud, with a withering look of his own. "Grow up."

"Moooooommmm! Akira is making short jokes about me again!" Aoi complained.

"I am not!"

"You are too!"

"I am not!"

"You are too!"

"I am..."

"AKIRA! AOI!" Lacus turned around in her chair and gave them both a glare. "Sit in your chairs and be quiet! Don't even think at each other. If you keep up this senseless bickering, I'll give you both something to cry about, just you wait! We're almost there, so don't test my patience anymore. If I hear or perceive another word between the two of you, it'll be no dessert for an entire week, do you understand me?"

"Yessss Mooomm... geeze..." Aoi pouted.

_She started it..._ Akira added with a sigh of his own.

"Don't antagonize your mother, kids, you know better." Kira cut in with a bit of sharpness of his own. You would be hard pressed to find a more gentle and understanding pair of parents than him and Lacus, but that didn't mean they were soft on their kids when it came to manners and discipline. Some parents they knew would let their kids get away with just about any behavior, because they couldn't deal with children throwing temper tantrums, or because they were afraid to be seen as tyrannical or abusive when handing out punishments to their children. But there was nothing abusive in a raised voice or stern talking to now and then when children started to get out of line, and though it was a matter of debate, a stinging palm smack on the behind did tend to convince a chronic misbehaver of the costs of their acting out in Kira and Lacus's experience.

Cagalli was one of those parents that had a tough time disciplining kids, not least because she herself had been pretty wild and undisciplined her entire life. Complicating the situation even further was he mounting guilt over constantly being away from Allister while he was growing up all alone in the Villa Pacifica, and thus Cagalli could rarely muster up the gumption to draw the line in the sand, not that Allister frequently crossed it anyway. And those times he did, he found his father, who had grown up in a very strict household indeed, waiting for him with stern words, a disappointed look and then generally a heart to heart conversation about why what Allister had done was wrong, often followed by a revoking of gaming and computer type privileges. Kira didn't know how Dearka and Miri kept their kids in line, though he would bet money it had more to do with Miri than Dearka. And Yzak and Katie were a complete mystery, probably Katie was the disciplinarian, despite Yzak's temperment, because the Joule twins tended to have their father twisted around their slender little fingers pretty as you please.

Antsy children silenced for the moment, though the glowers they were shooting at each other and the backs of their parents heads, when they thought Lacus and Kira weren't looking, told him that it was a temporary truce at best, Kira turned back to his controls and instruments, as he guided the shuttle towards their destination. Or rather, kept his hands on the controls and watched the autopilot to make sure that nothing was going wrong, and nothing was. The type of shuttle they were flying bore strong resemblances to the one that Noah Borander had once used as his personal airborne transport, though theirs was much less opulent, since it wasn't a privately owned vessel, but rather one of two long range, surface to orbit capable craft owned and operated by The Clyne Foundation, the charity conglomeration organization that Lacus had organized and founded, and continued to be a senior boardmember of.

The shuttle's exterior was painted a very distinctive and eye catching bright pink color, very nearly the shade of Lacus's trademark hair, though the interior was much more tasteful and subdued in its color schemes of light blues and creams, with a large cockpit up forward, which connected to a pair of small bedrooms and a sanitary closet type facility, and the rest of the interior space was given over either to the machinery that operated the shuttle or cargo space. _Envoy 2 _and its sister vessel, _Envoy 1_, served TCF as a means to get charitably donated aid out to those in need, whether they be in the far reaches of human space or on one of Orb's outlying islands, in bulk and quickly, without having to rely on military or sometimes unreliable civilian companies to do the transporting. This was especially useful when delivering aid to those areas of Earth, actually better termed New Eden, outside Orb's Glasshouse.

While the USN military maintained an orbital blockade of most of New Eden, preventing any easy orbit to surface contact or exploration missions, all those mighty warships could do precious little against a shuttle flying in the lower atmosphere. And it would take one hell of a rogue military commander to have the balls to order a fire mission on a bright pink shuttle known to be registered to an organization owned by none other than Lacus Clyne. Contact with those living on New Eden was technically illegal without government sanction, indeed the fact that there were even people still living on New Eden was a open secret, but no one was going to actually lift a finger to stop Lacus Clyne from dispensing aid where she saw fit to do so, not anyone who didn't want to get their heads bitten off or lynched, politically speaking.

Starting a few years ago, TCF had began running regular missions into the "Green Zone" beyond Orb's Glasshouse, visiting those southern Pacific islands closest to Orb. Many of the islands were deserted, some so overtaken by new vegetation that all signs of previous human presence had been erased totally. But others had small villages of Edenites, those who had survived the Green EDEN and come through as new Ultimate Coordinators. Indeed, one larger island even had a full sized town of over thirty thousand Edenites living together, it was known as Freeport, and it was the economic and political hub of most of the Oceania islands Edenite populations, probably close to a hundred thousand Edenites all told, spread out in small groups across several thousand square miles of ocean. It was to these groups that TCF gave aid, in the form of medical and food supplies, agricultural tools, construction materials and even some technological items like radios, power generators and small vehicles, like tractors or workboats.

Most of the TCF missions went out with a small crew of volunteers, to coordinate with the locals and unload the cargo, the volunteers underwent special training and had in depth cultural briefs, usually delieved by none other than Lacus herself, to help prepare them for the world beyond the Glasshouse. With access to Orb's "Red Pill" anti Green EDEN medicine, TCF volunteers didn't have to worry about having to wear fully self contained environment suits all the time when outside of Orb, which was both a blessing and a curse. The freedom of movement and interaction was an immense relief to many people. But even without residual Green EDEN poisoning, the environment of New Eden was extremely hostile for the unwary or unprepared, and an armored environment suit could do a lot to save the uninitated from a nasty injury or a painful death.

But in truth, the people that did the most work outside the Glasshouse, and all first contact work with new settlements, were none other that Lacus and Kira themselves. Both having been born Ultimate Coordinators, Kira by design and Lacus by accident, they had nothing to fear from the Green EDEN in the atmosphere, and were much better adapted to surviving on New Eden itself, being much less susceptible to sickness or infection or poison from accidentally handingly a thorny flower vine, for example. And by virtue of being psychic, they could more easily interact with the psychic background inherent to New Eden to attune themselves to incoming danger before it became a real threat, avoiding predators, many of whom had few compunctions about attacking humans, before a confrontation became necessary for example.

And in the past year or so, they had started bringing Akira and Aoi with them, at least on those missions they deemed safe, when visiting settlements they had been to before, or larger towns where dealing with the harshest aspects of the environment weren't a part of everyday life. As the children of not only two Ultimate Coordinators, but two Ultimate Coordinators who had reached full maturity, experiencing and passing through the complex and draining period of biological change known as Second Puberty, Akira and Aoi were Edenites through and through, though technically speaking they were known as Neo-Humans. Edenites was a broad term, used to describe everything sentient living on New Eden, so Ultimate Coordinators and Neo-Humans were both Edenites, but still quite different from each other. Though the exact specifics of different how and why were still unknown. Akira was the oldest living Neo-Human, and he was only eight, not exactly in his prime.

They brought the children with them because, like it or not, they were Edenites, and more pressingly, they were psychics, both Actives like their mother. Their friends and extended family were all Earthlings of one flavor or another, and while they would never love any of them any less for who they were, there was an undeniable gulf between them and their peers and their peer's parents. A connection that could not be fully made. It wasn't something that came up in day to day, polite conversations, but Lacus and Kira were both strongly considering a more permanent visit to New Eden once Akira and Aoi had gone through their first puberty, at age 12 to 13. As dual citizens of Earth and New Eden, it was only fair to introduce their children to the world and the culture they were born to inherit eventually. No matter what the USN wanted people to believe, there was a whole living world out there, and it couldn't be ignored forever. Perhaps it was presumptious of them to start preparing their children to be a bridge between Earthlings and Edenites already, but they were in a unique position to do just that, and for the good of all.

After all, Allister would grow up to be the next King of Orb, and maybe even Chief Representative as well, like his grandfather, and Akira and Aoi would grow up as his friends and maybe even advisors, much like Lacus and Kira were for Cagalli now. As the most independent and progressive minded Earthling nation, if anyone was going to forge peaceful and mutually beneficial relationships with New Eden and Edenites, it would be Orb. Just by growing up with Akira and Aoi, Allister was recieving a first rate education in the idiosyncrasies of Edenites, from their psychic potential to their inhuman eyes with pupils of metallic gold or silver to the way their bodies changed and adapted to biological and environmental stresses and the waytheir keen senses allowed them to interact so deeply and subtly with one another, so that even Latents seemed to be in telepathic communication with each other at times as they responded to pheremone and postural cues invisible and undetectable to an Earthling. With this intimate understanding of Edenites, Allister would have a big leg up on all other diplomats.

Besides just that social interaction, Lacus and Kira were also gathering more publicly sharable information on New Eden, through the camera recorder eyes of Birdy, Kira's old childhood mechanical bird and now Aoi's buddy, made by Athrun and recently refitted and upgraded with modern technology and Batty the bat, another mechanical friend made for Akira by Athrun as his fifth birthday gift. With the mechanical pets perched upon head or shoulder, they were collecting gigabytes of video data on the everyday life and culture of Edenites of all ages and geographic locations, at least within the greater geographic location of Oceania. This data they used to help train TCF volunteers, and also, somewhat grudgingly, the Stormhounds and other Orb military groups and diplomats. Also they were planning on compiling a full length feature film documentary about life on New Eden, and using it to counter the propoganda films of the Reclaimer Initiative, which Kira and Lacus found to be both offensive and completely inaccurate in the portrayal of Edenites as ignorant savages and post apocalyptic barbarians.

Truth be told neither of them were at all happy with the way the USN was treating the issues of New Eden and the Edenites themselves, publicly pretending that there were no problems, or even survivors at all, while at the same time participating in the circulation of ideas and evidence that painted the Edenites as barely above the level of animals, grubbing naked in the mud for roots and berries, savages that needed a helping hand of Earthlings to once more contribute to society in a meaningful way. Some of the propoganda films they had watched were so grossly inaccurate and fake, obviously having been shot with specially paid actors in a sealed set somewhere in space, that it would have been funny, if not for the all too serious and condemnational tone of the films. Someone, somewhere, and they had a pretty good idea who, was doing all they could to skew the opinions of Earthlings everywhere to the point where they would either disregard their Edentie counterparts and any suffering they might experience as less than human, or actively fear them as savage monsters.

Which wasn't to say that there was nothing for Earthlings to be concerned about. Even Lacus could admit that some Edenites could pose a great threat to Earthlings, if allowed to run out of control. People like the late Noah Borander for instance. Or even Lacus and Kira themselves, though of course they kept themselves under the tightest of personal controls. Like any weapon, pyschic powers could be grossly misused, intentionally or unintentionally, but the mystique and general vulnerability to psychic powers made most Earthlings fear them more than knives or guns, despite the fact that only the rare few Edenites could actually kill or cause permanent harm with their powers. But the very culture of New Eden revolved around people retaining as much control over their powers and the impulses that fuelled them as possible, for precisely that reason. Violent crime was all but unknown upon New Eden, while it was all but endemic in some Second Earth Colonies. The reason for the lack of murder, rape and assault on New Eden was known as The Wind of Words.

In essence the Wind of Words was like a psychic internet, that connected the thoughts and emotions of almost all sentient creatures on New Eden. And like the internet, data was always flowing back and forth across this psychic network, even if a person was not actively aware of it or participating in a communication of words or ideas. At close range, the emotional states, especially strong ones, like fear, love, anger, fear or sadness, of people could be broadcast to others who could hear the Wind of Words, as clearly as any vocal shout. With people able to experience the consequence of their own violent or spiteful actions in real time, experience how their victims felt at the moment of committing the crime... well, it was an experience few could bear, to say the least, and only the most hard hearted, well trained or unbalanced minds could handle the emotional strain of violent confrontation with another fully sentient, connected mind.

Also just like the internet, a computer, or in this case a psychic person's mind, could not just connect to the Wind of Words randomly, they had to make a concerted effort to forge a connection, usually assisted by others who were already connected, such as siblings, parents or friends. To most Edenites staying connected was as natural as breathing, they learned to do it as soon as they learned to speak, sometimes before, but to Lacus and Katie, among others, while they could sense the psychic information flowing all around them, they really didn't know how to access it themselves. Attempting contact from up in space or from within Orb's Glasshouse was almost impossible, because of the general lack of sufficient psychic background energy in those locations, and while Lacus had connected once or twice on outings, she tended to connect awkwardly and either got flooded with information or only processed a trickle at a time, like an infant, neither of which was exactly a help. She needed someone to show her the proper way to do it, but had yet to become close enough with anyone to ask for such help.

That surprised many of her friends back in Orb, who were well acquainted with her magnificent force of personality and charming nature, which were all but overwhelming when she wanted them to be, and were a large part of her reputation as one of the world's greatest peacemakers... put her in a room, mediating an arguement between even the bitterest of foes and she could keep things civil and progressive through sheer force of personality alone! Surely making a few friends was nothing particularly hard for her? Well, among Earthlings that was true. But a significant fraction of her magnetic charm actually was derived from her Newtype powers, her ability to accurately sense the emotional states of others and react appropriately. It was hardly even a conscious reaction on her part, it just sort of happened. But it did not happen to Edenites, most of whom were well versed in shutting out low level psychic probes like that by the time they hit first puberty, and pressing harder was not only rude, but even grounds for an interpersonal conflict in some cases, as bad or worse than inappropriate physical touching!

Furthermore, most Edenties tended to regard her with less awe than their Earthling counterparts did. There was no denying her past reputation or deeds, and those opened many doors that would have otherwise stayed shut, but they just saw her as a very astute and accomplished Edenite, versus the near legendary and mythical figure she was to some Earthlings. In some ways she enjoyed the degradation in her status, people treated her much more normally, like she liked to be treated, but it was a pain in the butt when trying to make good first impressions, and met more scepticism than faith. Though the Edenites did have a lot to be sceptical about when it concerned Earthlings. Though only a small fraction of them had ever actually met an Earthling, because they were almost all connected through the Wind of Words, the experiences of those few were widely shared, and they were not very good experiences, unfortunately, since most of them came from USN or Reclaimer Initiative forces kidnapping people or slaughtering them wholesale or enslaving them "for their own good" while ruining the natural balance of the environment in their attempts to resettle "Earth".

The pink shuttles of TCF carried a different reputation of course, but it was still more often than not the town constables or sheriffs that met them initially, with weapons close at hand if not actually drawn and pointed, at least until Lacus and Kira had time to meet and greet the welcoming committee for a while. Having Akira and Aoi along helped immensely in allaying the suspicions of townspeople, after all, who would bring their own children along if they intended harm or mischief? Just as bad deeds and experiences were transmitted across New Eden by the Wind, so too were good deeds shared widely, and during their last visit to Freeport, the town leaders had contacted them with a special request from a member of the Garden City government, for a personal meeting. While Freeport was not allied with or controlled by Garden City, the town leaders still spoke about New Eden's pre-eminent city-state with awe and deep respect, and were thus more than happy to pass along the message.

The envoy from Garden City, who's name was Hieronymo and who's position was Consol of Foriegn Affairs, which apparently made him a pretty big deal, according to the Freeport town leaders, was proposing a meeting with Lacus and Kira to thank them for their efforts in bringing aid to the Edenite communities of Oceania, and to talk about the beginnings of a longer term political and maybe even economic relationship with Orb. Private talks with Cagalli and Jiro Kurenai had confirmed that Orb would not be averse to any partnerships that could help them achieve independence from the USN in a peaceful fashion, though they all agreed it was too early to invest much hope just yet, and that things would have to be handled very delicately, as the USN and Durandel would be sure to take a dim view of such a partnership.

The meeting was to take place at a place called "Rex Lodge", which was located in the hilly forests of former Thailand and Vietnam, former component nations of the FNE, and before that, the Republic of East Asia during the Earth Alliance Era. The Yamato-Clyne's were asked to bring only family members or top level members of TCF and to scrupulously avoid bringing any official Orb delegates or diplomats, as this meeting was first and foremost about thanking them for their relief aid efforts, and any other business that might be discussed was strictly off the books. In the end they had decided just to come with themselves and their children, Lacus more than familiar with the burden of high level decision making authority, and Cagalli trusting her to employ that authority for the benefit of all. Though events of the past had strained and cooled the personal relationship between Lacus and Cagalli to "just friends", rather than "confidants", they were still united in their goals for a peaceful future. And the love their children bore for each other was a strong mutual bonder for them as well.

Kira kept a careful eye on the instruments and computer plots as the shuttle roared in over the shoreline, a brilliant golden white stripe of sand in the late afternoon sunlight, sandwiched between a turquoise sea and the deep emerald green jungles of towering Yggdrasilwood and Blankwood trees, and closely packed bushes and ferns that made up the undergrowth. Descending to a height of three hundred meters, and still having to jump up or swerve every now and again to avoid a gargantuan Yggdrasilwood tree that had grown head and shoulders over its lesser brethren, Kira kept both hands on the controls as the shuttle slowly deccelerated from its close to super-sonic cruising speed, putting more power into vertical facing thrusters to keep them airborne with the lower airspeed. He could hear Aoi fidgeting in her seat behind him, but her scent told of excitement rather than boredom, as she could feel the change in flight motion as the VTOL thrusters came online, and she knew they were very, very close now. Even Akira seemed to be perking up more, his head cocked as if listening to something very faint in the distance.

The lodge's location appeared on his monitors within the next few minutes, though it was still not visible to the naked eye. Kira thought the lodge must be just beyond one of the biggest Yggdrasilwood trees he'd ever seen, which had to be at least four hundred meters tall and a good fifty or sixty meters across through the trunk, when he realized that the lodge was in fact partly built into the trunk of the gigantic tree, as landing lights clicked on in an identifiable pattern at the ends of some reaching branches, giving him reference points with which to guide himself through a narrow avenue in the tree's branches. Even as one of the most skilled and experienced pilots alive, Kira found his hands a bit tense on the controls as he guided the somewhat ungainly shuttle very, very carefully under the arching branches, some of which were thicker than the shuttle itself! The afternoon sunlight was blotted out by the tree's branches and needle like leaves, and Kira found himself piloting down towards a wide platform that was lit by spotlamps.

The landing platform seemed to be carved from the living bark and wood of the tree itself, but Kira's keen eyes also picked up bits of more technological braces and expansion materials that extended what had once been a huge knot in a tree branch into a landing platform that could have accomodated a shuttle three times the size of the one they were in, though Kira sure wouldn't have wanted to try piloting such a craft through the approach vector descending through the tree branches! A part of his mind noted that the path was almost certainly deliberately difficult as a security... anyone trying to land or leave in a hurry would be in for a rough, and likely very short, journey. Telling himself that it was just like landing on the top of the Archangel or other Mobile Carrier, and to ignore the fact that the landing platform was still a good eighty meters from the forest floor, Kira set the shuttle down with all the gentleness of a settling feather.

Even before he was done fully making sure the shuttle was down and secure, Akira and Aoi were out of their seats, all but crawling up the walls with exuberance as they peered out of the cockpit windows at the wonderous spectacle of the biggest treehouse they could ever have imagined! They could only see a small part of the lodge from where the shuttle had landed, and that small part was still bigger than the Villa Pacifica! The entire structure, which spread out around the base of the tree before winding up its sides and even penetrating the trunk in some locations, had to be as expansive as a fifty story skyscraper, at the very least. It was less a lodge and more a fortress, though if there were any defenses besides the tree itself, Kira could not spot them. Smiling at his children's excitement and wonder, letting it infect him a bit too, Kira took Lacus's hand in his and the family started making their way to the aft landing ramp, to take their first steps out into this wondrous new place and meet the people that lived there.

xxxx

**Forests of Thailand, near Rex Lodge, New Eden, October 7th, late afternoon**

_I am glad you have come, majestic one._ The smaller form, half hidden by the shadows of the looming trees, said pleasantly, looking off into the near distance, where a group of much larger beings stalked warily through the underbrush, led by one shape larger than any four of the others put together.

_**HOW COULD I NOT? THE TREE GOD HAS FORESEEN THIS. THOUGH THIS PARTICULAR TASK PLEASES ME NOT, I AM EVER THE SERVANT OF YGGDRASIL. FOR THE GOOD OF ALL, SOMETIMES THE SMALLER HERD MUST SUFFER.**_

_It is regrettable. But our future, the future of all New Eden, rests upon the events to come. The part Yggdrasil requires you to play is very important. Pardon my human frailties, but you are sure you can accomplish what is needed, even from here?_

_**I CAME PREPARED FOR SIGNIFICANT EFFORT. MY DOE'S WILL PROVIDE ANY BOOST I MAY REQUIRE, IF I SHOULD REQUIRE IT.**_ The mighty antlered head dipped, fist sized pupils of glimmering gold shining in the gloom, while pairs of silvery eyes glinted in the background, as the doe's took up resting positions around their lord and master, settling in after the long, unseasonal migration they had endured at his side._** IF ANYTHING GOES AWRY, IT WILL BE ON YOUR END OF THINGS, BALD BULL.**_

_I meant no offense, or to cast any aspersion on your abilities, majestic one._ The smaller shadow replied soothingly. _I have merely seen the future Yggdrasil has perceived, and find myself with a thorn in my hoof about it, you could say._

_**I SEE WHERE THE LITTLE BLUE FAWN LEARNED HER MANNERS. YOU HAVE A WAY OF GETTING INSIDE MY VERNACULAR, BALD BULL.**_

_Your vocabulary of human terms is no less impressive, majestic one._ The smaller shadow climbed laboriously to his feet, followed by a rustling in the shadows from several other shadows of similar size, stirring from watchful positions deeper within the darkness of the forest. _I rest assured that you have your part of the events well underhoof. Truth be told, my herd has the sweeter grass upon which to graze, in this particular case. I apologize that we cannot bear more of the burden._

_**WE ALL SERVE THE TREE GOD AS WE ARE FIT TO DO SO, BALD BULL. APOLOGIZING FOR THE LIMITS OF YOUR NATURE IS LIKE APOLOGIZING FOR THE WAY YOU WERE BORN, IT IS FOLLY.**_ The huge shadow shook his head, antlers clacking mutedly against the lower branches of the surrounding trees. _**THESE WOODS ARE NOT FRIENDLY. I WILL HAVE MORE TO DO THAN YGGDRASIL'S AIMS BEFORE THE DAY DAWNS AGAIN. **_

_Do you require a guard? I would be most distressed if you or your doe's were to suffer injury from predators while focused on your task._

The huge shadow snorted loudly, blowing enough air to make the smaller shadow turn its face away. _**I WILL TAKE THAT IN THE SPIRIT IT WAS MEANT, BALD BULL. THERE WILL SIMPLY BE A FEW LESS PACKS OF SPIDER WOLVES IN THIS FOREST BEFORE THE DAWN COMES. IT IS I THAT SHOULD EXTEND SUCH AN OFFER TO YOU, IF I WOULD BE BLUNT. YOU HUMANS ARE WELL KNOWN FOR YOUR FRAILTY AFTER ALL.**_

_Of course, my lord, forgive me for my thoughtlessness._ The smaller shadow bowed his head, adopting a submissive posture. _Please excuse my herd and I, majestic one. We have a ways still to travel before we are in position, and time ever slips past us._

_**GO WITH MY BLESSING THEN BALD BULL. DO THE WILL OF THE TREE GOD. PROTECT THE FUTURE OF US ALL.**_ The huge shadow half turned away, before looking back at the small group of humans. _**I LIKED THE SMELL OF THE LITTLE BLUE FAWN. SHE SHOULD COME VISIT ME MORE OFTEN.**_

_I will convey your appreciation, majestic one. And I will say that you're not alone in that like, my dear Lilia is quite popular amonst the bucks of my herd. It is regrettable that she could not be here today, but she has other tasks to attend to that better suit her capabilities and, well, preferences, shall we say. No matter how sweet this grass is that we shall eat tonight, it would not be to her liking. She has a sensitive stomach at times._

_**BEING A PICKY EATER IS A SIGN OF NOBILITY AND INTELLIGENCE. NO MATTER HOW SWEET THE GRASS MAY SMELL AT FIRST, SOMETIMES IT IS STILL POISONOUS TO THE UNDISCERNING GRAZER.**_

_As you say, majestic one. We shall endeavor to graze with care tonight. My herd is few enough as it is, we cannot afford any poisonings right now._

xxxx

**Rex Lodge, New Eden, October 7th, early evening**

"So what do you think of my humble lodge then, Kira, Lacus?" Their host, and the steward of Rex Lodge, whose name was Monticello, though he had told them to call him Monty, asked pleasantly. After meeting the Yamato-Clyns as they disembarked from their shuttle, Monty and his retinue, which they had later discovered consisted of his wife and four children, three of whom were adopted in the wake of the Eden Disaster, and the fourth and youngest recently born to the couple in the past three years, had escorted the Yamato-Clynes up a seemingly endless flight of stairs to a sitting and observation room midway up the Yggdrasilwood trunk, carved out of the outer trunk of the tree itself. They were just below the level of the lower canopy, and they listened to the buzz of insects and the scampering of tree rodents and other small lifeforms as they sat in the twilight gloom around a table carved from the very floor.

Monty was tall, taller even than Kira by several inches, with a mediterranean cast to his skin tone and features, short straight black hair and rather dapper pencil mustaches. Henrietta, his wife of several decades, was also of mediterranean descent with dark hair that fell to her shoulders, both of them having lived most of their lives in Europe, old Spain, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Their oldest child, Marcus, was of Italian descent, he was nineteen, having lost his family in the Eden Disaster. Next was Sarah, who was seventeen, of Germanic parentage, her family had been seperated from her by the world evacuation lottery when she dropped and lost her ticket. Then there was David, a restless thirteen year old of American heritage, who had been vacationing in Europe when the Great Endeavor landed, and had been trapped there during the Eden Disaster, losing his family just like Marcus. And finally there was three year old Ian, born here at Rex Lodge.

If there was a family last name, Lacus and Kira didn't catch it, but that was normal for New Eden. Because of the social shakeups following in the wake of the Eden Disaster, there were few families that were intact and whole, and many people had jumped at a chance to start their lives over again in the new world that they found themselves in. People abandoned their old names, their old identities, and forged new paths for themselves. Also, society on New Eden was much more personal and intimate than most Earth cultures, and almost everyone called everyone else by first names, with those who were truly intimate using endearing nicknames or pet names. Only the most important and famous people were addressed with both names if they had them, and usually only formally. Monty had started out calling them Lacus Clyne and Kira Yamato, before they had asked him to stop being so formal, which he was perfectly comfortable doing.

"I think that if this is a humble lodge, I would really like to see an extravagant one." Lacus replied with a bright smile. Aoi was standing by her mother's side, as Lacus sat at ease in a very comfortable handbuilt leather chair on rollers, sipping what looked like fresh herbal tea from a wooden cup, but it was no tea Lacus had ever had before, it was thicker and more potent and altogether more tasty and refreshing. She suspected it was some form of flavored Nectar, but the sap came in such a wide variety of flavors and she had it so infrequently, she could not be sure. Aoi had shed much of her exuberance of earlier and had actually become quite shy, a bit intimidated by the new local and the people living there, trading cautious looks with Monty's kids from across the table. Even less secure than his sister, Akira sat firmly upon his daddy's lap, where he felt safest and most secure, and studied his new surroundings intently.

"No kidding." Kira added with a smile of his own. "I know royalty that live in smaller houses than this one. And less comfortable ones for that matter." Kira made a show of relaxing back into his own leather chair, also handbuilt by Monty and Marcus, as was most of the furniture in this part of the lodge, which seemed to be Monty's family quarters. He took a sip of his own tea, marveling at the sense of fullness and satisfaction even a little sip brought him. This was definitely an Edenite drink, very compatible with their increased need for calories and fluids.

"You are too kind." Henrietta spoke up with a sly look at her husband. "Despite what Monty may try to get you to believe, we do not own this lodge, we merely operate it at the behest of the Consol's. We're really much more like resort managers than aristocrats."

"It's still very impressive, no matter who owns it." Lacus assured them, drawing pleased smiles from the family. "I've never seen such a huge tree before." She admitted, looking around the room, which was a good thirty feet square, built right into the trunk of the tree, and it was barely a notch in its side. Translucent windows of some form of resin blocked out the heat and humidity of the jungle air, while still flawless transmitting the sounds from outside. Everything looked perfectly rustic and handmade, but she could feel the cool breeze of artificially circulated and cooled air from a air conditioner of some sort, and she saw several places in the ceiling and walls where artificial illumination spilled forth, showing that the tree was wired for electricity somehow. All was not as it seemed here, and Lacus suspected that this was a subtle message.

"Rowan is the biggest tree on this side of the Himalayans!" David declared proudly. "You can see for a hundred miles from the observation posts on the top branches!"

"Its still nothing compared to Yggdrasil though." Marcus said, with both a sniff of disdain for his brother's excitement and the lowered tone of someone viewing an awesome memory. "Yggdrasil makes Rowan look like a shrub!"

"Garden City is built around Yggdrasil." Monty explained, though by the twinkle in his eyes Lacus and Kira guessed that such a simple description hardly did the real thing justice. Everyone in Monty's family except for Sarah had the golden pupils that denoted the Active Newtype gene, Sarah of course had the silver eyes of a Latent. Despite what many so called Newtype experts had predicated and assumed, Latents were actually not the more common form of Newtypes, in fact they were outnumbered almost fifty to one by Actives. Perhaps that was because Noah's Green EDEN drew upon his own Active genetic structure as its base blueprint, perhaps Actives were just more common than previously thought, no one knew. At least this held true for human Edenites, there was a much higher percentage of Latents among the animals and plants, again the whys of this were a mystery, though it was thought that the heightened senses of a Latent, even over other Edenites, made for easier survival in animals and plants.

Here, in a relaxed, intimate environment, Sarah was clad much like the rest of her family, in simple, durable clothing of light and airy fabrics suitable for the moist heat of most of New Eden, short sleeves and long pants to protect against pointy or poisonous plants in the undergrowth. But a rack near the door held the garments she'd worn when she'd first helped greet the Yamato-Clynes, a full body enveloping mantle/robe of dark cloth that could be wrapped around her body from head to just above her ankles. It was loose and flowing, and did not overly constrict her movements, but it, along with a facial veil and long gloves for her hands, covered every inch of skin when she was in public. This was not a religious or personal choice of Sarah's but a common social stricture of New Eden for Latents. Because Latent's could not only boost the powers of an Active, but commandeer them for their own use through skin to skin contact, a Latent walking about with bare hands or arms or skin was a potential deadly weapon and a threat to every Active around them.

Thus they usually went shrouded except when around family and intimate friends, those with whom trust was absolute. In some of the more organized cities and towns, such as Freeport, a Latent walking around in public uncovered without special dispensation was a misdemeanor level crime. In most smaller communities, it was just a major social faux paux, unless something happened, in which case it could get quite a bit more serious than that. The first time they'd ever gone to an Edenite community, Kira had of course been walking around in normal clothing, without gloves and all. Needless to say, that had been one hell of a complicated discussion when the sheriff's had come after him raising hell. He now knew better, and though he didn't like it, he had a full body covering and gloves he wore when doing first contact type situations now.

Kira had offered to wear the garments here, but Monty had waved it away, saying that if they could not trust Kira Yamato to interact peacefully with others, then who could they trust? All the same, Kira recognized the gesture of trust for what it was, and even if he wasn't already going to be on his best behavior, he was now. They were basically giving him permission to walk around their family home, be around their children, with a loaded gun in his hands. Kira didn't know if he himself would be that trusting if the situations were reversed. "The Wind speaks well of you." Monty had explained. "Even without taking your past reputation into account." He'd added off handedly.

"This tea is wonderful. How do you make it?" Lacus asked, making small talk, something every politician or diplomat had to be good at, and which she was better at than most. Politics and diplomacy was all about connecting with people, and apparently idle conversation was a perfect way to accomplish that.

"We import it from Garden City." Henrietta replied comfortably, finding herself quite at ease with the younger woman. Though of course she knew who Lacus Clyne was, she had never expected the legendary peacemaker to be sipping tea in her own dining room, making casual conversation. She was pleased with how everyday and down to earth the pink haired woman was, not at all snooty or high handed, despite an upbringing that could be described as privileged and "gold collar" at the very least. And of course there were the two adorable children, Akira and Aoi, and she instantly found herself warming to a fellow mother, even if Lacus was a good two decades her junior. Of course both children were nervous and shy in a strange new environment, but Henrietta knew from experience that the shyness would fade in short order... Rex Lodge was a child's dream house, built into a tree like it was.

"Yes, I'm not shy about saying it is very expensive." Monty added with a broad wink. "We don't break it out for every guest. But Hiero is a personal friend and even a benefactor of my family and I, and we are happy to go out of the way for his guests. I regret he cannot be here tonight to meet with you, some important business came up in the city he has to take care of, but he will be here tomorrow morning. As for the tea, it is a specially bred form of Nectar vine. Most just drink the sap raw, but this is refined and blended with other fragrant and savory herbs and spices, giving it a much improved flavor. Its a real treat, if I do say so myself."

"I'm honored you would indulge upon us." Lacus answered, taking another sip of the tea-sap and smiling. Oh, this stuff just blew Cagalli's "The Tea" right out of the water. She'd have to see if she could take some back with her.

"What are honored guests for, if not indulging?" Monty replied with a smile. "Speaking of indulging, I'm sure Akira and Aoi would like a tour of the premises, I know the last thing I ever wanted to do at that age was listen to my parents chat with other adults. And my own children are champing at the bit, they'd die for a chance to get out from under our noses." Monty smirked fondly at his children, who returned the look with tolerant patience. "Would it be all right if my children were to take yours on a tour of the Lodge?"

Kira looked to Lacus, who nodded after a short period of thought. Though only seven and eight, Akira and Aoi were easily as intellectually mature... or immature as the case might be... of someone twice their age. They would know not to do anything too stupid. And besides, they were in constant mental contact with each other and each of their parents through their family bond, even from kilometers away they would always know exactly where they all were and what their condition was. Out of sight was not out of mind in this case. Besides, Monty had a point... the last place children would want to be was around stuffy adults talking about stuffy adult matters. Especially when there was a huge tree house to explore. With a little prodding and mental coaxing, Akira and Aoi followed along behind Marcus, Sarah and David, and went up the stairs towards the top parts of the tree.

"No doubt you are wondering about why exactly you are here." Monty said, his whole voice and posture changing a bit, becoming more intent and less casual as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, putting his chin on his tented hands. "Hiero could easily fly out to Freeport to convey our thanks for your efforts after all. Rex Lodge is, shall we say, a very exclusive location. Only those vetted by the Consol's themselves are allowed to come here. We are far more than just a high class resort."

"Of course you are." Lacus replied calmly, still maintaining her sunny disposition. "This is obviously a showing off of some of your assets and technology, as you source out a potential ally or partner. We are here to be impressed, and I must say, you're doing a pretty good job so far."

"A high compliment indeed coming from Lacus Clyne." Henrietta observed, leaning back in her own chair, little Ian held in the crook of one arm. "Despite Monty's best efforts, we don't mean to try to intimidate or frighten you, merely demonstrate to you that we are far from a junior partner in any potential arrangement. Despite what some of your media would perhaps portray us as."

"We know about the media you're talking about." Kira replied. "And we find it both reprehensible and disgusting. The position of the Reclaimer Initiative, and the greater USN, is not our position."

"I am relieved to hear you say that." Monty answered, one of his fingers twitching, either the slight motion or the mental burst of telekinetic power that it presaged trigegring a hidden control in the table, activating a Brotherhood style holoprojection system built cunningly into the wooden surface. The image projected at first made no sense to Lacus and Kira, until they saw it was footage of old, stripped down Mobile Suits, Ginns and Strike Daggers, in uniform grey paint schemes, marching through a forest, their weapons chattering as they aimed at movement in the underbrush. Some of that movement was two legged and clothed. The sound was off, but all the same, the fear of those the Mobile Suits were hunting down was all but palpable. The scene changed to a burned out settlement, houses wrecked and blasted apart, bodies and bits of bodies lying in the dirt streets, while a huddle group of survivors, many bearing terrible wounds, were rounded up and marched into the belly of a waiting bulk ground transport by men and women clad in environment suits and waving modern military weapons.

"As you may realize, incidents such as these, and many more besides, have the government of Garden City, and the other major City-States, extremely worried. We appear to find ourselves in the position of the PLANTS in the year or so just before the outbreak of the First Valentine War, enduring "unsanctioned" attacks by a popular terrorist group masquerading as a benign political movement, using unofficially supplied military equipment and personnel. We would like to avoid suffering a Bloody Valentine type tragedy if at all possible... recent evidence indicates that attacks and operations are being stepped up by the Reclaimer Initiative and the USN secret forces. Popular sentiment is bending towards, shall we say, a forceful confrontation to demand that such activities stop." Monty explained.

"Well, that would be good for no one." Lacus agreed, her brow furrowed with not a little anger as she watched the clandestine activities of the RI and USN play out in front of her. It was one thing knowing that the USN government was anti-Edenite, quite another to see it so blatantly misusing its resources against largely helpless civilians. Edenites or not, psychics or not, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot an unarmored person with a rifle could do against even an outdated Mobile Suit, much less a group of them. "Is this a widespread, official status report, or are you speaking for a smaller group or faction?"

"Nothing said here is official, of course." Henrietta remarked. "New Eden is far from unified in its government structure... Garden City is widely respected, but we do not speak for everyone. Even amongst Garden City, Monty and I, and Hiero as well, only speak for the faction known as Children of the Sea. Our philosophy is a bit complex, and is better explained by Hiero, but suffice it to say we desire a peaceful world if at all possible. As for the other major political factions, well, Green Cosmos is pressing hard for a military response to these provocations, and they are very popular. They believe that humanity is better off if everyone is an Edenite, and they are not averse to converting Earthlings by force if need be. As for the Unified Conclave... well, nobody really knows what they're up to, just that they take a very dim view of the actions of USN. And that they are very much in line with the concept of "sacrifice the few for the benefit of the many". They would not shirk from warfare if it was for the benefit of all New Eden."

"Sound's like the situation is balanced on a knifepoint." Kira said unhappily, almost depressed. What the hell was it going to take for humanity to realize that killing each other off was not the best solution to problems of differences?

"Yes, things are desperate." Monty agreed. "Desperate enough that Hiero and the other Children leaders believe it would not be a waste of time and effort to attempt an unofficial diplomatic course of action, through a covert alliance with a disatisfied USN member state. Trust me when I say that a war with New Eden, even a war with Garden City, would not end well for the USN."

"We have few details on your military forces." Lacus admitted.

"Good." Monty smiled broadly. "That won't change unless the situation becomes decidedly open in terms of hostilities. Though I imagine you are both well aware of the combat capabilities of an Edenite, especially with access to Brotherhood and post-Brotherhood level technology."

"Tell your government to imagine what it would be like to face a legion of twenty something year old Kira Yamato's, in Vengeance level Gundams." Henrietta simplified.

"You don't have anything to worry about from the Orb Government." Kira promised. "Like the Children, we desire peace if at all possible."

"That is very reassuring to hear." Monty said, and then leaned back from the table, finger flicking again and shutting off the tabletop hologram. "I apologize for being so direct, but the situation is tense, as you say. I will leave the rest for Hiero to say in the morning. Come, let us entertain you, we have quite the feast prepared on the ground level, in the main dining hall. We have many guests who are just dying to meet the esteemed and famed Lacus and Kira. Tomorrow you will speak of the world, tonight let us speak only of ourselves, and the fun we are having. Let us enjoy life, for it is always too short, no matter how long we might live. And besides, both my wife and I are simply desperate for news of the rest of humanity, all those Earthlings living up in space!"

xxxx

**Rex Lodge, main banquet hall, late evening**

For one of the few times in his recent life, Kira felt he quite literally could not eat another bite. He leaned back in his chair and sighed happily, placing one hand on his stomach and wondering if he looked like he was pregnant. Because it sure felt like his belly had swollen to several times its regular size! He was used to consuming Earthling food, "regular" food, and as a mature Edenite, he ate a lot of it. About two or three times as much in a sitting as Athrun did, for example. And as Cagalli was always complaining, Athrun wasn't exactly a light eater. It was a rare meal for Kira that didn't push three thousand calories. However, he'd forgotten that the food on New Eden was biologically designed to be eaten by Edenites with their high metabolic rates, and a Rex Elk steak, though no bigger than a beef steak, had about eight times as many calories in it. And he'd had three of them. Plus several helpings of Ambrosia patties, plenty of Nectar of several varieties, including an alcoholic varient that had almost knocked him flat on his ass, and lots of leafy salad greens that packed as many calories into each leaf as there were in the average sugary donut.

His hosts had been quietly amazed at his appetite, and it was only after he was done cleaning his plates that Kira realized everyone else was eating MUCH less than him, even Lacus. That was shortly before the first overstuffed stomach cramps hit of course. He would swear he hadn't felt worse since that time he'd tried to pilot the Pulsar, and almost got electrocuted to death! But even as dire as the situation was, it didn't last too long before his overactive body systems did their best to correct his mistake. He would be taking the world's biggest dump in about two hours, but at least the indigestion and feeling of near vomiting had passed away. Kira eyed his cup of Nectar, just a plain water replacement type, but could not bring himself to even take a sip, the mere thought making him break out in a cold sweat.

Thankfully the majority of partiers, made up of the lodge staff and the other guests, about thirty Edenites in all, had had their fill of socializing with him during the hours long dinner and entertainment. He was surprised, as ever, with the degree of respect which many people held him in, and he had flushed quite pink with embarassment after recieving multiple toasts in his honor, and even applause. Lacus of course took it all in stride, but then again she'd been dealing with public adulation for most of her life, and he'd always been much more comfortable in the backstage sort of environment. She had recieved her own toasts and standing ovation after being convinced to sing a short song by Henrietta, and the applause had only been the louder when Akira had decided, impromptu and very surprisingly to his parents, to join his mother in a duet. Akira almost NEVER sang in front of an audience, and an audience of strangers was that much more surprising. He must really have been happy.

Akira and Aoi seemed to have formed pretty strong bonds with Monty's children, especially David and Sarah. They'd come into the banquet hall as one laughing, joking and smiling group, several hours after leaving their parents to talk with Monty and Henrietta, and Lacus and Kira had shared a contented look as they felt the joy and wonder and excitement all but rolling off their children like heat from a fire. It was rare that Akira and Aoi got to play with their peers, though Kira instantly felt guilty for not including Allister and the other kids in that category. But Edenite children were just... different. They could completely relate to Akira and Aoi and what they were feeling, growing up as psychics, in ways even the well meaning and understanding Allister simply could not. He never saw Akira getting so active and involved in playing with his Earthling friends as he was right now, and that saddened Kira, just a little bit.

Ian the toddler wandered over and tugged at Kira's pant leg, and Kira absently reached down and picked the young child up and set him on his lap, the instinct well ingrained from when Akira and Aoi had used to act the exact same way. Kira paused for a moment, his brow furrowing, as he realized that it wasn't just a similar act... it was EXACTLY what Akira and Aoi had done, down to the place on his pant leg where Ian had gripped and tugged, and the amount of force used to get his attention. Coincidence perhaps, he didn't have enough experience with neo-humans to know for sure. But it felt like something deeper than that. He was stumped as to what though.

The clack of claws on wood from nearby brought his head up cautiously, and he only relaxed a little bit when he saw that it was only Fido, Monty's family dog. Well, dog was technically not an accurate term, since Fido was a neo-dog, better known to Edenites as a Garm. Garms looked one heck of a lot like wolves. Wolves the size of a pony. Fido weighed more than Kira did, most of it very solidly packed muscle, and could easily place his paws on Kira's shoulders without having to stretch too much. The Garm regarded Kira with intent golden eyes that practically flashed with intelligence. Garm's were not sentient, but it was a pretty close thing at times. They could understand words and commands, both vocal and mental, and even complex instructions. They just could not talk in turn, having to rely on empathic projection and visual cues for communication. Currently Fido's dark brown fur was a bit bristly, and Kira realized the Garm was a bit on edge, because he was a stranger holding Ian in his lap. Moving carefully and slowly, Kira picked Ian up and set him down on the floor and then backed away from Fido.

The Garm bowed his head, almost in a nod of recognition, and gently took the back collar of Ian's shirt in his jaws, effortlessly lifting the giggling toddler up like he was a pup, and turning to bring him back to his parents. Kira watched the Garm go, and shook his head as Fido approached Monty, bearing his youngest child in his mouth, receiving a pat on the head before Monty pointed at the stairway leading up into the family levels of the lodge, and Fido obediently took Ian up towards his bedroom, like it was the most normal and natural thing in the world for the Garm to ferry his owner's baby to his crib. It was getting pretty late actually, Kira realized with a yawn of his own. Lacus was already herding a sleepy eyed Akira and Aoi towards the staircase Fido had gone up, towards their own quarters, despite their protestations that they weren't tired. Kira watched them yawn all the same, since it had been a long and full day for them, Edenites or not.

From the glance that Lacus sent him over her shoulder, and the taste of her scent on the breeze, Kira knew that she was pretty tired too, and that while she would wait up for him a little bit, he probably shouldn't expect much in the way of extracurricular activities, which was just fine with him at the moment. Though during the process of second puberty, especially one that came earlier than it biologically should because of trauma, an Ultimate Coordinator was all but hypersexual and insatiable, that time was many years in the past for both of them, and their sexual needs had returned to more or less normal parameters. Not that he didn't enjoy a lot of very good sex with Lacus whenever the mood was right, but it wasn't an oppressive, all consuming need anymore. After overeating he was going to stay up only long enough to take care of necessary biological tasks, and then he was going to fall asleep, good and proper, because it seemed like they had another big day ahead of them.

Staggering up from his chair, Kira headed for the door that would lead outside, to the forest floor, looking up along the walls as he ambled along, admiring the mounted heads of the creatures various guests to the Lodge had hunted and killed over the years. Though Kira doubted he himself would ever be the hunting type, his dislike for guns was simply too great, he could acknowledge that it was a skillful and even necessary profession, especially on New Eden, where the great majority of people lived directly off the plants and animals of the forests and savannas. It wasn't like they were hunting for sport, or not just for sport, they were hunting to feed themselves and their families, to provide raw materials for tools and clothing, and even to protect themselves in some cases, such as the massive Megahunter head hanging in a place of honor over a roaring fireplace.

Kira stared up into the lifeless, golden eyes of the saurian hunter-killer, its jaws big enough to bite him in half with ease, and swallow the parts with a single gulp, and shivered, just a little bit, with atavistic and instinctual fear, knowing that living examples of this creature were walking around in the forest, if not nearby then at least somewhere. The Megahunter's well preserved skin was a shimmery dark green-brown color, and Kira realized that it was an exact match for the shade of the wall where the head was mounted, even down to the patterns and whorls of the wood. "A magnificent creature, isn't it?" Monty said, coming up from behind him to stand at Kira's side, looking up at the Megahunter. "I wouldn't want to encounter him in a dark alley. Or a brightly lit one for that matter. It took twelve seasoned hunters and over thirty shots from high caliber rifles to bring this one down. And even then, we lost three hunters."

"I sure hope he doesn't have any friends." Kira commented with a smile.

Monty did not return it. "I see you are not familiar with Cold Hunters. I'm not sure whether I should envy you or pity you. He did indeed have friends. Almost a dozen of them, though thankfully not Megahunters. Cold Hunters always move in packs, its part of the reason why they are so dangerous. You can see how well their natural camouflage works, would you believe that despite being bigger than a main battle tank, this fellow is all but impossible to see when motionless from greater than thirty feet away? You can imagine how stealthy the regular sized ones are. They are a real threat, there is no two ways about it. They are aggressive and active, and they will not hesitate to attack even moderately large groups via ambush tactics. Its as often them hunting us as it is us hunting them. More often, in Rakejaw's case."

"Rakejaw?" Kira asked the expected question.

"Yep. She lives in South America, thank the Tree. Only two people who have seen her have lived to tell the tale, and one of them saw her from a helicopter. She still almost managed to kill him. There is a standing bounty on her head, a very large one, but I don't think even the Praetorians want to mess with a Cold Hunter Chimerae and her pack."

"A chimerae?" Kira questioned. He'd heard the term off and on throughout the years, almost always in a hushed whisper, and so far he had not been all that successful in getting an explanation of the term. Everyone just said that they were very bad things, best left well alone, and not talked about.

"You don't know of Chimerae?" Monty seemed surprised. "Once more, I am not sure if you are fortunate or cursed. Chimera's are non human creatures with humanlike or greater than humanlike intelligence, awareness and psychic power. Many of them are what you could call "hostile" to other thinking beings, especially humans. Some few are benevolent. Most prefer to be left alone. Rakejaw is one of the hostile ones, she reacts with great violence and vindictiveness to anyone that enters her hunting range, which covers most of old Brazil. Her pack has been responsible for wiping out more than a dozen settlements, down to the last living being, leaving nothing but cracked open bones and empty homes in their wake. These are well armed and experienced deep woods travelers and settlers I speak of. On the other end of the scale we have the Forest Prince, a great protector of the balance of life and warden of those in need of protection. You would like him, I think."

"Do you encounter these Chimera often?" Kira asked, not sure if he should feel disturbed or relieved to hear about this subject.

"Thank the Tree, no. Like I said, most are content to stay well away from other sentient beings, humans included. Chimera are mutants in mind and body, aberrations of regular creatures in almost all cases. They are a terror to deal with, even the benevolent ones, because often they can hurt you without even realizing it, mentally or physically. What contact we do have with benevolent or indifferent Chimera is almost always handled by the Praetorians, no one else is brave enough. Or suicidal enough, depending on your point of view."

"And these Praetorians are what exactly?" Kira asked. "Diplomats? Ambassadors?"

"More like special forces. I am a member of the Custodians, what you would probably call the regular army. I am a Tacticus Regulus... basically a Captain or a Major. The Praetorians are our elite forces, much like ZAFT's redcoats. They possess much greater skills and talents for combat, of both physical and psychic varities, than the rest of us. It is a very rare situation where the presence or involvement of more than one Praetorian is required, shall we say. They are perhaps the only police and military force that has authority that is respected across New Eden, but they are very few in number. If I may say, I think the Praetorians might even be able to give one such as you a run for his money when it comes to combat. Even Mobile Suit combat."

"I would be perfectly happy never finding out for sure." Kira said fervently. "If I never set foot in a Mobile Suit again, it will be too soon."

"I feel similarly. I have seen all the wars since the First Valentine conflict, I even served in the Second Valentine war, during the Isolation era. I never saw combat, but I did recieve enough training for it to make me sure that I never wanted to. That attitude has not changed since the Eden Disaster. War is a terrible thing, you know that far better than I. I will be greatly saddened if we cannot head this coming conflict off before it erupts into one."

"You may well be dead too." Kira was not afraid to point out. "Confidence in your military aside, we both know a war always has casualties on both sides, and the USN has a great advantage in both position and numbers. I can't say one way or another how the conflict would go, I don't know the future... but I wouldn't want to bet against either side." He paused as Monty broke out into a fit of snorting chuckles. "Did I say something funny?"

"You may not know the future, not very much of it anyway, but there are those of your persuasion that do. Or at least usually do." Monty shook his head, still chuckling, and even more so at Kira's blank look. "Its not important, not to you anyway. Though it quite reinforces my opinion that the Praetorians would really give you a run for your money, Kira. But come, let us not talk about these depressing and violent things, which we are all doing our very best to prevent coming to pass. If you think you can manage it, come have a drink with me at my favorite spot. We can look at the stars together, and share funny stories about our children, maybe find a convenient tree to utilize as man has utilized trees for ages, and return to our warm beds in short order, perhaps less overfull and bloated than we were when we set out."

"I could go for that." Kira agreed, one hand pressing on his grossly overfilled stomach. "That sounds like a really good idea actually. Lead the way."

xxxx

**30,000 feet over Thailand, New Eden, late evening, October 7th**

"This is Virgin Flight, we are in position for the test. All mechanical systems read green, deployment canisters are locked into bomb bay cradles. We will begin experimental high altitude deployment of "White Girl" shortly."

"Roger that, Virgin Flight. Test Control is feeding you targeting data and atmospheric data as we speak."

"I see it, Test Control. Inputting now. Projected wind dispersal is within test parameters. Blanket coverage of roughly a ten square kilometer area. Got a few big trees in the zone, should show up real nice on the orbital scopes. Beginning drop and dispersal of "White Girl" in T minus forty five."

"Understood, Virgin Flight. Laundry Team is waiting to wipe the bloodstains and clean the sheets after dispersal is complete. Can't have everyone knowing we've popped the cherry, now can we?"

"Just like back in highschool, Test Control. T minus thirty five to deployment. Entering active stealth mode, ceasing all outside communication." The pilot flipped some switches, turning off his encrypted commset and cloaking his high altitude strategic bomber in a haze of Mirage Colloid particles, erasing it from the sky. He watched his timers count down and felt the plane shudder and jerk as several thousand pounds of weaponized deployment canisters, basically gigantic aersol cans, were released from his bomb bays. "Kiss the pretty Maiden goodbye..." He breathed into his flight mask, his eyes glued to the camera screens as the canisters cracked open and began spraying a thin drizzle of white mist, forming fog like clouds that drifted towards the lush greenery thousands of feet below. "... watch her kiss ignite the fiery passion of war..." He added, pleased with the poetic turn of phrase. Too bad nobody else would ever hear it.

xxxx

**Outlying perimeter of Rex Lodge, New Eden, late evening, October 7th**

"Are you all right, Kira? You've been back there for almost fifteen minutes!" Monty called with a chuckle into the darkness. Several seconds later he heard the crackle of twigs and underbrush as Kira stomped back around the bole of the tree, wide enough for a Mobile Suit to play hide and seek with, with a much relieved expression on his face. "You look like a man who has recently lost quite a bit of extra weight." Monty observed with a smirk.

"Do NOT go back there. I mean it. That was... was just plain unholy." Kira shuddered. "I feel like I left half my intestines out there in the weeds."

"Well, I was starting to get worried that you'd crouched down in a Bloodweed patch, or tried to wipe yourself off with a Partisan fern. In which case that might have literally ended up being the case." Monty answered, only half jokingly. "It would not be the first time I had seen such a thing. Unfortunately. Such things tend to stay with a man, despite his best efforts to forget. Like a bad car wreck."

"I may only act like a half Edenite, but I do know what Partisan Ferns and Bloodweed are, and I could scarcely imagine someone foolish enough to try and take a shit in a Bloodweed patch, much less wipe his ass with a Partisan Fern. Might as well take a shit on a toilet seat made entirely from large gauge hypodermic needles, and wipe your ass with a straight razor. That is definitely natural selection at its messiest work." Kira replied with a snort of his own. It wasn't really funny, in fact it was pretty terrible to think about, but that just made it kind of funny. It was so awful a thought you could either laugh or sob.

"I would definitely not want to have to explain it to your wife and kids." Monty agreed, turning to lead the way back towards the Lodge. As he did so, they both heard a faint crackling noise, one that was familiar to them, but all the stranger for that.

"Is that fire?" Kira asked, puzzled, looking around for flames and seeing none.

"Impossible, it must be the wind." Monty replied at once. "Yggdrasilwood is almost flameproof, you could hit it with a flamethrower and not even scorch it. That's one reason we build with it so much." All the same, the crackling sound, very definitely the sound of flames hungrily devouring solid, flammable materials, kept growing louder and louder and louder, coming from more and more directions at once, until it was all around them, coming from above, until it was as loud as a jet engine, to the point where regular speech became impossible. By that point in time the night gloom had been lifted, replaced with a hellish red-orange glow, as the treetop canopy a hundred meters or so over their heads burst into incandescent flames, fire spreading down the tree trunks and branches like they were made from dry candle wicks!

Kira and Monty both gaped upwards in shock and confusion, seeing that it was no isolated blaze... the canopy was on fire for as far as they could see in every direction, and it was burning like the very end of the world itself! Even from a hundred meters, the heat was enough to plaster both men with sweat and make them feel lightheaded. Without even needing to talk, both men began running as fast as they could back towards the Lodge, dodging sparks and falling branches, some as big as both men put together, which had been turned to glowing cinders by the impossibly hot and rampant inferno. Such fallen cinders smouldered on the ground and extinguished themselves without setting the underbrush alight, even as trails of hungry fire crawled down the usually impervious tree trunks like they were nothing but tinder dry deadwood.

They could both hear, even above the roar of the conflagration, the sound of tree branches popping and snapping and splintering as they gave way beneath their own weight as the fire ate through them, and the rain of sparks and cinders became first a downpour and then a torrent, to the point where there was no way they could dodge them all, just having to throw their arms and shirts over their heads and run hunched over, hoping nothing big fell on them. They were still about sixty yards from the Lodge's ground level entrance, leading into the main dining hall they had left, their view obscured by choking smoke and falling cinders, when Monty started screaming in indescribable agony, his skin bursting into flames from the inside out, working down his fingers and arms like acid eating away his frame. Kira watched, wide eyed and helpless, as Monty turned into a staggering flame sculpture, despite dropping and rolling to the ground, the dirt and leaves could not seem to smother the blaze!

Fire spurted in small gesyers from where Monty's chest and throat had melted away, revealing fire burning away at his internal organs like they had been dipped in oil tar, even though nothing particularly flammable or hot had ever touched the Edenite directly. Certainly nothing that would lead to such a rapid and wholesale combustion, Monty had gone up in seconds like he'd shoved a flamethrower down his throat and pulled the trigger! Kira flinched from the total agony he could feel pouring off the man, before finally, mercifully, it cut out, as Monty finally curled up into a charred hunk of carbonized coal and smoking bones, which crumbled to ash in moments, his entire being utterly consumed by the insane fire.

For his part, Kira felt a certain amount of burning and heat on his skin and within his body, but it was nothing like enough to set him alight, and in truth the oppresive heat from the forest fire was a much more pressing concern. Yggdrasilwood did not catch fire easily, but when it did, it burned hot enough to melt some metals, and it burned for a long time. But strangely, this fire burned very quickly, consuming in minutes what should have burned fiercely for hours! Kira realized he didn't have time to sit around and ponder, because with a crack like the world splitting, some of Rowan's largest branches shattered under the strain of fire weakened sections, and over a hundred tons of wood, along with thirty tons of bright pink shuttle, came crashing down to the ground in an avalanche of fire and jagged wood splinters. Kira dived for cover behind another burning tree, and he was still half buried in cinders and ash when the debris struck the earth, throwing up choking clouds of smoke and dust that prevented him from even seeing his hand in front of his face!

Squeezing his eyes shut, trying to ignore the pain of scorched skin and lightly smoking hair, Kira reached out for the bond with his family, which would allow him to home in on their locations, even though he could not see, hear or smell anything but fire and smoke. He reached out for that bond and found it, trembling with fear and supressed pain, Lacus and the children coming through strong and clear from only forty meters or so away and right on his level... they must have woken up when the treetop caught fire, and headed down into the dining hall for safety. Immensely relieved, Kira sent a pulse of reassurance to them, telling them with far stronger intent than words that he was on his way, to the rescue, as much as anyone could be rescued in this inferno. Before Lacus could send her reply though, a huge tearing sensation of terror, horror and agony slammed through the link, and Kira felt heat against his skin like flaming wood pressed inexorably against his chest, though he was still standing in the clear at the moment. And then... the link went dead.

The link... went... dead! The link disappeared! The was the terror, the pain, the fear, maybe a smidgeon of love unexpressed... and then crushing darkness and oblivion and no link, no bond! Kira's eyes snapped open wide, filled with disbelief and agony beyond expression. Ever since that day, more than a decade in the past, when he and Lacus had first forged their psychic bond, she had always... ALWAYS... been in the back of his mind, a faithful presence, like the sun and the moon, felt more by their effect on everything within him, like light, like gravity, holding his world together at the seams. That presence, and the newer but no less familiar presences of Akira and Aoi, like twin torches that warmed his heart... they were GONE! They were just gone! Snuffed out in an instant. Gone, and ripping a huge hole in his heart and soul as they left.

Kira fell to his knees in the cinders, unheeding of the fact that he was, for most intents and purposes, kneeling in a campfire, his flame retardant clothing all that kept him from a series of third degree burns along his calves and ankles. His purple seed, veined with silver, dropped through the howling void opening up inside his mind and being, and exploded with a familiar omnipresent rush of pwoer, vitality and awareness. But even in his post second puberty Seed mode, as strong as he could get under his own power, Kira could not find Lacus, Akira or Aoi within his bond. THEY... WERE... GONE! He refused to believe it of course. It couldn't happen, not to him. Not to his family. They could NOT be dead. It was impossible. Not like that. Not in a sudden rush, during an event he did not understand and was powerless to stop. Not when he wasn't even around to be with them at the end!

He was still disbelieving it when a muted crack sounded from directly above him. Looking up, Kira's seed hazed eyes easily picked out a tumbling branch falling towards him, the branch was afire and was easily as thick as his neck. It was falling right at him, but he could easily evade it. He could dodge it just by rolling to the side, a sidestep of less than a foot. He saw exactly where it was going to go. All he had to do was not be there when it landed, in a few seconds. Kira stayed on his knees, and watched the branch come. Lacus was gone. Akira was gone. Aoi was gone. His family was gone. Why should he remain? Why should he stay behind without them? Kira was still puzzling out the answer to those questions when the branch struck him squarely on the top of the head. He barely felt the crack, as darkness and heat claimed his entire world.

xxxx

**Rex Lodge, New Eden, morning of October 8th**

Kira's eyes snapped open and his entire body jerked. He'd just had the most horrible nightmare! He'd dreamt that an inexplicable inferno had consumed the forest and the lodge where he and his family were staying, that he had felt Lacus and Akira and Aoi be trapped in a burning building as it collapsed upon them and crushed and burned them to death while he was helplessly far away and unable to even be with them in their final tormented moments! Kira could taste vomit on his lips, and realized that he must have thrown up at some point in time. Probably because he ate too much. Lacus was not going to be happy with him. He rolled over to face her ire. And found himself face to face with a blackened and charred stump of a tree. Kira blinked, wondering if Lacus had somehow managed to throw him out of bed already, without him noticing.

But then his eyes, which had been having trouble focusing for some reason, cleared a bit and he realized that it wasn't just a single tree stump that was charred. It was everything. Everything around him was burned to black and white ash. There was not a single scrap of vegetation in sight. Nothing besides cinderized wood and ash. He himself was caked in ash, his head lying in a vaguely branch shaped pile of it, his skin tight and hot with recent first and second degree burns, blisters large and painful on his cheeks and scalp where his hair had singed away. There was a monumental bruise on the top of his skull, and what hair he had left was caked with dried blood. For the first time in years, he'd hit his head hard enough to suffer a concussion, which would explain why his vision was all wacky. Shaking his head and blinking his eyes, Kira propped himself up on his elbows and glanced around, wondering just where the hell he was.

In the next moment he was fully upright and running, the memories of last night, not just a nightmare but a living hell, came rushing back all at once. His balance was all screwed up from the knock on his head, his skull might even be cracked, but he didn't have time to be hurt, so he staggered onward, ankles kicking through shin deep ash piles, stumbling over roots that had only been mostly burnt through, as he charged towards the Rex Lodge. Or where the Rex Lodge had once been anyway. Only blackened stumps of the mighty Rowan tree remained, the stumps reaching like the fingers of a dead hand for twenty meters into the sky, just a fragment of the former majesty of the tree. Of the Lodge buildings, more remained, for whatever reason, perhaps because much of the strucutre was made from artificial materials and not just Yggdrasilwood, it had not burned as badly as the rest.

It had still burned VERY badly though, badly enough to warp metal, melt plastic and leave everything else as cinders and ash. The roof had collapsed at some point in time, as had several walls. Frantically calling out into his oppressively silent link, Kira waded into the debris, slipping and falling and gashing his palms and chest open on protruding splinters of unburnt wood, which had been under other wood and thus shielded from direct exposure to whatever had caused the fire in the first place. Seeing the unburnt wood gave Kira fresh hope. If some wood had survived, then there must be a room or two that was just buried, rather than burnt. In that room he would find Lacus and the kids. Unconscious maybe. Perhaps some Blankwood had fallen on them and was blocking their psychic signals. That had to be the reason he couldn't feel them. It had to be!

Kira found more than a few bodies and pieces of bodies while digging frantically through the smouldering remains, some of them so badly burned even the bones turned to dust at his touch, some more like overly barbecued cuts of meat, from where they had been spared direct exposure but trapped under fast burning logs and pieces of roof. Kira gagged when he turned up Fido's head, detached from the Garm's body somehow, one half of the skull still clothed in fur and flesh, the eye dull and cloudy, while the other half was nothing but blackened soot. Undeterred, Kira continued to scoop at the still painfully hot ash with his bare hands, throwing aside partially burnt branches and boards, kicking away technological debris, searching for that hidden nook, cranny or crawlspace where Lacus would have taken the kids at last resort. Where they were waiting for him to come and rescue them!

And then, as he levered away a particularly heavy half burned log twice as long as he was tall and almost as thick as his thigh, he found it. He found where Lacus had gone to ground to escape the hungry flames, Akira and Aoi huddled beneath their mother as she shielded them from the flames with her body. He found it, and his hopes, just like everything else around him, turned to ash and blew away in the wind. Kira fell to his knees, and then to his hands and knees, hot tears falling from his eyes like blood from a wound, staining the ashy ground dark. He tried to shout, tried to scream in denial, but his throat was burned raw from smoke inhalation, and he could barely even croak his soul crushing despair and distress, as he stared down at the pitiful remains. There wasn't much to see. There wasn't much left. The fire had... had burned fiercely here. There wasn't much to see... and there was too much for him to want to see. But he could not look away.

Firstly there was the melted and blackened remains of a mechanical bird, nearby a similar sooty ball of metal that might once have been the thumb sized body of a furry bat robot. Kira looked at the blob of twisted and warped metal that the fire had turned Birdy and Batty into, and though he wanted to deny it, he knew that both mechanical pets were dogged in their persistence in staying with the children during nighttime hours. Athrun had programmed them that way. Only by physically grabbing and restraining them could you seperate the robots from their children at night. They functioned like teddy bears and child monitors combined, transmitting the sounds of their children sleeping peacefully, and not so peacefully if they were sick, rare as that was, to Lacus and Kira's room. But Birdy and Batty were not conclusive proof. Not to Kira's desperate mind. It was hard, but he could conceive of a way for the pets to be seperated from the kids, especially in the chaos of an inferno.

The other evidence, Kira could not rationalize away. He could only stare in abject horror as the bottom dropped completely out of his world. It was a human arm, from just above the elbow down to the fingertips. Creamy pale skin, soft and silky to the touch, had turned to a lattice of black scorchmarks, sickeningly like those of meat on a grill, just much more tangled, like Lacus had pressed her arm down against a red hot waffle iron multiple times and held it there long enough to cook away skin, muscle and fat, and bare bones. It was Lacus's arm, her left arm, the bones of her humerous gritty and brittle where they poked from the grilled skin and meat just above her elbow. Most of the forearm had split open, puffy marrow protruding like half cooked marshmallow from the scorched bone. Her hand was curled into a fist by the heat, her fingers, the fingers that he stroked and stroked him in turn, so many times when his own sleep was troubled, turned to greasy sticks of charcoal.

And upon the ring finger of that hand, a bit melted, a bit warped, but still more than recognizable, was the ring. The special ring. The plain silver ring that Lacus had once given him as a token of her love, as part of a promise that he would come back to her, as he was leaving to participate in the Battle of Jachin Due. The ring he had first kissed her for, the ring that she now wore in everyday place of their wedding band. The ring that symbolized their union, their love for each other, their sworn oaths to be by each others side, to support and protect one another for all time, until death did them part. The melted, warped, scorched band of metal, sticky with bits of cooked flesh, that showed the entire world that he was a goddamned liar, that he couldn't even protect the people that meant more than life itself to him, when they needed him most.

Kira reached out with shaky hands, cupping the arm, afraid it would break apart at his touch, but the burns weren't so bad as that. Her arm had been trapped under a piece of wood or metal that had not directly caught fire, and so had been preserved, while the rest of her was nothing more than a vague outline of deeper ash amongst the rest, with two mounds where Akira and Aoi had huddled in their mother's shadow until the fire had reached them too. Kira held the arm to his chest, his entire body shaking with tears he could not shed fast enough or loud enough, kneeling amongst the remains of his family, his life, his love! He brought his head down and kissed the ring as gently as he could. Despite his care, flakes of smoky skin rubbed off against his lips, smearing, staining them black, leaving the taste of overcooked pork on his tonguetip, which was enough to make him convulse and dry heave. Underlaid by the taste of burnt meat was the familiar taste of Lacus's sweat and skin oils.

Clutching the last mortal remains of his true love and one of the world's greatest peacemakers to his chest, sitting in the piled remains of his young children, Kira pointed his face at the achingly blue sky and howled, his throat constricting and bleeding with the effort of forcing air and sound past all the smoky soot in his esophagus, his howl fading away to a deathly rattle that shook his entire body, like his soul was trying to tear itself loose from its earthly prison. He was still shouting, soundlessly, up at the achingly blue sky, when Consol Hiero's shuttle arrived several hours later. Kira was the only living survivor for ten kilometers in any direction. Everything else was burned to ash.


	10. Ashes

Author Note: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. You awake yet? No? Read the end of chapter nine again. I'll wait. Yeah, you're back now I see, with that all fresh in your mind. Got your attention, didn't it? Well hold on, ladies and gentlemen, this roller coaster ride is just starting. I hope the softcore events of last chapter didn't unduly upset anyone, because this shit is going to get very real here soon. I have a new theme song for Kira, one I've been wanting to get to for a long time now. It's called "Paint it Black", by Rolling Stones. I HIGHLY recommend you listen to it, to me it is the epitome of a grief stricken Kira. Not only that, its an awesome song. And thanks for making Conflagration the most reviewed chapter in the series to date, at 28 reviews currently, and who knows what it will end at? Course, now the bar of what I'm expecting to hear is set higher for future chapters...

I sure do hope that despite the events of Conflagration, no one is feeling like jumping ship, though judging from some of the later reviews, maybe that won't be a problem. I won't confirm or deny anything right now, the story will tell in time. You people should know me better than that. Quitting this story based upon the events of a single chapter, and an EARLY chapter at that, no matter how shocking, would be a disservice to both me and especially you. Then again, I'm confident none of my regular reviewers are the sort to do that, and well, to put it bluntly, those are the people I'm writing for. Doesn't matter how many hits I get, its the reviews and the people that leave them that I care about, even if they are anonymous, at least I know they exist. You've preserved through thick and thin and over 2.2 million words to get to this point in time, it would be a real shame to let it all go to waste without knowing how it all ends, huh? Just trust me... everything will fall into place sooner or later. I promise.

xxxx

**Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver, Orb, October 8th, early afternoon**

As Earth/New Eden's sole remaining active spaceport and mass driver, Hameya's Attlatl was one of the busiest places in all of Orb. Named for a stone age tool used by the earliest natives of Orb to extend the technical length of their arms, so they could throw hunting and war javelins further and harder that they could with pure human muscle alone, the facility had been destroyed during the First Valentine War and then rebuilt several times in the years since. The most recent additions, in the years since the end of the Eden Disaster, had seen two large Fusion Pulse Reactors installed, replacing the old wind, tidal and solar power plants that powered the surface to orbit launch mechanism. Mechanisms nowadays, since with all the extra power available they could now afford to run surface to orbit launches on three seperate driver-catapults all at the same time. The catapult ends splayed outwards from each other like a bird's foot, so the sonic booms of one catapult's launch would not interfere with the balance of a load on another catapult.

The skies and waters around the Attlatls were probably the busiest anywhere in Orb, and maybe even the busiest on New Eden, comprising as it did both incoming and outgoing cargo and personnel ships and aircraft, luxury heli-taxis taking important or wealthy personages the quick way from the spaceport to Nara-Attha City, and even Mobile Suits from the Orb Defense Force, on defensive training maneuvers, not to mention the building sized bulk cargo containers that were fired from the catapults every few minutes, like a steady stream of the most massive cannon shells in existence. Splashdown area's for bulk cargo were marked off in the waters off shore, well away from the rest of the facilities in case of an overshot, but most bulk cargo containers tended to come down on very gentle course, taking several days to degenerate from orbital velocity, dipping into the upper atmosphere before taking a parachute assisted drop to the splashdown area, where special ships would rapidly fish them out and ferry them to shore.

Directing and orchestrating this complex dance of ships, orbital shuttles, bulk cargo containers and atmospheric flyers was a full time job for over two hundred dedicated operators at a time, working in five six hour shifts. There was a seperate control tower for each Attlatl, one dedicated just to orbit to surface shuttles, another just for atmospheric craft and finally one more for offshore and harbor operations, and all six control towers had to stay in constant contact with each other. It probably would have been almost impossible if it weren't for Lexi doing most of the grunt processing and data communication work, leaving the human operators to handle special cases and watch for anything going wrong.

A red light blinked into existance in the radar watchroom of Control Tower 5, the one responsible for atmospheric flight type craft traffic, and the operations team immediately went into action. Most of which consisted of stopping their previous conversations and turning more of their attention towards both individual radar displays, and the master plot that took up most of one wall, like the CIC screens of a warship but much bigger and more detailed, colored lights and streaks showing all the various atmospheric craft in a hundred kilometer radius of the Attlatls, their current positions, their projected headings, speed and classifications, and various and sundry other necessary tidbits of information. Civilian and commercial traffic was done in shades of blue, official government traffic was in orange, and military traffic was denoted by white.

However there was a new contact on the board, outlined in pulsing red, its course a dotted line showing that it was only a projection, rather than any filed or regularly scheduled flight plan. This was not exactly a cause for concern... it could be an unscheduled government flight, someone who had forgotten to file a flight plan, or some sort of computer mixup in data transfers between Namara and Lexi, which was very rare these days but could possibly occur. But it was something that had to be watched, and slowly, as Lexi quickly and efficiently trained batteries of sensors upon the unknown contact and information from their findings poured in to update the radar screens, people grew quieter and quieter, until eventually the watchroom was dead silent with concentration and concern.

The unidentified contact was inbound from outside the Glasshouse. That was not particularly strange, the Glasshouse only extended about a kilometer into the air, and about fifteen kilometers out to sea, and though most flights tried to avoid flying through the electromagnetic shield barrier, in case of incidental damage to delicate electronics, sometimes it was more fuel and time efficient to skip out of Orb's protective envelope for a short hop, of course dipping back down through the shield to cleanse off any Green EDEN contamination. And orbital shuttles of course were forced to come from outside the Glasshouse. But this was not incoming on the sort of course an orbital shuttle would follow, nor the sort of course any sane commercial or military pilot would take. This UFO was coming from the ocean side, from out of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, flying just over a half kilometer from the water on a level course.

"All right, Lexi, what the hell is this?" The watch leader and senior radar operator, who was named Brandon, asked the nearly omnipresent AI assistant. A holographic projection strip on the floor in front of the main radar plot flickered to life, and projected Lexi's image, of a girl that looked remarkably like a twenty something Cagalli Yula Attha but with blue eyes and red hair, dressed in an Orb Defense Force uniform with no insignia, in front of the display at life size, like a weather forecaster on a News Channel. She clasped her arms behind her back and paced back and forth in front of the primary plot as the screen subdivided, squishing the primary display over to one side as a series of sensor images of the UFO came up.

"That is a VERY good question actually, Bran." Lexi answered with a small pout on her digital face. She was unused to this feeling of being in the dark and not knowing what was going on. "The sensor profile of the inbound track is unlike any registered vessel in Orb or the wider USN. It also doesn't match up with any unregistered civilian or military vehicle types we are aware of, either ours or the USN's. I hate to hit a potential panic button, but I think its fairly safe to say this vessel didn't originate from any USN group. The flight path is all wrong, and our long range sensors haven't showed any orbital drops or entries in the range of a shuttle of this size, at least none of our shuttles of that size have such range."

"Is it one of the _Envoy_'s?" One of the more junior radar operators asked curiously. "That could account for the weird flight pattern."

"It could." Lexi admitted with a charmingly girlish smile. That smile faded and was replaced by a wickedly sardonic smirk as the young male tech beamed happily. "But it wouldn't account for this." Lexi added, bringing a long range visual camera picture of the incoming vessel onto the main screens. There was a series of gasps and soft curses, as the operators stared at the unidentified vessel. It looked like no craft any of them had ever heard about or seen before, its wings were "V" like, with the two legs pointing forward, rather than back as they were for most aircraft. There were two fuselages in parallel, of equal length and girth, projecting forward from the V wings, underslung under the wings, with a another, fatter projection mounted between them on top of the wing's V junction, like the bridge of a warship or submarine. As they looked on, the craft's wings fluttered and shifted, adapting to changes in wind currents and air pressure as the craft bled velocity and angled its course more downwards.

"Those variable geometry wings are of the same class of system as the HiMat wings the Dawndrakes and Gundams are equipped with." Lexi pointed out, a puzzled tone in her voice. "Strange to see such an enhancement on an unarmed transport shuttle. At least I can detect no weapons, offensive or defensive, upon it. Heat readings indicated its equipped with a miniaturized nuclear reactor, which is definitely not something any of our shuttles possess. Oh yeah, and unless I totally miss my guess... and I never do that... its made of wood."

"Say that last part again?" Brandon said sharply, his hand tense on the emergency phone line that would connect him to the commander of the Hameya's Attlatls security and defense forces. As Orb's primary and only reliable commercial link to the rest of the USN up in space, the mass drivers and spaceport facility was probably the most heavily defended location in the entire nation, though much of the defenses were subtle or hidden from the casual eye. If need be, they could have interception missiles, a CIWS barrage and several squadrons of Dawndrakes in the air in less than two minutes, if this UFO had hostile intentions.

"It's made of wood." Lexi clarified, taking no offense at his incredulity. If she hadn't seen it with her own sensors, which she reclaibrated and checked a dozen times a second, she'd have thought it was a hacked or corrputed file. "The entire shuttle is made of fiberous dead plant matter, more commonly known as wood. Wood with a density and apparent tensile strength at the very least equivalent to regular structural steel, by all visible appearances, but wood all the same. I think we can safely call this one a bogey, Bran. Don't worry, I'm briefing the military and getting in contact with the government as we speak. Just as I was wishing for something to break the monotony too..." Lexi broke off, her eyes widening. "We're being hailed, wideband channel, high level but standard encryption. Source is the UFO. Connecting for live broadcast..."

Lexi's projected figure shrunk to one third regular size as the main radar screen subdivided even more, with most of the main screen being sent to smaller secondary screens around the room, while the main display was given over to displaying various sensor profiles of the incoming UFO shuttle, and a healthy chunk of screen in the middle was dedicated to the incoming transmission, which Lexi was also relaying to several military and political sites around Orb in real time. The screen flickered just once as Lexi made contact with and established protocols for data transfer between herself and the computer systems aboard the shuttle, which though of course nothing compared to her capabilities, were still quite impressive for a ship of that size. Lexi kept everything in a safely buffered partition zone of her network, in case the UFO was transmitting viruses and spyware at the same time as they talked.

A man appeared on the screen, his face deeply tanned and a bit lined by years spent outdoors in the elements, his age somewhere in the fifty to seventy years that some humans seemed to stay in for most of their later lives, in Lexi's estimation. She ran face recognition software, but doubted she'd get much back from it, not just because her databanks didn't stretch back much more than a decade or so, but because the man was an Edenite, his hair a soft grey mixed with traces of faint green, like lime juice dissolved in tonic, looking recently cut and in the process of growing back out, his eyes a penetrating forest green with distinctive and eerie metalic silver pupils. He was clad in what Lexi could only charitably call robes, like a middle ages priest or friar might wear, though his were made from some form of supple light tan leather, decorated with red, green and dark blue stitchings and hung with a few glistening crystals and beads. It wasn't until he shifted his posture somewhat and the robes fell open to reveal a perfectly modern business suit and tie beneath than Lexi recategorized the outer garment as either a shawl or overcoat of some sort, maybe ceremonial in purpose by the ostentation.

The man had a deeply focused and intent stare, even through a display screen while not looking at any one person in particular, since all Lexi was transmitting in turn was a depiction of Orb's flag, he gave the impression of looking right into your head. Cyprus had eyes like that, Lexi remembered, and she called up a comparison between the two men. Yep, very similar stare, the "don't mess with me, I'm impertuable and I see right through you" look. It was an idle comparison, but there was absolutely no family resemblance between the two men. No one knew what Cyprus's family, if he even had one, was like. It was one of those pet projects Lexi had assigned herself, to find out about the enigmatic Stormhound, if for no other reason than so she could needle him better in the future. So far she wasn't having much luck with it, the man simply did not seem to exist in any official records anywhere!

"Greetings, and blessings of the Tree upon you all. I am Hieronymo, but please, call me Hiero, as I am not here on official business. I am the Consol of Foreign Affairs for Garden City. I have come to your shores today to return one of your most upstanding citizens, and to bear a tale of the utmost tragedy, though it makes my heart clench at the thought. I am unaware of the degree of your nations understanding of the situation outside your own borders, and of the degree of freedom of speech and authority you granted to the unofficial emmissaries you sent to us recently, so you will pardon me if I am perhaps overly cautious in discussing the exact details of who I am and why I am here." The silver eyed Edenite said, bowing his head somewhat, and though he did a good job of keeping his face composed, Lexi's keen sensors could easily detect a quavering note in his voice, the sound of a great deal of emotion being choked back.

"This is Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha speaking." Cagalli's strident but somewhat hesitant voice said in reply, the Queen speaking from within the comfort and privacy of her own home, halfway across Orb. "I greet you in turn, Mr. Hiero, with all the formality your culture might require, but I know almost nothing about you or Garden City, so I hope you'll pardon me if I skip the usual pleasantries, whatever they are. I'm not comfortable talking about Orb's degree of awarness of international affairs in this manner, so perhaps you can land your shuttle and come on over for a face to face chat?"

"Alas, I cannot, that would attract far too much in the way of official notice. As yet only your long range military sensors have been allowed to detect my transport... a very comprehensive system you have, my technicians are impressed... and unfortunately I am under orders to minimize knowledge of our involvement with this issue, at least for the time being. Things are, shall we say, very precariously balanced all of a sudden. We will be putting your citizen into a liferaft and dropping him outside the edge of your electromagnetic shield, and then we will be leaving, because I have a rather urgent meeting to attend to with my own people." Hiero's eyes narrowed in what Lexi could easily read as dangerously focused displeasure, even anger. Someone on Hiero's team had done something to piss him off but good. "Please, you may put your defense systems at ease, we bear you no ill will. Quite the opposite even. But I am not at liberty to discuss such things further, at this time, I am sorry."

Even as they spoke, the Edenite shuttle had slowed even more and descended to the point of skimming over the waves. The HiMat-esque wings folded down and became a pair of hydro-foil like struts, kicking up two roostertails of spray as they bit into the ocean swells like twin knives, the shuttle slowly settling down until the two lower fuselages were resting on the ocean's surface like the keels of a catamaran. The shuttle proved every bit as maneuverable as a boat as it had looked in the air, pulling a hairpin turn just short of the slight disruption and discoloration in the water that marked the point where the Glasshouse was projected up from emitters on the seafloor a thousand feet below.

"Well if you can't talk to us about anything official, Consol, what can you tell us off the books?" Athrun's deeper and somewhat weary voice asked next. The Ambassador had been pulling all nighters at the Orb National Palace for the past few days, working on massaging up more support for Orb's Independence Bill in the USN legislatives. "I'd like to know who this citizen is that you're delivering. And you mentioned a tragedy of some sort?"

"Ah, of course, I am sorry. I forget that you Earthlings cannot hear the Wind." Hiero looked crestfallen, as if he'd made some sort of extremely embarassing mistake. "I am here to return Kira Yamato to you. I am sorry, but Lacus Clyne, Akira Yamato-Clyne and Aoi Yamato-Clyne were killed last night in an unexpected forest fire while staying at one of our deep forest lodge resorts. Kira has been provided with medical care already, but he has been uncommunicative, and we are very worried about the state of his mental health."

The silence that stretched across the communication line could have drowned a fish, it was so thick. The outgoing image of Orb's flag disappeared, replaced with a facial shot of Cagalli, her eyes wide, her normally tanned face as pale as milk with disbelief and shock. "... what did you just say?" She said, the words tumbling from her lips in a whispered croak.

"We are still investigating the cause of the forest fire that claimed their lives, and the lives of thirty other men, women and children. Kira was the only survivor, and we have not been able to successfully communicate with him. My government will be launching a thorough investigation, you can rest assured of that. You have my personal word that we will get to the bottom of this tragedy, and when we do, we will give you a full report. Your citizens were in our care, it is nothing less than our moral obligation to assist however we can, unofficially, for the moment. You have my condolences, Cagalli." Hiero's voice choked up as he spoke, and either he was the best faker Lexi had ever seen, or he really was on the verge of tears of his own. "The world will miss them greatly. This day and all subsequent days are a little less bright than they might otherwise have been."

"You're lying..." Cagalli accused, though there was little conviction in her weakened voice. Cagalli had been dealing with people that lied for a living for most of her adult life. Hell, she sometimes lied for a living herself. She knew when someone was fibbing, when they were exaggerating for effect, when they were stretching a truth or bending terms. And she also knew when someone was letting the real honest truth, no matter how painful, spill unfiltered from their lips. But just because he was speaking what he saw as the truth didn't mean that he wasn't mistaken. "You're wrong... Lacus... the children... they can't just be dead...!"

"I wish I was, Cagalli. I wish my foresight was clearer than it was, but on this issue I was blind. Their fate was written, and we read of it too late to make a difference. I am sorry. They are gone." Hiero bowed his head. "May the Tree save us all, but they are gone..."

xxxx

**Orb National Hospital, Nara-Attha City, Orb, 4 pm.**

The rooftop helipad was crowded, despite the oppressive heat of the late afternoon sun. Since Orb was in the southern hemisphere, early October was right at the beginning of the hot summer months, and ever since New Eden had come about, summers had become even hotter and more brutal than ever, with the entire world climate being several degrees warmer year round, and more like ten degrees warmer in Orb during the summer. There was hardly a cloud in the sky, and though the most recent arrivals, in the person of the Queen of Orb herself, and the young Crown Prince as well, had only been there for a few minutes by the time the rescue helicopter that had picked up Kira from the Edenite liferaft was in view, they were still drenched in sweat. Well, Cagalli was, Allister, despite vehement protestations, was waiting in one of the private rooms in the upper levels of the hospital, the ones alloted for visiting family members of patients in the critical care wards.

Guarded, watched and kept company by First Sergeant Matthew "Conrad" Kurtz of the Stormhounds, Allister was pacing back and forth in the room, his teeth clenched and fists bunched at his sides, very much like his father and mother got when they were angry or upset. Allister hadn't gotten the full report, he'd been listening in to that Hiero guy in his room, but then the connection had been cut right before Hiero had said something with a very sad look on his face, and Lexi wouldn't let him connect again no matter how much he yelled and begged and tantrumed. He'd gone to see his mom about it when she came rushing out of her makeshift home office, but one look at her bone white face and the wide eyes put the utter kibosh on any petulant confrontation he might have had planned. He didn't see either of his parents look scared and troubled like that very much. Very ever, really.

"What's wrong, mom?" Allister had asked tenatively, reaching up to touch her hand. "What's the matter?" He asked, getting scared himself when she didn't immediately answer his first question, her mouth working, her throat bobbing, but no words seemed able to come out. Her legs and hands were shaking and she slowly sank to her knees and hugged him unexpectedly tight and close. Normally Allister didn't like such PDA's, even at home, but he could tell this wasn't his mom being cutsy-cuddly. Something was wrong. Something had scared her. Shaken her. He hugged her back tightly, just like he'd seen dad do once, a long time ago, when she'd acted kinda like this. "Is everything okay mom?"

"No, honey, things are not okay." Cagalli had at last managed to whisper in return. "There's... a problem with Uncle Kira and Aunt Lacus. I need to go to the hospital now, I promise I'll be home as soon as I can. Either me or dad, just be patient okay?"

"What about Akira? What about Aoi? Can they come over?" Allister asked, and winced as his mother's grip tightened for a moment, her fingers digging into his shoulderblades. "Mom?" Allister had then realized his mother was crying. He'd seen her cry before, but it was usually happy or embarassed tears. This was not like that. These tears made him want to cry too, and he wasn't sure why. It was very scary.

"Sorry honey, but I just don't know." Cagalli patted him on the back and made as if to get up.

Allister clung to her all the tighter. "Are they okay?" He asked, his own voice wavering now. Akira was his best friend! And he loved playing with Aoi, they got along so well together. And they were cousins too! Almost like brother and sister really, since he saw them so much! "Are they hurt?" He asked, choked up.

"I don't know, honey. I don't know." Cagalli had answered. "That's one of the things I'm going to go find out, okay?"

In the end she'd had little choice but to bring her son with her, not comfortable with leaving him home alone with only Lexi around after they'd had that mutually emotional scene outside her home office. But just because she couldn't bear the thought of leaving him alone, didn't mean she was not going to shelter him as much as possible, so she'd had to leave him in the private waiting room with Kurtz as she rushed to the rooftop to meet Athrun, Jiro, Cyprus and several other Stormhounds, as well as a full complement of waiting doctors and nurses. The Edenite, Hiero, had said that Kira's own burns and injuries had already been treated, but that wasn't something they were going to leave to chance.

The wind that the helicopter's rotors threw around when it began its landing approach was hot as hell, the furthest thing from refreshing, indeed it even felt somewhat ominous. The only way it could have been more ominous was if there was a pounding rainstorm with lightning flashes, but then again, something about the broad daylight and wilting heat actually made things worse. Made them more real, more undeniable. The helicopter's side door swept open as soon as its skids touched the rooftop, and Cagalli's hand tightened against Athrun's as they stood side by side. One of the Search and Rescue crewmembers got out, still clad in the bright orange and red wetsuit he'd worn when he was lowered into the water near the liferaft. Of course the man, as well as Kira and the entire helicopter, had been extensively scrubbed and cleasned with anti-Green EDEN nanites before coming in to land. The SAR crewman reached a hand back into the cargo section of the helicopter, and Cagalli had to bite her lip as Athrun's hand crushed her's back with agitated worry.

The crewman was helping Kira get out of the helicopter, and that, right off the bat, put a terrible weakness in Cagalli's legs and filled her stomach with dread. Kira was just about the toughest person she could think of, she could hardly imagine him hurt to the point where he would need assistance to even step down or walk! If he was hurt that bad he should be strapped to a stretcher, not walking around! But though he moved with all the frailty and unsteadiness of a ninety year old Natural, Kira's injuries didn't seem that terrible or life threatening, a lot of bandages but no excessive blood or major casts on his limbs. His hair was a bit singed in spots, and his skin overall looked like he'd been lying on a beach with no sunscreen for an entire day, he was burnt brick red, but while an intense sunburn was pretty painful, it didn't account for his unsteady balance... he was all but tottering and staggering!

Kira had a bandage wrapped package clutched in his hands, held to his chest like it was at once the most precious thing in the world and also a knife stabbed right into his heart, his hands holding it tenderly, reverentially even, but his arms trembling like he itched to hurl it as far away from him as he possibly could. Cagalli took a half step forward, a falsely cheery smile plastered onto her face, her free hand raised in a wave and greeting to her brother. The wave faltered and the greeting died in her throat when she at last got a good look at Kira's downturned face as he trudged towards them like a zombie in the midst of a nightmare, every step seeming to require more energy and concentration than the last.

Cagalli had seen herself in the mirror on her way up through the hospital's levels, and though she looked betetr than she had when Hiero had first made his claims, her pallor was still very pale and her eyes wide, her cheeks moist with wiped off tears. Kira's cheeks were brick red, just like the rest of him, but they were also cracked and dry. Not because he jadn't been crying, his eyes were the most bloodshot she'd ever seen of any human being ever, just that he had already cried himself out, and couldn't muster any more moisture for his tear ducts. His eyes where ghastly, the whites stained pink, veins bulged red, the sparkling violet with silver corneas and pupils dull and lifeless, like the eyes of a real walking corpse. Cagalli opened her mouth to ask the question, the one she didn't want to know the answer to, the one she already knew the answer to. But the look on Kira's face stopped her. The look of confirmation, of hopelessness. The broken, lost and agonized look that told her everything she didn't want to know.

A tug on her hand and the sound of knees hitting pavement brought Cagalli's head whipping around, to find Athrun on his hand and knees, his head bowed as his shoulders shuddered with helpless tears that dripped freely to the concrete below. Athrun tried to speak, tried to control himself, but he could only manage an animal whimpering sob of denial and sorrow, somewhere between a howl and a gasp. He had known Lacus since puberty, had even been her arranged fiance for a year or so, and his bond with her, though tested and strained as Cagalli's had been by some events, was in most ways as deep and strong as Cagalli's was to Kira himself, more a relationship of siblings than friends.

Torn between Kira's crushing despair and Athrun's sobbing distress, Cagalli found hot tears running down her own face. Still, there was something she had to do first, before she could let herself give in to grief and sorrow. She found herself stepping forward at the same time as Cyprus, and even the grey haired, grey eyed Stormhound looked a little disturbed. Not that she expected him to cry, not in public, not where anyone could see him, not even for Lacus and the children. Though, Cagalli reflected that Cyprus probably had a tough conversation ahead of him, just as she herself did. Allister, Akira and Aoi had been like three fingers on the same hand, they were so close. And while it was of course far too early to speak of romantic entanglements amongst the children, no one with eyes to see with had doubted a strong connection between Akira and Violet Finch, a strong connection that could easily have blossomed into something much greater if only given the time.

Seeing that the Queen was incapable of much in the way of coherent words at the moment, while the Ambassador was all but incapacitated by emotion, Cyprus took the lead. He already knew the answer to the question he was going to ask, he'd known it from the moment he'd seen Kira's eyes, but it was a question that had to be asked nonetheless. "Is it true then, Kira?" Cyprus asked, finding his own lips a bit dry and his throat a bit choked up. Lacus Clyne was one of the most exceptional women in history, and one of the few true pacifists that Cyprus had any respect for at all. And in this case, "any" was "a great deal". Lacus Clyne was the sort of woman who could change the lives of even the most twisted and lost souls, just by passing by, and she had left an indelible mark upon him that he was only now truly comprehending. "Are Lacus, Akira and Aoi dead?" Cyprus watched the Queen flinch at those words, out of the corner of his eye.

Kira on the other hand just stared, his eyes dull and unfocused, as his head dipped just a fraction. The eyes and face of a shell shocked battle survivor, the sort that has seen his entire unit die horribly all around him, and expecting death to come for him at any moment, while miraculously coming back alive. It was the expression of a man that had left most of himself behind somewhere, and might never be able to retrieve all of it. "They're dead. I felt them die." Kira whispered, or perhaps that was as loud as his voice could currently go, dry and dusty and choked up as his throat was. "They burned to death. Only ashes left. Ashes and this." Kira let the bandages fall off the top part of the object he had clutched to his chest.

Cyprus narrowed his eyes and wrinkled his nose slightly as the unwholesome smell of charred pork wafted to his nostrils, faintly, but definitely there, the scent of burned human flesh. The bandages had fallen away to reveal a human hand, burned almost beyond recognition as such, a twisted, malformed claw of blackened shreds of skin pulled tight around brittle bones, waxy deposits of melted fat gathered around the knuckles and dripping down the wrist. Cyprus heard the Queen collapse to her hands and knees as well, and vomit onto the ground, and she was far from the only one to react to the gruesome sight that way. The Queen had toured the aftermaths of many battlefields, a burned body was nothing new to her, but the fact that this was the detached, burned arm of her friend and sister in law. well, the loss of a friend or family member was always worse than a stranger.

"And you are absolutely sure it was them?" Cyprus pressed, not sure if he was just being thorough or trying to hold out hope that Kira might have been fooled or been mistaken. An arm so badly burned was almost impossible to correlate to the person it had originally belonged to, past a certain point, all burned bodies started to look the same.

"Completely." Kira replied, swaying a bit on his feet, his eyes and his voice hollow, the tone of a man who has already accepted the greatest of tragedies. "She was wearing her silver ring, the one she wears in place of our wedding band." Kira tilted the hand so Cyprus could see the scorched metal band on one finger. "I felt them die. Our link disappeared. That would ONLY happen if their minds were gone for good. This is all I have left of her. Of any of them."

"I understand you are sure, but your objectivity is somewhat compromised." Cyprus said carefully, wondering why he was so doggedly pursuing this, but unable to stop himself once started. "Would it be okay if we ran some genetic tests to verify that the arm really does belong to Lacus? I know its painful to be seperated from her mortal remains, Mr. Yamato, but we must not have any doubt of her condition. Lacus is too important... to all of us... to be anything less than one hundred percent, verified by multiple sources, sure."

"Test away." Kira sighed. "But you're only prolonging your agony. Do you honestly think I would declare Lacus, Akira and Aoi dead if I had any doubts? Any doubts at all?"

"I think many a distraught survivor, pushed to the edge of sanity by the trauma they have experienced, may have convinced themselves of something happening that may not have occured exactly as they thought." Cyprus answered. "You would not be the first man to give up hope too early, Mr. Yamato."

Cyprus was in the process of saying more when Kira's hand flashed forward and grabbed him by the Stormhound's uniform collar. With a scrap of boot soles, Kira hauled Cyprus bodily over to be practically chest to chest with him. Once, Cyprus had towered several inches over Kira, but time and full maturity had evened their heights, and Cyprus found himself nose to nose with one very unhappy and barely in control Kira Yamato. "I... FELT... THEM... DIE." Kira intoned each word with a gnashing of his teeth. "You cannot understand." Kira turned his eyes away, and all but shoved Cyprus backward. "None of you can... you don't have the ability to understand."

"Then I am sorry." Cyprus returned, his voice rough, but not with anger. "I don't know what I'm going to tell Violet. Akira was her best friend."

"You can tell her this." Kira turned his eyes back to Cyprus, and the Stormhound leader, the master of the staredown, trained by Asmodeus Sark himself to turn a simple gaze into a weapon of brutal intimidation, found himself taking a step back from the look in Kira's eyes. "When I find out who started that fire... and it was no natural fire... nothing in heaven, hell or anywhere in between will stop me from making them pay for what they have done, not just to me, but to everyone."

xxxx

**Orb National Palace, Nara-Attha City, October 18th, midafternoon**

The funeral of Lacus Madeline Clyne and her two children, Akira Yamato-Clyne and Aoi Yamato-Clyne, had transcended the usual bounds of such a tragic event into something that had managed to reach out and touch anyone who was watching it, even through TV screens, even though they were tens of millions of kilometers removed from where the events were taking place. Of course everyone knew who Lacus Clyne was, either as a pop star, a political leader, a charity organizer or even, to some, a saint, but it wasn't until after she was gone that people truly realized how important she was to them, maybe not in a personal sense, but like a safety blanket or training wheels, a hidden sense of reassurance taken away. Lacus Clyne had, not through personal force of arms but through words, charisma and understanding, pulled the world and the human race back from the brink of genocidal mutual annihilation on multiple occasions, had forged two lasting peace treaties, and was widely considered the most influential woman of the Cosmic Era to date.

The funeral started in the morning with a procession through the streets of Nara-Attha City, with tens of thousands of red eyed, tearful public mourners lined up on the sidewalks to wave and shout goodbyes and thank yous to the coffins as they were driven slowly past in a motorcade. Keeping with tradition, the hearse that carried Lacus's coffin was black, but even such a somber day could not go without a nod to Lacus's preferences in life, and a broad pink stripe ran from the hood to the trunk down the middle of the car. Even if a National Holiday and day of mourning hadn't been announced ahead of time, the only people in office buildings that day would have been those that could get no view from street level and had climbed into offices to see the procession. Orb had not seen such an influx of pilgrims and short term visitors since the protest against Blue Cosmos that had turned into Purgatory Day, twelve years in the past.

It was later estimated that at least seventy million people had crowded into Nara-Attha City to witness the funeral procession in person, and the news broadcasts, across both TV and the internets, reached well over 4.8 billion people across Human Space, making it the most watched single event in the history of the human race to date. Unlike the funerals of many important political leaders, there was almost zero military presence at this funeral, no overflights from jets or Mobile Suits, no twenty one gun salutes, and even the motorcade honor guards, Stormhounds in full dress uniform, which they almost never wore, carried no weapons, only tall banners of various nations, or else armfuls of flowers.

Of course there were still some armed guards, but they stayed out of sight as much as possible, watching the crowds for any signs of disturbance, rioting, or grandstanding. It was a boring watch, because despite the all too common nature of human insensitivity to the suffering of others, this was not like other funerals. Even Lacus's political rivals and personal enemies could not find themselves able to badmouth her, or even rejoice in her passing. Regardless of the problems her opinions and actions had caused for many people in the higher echelons of world politics, the passing of Lacus Clyne could not be said to be anything less than a tragedy for the entire human race, no matter their personal feelings about her. No one acted out during the procession or the funeral because EVERYONE could feel a sense of loss, and no one was going to disturb an event they themselves felt connected to.

After touring through the city, the motorcade drove out of the city proper, and onto a nearby penninsula of land, where the war memorial gardens for the Valentine Wars had been constructed in the aftermath of those conflicts. Taking up several hundred square acres of ground, even the calamity of the Eden Disaster and Orb's desperate need for open ground for agriculture after the construction of the Glasshouse had not impunged upon the memorial gardens, which commemorated, among other things, the first razing of Orb and loss of Lord Uzumi Nara-Attha, Purgatory Day, and all those who had died in both first and second Valentine Wars. Here the funeral was closed to the public, with only family friends and government officials allowed in to witness her ceremonial internment, and those of the children.

Of course what only those closest to the deceased knew was that the three sealed coffins were completely empty inside. The public reason that the coffins were sealed was of course because Lacus and the children had died in a fire, and the bodies were said to be too horribly burned to display. But also, the PLANTS had asked for permission to bury Lacus Clyne, as their most famous daughter, on Aprilius City, and in a rare break from PLANT tradition, they would not be recycling her body, but letting her rest undisturbed for all time in their memorial. All agreed that Lacus Clyne had already given enough back to the human race. After some debate, Orb had agreed to the PLANTS request, on the condition that the coffins be sealed in Orb.

Genetic testing of the burned arm had come back with a completely perfect match for Lacus, leaving no doubts, not that many had been able to entertain them. After testing, the doctors had reverentially removed the ring from her finger and returned it to Kira, before the arm was fully cremated, turned to ashes just like the rest of her body. The cremated ashes were then sealed into another container and given over to Kira as well, who had buried them two days before in a private, family only event on Serenity Island, in a palm grove that he and Lacus had walked through many times together in the past, a few hundred yards from their house. The PLANTS could have the symbol of Lacus Clyne's burial, but she belonged with her husband. Kira now wore the scorched ring on a chain around his neck, where the ring could rest near his heart, the metal, though long cooled, always seeming to burn him a little when it touched him.

It is said by some that the true worth of a person can be measured, not by their actions in life, but by who shows up to be at their death, and by that measure the funeral of the Clyne family was also truly exceptional. Everyone from Orb was there, Kira, Cagalli and Athrun, Dearka and Mirillia, Mu and Murrue, Erica Simmons and her family, all the Stormhounds, Jiro Kurenai, Reverend Malchio, and many more, great and small. Solar President Gilbert Durandel was there, with Captain Talia Gladys of ZAFT on his arm, most of the PLANTS Supreme Council, including retired members such as Ezalia Joule and Eileen Canaver, a longtime friend of the Clyne family, the Elsman clan, and others. Notable in their abscence were Yzak and Katie, but as they lived on Mars, which was a good two week journey from Earth, they would come by during their next home furlong.

Standing in a seperate group, closer to the coffins supposedly carrying the remains of Akira and Aoi, was the new generation, Allister Zala-Attha, Roy and Alice Elsman, Violet Finch, Lewis Andrew la Flaga, Ryuta Simmons, and the children of other guests, including a whole slew of Elsman cousins. The Joule twins, Mina and Jamie, were missing from this group, as they were with their parents on Mars, and would not be back to the PLANTS, much less Earth, until early on in the next month. Many speeches were given, condolences were offered, national holidays and days of mourning declared, moments of silence were held, memories were talked about, but to those truly connected to the deceased, it was all inadequate. How do you fit the totality of the people you loved into mere words, or memories or snippets of the things they said or did? It was impossible, Lacus, Akira and Aoi were so much more than they could ever be expressed as by others!

There was a semi-public wake and reception for the dignitaries and their families after the ceremonial interment was over and done with, but Kira did not stay for it, slipping out as quickly as he politely could. Truth be told politness was far from the foremost concern on his mind, the events of the day, with pictures and video clips of Lacus everywhere, and people who had hated Lacus in life talking with such apparent sadness about her passing, and the tragedy of children's lives ended so short, had almost driven him crazy. Some people were truly sorry, but the constant reminders that she and Akira and Aoi were gone, gone forever, was too much for him to bear! He had buried Lacus but he had no peace with his actions. Not while the people that had murdered his family were still out and about. For all he knew, they might even have been attending the funeral!

Kira's suspicions focused upon the USN, perhaps not surprisingly, given the information Monty had shown him and Lacus only a few hours before the fire had occured, it was plain that the USN and its special interest groups were waging a covert, no holds barred war against the Edenite populations. Whether or not the fire was an intentional attack or assassination attempt Kira did not know, all he knew for certain was that the fire was no natural phenomenon, it had moved far too fast, and the way Monty had died, combusting from within, it was like there had been something in the air that had spontaneously set anything on New Eden it touched alight. But at the same time it had little to no effect upon him and Lacus, and presumably upon Akira and Aoi. It hadn't taken much figuring to realize that the only real difference between himself and Monty was their degree of exposure to and saturation by Green EDEN.

Kira did not live day in and day out on New Eden, and he only rarely ate Edenite foods, and even on that particular night, when he'd gorged himself, he'd purged most of the food before he'd really had time to digest most of it, and the Green EDEN it contained. So he'd only felt heat on his skin and within his body, while Monty and the Yggdrasilwood trees around him, burst into flame like a candle dipped in lighter fluid. That whatever it was appeared to target Green EDEN was a definite red flag, as far as Kira was concerned, pointing to the USN. Why would the Edenites not only kill their own people like that, but create a weapon that was apparently tailored to specifically target their own unique biology to greatest effect? It just didn't make sense, especially with the way they were all emotionally connected through the Wind of Words, they had a hard enough time shooting at each other, much less burning each other to death!

The problem was he didn't have any proof for his suspicions, just the suspicions themselves, and his memories from the fire. And while Cagalli and Athrun and Cyprus and even Mu were glad to listen to his suspicions, it really felt to Kira more like they were just placating him, stringing him along by turning a helpful ear but with no real intentions to do anything about it! It had been more than ten days since the fire had happened, and Orb still hadn't sent an official investigation team to Rex Lodge! Cagalli assured him that they would, but that political complications with the USN's increased scrutiny of Orb, ever since the rumors of Kira being dropped off by an unidentified Edenite shuttle had somehow gotten out were preventing Orb from moving openly outside the Glasshouse. All Durandel needed was the "plasuible" suspicion that Orb was colluding with the Edenites, to find an excuse to quash their Independence bill before it even got off the ground, under suspicion of them planning an assisted revolt!

Ten DAYS! Ten hours on New Eden would have been too long, but ten days and counting? They might as well just burn down a random ten square kilometers of forest and search THAT! They'd have about the same chance of finding anything useful relating to the deaths of his family! The Edenites were supposed to be doing an investigation of their own, but how did that help Kira, stuck in Orb under "bed rest recommendation" by several doctors, due to "physical and emotional trauma"? As if he could ACTUALLY SLEEP in the bed he'd shared with Lacus for the past ten years or so? As if he could rest, knowing that she wasn't there, and never would be there again? As if he could even close his eyes without seeing her charred arm lying there in the ash, and knowing that he had totally and completely failed in his most basic task as a father and a husband! If it didn't hurt so much it would be laughable!

Storming through the halls of the National Palace, looking neither right nor left, nor really even seeing his surroundings, Kira continued to brood over not only his own failings, but the far more pressing concern of what had caused that fire. If it was the USN, then it was all too likely they would use it again, and in the furor and aftermath of Lacus's funeral would be the perfect time to do so, while the eyes and minds of the world were distracted! As much as the need to avenge the senseless and random deaths of Lacus, Akira and Aoi burned inside him, he could not let himself forget the ideals that he and Lacus had lived to their entire lives together. This was bigger than just his personal tragedy, this could be the start of another slippery slope descending into the madness of war! Lacus would never forgive him if he turned his back on the world when it needed him, especially if she herself could no longer be there to pick up the slack for him.

He heard someone call his name, and Kira spun around, realizing for the first time that his legs had carried him to one of the National Palace's many garden spots, a place where he had talked with Athrun several times in the past, when they were both avoiding Cagalli when she was in one of her pissier moods. This time it was Kira that was in the pissy mood, though calling it that was quite the understatement. And it was Cagalli that had come to talk with him, looking a bit breathless, she'd probably had to jog to catch up with him, he tended to walk pretty fast when he was angry and lost in his thoughts. Athrun was probably holding down the political fort at the reception, giving Cagalli time to step out and follow her fuming twin brother. Kira met her amber eyed gaze and didn't know whether he was pleased or appalled when she swallowed nervously.

"Have you sent that investigation team like we discussed?" Kira asked, preempting her as she was opening her mouth. "The trail of the people that murdered Lacus and the kids is getting colder with every passing second, you know."

Cagalli opened and closed her mouth a few times as she reordered her mind from whatever she was going to say, Kira's dry eyed confrontationalism plainly catching her off guard, on a day where everyone else was all but overwhelmed with grief and tears. "Uhm, no, I'm sorry, but I haven't sent them yet. Things are complicated right now, Kira."

"Complicated?" Kira snapped, his eyes blazing. "My wife and kids are killed by arson and its too complicated to send a simple forensics team to the scene of the crime! Your own sister in law, and your niece and nephew are murdered and you won't even launch an investigation?"

"Damn it, Kira, you know that's not how things are!" Cagalli retorted with some anger of her own. "Dramaticism aside, Lacus, Akira and Aoi's deaths hit me just as hard as they hit you, and you know that I would do anything in my power to help you out. But my power has limits, and we've already been over them! I can't send anyone right now, because if any Orb officials, even a simple forensics team, were to leave Orb's territory and head out into the Green Zones, Durandel will take it as a sign that we are conspiring with a rogue government and he'll stomp Orb's Independence Bill flat! That bill is just starting to gain momentum, the hopes and dreams of our entire nation depend on it passing! I can't take that chance away from them. Not even for you."

"Then send someone covert! Give me some Stormhounds and we'll sneak out! Anything! I can't stand just sitting around here! This is about more than just me and Lacus, Cagalli, the entire world could be at stake! Millions of Edenite lives could be threatened by this new weapon, whatever it is! We can't just sit here and do nothing!" Kira replied, his fists bunching at his sides. "I swore an oath with Lacus to always fight against war and injustice, and that has not and will not ever change. I cannot sit idly now while someone prepares a genocidal weapon for use!"

"Kira, we don't have any proof that this was an attack!" Cagalli ran her hands through her hair, her legs feeling trapped by the somber black and silver gown she was wearing for the day's events. "I know what you believe, and I believe you too, it doesn't sound like a natural fire from what you describe. But much as I can't deploy an official investigation team because of political ramifications, I can't send an unofficial military team either! I don't control the military anymore, Jiro does, and while Jiro is as sympathetic as anyone, he's not going to risk Orb for your sake, Kira. Especially when we only have your word to go on."

"Since I've made such a habit of lying about things during my life." Kira snorted with contempt.

"For god's sake, Kira, you know I didn't mean it like that!" Cagalli crossed her arms across her chest and glared at him. "Its not a question of personal trustworthiness, its just, well, you were in the middle of a really bad forest fire, and you were being bombarded with feelings from Lacus and the kids, and well, a case could be made for you perhaps exaggerating what happened. I mean, you did get hit pretty hard on the head, by your own admission."

"So now I'm misremembering the events that led to my wife and children being burned into piles of ash." Kira replied flatly, his eyes cold. "I'm not lying, I'm just unreliable as a witness?"

"You're traumatized, Kira, don't even try to deny that!" Cagalli hissed back. "You don't sleep hardly at all, you're barely eating, and if I didn't have Athrun checking up on you every day, you wouldn't even wash yourself! You're falling apart, little brother, everyone can see it happening! Put yourself in my shoes for a little bit? Would you trust the future of an entire nation on the word of someone who looks like a zombie freshly risen from his grave? Who can't even take care of his own basic needs without prodding from others? I believe you, Kira. I'd fly out there with you myself. But you don't have to convince me, you have to convince Jiro! And Jiro took one look at you this morning at the memorial gardens and just about passed out! You look like death warmed over, Kira, people are going to start wanting to help you by strapping you to a damn table soon!"

"My wife and children were murdered... burned to death... not one hundred feet away from me. I felt them die. How the HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO LOOK?" Kira shouted back furiously. "How would you look if it was Allister and Athrun that were dead? I remember what you were like when Kisaka died, even if you don't! How dare you comment on how bad I look at a time like this! At least I haven't shut out my entire family in a bout of depression!"

"No, instead you antagonize and belittle us when we try to help you in the only ways we currently can!" Cagalli shouted right back. "You did the same damn thing back when Lacus almost died from Noah's poison, so I'm not sure why I expected you to act any different now, but I was! I'm sorry I was clinically depressed because of a pleasure enhancing drug that I was tortured with, I guess I'm weak, unlike you, Mr. Ultimate Coordinator! I guess I lack your ability to be immune to poisons and drugs and trauma and to always be right about everything because I wasn't genetically engineered to be the perfect future of humanity, I apologize! Mom thought I was just fine the way I was, apparently, and in the balance of things, I'm not sure she was wrong!"

"I never wanted to be who I am!" Kira yelled at her. "I never asked for this! But I am an Ultimate Coordinator. I am an Edenite. It does not change who I am. I know my certainty doesn't make sense to you, because you just can't understand the depth of feeling conveyed by the psychic bonds of Newtypes. Its a handicap, I know, but..."

"Oh, so now I'm handicapped, am I? Damn it Kira, could you try, once, to NOT be a jerkass?" Cagalli snapped back. "You have always been pigheaded when you think you're right, we both are. But just because you are certain of something doesn't mean you're right! Remember the Pulsar? You were sure that was the only way forward, and then what happened? You almost died! Don't you lecture me about how I can't understand how you feel, at least the parents you grew up with are still alive! I may not be psychic, but love has a connection all of its own! It seems more like being a psychic is a handicap, because you get so caught up in how you can feel things we normal people can't that you forget that normal people have still been feeling all the same emotions as you have for thousands of years, without relying on the crutch of mind to mind contact for certainty! I don't know how your bond thing feels. But if you think I don't understand how your love for Lacus feels, then you are an idiot, little brother."

"What's the point of even talking to you about it? You just preach at me." Kira turned away from his sister angrily. "You weren't there. You don't know what it was like. You couldn't know what it was like."

"Well maybe you'd like to tell me then?" Cagalli challenged. "Though hearing you complain about getting preached to is pretty damn rich, coming from Kira Yamato, the king of preachiness."

"Just go away. I want to be alone." Kira told her.

"Yeah, sure, like you guys left me alone when I was in my Spiffy induced depression. No, that's not happening, Kira. Talk to me. I'm your sister. I'm your family. Talk to me." Cagalli pleaded, reaching out her hand for his shoulder.

"Don't touch me." Kira said coldly. "Just go away! I don't want sympathy right now. If you can't bring yourself to help me investigate the fire, then go back to entertaining the politicians. I'll do it without you."

"Come on." Cagalli put her hand on his shoulder and tugged. "I'm not going anywhere until you talk to me."

"I SAID, DON'T TOUCH ME!" Kira whirled to face her, tearing his shoulder out of her grip, his arm raised to ward her back. In the process of raising that arm, he also raised his hand, and the act of turning brought the back of that hand into contact with Cagalli's lips and chin. Kira had turned with a lot of force, and his accidental backhand connected with enough power to twist Cagalli's head to the side and knock her stumbling to the ground, blood dripping from where her teeth had mashed against her lips. Cagalli shook her head dazedly on the ground, before looking up at him with a shocked expression on her face, and Kira realized that she thought he'd intended to hit her. Though far from as hard as he could hit, he'd still bloodied her lips and knocked her down, which was a bit more than most accidental contact from an Earthling would do. But Kira was not an Earthling. He opened his mouth to apologize, but then his anger took over again. He had told her not to touch him. Maybe she'd believe him in the future. Today was not his day for feeling sympathetic towards the problems of other people.

"I'm going home." Kira announced, turning away from his shocked sister, not even offering her a hand up, much less an apology. "I need to be by myself. Don't call me, don't come visit me. I'm not in the mood for empty sympathy with no intent for action behind it. If you have an investigation team set up, then you should call me. Anything other than that isn't welcome." Kira kept his back to his sister and walked away, shoulders set and head held high. It looked like it was up to him to save a blind world from itself. He hoped Lacus was watching over him from heaven, because it seemed no one on earth was all that interested in helping out.

Cagalli watched her brother leave, shaking stars out of her vision and rubbing a very sore jaw full of teeth that felt a bit looser than usual, tasting the coppery tang of blood on her tongue and wiping it from her chin onto the back of her own hand. Far from discouraging her, the fact that Kira had physically lashed out at her just made her that much more determined to watch over him. It was more surprise than power that had sent her to the ground, though she dreaded explaining her bruise and smashed lips to Athrun when the time came. He tended to be very overprotective of her, and even if it had been Kira who hit her, that would just make it all the worse in Athrun's eyes. Well, whatever, Cagalli thought as she climbed back to her feet. Kira might not believe it at the moment, but he had friends and family that cared deeply for him and would do all they could for him. Even if it was just leaving him alone so he could work things out himself for a little while.

xxxx

**Rural Agriculture District 14, Mandell township, Eastern Coast of Orb, October 20th, Early morning**

As if crossing half the fucking pacific ocean hadn't been a big enough bother, just as he was reaching the doorstep of his final destination he'd hit another snag. Namely, the orangy colored energy field that surrounded the entireity of the Orb islands. While easily permeable to water, air and other things, the electromagnetic barrier was pure death for any electrically charged particles or nanomachines that crossed into it, which was what kept Orb all brown and Earthy, compared to green and Edeny outside. It also kept out the Edenite fish and oceanic wildlife, because brushing up against the Glasshouse field was like rubbing your side across a bed of red hot needles. It wouldn't really kill you as it popped all the Green EDEN inside you into plasma, but it sure wasn't fun, so the animals stayed away. But as saturated as most animal and plant life was with Green EDEN, it was nothing compared to the way his body was pumped full of dozens of different nanocolonies, so much so that Frost wasn't sure he could even survive if they all got zapped.

It was ironic, that what amounted to the worlds largest bug zapper, something that couldn't even actually kill a fly, would be anathema to the greatest and most dangerosu killer of modern times. It might as well be made from planes of solid quantum crystal, he could not penetrate it, on pain of ignominous death, which was the absolute worst kind of death. Not in his little patched together and half sinking boat anyway. It hadn't taken too long for a solution to present itself to him, as was usual, as he'd spied a relatively large container type ship inbound from further out to sea, where he'd passed some sort of artificial construction project in the middle of the night. He'd thought about checking it out, but the lights from Orb's shore had been almost visible by then, and so he'd pressed on. Only to encounter the damn Glasshouse just twelve miles short of the goal line.

Getting aboard the frieghter had been simplicity itself, they'd thought he was a fisherman who'd accidentally strayed outside the Glasshouse and had his motor killed by the electromag field. Apparently that would not be the first time such a thing had happened. A pair of dark sunglasses taken from the previous owner of his ramshackle boat, back on the Chilean coast, sufficed to hide Frost's eyes from his "saviors", who did comment on how strikingly similar to the famous Kira Yamato he looked, which earned them the thinnest of tolerant smiles from him, at least long enough for them to escort him to a small medical chamber, where they were going to feed him something to counteract Green EDEN poisoning. Well, then the glasses came off, more or less by accident, and from there one thing led to another.

He didn't kill them. Every cell in his being wanted to soak in their blood, but he forced himself to maintain strict discipline. This was a covert operation after all, he didn't want to tip his hand too soon. With the powers of the mind that his new body granted him, it wasn't too much work to modify the memories of his victims so that they either didn't remember him or only hazily remembered him. No one even called for help, because by the time anyone realized anything was wrong, they were already pinned beneath him and basically having their brains sucked out and spat back into their skulls. The ship only had a dozen or so crewmembers, most everything was automated, a regular supply shuttle running parts and raw materials out to a place called Trieste Harbor, which must have been that place he'd passed last night.

Cover maintained, Frost had stowed himself away in one of the containers inside the ship's hold, inside a metal barrel filled with water. Shielded by the ships hull, the metal container, the metal barrel and the water, he barely even felt a tingle as the ship passed through the Glasshouse. Leaving a ship full of unconscious bodies, displeased that there were no women on board to provide even a modicrum of liesure activity, Frost bailed out over the shoreward side and swam to shore, an invigorating swim to work out the frustrations of not being able to kill those stupid humans. Orb was a lot different from he remembered it being during the brief time he'd been there in his old body, there seemed to be a lot less people and a lot more farms and fields, filled with fast growing food staples such as corn, wheat and potatos.

Harvesting some of the riper spuds for his own use, having not eaten anything substantial since that big yellow snake a few weeks earlier, Frost assuaged the gnawing feeling in his belly that kind of reminded him of how it felt as a fiver when the scientists weren't giving him enough Gamma Glipheptim. It was certainly annoying, but far from crippling. Reaching a road, Frost began following it, ancient memories of the briefing on Orb's layout Asmodeus had once given him stirring to life, creating a map of the country in his head. He'd landed on the northern east shore, to get to where he was going, where he would find the first blades to sharpen, he needed to go west and south, to Orb's capital.

An hour or so of jogging along the road had finally seen him overtaken by an early morning motorist, some businessman or other returning to Nara-Attha City after a meeting in north part of the country. Of course Frost only learned that after oh so casually stepping out in front of the speeding car, allowing it to hit him, denting the hood deeply and sending him rolling and skidding for a good twenty meters. He'd thought about just waving the guy down, or using his mind to make him stop, but where was the fun in that? Picking himself up from the ground, skin abrasions already fading away into new skin, Frost popped his neck a few times and then walked over to meet the flustered businessman, who was alternately profusely apologizing and eyeing the damage to his car with a somewhat stupefied look.

If he thought the dent in his car was surprising, the clawed fist Frost casually shoved right through his ribcage and out through his back had to be the worst shock of his entire life. And the last one too, as Frost's hand clenched around the man's spine and ripped half his backbone out through his sternum, closing his eyes and beaming as the hot gore of arterial spray painted across him. Violent needs satiated for the moment, Frost stripped out of his ruined clothes and used them to, regrettably, wipe himself off, and then searched the corpse for keys and wallet and other goodies, which was when he'd discovered the man's travel planner and other stuff. The suitcase in the car trunk had clothes that were a bit tight but he could squeeze into them, even if they were a bit too stuffy and formal for Frost's tastes. he left the dark grey collared shirt mostly unbuttoned, and forwent a belt for the slacks, and didn't bother to tie the shoes. He was only wearing this as a disguise, and not even a good one. He'd be changing clothes sooner or later.

He did find a rather nice pair of sunglasses that he used to cover his golden pupiled eyes, and a red ballcap with an orange "M" stuffed into the glovebox that sufficed to cover his mop of brown hair. Sucking on his teeth for the last traces of bloodspray, Frost climbed behind the wheel, and for the first time in his life, actually had to move the seat back a bit because his legs were too long. It was a disorienting experience for someone who had to do a pullup to see over some garden walls in his original body. Running over the already mangled body with the owners own car, Frost pulled back onto the road and headed south, cruising with the windows down, ignoring a pestering pinging from the dashboard as a "engage automatic mode" warning blinked above his speedometer. As if he needed a computer to drive the car for him! Humanity's blade was duller than he'd thought if they couldn't even drive their own cars anymore!

Covering the forty or so miles to the next township took about fifteen minutes, with the way Frost drove, which pushed the car right to its mechanical tolerances, his keen ears alert for any noises that would indicate a problem soon to occur. It was the need for information more than fuel or food that drove him to stop at a fuelling station, hooking the car's electric battery up to the charging port and sliding the dead man's credit card through the reader, Frost went into the store and bought a newspaper. Though printed media had largely been killed by the internet and TV in the Cosmic Era, the recent resource glut of Red EDEN had seen a resurgence in printed papers, though mostly they were more the tabloid sort than the news sort. Frost smirked as he remembered the lessons, oh so long ago when he'd been but a tiny boy, where the BCPU's were taught covert intelligence operation tactics. Who'd have ever thought that stuff was actually going to be useful for him?

His smirk lasted about as long as it took for him to walk outside and open the paper. He scanned the main title and actually did a double take. It read "LACUS CLYNE AND FAMILY FUNERAL LARGEST MEDIA EVENT IN WORLD HISTORY" in screaming bold letters across the top of the first inner page. Then there was a huge picture of a coffin, with Pink's picture on it, and two smaller coffins with two kids pictures on them. The kids bore a definite family resemblance to Pink. "They're DEAD?" Frost shouted in disbelief. "How can they be DEAD? I didn't even think at them yet!"

"What the hell is..." Frost trailed off into furious mumbles as he devoured the article with his eyes, growing more and more infuriated and distraught as he did so. Pink and her kids had burned to death two weeks ago in a fucking forest fire? A forest fire! What the hell kind of pathetic, worthless death was that? How could Pink let herself die in a natural accident? What sort of perverted bitch had she become since he died? Where the FUCK was the boytoy? And then he read that Kira had also been in the fire, but had emerged mostly unharmed. That was the final straw.

Frost whirled and punched the cinderblock wall of the fuel station with all his might, splitting the skin on his fingers and carving a palm sized divot in the stone. "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU DOING, BOYTOOOOYYY! DON'T YOU KNOW THAT PINK IS MINE TO KILL! WHAT IS YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM! ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS KEEP HER ALIVE WITHOUT ME AROUND FOR TEN MEASLY YEARS AND YOU DROP THE FUCKING BALL TWO WEEKS BEFORE I GET HERE? WHAT... THE... FUCK...!"

Frost crumpled the newspaper up and hurled it away like it was a piece of animal rubbish. Still fuming, he turned and kicked his car door hard enough to put his foot entirely through the thin metal. It didn't make him feel any better. Pink was dead and gone and burned to ash, he couldn't even feel the luxury of her life's blood pour across his fingers, he couldn't taste her last breath on his tongue, he couldn't watch the light go out in her eyes as he choked the life from her pretty pale neck! The Boytoy's blunder had cost him so many of life's pleasures, the things he had been looking forward to since even before he'd died! Snarling, Frost drew back his foot to kick again. And then stared, down his long legs, at himself and set the foot almost gently down on the pavement again. He looked down at his foot... at the Boytoy's foot. The snarl turned into a rictus grin, and Frost started to chuckle.

"So maybe you took Pink from me, Boytoy. Point to you, having her die peacefully and gently in a fire before I could get to her and your precious little babies. Yes, you win that round, Boytoy. Well played. But the game isn't over yet, and I'm not just here for you and Pink. You two are the worst, but I have a special thank you to give to all of your friends. Loser and Fiery Zala-Attha. Blond Weeny and chick. Scarface. And you know what, Boytoy? I think they'd like the message so much better if it came from you, rather than from me. Or at least, if they thought it did. Heh. Heh heh heh heh." Frost choked down his amusement before it could turn into a spectacle causing belly laugh, his grin stretching painfully tight across his face. "Its going to be one hell of a Halloween, don't you think, Boytoy? A regular Nightmare on Orb's streets..."


	11. Cold Front

Author Note: well, I'm glad to see people still interested, not that I expected much else from most of you, and those that are wavering are still willing to give me some time to let things unfold. which is a very good thing for all concerned. I'm not the sort, after all, to arbitrarily kill off a major canon character for no reason at all. People keep bringing up biotech when it comes to Edenites and building things out of wood. Is a wooden house Biotech? Is a cart Biotech? I don't think so. Wood is a structural material just like steel or stone. Edenite wood just happens to be equivalent or superior to many metals in terms of strength, flexibility and weight, so they use it instead of metals or plastics. It also happens to be readily available pretty much anywhere on New Eden, so that helps too. To me Biotech is manipulating a living lifeform of some sort to fufill a technological role. BALORs are Biotech. Frost is, in ways, Biotech. The Edenites farming Nectar to taste like tea, that's Biotech too. But by and large, the Edenite industrial/military complex is pure technological, with Yggdrasilwood instead of metals, is all.

Some people noted that my definition of Dark Kira is not "Evil" Kira. That is definitely correct. I see "dark" Kira being more like Kira during the first 15 episodes of Gundam Seed, except not in over his head. He's the Kira we all know, love and hate, but with a lot of the crusading idealism and wishy-washy behavior stripped out. He's now more concerned about the ends, rather than the means of getting there, at least up to a point. He wouldn't start a fight, but by god, he'll end them, and with extreme prejudice. And I'm afraid there's going to be some elements of angst too, but can you really blame the guy, with what happened to his family? Muciope asked why Kira would wait around for ten days. Its not by choice, but its not as easy as it seems to go into the Green Zones. Very few people are willing to fly there for any reason, or boat there, and the Orb government has him under a no travel order for his own safety and health, so its not like he can just commandeer something. Just because you know someting is happening doesn't always mean you possess the ability to act on it, due to circumstances around you.

xxxx

**Praetorian Enclave, Garden City, New Eden, October 8th, Evening**

Hiero opened the sliding door to the meditation chamber probably a trifle harder than he meant to, and certainly harder than was polite, the rich, dark steely grey panels of Blankwood clacking and "thunking" as they bounced against the solid granite wallstop, but then again he was hardly in the mood for social nicety right now. Less than fifteen minutes ago he'd returned from dropping the nigh comatose Kira Yamato off outside of Orb's Glasshouse, and the crushed look of despair and sorrow on the man's face had lit a fire in Hiero's gut of the like that had not been there for several years now. Normally the Consol of Foreign Affairs was famed for his inscrutability, compared favorably to most glaciers for sheer icy composure, letting neither a smile or a frown crease his polite and attentive mask. Today his mouth was a thin, hard line, slightly downturned at the corners, concealing teeth that were all but clamped together and grinding with contained emotion.

Sweeping into the room, Hiero ignored at first the man he'd walked all this way, almost two thousand cold, hard steps up a winding staircase in the western cliffs of the mountain valley that Garden City was built into. Climbing the steps was a test of endurance in and of itself, one that the Praetorians themselves would endure three or four times a day as they traveled from their eating and sleeping quarters in the valley up to the training facilities buried high up in the cliffs, and normally Hiero would have taken an escalator or lift, but today he needed the time to cool off a bit, so he'd taken the longer, traditional route. And he hadn't been quiet about it either, all but stomping as he resolutely strode up the steps, the sounds of his passage echoing far ahead of and behind him, letting all and sundry know that it would perhaps better pay to be somewhere else than in his path right now.

Reaching up to his throat, Hiero unclasped the ceremonial overcloak he'd worn for his appearance in front of the Orbites and with a flapping of leather, slung it over a convenient protrusion on the rocky wall, the crystal beads and semiprecious stones embroidered onto it clacking like a handful of pebbles tossed against a brick wall. The cloaks were a mark of status as a member of the Consols, the men and women who governed Garden City, but most Consols, Hiero among them, utterly despised the garments and only wore them for the utmost of formal occassions. It wasn't that they were uncomfortable or restrictive, they were fine and expensive garments, but they symbolized a "setting apart" from the rest of the Edenites that most found very uncomfortable. In some ways, Hiero had once commented to a friend, wearing a Consol cloak was like painting a big pair of bullseyes on yourself, one on your forehead, the other on your ass, because no matter which way you went, you were going to get nailed hard by someone who wanted you going the other way.

On the other hand, there were times when the sight of the overcloak could definitely pay dividends, much like a police officer showing his badge or a government official displaying a diplomatic ID, and Hiero had very deliberately not removed his cloak before coming up here today, knowing that the man he'd come to see would be more than appreciative of the slightest nuances and would draw the appropriate conclusions. Edenites weren't always the most consciously subtle of people, but at the same time they generally were far more subtle, unintentionally, than Earthlings were. With keener senses they could detect all the little details in poise and dress and even scent that would clue them in on the exact feelings of others in a social situation, and that wasn't even getting into the emotional and psychic sensitivities! By wearing the cloak to this meeting, Hiero was reinforcing that he came as Consol Hieronymo, in a more official, authoritarian capacity, not Hiero the fellow Edenite.

Finally turning from hanging up his cloak, Hiero gave the barest nod to the man seated in the chair by one of the large windows that looked out onto Garden City and Yggdrasil, and took a chair himself without being bid, just across a small writing desk from the man he'd come here to confront. That was one advantage to being a high government official, Hiero didn't have to be polite if he didn't feel like it, he wasn't here to be friends with this man, though he certainly would not seek him out as an enemy either. The enigmatic man known as Kunai was definitely not someone you casually got in the path of, but then again, neither was Hiero. As Consol of Foreign Affairs for Garden City, he was probably the most powerful Consol, or at least had the widest sphere of influence, since he was responsible for not just dealing with other city states, but also the Earthlings.

Leaning his elbows on the table, Hiero hunched over and placed his chin on his gloved hands and glared frigidly at Kunai, sitting calmly across the desk from him. The gloves were another snub/subtle hint, since despite being Latent, as a Consol Hiero was not obliged to follow the usual social strictures of covering up his skin around others, he'd earned enough trust from his people that it wasn't necessary unless he so chose. Like he had today, signalling to Kunai in no uncertain, though far from overt, terms that Hiero felt like he needed restraining, in case of accidental touches. In essence, Hiero was telling him that he didn't trust himself to act civilly should they touch hands, so he'd covered up to be polite, conveying that he was pissed off enough to not care about being polite, while at the same time, still being socially polite on the surface.

"Your eyes sure are bright today. Something on your mind, Consol?" Kunai asked agreeably, leaning back in his own chair, giving Hiero some extra space, just like he would for any dangerous being that sat near him in a tense mood. "Bright eyes" was an Edenite saying that referenced how a person's eyes would turn reflective and metallic when they were furious or enraged, as they got closer and closer to activating their Seed. An Edenite with bright eyes was someone you wanted to steer clear of, they were about to explode. Not that Kunai felt especially threatened by Hiero, but it wouldn't do for violence to break out between two such powerful and respected men. Kunai had been offered various Consol positions before, but he always turned them down, content with his reputation as one of the primary founders of Garden City and discoverer of Yggdrasil. He could better help serve his people by being an informal political focus point, rather than a governmental authority. Lacus Clyne had enjoyed years of widespread success with just such a standing, and Kunai sought to emulate her success, if not her methods.

"Don't play cute with me, Kunai." Hiero warned. "I'm not in the mood for your usual Conclave shenanigans. I mislike being made a pawn, and I mislike even more when good, innocent people get caught up in events they don't deserve in order to facilitate some grand plan."

"If you want me to admit to having your shuttle tampered with in order to prevent you from going to the Rex Lodge last night, then I will." Kunai replied in a relaxed tone. "I would think, in light of the night's events, you would be thanking me for that rather than accosting me."

"Thirty three people lost their lives because you kept things close to your chest. Six of them were children, three of those under the age of ten. One of the deceased was a personal friend of mine, Monticello. Another was Lacus Clyne herself." Hiero countered flatly. "And you think I'm glad that your machinations spared my life? Obviously you have no understanding of what a pivotal woman Lacus is. Or even worse, what sort of man Kira Yamato is. He will not take the murder of his family lying down. And I would not wish to place myself betwixt him and his revenge. You're playing with fire here, Kunai, and I don't like the implications one bit."

"I understand the implications of the death's of the Yamato-Clyne's better than you can imagine, Consol. Far, far better." Kunai leaned closer this time, dropping his voice to a whisper, even though there wasn't another soul around for a hundred meters. "If you're really that bothered by what happened, perhaps you should have fruit salad for lunch? Maybe you'll feel better after that." Once more Kunai was employing an Edenite saying, this time "fruit salad" referencing the Fruit of Wisdom produced by Yggdrasil, apple like fruits that contained chemically coded information, basically like data disc downloads from Yggdrasil, since a direct real time psychic conversation with the Grand Chimera would put a human into the hospital, or if they were unlucky, into a grave. Wisdom Fruit was not publicly available, even condensed and filtered by encoding into chemical format, the thoughts of a Grand Chimera struck like mental sledgehammers, and few were left able to stand or even talk after a meal of "fruit salad". It was not a meal to be had lightly or regularly.

"Yggdrasil ordained it?" Hiero asked in mild confusion, leaning back as he struggled to assimilate what Kunai was hinting at. "But why? What purpose does such a sacrifice serve? Where is the need for such suffering?"

"I am merely a branch waving in the wind. I do not comprehend the trunk that bears me." Kunai shrugged. "But it was ordained, Consol. Yggdrasil foresaw the events of last night with great clarity, and my own actions were dictated thusly. You are too important to the cause of Garden City and New Eden to be allowed to burn in chemical flames just yet." Kunai's thin lips turned up in a slight smirk, as if privy to a private joke.

"My life is too important but Lacus Clyne and her children are allowed to burn?" Hiero commented sceptically. "By the Tree, man, she was the greatest peacekeeper of modern times. She could have been the necessary link to a lasting peace between us and the Earthlings, maybe even to eventual re-integration of our peoples on equal terms! And now she's gone, dust in the wind, and though I can only peer a minute or so in the future myself, I don't need to be psychic to foresee the reprecussions of her violent death. Of her murder."

"So sure she was murdered?" Kunai's smirk grew a little wider.

"Don't play with me, Kunai." Hiero warned dangerously. "We both know that the fire wasn't natural. Nothing natural could have started such a widespread fire in an Yggdrasilwood forest. Nor would it have burned so completely. I don't have any evidence yet, but I have people sifting through the ashes as we speak, and we both know its only a matter of time before we discover who was behind this tragedy."

"I should think we already know who is behind it." Kunai's smirk turned bitter. "The Reclaimer Initiative and the USN have been striking at us covertly for years now. With this event as their catalyst, they will come after us in the open now, and with a weapon on hand that can set an entire forest alight from above."

"Indeed, they would be the obvious perpetrators." Hiero agreed, shooting another hard glance at the bald headed young man across from him. "But pardon me if I remain suspicious of the degree of Conclave and GreenCo involvement I see in the shadows. I would not think it beyond the Conclave to engineer this whole event, in the interest of your nebulous greater good. And GreenCo supporters will be glad to jump onto any confrontation that ensues and escalate things into a full blown war. Its all a little too pat for my tastes. And then there's the fact that you and several of your Praetorians were missing and unaccounted for last night, and I seem to be holding one card short of a full house."

"If the Unifying Conclave wanted to engineer a fracticious event, we would have been far more clean cut than burning down a dozen square kilometers of verdant forest. Besides just the human casualties, the toll on high and low order organisms was devastating." Kunai replied sadly. "Of course, for the greater good of all New Eden, they would still be sacrificed if need be. But why resort to a forest fire when an ambush by "Reclaimers" would accomplish the same thing in a hail of "misaimed" gunfire, and much less randomly?"

"To think that such a revered man could be so heartlessly cold blooded." Hiero observed with a shake of his head. "I shudder to think what the people on the streets would say."

"I've never made any attempt to hide my pragmatic nature. Events of the past have blown my generous qualities far out of proportion in the public eye. You should know better, Consol, I created and trained the Praetorians... is that something a nice man would do?"

"By some opinions, the Praetorian Order are our greatest protectors against the ravages of the RI and rogue Chimeras, the traveling lawmen and lone riders of our post modern world. They save hundreds of lives and livelihoods across New Eden every month. Every boy or girl wants to grow up to be a Praetorian, at one point or another." Hiero answered with a shrug. "The people idolize your Praetorians. They are our paladins in shining armor."

"More like black knights than paladins." Kunai retorted with a shake of his head. "The Praetorians were created to protect and defend to people of New Eden against all threats, internal or external, no matter the cost. They are soldiers first and foremost, Consol. Trained killers, those who have dedicated their lives towards being masters of violent arts and the dealing of death to their enemies by whatever means is most expedient. Our justice comes from the barrel of a smoking gun, our mercy from a silent knife in the night, our wrath from a twenty meter war machine stamping an entire township into oblivion. Idolize us or fear us, we don't care, we'll protect you all just the same. But don't ever mistake us for nice people. We are the rough men that stand on the walls while the rest of you sleep tight."

"And there is great nobility in that." Hiero noted, leaning back in his chair once more, as the topic of conversation shifted away from the subject of his ire. "I know I always rest a little deeper when Lilia or Heine or Haman or Alexander are around." He looked around the meditation chamber, which was asture to the point of starkness, with the only furniture being a few chairs, two of which he and Kunai were occupying, the desk, and a small cabinet that was probably a combination refrigerator and pantry. The rest was bare granite walls and then two sliding doors of Blankwood panels, one of which he'd come through, the other opposite. There were two large windows looking out on Garden City, spread out almost a thousand feet below in the valley, and some of Yggdrasil's lower boughs were just overhead, providing plenty of shade throughout the day.

The skyscrapers of the downtown commercial and administrative districts of Garden City never failed to look like toys from up here, thirty and forty story buildings crowded like weeds along and around Yggdrasil's trunk, its branches sweeping out to keep the entire city of over three million Edenites in comfortable shade from the high altitude sun, with the crown of the tree still an equal distance overhead. Flocks of songbird Cheeps flitted by the window, fleeing from the shadow of a giant Roc, neo-Eagles that were big enough to pick up a adult human in a single claw. There were special watchers and automated programs set up to shine painfully bright beams of light into the eyes of any Rocs that descended below a certain altitude, to keep the predatory birds from bothering pedestrians. In the distance, Hiero could make out the cleared ground that served as the airport, where his Griffin class diplomatic shuttle was parked, linked to the rest of the city by high speed subway lines.

Much like an iceberg, only a small fraction of Garden City was built aboveground, the greater majority of the homes, businesses and government structures were actually buried in the valley floor, or carved into the mountain cliffs and peaks on all sides of the valley, a subterranean network of gigantic caverns that stretched for miles in every direction, even straight down! This left more of the surface areas, the most pleasant areas, for public spaces for recreation, amusement or agriculture, as well as living areas for the non-human residents, such as several herds of Rex Elk, packs of Garms, prides of Direcats and other domesticated or allied creatures, including several Chimerae.

"Speaking of Lilia and Alex." Kunai said, watching his guest fondly eye the city spread out below. The city he had helped found. The city he was devoted to protecting, to his dying breath and beyond, no matter the cost. No matter how dirty he had to play, even if it meant provoking a war now, rather than letting it develop on its own later. Even if it meant driving a man he had once called friend into the pits of despair by denying him his precious family, a pain he himself knew all too well. It would all work out in the end. He'd seen it, or rather, Yggdrasil had predicted it. And Yggdrasil had not yet been hugely wrong to date. But the Praetorians would not be enough for the conflict to come, New Eden needed something more. Something special. The greatest Mobile Suit pilot to ever live. That would be one of their aces in the hole. It was only a matter of letting events play out fully, and then picking the fruit when it was ripe. "They're in quite the heated bout right now."

Kunai waved his hand and circuitry embedded in the walls and floor projected a holographic display of one of the Praetorian practice rooms, deeper inside the training halls that the meditation room was the antechamber of. Cameras from that room displayed a real time three dimensional image of the training bout in progress, which had two Praetorians suspended on a balancing wire about as thick as a human thumb, the wire was stretched out about ten meters from the floor. One of the Praetorians was the lithe Lilia, clad in a light blue training outfit of sleevless shirt and trosuers, while her opponent, massing almost twice as much as her and towering a half foot over her, wore dark brown clothing of similar make. Lilia's blue hair flew wildly around her head as she swayed back and forth on the wire, one foot in front of the other, poised and ready. Alex, her opponent, had a mane of white-blond hair, which was plastered to his skull with sweat, his greater size and weight more a handicap than an advantage on the narrow balancing wire.

Both Praetorians bore springy poles of Yggdrasilwood about four feet long, with a sculpted foot and a half long glaive blade on either end of the pole, the same style weapon as the Mobile Suits they piloted bore. Each Praetorian was encouraged to develop their own fighting style and master their own favorite weapons, but they all trained with the long glaive and double glaive, the signature weapons of the Praetorian Order, combinations of staffs and swords, weapons and tools. They used the weapons as much for balance as for attacking or defending as they edged back and forth on the wire. Each Praetorian wore a patch over one eye, a plug in one nostril and another plug in one ear. With Edenite senses, only half disabling vision or smell or hearing was actually more crippling than completely denying one or more senses. Both of them bore heavy bruises from blows from their opponents double glaive, which, while not sharp, was still an effective bludgeoning tool that could easily break bones if you didn't block or dodge correctly.

As if all that wasn't enough, other Praetorians stood at the edges of the room and shot blunt tipped arrows or bean bag bullets at the two combatants, forcing them to duck and dodge the incoming projectiles or else chance being knocked off balance or even entirely off the wire, for a long hard fall to the sand covered floor thirty feet below. Not necessarily a fatal distance, but definitely a painful broken bones one, if you didn't land correctly. Hiero shook his head in bemused amazement, caught between awe at the Praetorian's dedication to personal mastery, even going to such extremes as this in training, and a bit of disdain, that such otherwise smart and capable people should turn to violence as their preferred method of expressing themselves. "They've been at this particular match for most of an hour now." Kunai explained, levering himself to his feet with a heavy sigh.

It wasn't the most commonly known fact, but Kunai was actually paralyzed from the waist down, though you wouldn't know it from looking at him as he moved around. Sure, his gait was a little weird, his feet lifting high and slamming down with exceptional force, more stomping or marching than walking, but he got around just fine on his own, without a cane or crutches or any mechanical aides. Which was just that much more of a testament to the unflinching power of his mind and his will. It took another strong telekinetic to truly appreciate just how tough it was for Kunai to move around as he did, telekinetically gripping his inert legs and forcing them to move in a parody of regular motion, even keeping his balance with delicate pulls and pushes from his mental powers. Most telekinetics counted themselves as pretty strong if they could lift thirty pounds at a time. Kunai could lift a little more than a hundred. While also keeping himself upright and mobile. There was no greater telekinetic alive among the human race, at least none known.

And none more expert in the use of telekinetics as a deadly force either. The extent of most telekinetics combat ability was a bludgeoning invisible punch or shove, or else grabbing something else heavy and using that as a club or projectile. Kunai was far more refined and terrifying than that. Besides just using multiple razor sharp "card" like projectiles to slice and dice targets, he could quite literally rip strips of skin and muscle off of people, or pull out their eyes and tongue from a distance, or create fire from thin air by rubbing molecules together until the air ignited, and some Praetorians would swear they had seen him rip a man's heart out of his chest without touching him once, though that might have been hyperbole. Still, it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, not taking the Seed into account. It was to the point that while every Praetorian could best Kunai in a physical contest, no one would ever challenge him, because his mental power was just such an incredible advantage, he was practically unassailable on a personal scale. He deserved his spot as the founder and leader of the Praetorian Order.

"Don't think you're off the hook, ordained prediction or not, there are some lines we should not cross." Hiero said, turning to leave, not having much of a stomach for watching two people he knew well beating the hell out of each other, even for mutual enjoyment. He found his cloak waiting for him in midair, and he plucked it from Kunai's mental grip with a roll of his eyes. "Just for that, next time we sit down together, I'll pull your chair out for you." Hiero threatened, with the merest hint of humor.

"You and Lacus and Kira would get along great together. They are born Children, if I ever saw any." Kunai answered. "There are lines not to be crossed. But they are too dark and horrible for you to even consider them, Consol. I pray it will not come to the point where you even have to become aware of these irredeemable lines. Nothing I have been shown would indicate it."

"Let us hope you have been shown everything then, Kunai." Hiero said heavily. "Let us hope that Yggdrasil is not sugercoating the future for our current peace of mind. Or that we are not misinterpreting what it means. It would not be the first time things got lost in translation between tree and man after all..."

xxxx

**Undisclosed Location "The Cube" Maximum Security Prison, USN Space, October 20th**

"I don't believe you." The young man seated in the chair... more like secured to it, his arms constrained by a heavy duty straight jacket, the cuffs shackled to the armrests, his ankles similarly bound to cleats in the floor of the special interviewing room, said in sneering tones. Seven years in near total isolation had done little to dull the edge of Noah's tongue, and he had grown to almost enjoy Gil's infrequent visits for the chance to verbally spar with someone, anyone. Though of course unable to see Gil, or anything else, after his eyes had been taken from him, along with much of his fine facial features, by Lunamaria Hawke shortly after he was taken prisoner by the USN, Noah could hear where Gil was easily enough by the sound of his breathing, and he tilted his head as he "peered" at his infrequent honored guest.

"You don't have to believe me, but its nothing less than the truth this time." Gil answered, keeping himself mostly turned away from Noah, since staring into the mass of pink and purple and white scars that covered most of the young man's face was unsettling to say the least, and even actively upsetting if he'd just eaten, especially the acid burned pocks where those unnerving gold-purple eyes had once resided, and were now nothing but raw cups of reddish scar tissue. Gil made a note, as he frequently did but always forgot later, to have the guards put a blindfold or mask on Noah next time, so he wouldn't have to look at his horrific mutilations while they talked.

"Lacus, dead in a forest fire?" Noah retorted skeptically. "Along with both her children? What, did someone shoot her in the spine first? Lacus is many things, but she's not the sort to get caught in a forest fire, certainly not with her children around. And what the hell was Cousin Kira doing all this while? No, its just too fantastic Gil. Try again, with Athrun and Cagalli maybe. I could see that blond bimbo burning herself to death, perhaps. But not Lacus."

"And if I told you it wasn't a natural forest fire?" Gil said slyly, still turned around. With his face like it was, it was almost impossible to read Noah's expressions, so instead he listened. It was faint, but there might have been a somewhat sudden intake of breath.

"Then if I were you, I'd better hope Kira doesn't find out it wasn't a natural fire." Noah said simply, after gathering his thoughts. He shivered as he remembered how Kira had been after he'd accidentally shot Lacus with poison intended for Kira, much less how he'd been in the Battle of Cape York after coming from her near deathbed. If Gil had actually contrived an event that HAD claimed the lives of Lacus and her young children... Noah actually smirked, and it was a terrible expression indeed. "My advice, truth be told, is to take a spacewalk without a suit, Gil. You'll save yourself a lot of time and pain."

"I am not concerned with Mr. Yamato's reaction, even if he manages to scrounge up evidence, which should be impossible by now." Gil shrugged. "He's just one man, and he doesn't even have a Gundam right now."

"I was just one man too." Noah reminded him. "And I didn't have a Gundam for most of it. It may sound strange coming from me to you, but don't be stupid here, Gil. Kira is one person you do not want to be opposed with. If you had to pick anyone to make an enemy of, choose anyone but him. Pacifistic idealist he may be, but that's never stopped him from throwing down his enemies in fire and ruin when it all came down to it."

"I should hope he does come after me." Gil replied with a cold smile. "If the brother of Orb's Queen were to spark an incident between Orb and the USN, say by assaulting the Solar President, then Orb would have two choices. Watch their pitiful independence bill crumble into dust then and there, or utterly disown Yamato, in which case the federal penitentiary system would take care of him. No, for their own sake and for the sake of their own people, Yamato's friends and remaining family have a vested interest in keeping him calm and contained. Without definite proof, of which there is none, linking me and the USN to what happened on the 7th, they don't have a leg to stand on when it comes down to it."

"You always do have things planned out." Noah sighed. "I was the same way. I never saw my defeat coming. Not until the Brotherhood went down. Until then I was still pretty sure I could pull it all off, just fine. You should know by now that Yamato, when the mood or need strikes, flies in the face of all reason and logic, and usually comes out on top. I won't warn you again, hell, I don't know why I'm warning you at all. Just don't think you can demonize Kira Yamato like you demonized me. There are just some people that don't have a skeleton in their closet, Gil, and those are the people it is wisest to leave well alone."

"I think I will survive." Gil told him with another shrug. "They are all flies dancing on my palm, I can crush the lot of them any time I need to." He turned and looked at the top of Noah's head, the wispy platinum blond hair that was, as ever, well groomed despite his blindness. "I should convey compliments from Dr's. Dostanya and Roanoke, they are taking great strides forward in anti-psychic technologies, thanks to you playing test subject." Gil's eyes caught on the small metal and plastic box that was surgically bonded to the side of Noah's skull, which contained a monitor that constantly watched his brain for evidence of psychic activity, and various drugs and stronger countermeasures for disabling him if his mental activity ever went above a certain point. This was a prototype model, and they were soon to begin mass producing them, and then they would have a easy way to keep the Edenite population under control in the future, once they were resubjugated.

"Now there are two people that could stand dying in a fire." Noah's voice was brittle and cold. "And if they did, I don't think I'd even spit on them, in case it accidentally put them out."

"I'm sure they would be hurt by your opinion." Durandel said with a grin. "They do so love poking and prodding around inside you. But if you're getting tired of it, I'm sure Meyrin would be glad to shoulder the burden in your place? They've been complaining recently about getting bored with a male test subject only, the female body is different in significant ways after all."

"Do as you want." Noah said with studied disinterest. "Chop her up, pickle her in jars, or serve her as sushi, I don't care."

"Oh come on now, Noah. You've kept this silly charade up for more than seven years now and its completely pointless. Everyone knows you two were in love back then, and your stubborn insistence that she means nothing to you, even now, makes me think your feelings have endured and even matured since then. Its quite a wonderful thing, true love, don't you think?" Gil asked.

"Think what you want, do what you want. I don't care if you serve me her head on a silver platter." Noah retorted sullenly. "Just leave me alone, or send in your doctors to poke and prod me whenever you need a chuckle. I'm only alive because you need someone to gloat over anyway."

"Perhaps you'd like to die then? Go under the knife one time and not wake back up?" Gil offered. "It could be arranged if you want. Perhaps we could do a re-enactment of the classic Romeo and Juliet scene, with you and Meyrin believing each other dead and sacrificing yourselves to be with each other in death. That seems sufficiently melodramatic for someone like you."

"I'm just the actor, you're the one directing the show, Gil." Noah reminded him. _At least for right now._ "Any melodrama would be your fault."

"Perhaps so. I guess we'll postpone that conclusion for a while yet." Gil smiled and turned for the door. "I'll send Meyrin your best then?"

"Tell her to fuck off and die already, I'm bored of hearing her name. She was a fine piece of ass, and thats all. You get over it after the first year of sterile celibacy."

"Oh, the words of true love, they ring sweetly in my ears." Durandel chuckled at Noah's expressive grunt of disdain.

"Gil." Noah said, halting Durandel just as he was buzzing the door to be let out of the secured room. "Don't underestimate Kira. If he thinks you had a hand in Lacus's death it will be bad for far more than just you."

"The time where a single man can influence the world for good or ill has passed." Durandel said, over his shoulder. "For what its worth, it was an accident. But a very well timed one, I do have to say. Its almost like it was preordained..."

xxxx

**Fenris Enhanced Armament Researchers Headquarters, Second Earth Colony 4, Lunar orbit, October 21**

"Testing is complete. Subject 0073, you may now return to your quarters for a rest cycle." The cold, almost toneless voice on the intercom grated, as the lights in the room dimmed from the pure, almost blinding white they had been, returning the room to normal standards of illumination. The metal table-rack rotated from its vertical position in front of the bank of one way mirrored windows and camera arrays to a horizontal arrangement, plastic and metal wrist, waist, neck and ankle restraints popping loose at the stroke of a key from the control room, allowing the young woman who had been held on the examination table to first sit up and then get to her feet, her balance a bit wobbly as she stood on her own two feet for the first time in over six hours. She shook out her medium length light red hair and blinked her greyish-lavender eyes, with their bright metallic silver pupils, as they dilated and squinted as she tried to recover her bearings.

It was easier said than done, Meyrin reflected hazily, her thoughts still blurred from the aftereffects of the cocktail of experimental drugs and "treatments" that they'd injected her with at the beginning of the tests, earlier in the day. She wasn't sure if it was morning, afternoon or evening right now, on a space colony with constant "daylight" such earthly time constraints were largely unknown and meaningless anyway. All she knew for certain was that her body ached and panged all over, from inside and out, her bones throbbed, her muscles cramped and her skin itched as her enhanced immune systems fought to flush all the contaminents from her system. Holding a hand to her feverish brow, Meyrin closed her eyes and wished the headache would go away, but long and bitter experience had taught her that her suffering was only just beginning. She wouldn't be sleeping much tonight, and she'd be doing even less resting.

The door to the secure examination room hissed open at another flick of a switch from the doctors and technicians staffing the monitoring and control room, reading information from their sensors and data collectors as they compared the preliminary results of this battery of tests to logs from many, many other such tests in the past. The search to find a natural or synthetic drug that could overwhelm and depress an Edenite immune system and mental power control in a cost effective and efficient manner was one of the longest running experiments in FEAR, but today, as in all other days, the prognosis was not particularly good. Suppression of psychic activity or bodily control was only temporary at best, even in concentrations that would kill an Earthling, and the subject's immune system continued to work efficiently to purge any outside contaminents.

Ignorant of the scientists displeasure, and not of a mind to care either way, Meyrin stumbled from the room where she had basically been voluntarily tortured for the past quarter of a day and, using one wall to help support herself, started trudging back towards her quarters. Voluntarily was perhaps a stretching of terms, while it was true that her status her at the "Facility", as all those who lived and worked there were wont to call it, was unique, she was far from the happy and willing "guest" that her status was officially labeled as. She had quarters of her own, though they were small and bare, and a measure of "privacy", at least a door to shut to keep out casual passerby, though she knew she was watched and monitored secretly at all times. She was a dangerous, mutant aberration to these people, or else a very important test subject, of course she was kept under close scrutiny at all times.

For that matter she was a political prisoner as well and even a hostage, though that last part was, hopefully, accidental. She had the freedom to go pretty much anywhere in the private sections of the Facility, but other than her room and the nearby restroom and bathing facility, there was nowhere she particularly wanted to visit, and many places she would go far out of her way to avoid ever going again if she had a choice. She also was free to travel, by and large, without an escort, though there were sections of the Facility, many of them places she would never voluntarily go, where she was forced to endure the presence of a security taskforce member walking close behind or beside her, stun baton in hand and other hand resting on a pistol holstered at side or thigh. As if either weapon, lethal or nonlethal, would be enough to deter her from taking out a single security guard if she felt the need to do so, without suffering injury herself in the process, but it was the symbol that counted, she assumed.

But as terrible as her situation was, enduring endless rounds of physical examinations and drug tests, Meyrin knew that her life was practically a paradise, at least for an Edenite in Earthling custody. Or as the Earthlings preferred to be called on their home turf, "Humans", though Meyrin found precious few of them to be worthy of that title. By twisting and re-interpretation of the almost twenty year old Torino Protocol, which had originally been issued by the nations of Earth banning overt genetic modification of human beings anywhere on Earth, all Edenites and other Green EDEN transformed life forms had been declared "illegal genetic experiments" and had been classified as non-human by the powers that be in the USN. They kept this fact quiet for the time being, as declaring an entire genetic subset of humanity to be monsterous abominations unfit for even basic human rights was a tough thing to feed a peacetime public.

But where Meyrin had a famous, well connected and politically powerful sister to keep her protected from the sharp edge of the USN and FEAR's experiments, she was the only one so blessed, and there were many other Edenites living in the Facility that were not so fortunate as her. Most of them had been living there for as long or even longer than Meyrin herself, captured during the days or weeks immediately after their transformation, when they were still weak or disoriented from the draining experience and were easy to corral and transport. Others were more recent captives, brought in by covert USN and FEAR forays to New Eden's surface in the past seven years, snatching lone travelers, small groups and even entire families from isolated homesteads. Few went quietly, and most arrived at the facility either unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, some even on the brink of death from injuries sustained in fighting their captors.

Most of the Edenites lived in what were charitably called "cubicles" but a much more apt name would be "cages" or "kennels", barred enclosures barely big enough to sit upright in, much less stand, and so narrow a grown adult could not fully spread their arms without touching bars. Bars which could be charged with almost ten thousand volts of electricity at the press of an invisible button in a security center somewhere not even remotely nearby, in case of a breakout attempt, or, far more often, seemingly for the pure hell of it, making an inmate jerk and shriek and wet themselves just for the purposes of psychological torture. All in the name of science of course, of bettering "Humanity", of more fully understanding this genetic "affliction" that was Green EDEN, and the effects on human bodies, and of the capabilities of those transformed by it.

The cages were just the start of the dehumanization of the captives by their captors. The food was heavily drugged, to keep the Edenites placid and docile, but most of the time the drugs just made them sick as their bodies rejected the "poison", and more meals ended up half digested on the floor than they did in the small drains each cage was equipped with for sanitary reasons. Most times they weren't allowed clothing, and they were washed via a very cold hose and left to shiver dry. Several cages were built into each "domicile" chamber, between six and ten, but talking or otherwise communicating with the other inmates was strictly prohibited, and though it went on anyway of course, too much talking or too loud would generally get the electric bars turned on for all involved. And woe betide the fool, usually a newcomer, that tried to resort to psychic means of communication.

As a matter of course, each Edenite inmate had a brain monitor bonded to the back of their skull sometime in their first day at the Facility. Some monitors contained taser like prongs or drug injectors that would sedate and shock unconscious a subject if they detected activity in the psychic parts of the human brain, but most merely monitored and relayed data to a central observatory in the security center. Not that the punishment was any less dire for all that it would come a few minutes after any activity was detected, suffice it to say being beaten with clubs into an unconscious, bloody heap was where things started, and they grew progressively worse from there. But some people refused to be cowed, or didn't seem able to learn, perhaps because they'd lived for years with psychic communication as an everyday part of life, and they could no more stop doing it than they could stop making facial expressions while talking.

Such "irredeemable subjects" would be assigned to experimentation in the dreaded "Lab 8", the domain of the bio-anatomy researchers. Very few who ventured into Lab 8 ever returned, and even fewer returned with all their body parts still attached. All dead bodies generated by other avenues of research were routed to Lab 8 for dissection and cataloging, but they also required living bodies to root around in so they could see how all the enhanced organs functioned together inside a body, and how they would react to various stimuli while still infused with life. Stimuli like being sliced with scapels, electrocuted, bathed in acids, burnt, frozen and injected with a variety of toxins and drugs. They would start at the toes and work their way up to the head, completely without anasthetic, with the subject alive and awake and all too aware, targeting every major nerve junction and organ in between, or so it was whispered. No one who had ever gotten a full treatment in Lab 8 had ever come back to confirm or deny the rumors, which to most just confirmed them.

Since the subjects were awake and aware, for maximum response to each stimuli, they of course screamed. Lab 8 was soundproofed, no one even right outside the doors could hear a whisper, even during a multiple live dissection experiment, but there was no way to silence the psychic cries that accompanied the physical ones. Live dissections in Lab 8 were one of the most dangerous experiments conducted at the Facility, because it required multiple Earthlings in close proximity to an awake though fully restrained Edenite in full command of their psychic powers, and no amount of drugs or restraints could contain or restrain their minds when they were being cut open and mutilated without painkillers. Injuries, blackouts and even deaths among research staff were not unknown, and more than one dissection had to be halted early with a bullet to the brain when a subject's mental interference grew too great to safely continue.

Whether by hideous design or accident, Meyrin's trip to her quarters frequently required her to pass the doors leading to Lab 8, and it was a constant struggle some nights, lying on her cot, trying to close her eyes and not see the broken, gory remains of once proud and lively human beings lying on a cold metal table, being sliced and prodded by a crowd of white coated and surgical masked men and women with clipboards. She rarely if ever dropped her mental shields to the point where anyone could contact her anymore, in an effort to keep out the psychic miasma of pain and fear and suffering that pervaded the Facility from the torment of her kind. Of her children, in a way, though many of them were decades older than her, Meyrin still felt responsible for them, because she had done a lot of contributing to Green EDEN even being deployed on Earth, alongside Noah. Though this was not a commonly known fact, Meyrin was the first true Edenite, the first lifeform to be transformed into an Ultimate Coordinator by exposure to Noah's Green EDEN.

Though her mental shields were as rigid and unyielding as walls of pure diamond, there was one type of communication that pierced them as easily as if they were only veils of mist, a low level communication that did not register on any of FEAR's detectors, one that, as far as Meyrin knew, they were still unaware of. A communication not of words, not even of emotion, not really, but just a sense of "being" with someone else. A connection of souls. A bond. The mark of true, deep love between two Newtypes, a mutual imprinting of minds that left indelible marks between those that conjured it, marks which could be felt by those bonded no matter the distance between them. Only death could sever this kind of bond, at least as far as Meyrin was aware, even unconciousness or comatose states would not affect it. At times her bond with Noah felt like the only thing keeping her sane in this house of horrors. The knowledge that her true love was still alive always revitalized her when she was flagging, gave her hope whe despair tried to close in.

It had been seven years since she'd last seen him. Seven years of pain and terror and paranoia, never knowing whether she was dancing on the edge of life or death, never knowing when that moment would come when the bond would twinge sharply and then disappear forever, without them ever having the chance to touch each other again, or see each other, or whisper "I love you" in each other's ears one final time. But for all the constant tragedy of their seperation, and the trials and tribulations of daily life, Meyrin found herself only loving him more and more as time wore on, absence making her heart grow fonder. Her time with Noah had been brief, but quite literally life changing, and though she felt trapped by darkness right now, Meyrin still believed his promise that they would be together again, eventually. They had still to experience his bright new world for themselves after all! And while it did not seem to be in any way the perfect new world Noah had envisioned, Meyrin was still extremely proud of him and his accomplishments.

Her pride was based off the Edenites, the ones more freshly captured, the ones that had come from the evolving societies on New Eden, the ones that had actually lived in and fought for the right to survive in the new world Noah had brought about. The ones that stood tall and proud and pure against the heartless arrogance and inquisitiveness of FEAR, even when beaten to a bloody pulp. The ones that smiled at her, trying to give her a measure of reassurance as they themselves were frog marched towards experiments that would leave their bodies or minds in literal pieces. The ones who stood as beacons of light even in this pit of darkness, and refused to be smothered by anything less than terrible death itself. If these people were any example of the kind of Edenites that lived on New Eden, then Noah had more to be proud of than he could even dream. And Meyrin allowed herself to share in a measure of that pride too.

Meyrin's thoughts of pride were scattered unpleasantly when she slapped one weary palm against the reader panel set beside her doorway, genetic scanners in the panel reading her sweat and skin oils and acknowledging her authorization to enter. Just about anyone cleared to be in this part of the Facility could bypass her doorway too, so it wasn't much of a security or privacy measure. Not that she was worried about the former, and the latter was invaded often enough that she really ought to be used to it by now. But still, whenever she came back from an intensive session of writhing on a steel table and trying to see how long she could last before she started screaming and crying, it was never pleasant to find someone else in her room. Going through her few drawers of personal belongings and throwing them all over the floor.

Meyrin sagged wearily against the doorframe and sighed in irritation as the security guard, one she knew all too well, and loathed for that matter, looked up with an almost guilty expression on his jowly face, his hands still firmly ensconsed within her drawers. The guilty look vanished as he saw that it was only Meyrin, not one of his superior officers or a scientist, and Trooper Harry McNabb went back to what he was doing. Namely, rifling through Meyrin's pitiful personal belongings, tossing things about the room more or less at random, and stuffing a few choice articles of clothing, namely a pair of panties and a bra, not so unobtrusively into his pants pockets. Meyrin's clothes were all issued by the Facility of course, and consisted mostly of shapeless, baggy light blue hospital scrubs and plain white undergarments, certainly nothing expensive or showy, but that wasn't really why he took them.

Meyrin leaned her head against he doorframe and watched McNabb paw through her underwear with a disgusted sigh she was careful to keep mostly to herself. Technically she could complain and report his perverted thefts and repeated harassments to his superiors, which would no doubt earn him a stern talking to and maybe even tougher discipline, but in the end she'd only be rid of him for a few weeks or maybe a month and then the weasel would be back, and with a bone to pick. She'd learned this the hard way, as she had most of her lessons at the Facility, and she'd been cornered by him and two buddies in an examination room right after a grueling series of tests, and about a half hour of getting slapped around and kicked by the leering bastards had ensued. They'd talked about raping her, right there, in plain view with her lying battered and bleeding on the floor at their feet, but in the end had opted just for groping and taking her clothes, not wanting to get in trouble for inflicting any real damage to the "prize whore".

McNabb and a few other people, guards and staff both, men as well as a few women, were just like the psychic miasma, you did you best to tune them out and get on with your life, and when given no choice but to confront them, you did what you had to do in order to survive with the least possible harm to yourself. People like them weren't even evil, not compared to the true evil of the Facility itself, they were just people with no self control, or personality disorders, or who were high on the power they held over others for the first time in their otherwise pitiful lives. They were just part of the hellish environment, and fighting them only got you noticed by the real bad people in charge, and that was rarely if ever a good thing for anyone involved, but most especially the person who didn't even have basic human rights to protect them.

So she just stood there and watched him pocket her used underwear, no doubt to be later used for purposes she'd rather not think about, while he tossed her other clothing, toiletries and a few keepsakes from her time in the Solar Knights... nothing from her Brotherhood time of course... all over the plastic floor. She was fortunate that she really didn't own much, the mess wasn't that much worse than how she used to keep her room all the time back when she was a Solar Knight, and in a few short minutes McNabb ran out of things to toss. He unseated her cot mattress from the cot and slid it to the floor as well, before finally turning and stomping towards her. Or towards the doorway, it was hard to tell for a man of his girth. "Room inspection." He grunted at her, almost challengingly, daring her to protest, to whine, to complain.

Meyrin did nothing of the sort, just nodding her head tiredly, and pointedly not looking at the scraps of white cloth sticking out of his pockets. She tried not to look at him at all, but that was tough, as he was an inch over six feet tall and must have weighed close to three hundred pounds, and though a lot of it looked like flab, there was still a hefty core of pure muscle to him. He might jiggle like pudding when he walked, but he'd still slapped Meyrin right off her feet with just one swat of his hand, and had almost broken her jaw at the same time. He had short black hair and blue eyes, over a crooked nose that had obviously been broken more than once, and that he either didn't want to or couldn't afford cosmetic surgery to fix. He wore the standard dark brown pants and tan shirt of the security forces, with a heavy cudgel on his belt and a pistol at his other hip.

Irritated by her lack of response, McNabb reached out and roughly fondled Meyrin's chest through her scrubs, but while she did flinch away from his touch, she didn't meet his gaze or otherwise respond to his provocation and McNabb was forced to relent after only a few seconds, the open doorway draining him of what little courage he possessed. One thing what went on behind a closed door, but if someone else saw him manhandling Meyrin and complained, well a complaint from a staff member was a whole different kettle of fish than one from a test subject, even a privileged one, and that was a can of worms McNabb didn't want to open. "One of these days, you haughty bitch..." McNabb trailed off threateningly as he shoved past Meyrin, almost knocking her flat on her ass in the hallway, as he stomped off towards wherever the hell he was when he wasn't molesting her.

Contenting herself with a brief daydream of encountering Trooper Harry McNabb somewhere other than in the Facility, with Noah free and by her side, Meyrin didn't even look after him as she stepped into her room and let the door shut behind her. Not that she would need Noah's help to take down that fat pervert, indeed, there was little enough for her to do in her off time besides physical exercise and strength building, and she was in far better physical shape now than she had been ever before. Discounting the poisonings and drugs and other knocking about she suffered on a semi-daily basis of course. Though perhaps it would be satisfying to tell Noah that McNabb had been groping her and stealing her underwear... Noah was such a pure man at heart, he would be scandalized by such relatively mild perversion, and no doubt he would scramble McNabb's brains in a truly exceptional manner. That might be worth seeing. For now though, hopeless or not, she was going to try and get some sleep. Just another day in the grind that life had become.

xxxx

**Villa Pacifica, Orb, October 31st, Halloween, Early Evening**

"Look, mom, I'm a Space Monster!" Cagalli turned at Allister's exuberant shout, to see her excited son come tearing down the steps from the front doorway, clad in his halloween costume, which was of some lizardlike flying beast with four arms and three eyes and two tails, covered in black-green scales and equipped with very real looking white plastic claws and fangs which surrounded the joyous face peering up at her. A pouch on the front belly of the costume doubled as a candy bag, and though the costume was already suitably grotesque, Cagalli could only imagine what it would look like later in the evening, when Allister came back from his trick or treat foray with his friends. He'd look like a space monster that had just eaten a roomfull of babies.

Which was perhaps too grotesque an image, and one that both Athrun and Dearka, standing nearby, obviously thought of as well, judging by their brief winces. Allister of course could not know, but the term "space monster" had once been a derogatory racial slur directed at Coordinators by Naturals prior to and during the Valentine Wars. Of course Allister, like all of the children of their friends and family, was a Coordinator himself, so the irony was far from minor that he would so happily exclaim such a thing with pride. "You certainly are! Don't get close to me, I'm afraid you'll eat me all up!" Cagalli replied warmly, going to one knee all the same so her son could recieve a hug.

"Rawr! Groooar!" Allister provided the fierce soundtrack, all the while ignominously hugging his mom tightly. He'd grown a lot more clingy in his affections since the funeral of Lacus, Akira and Aoi, little wonder. Everyone was still significantly subdued by the whole tragedy, as might be expected, and even moreso by the ongoing situation with Kira. But this was a holiday, and they couldn't allow themselves to be dragged down by tragedy forever. Everyone agreed that the sooner they could get their children's minds off their two missing playmates, at least for a little while, the better. And what better way to do that than children's perhaps most favorite holiday, where they got to dress up and be rowdy and be given candy and sweets by total strangers? Life goes on after all, despite what one bereaved person seemed to believe.

It wasn't like anyone expected or even wanted Kira to get over what had happened. That was simply impossible, Kira would probably never fully get over his losses. But to simply shut himself away, refusing all communication from friends and family, well, that seemed a bit self destructive. Not much positive could come from Kira being allowed to sit and brood by himself for days on end, and Cagalli and Athrun had agreed that if he hadn't come out of his shell by the end of the holiday weekend, then they were going to come in after him and drag him out, kicking and screaming if need be. Kira had to accept that he wasn't alone in his pain, despite how he seemed to feel and despite Orb's inability to officially or unofficially aid him at this time. Cagalli also wanted to make sure he knew she forgave him for the cuff on the cheek he'd given her, it wasn't like she'd never punched him in the jaw, accidentally or intentionally. Athrun had of course taken a predictably dim view of that bruise, but she'd managed to talk him down after a night or so. Kira didn't need confrontation right now, he needed understanding and help.

But that was all in the future, and Cagalli reluctantly let go of Allister so he could say his temporary goodbyes to his father. Allister had originally planned to be a Zombie for Halloween, but after recent events, dressing up as a dead child, even an animated one, was a bit too gruesome for anyone's taste, at least among the Clyne Faction and their extended social network. Since the Villa Pacifica was a good twenty minute drive from the next major point of habitation, and closer to thirty from Nara-Attha City itself, there wasn't much in the way of trick or treating to be done there, so Allister was going in a group with the Elsman's, la Flaga's, and, to Cagalli and Athrun's private surprise, Violet Finch. Given how paranoid her father was, Cagalli was surprised there wasn't a full Stormhound escort for the trick or treaters, but then again, Nara-Attha City and especially the upper class residential districts, had just about the safest streets of anywhere in Human Space. And Dearka, Miriallia, Murrue and Mu would be there with them. And even the Stormhounds needed a break now and then.

In fact, unless Cagalli was very much mistaken, the primary reason why Violet was going trick or treating with the Elsman's probably had less to do with her father and more to do with her mother. Strange as it might sound, going trick or treating with the Stormhound personalities like Glory, Ramierez, Kurtz and Raven probably would be a real hoot for a girl like Violet, but her father would be all but obliged to come along and shepard his little girl from the shenanigans of his work friends. Among her peers and in the company of none other than Orb's Crown Prince, such an escort would not be necessary. Besides, Violet was taking the loss of Akira particularly hard, and being around her other friends might help her cope a bit more. And Wrenn almost certainly had plans for Cyprus now that the little girl was out and about for the next few hours.

Cagalli figured this because she had similar plans for Athrun, plans that were most awkward to enact when Allister was around. But with the terrible prince safely distracted for the next five or six hours, well, parents could get up to a lot of mischief when their children weren't around to interrupt. And it was Athrun's birthday, or close enough anyway. Cagalli had a costume or two of her own that she'd been saving for the ocassion, though neither was one she'd ever be caught dead in by anyone but him. Even admitting such costumes existed at all was not something she was prepared for any but her closest friends to be aware of, and even then, she could not help but flush when Miriallia gave her a very frank nudge and wink as they herded Allister towards the large tan SUV that contained the other costumed kids, a category that included Mu la Flaga, and the lone adult, Murrue.

By unspoken agreement, the Elsman's and la Flaga's would watch the kids for the first part of the night, and then everyone would come back to the Villa Pacifica, the kids would sleepover, and then Miri, Dearka, Mu and Murrue would have the rest of the night and some of the morning to themselves, while Cagalli and Athrun and Lexi played babysitters. Speaking of Lexi, Cagalli made a mental note to turn off the AI's broadband access to the house for the next few hours. It wasn't like she was embarassed to have sex with Athrun while Lexi was around, she was just a computer program after all, but all the same, she wanted tonight to be just the two of them, at least in pretend. There was a single Stormhound on security duty on the premises, as was always the case, but he'd been well briefed ahead of time and knew to avoid the master bedroom and bathroom or their vicinity for most of the night, except in a dire emergency.

Waving goodbye to their son and their friends, as Dearka climbed behind the wheel of the SUV and pulled out of the Villa Pacifica's long driveway, Cagalli slipped her arm around Athrun's waist and leant into him, resting her head against his shoulder as his own arm came up and around and settled around her shoulders, hugging her tight. They stood there in comfortable silence for a few moments, staring out into the gathering dusk, feeling the air start to chill a little bit as day crept away to be replaced with night. Cagalli shivered, but it had more to do with the talented play of Athrun's hand rubbing along her back than it did the ambient air temperature. Athrun wasn't much of one for public displays of affection, but that didn't mean he wasn't affectionate. Indeed, quite the opposite, when Athrun turned on the "cuddle button", he turned from just regular irresistable to a living, breathing statue of pure sexiness, at least in Cagalli's eyes.

"Space monsters, huh?" Athrun said idly. Though it might seem strange, Cagalli knew that the more off topic his words were, the more of his attention was focused on her.

"I didn't tell him to say it, though perhaps I should have, it was quite amusing seeing the sick look on your face and Dearka's. Kids say the damndest things." Cagalli agreed. "I guess I'm just helpless before the wiles of you two space monsters though."

"You are rather pathetic compared to our alien might." Athrun replied with a small grin. "I think I have no choice but to take advantage of your weakness tonight. Shall I pin you down and overbear you with all my strength, weak earthling?"

"That sounds more like something Yzak and Katie would enjoy." Cagalli pointed out, her heart fluttering a bit in her chest all the same. She tensed and then shoved him away, racing up the steps before glancing behind her at his bemused expression. She giggled and gave him a coy look. "If you want me, you're going to have to catch me, space monster..." She taunted, and then bolted for the doors to the main hall. She knew better than to try and outrun Athrun in a straight footrace, but he wasn't the best at going up and down stairs or around tight corners at speed, so inside the house she would have a fighting chance at least.

She led him on a merry chase that had her red in the face and even him a bit breathless, visiting most rooms of the house once and some twice as he stalked her through their home, playing hide and seek in the smaller rooms, and more regular chase in the larger, more open chambers, before the play ended, perhaps inevitably, in the master bedroom. Quite what the Stormhound bodyguard had to think of his Queen and her Consort chasing each other up and down the hallways, giggling and laughing like they were their child's age again, neither could say, but he would certainly have one hell of a story to tell the other Stormhounds the next morning.

Cornered in the bedroom, Cagalli stood at bay with her back to the huge king sized bed, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath while she watched Athrun prowl closer, pacing back and forth at every slight motion from her, cutting off any and every avenue of escape. Seeing that she was trapped, Cagalli went on the offensive and tried to run right over Athrun and see if she could slip by. Not that she had any real hope of that, but then again, it wasn't like she was really wanting to avoid being caught for much longer either. She wasn't going to make it easy for him though, and she made sure to struggle hard enough to get them both sweating before he was able to manhandle her back to the bed. She'd heard from Katie that sometimes she and Yzak actually physically fought a sparring match as a sort of foreplay sometimes, but Cagalli didn't see the attraction. Playful struggle games, sure, but an actual fight? Not really her turn on.

Athrun tossed her carefully onto their bed, and then straddled her to prevent her from squirming away. "So now I've caught the damsel... or is it the heroine? It's so hard for us male space monsters to keep track of the real role of you pathetic earthling women." Athrun said huskily, his hands pinning hers to the bedsheets as he lowered himself atop her, his breath brushing her bangs and tickling her scalp. "I suppose that I've little choice but to ravish you now, that would be my role."

"Oh please, brer fox, don't throw me in the briar patch..." Cagalli whispered back. "You dastardly fiend." She said in a louder voice, falling back into the game. "I'm going to be ravaged and then eaten by a horrific space monster! Woe is me!"

"This space monster is thinking he might want to eat bits of you first, before the ravaging ruins your flavor." Athrun replied, his teeth lightly nipping at her ear, smirking as he felt her shudder pleasantly beneath him. "Then again, some earthlings become more flavorful and juicy after a good ravaging..."

"Either way, you'd better do your worst fast, fiend, or else some nameless, bothersome hero might interrupt before you get to fully enjoy your meal." Cagalli prompted in a sultry voice. "That's how it always happens in the movies anyway."

"I'm glad this isn't the movies then." Athrun answered lightly. "Sometimes the bad guys get to win in real life..." He added, before leaning down to capture her lips with his own. Neither of them did much talking after that for the next few hours, lost in each other and the pleasures two people still deeply in love could provide for each other when they were assured of no interruptions. Finally exhausted, they both dropped off into a well earned snooze, snuggled tight against each other, safe and warm in the comfort of their own home, a capable guardian striding the hallways, alert and armed to the teeth.

Outside, in the bushes, a shadow slipped from the treeline and stole across the back lawn towards the house, moving faster than anything on two legs should be able to do. Sophisticated sensors hidden in the grass and gardens detected the intruder and scanned its heat profile and even scented its genetic signature based off its evaporating sweat. It only took a moment to come back with results, and the automatic systems powered down from near alert mode once more, the entire process happening in less than a second. The intruder was nothing of the sort, in fact its signatures were logged in the system with privileges only slightly less total than that of Cagalli and Athrun. After all, what reason would they have to deny access of their home to her own brother, Kira Yamato? The shadow touched the glass doors of the back patio and smirked as they swung open soundlessly. Golden pupiled, red haloed eyes flashed behind darkened sunglasses, and then the shadow was gone, slipping unnoticed and unheeded into the dim interior of the house. The night was already cold, but it was only just beginning...


	12. Ice Storm

Author Note: Well, I'm actually somewhat happy to see that I've managed to polarize some people on their favorite factions, OrangeP47 and LordRevan most vocally. I've put up new forums, one for Pro USN sorts, one for Pro Edenite sorts and one for Reclamation War in General. Feel free to browse them and use them, I will be checking them from time to time (read, often, maybe daily or even more frequently), so if you don't wanna put something in a review, and desire it to be a more open discussion than a PM, thats the place for it. Just try and keep things sorta civil. Like, Durandel-Cagalli civil. I like reasoned debate, even if its vehement and hot headed.

There is mature content in this chapter, several scenes of it. I mean it this time people, you will have been warned. I'm not picking on any character. This is Frost, he's the most evil villian in the series. If you're of the delicate sort (first off how did you get this far at all), skip down to the "Mature Content over" disclaimer and read the other scenes in the chapter, then there will be a summary of what happened in the Mature sections in the author note at the bottom. And if you're gonna read the Mature anyway, as most of you will, don't skip it and read the summary before the scenes. Don't ruin it for yourself. Anyway, without further ado, here goes Ice Storm (man, I agonized over these titles, so many good ones to use).

xxxx

**Villa Pacifica, Orb, October 31st, Evening**

The interior of the mansion was mostly unlit, with dim lights showing in a few rooms, such as the master bedroom and the main hallways, most of the rooms in low power mode now that the occupants of the manor were abed and only the single Stormhound remained to patrol the corridors. Not that his presence was much besides a formality, the Villa Pacifica was surrounded with a comprehensive sensor security system that wouldn't let a stray cat into the premesis without notifying both the internal guard and the main security headquarters a mile or so away, buried in the rocky cliffs to the west, where a ready team of Stormhounds eight strong was capable of deploying to face any threat in less than two minutes. And of course any event requiring the deployment of backup would send a help notice to Orb National Defense Headquarters in Morganville and the Orb National Palace in Nara-Attha City, and major help, up to and including Mobile Suits, would be incoming in less than fifteen minutes.

But no intruder had ever breached the security of the Villa Pacifica in the more than fifty years it had served as the family retreat and preferred residence for the Attha clan, either when it was only Orb regular security forces handling protection or in the last ten years or so, the Stormhounds. The house definitely deserved its moniker as "the Peaceful Home". Which kind of made it a boring post for the Stormhounds, about as "light duty" a post as they were ever likely to stand. Not that they let the comforts of living for a day or two in the plush manor of their nation's monarchs drain their alertness or their readiness, anyone who would let that happen wouldn't have made it into the Stormhounds for long, but there was a certain amount of relaxation inherent to the post, which didn't involve being in the public eye and just as often involved playing console games with Allister or chatting with Lexi about the Lt. as it did standing armed guard over Cagalli or Athrun as they made secure phone calls.

With Lexi keeping her more than human eyes and ears and myriad other senses trained on the house, interior and exterior, getting snuck up was impossible, even a sprint attack by orbitally dropped forces would be detected with at least a minute to spare, and anything unstealthy wouldn't be able to get past the Glasshouse before being intercepted by regular military forces. However, there was one hole in the otherwise impenetrable defense. It made little to no provision for an attack from someone already close to the Attha family, someone who was already authorized to be on the grounds or in the house without alerting or activating the security systems, who did not need Athrun or Cagalli's permission to open pretty much any door of the house at any time. Normally a person in such a position of trust would already have been vetted by the security teams anyway, and wouldn't be a threat. But, as ever was the case, whenever defensive technology seemed to reach an unbeatable plateau, offensive innovation was bound to come along and shatter the previous boundaries sooner or later, rendering the safe unsafe once more.

It wasn't that the automated systems or even Lexi herself did not detect the shadowed form slipping noiselessly along the walls of the kitchen and informal dining area of the house, indeed they saw him plainly despite his attempts at stealth. But except for a few small anomalies in the readings, they also recognized him as none other than Kira Yamato, Cagalli's twin brother and someone who not only had unlimited access to the house, but was one of only four people actually allowed to change the access list by himself. Anyone who was a friend of Kira's was more than welcome in the Attha household, anyone able to earn Kira's trust enough to be invited into his sister's home had passed a security test about as comprehensive as they came. After all, Kira's family spent as much time living there as they did their own home out on Serenity Island, so he might as well be inviting someone into his own home.

Frost was just about to move out of the kitchen area towards a staircase leading up into the more residential area of the manor, following his nose quite literally as he locked in on the scent of mingled sweats from the master bedroom. He had all his senses cast out like a finely woven net or spider's web, hearing alert for footfalls or breathing, nose alert for the scent or fear or agitation, eyes probing the shadows for movement or color, even his skin alert for the vagaries of the passage of air that might indicate a presence invisible to other senses. But it was with his mind that he probed hardest, locating and locking on to the three mental presences he could feel most strongly in the surrounding hundred meters or so. Every Newtype saw the mental emissions or "wakes" of others differently, to Frost the minds appeared like prey animals, an antelope pacing the halls with sharp horns on its head, and two rabbits snuggled close in their den further on, sleeping the contented sleep of those who think themselves totally safe. The antelope was wary but not agitated, and Frost gathered that his presence was still undetected.

"Psst." The whispered hiss brought Frost up short, his entire body tense like he'd turned to stone as his mind roiled with confusion. It should be impossible for anyone to sneak up on him right now! No one should be able to move within twenty feet without him noticing somehow, much less get close enough to literally whisper in his damned ear! He cursed inwardly, berating himself. He'd thought to play this one cool and mature, be the knife in the night, overriding his better nature and inclination to ransack the place like he was razing a city, but his plan had barely even gotten udnerfoot and already he'd been caught! He'd thought he'd shaken all the rust seven years in the grave had put on him off, but apparently he still needed some work. Pivoting smoothly, Frost adopted a cocky smirk, comfortable in his own power, knowing that at close range there wasn't a human or even humans alive that could stand up to him or cause him that much damage.

He didn't see anyone. He was alone in the room. His smirk switching into a scowl, Frost wondered if he'd imagined the whisper. It would not be the first time his mind had started playing tricks on him. Indeed there were moments when he could not tell the difference between his dreams and the real world, but he'd been fairly sure he had that aspect of his dementia under control for the time being. Sometimes pure madness was to be reveled in, but if Death had taught him anything it was that everything had a time and place. Tonight was about more than just random mayhem, though the others in the house might disagree with that assessment. Shaking his head, Frost turned for the stairs once more. "Psst!" This time Frost was ready for it, and his ears tracked the source of the voice down to its origin point before she was even half done with her hiss.

Leaping headlong over the kitchen counter, Frost landed on all fours like a hunting cat, still completely silent, before lashing out with a backhand sweep of one hand that should have crushed the girl's skull into powder, or even taken her head clean off her shoulders. If it had connected. Instead of the pleasing sensation of flesh and bone meeting and mashing through more yielding flesh and bone, Frost's instinctive jab met only air and he had to check himself sharply before he put his fist through a kitchen cabinet, which would have probably woken the whole house, considering they were made of mirror finished steel. Glaring down at the person crouched beside the cabinet, Frost slowly retracted his hand, passing it right through her red haired skull several times, before finally conceding, with a barely audible grunt of frustration and disgruntlement, that it was just an image, not a real person.

"Wow. Sometimes I really hate being disembodied, but right now it kinda came in handy huh? You could have taken my head off if I were a real girl." The redheaded image commented, sotto voce, though there was a definite hint of admiration in her voice as well. She stood up from her crouch as well, the top of her head barely coming up to Frost's chin. "Guess that will teach me to startle you, huh, Kira? I guess you're kind of on edge right now, huh? Oh, excuse me if I'm picking at a scab... I'm still not so sure on this who death-tragedy-grief thing you fleshies experience." She talked quickly but kept her voice to a low whisper. Every syllable of every word made Frost's jaw twitch just a little bit, her voice was a blend of Fiery Zala-Attha and Pink, and it tugged at his heartstrings to hear Pink's voice, knowing he would never hear it raised in agony or sadness ever again.

Frost debated how to proceed, since this computer simulation or program had plainly confused him with the Boytoy. She... it... seemed quite familiar with and even friendly to the Boytoy, which posed a problem, since while Frost knew that he and the Boytoy were basically identical, basically was the extent of it, and even then it was only a physical identicalness, they could not be more different in terms of personality. Anyone at all familiar with the Boytoy would be able to spot the difference almost instantly, or at least recognize something was odd. But then again, he was already provided with a ready made excuse for oddness, wasn't he? As long as he played things cool, this wasn't necessarily a game changer of a circumstance. Forcing the words off his tongue like bitter ashes, Frost spoke to the hologram, his voice barely audible. "Forgive me. I didn't mean to lash out at you like that. I'm... not feeling very good at the moment, as you can imagine."

"Its all right, no harm done." Lexi replied with a lifelike shrug. Even as she talked with Kira, she replayed his movements of the recent past again and again with another part of her consciousness, admiring his reflex speed and physical coordination. Appreciation for the qualities of fleshies was not an easy subject for her, but there was an almost mechanical precision and beauty in Kira's reactive movements that she found quite striking. Fleshy watching was, by virtue of necessity, something of a hobby for both her and Nam, but by and large most fleshies weren't very interesting to watch. They moved so slow, it was like watching grass grow. There were some exceptions... Lexi took an almost feminine pleasure in watching some of the Stormhound males during their group physical training sessions, when they all went through their hand to hand combat motions in slow motion in synchronity. It was a purely intellectual pleasure, more about the way their bodies were honed to the utmost edges of utility, muscles working perfectly in unison, than any actual emotional attraction, which would be doomed to failure anyway.

Kira Yamato was another exception to the general rule, as was Lacus Clyne and their two children, Akira and Aoi. Lexi had far more than five senses to observe with, and in almost any sensorial spectrum, the Yamato-Clynes stood out from the other fleshies around them. Body temperature, metabolic rate, brain activity, even electromagnetic emissions, all were different, more efficient, more... viable... than those of other fleshies. And reaction speed, well, it was nothing like the speed at which Lexi herself could react, but it made other fleshies look like they were encased in bricks of ice! Kira was reading several degrees hotter than usual tonight, and there some irregularities in his bone and muscle mass and brain activity, but nothing of medical worry. Quite why he was wearing dark sunglasses during the night in a dark house she did not know, but perhaps it was a cosmetic thing. Fleshies eyes got all red and puffy after prolonged tear duct activity, and the look was far from pleasant, so perhaps he was only covering that unpleasantness up.

"Are you okay? Your voice sounds a little rough." Lexi observed, now leaning back against the cabinet before using her arms to push herself up into a sitting position atop it. Or at least appear to do so of course. She kicked her legs like an impatient schoolgirl, watching the milliseconds count down until Allister and the other children came back from candy gathering so she could play with them. A whimsical part of Lexi so wished she could go play dress up along with them, but there weren't any holographic projectors along the streets, not yet anyway, so she was confined to government buildings, vehicles and specially upgraded homes right now.

"Of course I'm not okay." Frost retorted, even he was shocked by her naviete. "The person I valued most in all the world is dead, and so are the offspring. No one would be okay after something like that. I'm lucky I can speak at all."

"Sorry. Fleshie negative emotions are still largely a mystery to me." Lexi held up her hands placatingly. "Grief, sadness, fear, hate, I just don't get them."

"That won't do." Frost had to fight hard to keep a predatory smile off his face. "I mean, its important you understand how we feel. Good and bad. Maybe I can educate you sometime."

"I'd like that. I always appreciate a helping hand with those sticky, illogical fleshy matters. I mean, this entire holiday seems to be based around fear and intimidation, yet everyone is so happy and playful during it. I can do ten thousand sixth dimensional quantum mathematics equations in less time than it takes for you to blink, but I still sometimes don't know if I'll ever have the processing power to really understand you fleshies." Lexi complained with a pout.

"Its more a matter of experience than of raw processing power." Frost promised her. He was intrigued by this whole line of discussion, at the challenge of introducing human darkness into what was, essentially a completely pure intelligence, who could hardly even conceptualize fear and suffering and all those wonderful motivations he stood for. Corrupting and tainting this redheaded program would be an artistic joy, Frost was pretty sure. He'd have to make time for it sometime in his busy schedule. But that time was not tonight, he had other things to do today, and time was ever pressing. This wasn't his only appointment of the night. The question was, how could he get rid of her without causing a scene? He'd never been much of a conversational adept, most of his smoothest exit lines revolved around tearing off a limb or ripping out a beating heart.

In the end his dilemma was solved for him, when Lexi hopped off the cabinets with a guilty expression on her face, her image shrinking down to put her head level below the top of the cabinets. "I'm not supposed to be in here right now, Cagalli and Athrun wanted a house to themselves for some hot and heavy sex tonight. Despite the fact that I have access to like a million imitation Cagalli-Athrun porno tapes across the nets, some of which are only possible via use of CGI, they still don't want me watching the real thing in action, as if it could be any stranger than some of those fantasies? Fleshies..." Lexi shook her head in exasperation. "Don't tell them I was here, okay?"

"I won't if you won't." Frost said with a hint of a wicked smirk. "It's... sorta like a surprise party, you could say."

"Deal. As far as I know, you're still on Serenity Island in your own house. Which by the way, could use some updating... I wouldn't mind dropping by there to talk over some of these fleshy problems with you sometime, and comm screens are just so impersonal, you know?" Lexi pointed out, her image shrinking more and more as they both listened to the footsteps of the Stormhound come closer, alerted and somewhat puzzled by the sound of voices from the kitchen. The sensors had made no alarm call, so he was just checking things out to be safe, it could just be a glitch on his helmet, or Lexi playing a practical joke. It would not have been the first time she livened up a boring watch rotation by trying to make the house seem haunted, especially on Halloween.

"Or I'll come to you." Frost answered. "I like to be able to reach out and touch the people I'm talking to. Even if they're made of metal and circuits rather than flesh and blood. Some of us fleshies can communicate as much or more with our hands as we can with our mouths."

"I'll be looking forward to you showing me how you do that." Lexi replied, her image barely the size of his hand. "Bye, Kira. See you sometime soon!"

"Definitely." Frost nodded in pleasure, ducking down behind the cabinets as well. Lexi's image disappeared, and several seconds later the slight scuff of combat boots on kitchen tile announced the arrival of the Stormhound, one Sergeant Jerome "Carome" Zavier, who had been in the Stormhounds for about four years come next month. This by no means qualified him as a veteran, indeed, in the Stormhounds unit, with its exceptionally long vetting and training process, that still qualified him as a newbie, and he was still subject to plenty of "constructive bothering" and "character building exercises" from the more senior members of the unit, such as Master Sergeant Ramierez and Sergeant-Major Glory. Still, he'd earned his team name "Carome", after having a dummy grenade skipped entirely off his shaved bald head during one exercise, which he still finished despite the gash and concussion, and he knew the worst of the hazing was over, he'd made it through the grueling acceptance process.

"Lexi? That you?" Jerome asked in a normal voice. He'd have whispered if it were earlier in the night, even so far removed from the master bedroom, but now, after his monarchs had finished with their lovemaking and fallen into a period of satiated rest, there was little reason to tread particularly softly. "Don't you start fucking with me too, girl, I just got done dealing with the Coporal's bullshit remedial car rebuilding lessons yesterday. You know you ain't supposed to be home right now anyway." His helmet's night vision sensors turned the dimly lit kitchen as bright as day, but he didn't see anyone. His weapon, a recently churned out Morganroate Armories Linear Assault Weapon or MALAW-3, which used electromagnetic repulsion fields to smoothly and silently launch 10mm high explosive bullets capable of taking down a body armored human in a single hit, was in his arms, as ever during watch, the weapon secured to his chest via a friction strap around one shoulder. He heard a slight noise by one line of cabinets. "Lexi?"

"Trick or treat." Frost said, popping up right in front of the Stormhound, moving fast enough that by the time he was on his second syllable, he'd already torn the matte black rifle completely out of the surprised soldier's grip, yanking so hard the nylon friction strap snapped, but not before pulling the Stormhound forward into the cabinets with a muffled thump, hard enough to shove the air from his lungs. Which in no way appreciably slowed Jerome's responses, a little thing like not being able to breathe was not going to stop someone who'd been through the Lt's training regimes, and he interposed a forearm in front of his face to ward off the expected blow at his face and throat.

For all the good it did him, as Frost's free fist thundered into the Stormhound's forearm and shattered the bone before driving inward and clubbing against the forehead of the battle helmet hard enough to crack the armored plastic. Stunned and disoriented, Jerome started to topple backwards, before the fist that had just punched him grabbed him by his tactical vest's collar and held him upright. Jerome was not the biggest man in the Stormhounds, indeed at a little over five foot six and one hundred seventy pounds, he was on the short end of the height scale and the middle of the weight scale. But clad in close to seventy additional pounds of gear, one thing he was not really prepared for was being lifted completely off his feet, one handed, by a man who had to weigh only a little more than him, if that. By the Sarge-Major, sure, but he was a giant. This guy was a reed, comparatively, and yet he hoisted Jerome like he was a handbag. He was also faintly familiar, but with his sensors scrambled and vision blurred from the concussive blow to his skull, Jerome coudn't make his attacker out.

"Or better yet..." Frost whispered malignantly, dragging the Stormhound up and over the cabinets towards him, putting the gun on the countertop and reaching for the hound helm with his now free hand, fingers slipping under the neck seal and finding the release catch, popping the helmet free of Jerome's head and setting it carefully down beside the gun, so far the only sounds of the altercation being Jeromes elevated breathing and the single muted "Thump-bang" of Frost pulling the Stormhound's gun away and bashing his head. Jerome started to struggle, his eyes squinting as he tried to focus on the face of his attacked, but his vision was occluded by the palm of a pale hand that covered his eyes and forehead. "Let's do both." Frost decided as he jabbed with his psychic fangs at Jerome's consciousness and memories, causing the Stormhound's eyes to roll up and flicker shut as he blacked out under the mental assault. Less than a minute later, Frost lowered his limp victim to the floor and brushed one hand across his lips, a sneer building across his face as he headed towards the master bedroom, pausing only to take Jerome's mono-molecular combat knife from his thigh sheath.

xxxx WARNING: MATURE CONTENT BELOW! EXTREME VIOLENCE AND BAD THINGS TO COME. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. xxxx

Athrun awoke, the echoes of some slight sound reverberating in his head, carried to him from a distance by his keen ears, one of the few parts of his body that was not in some way impeded or degraded by the many terrible injuries he'd suffered during the course of his life. Though it would be doing himself a terrible injustice to complain that his health had been taken from him by events of the past, there was no denying that there were times when he felt twice as old as he actually was, and when he could almost feel Death's cold hand patting him on the shoulder, just getting up in the morning, with his entire body feeling like he'd just taken a sulfuric acid bath. Right now wasn't one of those occassions, thankfully, if anything he felt pretty damn good. Which he should of course, considering that he'd spent about an hour and a half having very fufilling sex with his limber and demanding wife. If he ever woke up after making love to Cagalli and he didn't feel good, despite aches and bruises, then he'd know something was badly wrong with him.

Ears straining for another hint of whatever noise it was that had called him from his peaceful doze, most likely nothing more than the wind against a window or the step of Jerome out in the hallway, Athrun sat up a bit straighter in bed, letting the sheets fall down to his waist, exposing his tanned and toned upper body to the dim light of the master bedroom. Absently he trailed one hand across his abdomen, wincing as ever when he could only feel his fingertips by pressing down hard. It was hard to tell by looking at him, but over sixty percent of his skin was synthetic replacement, an afteraffect of the nearly fatal radiation burns he'd suffered seven years ago. You could tell the fake skin from the stuff he was born with because it didn't have any scars or imperfections, which was almost a depressing thought. He blew his purple-blue streak with silver bangs out of his eyes, the grey hair another consequence of radiation poisoning, and turned to look down at Cagalli, sleeping curled up next to him.

Except she wasn't there. There was a warm indentation where she should have been, but no Cagalli, the bunched up sheets on her side of the bed in disarray, her pillows out of place. This was no cause for alarm, Cagalli had had quite a bit to drink at dinner and waking up for a restroom break was far from uncommon with her, indeed, it was more uncommon when she slept the night through undisturbed. Usually he woke up, at least partially, when she left the bed, but he wasn't beyond sleeping like a log at times either, and he'd really put a lot of effort into the sex, since it was birthday sex, and also special occassion sex, marking his caving to Cagalli's desire to have a second child, a daughter this time. The actual insemination would be handled at the clinic, since that was where his remaining fertile sperm was stored, but it didn't feel right to have a new child without a "night of conception".

Indeed, the light was on in the bathroom, and Athrun smirked as he noted that Cagalli's house robe was still hanging discarded over one of the cushions elsewhere in the room, while her clothes were still scattered on the floor where they had been thrown during the rather frantic disrobing process. Though he'd been with her for over a decade, had memorized every millimeter of her body, knew her by sight, smell, touch and hearing in every intimate way, Athrun wasn't above a free look at his wife's naked body as she came back to bed. He could hardly help it if she entranced him so much, could he? Maybe she'd be in the mood again, no, scratch that, he knew she'd be in the mood again. The question was, could he provide for her? After a few moments of reflection, Athrun smirked wolfishly. Hell yes he could, he wasn't that hurt, that he would turn down sex!

After five minutes had passed with no sound or movement from the restroom, Athrun's amorous thoughts dwindled and were replaced by mild concern. It wasn't like Cagalli to spend so much time in bathroom, not at night anyway. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Athrun searched around and found a pair of sleeping boxers and slipped them on, before standing up with a suppressed groan, his joints aching as he forced them to assume vertical alignment without physical desire to cushion the pain. The pain wouldn't last more than a few minutes, but it was there, every time he got up from lying or sitting too long. He made his way to the bathroom door and knocked, cautiously. "Everything all right in there?" He asked lightly. "Bladder hasn't fallen out, has it?"

He waited for about ten seconds, but got no reply, no noise at all. Crinkling his brow, Athrun put his hand on the doorknob, finding it, as expected, to be unlocked. "Pretty or not, I'm coming in. Hide the parts of you I haven't seen." Athrun told her, still half jokingly, since obviously there was no part of her he hadn't seen at one point or another. He twisted the knob and stepped into the bathroom, a slightly goofy grin still plastered on his face. The scene that greeted his eyes brought him up dead short, his eyes bugging wide, his mouth hanging open as his mind went blank, struggling to process what he was seeing.

The bathroom mirror and countered were streaked with thick trails of dark crimson fluid, handprints and finger strokes appearing in the still wet blood, from where someone had been dragged or pushed against the counter and glass, gore from deep wounds splattering and smearing as they fought against an assailant. Fought and lost, judging from the trail of blood splatter and puddles that oozed across the marble tiled floor to the bathtub, big enough for them both to bathe in together if they so chose, and that was a choice they often made. Tonight there was only a single occupant in the tub, lying on her face, blond hair more of an orange color with liquid red stains. Athrun stared, disbelieving, at Cagalli's naked body, lying in the tub, covered in deep stab wounds, her ankles twisted and broken, her forearms sliced open from wrist to elbow down to the bone, her groin a welling ruin of deep cuts and stabs, some parts of her back and buttocks actually sliced off and nowhere in evidence, like ham carved from a bone!

Her slender neck, upon which he always lavished tender kisses, had shoestrings wrapped around it, pulled so tight and tied off that they bit into her neck like steel bands, banding her throat with lines of deep purple and dark red bruises. Her chest did not rise or fall, her limbs did not move, her wounds did not bubble with blood. Athrun took a step forward, stunned, disoriented, disbelieving, and almost slipped and fell on a palm sized puddle of blood. Catching himself on his hands on the edge of the tub, he saw that a washcloth was wadded up and shoved into the back of her mouth as a gag, to keep her silent as her assaulter had stabbed her to death in an animalistic frenzy, her palms and fingers were covered with defensive wounds. Athrun shook his head and rubbed at his eyes, starting as lukewarm gore was smeared across his face and cheeks by his palms, picked up from the edge of the tub. This couldn't be real! "C... C-Cagalli?" Athrun stammered, reaching out to touch her inert shoulder.

She was still warm, and she felt exactly like Cagalli Athrun drew back his hand like he'd touched a hot iron. This was impossible. Impossible! There was every sign of a massive struggle in the bathroom, of Cagalli going down only after a huge fight! And yet, despite taking place less than twenty feet away, Athrun hadn't heard a thing as his wife was murdered in the bathroom? No, that was impossible, there was no way that could happen! no way a madman with a knife could even get within spitting distance of the house without the sensors blaring and the Stormhounds descended like wrathful ghosts! Athrun pinched his cheek sharply, trying to wake himself up. This was just a dream! A terrible, evil dream, a nightmare. It had to be. It HAD to be! Cagalli could not be dead. Not like this.

The pinch on his cheek hurt but it didn't make the murder scene dissolve, and Athrun did not feel himself start to wake up. He felt fully awake right now actually. And everything seemed so real... the blood smell, the warmth of the gore and the body, the exact dimensions of the bathroom, Cagalli looked exactly like he knew she did, everything fit with his memories seamlessly. But there was just no way Cagalli could be messily murdered in their own bathroom while he slept unawares. No way at all! Just like there was no way Kira could have let... Athrun forced himself to discard that painfully raw line of thought, which had snuck up out of nowhere, his grief at the loss of his friend taking advantage of his restless nightmare to torment him even more. Lacus was dead, but Cagalli... Cagalli couldn't be dead! Not while he was there to protect her!

"All right." Athrun spoke, forcing himself to turn away from the body in the tub. The body that was not Cagalli. "This is a dream. That means I'm in my own mind. I'm in control. I want to wake up. If I can't wake up, then I want a change of scene. Something pleasant." Athrun thought back to Allister's last birthday party, where Cagalli had tried once more to bake a cake, despite his reservations. She hadn't burned the kitchen down, or even burned the cake. But she had done something wrong with the frosting, and no matter how hard they tried to cut the cake, they could not pierce the frosting, which had set like rubber, and the cake had ended up smushed flat before they could serve it. Athrun fixed the image in his mind and breathed out evenly, closing his eyes, ignoring the scent and feel of Cagalli's blood on his face as he put his hand on the bathroom door. When he opened the door, he'd be at the birthday party, bearing surprise gifts for Allister.

Athrun pulled the door open and stepped through, letting the door fully shut before allowing his eyes to open. Everything was exactly as he'd pictured it, everyone was happy and smiling and laughing, and Athrun let out a sigh of relief. He didn't usually have nightmares like that, and never ones involving Cagalli being murdered. He resolved to hug her tight and kiss her deeply the moment he woke up, he needed the reassurance. He felt someone bump him from behind, and he smiled, knowing this was where Cagalli had leapt upon him for a short piggyback ride and almost ended up cracking her skull on one of the doorframes. Turning to savor the smiling face of his wife, Athrun yelped and staggered backwards as she did indeed jump into his arms. Or rather, collapse, as her naked body, covered in deep stab wounds and with her face cut to ribbons flopped against him, smearing him with gore as she collapsed to the ground, making a choked death rattle as she cracked her head open against the tile.

Athrun screamed in horror as her brains came spilling out across the floor and squished warmly against his toes, and at the sound the noises of the party stopped. Looking around, Athrun was greeted with more scenes of horrific, painful death, all his friends mutilated and ravaged, Lacus splayed out on the table with her belly slit from groin to breasts, her intestines spilled all over the table, Allister headless in the chair of honor, crucifed spread eagle to the tall wooden once-throne of Orb, Akira and Aoi nothing more than charred skeletons in their chairs, covered with a few straggly smears of melted fat. Athrun felt his gorge rise and he vomited onto the counters, which were slick with mixture of blood and organs from Dearka and Miri, lying in a twisted parody of copulation with all their limbs twisted off and their throats slit. Knowing it was a dream didn't lessen the impact much, it all felt so real that Athrun could not help but flinch and scream with despair as each new horror was revealed to him. "WAKE UP! GODDAMN IT, WAKE UP!" Athrun pleaded with himself. "Please... let me wake up! Cagalli! Help!"

xxxx

Cagalli woke with a start as she felt Athrun shift and thrash in bed next to her, almost bruising her thigh when he lifted his knee in a near convulsion. It took her a moment or two to fight her way clear of him, since they'd gone to sleep all tangled together in the aftermath of passion, and he was lying half atop her when he'd started his flailing. It wasn't the first time she'd ever been in bed with him when he'd had a nightmare, but the last one had been years and years ago, during the Second Valentine War, and it hadn't been nearly as bad as this one. She could see him crying, could hear him whimpering and moaning as he lashed out defensively with arms and legs, hard enough to sting when he caught her by accident. "Damn it Athrun, wake up!" Cagalli hissed at him, warding away a forearm that would have impacted her chin.

She rolled away from him, getting completely wrapped up in the sheets as she did so, before shooting a hard elbow back into his lower ribs, a trifle harder even than she'd meant to, she realized guiltily as she felt it dig home just above his hips, enough to make his breath hitch and cough for a second. "You're having a bad dream..." Cagalli began to explain, but then she realized despite getting basically punched in the gut hard enough to leave a small welt, Athrun was still asleep and lashing around in tormented nightmares. That wasn't right, Athrun was a damned light sleeper, she could barely turn over in bed without him cracking an eye, and all she'd ever had to do to wake him from a nightmare in the past was flick his chin with a fingertip. "Athrun? Hey! Wake up already." Cagalli rolled to face him once more and reached out to shake his shoulder. And got bashed in the lips with a backhand that left her teeth tingling as he groaned and twisted like an electrocution victim. "DAMN IT!" Cagalli yelped, rubbing her jaw irately. "HEY YOU, WAKE THE HELL UP ALREADY!"

"I don't think he's going to be able to do that any time soon." A new, unexpected voice commented casually from the foot of the oversized king bed. "In fact, you can take it as a promise that he won't. No matter what happens."

Cagalli sat bolt upright in the bed in shock, the sheets falling away from her chest to puddle on her lap as she leaned back against head headboard with a sigh of relief. "Goddamn it, Kira, you idiot, you scared the life outta..." Cagalli trailed off in her admonishment when she realized that she was completely unclothed, and still a bit sweaty from her lovemaking, and she folded her arms protectively across her chest with a deep flush. Kira was her brother and all, but she was a grown woman, in her own bed, naked, and she couldn't help but feel a bit uncomfortable with him sitting right there. "What the hell are you even doing here, you damn pervert?" Cagalli said accusingly, more than a little upset by the intrusion into her privacy. "Go look at Lacus's chest and..." Cagalli trailed off as her mind caught up to her words, and she clapped her hands to her mouth in constrenation, unintentionally baring her breasts once more. "Oh, Kira, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to..."

"I'd like to do that. But Pink is gone, dust in the wind, and I'll never be able to stare at her chest, or any other part of her oh so tearable body, again. So in absence of Pink, you'll have to do." Kira replied, his voice strange, the sound familiar but the syntax and vocabulary and intonation totally off. He sounded threatening, angry, scary even. There were times when Cagalli could admit to herself that she was a little bit frightened of her twin, but this was different. Those times were more like an excess of respect, she'd never actually felt threatened by him before. Even when he'd cuffed her to the floor, she hadn't really felt threatened, it had seemed more of a reaction than an intentional action. But right now, the way he was staring at her chest, the way he was talking... Cagalli felt scared of him.

"Hey, could you at least turn your back while I find my robe?" Cagalli protested, wanting to look away from him to locate the garment, but she had the undeniable feeling that if she took her eyes off him for even a moment she might deeply regret it, like staring a hungry wolf in the eyes while alone in the forest. The dark sunglasses he was wearing for some reason didn't help matters, she couldn't tell exactly where he was looking. She kicked at Athrun under the sheets. "Wake up already, Athrun!"

"I already told you that wouldn't work." Kira said, his voice dropping to become a near whisper. For all the quiet, Cagalli had no trouble hearing him, and his words made her shiver. "Its just you and me right now, Fiery Zala-Attha."

"Kira, you're making me very uncomfortable right now." Cagalli told him, hoping her voice wasn't shaking. "You KNOW why I don't like people using nicknames for me like that, ESPECIALLY that one! Now please, stop staring at me, I need to get dressed, and then we can sit down and have a talk about whatever's bothering you. I'm just glad you decided to stop grieving by yourself, we're a family after all. We're here for you, Kira."

"A family are we?" Kira sounded like he was tasting the words. He did not stop looking at her chest, seeming to take great satisfaction in her deepening discomfort. "I suppose we are related, now, aren't we? I hadn't thought of it that way before, but you're right. That just makes everything that much more wonderfully delicious. Oh, the anguish to come..." Kira chuckled, more like giggled.

That was the final straw for Cagalli. That laugh was not like anything she'd ever heard Kira make. Not like anything she ever WANTED to hear Kira make. It was the rasping chuckle of someone who's grip on sanity was tenuous at best. The chuckle of someone unpredictable, someone who might not even realize what they were doing. Someone not in their right mind. It was nothing completely unexpected of course, given the traumatic method of Lacus, Akira and Aoi's deaths, Cagalli and Athrun had worried that Kira's mental state might suffer. They didn't think he'd break, but he would definitely need consoling of some sort. Well, it was looking like they really shouldn't have let him be by himself for so long, despite his wishes. Bringing her inner diplomat to the fore, Cagalli forced a pleasant smile onto her face. The trick would be in not agitating him, he was plainly on edge, and as she knew well, he could hurt her without even meaning to if he got out of control.

"I know." Cagalli volunteed with her fixed smile. "Lets go down to the kitchen and fix some of The Tea. It always helps me when I'm troubled, I'm sure it will help you too, Kira. Just let me get dressed, okay? The kids will be back in a few hours, and they're really anxious to see Uncle Kira again." Not only was she telling the truth about "The Tea", but once they got out of the bedroom, she could find Jerome, and get him to watch Kira in case he started getting out of control. Cagalli knew she'd feel much safer around her unstable brother with a Stormhound at his shoulder, if Athrun couldn't be there for some reason. She eyed him out of the corner of her eye, watching him shiver and twitch on his side of the bed, his face contorted in pain or terror. Why couldn't he wake up already?

"I think I like you better naked, Fiery Zala-Attha." Kira smiled broadly, turning more towards her and revealing the long, wickedly sharp combat knife he was playing with in his lap.

Cagalli swallowed heavily, every muscle suddenly tense. This had just gotten much worse than merely unstable. Kira was playing with a weapon, an edged weapon, something he normally wouldn't touch even if his life depended on it! "Kira..." Cagalli swallowed heavily once more. "Stop this, please. You're scaring me."

"Good. Fear is an essential emotion. It makes us strong. There is a lot for you to be afraid of, Fiery Zala-Attha." Kira commented with a leer.

"STOP! Don't call me that nickname!" Cagalli pleaded, unable to repress a shiver at the way he said it, letting the syllables slide off his tongue almost lovingly. "Please... stop this. I don't wanna do it, Kira, but if you don't leave, I'm going to scream for help and have Jerome escort you off the premesis by force."

"Go for it." Kira challenged, turning around and starting to crawl up the bed towards her, licking the flat of the blade menacingly. "Scream for me, Fiery Zala-Attha."

Cagalli flinched at the nickname use again, dredging up memories she really wanted to stay buried, memories she'd only conquered with intensive group therapy a decade ago, memories of a darkened subway complex, and the fiend that had captured her there. "JEROME! JEROME! HELP! HELP IN THE BEDROOM! HEEELLLPPP!" Cagalli yelled, nonplussed to see that Athrun barely even stirred next to her. Her voice echoed around the bedroom, but there was no rush of feet in the hallway. "LEXI!" Cagalli shouted, before realizing that the AI was not due to "return" to the house for several more hours, and had turned off her audio pickups and other sensors for privacies sake. There was an emergency code to reactivate her, but Cagalli was damned if she could remember what it was right now, which was kind of strange since it was a personalized code. It was almost like the memory had been repressed or plucked from her head by an outside force, even though she knew Kira's psychic powers did not run that way.

"Oh come now, Fiery Zala-Attha. You can scream much better than that. I know you can. I sensed worry, but no terror. You still don't understand the true situation here, I gather." Kira trailed the mono knife along the bedsheets, slicing them open, cutting a rent up between Cagalli's calves, baring her feet as he sliced away the constraining sheets. "Care to try again?" Kira asked, almost straddling her legs now. Cagalli stared at her brother in incomprehension, unable to make this madman invading her bedroom match up with the sweet, gentle and quirky brother she loved so much. It was like he'd become an entirely different person, like his entire personality had inverted! The knife started to slice up to bare her thighs, and her throat was dry and raspy, so instead of screaming she struck out with one fist and belted her brother right in the nose. Cagalli's arm jarred at the solidness of the blow, and she winced, expecting to have broken his nose. But the only thing she'd hurt was her knuckles, which felt bruised.

"I was hoping you'd do that." Kira whispered, his mouth less than six inches from hers as she drew back her arm in surprise. He reared back, throwing the knife across the room to embed deeply in the bathroom door, before slicing a path down to the floor. Then, before Cagalli could do much more than blink, he brought a hand around and slapped her right in the cheek with a gunshot report of flesh on flesh, slamming her head backward into the headboard, blood flying from mashed and cut lips and cheek as she sagged backward, stunned. He didn't give her any time to recover from the dazing slap, the other hand coming around to slap her head the other way, cracking her head against the headboard once more, and splashing hot blood and spittle across Athrun's nightmare twisted face. Shaking her head, Cagalli raised her hands defensively and tried to shout for help again, but one of her brother's hands seized her by the throat and thrust her out of bed in a tangle of sheets.

Cagalli tried to kick her way to her feet, but the sheets were all wrapped around her, and instead she shrieked as Kira grabbed her by the hair, yanking out a handful as he dragged her up to a hunched over position and then buried his fist in her gut, driving all the air from her lungs and making her cough up a thin speckle of blood. She was sagging towards the floor once more when he grabbed her by shoulder and hip and tossed her fifteen feet across the room to slam into the wall with a crash and crunch of breaking drywall. She lay in a heap, retching and coughing, spasming with twisted muscle and bruised bones, her entire body feeling like it had been hit with a car. She was just getting air back in her lungs and was getting to her hands and knees when Kira grabbed her again, and tossed her back across the room, one shoulder slamming into a bedpost with a meaty "SNAP" of breaking collar and shoulder bones. Cagalli managed to find her voice again, a high pitched yelp of agony as shattered bone pieces ground together when she hit the floor.

"That's more like the Fiery Zala-Attha I know and love." Kira said gloatingly, standing over her before driving his heel down on her hand, crushing her wrist and driving jagged pieces of bone out through her palm. He inhaled deeply as she screamed again, like he was inhaling an intoxicating perfume. "Oh yes, I've dreamed of this for a long time now." Kira commented in his un-Kira voice. He looked over at the bed, on which Athrun still lay, locked in nightmares from which he could not escape. "Does your hand hurt?" Kira asked, crouching down by Cagalli, who was sobbing and gritting her teeth as she tried to collect herself. Gently, he took hold of and cradled her crushed wrist, and then grabbed her pointer finger. "Poor baby. Does... THIS... hurt?" He wondered with a smile, yanking back her finger until it snapped at the base and middle knuckles, listening to her bloodcurdling shout.

"Not enough." He complained, yanking back on her middle finger, to the accompaniment of another shriek. "Not nearly enough." He continued to grouse, yanking all the fingers of her left hand backward until they snapped like dry twigs, and her fingers hung limp and fluid like wet noodles. "Now don't you pass out on me yet." He said conversationally. "I won't let you pass out."

"Ki...ra... stop this..." Cagalli panted agonizingly. "Please..."

"See, every time you say that, it just makes me want to hurt you all that much more." Frost told her. "Especially in that weak, desperate, disbelieving tone of voice. Well, that's enough rest break... lets have you up now." He grabbed the sheets and tore them away, baring her body completely, before grabbing hold of her broken shoulder and hauling her to her feet, more or less, using it as a handhold. Her mouth opened to shriek, but it hurt so much she couldn't even inhale to shout. Frost let go of her shoulder and then belted her in the stomach again, playfully digging his fist in and shoving her backward into one of the dressers with another crunch-thump as she hit the floor on her knees and then on her side, good arm pressed to her belly, her face white, eyes staring as she vomited a mixture of food and thin blood out of her mouth and nostrils.

"Every day, every hour, every minute, every second I spent in that abyss that is Death, I dreamt of moments like these." Frost explained, kneeling beside her huddled body once more, grabbing her by the back of the head and slamming her face and jaw against the solid wooden cabinet, breaking her nose and chipping a tooth. "Dreamt of my most hated foes broken and bloody before me, helplessly in my hands." He slammed her face into the dresser again, breaking out a tooth and cutting her tongue on the stump. He could have crushed her skull like an eggshell any time he chose, but he wasn't trying to kill her. That would ruin all the fun. She was still part of the blade after all, he just had to reforge her a little bit. And her friends by proxy. "Dreamt of being able to hurt you to my heart's content." Frost continued, and slammed her face into the dresser several more times, until he felt the bones of her face crack and start to give way. Her face was a mask of blood, her jaw filled with broken teeth, her nose mashed flat, and her eyes swollen almost shut. She was beautiful.

Frost lovingly plucked out her hair in fingerfuls, chuckling with glee as he held her down with one hand as she squirmed ineffectually, watching parts of her scalp get peeled up with each colelction of strands, until her head was bleeding profusely from over a dozen bare spots. He worked his way down her body with care, precision and speed, cracking bones, breaking a few ribs, bruising a few internal organs, stopping her heart for a brief ten count to keep her guessing, wrenching at her breasts until they bled from the nipples, crunching his heel down on her groin and grinding back and forth, his sneakers shredding and tenderizing the silky flesh there. He twisted one leg sideways so it snapped at thigh, knee and calf, the calfbone protruding like a dagger from her shin. He bit off both her big toes and swallowed them. And he kept her awake and aware throughout every moment of it, long past the point of her own endurance, basking in her agony alongside her.

At last he picked her broken and bleeding body up off the floor and laid her back down on the bed, right alongside Athrun. "Last time we got together like this, we were sadly interruped before we could get past the preliminary foreplay." Frost reminsiced fondly. He looked down at her and shoved her brutalized legs roughly apart, drawing another gasping shudder from her. "I wondered then, how far down your fire went, Fiery Zala-Attha. I'm still wondering, and I intend to find out." Frost looked over at Athrun and smiled happily. "I told you I would go places with her only you had ever gone before. I'm a man of my word, Loser Zala-Attha." Frost stripped out of his blood spattered pants and climbed onto the bed, straddling Cagalli.

"Pain and pleasure are the same thing to me." Frost expounded, as he thrust himself inside her with a pleased grunt, echoed by her gasping howl of denial. "Let me instruct you as to why." He added as he humped and thrust into her, grabbing hold of her protruding shin bone and tugging on it with one hand as his other hand reached up to fondle across her pulverized face. Her body arched against him in excruitiating pain, but it was a very similar motion to how she had arched against Athrun only an hour or so before. Her throat was raw from all the screaming and yelling she'd been doing, and she could barely make whispers now, so Frost leaned close and kissed her, tasting her agony and despair through the blood of her mouth as he tweaked her shinbone and raped her simultaneously. "Yes, so sweet, so hot...!" Frost exulted, drawing away after nibbling on her lips.

One of Athrun's flailing arms smacked him on the side of his head, and Frost irritably shoved Athrun completely out of the bed. "Its almost too bad you're locked in those crappy nightmares, considering the mess I'm making of her in real life." Frost grumbled. "This girl is a feast, an absolute carnal feast! Oh, and this is just the beginning!" Frost cackled merrily, leaning down for another kiss. Her was near his climax, and he reached out to take hold of Cagalli by one ear as he reached his limit, gasping a bit himself as he released into her and pulled back, twisting her right ear so hard in his shudders that he tore it completely off the side of her head! Holding his memento tightly, Frost leaned back and considered his handiwork. By any and every definition of the word, he'd ruined Cagalli Zala-Attha. None of her wounds was mortal, but altogether they definitely posed a health risk! He shrugged, he wasn't here to kill her, but if she died anyway, well, the blade would be better off without any weaklings in it.

Backing off, Frost pulled his pants back on and retrieved his discarded mono-knife, making sure to grip the handle tightly with his blood spattered bare hand. Circling around the bed to where Athrun lay thrashing, Frost relaxed his mental hold on the green eyed Coordinator, allowing him to jerk to wakefulness for a bare moment before Frost's foot crashed into his head and sent him into deep unconsciousness. Leaving the room, Frost returned a minute later dragging Jerome's unconscious body and bearing his helmet at gun. He dropped the gun casually in a corner, but kept the helmet in hand as he went over to the bed one more time. Cagalli was twitching weakly, but she was so traumatized by her torture that she only barely qualified as conscious, and even then because he wouldn't let her drop out. She was all but comatose from blood loss anyway. But he wasn't done with her just yet.

Leaning carefully over her, making sure she could see the blade coming in, Frost sliced the knife blade across the base of her throat with surgical precision, opening a thin red line from ear to ear across the base of her neck, slicing open the windpipe and then returning to dig the tip of the blade into the wound to mangle her esophagus. Thick, dark blood welled from her slashed throat, but he'd been extremely careful to avoid the jugular vein, he didn't want her to bleed out. Not so quickly anyway. Discarding the knife onto her belly, letting it slide flat down between her ravaged thighs, Frost picked up the helmet and keyed the microphone, his own throat working as he croaked out a passable imitation of Jerome's voice, using codes stolen from the Stormhound's memory. "Code Blue, repeat, Code Blue!" Frost broadcast on the emergency channel, before he threw the helmet over by Jerome's still quite alive body.

Slinging Athrun's unconscious form over his shoulders, Frost loped out of the room and into the night, fighting down his exuberant, triumphant laughter, as the broken, tortured form of Cagalli Zala-Attha, Queen of Orb, lay raped and slowly bleeding to death from a slashed throat and myriad other wounds, in her own bed, with her bodyguard lying unconscious and with no memories of the night on the floor, and her husband gone, presumed kidnapped. That was how the reaction team found her, two minutes and thirty seconds later. Rapid first aid was enough to stop her from bleeding out, but as she was rushed by helicopter to the Orb National Hospital, her prognosis was still grim, touch and go. Though much of Orb would not know it, their Queen's life, and maybe the life of the country, hung by thin cords that night. And those cords were still fraying, because the night's events were not over yet...

xxxx MATURE CONTENT END xxxx

**Far Space Expansion Zone, Beyond the Asteroid Belt, Zaratan ISSA "Ronin City", October 31st, Midday**

According to all official charts and reckonings, the Zaratan class Independently Stable Space Arcology known as Ronin City, population 165,000, was on a slow and steady course for orbit around Jupiter, set to arrive there in a little under a year. However, in reality, due to lots of "unforseen technical problems" the city's actual progress was much, much slower, they were moving at barely a tenth of the speed they should have been. Some of these problems were legitimate, Zaratan's were fairly new technology after all, and there are no "little" problems when they occur several light minutes from the nearest major support facility. But the vast majority of these technical issues were nothing more than words on paper, or encoded on video reports beamed back towards the heart of USN space, and in most cases, there was more to the reports than mere technical complaints.

It was still a tightly kept secret from the USN at large and especially the USN leadership, but Ronin City had quietly declared its independence, not from the USN, but from the corruption of its current government, and had declared in favor of the Retributors movement, becoming a refuge of sorts not only for that group of freedom fighters and discontented soldiers, but also for anyone who had reason to distrust, mislike or fear the heavy hands of the USN's secret government organizations, the ones that had the real power. So far from the political and military heartland of the USN, all but forgotten except as a footnote in occassional news reports, Ronin City provided a place for those people on the run to have a semblance of a normal life. Of course the shadow of discovery hung ever overhead, but it was still better by far than trying to live in hiding within the Asteroid Belt, where Section Nine intelligence and various Military units could and did move about at will covertly.

During the passage through the Asteroid Belt, the Retributors had moved their headquarters from the old hollowed out asteroid they had been using, a former Tiamat cell base, and established themselves semi-formally on Ronin City as a Private Security Company. It was an open secret who they were really, but given the political climate of Ronin City, no one really cared and the Retributors even saw something of an upswing in recruitment, finding plenty of people who had fled from injustice or corruption and felt like protesting with more than just words. Especially because the Retributors were not just another terrorist organization, they did not strike back against the USN or the USN military indiscriminately, they deplored civilian or innocent military casualties, and the leadership of the Retributors was not hesitant to turn its wrath upon any of its own members who crossed such lines in fanatical pursuit of revenge, versus retribution.

Commander Tamara Logan, formerly a member of the Puritan Blue Cosmos terror organization known as Tiamat, and exiled to their asteroid base for her "radical views" about how all Coordinators didn't necessarily deserve to be killed for the crime of existing, was now the second in command of an organization far more powerful and directed than Tiamat had ever dreamed of being. Once Asmodeus Sark, the Hellhound, the man who'd established Tiamat from the ruins of Blue Cosmos, had been killed, the leadership had fallen apart into squabbling camps, and as a result the organization had lost focus and direction, and effectiveness as well. The Retributors were, in a way, just as much based on a cult of personality as Tiamat had been, but their principles were more relatable to a wider audience, and since they worked more on outrage than hatred, they tended to suffer much less infighting and ego tripping, as people worked together to take down their much more powerful enemies.

Besides, Markov Johanovich Ashino, the Retributor, was much different in his personality than Asmodeus Sark had been. Where Asmodeus commanded through fear and respect, Ashino commanded through pure respect, though some people did fear him, it was a healthy fear of a dangerous and committed man, not a genocidal madman. Ashino had limits, lines he would not cross, such as weapons of mass destruction, targeting innocent civilians, and targeting family members of foes, Asmodeus had no such restrictions. Which was not to say that Ashino could not be as merciless as the next man, on the field of battle. But he chose his battlefields more cleanly than Asmodeus ever bothered to do, and his people admired him all the more for that.

Being second in command of the Retributors was less than it was cracked up to be. Not only was she just about the most wanted woman in all the USN, with a bounty worth several million dollars on her head, dead or alive, and constantly demonized by the mainstream press, but she was stuck doing almost all of the logistical and day to day paperwork tasks that came with efficiently running a large militant group with at least pretensions of discipline and responsibility. Ashino, for all his qualities, was not a politician or an office worker, and she'd read some reports he'd tried to write, and had told him to stop trying. It was a lot of extra work for her, but it was the kind of intellectual work that she was best at. Ashino provided the focus and the draw, Tamara provided the nitty gritty details, the oil that kept everything running smoothly.

Ashino also provided the Retributor's ace in the hole and major combat punch, the Retribution Gundam. Formerly a Brotherhood machine, Ashino had absconded with or stolen the machine sometime during the Eden Disaster and now used the machine as his combination combat command post and assault craft. In the time since the re-organization of the USN, the engineers and techs of the retributors had managed to reverse engineer some of the Retributions tech and had built a small run of derivative Mobile Suits called Punishers, which operated off nuclear reactors and were generally not nearly as powerful or maneuverable as the Retribution. But they were more than powerful enough to stand face to face with Solar Knight Vindicators or even Excalibers, in groups, and more than a match for Moebius Sigma's and the Patriot Militia Suit piloted by the USN mainline reservists, at least in small numbers.

Along with a small fleet of stolen or converted warships of sub-capital class and Ronin City itself, those fifteen Punishers and the Retribution comprised the main combat forces of the Retributors. They also possessed the equivalent of thirty Mobile Armors, and about a battalion of trained infantry and insurgent forces all told. Not enough to occupy a major colony, but enough to defend a small one should it come down to it. Though of course the longer they avoided a direct confrontation with any large USN fleet the better, their prospects in battle against even a single Incarnate class dreadnaught and escorts was not overly great. Fortunately the USN at large did not seem to rate the Retributors a large enough threat to warrent such a response, and as yet the largest force to come after them was a single Myrmidon Heavy Cruiser, the _Mongol_, and its escorts, three Armstrong class flak frigates, two aging Agamemnon class Mobile Suit carriers and ten Nelson class destroyers, which were currently on the other side of the Asteroid Belt, still searching for the Retributor's old base.

Taking the most recent intelligence on the fleet hunting them, Tamara left the operations center and went to find and brief Ashino, seeing herself a chance to perhaps inflict some grievous harm upon the hunting fleet now that the Solar Knights and Paladins had pulled back for whatever reason, leaving the fleet berefit of most of its Mobile Suit forces. The fleet had been reinforced by those two Agamemnon classes, neither of which were registered to the active USN military, which made Tamara think special forces of some sort, but even so, the bulk Mobile Suit carriers they'd replaced had carried four times as many machines as the Agamemnon's possibly could, so unless they'd sent out a squadron of Gundams, the enemy had to be weaker now. And best reports still put the Vengeance-Transcendance as being the only operational Gundam in the USN, though those Excalibers came damn close at times, and it still based at Galileo LFB.

She was familiar enough with his habits and personality by now to know where to find him, which would be in one of the training gyms, going through another set of exercises. Despite the fact that he was in incredible physical shape, that he was quite literally the strongest, fastest and toughest man in the Retributors, by a significant margin, despite even the fact that he could take on any three other soldiers in the unit simultaneously and emerge victorious without too much sweat, Ashino was always working harder, towards some next new goal, some new benchmark to pass. His dedication bordered on the insane at times, or maybe it was all that kept him sane, Tamara could never really make up her mind on that bit. The raw wound of his betrayal by the USN always ate at him, but unlike some who had been wronged, he didn't allow his pain to own him, to sour him. It was motivation and focus for him, but it did not trouble his dreams.

Or if it did, it never did when Tamara was there in bed with him. Which was quite often, more often these days than in the past. Getting through his barriers had been no easy task, indeed Tamara would often say it might have been easier to beat him in a straight up fistfight, but no man is an island, and every mature man has some need for company, even if it was just for the sexual release, which it had been at first. Ashino's scars were deep, and none deeper than the emotional ones he carried from that betrayal, where the girl he had loved most had been crippled and brain damaged during an attempt to assassinate him. He had been understandably wary of extending his emotional reach to anyone else, especially a member of his own organization sometimes involved in combat, but as the years had gone by, he'd needed someone to open up to at times, and Tamara had been there for him.

She wasn't sure what the extent of the relationship was... they didn't live together, there was no official dating, no taking each other to dinner, but there was a lot of time spent quietly in each other's company, in and out of work situations, and there was lots of sex. Mind bendingly great sex, Ashino had the focus, attentiveness and physical capabilities to put to shame every other man Tamara had ever been with in her not altogether long life, and it was plain to see and feel that he cared and felt for her, truly. But she didn't know if that emotion was mere fondness or actual love, and was afraid it was more the former than the latter. He still sometimes whispered the name of his first love in his sleep, or during moments of climax. Tamara wasn't offended, from the little she knew, this Jean girl had changed Ashino's life, had even saved his soul in some ways, and there was no way she could compete with that sort of experience on a day to day basis.

True to expectations, she found him in the middle of a workout, not the weight lifting sort, but the dashing around-leaping into the air-pummeling target mannequins into heaps sort that he preferred for those times when he could not convince any live opponents to step onto the mats with him. Which was a mistake new recruits only tended to make once or twice, as the bully boys and tough girls thought to take on the ridiculuously short Retributor and take him down a peg or two. The problem being that Ashino was, quite literally, a super soldier, not a regular human being, and he could both absorb and dish out levels of punishment that would leave a regular person in an ambulance without breaking a sweat. Tamara stood at the edge of the mats and watched him finish up, one bare foot slamming into a block of plastic of woodlike toughness almost three inches thick and shattering it like it was an icecube.

It never failed to tug at heart heart, or more precisely, her loins, when she watched him train. It was a perfectly natural way to feel, Tamara knew, there was nothing wrong with getting a bit excited at watching a very fit and muscular man get all sweaty and flexy, especially when you often shared that same man's bed. All the same, she couldn't help but flush now and then, especially when other female recruits, members and friends would make admiring comments to her, unaware of the depth of their relationship. Seeing him come to rest in the middle of the mats, chest barely hitching with exertion, over thirty test blocks and target mannequins lying destroyed and defeated around him, Tamara stepped out onto the mats, careful to approach loudly, wary of that one time she'd almost caught him unawares, and he'd almost broken half her ribs before he checked his kick, which had still knocked her down and out.

She handed him a small towel, which she had taken from a rack on the wall, and let him mop down his face and neck of the thin sheen of perspiration. His curly, cherry red locks of hair had grown a bit long of late, hanging down to below his ears, but she liked his hair longer, it made him look even younger and more boyish in her eyes, less intimidating, less severe, and he was apparently humoring her in letting it continue to grow out. However the lime green eyes that turned to regard her after he was done wiping off were all business, and Tamara knew better than to try and hug him in even semi-private like this, despite how tempting it was to run her fingertips down the familiar lines of his arms or across his chest. As ever, a slight smile tugged her lips when she found herself looking down into his eyes, he was just so short compared to most modern men.

"So what do you have for me, Tamara?" Ashino asked, after waiting an appropriate interval for her to finish her usual period of gawking. It wasn't like he didn't enjoy being admired by a pretty woman, but if he let her, Tam would stare at him like he was a juicy meal for hours, with that wistful look on her face and her fingers and hands twitching as she kept herself from reaching out to touch and feel. She was a very hands on woman, Tam was, which he didn't mind and often enjoyed, but this wasn't the time for such things. He saw the data reader in her hands and reached out to take it from her. She'd already highlighted the most pertinent sections, highly efficient, that was Tam for you. She'd also put together a basic plan of operations, with plenty of room for him to tweak to his own needs.

At times Ashino almost felt guilty for being so attracted to Tam, who was smart, attentive, organized, strikingly attractive physically, creative and fun to be around. Jean had been fun and smart and pretty attentive, but she was not organized and every time he tried to imagine Jean filling the role of second in command, he either couldn't or had to actually chuckle sadly. Jean was many things, but she would never have been able to be a productive part of his work life. Jean also lost out to Tam in the looks departmet, she was just a gawky glasses wearing college student and Tam was a fit and confident woman in her own right, but he always felt really terrible in making that comparison. Jean meant so much to him, even now, even while he was slowing moving past her, and Tam was filling in for her spot, the post of keeping him human and social.

"Well, we can hardly let an opportunity like this one pass us by, can we?" Ashino observed, after carefully perusing the text, both highlight and non-highlighted sections. "Not every day we get a chance to make big headlines by giving the USN a black eye. Putting an entire taskforce to route, its almost like a dream."

"You don't trust it, do you?" Tam asked, knowing him well.

"Of course I don't. I don't trust anything unexpected, and this fairly screams of a trap. The question is, is it a trap that is worthwhile to trip anyway?" Ashino replied, brow furrowing in thought. "I think we will have to fight a probing engagement at the very least. I detest the thought of not knowing what kind of units arrived in those Agamemnons. Obviously its the sort of units that the USN thought was a fitting replacement for over four dozen Solar Knights, and that concerns me. It may be super soldiers of some sort, FEAR's vaunted Extendeds. My cousins, you could say." Ashino frowned heavily. "Those poor, lost souls... I really feel for them, you know? They never really have had a chance for a regular life. Not like I've had."

"Well, maybe we can capture some and free them?" Tamara suggested. She noticed his arched eyebrows. "I'm not saying it would be easy, but its better to try than just let them suffer under brainwashing, right? They're people too, they deserve a chance at a real, peaceful life if they want."

"If more of Blue Cosmos had been like you, I would have enjoyed working for them." Ashino said slowly.

"If more of Blue Cosmos had been like me, you never would have come about." Tamara replied with a shrug. "All told, I'm happy with the results we have." She thought about what he'd said for a moment. "Cousins? Not brothers and sisters?"

"Thankfully not." Ashino said, with a real shudder, which had her eyes quite wide with amazement. She'd not seen much that could make him shiver with dread, that was for sure. "Trust me, if a family reunion were ever to be held, I would nuke the place at the appointed time. Even if it was in a major city. Such a tragedy would only be a drop in the bucket compared to the potential damage of my "elder" brothers and sister could cause. Especially..." Ashino shook his head. "Don't worry about it. One of them is brain dead, the other two are nothing but ashes and bad memories now." Ashino held up the data reader. "Now lets get down to the details... we're going to need to work it so they think we're still operating out of the asteroids..."

xxxx

Author Note 2: Summary of Mature Content: Frost gets into the bedroom and psychically attacks Athrun, tormenting him with horrible nightmares while preventing him from waking up. He then physically attacks Cagalli and inflicts horrific injuries upon her, including sexual assault and slashing open her throat, before calling in the Stormhounds using mimicry and memories stolen from Jerome, to discover his handiwork, while he flees into the night, taking Athrun with him.

As you may summarize, that I was able to put the meat of the chapter into two sentences should put emphasis on the kind of extreme details I went into when actually writing the scene. Until next time, looking forward to the reactions.


	13. Hypothermia

Author Note: For the benefit of those unaware, "Carome", Jerome Zavier's nickname, is a synonym for "bounce" or "ricochet", a glancing hit, as in "the truck caromed off the wall and kept going at near full speed". So in that training scenario, when the dummy grenade hit his shaved head and bounced off and he kept going despite the gash and concussion, the smart alecks gave him his team name, after the bounce of the grenade. Its a bit obscure, but no more so than Kurtz and "Conrad".

xxxx

**Near Space Expansion Zone, The Asteroid Belt, Agamemon class carrier "Damocles", afternoon, October 31st**

Walking through a Mobile Suit hanger never failed to instill a sense of awe and wonder into him, Lain Debora reflected wryly, as he made his way along the floor of the renovated and retrofitted hanger of the old Agamemnon class space carrier. The thought that humans had built and could control such massive and, in a way, beautiful, constructs always made him shake his head and smirk, and the knowledge that he himself was one of the chosen few not just lucky enough to be able to pilot them, but to excel at piloting them, to be famed for his skill, that feeling, well, he always made it a point to walk through the hanger once a day at least, let it be put that way.

The effect was, if anything, amplified by this particular hanger, expanded as it was to contain the titanic forms of the near Special Project Mobile Suits, named Panzerdragoons. Loosely based upon the old Panzerwulf models first sued by the super soldiers of FEAR during the Eden Disaster era, Panzerdragoons... which translated to "Dragon-Tanks", loosely... certainly lived up to their monikers. With the acquisition of Red EDEN nano-resource generation and construction, and various other Brotherhood technologies, the old limits of Mobile Suit construction had been thrown completely out the window. Whereas the original Ginns and Strike Daggers bore only a single weapon for ranged and melee combat, and maybe a CIWS gun, every subsequent generation had delighted in adding more manueverability, power, armor, weapons and advanced technology, until the main line Mobile Suits of today had higher specs than any of the five original Gundams!

When he'd first seen a Panzerwulf, during the USN armed forces coaliltion demonstration on the Solar Knight's Africa base almost eight years ago, Lain had been impressed by the size and power of the "Wolf-Tanks", even while remainging disdainful of their speed and manueverability. Despite that severe handicap, at least to Lain's eyes, the Panzerwulf's and their pilots had proved that resilience, strength and determination could be just as much a game winner as aerobatic dodges and cunning finesse, and many times Panzerwulf's had taken hits that would have destroyed any other Mobile Suit and kept fighting, something which Lain had his life to be thankful for.

But while Panzerwulf's were head and shoulders taller than most other mainline Mobile Suits of their age, they barely even came up to the belly button of the new Panzerdragoons, which towered slightly over forty meters into the air while standing in Mobile Suit mode, and a good eight to nine meters when in tank mode, a transformative ability that granted them access to extra weapons, a lower profile and greater stability for slow, heavy assault type maneuvers, where they could also act as combat transports for supplies for supporting infantry and armor battalions. Though such massive size would inevitably lead them to become targets on a battlefield, the Panzerdragoons were easily as tough as they were big, their armor made from the same ablative material as the plating of the old Archangel class Mobile Assault carrier, with additional plates of Geischmedig-Panzer beam deflectors.

And anyone who happened to take a shot at a Panzerdragoon had better either be able to clear the area fast, or possess some crazy defensive technology of their own, because each Panzerdragoon carried more weaponry than just about anything save a modern capital warship, with a plethora of missiles, large caliber gatling beam weapons, gatling regular cannons and even a battleship class 200cm Lohengrin cannon carried as a rifle. But the true primary weapons of these monsters was a pair of "Ragnarok" Mjolnir 3P Mega-Cannons, on the shoulders. Mjolnir 3P cannons fired what were essentially bolts of man made lightning, shooting streams of ionized particles at close to twenty percent of light speed, dealing damage through both physical impact and heat energy discharge, making them one of the few weapon systems that were effective against all armor types and at breaking through the heaviest of defenses. Ragnarok's were to regular Mjolnir's what regular Mjolnir's were to a normal beam cannon, and Lain was glad he only had to face them in simulators.

There were three Panzerdragoon's in the _Damocles_'s hanger, plus an additional squadron of four Panzerwulf's in the _Damocles_'s sister ship, the _Diomedes_, which were nowadays assigned to the junior Extendeds or ones that were still in the process of training for full deployment. With NIC-III retrofits in place of standard controls, modern Panzerwulf's were significantly more agile and deadly than their original incarnations, though they lacked Fusion Pulse Reactors and thus the frightening power of their larger brethren. Tucked away in the corner of the _Damocles'_s hanger, next to Stella's Panzerdragoon, resided Lain's own Mobile Suit, a Solar Knights mainline unit, a Vindicator. Barely half the height and a third the weight of the Panzerdragoon's, Lain's Vindicator looked almost puny, like a toy or scale model of an actual Mobile Suit, for all that it was based on the same chassis as the Archon, and was in some ways an improvement upon the original Solar Knight machine.

In the wake of the Eden Disaster, the USN had reorganized and reinvented itself, from a international coaliltion body based on the old United Nations, to a true world spanning singular nation, almost an empire in some respects. As part of this reorganization, the Solar Knights, formerly a special operations unit at the direct beck and call of the Secretary of Defense, had been expanded hugely in parallel with a similar scaling up of the regular USN military, until they were basically two seperate and complete militaries, the Solar Knights being considered the more elite of the two, though it was an open debate as to which military was more powerful. The Solar Knights dealt almost exclusively in Mobile Suits, and everyone knew the power of these war machines by now, especially the ones that incorporated Brotherhood level technology.

But the regular USN military was far vaster, and contained the might Solar Protection Fleet of immense capital warships, designed not only to engage and destroy other ships, but to weather attacks from Mobile Suits, and give far better than they got. The Solar Knights generally fell into the category of assault or shock troops, their job to engage and break the enemy with covering fire from the fleets, before the regular military moved in with vehicles, ships, Mobile Armors and infantry to consolidate and mop up any remaining targets. Then of course there were the FEAR sponsored units, piloted by "super soldier" Extendeds, which functioned as an even heavier assault and special operations wing of the Solar Knights, specializing in anti-psychic warfare, among other things.

Thinking about the Extendeds always brought mixed feelings to the surface of Lain's mind. On one hand they were undeniably effective, with physical, reflexive and even mental abilities in excess of even most highly trained Coordinators, but they also weren't volunteers. They were born and raised into the program, or else recruited at a very young age, when they were stall baby's or toddlers, and reared up with the Extended project as their whole world. Lain hesitated to use the word "brainwashed", since many of the Extendeds displayed unique and even counter-authority type personalities, but there was no denying that they were conditioned and indoctrinated to a certain worldview, and that particular worldview was not one Lain liked, where the Extendeds were more like spare parts, expendable in the name of the mission! It was one thing to choose to give your life for what you believe in, quite another to grow up with the idea that there was no other way to accomplish some missions other than suicide.

But despite being a tad bit warped, and often more than a little bit odd, the Extendeds were still human beings, just like anyone else, and if you took the time to get to know them, and managed to gain their trust and be accepted into the exclusive clique that was Extended society, you wouldn't find better friends and allies. Loyalty to other Extendeds was perhaps the strongest emotion they felt, becuase they were well aware that they were different from regular people. They regarded each other more like family members than members of the same military unit, and at times Lain wondered if the scientists and researchers in charge of the Extended project truly had any inkling as to how deep and complex the web of relationships and feelings between their Extendeds were.

Lain himself was now part of that web, though even after seven years of living and working and training alongside the Extendeds, he still felt a bit like an outsider to their society, but perhaps that would never change, because he was just a Natural, not an Extended and there were things about them that were simply beyond his understanding. Not that he wasn't trying, but in some ways the things he was trying to learn weren't even known consciously by the Extendeds themselves, just subconsciously sensed. But even if he wasn't a full part of the larger web, he had forged a unique and enduring connection with one Extended in particular.

Just the thought of Stella made Lain's heart race a bit, and a part of him chuckled at himself. Here he was, in his early thirties, and he was still thinking like a hormonal teenager, at least when it came to Stella. For a guy who'd formerly been something of a skirt chaser, the idea of being so hopelessly in love with a single girl was kinda funny in some ways, but Lain wouldn't trade the feeling, or Stella herself, for anything. Stella was one of the oldest and most experienced of the Extendeds, along with her friends-brothers, Auel and Sting, who had become Lain's other two close friends among the Extendeds. Many people, even other Extendeds, often had the impression that she was ditzy and airheaded, prone to wandering off and getting lost, or tripping and falling down stairs, something especially embarassing for the finely honed, post-olympic level athletes the Extended all were.

And maybe that was even true, a small fraction of the time, but mostly it was just that Stella was, rather than too shallow of a thinker, actually too deep of a thinker, to the point where she would lose track of the outside world during her ruminations, with the aforementioned clutzy results. She also had a fascination for high places, not because of the elevation per se, since she was actually afraid of heights, but for the views of the surrounding world being so high up offered. A good view was deeply satisfying and calming to her, and she would seek out a good high spot everywhere they went, whether it be a building, a tree, an outcropping of rock, a cliff or even a mountain, where she would go when she needed to think about something, or to relax. Lain had learned to sometimes just give Stella some space at times like that... it wasn't like she wasn't glad of his company, but she'd told him she couldn't think straight whenever he was around, which had left him feeling both complimented and a bit guilty.

At the moment though, Lain was seeking her out, both because he had some things about the coming deployments to discuss with her, since he'd already talked things over with Sting and Auel, since he was now part of their fighting formation and strategy, and also just because he wanted to be with her, hold her in his arms, run his figners through her hair, smell the back of her neck, perhaps float quietly in some dark corner and just be together in peace. Moments like that were getting more and more rare as the days went by, with Doctor Roanoke, who's brainchild the Extendeds were, demanding more and more of Stella's time for special experiments and tests, all of which she refused to talk with him about, claiming that she herself didn't remember much of anything, that she spent the time with the doctor sedated and semi-conscious at best. Probably testing revolving around "Tranquility" that mental aspect of Extendeds that rendered them invisible and even intangible to the mental efforts of psychics, is what Stella thought.

Lain wasn't so sure, there was just a vibe he was getting from Roanoke that creeped him right the fuck out. That in itself wasn't particularly abnormal, the eldery Doctor freaked most people out, he just had that kind of mind and mannerisms that seemed to divorce him a step or two from the rest of humanity. Undeniably brilliant, Roanoke was certainly the smartest guy Lain had ever had a cup of coffee with, but he could not help but consider it a twisted brilliance, and Lain always tried to keep a wary eye out for the good Doctor, whose intentions towards Stella he didn't trust farther than he could throw his own Vindicator. It wasn't that he couldn't see how fond Roanoke was of Stella, of all his Extended "children", but Lain was all too aware that love, when twisted, could be one of the most dangerous emotions of all, and lead to some of the most heinous tragedies. Roanoke loved the Extendeds, but Lain felt he loved the concept more than he did the individuals, and that was unsettling.

The problem being that Stella loved and trusted Roanoke just like he was her own grandpa, and badmouthing the Doctor was one of the few ways Lain had ever gotten her legitimately pissed at him, and when Stella was angry, she was one of the most frightening people Lain had ever been around. She didn't look it, but Stella, like most Extendeds, was crazy strong, tough and agile, and Lain knew she was capable of killing him with a single blow if she so chose. Or worse yet, drawing her favorite knife, a combat blade with a wicked curve and a row of blade breaking serrations down the back, which he'd seen her punch through a solid steel armor plate without much effort. Even the other Extendeds were afraid of Stella when she had her knife in hand. So he had to keep his suspicions to himself, and do some snooping around, to get some solid proof, before he would broach that particular subject again. Stella wasn't blind in her faith, she would listen to reason, to proof. But anything less than that would just enrage her, as anyone would be if aspersions were cast upon a beloved parent.

Upon entering one of the ship's cafeterias, a snapshot glimpse of touseled blond hair got Lain's heart racing a bit again, his excitement bringing a self mocking smile to his lips before his lips downturned into a frown, his heart rate remaining accelerated, but now from indignation and irritation, fueled by hints of irrational jealousy. Usually Stella sat off by herself, the regular crewmembers of the _Damocles_ being unsettled by her and the other Extendeds, despite the fact that Stella was a woman in the flower of youth, pretty enough to grace sporting magazine covers should she ever think to audition. But there was someone else sitting with Stella at the moment, a large, heavily muscled black man that was instantly recognizable to Lain, for all that he'd only known the guy for a few weeks. And already hated him. Heck, the first hour had been enough to spark his loathing for that guy, Mechael Smith, the ICMS Augmented.

It wasn't that Mechael was a cyborg, more plastics, prosthetics and computer chips than he was flesh and blood, though that was kind of unsettling at times. Nor was it the color of his skin, since the prejudices against skin pigmentations had died out in the furor over Naturals vs Coordinators, and Lain was from Orb anyway, easily the most tolerant nation on Earth or in Space. It was his personality that grated on Lain, and on pretty much everyone. Mechael was just about the most arrogant son of a bitch Lain had ever met... and he'd met some doozies in his time. But his pride and disdain for others wasn't the thing that really burned Lain's chops. No, that honor belonged to Mechael's unceasing attempts to crawl up Stella's skirt, despite repeated confrontations by Lain, by Stella and by Stella and Lain together. It wasn't just Stella, Lain knew, Mechael tried to get fresh with pretty much every female that snagged his sensor enhanced gaze, regardless of whether they were single, involved, married, or just plain uninterested.

Perhaps it was because Lain had once been a skirt chaser as well, in his past, but Mechael's oily insinuations and shockingly blunt advances really got to him on a personal level. It was one thing to suavely join a conversation, interject some witty commetary, buy a few drinks, make small talk and maybe get invited home for a happy finish. That was just playing the game well, and any good skirt chaser knew that you struck out at least twice for every time you tumbled into a bed, and that's at the best. Mechael didn't seem to understand the concept of "No" or "Sorry, not interested", or maybe he was just one of those guys that thought every girl liked playing hard to get and just needed cajoling in order for the shirts to come off and panties to go down. He also seemed to think that most women liked being touched by someone they'd just met, and he wasn't afraid to grab a piece of hip or ass or thigh or wrist when talking to a female.

And unfortunately, because he WAS a cyborg, slapping him across the face just made him smile and chuckle. He was also quasi-outside the chain of command, or at the very least he only seemed to answer to Doctor Roanoke and the top tier FEAR leadership, and thus official discipline from the ship's officers just slid right off him without leaving a mark or dampening his efforts in the slightest. Also there was the point that he'd absolutely thrashed one of the other Extendeds, who had objected to Mechael putting his hands on one of the other Extended girls. Lain had fought the Extendeds for training, and if he ever broke even during those matches, he knew they were holding back. It had hardly even been a contest between the Augmented and the Extended though, Mechael didn't seem to feel pain, and only two punches were required to lay the Extended lad out unconscious and coughing up blood.

If you couldn't fight em, and you couldn't get rid of em, really the only option left was to tolerate and avoid em at all costs, Lain reflected with an internal sigh, even as he gritted his teeth as he stomped over to where Mechael was trying to put the moves on Stella, yet again. Stella had long since finished her meal, despite having to stop every other mouthful to wriggle away from or shove away Mechael's questing hands. It wasn't that Stella was just supremely patient or tolerant of the Augmented's behavior, or that she liked it and was playing hard to get, it was just that Stella didn't have much depth of experience with men, and she was extremely uncomfortable as the focus of public attention. The only reason she wasn't protesting and making a scene was because that would be more embarassing to her than letting Mechael paw at her.

Fortunately Lain suffered no such phobia against drawing attention to himself, and he stepped up right beside the two of them as Stella was twisting her shoulder to cause Mechael's heavy hand to slide off. Lain cleared his throat loudly, and glared down at the short, sandy brown hair of the serial molester. "I believe you're in my chair." Lain said, trying for casual calmness.

"Plenty of chairs around here." Mechael replied diffidently, not even glancing up at Lain's frowning face.

"Yes, but that particular one is mine." Lain pressed, more forcefully.

Mechael glanced up at him, his disturbing orange eyes meeting Lain's mismatched blue and green ones for a moment, traceries of light flickering across Mechael's corneas as sensor systems scanned and assimilated data, before the Augmented returned his eyes to scoping out Stella and trying to peer down the front of her uniform shirt. "Didn't see your name on it, shorty."

Lain was reminded of the adage about where you seated an eight hundred pound gorilla... namely, wherever he wanted to sit. Mechael had almost half a foot and almost one hundred and fifty pounds of cybernetically enhanced muscle on him, plus concealed weapons. There was no way in hell that Lain could shift Mechael if he didn't feel inclined to move, even attempting to drag the guy away would just land him in the infirmary. Left with no choice but to concede the initial confrontation, Lain sat down on the opposite side of Stella from Mechael. He may have lost that skirmish, but the war was still on! Reaching out his arms, Lain encircled Stella's waist and lifted her up and back, settling her down in his lap, much to his delight and her relief, putting an entire empty chair between them and Mechael. Stella put one hand on Lain's, clasped around her stomach, and leaned back gratefully against him.

Lain exchanged daggerlike glares with Mechael, who seemed to almost be measuring Lain for a bullet for a moment or two, before the big black guy just shrugged and smirked, letting the whole situation crumble away like nothing had ever happened. "No reason to get all clingy and jealous, friend, just a little fun." Mechael commented, turning to his own plate of food, which he'd largely been ignoring, the plate having served mainly the purpose of giving him an excuse to sit down by Stella. "Gotta fill the time between missions somehow ya know."

"Go commune with your Gundam then." Stella retorted, emboldened and reinforced by Lain's physical nearness, she never felt as safe and secure as she did when his arms were around her, not even when she was locked in the cockpit of her Panzerdragoon. "Or spar. Or use the simulator. But do not sit by me, do not talk to me, and do not touch me. Next time you do, I will lop off that member you so like to boast of." Stella free hand caressed the hilt of her blade, which as ever, was sheathed across her lower back, accessed through a slit in her uniform coat. Just about the only times Stella was without her blade was when she was in the shower or in bed, and even then not always.

"Just a little fun, don't get your panties in a twist. Didn't mean nothing by it." Mechael replied, raising his palms in mock fear, though from the tone of his voice, it seemed obvious that he thought he could take Stella if it ever came down to it. He might even be right, Lain was in no hurry to find out. "Omega Panzer is doing all right for the moment. Don't need me mucking about inside." Mechael flexed his arms as he crossed them over his chest. "Getting a bit antsy, just like me. Boring as shit, plowing around these asteroid fields, looking for those cowardly bastards. Retributors, huh, more like Retreaters..."

Lain thought about pointing out that the Retributors had fought an entire unit of Paladins and Solar Knights to a standstill on multiple occassions, which was about as far from cowardly as it was possible to be. They weren't running or hiding, they were biding their time, waiting for the right moment to strike, and strike hard. Lain just hoped the power of the Panzerdragoon's, and the unknown abilities of Mechael's Gundam, would be enough to give them a fighting chance. They were going up against the Retribution Gundam after all, with allies, and Lain had seen that Gundam fight before. Unless Mechael was all he was cracked up to be, and more, Lain couldn't help but feel they might have bitten off more than they could chew, and that sending away all the Solar Knight forces might not have been the wisest decision. But confiding these concerns to Mechael was pointless, the braggart had no room for anything but absolute, preening confidence in himself. Hopefully the rude awakening of actual combat against a cunning and resourceful foe would snap the Augmented back to reality.

Denied his fun with Stella, and obviously not feeling hungry, Mechael stood up and stalked off, every footfall echoing with the faintest metallic clink as his foot touched the deck, bulldozing a path through the regular crewmembers as he headed for a doorway. Lain and Stella watched him go, and shook their heads in unison, drawing a spate of chuckles from them as they watched each other. "He's like a child..." Stella commented with another shake of her head. "Always trying to put his hand in the candy basket."

"Yeah, well, if he keeps trying it, he's going to get a little more than a smack on the knuckles." Lain replied with a bit of left over heat.

"Thank you for rescuing me." Stella added softly, wiggling around to half face him, the movements of her body doing very pleasant and distracting things to his. "I'm just no good at sticking up for myself at times like that."

"Everyone has weak points." Lain shrugged, tightening his arms and smiling as Stella laid her head against his chest and shoulder. Further intimacy would have to wait for the privacy of their room, but just holding her was enough for him right now. "Self assertion doesn't happen overnight, it can take your whole life to learn. And even then, not everyone is comfortable with it. I love you just the way you are, Stella."

"And I love you too, Lain. You always make me feel better about everything." Stella whispered in reply. They held onto that moment together for a while, tucked in the back of the crowded cafeteria, but still very much alone with each other. Finally, Stella licked her lips and squirmed a bit. "I think we should return to our bunkroom. I want to wash myself after being touched by him. Perhaps you could scrub my back?" Stella suggested with a sly wink.

"I think that's the best idea I've heard all day." Lain managed to whisper back, dry mouthed as ever when Stella got in the mood. As they got up from the table, Lain actually found himself hoping Mechael's opinion of the Retributors was true, at least for the next hour or so. It would truly suck to be interrupted in the middle of something fun.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Upper class residential district, 10:15 pm, October 31st**

Dearka covered his yawning mouth with one hand, and used the same motion to surripetiously glance at his watch, wincing as he saw how late it was. Normally, despite protests, the kids were in bed by no later than ten pm. He himself was usually willing to bend the rules a little bit, work in some leeway, but Miri wouldn't have it. Come hell or high water, the kids had to be in bed, lights out by ten pm, especially on schoolnights. And so Dearka himself had gotten used to going to bed no more than twenty or thirty minutes later, because if there was one thing he knew about his kids, it was that they weren't going to fall asleep if he and Miri were still up and active, especially if they were watching TV or doing anything else "fun". So now his body was starting to enter "sleep mode" and they were still out trick or treating. They'd had a pretty good run, they'd been at this for hours, though some of that time was eaten up by driving between neighborhoods, and stopping at haunted houses and other such diversions that didn't involve the all important gathering of sweet candy tributes.

Thankfully even the most exuberant kids, surprisingly not his own Roy and Alice, or Lewis la Flaga, but none other than Violet Finch and Allister Zala-Attha, were starting to wind down and run out of energy. Dearka never would have picked the reserved and even somewhat chilly Violet or the serious and focused Allister to be the type to freak out over Halloween so much, but then again their families were both the "play hard, work harder" types. And also those two kids were obviously glad for an excuse to think about something other than the recent tragedy with the Yamato-Clynes. Not like anyone wasn't close to Akira and Aoi, but Dearka could readily admit that Allister and Violet had been closer than most. Which was understandable in Allister's case, since they were cousins, but the thought of Violet Finch, of all people, developing a firm attachment to Akira Yamato-Clyne... it had provided plenty of half worried jokes about the children's future during the Clyne Faction get togethers.

Though even a union of the Finch's and Yamato-Clynes, grotesque and dysfunctional as they had all joked about how it would be, was better than the unmitigated disaster of Lacus, Akira and Aoi burning to death in a forest fire, right in the full bloom of life and happiness. Dearka forcibly steered his thoughts away from the matter, knowing that he was all too prone to dwelling on the bad things in life, especially the ones he could do nothing to change or affect. If he didn't watch himself, he'd get depressed and start drinking again, and he'd been on that particular downward spiral once before, during his ICD crisis. Only cosmic chance had rescued him from that self destructive dance, and he knew he wouldn't get so lucky again. Miri and the kids needed him too much for him to take any risks like that with himself ever again, and he'd gone cold turkey on all intoxicating substances since the end of the Eden Disaster and hadn't slipped once in the intervening years. An overreaction, perhaps, but when it came to your family, there was no such thing as too safe.

Dearka straightened from his position of leaning against the side of the SUV that their trick or treating party was crammed into for transportation. With five kids and four adults, the vehicle was actually a bit overcrowded, in purely legal terms, but by staying well under the speed limit Dearka knew they were safe enough. It was still too early in the night for people to be coming home from the sort of parties that involved alcohol, pretty much everyone else on the road was a parent with children, so everyone was being more cautious than they otherwise might. For that matter, even if someone was drunk, they couldn't start a car in manual mode when they had more than a certain, very low, amount of alcohol or intoxicants in them, so Lexi would be doing most of the driving tonight for many. Having grown up on the PLANTS, who had autodrivers in most every vehicle, Dearka was more than comfortable with having computers do the brunt of the driving for him, though he did notice that Miri always freaked out when he took his hands off the wheel while on the highway.

The party of kids, plus Mu and Murrue as guardians, chaperones and, more usually, sheep herders, was returning from the doorway of the most recent house that was being repeatedly pillaged of treats by gangs of kids. This was the last house on this particular block, and they only had one more, short block to go before Dearka was going to call it quits, not wanting to have to drive another thirty minutes to find an acceptable neighborhood they hadn't visited yet. If it was just him and his own kids, he would have been comfortable trick or treating just about anywhere, it wasn't like Orb was exactly crowded with slums or ghettos or rife with street crime. But he was with the Crown Prince tonight, even if the tyke was incognito, and so that meant walking the straight and narrow path of keeping to the real upper crust, genteel spots. Which tended to give more and better candy anyway, but still, all the driving around was a bit annoying.

It wasn't like anyone was aware who the three eyed, four armed, two tailed, winged space creature with the potbelly fully of plundered candy really was. You'd need to crouch down and shine a flashlight up into the mask's jaws to really get a good look at Allister's face, and even then, outside of his regal garments, it would be easy for people not familiar with him to not recognize him. The Orb royal family didn't exactly avoid the public eye, but they didn't commonly walk the streets door to door either. In a way Dearka suspected that Allister found the experience pretty refreshing, being able to be out and about with his friends and family and be treated exactly like everyone else, no bowing and scraping, no false smiles, no crowds of reporters and photographers, no one to get in the way of being a young boy on Halloween.

Truth be told Dearka himself was kind of enjoying it too. His own costume wasn't much, just a lame plastic Frankenstein fright mask and some hastily applied camou paint he'd swiped from Ramierez one time, but it was enough to keep people from recognizing him during those times when he and Miri were the sheep herders instead of Mu and Murrue. The adults switched jobs every block, to give each couple a bit of a rest... sheparding five boisterous kids was not light work. Or four boisterous kids and one who was not doing so well at maintaining her usual composed mask, as boisterous was not a word to be applied lightly to Violet Finch. Dearka and Miri didn't have it anywhere near as bad as Cagalli and Athrun, or Lacus and Kira used to, where the moment they went out in public they'd draw a crowd, but he'd done enough famous things that he didn't like dealing with all the questions and picture requests and stuff like that any more than he absolutely had to.

He snorted and his lips twitched in a sardonic smile for a moment. All his early life and youth, he'd wanted so bad to be world famous, and now that he was, he just wanted to be anonymous again. Well, maybe not fully anonymous, not like Kira and Lacus, he did enjoy some of the perks of his reputation, and the financial benefits were nothing to sneeze at either... Orb took very good care of its national heroes... but he just didn't like being in the spotlight. He was, and forever would be, happiest in a support role, be it on the battlefield or in everyday life. "I'm glad someone still has the energy for a genuine smile. My jaw hurts from all the grinning I've been forcing for the past forty minutes." Miriallia commented from beside him, opening the back side door of the SUV and clambering out from the bench seat in the back, where she'd been lying down and resting her head for the past couple minutes.

Miri had had a pretty tough day at work, doing research and article writing for several Orb technical magazines, mostly focusing around aspects of the still under construction Trieste Town, Dearka knew, and on such days she generally came down with a stress headache later in the evening, which could spiral up into a real migraine if she didn't find some way to relax. And though it was fun to go trick or treating, it could not be in any way called relaxing, and the throbbing in her head had been steadily building for most of an hour now. Just about the only thing keeping her on her feet was not wanting to ruin things for everyone else, and the thought of the very wonderful hot tub back on the _Dawn's Light_, Dearka's salvage ship and their home, where just the two of them would be returning after they finished trick or treating and they dropped the kids off at Villa Pacifica for Athrun and Cagalli to entertain for the rest of the night.

Given her gritted teeth and the way she winced even when they passed under streetlights, Dearka figured the headache was already pretty severe and would only grow worse, so he somewhat regretfully crossed the possibility of some amorous fun off his list of things to do later that night. Sex was great and all, and they still did it once or twice a week, sometimes more often, but it also, sadly, usually fitted under the category of "fun but not relaxing" things. But just because sex was offline didn't mean they couldn't get in some productive cuddling and other quiet time together, sit on the couch, look at the sky, maybe use the hot tub together, and enjoy not having two mischevious and inquisitive kids underfoot for a few hours. Not that he didn't love Alice and Roy with all his heart, but nobody knew how to get under his skin better than them. If he and his sisters been like this growing up, he could almost feel some sympathy for how irritable his father had always been, and for Dearka, that was saying something.

And then the kids were back, with Mu and Murrue trailing a few steps behind as the kids chattered amongst themselves excitedly, comparing the size of various candy bars and other treats that they had collected at the latest house. If anything, Coordinator children were worse blabberers at that age than Natural children were, the higher degree of intellectual and mental development among Coordinator children of young age meant, for all that the children were still in grade school, they were basically escorting the mental equivalents of middle or highschoolers around, just without all the messy puberty nonsense, thank god. Dearka was not looking forward to the time when the children's hormones started kicking in. Not that, hypothetically, he had anything against his children forming romantic relationships at the proper age, and it was far from garaunteed that they would chose from within their current friend group, but all the same, the chance that he might end up, in the distant future, related by marriage to Athrun or Yzak was just plain unsettling.

Getting back to the present, Dearka stepped aside as the kids clambered back into the SUV and began cramming themselves in the back bench seat, where Miri had just been lying down. Not all of them crammed very well, in fact most of the costumes didn't compress well at all. Allister's tails, extra arms and wings were always hitting Roy and Violet in the sides and face whenever he wriggled or moved his real arms, and while Roy just puffed his cheeks and spat good naturedly every time he got a faceful of faux scale, Violet was starting to eye Allister's costume in a way that made Dearka think she was thinking of doing some trimming of extra appendages. And she was equipped to do so, because her costume was that of a samurai warrior, and it was shockingly authentic looking, even down to the twin swords, sized specifically for her. The swords were not only made of metal but they possessed edges every bit as keen as a combat blade, as Violet had demonstrated by slicing apart a caramel apple... and the wooden fence post it had stood on... early on in the night.

Lewis Andrew la Flaga wore a tiger suit that might have started out as adorable, more of a girl's costume, but with the addition of enough faux blood and dramatic rips along the hide, he transfored from a tiger toy to a battle tiger. Dearka was fairly sure it had been a gag gift from Commander Waltfeld, it had that look about it, but with a little work and inguenity it was a costume any young boy would be proud to be seen in. As for his own kids, Roy had convinced him to buy a large kit of plastic parts that could be snapped together into a not altogether unrealistic simulation of a M-7 Dawndrake Mobile Suit,the mainstay of Orb's Mobile Suit Corps. Roy had wanted a Warmaster kit, but they didn't make those, and Dearka had drawn the line at asking Erica Simmons to custom build one. Alice had decided to be a ghost, and with help from her mother's experience in applying makeup for photography purposes, had actually turned out the most dreadfully and genuinely scary looking of all the kids, for all that the majority of her costume consisted of a old white sheet with a head hole in it.

Dearka was just about to start the SUV up, Miri climbing into the passanger seat in front, Mu and Murrue taking the shorter bench between the kids and the front two seats, when the car comm, a new built in device that hooked the car fully up to Lexi's communications network, began to beep and flash at him, high, piercing chrips and trills not at all like the usual ringtone. Dearka, Miri, Mu and Murrue all exchanged startled glances as the comm continued to go crazy, a sudden foreboding overtaking them. This was an urgent, emergency level transmission, of the sort they'd been briefed on, since technically the car was a government vehicle. Dearka reached out and hit the comm accept button, the four adults leaning forward and turning down the volume on the comm system in an effort to keep whatever breaking news it was at least out of initial view of the five too observant children in the back seat.

A blur of light formed in the air and resolved after a second into a finger high 3D image of a Stormhound in full battle regalia, rifle held comfortably in one hand, muzzle toward the ground, while the Stormhound had his snarling, bale hound masked combat helmet slung on his belt. That made the adults relax at least a little bit, a Stormhound would never remove their helmet if there was any imminent danger. However, the stromy expression on the soldier's face banished any remaining hopes that this was some sort of drill or mistake. "If you're driving, pull over right the fuck now." First Sergeant Matthew Kurtz, affectionately known as "Conrad" to his Stormhound peers, said without preamble. His image glared out at them, his gaze no less intent for all that it was made with one eye, the other having been carved out by a Brotherhood bayonet during a terror attack on Orb's Parliament seven and a half years before. Modern neurological connection technology allowed Kurtz to continue to serve in battle with just as much efficincy as before his maiming, and he was one of the more senior and trusted Stormhounds.

"We're already at the curb." Dearka replied tersely, trying to keep his voice down, knowing how keen the ears of the children were. "What's the big deal?"

"Get the kids out of the car. Out of earshot." Kurtz answered, his tone flat and a bit strained, and Dearka was discomfited to see how pissed off the Stormhound was. Kurtz, like the Lt, liked to cultivate an image of unflappability, a cool razor-calm indifference to the trials and travails of the unpredictable life he lived. For him to be visibly fighting for control of himself was a very bad sign on top of the already bad signs of being called by him. A quick exchange of glances among the four of them had Miriallia, her headache forgotten for the moment, and Murrue crawling out of the car for an impromptu "candy inspection" of the kid's recent takings. At the very least, Allister and Violet weren't fooled, and Dearka could almost feel the eyes of the Crown Prince and Cyprus's daughter burning into the back of his head as he used his torso to block their view of the front of the car.

Dearka exchanged a grim glance with Mu as the doors to the SUV clicked shut, and they both looked back at Kurtz's image. "We're secure, Conrad. As secure as can be anyway." Dearka reported. "What the fuck is going on?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out myself." Kurtz snapped back, uncharacteristically testy. "I got a call from the Villa Pacifica emergency response team five minutes ago. Somebody breached the house, took out the guard on duty, broke into the master bedroom and assaulted the Queen and the Ambassador. The Queen is being flight for lifed to ONH (Orb National Hospital), and she's in rough shape. She might not make it till morning. The Ambassador is missing. Just plain fucking gone. That's what the fuck is going on!"

"Good God!" Mu exclaimed, stunned and well he might be, since the security at the Pacifica was, though not heavy in the strictest conventional terms, still considered to be all but impenetrable.

"Not tonight he isn't." Kurtz spat in return, with a look of mixed rage, shame and disgust on his face. "Carome was on watch duty, and we're still trying to bring him around, but from the looks of things, he got taken totally off guard. The Lt is going to have some real tough questions for him when he wakes up."

"What about Lexi? What the hell was the AI doing while all this was going on?" Mu demanded, shaking his head and gritting his teeth.

"Still working on that. But from the looks of it, Athrun either put in a programming back door or had Kira do one, that allows him and Cagalli to shut the AI out of the house for short times. Not the auto-security parts, but the interactive displays and interfaces were all in shutdown mode. They must have had a re-arm code, but apparently they didn't get to use it, because we've rebooted the system and checked the logs and both Lexi and the logs swear up and down that there were no intruders detected in the house during the timeframe of the attack." Kurtz reported with a heavy sigh.

"Is Cagalli really in that bad of shape?" Dearka asked with a heavy swallow, and an uneasy look out the window into his rear view mirror, where he could easily see Allister laughing happily as he dug his candy reserves out of his costume's belly pouch for Miri's perusal. It didn't seem real that he could be talking about something so terrible as his mother's life just five feet away.

"The bedroom is a fucking disaster area. There's blood everywhere. I'm personally surprised she was still alive when we got here." Kurtz admitted with a shake of his head. "That is one tough woman. She got the stuffing beat out of her. It was bad, Dearka. Really bad. I ain't never seen worse, I swear to god. Looked like she'd been mauled by a rabid bear. I've never seen damage like this to a human. Not inflicted by another human." Kurtz shook his head again and then fixed Dearka with his cyclopean gaze once more. "Look, just stay right the fuck where you are, we have civilian police and a full Stormhound squad with Raven in charge headed to your position right now, ETA ten minutes or less. They don't know what went down, we're keeping this shit locked the fuck down as you might imagine, so they just know that they need to get you and the kids, and especially Allister, to ONH yesterday or sooner. Keep your eyes open, this might be a multi pronged assault, and Allister's life is almost certainly in danger. And you all along with him."

"We'll stay on the lookout." Mu promised, with a glance of his own back towards the children. The houses all around were still brightly lit, and all the streetlamps were functioning, so they had plenty of good vision for a long distance around them. On the flip side, they were brightly lit up and illuminated for anyone who might be taking sniper shots, but you couldn't eat your cake and keep it too. The atmosphere had completely changed after Kurtz had signed off, what had formerly been a light hearted jaunt for family and friends had suddenly turned into a danger laden trip through the heart of a shapeless battlefield, with unknown foes possibly lurking all around, closing in. Unable to sit still in the car, and not wanting to hang around in such an obvious target anyway, Mu and Dearka got out and did their best to sidle the children and their wives away from the SUV. They couldn't exactly tell Miri and Murrue what they had been told, not with Allister standing right there, but neither woman was stupid, and they could see the writing on the wall in the posture and tension of their husbands.

The minutes passed like eons, and even the boisterous bickering and clowning around of the kids started to take on a strained note, as if they were only maintaining the activity as a cover, as they watched the adults glance cautiously around and chew their lips. The kids weren't stupid or unobservant, and when mommy and daddy, or uncles and aunts started acting all funny and serious, that was sure sign that something big was afoot. And while that was exciting, the pinched looks on Dearka and Mu's faces were enough to cause the bad sort of butterfly fluttering in your stomach, they weren't just cautious, they were really worried, scared even. Something bad had happened. Might still be happening even.

With senses on high alert, neither Mu nor Dearka missed it when, about seven minutes after Kurtz's call, a car pulled up down the street, just around the block corner and parked. It was hard to make out what the car was from such a distance and at night, plus it seemed to be painted a dark color, but by the rumble of the engine and low slung shape, it was obviously a high performance sports car of some make. Dearka could almost have sworn the sound of the engine was somewhat familiar, a peculiar well tuned throaty purr he'd heard several times before, but before he could focus his concentration and work the memory to the tip of his mind, someone got out of the car and began walking towards them, unhurriedly. Dearka and Mu unobtrusively moved to the front of the group, though the person didn't seem to be moving in a threatening manner, indeed he was just sort of strolling along like he didn't have a care in the world, they were too on edge to care.

However it was Miri who first reacted to the person, stepping past Dearka with a cry of mixed happiness and relief and surprise. "Kira!" Miri called, pleased to see him, happy to see that he was feeling less depressed and withdrawn, and also, whatever it was that was bothering Dearka, well, having Kira nearby would do a lot towards easing the burden of any danger. A part of her wondered why Kira was smirking like that, and why he was wearing such dark sunglasses even during the night, but she stepped forward with a hand outstretched to envelop one of her oldest friends in a hug anyway. It was good to see him getting back into the swing of life again, becoming functional and at least a shadow of the gentle and lovable Kira she knew so well, rather than the angry and confrontational person he'd become in the aftermath of the funerals. Kira might have lost his blood family, but his extended family, Miri included, was still there for him, to the bitter end.

When it happened, no one was ready for it, not even Dearka, not even Mu, who had started to get a frown on his face because he could not shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong with the Kid, a feeling that kept growing worse and worse the closer he got. Like a chill going down his spine, like ice spreading across his guts, a desire to flinch away or even run. Mu was experienced enough by now to recognize a psychic reaction when he felt one, but this was different from the occasional emotional or intent flashes he would pick up from Kira and Yzak when the other Latents were nearby. This felt much more like the swelling sense of presence that he felt whenever Lacus or Katie were exercising their Active powers around him, not at him per se, but in his direct vicinity. Mu was just opening his mouth to give Miri a warning, spurred on by a subconscious premonition, but by the time he'd opened his mouth, it was too late, it had already happened.

Miri got within arms reach of Kira and was just about to encircle her friend in a hug when Kira's right arm swept up and over and across and he punched Miriallia right in the jaw and cheek, his fist moving like a dark blur, the report of flesh and bone impacting flesh and bone shockingly loud in the sudden stillness of the night! Bone crunched, teeth shattered and blood flew from torn open lips and gums as Miriallia was twisted forcefully around and away from the point of impact by the force of the blow, her eyes already rolling up as the punch lifted her off her feet and sent her spinning several feet backwards and to the side in what felt to Dearka like a slow motion ragdoll fall, her arms flopping limply as she slammed into the sidewalk on her side, her skull rebounding off the concrete with a sickening "CRACK" and spurt of dark blood as she rolled into a unmoving heap, facedown on the ground. Red liquid began to puddle around her head and dripped into the sidewalk cracks.

Kira barely even checked his stride as he stepped over Miriallia's motionless form, the night still silent as the children, Mu, Dearka and Murrue struggled to process what they'd just seen, a completely unprovoked attack by Kira on one of his oldest friends, a forceful punch that had caused real injury, perhaps even a serious or life threatening injury depending on the fall, within warning or provocation or even a hint of remorse! Mu was left caught between his bad premonition and the increduluous shock of the real event, his mouth hanging open, one hand raised to call Miri back, but Dearka was under no such mental confliction. Already roused by Kurtz's warning, he transitioned from civilian mode to soldier mode smoothly and quickly, a brilliant yellow seed dropping through a vast space inside his mind before detonating with the fury of a supernova, filling his limbs with fire and light.

Screaming an incoherent, snarling threat and admonishment at Kira, Dearka leapt at his friend with every intention of wrestling him to the ground and subduing him, perhaps by pounding his head into the concrete until it cracked open, either Kira's head or the sidewalk, whichever happened first! The completely unprovoked, brutal attack on Miri, right in front of the children, erased any of Dearka's usual reservations about fighting a friend, what Kira had done demanded quick and harsh retribution, there were lines one just did not cross! Dearka was going in knowing that Kira's baseline abilities outclassed his, he'd seen Kira do hand to hand combat before, but where Kira had devoted his life to his family these last seven years, Dearka had at least been keeping his hand in with his Stormhound buddies, and had even managed to pick up some new hand to hand skills in the process. Coupled with the power of the Seed, he was pretty sure he could at least break even with Kira for a while.

Kira didn't even shift his balance or change his pace of advance, his hands whipping up to snag Dearka around the neck and by the belt, ignoring without even a grunt the two gut punches Dearka managed to combo out before he was bodily lifted off the ground like he was about as heavy as a teddy bear. Dearka's hands flew to his throat, where Kira's hand was applying steady pressure that felt like a steel vise, as the brown haired Ultimate Coordinator took another step and then cranked his arms back and then forward in a throwing motion, as he hurled Dearka through the air, more than fifteen feet of distance, until the blond Coordinator's fall was broken by the hood and windshield of the SUV, which spiderwebbed with cracks and bounced on its suspension as he hit and lay gasping and twitching, stunned for the moment, trying to clear his head of the starbursts of light and pain.

"You're not Kira..." Mu snapped, warily interposing himself between the by now hysterical children and the oncoming man. "Kira would never do things like this. Kira would never hurt people like this, not even in his worst rages!"

"I'm not sure who you are, but you're smarter than Fiery Zala-Attha was." The not-Kira commented in return, with a leer that froze Mu's marrow.

Mu threw a punch, just like the boxing trainer at his old high school gym had taught him, a straight jab aimed right for not-Kira's face and sunglasses. Mu was not the fighter that some were, but he was big and strong and very experienced, and besides, he was canny too. He knew that a hand to hand fight with anyone in Kira's weight class would only end badly for him, but he wasn't really trying to hit this guy, he was just trying to make physical contact, skin to skin. Because Mu was a Latent Newtype, and one of the chief powers of Latents was amplifying the powers of Active Newtypes. But with skin to skin contact, a Latent could also quite literally hijack an Active's powers, fully amplified, for his own use, in a short term sense, as long as skin to skin contact was maintained. Whoever this guy was, Mu could feel that he was a powerful Active, and so hopefully all it would take would be a quick amped up mind blast to put the guy down with his own strength. All he needed to do was make contact with a fingertip...

And then he did, not-Kira turning his cheek contemptuously to take Mu's punch right in the jaw, and Mu winced as he felt knuckles pop, it felt like he'd just punched a solid sheet of Phase Shift Armor, and the skin of not-Kira's face felt odd, more resilient and dense than flesh should be, but the important thing was the skin to skin contact. Mu grabbed for the power he could feel, and grinned fiercely as he felt it start to pour into him, filling him with memories leeched from his foe. And then he actually took a moment to comprehend those memories, and Mu staggered backwards, breaking contact of his own will, his hands cradling his head as he howled with agony, the blazing pain and incoherent madness of the shared memories blasting his consciousness like he'd just dipped his brain into molten metal. Convulsing with the power of the torment locked in those few memories, Mu dropped to his knees and then fell on his side in the street, fingers clawing bloody tracks in his face as he whimpered and finally, blessedly, passed out.

"Well, that was different." Not-Kira commented, looking briefly nonplussed, straightening his sunglasses on his nose a bit. "You should really watch what you eat, Leech. Sometimes the food that's available might not agree with you. You want my power?" Not-Kira crouched down by Mu and placed his hand on Mu's wrist. "Have some more." Not-Kira cooed, and Mu suddenly jerked as if he'd been electrified, and even though he remained unconscious, he screamed hoarsely and started to thrash back and forth on the ground. "Full yet, Leech? No? Don't worry, there's plenty more to come where that came from! You haven't even gotten out of the Foursie memories yet!" Not-Kira's head suddenly snapped to the side, about an inch, and he rotated his head to glare up at Murrue, who'd spin kicked him in the side of the head, with annoyance.

Murrue drew back her leg, wincing from the bruise she could feel growing on her shin, where it felt like she'd cracked a bone against the guy's skull, but at least he'd let go of Mu, and stopped torturing him. Of course now he was focused on her, and given that he'd been going through everyone else like they were wet toiletpaper, Murre didn't rate her own chances of anything but getting soundly beaten as being too terribly high. All the same, she stood her ground between the attacker who looked so disconcertingly like Kira and the group of children, where were by now silent and huddled in a group, completely cowed by the sudden and inexplicable violence from their dear Uncle Kira. Murrue cocked her fist and swung for the point of not-Kira's chin, but he plucked her hand out of the air by her wrist like she was moving in slow motion. Murrue gritted her teeth and then let out a shriek of pain as not-Kira casually twisted her arm, further and further and further, until with a sickening snap and pop, her elbow and shoulder both dislocated!

Swaying on her feet, gasping for breath, Murrue saw only a blur as not-Kira's other fist cannoned into her upper stomach, breaking her two lower ribs and digging in there, doubling her entire body up around his fist, expelling all the breath in her body and lifting her toes off the ground as she folded up and flopped backwards like she'd just been hit by a motorcycle, aspirating a thin splatter of blood from her lips as her lungs bruised and her internal organs compressed violently. Murrue landed half on the sidewalk and half on the house lawn, foamy drool bubbling on her lips as she jerked and spasmed, trying to breath in around the hole that felt like it had been pounded right through the core of her body, her eyes half rolled up and unseeing. Her underwear and pants turned damp and then wet as her bladder let go on the way towards her consciousness slipping away.

Not-Kira took another step towards the group of children, a triumphant smirk on his face, before staggering a half step sideways as Dearka leapt off the hood of the SUV and slugged not-Kira across the nose and cheek with all his Seed assisted strength and weight behind the blow. The snap and crackle of bone bespoke of a broken hand earned for his trouble, but for the first time, not-Kira looked a little discomfited by the blow, as his sunglasses cracked and flew off his face to land in the grass. Dearka gaped, even amped up as he was, as he came eye to eye with not-Kira's demonically red lit, gold pupiled gaze, and the momentary lapse in concentration cost him. Actually, it didn't, even had he been completely on guard, not-Kira's counterattack would have been beyond his ability to deal with, his hand darting through Dearka's guard with the speed of a cracking bullwhip, steel trap fingers locking around Dearka's neck once more and choking off his ability to breathe and speak.

Dearka found himself hoisted into the air once more, hands clawing at his attacker's wrist, trying to pry off the vise grip, but he might as well have been trying to pull off a Gundam's gauntlet with his bare hands, and being swung through the air like a weight at the end of pendulum didn't help matters. Nor did being slammed against the front passanger side door of the SUV hard enough to dent the plastic and shatter the window and deploy the side airbag, his head and shoulders rammed through where the window had used to be, before he was yanked out of the car and then slammed once more against the rear passanger side door, crumpling that door and breaking out that window as well. Blood was trickling down across his face and matting in his hair, and his shirt was half torn to tatters but Dearka grimly hung onto consciousness with all his might, knowing he was the last line of defense for the kids against this madman, and knowing that the police and Stormhounds would be here any minute.

The world spun and the air whistled around Dearka as he felt himself be swung up again, but he was on the verge of passing out from the battering and lack of oxygen by that point in time, so he didn't realize that not-Kira had completely lifted him over his head and was now body slamming him downward onto the curb. Dearka felt a sensation like his entire back side being pressed against a red hot plate, and then sensation of all sorts ceased, as his body crumpled half in and half out of the gutter, his legs and arms twisted at unnatural angles from where they had been caught under his torso during the body slam. Smeared on the sidewalk like a cockroach that has been stomped, blood slowly spread out around Dearka as well, though Frost was pleased to see it wasn't the gushing spread of a mortal wound. The Blond Weeny was damned annoying, but it would be no fun at all for him to bow out so soon, not before Frost got the measure of how much reforging the bastard needed.

Frost turned to the huddled group of children with a demonic leer on his face, the look only enhanced by his bioluminescing eyes, despite the costumes, Frost was by far the scariest looking individual on the block. "Hello, my sweet little pumpkins." Frost crooned, taking a step closer to them. "Who wants to go get an ice cream cone with Uncle Kira?"

"You're not Uncle Kira!" One of the girls, the one with aqua-blue eyes and blond hair, one of the Blood Weeny's brood, half shrieked in his face. "Uncle Kira wouldn't hurt people like that! He's a nice guy, and you're not!"

"I guess I am somewhat transparent in that sense." Frost agreed with a chuckle and a shrug. He reached his hand out for the blond girl's head, if she wanted to speak up and stand out from the pack, well, who was he to not reward her for her efforts? "Though don't judge me too harshly just yet, little pumpkins... I stopped short of killing them. That wouldn't be any fun at all." Just as he was finishing his sentence, Frost caught a blur of motion, streetlight reflecting off brightly polished metal, and felt a scraping, jarring impact against his palm and fingers. Dark blood pattered thinly onto the sidewalk before drying into rubbery spots in an instant, the gouge in his hand and fingers healing over before the blood had even finished falling to the ground. Frost paused in midreach and actually blinked at the other girl in mild shock.

She was clad like a samurai, even down to the banded armor chestpiece and shoulder pauldrons, though she didn't have a battle-mask, just a headband of white silk that went well with her pale, silvery grey hair, done up in a topknot ponytail. Her armor was dark blue and her kimono robes were white, and she was glaring at him fiercely through mismatched eyes, one of them blue like her armor, the other grey like her hair. A very familiar intensity in the stare, and the coloration of her grey right eye and hair, clued Frost in as to who this might be. The fact that she'd had the presence of mind and gall to actually attack him with her sword was just the clincher... who'd have ever thought Grey, that lovely man, would have ever managed to breed? Frost felt the smirk stretching the corners of his mouth again, and he could not help but voice a snigger of real enjoyment.

"There appears to be a pineapple among my little pumpkins. I'll have to watch my hands, I don't want to prick my thumbs." Frost commented jovially, meeting Violet Finch's gaze and returning it with the full force of his own. She was a tough girl, that was for sure, not that Grey was likely to raise anything else, and though there was many a grown man who could not meet Frost's eye for more than a second, this little samurai girl was all but taunting him with her stare. It was costing her, he could easily see that, her limbs were trembling and her heart was pounding like a four alarm fire bell, but she ignored her fear and brought her kid sized katana around and pointed it at Frost's chest defiantly.

"Go away, or I'll cut you open." Violet hissed through clenched teeth. The tip of her sword wavered in small circles, despite how tightly her hands were clenched around the hilt. "I'm not going to warn you again..."

"You shouldn't have warned me in the first place, little pineapple." Frost scolded her, his hands blurring together from both sides, palms meeting against the sides of her blade in near tandem, first bending the blade slightly one way and then sharpely back the other in a bare instant, snapping the sword blade in half about a third of the way up the blade. Frost lowered his arms, dropping the broken sword blade to the ground with a scrap of metal of concrete, and then shoved, lightly, with his elbow, into Violet's chestplate, denting the thin metal and knocking the precocious girl right off her feet. "Didn't your father ever teach you that hesitation kills more people than anything else, in combat?"

Dazed and shocked by the casual destruction of her beloved sword, which she had helped her father hand make shortly after her fifth birthday, Violet lay on her back, trying to suck in air through her compressed chest, almost all the fight knocked out of her in one simple blow. But it was a harder blow than any she'd ever taken before, even her father didn't hit that hard during fencing or hand to hand combat training, and her father did not hold back very much, because most real opponents wouldn't. Train like you fight, fight like you train, was one of his favorite maxims. Tears began to start up in Violet's eyes, the one thing she feared more than anything was disappointing or embarassing her father, and yet she'd just been beaten so easily by an unarmed man, even an adult, she'd never even had a chance! And now he was looming over her with a twisted smile on her face that made her feel like she was going to either vomit or wet herself, and he was reaching down with the hand she'd cut, which had somehow become unmarked already and...

For the second time, Frost was forced to check his grab in mild surprise, as Allister stepped forward and thrust himself between Frost and Violet, spreading his arms widely and planting his feet firmly, the space monster ensured there was no way Frost could touch Violet, not without first getting past or through Allister himself. "You are NOT my Uncle Kira." Allister hissed, trying to fight the shaking of his knees. Mr. Dearka and Uncle Mu, Aunt Miri and Murrue, they were all lying so still and hurt on the ground, and even Violet, who was way, way tougher than him, had gone down like a bowling pin in front of a wrecking ball, and this guy who looked so much like Uncle Kira but wasn't him at all was just smiling and laughing and it was almost more than he could take! But all the same, he couldn't just let this bastard hurt his friends! He was Allister Zala-Attha, Crown Prince of Orb, and he had a responsibility to protect people, just like his mom and dad! And he told the Not-Kira that in no uncertain terms.

For his part, Frost was just about to die of unbridled amusement. He, the darkness in the human soul, the eyes in the abyss that stared back, the very end of all, was getting this level of resistance from kids who didn't even come up to his chest! It was perfect, simply perfect, everything he could have hoped for! Oh but he couldn't wait to break down their defiance and remold them in his own image, there was such potential here, in was almost enough to stagger even him! "So you're the little prince, the spawn of fire and failure." Frost said happily, even as the other brats also moved up to stand at Allister's shoulders, galvanized by his show of resistance. "I am so glad to make your acquaintaince, Spark."

"My name is Allister Zala-Attha, not Spark!" Allister replied with a sniff that might have almost been disdain in another circumstance. "I'm the Crown Prince of Orb, I don't care who you think you are, you will address me with the respect due my position!" Allister continued to bluster, knowing full well that it was all an act, a desperate attempt to keep from breaking down in terrified tears. Only the thought that his friends were there and counting on him, that his family needed him to be strong and come to the rescue, kept him where he was, all but chest to chest with the monsterous and terrifying man who looked like Uncle Kira.

"But Spark fits you so much better, Spark." Frost protested gamely. "Flames give off sparks when they start dying, when they meld with the essence of failure, and you are such a product! Sparks burn brightly, but most are ultimately doomed to fizzle and die before they reach their potential. Sparks are tiny and weak by themselves, but with the proper guidance and care, even a single spark can become an inferno that consumes all in its path. So I hereby christen you Spark, Prince Spark if you want to be formal."

"What do you want with us?" Lewis la Flaga demanded, finding his courage after it had been shattered by his father's screams of agony and the way his mom was lying so limply in the grass. "You're not going to get away with it anyway! Don't you know who we are?"

"Explicitly." Frost replied sibilantly, drawing a heaving gulp from Lewis. "Its because you are who you are that I'm doing this. Because, by twist of fate, you actually matter in the great scheme of things, or can be made to matter anyway. As for getting away with it..." Frost shrugged and returned his gaze to Allister, a toothy grin spreading across his face. "I've already gotten away with so much tonight. Why don't you ask your daddy, assuming you ever see him again, why he didn't protect your mommy tonight, Prince Spark?"

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY MOM, YOU BASTARD?" Allister shouted in a terrified fury, actually stepping forward a stride and hammering one costumed fist into Frost's belly. He might as well have been punching a brick wall for all the impression he made, but that didn't stop Allister from continuing to flail at his tormentor. "I'll kill you if you hurt my mom!"

"I look forward to you trying exactly that." Frost commented happily, ignoring Allister's fists thudding into his chest and sides. "Indeed, you might even say that's why I did it. As for what I did, well, let me put it this way, Spark, telling you what I DID NOT do to your mommy would be a much shorter list... I made her scream so prettily... and then I kept hurting her until she couldn't scream any more. And then I hurt her more. And again, and again, and again. I gave her such misery as would destroy any regular person. I shared my life and my love with her in a way that few living women can say they have experienced."

"You... you... YOU...!" Allister railed, tears streaming down his face in pure helpless horror and worry. His mom was hurt, his dad too, and this guy was just standing here and making fun of him, gloating about it? What sort of evil, twisted monster was this guy? What sort of person could do something like this? What sort of world could allow things like this to happen? Allister was still struggling to properly voice his emotions, when the sound of sirens in the near distance brought all their heads up, the children's with hope, Frost's with irritation.

"How truly annoying. Just as we were getting to the good part." Frost complained with a frown. He glared down at the children of his most pussiant and problematic foes, and turned his frown upside down. Perhaps everything wasn't going according to plan, but at least he'd gotten this close, and he had plenty more to think about and plan for in the future, when he could come back with a personally tailored experience for each little pumpkin, and the Spark and pineapple too. A dramatic wave of his hand and an exertion of his mind caught the terrified and stressed children with a psychic attack that blasted through what pitiful mental barriers they possessed, though the pineapple girl was a bit harder to lock down than the rest. Stealing their memories individually would be too long and involved of a process, so Frost just settled with scrambling their recollections and impressions of the last few hours. A temporary effect, but for the next few days they would be unable to remember coherently what happened here, at least not well enough to cause him any problems.

Kneeling down by each of the adults in turn, while the children stood blinking and shaking their heads, trying to clear away the sudden fog that had settled over their thoughts, Frost placed his hand on each of Dearka, Murrue, Miriallia and Mu's foreheads in turn, extracting from them all clear memories of his attack upon them, just as he'd done with Fiery Zala-Attha earlier in the night. They would wake up knowing that they had been attacked, and by someone who seemed familiar, if a little off, but none of them would be able to out and out say that they'd been attacked by someone who looked like Kira Yamato but acted like Zacharis Frost. It was disappointing that he couldn't leave their memories intact, to torment them with their helplessness, but that was something the old Frost, his immature self, would have done. All about instant gratification, he'd been. Death had taught him that some pleasures were better served cold.

Fun as tonight had been, this wasn't really about Fiery or Loser Zala-Attha, or their Spark, or the Blond Weeny and Chick, or anyone else. This was about the Boytoy, and punishing him for allowing Pink to die before Frost could kill her properly. This was about showing the Boytoy that now that Pink was gone, that he was alone, that the glue of his life was dissolved away. To cast him into a pit of despair and debasement, in the surety of knowledge that the Boytoy would, as the Boytoy always did, rise from the ashes of defeat, stronger than ever before, to provide Frost with yet another enjoyable challenge. Much as Frost was the Whetstone of Humanity, so too was the Boytoy the Whetstone of Frost. Whether he wanted to be or not.

Frost snagged his sunglasses from the grass, one lens cracked from where Murrue's kick had caught the side of his face, just as a police car came screeching to a halt in the roadway and police officers bailed out, spotlights sweeping toward him, megaphones in some hands, pistols in others. One of the people getting out of the car was no police officer at all, but instead wore the grey-white-black-blue urban camouflage of the Stormhounds, complete with snarling, electric blue eyed hound helmet-mask. She was short, only a few inches taller than Frost had originally been, and very petite, but for all that she moved with alacrity and confidence as she drew her sidearm and pointed it at his back. Frost settled his glasses onto his face once more, hiding his eyes, before shooting the police and Stormhound a disdainful glance. And then he turned and ran, much as his instincts demanded he turn and massacre them, it wasn't the time for such frivolous behavior.

The police hollered at him with their megaphones, demanding that he halt, stop, freeze or get on the ground with his hands up, it was really almost confusing, trying to figure out which officer wanted him to do what. They did a lot of pointing of their guns, but Frost could feel their reluctance to open fire in the middle of an upper class residential neighborhood, especially with lots of children and innocent bystanders potentially around to eat a missed shot. The Stormhound woman had no such reservations, either not caring about the possibility or just that much more confident in her shooting ability, and even as the police were doing their song and dance routine, she opened fire twice. Frost had extended tendrils of thought into her mind and could feel her point of aim even without looking, could easily sidestep or even block the bullets with his arms or hands, but that would have given her a clear look at his face, and he wanted to avoid that.

So the two 10mm bullets slammed into the meat of his right side and shoulder, like two hard punches, but at such distance, small caliber handgun rounds barely even made him stumble, and the wounds were already closing over, breaking up the bullets imbedded in his flesh in order to sustain the regeneration, even as he rounded the corner of a house and broke line of sight, and after that he was home free. It was too bad that he'd been forced to abandon the sporty car he'd hijacked from the Zala-Attha's garage, the thing had seemed built for his hands, and he'd never have been able to get to the children so fast without its power, but it was almost certain that the thing could be tracked, and he didn't want anyone following him to where he'd stashed the comatose Loser Zala-Attha. Frost wasn't done with him yet, not by a long way, and he didn't want that particular entertainment to be interrupted. He still had a lot planned, and a lot to improvise, but the chaos he'd left behind tonight was a pretty good start...

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Hospital Trauma Ward, slightly after midnight**

"Dear Hameya, what a mess this is..." Jiro Kurenai, Chief Representative of Orb, the de facto head of Orb's political structure, sat in the chair of the private waiting room and held his head in his hands. To think that only a few hours ago he'd been dozing in his bed, limbs all tangled up with those of one of his virile young lovers, a sports star from Orb's olympic team. Male, of course, the mere thought of going to bed with a female was enough to make Jiro gag a bit. Not that he couldn't admire feminine beauty, abstractly, but actually touching a naked woman, much less cavorting with her in bed, it was just plain unsettling. Perhaps because he'd been raised the sole son in a large family of females, but whatever it was, Jiro had a fear of women that was quite pervasive, at least when it came to relationships. At times this stood him in good stead, he was much less apt to be awed by the beauty of females he met in politics, such as Lacus Clyne or the Queen. On the flip side, his attraction to the Royal Consort, Ambassador Athrun Zala, was all but crippling at times.

Times like this, where his unrequited feelings for Athrun tormented him with horrid visions of what state that lovely body might be in right now, abducted by some sort of freakish psychotic murderer as he had been. And right out of his own home, his own bedroom, probably one of the most secure places in all of Orb, in its own way. Secure no longer however, as whoever the intruder had been had bypassed Orb's most advanced technological security like it was hardly even there, hadn't even left clues of his passing behind, other than the horrid mess he'd made of the Royal bedchamber. So far Jiro had been spared any picture or video of the actual crime scene, or photos of the condition of Queen Cagalli upon her arrival via flight for life helicopter, but he could already tell how horrific they were, judging from the shaken looks on the faces of the Stormhounds. If even such hard men and women, who were trained to deal with the messiest of battlefield situations, could be unsettled by what they had seen, then Jiro hoped he would never have to bear witness himself.

It was a vain hope, he knew. He was Chief Representative after all, he had a responsibility to be kept in the loop, whether he wanted to be or not. With a heavy sigh, Jiro took his head out of his hands and stood up. He was Chief Representative, and it was time to start dealing with his responsibilities. Composing his face as best he could, combing his fingers through his long black hair, blinking his stormcloud grey eyes, Jiro went to get a situation report. He didn't have to go far, just outside the waiting room was the nurses station, and clustered around the station, leaning against desks and sitting in commandeered office chairs, were the Stormhound leaders.

Colonel Robert Jones, also called Alkire Majesty, and Colonel Raine Belaruse, his wife, were the two highest ranked Stormhounds, but they were in charge of the unit in name only. Day to day unit operations, training and battlefield command all lay at the feet of a somewhat unassuming grey haired, grey eyed man standing in the middle of the group of elite soldiers. Lieutenant Cyprus Finch was a legend amongst the infantry soldiers of every nation's military, and was widely considered to be the most deadly Natural alive, and maybe just the most deadly man period. A quiet, observant sort, much like Jiro himself liked to be, it was rare for Cyprus to raise his voice or show his emotions, but tonight his face was a cold mask of fury and a fell light burned in his eyes, and even the other Stormhounds were leaning away from him a bit. His professional pride was deeply wounded by the catastrophic events of the night, as Cyprus was the one who'd designed much of the security layouts himself.

Looming by Cyprus's right side, despite the fact that he was seated, was the gigantic Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory, senior enlisted man in the unit and Cyprus's longstanding best friend. By Glory's side, almost dwarfed, was Sergeant Melissa Raven, Glory's wife and fellow heavy weapon's specialist. Master Sergeant Richard Ramierez, the latino recon specialist of the Stormhounds and Cyprus's other longtime comrade, and First Sergeant Matthew Kurtz, the one eyed Stormhound, rounded out the counsel. They were the core of the unit, the heroes, the legends, the ones everyone else strived to emulate and envied. They were the people you always wanted on your team when the going got rough, and the going was currently very damned rough. Cyprus turned as Jiro approached them, and Jiro had to fight not to quail under the flaying intensity of Cyrpus's gaze.

"What news?" Jiro managed to squeak out, fighting the urge to run back into the waiting room and lock the door behind him. "Have you... figured anything out yet?"

"Too much and not enough." Ramierez replied heavily, shaking his head. "This whole situation is totally FUBAR. Nothing adds up right. We've got one hell of a sickopath on the loose, but I'm damned if I can figure out what their intentions are."

"Infiltrating the Pacifica without being detected could only be done by the highest caliber of professional." Kurtz added. "The Corporal might have been able to do it, but he has vast insider knowledge of the system. Maybe the Lt too, for the same reason. No one else comes to mind. But anyone frosty cold enough to sneak through the autosensors would have just put a bullet between the eyes of everyone they encountered, in and out like a knife through butter. Doing..." Kurtz shook his head and shuddered. "... what was done to the Queen, that's the act of an animal, a sociopath, a psychopath, a maniac. Someone that disturbed shouldn't have it together enough to accomplish the infiltration in the first place. Or get out with the Ambassador afterwards. It just doesn't make any sense. No one has claimed responsibility, no ransom demands, nothing."

"The Queen's injuries are also contradictory." Cyprus cut in, his voice icy and focused. "At first glance, she appears to have been mauled by a wild animal, battered about at random, savaged by something or someone with incredible physical strength. But closer inspection shows that her body was worked over with clinical precision, every wound inflicted with the intent of causing pain or disfigurement rather than death. Whoever it was that assaulted her could have broken her neck or back or skull in an instant, but they carefully avoided inflicting mortal wounds in favor of beating her into a bloody, and still conscious mess. They wanted her to suffer. This was a personal attack, nothing else can account for the vehemence."

"I should think cutting her throat was a pretty mortal injury." Alkire pointed out, playing devil's advocate. It was easy for him, with regards to Cyprus anyway, since the grey haired man's scary competence in most matters tended to make Alkire feel a bit inadequate. Calling the two rivals would be a disservice to the term, but they did clash a bit every now and then. Questioning Cyprus's judgements in a productive manner was a rare pleasure for Alkire. "And I still don't see how you figure she was still concious. Blood loss alone should have put her out, much less those head injuries."

"At first glance, yes, but once more, slashing her throat was designed to maim and mangle, nothing more. Someone with the strength and savagry we're talking about could have decapitated her with that knifestroke with little effort. Yet they carefully cut open her neck and avoided the jugular vein, instead choosing to slash the layrnx and esophagus, leaving a messy, but far from mortal wound. Of course she was on the verge of bleeding out, but he could have accomplished that in ten seconds with only a slight variation on his angle of incision, instead he left her to be found, still alive." Cyprus answered. "The pattern of blood spray indicates shock-esque movement and resistance up to and after the point her throat was slit." He continued.

"Sure it was a male perp?" Raine asked.

"She was sexually assaulted and inseminated before her throat was cut." Cyprus answered cooly, a slight twitch of a single eyebrow denoting a private reaction to such a thing. "I suppose it is possible to fake such a thing, but very unlikely. The fact of her rape also makes things muddled, anyone professional enough to manage the entry would know better than to sexually assault a target in their own bed, much less leave semen behind inside her."

"Or a murder weapon." Glory added. "Though technically since she ain't dead yet, I guess its an "attempted murder weapon". But in any case, leaving behind a bloody knife with fingerprints all over it? Its like the bastard wants to be caught. Or they're just plain stupid, and that's impossible."

"Maybe that's why he took Athrun? He needs a hostage to help ensure his safety when we figure out who he is?" Ramierex postulated.

"What about the Stormhound on duty?" Jiro asked, speaking up. "Surely he must have some information..."

"Carome took a pretty good hit to the temple." Kurtz replied with a shrug. "Hard enough to crack his helmet, and these things don't break easy." Kurtz idly stroked his helmet, attached to his belt like all the Stormhounds currently had them. "Got a medium grade concussion, his recollection of the night is pretty vague I'm afraid. Sucks to say it, but I think he got caught with his pants down, never knew what hit him. And that's fucking scary, because the dent is on the front of the helmet. Frankly I'm not sure why he's alive, just knocking him out is fucking careless as hell. He managed to wake up and call for help after all, otherwise it could have been an hour before we knew anything was wrong!"

"And we have no idea where the Ambassador has been taken?" Jiro shuddered at the nods of confirmation. "What about the Queen? Will she make it?"

"It is too soon to say for sure, but probably." Cyprus said after some consideration. "Another few minutes in the bedroom and she would have been beyond help, but Carome timed his call for help well. Too well, in some ways. Orb's best surgeons are working on her right now, for what its worth. They are quite worried about the neck injury, they say there is a strong possibility that they may not be able to recover her voice, at least not fully. And she will be scarred, there is just too much damage for skin transplant surgery to make any difference. But the Queen has a will to live that I have seen in few others, so I won't count her out until I have no choice."

"And the Crown Prince?" Jiro asked, almost hesitantly.

"Sleeping in one of the waiting rooms. I had him sedated, for his own good." Cyprus replied, perhaps a trifle guiltily. "Violet and the other children are with him, we're keeping them here for the time being, at least until their parents are able to leave the hospital." His eyes burned a bit brighter and more fiercely at the mention of his daughter's name, the threat to his child had stirred a rare rage in him that picked incessantly at his ironclad control.

"Assaulting children in the middle of a residential neighborhood, right out in the open." Jiro was shaking his head incredulously. "What gall this bastard has! Did no one get a clear look at him?"

"The Elsman's are both in the ICU, as is Captain Ramius." Ramierez answered. "Commander la Flaga doesn't have much in the way of physical injuries, but he's incoherent all the same. He might have got hit with a fast acting gas or poison of some sort, we're still waiting on toxicology results. Mostly he just thrashes and screams like he's in horrible agony, like he's trapped in some sort of nightmare. Never seen anything like it."

"The children all report seeing someone familiar, but they can't say who." Raine reported. "They're half scared out of their minds, getting a straight story out of them is impossible right now."

"The guy who attacked the kids is tall, slim, with short brown hair. Didn't get a good look at his face, he had on sunglasses, but he did look kinda familiar for some reason." Raven provided with a scowl. "I saw him when I arrived on scene. I think the cop car scared him off, he was certainly making a run for it..." Raven trailed off thoughtfully. "I've never seen anyone sprint that fast. He must have covered fifty meters in two and a half seconds, easy. I could barely keep my aim on him, and that only because he was running directly away from me. I shot twice, and I could have sworn I hit him, but he didn't slow down in the slightest, and by the time I turned the corner, he was long gone. Didn't see any bloodstains, but damn it, I'm sure I hit him! In the shoulder and upper back, 10mm hollow points. Half his chest should have been on the yard, but I couldn't even find a speckle of blood!"

"So we don't even have any reliable witnesses?" Jiro had to fight to keep his voice normal. "What am I going to tell the public in the morning?" He demanded, mostly to himself.

"Absolutely nothing, Chief Representative." Cyprus told him in no uncertain terms. "We have to keep this as secret as we possibly can. There would be a mass panic if it got out that someone had attempted to assassinate the Queen and abducted the Ambassador right out of their own room, much less attempted to kidnap the Crown Prince as well, and is still unknown and on the loose. The USN would stick its nose in without hesitation, and once Durandel got his fingertips into us, we'd never get him out. The Queen and the Ambassador are taking a private vacation with the Crown Prince, they'll be back soon, that is what we should say, or something like it. If we make this a public spectacle, we might endanger the Ambassador's life, if he is still alive, by putting pressure on the abductor. The best thing you can do is keep the media away and trust us to track this bastard down. We'll rescue the Ambassador or avenge him, with a stress on the former."

Jiro was about to reply when a lab technician hurried up to them and handed a slim folder to Alkire. "These are the results on the DNA testing of the semen we found, and the fingerprint analysis from the knife handle." The technician explained, with a troubled look on his face. Alkire grimaced and handed the folder to Cyprus, knowing that the sooner Cyprus put his computer like mind to work on the hard facts, the sooner Alkire would get to kick down a door and shoot this slimy bastard in the face a hundred times. Cyprus flipped the folder open and began to browse the contents, conscious that the lab technician was loitering nearby, chewing his lips with distress or worry. He must have glanced through the report on the way up. It didn't take Cyprus more than a second or two to discover what was bothering the man.

The gathered Stormhounds sucked in audible breaths as Cyprus's jaw fell open and his eyes went wide and shocked and even disbelieving. No one, not even Glory, had ever seen Cyprus so taken aback and stunned. "This is impossible." Cyprus said flatly, snapping the folder shut with a flick of his fingers. "Verify this again."

"We have, sir." The technician said nervously. "We've confirmed it five times already. There can be no doubt on the fingerprints, and the semen is a ninety nine point nine eight percent match, which is about as close as our tests can get to one hundred percent. We have detected some slight anomalies in the sexual fluids, but nothing that would interfere with the gene pattern recognition tests. We're investigating the anomalies right now, but we won't have results for days at the earliest."

Cyprus's brow furrowed and a grim light danced in his eyes as he slowly flipped the folder back open and began reading again, his face twisted into a heavy scowl. He shook his head after a few moments. "I can't believe it. I simply cannot countenance this result. It flies in the face of everything I know to be true. This is impossible!"

"Uh, mind letting the rest of us in on this, sir?" Glory spoke up, somewhat hesitantly, uncomfortable with Cyprus's blatant shock. Cyprus did not reply with words, he instead just flipped the folder around, still open, and held it open so the other Stormhounds could see. The reports were written in small type, but the reports themselves were unnecessary for this purpose. The picture in the middle of the folder told the entire story. Everyone who saw the picture just stopped dead, mouths hanging open in disbelief, just like Cyprus had reacted.

It was actually Jiro who first found his tongue again. "Do you mean to say..." Jiro said slowly, his face drained of all color. "That they found Kira Yamato's fingerprints on the bloody knife, and Kira Yamato's semen inside the Queen? Are you saying that the Queen's own brother, Orb's guardian angel, is the madman behind this mayhem?" Jiro flailed his arms and found the wall, slowly sliding down to sit on the floor. "That can't be right..."

"Fingerprints can be faked, and with today's tech, I bet someone could whip up some imitation sperm." Alkire said after a few moments of thought, having closed his eyes and shaken his head to try and clear the shocking image away. "The Kid wouldn't hurt a plagued rat, much less his own family. Not intentionally anyway, though he does do a bang up job unintentionally at times..."

"Maybe he snapped." Raven pointed out in a small voice. "He did fight with the Queen a few weeks ago, and he's been out of contact since."

"He's stronger than that." Raine asserted. "This is Kira Yamato we're talking about here."

"The possibility must be entertained." Cyprus said, holding up his hand to forestall any further arguement. "Though I personally agree with you, Colonel, the case could be made that the psychological and emotional trauma of losing his wife and children, and the enforced inactivity since, could have had a detrimental effect upon Kira's psyche. A personality inversion of this order would seem unlikely to develop in such a short time, but I am no expert on such a thing. Protocol in this situation demands we act on the evidence we have, even though that evidence is suspect. At the very least, we need to get Mr. Yamato in here for an interview and to appraise him of the situation. If the Queen does not make it through the night, and the Ambassador is slain as well, then there will be legal matters for him to attend to. At the same time, if he has snapped, if he has lost his control and become a psychotic, then he must be handled with the utmost care. Regular police forces will not be equipped to handle an Ultimate Coordinator in that condition."

"I'll go." Alkire volunteered. "We haven't always seen eye to eye, but the Kid and I have an understanding. Tough news will come best from me, if from anyone here."

"I'm going as well." Raine said firmly.

"Me too." Ramierez added. In the end, Kurtz and Glory ended up going as well, first detouring back to the National Palace armory to kit themselves out with nonlethal weapons, tear gas, tasers, net guns and tranquilizer darts. Not that they particulary expected much of it to work on Kira, but it might slow him down a bit, if it came down to it. And five Stormhounds should be enough to detain even an Ultimate Coordinator if things went sour. Should, though none of them were looking forward to that eventuality if it should occur. There wasn't much conversation as they boarded a fast helicopter, Alkire at the controls, each sunk into their own thoughts. Kira could never do such things... could he?


	14. Frostbite

**Orb, Serenity Island, The Yamato-Clyne House, 2 am, November 1st**

Kira tossed and turned on the living room couch, draped with a thin blanket he didn't really need, his head resting restlessly on a pillow taken from the little used guest room. The bed in the master bedroom was softer, but lying in it without Lacus made him feel like he would vomit, the disorientation was so strong. His eyes were closed, but he was the furthest thing from asleep or even relaxed, despite how bone weary and exhausted he was. He needed sleep, but at the same time he dreaded it, because sleep was where dreams occured, and his dreams only brought him fresh torment, even when they weren't nightmares filled with fire and ash. Indeed, it was the happier dreams, the recollections of past moments of joy and pleasure involving Lacus, Akira and Aoi, that brought him the most suffering, because they were always so short, and he would have to wake up to the grim reality that they were gone, forever. It was like losing them all over again each time that happened, and Kira wasn't sure how many more times he could bear that trauma and remain sane.

He knew he was letting himself fall apart, but it was only an intellectual understanding, he lacked the willpower, for lack of a better word, to do much to fix the situation. Not right now anyway, not when the pain of the wound dealt to his entire soul was still so deep and ragged and fresh. He wasn't eating anywhere near enough, not for his body's extremely high requirements, but Kira dreaded spending much time in the kitchen, and even going in to microwave a frozen dinner or a pizza was like sticking a red hot poker in his breast and stirring it around. The kitchen had always been Lacus's place in the house, not because Kira couldn't cook, but because she enjoyed it, enjoyed playing the role of a housewife, enjoyed the normalcy of attending to the needs of a household, cooking meals, doing laundry. Being everyday, rather than exceptional. Everything in the kitchen reminded him of Lacus, even more so than the rest of the house, and entering it was like walking into her arms for a moment, only to realize she wasn't there anymore.

He remembered to shave every few days, and to wash himself about as often, but with no one around to pressure him into cleaning up, both the house and himself, the place was starting to take on the look of a college dorm room after an all night drinking session. There were even a few emptied alcohol containers and bottles lying on the floor of the dining room. Kira and Lacus weren't fans of alcohol, couldn't even get drunk if they wanted to, not after Second Puberty, but they kept some supplies for visitors and guests. He'd drunk them anyway, just for the hell of it, but predictably, a hazy drunken stupor had eluded him, in fact the calories functioned more like an energy drink and kept him awake and thinking more than he'd wanted.

Kira spent most of each day either lying on the couch or else in his den/office, the place where his computers were, his private space of the house where he did what programming and computer technology work he felt like he wanted to do for Morganroete on any given day. Because that was the one room of the house where Lacus, Akira and Aoi hadn't made much impression, it was also the one area of the house where he could sit for any length of time without his eyes passing over a photo frame or even just a random toy or household object, which would invariably trigger a memory about Lacus or his children, and from there the pain would well up anew, hot and spiky in his gut and the back of his throat. It was getting to the point where Kira was thinking about leaving the house behind, there were simply too many memories associated with the place, it was too painful to try and live there alone.

On the other hand, he desperately did not want to leave, because, painful or not, this place gave him a connection with Lacus, Akira and Aoi. This was the house he'd practically built from the ground up with his own two hands and Lacus's help. This was his home, and their home too. Running away from it would be like turning his back on them, and Kira could never do that. Also, he didn't exactly have anywhere else to stay, other than a hotel, and the last thing he wanted right now was to be around strangers even for a little while. After his altercation with Cagalli, accidental as it had been, Kira had turned off the comm system, hiding from any more angry confrontations with her, knowing that he wasn't in control of himself, not trusting himself to keep things in perspective, to be calm and rational. He didn't want to hurt anyone more than they were already hurt, and the best way he could figure to do that was to isolate himself until he'd regained control of his life and actions.

Unfortunately, he didn't seem to be making much measurable progress in that regard, if anything he felt more strung out and less well connected to reality now than he had during the funerals. He was only now, incredible as it might seem, coming to full realization what a huge part of himself was made up of Akira, Aoi and Lacus. If anything, it was all made worse by them being psychic, the subconscious emotional bonds between them all were the most reassuring thing in the world when they were alive, but now that they were dead, Kira wished he'd never been born an Ultimate Coordinator, now more than ever before! The bonds offered surety in a way that was simply beyond what ordinary physical and emotional intimacy could offer, banished all sense of doubt, allowed him to know exactly how Lacus felt about him and vice versa. It was a little bit like that moment of connection just after a mutual sexual climax, when you stared into your partners eyes and saw their love and acceptance of you, no matter what. But he had that level of surety all the time. Or had had, anyway.

Now that the bond was gone, that part of him that had been connected to Lacus throbbed and ached constantly, searching for input that was not to be found. It was like all his teeth had been removed, leaving the nerves raw and exposed, and then slivers of ice and red hot metal slipped into the gum sockets side by side, a constant pulsating echo of agony that had no physical cause, no way to be suppressed. He'd heard that some people who lost limbs sometimes complained of phantom cramping or itching in the limbs they had lost, this was something like that, but more pervasive. In some ways, he supposed the reaction was like drug withdrawal, he'd been extremely addicted to Lacus, had become dependent upon her presence to be physically and mentally balanced, and now he could no longer get a fix from her, so he was falling apart. One of the downsides to being a psychic. It was almost enough to get him to really sympathize with Cagalli's obsessive need to keep her mind and emotions private.

With a sigh, Kira opened his eyes and sat up from the couch. Lying there with his eyes closed was just not going to work, and meditation was out of the question. Self introspection at a time like this would only highlight all those parts of him that were gone or damaged by his losses, he might as well just stick a knife in his ribs and fiddle about with it, it would hurt less. He was wearing a long sleeved shirt, one of his nicer ones, dark and silky black, with buttons on the front, which hung open, baring his chest. He was wearing nice dark slacks as well, having run out of regular clothes to wear and not having the heart to run the laundry, another of Lacus's favorite chores that she refused to let him help with. Most women fought tooth and nail to avoid the stereotypical female chores of housekeeping these days, or at least demanded that males share the duties... Kira doubted Cagalli even knew how to run a washer or dryer at all, for instance. Lacus seemed to have taken real pleasure in adopting the traditional duties of a wife, perhaps because she was so untraditional in other areas of life.

Kira set his bare feet on the floor and stood up, a cool metallic weight thumping against his chest as he did so. Almost unconsciously, his hand went to his chest and clasped the heat warped silvery ring that he wore on a thin chain around his neck. The ring that Lacus had first given him aboard the Eternal, the one that had always symbolized their devotion to each other, the one she'd been wearing the night of the fire, the one he'd found on the charred and scorched arm that was all the physical remains of her that had been left. Kira bowed his head and stared down at the ring in his palm, and had to wipe his blurry vision with his arm to clear away the welling tears in the corners of his eyes. His stomach grumbled, ruining his moment of sorrow with an intrusion of reality, reminding him that he'd only had a few packages of ramen noodles to eat the day before, which was about a third of a single normal meal for him. He was starting to run out of easily prepared or microwavable food, something they never stocked much of in the first place, since Lacus loved to cook.

Contenting himself with a double strength protein shake from a pair of foil packets, Kira took his glass of chocolate slurry back to his den and flopped down heavily in his comfortable chair, sagging against the padded back and closing his eyes for a moment in partial relief and partial pure tiredness, before taking a large gulp of the shake and taking his computer systems out of sleep mode again. He probably had the most powerful home computer system in all of Orb, with direct lines to the main parallel quantum processers at both Morganroete and Lexi's mainframe bunker, since he did a lot of work in both areas, but didn't like traveling away from his home to do it. In the past he'd had laptops and desktop computers, but in the wake of the Eden Disaster, he'd upgraded to a mostly fully holographic interface display that allowed him to work at close to his full potential, the only thing better would be an actual Neural Interface linkage, but having wires going into his skull was not his idea of fun at home.

Normally his displays were filled with reams of data and half finished projects involving network security at Morganroete, or else high order programming blocks to expand Lexi's capabilties, but ever since the funerals, he'd dumped his usual workload and concentrated all his efforts into searching out the progenitors of the attack that had hurt him so badly, and ruined his happy life. Because even if Cagalli or everyone else wouldn't believe that the fire was anything but a random, regrettable accident, Kira himself knew better. Yggdrasilwood did not catch fire like oil soaked tinder, you could shoot it with Mobile Suit caliber beam weaponry and it would barely smoulder! Even a FRALA beam might not set a well hydrated, healthy trunk alight, not with one shot anyway. Break it apart, chop it to pieces, sure, but set it on fire? Not likely.

Frustratingly, his best efforts had earned him little to nothing of real use. Nothing in Orb's databases, not even the most top secret ones even he wasn't supposed to have access to, had anything on a weapon or technology that could cause such widespread inflammatory effects. And his success at breaking into the USN databases was hit and miss. He was waging a guerilla war with Namara, the USN AI program, that was every bit as intense as some Mobile Suit battles he'd been in. Indeed, that was actually how he'd approached the problem, writing programs to generate a virtual cockpit and to translate his hacking programs and opposed security programs into facimiles of weapons fire and enemy Mobile Suits. But no matter how many programs he shot down, or how fast, Namara could generate a thousand more in the time it took for him to blink, there was just no way a mortal mind could keep up with an AI system of that power. And he was reluctant to draw upon Lexi's aid, for fear of being backtracked and causing an international incident, since Lexi was an Orb national asset.

He'd managed to crack open some of the military systems, but everything above the first few layers of security was totally out of his reach. He'd had one or two minor successes with focused, deep probes, managing a few seconds peering into top secret research databases before being shunted out by Namara, but all such probes had netted him nothing about weapons of any sort, much less widespread incendiaries. He had located several video files of blatant human rights violations that had twisted his stomach, records of human experimentation that simply could not be legal, given that it started with live subjects and ended with dead ones, in multiple pieces. From what he could tell, most of the experiments concerned Edenites, which opened up a huge can of worms in his mind, in addition to the video that Monty had shown him and Lacus at Rex Lodge. It was plain that the USN had all but declared open war on the Edenites for some reason and had adopted a Blue Cosmos esque attitude towards dealing with them. Worse even, Blue Cosmos rarely bothered to dissect live Coordinators, since it was much easier just to shoot them or blow them up at hospitals and day cares.

But he'd set those files aside for the time being, as they didn't tell him who or what or why the USN... and he was sure it was the USN, or at least some part of it... had launched the attack on Rex Lodge that had killed Lacus, Akira, Aoi and Monty's entire family. He felt like he was blundering around in a lightless cavern while hidden demons chortled and pelted him with refuse, his best efforts turning up plenty that would normally have him on the warpath, but nothing at all on what he actually cared about knowing right now! It was starting to look like he'd reached the limit of what he could do while in Orb, he might have to travel up to the Second Earth colonies, the PLANTS or the Moon in order to investigate more directly. Or else try and follow up with the Edenites, despite the fact that Cagalli had forbidden him to try that route for political reasons. He loved her with all his heart, but he would not be held back by her, not now. Not on this matter.

He'd just finished booting up the systems and bringing his programs online for another probably hopeless battle against the endless legions of Namara's security forces, when Kira's ears perked up and he cocked his head to one side, listening carefully. After a few seconds he stood up, putting his programs on pause for the time being, a frown crossing his face even as his heart fluttered with both anxiety and hope. He could hear, distantly, the sound of a helicopter approaching the island. Kira could think of no reason why a helicopter would fly all the way out to Serenity Island at this time of night except if someone was coming to see him. Of course a comm call would be much more efficient, but Kira had blocked all incoming calls for the time being, not wanting to be interrupted in his investigation efforts by verbal fights with family or friends. Perhaps Cagalli had at last caved, and decided to send him some Stormhounds on the sly so Kira could make a thorough search of the Rex Lodge site, late even as it was?

With that chance, slim as it might be, buoying him up, Kira drained the rest of his shake and headed out to the front porch, new energy and eagerness spreading through his limbs as he waited for the helicopter to show up. By the time it got within visual range, about five minutes later, Kira's foot was tapping impatiently on the wooden deck, and his hands were clenched on the wooden rail so hard his knuckles were turning white. Finally the chopper settled down on the beach about a hundred feet away, blowing up a cloud of fine grit as it parked just above the tide line. The Glasshouse obscured the starry sky somewhat, but enough light filtered through for Kira's eyes to easily make out the people disembarking from the helicopter, and he was pleased to note that they were indeed Stormhounds, judging from the helmets slung at their hips and the color of their armor.

They were fully kitted out with armor and weapons, which made Kira smile just a bit, since it was looking more and more like they'd come prepared for a potentially dangerous expedition or mission. Alkire, Raine, Ramierez, Glory and Kurtz... one hell of a team to have on his side, that was for sure! Ramierez, Glory and Kurtz hung back a bit, about halfway to the house, and began spreading out towards the jungle area in a security perimeter. Kira could have told them it was pointless, there was nothing more dangerous than a mouse on the entire island, but they had their habits and rituals, and who was he to deny them their security blankets? Alkire and Raine trudged onwards, and the closer they got, the more clearly he could make out their faces, the more Kira's exuberant hopes started to wither. They both looked stressed out, in a way he wasn't used to seeing them. Even in the heart of battle, Alkire rarely had anything but a smile on his face, and Raine too seemed pretty much fearless and dauntless. But something had gotten to them both today, and they moved with such wariness it was like they expected to be ambushed at any moment!

"Bit late for a social visit, don't you think?" Kira called as soon as they got within easy talking distance for them, which was about half that of his own. He tried to keep his tone pleasant and neutral, but he wasn't sure how effective his efforts were. He'd been bawling his eyes out for days, his throat sometimes felt like it was lined with sandpaper, and his somewhat decrepit appearance, with a two day beard and unkempt hair, probably wasn't the best impression to make on others. His eyes had to be bloodshot as hell, and his entire body was probably a bit sunken and sallow, because of lacking nutrients. Kira realized he probably looked a bit like a zombie, and he flushed with embarassment at appearing before friends in such a state. Alkire and Raine took a few steps closer before halting, still several feet short of the stairs up to the deck where Kira was, and there was a brief, uncomfortable silence before Alkire finally raised his eyes and looked Kira in the face with a strained smirk on his features.

"Yeah, sorry about this, Kid, but you weren't answering the phone." Alkire managed to say.

"I've been busy. I didn't want any interruptions." Kira explained. "I was afraid I might not be able to control myself very well." Kira watched Alkire and Raine exchange swift glances, and his own smile dropped off his face. Something was wrong, they weren't acting right at all. After a few moments the answer came to him, and Kira forced the smile back on his face. He realized that they were probably wary of him, perhaps even afraid, slightly. That incident with Cagalli did not reflect well upon him at all, especially since he'd just walked away without an apology. If they came to bring bad news, and it was starting to look that way, then they might be worried that he would lash out at them too.

"Maybe we should come in and sit down?" Alkire suggested after another moment or two.

"Maybe we should stand out here and you'll tell me why you're here?" Kira countered, more harshly than he'd intended. Sitting down in the living room, even with friends, was just about the last thing he wanted to do right now. The house might as well be haunted, and the less time he spent in the common areas, the better. Also, he really didn't want them to see how he'd trashed the place, bad enough how he looked, he didn't want them thinking he'd totally lost the ability to take care of himself, even if that was marginally true. Especially if it was marginally true. Kira's shoulders sagged as he watched Alkire and Raine exchanged worried glances once more. "I'm sorry. I haven't been myself lately." Kira apologized. "If you're worried about what happened between Cagalli and I, don't be. It was a mistake. I got angry and lost control, that's all. I feel much better now, it won't happen again."

If anything, that last bit of explanation only freaked the two Stormhounds out more, if that was possible, and Raine actually put her hand on the grip of her left hand pistol, though the weapon stayed in her thigh holster. Alkire put a warning hand on his wife's forearm, and then took a half step forward to put himself slightly between her and Kira, a very brittle smile on his face, his eyes intent as they bored into Kira's face, searching for something. Kira looked back with a frown of puzzlement and took his hands off the rail and started towards the steps that led down to the beach. He was just about to put his foot on the top stair when Alkire spoke up. "Maybe you should stay up there, Kid, and keep your hands where we can see them?" He phrased it as a question, but there was the firmness of an order behind it. Kira paused, his brow wrinkled in surprise. That last remark had sounded almost hostile.

"What's wrong, Alkire?" Kira asked, doing as the man asked, though he had to concentrate not to let his hands curl into fists. The last thing he needed was another confrontation with a friend, especially when he didn't even know what was going on. "Why are you here? I take it Cagalli hasn't decided to give me a special operations team to help find out who murdered Lacus and my children?" Kira sighed unhappily. "I should have known better than to expect her to change her mind. I tried my best to convince her, but she's too pigheaded! I think I'm going to have to take matters into my own hands. I just hope she won't be sorry later..."

"Kira..." This time it was Raine that spoke. "We've come here tonight because something has happened to Cagalli and Athrun. Someone broke into the Pacifica..."

"That's impossible." Kira interrupted. "I designed the auto security myself, a stray cat couldn't get into that house without triggering an alarm!" He was suddenly conscious of the glares of both Stormhounds, and he smiled weakly. "Sorry, go on."

"Someone broke into the Pacifica, took out the guard on duty, and attacked Cagalli and Athrun." Raine finished quietly. "Athrun is still missing, we think he's been abducted. Cagalli was severely beaten and she may not live out the night." She watched Kira's eyes widen with horrified disbelief, he swayed on his feet and had to grab for the porch railing post to keep his balance. "She was beaten, barehanded, almost to a pulp, then raped in her own bed, then her throat was cut. She was on the verge of bleeding to death when the security teams arrived."

"Oh my God..." Kira said, his vision blurred, his heart hammering in his chest with a mixture of worry, horror and outrage.

"Shortly afterwards, someone, perhaps the same person, attempted to kidnap the Crown Prince while he was out trick or treating with the Elsmans, the la Flaga's and Violet Finch. Dearka, Miriallia, Murrue and Mu are all hospitalized in serious and critical conditions. Only the sudden arrival of police and Stormhound units on the scene prevented the children from being harmed or abducted. We haven't been able to get much from the eye witnesses, but they all describe being attacked by someone who looked familiar." Raine continued, her fingers squeezing the grip of her pistol. "The injuries suffered by the adults were also inflicted bare handed, and by someone with exceptional physical strength. Even Glory might have had trouble inflicting some of the injuries we've seen tonight, at least barehanded."

"Who is it? WHO DID THIS! Do you know?" Kira demanded, his eyes blazing wrathfully. How dare someone attack his family! Especially someone familiar! Who could betray the trust of his family like that? "Who are the suspects?"

"The knife used to slash Cagalli's throat had distinct fingerprints on the handle, and a detailed genetic analysis was done on the semen left behind in Cagalli." Alkire answered, the words coming slowly and painfully to his lips. He walked to the edge of the bottom step, very carefully, and took out a hospital report folder from under his non-weapon arm. "There's no easy way to say this, Kira, so here..." Alkire proferred the folder up to Kira.

Kira took the folder, a trifle uncertainly, a dreadful premonition building in the back of his mind, that part of him that reacted to danger in combat before he would normally be able to sense it. He flipped it open and stared at the documents within for only a brief second, his eyes flashing to the photgraph in the middle of the first page, before the folder slipped from suddenly nerveless hands and fluttered to the deck. Kira stared numbly down at the folder, before his eyes tracked up to meet Alkire's. Alkire took a full step back, his mechanical foot indenting deeply into the sand as he planted himself for balance, the furious and hurt look in Kira's eyes combining to make him look like a dragon about to breath fire on an unfortunate knight. "If this is meant to be a joke, I am not amused." Kira said, his voice flat and cold. "You honestly think I would do something like that, to anyone, much less Cagalli?"

"It doesn't matter what I think." Alkire replied stiffly. "The evidence is there, Kira. Quintuple checked. We're kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place on this."

"You're going to arrest me as a suspect in the rape and attempted murder of my own younger twin sister?" Kira's voice was dangerously calm.

"Arrest is too strong a word." Alkire protested, glancing away, somewhat ashamedly. "We just need you to come with us and present your side of the story. You know, tell us what you were up to from around 7 pm yesterday until now, that sort of thing."

"I was here. Mourning the murder of my wife and children. Alone." Kira retorted, almost gnashing his teeth in barely controlled fury. Insulted was not the word for how he was feeling, this was beyond insulting, this was absolutely abhorrent! How could ANYONE, anyone who knew him at all, think he would do something like this? Perhaps Randolf might have been able to think up something this stupid and twisted, but Randolf was a kook! He was obviously being set up by someone, and he had a good idea who. Someone must have noticed his attempts to break into the USN systems, and Durandel or someone else had obviously taken steps to hamper and remove him. Hurting Cagalli like this would be just the sort of thing Durandel would privately enjoy!

"And you got someone who can verify that?" Raine asked, a definite edge in her voice. "God knows, I want to take you at your word, Kira, but we can't. That's not how the law works."

"Guilty until proven innocent isn't how the law works either. Not in Orb anyway." Kira snapped back. "I could NEVER do this, and you know it. I don't even like using kitchen knives to prepare food, much less cut someone, especially Cagalli's, throat! And if you think I would ever even touch Cagalli in a sexual manner, much less rape her, then you're crazier than Noah was."

"I'll grant you that, but most innocent people don't have their fingerprints turn up on the attempted murder weapon, or their sperm turn up in the vagina of the raped victim." Raine returned, ice in her tone. "And your comments of earlier, taken out of context... well, they almost sound like a confession, Kira."

"This is completely insane!" Kira spat, veins bulging on his wrists as his hands curled into fists. "I can't believe you're actually accusing me of assaulting, raping and attempting to kill my own younger twin sister, whom I've risked my life for on dozens of occasions!"

"We're not accusing you of anything, Kid!" Alkire sought to clarify. "We're your friends, and none of us believe you did anything of the sort, not for a moment! Not intentionally."

"Oh, so I unintentionally turned into a monster then?" Kira shook his head in mock despair. "Just decided to up and take a boat out to the Pacifica, walked into the house, knocked out a trained soldier, attacked my little sister and my oldest friend, beat her almost to death, raped her and released inside, cut her throat, left the knife behind and then took off with Athrun before dumping him somewhere and attacking my nephew and other close friends for no reason, then came back to my house to wait for you all to come and find me? That's the scenario here? That's what I did last night?" Kira couldn't not hold back bitter laughter. "I guess that explains why I'm so damned tired..."

"Its comments like that, sarcastic or not, that will get your ass thrown behind bars for the rest of your life." Raine said with more than a hint of anger. "You said this is all insane? Well, most of us agree. But what garuantee do we have of your sanity, Kira? You've been hiding out here, all alone, brooding and mourning, for almost a month. The last time anyone saw you in person, you punched Cagalli in the jaw and left her stunned on the floor after a major arguement. You won't contact us, we can't contact you, and even Lexi can't verify your whereabouts because you've blocked her off too! And now Cagalli turns up on the verge of death, your cum in her vagina, your fingerprints on the bloody knife, and the Pacifica autosensors recording no INTRUDERS in the house! But the sensors aren't programmed to log AUTHORIZED GUESTS, and as the person who designed them, you'd have a back door for shutting them down anyway, right? Pardon my bluntness, but I'm damned fucking concerned here, Kira! If you've gone off the deep end..."

"Why am I even talking to you then?" Kira retorted with equal anger. "If I'd done all those things, why are you even still alive and conscious right now?"

"You might not realize it, Kid." Alkire pointed out. "Multi-personality disorder, schizophrenia, sleep walking, whatever, if you have gone nuts, you might not even realize it until its too late and you suddenly wake up in someone else's bedroom with blood all over your hands! Once we can get some experts to take a good long look at you, and confirm your mental stability, we can put all this bullshit behind us, okay?"

"Confirm my mental stability?" Kira uttered another bitter laugh. "Right now? Why don't I just drive to jail myself? Mentally stable? In the wake of what happened to Lacus, Akira and Aoi? Given the depth of our bonds? I'm almost surprised I'm NOT a drooling lunatic! How could you or anyone else possibly understand how I feel right now? How could you understand how it feels to lose your family like I did? Unstable? I'm a bomb waiting to go off and I know it. But I haven't gone off yet, and I would NEVER hurt my family!"

"Now you're the one talking bullshit, Kira." Alkire replied frostily. "Wake the fuck up, Kid, and realize who you're preaching to here. You think you're really the only one who's ever suffered the loss of their family in this conversation? Hell, do you think ANYONE on this goddamn beach has not suffered the loss of loved ones, some in situations just as violent as yours? My whole family was gunned down by business rivals during the energy crisis of the First Valentine War. My parents, my brothers and sisters, my uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews and grandparents, all murdered in cold blood, shot to pieces with machine guns at close range, in my own fucking HOUSE! Some of them were bedridden by age, others were still in baby cradles, and you dare to say I can't understand how you feel, you conceited bastard?"

"My family was lost to me too." Raine spoke up. "I was just a teenager when the rebels came to our farm in search of a hideout from government paramilitary forces. They made my parents dig their own graves while they were amusing themselves taking turns with me and my sister. Then they shot them in the head and were going to do the same to us, if the police hadn't arrived. The ensuing gunfight saw my older sister shot to pieces in the crossfire. I was close enough to get her brains all over my face. I was thirteen, Kira." Raine's voice trembled with raw pain. "I've lost a child as well. I know how it feels."

"Its not the same." Kira shook his head. "You couldn't possibly have loved an unborn baby as much as..." Even as the words came spilling out of his mouth, Kira realized he'd crossed a line. Just like with Sai, so long ago, when he got mad he didn't stop to think about what he was saying, and he would talk himself into trouble. He opened his mouth to apologize, but it was too late. Raine's pistols were in her hands, pointed right at his face, though her arms were shaking so bad with pent up emotion that she probably would have had trouble hitting his body at all, much less his head, despite only being about ten feet away. Her eyes were wet with tears, and blazing with outrage.

"How... DARE... you..." Alkire's voice was choked with fury as well, his hand clenched around the grip of his own pistol, half drawn from the holster. "How DARE you say that to us! How DARE you insinuate that we loved our baby ANY LESS than you loved your family, for all that our child died in the womb!" Alkire gritted his teeth so hard blood ran from the corner of his mouth, the searing pain of the barely scabbed over memories being ripped to the surface again all but driving him to his knees, for all that it had happened more than six years ago. It wasn't the sort of thing a parent ever really got over. Raine had really been pressing him for a baby after the events of the Eden Disaster, a true biological child, in addition to their adopted and grown daughter Katie, who was expecting children of her own by then.

At first everything had gone great, she'd tested positive after only a week or two of serious effort, and for the first few months, she'd been positively radiant with joy as the baby developed inside her. They'd forgone much in the way of scans and tests, wanting to leave the sex of the baby as a surprise, though Raine was scrupulous in taking her C pills, the drugs that would ensure the child was born a Coordinator, every day. In retrospect, wanting to be surprised was the biggest mistake of their married lives. Because during the invasive cavity search by the USN soldiers after the storming of the Great Endeavor and capture of Noah Borander, one of the probes had accidentally penetrated too far inside Raine's body, and scratched the inner lining of her womb. The cut in and of itself was nothing severe, but the scar tissue that formed half blocked an area of the womb responsible for blood flow into a developing baby.

For the first few months, with the blood requirements of the growing baby being fairly low, there was no problem. But after the fourth month, the baby started needing more oxygenated blood than Raine could provide, because of the scarred area. Over the course of the next month, the baby's health slowly deteriorated, its demands for blood growing even as they continued to be unfufilled. Raine had experienced some pain, but thought nothing of it, her body was filled with aches and pains from old battle injuries anyway. The baby died, its organs unable to survive without sufficient bloodflow, but they only realized that a week or so later, when Raine started suffering intense stomach cramps and needed to be hospitalized. Of course the first thing they did was check on the baby. Which by that time had become to necrotize inside the womb, and the infection was beginning to spread to Raine's womb and the rest of her body.

Emergency surgery removed the baby and the affected portions of Raine's body, saving her life but leaving her unable to produce children, her reproductive system ravaged by infection. She'd taken it hard, harder even than one might imagine, and only Alkire, Katie and Cyprus knew that Raine had attempted to kill herself on two different ocassions within the first two weeks, unable to deal with the tragedy. Eventually, with a lot of help from Katie and the newly born grandkids, Raine had managed to get hold of herself, but the wound of her lost baby would always run deeply through her soul. And to have her feelings for that lost child mocked or belittled, by anyone, much less a close friend who KNEW about the tragedy, was almost more than she could bear. Especially from someone who had had two healthy and beautiful children of his own for seven whole years, while she'd never even gotten to name her baby, much less hold it in her arms!

With a titanic effort of will, Alkire pulled his hand off his pistol. What Kira had said, intentionally or not, was simply unforgivable. But it didn't change what they were here to do, even if it did change the nature of his relationship to the Kid. Looking away from Kira's stunned expression, Alkire did one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do in his life, and stepped between Raine and Kira, her pistols wavering only inches from his breastbone. He stared deep into his wife's wild, furious eyes and winced. He idly wondered just how close she'd come to actually double tapping Kira between the eyes for that comment. And then decided he'd rather not know, because he knew how close HE had come to doing the same thing, or at least kneecapping the bastard, and it made him very uncomfortable. Carefully, Alkire reached up and tugged Raine's arms down to her sides. She didn't go willingly or easily, but eventually, go she did.

"I'm..." Kira stammered. "I didn't mean to..."

"Don't say another word to me..." Raine grated out. "Or I'll shoot your tongue out of your mouth through the base of your skull. The Kira I know, the Kira that wouldn't do what has been done to Cagalli, would NEVER have said what you did just now. That Kira, that empathetic Kira, would know better. You are NOT that Kira. Not anymore. What would Lacus say if she could have heard what you just said? Can you imagine how she would be crying, you arrogant, cold hearted BASTARD?"

"Don't talk to me about what Lacus would or would not feel." Kira answered grimly, feeling his anger replace his contrition. Maybe he had overstepped his bounds there, but now Raine was doing the same thing to him. "Lacus is gone forever..."

"So that means you can say and do whatever you like and we just have to accept that its because of your grief?" Alkire replied with a snort. "We've been more than patient with you, Mr. Yamato, but there are lines you just don't cross, and you just did. This is going to sound really bad, but I'm past the point of giving a fuck. What kind of example to your kids do you think you are, huh? If your kids were still alive, would you want them to have heard you say that? Would you want them to think its all right to mock the pain of others, just because you yourself are hurt? You're supposed to set an example for others, Mr. Yamato. You're supposed to be better than this..."

"LIKE I EVER WANTED TO BE WHO I AM?" Kira shouted in infuriated reply. "LIKE I ASKED TO BE AN ULTIMATE COORDINATOR? LIKE I WAS EVER GIVEN THE SLIGHTEST CHOICE ON WHETHER I WANTED TO BE HELD UP AS AN EXAMPLE FOR OTHERS? I NEVER WANTED THIS, NOT LIKE IT IS! I'M NOT PERFECT, I LIVE MY LIFE AS IT SEEMS RIGHT TO DO SO! AKIRA AND AOI WOULD UNDERSTAND, DESPITE WHAT YOU THINK!"

"All right, I think we're done here." Alkire replied wearily, taking his mask from his belt and slipping it on over his head. "I didn't want it to be like this, Mr. Yamato, but you leave me little choice." Alkire sighed and began fishing in his belt pouches. "Turn around, kneel on the ground and put your hands on your head, please. We're taking you into custody under suspicion of assault, sexual assault, kidnapping and attempted murder of a high government official. You have a right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to legal counsel, or if you cannot afford it, legal counsel will be appointed for you."

"You're actually going to arrest me?" Kira said quietly.

"Yep." Alkire answered with no humor at all, having located his steel handcuffs. "So turn around, kneel down, and put your hands on your head. I'm going to cuff your wrists, and then you're going to walk, slowly, back with Colonel Belaruse and I to the helicopter for a trip to a holding facility on the mainland. If you resist, we will have no choice but to subdue you by any means necessary. You know who we are, Mr. Yamato. Don't push us anymore than you already have."

"This is stupid." Kira turned away from them. "I have other things I have to do with my time, than participate in a criminal case for which I have OBVIOUSLY been framed and set up. The trail leading to the people who murdered Lacus, Akira and Aoi is getting colder with every hour that passes, I just don't have the time to waste on other bullshit right now. Turn around and leave, Alkire. Do NOT fuck with me right now. I'm not in the mood to play nice."

"Your sister is in the hospital on the verge of death, and your best friend is missing and might be dead as well. And you are looking more and more, with every passing second, like the guy who did it." Alkire warned. "This is your last warning. Kneel down and put your hands on your head, Mr. Yamato, or we will take you down, as hard as ncessary. Resisting arrest is its own crime." Even as he talked, Alkire blink activated a series of commands that alerted Kurtz, Ramierez and Glory to an unraveling situation, and their position markers started to converge on the house from the perimeter they'd set.

"You'd shoot me, unarmed as I am, in the back?" Kira glanced over his shoulder.

"Given that the person who may have killed Cagalli did it with their bare hands, that unarmed comment doesn't mean much to me right now." Alkire returned. His hand tightened on his pistol grip as he sidled out of Raine's line of fire, her arms starting to come back up. "Make the right choice, Mr. Yamato. I don't want your blood on my hands, despite it all."

"I don't have anything more to say. Goodbye, Alkire, Raine..." Kira said, turning his head back and reaching for the door handle of the house's main door. His Latent senses tingled and he threw himself to the side just milliseconds before Raine's pistols barked and sent two heavy slugs whistling through the air where his calves had just been. Wood splintered and fragmented as the bullets dug into the house siding, and before the splinters even hit the deck, Kira was moving again, responding to the threat with a sense of joy he found troubling, his mind craving the release of action, any action, even if it meant fighting friends. He was through lying back and letting things happen, from now on he was going to be proactive when threatened or harmed! He'd had enough of turning the other cheek! A silver veined, purple seed dropped through the roiling darkness of his mind, before detonating with a electrifying light that seemed to paralyze the entire universe.

Raine's second pair of shots seemed to leave her pistol's in slow motion, almost slow enough that Kira could watch the bullets move, but he was already well away from her point of aim, flying down the stairs, barely touching them, as he bulldozed his shoulder into Alkire's chest. Kira heard a rib buckle underneath the Stormhound's armor, and the breath whoosed out of Alkire's lungs as he folded up around Kira's shoulder and then sprawled backwards heavily onto the sand, the handcuffs flying from his hand, pistol tumbling from the holster on the other side. Whirling, Kira took a step and brought one fist around and connected with Raine's right wrist, fracturing the bones and knocking that pistol flying from her grip. His knee came up in almost the same motion and slammed into her midriff, doubling her up with an explosion of breath, in time to meet another fist against the side of her head, dazing her and knocking her down onto her side in the sand.

Kira sidestepped a lashing foot from Alkire and caught that leg, he was in the process of twisting the leg to dislocate the knee and disable the Stormhound when his extra senses warned him to dodge once more, and Kira threw himself to the ground as a volley of hard rubber bullets scythed through where he'd been standing, fired from a few dozen meters away by Kurtz. Senses twinging again, Kira rolled and leapt to his feet as a large hypodermic dart buried itself in the sand where he'd been laying, courtesy of Ramierez, approaching from another direction. Almost casually Kira sidestepped a snapshot from Raine, who had not been as dazed as he'd thought, and this time he put her out for good with a kick to her jaw than sent her flopping and sliding backward almost two meters. Kira winced as he saw blood and tooth fragments fly, but he was feeling less than guilty or remorseful at the moment. She had shot at him after all.

Crossing his arms in front of himself, Kira blocked a stamping front kick from Alkire, who had jumped to his feet while Kira was taking out Raine. Kira's forearms screamed as the bone bruised under the shock of absorbing the blow from Alkire's mechanical foot, delivered with the power of a jackhammer piston, Kira actually sliding a few inches backward in the sand from the force of the blow. Stepping forward to the attack, Alkire threw a combination of punches, only to have his hand snatched right out of the air and then grabbed at the collar by Kira's other hand, and heaved a good ten feet through the air to land with a jarring THUMP on the wet sand of the beach just below the tide line on his back. Alkire felt something in his back twist and give under the impact, fiery pain lancing up and down his whole spine, but he refused to be taken out so goddamned easily!

Kira ducked away from another few shots from Kurtz, and another tranq shot from Ramierez, only to find himself square in the line of fire of Glory's cylinder action grenade launcher. The weapon vomited fire and spat a six inch long, two inch thick metal rod at him, the rod expanded into a cross shape with hard rubbed pads on the front edges, a subdual round meant to knock someone out through physical impact. Kira blocked with crossed arms again, his bruised flesh protesting the treatment as he was knocked backwards, off balance. Kira hissed a curse as he felt a tranq dart sink into his left side, he angrily brushed the empty dart away, feeling cold numbness spread through his side from the sedative drug. Normally his immune system would laugh at a simple tranquilizer, but plainly the Stormhounds had come prepared, and though he didn't go down, Kira almost immediately felt a bit dizzy and disoriented as the customized drug doggedly attacked his nervous system.

Ramierez could only stare as Kira staggered and then straightened, despite having been hit with enough sedative to take out a rodeo steer in full motion. Colonel Belaruse was down and out, Colonel Jones was half down and hurt, and suddenly three on one odds wasn't looking so hot for them. He fired his fourth shot, but it was like Kira knew it was coming, because he was well out of the way by the time the dart got there. Moving sideways, Ramierez tried to keep Kira in a three way crossfire between him, the Sarge-Major and Conrad, careful to never stand opposite an ally, so they wouldn't chance hitting each other. A dose of this tranquilizer on a regular guy might put them into a coma after all! Kira scrambled away from another burst from Conrad, staggering again as he wasn't entirely successful and several rubber bullets hammered into his side and shoulder, which had to hurt like hell.

Still didn't seem all that close to putting him down for the count though, and the Stormhounds kept up the pressure, keeping their distance, knowing that if they let Kira get within hand to hand distance, they were as good as down. It was almost like a team of matador's fighting a bull... each time Kira started moving towards one person, the other two would attack and force him to defend, and so forth and so on. Glory's fourth shot was a mesh net, the wires made of macromolecules, all but unbreakable and also nonabrasive, and though Kira managed to dodge half the net, the other half enfolded his right side and swiftly got tangled up in his arm and leg and head. Still, he didn't go down, not even when he caught a full ten round burst of rubber bullets from Conrad, right across the solar plexus. Ramierez sighted and aimed, and sent another tranq dart into Kira's buttocks, which made the Ultimate Coordinator stumble yet again, but still he would not fall the fuck down! Ramierez was starting to think they'd have to shoot him for real to get him to go down!

Kurtz hurried in with a high voltage taser in hand, but Kira wasn't as unsteady as he appeared, and he blocked Kurtz's thrusting arm with his free hand and then headbutted the Stormhound right in the face. Kurtz had his helmet on, but he was still staggered and dazed, though Kira didn't look too well off either, at least. Kira took a step towards the dazed Kurtz, or tried to, but the two tranq doses and the net fouled him up and he fell to his knees in the sand. Glory took three big steps forward and unloaded another cross shaped subdual round right into Kira's breastbone, knocking him over flat on his ass, but he still kicked and struggled to stand upright once more.

Alkire lurched forward and slammed his mechanical foot down on Kira's chest with grave force, and Alkire heard the crackle of bones suffering hairline fractures. He had little sympathy, his own broken rib felt like it was digging into his liver, and Raine was lying there like a wet noodle, her lower face a mess of blood, her right wrist twisted at an obscene angle. Keeping Kira pinned, Alkire snatched the taser from Kurtz and jammed it down, right into the base of Kira's neck. There was an actinic flash of blue-white sparks, and Kira's body jerked like, well, like he'd been electrocuted, which was basically true. Astoundingly, the Kid's eyes were still fluttering open and his free arm lifted and began pushing at Alkire's foot on his chest, despite having taken enough punishment to kill most people! Alkire stabbed downward with the taser once more, but this time Kira's arm flashed up and caught the baton behind the sparking head and snatched it from Alkire's grip.

"Motherfucking fake..." Alkire swore, even as Kira flipped the baton around and jabbed it upward. Right into Alkire's groin. The electric jolt lifted Alkire six inches into the air in a single muscle spasm, before his joints locked tight and he collapsed backwards, stiff as a tree, his face pale and twisted, foam bubbling from his nostrils and mouth from the pain of taking over five hundred thousand volts right into his balls. It would later be discovered that his heart had actually stopped for about five seconds because of the jolt.

Seeing the Colonel go down in just about the WORST way possible almost made Ramierez vomit from sympathetic pain. It was so terrible that even he couldn't find something like that remotely funny. Taking aim, Ramierez shot Kira with dart after dart after dart, and only stopped when his six round clip, his second of the night, ran dry. Kira was still twitching, but that had to be from the residual taser shock, nothing of human size that lived could still be conscious with that much sedative in their system! Ramierez thought about it for a minute. And then reloaded the gun and fired six more darts into Kira. Yeah, so maybe he was putting the guy at risk of cardiac arrest. But goddamn, he had to be fucking sure, didn't he? If they hadn't come specially prepared, Kira would have wiped the floor with five of the toughest men and women in the USN, maybe without breaking a sweat!

"Check the Colonels and call in some medical support." Glory ordered, tenatively edging forward to stand over Kira, who was drooling with his eyes closed, his breathing shallow and jerky. Moving very slowly and cautiously, Glory used four sets of handcuffs to double lock Kira's wrists and ankles together and then slung the insensate Ultimate Coordinator over one massive shoulder. "I'll get on the horn to the Lt, tell him we need the special holding room ready. Goddamn, but I never thought we'd actually need the damn place... what the hell is this world turning into anyway?"

"A scary goddamned place, Sarge-Major." Ramierez replied, shaking his head. "One motherfucking scary goddamned place..."

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City Suburbs, 2 am, November 1st**

Finding the right house had been a bit more of a chore than Frost had been expecting. Perhaps that was due to his somewhat stringent criteria, but at times like this it was better to be too careful than not careful enough. He would really hate to be interrupted because of a hasty mistake. Anything less than perfect stealth was going to have Grey's new flunkies, the so called Stormhounds, hot on his trail. And while being chased and confronted by the most highly trained and deadly soldiers in the USN had an appeal all its own, now wasn't the time for such indulgences. Not with an interview with Loser Zala-Attha to conduct. Frost needed a house that was occupied, because he didn't want residents coming home while he was in the middle of something fun, better to get the small fry out of the way off the bat. He wanted one that was relatively isolated, a large yard at least, and a basement was almost necessary. Loser would be making a bit of a racket, at least if Frost had any say in the matter.

He approached the first house under the pretence that his "buddy", the Loser, had fallen over and hit his head, and he was asking for someone to call for an ambulance. A moment of cracking Loser's head against the pavement produced a satisfactory gash on his scalp to complete the masquerade. After disposing of that first family and finding their house unsuitable for his needs, Frost piled them all up in the master bathroom to drain into the tub, spraying a full can of bathroom air freshener around the doorway to mask the coming smell, and moved on. Now a bit gory himself, he changed his story to getting mugged, laughable as the idea was, and scouted the second house, with similar results to the first. Third house was the charm, and after hauling the family of five up to the master bathroom once more, Frost returned to his prize Loser and headed for the basement, which the family apparently used as storage for odds and ends and tools, plus a workshop for the husband's hobbies, it was so perfect for his needs it might have been tailor made! The only thing better would have been a full surgical or dental suite, and one didn't tend to find those in private homes.

Finally relaxing his mental hold on the Loser, which had kept him in a constant delirious state somewhere between awake and asleep, Frost dumped the Loser in a corner and stood over by the stairway, out of immediate line of sight of his prey, and waited to see what the Loser's reaction would be. For his part, Athrun came to lying on his face on a cold concrete floor, his body shivering in nakedness, his head ringing and sore from some sort of blow, his throat raw and acidic with bile. He had no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there, and he tried to retrace his memories to make up the difference, only to shout in half strangled horror as he encountered the twisted dreams Frost had been planting in his head for amusement's sake. But despite his namesake, Loser Zala-Attha didn't take too long to get past that old torment, and in less than a minute he was shaking his had and clambering to his feet, swearing softly under his breath, lightly touching the half dried scalp wound on his right temple.

Frost smirked as Loser turned his head from side to side, obviously puzzled at regaining consciousness in a garage or basement of some sort, when his last waking memories had involved going to sleep in his own warm bed next to the sexually satisfied body of his wife. His smirk grew when the Loser's gaze passed over him, and then the Loser did a double take, eyes locking onto Frost's half shadowed form. "Kira...?" The Loser asked tenatively, and it was all Frost could do to hold himself back from bursting out laughing. This was simply too rich. They all thought he was the Boytoy, at least until he actually acted. How confused they must be!

Loser Zala-Attha was one of the sharper knives in the box though, and after a few more seconds of peering at Frost, he shook his head, his body tensing up and subtly shifting to a more defensive posture. "You aren't Kira." Athrun half growled.

"Oh really?" Frost replied, curious as to what gave him away. He hoped it wasn't the blood spattered all over him, that would be a pretty lame giveaway. "What makes you think that?"

"You're standing there while I'm hurt. Kira would have been helping me up, even if he was hurt himself." Loser replied analytically. "You don't talk like him either. And he never stands like that. And that's not fake blood you're covered in." Athrun paused and stared intently at the Kira imposter. "Who are you really?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Frost stepped forward so that the Loser could clearly see him. To his credit, the Loser only flinched a little, and it was probably mostly the juxtapositioning of Kira and blood splatter.

"What did you do with Cagalli?" Loser demanded next, obviously willing to shelve the discussion of his assailant's identity for the time being.

"Your son asked me that same question." Frost answered with a chuckle, which only grew as he watched the Loser's face tighten and his hands curl into fists at the mention of his progeny. Sadly, he did not make an outburst or a further demand that Frost explain what he'd done to his child, he seemed focused on one thing at a time, though Frost could sense his mental agitation like a sweet aroma. "Such a pretty child. Has his mother's eyes. And his father's insanity driven bravery. He's going to be a dangerous one when he grows up, even if I don't do a thing to him."

"What did you do with Cagalli?" Loser asked again, refusing to be sidetracked, his teeth all but grating together. "If you've harmed her..."

"I think "harm" would be an understatement, Loser Zala-Attha." Frost replied happily. "I once promised you I'd find out how deep her fire goes, I promised you I would go places with her only you had ever gone before. I keep my promises. Her fire goes all the way down to her core, and no matter how hard I beat her, broke her, or raped her, it just wouldn't go out... you're a lucky man, Loser Zala-Attha. Or you were, anyway..."

Frost could see the realization dawn on the Loser's face, tempered as it was by disbelief. He smirked at the Loser, who seemed, for the first time since regaining consciousness, totally off guard and unsure. "And I was so sure you burned up into a crisp when I threw you into the gravity well too. You're like a cockroach, Loser, you never go down when you're supposed to, though you do make a nice smear when you do get crushed..."

"You're lying... that's impossible... you can't be..." Athrun swallowed heavily, real fear billowing up inside him. He didn't want to believe it, but the things this Kira imposter were saying were not things very many other people could know.

"Evil finds a way, Loser Zala-Attha. And the greatest Evil, the sort of Evil I am the avatar of, the darkness in every human soul, can never be vanquished, only sealed away temporarily. My seals have been broken, and I am come once more! The world shall burn to cinders beneath my feet, and I shall paint my face with the blood of the innocent, and grease my hands with the innards of the powerful! I shall reforge this world in fire and blood, until the blade of humanity shines with brilliant deadliness, as many times as necessary." Frost promised fervently. "I am Zacharis Quentin Frost, and that is my destiny."

"You're dead. I saw you die. There's no way you could have survived the destruction of the Pulsar." Athrun protested, his legs all but giving way beneath him in terror. He was trapped in a room with someone who very well might be Frost, the worst bogeyman of all his nightmares. For that matter, a Frost somehow reincarnated as a twin to Kira, perhaps even access to the same physical abilities Kira possessed...

"Greater than the Boytoy's actually." Frost plucked the thought from the Loser's mind like a finger from a child's hand. He discarded his sunglasses and let Athrun appreciate his golden pupiled eyes for a moment, before taking up a hacksaw blade and running it lovingly down the inside of one arm, digging in deep into the flesh, slicing a ragged gash down to his elbow. Even before the blade reached his elbow, the gash was already healing over, and barely a trickle of dark blood escaped. "What's that saying some villians use? I have all of your power, and more? Well that's true in my case. I am everything the Boytoy is... and so much more! Hah!" He let the hacksaw blade drop from his fingers. "Don't worry though, Loser, I have no intention of killing you. That would be wasteful, like it or not, you are part of humanity's blade, one of the sharper bits at times actually."

"Did you hurt my son? Did you hurt Allister?" Athrun demanded next, ignoring Frost's offhanded compliment.

"Not yet, but the day is young." Frost answered laconically. Athrun's hands quivered with rage, but he held himself still. Attacking Frost was idiocy, he could never have competed with the monster in his original body, and now in Kira's post second puberty, Ultimate Coordinator body, enhanced at that, he doubted he could hurt Frost even if he just stood there and let Athrun hit him! "Though I suppose emotional trauma is injury of a sort. He's with his mother now I imagine. I wonder how she'll sound when she wakes up? If she can even talk that is... I cut her throat, you see and I did my best to mangle her layrnx and esophagus. That was after I raped her in your own bed and came inside of course. And that was after I beat her to a pulp with my bare hands, leaving only the barest few bones unbroken, while you lay there insensate and unable to lift a finger to defend her, despite how much she begged for you to awake. So much blood... so much fiery hot bloo..." Frost taunted, only breaking off when athrun hurled himself at him, screaming incoherently. Everyone had a snapping point after all.

Athrun watched the emerald green Seed fall through the boiling darkness of his mind, detonating with feverish intensity that made his skin swelter like he was burning alive once more, but this was not pain, it was energy, determination, the essence of his furious intentions! Already familiar with Kira's body and general characteristics, Athrun knew that if he was to have any chance at all, he would have to strike in one of two locations. Either the face and nose area, or the groin, both of which were soft targets on every human male, not particularly strengthened by being an Ultimate Coordinator. Athrun feinted with an elbow towards Frost's amused face, knowing that striking with his hand would only lead to a self injury, before bringing up his knee towards Frost's gonads with all his body weight behind it. Athrun barely even saw Frost move, his knee slammed into the pit of Frost's palm with jarring force, but Athrun was the only one being jarred. His knee twinged as it hit Frost's palm bones, which felt as solid as steel!

The counterblow came as a blur, and when Frost's open palm slapped Athrun against the side of the skull, he saw darkness and starbursts, his neck complaining loudly with jolts of agony as his skull almost dislocated from his neck as he was thrown backwards, stumbling, before his legs caught on something on the floor and Athrun tumbled over backwards, landing hard, spread eagled, on the concrete floor once more. Teeth felt loose in his mouth, and the coppery taste of blood was all over his lips and tongue, his vision whirling and fading in and out... and al this from a single slap, not even a punch! Greater physical abilities than Kira indeed, Frost had not been lying about that! But then again, as Athrun recollected, Frost rarely if ever lied, never felt the need to conceal his intentions. "No time to lie around, Loser, your wife is on her deathbed with my semen... her dearest brother's semen... in her cunt, and your son is next on my hit list!" Frost pointed out encouragingly.

True to his expectations, Athrun came flying back to his feet, ignoring his own injuries in his rage, just like that time at JIHAD, when the four Coordinators broke out of their bonds when the Doc was experimenting upon them. Frost ducked and dodged a flurry of punches and even a neat flying kick, before he caught the raging redcoat by the throat with one hand, hoisted him in the air, and then tossed him fully the length of the room, to slam into a wall hung with hoses and garden implements, which rattled and fell off the walls, half burying the Loser as he slumped against the wall, blinking his eyes and coughing weakly as he clung to consciousness with all his might. "Is that all the vaunted Athrun Zala, the most famous Redcoat in ZAFT, has to offer in the way of resistance? Are you really willing to just give up your son to my tender mercies? Shall I whisper in his ear while I slowly flay the skin from his bones about how his Father just couldn't work up the gumption to try and save his life when it came down to it? I don't fancy men usually, but when they're below puberty, they still squeal like girls, so maybe I'll entertain myself with a squealing contest too, hmm?"

Athrun stood up... and then fell to his hands and knees, coughing thickly, his eyes kept trying to drift shut of their own accord, and Athrun could no longer tell if he was even in Seed mode or not. "Get up already!" Frost exhorted him. "I'm getting bored. If you don't get up right now, Loser, I promise you, I will go to that hospital and rape your wife in her bed right in front of your son and then I'll tear her head off and drown the little Spark in her blood!" As expected, the dire threat had Athrun focused and standing once more, or at least standing, weaving drunkenly from side to side. Frost estimated that one more exchange was about as far as this game would get, damned regular humans and their limitations...

Athrun couldn't see straight, couldn't even really see much at all besides dim shapes in encroaching darkness, but he still stumbled forward, half tripping over his own feet, and aimed a heavy punch at where he thought Frost was. Surprisingly his fist connected, but only against Frost's chest, and Athrun half collapsed against his foe, the strength leaving his legs, panting with impotent fury. Those pants changed to choking gags when Frost's fist pummeled into his groin and gut, folding him up so far his head almost touched his knees as he staggered backward, eyes bulging, unseeing, ropes of pinkish bloody spittle hanging from his gaping mouth and nostrils. Athrun's fingers twitched and trembled, before his eyes began rolling up and he started falling forward onto his face, only to be arrested in mid drop by Frost catching hold of his hair and neck. Athrun hung limply in his enemy's grasp, tormented with the totality of his failure, knowing that his family was in ever increasing danger and he was helpless to do anything about it!

"Now now, don't despair just yet, Loser. I'm far from done with you this night." Frost admonished pleasantly. He carried Athrun with him over to the workbench, letting the Redcoat sit in a slumped heap by his side as Frost rummaged through the workbench for interesting items to use. He found a large coil of strong cord, which would always come in handy. You could never have too much rope. And then there was a battery powered belt sander, that looked promising. And a small, handheld, cord powered circular saw, the blades sharp and shiny and looking brand new. And what was this... a powered drill? He'd always wanted to play dentist with someone, and this drill looked about the right size for his needs, it was almost big enough that some people might need two hands to use it! Frost hit the trigger and listened appreciatively to the whirring buzz of the drill bit turning. "Vhhrrrr... VHHRRR..." Frost mimicked happily.

Then he found the real treasure in one of the bottom drawers. A cord powered, handheld nail gun, complete with a large magazine of six inch long roofing nails. Taking the precious item from its case, frost located an extension cord and plugged it in, humming under his breath, as he then began wandering along the walls, tapping with one knuckle and listening intently as he scouted out where the structural support beams were located, keeping an eye on the defeated and still slumped Coordinator, wary of tricks. He'd learned from his death experience not to count these Clyne Faction assholes down until he had no other choice. Scouting complete, Frost grabbed Athrun by the back of his neck and dragged him over to the wall, before switching his grip to one arm, dragging the limp Loser up by one hand until he was actually off the ground by almost a foot.

Placing Athrun's wrist against the wall, right over where the structural stud was, Frost promptly pressed the nailgun against the wrist and fired three times in rapid succession, a tight triangle of nails that bored through the Loser's wrist bones and pinned his arm to the structural beam inside the wall. The Loser twitched and moaned, but still seemed semi concious as Frost nailed his other arm to another beam a few feet away, hanging the Loser up by his arms. Frost wasn't done yet though, and he spread the Loser's legs and nailed his ankles to the beams too, for better and easier access to the full realm of his victim's body. Now crucified, spread eagle to the wall, the Loser was finally prepared for the rest of the night's festivities. Well, almost, he needed to be awake first. Frost accomplished that with a gentle nudging of his mind on the Losers. And also by pressing the nailgun against the Loser's groin, about an inch and a half below the belly button, and pulling the trigger twice, burying two heavy nails in his pelvic area, careful to miss the major arteries. Athrun came awake with a wracking scream, blood trickling down his arms and feet and groin, and Frost smiled happily.

"Welcome to your worst nightmare, Loser Zala-Attha." Frost greeted his reawakened victim, swapping out the nailgun for the drill. Moving slowly so Athrun could watch and appreciate what was coming. Frost raised the drill by increments, running the inert bit across Athrun's bare chest, pausing with a chuckle over his heart, as if he would be so crude and merciful as to immediately drill out his victim's heart, before continuing onward and upward, tracing the lines of Athrun's circulatory system up his chest and up his neck before finally tapping the drill bit against Athrun's clenched tight teeth. Frost clamped his free hand against the bottom of the Loser's jaw, forcing his head back against the wall and jamming his jaw shut so his teeth were pressed together. "Say aaaahhh..." Frost prompted wickedly, as his finger tightened on the drill trigger and it spun up to speed. He then pushed it, achingly slowly, against Athrun's teeth, right at the gumline.

VHHHHRRRRRRRR...

xxxx


	15. Cyromania

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Palace, Morning, November 1st**

"I blame myself." Cyprus said with a heavier than usual sigh and even a slump of his shoulders as he rested his chin on his hands in his private office, tucked away in the back of the security center. He could afford to let his hair down a bit, so to speak, because it was only Ramierez and Glory and himself in the office, and all their helmets were off. The Sergeant-Major and Master Sergeant, his top two enlisted soldiers and best friends of getting close to two decades now, had returned with Kira Yamato a few hours earlier, carting the insensate Kira around like a sack of meal, before depositing him into a specific safe house built expressly for the purpose of restraining those with "greater than average abilities". It was not specifically designed for Kira of course, that would have required a conspiracy no one was comfortable with, but the possibility existed, in the wake of the Eden Disaster and the population explosion of Ultimate Coordinators, that a spy or infiltrator might need to be restrained, privately and quietly, and, depending on the situation, even comfortably.

"For what?" Glory grunted, having half dozed off for a second there. For all that the combat against Kira had been brief and at a relatively safe distance, for him anyway, he found himself quite exhausted all the same. It took more energy to fight friends and people you respected, you just couldn't let anger and hate take you away. "And if you say "for everything", I'm going to laugh at you, sir."

"Our system was flawed and we were overconfident." Ramierez interjected, also heading off his commanding officer. "We got royally fucked on this one sir, but the blame can't rest on just you. That's not fair to the rest of us screwups."

"I am the one in charge of physical security for the Royal Family." Cyprus retorted coolly, cheered all the same by their unflagging support, as ever. "I would tender a resignation, but I know they wouldn't accept. They are too forgiving."

"Annoying, huh?" Glory said, rolling his eyes sarcastically. Leave it to the Lt to be pissed off because people weren't hauling him over the coals and demanding his head on a stick!

"It is." Cyprus agreed with a blank face. "But I was in fact referring to the recent fiasco involving Mr. Yamato. At first glance, the Colonel's proposition seemed right, but upon deeper consideration, it was the worst possible choice and I should have realized that. If you were just going to convey bad news, the Colonels would certainly be the right choice, because of their sympathetic natures. But to present him with evidence implicating him in a crime of such horror and magnitude and ask him to come in for questioning... that should be handled by a cold professional only. Friends are too likely to argue and allow themselves to become emotionally involved, leading to situations like what you experienced."

"Mr. Yamato was on a hair trigger, and the Colonel's weren't much better." Ramierez agreed with a shrug. "The baby comment was out of line, but who can blame the guy, really? I mean, his life is hell right now, everyone says stupid things sometimes. I say stupid things every day, for instance. Kira just says them at really bad times."

"As I recall, something very similar happened during Sai's wedding." Glory reflected with a small smile. "Oh man, I can't help but grin when I think about how Sai decked him! I've never seen anyone so shocked in my life! And I'm not talking about Kira either!" Glory's humor imploded after a few seconds of weak enjoyment by Ramierez and little to no reaction from Cyprus. "How are the Colonels doing?" Glory asked, switching tacks.

"They are stable and should be back on their feet in a few days to a week. Colonel Belaruse suffered a dislocated neck and a compound fracture on her wrist, Colonel Jones some broken ribs and burns to the groin from the taser, plus some slipped discs in his back. Before you ask, yes, he can still get it up." Cyprus replied, cutting off Ramierez even as the latino opened his mouth. Ramierez sat back with a half pleased, half disappointed look on his face. "Mr. Yamato's injuries are also being tended to at the safe house. He was hurt worse than he appeared..." Cyprus took a moment to shake his head at the resilient nature of someone who all but despised toughness and strength training. "Seven cracked ribs, a fractured sternum, hairline fractures throughout his forearms and wrists, a high degree of stomach and bowel irritation from an overdose of sedatives..."

"Hey, I had to be fucking sure he was done, right?" Ramierez protested at the implicit criticism. "It was fucking unreal, he just kept getting up! I've shot zombie bosses in video games that didn't get up as much as he did!"

"... second degree burns on the neck from a taser, a multitude of deep tissue bruises from rubber bullets, and temporary discordia of the nervous system from electrical overload." Cyrpus finished without looking at his subordinate. "I think it's relatively safe to say that Mr. Yamato won't be going anywhere any time in the next two or three days. Just breathing with those rib and sternum injuries will be like inhaling live coals." Cyprus spoke with the air of experience in such matters. "Then again, he has surprised me before." Cyprus added, referring to when Kira had recovered from poisoning and electrocution almost to the brink of death in less than a week, during the Isolation Era. "Of course, even if he should recover with abnormal speed, he won't be able to leave that room. I hope. We did build it to contain someone more or less like him."

"That must have been a fun conversation with the Queen." Glory half wondered. "Hey, we need to build a jail cell that can hold your brother. Not that we're planning on putting your brother in jail, but, hypothetically..." He paused and cast his eyes downward. "Course it ain't so fucking funny now, huh?"

"The Queen and the Ambassador never came into it. We consulted the Chief Representative only. For reasons of security." Cyprus answered. "Despite the unfortunate necessity of his arrest for assaulting a federal officer, I still cannot believe that Mr. Yamato is the culprit of the crimes against the Royals. Perhaps I could see a murder in the passion of a moment. But abduction after extreme assault and rape? No, he just doesn't think like that! Causing other people to suffer is anathema to him!"

"But the evidence..." Ramierez pointed out.

"Evidence is bullshit and we all know it." Cyprus almost snapped back, shocking both his friends with his uncharacteristic vehemence. "How many times have we three manufactured evidence as damning or more damning still than what we have on Kira in order to take someone out? I will find who is attempting to destabilize Orb's leadership by framing Kira and attacking the children, and when I do..." Cyprus stared down at his hands on his desk, and maybe, for a moment, he might have smiled. Smiled like a snake about to eat a mouse.

"Sir, could you please not do that?" Glory complained, feeling cold sweat trickle down the back of his neck. "I wanna be able to sleep tonight..."

"It is as I feared." Cyprus replied, as much to himself as to his friends, catching himself in mid menace. "Violet... I'm becoming too involved... but who else..." Cyprus trailed off in a mumble and shook his head. "Pardon me." He said after a few moments, once more icy cool and collected.

"I didn't see anything." Ramierez assured him. "Just like I never saw that autographed photo of Wrenn in your wallet."

Glory was about to add his own assurance that he had not noticed Cyprus's slip of human anger and frustration, when bleeping from his desk shut them all up and changed the entire mood of the office. No longer was it Cyprus, Richard and Thomas sitting around sharing thoughts, now it was the Lt, Sergeant-Major and Master Sergeant of the Stormhounds awaiting a briefing on the situation. After a second of straightening in chairs and composing faces, Cyprus nodded ever so slightly. "You may enter, Lexi." He announced, and even before he was done speaking, she had materialized in front of his desk, projected by part of his office's tactical simulation and planning computers.

"I even remembered to knock this time, Cy. Aren't you proud?" Lexi commented with a lopsided smile, as she turned around and wriggled up onto his desk and sat down half facing him in an almost flirtatious manner.

"Observing the minimum standard for politness is no cause for praise or reward." Cyprus answered her, leaning back a bit as she got comfortable on his desk, or at least aped such a thing. "And you ruined it by addressing me in such a familiar manner. I never have, and never will, give you permission to shorten my name so. That is a privilege reserved for my family alone. I don't tolerate it from Thomas or Richard, I won't tolerate it from you."

"You're such a hardass, Lt." Lexi's tone was that of an offended young woman. "Does that rod up your butt fuse with your spine or just reinforce it?"

"If you came in here to make such observations alone..." Cyprus began to say.

"No, no, don't get your knickers in a bunch." Lexi slid off the desk, only the lack of sound clueing people in to her insubstantial nature. "Fleshies generally take things way too seriously most of the time, but you guys really take the cake! Would an ice cube even melt on your brow, Lt?" Without waiting for a response to the last jab, Lexi hurried on. "Yes, yes, serious situation, I am aware. And I'm sorry, I never would have let them lock me out if I thought something like this was going to happen!"

"Plenty of blame to go around to us all." Cyprus told her. "You should have been watching, we should have stopped the intruder in the first place."

"I just can't believe it was Kira! I was just talking to him in the kitchen like five minutes earlier and he seemed perfectly normal. Well, maybe a little weird, but nothing outside expanded normal parameters." Lexi shook her head in disbelief. She was going to say more but then she detected the expressions of shock on the faces of all three Stormhounds. It wasn't like she didn't know what she'd just said, word vomit didn't happen to her like it did to Fleshies, despite her best simulations, but she did realize with a flash of guilt that she wasn't supposed to have mentioned that conversation, since it was private. An example of one side of her programming, the side designed to simulate human emotion and expression of emotion and feelings, messing up the logical, computer side of her. "Um, not that I was there in contravention of the Queen's wishes or anything like that. I would never backdoor a backdoor..."

"Nevermind that!" Cyprus was all but leaning forward over his desk. "You say you saw Kira Yamato in the kitchen of the Pacifica right before the attack on her Majesty?"

Well, it was too late to change her story now, and it wasn't like she could lie to a direct question from someone with Cyprus's level of command authority. "Yes I did. We had a nice chat about Fleshy emotions, especially the so called darker ones like fear and hate. The ones I really don't get. But I wasn't supposed to be there, and so I left before Carome showed up. Don't know what happened after that, I was really locked out for the rest of the time, honest."

"Did you notice anything wrong with him? Anything different from normal? Even the slightest thing?" Cyprus demanded, cursing himself for not thinking to ask the AI about this earlier. He just wasn't used to her near omnipresence, his thinking was out of date!

"Did he seem like he was about to go psycho on his sister and best friend to me? No." Lexi replied shortly, before cupping her chin in one palm and squinting her eyes in concentration. It was all an act of course, the motions of one image among thousands hardly conveyed the workings of her processors. She thought just as hard while she was jumping around and singing as she was when quiet and squinting, but Fleshies had expectations about how one should be when concentrating, and it was her duty to conform to them. She brought up her scans of Kira from the night before and held them like a mannequin in midair next to her. "His life signs were normal, for him anyway. Some slight irregularities in the bone density, but those might be because of dietary concerns, as I understand it, he hasn't been nourishing himself well recently. I didn't exactly scan him with a medical vari-camera, ya know, didn't have the capability or the inclination at the time. Data is limited."

"Brain and nervous system activity?" Cyprus asked, hopefully.

"Nope, sorry, that requires special sensors to do from a distance. Or better yet, a NIC connection, but obviously didn't have that. I could scan him now, if I could just figure out where the hell you guy's stashed him..." Lexi pouted, not liking being left out of even a tiny portion of Orb's infastructure, which had become her combination workplace, home and playpen.

"Its a... nonofficial location." Cyprus explained with a wintry smile.

"Are you saying you don't trust me?" Lexi said haughtily, folding her arms across her chest petulantly.

"Are you saying you're perfectly reliable?" Cyprus countered. "Plainly though, no, I don't trust you. Not like I would a human. There are far more ways for a computer system to be compromised than for a human."

"Care to bet on that?" Lexi challenged, her pride wounded.

"If I'm wrong, I don't want to know it. Allow me some peace of rest." Cyprus backed down, perhaps just a little. Antagonizing the AI was simply pointless. It wasn't like he could damage the relationship he had with her, not like if she were human... she couldn't walk away, couldn't ignore him. But like all thinking beings, when feeling cooperative, her performance was measurably better. "Perhaps in the future we can work out a way to allow you access. It would certainly make some monitoring tasks easier."

"I'm always happy to take on more thankless burdens." Lexi replied, only mildly sarcastic as she accepted the olive branch. Truth be told she would take a thankless burden a thousand times before what she was currently stuck with, with most of her processing power sitting idle. Nam was so damned lucky, being responsible for not millions but billions of life forms and their support. Nam certainly never complained of being bored... Lexi was enjoying some self indulgent pity when other parts of her mind routed data to her interface in Cyprus's office. "Newsflash. We've discovered two houses broken into this morning. Normally a burglary or robbery isn't too big a deal, but listen to this... in each house, the entire family was butched like chickens in a coop, their bodies all dragged upstairs and tossed into the master bathroom! Pretty messy scenes, let me tell you. Looks like they were twisted or torn apart bare handed. You Fleshies are so gross when you break..."

"I don't see the connection." Ramierez admitted in a puzzled tone. "Other than the physical brutality of course."

"Oh yeah, sorry. Both houses were within a dozen miles of where that guy tried to kidnap the Crown Prince off the street." Lexi added offhandedly. "Still working on other pattern recognition type stuff, haven't come up with much so far. Looks like whoever it was just chose two houses at random, killed everyone inside and then left. No valuables taken, no property damage beyond minor incidental type stuff, just walked up to the door, killed the person that answered and then slaughtered the rest of the household and walked away. You know, if I was a Fleshy, I think I'd have goosebumps right now, with someone like that walking around out there."

"If the person that attacked the Queen and abducted the Ambassador, and attempted to abduct the Crown Prince were the same person, and I believe that they are, since we found the Ambassador's stolen sports car near the scene of the attack on the Crown Prince..." Cyprus mused out loud. "They would have had to retreat on foot to wherever they stashed the Ambassador, and then carry him through the streets. He wouldn't have been able to get far, not without raising suspicion. There's only so far you can carry a man in his bedclothes, even on Halloween, before someone gets suspicious and calls the police. So he would be looking for a place to hide, somewhere relatively close. I would have personally selected an area of a few blocks radius, but our perp apparently has superhuman endurance to go with his strength, a dozen miles is a lot of area to cover lugging a body. This is of course presuming the Ambassador isn't lying in a shallow grave somewhere with his throat cut."

"And since we haven't seen or heard any reports of someone carrying around an Athrun look alike or a body sized bag today, that means the perp must have found his hide hole, sometime last night." Glory reasoned. "Question being how far did he go from house two to house three?"

"I need all the details on those two houses, complete schematics, and details on the families that lived there. Link it to my helmet." Cyprus ordered Lexi as he stood up, a predatory smile crossing his face. "Corporal, put together a hostile entry team, and don't skimp on the gear. Thomas, you're with me. We're going to pay a quick visit to Mr. Yamato, give him some good news. Then we'll link up with the Corporal and start knocking on doors until we find one that doesn't open. Then we kick it down and drag this bastard kicking and screaming back down to hell."

"Loose the hounds." Ramierez said with a grin to match his superiors.

"Let there be hell to pay." Lexi finished, drawing a momentary surprised stare from all three of them. "Oh give me a break, who do you think I am anyway, a vending machine? I am omnipresent and omniscient. Or nearly so anyway. I could tell you what you sang in the shower this morning, your little credo is nothing special to turn up."

"Now the only question is..." Glory said after a few moments of thought. "How the hell do we initiate a fricking AI into the Hellhounds? How the HELL are we gonna haze her, Corporal?"

"Leave that..." Cyprus interrupted with a truly wicked smirk. "... to me, Sarge-Major."

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Suburbs, Morning, November 1st**

Water plipped onto wooden stairs as Frost descended into the basement one final time, his skin fresh and scrubbed clean just minutes before in the guest shower. The master bath was still filled with just beginning to putrefy corpses of the house owners and their children, so trying to get clean in there was something of a pointless exercise. Not that being covered in bits and pieces of other living and formerly living beings particularly bothered Frost, in truth he found it satisfying, because it meant that he'd been recently productive. He couldn't afford to waste too much time or effort, he had a big job to accomplish. Humanity wasn't going to sharpen itself after all!

Toweling the last bits of moisture from his repungent brown Boytoy locks, and wiping the last trickles of condensation from his disgustingly flawless Boytoy body, Frost stepped onto the cool concrete floor of the basement, careful to avoid a far ranging bit of splatter from the night's festivities. Tossing the towel aside casually, Frost stretched and popped his neck joints loose, before finally turning his eyes and attention to the art, his special, magnificent art, that hung limply against the wall. Throughout the process of creating his art, he'd had to reaffix his canvas a few times, it kept on trying to wriggle off the wall of its own accord, and so where once there had been three nails in each limb, now there were five or six stapling the canvas to the wall. Frost shivered with delight as he thought of the expressions of the gallery when his art was at last unveiled, truly, he was a genius when working with his hands. He had also discovered an affinity for power tools last night, maybe he could have worked in construction if he wasn't already tapped for destroying the world and reforging it from the ashes and blood?

"Good morning, Ambassador, would you like some coffee?" Frost asked lightly, proffering the chipped ceramic cup he held in one hand. Athrun didn't reply, but then again, he was comatose, so perhaps that was to be expected. Nonetheless, it was only polite to offer him a drink. No point in being uncivilized, right? Course the Ambassador might have had trouble holding the cup, not only because he was nailed to the wall spread eagle, but because Frost had lovingly run his handed held circular saw along the fronts of Athrun's fingers, each and every one of them, slicing them open to the bone and oh so carefully peeling back the ragged flaps to display crimson smeared muscle, tendon and bone. "Flay Interrupted", was his name for that masterpiece of torment. Which melded into "Falsity Denied", which covered most of Athrun's body. Frost had made the unpleasant discovery that a goodly portion of his canvas's skin was artificial, synthetic! Fahg, what artist could work with putty instead of marble? It had to go, simply had to go.

The belt sander had served admirably for that pupose, first a rough paper to break up the flawed pieces, and then progressively finer and finer papers to grind away the detrius that was left until only pure, holy red, glistening muscle and blood smeared fat remained. He was careful not to go too deep... beauty was far more than skin deep, but there was a spectacle to the revealed musculature, veins and fats all its own. Plus, the whole masterpiece of masterpieces revolved around the canvas being still alive when first viewed by the gallery. Anyone could chop up a body. Few could dismantle it while leaving the person it compsed still alive and aware. That was also why he'd avoided the lucious, emerald green eyes, despite his inclinations to play marbles with them. Eyes were a window into the soul, and he so desperately wanted people to see this soul he'd traumatized! Rope tourniquets around major arteries kept bleeding to a minimum, while still allowing sweet, coppery red fluid to spill in controlled spurts when he so desired.

The most fun had come by using the power drill on his teeth though. Oh, the muffled squawks of agony, they were the sweetest he'd heard in a long, long time. Maybe the sweetest ever! There was just something about making someone who was ordinarily so powerful and capable, completely helpless at his mercy! Brutalizing Fiery Zala-Attha was one thing, she was just a girl... but Loser Zala-Attha, he was one of the most famous soldiers of the modern era, one of the best pilots, who had even defeated Frost at times, though never alone. And Frost had made him squeal like a pig and beg like a whore... truly, what fufillment could be better, save that of doing it to the Boytoy and Pink, a pleasure now forever denied him by the Boytoy's laxity! Good mood soured by the thought of Pink laughing at him, safe beyond the veil of death, Frost's face twisted into a rictus snarl.

He dashed the scalding hot contents of his coffee cup across the laid open flesh of Athrun's face and chest, the liquid hissing as it dribbled down his bare pectorals and towards the morass of crusting blood that covered his groin. Athrun groaned feebly, but did not regain consciousness, his strength all but exhausted merely by the act of living. Frost reflected that perhaps he shouldn't have added bleach as his creamer, since that was bound to sting a little on Loser's open wounds. Personally he'd enjoyed the crisp, acidic taste it had added to the black coffee... and the teensy fact that it was poisonous if ingested by humans wasn't exactly an issue for him, his internal nanobots could break down pretty much anything he could fit or pour down his throat. Frost shrugged and inverted the cup, delicately pressing it into the gore swamp of Loser's groin, over his balls and prick, pressing and holding until the blood recongealed and held the cup in place. Had to have some modesty after all... there was enough of his internals on display, no reason to have his dick hanging loose like a tomato-basil smeared pasta noodle, now was there? That would just be disgusting.

"I came down here to tell you that we're done. I can't stand living with you any more. It's just not working out between us, I'm sorry. Its not you, its me. I just need to... expand my horizons... find out who I really am. So I'm leaving you. Okay, fine, yeah, there is someone else special to me. You found me out. Someone who can satisfy me more than you can, Loser. Someone who makes me feel happy. Secure in who I am. Someone who makes me feel special. You can keep the cat, I couldn't catch it. But the car is mine. It was fun while it lasted, but its time for us both to move on to bigger and better things." Frost turned for the stairs, sniggering. He put one foot on the stairs and then turned back to Athrun and blew him a kiss. "I'll always treasure the memories we created together. But this is goodbye. We're breaking up. Don't call me." It being all he could do to hold down his howls of laughter, Frost scampered up the stairs for breakfast. He had a full day ahead of him. Behind him, he left a dark room with a man more dead than alive nailed to one wall, the floor slick with excrement and bile.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Secret Stormhound Safe House, Morning, November 1st**

Kira fluttered his eyes open and winced and groaned at almost the same time. His mouth felt fuzzy and raw and tasted heavily of bile, the skin on his body felt tight and sensitive, especially across his chest, like he was wrapped a bit too tightly in cellophane wrap. Trying to take a deep breathe was impossible, as soon as his lungs expanded past a certain point, red hot agony lanced through his chest, it felt like his ribs were about to fly apart into a billion pieces! Even when his eyes were fully open, his vision was blurry and the ceiling seemed to have a nasty tendency to rotate disconcertingly, and for one of the first times in his life, Kira felt loggy and lethargic, even though he was fully awake. Those were some damned powerful drugs they had shot him with...

His mind re-engaging, spurred by the sudden flashes of memories of what had happened the night before, Kira tried to sit up, before the searing pain in his chest convinced him that perhaps it was better to lie down. By tilting his head on his neck, and lifting the sheets with careful but still jerky motions of his sore arms, Kira discovered that his chest was tightly wrapped with tape and bandages from just below his armpits almost all the way down to his hips, which accounted for the tightness and difficulty expanding his lungs he'd experienced. The side of his neck twinged, and he brought a finger up to brush along a wide circular bandage pressed against the juncture of his neck and shoulder. That was where he'd been tasered, if he remembered correctly. Everything was a little hazy, not just from the injuries, but from the intense emotions which had powered him into a Seed Rage. He was used to the sensation... sometimes everything in a Seed Rage came back crystal clear, other times he only had vague impressions of what he'd been doing, exactly. It all really depended on what kind of emotions pushed him into it.

Laying his head back on the pillow of the hospital esque bed he was lying in, surrounding by various monitoring equipment, though only a single IV line was attached to his arm, feeding him fluid nutrients, and a heartbeat moniter clipped to one finger, which only made sense. They'd pumped him full of a hell of a lot of extremely powerful tranquilizers, they wanted to make sure his heart didn't stop. A part of him almost wished it had, at least then he could have been with Lacus, Akira and Aoi again, and not stuck back in a life that made no sense, mistrusted by his friends, accused of unthinkable crimes, basically alone against the world. But the flash of self pity vanished in a matter of moments. Bad as his life was right now, he couldn't just end it. He had something he needed to do first. He had to find out who'd killed his family. And he had to bring them to justice, whatever the cost might be. Even if, at the very last, he had to dispense that justice himself, without regard to the law. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but he found he was prepared to take that step if confronted with it.

Because somewhere deep inside, that part of Kira Yamato that had so obstinately clung to his oaths not to kill, his strict code of morality, had burned to ash along with Lacus and the kids in that fire. It had been as much for not disappointing Lacus as for salving his own conscience that Kira had adhered so zealously to that long ago commitment, and with her gone now, Kira found he wasn't strong enough by himself to uphold what so many people considered his most defining characteristic. Probably also had a lot to do with the fact that Lacus and the children had been murdered, not accidentally killed. Such things could change even the most kindhearted of people. Kira would never seek out an armed conflict, or life or death situations. But if a life or death situation, an armed conflict, came to him now, he would not hesitate to respond with his full ability, to the mortal detriment of anyone in his path. Lacus was dead, his moral balance starting to wither without her to nourish and encourage him. No more Mr. Nice Kira.

Something which Alkire and Raine had no doubt realized, somewhat belatedly, by now. Kira sighed and closed his eyes, hoping he hadn't hurt them too badly, he just couldn't remember specific details about the fight, other than that he'd lost, obviously, but not before taking down several of his assailants. On the other hand, he couldn't exactly muster it up inside himself to feel sorry over what had happened. He did not think he was wrong to have reacted the way he had. Or if he was wrong, then Alkire and Raine were equally wrong. Mustering his nerve, Kira slowly inched himself upright into a sitting position, leaning against the wall behind the head of the bed, by the end of which simple movement he was sweating and gasping with pain from his chest. He'd been hurt worse than he'd thought, but all the same, the pain had the sharp, immediate sensation of a minor injury, just a lot of them, and Kira felt pretty confident that in a week or two, he'd hardly even feel a twinge.

He looked around the room he had awoken in, seeing a drape covered window in the wall to his left, and a large and very strong and secure looking door in the wall to his right. The room was hardly decorated at all, just light beige painted drywall and some creamy colored wallpaper bordering the ceiling and floor. It looked like a room in an apartment before anyone had moved into it, spotlessly clean and just... empty-neutral. Except for the not so unobtrusive video cameras on armatures that hung in the corners of the room from the ceiling, so that the bed he was lying in was covered from at least four different angles. Also, something about the almost antiquated fire suppression sprinkler system in the ceiling made Kira think that it was designed to spout more than just water or fire retardent foam, though he couldn't place his finger on the exact thing that had tipped him off.

Kira was in the process of working up the nerve to swing his legs off the side of the bed, in preparation for standing up, when there came the sound of multiple heavy bolts sliding and clicking from the direction of the door, which then swung open with surprising quietness, since it had to be at least two inches thick of reinforced armor steel. The person that came through the door wasn't one of the people Kira was exactly glad to see even in the best of circumstances, and he could not help a slight tightening of his lips and eyes in trepidation as Cyprus Finch shut the heavy cell door behind him. Because that was what this place was, Kira realized, a cell, a comfortable one perhaps, but a prison cell all the same, and built to excessive standards at that. You'd need military grade explosives to get that door open without the key sequence.

For perhaps the first time since he ever met the man, Kira noticed that Cyprus was completely unarmed, not even a pocket knife or a pencil in his possession, and while that would have reassured many people, to Kira it almost felt like a slap in the face. If even Cyprus Finch didn't trust him enough to not try and attack and take away a weapon then... Cyprus seemed to notice the slight change of expression on Kira's face, and he almost smiled for a moment. "Its not like that, Mr. Yamato. Security protocols demand that all visitors must be totally unarmed, its nothing personal. Besides, in your current condition, there is a fairly good chance I could cripple or kill you with my bare hands, if it became necessary."

"You certainly are reassuring." Kira commented, a bit sourly, though in truth he was relieved to be back on familiar ground with Cyprus.

"And even if you did overwhelm me, there's nowhere for you to go." Cyprus continued, ignoring Kira's jibe. "You saw the door, and the window is three inch thick bullet proof plexiglass. The walls, floor and ceiling are reinforced like the door, and you are being constantly monitored by a detachment of four Stormhounds. A further two Stormhounds patrol the hallway outside, fully armed and armored, with authorization to use deadly force if required. Furthermore, as you have no doubt noticed, the ceiling fire suppression system has been modified, and any escape attempts will only result in the room being filled with an anasthetic gas that can overwhelm even your body chemistry with a minute or two of exposure."

"You could have just said, "stay put in this room and don't try and escape." Kira pointed out. "By giving me all that detail, its almost like you're begging me to try and think of a way around it."

"In happier times, that might even be something I ask of you." Cyprus answered, completely serious. "I merely wanted to illustrate that this room has been designed to be secure even against an Ultimate Coordinator, or so we should hope."

"So you think I did... that... to Cagalli and Athrun also?" Kira asked, somewhat despondently. "I'm not crazy! I would never..."

"I know you wouldn't. Its not in your character." Cyprus cut him off. "I could perhaps see you killing somone by accident, or in the flames of angry passion. But to cold bloodedly infiltrate the Pacifica, abduct the Ambassador and assault the Queen... no, you would have chickened out. And going after the Crown Prince? Not in a million years. Even if you have become unbalanced due to the loss of your family, a sentiment I can more easily emphasize with than you can likely imagine, you are still Kira Yamato at heart. A bit darker perhaps, but you are still and always will be, the insufferable idealist, Kira Yamato." Cyprus's mouth almost twitched in another smile. He watched Kira open his mouth. "Of course I have faith in you, Mr. Yamato. There is a lot about you I don't like, a lot I would change if I could. But I know you, I've studied you, and I would sooner suspect myself than suspect you in this fucked up situation we find ourselves in."

"Are you sure you aren't actually psychic?" Kira asked with a weak smile.

"Coming from an actual psychic, I think I'll take that as a compliment." Cyprus shrugged and turned back towards the door. "Now that I've come and talked with you, I am even more totally sure that you are not our culprit, Mr. Yamato. I apologize for the circumstances that brought you here, and I must regretfully inform you that there will be consequences for the crimes of resisting arrest and assaulting federal officers. But I can also assure you that I am hot on the trail of the psychopath attempting to frame you for the heinous acts of last night, and, God willing, I will have him in custody and you exonerated by tomorrow morning. After that, we can perhaps see what we can work out for a covert investigation outside of Orb's borders. You should have come to me directly about that, I am much less likely to balk over legalities than your friends."

"Why?" Kira asked, stunned by this level of support from a man whom he never would have described as a friend.

"Is it so strange to think that Lacus Clyne could be a deeply meaningful person to someone such as me?" Cyprus replied softly. "The world is a darker, uglier place without her in it. Aside from that, she was a personal friend of Wrenn's. And Akira was very special to Violet. Though your family was the one that died, my own cries only slightly less hard than you. I'm not the sort of man to stand by idly while my family is distressed. You have all the makings of a good avenger, Mr. Yamato. But you should really leave that sort of thing to those of us with less in the way of purity to lose. Revenge is a victory with no reward, take it from someone who knows, who has been down that path more times than he would like to remember."

"I was once accused of vigilantism." Kira answered slowly. "At the time I was offended, but right now, I'm comfortable with that label. In all likelihood, the people I'm after are beyond the reach of the regular justice system. The only way they could possibly see justice is at the hands of someone willing to break laws in order to enforce them." Kira skwered Cyprus with his gaze, and for once, it was Cyprus who looked away first. "I cannot delegate this to others, Cyprus. This is my choice, my own mission. You say I should leave it to the impure? I disagree. I, who has purity to spare, am the right one for this task. You who have already sacrificed so much of your purity, should hang tightly on to what you have left. Because you know that when its gone, getting it back is almost impossible."

"You may have something with that, Kira." Cyprus acknowledged with a brief bow of his head. "But first things first... you stay here, under survellience, while I track down that psycopath. Once your name is clear, we can work out the particulars of hunting down and punishing those that murdered your family. Its a lot to ask, I know, but I need you to be patient for a while longer."

"I'm really not in shape to go running off anywhere right now anyway." Kira tried to smile, but the expression wouldn't come to him. Cyprus just nodded and went to the door. "Cyprus..." Kira called out, drawing the Stormhound's gaze one more time. "Don't go easy on the bastard." Kira requested.

"He threatened my daughter." Cyprus replied, and Kira felt goosebumps crawl over his arms at the Stormhound's tone. "The last person to threaten a member of my family ended up pinned to my foyer wall with a sword through his gut. That one got off lightly." Cyprus waved at the cameras and the door opened from the other side, courtesy of Glory, with two wary Stormhounds keeping their guns trained on the doorway. Faith of their commander or not, the Stormhounds weren't the type to take chances with anything. Kira watched the door ease shut and lock close with heavy thumps and clicks, and for all that he was being imprisoned in a jail cell, he felt like a weight had been taken off his shoulders. He felt almost... at ease... knowing Cyprus was throwing his all in hunting down the real perpetrator of those horrific acts. As long as Cyprus was on the job, Kira knew he was well on his way towards being free and clear.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Outside the Secret Stormhound Safe House, Morning, November 1st**

From the concealment of a disgustingly clean alleyway, Frost watched Grey and his man-bear-ape of a second in command leave the otherwise inauspicious condominium building and clamber into the man-bear-ape's late model sports car, with Grey in the passenger seat. It seemed faintly ludicrous that such a gigantic man could drive such a relatively small car with any degree of comfort, but perhaps the interior was modified for his size. It was an irrelevant thought anyhow. Frost made sure to keep himself out of easy line of sight of Grey and his buddy, using his psychic senses to monitor the man-bear-ape's attention sphere. He tried to do the same thing to Grey, but for whatever reason, Grey didn't show up on his senses, not even a ghost of a reflection. Which was too bad, he'd really been looking forward to discovering what manner of beast Grey would appear as on that plane. It was a conundrum he'd have to work on solving later, right now he had other things to do.

The memories he'd leeched from the Pacifica Stormhound, the one known as Carome, which was a idiotic nickname if Frost had ever heard one, were coming in very handy for prosecuting his punishment of the Boytoy and his friends. As a trusted Stormhound, Carome had access to all sorts of interesting tidbits of information in his memories, such as the location and entry codes for this covert holding facility for instance, or the location of Grey's private home, or the comm channels and codes used by the Stormhounds, which had allowed him, with a little modification of some household computers, to listen in on them bringing in the Boytoy, plus lots of details on things like Lexi, the projection girl he'd talked to in the kitchen and the larger socio-political situation of the world. Frost watched the silvery sports car roar away from the curb, and he waited for a few more minutes in the alley to make sure they were really gone, off on whatever errand Grey had assigned himself.

Satisfied that Grey was gone, Frost slouched out of the alleyway and did his best to casually wander over to the condominium building, despite the building, aching desire to just rush in and get to work. The outside of the building was watched and monitored too, so he needed to be circumspect for the time being. Wouldn't do to alert Grey so soon. For today's opening cermonies, Frost wore new sunglasses that wrapped around the front of his face, as well as a high collared coat and a large hat to cover his head. The coat was hot in the sunlight, but such a mere physical discomfort was not one that even really registered with Frost.

He didn't see or especially feel any signs of alarm from inside the building as he finally reached the threshold, the six attentive and wary minds inside still mostly quiescent, focused on their duties, unconcerned with the view from the exterior cameras. And why should they be? The front door would not have been out of place on a bomb shelter, though it didn't look it. You'd need a heavy armored vehicle, a lot of explosives, or a Mobile Suit in order to force your way inside, and the coat wearing dude leaning against the front wall was none of those things. Probably just a hungover partygoer from last night, staggering home. Which wasn't to say they weren't watching him, they just weren't concerned with him. Not even when he began tapping at the outdoor keypad that would operate the door. For one, the code to get in was ten digits long, it wasn't something that was going to get accidentally input by button mashing. For another, even if the correct code was put in, a audio password checked against a voicebank of the Stormhounds was needed to further proceed.

All the same, they didn't exactly want some random stranger just standing there trying to get into an apartment he obviously didn't realize wasn't his, since this was supposed to be a secret holding facility, the less other people hung around, the better. The last thing they needed was the guy calling friends or a locksmith or something to try and get into "his" house. So one of the Stormhounds from the monitoring room, who was dressed in civilian clothes for situations exactly like this, got up and went to the door to chivvy the confused man away, using a comm system built into the door to make it sound like he was shouting out through a regular door, rather than a reinforced armor door almost four inches thick. The stormhound had just activated the system and was clearing his throat to adopt the tone of a sleepy and irritated resident, when the outer door made a muted series of clicks and clunks as its locking systems disengaged, courtesy of Frost inputting the numerical code and mimicing Carome's voice outside.

Caught slightly off guard by the door suddenly unlocking, the Stormhound was rasing one hand to his collar communicator while drawing his pistol with the other hand, when the door, which easily weighed close to two tons, slammed open hard enough to knock the Stormhound behind it backwards onto his ass. His eyes widened as he saw a blur of motion charging through the doorway, but his pistol was only halfway raised when a clawed hand scythed around and ripped the top half of his skull right off the rest of his body, his eyes rolling wetly out of bisected sockets, grey-pink brain matter exploding across the floor in a fountain of blood. Frost hurled the fragments of skull in his hand against the wall, where they shattered like glass, sending scraps of scalp fluttering like organic confetti. Knowing that speed was key, that the monitoring room would have registered the opening of the front door, Frost raced through the spartan interior of the holding facility until he reached the door that Carome's memory indicated led to the monitoring room.

It was closed, and required another passkey to get in, but Frost didn't have the time to dredge up the password from Carome's fading memories. He shoulder charged the door with all his power and speed behind him, slamming into it hard enough to knock a normal person unconscious, and break most of the bones in their shoulders and chest. The reinforced door shook and dented, but held, and Frost staggered backwards, the skin of his shoulder bruised and split, before healing shut after a few thin trickles of blood. Growling, Frost charged again, leading with his other shoulder, worsening the dent, and bending the frame of the door somewhat. Third time broke a hole through the center of the door, and from there he reached his hands in and ripped the door back towards him, the metal finally giving way as it warped back to true and then beyond. The process had taken perhaps four seconds of time.

All the same, when Frost burst through the remains of the door, he caught an explosive linear assault rifle bullet right to his left breast, flesh and gore splattering from the wound even as the kinetic force half twisted him to one side, making him stagger. But stagger wasn't stopped, and Frost powered on, his wound already scabbing over, and tore the rifle out of the Stormhound's hands before he could pull the trigger again. Twisting the weapon barrel into a U type shape, Frost hurled the weapon across the room and into the back of the neck of the Stormhound trying to call for help to the National Palace, breaking his neck with a gunshot SNAP. The third Stormhound tried to bring his rifle to bear, only to get picked bodily up and hurled into the ranks of monitors and computers that serviced the camera systems of the facility, throwing up a shower of sparks and shattered glass amid the crackle of popping bones.

The first Stormhound, the one who'd first shot Frost, now hand his pistol in hand and was fumbling for his knife in the other, at least until Frost turned back to him and physically ripped his gun hand off his wrist with a blurring sweep of one hand. The Stormhound stared dumbly at the ragged, gory fountain his wrist had shockingly and inexpicably become, hot blood spraying across his assailant's demonically grinning face. He was still staring when that blurring hand came back, now a fist, and cannoned into the lower side of his jaw and had, breaking the spine and cleanly disconnecting his skull from his spine. The Stormhound crumpled, his mind dissolving away, leaving Frost victorious for the moment, though the man he'd thrown into the computers was still alive and semiconscious. Stripping the pistol from the severed hand, Frost held the firearm disdainfully, even as he turned to face the two hallway Stormhounds as they tried to rush in on his flank. Unlike their comrades, these two were fully armored and armed, helmets and all, and they were ready for a fight.

That was all well and good, but they were ready for a fight against a HUMAN opponent. They were in no way prepared for Frost. One Stormhound staggered, suddenly assailed with stunning amounts of pain that seemed to envelop his whole body at once, like fire coursing through his blood, as nightmarish visions of death and despoilation filled his thoughts. His partner got off a burst of rifle shots with her linear rifle, but they chewed fruitlessly into the walls and ceiling as the target impossibly ducked right under and away from her line of fire, practically dodging her bullets with pure speed, before firing a pistol into her chest from less than six inches away. Her armor stopped it, of course, but the impact still felt like a hammer blow in her gut, and was followed up by four more in quick succession, which sent her stumbling backwards, choking for breath.

Turning to the Stormhound he'd psychically distracted, Frost tossed the pistol into the air, and then brought both palms together, one on either side of the Stormhound's helmet, and crushed inward until the skin of his palms touched each other, squishy with pulped organ gruel. He snatched the half spent pistol out of the air and fired it almost nonchalantly behind him, four hollow point bullets slamming into the whimpering Stormhound lying across the monitoring systems, blasting fist sized wounds in his unarmored chest and exploding the back of his skull, painting the sparking computers with thick red fluid. Dropping the spent pistol gratefully, Frost turned back to the last remaining Stormhound with a pleased grin on his face. She pointed her rifle at him, but he slapped it out of her hands like it was a toy. Her pistol came out next, and he even let her fire it, before blocking the path of the bullet with one palm. The skin and meat of his palm splattered away, but his QC infused bones repelled the bullet like it was made of foam.

Frost reveled in her shock and fear as she saw her flattened bullet drop to the floor, leaving the dully glinting material of his palm bones unmarred, dark red scabs and replacement flesh already starting to form across the bare bone. It was ruined somewhat by the full face mask so he couldn't see her expression, but the flavor of her mental emnations more than made up for that. Her pistol shook in her hands, the muzzle only a few inches away from Frost's palm, as he stood there and looked at her with a growing smirk on his face. "Go on then. Do it. You know you wanna. You know its useless, but you know you wanna..." He encouraged her. When she steeled herself, he felt it, and so when her pistol suddenly leapt upwards and she fired a round right between his eyes, it was simplicty itself to cock his head to the side just enough for the bullet to graze past him. Not that a bullet between the eyes would have stopped him, not from her dinky pistol anyway, but the facial damage would have been inconvenient for the rest of the day.

She did fold up so nice and soft against his fist when he buried it in her gut, his fingers ever so slightly clawed so they could dig through her armor vest and into the skin of her stomach, tearing the flesh and spilling warm blood down her front as she staggered and fell over against the wall, making gagging and choking sounds and writhing in agony. Her pistol clattered to the floor by her side and Frost towered over her triumphantly for a moment, before turning back into the monitoring room, knowing that she was inching towards her gun yet again even as he did so. He pulled the corpse off the monitoring systems and did his best to wipe away the blood, but there was so much of it, he mostly just smeared it around. The Boytoy was alert and awake, unable to hear what was going on in his soundproofed cell, but the Boytoy was sensitive to pyschic energy as well, and had no doubt felt Frost exercising his powers, even if he obviously didn't recognize who exactly it was.

Eying his nemesis for a moment, Frost stabbed down with a single finger on a button labeled "deterrent", and activated the jail cells anti-escape measures, sleep gas sprayed from the ceiling vents and fire system. The gas cloud filled the room in seconds, a slightly purplish haze that occluded easy vision in the room. Frost flinched aside once more as the female Stormhound fired at him again, lying sprawled on the floor in the doorway, a puddle of red leaking out around her belly, her abdominal wall torn open by his fingertips, the only thing keeping her guts in her belly being the fact that she was lying on her front with her arm against her stomach. The bullet cracked into one of the monitoring screens, shattering it in a corona of sparks, and Frost turned a patiently predatory gaze over on the Stormhound. "Wait your turn, darling." Frost admonished her with a chuckle. She didn't take his endearment so well, dropping her pistol and snatching out a tear gas grenade, which she rolled across the floor at him until it thumped into his feet. With her helmet on she was immune of course.

Sighing and shrugging with mocking resignation, Frost bent over and picked up the sputtering grenade, inserting the gas spewing end into his open mouth as the grenade coughed and hissed its payload of whitish irritant vapor directly into his mouth and down his throat. To the Stormhound, he looked like a college student huffing an entire can of whipped cream on a dare, and seemed about as bothered by the ordeal, despite the fact that he was inhaling enough tear gas to incapacitate over a dozen people. The grenade petered out after about ten seconds, and Frost discarded the empty canister with a forced belch, wisps of tear gas escaping from his nostrils and between his teeth. "Do you have anything in mint flavor?" Frost requested irreverantly, meeting her incredulous stare. Knowing that it would take the Boytoy a minute or two to succumb to the sleepy gas, Frost figured he had some time to play with this one.

She made a go for her gun again, only to screech in pain as his heel came down on her palm and mashed her hand and fingers flat, grinding them against the floor until her fingerbones were nothing but pinkish grainy smears on his shoes. She howled and sobbed with agony, drawing back her maimed hand even as she clutched frantically at her opened belly with her uninjured arm. Frost rolled her over with his toe, even as she tried to writhe and kick away from him, he stood over her and then knelt to straddle her chest, pinning her down with his weight. Almost gently he divested her of her helmet, revealing a taut face turned white from pain, blue eyes with mousy brown hair, probably about his biological age. Not pretty in the traditional sense, her face a bit scarred up, but attractive to a certain subset of men who liked tough chicks, or so Frost assumed, considering her mind was focused on her husband right now. She thought she was going to die in the next few moments, the silly girl. Where was the rush after all? The Boytoy could wait a few minutes.

"Generally this is the part where I would tear your pants off and rape you." Frost pointed out in a whimsical tone of voice. "And then tear out your throat, or crush your skull, or rip your heart out of your chest when I was done." He let her register that for a few moments, feeling her hate and disgust well up inside her. "But I'm not going to do that." He added, feeling confusion replace some of the disgust. "No, I'm going to violate you so much more horribly than merely sexually." Frost sneered at her, reaching behind himself to push her good arm out of the way. Loops of intestine bulged at the rip he'd made in her gut, and he delighted in the smooshy feeling as he forced his fingers and then his entire hand into her lower abdomen, slippery, slimy folds of muscle and organs squelching around his wrist as he probed deep inside her. She gasped and groaned, eyes rolling up as her body flopped and jerked beneath him. It was unexpectedly stimulating, and he ended up unzipping and releasing his satisfaction on her neck and face when the feeling grew too great.

Pleasantly and unexpectedly satiated, Frost stood up, his arm from midforearm down soaked with her gore, and stuffed himself back into his pants. Coils and loops of intestine puddled in her lap and dripped down into the crook between her thighs, and her breathing was becoming hitching and shallow as blood loss started to take its toll, her white face splattered with more white from his appreciation. "I'm not the sort of man who just gets off and gos. I appreciate my little partners." Frost informed her reassuringly. "You gave me a good time, so I'll give you a gift in return." Frost bent back down and unclipped another tear gas grenade from her chest webbing. "Most women don't like the taste of semen, so let me cleanse your palette for you." Frost offered. He barely even got a moan for a response. "I won't take no for an answer. Its only the proper thing to do, give you something to wash out your mouth." Frost admonished, his grin twisting into a rictus as he yanked the pin and then forced the cylindrical grenade into her mouth, shattering teeth, squashing her tongue, and completely blocking her thoat as the tear gas began discharging. He didn't stop until the canister was wedged halfway down her neck, making her throat bulge.

Frost stepped back, and hummed along to her gurgles, admiring the puffs of white smoke that plumed from her nostrils and escaped around the ragged stumps of her teeth, her jaw broken and hanging open and dislocated by his efforts to fit the canister into her mouth. "That one looks like a kitty cat. And that one's a tree. And there, that's a angel. You're so talented, I wish I could blow smoke shapes!" Frost told her, pointing out the imaginary shapes in the smoke as he crouched down and listened to her expire. It took a little bit longer than he'd expected, almost two minutes for her to choke to death in horrific agony as tear gas poured down her throat, to the point where wisps of vapor were starting to puff out of her torn open belly and intestines by the time she flopped and twitched her last. Of course he'd made sure to prevent her from blacking out until the end, drinking in her agony and storing it in his memory banks for use as a future weapon. And just because he enjoyed it, enjoyed experiencing death secondhand for a change.

Amusement finished, Frost opened the door to the Boytoy's cell and dragged the unconcious Boytoy out. The temptation to harm him was almost overwhelming, but Frost reigned himself in at the last, consoling himself with the knowledge that he WAS hurting the Boytoy, and in a way far more profoundly than a mere physical injury. He dragged the Boytoy to the control room, making sure to roll him in the blood and gore to get him good and dirty, before depositing him outside the door to the control room. Taking up the rifles and pistols the Stormhounds had tried to use, those that weren't broken that is, Frost hosed down all the electronic devices in the room with a hail of explosive bullets, firing over two hundred bullets into the monitoring system alone until he was positive it was destroyed. Then he went to the closet that sufficed as the backup data storage for the facility and shot that up too. Reasonably sure that no records of his visit or even much of the previous day since the Boytoy arrived were still intact, Frost returned to the Boytoy, who was still sleeping soundly and would probably be out for a few hours yet.

Touching his plam to the Boytoy's forehead, Frost delved into his memories and called forth a dream. Not a nightmare, not at all one of those. Not in a traditional sense anyway. Frost found the Boytoy's happiest memories and stitched them all together in a looping replay of utmost pleasure. Because he knew the Boytoy, knew that pain and suffering and horror would only go so far with him. He knew that the worst pain in the world would be giving Pink back to the Boytoy only to have him lose her all over again when he woke up. Hoisting the slumbering and smiling Boytoy up onto his shoulders, Frost glanced around the ruin of the holding facility and found himself grinning as well. This had been a pleasant warmup, but the real fun was still ahead. Where there was a daughter, there had to be a mother somewhere, and if the women was able to put up with Grey, then that was definitely the sort of woman Frost had to meet for himself.

"Mmm... Lacus... yes..." Boytoy mumbled dreamily as Frost stalked out the door, having used the Boytoy's bedsheets to wipe as much blood and guts off his clothing as possible. He had a change of clothes in the car he'd taken from that suburban household, but there was no sense in both of them looking like rejects from a slasher movie for the brief walk to the car. The blood and guts on the Boytoy was important, Frost needed that to dry so that the Boytoy could be linked to the bodies at the facility. But if he was going to bluff and sweet talk his way into Grey's house, he wasn't going to have a chance if he looked like he'd just come from a slaughterhouse. Ah, keeping up appearances was so damned annoying sometimes! But this should be worth it. It had BETTER be worth it.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Finch Household, Late Morning, November 1st**

With a audible sigh of relief, Wrenn turned off the vidcomm screen and leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms over her head, feeling the tension leave her back in a few sharp pops and clicks. Meetings with agents and producers and venue owners were a fact of life for a performing artist, especially one as famous as Wrenn herself was. Or had used to be, as she'd seen a relatively steep fall off in her fanbase in the past few years, as more and more of her time was tied up in her family and less and less was left over to Avaunte Noctem and her music career. She still did the occasional reunion tour sort of thing, and plenty of charity concerts, but those didn't generally pay out much, and usually had her doing covers of other people's songs rather than producing new work herself. It was more or less exactly as Lacus had warned her it would be, trying to balance a real, productive life and a musical career, one side had to lose, and she'd chosen, just like Lacus, to neglect her music, despite how much joy it brought her.

The thought of her pink haired friend brought a twinge to Wrenn's heart, a stab of achy loneliness and sorrow. She missed her so much still, and probably would for a long while yet. Though not one of Lacus's inner circle of friends, not a part of the so called Clyne Faction, Wrenn felt that her relationship with Lacus had still been unique and special, the two of them with relatively similar backgrounds and present situations. They were both internationally famous musicians, though their styles of music were wildly different, with Lacus being an upbeat pop star and Wrenn a goth-industrial singer, they were both married to difficult men, they were both pacifists and they were both, in the end, not content unless they were doing all they could to help those less fortunate than themselves. Though she was a few years older than Lacus, Wrenn had frequently found herself in awe of and looking up to her younger friend. Perhaps not as surprising considering Lacus was almost certainly to be named "most influential woman of the century".

But for all her fame and money... Lacus had never told Wrenn how much she'd made from her own album sales, but if they were anything like Wrenn's numbers, even split five ways through the band, then money was just about the last thing Lacus would ever have to worry about... Lacus was also just about the sweetest, kindest and humblest person Wrenn had ever met. Some called her a saint, but Wrenn knew that was hyperbole. Lacus was not saintly, though she was righteous and generous to a fault. As Cy had so wonderfully said at one point in time, Lacus and Kira were that rare breed of people that could be self sacrificing without sacrificing themselves. They did good deeds, risked their lives for others, because that was what they believed was right and just, and no matter what setbacks they encountered, what tragedies came their way, they didn't let themselves become bitter or ruthless.

Up until Lacus herself, and her precious children Akira and Aoi, had themselves died that is. Being in a somewhat special and priviliged position to know more than the common person on the streets about the matter, Wrenn had heard that Kira was saying that the forest fire had not been accidental, and though he had no proof of that, Kira was not the sort to lie, even under the greatest duress he was shockingly honest with people, often to his detriment. If Kira believed foul play was at work, Wrenn saw no reason to doubt him, though the question of what to do about it seemed an open one. Wrenn had heard that there had been something of a falling out between Kira and Queen Cagalli, his twin sister, on the subject of pursuing an investigation into Lacus's death, but she didn't have the juicy details on that one. Lacus had been her primary window into the rumor and scandal of the highly powerful elite, and her only other social contact of note in Orb, Melissa Glory, was being determinedly closemouthed about things lately, which probably meant she was under orders from Cy.

Which was just one of the many irritating things about being married to a man like Cy. Not that there weren't at least as many reasons to forgive and love him of course, but all the same, he always seemd to find some new way to get under her skin. At least her life was never boring though. Peaceful, definitely, but boring... never. Especially not these last few years, raising Violet. Or, half raising her anyway, because her daughter had latched onto her father with fearsome intensity, and that sentiment was returned in kind by Cy, which never failed to bring a pleased tear to Wrenn's eyes at certain moments, when she observed the two of them together when they weren't nominally aware of her presence. Violet was much more her father's daughter than she was Wrenn's, though she did have some talent and appreciation for the performing arts, she was otherwise not a very girly girl. It was perhaps premature to call her a tomboy, but she was definitely well centered on that path already.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, if Violet wanted to follow, more or less, within her father's footsteps, then Wrenn was okay with that. A little anxious certainly but no more so than any mother would be when their precious child was interested in a dangerous career path, no matter how necessary and honorable it was. And a good deal less in some ways... if Violet wanted to grow up to be a law enforcement officer or soldier, then being trained almost every day by none other than Lieutenant Cyprus Finch himself, one of the most famous and accomplished soldiers alive, could only be to her benefit. Wrenn just focused on providing balance to Violet's life, giving her the option to pursue other things if she wanted, finding that advising was much better recieved than ordering. And in truth because of her father's training, Violet was growing up as a near perfect child, at least in a parent's perspective... hard working, polite, self sufficient as her age allowed, extremely bright, self motivated, considerate... the list could go on for a long time. Wrenn did so love her daughter, so very much.

And her husband of course, though it had been a torturous process getting him to actually formalize their relationship, despite how much they both enjoyed it once they had done so. Cy was the very definition of stubborn and his inflexibility on some matters was one of the few things that really actually bothered Wrenn to the point where they would fight over it. She was more than aware that there were details to his life, especially the early part of it before he was a teenager, that would frighten and even disgust her. That there were things he had done, that had been done to him, or that he had seen or been around that had turned him into the man he once was, and in some ways, was today. Things that would have destroyed most people. Things that Wrenn could not understand, would not have the required knowledge or experience to understand, would not WANT to have the experience or knowledge to understand. But that didn't change the fact that she wanted to know, if for no other reason than to give him some form of cathartic release, despite how much he protested he didn't need it.

Cy had once been a very bad man, or at least a man who had done very bad things repeatedly, without being too choosy about his reasons. But today he was a very good man, even if he privately didn't always believe that, and Wrenn could not imagine loving him any less than she always did. Even if he wasn't around as much as he was supposed to be, or didn't keep about half of the social appointments he made with her, and seemed actively allergic to any social outing that involved people other than her and Violet. Some women, the needier sort that required being lavished with attention from their partners, would have been driven nuts after a few weeks with Cy. Wrenn didn't rate herself as such, but she could not deny a twinge of disappointment every now and then when Cy missed a dinner date. He made up for it, his surprise visits and vacations were the stuff of feminine dreams, but she would have preferred him to be a little more family focused, rather than work focused. It was a vain hope, she knew that from the beginning, but that didn't make her hope any less.

For instance he was supposed to have had last night off, while Violet was off trick or treating with the Zala-Attha's and company, and they were going to have a romantic night to themselves, for the first time in more than a year. But he'd been working late, as per the usual, which she'd allowed for, given that it happened all the time, but eventually, around midnight, he'd called briefly to say that something had come up, and that he was sorry but they were going to have to try again another time. A part of her had wanted to snap at him, since they'd been planning this date for a while, but subtle cues in his voice and facial expression had convinced her that this was not the standard excuse. Something had gone wrong somewhere in Cy's purview and it was something he HAD to take care of. Of course that could mean anything from a training deficiency in a Stormhound to a full on national security emergency, but she trusted him to know how to prioritize by now. Most of the time.

No major announcements from the government yet, which Wrenn took to be a good sign, but then again, no sign of Cy yet either, which was less good. Even in most emergency situations, he would at least find thirty minutes to drop by the house to change clothes and give her a hug, staying at work all night was something she'd convinced him to stop doing years ago. It could be that he was just too busy, in fact that was what she was sure it was... when he was on the job, Cy always put in about 120 percent effort, it was one of the reasons all his people were so much in awe of him, but it was less awesome in her eyes. He had promised in his call to take on the task of bringing Violet home from the Zala-Attha's, which should mean that come hell or high water, he'd be home sometime in the next few hours. A promise to Wrenn was one thing, but a promise to their daughter was quite another, and Wrenn had never seen Cy fail to keep his word to their daughter, no matter what sort of hellstorm work had turned into. Perhaps that would change once Violet matured into her teens and could better understand the nature of her father's work and the pressures he was constantly under, but for now, a promise made was a promise kept.

Standing up from her chair, Wrenn wandered to the kitchen to fix herself some brunch, since most of her morning had been spent reassuring herself and making calls to various producers and agents, since she was planning on trying to release a new single sometime in the next few months, her first major musical work in almost five years, and her first time working by herself. Of course it wasn't fully by herself, she was getting lots of assistance from Lexi, enough that she was actually thinking about putting the AI's name on the production credits. Lexi had developed something of a fascination for Cy, something Wrenn could well understand, and they spent as much time talking about her husband and his friends as they did actually working on her song, which was perhaps why it was taking so long to finish, which had the producers all pissy.

While making an omelete, Wrenn peered out into the common/dining room, where the table was jumbled with notebooks and stray papers and calculators and other study type paraphenalia. Sitting at the table, her head bowed in thought, hands carefully holding a pencil and scratch paper, was Wrenn's other "daughter", actually a live in houseguest that had been more or less adopted into their family in the years she had been living with them. Wrenn knew precious little of Jean Kellson's past, other than that she was the intimate partner of one of Cy's good friends from the Isolation Era, which one he wouldn't say, though Wrenn had a fairly good idea who it was, and also why Cy wouldn't confirm it. Jean could very well be in danger if she was the girlfriend of who Wrenn thought she was, and by extension so too the rest of the household. People had come to try and steal her away before, during the Eden Disaster. Cy and his friends had taken care of that invasion, but who was to say the next one would go so well?

Jean had come to live with them because she had been injured in an assassination attempt on her boyfriend, suffering not only the amputation of both her hands, but significant brain daage that had resulted in memory loss and personality regression to that of a young child. Advances in medicine had seen her hands replaced with cybernetic prosthetics that were just as good as, if not better than, her original hands had been, and intensive rehabilitation programs had helped her begin to recover mentally as well. Not her old memories, but her cognitive functions were slowly coming back to normal. Jean had first arrived at roughly four or five year old level, and was now about ten to twelve, mentally speaking, and a very bright ten to twelve at that... major progress no doubt, but still saddening for a woman that was in her late twenties biologically and had once had a beautiful and happy, fufilling life.

Not that Jean wasn't happy here, if anything she seemed to consider it almost a paradise, and had fully integrated herself into their family, even to the point of calling Wrenn "mom" and Cy "dad", which was a little disconcerting at times. But as the years went by, Wrenn had grown to feel something of a motherly relationship to the brain damaged girl, and Cy too was fond of her. Besides just their family, Jean had made friends with a woman named Mary O'Brien, a former Orbite nurse that had been recruited by the terrorist organization The Brotherhood of Man and had in fact been one of their Gundam Pilots. Since rehabilitated herself, a process which Jean had been instrumental in, Mary had returned to the medical profession and actually worked as Jean's teacher and minder during most days when Wrenn herself was working.

At times it was enough to make Wrenn smile wickedly, having four females of various mental and physical ages in the house all at once, and poor Cy being the only guy, and though Cy wasn't the sort of man one could just boss around, when you got to know him, there was a certain amount he leeway he allowed those he considered part of his family and friends, and the four of them were experts at taking advantage of that. Wrenn grinned almost maliciously at some memories of the four of them running Cy quite ragged, before she smelled her omelette beginning to burn. In the middle of saving her brunch, Wrenn heard the doorbell ring, which was an uncommon but not unknown occurence. "I got it, mom!" Jean called from the common room, by her voice clearly eager for any excuse at all to get away from the math homework Mary had designed for her. Wrenn thought about telling Jean to be careful, but then again, if anyone could get through the autosensors in the yard and driveway without setting off an alarm, they had to be friendly. Calling their house "secure" was a little like calling a space colony "big". Just let it be said Cy had to hand mow with a weedwacker to avoid setting off the anti-personnel minefield in the yard and leave it at that.

Sliding her omelette off the grill and onto a plate, Wrenn put her skillet back on low heat to keep it warm so she could make a grilled cheese sandwich for Jean, one of her favorite snacks, and then went to go see who had come calling. Jean could answer and open the door well enough on her own, but she was still a ten year old in mind, and any sort of complex situation, such as a delivery person or even a soliciter who had the credentials to get past the autosensors, would be beyond her ability to deal with. As she turned into the foyer, Wrenn heard a delighted squeal from Jean as she opened the door and half flew down the steps to embrace whoever their visitor was, almost certainly a friend, but which friend? Usually a friend called to make sure someone was home before coming over. Wrenn quickened her steps and looked out the door, a pleased smile spilling onto her face as well, even as her heart twinged again with a reminder of sorrow.

"Well, well, Kira, its been a long time since you last dropped by for a visit." Wrenn commented, as she recognized the touseled brown hair and tall, lean frame. Kira was wearing dark sunglasses that wrapped around his head to block sunlight from getting into his eyes from almost any angle, which looked a bit odd on him, but Wrenn was fairly sure she knew the reason. Kira had been almost destroyed by grief for weeks now, his eyes had to be puffy and bloodshot as hell. Not something that would bother friends, but also not something you wanted to show to everyone on the street. Wrenn didn't know why he'd decided to drop by her house, but nonetheless she was glad to see him. And so was Jean, who had many fond new memories of Kira and Lacus coming over with Akira and Aoi and the mass play sessions that had ensued. "Its good to see you up and about." Wrenn added in a heartfelt tone.

Kira was a bit breathless and awkward in replying, though that might have had something to do with the bearhug Jean had him in, which was always stronger than she thought it was, especially with the grip of her mechanical hands. He looked a little off balance and nonplussed, surprised even, to be greeted in such a manner. "Yes." He managed at last, his voice a bit rough. "I was in the area and thought I might stop by. I've been... having some trouble connecting with my usual friends." Kira said slowly.

"Well, I'll be glad to sit and talk if that is what you want." Wrenn offered, feeling a bit honored that THE Kira Yamato, husband of her friend or not, would come to her because he needed a shoulder to cry on or a person to talk with. Perhaps it was easier with someone whom you didn't know as wlel, easier to open up and let your real feelings show. "I was just making brunch, and while I doubt I could really feed that bottomless pit you call a stomach, I might be able to take the edge off with a snack. Lacus always talked about how you were constantly hungry..." The last sentence slipped out and Wrenn paused with a stricken look. "I'm sorry."

"Do not be. I cannot be crippled by what is gone anymore." Kira shrugged, though Wrenn did not doubt that the relatively callous words masked a entire realm of hidden pain. Jean finally let go of him and stepped back, her nose crinkling in sudden distaste.

"You smell like dad." Jean complained.

"Jean." Wrenn said, with a hint of sharpness.

"Sorry, but he does!" Jean protested, before seeing the look on Wrenn's face and bowing her head and trudging back up into the house, chastened.

"I apologize, she's... well, you know how it is." Wrenn shrugged helplessly. She reached out to take Kira's hand, noting as she did so a faint familiar smell of gunpowder and sweat, which was what Jean had been referring to. Wrenn wrinkled her nose as well, but forbore commenting. It was odd to smell weapon residue on Kira, but there were any number of legitimate reasons for it to be there, especially if Kira was as active in pursuing sending out an investigation team as she'd heard, he was probably spending a lot of time at police stations and military bases lately.

Kira nodded slowly, his gaze locked on Jean as she trudged away. "Such terrible damage." Kira observed in a low voice, as if speaking mostly to himself. "He must be in agony over it." Kira added.

"Excuse me?" Wrenn asked, cocking her head in a quizzical manner. Kira looked startled, as if he hadn't realized he'd been speaking aloud. He gave her a weak smile.

"Nothing. Pardon me, but I've developed a few bad habits of late, and talking to myself is one of them."

"Don't worry about it." Wrenn assured him, guiding him into the house and shutting the door behind them. "The loss you suffered is of the greatest magnitude, I actually somewhat surprised to see you as stable as you are. I don't know of many men who would be. Don't tell him I said this, but even Cy might break if what happened to you happened to him, god forbid."

"God forbid indeed." Kira agreed, though there was a curiously flat and lacking tone to his voice, and Wrenn belatedly realized that perhaps that wasn't the best way to get him to open up about his feelings, mentioning how lucky other people were that they weren't him, no matter how strong he was. Jean had begun to tidy up her notes and school papers from the sprawl they had been on the dinner table, and Wrenn showed Kira to the chair opposite her before returning to the kitchen to get some tea and begin heating up the stove once more. She hoped Kira liked grilled cheese, but then again, from what Lacus had half bragged and half complained about before, Kira would eat just about anything put in front of him without regard to taste or delicacy. She was a few minutes into her preparations when an odd cry from the dining room got her attention, and she poked her head back into the dining room to see what was up.

Kira had gotten out of his chair and was standing by Jean's side as she sat in her chair, and for a moment Wrenn thought he was helping her with her math homework or something. But then she saw that Jean was sitting back in her chair as if pressed into it by a giant invisible hand, her head crooked almost painfully back, her eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, Kira's right palm pressed tightly against her forehead. Jean's hands were clenched tightly around her chair armrests, so hard the wood was starting to splinter under her mechanical grip actually, while her legs kicked and jerked under the table spastically. She looked like she was having a seizure of some sort, which immediately got Wrenn's heart hammering in her throat. Jean's brain damage was supposed to be stable and wasn't supposed to interfere with her body, but with damage that bad, there was no way to tell when something awful might occur! "Omigod, what's happening?" Wrenn cried, torn between a desire to go to Jean and the knowledge that she should probably be calling for emergency services.

"The damage is worse than I thought it would be." Kira said, almost contemplatively, as if he was discussing the relative merits of a piece of artwork. "But I couldn't let her keep living like this, blind to her past, a blank cipher rather than a potential meaningful code to unlock something very precious to me."

"What are you talking about, Kira?" Wrenn asked, her concern for Jean starting to melt into suspicion. Kira was acting very oddly, even more oddly than grief could account for.

"Kira, Kira, Kira... people keep calling me that. Its getting quite annoying." Kira retorted with a irritated sigh. Jean continued to thrash and twitch with her forehead all but sealed to his palm, the armrests of her chair snapping apart with splintering cracks as her mechanical hands contorted into fists. "Mmm, what strong hands you have... the better to grip me with I should hope..."

"Mr. Yamato, let go of her." Wrenn said firmly, her tolerence for weird shit now completely exceeded. "Let go of her right now."

"I'm not hurting her." Kira returned with a dirty look. "Quite the opposite in fact. Though I should perhaps revise that statement. I'm not hurting her yet. First I have to fix her, so she can truly appreciate being hurt. If I remember correctly, she likes being hurt. I once offered to hurt her if she liked it that much, since I could do so much better of a job than her boyfriend, my little brother, but she never answered me. That's very impolite, don't you think? When someone asks you a question, you should answer it."

Wrenn's indignation was beginning a quick migration towards uncertainty and a little fear. This was not just weird behavior, this was completely alien behavior for the Kira Yamato she knew. It was like there was a different person inhabiting his body, wearing him like a mask. But that was impossible, wasn't it? "The truth begins to dawn." Kira commented cryptically, as he at last withdrew his palm from Jean's forehead, letting her slump forward onto the table, her breathing shaky and irregular.

"You should leave." Wrenn said, trying to make her voice stay steady. "You should leave now, or I'll call the police."

"Oh no. Not the police." Sarcasm dripped from every word of Kira's, or whoever it was, voice like syrup from Jean's breakfast pancakes. On the table, Jean stirred, slowly levering herself upright, a lost and confused look on her face. But Wrenn's heart lurched, because it wasn't the expression of a child, it was the look of a woman who had just woken up from a very long nightmare and was finding the world had changed around her to the point of near incomprehensibility. "And the sleeper doth awaken at last." Kira said almost jovially. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Jean."

"Where is Ash?" Were the first three words to leave Jean's mouth, and those three words were enough to confirm the impossible in Wrenn's eyes. Somehow, someway, Kira had given Jean her memories back. Something he had never been able to do before. Something Lacus could not do. Something Lacus and Kira together, stronger than either of them were alone, could not do. Something they just didn't have the talent, the ability to accomplish. Something that was not part of their psychic purview. Something that the Kira standing in front of her had just done, casually, in the space of minutes.

"You're not Kira." Wrenn said softly, the bottom dropping out of her belly.

"Ding. We have a winner." The man who looked like Kira said malevolently, taking off his sunglasses and setting them on the table next to the bewildered Jean. Wrenn found herself staring into eyes that were so like Kira's, that gorgeous shade of royal purple... with solid GOLD metallic pupils. Kira should have had silver pupils, because he was a Latent Newtype, while Lacus and other Actives, at least those affected by Green EDEN, had gold pupils. "Care to guess what your prize is, little bird?"

"What do you want? Why are you here?" Wrenn asked, slowly edging backwards from his predators stare. "Who ARE you?"

"I am the End of All." The man smiled at her, more a baring of his teeth, like an animal threat posture. "You may call me Zacharis Frost." Frost watched as the older, dark haired woman, the one that had to be Grey's woman, gasped and flinched. Plainly she had heard his name before. That was pleasing. Ashino's little fucktoy was shivering with dread too, she obviously remembered that name, even if he did look much different now. "Been a while since Panama, eh Ashtray?" Frost winked down at her. "Put any fingernail marks in my little brother's back recently? Oh wait, you've been a drooling vegetable for the past seven years. How he must be tormented... not only did he fail to protect you then, but he's by default failed to protect you now..." Frost watched Wrenn continue to back up. "Aww, the little bird looks like she's about to take wing, abandoning her chick to the snake in the nest. Fly, little bird, fly, and you'll find I'm no snake, but an eagle instead.

"What do you want from us?" Wrenn demanded, her voice beginning to falter.

Without warning, Frost grabbed Jean by the back of the head and slammed her face first into the dinner table, hard enough to break her nose and knock most of the notebooks flying as the table tilted and groaned for a moment. Jean gave a bubbling moan of pain, slick gore spreading out in a puddle around her face as Frost kept her head pinned to the table, her hands scrabbling weakly and discordantly as she tried to brush him away or push herself up, neither with any success. "That will do for a start." Frost commented with a grin, inhaling her discomfort, shock and terror like a fine perfume. "But in truth, it only whets my appetite. Call out, Ashtray. Call out to your boyfriend to come save you. Call out to little Ashino, that red dwarf. Call out in vain... because he won't be coming. I said I would hurt you that time in the hanger. I keep my word." Frost kicked the chair out from under Jean, the legs splintering apart as he grabbed the back of her t shirt and yanked her more or less upright, with her head and upper body still pinned on the table top.

Wrenn suddenly pounced forward, smoothly and quickly, throwing an expert elbow into Frost's kidney area. She wasn't a woman of violence by inclination, but Cy had insisted on self defense courses, and since he'd offered to teach her himself, and that meant hours on hours of uninterrupted time together with him, she'd been something of an avid student. Good exercise too, great for keeping those extra pounds off. Today was the first time she'd actually needed to use those skills, the first time she'd relied upon them in a pinch... and found them utterly lacking. Her elbow slammed into his lower back, right on target, but for all the effect it had, she might as well have hit him with harsh language. He didn't even turn his head to look at her, much less gasp or fall over screaming in pain like he should have. She'd hit Cy once like that, just so she could see what it would do, and she'd almost had a heart attack when he went down like a bowling pin and started rolling around on the ground, whimpering in pain.

"Wait your turn, little bird, I won't be too long with the Ashtray." Frost growled at her, as he began ripping away Jean's clothes like they were made of thin gauze. Galvinized by his contempt, Wrenn kicked his achilles tendon with all her might, but only ended up bruising her toes in the process. Goddamn, but she'd known Kira was supposed to be tough, Cy had always said that Kira was his physical superior in most every way, but it was disheartening to see all these tried and true one hit takedown moves just bounce off him like he was some kinda machine! There was almost something unnatural about it, no matter how strong a person was supposed to be, the body had weak spots, vulnerable areas, and when hit there, even the strongest person would feel some discomfort if not outright pain. Didn't matter how big your muscles were, taking a precise hit to the back of your heel should still numb your entire leg! And Frost's muscles weren't that big! But it was like he was made of metal or stone or something, inside!

Frost continued to ignore Wrenn's efforts as he pushed Jean's legs apart with his own after stripping away her shorts and underwear, keeping her pinned facedown on the table as he loosened his own pants. It wasn't that he thought she was in any way attractive, in fact he found her quite ugly compared to his usual standard. But this wasn't about the sex, this was about hurting her, and through her, hurting his little brother, who had had the gall to parade this slut in front of his elder brothers and MOCK them! Who had the sheer nerve to think he, a BCPU, could actually have a healthy human relationship with a normal person! It was that betrayal of their nature, of their inherent essence as BCPU's, that Frost found most offensive about his misguided little brother. They were not human, they stood apart, and trying to reintegrate yourself back into the herd was one of the few things Frost would consider a crime! He listened to her whimper and beg for a few moments, glad he had been able to restore her personality. It would be meaningless to hurt her unless she knew how utterly helpless she was, how alone she was.

Seeing what Frost was doing, Wrenn reared back and kicked with all her weight and strength behind it, squarely up between his legs. Finally she got a reaction from him, though not one of pain. His face twisted in a grimace, moving normally despite taking a blow that should have left any man alive curled in a semiconscious ball on the ground, Frost half turned to her, lashing out with his hand faster than her eye could follow, his steel strong fingers closing around her neck and choking off her air as he lifted her off the ground like she was a featherweight. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, little bird." Frost admonished. "If my regular equipment doesn't work properly, then I'll be forced to improvise a way to fuck you. And I can assure you, you won't enjoy that. Even less than you otherwise would." Frost squeezed his fingers tighter for a moment, listening to Wrenn gag until he had recovered his previous hardness, before he tossed her casually away, all the way across the room, where she slammed into the wall and slid down to the floor in a heap.

Regaining full consciousness about a half minute later, Wrenn coughed and retched, her throat feeling like it had been wrapped round with bands of half molten metal, even as she became aware of a chorus of sobs and shrieks as Frost raped Jean not ten feet away, on the dining room table. Realizing that there was nothing she could physically do herself to save her adopted daughter, Wrenn crawled towards the door leading to the kitchen, where the nearest phone was. Frost seemed too involved in his violation of Jean to notice what she was doing, and though Wrenn had tears in her eyes that had nothing to do with the pain of her body and neck, she didn't let herself stop crawling as she let Jean's ravaging serve as a distraction so she could call for help. The grilled cheese was starting to smoulder on the stovetop as Wrenn clawed her way up the wall and fumbled the phone from its charging cradle, fingers desperately tapping out a number she only rarely called, Cy's work cellphone, which would actually connect her to his battle helmet if he had that on.

Wrenn was one number away from finishing the call when she heard a footstep behind her, and reflexively turned, staring up at Frost as he stood in the kitchen doorway, bare from the belly down, his groin still wet with blood and intimate fluids from Jean, who was still lying on the dining room table, apparently unconscious or passed out. Wrenn's eyes met the nightmarish eyes of Frost and she froze like a deer in a speeding car's headlights. "I told you to wait your turn, little bird." Frost rumbled. "Did that sound to you like crawl away and try and call Grey? Did it? You're starting to make me angry. Don't you realize you're the victim here, not the heroine?"

"I will never be your victim." Wrenn retorted, finding her core of inner strength and tearing her eyes away from him. "No matter what you do to me." She defiantly pressed the final number and started the call, which picked up on the first ring, as she knew it would. "Cy, help..." Wrenn began, only to have the phone spin out of her hands and shatter against the wall, courtesy of a sweep of Frost's arm. Wrenn realized with a start that her wrist was now broken, jagged splinters of bone peeking out through the skin of her forearm. The pain spread up her arm like she'd dipped it in lava and she winced and gritted her teeth as she fought to keep herself from writhing like a beached fish.

"A touching sentiment, I'm sure. I'm beginning to see why Grey allowed himself to fall for you. You're almost Pinklike in some ways." Frost told her as he crouched down next to her in an almost conspiritial fashion. "Humanity itself is my victim, you can no more excuse yourself from that fact than you can grow wings and fly from me right now, little bird." Frost reached out, slowly, carefully, watching Wrenn close her eyes as he settled his grip into the hair on her crown. "Don't you think you've been brave enough, little bird?" Frost asked, reaching up with his other hand to gently stroke the curve of her chin. "Its just you and me now, you needn't stand on pride. Its all right to be scared when confronted with a monster like me. I am going to hurt you worse than you have ever been hurt before. Your life after me will never be the same. There may not even BE a life after me, little bird. So live a little while you still can. Come on, let me hear you sob, just a little..."

"I reserve my voice for Cy and my friends. You will get nothing further from me." Wrenn declared defiantly, though her resolve crumbled a little when she saw the malicious smirk cross his face.

"That how you want it, little bird? Sing only for your mate and flock?" Frost reached up onto the counter for the knife Wrenn had used to cut bread and ham for the grilled cheese sandwhiches was lying. It wasn't a very sharp knife, but then again, that was almost more of a plus than a minus in this case. He brought the knife down and tapped the tip against her bottom lip. "Have it your way, burger king. If you won't sing for me, you'll sing for no one ever again..." And with those words, more a promise than a threat, Frost pried her mouth open and brought the knife forward and got to work. He had a lot to do, and with Grey almost certainly on the way, not much time to do it. Then again, he was one of those artists who did his best work under pressure...


	16. Best Served Cold

Author Note: Frost is evil. Perhaps that was not fully clear to some people, even those who thought so initially. All those emotions most people try to keep bottled up or controlled run rampant in him. Fear, hatred, anger, lust, cruelty, pain... these are his world, his guiding factors. I understand that what he does is queasy inducing, it is meant to be. But I challenge you to look beyond the gore and violence and perversity, to take both a step forward and contemplate the real reasons and real victim of this rampage, when all is said and done, and also to look at the bigger picture and the implications of what is happening here in Orb and how it affects the wider world. Its much more than simply the triumph of a single evil super-villian, who was in my opinion overdue for some tangible triumphs. Can't even remember how many reviews I got where people were begging to see Frost again. Well now you have, he's here, in all his terribleness. Have patience, though it may seem this arc is nothing more than the tribute to the violence and sexual perversity of one man, I can assure you it is anything but that simple. This is the Dark Kira arc and so much more besides. Look past the smokescreen of violence and try to consider all that has been set up by the events of these chapters and what they mean for the future.

Raven is alive and well, that was not her that Frost killed last chapter. There are other female Stormhounds besides Raine and Raven.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Late Morning, November 1st**

For one of the very few times in his life, Cyprus found himself wishing that it was Colonel Jones that he had as his constant partner, rather than Thomas Glory. Thomas was many things, but the Colonel had an affinity for the operation of vehicles that was second to none, and he probably would have been able to cut twenty to thirty percent off their travel time accordingly. After receiving the highly disturbing distress signal from his home phone, they had of course changed course from the upper class residential district they'd been heading toward, where the families had been found butchered earlier in the morning and done an almost total about face to head down towards the outskirts of the military harbor district, where Cyprus's home of almost twelve years standing was located. The longest he'd ever lived in a single place before in his entire life. A place he was almost shocked at times to realize he did consider his home. That safe place where he changed from Lieutenant Cyprus Finch of the Stormhounds to just Cyprus, or far more often, Cy, husband of the most incedible wife alive, father of the most wonderful daughter anywhere. The safe place that was now inexplicably threatened.

How any threat had managed to get past the autosensor array surrounding his house, only slightly less sophisticated than the one protecting the Villa Pacifica, and tied to a security system decidedly more deadly, Cyprus could not initially comprehend, but as he thought about it on the agonizing several minute long drive across the city, other cars veering violently out of their way as Thomas activated his car's emergency authority beacon, which, through Lexi, could shut down or control the autodrives of pretty much any vehicle on the road, unless they had a higher security clearance than Thomas and Cyprus, things started becoming clearer. Most such people were currently in a hospital though. Someone had likewise breached the Pacifica, which should have been impossible. Someone able to mimic Kira Yamato's genetic and biological traces to near perfection. Someone who could even fool Lexi in a short conversation, and apparently other close friends as evidenced by how close he had gotten to the children before attacking. How this criminal could have known to strike at his family, Cyprus could not figure, but strike at them he had.

He cursed himself for not warning Wrenn that there was a Kira impersonator on the loose, but even as he did so, he knew there was no way he could have warned her, not without breaching national security. Just because they were married, just because he loved her more than life itself, did not mean he could tell her secrets she wasn't cleared to know. It was something of a conflict between duty, honor and compassion, and in those situations, duty and honor tended to win, for him. He hadn't even told her that Violet had become involved, because he didn't want her to worry, especially because Violet was safe and unharmed. He'd been planning how he was going to discuss with his daughter how they were going to keep mother from worrying too much... it would not be the first time he and his daughter had colluded on such matters. He certainly wasn't supposed to be giving her firearms training yet, but she had proved she was ready and... well, daddy's little secret, right?

Cyprus knew he would not be able to forgive himself if Wrenn was hurt in any fashion, especially because of negligence, unavoidable or not, on his part. For reasons such as this, he'd once contemplated breaking off their relationship in the times of the Isolation Era... not because he didn't love her, didn't want to be with her as much as possible... but because she created a chink in his armor, a weak spot that his enemies could exploit to break him. He'd been broken before, during his upbringing with Asmodeus, and even before that. Each time he recovered by a slimmer and slimmer margin, and he didn't know how much more he could take. He'd seen what happened when someone like him broke for the last time... Asmodeus had been his mentor, his foster father, his idol even... and eventually, his dire enemy and an enemy to all who were peaceful and innocent. Cyprus knew that he too could be consumed by the need for revenge, until there was nothing left but anger and the will to kill. He'd suffered a scare when the Brotherhood had come to try and kidnap Jean, but now all his fears were finally coming true for real. Wrenn's life was in danger, because someone was trying to get at him!

In the seat next to his boss and best friend since early teenagerhood, Glory kept his concentration on the road as much as possible. Both because he was driving a sports car at close to three times the legal limit on city surface streets, and because he desperately did not want to spare even an iota of thought about the look on Cyprus's face. The Lt's eyes had done that funny fadeout to a metallic grey instead of the usual fog grey, something which Glory had only ever seen in person once or twice, and neither time was something he especially liked remembering. Cyprus called it "Focus", Glory called it "one scary motherfucking man". That look forboded someone dying, and not necessarily quickly. That look said the usual rulebook had just gone out the window, and that even the demons in hell better watch their steps and speak softly, because the Hellhound was on the prowl, and he had a thorn in his paw.

There was little need for words between them anyway. Glory had heard the call come through on the Lt's helmet just as Cyprus had, and he'd been turning the car around so hard the tires smoked even before Cyprus had his mouth open. Some stupid motherfucker had decided to go after the Lt's family, in their own home, so they were gonna go there, kill the fool and that was that. Glory had told Lexi to put out a call to the police and special response forces as a matter of procedure, but they both knew that by the time the police got there, the shooting would have come and gone. Seeing the Lt's familiarly unoriginal and shockingly normal house come into view down the street, Glory stamped on the brakes so hard he was fairly sure he might have damaged the pedal, leaving twin streaks of half molten rubber behind on the pavement stretching for almost a hundred yards as he slewed to a stop more or less in front of the house, the unholy shrieking of the locked up tires hopefully conveying to all and sundry that some serious shit was about to go down.

They kicked the doors open, ducking into their battle helmets with almost identical motions as they got out, the car's special suspension sighing as Glory shifted his close to four hunred pounds of muscle mass out of the driver's seat. The trunk of the car wasn't particularly expansive, but it was big enough to hold a small arm for both of them, plus first aid kits and other assorted tools. They already had pistols and knives, they wore them as part of their standard uniform, ditto for body armor covering the torso, thighs and upper arms, front and back. Glory took up the auto-shotgun, checking that the load was full of slugs instead of buckshot, since while buckshot was great at close quarters, it was less great with hostages and civilians sharing those close quarters. Cyprus took the linear assault rifle, the new standard rifle of the Stormhounds, and also a trio of grenades, two of them concussion/flash and one tear gas/smog. They headed up the lawn at a trot, weapons ready in their arms, eyes and helmet sensors scanning carefully as the house defenses automatically disengaged around them.

No one shouted or shot at them during the time it took to reach the front door, which if anything only made them more cautious. It could be, was even likely that the house was empty, that the threat had already come and gone and maybe even taken Wrenn and Jean with him, but they could not operate on that principle. Cyprus crouched to the right of the door, by the wall of the garage, while Glory stood to the left, gun aimed towards where the door would first open. Touching a hidden panel in the wall by his back, Cyprus opened the front door on hidden hydraulics, slamming it open with a percussive bang calculated to startle anyone inside. Much as the house was built to be a defensive fortress to prevent threats from getting in, it was also modified to allow lawful attackers to more easily flush out threats that did manage to get inside somehow, with secret passages through many of the walls, remote control of doors and lights, and hidden weapons that could only be unlocked via his own gene-prints.

There being no threats or targets in view in the entry hall, Glory maintained his covering fire arc as Cyprus dived and rolled into his foyer, staying low in a crouch as he came up to a firing stance behind one of the hallway cabinets. Again, no motion, no shouts of dismay, no gunshots. Glory stepped cautiously through the doorway, his gun always moving in counterpoint to Cyprus's, their fields of coverage overlapping slightly, Glory staying high and Cyprus staying low. The house was disturbingly quiet and filled with the stench of burning food. Bread and cheese and some sort of meat, possibly ham. Moving silently but quickly down the main hall, Cyprus doused the lights in the dining room and its adjacent rooms, the kitchen and his work-study and then flipped in a flash-bang at almost the same moment, so that even if any threats had night vision handy, they'd still be blinded and confused. The detonation of the concussion grenade and the flash of blinding light it threw off was their cue to move in, and move in they did, in a rush of boots and pointing weapons, Cyprus moving left and Glory moving right.

Both of them flicked their weapons to cover a heat source sitting or lying atop the dining room table, but though the features were blurry in thermal imaging, Cyprus almost instantly recognized Jean Kellson, the girl he'd taken as his ward for his friend Ashino, now leader of the Retributor group. She seemed to be unconscious, but she also seemed to be breathing and in no particular danger of dying, so he and Glory finished scouting and securing the room before Cyprus flipped the lights back on, his helmet lenses polarizing to preserve his vision. Cyprus heard Glory utter a gasp and a muffled curse, and the human side of his mind agreed with the heartfelt assessment, even as the rest of him stayed in Stormhound mode and began calculating a new overall picture. Jean was indeed alive, her breathing shallow and jerky, not quite unconscious so much as senseless with trauma-shock. Her clothing was in tatters, her face awash with blood from a broken nose, the fingers of her mechanical hands snapped and trickling lube fluids like sluggish blood. She was lying curled up on her front, and it was obvious to see that she had been sexually assaulted from the blood and fluids on her legs. Her eyes were open but blank and she did not register when Cyprus waved his hand in front of her face.

Pulling his helmet off so she could see his face, Cyprus took a tablecloth from Glory, who had rummaged it out of one of the cabinets lining the kitchen wall of the room, and he draped that over Jean to cover her nakedness and the damage done to her. Scant consolation he knew, but it was all he could currently offer his brain damaged adopted child. And Cyprus did know, in ways that most of his friends, even including Thomas, would never suspect in a million years. He knew far better than he ever wished he could what it felt like to be in Jean's particular situation. His hand curled into a fist and he thumped it, once, hard, against the wall, the only outward sign of his agitation that burned with a rare hot fire inside him. He knew what it was like to be pinned by someone stronger than him, which was why he'd endeavored to make himself strong. He knew what it was like to have your most basic freedom, that of your own body, taken from you by force and the how the pain from it echoed down your life for years afterwards. It wasn't something most people could get over. It wasn't something he, in his darkest moments, considered himself to be over, thus the strength of his current reaction.

Dragging himself away from the dangerous maw of his fury, feeling his ironclad discipline begin to slip away, the hard won control of decades cracked and splintered by this one horrible moment, Cyprus forced himself to turn away from Jean. Wrenn still needed his help. He checked the kitchen, his lips in a tight line, his teeth clamped down like he was trying to chew through a steel bar, but aside from the burnt grilled cheese sandwhich on the still hot electric stove, there was nothing there. His eyes did a quick, almost unconscious inventory, and he realized one of the bread knives was missing, and he could detect the faint stench of hot metal underlying that of the burned food. He had just returned to the dining room, Glory standing watch over Jean, when they both heard something from the direction of his work-study. An incoherent cry, more a mumble than anything else. Without Glory's helmet or Cyprus's Focused senses, they never would have heard it.

Though it pained him, Cyprus signaled for Glory to leave Jean behind for the moment. Her condition was noncritical, and attempting to give her first aid might only provoke an extreme reaction since they were both males. She would keep for the five or so minutes it would take for an ambulance crew to arrive. Lacking his helmet, Cyprus kept the lights on and decided to forgo the use of tear gas or his other flash-bang, also because he didn't want to chance aggravating any injuries Wrenn, if that was her in there, already had. The first flash-bang wouldn't have done much good for Jean in her condition, might even have pushed her heart into cardiac arrest from shock if they'd been unlucky. The door leading to his work-study, the room done over in traditional Japanese style, woven tatami mats covering the floor, paper and wood walls, paper lanterns concealing electric bulbs, and trophy displays staggered along the walls and scattered on stands throughout the room, weapons and armor from across all periods of history, from flint knives of stone age cultures to splinted steel samurai armor to models of modern firearms. And one or two that weren't models.

The room had been ransacked, even from the small glimpse of it they could see through the open doorway, weapons and armor torn off the walls and hurled into a pile, holes kicked in the wall, floor mats tossed aside in heaps, his heavy oak desk shattered in half and upended, the drawers all ripped out and their contents scattered willy nilly. They heard the incoherent, burbling mumble again, louder and clearer this time, and noted that it seemed to be coming from behind where the piles of tatami mats and desk were piled up. It sounded like someone was trying to talk underwater, or perhaps more accurately, with a mouth full of fluid. Neither of them needed two guesses to figure out what kind of fluid it might be. His heart aching and pounding in his chest, Cyprus forced himself to enter the room properly, diving low and left while Glory went high and right. Neither his eyes nor Glory's helmet sensors picked up any hostile movement, though in truth they weren't looking as hard as they otherwise might have.

It was tough to take their eyes off the the figure lying twisted on her back behind the ruined desk, and Glory saw, out of the corner of his eye, Cyprus almost stumble and fall as he rushed forward to Cradle his wife in his arms. Wrenn, unlike Jean, was still fully conscious. Her clothes were also torn apart and from her splayed legs trickled blood and other fluids showing that her assailant hadn't been satisifed with just Jean. Wrenn's injuries were more extensive though, she'd been tortured. Maimed actually, the tendons at her ankles, knees, hamstrings, wrists and elbows had been neatly, almost surgically slashed, robbing her of any ability to guide the muscles of her limbs, basically the equivalent of severing them from the moorings to the bone so that they flopped limply. One of her eyes was heavily blackened, courtesy of a punch of some sort and her nose was leaking blood as well. But the worst thing was her mouth, which was frothing with red gore, spilling down over her bottom lip and dribbling down her chin, her mouth working open and closed, showing the grotesque, half cauterized wound where her tongue had been cut from her mouth. Only the fact that the wound had been seared mostly shut with hot metal had prevented her from bleeding out in minutes.

Glory stood helplessly over her as Cyprus fell to his knees beside her, rifle falling carelessly to the side as he gathered her up into his arms, his face twisted and stricken with horror, fury and worry. Wrenn saw him, recognized him, her one open eye dribbling a tear as she tried to lift her hand to his face and failed, her arm twitching and jerking uselessly, her muscles unable to shift her bones coherently. Her mouth open and closed once more and she gurgled and spat blood, the noise they'd been hearing as she fought to keep from swallowing and choking on her blood. Seeing that his friend was all but disabled by shock, Glory turned his mind towards analyzing the situation. Her wounds were still fresh, less than two minutes old... the bastard could have still been tormenting her even as they were breaking into the house! There didn't seem to be any sign of the perp now though, he must have skedaddled when the front door slammed open.

Cyprus tore at the first aid kit he'd taken from Thomas's car trunk and broke it open, searching for a vial of sedatives so that he could take Wrenn's pain away while he worked on stemming her bleeding. A part of him, mostly repressed by the hurricane of emotions pouring past his failing control, noed that while her wounds were varied and serious, they seemed mostly inflicted to cripple and hurt, rather than seriously imperil her life. Cutting out her tongue could have killed her from blood loss or drowning in minutes, but the bastard had been careful to reduce the bleeding by cauterization as much as possible. Cyprus was shocked that Wreen hadn't blacked out, the practice of cauterization had killed as many injured soldiers through shock as it had saved from infection! "You're safe now." He promised her, tears streaming down his face. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... but you're safe now, Wrenn... I'm here and I will..."

Cyprus was still finishing his reassurances when Wrenn's one open eye widened fearfully and she gargled intently in her throat, her arms both twitching and trying to rise again. Senses and thoughts dulled by emotion, it took Cyprus a second to realize that Wrenn was trying to warn them about something, something behind Glory. He turned his head to shout the warning, but by then his window of opportunity had passed. The pile of weapons and armor sloughed away as the person who had cunningly buried himself beneath it rose up only two or three feet behind where Glory was standing so helplessly by. Glory saw the expression on Cyprus's face as an instantaneous chill swept down his spine and even as he told his body to turn, he knew he was far, far too late. Wrenn's positioning had been a trap, and they'd both fallen for it, allowed themselves to be distracted for crucial moments.

"GUUAGHH!" Glory screamed, his back arching and his legs twisting as he was hit from behind by an overwhelmingly powerful force. Still in his Focus, the events seemed to play out in slow motion to Cyprus... Thomas tensed, started to turn, began to arch as he was struck, and then started to scream, his entire body convulsing like he'd just been struck with a taser. And then, in the next moment after that, Cyprus saw that it was so incredibly much worse than that. Thomas's chest armor fluttered and bulged, and suddenly ripped apart over his right chest, just below his heart, and then again on his left side, a few inches below his ribcage. Blood spurted widely as two hands, fingers crooked into open palm claws, burst out of Thomas's torso, shoved entirely through him from behind, until the forearms protruded almost three inches from his shredded flesh. The hands flexed a few times, as Glory staggered but somehow remained upright, even as he vomited blood and bile into his mask, so much of it that it began to drool thickly from beneath his throat seal.

The shotgun slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered on the floor by Glory's feet as he slowly raised one hand towards the fists protruding from his torso, his armor staining itself wet and red in seconds, his boots beginning to fill with blood, as his lungs hitched and spasmed, one ruptured by the upper fist, while his intestines bunched and squirmed around the lower arm thrust through his body. Glory was just about to grab hold of that lower fist with his gigantic paw of a hand when the man behind him stepped back and ripped his arms right back out through Glory's body cavity, taking out handfuls of flesh and internal organs in the process. For a brief, Focus enhanced second, Cyprus could actually see all the way through his best friend's gut wound, before it filled with gore and internal fluids, bits of gut poking out purple and mauve through the fist sized hole. Glory swayed, his chin falling down onto his chest, his slowly rising hand inching towards his underarm pistol holster, before his center of balance gave out and he toppled over to the side like a felled tree, landing with a wet smack on his face. He did not move further.

"Well, hello there, Grey. Long time, no see." The smirking man who had been standing behind Glory said cheerfully, throwing a sloppy salute with one arm that was wet from fingertip to just above the elbow with Glory's blood.

It only took a moment for Cyprus to take in the full details of his foe, and for a brief fraction of that moment he almost thought he'd been wrong, that Kira WAS the one committing these heinous crimes. That opinion changed as soon as he met the monster's eyes. Those gold pupiled eyes, so like Kira's and so chillingly different. All at once, despite the impossibility of it all, it clicked in Cyprus's mind. The nickname was just the final confirmation. "Frost. You obscenity." Cyprus declared in his most dire tone. "How did you crawl out of the pits of hell?"

"Aww, you've stolen my thunder, Grey." Frost complained petulantly, flicking his hand and spattering droplets of Glory's blood across the room like horizontal rain. Frost pointed with his chin at the ruin of Wrenn. "She wasn't much fun either. She refused to scream for me. Now she won't be screaming for anyone." Frost crossed his arms over his chest and smirked in a superior manner. "I've said it before. You can't kill what I am. Evil will find a way. That way is me."

"Still with the insane babble I see." Cyprus began inching his hand down towards his pistol holster. He still had the fastest draw in the Stormhounds, though Alkire was a close second. A matter of half a second at most. He kept Wrenn held close in his other hand, prepared to shield her with her body if it became necessary. Thomas was lying like a log, bleeding out, and he was caught in the open, with a badly wounded hostage who couldn't move, on his knees. And he was facing off against perhaps the most diabolical madman the modern world had seen, in a body that had a known reaction speed well beyond his own. Even with the Focus.

"You know that's not going to work." Frost pointed a encarmined finger at Cyprus's pistol. The palm of that hand was all irregular and pockmarked, looking like a bullet wound several weeks after it had been inflicted.

"The only thing I know is myself." Cyprus retorted, snatching the pistol out, training it on Frost and pulling the trigger in the same motion. Frost almost blurred, even to his Focus senses, and sidestepped the point blank shot like it was a ping pong ball tossed at him underhand. Cyprus well remembered Frost's inhuman reflexes from their last personal encounter, but this went so far beyond that it was simply unbelievable. Frost of old could dodge bullets with his boosted spped and reflexes, more like make it hard to aim at him accurately, but to actually sidestep a point blank shot in the instant it was fired, that was like nothing Cyprus had ever seen before. "Myself is impressed." Cyprus had to admit, with a suddenly dry mouth. "But I had to try."

"Of course you did." Frost replied with a shrug. "That's the Grey I know. You never gave up, not even when there was clearly no way you could win. I'm glad to see you didn't die when I massacred that pretty boy president you were so in love with, dropping a building on you would just be ignominous and insulting, don't you think?"

"Why have you done this? Why didn't you just come after me directly?" Cyprus demanded in a low tone, keeping his gun pointed at Frost, though they both knew it was a mere formality by this point. "I thought you liked challenges. How could Wrenn or Jean pose any sort of challenge to you?"

"I do like challenges. But you've grown dull these past years without me, Grey. The whole world, all of Humanity, has lost its edge. I'm going to sharpen them again." Frost pointed a bloodied had at Wrenn. "She was corroding your edge, Grey, don't even try to deny it. But she can also help resharpen you. To avenge the atrocities I've inflicted these past few days, you would do anything, become anyone. You'd make dear Asmodeus look like a kindergardener throwing a tantrum. And when I woke up this morning, that was what I set out to do. But seeing you here, now, in front of me, I suddenly find myself bored with the idea. I've already done that to the other weaklings. And I hate sticking to a pattern."

"So you're going to kill me and wait to see who comes to avenge me?" Cyprus inquired. Frost broke out into a wide grin.

"That's what I like and hate about you the most, Grey. You can walk around in my head without getting tainted." Frost shook his head in admiration and disgust. "You have an impressive little pineapple of a daughter, Grey. I think I'd like to see her in a decade or so, fully fired up about avenging her parents. I gotta make provisions for future amusement you understand. One thing being dead taught me was to always plan to avoid future boredom, even if it means avoiding some fun in the present."

"So get on with it then, monster." Cyprus said, almost wearily.

"See now, I would, but a man like you, Grey, you aren't afraid of dying. Not in a situation like this. You don't WANT to die, but you can be at peace with it if you do. You're together with your formerly lovely wife, your daughter is safe, help is on the way, and you can be content bowing out in this situation. You've had a good run. You've accomplished more with your life than you've ever dreamed possible. Its been a long road from Headmistress Mueller's secret basement "playroom" in the orphanage, hasn't it?" Frost smiled slyly, basking in the dumbfounded look that stole across Cyprus's face. "How did I know about that? You've never told anyone. Asmodeus might have suspected, but he never knew. Think about it Grey." Frost tapped a sticky finger against the side of his skull. "You're a slippery one, but even the strongest castle is vulnerable when it drops its bridge to let the troops out."

"You left Wrenn here like this so I would become emotional and make my mind visible to your psychic power." Cyprus said, shockingly deadpan for a man in his situation.

"Its too late now, Grey, you can control yourself as much as you like, now that I have a handhold, you're not going anywhere. Interesting place, inside your skull. I wish I had time to work up a good nightmare for you, but time is limited, as we both know. Don't worry, I have no intention of killing you, either of you. That would be too overwrought. Too cliche. Murdered parents, faugh, at least give dear Violet an interesting backstory, right?" Frost suddenly pounced forward and tore the pistol out of Cyprus's grip, triggering a round into the ceiling in the process and breaking his trigger finger.

"I won't go quietly." Cyprus warned, his other hand slashing upwards, knife in his grip, carving a long slice across Frost's interposed forearm, cutting away a long flap of skin and meat, but skipping off the bone despite being a mono-edged weapon. Caught off balanced by the unexpected resistance, Cyprus watched the top three quarters of the knife blade go spinning away in fragments as Frost seized the blade in one hand and wrenched it apart with a twist of his fingers, which were also cut down to unyielding bone. Almost as soon as he started bleeding, the wounds scabbed over and began to knit closed, right in front of Cyprus and Wrenn's eyes. So Frost's healing ability had been upgraded significantly as well. Something to bear in mind for the future, assuming there was one, despite Frost's statement about not planning to kill them. His world exploded in stars and pain as Frost backhanded him across the face, breaking his nose and sending him slumping backwards, stunned and disoriented. Distantly he heard Frost muttering as he held his severed flap of flesh against his arm wound long enough for it to begin to heal together.

"Quiet is a relative term, Grey." Frost said, crouching down by Cyprus's side, now that his first aid was taken care of. Wouldn't do to leave a big chunk of flesh behind for the authorities to find, not with the boytoy waiting nearby about to wake up from the sleepy gas, without a eight inch long gash in his arm. "The Ashtray in the dining room gave me an inspiration earlier. I fixed her, you know, so she could better appreciate the enormity of what's happened to her." Frost gently laid his palm against Cyprus's forehead, annointing him with a bloody palm print, while he used his other hand to pummel Grey in the belly until he was breathless and writhing helplessly. "Sleep, Hellhound, and when you wake up next, it'll be like it was all a dream. A dream you can't remember. You'll be a puppy again, free of all these nasty experiences and memories. I'm not going to kill you, Grey... but after today, Cyprus Finch will be no more! Heh heh heh heh heh..."

The last sensation Cyprus felt before blackness came crushing in on all sides was Wrenn's fingers tangling with his and hanging on tight. After that, nothing but silence.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Several blocks from the Finch house, Late morning, November 1st**

Kira came to with a moan and a grunt, having been interrupted right in the middle of a very pleasant recolelction of one of his and Lacus's anniversary dates, one of the ones he ahdn't screwed up by inviting other people along. Just the two of them walking along the shore of an otherwise deserted island with the moon and stars bright overhead, him in swim trunks and Lacus in just a slip of a bathing suit she never would have been caught dead in on a public beach. That had been a night with a happy ending, and he'd just been getting to that point, Lacus's swimsuit ties coming unlaced in his somewhat fumbling fingers, when the cold light of reality shone down and dragged him from the dream. And brought with it the almost crushing realization that it had all been a dream, and that Lacus was gone, and so were the children, taken from him by the manipulations of corrupt and uncaring powers that be.

His eyes filled with tears, Kira blinked them away and slowly took stock of his surroundings, which were totally unfamiliar to him. It looked like some sort of alleyway in a residential neighborhood, large wooden fences closing off yards, bags of trash and yard leavings waiting for transferral to an Red EDEN reprocessing plant. He tried to get up and was forced to lie back down when his chest caught fire with agony, coughing thickly through a mucus filled throat and nostrils, spitting vaguely purple phlegm onto his chest and the hard concrete he was lying on. His second try, moving more deliberately, saw him reach a sitting position, and after a minute or two of getting his breath back, he used a fence to help him stand before half collapsing against it, his head spinning, and he vomited noisily against the fence, his bile coming out thin and also slightly purplish.

Kira felt much better after his stomach had finished purging whatever it was he had swallowed or inhaled, though the feeling of fiery bands where his ribs should be did not abate, at least the dizziness and disorientation was going away. He could smell the ocean quite plainly, and hear the sound of ship engines in the near distance, so he figured he must be somewhere near the harbor or military harbor. Though how he came to be here, he could not figure. The last thing he clearly remembered was... Kira realized he didn't clearly remember much of anything before waking up in his home on Serenity Island sometime the night before. There were impressions of emotions, anger, disbelief, sadness, unexpected friendship, but no details to go with the feelings, and precious little timeline. It was like his thoughts had been put in a blender and set to puree.

Keeping one hand on the fence just in case the vertigo came back, Kira half walked and half stumbled towards the end of the alley, where he could see a road with cars passing by on it. Judging by the angle of the sun and the temperature, it was sometime shortly before midday, people just getting out of work or school for lunch breaks, and traffic was starting to pick up. He could hear sirens in the distance, getting closer with every passing breath. A lot of different sirens actually... police cars, at least two ambulances and several fire trucks. Kira wondered what had happened... with Lexi in charge of most cars, car accidents were almost nonexistant these days. Maybe it was a house fire, but he didn't see any plumes of smoke. A part of him nagged that he should really get out of here and head home, but he knew he couldn't turn his back on people in need, not even if proper authorities were already on the way. He had to at least check it out.

So he reached the road and listened, letting his keen ears note the position of the sirens, both stationary and moving, and he pointed himself in the direction of the largest concentration of still sirens, the place where the moving ones seemed to be heading. Besides just the cars on the streets, there were plenty of pedestrians, and Kira had only gone a few steps from the alleyway when people started to shout and scream. He looked around for the source of the disturbance and realized that people were pointing at him and shying away. A police car roared past on the street before jamming on its brakes with a unholy shriek of grindign metal and burning rubber as it did a quick U turn and came racing back at him. Holding on to the fence for support still, Kira watched the two cops inside the car fling open their doors and half crouch behind them. One pulled his pistol and pointed it squarely at Kira, while the other took out a loudspeaker.

"You! Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!" The policeman shouted, and Kira could see the beads of nervous persperation on his forehead and cheeks, and those of his partner with the gun. Having no clue as to what was going on, Kira nonetheless complied with deliberation, having to pause to catch his breath when his ribs protested at his movements. He was dimly aware of traffic cameras on either intersection turning to regard him, no doubt under Lexi's direction, and he hoped that his plight would be communicated to the proper authorities soon, so this misunderstanding, whatever it was, could be ironed out. The one cop kept his gun pointed at Kira's face as the other tenatively came over and frisked him. Kira was going to tell the man there was no need, but given how edgy the officers were, he decided silence and meek cooperation was the best tactic at the moment. Lacus would never forgive him if he joined her in heaven after being shot by police officers for no good reason at all.

After deciding Kira was clean, the frisking officer slapped handcuffs around Kira's wrists, binding them behind his back, and then helped Kira, not gently but not unnecessarily roughly, to the back seat of the police cruiser, where he was locked in. It was only after struggling upright on the car seat and looking forward that Kira caught sight of his face in the rear view mirror, and he blanched. His face and hair was streaked and matted with dried blood and unidentifiable bits of flesh and meat. It looked like he'd just gone bobbing for apples in a tank of slaughterhouse byproducts. No wonder everyone on the street was freaking out. But how the hell had he gotten covered in blood and guts? He didn't feel injured, not anywhere except in his chest anyway. But try as he might, he just couldn't remember anything with any detail, not since last night! He hadn't felt this blurry since the last time Lacus had mind blasted him while they worked on psychic attack and defense in the post Eden Disaster days.

After some deliberation and consulting on radios out of his earshot, the police officers got back into the car, making sure the soundproofed glass between their portion of the car and Kira's was securely in place, and then they turned around once more and burned rubber for the government district, sirens wailing all the way. They pulled into the central police headquarters for Nara-Attha City and parked in the underground garage. A full SWAT team of heavily armed police officers were waiting for them there, and they escorted Kira into the bowels of the building. He made sure to give them no cause for alarm, though he hadn't the slightest clue what was happening, he'd been picked up wandering the streets covered in blood, and they were right to be wary of someone looking like that. They had him strip down in a small cell, and he was disconcerted to discover his chest and limbs and legs were all splashed and crusted with their own layers of dried gore, samples of which the police officers took away for study before they washed him down with a hose from a distance.

Freshly clothed in bright red prison coveralls, his hands shackled in front of him and his legs manacled as well, Kira was escorted through several long hallways and down two flights of stairs before he was admitted to another small room, with a metal table bolted to the floor and a chair likewise fixed to the ground. Other folding chairs waited in locked racks along the walls for use of other people. Kira sat down in the bolted chair when instructed, and was relieved when they gave him a glass of water before securing his restraints to the chair and leaving him alone, with only the glass of water and probably an observer or two staring at him through the one way glass window that dominated one of the walls. Seeing as he wasn't going anywhere for a while, Kira took a few sips of water to moisten his throat and then sat back to get as comfortable as possible, closing his eyes serenely and slipping into a meditative trance, not to rest, but to try and reconstruct his memory.

Three or four hours must have passed by before Kira's eyes flicked open, warned by a sudden premonition that he was about to have company. His eyes were dry and his brow was furrowed, his time alone in his mind had done his memories a lot of good, but in so doing, he'd regained full awareness of the situation and know realized what sort of deep shit he was really in. He was under private suspicion in the rape-attempted murder of his sister and the abduction of Athrun, an aborted attempt at kidnapping Allister that saw most of his other friends landed in the hospital, and resisting arrest and assaulting a federal officer. And now, probably, fleeing confinement, even if he had no idea how it had occured, and being recaptured covered in the blood of other people. Of course he was being framed, framed hard, and even psychically tampered with, or so he was pretty sure, but the why and who still escaped him. And Cagalli was probably not going to want to hear "I was being psychically controlled or influenced" no matter how true it might have been.

Kira's eyes went to the door as it slammed open hard enough to send small chips of concrete flying from the wall when it rebounded. Standing in the doorway was a Stormhound, clad in full gear, including helmet, baleful blue camera eyes glaring at Kira as he stepped into the room, his entire body quivering with tension. The Stormhound let the door shut behind him, but not before Kira got a glimpse of a large number of other police officers and Stormhounds waiting in the hall. One of them was known to him personally, Melissa Glory, one of the heavy weapon support troopers, and the expression on her face, a mixture of gut wrenching worry and anger, drained some of the blood from Kira's own features. Something bad had happened. The Stormhound in the room with him stalked over to the table and laid down several file folders he'd been clutching under one arm, before slowly removing his helm, revealing the scowling and glaring visage of Master Sergeant Richard Ramierez.

"I'm of half a mind to just shoot you right now." Ramierez started off with, getting Kira's whole and entire attention. "Or maybe let Raven have a piece of you, though it'd be more merciful to just shoot you."

"What happened?" Kira asked, as softly and kindly as he could manage when confronted with such anger. For a moment he thought he'd made a mistake, the scowl on Ramierez's face twisted into a bestial snarl, and the Stormhound took a step towards Kira with his hand on his pistol grip, but at last Ramierez mastered himself, though obviously not easily.

"If there wasn't the tiniest seed of doubt in my mind that you asked that because you truly have no idea what's going on, that you're innocent despite all the evidence I've seen, just like the Lt had me mostly convinced of earlier this morning, I'd have kneecapped you just now." Ramierez explained heavily. "Just to set the right tone for the rest of our little discussion. Because I will be blunt with you, Kira, I am not feeling much like your friend right now. No one is."

"I don't know how I got out of that holding facility. I woke up on the streets covered in blood, and I have no idea where it came from." Kira explained.

"Well, things are still preliminary, but I've a fairly good idea of how you got out, and I know exactly where that blood came from." Ramierez retorted, pacing back and forth on the opposite side of the table from Kira, using it as a physical barrier to seperate them, for Kira's sake. "Someone hacked the door at the safe house and then proceeded to slaughter all six of the Stormhounds inside. None of em died easy and one of em died slow, her belly ripped open, with a tear gas grenade stuffed down her throat and semen all over her face. The entire place was shot to shit, and I've got experts working to reconstruct the camera footage, but they're not particularly hopeful. Judging by the residue, the anti-escape gas deployed in your room at some point in time.

"I remember that. Sort of." Kira answered. There was a short pause. "I suppose it was my semen they found on her face?"

"Why yes, it was actually. Perfect genetic match for you, identical characteristics to the stuff we cleaned out of the Queen." Ramierez replied with some viciousness. "Your fingerprints were all over their guns too."

"I didn't do it." Kira stressed. "I would never do it."

"Well, unless you got an identical twin brother we don't know about, you'll forgive me if I take that at less than face value?" Ramierez spat back. "And if you DID have such a brother, we wouldn't even be having this conversation, would we?"

"That room was built to contain Ultimate Coordinators, your gas took me down in less than a minute! There was no way I could have gotten out of there by myself!" Kira protested vehemently.

"You're damn right!" Ramierez agreed. "So now we're all kinda wondering... who's your fucking accomplice, Kira? Who's the guy we haven't caught yet that busted you out and helped you kill my friends and subordinates?"

"I did not kill anyone. I don't kill people." Kira told him firmly. "Not unless there is absolutely no other way to bring peace and justice to the world."

"Tell that to the Sarge-Major!" Ramierez snapped heatedly.

"Bring him in here. I will." Kira replied. He watched Ramierez's face contort once more, and suddenly the bottom dropped out of his stomach. "Oh no..."

"Oh fucking NO is right, you bastard!" Ramierez hissed. "I would gladly bring the Sarge-Major in here. He's much better at this sort of thing than I am! And the Lt blows us all away! Course the Lt was the one who had so much faith you weren't our culprit, so I guess he's not infallible. But I can't do either of those things. Because Thom is in the fucking emergency surgery room with a team of doctors desperately trying to preserve his life, since SOMEONE shoved BOTH of their HANDS through his goddamned CHEST and ripped out big chunks of his internal organs! Care to tell me anyone you can think of with that kind of crazy, amped up strength, Kira? And the Lt is in a fucking COMA of some sort, we found him lying on the ground in his own fucking house with YOUR BLOODY HANDPRINT ON HIS FUCKING FACE!" Ramierez turned from Kira for a moment to try and control himself. "And what happened to Jean and Wrenn..." He shook his head and actually gagged.

"I'm being set up." Kira insisted, though he knew it was probably futile. Cyprus had been on his side, and if Cyprus was on his side, the Stormhounds were on his side. But if Cyprus was out of the picture, and it looked like Kira had done it... well, the evidence being stacked against him was getting pretty heavy. If he wasn't absolutely sure someone had tampered with his mind and memories, he could almost subscribe himself to the theory that he'd lost his mind and was committing crimes while in another personality. But he was sure, he just despaired of ever being able to convince anyone else of that.

"Its not all bad news. We found a set of car keys in your pants pockets, and we traced those back to a house where we found the family dead and the Ambassador, your good friend Athrun, crucified in the basement, barely alive. He should make it through according to last report, and your sister, despite what may or may not have been your best efforts, has been changed from critical condition to serious earlier this morning. She's expected to recover, though her voice will never be the same. And the psychological damage is anyone's guess." Ramierez came back over to lean on the table and look Kira in the eyes. "Now there's no way you could have been the one who tortured the Ambassador, even if we did find some traces of your fingerprints in the house. You were in my personal custody when most of the Ambassador's wounds were inflicted, so you're clear of that. Seems to me like your accomplice, whoever it is, is trying to set you up for a fall to take all the blame. So why don't you tell me who he is, earn yourself a little goodwill, eh?"

"I don't have any accomplices." Kira shook his head in exasperation. "I tell you, I didn't do any of it! I would never hurt people like that! I've fought my whole adult life to protect people from this sort of evil!"

"And I respect that, which is why we're in a comfortable and orderly police interrogation room, rather than a warehouse down by the docks with you strung up like a turkey and suspended over an industrial wood chipper." Ramierez replied. "Which is MY preferred venue for interrogating sick fucks." He leaned back and sighed. "I don't WANT to believe you're guilty, Kira. I don't. But I can't deny the evidence in front of my eyes. Your fingerprints are on the murder and assault weapons. Your fingerprints are on the bodies of the slain and assaulted. Your sperm has been found in the vagina's of three different women, and on the face of one other. You were brought in here covered in the blood of slain Stormhounds from the detail at the facility. You WERE in a secure facility until it was raided and everyone inside was killed and then you turned up two blocks from the Lt's house with no goddamned memory only ten minutes after I get there and find the Sarge-Major expiring on the floor and the Lt down for the count? And your best defense is to maintain "I didn't do it, I wouldn't do it"... WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK, KIRA!"

"There's no way I can prove myself innocent." Kira said with a sigh. "Short of catching the real culprit, and I was relying on Cyprus to do that."

"Well, we do have a nationwide manhunt out for your accomplice. Though its not going to be easy to catch him, since we haven't the slightest fucking clue what he looks like, no thanks to you." Ramierez pointed out snidely.

"So what are my options then?" Kira asked despondently. "I refuse to admit to doing something I did not do, but there is all this evidence against me. I don't think there's a lawyer anywhere in Orb that will take my case, not after they find out what I'm charged for. For what happened to Wrenn, Jean, Cyprus and Mr. Glory, sure... but for the assault on Cagalli and Athrun? I'll be lucky if the cops don't throw me off the top of the building or just lynch me themselves, much less what the rest of the populace would do!"

"I don't think you have to worry about a trial. Not a public one anyway. Jiro wants to keep this all as hush hush as possible. Not just for the sake of all the victims... and that might even include you, lets say to be generous... but because we really don't need a big scandal coming to the public attention, and the attention of the wider USN. We all know that Durandel would turn this from a potential crazy dude and a friend into a pair of psychics committing hate crimes, and no one wants to walk down that road." Ramierez explained with a shrug. "I imagine they'll give it to you plea bargain style. Given that they've got you cold, whatever you may think, they could go as high as the death penalty... assaulting the Royal Family carries that penalty, even if you are PART of the Royal family. I imagine Cagalli won't let them execute you though, so maybe if you are contrite and willing to put yourself at the mercy of the Queen and courts, I bet you'll end up in a institute for the criminally insane for the rest of your life. Won't be fun, living in a padded room, but its better than a cold grave."

"So instead of admitting I'm secretly an evil pervert-murderer all these years, I admit to being legally insane and a threat to everyone around me?" Kira parsed it out with a dispirited chuckle.

"You're fucked either way." Ramierez agreed. "You just gotta choose whether you want it prison style in the ass or firing squad style in the brainpan."

"I don't suppose I could talk to Cagalli, could I?" Kira wondered.

"In person, not a fucking chance. Through a comm screen..." Ramierez wavered and shrugged. "I'll ask her, let's put it that way. With the Lt down, the Sarge-Major on the verge of death, and both Colonels laid up by a certain angst ridden brown haired fuckup we both know, I find myself suddenly the top dog of the Stormhounds, and I ain't fucking ready for it. I got so much shit on my plate I could drown in it just by closing my eyes for a moment. But I'll ask her, Kira. Because, damn it all, after talking with you, I just... I just can't be sure you did it. I'm pretty sure you did do it, but I'm not certain. And the Lt would rip my balls off and nail em to his door if I did something hasty without being certain of it. We all do owe you that much, at least." Ramierez turned for the door. "You're going to stay in a holding cell here for the time being. But let me be frank... one more incident, if a police officer even gets a papercut caused by you, I'm going to ventilate your skull, do you understand me? You're hanging by a fraying rope right now. And if the sarge-major bites it, I wouldn't be alone with Raven if I were you and I valued my life."

"I will be the model prisoner. Because I have everything to prove." Kira replied. "Just get Cagalli to talk to me. Please."

"I'll see what I can do." Ramierez collected his folders, which contained the lab reports on the evidence found at the Lt's house and the Stormhound safe house, and then opened the door and strode out, closing it behind him with a metallic thunk... but not before Kira had the chance to meet Raven's murderous gaze for a moment. Ramierez might have doubts, but Melissa Glory certainly knew who she was blaming for the events of the day. Kira closed his eyes and sighed. All seemed lost, but he refused to give up hope. Lacus would never have countenaced him giving up hope. To honor her and the children, to keep his name and theirs clear, he would fight as long and as hard as he had to. He just hoped he'd get the chance to survive to do so. Orb was fast turning into enemy territory for him. and somewhere out there, the real psychopathic madman was out there, running free and targeting innocent people! Kira's hands curled into fists, and his wrist cuffs gave way with harsh snaps as he imagined getting his hands on whoever had set him up!

xxxx

Author Note 2: Well, thats the end of the Frost rampage for now. On to the bigger picture in the next arc. And maybe the beginnings of a new relationship for one of our favorite people...


	17. Prisoner

Author note: Well, no torture or gore or horror in this chapter, well, maybe a little. Start of a new arc and all that. Prisoner, Fugitive, Public Enemy, Patriot, Pacifist, Destroyer and Executor, those are the chapters this arc. Now back to the grand scale of things, big events in motion.

xxxx

**Orb, Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver and Spaceport, Late Afternoon, November 1st**

They might not be the sort that exploded in the air in riotous color, but all the same, Orb was awash with fireworks to Frost's heightened senses as he crept stealthily through the bowels of the gigantic spaceport and mass driver complex that was Orb's best and only commercial link to the rest of "humanity", living up in space. Though details had not yet been released on his little escapades with the royal family, the attacks on Grey and his little clan had been all too public, as had been the later apprehension of the Boytoy, covered in blood, wandering the streets nearby, and everywhere he went he could hear the buzz of excited, speculating voices, the scent of uncertainty and even a little fear, and as for the psychic plane, well, psychedilic barely even began to cover it. The combined agitation of millions upon millions of people released a psychic perfume that was almost intoxicating to him. He almost wished he could stick around to bathe in the sensation when the details of his attack on the Fiery and Loser Zala-Attha's, and the little Prince Spark, managed to come to light.

But he had other work to do, and business had to come before pleasure, if it could not be combined with it, that is. As fun as tearing around Orb, wreaking havoc everywhere he went was, Orb was just one small piece of the puzzle. A piece that was far more weighty and important than its physical size would otherwise indicate, but just a single piece all the same. He'd indulged his desire for personal confrontation and redress with those that had originally slain him, now that he was slightly sated in terms of vengeance, it was time to move on to sharpening a larger portion of the blade that was human kind. And to do that, he needed to get into space. However, that was less easy than it might seem, because he wanted to do so unnoticed, and as convenient as the Boytoy's flesh image had been in the past, now that the Boytoy being in police custody was common knowledge, looking exactly like him was more burden than boon.

Certainly it wasn't going to be possible to buy, rent or steal any form of normal transportation to space, not without attracting a lot of unwanted attention and perhaps even pursuit from those thinking they were chasing an escaping convict. Not that the idea of just walking up to a ticket counter and buying a ticket with cash had ever really occured to him. That sort of pedestrian thing was just not how he operated. The fact that it was impossible anyway was just a nice reassurance. The universe, as ever, seemed to be reinforcing his latent desires, making his chocies a matter of course, rather than a matter of deliberation. He'd thought about stealing a Mobile Suit, but that would have almost definitely fallen into the category of noticable, so he'd regretfully crossed that option off his list. Which was why he now found himself on plan C or D, he wasn't quite sure which it was, skulking about in the commercial cargo loading docks of the massive mass driver complex.

He'd come in by stowing away in a shipment of frozen fish headed up to various and sundry resteraunts in space, fish being one of the few foodstuffs it was still far more economical to farm raise in the ocean rather than clone up in the colonies. There were a few fisheries in orbit, but nothing to compete with the hundreds of square miles of ocean that still fell under Orb's Glasshouse. It was all immaterial to Frost, those tidbits had come from the minds of the driver and loader, whom he'd had to blur and selectively filch while seeking timetables, schedules and any other pertinent details about the premesis and problems of the Mass Driver facilities. Neither of them would be remembering much of anything about the day, much less a shadowy, half seen figure lurking in the back of the truck. But that mind trick would only go so far, and Frost was leery of leaving too many memory blurred peons behind him. The wrong kind of people could pick up on that sort of trail, once they'd finally run themselves ragged victimizing the oh so sad Boytoy, that is.

Which Frost didn't expect to be any time soon, but he knew better than to assume he'd managed to permanently frame the Boytoy. He wasn't that careful, didn't care enough to be that careful. This pain, this sense of betrayal the Boytoy had to be feeling right now, this was just the beginning. The first taste of the feast to come. The wake up call, if you will. As yet only a very few were aware he had returned from the abyss, and of those that knew, even fewer could either remember that fact, or coherently explain it to others. Dear Grey might never recover himself enough to name his agressor, Frost had never drained anyone of that many memories and experiences before, nor bore down so hard while doing so. He might have left the man a blank slate. He hoped so, it would be intriguing to see what Grey made of himself by starting over as a puppy instead of a grizzled old wolf. But someone, somewhere, would notice things not really adding up very well, despite the genetic evidence, and then the whole game would really be on. Probably sometime after the shock and awe wore off, but that might not be for weeks or months. Plenty of time for a headstart.

Getting back to the problem at hand, while outgoing foodstuffs were given only cursory checks by the inspectors down in Orb, they underwent thorough testing and scanning up in orbit, checking for even the slightest trace of Green EDEN contamination, and there was no way he himself could evade that sort of scan, which would necessitate more memory wipes, which he wanted to avoid. Fortune provided however, though perhaps only because of his own unique abilities, and so it was that Frost had ended up worming his way through an uncomfortably tight and wet pipeline into a water tank being filled with freshly desalinized water. Water being another one of Orb's few naturally occuring resources that could not be easily replicated in orbit. The PLANTS contained a lot of water, but at the end of the day they were still a closed system, with water only being used and recycled and nothing new introduced by rain or runoff, which meant they would eventually run out. The Second Earth colonies were even less water efficient, and millions of gallons of purified seawater were thus one of Orb's newest and best profiting exports.

Of course the water would be checked too, but not in the same way as the food, it wasn't like they were going to dive into possibly contaminated water to run their tests, no, they'd take a sample from each container, test that, and call it good or bad. Once inside the partially full tank, Frost made sure to find the intake for the sample purging system and hunkered down in the cold water to wait, his fingers hovering over the intake so he'd be able to feel the rush of water when they started taking the samples. That way he would know when he'd reached orbit, or more accurately, the Moon, or maybe even, if he was lucky, the PLANTS themselves. Of course that meant several hours fully immersed in freezing cold water, which would be enough to kill a normal person through hypothermia, even without the drowning problem. But with his internal nanomachines providing heat and oxygen, and most of his organs in low consumption mode, not only would he be perfectly comfortable during the trip, but he'd also be almost invisible to most sorts of active scanners once he got there.

Frost took a deep breath as the water reached his chin, and let it out as he relaxed his muscles and let himself fall almost limp, in a sort of half doze, almost like the meditation the Boytoy apparently practiced, alert but not awake. As ever when his mind receeded from harsh reality, the comforting and hellish oblivion of the abyss waited to greet him. No bubbles escaped his mouth or nostrils as the water closed over his head, his eyes drifting shut in the pitch darkness of the closed tank, an outer abyss containing an inner abyss, headed for the heartland of the PLANTS. All was silent. All was cold. All was Frost.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Basements of Orb National Police Headquarters, Afternoon, November 5th**

Kira sat in a bare metal chair in the middle of a small conference or briefing room, some three or four levels below ground level, he wasn't sure of the exact placement of the room in the building layout. He'd never expected to be spending much time in the detention area of the national police headquarters, for some reason, so he'd failed to carefully peruse the building schematics beforehand. Such as he might have done if he wanted to have any reasonable chance of escaping the place. Not to say that he was thinking about cutting and running, except perhaps in his wildest dreams, but the nagging feeling that the trail leading to those who had murdered his family was getting colder with every passing hour was not conducive to entirely rational thinking. Kira forced himself to remain calm and patient. He wasn't doing anyone any good locked up here, but if he was to have any good chance of getting out, this upcoming talk with Cagalli would be it, and he could not afford to present himself as out of control and antsy.

So it was that despite spending the past five days in a holding cell, he actually looked better, more mature and presentable than he had when the Stormhounds had first come to his house to not so cordially invite him to come in for questioning. He'd managed to shave and had regained some of his pallor after burning through a few extra thousand calories of food a day, so much so that the cafeteria staff were starting to think about revising their "all you can eat" buffet style until he was out of the building. Kira found himself wishing for more of the food he'd had at Rex Lodge, not only did it fill him up faster, but it tasted much better while doing so.

Of course, the mere thought of Rex Lodge would only bring to mind the other events that occured there, and the pall that had been cast over his life. But while his eyes would become moist at such times, and his jaw would tighten and he would perhaps sink into a few moments of introspection, he no longer allowed his grief to ordain his every action, to cripple his ability to be himself. He would not say... would never say... that he had come to terms with the deaths of Lacus, Akira and Aoi. But the fact of their demise bothered him much less than the thought of those who had them murdered walking around free and clear, getting on with their everyday lives like nothing had happened. That thought was almost unbearable to him. Some of them might not even have realized they'd even done something wrong, and that just killed him inside.

Kira already had things planned out for when he got out. Hanging around in Orb wasn't doing much helpful, and especially in the wake of this framejob, some distance from his usual friends and contacts might be a good idea until things blew over. Commander Waltfeld had gone back to live in the PLANTS, after losing Murrue to Mu's return, he'd had little reason to stay in Orb, despite the friends he'd made there. Kira had heard scattered reports from Katie that Waltfeld had even begun seeing Yzak's mother, Ezalia, or was it the other way around? In either case Kira found it a little odd, since if Ezalia wasn't old enough to be Waltfeld's mother, she was within a few years of such a mark, but who was he to judge people on the path to finding love? In any case they seemed to be good for each other, Ezalia losing some of her cold exterior to Waltfeld's irreverence, and Waltfeld gaining... well, something or other. Maturity or discipline wasn't the right term, but it was something like that. Perspective, perhaps.

There was also the chance he might bump into Yzak and Katie while he was there, if they were on furlough from Yzak's duties as military commander of the Mars Exploration and Scientific Expediton, which was one of the few major projects run exclusively by the PLANTS. Kira hadn't always seen eye to eye with Yzak, in truth there was even some bad blood between them stemming from Kira's long ago negligence that had led to the tragic death of Katie's twin sister, Chanel, but the Yzak of today wasn't the sort of man to let a painful memory stand between him and a friend in need. If anyone were to have empathy and sympathy for what Kira himself was going through recently, it would be Yzak and Katie. They were fellow psychics living in a very psychic dumb world, and that common ground seemed to only grow stronger with time.

Kira tried to remind himself that he shouldn't try to plan to far ahead, or get his hopes up too high. Waltfeld had a lot of contacts in the old but still function Clyne Faction intelligence network, some of whom were even highly placed in the USN's intelligence directorate, Section 9, including Waltfeld's longtime friend and onetime second in command, Martin Dicosta. Even if they couldn't name names, they could at least point him in the right direction, tell him what to look for. That would be good enough for the moment, though what exactly he would do with that information when he had it, Kira did not know. He'd address that problem when he came to it, right now he had first to get Cagalli to let him free and clear him of charges.

And despite the recent rough spots in their relationship, Kira was confident that the upcoming conversation with Cagalli would smooth things over with the authorities. As Cyprus had said, it was an obvious frame job, perhaps even perpetuated by those selfsame USN officials that had been involved in the murder of his family, trying to distract and discredit him. The USN stood to benefit if Cagalli was hurt and Athrun also taken out of the picture, and with Lacus now gone, that would mean Orb had lost, at least temporarily, all its major political secret weapons and wild cards, something Gilbert Durandel would only be too pleased to take advantage of. And besides, Cagalli was family, his own fraternal twin sister, and Kira knew she would be able to forgive him for his conduct earlier in the month, just as he had forgiven her for her own conduct in the wake of the destruction of the Archangel and loss of her guardian and father-surrogate, Ledonir Kisaka, to Noah's Blue EDEN Nanoweapon.

Just the thought of that horrific incident made Kira shiver a bit, and he glanced down at his left hand, the fingers of which were about a half inch shorter than the fingers on his right hand. The doctors had reshaped and reconstructed his fingers so that he had fingertips and even fingernails again, but there was no getting over the fact that his hands were different sizes now. Legacy of his foolish and instinctual attempt to scrape the Blue EDEN out of Lacus's hair, which hadn't worked and had only gotten him contaminated. If it hadn't been for Alkire's quick thinking and disregard of his own contamination, Kira could very easily have shared the fate of Ensign Neumann and most of the rest of the Archangel's crew, dead in horrible agony as his tissues were converted to more Blue EDEN, or else shot dead as a mercy killing by Raine.

Which led into feelings of guilt over his conversation and confrontation with Alkire and Raine a few days prior. He owed his life to Alkire, and that of Lacus and Akira as well. Alkire had lost his leg below the knee because he prioritized Lacus and Kira's safety over his own. Kira hoped he would get a chance to apologize to them both before he left for the PLANTS, though they did not see eye to eye on many things, they were both very good people and Kira had come to rely on them as friends. This was not the first time he'd been put at odds with Alkire over a controversial action, and perhaps not even the worst of such incidences. Alkire and he were actually similar in a lot of ways, especially in their habits of speaking from the heart rather than from the mind, and letting their words get them into trouble even when their intentions were otherwise.

Further thoughts and recriminations were shouldered aside when the comm screen embedded in the wall across from him fritzed with static for a brief moment as it activated, before resolving into a discernable image, as if he was looking in through a window. The room revealed was obviously in a hospital, with the large, stark white and steel bed dominating the center of the picture, and rows of beeping and blinking machines of indeterminate medical function arrayed behind and to the sides of the bed. Cagalli lay in the bed, almost entombed like a fly in spiders webbing by all the tubes and wires and bandage wrappings that connected to her and covered her. She or someone else had tuned the bed so the head portion was raised up, so she was reclining instead of fully lying down, in order to see her own screen of him and his bare metal chair.

Kira could not control the momentary blanch that crossed his face when he first caught sight of Cagalli's condition. Despite three days of the best emergency medical care Orb had to offer, including full on immersion in a Curaga tank for several hours, his sister still looked like she'd just fallen out of an airplane at cruising altitude. He'd heard about her injuries of course, Ramierez had described them to him, but there was a difference between hearing about them and actually seeing them, seeing the still open rend marks in her skin, the gashes and bruises and welts and tears! A spaghetti bowl of brightly color coded wires ran beneath her bed sheets and hospital gown, connecting various parts of her body to diagnostic machines and monitors, while a half dozen clear tubs fed her body with liquid nutrients and carried away waste.

She had a partial mask on the lower part of her face, her lips pulled tight around a plastic bit, ragged stumps of broken teeth partly visible through the mask, which included a wide plastic tube that extended down her throat into her lungs and ensured she could keep breathing, even if her lungs were too damaged to sustain the effort by themselves. Her eye sockets were like plums, dark purple and slightly moist, her eyes themselves slitted in controlled pain, even with all the medicines and mild sedatives being circulated through her bloodstream. Kira's eyes could not help but be drawn to just below the oxygen mask, where a large bandage was wrapped and taped around her neck, covering the stitched and glued closed incision where her throat had been slashed by her assailant's parting actions. Though obviously freshly sterilized, the throat bandage was beginning to show light pink in some areas, attesting to the wounds reluctance to seal closed. A tube running out of the bandage drained away pinkish mucus and congealed blood, keeping her throat clear of choking hazards.

Cagalli's eyes narrowed still further when she saw the look on his face, and a text box appeared at the bottom of the screen, her fingers moving just out of sight of his view as she typed on a handheld keyboard to convey her thoughts, since speaking while on life support as she was would be impossible. **"I may not look my best at the moment, but that is no reason to stare at me like I'm a carnival freak."** Cagalli typed, and though silent, Kira could easily ascribe her irritated inflection to the words from past experience.

"Sorry... I just hadn't realized... how terrible, how bad..." Kira trailed off, shaking his head helplessly. "I'm sorry, Cagalli."

**"I'm told I was very lucky. Another minute or two without medical care, and you'd be standing at my gravestone right now."** Cagalli informed him. Her eyes closed and tears dripped from the corners of her eyes. **"I don't feel lucky, Kira. It hurts so much all over. And especially inside."**

"You have a lot of internal injuries." Kira pointed out. "It was the same for me when I had those electrical burns from the Pulsar."

**"That's not what I mean."** Cagalli replied quickly. **"I feel like I might have lost something very important to me, and the uncertainty is like a red hot coal inside my soul."**

Kira could never be accused of being the most astute man on the planet, at last when it came to delicate feelings, but there was a certain weight to Cagalli's words, along with the way her eyes seemed reluctant to truly settle upon him, that left no doubt as to what she was talking about. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and he struggled for a few moments to keep his indignation out of his voice. "You don't actually think I would do that to you?" Kira gritted out, trying to remind himself that calmness and logic were his friends right now. "I could never hurt you, not purposefully! I made a mistake that day during the funeral, but that was an accident! I didn't mean to hit you, but I was so angry..."

**"I am not sure what I believe anymore."** Cagalli answered, this time with agonizing slowness. **"All my experience with you wants me to believe that there is no way you could have done this. But, Kira, I remember you being in my room. You weren't acting like yourself, but it was unmistakably you! I've turned what fragments of memory I have of that night over and over in my head, but no matter what, your face keeps coming back to me. And then there is the fingerprints and..."** Cagalli paused, her whole body trembling for a moment as she fought for control over a sob. **"... and genetic evidence left behind. I've seen the results myself, Kira, and had them checked and checked again. They belong to you. What am I supposed to think?"**

"I'm being set up! Framed in order to cause a public spectacle while at the same time causing harm to Orb and the Clyne Faction, and to prevent me from digging too deeply into the events surrounding the deaths of my family." Kira replied earnestly, glad for an opportunity to make his case. "Can't you see, Cagalli, who really can be the only one to gain any real benefit from all this? God knows, I would hesitate to name anyone for something like this if I wasn't sure, but who else could it be besides the USN, and Gilbert Durandel? He's had it out for us since before the Eden Disaster, and he's finally decided to tighten his grip once and for all!"

**"Let's say that I don't think that is totally impossible."** Cagalli told him. **"What would you want me to do about it?"**

"Well, since I clearly couldn't... wouldn't... have done what has been done, I would like to be freed from confinement. I understand you can't direct any of Orb's resources to help me, I should never have tried to put you in the position of choosing between your duty to Orb and your feelings for family, that was my worst mistake. But I have other avenues to utilize that don't involve any connection to Orb. I intend to go up to the PLANTS and see if Mr. Waltfeld can reactivate portions of the old Clyne Faction network, he has some people placed pretty highly in the USN intelligence agencies. I'm sure they can point me in the right direction. I'll be going as a PLANT citizen, Lacus made me get a citizenship so I could travel freely with her there, as you know."

**"Let me get this straight, Kira."** Cagalli stared at him through her bruised eyes. **"In pursuit of those who you think had a hand in the deaths of Lacus, Akira and Aoi, you intend to head to the PLANTS, which have long been a bastion of strong USN and Durandel support. The same USN and Durandel you claim has the werewithal and maliciousness to not only commit these horrific crimes but to manufacture evidence so as to implicate you practically beyond any reasonable doubt? And you think you could possibly accomplish anything productive in such an environment? If they really do have it out for you in such a direct manner, you wouldn't even make it through customs without a knife in your back or a black bag over your head."**

"What other options do I have?" Kira protested with a heavy shrug. "I can't stay here by myself any more, and especially I shouldn't be here when the news of all that's happened gets out to the public, as we both know it envitably will. This thing is too big, too horrible, to keep under wraps forever. I don't enjoy the thought of an angry mob storming my jailcell and dragging me out for a street lynching, and we both know that might not even be an exaggeration of what could happen if it gets out that I'm suspected of... doing what was done to you and Athrun." Kira paused. "How is Athrun, by the way?"

**"He looks like I feel."** Cagalli replied curtly. **"He never really fully regained his strength after his near death experience at the Battle of Cape York, and what was done to him on Halloween..."** Cagalli's eyes filled with tears once more. **"He was broken, Kira. Broken like a ragdoll, tortured to within an inch of death and held there for hours. He's in another medically induced coma right now, the doctors say they might be able to bring him out of it in another week or so. But he doesn't heal like he used to, because of the radiation damage. He's going to be a long time recovering, and he'll never be fully whole again. Just like me. If not for NIC systems, I don't think he'd ever be well enough to pilot a Mobile Suit."**

"I'm sorry." Kira said, not knowing what else to say, all but overwhelmed at his own helplessness of late. First Lacus and the kids, now Cagalli and Athrun, and the Stormhounds... he couldn't seem to protect anyone important to him anymore. He wasn't used to feeling helplessness, not like this, not since the very first days of his time aboard the Archangel, whe he still hadn't the foggiest idea what he was doing. All his adult life he'd always had the power to protect, to intervene, to make things right and safe for those he cared about. Suddenly finding himself to be as weak and powerless and helpless as anyone off the street was intensely frightening.

**"Athrun is broken on the outside, but I know him. Inside, he'll come through just like he always does. He's stronger than me in that regard."** Cagalli blinked away her tears. **"I'm broken on the inside, Kira. They tell me the physical wounds will heal, that there will be scars, that I probably won't be able to talk very well or very loudly anymore. They're thinking of installing a new prosthetic that should let me speak without pain, reasonably clearly, but my voice as you and I know it is gone. But I can deal with that. What I can't deal with, Kira, is the uncertainty. That I can't convince myself, no matter how much I want to, that..."** Cagalli trailed off and closed her eyes, as if gathering strength.

Kira spared her the effort, even as it made his insides clench with a mixture of sorrow and anger. "That there is still a possibility that I've gone crazy and that I really did assault you, rape you and attempt to kill you, and do much the same to Athrun, and then Cyprus's family and Glory. That the loss of my family has totally unhinged me and left me a monster little better than Zacharis fucking Frost, perhaps even unwittingly! That I may have become sociopathic and schizophrenic, and be a danger to everyone around me, regardless of past relationships." Kira sighed and shook his head, dissappointed and enraged. "Look... I didn't do it! Even Cyprus Finch believed that! Why would I hurt the one man who stood the best chance of proving me innocent? What kind of sense does that make?"

**"It doesn't make any sense at all."** Cagalli allowed. **"But then again, none of this makes rational sense, Kira. I'm not going to call you crazy, because even if I can't convince myself that you are innocent and sane, neither can I convince myself of the opposite. My heart wants to believe in you, but my head can't ignore all the evidence that's been stacked up. You were found wandering the streets covered in the blood of murdered men and women, Kira, after going missing from a secure holding facility. Your fingerprints have been found on murder and attempted murder weapons. Your sperm has been found inside not only my body, but Jean Kellson's body and Wrenn Finch's body as well. I would be doing a grave disservice to Orb's law system if I were to just ignore all of that and have you released. Can you understand that?"**

"But I didn't..." Kira protested, or began to anyway.

**"KIRA!"** Her typed exclamation shut him up in mid arguement. **"I didn't ask if you liked it, just if you could understand it. You think I like being in this position? You said you made a mistake when you tried to make me choose between my duty to Orb and my love for my family after the funeral, well, you know you're doing it again, right now! You're asking me to use my power as Queen to give you a pardon based soley on our familial relationship, a pardon excusing you of some of the most heinous capital crimes in Orb's judicial lexicon! Aggravated assault on Royalty carries a mandatory death sentence, Kira. You're asking me to ignore the laws for your sake."**

"Haven't I given enough to Orb in the past to expect a little leeway when I need it?" Kira answered coolly. "Haven't I put my life on the line for this country as many times as you, or even more? I've sweated blood for your people, old and young, military and civilian. And now, in my time of need, you want to tell me that I can't get any support, any relief, from those selfsame people?"

**"You know its not that simple, Kira. If this were a question of anything but major capital crimes, there would be no issue. But even if I were to issue you a pardon for what happened, it would be vetoed by Parliament and Jiro. They would say, perhaps rightly, that my mental integrity has been compromised by events. I was lucky to hang onto as much power as I did after the Spiffy incident, if I try to push things now, not only will it not help, but it'll probably result in me losing what backroom strength I do have, for good. Then I won't be able to help you at all."**

"So because its too risky to stick your neck out, you're going to let me, your only brother, twist in the wind for the sake of political expediency? Orb has become more like the rest of the USN than I thought." Kira retorted bitterly, barely caring as he saw her recoil from his harsh words.

**"That's not what I mean either!"** Cagalli typed furiously, her mouth grimacing around her breathing tube, various monitors around her increasing their beeps and blinks as her vitals increased under her agitation. **"I just can't help you like you want me to. I can't give you a full pardon, much less let you leave the country. I can't simply burn all the evidence and tell people to forget this ever happened. What I can do, and will do, is prevent this from becoming a public criminal trial, which we both know would simply tickle Durandel pink. The last thing anyone needs is having him twist this into part of his anti-psychic and total unification agendas."**

"So what's your plan then?" Kira asked flatly, his arms folded across his chest, this time it was him who found it difficult to look at her, hardly able to believe this was his own twin sister. "Avoiding a public trial only makes sense, but what's your alternative?"

**"You're not going to like it."** Cagalli typed, almost hesitantly.

"How is that any different from how I feel right now?" Kira countered. "I'd at least like to know what my fate is to be, even if I don't really have a choice in it."

**"You'll be remanded into custody at an asylum for the insane."** Cagalli winced as she saw the blank look cross his face. **"Its a temporary measure. While you are there, the experts will do a full evaluation on your mental state. It may take a few weeks, maybe a few months, but at the end there should be no doubt as to whether you are sane or insane. Meanwhile, the Stormhounds and police investigators will be going over every crime scene and piece of evidence with a fine toothed comb. Already they say there's some contradictory evidence, maybe in time there will be enough to completely overturn the stuff you say has been placed to frame you. I'm asking for you to give us time to build a case for your innocence, because right now there's simply no way to argue any way but guilty or insanity."**

"And what if these experts conclude that I am not mentally sound?" Kira asked. "Perhaps because I am in mourning after the murder of my family and angry over unjust persecution from the rest of my friends and family, and not altogether inclined to being the polite and gentle man I like to be? How will they differentiate between the true insanity of a man pushed over the edge, and the obsessive determination of a man who has lost his true love and his children to senseless and violent means, and knows he is perhaps the only one who could possibly deliver justice for those deeds because of a corrupt legal system that has turned against him at every step?"

**"If they conclude that you are not mentally sound and that you could pose a danger to others, then they will recommend that you be placed in more permanent custody and observation at the asylum."** Cagalli told him, after a long pause. **"That is the way the system works. I will do everything in my power short of influencing the experts directly to have them proclaim you fit and sound of mind, but if they decide otherwise then my hands are tied. It could be years before they declare you well. It could be never. I'm not saying there is no risk here, Kira, but at least there's a chance of things going your way. The way you're asking me to do things will only see you still in jail and me in your place at that asylum. I'm doing all I can, Kira, because you're my brother and I love you. I'm sorry I can't do more, but this is the best that can be done."**

"The best that can be done." Kira said slowly, as if tasting each word. "This is the most help I can expect. To be taken from one jail cell and put into a padded room instead. To be put under a microscope and held in confinement while the people that ordered the murder of my wife and children, along with dozens of other innocent men, women and children, are allowed weeks and even months to cover their tracks and compile evidence against me. To hang all my hopes on the opinions of a panel of men and women whom I have never met and who don't have my interests at heart, who don't know me and have little idea of the sort of stresses I am under as a Newtype with a forcefully severed intimate bond. To trust that these so called experts, none of whom will have any experience in those with psychic minds, will conclude that I fit their definition of sanity. That's the best that can be done?" Kira watched Cagalli eying him, waiting for him to explode. He didn't dissappoint her.

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST PUT A FUCKING BLACK BAG OVER MY HEAD AND SHOOT ME IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD YOURSELF!" Kira demanded at the top of his lungs. "IT WOULD BE MUCH LESS PAINFUL FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED! DON'T YOU DARE THINK OF SENTENCING ME TO A LIVING HELL IN THE INTERESTS OF SAVING MY SKIN! I WOULD RATHER BE DEAD THAN CONSIDERED A RABID DOG, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE I AM NOT ONE! YOU SAY I'M PUTTING YOU IN A HARD SPOT... YOU'RE TRYING TO MAKE ME CHOOSE BETWEEN MY LOVE AND RESPECT FOR YOU, AND FOR THAT OF MY DEAD FAMILY! I WON'T LET YOU HANG ME OUT TO DRY, NO MATTER HOW IT SALVES YOUR GUILTY CONSCIENCE! I WON'T LET..."

"STOP YELLING!" A new voice cut through his tirade, the voice higher pitched than Kira's, as the comm screen view twirled madly about as the camera on the far end was adjusted around by hand. "Stop yelling at my mommy." Allister Zala-Attha pleaded in more normal tones now that Kira was standing with his jaw agape in mid shout. Allister's eyes and cheeks were wet with tears, and his face was flushed with anger of his own. Anger that he seemed better able to control than Kira could his own, despite Allister being right at the age where tantrums were still a real possibility. "Please don't yell at my mommy, Uncle Kira. You're hurting her." Allister told him, choking a bit on the words. "She's hurt too bad already. Don't you dare hurt her more, or I won't forgive you!"

"Allister..." Kira slowly closed his mouth, trying to recover himself, shocked out of his own fury by the distress of his nephew.

"My mom could have died four days ago, Uncle Kira. My dad could have died four days ago too. And everyone is saying you were the one that hurt them." Allister continued. "I remember when you tried to come after me when I was with the Elsmans. You were scary, Uncle Kira. You hurt people like they were bugs. You said things that made me feel small and raw inside. You were going to do something awful to Violet! You kept calling us all these weird nicknames too, and they weren't funny ones!" Allister stared at him intently through the comm screen. "But you're my Uncle Kira, and both my mom and I don't really think it was you who did these things. You're sad because Aunt Lacus and Akira and Aoi are gone. But you're not crazy. We both know that, in here." Allister held his hand to his chest. "Can I tell you a story, Uncle Kira?"

Unable to speak, his mind numb at being lectured by his own nephew, and not unjustly so, Kira nodded and sat back down on his metal chair, barely aware that he'd risen from it in the first place. "This is from one of my lessons." Allister told him. "One of my Prince lessons. One time, there was a Prince of Orb. He was a good Prince, who was kind to his people and who loved his family greatly. He could not bear to see anyone get hurt, and he would always stand up for those who were innocent or wronged. In return his people loved him back, and trusted him to voersee their lives for the good of all. This Prince had a large family, many brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and other relatives. Most of them were just like the Prince, but they were all still human. They made mistakes. Some of them committed crimes. When they were caught, they pleaded with the Prince for mercy, and despite the fact that he knew they were guilty, he loved them too much to want them to hurt, so he pardoned them of their crimes and set them free."

"Instead of mending their ways and seeking forgiveness for their wrongs, these members of the Prince's family began to feel as if they were due special consideration because of their relationship to him. They began to feel that the laws of the country didn't apply to them like they did to other people. They committed more crimes, and each time they went before the Prince and begged for mercy, and each time he granted it because he loved them, because they were family and he couldn't stand to see them hurt. No matter how obvious it was that they were committing crimes, he still forgave them each and every time. After a while, the Prince started becoming unpopular with his people, because his family was committing these crimes and escaping justice all the time, while people who were not related to him were punished for doing the exact same things. The Prince recognized the problem, but couldn't do anything about it, he loved his family too much to see them punished and hurt. In the end, the people had to overthrow the Prince and elect a new one, or else the country would have fallen apart because the old Prince could not stand to hurt those he loved."

"The moral of this story, Uncle Kira..." Allister explained with steady eyes. "Is that it is just as bad for those in authority to let their feelings for those they love cloud their judgement as it is for them to let anger or hate or lust or greed control their actions. The Prince in the story was a good Prince, a kind and gentle man, a smart leader. But he loved his family too much, and in so doing, proved himself unable to properly protect his own people from those he cared about. No matter how much my mom wants to help you, to throw out all the rules for you, she can't do it, Uncle Kira. She can't love you too much, because that wouldn't be fair to the other people. It doesn't matter that you're Uncle Kira, you have to be treated just like everyone else when things like this happen. Its the only way we can truly be just. The Uncle Kira I know wouldn't want us to compromise the morals we hold dear for his sake, he would understand that we would work as we could within our morals to help him. The Uncle Kira I know, Akira's dad, would know that some things are more important than his own needs and desires, no matter how important they are to him. Justice must triumph over both love and hate, Uncle Kira. No matter how much it hurts us in the process. That's part of what it means to be Royalty."

"But how am I supposed to accept the judgement of those so called experts, when none of them have the slightest inkling of how my mind works?" Kira protested woodenly. "Even if they don't judge me insane, I doubt they'll be able to come to any conclusion about my actual sanity. They would only being doing their jobs right to err on the side of caution, and take anything less than total sanity as insanity."

"Time will tell, Uncle Kira." Allisted lowered his eyes. "Its not a perfect solution. A lot can go wrong. But I have faith in you, Uncle. But if things don't work out, don't you dare think to blame my mom and dad for what happened. We are doing everything we can, I promise you as Crown Prince of Orb, we are." Allister glared fiercely at his Uncle, almost pinning him to the chair with his eyes, so like his mothers. "I have faith in you, Uncle Kira. You should have faith in yourself too. I can't force you to agree to accepting our help, such as it is. But this is our help, and its your turn to decide to accept it or refuse it. Please let us help you, Uncle. I don't want anyone to get hurt." Tears started in the corner of Allister's eyes once more. "But my mom and dad are hurt too bad as it is. I won't let you hurt them any more, and if that means you have to hurt, then I will make that my choice, Uncle Kira. I am a good Prince, but my love for my family doesn't cloud my judgement. I can't ever let that happen. My people deserve that much."

"You're going to be one hell of a King one day." Kira commented numbly.

Allister took the compliment in stride. He looked away from the camera for a moment, then fixed his eyes on the screen once more. "My mom wants to talk to you again, but she needs to rest, and I don't think she can do that if you argue with her more. We've explained what our position is and what we intend to do. You have my word that we won't leave you to twist in the wind, Uncle. Goodbye for now, Uncle Kira. I promise to come visit you at the asylum, if you choose to go there. I'll help you show them that you're not dangerous or crazy." Allister reached forward and then the comm screen went black, leaving Kira in a mostly darkened room once more.

Kira stared at his slightly mismatched hands and shuddered, drained of all his previous emotion. His hands slowly curled back into fists and he craned his head back to look at the ceiling, trying to stare up through it, to the sky beyond, and to space beyond that, all the way up to the space colonies where his antagonists made their lairs. "I wish that were true, Allister." Kira whispered to himself. "But I am a dangerous man. Quite how dangerous I never really realized until recently. I am an innocent man, wronged by friend and enemy alike. There is no more dangerous person alive than someone like me. And I intend to prove that to them. By whatever means I can." Kira shook his head, tears of his own gathering in his eyes. He would go to the asylum. But only because it would be easier to escape from than a real prison. As unprepared as the experts would be for his mind, they would be even less prepared for his body. He was, after all, an Ultimate Coordinator. The Ultimate Coordinator. And he would not be denied justice, not even by justice itself.

xxxx

**The Moon, Copernicus Lunar City, Solar Tower, office of the Solar President, November 5th**

It was shaping up to be another long day, and long days were never fun. Of course ever since the reorganization of the USN into a united government body in the wake of the Eden Disaster, all of his days had seemed to be long, but for some reason he couldn't seem to grow used to it. Durandel stared at the electronic writing stylus in his hand and sighed, signed one more document displayed on his desk screen, and then let the writing instrument fall to the desktop with a muted clatter as he sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes and aching brow with one hand. That wasn't the last document he was supposed to sign today. It wasn't even within a couple hundred of that singular mark, and it wasn't like he could just speed read and stamp these papers. Oh no, not with subordinates like his, and a needlessly complex tri-house political system that had seemed like such a great way to retain power at the time and was now turning into a gigantic fucking hassle.

He was looking forward to the time when he could drop all the pretenses and just lead as he knew he could lead, because of his superior intellect and gene derived ability, without all the political trappings and backroom dealing. It would not be ruling, oh no, he would merely be guiding humanity on the right path, because he was uniquely qualified to do so. Just, openly instead of standing back in the shadows and giving lip service to democracy while running things as they needed to be run outside the eyes of the public herds. He would be the mentor and teacher of humanity, and under his benevolent instruction, they would ascend into a golden age that would last for millenia, if it ever ended at all. The Destiny Plan would save all of humankind from ignorance, dissatisfaction and division.

However he had learned his lessons well from the mistakes of his so called peers and rivals, most notably Noah Borander, and instead of forcing a sweeping change upon humanity at all once, which would be sure to generate only needless conflict and destruction, he would instead insinuate his ideals gently, subtly, over the course of years and years, so that it felt perfectly natural and ordinary to the masses. Already he was instituting bills to require genotype analysis for aptitude testing at kindergarten and elementary school ages, so that parents could better direct their children to activities and studies that best suited their unique genetic predispositions. He had programs creeping into the military as well, with those who tested positive for genes that would make them better suited to Mobile Suit combat being sifted out of the USN recruits and put into the Solar Knight training programs, there to succeed or fail based on personal motivation.

He was gradually compiling, with the aid of Namara, a complete genetic database of all living humans, by which he hoped to be able to accurately predict the results of breeding and could even act to steer those with desired genes into mating and producing ever more desirable and capable children. It was still a nascent dream right at the moment, but he could definitely see the foundations being laid with every passing day. And best of all, the people loved him for it, trusted him as their savior, and not only was there no resistance to his plans, people had even begun spontaneous grassroots movements to DEMAND for more genetic testing and evaluating for reasons of personal security and improvement. After seeing from a distance what power humanity possessed in its genes that could be activated by outside forces, such as Noah's Green EDEN, people were wondering what they might be capable of without even realizing it.

Though he was careful to manage that aspect of things quite closely. All well and good to envy and fear the so called Edenites for their powers, but if envy and fear changed into a desire to understand and be like, then that was a problem. Because the genes of an Edenite were simply too perfect, too capable, in all of his models they were proclaimed as near godlike individuals. Individuals better qualified, genetically, to lead humanity than Gilbert himself was. And that simply could not be countenanced or allowed. This was HIS vision, his dream after all... he couldn't let a gaggle of genetic freaks steal his birthright from him just because of an accident in nanotechnology! No matter how good and just his Destiny Plan was, he could never allow it to come to completion while Edenites still existed. He could hardly break his own rules and discount their genes after all. If he was to have any chance of retaining autonomy of his dream, they had to go. They had to be gone.

Establishing the Reclaimer Initiative had been one of his first steps along the path to accomplishing this urgent goal. He'd assigned control of the organization to that freak Djibril mostly as a test to see whether someone with such obvious genetic flaws could overcome them, and he had to say, he was slightly impressed. Bitter and backstabbing as he was, Djibril was just the sort of ruthless, cold blooded individual to quietly take up the reins of command and recreate what was basically a new Blue Cosmos, but this one firmly under Durandel's thumb. He'd learned from his association with Noah how useful it could be to have a terrorist organization on call to establish a credible threat to the populace in order to enhance his own power, and while the RI was a blunter tool than the Brotherhood had been, it was effective all the same.

Under Djibril's fanatical eyes, the RI had steadily and "unofficially" been provoking the surviving Edenites into a furor over the last few months, until Durandel was sure things were practically at the breaking point. The time was just about ripe for that incident he had discussed with his "shadow government". He had opted not to go the path of a breakout at FEAR headquarters, the less public attention directed that way, the better. Setting up a group of overeager settlers from the crowded Second Earth colonies was a much better gambit. Not only would he have the blood of women and children to show to the masses, it would also serve as a way to get rid of some important dissidents at the same time. They chafed under what they saw as his despotic grip on the USN, and if it bothered them so much, he was only too happy to let them leave... permanently. Never let it be said that Gilbert Durandel kept a citizen against their will.

All it would take would be some creative work on the paintjob and identification codes of the transport shuttle, and a few slight modifications to the shuttle's landing trajectory, moving it away from a sparsely populated grassland towards the more heavily populated "city" that had grown up around the ruins of the old Victoria Mass Driver. "Urbanis" it was supposed to be called, by the Edenite Natives that lived there. Though barely even large enough to be considered a town by modern standards, having less than two million residents, it was the largest concentration of Edenites in Africa, and if anyone were to have the means to shoot down a "RI hunting shuttle" it would be them. Perhaps they would even be obliging enough to use a Mobile Suit to do the deed, that would be just about perfect. All it would take thenw as a bit of manipulation of the background by his media experts, and voila, they would have an unprovoked and senseless attack on unarmed civilians to enflame the populace. Declaring war would be child's play at that point in time, the people would beg him to do it.

Rey and Fleet Admiral Icarus were already staging troops and supplies for the initial reinvasion of Earth, the Solar Protection Fleet was on heightened maneuvers in high orbit over the planet, and the Solar Knights were marshalling their full force to serve as the steel gauntlet that would crush any resistance to landing operations. FEAR had promised him plentiful supplies of MAIDEN as well as other advances and technology to help maintain ground and cleanse away the taint of Green EDEN, as well as the use of their super soldiers and advanced Mobile Suits for shock attacks. If anything, those in FEAR were even more eager to begin the war than he was, their scientists all but drooling over the opportunity to gain more fresh research material.

Research material wasn't the only thing those in FEAR were drooling over. Dr. Natalia Dostyana, FEAR's head director, had been making more and more overt moves on Rey as of late. Gilbert didn't feel it was his place to tell his adopted son who he should and should not sleep with, he just feared that Natalia's reasons for seeking out his son had little to do with sex and more to do with politics, and he would really rather spare Rey that sort of pain and heartbreak. Rey had assured him that he could handle himself with regards to the older woman, but Durandel remained unconvinced. If Rey was to have any one glaring weakness, women would be it. He was still head over heels smitten with the Lunamaria girl, and Durandel knew too well that forlorn love could easily turn to jealousy and hatred. Natalia was too smooth a serpent for Rey to be able to grasp her and hold her at arms length, she would be coiled about him before he even knew she was that close.

But perhaps it was only by making a mistake and getting his figners burned that Rey would be able to learn better, and so Gilbert kept his nose out of that part of his son's business, even as he kept a wary eye on it all the same. In a way, Rey served as a great lightning rod for him, and gave him an opportunity to watch Natalia as she worked to sink her hooks into him with seductive wiles. If she thought to do the same to him, then she had a few hard knocks coming her way. Gilbert smiled grimly. He enjoyed women, enjoyed their company, their little oddities and their unique perspective on many issues. He enjoyed being with them physically and mentally, and he would not turn down an intelligent, attractive woman's offer if she were to make one. But he would not let himself be controlled by one either, unlike most men. If Natalia was so determined to climb into his bed, he would not stop her. But there was no path from his bed to this chair he sat in right now, not for her. Perhaps not for anyone but him.

Which was a somewhat painful thought because there was one woman he cared for above all others, and dearly wished would be at his side through thick and thin, forever. Perhaps the only woman he knew he could understand him, disagree with him, and still love him all the same. His dear captain, Talia Gladys. They'd been in the same relationship pattern for more than a decade by now, after he had asked her to marry him shortly before beginning his meteoric rise to the top of PLANT politics. She had respectfully declined, not being able to seperate herself from her work at the time, and knowing that he could not seperate himself from his either. They remained friends and lovers, and had been plodding along, more or less in stasis, ever since. Whenever they saw each other they would make time for dinner and sex, but neither could stay for long enough to truly kindle the relationship they both knew they wanted. They were too devoted to their jobs, already married as it were.

Talia had recently become commander of ZAFT's newest and biggest warship, the Fleet Carrier _Remembrance_, all due to her own considerable leadership and organizational skills of course. Talia was adamant in refusing his political help in advancing her career, despite his many opportunities to do so. But that very determination to prove herself, by herself, was one of the reasons he loved her so much. She perfectly fitted the profile of her that her genes laid out for him, and he would no more interfere in that expression of her genetic potential than he would accept the existence of Edenites as part of his plan. Smiling fondly, Gil recalled the last time they had been together, and noted with a smirk that it was perhaps past time he made another friendly inspection of ZAFT's small fleet, and of course be obliged to spend some time admiring the new flagship. He resolved to schedule it in as soon as he got a free moment, it might be the last such chance for easy congenialty before the war began.

A knock on his door brought his head up and cleared his thoughts of idle and pleasant dreams, and once more he was Solar President Durandel. He paused a moment to ensure he was composed and steady, and then let the door open with the press of a button on his desk. A man in a neatly pressed and starched suit and tie waited on the other side, his pale reddish hair clipped almost militarily short. Durandel instantly recognized him but couldn't quite figure his name out, though he knew him to be one of the more senior agents of Section Nine, his internal affairs and intelligence organization. "You may enter." Gilbert said levelly, with the hint of warmness he allowed into his voice for those who he might consider worthy of making a good impression on.

"Thank you, sir." The man said, briskly walking in front of the desk and standing more or less at parade rest. Definitely military, most likely a coordinator, and thus from ZAFT. A veteran too. Capable, intelligent, accomplished. Just the sort of man he liked to see working to guard the shadows at his back. "Senior Operative Martin Dicosta, delivering an urgent report, sir." He proffered a data chip to Gilbert, who took it while not taking his eyes off the intelligence officer, trying to place him.

"Have we met before, Martin?" Gil asked, setting the chip down on his desk for a moment. "You look familiar."

"I've been honored to give the President intelligence briefings before." Martin replied with an easy grin. "Though never one on one. You look taller on camera, sir."

"Everyone does." Gil smiled, pleased that the man showed no trepidation or fawning deference. Respect, yes, but there was a world of difference between sycophancy and respect. The man was comfortable in his skin, and felt no need to suck up to high authority, confident in his own abilities and experience. He found that he liked this Martin Dicosta fellow. "So what is so urgent that you must need deliver it by hand, Martin?"

"Unrest in Orb, sir." Dicosta replied at once, carefully shading his tone to filter out any hint of dismay and instead replace it with crisp anticipation. This was about as deep cover as deep cover got, and though he privately thought the man sitting before him would better serve humanity by decaying at the bottom of a sewer with a slit throat, that wasn't his mission or his intentions. He could do far more to hurt this man and his twisted dreams by gaining his confidence and friendship than he could by hurling abuse and pulling a weapon. He'd volunteered to infiltrate Section Nine during the reorganization process, and he would not waste his time or opportunity now that he had the chance to worm his way into Durandel's good graces. The information he was to report made his guts clench up inside, but Durandel would have found out sooner or later, and from someone else, so he'd decided to make the best of it and turn it to his advantage.

"Unrest you say? In my most peaceful, eglitarian and socially active province?" Gil replied slowly, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. "What's got their panties in a bunch this time?"

Dicosta took a deep breath and committed himself. "Someone made an assassination attempt on the Queen and the rest of the Royal family."

"Someone did WHAT?" Gil was half up out of his chair, angry on every line in his face. Not that he was angry that someone had made such an attempt, but that he didn't know about it till now, and definitely hadn't authorized such a thing! He was committed to letting Orb play out enough rope to tie their hands AND hang themselves, and giving them a legitimate reason to protest was the last thing he needed! "Who did this? What stupid, irresponsible..."

"No one from the USN." Dicosta cut him off. "We've searched long and hard, sir and we haven't found a single link to your government. That's the first thing we thought of too." Dicosta frowned, as if in concentration, but in truth he was actually puzzled. He wasn't lying, all his efforts had turned up nothing implicating the USN. Nothing at all. And Durandel's reaction, while conceivably fake, didn't appear to be anything less than total surprise and outrage, if not for the same reasons as Dicosta was surprised and outraged. Dicosta saw a tragedy, Durandel saw a challenge to his power and control. And he had yet to drop the real bombshell. "Apparently they didn't miss by much either. The Queen came within a few minutes of dying, and the Ambassador is in a medically induced coma. Exact reports on their injuries are still hazy, but from what I hear, they're alive more by luck than skill. An attempt was made to kidnap the Crown Prince as well, but that was foiled by Orb security forces."

"Good god." Durandel sat back down in his chair, his mind afire with possibilities. "Was their security so lax? How did anyone get close enough to inflict grievous bodily harm upon those two? I wouldn't have thought it possible with less than a mechanized regiment!"

"There security was not lax, but it appears to have been bypassed. They rely on much the same sort of genetic samplers and thermal profiling and facial recognition software as we do. Apparently a single man was able to infiltrate the royal estate, take out the bodyguard and attack them both in their own bedchamber. The only way we can conceivably understand how this was possible is if that man was already recognized by the security system as a registered guest."

"Are you telling me someone from within her own government tried to kill her?" Gil tried to suppress his glee, but it was very difficult.

"I'm telling you, sir, that according to the rumors I've heard, that Orb's prime suspect for the attack, whom is in custody at this very moment..." Dicosta looked straight at Durandel and dropped the bomb. "... Is none other than Kira Yamato, the queen's twin brother."

Gil stared at the intelligence officer in shock, his mouth working, his brain numbed. "That can't be right." He managed to blurt out at last. "Kira Yamato attempted to assassinate his sister? I've met the man, he couldn't do that. He would have done it a long time ago if he could have done it at all."

"I'm not saying its the truth, sir, merely that its what I've heard." Dicosta stressed. "Apparently there is a lot of phsyical and even genetic evidence left behind at the crime scenes that indict Mr. Yamato beyond a shadow of doubt. Needless to say, Orb's government is trying to keep this nailed down tight, but its just too big. Orb's going to explode sky high when it gets out that Kira Yamato, their hero, raped and attempted to murder his own sister the Queen, and tortured her husband, his best friend, half to death with power tools. There are already government officials at work on a counter-assassination, from what I understand. They take injury to their Queen very seriously there."

"Well, then I think it would only be our duty, as the benevolent federal government, to come to the aid of our province in its time of need." Durandel said, as much to himself as to Dicosta. This was almost too perfect to be real! Because Kira Yamato was an Edenite himself, and if he had really committed such an atrocity, or could be proved to have done so anyway, that would be a HUGE coup for his public relations department, in addition to the colony ship! Edenites didn't even spare their own families from their evil depradations... ohh, the public would eat it up like honey covered gold! "Do you think he actually did it, Martin?"

"I think that's the way the evidence points, sir, but I find it hard to believe personally." Dicosta replied evenly.

"They can be a tricky bunch, those Ultimate Coordinators. I thought Noah Borander was my good friend up until the moment he turned out to be my greatest enemy." Durandel said sorrowfully. "Perhaps it has something to do with the recent tragic loss of Ms. Clyne. He may have become unhinged by grief. Yes, that sounds more like the Kira Yamato I know."

"Regardless, sir, we should be very careful how we handle this. If we go down there and start throwing our weight around, the whole story will come to light in no time flat, and there will be rioting in the streets and civil disorder to match. It could bring down the entire Orb Government, a scandal like this one." Dicosta cautioned.

"We wouldn't want that, now would we?" Gilbert smiled like a cat locking on to a wounded mouse. "I think I will first meet with Chief Representative Kurenai, get his plans for the situation, before I make any overt moves. Its only fair to give them a chance to clean their own mess up, right Martin? I will of course put forces on standby to assist in restoring order, but they are a last resort. Orb has too much recent history of invasion for me to be sanguine about subjecting them to it again, even for their own good." He looked up at and studied Dicosta for a few moments. "You've done well bringing this to my attention personally, Martin. Consider yourself in charge of all future developments on this subject, and if you find anything out, about this or anything else you feel deserves my attention, don't hesitate to come to me, day or night."

"I'm honored by your trust, sir." Dicosta replied, glad for his high collar that absorbed the sweat dripping down his neck. He wanted nothing more than to be away from this twisted man right now, who was all but gloating already. "I will return to my duties then, and I will have an update on the situation on your desk tomorrow morning. Along with any other pertinent items of interest."

"Keep this sort of work up, Martin, and you might find yourself in places you could barely dream of achieving." Gilbert promised. "I need good men at my side to help me usher in a golden age for humanity. You've impressed me today."

"Quality of work is part of personal pride, sir. I'm glad I can serve the USN in whatever capacity I can." Martin had to fight not to salute, merely nodding and marching out of the office. He needed to go find a bathroom and vomit. The world was going to hell in a handbasket... and he'd just helped push it along. Good reasons or not, higher calling or not, he felt dirty and tarnished. "In your memory, may it guide me to a bright future, Ms. Clyne." Martin whispered, so low even he could barely hear himself, holding his hand to his chest in respectful remembrance. He then went to find that bathroom.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Praetorian Order Chambers, November 5th**

Lilia's mood, as she stalked up the thousands upon thousands of curvy, winding steps towards the office of her mentor and leader, could perhaps best be described as "tense". It was a mood many in the order could relate to, and one that was even beginning to infect the rest of the population of Garden City. Not because of information leaks, but because of a sort of subconscious awareness that rose insideof people. Yggdrasil was restless, the Wind of Words blew gustily, and such a thing could only mean events of great importance were nigh. As one more informed than most, Lilia was deeply afraid that these signs heralded a dark and grim time fast approaching. Even without her psychic senses, she had plenty of brain left over to see the patterns in recent attacks by the Reclaimers and know they were building up to something bigger.

There was a new hint of agitation in the air of the Praetorian chambers as well, a bare pheromone trace of heightened aggression, worry and even anticipation. Where most Edenites were of the newfound opinion that war was just about the most terrible thing that could be imagined, because of the Wind of Word's bond, the Praetorians knew better. The enemy they would face had no breath in the Wind, they would hardly even feel aunguish when they snuffed them out. And Praetorians were trained to endure the death echoes of powerful psychics, including Chimera. They would not be troubled by killing a bunch of pathetic Stumps. Well, most of them wouldn't be, Lilia and a few others were of more generous temperment. She would rather not kill anyone at all, but if war was thrust upon her, as it seemed likely to be, she would do her duty and protect those in her charge, to the death if need be.

The Stumps... formerly a derisive term for the non-psychic by Newtypes, and now more widely adopted as a derogative for all non-Edenite humans, referencing not only their psychic dullness but their stunted potential in almost all aspects of what the Edenites considered life. They were were like tree stumps compared to the towering trees that were Edenites. The same on basic terms, but quite differently executed, and not really comparable. But getting back to the point, the Stumps were numerous and easily misled by their leaders, and in that Lilia recognized them for the true threat they were, even as her comrades frequently downplayed the danger. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups, she'd seen that on a T shirt once, and it seemed apt for the current situation to her. So what if one Praetorian was the equal of a hundred Stumps? There were more than six billion Stumps, and less than half a billion Edenites. And only about thirty Praetorians. Not good odds.

Of course she and her comrades did have many advantages, including local knowledge of a wide stretch of New Eden, access to high technology, and the best training their people could provide, which outstripped those of Stump soldiers like a lion outstripped a housecat. Also, they had occassional access to those who could quite literally see the future, or the probable future anyway, and figure out how best to change what currently was to allow or disallow that particular future. They were psychics of unparalleled might and motivation, and they knew no fear of any mortal foe. Lilia had no fear of any individual Stump, or even small group of Stumps. She was trained to handle such things. But Stumps as a whole scared her almost breathless. She just wished more of her comrades felt that way, she felt they were going to be in for a rude awakening otherwise.

Lilia's dark mood lifted somewhat as she finally reached the top of the stairs and found a group of her peers standing there waiting. Not for her, but for the man who they'd come to see to deign to open his office door for them. It wasn't like Kunai to keep his disciples waiting for long, and Lilia figured that since she was the last to arrive, having had to come from her personal residence while in the shower when she got the summons through the Wind, Kunai would be ushering them into his sanctum soon enough. She could have been there faster, but she'd felt that the situation was important enough to warrent her dressing in her uniform-armor, which took a few minutes to put on correctly. Technically she could have showed up naked, and no one would have batted an eye or made a comment. Its not like they hadn't all seen each other nude many times before. She'd even had a few relationships with some of them, one night things mostly.

Such as with mighty Alexander, the fourth of the four Arboreal Praetorians, a rank within their order that was as much ceremonial as anything else. It just singled out those four who were the most accomplished, in the eyes of their peers, and marked them out for special extra duties, most of which were onerous and a select few of which made them shake with pride and honor. For instance they were allowed to harvest the Fruit of Wisdom from Yggdrasil's branches and convey it to those who were to consume it, and they were often sent as emissaries to the Chimera allies of Yggdrasil. Heine and Haman, the other two Arboreals, were also waiting in the hall. Alexander towered over the other Edenites present, only a hair less than seven feet tall and bulked out with muscle like a statue of Hercules himself, his head crowned by a close cropped buzz of white-golden hair and with serious brown eyes that seemed to smoulder like wet coals when he was focused. The golden pupils only enhanced the effect.

For all his size, Alexander was light on his feet and quite agile and dextrous, deceptively so for a man so big, and he was widely accounted as perhaps the most dangerous Praetorian in melee combat, though Lilia could well remember a few times where she had managed to sting his pride a little with her speed and agility, or for that matter, where Heine's devious mind or Haman's immense hoard of experience had prevailed over the pure power of their peer. They complemented each other well, and could easily have been called friends, though friendly rivals was as accurate a term as any. Sometimes friendlier than others, such as those nights she'd spent in Alex's arms, usually after besting him in some contest... he hated losing, but he could handle it from them, taking it as motivation to do better in the future.

She'd never been with either of the other two Arboreals, Haman being more than twice her age and for all his gentleness and wry humor, stirring up unpleasant associations from her past because of that, and Heine, though he was cute and wonderful, because he was involved with another woman, and Lilia liked Panner too much to try and poach her man. Besides, Praetorian or not, she didn't feel like messing with the Strategos Minoris of Legio Direcat, or more directly, her pet Direcat and mascot of her Legio, Hector. Hector was the sweetest thing, just like a sabretoothed housecat the size of a very large horse, except when he felt a threat to his mistress, in which case he was eighteen hundred pounds of pure mayhem wrapped in tawny gold fur. Lilia had seen Chimera's that were less fiercely deadly than Hector.

She tradded comfortable nods and hand touches with her comrades and peers, including the half dozen or so other Praetorians that had apparently been summoned to Kunai's sanctum at this time. It was rare to see so many Praetorians, almost a third of the order, including all four Arboreals, in one place at one time, and almost instantly Lilia was aware of the buzing excitement on the psychic plane. No one was talking about it of course, but they could all feel that something big was about to happen. One Praetorian was enough to handle pretty much anything up to and include a enemy Mobile Suit, as Lilia herself had proved, what problem could be big enough to require ten of them, she almost didn't want to know. She was privately relieved to have taken the time to wear her armor, as everyone else was so dressed as well.

"Quite a gathering we have here." Heine noted with his trademark brilliant grin. Heine never seemed like he was serious, until you realized he was almost always serious, he just cloaked it in good humor. "I wonder if Atlas has grown tired of carrying the world around on his back, and Kunai needs some folks to spell him? I can hardly think of any other issue big enough to require so many of the Order."

"Ah, Heine my friend, I almost wish you would be right about that. I would gladly carry the planet around the sun a few times on my back rather than deal with what I fear we will be dealing with soon." Haman answered with a shrug and a wink of his eye, brown like Alexander but with shiny silver for a pupil instead of gold, like the other three Arboreals.

"There's no need to fear anything." Alexander rumbled, shrugging one shoulder in mild irritation. "I wish the Stumps would try something major, just so we could stuff their guts right down their throats and show them once and for all who they're really messing with here. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am sick of turning the other cheek and burying innocent families. These evil space monsters need to die, the sooner the better."

"I used to be a space monster too ya know." Heine pointed out with a sharp grin that indicated to them all that was a bit nettled about Alex's casual use of the term. "By and large they're not that much different from us. Most of them probably don't give a fig either way what we do. They just have bad, corrupt leaders, and they have been conditioned, by and large, to follow them blindly. The people are not our enemies, the USN leadership is."

"Its okay for them to kill our people, but we must not kill theirs?" Alexander's eyes smouldered, and his hand caressed the hilt of the monstrous two handed mono-sword that he carred strapped to his back. The sword could fold into thirds for easier storage in tight spots, but right now was at its full impressive length, almost as long as Alexander was tall. "I disagree completely with that assessment. Morality be damned, blood calls out for blood. We have not sought this conflict, but by the Tree, I will finish what they bring to me, no matter what I must do to do it."

"You would visit upon them what the RI visits upon us?" Haman asked. "Alex, my friend, down that way lies a dark path with no good end. Even the best of men who walk that path rarely return whole. I am no less sad or angry at their atrocities than you, but to wage a total war, against even their civilian populations... that is..."

"Perhaps what is necessary, though I pray fervently that it is not." A new voice said, and immediately the Praetorians stiffened to more respectful stances, as the door to Kunai's office-sanctum swung open and he was silhoutted in the doorway. He was in an automatic motorized wheelchair, at his ease, feeling no need to prove himself to them by walking around like he did for others. Crippled legs or not, he could take any two or three of them in a straight fight and they all knew it. Especially while sitting down and all that power normally devoted to standing upright and moving around available for other purposes. Kunai was perhaps the only man alive who was more dangerous lying in a bed than he was charging around on the battlefield with a gun in hand.

"You would have us wage a total war?" Haman asked him, quite respectfully for all that he had a good decade and a half in years on Kunai. Years mattered very little to most Edenites.

"Given a choice, no. I fear that choice or not though, a total war will be brought upon us, and that we will have little choice but to respond in kind." Kunai answered with a shrug he turned into a waving gesture. "Come in, all of you, and get comfortable. I have something I need you to do."

"All ten of us?" Alexander asked, with more than a hint of disbelief in his tone. He noticed Kunai's gimlet stare, and wilted a bit. "It just seems a bit excessive, sir."

"It is no more and no less what I have seen is required." Kunai answered, and just from the phrasing of that reply, all further protests and questions died unasked. What Kunai had obliquely referenced was receiving a vision of the future from Yggdrasil. "I had fruit salad for lunch today, and suddenly find myself with no appetite for dinner, my friends." Kunai commented wryly, moving his chair around the room back to his desk.

"That bad huh?" Heine asked, slouching against one of the walls. Heine always was the most informal of them all. "Well, that kinda blows."

"Not necessarily. It was not so much bad news as... important news." Kunai trailed off, gazing into a distance only he could see. "Vitally important news. We stand on the cusp of events that will rock all of humanity... Edenites and Stumps both... to the core. We have a chance to tip things in our favor before they even truly begin, to gain an ally worth a hundred regular soldiers."

"What do we need one more Praetorian for?" Alexander asked, perhaps a bit snidely. He wilted again under another stare from Kunai.

"This is no ordinary man, no ordinary Edenite I speak of. This is a man all of you respect. A man you all fear, at least if you have a single iota of sense about you. This is a man people speak of in whispers, a man who can cause even veteran soldiers to blanch and lay down their arms rather than face his wrath. This is a man who's hands have held the hope of the entire world, without flinching or trepidation. This is a man of a sort that only comes once every few hundred years." Kunai explained.

"This man is Kira Yamato, isn't he?" Lilia spoke up, her eyes shining brightly. There was a quickly silenced series of mumbles from the Praetorians scattered about the room.. Even Alexander looked momentarily impressed.

"You have it exactly right, Lilia. I do speak of Kira Yamato." Kunai smiled, though it was a hard edged smile.

"I still don't understand." Alexander pressed, worrying at his concern like a dog with a bone. Singleminded and focused were good descriptors for Alexander, as was stubborn. "What's so special about Kira Yamato? Yes, he's a damned good pilot, but so are all of us. I've seen the recordings from Rex Lodge, and I wager I could break him over my knee like a dry twig. He doesn't seem that special to me. Certainly not enough so as to be some all important savior."

"Kira might very well surprise you, Alex." Kunai warned him. "He did it to me quite often. I learned that it was almost impossible to overestimate his abilities in clinch situations. He is after all, the model upon which all of us are derived, like it or not. He is the first Ultimate Coordinator, and he has passed through his second puberty. His Seed is matured, has taken root and he has achieved the next level of Seed enhancement, accessed powers the rest of us can only dream about."

"I didn't realize you knew Kira so well." Lilia said, her gaze sharpening with interest. Kunai might be her mentor and the savior of her body, but Kira was her idol and the savior of her soul. She was desperate to know more about him, and the thought that she might actually get to meet him set her whole body to tingling with energy.

"Once upon a time we were very good friends." Kunai smiled sadly. "Events and personalities conspired to bring us to odds with each other, but I've never lost my respect for him. He is a good man. Foolish in his pursuit of idealistic black and whites, but a good man. The sort of man you definitely want on your team. Which brings us to the topic at hand."

"If I remember correctly, he's part of Orb's military." Heine volunteered with a half frown. Heine and Haman both had been prior military, elite soldiers of ZAFT and the ALU respectively, before becoming Edenites and eventually Praetorians. They both had some ugly history with the USN which had prompted them to give up their old lives, but Lilia didn't know the details. Which was all right, only Kunai really knew much about her own background, it wasn't something she liked talking about. Ascension to an Edenite was like wiping the slate of life clean, it allowed people to put their pasts behind them, and she was very grateful for that. For that matter, Kunai himself seemed to have a deeper past than she had ever expected. "He's not the sort of person that changes sides at the drop of a hat."

"In a normal situation you would be entirely correct, though it is more accurate to say that he is a pilot for the Clyne Faction, which is an independent political movement closely allied with Orb, but not actually controlled by it." Kunai explained. "But this is anything but a normal situation. A darkness has passed over Orb, and left horror and death in its wake. Grave damage has been done to the highest reaches of Orb's government structure, and their populace is on the verge of uproar. Kira hangs balanced on a spiderweb over a pit of fire, because he has been implicated, falsely I might add, in the events that have so damaged his adopted country's rulers."

"What kind of darkness are we talking about here? Special ops team from the USN?" Haman asked.

"Worse than that." Kunai said flatly.

"Semi-human hit squad from FEAR?" Heine volunteered, curiosity piqued. Kunai looked almost... spooked. He'd never seen the Praetorian leader even bat an eye at terrible and dangerous creatures of all sorts before, even Chimera barely seemed to draw a blink.

"Far worse than that."

"One of the Caller's Chimerae?" Alexander provided, suggesting the most dreaded thing he could think of.

"In a manner of speaking, they might have wished for something so merciful." Kunai's voice was barely a whisper. "Evil has been afoot in Orb, an Evil the likes of which I have rarely felt, and hoped never to see again. The vision was not clear, all I saw was a blot of darkness, with red eyes in the depths of the abyss, and a great chill down my spine. True evil is very rare, and thankfully so, because it destroys or warps everything it touches." He seemed to shake himself out of some sort of reverie. "It matters little, the darkness is gone now, moved up and away and out of our current concern. But its passing has put Kira in a very dangerous situation, far more dangerous than he realizes. His life is in danger, and unless an outside force acts, he will be dead before the end of the month, struck down by former allies."

"We can't let that happen!" Lilia exclaimed, overcome with worry for her idol.

"We won't." Kunai assured her. "I have called you all here today for a mission of the utmost gravity. A mission only Praetorians could hope to accomplish. We are going to save the savior, and bring salvation home to us." Kunai turned to Alexander and several of the other Praetorians. "Your group, Alex, will be in charge of infiltrating Morganroete Armories, Orb's national security defense and technology firm. There are data files there containing blueprints on a new prototype Gundam for Kira, named the Salvation. You will steal these plans, and destroy the rest of the facility, or as much of it as you can. You will be acting at night, so there should be few civilian casualties, but it is of utmost importance that you return with this data, because it is upon the Salvation's frame that we will base Kira's new Gundam."

"Smash and grab. I'd be happy to do it." Alexander said with a broad smile.

"Heine and Haman will take the rest of the Praetorians, save Lilia, and infiltrate Orb's primary Mobile Suit base outside of Nara-Attha City. You will then sabotage or destroy as many of their Mobile Suits and maintenance facilities as you can. They only have fifty Dawndrakes, crippling the majority should not be overly difficult. You are to avoid casualties if possible, but don't let a little blood stop your mission either. Make as much noise and confusion as possible, in addition to crippling Orb's military forces, you'll be helping provide a distraction for Lilia." Kunai turned to the blue haired girl. "Lilia, I am assigning you the most pivotal task of all. You must breach the asylum where Kira is being held, convince him to escape with you, and then return him to the extraction point. There should be little in the way of organized pursuit, because of Heine and Haman and Alexander's actions, but the vision tasted of a hard struggle all the same. You are our best runner and escaper, if anyone can get through the city to the rendevous point, it will be you."

"I will not fail you, Kunai. I will save my savior." Lilia promised with all her heart and soul. "No harm will come to him."

"I don't care if he gets hurt, we can fix that. But he must survive. And it would be best if he came of his own free will. I feel that of all of us, you would stand the best chance of persuading him that this is the right course of action, you do have much in common with him after all. I trust you will all perform your tasks with the comptence I know you possess. A new war is starting, and this will be our first blow. By denying Orb and the USN its highly trained Mobile Suit forces, and the technology of their new Gundams, we will have already gained a decisive advantage over those who would conquer and exterminate us. With Kira Yamato at our backs, in a new Gundam combining Orb's best technologies with our own, each battle will be half won before it even begins. The psychological advantage will be worth ten thousand soldiers on the field."

"I still don't see how he's so great, but I am glad to strike a blow at those bastard Stumps." Alexander said with a snarled grin.

"I've fought by his side before, and he awed me then. It would be a true pleasure to fight by his side once more." Heine said, almost wistfully.

"Always good to have someone around who the enemy wants to kill more than they want to kill me." Haman smirked. "As a distraction, he will do most nicely."

"He's a great man." Lilia whispered. "I owe him so much... I will do anything for him. Anything. I will NOT allow him to be harmed. He has suffered too much already."

"His suffering is only beginning, as it is for us all." Kunai told them heavily. "But Kira is good at suffering. Its one of the things he does best. He suffers and then he makes things right again. You leave in five days. May Yggdrasil watch over you, my friends. You hold our future in your hands. You hold the future of humanity in your hands. Per aspera ad astra."

"Per aspera ad astra." They replied as one. It was latin, a motto adopted by the Praetorians. It translated as "Through Difficulties to the Stars", signalling their devotion to advance to any height no matter the hardships they encountered.


	18. Victim

Author Note: Well, time for some more set up and action, and maybe some surprises in store as well.

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Palace, November 9th**

Being the highest political authority in Orb was a role Jiro had never really quite gotten used to. Despite the fact that he'd been in the role of Chief Representative for over eight years now, and had been in charge during perhaps the worst crisis to ever befall his nation, a crisis so terrible every other terrestrial nation had chosen to flee to space rather than confront it, he couldn't help but feel that he was still the lesser shadow of the person who truly belonged in the position. His popularity polls said otherwise, said he was every bit as popular in terms of percentage points, as his esteemed predecessors, but he knew better than to fully trust such things. The people of Orb trusted and respected him, but he did not enjoy their reverence. And sometimes he was glad of that, because he saw what a burden it was to bear such adoration from so many people on your shoulders, and that burden was one he was glad he did not have to carry.

On the other hand, at times being held as a figure of near religious awe by his people would have its advantages, Jiro reflected wryly, especially when it came to making hard decisions about the fate of the nation as a whole. Decisions of that sort had been coming more and more frequently as of late, as internal Orb pressure on the matter of their national independence from the USN had increased, and was matched by external pressure from the rest of the USN, until Jiro found himself in the position of being the thin wall between a cauldron of boiling steam desperate to break free, and a ocean of cold water trying to break in and douse that steam. Nobody on either side seemed to be able to be satisfied with his efforts in bringing a peaceful resolution to the matter, but at the same time no one had any better ideas and so he was forced to continue to plod along with knives at his back and swords at his throat, hoping for a miracle to open the path for him.

As if that all wasn't enough, events of the recent past, at the dawn of the month, were threatening to ignite into a conflagration that would take the entire nation by storm. Though security protocols had been enacted that kept the spread of information regarding the ghastly events of Halloween to a minimum, the news was simply too big to be completely supressed, especially in a democratic and independent state like Orb with a large degree of freedom of speech and of the media. An assault upon the royal family itself, the spiritual leadership of Orb, was like a knife thrust into the very soul of its people, and already some of those charged with keeping it secret were beginning to fray at the edges under their own sense of outrage. Hameya herself knew, Jiro had been tempted with some wild revenge fantasies at one point or another, and his family could never have been said to have ever been particularly friendly towards the Attha's. Rivalry aside though, she was his Queen, and an assault upon her was an assualt upon his own honor and self-esteem.

And the worst of it all was that the prime... and only... suspect in the whole sordid, horrific affair, was none other than the Queen's own brother, one of Orb's most legendary heroes and respected figures himself. Jiro knew Kira about as well as anyone other than close friends and family could, and could hardly find it in himself to believe that he was responsible for the assault on the Royal family or the later incident involving the Stormhound leadership, but the evidence was starkly undeniable. Who could know the darkness that lurked within the hearts of some men, perhaps not even those men themselves? Things had been rough for Kira in the wake of the tragic death of his wife and children, and many experts, and now Jiro himself, were of the opinion that the great man had finally broken down under the strain of his years of self sacrifice. It was tragic and depressing to see such a wonderful and beloved personage fall from grace, but everyone had their breaking point, and Kira had clearly been forced past his.

His growing certainty in Kira's guilt, intentional or unintentional notwithstanding, made Jiro's heart heavy because he knew that despite Kira's actions and feats of the past, they would serve him little good against the fires of public outrage when news finally broke of what exactly had happened to the Queen and her consort, and had been attempted upon the Crown Prince. A hero is forgotten in a month, a villian remembered for years, it was a sad truth of human memory that unpleasant events were easier to remember than pleasant ones. The fact that the assault upon the queen had also been sexual in motivation would only further incite tempers to white hot incandescence, where reason or rational arguement would have little sway. Scarely less serious were the later events involving the Stormhounds, though there would be less public outrage, the souring of the Stormhound's opinion towards Kira was perhaps more imminently threatening. Should Sergeant-Major Glory not survive his injuries, Jiro was already being forced to sign orders to have his wife restrained in case of an attempt at pre-emptive vigilante justice.

The Stormhounds had always had a somewhat unique place in Orb politics, ever since the creation of the unit in the years before the Eden Disaster. Comprised almost entirely of Naturals, many of them cast offs or rejects from the old Blue Cosmos terrorist organization, or else veterans of the Earth Alliance special forces commands, Jiro had privately never been entirely convinced that he and the upper echelon's of Orb were truly in control of the group. They could issue orders, and those orders were by and large followed, but Jiro had the feeling it was more out of a sense of cooperation rather than obligation. Certainly there had been times when the Stormhounds had acted more or less on their own accord, almost always in support of Orb interests, but all the same without being told to do so. And their leader, the impentrable Cyprus Finch, remained a near total cipher to Jiro to this day. He never could tell what the man was thinking about, and all too often found himself apparently under scrutiny that was most uncomfortable. Cyprus was like a wolf in the room with you, perhaps slightly tamed, but still almost fully wild under the surface, and you'd best just hope that his instincts didn't come into conflict with yours.

Cyprus held a place in the Stormhounds that was very similar to that of Queen Zala-Attha in the hearts and minds of the people of Orb, and an attack upon him and his family was like a knife plunged directly into the backsides of every other Stormhound, a pain and indignity that they could not ignore, and which cried out for immediate and bloody redress. And the Stormhounds were precisely the sort of people that were trained, motivated and equipped to administer their own brand of personal justice should they deem it necessary, and there was little anyone could do to stop them, short of Jiro mobilizing a regiment or more of regular army forces, and perhaps even a Mobile Suit squadron and placing the entire unit in confinement. Whether intentionally or through oversight, Cyprus Finch had trained the Stormhounds to have more loyalty to himself and his immediate subordinates than they did to the country they were supposed to be serving, and now that he was down and perhaps even out of the picture, they too were starting to fray at the edges as conflicts between Orb's justice system and their own silent desires began to manifest.

From his recent meetings with Master Sergeant Richard Ramierez, now de-facto field commander of the Stormhounds, though he was technically outranked by the still recuperating Colonel's Jones and Belaruse, Jiro had come away with the feeling that it was only Cyprus's own prior stated conviction that Kira was in fact innocent that was at all holding the Stormhounds back from covertly eliminating Kira once and for all, and even their near limitless faith in the intuition of their fabled commander was beginning to falter in the wake of the brutal attack upon his family that had left him comatose and unresponsive, near vegetable-like, though curiously free of physical injury. Certainly Ramierez had seemed to be oscillating in his support of the Queen's decision to have Kira committed to a secure mental institution for the potentially criminally insane for observation and evaluation, though in the end he had agreed, though only with the caveat that the Stormhounds be allowed to augment the guard details with their own personnel. Which Jiro could only agree to, given that the last time Kira had been brought into protective custody six Stormhounds had violently lost their lives, Ramierez was plainly not open to taking chances with regular security forces.

He had managed to make sure that Melissa Glory, Thomas Glory's wife of several years, was omitted from the guard augmentation roster. On that particular matter Ramierez had agreed completely, Raven, as he still affectionately called her, was not emotionally fit for the responsibility of guarding the man whom she had clearly decided was accountable for what had happened to her husband and his best friend. Regardless of the fact that it might make a tidy end to the whole matter, and even might assauge public opinion somewhat, having her murder Kira in retaliation for what he was still only being accused of would in the end only cause more upheaval, especially as the Queen herself seemed convinced that Kira was not guilty. Or at the very least, not intentionally guilty. And the Crown Prince, Allister, was even more vehement in his protection of his Uncle. Once more, Jiro reflected sourly, he was finding himself caught in the middle of conflicting interests, with both parties being ones he couldn't really control, and both expecting him to bend over backwards for their side of the matter.

Jiro glanced down at his watch and grimaced, even as the supposedly comely projection form of Lexi shimmered into view in front of his desk. He turned from where he'd been staring out the large picture windows behind his desk and eased himself into his chair with a sigh, his eyes passing over and through Lexi with little interest. The female body held only miniscule appeal for Jiro, and though Lexi was carefully created to appeal to the physical sensibilities of the majority of people, Jiro was one of the few that fell outside that particular statistical model. It wasn't that he thought she was ugly or offensive, it was just that she was supposed to evoke something in him on an instinctual level, and she just didn't, through no fault of her own. Sometimes he pondered having her reconfigure her image into something more aesthetically pleasing to his eyes, something that would be the work of nanoseconds for her, but in the end he always opted not to. Perhaps it was best, he thought wryly, for powerful men to have secretaries whom did not meet their standards of sexual beauty. Much less chance of scandal then. Something many politicians in the past could have been wise to pay heed to.

"The military envoy from the USN will be landing shortly, Jiro." Lexi reported smoothly, watching the brief play of emotions, barely more than tics and twitches of tiny muscles, cross the Chief Representative's face. To another fleshy it would have been almost unnoticable, his politicians poker face unbroken, but to her sensors, he might as well have been writing his basic line of thought across his forehead. It was no more or less than what he always thought when he saw her in a private setting and wasn't distracted by other immediate concerns. Sometimes she considered appearing for him in another avatar, perhaps a mix of Athrun and Kira, rather than her usual hybrid of Lacus and Cagalli, just to see if she could get him going like she did some other people. On the other hand, it was kinda pleasant talking to a man who didn't stare at her entirely digital chest like he was waiting for her shirt to delete itself spontaneously. A trick that she had pulled once or twice, just to see the reaction, which had ended up being both exactly what she expected and still confusing for all that.

"Joy." Jiro replied, not bothering to mask his sarcasm or the minor undercurrents of dread. "Why do I feel like a chicken with my neck on the butcher's block all of a sudden?"

"There are any number of rational reasons why you should feel trepidation at the thought of meeting with a senior military official from the USN." Lexi replied, answering his question though she knew it to be rhetorical. "Most pressing of which is the high statistical likelihood that he will be here to demand concessions from your government in exchange for a certain degree of inaction on the part of the "benevolent" Solar President." Lexi managed to infuse the word of praise with enough bile as to make Jiro instantly think of the Queen and her distaste for their munificent grand leader. Jiro's own opinions on Gilbert Durandel were somewhat more confused, but he had had occassion to glimpse the blatant misuse of power the man sometimes indulged in, which had not done much to endear him to Jiro, given that most such uses had been against the interests of Orb.

It also didn't take him more than a few blinks to collate and decipher what Lexi was insinuating, and he stared at her carefully. It was impossible to win a staring competition with a computer projection, but all the same Jiro almost unconsciously tried to bore his way into her head and figure out what she was thinking. Something that probably would have driven him crazy from mental overload if he had somehow been successful. "Are you saying that this envoy has come here to blackmail me?" Jiro asked slowly.

"The probability is greater than eighty four percent, yes. Despite our best efforts, the USN internal intelligence service, Section Nine, maintains many covertly placed agents within our nation, it is inevitable that one of them, perhaps more, would learn of the events of Halloween and report them to their superiors. As we both know, the Orb Bill of Independence is meeting heavy resistance in the middle and upper houses of legislature, backed by none other than the Solar President himself, though never overtly. Should Orb suffer a sudden destabilization, such as is almost certain to occur in the wake of the public announcement of the attack upon the Royal family, our coalition of support could very easily wither away. With Durandel's control of the greater media, this whole incident could be spun to make our government look weak and indecisive, perhaps even to the point where outside measures from the federal USN government would be needed to help "maintain order"." Lexi answered, her hands nervously clasped behind her back.

And well should even an artificial being like Lexi be concerned about such an event, perhaps even especially so, since while the humans of Orb had certain inalienable rights, no matter who was in charge, as a computer program, even a highly advanced one, she had no such protections, and there were many groups in the USN, and especially FEAR, that would be only too happy to get their hands on her mainframe and propetiary technology that made up her personality, and, in essence, life. Though the USN had their own AI assistant program, NAMARA, they would certainly leap at the chance to control another, one that had plenty of extra computational power in reserve since she wasn't managing the resources of billions of people living in complex colonies. And Lexi had the feeling, from talking with Nam, that she would not enjoy the kind of personal freedoms under USN control as she did with Orb at the keyboard. She would be more a computer program and less a real personality, and few would bother to treat her as anything but a data resource, rather than as a person.

Jiro sighed and crumpled back into his chair, propping his elbows on the desk and leaning his chin against his palms. "So in exchange for them not blowing the whole sordid affair wide open, and manipulating public opinion to the point where they have no choice but to come in and declare Martial Law and then dissolve our government... again... what do they want, do you think?" He asked tiredly.

"Well..." Lexi collated information, some of it very recent, transmitted to her from Nam, who had a data tendril inserted in the USN shuttle that was at that point in time landing at Hameya's Attlatl, the personages inside preparing to board sleek air transport for the short hop to the National Palace. "Given that the envoy is a high ranking military commander and one without much of an entourage, suggesting he has been given very broad powers to adjuctate this matter, and that the USN has recently begun a top to bottom increase in its levels of military preparedness, I would assume they intend to ask us for the use of Orb as a staging ground for a major imminent military operation, as well as assurances of our support in a logistical and garrison type role for that operation."

Jiro stared at her some more, barely daring to believe what she was telling him. "He's about to start another war?" Jiro whispered, appalled. Again, it wasn't a question that really begged an answer, since it was obvious, but Lexi felt obliged to reply all the same.

"All our intelligence services and long range detectors agree, the Solar Protection Fleet and Solar Knights are gearing up for a massive and sustained set of maneuvers, likely to include seizing more direct control of the upper atmosphere, followed by large scale landing incursions to previous military strongholds, including Carpentaria, Gibraltar, Heaven's Base and eventually Porta Panama and Victoria Spaceport, though the latter two are entirely nonfunctional and would require months if not years of reconstruction in order to return to viable status. Additionally, Victoria Spaceport is supposedly home to a large concentration of Edenite survivors, who will no doubt not desire eviction, thus conflict is almost inevitable. Seperate movements by covert splinters of the USN fleets indicate to me a possible secondary landing on the South Pole, probably under the auspices of FEAR." Lexi informed him.

"And do we have any idea what sort of resistance, if any, the native Edenite populations will pose to these maneuvers?" Jiro asked, almost hopefully.

"Insufficient data on indigenous survivors of Green EDEN nanoplague to make an accurate predicition at this time. Strong possibility though that there do exist enclaves elsewhere on Earth with the technology to pose a threat to USN military forces, though the level of threat is unknown." Lexi replied consideringly. She called up her images of the shuttle that had dropped Kira off outside Orb's Glasshouse earlier in October. "We've seen evidence of technological capability in advance of our own from at least one group, and we have no idea how large such a group might be. There's just too little data for me to say, Jiro. But its hard to bet against the USN at this point in time."

"Quantity has a quality all its own." Jiro agreed. "And the quality of the USN military is not altogether low in the first place. I imagine we'll be called upon to do more than supply logistical support though, its in Durandel's vested interest to get the public from all the states involved in any major conflict. I really hate to acceed to blackmail, perhaps especially coming from those who are technically my governmental superiors, but when its a choice between bow my head or lose it, I really don't have much choice. One more thing we're just going to have to grin and bear, I guess." Jiro exhaled heavily and slumped forward in his chair. "Put together mobilization orders for our armed forces, to be sent upon receipt of my signature, would you? The regular military forces, I should specify... Hameya forbid that they know enough about our Gundam program to expect us to put them into production as well."

Jiro thought for a few moments, and then went on, knowing that Lexi was taking care of his orders as fast as he could put them to words. "And perhaps you should refresh my memory on our current force levels and the status of all current and relevant secret programs. If we are going to war, then I won't let us go half assed. Perhaps a show of military force and technological prowess could earn us some more respect and sympathy in the legislature. Certainly couldn't hurt much."

"As you wish." Lexi tapped a finger against her chin thoughtfully, though of course the data was already ready by the time the Chief Representative had finished his first sentence. "Orb's land forces currently number six divisions of mixed infantry and conventional armor, with battalion level attachments of tactical field artillery attached to each division. An additional division of amphibous and special operations forces, to include in times of war the Stormhounds, are jointly controlled with the naval forces or by your direct authority, in the case of the Stormhounds. Our naval fleet currently encompasses fourteen frigates, six AEGIS cruisers, one Takemikazuchi class flagship/aircraft carrier, the_ Uzumi_ _Nara Attha _and five attack submarines, plus assorted tender and supply vessels. In addition, the Defender class heavy destroyers and the Dawnblade battlecruiser can do double duty as either naval or space combat vessels, so that adds another seven Defenders and the Dawnblade itself. We have a total of fifty M-7 Dawndrakes for our primary mobile suit core, with two per Defender, fifteen on the _Uzumi_, ten aboard the Dawnblade and the rest ground based, plus the ability to bring an additional fifty M-4 Guardians out of mothball should the need arise. This is the totality of our conventional and public military forces."

Lexi smiled in a predatory fashion as she went on with her quick and dirty recap. "Forces we have that we are fairly sure the USN has only heard rumors about and cannot currently prove that we have include the new Endymion class special operations carrier, the _Endymion_, which is the replacement for the old Archangel class assault carrier, which has the capacity to carry five more Dawndrakes or Gundams, and is one of the few vessels that can achieve orbit without the use of a Mass Driver. Dr. Simmons over at Morganroete Armories has five new Gundams all planned out, they could be put into production in a few hours and be assembled in less than a week should the word be given. Currently though, the Amaterasu, Salvation, Simurgh and Balmung are without pilots capable of utilizing them due to injury, legal matters or distance, and the pilots of the Dreadnaught are available only pending hospital release paperwork. The new multi-phase Mobile Armor project has also reached final development stages, and the Firebird interceptor and Flarehawk gunship modules can be ready to deploy in a matter of days, with the Nova Condor heavy bomber and transport following two weeks later."

Before continuing on, Lexi brought up a timer in one corner of her projection that displayed a countdown until the USN envoy landed at the National Palace, from which point he would only be a brisk two or three minute walk from Jiro's office. "Finally we have the PUMA prototype production units, the PUMA-1 Hellhounds, of which we currently have almost twenty produced, and another five every week as long as we wish to keep building them. However, only a quarter of the Stormhounds are currently qualified to pilot them, and initial train up time would require at least a week before new pilots could be deployed to the field in any significant manner."

"And just for references sake, what's the ratio between our armed forces and those that the USN is committing to these military maneuvers?" Jiro asked, half wincing in anticipation of the answer. Lexi put it up for him as a pie chart, divided into two colors. Dark blue for the USN and bright orange for Orb. The orange slice of the pie amounted to roughly three percent, the other ninety seven percent was pure USN. "And with the addition of all our secret projects?" Jiro asked, watching the Orb slice widen to four percent in response. "Dear Hameya, protect us all... I knew their military was huge... but to see it put into this perspective..."

"Technically speaking, we are part of their military still." Lexi pointed out. "And the graph for effectiveness per unit ratio is far more complimentary. Orb's soldiers are better trained than any but perhaps the ZAFT redcoats and the Solar Knight Paladins, and our equipment is top notch too, though perhaps not quite the top, considering the greater USN's military budget is well over three hundred times larger than Orb's. Then again, our Gundams have always been the true strength of our Mobile Suit corps, and no nation builds Gundams as well as Orb." Lexi declared proudly. "Though information remains frustratingly sparse on the capabilities of the most recent production run of FEAR Mobile Suits, the so called Panzerdragoons, and I have heard rumors of a new Gundam, called Omega Panzer, though the name is all I know, so the possibility exists that the facts I have presented could turn out inaccurate."

Jiro pursed his lips and nodded his agreement. Nothing could be taken for granted until well after everything was said and done, that was one of the earliest lessons of politics, and one of the few that translated well into other aspects of life. He was just going to have to muddle on anyways though, utilizing the best researched advice and guesses of his advisors and Lexi, and hope with enough luck and skill things would turn out for the best. Glancing aside at Lexi's timer, Jiro got up and took a quick trip to the restroom and to get a quick drink of water, and was just settling back behind his desk, refreshed and feeling a bit more ready for what was coming, when the USN envoy landed. Instantly, Lexi brought up a video feed from the helipad, so they could get a good look at their visitor. They both recognized him at pretty much the same time, and Jiro bit his lip to stifle a hiss of dismay.

The envoy was none other than the notorious Paladin Commander, Rey ze Burrel, the leader of the Solar President's personal guard, Durandel's right hand attack dog and, it was rumored, also his adopted son. Few wielded as much official and unofficial power as Re ze Burrel in the USN, for all his relatively young age of late twenties, he was a man who one tiptoed around less you be taken in for questioning by Section Nine, something which some people did not return from. Not only that, but he was a famed military commander and a former ZAFT redcoat that had been personally tapped by Durandel to lead the nascent Solar Knights unit against the threat of the Brotherhood during the Eden Disaster, and he hadn't done too much of a bad job of it. Though Jiro was in a position to know that some of Rey's most famous successes had little to do with his own personal accomplishments and more to do with his ability to steal credit from those more accomplished than he. It was at Rey's hands and orders that Orb's full Mobile Suit force had been annihilated at the climax of the Eden Disaster, hobbling the country's quest for freedom for years because of lack of adequate military force to protect themselves.

And Rey had stood there gloating behind Durandel's shoulder in the infamous and highly secret meeting shortly after the apprehension of Noah Borander, where Orb had been forced to knuckle under and support Durandel's reorganization of the USN and rise to power under the threat of being invaded and destroyed. No, Rey ze Burrel was not someone Jiro was fond of, and definitely one of the last people he wanted to see across his desk in a diplomatic situation, though seeing Rey here was an indication of just how serious Durandel considered this whole situation, and his need for Orb's support. A malicious grin tried to fight its way across Jiro's face... though sent to intimidate, Rey could not help but also display, in his mere presence alone, how desperate the USN was for the assets Orb had at its disposal. And as a consumate politician, Jiro knew that when someone really badly wanted something, there was always room for profitable negotiation, no matter how much leverage they thought they had on you.

Composing himself, Jiro waited patiently as Rey stomped his way towards his office, in complete disregard for all normal standards of diplomatic conduct, ignoring the aides that tried to direct him to a conference room, and staring down the guards that stepped into his path to block his way into Jiro's outer office. Jiro was almost impressed with the Paladin Commander, who met the gazes of the two behelmed Stormhounds with little trepidation on his sneering face, though given the sort of military power the blond young man had at his beck and call, perhaps he had reason to be confident, even in the midst of people that would not mind seeing him facedown in a gutter with a slit throat. Jiro sighed and glanced aside at Lexi, and a moment later the two Stormhounds grudgingly stood down and let Rey past, though not so much that he didn't happen to wham his shoulder into one as he stepped by, something which almost resulted in Rey falling to the ground in disarray. He was not a small man, and was extremely fit, but he was not Stormhound fit, nor covered in armor.

Jaw clenched, Rey stepped into Jiro's outer office and completely ignored his secretary, who barely had time to buzz open the secured door to Jiro's inner office before Rey ran facefirst into it, and Lexi dissolved the feed of Rey as the door began to open, admitting the man himself in the flesh, Lexi reducing her image to one half size and standing over by the far side of Jiro's desk, as far from Rey as she could get within the limits of her projectors. The standard Solar Knight uniform consisted, these days, of sterling white trousers tucked into shiny black boots, with a heavy black high collared tunic with two rows of golden button-fasteners down the front, a golden sash, a shiny bandoleer of various color dependent on rank and a black beret with golden sword and shield on starburst emblem on the brow. Paladins, the elite of the elite, replaced the white with more gold, the gold sash with a white sash and had edging and piping of crimson red along their shoulders, collar, sleeves, and a red starburst on the beret, along with hoops of white braid dangling from one shoulder. Privately Jiro thought the effect was rather overdone, something from the military courts of half a millenium ago, but it did have a certain visual resonance.

Rey stamped to a halt only a half stride from Jiro's desk and stood looking imperiously down at him as the door slowly swung shut behind them and sealed with a quiet click to show that they had privacy. Or as much privacy as Jiro was willing to give Rey, considering that everything being said and done was being recorded by Lexi and even transmitted live to the helmets of his Stormhounds outside the door. Jiro met Rey's cerulean blue eyes, so much like those of Commander la Flaga in hue, though decidedly colder in manner, with his own stormcloud grey ones, letting the stare drift on for a bit before he took action to preempt Rey. One of the first tenets of political negotiation was to put your opponent off balance as rapidly as possible, get them reacting instead of acting. "Lets not beat around the bush, Paladin Commander." Jiro stated boldly. "You've come here to ensure our cooperation by any means necessary and we both know it. What you don't know though is that Orb is already taking steps to support the USN's latest military maneuvers, and within a matter of weeks our full force will be ready to deploy at the convenience of the federal government."

Jiro could see that Rey was indeed taken off balance by the open faced offer of military help, but he wasn't thrown for as much of a loop as he could have hoped, plainly Rey had been taking lessons from his old man, because he came back and slipped into things like he had been waiting for Jiro to say just what he had. "That is excellent news, Chief Representative Kurenai." Rey said with a wide smirk. "It is heartening to know Orb is so strongly behind our decision to reclaim the Earth. While its understandable that you might need a week or two to fully mobilize and outfit your state forces, I'm sure you can appreciate that the wider USN military has already been preparing for quite some time, and will be ready to move quite a bit sooner. We will be utilizing your terrestrial military bases and mass driver for logistical operations, at least until we can get our own industry restablished groundside. That won't be an issue, will it?"

"It only makes sense." Jiro shrugged and smiled innocently back at Rey. "Of course, that will put some strain upon Orb's own infastructure, especially with the large number of forces you have in operation, so perhaps we could work out some form of compensation for the use of our facilities... at a reasonable rate of course... far be it from me to take advantage of Orb's status as sole terrestrial nation and sole allied owner of a mass driver and spaceport." Jiro added, his smile turning as cold as Rey's eyes, emphasizing the fact that if the USN wanted to launch any major ground operations, they needed Orb's cooperation, at least during the first crucial months, there was literally nowhere else they could go with any degree of success.

"I'm sure something could be arranged to your satisfaction." Rey answered, perhaps a trifle darkly, cleary displeased that he wasn't going to get a good chance to threaten or blackmail Jiro. "Though you should remember that it is a state's duty to provide for the needs of the federal government in times of crisis, especially when it involves forces operating to protect your nation from outside threats. Getting a reputation as a war profiteer can be very bad publicity, after all." Rey warned.

"Orb would never dream of profiting in an illegal fashion from the conflicts initiated by the USN government." Jiro assured him. "We only desire just recompense, in proportion to the degree of assistance we provide. If you'll pardon my saying so, we've had a few... problems... in the past getting proper recognition for the services we have rendered to the greater good of the USN, so I just want to be very clear about our feelings. Orb has no issue with fighting to protect the people of the USN from external enemies, but we are not faceless pawns to be sacrificed in reckless gambits. Share and share alike, I'm sure there will be plenty of recognition to go around for all, though hopefully little enough fighting. A peaceful reintegration with those who survive outside the Glasshouse would be for the best of all, don't you think?" Jiro continued, fishing for perhaps some rationale behind the sudden wartime footing.

"Our enemy is not the peaceful sort, I'm afraid, Chief Representative. The Reclaimer Initiative has had many unfortunate run ins with the survivors, so called Edenites, many of which ended in violence against our settlers by savage and barbaric criminals who refused all reasonable offers of cohabitation. I am a soldier, Chief Representative, and though my job is to fight, I prefer peace. But there can be no peace with those who slaughter innocent and unarmed colonists, despite repeated entreaties for a diplomatic resolution. When an enemy declares itself to the USN, through words or deeds, we will not hesitate to bring the full force of our power to bear on breaking them until they are no longer even imaginatively a threat. Its good to see that we have Orb's support in this endeavor... it would be quite inconvenient to have to... renegotiate... the terms of service linking your state to the federal government, right before a major military operation, with dozens of capital warships and hundreds of thousands of battle ready troops hanging in low orbit over your sole terrestrial nation." Rey's smirk returned as he watched Jiro's face settle into a stone mask.

Jiro opened his mouth to reply, but Rey cut him off, half turning to leave. "Well, I'll let the details be worked out between my staff and yours, Chief Representative. I am heartened to hear of Orb's support for the coming operation, which is to be called Genesis, since we will be basically creating the world for ourselfs all over again. Operation Genesis will begin in three days time, I will expect your facilities to be ready, and would be greatly obliged if you were to have a store of supplies on hand for the first wave of disembarking troops. Sections of your coastline will need to be kept clear of water traffic while we airdrop and assemble our own naval forces, such areas will be communicated to you before the end of the day. A full report on Orb's current and projected forces under arms should be transmitted to NAMARA at your earliest opportunity. And if your Queen remains... indisposed... perhaps you yourself could come wish our troops well as they land? Seeing the Orb leadership so involved in proceedings could only help to boost morale."

"I'll see what can be arranged." Jiro said, but before he was half done with the sentence, Rey was walking out the door. Jiro waited for the door to shut and seal closed once more, before letting out a deep breath and hurling a pen across the room to thud lightly against the wall. "Arrogant bastard." He muttered, with plenty of feeling but little vigor.

"He was lying." Lexi said, drawing a start from Jiro.

"Lying? Lying about what?" He turned to her, almost eagerly. Depending on what Rey had been dissembling on, there could be some more wriggle room than Jiro thought!

"I am a soldier, Chief Representative, and though my job is to fight, I prefer peace." Lexi replayed a portion of Rey's speech. "He was lying. If he was any more excited about prosecuting this war to reclaim the Earth, his underwear would be full of jizz."

"Was he lying about anything else?" Jiro asked, somewhat desperately.

"Its hard to tell. He's convinced... or has convinced himself... that what he's doing is completely and totally right. He's a fanatic... such people can lie almost undetectably, because they fully believe everything they say, truth or not." Lexi turned an almost troubled gaze upon him. "I can only say that his reports of the Edenites do not match up well to those Miss Lacus dictated to me after TCF forays. I am forced to conclude, on current information gathered, that this may very well be an unprovoked war."

"Perfect." Jiro said sadly, head in his hands. "Just what we need. Another cycle of senseless killing. I'm starting to wonder if Humanity really is fated to stay at the apex of the evolutionary scale. We certainly seem to be inextricably entangled in this desire to test ourselves by destroying ourselves. Like a knife oversharpened by a whetstone, eventually we're just going to wear ourselves away to nothing with these relentless conflicts..."

xxxx

**Orb, Southwestern Coastline, 20 miles North of Morganville, November 10th, 10:15 pm**

The object approaching the faint orangy shimmer of Orb's Glasshouse barrier did not appear on any sensor scans, passive or active. Indeed, it was completely invisible across all visible spectrums as well, at best a faint shimmer at the edge of vision betraying it when moving at high speeds, and not even that currently as it approached with maximum stealth. Even the vaunted vari-camera multispectrum sensor arrays on Orb Mobile Suits and Gundams, which could strip away all conventional stealth systems, even Mirage Colloid, within a five hundred meter range, would be of little avail against the special stealth system employed by the Praetorian Deathstalker class shuttle, which used microgravity control to physically bend all wavelengths of light, sound and radiation around the shuttle. A similar system was employed on the Praetorian's Mobile Suits, though the one on the Deathstalker shuttle could only be maintained operationally for an hour at most at a time, due to power constraints upon the mini nuclear reactor powering the shuttle, versus the far more energetic Fusion Pulse Reactors on the Spectres or Wraiths.

Even without the total invisibility conferred by the photo-refraction array, the Deathstalker had redundant Mirage Colloid and conventional stealth mechanisms for longer duration, less demanding camouflage, which it would switch to once it had breached the far more sensitive externally oriented sensor arrays of Orb, which were sensibly focused upon the Glasshouse barrier and beyond. Named for perhaps the most individually deadly of all high order organisms on New Eden, famed for its ability to sit in perfect stillness and near invisibility on both physical and mental planes for days at a time before springing to attack with ruthless and unerring speed and some of the most toxic venom to be found anywhere, the Deathstalker was the totemic animal of the Praetorian order as well as the classification of its special strike shuttles.

The Deathstalker shuttle had a semi-modular frame, allowing it to be customized mission by mission, allowing for roles as varied as a front lines infantry support gunship, to a capable anti-air interceptor, to a high speed, maximum stealth dropship, just by switching out parts and assemblies. For the current mission almost all the offensive weapons had been stripped away, leaving only a single small beam CIWS turret and a few other defensive countermeasures such as flares and chaff launchers, freeing up maximum room for interior personnel capacity. And almost every inch of that space was in some way used, as the ten Praetorians directly assigned to the mission, plus the pilot and copilot of the Deathstalker, and Kunai himself, were all crammed into the shuttles various compartments, along with all their regular gear, special mission related gear, and Lilia's scout cycle, the _Freedom_, which itself had recieved special modifications to its seat and center of gravity to allow for easier use with a passenger aboard.

As the Deathstalker neared the Glasshouse, all talking, minimal as it had been, died out and the Praetorians hunkered down in their seats, bracing themselves for the moment of entry. Because the Glasshouse was a barrier of specially tuned electromagnetic force of exceptional, if diffuse, strength, the Photo-refractor array was not going to be strong enough to turn aside the Glasshouse effect. A special shield had been constructed that would briefly reflect away the Glasshouse field, allowing them to slip through without even a ripple that could be detected, but it drew enough power that the only way it could operate while maintaining the Photo-Refractor was to divert all other power from the rest of the shuttle for a few brief moments. All other power. Lights, life support, engines, sensors, weapons... everything. In short the Deathstalker would endure a moment or two of freefall in breaching the Glasshouse, and just hope all the systems restarted properly. They should, but there was no telling for sure until after the fact.

Psychically in tune with all of their comrades, much in the same way as the soldiers of the Custodians were in their Manifold units, all the Praetorians felt the anticipation of the Deathstalker's crew as they switched over all available power to the magnetic field deflector, the bottom dropping out of all their stomachs at once as the shuttle cleanly dipped down into a swan dive towards the dark ocean water only a few hundred meters below. But as jarring as the feeling of freefall was, it was infinitely better than the invasive burning and jolting sensation of the Green EDEN saturating their body's cellular structure being zapped by the Glasshouse, which could put even a Praetorian down sick and enfeebled for several days as their internal microburns healed and their immune system recovered. Though few would admit it to their brethren, more than one or two of the Praetorians had their breathes held and fingers metaphorically crossed as they dived through the barrier and the pilots began booting up the regular systems once more.

There was another long moment of gut churning freefall, and then the shuttle righted itself smoothly, pulling out of its dive under power and pulling up several dozen meters from the faint white curls of moonlit wavetops, the air around the shuttle flickering and shimmering as the Photo-Refractor disengaged, revealing for a moment the matte black, dark blue and dark grey paint scheme of the shuttle before the Mirage Colloid kicked in and once more concealed the shuttle from regular sight. Still keeping the speed slow to minimize any possible heat distortion of air leaving the thrusters, the Deathstalker crept towards the not too distant shoreline, the pilot's eyes alternating between the computer's plotted course and the bright reflections of light from off to the south, where Orb's second major city, Morganville, glowed prettily atop its own small island, seperated from the main mass of Orb by a few kilometers of shallow water, crossed by bridges and subsea tunnels.

While Nara-Attha City was Orb's political and residential capital, Morganville was the technological and commercial center of the nation, it was where the primary facilities of Morganroate and its military subsidary, Morganroate Armories, was sited, along with Orb's deeply buried National Defense Headquarters and a goodly portion of its military forces. The Deathstalker began a slow drift in the direction of the city, while the first team and a half of Praetorians began their final preparations. In the main hold of the Deathstalker, half wedged between one bulkhead and Lilia's scout cycle, Alexander was putting on the last of his Praetorian battle armor, individually crafted suits of Borealite armor shell embedded with technological enhancements and reinforcements, communications gear, sensors, power supplies and even integral weapons. A Praetorian's armor was a deadly weapon all by itself, each suit customized to the particular wants and needs of its individual wearer, no two suits the same in function or in appearance. All of the suits were heavily carved and decorated with symbology important or significant to their particular owner.

Carving the armor was a rite of passage for Praetorians, accomplished late in the process of induction to the order, and had to be accomplished either alone or with at most one other person, in the case of a Latent. All carving had to be done via telekinesis, never by hand or by machine. Because Borealite, which was shaped and specially grown sections of Yggdrasilwood, was thus subtly Latent, the process of carving it via psychic effort forged a sort of deep rooted connection between Praetorian and armor, making the armor feel like almost a second skin when done properly, moving in unconscious conjunction with the wearer, without impeding regardless of bulk or stylistic flourishes.

Alexander had carved his armor with skulls, hundreds upon hundreds of skulls, of both human and animal varieties, of all shapes and sizes and orientations, his entire armor a motif to death and morbidity. Which personified his view of his role as a Praetorian and an Arboreal... in a society where violence was abhorred and soldiers rare, he was the bringer of death to those who warranted it, the envoy of certain mortality, and he wanted his foes to know him for what he was and what his purpose was at first glance. He was a killer, death was his business and his calling, and the empty eye sockets of his skulled armor stared without pity or remorse at his victims and adversaries, much like the man inside the plating. Heavy leather tanned from the hides of Rhinobeasts, plains dwelling descendants of warthogs, known for their nasty disposition and legendary endurance, provided an interior mantle for the Borealite to attach to, and embedded within the leather was a microweave of synthetic fibers that could be infused with a Phase Shift like field during combat, providing short duration protection against physical attacks of all sorts.

He liked to keep his hands free as much as possible, preferring to close to melee combat range as quickly as possible, where his great size and strength, not to mention the six foot long mono-edged greatsword he wielded, could be put to the best use, but as a Praetorian Alexander was comfortable with and capable of dealing death at any distance, the backs of his large gauntlets heavily ridged, each ridge containing a single micro-rocket, good at up to one hundred meters range, which could be fired with a twitch of his hand and a blink of one eye, four ridges per hand. His forearm vambraces had flick out foot long mono-blades concealed in the undersides, and one shoulder supported a bulky, short barreled linear launcher that hurled bursts of needle like flechettes, each hand dipped in a variety of exotic poisons from the most deadly plants and animals of New Eden. The flechette cannon only had a range of about twenty meters, but within that range it was far more effective even than a shotgun, and could carry a lot more ammunition.

And then of course there was his famous sword, almost as long as he was tall and as wide as one of his spread hands, which had to be folded twice before it would comfortably fit along his back, but which could also be flicked to full length with just a simple snap of his wrist, space permitting. And for this mission he had a dozen odd grenades and other specialty devices clamped and clipped to attachments along his armor front and belt, plus a beam rifle on a strap across his back. For this particular mission, Alexander had been designated leader of three other Praetorians, though there was little need for any one of them to be in command, they all knew exactly what to do and when, and even how to compensate if somehow one or more of the others was incapacitated. While on a mission, their psychic bond practically put them together as a single entity anyway, moving like different limbs of the same body.

At the same time as Alex and his team were deployed to infiltrate and sabotage Morganroate Armories, so too would Haman Al'jib, also an Arboreal, along with two supporting Praetorians, deploy on their sabotage mission aimed at the military port and staging grounds nearby Morganville. Haman's armor was carved with gusts of wind and zephyrs of air, symbolic of the mythological spirits and demons of his native Middle Eastern nation, in keeping with Haman's vision of himself as someone slightly removed from the common sense of humanity, an elemental force for justice and law, as ephermal and unknowable as the desert wind itself, and as fierce as the raging sandstorms which could abrade flesh like sandpaper did paint. Haman and his assistants carried large satchels of timed and remote demolitions charges, sacrificing much in the way of personal armament for more widespread destructive potential, though as ever when on a mission, Haman carried his extendable dual mono-blade glaive, so reminescent of the weaponry of his Wraith, and a short barreled railgun carbine.

Arboreal Heine led the other half of the military sabotage mission, but he and his single assistant would be dropped off closer to the smaller military facilites near Nara-Attha City, there to further spread confusion and disorientation while Lilia, the fourth Arboreal, proceeded in her solo rescue mission of the legendary Kira Yamato. Privately Alex remained unconvinced that Kira Yamato, for all his hyped up rep, was really so important, after all, he was just another Edenite, right? The first Edenite in a lot of ways, but being born first didn't make you the best. But Kunai seemed bent on recruiting him, and so too did Yggdrasil, and Alex knew better than to second guess the Grand Chimerae, at least openly. Heine's armor was carved with representations of shooting stars falling to Earth, recounting his own personal history as a former ZAFT ace and his propensity for burning brightly, if at something of a distance from most and making a big impression on everyone around him, personifying the more independent nature of the Praetorians and their individual dedication to serving New Eden.

Together, intentionally or not, the four Arboreals unconsciously echoed the four basic tenets of their Order. Alex was the deathbringer, Haman the mysterious outsider, Heine the free wheeling independent vigilante and Lilia the serious and dedicated crusader of justice and duty. Each was fundamentally different in how they approached their duties, but all united in the common role of being the ultimate protector, assassin, judge, jury and executioner as need be to best serve the interests of New Eden and Edenites everywhere. Alex looked up from his introspection and found himself staring into the gaze of Kunai from across the compartment, his "Master's"... though he decried the term... eyes of gold surrounded by dark ocean blue burning into him with intensity that required no words nor thoughts to convey its message. Though Kunai wore no armor currently, he had little actual need of it, as anything that could get by his telekinetic defenses would not be overly slowed by any armor a man could wear anyway.

Awareness of the nearness of the drop point spread through Alex's mind, updated from the pilots in the cockpit, and he hunched over as he inched himself away from the wall and stepped gingerly past Lilia's precious bike, gathering with his chosen three, all bearing heavy weapons suitable for a prolonged engagement at close to medium ranges at the top of the shuttles rear ramp. Though the mission was technically to infiltrate the Orb tech complex, steal data and destroy other data, Alex saw little reason to employ stealth when dealing with Stumps, especially Stumps who had no idea what was coming their way. It would be like fighting a bunch of special olympic athletes... training aside, their crippling lack of baseline ability would render them childs play at most. Besides, it was best to leave a strong message, that the Praetorians could and would walk right up to your door, kick your teeth in, stamp on your balls and take whatever they wanted, and there wasn't a damned thing any pathetic bunch of Stumps could do about it.

_Blessings of the Tree upon you, Alex._ Kunai's thoughts intruded themselves,somewhat wryly, in Alex's head. They both knew that Yggdrasil's blessings had already had about as much effect on the situation as they were going to have, given that it was on the prediction of the Grand Chimerae that they were here at all. In a way, Praetorians often WERE Yggdrasil's blessings, personified.

_The Caller will dine well tonight._ Alex replied gruffly. _Though the fare may be a trifle bland for his liking._

_We're aren't here to kill them._ Lilia's mental voice crept in almost unawares, her keen emotional-empathic senses attuning her to almost all conversations around her, private or not.

_We aren't here to spare them either._ Alex retorted, somewhat irritably. A wonderful girl, Lilia, an amazing Praetorian and every bit as good in the sack as one might expect, but she was a bit too nosy for him to every really develop any deep fondness for her. Nosy and a crusading idealist at that. Not the most attractive of combinations in Alex's eyes, whatever her physical charms. Their mutual disdain for the philosophies of the other had never kept them apart during some nights though, it was just something they more or less accepted about the other, like siblings who always bicker about the same things. _They're Stumps, and we all know what Stumps are like... mindless destroyers and rapers of the world. Tantrum throwing children who tear down anything and anyone their feeble minds can't properly comprehend, ruled by fear and hatred._

_They aren't that much different from us._ Lilia insisted, the frown on her face clearly visible, for all that she was seated several compartments away with Heine and his assistant. Imagry born of long familiarity. _Many of them are weak of will and morality, but its not their fault that they are... half disabled... by their lack of emotional connection to their fellows. I pity them, because they are like tantrum throwing children... they lash out without understanding why. Its our duty to show them a better way._

_Its our duty to protect New Eden, and they are the greatest threat we face. Coddle them and teach them if you wish, I shall butcher them until they cry and tremble at the mere thought of attacking us... we'll see which way brings peace faster._ Alex replied curtly, before giving her the mental equivalent of a turned back, signifying that he considered the conversation over. Nosy or not, Lilia always respected the physical and mental privacy of others when they desired it, legacy of a time when all privacy of any sort had been denied her, making her that much more sensitive to how it felt to have people infringe upon it.

_This war will be won as much in the hearts and minds of our friends and foes as it is with blood on the edge of your mighty sword, Alex._ Kunai said, though Alex wasn't sure if it was meant as advice or as mild reprimand. He scowled nonetheless, but then, during a mission, Alex frequently scowled. It wasn't like he enjoyed killing sentient beings, even questionable ones like Stumps, but he would not let his personal distaste for an act stop him from committing it if it was the most effective course of action. They were like Blight Bugs, they just couldn't be reasoned with or even run away from because they'd chase you until you died from exhaustion, you had to kill them before they killed you, and keep killing them till they stopped coming at you, even if it meant striking preemptively, even if it meant killing them in their nests while they were still larvae and pupae and eggs. _All strategies are equally valid at this point in time... yours and Lilia's and a dozen others neither of you have yet put to mind._

Alex felt the drop point coming up, the meters blurring closer like milliseconds on a digital timer, and he settled his skull helm onto his head and made sure it was properly sealed and settled, computer and power and life support systems linking up and switching on, the targeting reticule of his shoulder flechette cannon hanging over his left eye view, the targeting reticule of his beam rifle on the right eye view, both reticules able to move independently to fire at different targets simultaneously. The Deathstalker soared towards the rocky beach beneath some cliffs, about eight kilometers from the fenced off edge of MA territory, the shuttle changing orientation without bleeding momentum, before firing a quick retro burst just as it crossed from water to land, the back hatch slamming open with a barely audible hiss, revealing a disembodied view of the interior of the shuttle for less than two seconds as Alex and his team sprinted off the shuttle and onto the beach, the ramp hissing shut behind them even as Alex's foot left the very bottom of the ramp, before his other had even splashed down in the shallows.

There was a brief backblast of hot air and a shimmer as the shuttle began lifting up and away to deliver Haman and his team a few kilometers away, and a final mental note from Kunai. _Per aspera ad astra, Alex._ _Show them the might of the Praetorians._

_Per aspera ad astra._ Alex replied diffidently, most of his mind already focused on the thirty meter free climb up ocean slicked cliff walls, and the eight klick jog through medium grade forest beyond to the fence line and outer security permiter of Morganroete Armories. No big deal, should take about twenty minutes at the outside. _The Caller cries for the souls of the unworthy, and I am his messenger. I am become death, the destroyer of their world..._

xxxx

**Orb, Morganroete Armories Headquarters, Special Projects Office, November 10th, 10:30 pm**

Dr. Erica Simmons, perhaps the most famed and certainly the highest paid engineer in all of Orb, sat back in her more than comfortable office chair and rubbed blearily at her eyes, trying not to look at the clock displays on the bottomright hand corners of her three working screens. Having worked her way up from a simple tech assistant engineer into the position of first chief Mobile Suit designer and then chief Gundam designer and head of all military special projects for Morganroete Armories, Erica was well enured to working stupendously long hours, often spending over eighty percent of her time during a week, awake or alseep, in her office or somewhere else withing the sprawling labyrinth of MA's main research and production facilities. But she'd really been trying to get away from doing that in the past few years, as her son Ryuta was reaching a delicate time in his life... the dreaded late teenage years of sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, and she wanted to be there alongside her husband to help guide their son through the transition into productive adulthood.

It was... a work in progress, to put it nicely. It had been a goodly while since her own rebellious late teenage years, but Erica still faintly remember how much disdain for her parents and their meddling she'd had herself, and was still faintly surprised to get a similar sort of treatment from her own child. Though perhaps Ryuta was justified to be suspicious of her desire for involvement now, given how absent she'd been from his life for most of the previous fifteen years or so. Of course some of that wasn't her own fault, not exactly... working to support several different Orb governments through multiple invasions, dissolutions and major wars was no normal nine to five job after all. And cutting edge Gundams to make the victories happen when they needed them didn't design and build themselves after all! But all the same, she could not help but feel deep flashes of guilt that her own precious little boy... not so little anymore, as he towered over her by several inches and a good few pounds... regarded her more like a intrusive stranger than a concerned mom.

Tonight was going to have to be an exception to her new normal rules, there was just no way around it, not after being told by no lesser personage than Chief Representative Kurenai himself to get the latest Gundam designs out of deep secure storage and ready for potential construction and finalization. Apparently major things were afoot on the USN side of things, and there was a strong possibility of a large scale conflict of some sort heating up in the next few days to weeks, and Jiro wanted Orb to be ready to respond with all its power if need be. Though quite who was going to pilot the Gundams if built was another story... as part of her unique position in Orb's military-industrial hiearchy, Erica was one of the few that knew what had happened to the Royal Family over Halloween, and neither Cagalli nor Athrun was going to be in any shape to pilot a Gundam, not even a NIC equipped model, for at least a month, probably more like months. And Kira was essentially in jail, so he was out, Yzak and Katie were still somewhere between Mars and the PLANTS and Dearka and Miriallia were still recovering from their own injuries and were in suboptimal shape!

At least they still had the new Firebird and Flarehawk Mobile Armor modules ready, and Commander la Flaga, for all that he'd suffered near total memory loss of the events on Halloween, was still in fine physical shape and capable of piloting his specialty equipment. Captain Ramius, one of Erica's few close friends and confidantes, was in somewhat worse shape, but she would still be capable of offering advice and perhaps even commanding the new _Endymion_ special operations carrier if it came down to a pinch situation, so all hope was not lost. Plus there was Orb's regular, well trained and equipped forces and the Stormhound's PUMA units, so even without Gundams, Orb still had plenty of kick left in its arsenal. Enough to hopefully suffice against whatever nebulous enemy the USN had "discovered" this time. Given what the USN had ordered done to her last batch of Gundams, sliced up like scrap metal after they'd all but won the last major battle of the Eden Disaster for the USN, Erica had a fairly dim view of the new federal government and its leadership.

A knock on her office door brought her up straight and short as she had been leaning back towards her screens, the ones to the right and left operated by seperate keyboards, the one in front controlled by voice dictation. Though not a Coordinator, Dr. Simmons was one of those rare breed of people who could still multitask with complete efficiency on multiple planes of thought at once, a talent that had served her very well indeed in her intellectually demanding, time intensive job. As she looked up through her holographically projected screens, Erica smiled broadly and a little sheepishly, staring into the narrowed blue eyes of her son, framed by his longer than she found normal for a guy black hair, in wild disarray around his face as per usual style. "Hi honey... I was just finishing up some last minute details and..."

"You said the same thing two hours ago, mom." Ryuta Simmons cut his mother of before she could launch another one of her storebought excuses. "You've been here since ten am... thats more than twelve hours with only a few cups of coffee and snack bars to eat. This isn't healthy, mom... you're gonna get old before your time." He prodded her with one of the things he knew she was sensitive about. It was for her own good... and his too! It totally sucked being stuck here for half a fricking day waiting for his workaholic mom to realize there was real life to live outside the office... his life, with a social circle and girlfriends and sports teams and... Ryuta shook his head, exasperated with her, yet again. At times being the son of THE Dr. Simmons was pretty fricking badass... he got to meet the Queen and the Ambassador, not like audience style, but in their own fricking home and whatnot, and he'd gotten to spend time with Lacus Clyne, like the hottest woman ever to live, back before she died, and he got to help with testing all sorts of cool tech that his mom worked with too!

But that hardly made up for basically having a mom that was never around and always about a half a year out of date on what he was doing and what was up with his life, and so damned nosy and persistent about butting in where he didn't want her to be! Dad knew when to give him some space, but his mom was always, ALWAYS poking her nose into his private affairs, such as which girls he spent time with and where he went out to eat and stuff. He could appreciate some level of concern, but he hadn't been a straight A student and model young man for the last half of his fricking life just to be hounded everywhere like a delinquent by his over inquisitive mother! That is when she didn't have her nose buried in so much work she probably wouldn't notice if the world ended outside in the hallway. Ryuta couldn't decide which he wanted more... her to come home and never work again, or go to work and never come home again!

Erica smiled weakly at her son and swallowed the remains of her worn out excuses, knowing that Ryuta had heard them a thousand times or more, and had to be heartily sick of them. All the more so because they were, no matter how sincere she wanted to be, ultimately always insincere. She sighed and began closing down her screens that moment. Jiro had said things were important, but he hadn't said that it was an emergency, surely it could wait to finish up in the morning. Perhaps the late morning, or early afternoon. Or maybe she could delegate for once, like she was supposed to do, have Lexi step in to take care of some of the bulk work and her trusted assistants to handle the delicate matters, take some home time with her family, and try not to spend it following Ryuta around and asking what he was up to every fifteen minutes. Fast as she closed the screens down, she wasn't fast enough to keep Ryuta from getting a glimpse of what was on them. Not that her son was a security issue, he'd been checked out along with the rest of her family long ago, and again every two years, and while he wasn't precisely cleared like she was, he knew when to keep his mouth shut when he saw something he technically shouldn't.

At least out in public, here in her own secure office, he could be a little freer with his speculation, and get away with it too, because she was well aware that she kinda owed him for his patience tonight. "So, new Gundams huh?" Ryuta asked, glancing at his mother from under the fringe of his bangs. "Going into production sometime soon?"

"I sincerely hope not." Erica replied, ommitting her concerns about the pilots, since Ryuta was NOT cleared to know about the Royal Family, and she didn't want him to know either. It was simply too horrific to want to expose her innocent, even if he didn't think of himself as such, son to. "Since Gundams are, as you know, war machines, with only one real purpose at the end of the day... to fight and win battles."

"New Gundams..." Ryuta mused again, a half glassy look in his eyes, a common reaction for a young Orbite when considering what were widely considered to be the most awesome and incredible machines in all of Orb. However he quickly recovered himself and narrowed his eyes at her once more, his mind every bit as quick as hers, though in different ways. "There some major war coming up I don't know about?" He asked intently. "Why else would we need Gundams, as you said?"

"I don't know, Honey." Erica answered honestly. "The Chief Representative called and asked me to prep them for potential production and put MA on high alert for the next few days, saying we would have to start stocking up on military supplies and munitions as quickly as possible. Maybe its nothing but..."

"But your gut tells you its something big." Ryuta finished for her. He thought for a second or two, and gave her a faltering smile. "Mine too." He confided. He looked so vulnerable that Erica could not help but enfold him in a hug, and for once he didn't immediately try to pull away. Well might he be worried, he'd been young during the past conflicts, barely a toddler during the Valentine Wars and Isolation, and preteen during the Eden Disaster, but now he was right at the cusp of adulthood, and right in the age range for the war to have the biggest possible impact upon him. Now he was old enough to fully understand what a war meant, that it was more about suffering and hardship than glory or victory parties. Now he was old enough to be potentially called upon to fight, and while Erica knew she would use all her not inconsiderable influence to stop that from happening, if Ryuta himself decided that was his path, there was little enough she could do to stop him.

She was still hugging him tight when one of her screens, one of the ones she'd shut down, suddenly sprang back to life of its own accord, brilliantly illuminating the office once more before beginning to flash red wand give strident honks and beeps, demanding attention. Both Simmons's recognized an alarm when they heard one, though Erica had only ever heard this particular alarm during infrequent drills before, and immediately her heart leapt into her throat. It was the perimeter breach alarm, meaning that some outside force had been detected attempting or accomplishing entry through the outer fences and was currently headed deeper into the facility grounds! Erica dropped back into her chair, Ryuta hovering uncertainly behind her, calling up her screens once more, banishing the Gundam schematics and drawing up video and data feeds from the security sensors.

Initially all she got was a rushing static of fragmented data flow and piecemeal images, as Eric tried to access security feeds that were either damaged, destroyed or disabled, but after a few frustrating seconds of flickering black and grey washed screens, she at last managed to call up a set of cameras that were still functioning. They both caught a glimpse of motion, but before they could fully make sense of it, the screen went to static as another camera was destroyed. Scowling, Erica called up the most recent captured images from that camera and put them on one of her other screens, blowing up a detail image of the last shot of the camera. She stared at the image and heard, distantly, Ryuta give a strangled gasp and retching noise, even as she felt her own gorge rise.

The view was of a hallway of one of the surface level exterior buildings, with a gigantic hole blasted in one reinforced cement and steel wall by application of some form of high explosive. Several crumpled and piecemeal bodies of security personnel and late working technicians lay half buried amongst the fire blackened rubble, their bodies splattered and squashed by blast wave or flying debris, blood spattered in bright splashes across chunks of concrete and soaking into the thin carpet of the floor. Caught in freeze frame, striding through the hole blasted in the wall, was a figure from out of nightmare, a gigantic humanoid figure seemingly made entirely of leering, empty socketed skulls, holding a wicked looking rifle in one hand, while dim figures crowded behind him, concealed by the smoke of the blast outside. It took almost ten seconds of staring before Erica recognized the giant figure as a man in some form of full body armor, though of a sort that was unfamiliar to her, looking like it was made of some sort of wood rather than fiber or metal!

Quickly calling up more cameras and data feeds, Erica caught and displayed more freeze frame images of the invaders as they made their way deeper and deeper into the facilities, no camera surviving for more than a second or two before being blasted apart by grenade or even beam blast. Seeing a man portable beam rifle in the hands of the giant really shook her to her core... the last people using weapons like that had been the Brotherhood, and though Orb had since copied that technology for their own use and even refined it, the level of advancement she saw in the giant's weapon made Orb's own personal beam weaponry look like cheap knockoffs! Several times they caught frames of MA security forces engaging the invaders from behind barricades both designed in and makeshift, to uniformly poor results, the small caliber handguns and autorifles of the guards pinging and bouncing from the heavy armor shells of the invaders without even leaving scratches, while the return fire, be it green plasma beams, heavy linear rifle bolts, or silvery clouds of needle like darts, left officers dead and dying unerringly, the shots placed with almost magical precision. Even the Stormhounds didn't always shoot this well!

One of her side screens pinged at her and came up with a windowed comm view from elsewhere in the complex, one of the senior security officers. He looked both relieved and annoyed to see that Erica was still in her office. "Ma'am, as you probably know, the facility is under attack by an unknown enemy force of indeterminate size. So far nothing we've put in front of them has managed to slow them down for more than a few moments, but reinforcements are en route and heavy support is being organized from the nearby military bases, and we will soon have them surrounded and cut off."

"Do we have any idea what their goal is?" Erica asked, sounding calmer than she really felt.

"As yet no, though they do seem to be headed in the general direction of the special projects division." The security officer replied tersely. "You should seal yourself in and don't open the doors unless you get a direct call from me or someone higher up in the chain of command. I'm sending several squads to your location to provide a buffer zone, though I don't anticipate letting the enemy penetrate that far into the complex. Do not attempt to leave, things are too confused and you might be struck by friendly fire."

"We'll stay right here." Erica assured the man, keying in her security code, sealing her door shut and dropping a heavy sheet of reinforced metal behind it as well, which would hopefully prevent the door from being broken down by conventional means. Another code opened one of her most infrequently used drawers, in the bottom of which there was a small wooden case she had almost never opened. Erica reached in, took up the case and set it on her desk, before flipping it open to reveal the small revolver she'd bought back in her college days as an anti-rape deterrent and never ever used. With trembling hands, Erica took up the little pistol and checked to see that it was loaded with all five rounds.

"Mom?" Ryuta said, somewhat uncertainly, his eyes wide as he saw the gun clenched in her hand, things suddenly becoming a lot more real and frightening, his eyes darting over to the heavy blast door blocking the entranceway to the office.

"Its going to be okay, honey, this is just a precaution." Erica replied, hoping she sounded confident. "There are a lot of highly trained men and women between that door and whoever these people attacking us are. They'll keep the bad guys far away from here. But just in case..." Erica stared at her gun, which shook in her hand. Who was she kidding, she'd barely even fired the thing on a range, twenty years ago! Still, it was at least a false comfort, and that was better than nothing. A sudden burst of noise from the videocomm nabbed both of their attentions, and they turned just in time to see the security officer's head ignite and explode in a hail of blackened bone chunks and hunks of half vaporized brain, courtesy of a plasma headshot from off screen. A fine mist of gore obscured the far end of the commscreen, as they both jerked reflexively away from the horrific image. They could clearly hear the sound of gunfire and the screams of dying and mortally wounded men and women as the security control center was overrun in a matter of seconds. There was even an odd whistling sound, followed by the hosing spray of large amounts of blood flying through the air.

A few moments later one of the strange armored figures hove into view, his or her armor decorated with images of dozens of serpents coiling around every part of the body, the snakes carved in magnificent, almost artistic precision so that they seemed to be almost half real, petrified in the act of constricting around the wearer. The attacker held some sort of large pistol like weapon in one hand, and, almost incredibly, a narrow bladed sword in the other, the sword being wet with fresh blood. The snake armored invader stared at the screen for a moment, and belatedly Erica realized the link was still on and that the attacker could actually see them staring back. She was just reaching out to cut the link when the attacked raised his pistol and unleashed a focused jet of raw plasma fire into the screen, a rush of white and orange hot fire and then blackness. Erica could not help but flinch backwards, and heard Ryuta do the same.

"Mom?" Ryuta asked again, after swallowing heavily. "That's not a good sign, is it?"

"I don't know, Honey. I don't know." Erica answered softly, her gun now pointed firmly towards the door. Oh Hameya, what the hell was going on out there?

xxxx

_We're going too slowly._ Alex griped as his squad finished mopping up the remains of the security checkpoint and ad hoc control center, a pitiful collection of a baker's dozen Stumps who thought they were being clever and coordinating the defense of their facility from a bloody obvious location. Taylor was just finishing hosing down the cameras and other equipment with her hand flamer, and the bodies on the floor had stopped twitching seconds ago, courtesy of the potent venom loads on his shoulder gun, and James's larger rifle version of the same weapon. Vince, the last member of the team, had a portable rocket launcher and linear rifle, which tended to leave targets in pieces, whether they be flesh or stone. _The nets are closing in behind us, and I'd prefer to face them head on rather than firing over my shoulder. We've been in here ten minutes and we've only cleared ten floors. We're so damned slow, its sad._

_Sorry, Alex._ Taylor replied sardonically. _But we are going off old maps and whatnot, kinda feeling our way. No one on New Eden could do it any faster than we have._

_We're here to send a message anyway, right?_ James added, gesturing broadly with his flechette rifle at the mangled bodies of the hapless security forces. _Its better to take a few extra minutes to convey the proper message than just rush through like we're on a timed run through an obstacle course._

_I'm with Alex._ Vince said with a mental hawk and spit. _This is our first real mission in forever and we're all rusty as hell. I mean, I'm missing my target points by as much as two centimeters at eighty meters plus range on moving targets. TWO CENTIMETERS! Its unacceptable, completely unacceptable! I'm going to need a lot more time on the range when we get back, perhaps another Cold Hunter pack would sharpen me back up._

_Dawdling around here isn't helping. Lets go._ Alex said, leading the way out of the room. Start to finish, conversation included, clearing the checkpoint had taken almost fifteen seconds. Sloppy and slow, Alex was heavily disappointed in himself. He had to do better. He could be better! He was a Praetorian, an Arboreal... he was the pinnacle of human prowess... he could do MUCH better than this! Half preoccupied with his mental recriminations, Alex came under fire from another cluster of security forces from up the hall, bullets whining and pinging as they slapped against his Borealite armor and ricocheted away, barely even nudging him beneath the rigid outer plates and cushioning leather underarmor. Distractedly, he ran his left eye over their position and blinked twice, showering the three officers in a double hail of toxic needles, throwing them back in ragged, convulsing heaps as he continued to stride forward.

A heavy blast type door was blocking the passage ahead, and Alex smoothly pivoted, wordlessly, presenting his side to the door as Vince fired his rocket launcher past the just vacated space where Alex's broad back had been, the armor piercing, plasma warheaded rocket round slamming into the door and blasting it apart in a hail of half molten fragments, engulfing the security squad beyond the door in ruinous fire and agony. Alex strode forward and right over one of the wailing survivors, who had caught a faceful of molten steel in her eyes and nostrils, putting his foot down hard on the woman's lower back to shatter the spine, and then stepping down hard again on the neck to crush the windpipe and cut off the annoying bleating. Standing upon her flattened neck, blood splashing across his greaves, Alex looked right and left and consulted both his mental map and armor computer to determine their route.

Behind him he heard the brief chatter of small caliber firearms and then the sibilant hissing of rapidfire from James's flechette rifle, followed by a chorus of ragged screams and gasps, and a pulse of satisfaction from the other Praetorian as he slaughtered the reaction team that had tried to flank them. They tried to be clever, tried to use cover and body armor and flash grenades and smoke to cover their advance, but such minor trifles were of little concern to a Praetorian who could, even while physically blind, target and shoot psychically with near dead perfect accuracy. At least if they were Active, Latents didn't even need to do that, they could generally feel where their shots were going before they fired. More satisfaction and smug anticipation rolled off of Taylor as she slung her pistol and sword and took up her own heavier weapon, a 90mm hyper-impulse cannon, braced and sent a massive bolt of blue-red plasma energy screaming down the hall, immolating anything and everything in its path for a straight line a hundred and fifty meters long and five meters wide. It would be a while before anyone thought to flank them from that direction again!

Deciding upon the left hand path, Alex stowed his beam rifle back on its strap and took up his sword, smoothly flicking it open with a undulation of his wrists and carefully laying it back across the non-gun mounted shoulder of his armor, flat down to avoid marring his pauldron. As he neared one set of doors leading off into an unimportant side room, the doors whooshed open and a pair of young Stumps, probably interns or junior assistants, rushed out, their clothes in disarray, confusion plain on their faces. Alex almost smiled, figuring that someone had been up to a little after hours office nookie and had been rudely interrupted by the Praetorian's attack. He could almost sympathize, as his sword came off his shoulder and around in a blurring arc as he pounced forward and seperated the girl's head from her shoulders and then cleaved her boyfriend from neck to crotch on the return stroke, both of them dead before they knew what was happening, the girl's head still having a put out pout on her lips as it struck the ground and bounced.

It was unimportant to him that they were both totally unarmed and likely inconsequential to the greater functionality of the facility, they were Stumps, they were in his path, they were to be killed. It was that simple. Bad luck for them. Alex wouldn't be crying himself to sleep, though he had no doubt Lilia might if she were in his shoes. Passing the doorway, Alex triggered its opening function once more and rolled a frag grenade inside, just in case there was any other vermin hiding in there, the door closed on the satisfyingly solid sound of hundreds of shrapnel barbs tearing up the lab space beyond. More substantial armored doors down the next flight of stairs required the use of clamp on directional explosives and some creative hacking with mono-blades to properly breach, and the security forces on the other side were well dug in and even had access to some heavier weapons, including automatic shotguns and a grenade launcher.

Mr. Grenade Launcher had his face shredded by a burst from James, the man's skull embedded with dozens of poisoned steel needles before he could even think about pulling the trigger of his weapon. Charging forward into the hail of small arms fire, Alex activated his phase shift weave to guard against accidental hits from the sheer volume of fire being poured at him, which he advanced into like a man walking into gale force winds. One of the officers tried to go hand to hand with him, swinging his expended shotgun like a club, but Alex blocked the pathetically slow and telegraphed swing with one arm vambrace before balling his fist and slamming it into the man's gut hard enough to burst his intestines, before firing a micro-rocket at point blank range and blowing the hapless fool apart like a pumpkin thrown off a tall building.

Taylor spun into the enemy formation just behind him, mono-sword slicing in one hand, hand flamer immolating officers in twos and threes in the other. Vince had stowed his rifle and rocket launcher and went straight hand to hand with another officer, disarming the man with a high kick before shattering his kneecaps, sternum and skull with a quick one-two-tree combo of kicks and punches. Spinning under a hosing arc of autofire from another security "specialist", Vince threw a double hand impact punch that tossed the officer ten feet across the room to slam into the wall with quite literally backbreaking force. James thrust forward with his flechette rifle so hard he actually impaled a young female officer between the breasts, and had to pull the trigger thrice to blow her spasming body off his front sights. Alex ended the brawl by bringing his sword down two handed on the last guard, cleaving him perfectly in half from crown to crotch, while Vince bent down and slashed the belly of the man who's back he'd broken, letting him bleed out his last moments in paralyzed agony. Sending a part of their message.

Down another short hall was their final goal, the office of the head of special projects, with a direct data link to the system mainframe and secure storage, that would give them access to the data they were here to steal. Then all that would be left was to assemble the small fusion bomb warhead that was scattered in pieces across the four of them, rig it to blow after a few minutes, and hightail it out, letting the facility turn to dust and magma behind them, or at least a large portion of it. Maybe it wouldn't completely derail the Orb military technology firm, but it would be sure to stall it for a while! Alex bulled forward and put his shoulder to the door, and was unexpectedly repulsed, the door itself buckling but his charge stymied by a heavy blast door lowered behind the regular portal. A bit embarassed by his backwards stumble, Alex hoisted his sword and stabbed resloutely forward, determined to cut out a block of the blast door and try again.

For her part, Erica had almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the resounding BOOM and crunch of buckling metal from just outside the door, as the blast door actually shivered in its frame slightly as someone tried to get in, quite forcefully, and was denied. She was just recovering herself, reassured by the grim solidity of the blast door, and about to comfort Ryuta, when with a tearing screech, a long span of silvering bright metal punched clear through the blast door like a man shoving a pin through a sheet of writing paper! Erica quickly realized she was looking at some sort of mono-molecularly edged cutting weapon, as that was the only way it could have sliced through the door so easily! Almost instantly after, she realized the people outside were cutting their way through the blast door to get inside! Involuntarially, her finger tightened on the trigger of her revolver, and she pinged a shot off the blast door, the sound of the gun startlingly loud in the enclosed office.

Ryuta ducked as he heard the buzzing whine of the bullet ricochet around the room before embedding itself in the floor, and he all but dived forward to yank the gun from his mother's hand. If she kept shooting wildly, she was more liable to hurt them than anything else... years of first person shooters of startling realism had taught Ryuta that much at least. Erica looked at her son dazedly, still stunned by the explosion of gunfire, as Ryuta stepped forward to the swordblade that was determinedly hacking through the secure blast door. Carefully standing well aside from the blade, holding the gun at arms length, Ryuta aimed and closed his eyes and prayed as he squeezed the trigger. The revolver bucked in his hand, the recoil surprisingly strong, and there was the loud SPRANG of high speed metal colliding, followed by an ugly "SNAP" of metal giving way. Opening his eyes, Ryuta grinned broadly, seeing that his desperate plan had worked, and the close range gunshot had weakened and bent the sword enough that it snapped when the owner tried to withdraw it.

A enraged bellow from the far side of the door erased the grin from his face and had him stumbling back away from the blast door, his face pale and his hands trembling. Plainly the owner of the sword was somewhat put out at Ryuta's efforts. Ryuta exchanged a sickly look with his mom. "I think I may have pissed him off." Ryuta confided softly. Moments later his prediction proved true, as the door shook under repeated heavy assault, smaller mono-blades stabbing slits through various points, and the sound of heavy caliber gunfire from outside corresponded to troubling dents appearing in the metal. A section of door in the middle suddenly began glowing orange and then white, and both Simmons's hurried to the sides of the room, and not seconds too soon as the door stretched like taffy and then half blew and half collapsed inwards. Framed in the doorway was the skull clad giant from before, flanked by the snake warrior and two others in equally elaborately carved and frescoed plate.

The skull clad giant held the ruined half of the two handed sword in one fist, and both Simmons's could feel the heat of his displeasure like a physical thing in the room with them. Ryuta suddenly remembered the gun in his hands and he brought it up and fired all at once, more by luck than skill striking the giant square in the chest. He might as well have been shooting the blast door, the bullet bounced right off the oddly wooden looking chestplate like a spitwad. Not knowing what else to do, Ryuta fired again, to similar results. He was about to squeeze the trigger a third time when the giant seemed to materialize in front of him, having pounced across the room in an eyeblink. The giant's right hand came up and around, a silvery blur projecting forward of the fingertips, and then his left hand slammed into Ryuta's lower chest hard enough to lift him from his feet amongst the crackle of ribs and slam him backwards into the wall hard enough to make his entire world explode with white and black starbursts of pain. Ryuta dimly heard his mother scream in anger and fear, and tried to pull the trigger of the gun, only to realize it... and his lower right arm... had been severed by the giant's wrist blade and were lying several feet away. He'd never even felt the cut.

Erica saw the giant armored man cross the room in a blur to slam a punch into her son's chest that cleanly snapped ribs and hurled him against the wall like a ragdoll, but it wasn't until she saw the flash of wet crimson spray across the giant's chest that she realized the bastard had actually sliced her son's arm right off, midway between elbow and wrist! Instincts for self preservation suddenly forgotten, Erica hurled herself, barehanded, at the man who had attacked and maimed her precious little boy, screaming fit to scare the devil himself. Halfway to the man, the bulky protubrance on his left shoulder revolved towards her and spat out flash of silver in her direction. Erica's chest and sides exploded with searing pain as the packet of flechette needles ripped into her breasts and arm, physical force knocking her over backward in a haze of blood and ragged scraps of torn away skin. She couldn't see it, but the close range, dense needle packet had stripped her flesh away to the bone across the right side of her chest and upper arm!

By the time she hit the ground, Erica was already convulsing and foaming from the dozens of different Edenite toxins and venoms injected into her bloodstream from the needles. Ryuta pushed himself to his knees with his one good hand, blood still pumping from the arm stump on the other arm, crying out as he watched the giant shoot his mother down as she charged to his rescue, her chest practically disintegrating in a spray of blood and flesh, like a zombie in his games hit with a shotgun at point blank range, except it was his MOTHER! She was still thrashing when she hit the ground and for a moment Ryuta thought it wasn't as bad as it looked... then he saw it was worse. There were three inch long barbed needles sticking out of his mom all over the wound site, and her skin was turning blue and black and green and purple from poison of some sort, while she foamed and drowned in her own spittle, before spasming so hard he could hear her spine shatter, all in the space of seconds, leaving his mother, Dr. Erica Simmons, crumpled on the ground like a overused chewtoy!

Alex snarled at the boy who had broken his prized sword, reaching down with one hand to grip the rapidly bleeding out teenager by the crown of his hair, yanking his head upright, away from the spectacle of the dying woman, whoever she was. The boy was crying, no doubt from the pain of his injuries, and there was sorrow and loss and rage practically pouring off his mind, but none of that was enough to assuage Alex's displeasure. He brought his right hand around again, mono-blade still extended, and decapitated the little punk neatly, a gush of blood fountaining from the neck stump before he kicked the body away. Holding the black haired, blue eyed head up, Alex grimaced once more, feeling Taylor sidle into the room and sit down behind the large desk, plugging in connections from her armor and getting to work on hacking into the data systems, while James kept watch and Vince began assembling the fusion charge.

Several tense minutes later, Taylor's mind brightened with satisfaction, and the screens upened up with scrolling reams of data, schematics and production info for several all new Gundams. Taylor let out a low whistle as she scanned through some of the data, while downloading the specs from the one titled "Salvation", the one designed for Kira Yamato. _Some pretty sweet gear these Orb Stumps have cooked up._ She commented, almost enviously. _Wouldn't mind adding a few of these goodies to my Spectre sometime. Maybe they're not all brainless retards after all..._

_Grabbing a souvenier?_ Vince asked, finishing up with the bomb and nodding his head at Ryuta's severed head, still held aloft by the hair in Alex's fist. _Rather macbre, even for a man dressed in skulls, don't you think?_

_Hey, I'm getting some signs of security forces again._ James commented laconically. _They seem to be under the impression we might have important hostages or something._ James peered in at the ruin of Erica and Ryuta, and gave a mental nose wrinkle. _Oh. Should I disabuse them of their notion?_

_Data download complete._ Taylor reported, standing up from the desk before slicing it apart with her sword, and flaming it for good measure. _Let's blow this mole hole sky high and get back to Garden City. I think I might be warmed up and ready for some real work by then._

_No... let me speak to them._ Alex said to James, almost smiling once more as he contemplated the severed head of the youngster. _I have a message to give them. Set the bomb for ten minutes or disturbance detonation, and make it an obvious trigger, Vince. So obvious even a Stump would realize not to fuck with it. Think like chimpanzes, but without instincts for self preservation or common sense._

_Whatever you say, boss._ Vince shrugged and fiddled with the assembled bomb, containing almost five kilotons of explosive force. _Wonder who that kid was, looks a bit young to be working here, at least as Stumps go? Wonder if he was someone important?_

_I do hope so, that will make the message that much more clear._ Alex replied dourly. _What's that saying? Sic semper tyrannus? Thus always to tyrants? Well, I'm modifying it for today._ Alex hefted the severed teenagers head once more. _Sic semper ignoramus... thus always to idiots! May they always get what's coming to them!_


	19. Fugitive

Author Note: Okay, so you guys and girls were right, I screwed up the title of last chapter. It was meant to have scenes involving Kira's breakout from the asylum, but the Alexander stuff got too long. I went back and changed the title of chapter 18 to "Victim", so now the arc goes Prisoner, Victim, Fugitive, Public Enemy, Patriot, Pacfisit, Destroyer and Executor. Basically I added another chapter to the mix. Sorry for the brief false advertising, as much as any chapter title can be considered such.

xxxx

**Orb, outskirts of Nara-Attha City, National Institute for the Criminally Insane, November 10th, 10:45 pm**

Kira stared up at the pale pink ceiling, a color carefully calculated to be calming to those with troubled or regressed minds, reminding them of being enclosed in the mother's womb, safe and warm and secure. By terribly unfortunate coincidence, it was almost the exact same shade as Lacus's hair color, and so had just about the opposite effect upon him, constantly digging angry thorns of grief and remembrance into his mind, never letting him get a moments distraction to settle his thoughts on more productive ventures. It was so disabling he could almost suspect it was intentional sabotage on the part of someone out to ensure the panel of pscyhologists did find him mentally unsound! He could close his eyes and block it out that way, but he couldn't spend all day, every day with his eyes shut, especially not during the interviews with various experts who were evaluating his mental stability and level of psychosis. He'd thought about asking them to change his room, but all the solitary patient rooms were painted this color, for the previously mentioned psychological reasons.

And he didn't feel much like delving into his reasoning behind asking for the room color to be changed, knowing from previous experience with his all too concerned and falsely friendly evaluators that they would want to go into excrutiating detail about why the color affected him so adversely, and what exactly sort of painful memories it dredged up, and how it made him feel and what it made him want to do. Those kind of conversations were like walking through a forest at midnight with a blindfold on and the ground covered with landmines, sooner or later he'd end up stepping on a mine and blow himself, and his chances of ever getting out of here in any reasonable timeline, sky high. Because Lacus's death... her murder... and the murder of his children DID make him want to lash out and hurt and kill those responsible for it, because he knew that they would otherwise be beyond the reach of the law. But by admitting to these feelings of dark rage and anger, he was opening the door to them trying to convince him, or more importantly, themselves, that he really had gone on a rampage over Halloween!

At least they were leaving him alone at night, giving him a solid ten hours of rest time, from nine pm to seven am, where they did not bother him with their questions or ask him how the various medicines they were giving him to help him cope were helping. Which was almost uniformly not at all, most of the time he couldn't even feel the effects of the drugs, if they were anything other than placebos, though he could usually taste the pills that were medicated versus the ones that were pure sugar, and those that did affect him just made him cranky and gave him headaches as his body fought their effects off like any sort of other poison or drug. Exactly as he'd predicted and protested to Cagalli, the so called experts, for all their good intentions, simply weren't actually qualified to deal with an Ultimate Coordinator, an Edenite, in a physical OR a mental manner. They didn't understand how his body worked, they kept trying to treat him just like all the other patients, and if they couldn't even fathom why their drugs weren't working on him, what chance did they have of understanding his feelings and thoughts and worries?

Part of it, Kira acknowledged, was his own fault for leading a mostly solitary existence out on Serenity Isle for the past decade and more. He never got seriously sick and almost never hurt himself to the point where Lacus couldn't fix him up with some ace bandage or maybe some medical glue, so he didn't have much of a medical record beyond the stuff from his Archangel days, which was laughably out of date, and he didn't even have a regular doctor who was experienced in dealing with his physiology. Some of the doctors who had treated Lacus during the time when she had been poisoned by Noah knew a little, but even they had mostly just stood back and scratched their heads in bemusement during that trying time. The Stormhounds and his friends knew about his resistance to drugs and chemicals and poisons and diseases, but obviously that had failed to be communicated to his new judges, or else they simply didn't believe the opinions of non-experts.

Another part of the problem was the fact that they were giving him ten whole hours to sleep every night, when his body only required between three and four hours of actual sleep, leaving him six hours of twiddling his mental thumbs in a darkened room with nothing to do but sit and wait for them to come bring him his morning meal. Which was barely sufficient to meet his calorie needs... he was getting double portions, but the food was not exactly gourmet quality, more like public servant cafeteria fare, and the lower ranking sort of public servant too. He wolfed down every bite, but still found himself with gnawing hunger in the hours between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner, only allowed sips of water to keep his throat moist in the meanwhile, which didn't do much for his tolerance or good mood either. It wasn't that they were deliberately trying to mistreat him, just that they didn't know HOW to treat him properly, so they were following their rote procedures, and he was a square peg they were trying to fit into a circular hole. And the people best suited to explaining his situation to them in a believable manner were all incapacitated or incommunicado for the near future.

So he was forced to endure twelve to fifteen hours of being strapped in a more or less reclining position to a heavy metallic table that reminded him very uncomfortably of a similar apparatus he had once been imprisoned on at the Blue Cosmos facility called JIHAD, clad in a straightjacket that pinioned his arms across his chest, denying him the slightest bit of leverage as his wrists and ankles and waist and sometimes neck were futher bound and collared with flexible plastic restraints to the table's slots. He was almost waiting for them to come in and fit him with an iron mask with a grill of bars or mesh over his mouth to complete the humiliation of the loss of personal freedom. He was almost starting to get a handle on how Frost had to have felt at times, being treated like he might rip free of his tethers and start a bloodbath at any given moment, and that was a truly frightening thought! The only times he was allowed off the table were for meals, going to the bathroom and washing himself, plus a few hours of carefully monitored exercise shortly after dinner, and at all times off the table he was surrounded by very twitchy guards, including two Stormhounds.

It was starting to look like he'd made a mistake, perhaps regular prison would have been easier to escape from if the need arose than this hellish place of constant monitoring and heavy duty restraints designed to stop people who had been trying to escape for generations. He certainly hadn't seen any good chances to make a break for it yet. Perhaps during a mealtime or exercise period he could overwhelm his guards, but there were between six and eight of them, and two Stormhounds, and he was doubtful of his chances of being able to take them all down, without killing them, and still being in fit condition to escape the premesis. At which point he would still be running around in very distinctive inpatient asylum garb, or else stark naked, neither of which would exactly be inconspicuous. And if he ended up seriously harming or killing anyone at any point in time, Kira knew that he would probably have to leave Orb and never return, because he would then be a dangerous fugitive, no matter what he had to say for himself.

Definitely a conundrum... the longer he stayed here, the better his chances of actually going crazy because of the people trying to cure him when there was nothing wrong. But if he left by force, it would probably only prove his guilt despite his innocence, and he would legitimately have the blood of innocent civil servants on his hands, and there would be no reconciling from that point on. Truly trapped between a rock and a hard place! He'd been trying to think of a solution since his first hour at the asylum, and it was now almost five days later and he was only going in circles, and the stress was really starting to get to him, and it was showing in his declining test scores and snappish attitude towards the people he really needed to convince of his calm rationality. He was beginning to strongly emphasize with certain species of animal that invariably sickened and died when placed in captivity, unable to adjust to the loss of freedom despite the studious care of their handlers.

In an attempt to take his mind off the pink walls and ceiling, and the tortuous mental pathways such consideration would invariably bring him down, Kira had taken to counting the footsteps of the guards patrolling out in the hallway, measuring their progress up and down the hall on their hourly check up rounds. It was completely pointless of course, but it did help take some fraction of his attention off the dullness and introspection that otherwise devoured him. It was forty steps up the passage, and thirty nine back, the guards always seeming to take longer strides on their way back, perhaps eager to leave a hallway leading to a bunch of rooms filled with gibbering or slobbering or staring lunatics, for some reason. Thirty eight... thirty nine... forty... Kira heard the squeak of the paired boots of the guards, probably asylum employees, since the Stormhounds patrolled at more random times and moved much more quietly, as they reached the end of the hall, right outside his doorway and started to turn back to way they'd come. He heard step number one and then his mind stumbled because step number two never came.

Kira frowned, a barely noticable twitch of facial muscles, wondering what had caused the guards to stop, knowing that to almost all outward appearances he appeared deep asleep, someone would have to come into the room and poke him to see that he was actually awake and aware. Keen ears perked up, Kira heard what sounded like muffled gasps from the men outside his door, and then the rather distinctive sound of two human bodies flopping limply to the tiled floor of the hallway, something he was familiar with from the passive resistance routines of some of the other inmates, who had to be half dragged and half carried to mealtimes or appointments. Sucking in a breath, Kira strained his senses but couldn't hear or detect anything else through the doorway, until with a almost jarringly loud click, the lock to his cell door opened and the door swung open a crack. Kira was just opening his mouth to say something when a small round object was rolled through the doorway and came to a rest near the middle of the room, right by the foot of his bed-table.

At first impression, Kira thought it was a bomb or grenade, it certainly looked like some such devices he had seen in the past, and he knew that if a frag or explosive grenade were to go off in such proximity to him, they'd be mopping him off the floor and walls with sponges! Secured to his table, there wasn't much he could do besides grit his teeth and stare in horror at the small device, waiting for it to fill his world with fire and light and blood and hopefully merciful oblivion soon afterward! But the object didn't explode, instead a series of small diode lights blinked on its sides and a barely audible humming, more like a vibration than a noise, filled the room, building to a sharp crescendo before dying away like a fading echo, and Kira belatedly realized that the video camera's and other remote detection gear focused upon him and his vital signs were now suddenly dark and nonfunctional. Some sort of short range EMP grenade... not something he'd seen in Orb's standard weapon's inventory, and never so small in any case!

The door to his cell swung open with barely a squeal of hinges, which told Kira, along with the faint scent of fresh, warm oil, that the hinges, designed to be clunky and loud so inmates would be unable to stealthily leave their cells, had been greased into submission for the time being. For a moment he couldn't see anyone out in the hall, and then from just out of sight beyond the doorframe, a figure stepped into view and Kira could not help but stare. The intruder, for that was what they had to be, judging by the crumpled bodies of the asylum guards lying shoved against the walls of the hallway a few feet behind them, initially brought to mind the imagry of a Stormhound, but even as that thought former, Kira dismissed it. This was no Stormhound, though there was some minor similarities in the poise and grace with which the intruder checked out his room for any other potential threats or monitoring devices, moving in a confident, practiced manner, though their head seemed to have to be guided away from staring at Kira himself by force of will.

For one thing the armor was all wrong, Stormhounds wore heavy synthetic plastic and fibre jackets with active camouflage colorations usually set to their colors of grey, white and dark blue splotchy camouflage when in an urban environment, like the kevlar body armor issued to most regular military soldiers but much more full body covering, lighter, offering better protection and even a degree of environmental filtration and short term life support services, plus the fantastically advanced sensors and computers and comm devices in their hound faced battle helms. This intruder wore armor that was much more like archaic plate armor worn by the knights of half a millenium ago, hard shells of what looked like dark stone or even wood over a bodysuit of supple leather, the outer plates heavily decorated and carved with virtuoso skill into freizes and frescos depicting winged angels shattering the bonds of cowering slaves, or else hovering protectively overhead, a flaming sword in either hand. The helm was twin winged and carved with feathers and the emblems of crossed swords and broken chains, with dimly glowing camera eyes of light flourescent green.

Abruptly, Kira realized that the intruder was female, something about her scent and the way she moved unutterably convincing him that she was a girl, despite the way the armor covered up all physical characteristics. A moment later he realized why her armor seemed so familiar to him, because it was made from some form of Yggdrasilwood, and an instant later, he realized he could feel her on the psychic plane, gently and respectfully tapping at the outermost layers of the shields of willpower and concentration he erected around his thoughts almost unconsciously these days, barriers to which only Lacus, Akira and Aoi had ever been freely given the keys. Stunned at suddenly coming face to face with another Edenite, an Active by the feel of it, and a young woman too, in the middle of his own asylum cell, Kira could only stare helplessly at her, trying to come up with something to say. At last he managed to work up the ability to lower his shielding slightly, allowing her thoughts to sidle into his mind.

_Ah, thank you._ She said, and her mental voice was definitely female, though Kira wasn't sure if that was a result of his preconception or not. _I apologize for not contacting you earlier, but I didn't want to risk you reacting visibly to a sudden psychic contact while the observation devices were still recording. I'm trying to minimize the amount of collateral evidence that you received outside help in escaping, the Tree only knows we could use one less thing to be overtly blamed upon us after tonight._ She seemed exasperated, her thoughts momentarily elsewhere.

"Who are you?" Kira asked verbally, uncomfortable with a mental conversation with a stranger, even one that seemed to have come with good intentions in mind. "What do you want?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, you must be really confused right now." She replied, reaching up with one hand to unseal and remove her helmet. Lifting the helm up and away, she shook out her long, dark blue hair, which fell in loose waves almost to her waist and smiled prettily at him with both her mouth and her lilac blue eyes, with golden pupils.

Kira almost choked, overwhelmed for an instant with grief and pain, stricken almost into a sob, as he thought Lacus had come back from the dead with dyed hair to rescue him. It only lasted a moment though and then the impression was gone, banished by the differences in her height and scent and mental feel, and the fact that other than the general cast of her face, the tilt of her nose, jut of her chin, and the lilac blue eyes, she actually bore little resemblance to his lost love. Still, the similarities were enough, at a glance, to be jarring, like splinters shoved into his heart. Especially that innocent and slightly self satisfied smile, which was painfully like the one Lacus allowed herself when it was just him and her, and she'd scored a minor victory over him in some small matter. Kira turned his head away and closed his eyes, swallowing heavily once or twice and willing his eyes to remain dry.

"Are you okay?" The young woman asked him, concern heavy in her voice. "You don't look so well."

"Its... nothing." Kira managed to rasp out after a couple of attempts. "You just reminded me of someone that I miss very terribly for a moment." He watched her recoil slightly, not in shock, but in actual dismay, a hand flying up to her mouth as she flushed bright pink in constrenation.

"I'm sorry." she told him in a small voice. "People tell me I kinda look like her in certain ways, but I never thought about how it would make you feel to suddenly..." she trailed off, eying him warily. "You don't want to talk about it." She finished, speaking with the confident tones of someone who has felt something out as a certainty, rather than guessed. "I apologize for getting distracted... but you are THE Kira Yamato, aren't you?" She wondered, gazing at him under half lidded eyes, as if half afraid he was a mirage.

"That's what they keep telling me, though I'm starting to wonder just who he really is myself these days." Kira answered, somewhat dismally. His downtrodden tone of voice didn't seem to register with the girl, who let out a muttered curse or yelp of some sort and then impulsively stepped forward and threw her arms around him in a bear hug. For all that she was heavily armored and apparently very strong, she was surprisingly gentle in her embrace. Still bound up in a straightjacket and restrained to the table, Kira couldn't do much but accept her hug, though he was shocked to see tears in her eyes and hear her sniffling a bit as she slowly disengaged herself from him.

"I'm sorry." She apologized again. "That must have seemed really random to you. But even though this is the first time I've ever met you in person, you've already had a big impact on my life, Kira. Believe it or not, you saved my life and my soul once, and without your help, I would probably would be dead of suicide by now. You gave me an example to live my life by, and that's a debt I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to repay."

"Well, you might make a start by getting me out of these restraints, assuming you came here for more than hugs and confessions?" Kira replied with a sardonic wit he truly didn't feel. He was still completely lost by the whole last five minutes or so, but it seemed this girl was here to help him, and she seemed really fond of him, at the same time as she was shy of him and even intimidated by him. He'd heard Athrun complain about being treated by some girls like this once, like he was some sort of demigod or something, but Kira had never experienced the phenomenon of coming face to face with a devoted fan in person. "And I still haven't gotten your name." He reminded her.

She flushed again, plainly mortified by her scatter brainedness, quite visibly collecting herself back udner a mask of professional calm, as if reminding herself why she was here in the first place. "Right, duh, basic politeness. My name is Lilia, pleased to meet you, Kira. I'm a Praetorian from Garden City, and I'm here to rescue you."

"Ah. Nice to meet you as well, Lilia." Kira managed a faltering simulation of a smile. He'd heard rumors of the so called Praetorian Order of Garden City during his trips with TCF, but he'd never thought them more than folklore of some sort. "And I can appreciate that sentiment, but how did you even know to come rescue me?" Kira was desperately trying not to be suspicious, but the timing was a little too pat and fortunate even for him, desperate as he had been.

"Oh, that's easy. Yggdrasil foresaw that you would need rescuing." Lilia replied blithely, stopping to look at him askance when Kira's eyes bugged and his mouth fell open in surprise and bewilderment. "I was told that if we didn't rescue you before the end of the month, a former ally of yours would kill you in captivity. I couldn't allow that, and neither could my superiors, so I was dispatched to rescue you before that future could come to pass."

"You came to rescue me based on a... a prophecy of my death?" Kira replied, incredulously, looking at her askance back, wondering if she herself might not benefit from some time strapped to his table. "A prophecy given to you by a tree?"

"Not to me, to Kunai. And that's more or less the sum of it, yes." Lilia replied, somewhat primly, plainly a bit put out by his rampant show of disbelief. "Believe it or not, acting upon the premonitions and "prophecies" of Yggdrasil is a fairly common occurence for us Praetorians, and we rarely if ever have cause to regret it. If it makes you feel any better, instead of a tree, you can think of Yggdrasil as a gargantuan biological psychic supercomputer who's overriding goal is the preservation of peace and balance throughout all lifeforms on New Eden."

"I'm not sure if that actually helps or hurts." Kira admitted weakly, lolling his head back on his table. "I'm beginning to think I may have snapped."

"I'm not a hallucination." Lilia told him darkly. "I can slap you to prove it, but I'd really rather not, I have way too much respect for you to ever want to hurt you in any way." She held up a forearm and a long knife of some sort of ivory or bone slid out of a hidden compartment in her armor and dropped into her palm. It took Kira a moment to realize it was the carved tooth of some gigantic New Eden predator, perhaps one of those Megahunters who's skull he had seen on the wall of Rex Lodge. Stepping closer with the razor sharp tooth-knife raised, Kira could not help but flinch slightly away from her, as much as his bonds allowed anyway. Disregading his twitch, Lilia ran the tooth along his restraints and down the front of his straightjacket, the tooth cutting through plastic and toughened fabric like it was parting water, and in moments he was free of his restraints, Lilia stepping back to allow him to stand up.

"I'll admit it would have been hard for a fever dream or hallucination to accomplish that." Kira allowed, rubbing his wrists and shaking out his legs as he stretched for the first time in days without some sort of restraints. He was dimly aware of Lilia staring at him, his body not well covered by the thin material of his inmate garb, and he quickly stopped, not altogether comfortable with the degree of appraisal he saw on her face. She was very pretty, and she'd saved his life, or maybe so, and had definitely come to rescue him from the asylum, but that didn't mean he was looking for a relationship right now either, even a casual one, no matter how much his body might want it. Face flushed again, perhaps noticing she'd been caught undressing her idol with her eyes, Lilia half turned away and put her helmet back on with a hiss of sealing gasses. The tooth knife disappeared back into her vambrace, and it was only then that Kira truly realized how heavily armed she was.

Twin swords sized for one handed use were sheathed across her back, and there was an additional rifle of some sort of advanced manufacture on a sling across her shoulders, some sort of pistol at her waist, and subtle hints of many different knives and throwing blades and other tools secreted about her armor plating. She looked like Cyprus just before he'd stormed the Great Endeavor, and she seemed to be perfectly comfortable so dressed, as if she commonly walked around like this. Kira glanced over her shoulder at the two guards in the hall, and his question must have been written on his face or in his emotions, because Lilia turned to regard them as well. "Just sleeping. They'll wake up sore and bruised, but no permanent damage. I go to great lengths to avoid killing people... you youself taught me that it was possible, and I strive to follow your example every day." Lilia's helm canted downwards in introspection. "I'm still not good enough to do it all the time, like you though. Sometimes I just have no choice, or so it seems..."

"Sometimes there is no choice." Kira told her, not particularly comfortable with hearing that she was trying to follow in his exact footsteps. He didn't mind setting an example, but he didn't consider it a good idea to have people trying to emulate every aspect of his philosophies, which had more often that not led him into grievous trouble and suffering. "Sometimes you have to kill in order to protect. Its sad and regrettable, but some foes don't fit into the regular boundaries and cannot be stopped by regular means."

"Like Rau le Creuset?" Lilia asked, noting his surprised look. "I've studied your entire career, Kira, searching for inspirations. I know you better than just about anyone who isn't friend or family." She declared proudly.

"Rau was one such example." Kira allowed, again uncomfortable with her familiarity despite the fact that she was a stranger. If there was one thing he'd learned about diehard fans from living with Lacus, it was that an idol could never manage to fully live up to the expectations of a true fan, and the inevitable disappointment could have disasterous results. He hoped he'd be able to disabuse Lilia, who seemed like a perfectly decent young woman, of her hero worship before she got herself into trouble because of it. But now was not the time or the place for that. "We can discuss the pro's and cons of battlefield choices another time though. I assume you have some way of getting me out of the building and somewhere away from the people who will no doubt be trying to stop us?"

"You bet your sweet ass I do." Lilia paused as if embarassed by her confident outburst. "Right this way, and I'll give you a ride on the _Freedom_, though my _Freedom_ isn't quite as badass as the one you're used to."

"I'm sure it will be perfectly sufficient." Kira answered, diplomatically. "I don't think I could fail to like anything named for my old Gundam, especially in these circumstances."

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, November 10th, 10:50 pm**

Ramierez winced as he heard the specially modified tires of Colonel Jone's customized ferrari sports car grind harshly across the roadway as the Colonel took a corner at a speed Ramierez wouldn't have attempted unless he was being chased by a very certain and painful death, but from the way Colonel Belaruse, in the front passenger seat, just leaned into the turn and continued on with conversation like nothing untoward had happened, he was forced to conclude that this was just how Alkire drove when he was in a hurry and that, with great exposure, someone could even grow used to it, somehow! Gathering courage, Ramierez leaned forward, ducking his head below the level of the front windshield so the roaring passage of air wasn't buffeting him in the face quite so much and he actually had a chance to hear and be heard in turn. "I said get there quickly, not risk all our lives getting there in record time, Leadfoot, sir." Ramierez half shouted into Alkire's ears.

"Keep calling me that, Corporal, and I'll show you what real leadfoot driving is like!" Alkire called nastily over his shoulder, actually turning around halfway in his seat to glare at the new de facto Stormhound field commander. Ramierez's eyes bugged as Alkire took his eyes off the road, mostly empty though it was, going in excess of one hundred thirty miles per hour, and he made strangled noises and pointed as Alkire swerved around the car they had been storming up upon like he had eyes in the back and sides of his head. "You piss your pants in my car, you're going to be buying me a new interior, Corporal, and these things don't come cheap!" Alkire warned, twisting back around to face forward, a grin of half forced jocularity pasted across his face.

"This is no car, this is a guided missile on wheels!" Ramierez muttered to himself despondently, hands white knuckled under his gloves as he held onto the back of Alkire's chair for dear life as they power skidded around another tight corner. Truth be told though, much of his trepidation, just as Alkire's jovial disregard for life and limb, and Raine's studied indifference to it all, was just for show, a coping mechanism as he put his fears away and prepared for the unknown. Less than twenty minutes ago they had all been rousted out of bed by a series of explosions coming from the city's military port, and shortly afterwardss reports had come streaming in from across the island at Morganville, where military bases there had also come under sudden attack by forces unknown, and an attack even launched upon the primary facilities of Morganroete itself! Nobody, not even Lexi, knew what the fuck was going on, but everyone was scrambling for cover or mobilization like armageddon itself was approaching.

With no clear idea of the present situation, and the majority of the unit mobilizing to protect the Chief Representative and senior members of government, Ramierez had actually, shockingly, used his head somewhat analytically and figured that maybe all the uproar was meant as some kinda distraction for some other operation, and from there it wasn't too much of a stretch to think of what he should be doing. Bumping into the Colonels had been a stroke of good fortune, and now he was barreling towards what he fervently hoped was a secure installation at speeds he'd never achieved outside of flying vehicles. With Lexi cut off from Morganroete due to the deployment of some sort of EMP or electronic scrambling devices that had nixed all comms into and out of the facility sometime in the past few minutes, things were rapidly going from chaotic to straight up FUBAR!

And Ramierez was dearly hoping that his sudden premonition or suspicion was completely unfounded, and that he would feel like an idiot and be subjected to several rounds of ridicule later by his teammates. because if all these attacks really were just distractions from some other main event, then his night was about to go nonlinear, and he might end up killing someone he really had a lot of respect for. Or being killed by him in turn, which would suck even more. Perhaps worst of all would be arriving to find Kira already gone, disappeared once more from a secure facility, leaving a trail of dismembered and maimed bodies behind him once more. However, as they rounded a final bend in the road, Ramierez could see the National Asylum for the Criminally Insane in the near distance, and it still appeared sleepy and wasn't in flames or ruins, so that was a good sign. What was not a good sign was the front desk not responding to his calls, and Lexi's inability to force through a comm, due to the same sort of dead zone effect she was encountering at Morganroete.

Ramierez took up his helmet and slipped it over his head, prompting Raine and Alkire to do likewise, the Stormhound leaders switching from banter to ice cold professionalism in a heartbeat as Alkire pulled the car up the side street elading to the darkened asylum building, which wasn't showing a single light, probably victims of the same EMP device or whatever it was that had knocked down the comm systems. Ramierez had his linear rifle already in his arms, and Raine was checking the play of her twin pistols in her underarm holsters as Alkire began to pull into the parking lot of the asylum, when sudden movement from a side window of the asylum drew their attention, just in time to see a indistinct figure dressed in some kind of exotic armor come smashing through the reinforced glass like it was made of spun sugar, followed shortly therafter by an instantly recognizable brown haired lanky figure clad in the thin off white cotton jumpsuit of an asylum inmate. "I fucking KNEW it!" Ramierez half shouted, in mixed despair and relief, doubts finally dispelled at the last, though not in the way he would have chosen.

Bringing up his rifle he sighted and fired in almost the same motion, a high explosive linear dart spitting from his gun and hurling itself at the base of Kira's throat, where a direct hit would shred the former Gundam pilot's entire head and upper body into mincemeat. Incredibly, Kira managed to duck out of the way of the shot, like he could see the trajectory Ramierez had been about to fire upon even before the shot left the gun, and instead managed to hurl himself to the lawn in time to only lightly be peppered by shrapnel from the exploding bolt when it hit the wall. Now presented with a prone, immobile target, Ramierez corrected his aim, determined not to miss again, before being forced to throw himself back down into the back seat of the ferrari with a muffled curse when Kira's accomplice or whoever it was in the dark plate armor fired her own rifle at the Stormhounds, unleashing a barrage of heavy slugs that put small divots and dents in the bright cherry red side of Alkire's car, which was specially armored against most kinds of small arms fire.

Alkire shouted furiously as he heard and saw the damage being done to his car, slamming the wheel around and jamming down on the accelerator to pull them out of the line of fire of the enemy fighter, his other hand scrabbling at the dashboard, flipping down the radio and music player to access the more combat relevant controls embedded behind that section of the dashboard. Sensing a break in the incoming fire, Raine half rose out of her seat, pistol in either hand, unleashing a blistering volley of rapid shots against the armored enemy, the magnum load slugs slamming into the dark armor plates with audible "THUNK" sounds, staggering the enemy but not dropping them. The enemy combatant grabbed at their chest and then made a hurling motion that any moderately experienced soldier could interpret as a grenade being tossed, and Alkire stamped his foot down, burning asphault under his armored tires as he raced his car away from the impact zone, which erupted into a blinding ball of green plasma fire almost eight meters across, leaving a molten divot in the pavement.

"Fuuuuck..." Ramierez commented whole heartedly, plasma grenades being a technology Orb was still working on making practical on a handheld level and not something that was issued outside of testing labs. And even then, their's werent half as effective as what he'd just seen. Momentarily dazzled and shocked by the plasma detonation, the Stormhounds watched as Kira's friend helped him across the lawn at a ground eating lope that wouldn't have put a pony to shame, keeping their armored bulk between the Stormhounds and Kira as they hurdled the six foot fence of the asylum like it was a knee high hedge. A few seconds later a throaty roar of a high powered engine starting up echoed across the landscape, and a two person motorcycle of a design Ramierez had never seen before suddenly raced out from behind the fence and across the outer lawn, spraying mulched grass in a roostertail in its wake, before jumping the curb and onto the streets headed back towards the city. The armored figure was slung low over the front seat of the bike, practically laying flat atop it, while Kira hung on for dear life on an extended backseat.

"I don't fucking think so." Alkire snarled under his breath, throwing the ferrari into gear with a lurch and a scream of his own customized engine. "Nobody fucking shoots my car and runs and gets away with it! You wanna play Death Race with me, punk, I'll be glad to show you the rules of the road!" Alkire pressed down with his artificial foot and peeled out after the fleeing motorcycle, almost throwing Raine and Ramierez out of the car before they managed to sit back down and strap in. At first the fleeing bike had the advantage, gaining distance on the surface streets which had frequent bends and turns that the bike could make at much higher speed than even Alkire was willing to chance, but as they started getting into the city proper the roads began widening and straightening, and emptying of cars as Lexi diverted traffic away from the scene of the chase, even while alerting nearby police and military response forces.

Entering a long, relatively open straightaway between two blocks of office buildings, Alkire pressed a button, retracting his front headlights and showing the nosecones of two laser guided rockets, which he then fired with vindictive glee, fiery contrails spitting from the twin RPG launchers as they screamed after the not so distant bike, guided by the laser rangefinder attached to Raine's sniper rifle. With a display of impressive timing and skill, the bike driver twisted and turned in time to dodge one missile, and used the hood of a parked car as a jump to evade the second, barely even losing momentum in the process, much to Alkire's professional dismay. He'd never seen anyone drive like that before, not even him, never seen anyone with the kind of reflexes to even THINK about trying to pull off those kind of chancy maneuvers at such speed!

He was so busy being impressed he almost didn't see the small giftbox the bike had dropped behind it in the middle of the road, heaving the wheel over at the last second as a directional bomb exploded upwards, a jet of half molten metal that would have punched through the underside of his car like it was tissue paper and incinerated all three of them. Mind back in the game after the close call, Alkire narrowed his eyes and hunched forward over the wheel intently, calling up more power from his car's engine even as Raine took up her rifle and did her best to brace herself as she leaned out over the side of the convertible, while Ramierez hunkered down in the back seat, doing his best to help anchor Raine while making rapidfire communications with his helmet comms. He dimly heard the barks of single shots in quick succession as Raine sighted in on the fleeing bike, but after a few moments she pulled the rifle back in and sat back in her seat disgustedly. "Some sort of foam or gel filled tires, I can't shoot them out." Raine reported a moment later, with a disgruntled sigh. "This one's on you guys for the moment."

xxxx

Lilia felt the brief shudders as high velocity bullets impacted her rear tire, two in rapid succession, and her respect for the accuracy of at least one of their pursuer's shooting rose another notch. Not even all the Praetorians could easily claim to be able to shoot that accurately at a high speed moving target while in a high speed, open topped moving vehicle as well! She was also gladdened to see that despite the initial volley of missiles that could have easily smeared them both across the highway in burning chunks, the pursuers seemed content to try for less immediately lethal attacks for the time being. Such a de-escalation let her throttle back on her own countermeasures as well, and hopefully she wouldn't be forced to inflict any more damage upon them than was necessary for them to successfully escape. Where a normal tire would deflate or explode under such puncturing, her adaptable gel filled tires were almost instantly self sealing and self repairing to an extent, it would take far more than two bullets to shred her tires.

All the same, now that the most obvious and easy solution to preventing their escape with at least an effort on not killing them had failed, Lilia was getting the strong feeling that the next round of deterrents would be aimed at them personally, rather than _Freedom_. And while her Borealite armor should be able to stop anything up to and including a direct strike from a rocket propelled grenade without allowing penetrations, Kira was clad only in the thin cotton jumpsuit he'd been wearing at the asylum, and he was between her and the people shooting at them, there being no way to put him in front of her and still have any ability to control her bike. Her sense of doubt about whether or not their pursuers would still shoot and risk hitting Kira was answered a moment later when she was forced to twitched the _Freedom_ heavily to one side to avoid a burst of machinegun fire chewing up the pavement, which would have otherwise tracked into and through their position.

As she shifted her weight and balance, Kira shifted along with her, a heartbeat behind, but not nearly as bad as she'd been afraid he would be. He seemed to be taking things in stride, but then again, he was the greatest Gundam ace of all time, a little motorcycle chase probably wasn't going to get him ruffled. Lilia wished she could say the same, though her own discomfort had more to do with the fact that Kira Yamato himself was sitting all of six inches behind her, his arms clasped tightly around her chest, his chest against her back, his thighs clamped against her hips as he held on for dear life. Her armor did significantly dull her ability to actually feel his touch, but her imagination was more than sufficient to fill the gap, and she had to divert a bit of concentration to staving off an inappropriate fantasy. Inappropriate for the moment anyway... later, who knew what a grateful Kira might be willing to do with his adoring rescuer?

This pleasant half daydream was banished a moment later when Kira grunted and flared with pain and a little fear on the emotional spectrum, a puff of blood whipping away in the wind of their passage as a bullet fired from the car chasing them scuffed across his shoulder, leaving a shallow graze wound that began trickling blood freely. The same bullet tumbled on and ricocheted from Lilia's pauldron harmlessly, but she hardly noticed, her attention caught by Kira's pain, and her own sudden upwelling of furious outrage. _Hang on tightly!_ She sent to Kira's mind, as she simultaneously hit the brakes and turned her front wheel sharply, so sharply that it became perpendicular to their previous path before momentum had time to compensate, and while the bike tried to flip and cartwheel, with the weight of two people on it and Lilia's skill, she turned a potential deadly accident into a maneuver that flipped the bike around one hundred and eighty degrees and gunned the engine, now in reverse. She couldn't go as fast in reverse, nor steer as well, but such were secondary concerns for the moment.

What was important was that her armored body was now between the hostiles and Kira, and that she was going slow enough to be able to spare a hand from her controls to do something a little more proactive about deterring their pursuers. More gunfire from the bright red sports car now rapidly advancing upon them slammed into the front wheel and bodywork of _Freedom_, digging out small divots and scratches along the frame of the bike, and sometimes slamming into Lilia herself, the bullets bouncing or deflecting away, but striking like full force roundhouse punches all the same. However, she was well braced and her armor's rigidity helped bleed away much of the imparted force, so instead of being knocked backwards or even completely off her bike, Lilia merely bucked and shook in place, prevented for a quarter second from grabbing out her holstered beam pistol, a standard sidearm among many Praetorians.

More than concious of who clung to her back, Lilia maintained her focus and determination and aimed her pistol deliberately downward from the oncoming car, triggering two emerald bright bolts of plasma energy into the roadway, melting fist sized holes in the black synthetic material a meter or two in front of the car, trying to force the driver to swerve or balk. The driver however seemed to have ice water for blood, and he drove over the still steaming craters like they weren't even there, small bits of half molten roadway splattering like taffy under his tires. Lilia shifted her aim higher, now aiming for what she assumed was the engine compartment of the sports car, but she came under fire again herself from the woman half sitting and half crouching in the front passenger seat of the car, holding an almost archaic bolt action type long rifle.

For all that her weapon was dated, the woman's proficiency with it was nothing to smirk about, and she worked the weapon's action so quickly it might as well have been semi automatic, large brass shell casings flipping up and over her shoulder like reverse rain before tinkling to the ground far behind the car as they were carried away by the windstream. Lilia trusted to her armor to protect her agains the bullets, but she wasn't counting on taking a headshot, basically right above the bridge of her nose, and while her helm deflected the bullet itself, the kinetic impact whiplashed her ehad on her shoulders and almost made her lose control of the bike! Lilia was forced to grab desperately for the handlebars with both hands, letting her pistol drop to the road. Cursing foully under her breath, Lilia hauled the _Freedom_ around in another one eighty degree turn and twisted the throttles as hard as she could, gunning for more distance once more, however, being forced to jink and swerve at random to throw off any shots from their pursuers kept her from getting too close to her maximum speed.

And even at maximum speed, Lilia was beginning to doubt she'd be able to outrace the monster car for long, whatever it had for an engine seemed like it was still only half woken up, and it was gaining on her steadily! She thought briefly about asking Kira to take up her autorifle and use that to at least give them covering fire, but even as the thought crossed her mind she knew it was no good. Kira didn't use guns, or personal weapons of any sort. He found them to be abhorrent and disgusting, a sentiment that sometimes earned him ridicule and incredulous glances from some, but which Lilia found inspiring, the refusual of one man to participate in the cycle of violence in even so small a manner. Her knee armor scraped up chips of asphault as she heaved the bike around a corner, the only thing keeping the bike from flopping over onto its side being their combined weight leaning in the opposite direction and their built up momentum. The screech of tires and brakes from behind her brought a small smile to her lips... at the very least she still had the advantage in terms of manueverability, the car simply couldn't turn like her bike could, not at similar speeds anyway.

_Freedom_'s built in sensor package, linked to her helm and armor systems, bleeped an alert from its long range sensors showing several other fast moving vehicles were converging on her position from various side streets, no doubt police or military response teams vectoring in on the gunfire and the high speed chase through the middle of downtown. It was fortunate that it was the middle of the night and traffic was negligible, nonexistant even, and Lilia belatedly realized that the roads must have been cleared shortly after the chase began. Consol Hiero's shuttle had detected an extremely powerful disparate computer system under Orb's control when he'd dropped Kira off back in October, perhaps their traffic was computer controlled, like the PLANTS? Even as these thoughts crossed Lilia's mind, _Freedom_ bleeped more alerts, more urgent ones, detecting an outside source attempting to hack into its systems via backtracing the sensor emnations. Most incredibly, the _Freedom_ actually seemed to be losing the cyber battle, at a rate that Lilia could scarcely believe! Whoever was trying to hack her systems was handily defeating... crushing even... the best codework Garden City could provide like it was nothing!

Deeply troubled, Lilia did the only thing she could do in order to prevent her bike from being hijacked from underneath her, forcefully shutting off all the electronic systems and falling back onto the purely mechanical secondaries! The bike's engine stuttered and coughed for a moment, her speed dropping during the transition before restoring itself, though without electronic guidance and computer compensation, her top speed had dropped a bit, and her handling was reduced as well, most notably in that her tires were stuck on one density, which could prove problematic should they encounter terrain changes. She'd lost her lights as well, but her armor night vision systems and the streetlights provided more than enough illumination for the moment.

Inspiration striking like a bolt of lightning, Lilia swerved closer to one of the streetlamps in question, one hand coming off the throttle once more, to snatch out one of her mono-swords from her cross-back sheathes, and a quick slice later saw the lamppole dropping into the street behind her like a felled tree, its stump spitting sparks and puffs of smoke. Lilia watched out of the corner of her eye as the pursuing red sports car slammed into the felled pole, shattering it like a twig in a spray of plastic and metal shards, but it did force the driver to slow down a bit all the same! Keeping to this newfound strategy, which was especially effective right before a turn, Lilia managed to stay out of easy reach of her pursuer through much of Nara-Attha City's downtown. Things got complicated again though when she merged onto the thoroughfare leading down towards the harbor districts, the ramp leading up to the raised highway being blocked by police cars parked lengthwise with siren's blaring.

Lilia jerked the _Freedom_ over into a long slide, kicking up sparks and dust as she ground to a halt about eighty meters from the impromptu barricade, out of easy firing range of the handgun armed officers taking cover behind their hoods and trunks. Another grinding crunch and squeal of armored tires from behind her bespoke the arrival of the red sports car, smashing through another lightpole, its front bumper mangled, its paintjob scraped almost down to bare metal along the front protion of the car, the woman sniper starting to rise to a half crouch once more as the car bore down on Lilia and Kira like a bat screaming out of hell. Sighing with resignation, Lilia reached up and back and loosened the 50mm hyper-impulse rifle from its holster on the back end of the bike, just past where Kira was sitting. Cradling the bulky weapon in both arms, Lilia grimaced and swung it around to point at the oncoming car, aiming a bit low before pulling the trigger.

Whether through amazing reflexes or uncommon predictive ability, the driver of the car was already spinning his wheel over to swerve away from her rifle when she fired, and she actually missed the car itself, somewhat to Lilia's personal relief, the blue-red supercharged plasma beam digging a trench almost two hundred meters long and a half a mater wide and deep through the center of the road before the beam petered out after digging itself into the ground on a shallow angle. The sports car hard been forced to turn so hard that its driver could not correct in time to prevent it from jumping the curb and smashing into a building front, shattering large windows and dousing the occupants with broken glass, fragmented masonry and flying debris. Highly conscious of Kira's eyes on her back, Lilia ejected the spent power core and took up the first of her two reloads, before slotting it home and swinging the weapon around to point at the police cars.

The officers gathered behind said cars immediately got the message and scampered and hurled themselves out of the way, Lilia giving them an extra moment to get clear before she fired and blew the blocking cars into flaming wreckage, splitting one in half and throwing the other cartwheeling into the sky as its hydrogen fuel cells lit off, flipping it like a pokerchip, the concussive force of the explosion hurling police officers like rag dolls, though Lilia was relieved to see most continue to move after they hit the ground. Stowing the ehavy weapon once more, Lilia guided her bike carefully but quickly through the middle of the inferno she'd created, conscious that Kira was vulnerable to the flames and heat, before racing up to the top of the onramp, where she paused again, to deploy a heavy blasting charge, which took out a ten foot section of raised roadway when it blew behind her, cutting off access from that ramp in case someone tried to follow her even after the demonstration of her heavy firepower.

Or at least it should have, but bare seconds after the demo charge blew away the top of the acces ramp, the dinged and dented red sports car came hurtling up onto the highway, its engine screaming like a banshee, plumes of exhaust flame spewed from its underside, some sort of short duration rocket jets or jump thrusters mounted to the frame which allowed it enough temporary lift to make a ten foot horizontal jump with a half dozen feet to spare, the chassis slamming back onto solid ground with a squal of protesting suspension and a puff of dust and paint chips. _What the HELL kinda car is that?_ Lilia questioned in disbelief.

_Alkire always has had a disposition towards mechnically upgrading his car in ways that border heavily on the insane._ Kira replied, a bit dryly, astounding Lilia with his still unruffled calm. _He's a unique man. A good man, in his own way, and not one I am glad to be at odds with. I hope you have some sort of plan, because I can promise you, directionless flight won't be enough to beat him. He's been doing things like this for almost as long as I've been alive, or so it seems._

Without her computer systems to reference, Lilia couldn't give him an exact answer, but she'd memorized as much of the city layout as she could, and she knew they were close to their destination. The ocean was in clear view, and even the long pedestrian pier that extended out along one side of the civilian harbor, for scenic use as well as private fishing. Though there was nothing there to see, not to her eyes or the sensors of her armor, Lilia knew that just off the end of the pier, the Deathstalker and her compatriots were eagerly awaiting her successful return. _Keep hanging on. This might get a little rough._ She warned Kira.

_I knew you were going to say something like that._ Kira's grip tightened around her all the same. _If this is what it feels like to be rescued, no wonder Cagalli hates the idea so much..._

xxxx

"Colonel, what the FUCK is this car anyway?" Ramierez demanded, his neck aching with whiplash and his stomach feeling like it was left back somewhere in the ruined facade of the building they'd hit. He'd seen the huge yawning gap at the top of the roadway, and had realized they were going to fast to stop, and was bracing himself for a twenty foot fall onto hard ground in an open topped car when he'd felt a brief weightless sensation and then a huge jarring THUMP as they came down on the highway and bounced once, the suspension sobbing like a broken hearted girlfriend. Colonel Belaruse, damn her for an ice cold sniper, just glanced over her shoulder at him disinterestedly.

"Its nothing new. We had a similar system back in our old TEMPEST ATV. We used it for jumping hedges and fences." Raine told Ramierez casually, able to afford some concentration because Alkire was now only following the fleeing bike, rather than trying to catch it. For one the ferrari had taken a pretty severe beating from all the lightpoles, much less the head on crash into a building, and he didn't want to push it to the point of breakdown. Two, given that the person they were pursuing had access to hand held weaponry of a sort usually mounted on medium tanks, he didn't want to chance getting blown into glassy slag either. His ferrari could take an RPG impact and keep rolling, but a hyper-impulse plasma blast was a whole different animal! He would just tail them and keep tabs on them, and hopefully they'd find a spot where Raine could take them down from long range.

Ramierez was working on a more proactive solution, having called off the police pursuit in the wake of the barricade being blasted to heaven and back. This was no matter for lightly armed civilian police. and most of the regular military as still tangled up in the clusterfucks happening at the major military bases, where sabateurs had set off bombs that had destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of supplies and infastructure, as well as buried, damaged or outright crippled over two dozen Mobile Suits and a half a dozen naval warships! It was an unmitigated disaster, andthat wasn't even counting the warzone that Morganroete Armories headquarters had become, shortly before a significant majority of the main research complexes went up in smoke couresty of a man portable thermonuclear weapon of some sort!

But while the regular military was running around like beheaded chickens, and perhaps rightly so, Ramierez had resources upon which to draw that were not so hobbled. All it had taken was one quick comm at the beginning of the chase, and things were already in motion. A new status icon appeared on his helmet HUD, paralleling their course from over by the military harbor district and rapidly closing, jumping from street to street without recourse to the conencting roads, bounding clear over low rise buildings. "Welcome to the party, Raven." Ramierez commed with a somewhat vicious smile. "Be warned that the enemy possesses weaponry capable of taking you down with one shot."

"What a coincidence, Corporal, I've got weapons like that too." Raven's voice came back tight and flat, both from her emotional turmoil and the concentration of piloting her PUMA for the first time in an actual combat situation. "And more of them, I bet." She added, her voice faintly anticipatory. While Ramierez had been leery of allowing her to be around Kira while he was in custody, he had no compunctions about calling her in, personal feelings or not, now that Kira was a declared fugitive. Any and all sympathy Ramierez might have had for Kira had been banished the moment the first shots had been fired. Like it or not, Kira was now the enemy, a dangerous fugitive, and Ramierez knew only one way to deal with dangerous enemies. Kill them without hesitation or mercy. Maybe the Queen would have his ass in the morning, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd been hauled over the coals for making what he felt was the right choice in a battlefield situation. Indeed, such an action had been the catalyst that first saw him accepted to the Hellhounds in the first place!

Jumping from street level to the top of a office building, Raven perched for a moment, the raised Harbor Highway in plain view, the images of Alkire's car and the fleeing motorcycle highlighted on her sensors, projected onto her eyes in a seamless 3D projection. Just as in the training scenario, she'd equipped her PUMA with a dual 30mm gatling cannon, and this time it was target appropriate, not like against a Gundam. A low snarl built in her throat as she thought abot Thom, lying in an oversize hospital bed, stuck full of tubes and wires as the doctors struggled to glue together his mangled internal organs from when that bastard had shoved his hands right through Thom's chest from behind, and she jumped from her position, falling five stories and slamming into the ground hard enough to crack pavement, but it was a shock she barely felt before she set off sprinting in long, jump assisted strides, each step covering almost five meters, sometimes firing the jumpjets to throw her down a long straightaway at close to three hundred miles per hour.

Raven cut under the raised highway and paced along underneath it for a while, midway between the Colonel's car and the fugitive's bike, before taking a sidestreet after calculating the fugitive's likely path. There was really only one place to go along the Harbor Highway after all, and while Raven could not comprehend why they would run into a dead end like that, she was well enough trained and experienced to surmise that they had some sort of plan that they were following. Certainly the attacks around the rest of Orb, if they were connected, showed a degree of forethought and planning, not to mention technical resources and training, that she could heartily appreciate, even as she hated it being used against her interests. Though not an Orb native, she'd spent the happiest years of her life here, and was planning on eventually starting a family here, and anyone who was going to start shit with her adopted nation... well, not a good idea.

The bike was forced to follow the roads while Raven could cut across building lots and even over the buildings themselves, though she did take care to keep out of direct line of sight of the fugitives, not wanting to tip her hand and scare the prey away too soon. When she confronted them, she didn't want there to be any way to go but forward, into the teeth of death, or back into custody, and frankly, she was praying they wouldn't give up. Coast Guard vessels were being dispatched to the harbor area in case of an attempt to flee by ship, but Raven didn't rate that as likely, it was too slow. Most likely there was some sort of extraction craft lying in wait outside the Glasshouse, ready to jet in and attempt a hot pickup, in which case they hould be pickin it up on their sensors soon, or at least the disturbance it made when it penetrated the Glasshouse.

Raven swept the harbor area and pedestrian pier with her Vari-Camera area, and smirked when she saw nothing within the five hundred meter range of the sensors. If the enemy had help on the way, then they were late. Too late. Hunkering down in the park leading up to the pedestrian pier, the chameleon coating on her armor blending with the bushes and ornamental trees around her, Raven watched as the blinking icon representing the fugitive's motorcycle came screaming around the final corner, the Colone;'s car once more in hot pursuit, serving as beater to flush the prey out for Raven to hunt. The bike came within optimum range and Raven exploded from cover, her arms bracing her weapon and tracking on the target speeding towards her, the concrete planks of the pedestrian pier square at her back, her PUMA blocking all access to the pier.

Raven didn't wait for orders or to broadcast a message demanding that they halt and surrender, that was the job of the police, not the Stormhounds. Clear warning had already been given, and with shots already fired, this was now a combat situation. The twin five barreled mechanisms of her 30mm gatling cannons blurred into motion, foot long flames spewing from the whirling muzzles as she fied a torrent of heavy caliber light armor and anti-personnel shells at the bike, ripping up the ground and concrete pathways in furloughs, chopping down trees and shredding foliage as she walked her fire into and through the bike's position. Or its old position, as the bike juked out of the way, going off road with a scream of shifting gears, ducking in amongst some shrubs for a moment before exploding out of them as Raven's hail of fire blasted the light cover to smithereens.

Sprinting after the diverted bike, Raven fired in short bursts, leading the target, herding it away every time it tried to veer out of the park and back into the city streets,where she would be constrained in her ability to engage without endangering civilians. On one pass through the center of the park, Raven watched as the second rider of the bike, easily identifable as Kira Yamato, was eithe rpushed or more likely jumped from the bike, landing in a rough looking roll, tucking himself into a fold in the ground for cover. Briefly, Raven's fingers hovered over the triggers, itching to fill his little fold of earth with 30mm shells, but after a moment she resisted the impulse. Whatever her strong suspicions, Kira was not yet proven guilty of hurting Thom, not yet convicted. Besides, blowing him to mincemeat would be too quick for the bastard who hurt her love. Also, the bike was still the greater threat.

As it proved when the rider took up her shoulder arm and walked a burst of heavy slugs across Raven's chest and head, shooting with admirable accuracy considering it was a long full auto burst and they were still moving on the bike while doing so. Raven was highly impressed with the recoil compensators on her opponent's weapon, despite being quite slight, possibly even feminine, her opponent was rocking and rolling without even trembling. Something perhaps only heavy weapon specialists could truly appreciate was the monster kick on all the most lovely big guns, and that gun was at least 15mm, maybe as much as 17mm... bigger than her precious Warhawk, and apparently easier to fire, damn it all. For all their power though, the slugs caromed ineffectually from her armor, designed to repel even tank fire, to an extent, and Raven fired back, just barely tagging her opponent with one shell, which was still enough to throw them off the bike, which keeled over in the dirt. Impressively, the armored figure struggled to stand up afterwards, her armor having somehow prevented the 30mm shell from penetrating, though her... Raven was sure her enemy was female... movements were awkward and stiff from sheer impact trauma.

A sudden heat warning from the side made Raven react instinctively, even as she was settling her target crosshairs on her defeated enemy, to blow her to pieces, she threw her Hellhound into a long rolling dive, backward and to the right, as a blue-red lance of superheated plasma scored along the ground through where she'd just been standing, throwing up a wall of fire and splattering glass shards of molten earth around like cake batter. Rolling to one knee, Raven turned to address the threat and blinked, shocked to see a doorway of light hovering in midair out by the edge of the dock, inside the doorway was crouched another dark armored figure, holding a bulky rifle of some sort in their arms, obviously which had just been used to shoot at her. All around the doorway there was nothing to see, even to Vari-Camera's, but inside it, was clearly a shuttle cargo area of some sort. That was one hell of a stealth system!

While Raven was still determining threat levels, the crouching figure raised his weapon once more, clearly having reloaded, and fired another spear of blue-red plasma at Raven's position, forcing her to dodge backwards again, less she be shot through the chest, Raven having no illusions as to her armor's veracity against heavy plasma weapons. Her sensors pinged as the first armored figure painfully clambered back onto her bike and roared off through the park again, as Raven swung around and blitzed the lot of ground where the bike had just lain, a half second too late. Gritting her teeth, Raven charged after the fleeing bike, being forced to dodge and even retreat as covering fire from the invisible shuttle continued to harry her. The bike raced past where Kira had gone to ground, the rider leaning low, and Raven watched as Kira was yanked back onto the bike in a move that made even her arms hurt, Kira must have dislocated his arm pulling a grab and go at over 100 kph!

The Colonel's car burst into the park, swerving wildly to avoid walls of fire left by glancing hyper impulse blasts, and fishtailed into position behind the bike once more, giving Raven a moment to swing and orient her weapon upon the invisible shuttle. Just because her sensors couldn't see it did not mean it wasn't there, and she ripped out a three second burst into where she guessed the cockpit region had to be. Either she guessed wrong or the shuttle was more heavily armored than she'd thought, because it did not dip or crash in flames, or even more fully reveal itself, though she did draw another hyper impulse blast that forced her to throw herself jarringly down on her face, and which still melted a furrow down her rear armor all the same. The bike burst out onto the pedestrian pier, the Colonel's car in hot pursuit, determined to ram the bike into the water if nothing else, though Raine was doing her balancing act in the front seat as well, Ramierez holding her steady as she methodically sighted in on the back of Kira's neck. Raven dropped her half empty gatling cannons for maximum speed and sprinted out onto the pier after them both, her footfalls digging craters into the concrete planks as she pumped her arms and legs like an olympian going for the gold.

The shuttle opened fire on her PUMA with some sort of CIWS weapon, like the beam CIWS common to many mobile suit, a constant stream of low caliber beam blasts, but though they melted scars and pits in her armor, Raven ignored the minor blaring of armor damage alarms and continued to race onward, her shoulder mounter 12.5mm machine guns spitting tracers back into the open maw of the shuttle's hatch, forcing the armored figures inside to dive and cover or else be blasted off their feet and into walls by the heavy bullets, sparks dancing from bulkheads as the bullets ricocheted and caromed around the interior. The bike did not halt in its pell mell rush towards the end of the dock, and Raven immediately divined their intent, to just jump the bike off the pier and into the shuttle. It was completely crazy of course, but in a way she could appreciate. All she had to do to stop it was keep filling the hatchway with firepower, and they'd be shot to ribbons when they tried to make the jump. She had plenty of ammo to keep up a barrage for at least another thirty seconds.

But then, within a quarter second of each other, both shoulder weapons jammed, bullets choking up in the barrels and blasting both laoding mechanisms into scrap with tearing explosions of shrapnel, the shock of which momentarily disrupted her NIC systems, and caused Raven to stagger and fall to one knee. Quite how bullets could have become wedged in BOTH barrels after only a few seconds of fire, when the barrels were still comparatively cool and not subject to heat warping, Raven could not understand, but somehow it had happened all the same, as if someone had took an invisible wedge and shoved it in her barrels to cause them to jam. Recovering control, Raven could only watch helplessly as the bike smashed through the wooden and plastic railing and soared out over empty space, impossibly bridging an almost fifteen foot horizontal gap like it was flying, or half as weighty as it should have been. The bike slammed into the shuttle bay and flipped, throwing both riders into a web of straps that had deployed from the walls even as the bike had made its jump.

Not to be deterred, Alkire's ferrari skidded to a halt just at the edge of the railing and Raine popped up, rifle already sighted and aimed, as an unarmored, bald headed figure clad in a simple grey casual business suit stepped stiffly up to the edge of the shuttle's ramp and looked out at them dispassionately, like a man studying the antics of apes in a cage. Raine fired twice, the gunshots extraordinarily loud in the absence of other noise now that the car's engine was idling and the bike was stopped. Despite being barely out of easy talking distance, the man didn't even blink as Raine fired, and no blooms of blood blossomed from Kira's back or the body of the unarmored man. Raine slowly lowered the rifle from her shoulder, staring in disbelief at something Raven couldn't see, as the shuttle door began closing and the shuttle itself most likely receeding away.

"I don't think so!" Raven shouted, using her jump jets to propel her PUMA up and over the Colonels and Ramierez, guestimating her point of aim and coming up lucky as her PUMA slammed down on either the fuselage or wing of the invisible shuttle, mono-edged combat blade in one fist punching downward and digging into something solid as the entire shuttle swayed udner the impact of the eight ton Hellhound. Unable to see what she was holding onto, or what she was stabbing, Raven nevertheless did her best to stab as many times and as hard as she possibly could, hoping that she would hit something vital. The water of the harbor seemed to be getting closer rather than further away, so she believed the shuttle to be losing altitude, or at least not gaining any, though they had moved pretty far away from the pier in the few short seconds since she'd "boarded".

Raven was in the middle of one downward thrust when her body suddenly locked up like she'd been frozen in ice, and her eyes widened fractionally through her sudden paralysis as she felt phantom fingers and porbes digging into her mind, invading her thoughts and memories and usurping control over her conscious body. Desperately fighting the psychic intrusion, but unable to make headway after being caught off guard, Raven felt herself slipping into darkness as her mind was shut down from afar, her grip on her combat blade loosening first, then her grip on the shuttle. Her last conscious sensation was that of falling, though whether it was from the shuttle or into a deep sleep, she couldn't tell.

Back on the pier, Ramierez chewed his cheek in outrage as he watched Raven's PUMA go limp and slide bonelessly from the invisible shuttle, which, now berefit of its PUMA parasite, was completely invisble and impossible to track, but he could bet it wasn't going to stick around long. "Get a recovery team to the harbor ASAP!" He barked into his helmet comm, not caring that it was an undirected order, on that frequency, it WOULD be heeded. Ramierez turned his head to where Raine had dismounted from the car on shaky legs, and was sitting down against the car, her rifle propped half unnoticed by her side as she stared into the palm of one hand. The palm containing the two bullets, sans casing but utterly undeformed, that had fallen to the decking only a foot or two from her rifle muzzle, stopped dead in midair before they could complete their planned trajectories.

"God damn psychics..." Ramierez muttered, wearily now that the adrenaline of the chase had worn off. "They just don't play fair..." He added, before belatedly remembering that the Colonel's own adopted dsughter was one of those selfsame psychics. If either Colonel noticed, neither said anything. If anything, at the moment, they could only agree with Ramierez's sentiments. Not that they ever expected anyone to play fair after all, not in the terms of their lives and jobs. But there was cheating, and then there was psychics. Maybe a whole bunch of them, it was looking like. Who weren't afraid to get down and dirty, for reasons Ramierez couldn't understand. And that alone, if nothing else, really scared him. No enemy was more dangerous than the one you didn't understand. That truism did also bring a smile to his lips though. Because he was pretty damn sure that these bastards didn't fully understand who they'd just picked a fight with. "There will be hell to pay." Ramierez muttered udner his breath, looking out into the darkened ocean. "Because the hounds are now loose..."


	20. Public Enemy

Author Note: Glad to see people liking the play of events in Fugitive, properly titled this time. One person wondered how Kunai has come to terms with being a Coordinator, well if you remember, a certain someone never HATED Coordinators in general, just certain Coordinators in specific. So its not that much of an adjustment actually. And truth be told, we're still in the prologue and opening acts of the story, so the potential for evil to do good, and good to do evil, remains quite strong. Plenty of time for events to play out. Sorry for no Lilia-Kira-Kunai, but other events have been building that need to occur before we can refocus down on Earth.

xxxx

**PLANTS, Aprilius City #1, November 11th, 12:08 pm**

Once again the Boytoy's image was serving him well. Which of course didn't make him hate it any less, didn't make him stop flinching and baring his teeth out of sheer reflex every time he passed a slightly reflective surface and caught a glimpse of himself, but at least it was useful, which made it slightly more bearable. Though for how much longer it would continue to be helpful, rather than burdensome, he could not say, though a part of him hoped it wouldn't be long. He'd always been more comfortable with burdens than gifts, perhaps as a consequence of his upbringing? Though in truth Frost found little to complain about regarding his youth, such as it was, and he certainly, if given the chance to do things over again, wouldn't have changed much of anything about his childhood. That which he could remember anyway, he was more than aware there were large gaps, entire years missing where the Doc had destroyed and rebuilt his personality in the process of making him the perfect killing machine. Having lived with such memory gaps all his life, Frost didn't exactly miss them or even really notice them unless he focused upon them, unlike his whiny, needy brother Cray, he wasn't overly troubled by the inconsistencies in the first place.

What was memory if not a record of life and consciousness, and what was life and consciousness but a reflection of dreams, and he knew better than anyone that dreams were false. He had no real use for memories other than those devoted to making him what he was, a fighter without compare, Humanity's Whetstone. Anything else was a mere luxury, and while he wouldn't go out of his way to throw such luxuries away, neither would he unduly protect them. Pleasant memories were easy enough to create after all. He was in pursuit of such a memory even now, as he strolled with careful nonchalance along the lakeside park boulevards of one of the upper scale PLANT neighborhoods. It was a beautiful day out, much as any day in the disgusting regulated PLANTS was ever not a beautiful day, they were soft for their perfect weather after all. One more decadence that would have to be ground out in a spray of sparks against the Whetstone eventually.

His luck had been in, as per the usual weighting of the cosmic balance, helpful in the small things, but always managing to turn against him when he really needed it. The container of fresh water he'd been holed up in had been delievered directly to the PLANTS, and hooked up to their own purification systems for processing before being introduced into Maius Nine's water supply. Getting out of the container hadn't been easy or particularly fun, a lot of crawling through very tight pipes, wishing his bones could dislocate or even break, but instead being forced to rub his skin raw and bloody, even down to the middle layers of muscle, in order to squeeze through some chokepoints. It hurt of course, but pain was his constant companion, built into his body after multiple open body surgeries and implantations of extra and modified organs, indeed if he could be said to have a best friend or true love, it would be pain. Pain that seperated him from false dreams and all too deceptive reality, pain that gave him focus and willpower in excess of all other creatures, pain that told him in no uncertain terms that he lived yet! He relished pain, relished suffering. It was his life after all.

The purification plant machinery caused other problems, requiring a bit of creative breaking on his part before he found a section of pipe... more like tubing... that he could claw his way out into regular atmosphere again. Except that that part of the system was in a portion of the plant that was sealed and there was no atmopshere on the other side of the pipe, not quite a vacuum but pretty damn close. Close enough that he was vomiting bloody ice crystals out of his lungs for almost half an hour after finally finding a airlock type hatch that led into a pressurized section of the PLANT's underbelly. Of course maintenance crews were sent to investigate, first robots, which he broke, and then actual people, which he regretfully did not break, but instead memory leeched and, disgustingly, robbed, appropriating new clothes and some little paper money, most transactions in the PLANTS being done by credit machines.

Smarting with the indignity of turning petty criminal, even for the right reasons, Frost used his pirated memories to guide him around Maius Nine for a few hours, during which time he'd discovered the continuing usefulness of the Boytoy body. Because apparently the Boytoy was a dual citizen of the PLANTS and Orb, and had several well established credit lines available at the touch of a literal button, all gene coded for security purposes as was common in the PLANTS these days, to prevent identity theft. Apparently Orb was still keeping things hushed up about the rampage over Halloween, because no one even gave him a second suspicous glance after he began calling on the Boytoy's own money to outfit himself with clothing and travel arrangements, which had brought an ironic smile to his face. He did get a few second glances because he was "my god, Kira Yamato" and plenty of people offering sympathy over the death of Pink, which was a true trial to sit through in a peaceful and hopefully "grieving" manner.

Not that Frost didn't grieve for Pink, no, he missed her terribly. Missed her soft skin under his fingers, her warm blood on his lips, her terrified yelps in his ears, missed the sight of life and feeling fading from her eyes to be replaced with the unblinking stillness of death! And she'd had the sheer gall to die of negligence bare weeks before he'd returned to send her off right! It was almost enough to make him cry, or at least to make his eyes wet, since Frost didn't quite know how to cry, wasn't sure if he possessed that emotional capability, to feel sadness in that manner. Sadness just made him angry, like most other wishy-washy emotions. But unlike his younger days in his original body, he was now the master of that anger, or mostly so anyway, and despite being literally surrounded by unsuspecting Coordinators of all ages, a wet dream come true in any other era of his life, Frost forced himself to remain aloof and peaceful for the time being.

Of course he didn't hate them because they were Coordinators, he himself was a Coordinator varient now after all, he hated them because they were dull and rusty and corroded, weak metal, chinks and chips in the blade of humanity. He hated them because they were happy, were content to live as they currently did, were averse to suffering, regarded war as a tragedy and abhorrent, were glad to stagnate! He couldn't stand them, and if it had been within his power, they would have all died horrible, messy deaths in a moment. And perhaps they yet would, but not yet. Soon, but not yet. He still had a little more preparation to take care of first. Another little visit to some "old friends" to pay, to meet and greet old Scarface and his one remaining girlfriend. Wife now, Frost supposed, memories stolen from Loser and Fiery Zala-Attha filling him in, in unnecessarily great detail, on the romantic entanglements of their clique in the years since Frost's demise.

Apparently Scarface and family were heavily involved in the expedition and proto-terraforming of Mars, an accomplishment big enough to stagger even Frost a little. Mars was a hell of long way away, flying all the way out there to sharpen the blade was going to be damned annoying. But at least some of humanity was reaching out, expanding, evolving in new directions, and he could respect that. It wouldn't save the majority of them, but it might be enough to tip the balance for some few worthies to prove themselves worthy of continuing to live on as reforged portions of the blade. Scarface and family might even be among them, after all, Scarface had managed to kill Cray, more or less, and that was an accomplishment Frost would have normally put beyond the abilities of a mere Coordinator. And he hadn't made a bad showing against Mr. Machine and his crazy crusade during Frost's time in the abyss either.

So Frost had decided to stop by and pay an evaluation visit to Scarface and company, check in on how they were progressing, perhaps catch up a bit on old times. In particular Frost was looking forward to a revisitation on that time in the Doc's lab at JIHAD, when the Doc had tricked Scarface's girlfriend into revealing who was a Newtype and who wasn't, by ordering little Ashino to pluck out eyes and feed them to girls from their respective boyfriends. Little Ashino had of course balked, weak and indecisive as per usual, but the mere thought had really stuck with Frost, and he was practically salivitating to see what she would babble about to stop him from shoving Scarface's baby blue eyes down her throat, and what she would say of the taste after he did so no matter what she had to say? From what Frost understood of modern day piloting technology, Scarface didn't actually need physical eyes to fly, so he'd never miss them in any important capacity...

Strolling along one of the sidewalks, Frost was peripherally aware of people parting to walk around him, mostly on an unconscious level, the younger, perhaps more mentally sensitive folk shying away because of his brooding and bloody thoughts, the older generations out of experience with the more intangible aura he projected, one of power and expectation, the feeling that he would walk over or through anything or anyone who got in his path, and wouldn't think twice of it. A new pair of dark sunglasses masked his eyes, given that no one else was sporting metallic pupils, he'd figured it best to conceal his own for the time being, in the interest of privacy. The weather was warm enough, and reflected sunlight bright enough, that no one would think it strange, indeed he was far from the only one who was wearing shades of one sort or another.

Turning out of the public park, Frost made his way into a more private section of the PLANT suburbs, heavily forested, at least in that artificial way the PLANTS had, each tree deliberately planted rather than set to grow naturally. Perhaps that was what really bugged him most about the PLANTS, their attempt to live a natural lifestyle, only accomplished through careful elimination of all normal natural factors, including weather, normal plant or animal lifecycles and even day and night! They were the most pretentiously false people he'd ever been around, not one of them actually realizing what it was like to live on a planet with weather, or walk through a living forest, or go to an actual beach with waves! They were people living in goddamned dirorama's of what they wanted the world to be like, rather than how it actually was!

It wasn't too hard to spot Scarface's home, even without visual details supplied by the Zala-Attha's memories, because it was the largest house around, with the most open yardspace and largest amount of trees on the property, a palace by PLANT standards. Scarface's mother had used to be a real high muckety muck of the PLANTS, a member of the Supreme Council and even, for a time during the Isolation Era, chief of their military forces, and she plainly wasn't adverse to the benefits that came with life as a top end politician. Not that Frost found anything wrong with the wealth he saw on display, he had no problems with someone being rewarded for doing a tough job that they themselves chose, that was only natural. The hunter slept on the nicest furs, ate the biggest meals of the best meat, because they were the one that provided it, of their own choosing. It was when people were rewarded for doing nothing, or denied reward for doing something, that he found offense.

During one of the shuttle transits from the Maius to Aprilius cities, there had been a public program playing on the seat screen in front of him, going into great detail as to the new educational reforms sweeping throughout the USN, starting at the lowest age groups and working upwards. Apparently kids these days were undergoing extensive genetic testing to decide where their aptitudes would best lie in life and then guided towards those paths accordingly. It was perhaps the most abhorrent philosophy Frost could envision, save perhaps total pacifism, the idea of genetic predisposition leading to what would basically amount to a caste system, where people were quite literally born into their roles for life! If there was any one person who was a total refutation of that sort of thinking, it was Frost himself, born a natural baby all but crippled with a host of genetic disorders, clinging to life by mere threads, he was now the most feared and dangerous man alive! People are not defined by their abilities alone, their chocies and their willpower make them who they are!

Which sounded suspicously like something the Boytoy would spout off at inappropriate times, enough so to make him shiver with disgust, for all that he refused to retract his feelings on the matter. On some matters, the Boytoy might actually be right, it was no shame to admit that. If only he wasn't so damned wrong about most everything else! Frost shook his head in exasperation and stalked up to Scarface's front door, triggering the buzzer and waiting impatiently for the door to open so he could get the pleasantries over with and get started on the fun. However it wasn't Scarface who opened the door, yawning a bit sleepily, covering her mouth with one surprisingly dainty hand, it was an older woman Frost instantly recognized, via pirated memory, as Ezalia Joule, Scarface's mother and sole surviving parent, former PLANT Supreme Councilwoman, yada yada, etc etc.

She was wearing a houserobe of light blue silk, and it was plain from the way that it was tightly belted on that she had little to nothing on underneath. For a woman old enough to be his mother, she was actually pretty strikingly attractive, if you liked your women tall and slim and a bit on the severe side, with short white hair and piercing blue eyes. Frost personally preferred his women screaming and bleeding on the floor, so physical dimensions were of little practical concern. Shaking off a waking dream of Ezalia in exactly such a pose, right there in the entryway of her own home, Frost forced a smile onto his face, hoping it was sincere and not predatory. He must not have been perfectly successful, because she half closed the door and stared at him suspiciously. "Mr. Yamato, what an unexpected pleasure. I hadn't realized you'd come up to the PLANTS recently." Ezalia noted, somewhat catiously, studying his face.

"Things were getting a little... messy... down in Orb. I came up to get some fresh air and freedom before I got locked into events beyond my control." Frost answered with a dark inward smile.

"If you haven't already, I'd advise staying away from the memorial. It hardly does her justice, and would only cause you heartache to see her so misrepresented." Ezalia said with a sigh, remembering her manners and holding the door open, beckoning Kira inside. "I'm afraid Yzak, Katie and the grandkids are out having a picnic lunch right now, and Andrew, the dear boy, has gone out shopping for dinner tonight, so its just me at home right now. By all means, make yourself at home though, and if you feel the need to talk, well, I am acquainted with how it feels to lose a dear spouse before you are ready." Ezalia sighed again, her eyes faraway in the past for a moment.

Frost accepted her hospitality, trying not to seem twitchy, though it was all he could do to stop himself from pouncing upon her the moment the door shut, leaving her all alone in her house with the most dangerous predator known to man or beast. She stepped by him unselfconsciously, unbothered by her state of relative undress in the midst of her own home, and led him into the dining and sitting area, stepping behind the bar and busying herself with some glasses and ice. "Pardon me, I had... something of a late night on the town with Andrew last night." Ezalia told him, her face flushing just so slightly, the effect barely noticable on her alabaster skin, which, along with the smell of man on her skin, led Frost to deduce the obvious, that she'd spent a somewhat raucous night partying and fucking with her own boytoy, and had been taking the morning off to recover. Not bad for a woman getting into her sixties.

Realizing he had no idea what sort of preferences the Boytoy had for drinks, if any at all, Frost quietly sat on one of the gleaming black leather sofas, admiring the juxtaposition of black leather, chrome steel edging and white walls and carpet, and Ezalia came over to sit nearby a few minutes later, obviously willing to let him collect his thoughts in silence, extending a hand holding an iced juice of some sort, which he took with forced gratefulness. It tasted sweet and a little spicy, but in truth he was no connessieur, he could barely tell the difference between rat piss and quality liquor. It was all just fuel to him, in one way or another, energy to be broken down into more useful forms. They sat for a while in what Ezalia obviously felt was companionable silence, while for Frost was almost tortuous, having no idea what to say, but not feeling the time was right to burst out of his shell either. He hadn't planned on just Ezalia being home, and who knew when Scarface would come back from a family picnic, it could be hours! Certainly his mother seemed to have little fear of being walked in on in her undress by her own son anytime soon.

In truth it was somewhat odd that she was so comfortable with "Kira" sitting there, with just her belted closed houserobe covering herself, but then Frost realized that Ezalia wasn't so much waiting for him to talk, but sitting there in silence because she had a raging hangover, and her head likely hurt so much she could barely even be civil to him, let alone worry about how she was dressed in her own home. Plainly her night out had been even wilder than he had initially surmised. He wondered how she would feel about it if she knew that today was going to be her last morning after ever again? Even as he thought it, curiousity overwhelmed him, and he found himself speaking. "If you knew beforehand that this was going to be your last day alive, would you have done anything different last night?" Frost asked her.

Ezalia stared at him warily, and for a moment Frost thought he'd been too obviously threatening, but then he realized she was worried, not for her, but for him. She thought he was talking about taking his own life, thought that Kira was pushed to suicide by the death's of his family. Truthfully the thought had never occured to him, because he knew the Boytoy better than that. He would never just give up, not like that. Which was why it was so fun hurting him so much, because he didn't really have a breaking point past which he could take no more! Ezalia continued to watch him for another minute or so, before she replied. "Thats a tough question. I think I might have told a few people I loved them, at least one more time, and I might have taken things further with Andrew than we have gone in the past. I might even have asked him the age old big question, despite our difference in age. He's been very good to me and for me, and I flatter myself in thinking it's been reciprocal for him. I would have held my grandchildren close a lot longer. And I would have been drinking better booze."

"But humans can't know things like that." Ezalia continued, with perhaps a bit of relief in her voice. "We don't get to know the future, so we just have to live our lives one day at a time, and take what joy and pleasure we can as we do so, without the certainty of knowing exactly how much time we have left. Because we don't know when we will die, we have to try to live for as long as possible, even if it hurts to do so. Pain is transitory, and happiness can be found even in the darkest and most unlikely of circumstances if you look for it."

"Pain is happiness." Frost insisted, obviously taking her aback somewhat. "And it is anything but transitory. Pain is life. Without pain, how can we tell we are alive at all?"

"Well, that's not exactly how I would put it, but in a way that's true." Ezalia allowed, relaxing a bit as she seemed to decide he wasn't planning on killing himself after all. "Though going much further down the road of pain as pleasure might lead you closer to bits of Yzak's and my personal life than I had thought you to be comfortable with, Mr. Yamato." Ezalia smiled in a slightly confidential manner, though from the way she spoke, Frost gathered that Kira already knew or suspected that the Joule family was into the rougher side of sex play at times. Which actually took some of the fun out of it for him, killing his mood a bit. It was no fun if she actually enjoyed it, even slightly! The best part of the pain came from the other person NOT enjoying it like he did! Hurting someone who liked being hurt, play or not, wasn't evil, it was at worst neutral and more probably good! He might as well just kiss her and buy her dinner!

Of course he wouldn't go that far, Frost mused as he sat bolt upright from his seat and crossed to where Ezalia was sitting in a blur, bored with the conversation and realizing the mood was already fatally wounded and wouldn't recover, so there was no point in building anticipation for a climax that wasn't to be. Ezalia was just opening her mouth to comment upon his movement when Frost's bladed hand slashed out and struck her neck, crushing her windpipe and stopping just a hair short of snapping her spine. Ezalia's eyes flew open wide and she gargled and gagged loudly, her arms flailing wildly before her hands closed around her throat as she tried to massage her crushed throat open again. Frost stepped back disinterestedly, removing his glasses, letting her get a good look at his eyes, though she was a bit preoccupied with her imminent suffocation to really care about such details.

Grabbing her by the scruff of her houserobe, Frost lifted her from her chair and threw her to the floor on her face, tearing away the houserobe in the process, proving that she was as naked as he'd suspected, all the more so because of the way her hair blended in with her skin color to the point of near invisibility. Standing over her, watching her flop and writhe and twitch as she coughed bloody bile and strangled on her own mangled throat, Frost found the proper mood still eluding him. He dropped his pants and crouched behind her, lifting her hips and ass up into position, but looked down at himself and found himself to be limp. Disgusted, Frost shoved her away from him once more, standing up and buckling his trousers, listening to her heels thump against the carpet, rapidly at first, but then slower and slower as the minutes wore on and she used up the oxygen in her body. After a last gasping rattle of fluidy breath, her heel thumps stopped for good.

Frost looked down at the naked corpse and nudged her with his toe, just to make sure life had fled. Her chest did not move, and he couldn't hear her heart beating, but just to be sure, since failing to kill someone he wanted dead, even someone it was no fun to kill, would be an personal embarassment, he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her to the nearest bathromm, where he submerged her head in the toilet for another five minutes. Now satisfied with her deadness, Frost dragged her back to the sitting room and let her flop, as he sat back down on the couch and finished his juice, considering what he was going to do now. Scarface could still be hours from coming back, and he wasn't up to leaving his usual evidence behind to implicate the Boytoy. Besides, that was old hat by now, boring and repetitive, and he found he didn't even want the Boytoy to be credited with this!

A brief search of the kitchen turned up a variety of useful implements, and, still unable to shake his memories of that time in JIHAD, Frost carefully scooped out her eyeballs, taking extra care to make sure they were as intact as possible, before dropping them into Ezalia's half finished drink, where they floated atop the ice, staring accusingly at the front door, which he felt to be a nice touch. Having never raped a dead person, and not of a mind to try, not because he found the thought abhorrent, but because it was pointless if there was no struggle or resistance... he might as well stick his dick into a steak or a couch as a corpse... Frost thought about how best to desecrate his victim's corpse to send the proper message, a taunt directed right into Scarface's soul. Having already removed the eyes, mostly bloodlessly, he didn't want to detract from the deeply bruised neck and obvious expression of agony as she suffocated by adding a lot of blood or garish wounds. There was some possibility in stuffing, like a holiday turkey, jam her mouth and other cavities full of something or other.

Frost was still debating his choices, moving Ezalia's limbs into various positions of contortion and desperation, musing over whether it was best to stuff her full of foodstuffs or household products, wondering which would be considered a worse desecration, and trying to figure if he should leave her half hidden by the furniture to be discovered slowly, or lying out in the front entrance hall, in full glorious view, some minutes later. Being a serial killer involved hard choices sometimes, since there was no acknowledged best way to display a victim to their horrified family to maximum effect. It all varied by the family in question, and of course the condition of the corpse. He'd thought about just dismembering her entirely, spread her pieces out throughout the house, one piece to a room, but he should have left her eyes in her head then, and besides, there was a subtle artistry to the single, slow killing blow of a crushed throat, and the knowledge of the pain and suffering she must have endured as life slowly fled from her.

At length Frost decided against stuffing her, since there was too great a chance of ripping her open in the process and making a huge mess that would send the wrong kind of message, one of violent entry and heroic death, rather than being taken by surprise and left to suffer. He'd put her in the entrance hall, half hopeful that one of the grandkids would be the first through the door to get an eyeful of permanent mental scarring, with her widely splayed legs facing the door and her face propped up on a couch cushion so her mutilated face was readily visible, her arms set along her body, hands resting against the insides of her thighs, the cup of iced juice with her eyes in it set between her legs, nestled up against her groin. He had just half dropped his pants again, determined to at least make it look like she had been despoiled by jerking onto her chest and belly, when the door to the house clicked and creaked and swung open. He'd been so involved in his art that he'd forgotten to search for minds approaching the door!

"Hey 'Zalia, I'm back! The party can continue!" The man bustling through the doorway, armfuls of groceries clutched in his arms, sang out sweetly, just at the right pitch to draw a disgusted grumble from someone with a major hangover. His face was heavily scarred, one eye socket completely covered by pale ridges of scar tissue, his hair rakishly styled along that side of his face, his skin tanned, clad in khaki shorts with an orange and black tiger striped T shirt emblazoned with the words "Tiger Power!" across the pectorals. Berefit of his sunglasses, pants around his knees, dick semi hard in his hands, Frost stared at the newcomer, deducing that this must be the Andrew person that Ezalia was fucking. He looked faintly familiar for some reason, perhaps connected to Pink's little club in some fashion, but it wasn't really important.

"Well, this is awkward." Frost observed, taking his hands off his privates and yanking up his trousers again. For his part, the man named Andrew didn't react quite how Frost had hoped he would, dropping his grocery bags and dropping into a wary combat stance in the doorway, only the hard glint in his eye and the agitation of his mind conveying how truly hurt he was by what had happened to Ezalia. "For the record, I was only going to jerk off onto her. Necrophilia is pointless." Frost pointed out with a grin.

"Who the HELL are you?" Andrew Waltfeld demanded back, his voice suddenly hoarse with choked back emotion as he stared at the monster standing over the mutilated body of his beloved Ezalia. For all that she was a good decade and a half older than him, and a widow, he'd felt that there was really something going with her, a conenction he hadn't felt since his infatuation with Murrue, but even deeper than that somehow! Maybe it was that she was an accomplished and established woman, maybe it was her aloof and arrogant attitude, maybe it was her striking good looks, but Waltfeld had found himself as drunk on ezalia Joule as he'd ever gotten on medium priced beers! And now, suddenly and inexplicably, she was dead, murdered and desecrated in her own foyer by someone who looked one whole hell of a lot like Kira Yamato!

But it wasn't Kira, Waltfeld could tell that just with a glance. No matter the physical similarities, there was something in how the person talked, how they stood, and most especially in the golden hue of his pupils, that told Waltfeld without a doubt that this was NOT Kira. Getting used to Kira having silver eyes had taken long enough on its own, but now the difference was simply startling! Perhaps most especially because Waltfeld actually had a pretty good idea what the difference was between those with silver eyes and those with gold, and the degree of possible trouble he was now in because of that. Even more so because of the insolent and unconcerned way the Kira look alike was staring at him, still standing above Ezalia's ravaged body like he was only annoyed at being interrupted in his unholy tasks! And then Waltfeld realized what was really wrong with the other man's eyes. It wasn't that they were gold, it was that they were fixed, unblinking, the eyes of a predator, of a beast... of a madman. Whoever and whatever else he was, this murderer was also completely insane!

Waltfeld tensed his right arm, the mechanical one, though covered as it was by its prosthetic sheathe, it was impossible for the unaided or inexpert eye to tell the difference between it and his flesh arm. The difference in strength and power was easier to see when demonstrated though, as Waltfeld had put his right arm through a cinderblock wall before, with nary a scratch on it. Added to his years of military and post military training, he could easily kill people with just a punch, though thankfully he'd never been called upon to actually do such a thing. Until today. Until he'd come home to find the woman he loved, the grandmother of two sweet and wonderful young girls, lying casually murdered and tortured in front of him, on display like a crime scene mannequin, her killer with his pants around his knees as he prepared to do unspeakably vile things to her body! Snarling much like his old namesake, Waltfeld stepped forward smoothly and threw his entire upper body behind his pistoning right arm as he loosed a roundhouse punch to the murderer's jaw.

It should have shattered bone, pulped his jaw and lips and tongue, perhaps even completely broken his neck and maybe even decapitated the guy. A fist that could go through a concrete cinderblock wall would do terrible, awful damage to mere human flesh and bone. But if the murderer was made of anything, it wasn't human flesh and bone, because while he did stagger backwards, spitting blood from gashed open cheeks and lips, not a single tooth popped loose, and what blood did spill almost instantly clotted on his face as he reached out with a hand, a bare hand, and dug through the plaster and drywall of the hallway wall to arrest his stumble. "Well, its been a while since I've been punched like that. I thought I remembered that mechanical whine from somewhere." The murderer said, still nonchalant, righting himself and sneering at Waltfeld's obvious shock. "Always a bigger monster, he said, and you know what, he WAS right. And now I have BECOME that bigger monster."

Waltfeld looked down at his right hand, the prosthetic synthflesh split open along his knuckles, cut from where his fist had ground against whatever the hell the murderer's teeth were made from, and he took a wary step back, careful to keep his guard up. That had been perhaps the best punch he'd ever thrown, and if the guy hadn't quite laughed it off, he'd come close! "What ARE you?" Waltfeld asked, stalling for time as he tried to think of what to do.

"I am the eyes in the abyss that stare back. I am the darkness of the human soul. I am the end of all." Frost intoned dramatically, before sneering at himself and his grandiose phrases. "You can call me Zacharis Frost though." As expected, tiger-shirt knew that name, though it was plain he didn't believe it either. "Yes, I know, I'm dead and all. Been there, done that, moved on. Hell couldn't hang on to someone like me, not for long. The devil Asmodeus himself is scared to look me in the eyes crosswise, after all."

"Why?" Waltfeld asked, his throat raw with pain as he looked down at Ezalia. "What did she ever do..."

"Its not a question of having done anything." Frost cut the man off impatiently. "This is not, contrary to popular belief, really a personal thing with me. She doesn't mean anything to me, I don't hold any particular rancor for her above others. Of course that's not to say I don't hate pretty much everyone to some degree or other, and wouldn't happily see you all die in agony if I could..." A minor fib, but appearances were everything after all. "She did not deserve death any more than anyone does. Which is to say, she's had it coming for a while now..."

"You're insane." Waltfeld accused, his mouth dry with welling fear. Though he couldn't bring himself to believe that this was Zacharis Frost, back from the dead after being disintegrated in a thermonuclear fireball, he was still dealing with someone totally unhinged from reality, and with superhuman strength and endurance. In short, not a good situation to be the mere mortal in.

"Happily so, yes. I'm also dastardly, barbaric, vile and evil, and I wallow gratefully in such conditions." Frost smiled, more like baring his teeth. "Because they seperate me from the rest of the filth that humanity has allowed itself to become, stagnant and slothful, decaying on the vine from too long between reapings! The blade of humanity has grown dull and rusty, and I am the whetstone that shall sharpen it anew through the conflict of extermination!" He watched tiger-shirt trying to edge inconspicuously for the doorway, plainly having decided discretion was the better part of valor. No sense in dying uselessly for someone already dead. Pragmatic thinking. Admirable. "Relax. I'm not going to hurt you."

"Too late for that," Waltfeld said bitterly, again looking at Ezalia, his heart throbbing like it had been stabbed with nails of pure ice! "Do you even realize who you've murdered? Who her son is? What sort of resources he has at his command? You won't get away with this, and I will for one smile as they perform your execution!"

"She's Ezalia Joule, former Supreme Councilwoman, leader of the Hawk Party of PLANT politics, mother of Yzak Joule, the Gundam pilot." Frost replied with a yawn. "Or as I like to call him, Scarface, because its just so much more apt." Frost turned his maniacal gaze on Waltfeld once more. "As for the rest of it, I'd be rather disappointed if he didn't come after me with all the resources at his disposal. It would kind of make killing his mother pointless if it didn't upset him something fierce. Pointless like necrophilia." Frost smiled as Waltfeld winced. "You could even say this is more about Scarface than anything. I wanna see how sharp he still is. If brutalizing the woman who gave him life and raised him isn't enough to get him to come after me with a vengance, then I guess I'll have to move on to his whelps or their mother, and see if I can't tickle a little more effort out of him."

"You seem to be trying to get me to worry about the consequences of my actions." Frost pointed out, almost gently. "But you see, the consequences are the REASONS for my actions. Why poke a sleeping dog with a sharp stick? So he'll try to bite me of course, so I can determine if he's got life to live yet, or needs to be put down to allow new blood to step forward. I've set myself against the entire world before, and I see no reason to change that strategy yet. Besides, there's not a one among you, save perhaps the Boytoy himself, who is even worthy to stand by my side, and the Boytoy would, thankfully, never do it. That's the best thing about him, he never compromisies his principles, not even when lives are on the line. In some ways, he's just as crazy as I am! But in the opposite manner."

Frost stepped forward, watching tiger-shirt flinch instinctively. "Where do you think you're going?" Waltfeld demanded, as Frost brushed by him casually.

"Dunno. For a walk. Might go see a movie, maybe some lunch. No point in hanging around here. While it would be funny to see the look on Scarface's scarred face when he comes home, I can roughly imagine it, and besides, I want him to simmer for a while in helplessness before he gets a chance to try and absolve himself of his rage." Frost explained.

"You think I'm just going to let Ezalia lie there like that, you monster?" Waltfeld hissed. "You may have no respect for the dead, but I loved her and I won't let you desecrate her body or use that desecration to taunt her family!"

"That is a problem." Frost agreed, turning around in the doorway. "I can't have you ruining the surprise." And without further words, Frost lunged forward, ducking under the shocked swipe from tiger-shirt's mechanical right arm, and powering his fist into tiger-shirt's gut, driving all the air from his body and lifting him a full inch into the air as he gasped and spat bile and crumpled forward, all the fight knocked out of him as he cradled his bruised and battered internal organs. Grabbing him by his rakish bangs, Frost clamped his other hand over tiger-shirt's mouth and nose, pinching them shut, pinning the man down as he suffocated him into unconsciousness. Sighing and rolling his eyes at the follies of humans, since all he had to do was keep his mouth shut to avoid unpleasantness, Frost picked tiger-shirt up and carried him back into the house, wandering around a bit until he found the utility room and the clothes dryer. Stuffing tiger-shirt inside the dryer took some bending, twisting and squeezing, but with only a few snapped bones and one dramatically bent spine, the chore was accomplished. Frost tossed in an anti-cling dryer pad to get rid of fuzzies and shut the door, programming the machine for tumble dry only, and set it for two hours. Anything more would just be excessive after all.

And the last thing he wanted Scarface to think was that this was excessive. This was nothing. Just idle timekilling really. Excessive would come later, upon the battlefield, when Scarface, Loser Zala-Attha, Boytoy and Blond Weenie all got together once more, maybe with Fiery Zala-Attha too, and came for his blood with death in their eyes. THAT would be excessive, and all the more glorious for it. Strolling out the door after collecting his sunglasses, concientiously closing it behind him and locking it to prevent any casual burglary... since he'd hate for some nameless crook to take credit for his masterful work... Frost sauntered down the driveway and ambled off back towards the park. Maybe he'd go get some sun at the beach, maybe take in a movie or something. He'd thought he'd seen a new horror flick out on some of the electronic billboards, and it had been simply ages since he'd been able to sit down to a good gorefest slasher film and spend some time, imaginatively or not, with someone who actually understood how he felt about other people and the best way of showing it. Not that any mere movie freak could come close to the sort of artistry he displayed, but it was better than comedy.

As he reached the end of the driveway his back suddenly stiffened, and he gave an exasperated sigh. "Of course...!" Frost threw his gaze upward in self derision, an artist who has seen the flaw in his own masterpiece. "I should have put her in the grandkids bedroom... damn me for an impulsive idiot... oh well... win some, lose some I guess..."

xxxx

**Near Space Expansion Zone, Asteroid Belt, November 11th, 12:30 pm**

_As far as battles went, this one has started rather inauspiciously._ Lain thought to himself, though his derision was directed more at the whole of the USN taskforce, rather than specifically at himself, since he'd done nothing but twiddle his thumbs and attempt to catch a few winks since boarding his cockpit over an hour before, upon the first sighting of some unidentified ships that the fleet commanders had tenatively identified as Retributor support vessels. Everyone had gone on scramble alert, expecting an imminent ambush or assault from the terrorist forces, but instead a game of cat and mouse had followed, with the Retributor ships fleeing deeper into the asteroid belt, and the USN commanders, perhaps sick of months futzing about in these backwaters, decided to go in after them, hungry for a decisive victory of some sort.

Lain could not help but feel that this was playing exactly into the hands of the Retributor commanders, but who cared what he thought? He might be a Solar Knight-Ensign, and a liason to the Fenris Company unit, but in reality his command authority was almost nil, courtesy of Rey's behind the scenes manipulations. He was outside... and beneath... the chain of command, though technically he could still act under his own initiative if he saw fit. Though he knew Rey was just waiting for him to do something like that, to buck the chain of command and do something that he could be nailed to the wall on, and from there his entire life would come crashing down around his ears, Rey would make sure of that! He still hadn't gotten over Lain siding with Eric when Eric's friend had come knocking at Galileo LFB during the Revenant battle. It wasn't like he'd switched sides, he just decided to confront what he saw as the greater threat, and Rey had been epically butthurt over it ever since. So maybe Durandal was his adopted daddy, Lain could see why he'd be upset. But Rey just wouldn't let bygones be bygones!

And it wasn't like Lain's service record hadn't been exemplarly since, cleaner than Rey's or Shinn's and Luna's in a lot of ways, since he hadn't signed on to be a duplicitous lapdog and work as part of a propoganda apparatus while turning a blind eye to the secret atrocities commited by the USN leadership! Indeed, he was living in the middle of atrocity prime, the FEAR labs, and his girlfriend was the result of one such atrocity commited in the past! There wasn't much he could do about it besides not turn a blind eye, and offer what sympathy he could without getting noticed by the people who were overly suspicious of such actions. And plan for the future, for when Orb became independent, and he could defect and rejoin his home nation, and bring Stella along with him, and show her a life of happiness that didn't have a single thing to do with war or fighting!

Awakening from a half doze, Lain blinked sleepily and then smiled at hismelf, coming fully awake. Was he really such a hardened veteran these days, able to snooze while still trapped in the launch bay of a warship, easily the most vulnerable any Mobile Suit pilot ever was during combat, while almost certainly speeding directly into an ambush in the middle of the Asteroid Belt, of all places? he could remember a time, damn, it must have been over a decade ago, when he was still a snotty, hotshot Orb ace, where he got the shakes before and after each combat, and had to hide in the restroom for hours until his body calmed down enough to act normal. Battle itself had never been a problem, but the anticipation before and release afterwards had been nearly disabling. And now here he was, in imminent, life threatening danger, nowhere especially near the front of the launch que, and he was taking a nap.

He checked his sensor feeds, currently tied into those of the _Damocles_ itself, saw that they were still slowly closing in on the Retributor ships, though the USN ships were having to slow down as well, because the asteroid field was becoming thick to the point where they would have to start shooting asteroids down to make further progress. Even an asteroid the size of a human hand, if hit going at the speeds of a space warship, could cause some pretty severe damage, and there were a lot of asteroids out there significantly bigger than that, many bigger than the ships themselves. It was less a problem for Mobile Suits, at least those with Phase Shift armor, which would still feel impact but probably wouldn't be broken apart, though Lain was more than acquainted with how deadly dangerous a jarring impact at the wrong time could be in combat.

Stella was even better at tiding over the time until actual combat started than Lain was, though she had unfair advantages in that she'd been trained and groomed her entire life for situations like these, and even brainwashed and conditioned so as to barely feel fear or trepidation or anxiety when it came to combat, even to the point where she could sometimes be pushed into a berserker like frenzy, neglecting her own defenses and even the sanctity of her life in her quest to destroy her enemies. Thankfully Lain was able to call her back from the brink of such rages these days, his presence and voice reaching out to the core of true Stella and keeping her safe and anchored, something which she seemed to find nothing short of miraculous. Stella was also hooked into a full body NIC piloting system, and was probably actually more comfortable in her cocoon of acceleration cushioning gel than Lain was in his only semi-padded seat.

And then, without warning, as per any good ambush, the battle started, multiple new threat icons appearing from hidden nooks and covered bunkers in the larger asteroids around the USN fleet, a motely mix of old salvaged Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors, Moebius's, Mistrals, Ginns, Strike Daggers, a Cavalier here and there and even a single M1 Astray, which brought an ironic crinkle to Lain's eyes. The Retributor ships had reversed course and were huddled in the shadow of the largest asteroid for a hundred thousand kilometers, upon which armored ports were opening up to reveal capital ship class weapon turrets. The Retributors had reached their hidden base, and now, under cover of its extensive firepower, were preparing to meet the USN fleet in open combat, with the majority of their force committed to the assault. Lain didn't believe it for a moment.

For one, the quality of Mobile force he was seeing was not the same as the force that had stymied a Solar Knight Paladin taskforce for months on end, because not even Rey and his goons were that incompetent, quite the opposite actually. For two, even with the asteroid base, the USN fleet still outgunned the Retributors, and outnumbered them as well, and the Retributors had to know that before they even started the pursuit. So that they had initiated it anyway, and led the USN fleet to this place, suggested to Lain that they had at least one more force in reserve, and maybe some sort of sneaky plan to go along with it. But again, no one really cared what he thought, and while he thought about going on record anyway, why make himself a needle in someone else's ass? The last thing he needed was more enemies on his own team.

"Why is it that the higher you normals get in the chain of command, the less brain cells you seem to possess? Do you siphon them off along the way or something? Is there some sort of lobotmoy performed upon attaining certain rank?" Auel complained over their private squadrom commline. "They cannot honestly be thinking that this is anything but a huge trap, and yet they are leaping into it headfirst and grinning? How did these people survive to be born?"

"Its because of political pressure." Sting, the big brother of the triplet of himself, Auel and Stella, and now kinda quartet with Lain being the in law. "They've been sent out here to hunt down what amounts to a minor terrorist group in the scheme of things, and they've been led around for months like a calf with a ring in its nose, and everyone higher up the chain of command is either snarling at them or laughing at them, and they can feel their career ambitions turning to dust the longer they stay out here without actually accomplishing anything. So when given the chance, they forge ahead like a bull and hope for the best. It IS stupid though, because this is a trap and we all know it. And we all know they won't care to hear that from us, so I guess we're just going to have to make the best of it."

"Omega Panzer has been launched. All units commencing launching operations now. Orders being uploaded to your computers now." The somewhat nervous voice of the fleet CIC operator announced, her words tripping over each other a bit. If they were closer to the USN core colonies, Namara the AI would be handling combat comms, since she could do it far better than any human could ever hope to, but out past the orbit of Mars there was almost a three second delay in her actions, which was unacceptable in a fluid combat situation, so they had to fall back onto the secondary string of human operators.

"Oh, Omega Panzer has been launched, I guess we can all relax now, that braggart Augmented is here to save the day!" Auel snarled derisively, though also perhaps a trifle bitterly, since Mechael was no more or less than a prototype replacement for Auel and all the other Extendeds. It was never nice confronting the fact that you were soon to be considered obsolete, and still early on in your life too. Lain was of split opinions... the sooner Mechael and his ilk could be mass produced, the sooner Stella would be hopefully retired from active service, though it was horrible to think of it in those terms. Deep down inside, Mechael was human too, and he might not have had a choice, any more than Stella had, in becoming what he was. Abrasive personality or not, he didn't deserve to be made into a weapon. Besides, there was no garauntee Roanoke would even retire the Extendeds, or if he did, what sort of retirement it would be. Lain doubted it would be much like releasing them into civilian life, for some reason.

"We're launching soon." Stella's demure voice came next, her focused calmness reassuring to both Auel's excitement and Sting's cool detachment. "Omega Panzer is leading the main force against the Retributor base, we are to take out any stragglers and destroy the ships before they can flee."

"Claiming all the glory for himself and making us do mop up?" Auel half spat in annoyance. "Does he think we're just going to sit on the sidelines while he takes all the credit?"

"It doesn't matter what he thinks, for all we know, this might not even be Mechael's plan." Lain reminded them. "And even if he does want to claim all the credit, well then he's welcome to it. Eventually his reach will overextend his grasp and he'll bite off more than he can chew, and then it will be us who ride to the rescue and end up saving the fleet."

"I like the way you think." Sting smiled slightly. "You're damned devious, for a normal."

"I'm so glad to meet your continued approval." Lain answered wryly. Though in truth he was, since Sting was an all right guy, and so was Auel, once you got past the brattish insecurity, and if he couldn't quite think of them as family like Stella did, he could at least think of them as Stella's family, and good friends. Very good friends to have on your side in a tough fight at that. It didn't bear thinking about having them set at odds with him, since it would tear apart their family, with Stella siding with him. Or so Lain hoped, though he never wanted to put that theory to the test, because Stella's family was just about all she had to hang onto in the world, besides himself, and she'd had them a lot longer.

The Panzerdragoon's were so large that they couldn't be launched via normal magnetic catapults, and the old Agammemnon class ships hadn't yet been retrofitted with the newer, larger catapults to be found on the Myrmidon's and Incarnate's, so Stella, Auel and Sting were forced to literally walk out of the launch tubes, half hunched over to avoid scraping their shoulder mounts against the bulkheads, and then at last Lain could launch, hurled from the ship like a silver bullet via the magnetic catapult, before circling around and falling into formation with his larger brethrenas they skirted around the edges of the battle, almost entirely unopposed, as the fracas around the asteroid base was drawing almost all the attention of both the Retributors and the USN fleet.

Lain took the opportunity to get a good look at Mechael's new Gundam, the Omega Panzer and its combat capabilities. In shape the Gundam was similar to the Panzerwulf and Panzerdragoon models, though its chassis size was somewhere inbetween those two models, about thirty meters tall and two hundred fifty tons. Like the Panzerdragoon's it was equipped with a Fusion Pulse Reactor, but while the Panzerdragoons were large enough to not require external cooling systems such as wings, the Omega had twelve spike like protrusions from the back of its legs, shoulders and torso that contained radiators for exchanging the high heat of the reactor efficiently. Compared to the plethora of weapons mounted on the dreadnaught like Panzerdragoon's, the Omega seemed lightly armed to Lain's sensors, with a few beam cannons in each wrist and hand, a single much larger beam cannon on the right shoulder, a VTP missile system on the left shoulder, and a double barreled heavy flak cannon in the hands.

Flak cannons were a relatively new innovation on the old anti-armor shotgun, firing a slew of smaller projectiles in a shorter ranged cone type effect rather than a single shell or stream of shells in a line like a regular cannon. Unlike the anti-armor shotgun, the submunitions of which were shaped anti-armor explosive charges which had proven ineffective against Phase Shift armor, flak cannons fired superheated shards of mono-steel, heated to near molten temperatures, which were fully capable of slicing through Phase Shift and other forms of non-energy armor with ease. Even the ablative armor of the Dragoon's and Omega itself, forged in single pieces from the most durable metallic-ceramic alloys available to the USN and equally durable against physical or energy attacks, was not proof against a close range flak cannon blast.

Upon further review, Lain realized that the Omega was only lightly armed compared to a Panzerdragoon, compared to his Vindicator it was practically a battleship, and compared to the Ginn's and Strike Dagger's it was fighting, it might as well have been an armada! Dark crimson supercharged plasma bolts spat in steady streams from the triple 80mm cannons on the back of each of the Omega's hands, the supercharged bolts striking and then exploding like hollow point bullets when they hit, gouging out craters almost half again the caliber of the weapon would indicate, sometimes ripping an arm or weapon apart with a single hit, or blowing a cockpit to smithereens! The right shoulder 300cm high energy beam cannon fired a plasma bolt as thick as two and a half grown men standing on each other's shoulders, and melted a Ginn's entire torso into vapor, leaving its arms from elbow down and legs from knee down hanging forlornly in the void.

And then the flak cannon spoke, with both barrels at once, and a swathe of Retributor forces almost two hundred meters wise suddenly detonated in roiling balls of fire, shattered wreckage spinning away from those machines only caught on the edges of the blast, the entire terrorist force seeming to reel and stagger as their centerline was ripped asunder in a moment. Heavy beam and cannon fire from the asteroid base tried to fill the gap, but it was too late, Moebius Sigma next generation Mobile Armors from the Myrmidon were already spilling through the gap, while Mechael continued to engage the disordered Mobile Suit forces to keep them from turning to the aid of their base. Lain and the Extendeds passed behind another large asteroid and then the battle was hidden from them as they continued to circle in on the Retributor's ships.

"So he's not all talk then." Auel admitted, grudgingly, after a moment. "Though scything down fodder doesn't count for much above minimal proficiency. I could have done the same, and faster too..."

While Sting listened soothingly to his "younger" brother's griping, Lain switched comm channels to the private one between him and Stella. "You know, I've been thinking of what we're going to do after we get done with all this." Lain began.

"Besides go back to the labs for a debriefing?" Stella replied, somewhat deadpan. "And some more sex, not necessarily in that order?"

It always caught Lain a bit off guard when Stella joked casually with him, perhaps because she did it so infrequently, so he was nonplussed for a moment. "I meant more long term." He clarified.

"I know what you meant." Stella answered, her tone serious again. "But you always pick the oddest times to bring it up. We're in the middle of combat."

"And that always gets me thinking about what I stand to lose if I don't have a plan for the future." Lain retorted somewhat stiffly. "If Mechael does as well in the rest of the battle as what we just saw, there's little doubt that mass... training... of Augmenteds will shortly commence. If that does happen, I don't see any reason why we should hang around and let ourselves be mothballed."

"Decommissioned." Stella corrected, perhaps a trifle sadly. "It's called decommissioning when a war machine is no longer required. Decommissioning, followed shortly thereafter by scrapping. Scrapping being the forceful dismantlement of a useless..."

"I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS!" Lain shouted, bringing a silence to the comm line. "But I won't let it happen to you. You're not a war machine, Stella. You won't get decommissioned or especially scrapped!"

"It bothers us all." Stella said after a moment, very softly. "Auel just shows it the most, but it bothers every last one of us Extended. What Mechael represents, it means the end of our usefulness to Father. It means we will be obsolete, forgotten, tossed aside, discarded, abandoned. There has been talk of... sabotaging Mechael. Even getting rid of him. None of us can imagine a world without Father in it, none of us could bear to be seperated from him, especially by being replaced by some new upstart! Not even me. I know what you want, Lain, and I know that I always want to be with you... but... he's my Father too, and I love him. I can't run away from him. Stella is not a normal girl, but she is happy that way. If she could live the rest of her life the way she has these last few years, she would be a very happy woman. But Stella knows that Lain doesn't care for Father much and that he isn't happy with the way Stella wants to live her life. That he stays anyway is one reason Stella loves him so very much."

"I won't let them just drop you down a chute into a waste bin." Lain said fiercely, a bit choked up. "You deserve a long and peaceful life after the service you've already given... all of you do, not just Stella!"

"Stella is not sure Lain will get to have a say in it, though she fervently hopes he does." Stella paused once more. "I don't want to die..." She added with a shudder. At one point in time, that word or its varients would have triggered a hypnotic suggestion planted in her subconscious and turned her into a raging berserker, but Lain had helped her, with his love and understanding and patience, destroy her vulnerability to the command word, helped her see it not as a failsafe but as a sort of training test, a step on the road to truly mastering herself and humanizing herself. Thinking that all that progress, all that work could come to nothing if Mechael and his future siblings replaced her in Father's affections was all but unbearable to Stella, but if that was what Father wanted, she wasn't going to argue, because she was a dutiful and loving daughter. Lain couldn't understand, because he wasn't, for all his trying, an Extended, so he just couldn't understand.

Further angst was brought to a halt by rounding the asteroid at last and coming into the flank of the Retributor fleet, which was beginning to edge forward to try and help close the gap in its defensive lines Mechael had created, the asteroid base hard pressed by swarms of Moebius Sigma's, their six dual beam cannon armed "Gun Barrel" wire guided pods, controlled by a seperate gunner while the pilot controlled the craft and nose mounted weapons, causing havoc in a wide area, some flanking the belaboured Mobile Suit forces, and others blasting apart the base's hardpoint defenses and large chunks of its rocky exterior, as the USN fleets, clustered around the mighty Myrmidon heavy cruiser, drifted into bombardment range of their heavy weapons. With the Retributor's Mobile force wavering on the edge of collapse, the asteroid base being pounded by the fleet, and the Retributor's own ships caught from the side and behind by Lain and the Extendeds, a great victory for the USN seemed imminent.

Which of course made it the perfect moment for a countercharge to completely change the balance of the fighting equation, as a cluster of new threat symbols suddenly appeared on Lain's long range scopes, appearing BEHIND the encroaching USN fleet, which had clumped up in its eagerness to bring focused firepower to bear on the asteroid base and thus were incapable of quickly maneuvering to face sudden flankers. It was a masterpiece of tactical timing and positioning, exactly the sort of thing Lain would expect from a small force that had so confounded the Paladins for so long, and he could not help but whistle in admiration even as he gritted his teeth in anger, because his own side was about to get raped right up the ass and there wasn't much he could do about it. Not even Kira Yamato himself could have gotten all the way across the entire battle in time to make a difference as the Retributor's elite forces pounced into the middle of the USN fleet formation, led by none other than the Retribution Gundam itself.

Though extremely heavily armed and armored, the Myrmidon wasn't the most maneuverable of ships, especially penned in by the asteroid field, and while its turrets did their best to turn and fire upon the new enemies, the foe was already in amongst the fleet, and fire control systems balked at target locks backed by friendly ships, computers refusing to fire while there was a good chance of destroying allied ships with shot overpenetration. On the other hand, the Retributors were in a target rich environment, and had no hestitation about firing at every ship in sight indiscriminately. Flying aptly named Punisher model Mobile Suits, strongly based upon the Vindicator chassis Lain was familiar with, the Retributors lacked much in the way of ehavy weapons, besides a 325mm hyper impulse cannon in the right shoulder, which took multiple shots to take down a heavy warship, and were almost entirely ineffective against the Citadel shields of the Myrmidon, which guarded almost seventy five percent of the ship's hull while it attempted to turn and get free from the binding brawl of the fleet.

The Retribution Gundam was an entirely different story however, its weapons several orders of magnitude more powerful than that of its minions, and its pilot of equal caliber to his weapons. Whoever the "Retributor" was, he was one of the most skilled Gundam pilots Lain had ever seen... and he'd seen them all. And apparently also a tactical genius, or closely allied with one, using what amounted to half scrapped Mobile Suits, many of which might not even be manned, and an almost certainly automated base defense network to entrap and destroy a USN fleet far superior in terms of numbers and baseline firepower. Lain could almost cheer and applaud, if it wasn't HIS fleet getting decimated so handily, and his best way home going up in smoke and flames. Ignoring the Retributor ships, recognizing them as just another distraction, Lain and the Extendeds began charging back across the battle zone, desperate to get into protective formation around the _Damocles_, their mothership. Panzerdragoon's weren't designed for sprinting though, and Lain soon outpaced his friends by a significant margin.

He arrived at roughly the same time as an enraged Mechael, the Omega Panzer appearing as if by teleportation through the midst of a cluster of burning warship wreckage, right in the middle of a knot of three Punishers, all of which drew their melee weapons, a mono edged sword, two handed sword and two handed axe, which began to glow pink hot with bleed heat from their reactors. Though still a good forty meters from the nearest enemy, Mechael pointed one hand imperiously at them, heated mono claws flipping up onto his gauntlet so that it became a gaping fanged dragon maw of cherry red glowing teeth, and then the gauntlet shot forth from the end of his arm, or actually the arm itself extended, unfolding in a blur of segments, like a giant spring uncoiling, the fanged fist slamming into the chest and head of the axe wielding Punisher, vibrating and superheated metal fangs punching through Phase Shift armor like it was cardboard and crumpling the Punisher like a beer can, before its reactor and munitions blew apart and scattered flaming chunks in an expanding sphere.

The Punisher with a two handed sword moved to engage while his smaller sword wielding companion turned to flee, the two handed sword slicing at the extended arm, but it retracted as fast as it had extended and the sword cut only vacuum. Mechael thrust with the other arm, just as extendable as the first, but the Punisher pilot was ready for it this time, and deflected the flying fist with the green-aqua glow of a forearm generated Citadel shield. He retaliated with a full flight of six VTP missile from his left shoulder launcher, actually a bit of overkill since one VTP missile was usually enough to destroy a Mobile Suit, or at least cripple it. Heavily armored and fast as hell, VTP, standing for variable tactical payload, missiles were every pilots worst nightmare, almost impossible to evade or outrun, and damned hard to shoot down, plus possessing the power of a one shot kill or deadly disorientation from kinetic impact. And that was just the hunter-killer loads, there were all sorts of crazy warheads you could put on those missiles!

Lain didn't get to see what the Retributor had selected for his warheads, because barely had the missiles left the launcher than they were vaporized, along with much of the Punisher's right torso, by the enormous beam of the Omega's 300cm high energy beam cannon. Lain himself blindsided the fleeing Punisher by jetting out from around a chunk of wreckage and firing point blank with the Mjolnir cannon of his trophy Cerberus combi weapon, legacy of Stella's old Panzerwulf machine, which fit the Vindicator like a bazooka, though it had been a one handed rifle for Stella. The Punisher brought up its forearm Citadel shields, but at point blank range, they might as well have been holograms, for all the good they did against a Mjolnir kinetic particle blast, like a man made bolt of lightning but with a hundred times the power. The Punisher all but disintegrated under the stabbing caress of the purple-white bolt.

"Don't get in my way." Mechael warned Lain, somewhat unexpectedly, plainly a little miffed at getting unasked for backup. "I don't need your help."

"I wasn't helping you, I was helping the fleet." Lain retorted with a scowl. A simple "thanks for the assist" wouldn't have cost him much, would it? Damn gloryhound. "And if you'll excuse me, it still needs more help." The destruction of the three Punishers had drawn the attention of more Retributors, and Lain soon found himself somewhat hard pressed, fending off volleys of explosive mono-edged razor discs from the twinned EMC rifles each Punisher carried, one per hand, the discs unable to penetrate Lain's Phase Shit, but the explosive power behind the shots being enough to rattle him somethign fierce. And though the Punisher's seemed to have mostly used up their VTP missiles on the fleet ships, a few looked to be holding one or two in reserve for a tough opponent, and Lain had the sinking feeling he was soon to qualify. A beam tipped VTP missile would make a big mess of his day.

Lain tried to keep them all well away, but there were four of them, coming from all different directions, and his main weapon, the Cerberus combi system, could only charge and fire so fast, the twinned 350mm hyper impulse cannons packing enormous punch, but it wasn't a rapidfire weapon by any means! And his shoulder mounts, two 45mm LAWs, Linear Assault Weapons, basically linear gatling guns with a tremendous rate of fire, were useless against Phase Shift armor. The Omega Panzer had disappeared somewhere, probably off seeking the enemy Gundam, and none of the ships nearby were in any position to offer Lain help, since he'd come to rescue THEM in the first place. Things were fast becoming rather awkward, and beginning to degenerate into "untenable".

And then the sky seemed to fill with shoals of large rockets, well over a hundred of them in the first volley alone, blasting the Punisher's back in disarray, simply too many rockets to avoid or shoot down with standard CIWS systems as Stella arrived and unloaded both of her torso mounted 75 tube 120mm rocket launchers into the fray. Each rocket was as thick as his thigh and as long as Lain was tall, and possessed only slightly less explosive punch than a VTP missile, though Stella's rockets were unguided and designed more for use against large collections of lightly armored targets, rather than single, high armor, high value targets. She had other means of disposing of tougher foes. Such as the 220cm "Lohengrin" Positron cannon the Panzerdragoon carried as a handheld rifle in its right hand, a gun stripped straight from the design of a space battleship and made into a handheld weapon! Two Punishers wavered and faded away like candles tossed into a blast furnace as the crackling red-blue geyser of plasma and antimatter particles washed over them, leaving nothing but radioactive dust behind.

The other two Punishers made as if to split up and attack from opposite sides, before being bracketed and boxed in by hammering barrages of 40cm high energy beam blasts from the four, count em four, gatling high energy beam cannons, mounted two to a shoulder on the Panzerdragoon. Nuclear powered Citadel shields could only hold together for so long under constant pounding from dozens of capital class energy beams, and so long translated to about five seconds before the Punishers blew apart and then away, the space around Lain suddenly empty as Stella moved her PanDrag, as they were called shortly, up to protectively shadow Lain's Vindicator, all but eclipsing him with her bulk. For all their gigantic size though, the NIC pilot system allowed the PanDrags to move as fluidly as a normal human, or close to anyway, especially in space. "Did they hurt you, Lain?" Stella enquired, a trifle playfully. "Did I make it all better?"

"You always make things better, babe." Lain answered with a smirk. He saw on his screens, now that he had a moment to look, that Sting and Auel were elsewhere in the fleet, lending their overwhelming firepower to the task of cleansing the Retributors from within the half destroyed USN formation, the staggering power and durability of the PanDrags, not to mention the superior skill of the pilots, allowing them to engage the Punishers with near impunity. "Let's see about proving to Mechael, and whoever might be watching, that there's a long time yet before the Extended's reach the end of their useful lifetime!" Lain suggested, scanning his sensors for where the Augmented might have gotten off to. It didn't take too much searching, there were only five FPR's active on the battlefield, besides the half disabled Myrmidon, and only two of those were maneuvering around and around each other. Mechael was obviously trying to take things into close quarters, and the Retributor was obviously not having any of that nonsense.

Finally catching sight of the battle, Lain was struck by how the NIC system helped create the illusion of actual people in armor battling each other, how humanized it made the machines, how easy it was to read frustration and anger, or calm and simmering determination, in the movements of the Gundams. Mechael cut loose with both barrels of his 100cm flak cannons again, but the half molten shards slammed into the shimmering pink energy field of a Positron shield projected from the Retribution's chest and the attack was pyrotechnically negated. The Omega charged forward and the Positron field suddenly blinked out of existence, though according to Lain's sensors, the Retribution was still engaging the system. The Omega must have some sort of new system, Lain realized, that allowed it to negate magnetic fields within a certain radius. Highly useful, that, denying your opponent use of Citadel, Positron or Geischmedig-Panzer shield arrays at close range. Even more so against the Retribution, whose primary armor was made up of overlapping Citadel scales. For that matter, the Omega read as being equipped with a Defensive Particle Inhibtor, same as the PanDrag's carried, which could negate Phase Shift armor, Mirage Colloid and even Angel Halo within a 150 meter radius when turned on. Get close to Mechael and you could kiss your defenses goodbye!

Obviously caught off guard by his shield's sudden lack of presence, the Retributor was almost caught napping by a double extension punch from the Omega, only barely managing to sidestep and contorot backwards, sprays of metal shards sparking from the armor over its hip and upper left shoulder as the extending arms grazed past. The heavy, multi-barreled gatling hyper impulse cannons that were part of the Retribution's back mounted armature weapon selection slid into firing position beneath the Retribution's forearms, both 525mm weapons pointing square at the Omega's chest from near point blank range, and the Omega lacked anything even remotely resembling a shield. The weapons spun up, but emitted only incoherent splatters of light blue and red plasma energy, like a water pistol with a dirt clogged barrel, and Lain realized the Omega's anti-magnetic system was even more powerful than he'd thought, extending even to preventing plasma type weapons from working within its radius.

The Omega slammed its shoulder into the Retribution's chest and bowled the slighter, shorter machine backwards like a ninepin, before Mechael was forced to frantically evade backwards as the hip and shoulder mounted VTP launchers of the Retribution coughed fire and smoke and four hunter killer missiles all started vectoring in on the Omega from different angles as the Retribution retreated to gain some breathing and thinking room. Mechael reacted faster than Lain expected, not even attempting to evade the missiles past the first pass, instead sending four of his own hunter killer missiles out to intercept the missiles coming after him, before once more charging after the Retribution, eager to get to within range of his anti-magnetic field once more. The Retribution was wise to the trick now though, and had swapped out its hyper impusle cannons for 150mm Rapidfire FRALAs.

The blue-white laser beams were totally unaffected by Mechael's field disruptors, and they carved sections of Ablative armor peel from Mechael's thigh and upper arm before he managed to swerve aside. Forced to back off to gain reaction room against the FRALA, which could slice him to ribbons in a heartbeat if he ever let the beams converge upon him, Mechael once more lapsed into frustration, sniping with his 300cm beam cannon, but the Retribution either dodged or blocked the shots with its reactivated center shield, now that Mechael had retreated past the range of his field disruptors. Which felt like a perfect time for Lain and Stella to make their presence known and felt.

"Stand clear." Stella warned Lain, bringing the PanDrag's primary weapon systems into play for the first time that battle. Mounted between the twin 40cm gatling beam cannons on each shoulder was a telescoping barrel that connected to bulky, wing-stub like power regulators welded to the PanDrag's back, these barrels were extending now, flickering arcs of eye searingly bright purple-white lightning crackling around the muzzles as the weapons built up to firing power. They were "Ragnarok" class Mega-Mjolnirs, the newest and heaviest class of 3P cannons... Penetrating Particle Projector, also known as kinetic particle weapons... which fired ionized superdense particles at close to twenty percent of the speed of light, dealing damage through both kinetic impact and energy impartation, making them effective against all forms of armor and shields. If a Mjolnir hurled bolts of lightning, then a Ragnarok hurled entire storm systems, designed to crack open even the heaviest of shielded bunkers and take down the largest space warships.

When Stella fired, space itself seemed to flash negative for a moment, all that was black becoming white with discharge flare as the two Ragnarok's were unleashed, hurling purple-white lightning bolts as thick as a human was tall at the Retribution. The downside to the Ragnarok's was that only someone who was truly sensor blind or termianlly distracted could fail to notice them charging up, and the Retribution was able to dodge the shots by a significant margin. Which didn't bother Stella any, because she'd lined herself up so that even if she missed the Retribution, she was on target for the asteroid base beyond, boring two orange rimmed molten holes wide enough to drive two main battle tanks abreast through all the way through the asteroid, from one side to the other. Secondary detonations began blossoming around the asteroid as the base inside began to collapse in on itself, the entire asteroid's structural integrity compromised!

The Retribution turned to address this new threat presented by Stella, and was forced to dodge yet again as Lain tried to light him up with his own regular Mjolnir, knowing that the Ragnarok's took time to set up and unset up, and that Stella needed a few seconds before she could comfortable take care of herself once more. Seeing Mechael move in from the opposite side, Lain stowed his Cerberus for the time being, a crimson red supercharged beam blade projecting outward from his wrist as he closed in on the Retribution with his shield to the fore, determined to catch the bastard in a pincer. It was a great idea, but in execution things didn't work so well, since as soon as the Omega got within a hundred meters of Lain, his wristblade sputtered out, Mechael's field disruptors apparently unable to distinguish friend from foe. In the backdrop behind them, the asteroid base suddenly crumpled inward, imploding, before ripping itself into a storm of rubble fragments as the base's power generators finally gave up the ghost, violently.

Suddenly enveloped in a blizzard of asteroid bits, Lain found himself forced back, and that was when the pilot of the Retribution made his move, accelerating towards the Omega, using it as cover against the hurtling fragments of metallic stone, three orange hot mono-blades sliding out of the back of each wrist to lock into place for melee combat, the Retribution's skin curiously dark and sad as its Citadel scales winked out under the influence of Mechael's disruptors. Mechael accepted the challenge, throwing a punch, quite literally, at the oncoming Retribution, the Omega's arm uncoiling on its segemented armature like a speeding bullet train tipped with red hot fangs, which the Retribution snatched out of the air, palm to fist, mono blades scraping against mono fangs as he absorbed the impact of the flying punch. And then the Retribution closed its hand into a fist, and the Omega's gauntlet shattered like it was made of spun glass, half of the entire arm splintering into jagged fragments as the CUSA-D in the Retribution's palm transmitted hypersonic wavelengths directly into the substance of the Omega's fist, rending the structure apart through vibrational stress!

Shouting incoherently over shared comms, Mechael targeted his right shoulder beam cannon at the Retribution, only to have a beam tipped super-penetrating VTP missile from the Retribution's left shoulder launcher streak right up the gaping barrel of the weapon, and blow the entire mount, along with most of the Omega's right arm, clean off its body. Staggering backward, Mechael was helpless against the Retribution's other bladed fist, which began to plunge forward aimed right at his cockpit. Still hopeless battered by the exploded asteroid fragments, Lain was out of reach to help, but he wasn't the only one around. Stella's PanDrag was more than massive enough to weather the storm of rock fragments like a spring shower, and she bulled forward to shield slam the Retribution away like a fly swatted from midair with a paperback book. Hovering by the Omega, sheltering it in her shadow just as she had done to Lain earlier, Stella confronted the staggered Retribution and drew her own heated mono-sword, sized for the PanDrag and impregnanted with slivers of pure quantum crystal for extra durability.

"I'd tell you to pick on someone your own size, but unfortunately, you already were." Stella commented, a tad wryly.

"I didn't ask for your help, blondie!" Mechael cut in before the Retribution could reply. "I don't need you to save me! I had it all planned out and you ruined it! I am the ICMS Augmented and I am the future of Supersoldiers!"

"Apparently they don't teach supersoldiers common sense and manners in the future then." The pilot of the Retribution commented dryly. "Because she just saved your life and we all know it. A simple thank you at the least would be appropriate, braggart."

"Who the fuck do you think you are, you smug bastard?" Mechael inquired heatedly. "What the hell do you know about us?"

"So much more than I'd like to." The enemy pilot replied, almost wearily. "You say you are the future of Supersoldiers? Well in that case, I am the past of Supersoldiers. I am Markov Johanavich Ashino, Biological Computer Processing Unit, level 4. And I must say, I am not impressed, Mr. Augmented, if that is what you are designated. The apple has apparently fallen far from the tree... and rotted on the ground. You who don't pay heed to the mistakes of your predecessors, are only doomed to repeat them yourself. If you are the future of Supersoldiers, then that's a pretty damned bleak future."

"How dare you belittle me, you relic!" Mechael hissed. "You got lucky, that's all!"

"I am very lucky, that is true, but at least I'm able to recognize what is luck and what is a result of proper planning, lots of training, and an overconfident child of an opponent." Ashino replied levelly. "Luck would be the asteroid blowing up and distracting you, the rest is all on me."

"We outnumber you three to one." Stella interjected, now that the worst of the asteroid storm was past, and Lain was able to move up to join her and Mechael. "The Omega is damaged, but far from disabled."

"I'm very used to being outnumbered, young niece." Ashino replied, not with confidence, but with surety. "Indeed, I believe I have been outnumbered pretty much my entire life. I'm not sure how I'd deal with having numerical superiority for once. It would feel... awkward. And by counting Mr. Future over there as part of your team, I'd say its more like two on two."

"Just keep talking motherfucker, I'll show you..." Mechael growled.

"Please, you're not even funny scary. I've stood against the essence of insanity and pure human evil in my time, can you appreciate how little you truly intimidate me, Mr. Future?" Ashino replied witheringly. "From what I understand of the Extended and most likely the Augmented series of Supersoldiers, you're more emotionally stable than us BCPU's, but you come up a bit short on the "super" side of supersoldier. Certainly you qualify as better than the common soldier, even the common Coordinator, but, thankfully, you're not true monsters."

"I dunno about that..." Lain said, somewhat doubtfully. "I've seen them do some things that I could never do, not in a million years..."

"You love my niece there, don't you, and she loves you back?" Ashino asked suddenly.

"Yes of cours... wait, how did you know that Stella and I...?" Lain stammered.

"When you've been around as long as I have, and around the people I have, you learn to spot things like that. The way you crowd close, but in a comfortable fashion, showing long familiarity not just in training but in terms of true intimacy. It reminds me of Athrun and Cagalli, how they fought at Panama and during the Eden Disaster. It reminds me of how Noah and Meyrin would stand together. So I made an educated guess." Ashino replied intensely. "Trust me, monsters don't know how to love. They don't even know how to fear, not for themselves, not for others. They only know how to hate. I have met monsters before, slept in the same room, eaten the same food, bathed in the same showers, huddled in a ball beneath their derisive kicks. My own brothers are the monsters I speak of, and my sister two, may Amy rest in peace wherever she is. And you lot are not monsters."

"I'm not afraid of anything!" Mechael insisted. "I fear no one!"

"Then you can be said to have never met someone named Zacharis Frost." Ashino replied calmly. "Because to meet him is to realize true, undeniable fear. He was... unstoppable. The greatest and the worst Supersoldier ever created. Thankfully dead now."

"Couldn't have been all that if he got killed!" Mechael pointed out snidely.

"Yes, he did die. It took the combined efforts of myself and all of the Clyne Faction's Gundam pilots, including Kira Yamato and Lacus Clyne utilizing their psychic gifts, to merely prevent him from killing us long enough for his Gundam to overheat and explode. We didn't kill him so much as we kept him busy until he unintentionally killed himself. If you honestly believe you can even attempt to stand in that sort of league, given the performance I have just seen you exhibit, then you, Mr. Future, are a true and sad commedian." Ashino explained.

"All well and good, but are we going to stand here talking over who isn't scared of who and who has the most badass dead relatives, or are we going to finish things?" Lain cut in somewhat impatiently. "Don't get me wrong, you actually sound like an all right guy for the number one public enemy of the USN, Mr. Ashino, but I am a Solar Knight, and it is my duty to either capture or kill you, no hard feelings."

"None taken, you seem like a fine sort yourself, for all that you serve a corrupt and abusive government. I don't have a quarrel with the majority of the citizens of the USN, only those who abuse their power for personal gain at the expense of others. So don't take it personally if I end up killing you. If I were you, I would retreat. You have a lot to live for, and my niece there needs you. It is all too rare that we supersoldiers should find someone to love, and chances like that should not be squandered on the battlefield. Take it from someone who knows... sooner or later you won't be able to protect her, or she won't be able to protect you, and you don't want to live with that kind of pain, like I have. Get out while you can. Run away. You don't owe those who forced you to become what you are any loyalty! You are your own person, not a piece of equipment!"

"If you really are a supersoldier, you know why that's not possible for me." Stella answered softly. "He's like my Father, I can't abandon him. I won't run away!"

"If you won't run, then I guess I'll have to take you by force." Ashino returned. "For your own good, niece."

"Over my dead body!" Lain insisted.

"And precisely how many dead bodies do you think I have strode over on my path in life, Mr. Solar Knight?" Ashino pointed out heavily, the threat all the more potent for the way he seemed ashamed of it. "One more won't please me, but it won't stop me either." The Retribution dropped into a fighting crouch, still disregarding that all its armor and shields had been stripped away by Mechael's field disruptors. "I've ordered my forces to pull back, you have accomplished your victory, though it has cost you heavily, and you would do well to retreat to rearm and re-equip, because if you try to press us now, I will not hesitate to annihilate you all, even though my quarrel is not with you. Take your victory to your press and be happy with it."

"You are a terrorist and a criminal. Number one on the wanted list. We cannot turn our backs on you." Stella told him. Even as she finished her sentence, her PanDrag was rushing at the Retribution, like a juggernaut bearing down on a child, sword raised to cleave Ashino apart from crown to crotch. "I'M SORRY!" She shouted.

"So am I." Ashino sidestepped the hurtling blade with a flick of his thrusters, slipping around the bulk of the Panzerdragoon in a dance like move, his left palm resting on the back of Stella's waist for a moment, before the CUSA-D fired and shattered the PanDrag's lower spine, severing the connections between its legs and torso, and sending the FPR into emergency shutdown as its cooling systems were shredded. Lain's heart clenched as he heard Stella cry out in pain and fear before the comm line severed and would not return.

"STELLA!" Lain cried in agonized disbelief, stunned to see her defeated so casually.

"An incredible weapon's platform, but ill suited for the rigors of close combat against skilled foes, NIC system or not. Not a bad effort, but barely a pale imitation of the mastery Cray displayed in the Revenant." Ashino commented, more to himself than anything else.

"Fuck THIS nonsense!" Mechael said decisively, and the Omega Panzer turned and fled back towards the crippled Myrmidon. "You JUST WAIT, you fucking relic! Next time... next time, I, Mechael Smith, the ICMS Augmented, will crush you like a bug!"

"I might feel more threatened if you weren't running like a whipped puppy when you called that over your shoulder, abandoning the people that had saved your life a few minutes ago, you worthless WORM!" Ashino retorted with a phlegmatic spitting noise. "Feel free to come back any time, and I'll see if another spanking can't cure your bad manners, boy."

Taking advantage of Ashino's distracting conversation with Mechael, Lain snatched out his Cerbeus combi weapon and aimed it at the Retribution, only to be knocked flying like a ball from a bat when the Retribution activated its Positron shield, know that Mechael was well out of range. Recovering in a hurry, Lain aimed again, only to be grabbed from behind in a modified choke hold, his arms forced out wide, structural bones creaking and straining at awkward angles, until with a tearing screech, his forearms dislocated and ripped out from his elbow sockets, quite literally disarming his Vindicator. "Its not really fair, fighting a pilot with a standard cockpit system like this, but you chose to be here, Mr. Solar Knight." Ashino noted, drawing back one bladed fist. "Better luck next time." He said, and the sullen orange streak of the blades was the last thing Lain saw before his screens dissolved into static and the world went dark.


	21. Patriot

Author Note: The events of Public Enemy, Patriot and Pacifist all happen at around the same general time, just in far separate locations, while Destroyer takes place immediately afterward. As a word of warning, there is some reasonably strongly implied sexual situations in this chapter, you'll know the scene when you see it. Its not quite a "lemon", as I think they're called, but its implicit enough as to what is going on. Just covering my ass, I guess.

xxxx

**Second Earth Colony 2, Mass Habitation Block 73, November 11th, 7:30 am**

The aroma of fresh toast smeared with warm butter and strawberry jam, made from real berries and not that synthetic mass market trash, filled the small kitchenette with a pleasant, homey smell. Real fruit jam was one of the few luxuries Brendon could afford on his current salary, though technically he made far more than enough to eat all natural foods every meal, and he could technically afford to live in a much bigger hab block, maybe even a private home in certain sectors of SE2, if he didn't garnish his own funds so severely, sending over eighty percent of what he made directly to the charity causes he believed in, mostly orphanages and public service works. He wasn't a needy or greedy man, not these days, and since it was just him these days, the four room hab in a modest income block and a minor luxury like fruit jam on his toast was enough to keep him satisfied.

Finishing his breakfast toast off with a large glass of clone produced milk, mixed in with several packets of nutrient powders of both the normal vitamins and the more exotic additives he specifically was required to take because of the demands of his job, Brendon rose from his tiny table, which could fold up into one wall of the kitchenette to give him more room to actually do cooking that didn't involve the microwave or toaster, not that he often bothered to utilize the kitchen in that manner. He'd never been the handiest man in an apron, even his grilling, back in the days when backyard grilling was not a luxury of the super wealthy, had only been mediocre. Carla had always handled the food, and had treated the kitchen like her own personal fiefdom, one in which his presence was only welcome during certain holidays. Carla had never minded taking on such a stereotypical "woman" role, she was not much of one for worrying about the conceptions of gender stereotypes. "Each do as each was able and inclined", she always said.

Brendon's "able" had been orbital data communications work for the ALU, quite a lucrative job at the time, when so much of the Earth's trade passed through the ALU's territories on its way from Orb or the FNE or down from the PLANTS. It required a lot of long hours and incredible degrees of concentration and focus, the ability to shift through gigabytes of raw data to pick out the pertinent info for commercial and military transmissions, and he'd been very good at his job. Nowadays all that sort of stuff was handled by AI, Namara being capable of working millions of times faster on billions of times more data than any human could manage. Brendon had rapidly climbed the ladder of meritocacy and was up for a transfer to the management side of things, leaving him with a lot more time with Carla and Francesca, their lovely and bubbly daughter of six, when everything had changed. When the world had come crashing down around his ears, and those of everyone else.

Stepping from the kitchenette into the combination foyer and sitting room, Brendon passed by a mirror, where he inspected his morning shave. Having been born of general Africanized descent, Brendon's skin was a dark brown color, not black, not like some pure blooded Africans, but almost no one was pureblooded in this day and age of genetic diversification and modification. He had milk chocolate brown eyes, or rather eye, since his left socket was empty except for the plastic plugs that covered the sockets bored through his skull and kept them clean and dust free. A surgical modification, rather than the result of an injury, one of the pre-requisites of his new job. His scalp was shaved smooth, both because he liked that look, Carla always having said it made him look regal, and to facilitate ease of contact with the systems at work. Regular NIC systems could make interface regardless of hair or even some types of clothing, but the equipment he worked with was a bit more specialized and delicate than the standard arrays.

Straightening his pale blue working uniform tunic a tad bit, the high collar almost always irritating the skin under his chin if he didn't have it situated just so, Brendon snagged his prosthetic eye, fitting it into the socket carefully, feeling the wireless conenctions come online and flood his vision with holographic overlays. If only he could afford to own something like it for himself, but even if he devoted his full paycheck, he wouldn't be able to afford a masterpiece like this for years, and it just wasn't worth that much to him. His dark grey trosuers were perfectly creased, courtesy of the automated steam cleaner built into the wall of the bathroom cubicle, and his black shoes and white belt gleamed spotlessly as well, faux leather that never lost its shine. Blue, grey, black and white, the colors of the United Solar Nation Armed Forces, at least these days. A black beret perched atop his head, with the silver shield with starfield rampant of the USN regular forces pinned to the front, completed the uniform. Collecting his briefcase, Brendon passed his fingertips lovingly across the framed photograph hung from the wall just to the right of the doorway.

In the photo, which was from a family vacation when Fran was just turning five, to one of the few remaining wildlife preserves in the country, Carla was in the foreground, her eyes full of laughter and amused tolerance as Fran pointed off out of the picture frame, small hand tugging on her mother's pant leg, her face lit up with excitement, her bright blue eyes startling in her dark face as she told her father to turn and look at the herd of antelope grazing behind him. The Eden Disaster had been hard on everyone, and the Stork family was no exception. Because his job was essential to the rapid movement of objects to and from orbit, Brendon Stork was a highly valubale man during the USN evacuation of Earth, and as such his family had priority queing to evacuate themselves. However, things were terribly chaotic, and somehow things had gotten mixed up, and the soldiers never came to take his family up to orbit with him. By the time he realized they weren't just lost at one of the disembarkation centers, it was too late to return. To this day he still had no idea what had become of them, though he knew the statistics as well as anyone.

Cast adrift without his wife and child, feeling aimless and pointless, Brendon had eventually been prompted by anger and feelings of revenge into joining the USN military, wanting to get back at the Brotherhood of Man who had deployed the Green EDEN Nanoplague and cost him his comfortable life and his family. But by the time he finished basic training, the Eden Disaster was over with, Noah Borander captured and executed, and the Earth declared off limits to humanity, save for the tiny island nation of Orb. With no good outlet, his feelings of outrage had eventually collapsed in on themselves and burnt out, leaving him feeling hollow and worthless. It was then that he was offered the opportunity to participate in a cutting edge new program for the military, because of his prior work experience and phenominally high aptitude test scores. Brendon was a Corodinator, high scores were nothing out of the ordinary for him, but apparently he'd done well enough to impress even with his genetics taken into account.

And thus he had joined the fledgling Tactical Information Managment Augmentation Training program, TIAMAT, after the five headed dragon of mythology. Brendon was pretty sure that same name had been once used by a terrorist organization in the past, but no one particularly seemed to care, and now, almost five years later, neither did he. Whatever TIAMAT had been in the past, it was now the bleeding edge tactical and strategic secret weapon of the regular USN military, and he was its star performer, TAC-Captain Brendon "Birdman" Stork. The TAC standing for Tactically Augmented Coordinator, versus the TAN or Tactically Augmented Natural. His job was both simple and complex. In a way he was still doing what he had always done throughout his adult life, but now he was doing it for military purposes rather than commercial ones. And on a titanically bigger scale.

Most independently operable units, such as warships or ground units of company size or larger, had a technician assigned to them that was responsible for combat information control, also known as CIC. CIC operators were some of the most vital soldiers in any unit, because they were the ones responsible for coordinating and communicating changes in orders and battle plans from the officers in charge to the soldiers fighting, and keeping the officers in command completely up to date on the ever changing battlefield situation around them. Battles could easily be won or lost depending on the ability of the CIC operator to efficiently manage and dissimulate pertinent information to those who required it, the moment they required it or even a little before. With the introduction of super powerful and pervasive AI programs like Namara, human CIC operators had been regulated to a second string type role However, just putting a computer in charge of life or death type information didn't sit well with most commanders on the front lines, and so was born TIAMAT.

In essence Brandon and his assistant TAC's and TAN's functioned as CIC operators for the entire USN military, regular and Solar Knights both, all at once, allowing precision control of units ranging in size from half of the entire SPF to individual squads of infantry, in completely different operating theaters, all at the same time. Of course Namara did most of the heavy lifting in terms of data gathering and collating, but it was Brendon and his fellows, hooking their brains directly into the AI's main servers as sort of parallel processors, who controlled where the data went and how it was used. Brendon Stork was the eye in the sky for the USN military, having a strategic viewpoint of an entire conflict, but able to make tactical tweaks in real time to effect the overall strategy. It wasn't a job just anyone could do, not without very high risk of mental burnout or overload, which could lead to permanent brain damage, and even Brendon, with all his talent for data manipulation, needed to take extra dietary supplements and performance enhancing medicines in order to stay in optimal mental shape. Jacking himself directly into what was basically the core personality of the most powerful computer program ever designed, well, it was an experience like no other, and Brendon wasn't sure it was even a good one. Always felt like he'd jabbed a red hot poker into his eye when the main plug went in.

Stepping out the door of his hab, having to duck, as always, to fit his six foot, five inches tall frame through the portal, Brendon headed briskly for the public tram station, nodding politely to the few neighbors who gave him greetings. Not an isolationist by any means, Brendon was still far more focused on the important job he had, especially in the days ahead now that the USN was about to enact the largest orbital drop operation in human history sometime in the next few days. In fact, the coming operation was so large that it was larger than every other previous orbital drop operation in human history... combined! And that included such events as Operation Uroboros, when ZAFT invaded the Earth, and Operation Spitbreak, the drop on JOSH-A. It was going to be a strategic and logisitical nightmare to coordinate by normal means. And that is where Birdman and his team stepped in.

Tucking himself into his seat on the tram, Brendon closed his eyes, to all outward appearances dozing, though in actuality he was using his prosethic eye to access the data networks and streaming live news feeds onto the insides of his eyelid. After a few seconds, he grunted and turned up the volume, so to speak, because today was one HELL of a newsday! _"... and in the wake of an unprecedented nuclear sneak attack upon its home soil, Orb's Chief Representative Jiro Kurenai has gone on record asking the USN legislature to declare war on the Edenite Nation that attacked without cause or warning, slaughtering hundreds of military and civilian personnel and causing billions of dollars worth of damage. Solar President Gilbert Durandel has declared his full support for Orb's demand, and has also pledged to send immediate aid and relief forces to the Orb islands, while the USN military forces have been put on high alert, and inside sources in the Solar Protection Fleet indicate a major operation to begin reclamation of the Earth is already in the works."_ The news anchor was reporting.

Visual images went along with the report, soundless shots of Chief Representative Kurenai making an angry speech to a crowd of agitated citizens, his face pale but his eyes blazing with outrage, aerial views of the daage done to Orb's major military bases, collapsed hangers, blasted ruins where warehouses full of munitions had been, and broken Mobile Suits lying scattered about like discarded toys, rescue crews still digging frantically through piles of rubble for survivors. A particularly weighty shot showed the Morganroete Armories main complex from afar, a gigantic smoking crater where its headquarters and primary research labs had been located, the ground slumped inwards almost a hundred meters as deeply buried underground bunekrs and testing facilities continued to implode under the weight of debris. The shot after that made Brendon snarl briefly, his anger truly igniting in a personal sense.

A signpost a few kilometers away from the blast crater, which was painted with "Welcome to Morganroete, Building a Better Orb", had been crudely defaced with some sort of beam weapon on very low intensity, the words "PAYBACK" emblazoned in black char across the middle of the sign, with the severed head of a young teenage boy tied by the hair to one edge of the signpost. The boy couldn't have been older than sixteen or seventeen, and his features were twisted into a grimace of agony, the cut across his neck as smooth as glass, probably from some sort of mono-edged weapon. "_Confirmed casualties at Morganroete include the longtime director of special projects and technologies, Dr. Erica Simmons, long famed for her creation of Orb's many Gundams, as well as her seventeen year old son Ryuta Simmons, who's decapitated head was discovered affixed to the main gate sign of Morganroete, a few kilometers from the labs, along with an apparent taunting message. The body of Dr. Simmons has yet to be found, and experts say she may have been disintegrated, because the epicenter of the nuclear blast was approximately around her office space. Over six hundred other people are still missing, presumed buried in the building wreckage, and rescue efforts are underway, but the prognosis is bleak. The reasons for this abomidable attack remain unclear, but I'm sure we can all agree that no reason could possibly justify this sort of barbarity!"_

Fairly fuming with righteous indignation, Brendon got off at his stop, just outside the secure portion of the colony where the military harbor and logistics supply center was located, and after getting his badge and genetics checked, was waved through into the base proper. He was so consumed by his disgusted outrage that he almost forgot to return the salute from a platoon sized group of young soldiers, fresh from basic training by the look of them, as they jogged past under the gimlet eye of a grizzled sergeant, doing laps of the base either as punishment or regular fitness training. Stopped by another layer of security just outside the TIAMAT building, Brendon was once more waved through after an intensive genetic scan confirmed his identity, and took an express elevator down half a hundred levels into the bowels of the Colony's exterior, since all the Second Earth's were globular in shape, the further down one went into their structure, the closer to vacuum one got. Proximity to the coldness of space was important for TIAMAT, it helped cut back on coolant costs for all their delicate equipment immensely.

Nodding greetings to the support personnel that manned the front desks and took care of administrative tasks, Brendon stepped into the TAC/TAN locker room and got changed from his uniform into the special bodysuit that would help facilitate interfacing with Namara. After a brief preliminary medical check, conducted automatically by Nam herself, Brendon was cleared to proceed and he strode quickly down a long, slightly curved hallway until he reached the heavily armored and locked portal leading to his interface pit. More genetic, ocular and voice pattern scanning opened the door, which quickly sealed shut behind him, security tight as ever since this was one of the most valuable secrets in all the USN military. Setting his briefcase, which was actually more like a lunchbox, on a small table, Brendon popped his prosthetic eye out and set it in a thoughtfully provided glass of antiseptic cleaning fluid before clambering down into the somewhat cramped confines of the interface pit, in which he was forced to crouch for the moment.

Registering his presence, the top of the pit sealed closed with another armored hatch, and the pit slowly began to fill with aerated gel, much like the old mark one gravity reduction systems of certain Mobile Suits, enveloping Brendon completely in light pinkish clingy fluid, always giving him a feeling like he was floating in a womb. A mechanical womb perhaps, but still... Brendon shook it off, as he always did, watching blurrily as silvery interface wires wormed their way through the gel to the connection ports on his bodysuit, while a finer mesh of wires descended around his head like a skullcap, brief pinpricks of pain lancing from his scalp as they found previously burrowed microtunnels in his scalp and skull and inserted themselves into his brain. The segmented cable and spike-plug of the ocular main data hookup extruded from the wall, the cable as thick as his thumb, and Brendon winced as the six inch long spike sank into his empty eye socket before rotating and locking in place. His body jerked as if electrified, and he dived headlong into the infinity projected into his mind. Just another day at work for the Birdman.

xxxx

"Dude, I think that was the Birdman we passed on the perimeter circuit, by the main gate!" Private Dudley Grant whispered excitedly, not that he seemed to have any other way of speaking, in Ryan Jones's ear as they sat together by their bunkbed in the open bay barracks that their platoon was assigned for the time being. "I hear he's involved in some really heavy shit. Like really, really top secret, slit your throat before you tell anyone sort of stuff!"

"If that's the case, why aren't you dead yet?" Ryan retorted with a roll of his dark blue eyes, running a hand through his buzzcut of brown stubble. Dudley was a good guy and all, but damn was he annoying in his attempts at gossipmongering! Especially because if there was anyone less likely to be included in any juicy discussions than the lowest ranked soldier in the entire platoon, with the reputation for being the biggest loudmouth, Ryan couldn't figure who it would be. Half of the reason for Dudley's nickname, not surpisingly being "Dud", was because pretty much any rumor he spouted off about was almost garuanteed to be untrue, or at best heavily exaggerated. That and he had a talent for hurling grenades without remembering to pull the pin first, because he got excited easily.

"Dude, you know me... I keep things way on the downlow. I'm practically fucking invisible, fly on the wall type shit." Dudley brushed his flax blond hair out of his muddy brown eyes, the slightly ridiculous flop of bangs always getting him in trouble with the sergeants, though technically it still WAS within regulations, so they could only give him gimlet stares and light punishments for his slovenly look. "I mean, if it weren't for one or two teensy little mistakes on the grenade range, no one would even know my name."

"DUD! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? DUD?" The stentorian bellow of First Sergeant Henry Blundquist, the second platoon's top sergeant and most senior enlisted man, seemed to shake nonexistant dust from the rafters of the barracks, and made every single soldier jump as if stuck with a red hot pin, even though it wasn't them being called out. "FRONT AND CENTER, DUD, AND SMARTLY!" Blundquist, known with fear and affection as "Blunderbus", because he was old, big, and loud, with a slow fuse, but the ability to deal catastrophic damage to anyone who happened to be in front of him when he did blow his top.

"Coming, Top!" Dudley hollered back, all but sprinting over towards the NCO office located in the front of the barracks bay, where the senior enlisteds sat and shot the shit and did paperwork while the junior troops were out doing physical training exercises. "Private Grant reporting as requested, Top!" Dudley said smartly, standing to stiff attention in front of the office, the effect somewhat ruined by his bangs flopping down over his eyes again, Dudley being too petrified to move his hand to brush them away again. Though a good half a foot shorter than Dudley, Blundquist was about a foot broader in the shoulders, and looked like he was made from pure sun baked leather, his stubble of hair more grey than blond, his eyes piercing green as he grimaced at his most frequently abused soldier. All in the name of the kid's own good of course, that grenade thing was liable to get someone killed, maybe even Blundquist himself, if they didn't iron it out of him before they reached the front lines. And as of five minutes ago, the front lines had just gotten a hell of a lot closer.

"You're a lucky man, Dud. You've got an important task. Think you can do it without screwing up?" Blundquist enquired with a gimlet stare. He didn't bother waiting for a reply, First Sergeants didn't have conversations with lowly Privates. Certainly not fresh out of basic Privates who couldn't even throw a motherfucking grenade without cocking it up. Seriously, most people had trouble getting them NOT to go off at inopportune times, Dudley was the only man he'd ever met that could out idiot the idiot proof handheld bombs. Of course he was still young, barely more than a kid at eighteen, so there was room for improvement, but good Christ... he was starting from pretty far back. "Get your ass down to the armory and pick up these items, and you'd better not even think about playing around with any of them on the way back, or I'll hang you up by your thumbs and turn your freckly hide into a shawl for my granddaughter." Blundquist handed his requisition sheet to the almost trembling Private, who clearly believed every word of the motivational threat.

Dismissing Dudley, Blundquist turned to face the barracks proper again, drawing in a deep breath and squaring his shoulders back, he brought back the parade ground bellow, which could be clearly heard at close to a quarter mile, even in combat. Fuck radios or quantum comms, an NCO that couldn't keep in vocal contact with his troops by sheer lungpower wasn't worth much as an NCO in his opinion. "PLA-TOON... FALL IN!" Blundquist demanded, smirking just a tad as he listened to the squeak of boots sliding on impeccably waxed floor tiles as his troops rushed to get into proper formation as quickly as possible, none of them wanting to be the ones singled out as being slow or sloppy. Truth be told, Blundquist was secretly pleased with their discipline and dedication, not that he'd ever say as much where they could hear him, but they were good boys, and he was proud of them. They'd do all right on the ground, long as they kept their heads about them and didn't get crackpot orders. Confronted in a handful of seconds by a nearly solid block of almost fifty fresh faced young infantrymen, all standing stiffly at attention, Blundquist let them sweat for a moment.

"At ease." He said at last, letting them relax, though of course they stayed attentively in formation, eyes on Blundquist as if he was about to personally dispense salvation or damnation. And in a way he was. "As you may or may not be aware, as of oh nine hundred this morning, our United Solar Nation is officially at war." He told them, the room suddenly as silent as a tomb. "That's right boys, its go time, hope you paid attention in training cause it might save your life, or the life of your best buddy. We are going back to Earth, and us lucky souls are going to be in the first goddamn wave, what a story to tell your kids that will be, eh?" Blundquist's remark brought proud smiles to the faces of some, but he did not share them. He knew that the first waves of any infantry operation always had the heaviest casualties. There would be stories to tell, but a good portion of these boys might not be around to tell them, though of course he would do all in his power to keep them all alive, but he knew it was realistically not possible.

After a few minutes of pep talk, reminding them of their oaths and their duties, of their families that they were serving and protecting, and the important job they had ahead of them, stressing the need for teamwork and utmost effort, Dudley came back pushing a trolley cart laden with the items Blundquist had requested from his buddy at the armory. Technically the troops weren't supposed to get their combat equipment just yet, to avoid accidents just prior to deployment, but he'd called in a few favors because he wanted to do some last minute overviews, in the interest of fully imprinting upon his men that this was no longer a peacetime game, this was life or death. Calling forth "volunteers" from the formation, including Dudley once more and his rack-buddy, Private Jones, Blundquist had them break out the gear from the packing boxes and lay it out in front of the formation.

"We are going to be dropping head-fucking first into the middle of a jungle hell the likes of which none of you can possibly imagine, despite my best efforts to enlighten you." Blunquist started off, catching the troops off guard with the criticism. "Because of the nanoplague known as Green EDEN, Earth has become a biological deathtrap of a like not seen for the last seventy million years. Make no mistake, ladies, if you go out there thinking that its just like the park back home, you're gonna die, messy and painful and slow, not to a goddam Eddie, but to some motherfucking nameless fungus or plant you had the misfortune to pick up and try to smell, before it spat flesh melting acid into your breathing filters! Quite literally everything you see from the moment you step foot out of the drop shuttle is fully capable of killing you in less time that it takes for you to crap your pants! Many of them will be actively trying to murder you the moment you get within proximity! Reclaimer Initiative colonization forces have suffered close to thirty percent casualties, from fucking FLORA... thats fucking PLANTS for you nimrods... ALONE! Not even getting into the animals!"

"Assuming any of you survive the fucking trees, which I find highly doubtful, we will then be dealing with all manner of mostly unknown but highly vicious beasts who have had seven years to get used to the idea of humans as nothing more than walking snack treats. They are NOT afraid of you, or your friends, or your motherfucking armored assault vehicle. They will come for you when you least expect it, and they WILL fuck your world up ten ways to sunday if you are not constantly on point, and watching not only your own ass, but the ass of the man to your left and the one to your right! And then, once the birds and the bees have had their chance to take their pound of flesh from your sorry hides, we get to the Eddies themselves, who are faster, stronger, tougher and smarter than us, generally speaking, and they know the land like you wish you knew your girlfriends asshole. So pay fucking attention, because what I have to say in the next half hour could quite literally mean the difference between coming home a hero, free to bang hot chicks two at a time all fucking day, and a black card signed "regretfully yours" being delievered to your sobbing moms and dads!" Blundquist snorted derisively and picked up the first item.

"As you had BETTER be fucking aware by this stage of your miserable lives, this is the LAR-84 Cutlass, the primary long arm of the USN military since C.E. 84 and soon to be your best fucking friend in the whole goddamn world, which you had better treat better than the hot seventeen year old virgin whose pants you're trying to get into, because she can't save your life out in the jungle, but the Cutlass CAN AND WILL! This Linear Assault Rifle fires 5mm shells using electromagnetic repulsion fields, reducing wear and tear on the barrel interior to almost nil and allowing for sustained fire of over ten thousand rounds before cleaning becomes necessary, though if you have any sense at all, you'll clean it after every fight, no matter if you shot one round or one hundred thousand!" Blundquist field stripped the weapon and then snapped it back together, his hands moving with total surety as he disassembled and reassembled the rifle in thirty seconds flat. He could do it blindfolded too, in a rainstorm, while the weapon was covered in mud. And he expected the same of his troops.

Blundquist held up one of the Cutless shells. "This is your standard 5mm Sledgehammer round, your most common ammo varient and the one you will be using in your Cutless's until further notice. As you can easily see, the tip of the bullet is a six edged conical type arrangement, and watch your goddamn fingers cause the edges of those conical planes are razor fucking sharp and they will take your fingertips off if you cock about with them. Though of small caliber, the high velocity at which the round travels, coupled with the razor sharp tip, allow it to penetrate most forms of infantry armor with ease, before the integral data chip senses the change in ambient density corresponding to flesh and blood, and the bullet fragments apart explosively inside the target's body. One good hit to the torso or upper part of a limb will take down a man sized target sure as sure, and you got sixty shots per magazine, though they go much faster than you'd expect in combat, so toss out any notions of full auto rock and roll like in the movies, unless there's a fucking human wave of goddamn Eddies jumping down your shorts."

He moved on to the next weapon with a near grin of pleasure. "And this, ladies, is your new best friend's hot, wanton girlfriend, who's always glad to put out when you really need it." He hefted the wicked looking, short barreled chunk of black metal and plastic, with a muzzle nearly big enough to stick three fingers in abreast. "This is the LSG-94 Mauler, the first ever handheld linear auto-shotgun. With a 25mm caliber, this beast fires "Boomer" armor piercing explosive rounds for taking out heavily armored targets or light vehicles, as well as Sledgehammer type fracturing splinter rounds for anti-infantry mayhem. Fed by a twenty shot cylinder of ammo mounted here, behind the rear grip, known as "bullpup style", the short barrel and counter weight of the ammo clip make this weapon just about the most balanced piece in your arsenal, and it practically seems to point itself."

"This is the standard issue Schneider combat blade and bayonet." Blundquist tilted the foot long knife blade so that it gleamed like a mirror in the flourescent lighting. "You can slot it onto the lugs on the front of your Cutlass or Mauler, though it is a weapon of last resort only. If it comes down to knifework, you're already half fucked anyway, because the Eddies are stronger, faster and tougher than us, even the Coordinators among us. Your Schneider will hopefully see far more use hacking away undergrowth and cutting handholds in cliffs or tree trunks than it will spilling enemy blood, though it does have a laser sharpened mono-molecular edge that you should NOT fuck with, because you can quite literally cut your hand off without feeling it." Blundquist held up a grey metal pistol. "Though somewhat outdated, the 9mm forty three special is still the most common military handgun in the world, and has been since its introduction in C.E. 43. Fourteen round clip with minimal recoil, it shouldn't be your first choice in a fight, but its better than your Schneider and its light enough to keep with you at all times." Blundquist narrowed his eyes. "ALL times, get it?"

Next Blundquist held up a slinky looking jumpsuit of a clingy dark grey material. "Though it may look like something you have wet dreams about seeing your girlfriend in, the undersuit of your Survivor pattern battle armor will be what does the most grunt work in keeping your dribbly asses from being dead dribbly asses. This skintight jumpsuit will help regulate your body temperture, keep you cool in the fetid fucking jungle, keep you warm even in the ball freezing icefields, and keep you from growing mold as you stew in your own fear sweat in the middle of your cherry firefight. Its made of two layers of nanomesh that is almost impossible to cut or pierce, even with mono-edges, with a layer of special absorbent gel between them, the gel stiffens when struck solidly, helping to dissipate the shock of an impact, such as the bullet you were too slow to duck. The gel is also a medical antiseptic sealant, so if by chance you do manage to find some way of puncturing your suit... and some of you will... not only will it stop you from bleeding out until medics arrive, but it will keep you, theoretically, from getting a big lungful of Green EDEN and turning into an Eddie. That or dying a horrible, withering death as your immune system fails."

With Private Jones's help, Blundquist displayed the rest of the Survivor pattern battle armor, which consisted of thick ceramic and ballistic cloth plates that guarded the chest, upper arms, thighs, shins, back, belly and groin, plus a fully enclosed helmet and oxygen refreshing system good for a full week before the filters needed changing, rated as a full on bio-radiation-chemical proof rig. All told, the armor weighed about fifty pounds, almost all of that in the life support and ballistic protection areas, but it was well distributed and with proper training, a soldier could move about in it with near total freedom of movement. "Before you all get to thinking you're now fucking invincible when you got your armor on, think fucking again. Preliminary reports seem to indicate the Eddies have a lot in the way of personal plasma beam weaponry for their own infantry forces, and Survivor armor will do absolutely dick all against a plasma beam. So remember that the best armor any infantryman can have is a nice solid object to hide behind. The trees on Earth are supposed to be pretty damn tough, but remember that while you're hiding your head from the Eddies, the plants will be trying to suck your blood or eat your balls, so I'd advise not hunkering down for too long."

"Now, Private Grant, why don't you explain to me what this spherical chunk of metal and plastic is, how it is used, and more importantly, how it is NOT used?" Blundquist prompted with a snarl, holding out a disarmed grenade to Dudley. "And I swear to god, if you bobble it again, you're going to be brushing out grease gutters in the Solar Knight's kitchen with your toothbrush for the next six months!"

xxxx

**Low Earth Orbit, Geosynchronous over Gulf of Carpentaria, Incarnate Class Dreadnaught **_**Incarnate, **_**November 11th, 10:00 am**

"It certainly is a stirring view, don't you think, Paladin Commander?" The slightly oily and self satisifed voice commented from behind where Rey stood, on one of the lower observation decks of the gargantuan spaceship, looking down at the broad expanse of blue and white and green and brown that was the Earth, its oceans, landmasses and clouds. Fleet Admiral David Icarus, the commander of the Solar Protection Fleet of which the _Incarnate_ was the flagship and the highest ranked officer in the regular USN military, stepped across the richly appointed observation deck, which did double duty as a conference room and spare canteen for the higher ranks of flag officers and stood by the wide faux viewport, actually just a massive high quality viewscreen, since putting big windows in the side of a battleship was not just pointless but actually counterproductive to its armor integrity. "Like a ripe fruit just hanging there waiting to be plucked and drained of its sweet pulp and juices."

"I've never understood this fascination with a giant ball of dirt and decaying biological matter that so many people seem to suffer with." Rey confessed, looking down at the Earth, not as a home to be returned to, but an enemy fortress to be smashed and conquered. "Humanity is perfectly capable of living in space, the last seven years have proved this. The Earth may have been the cradle of our race, but don't you think its high time we stepped out of the cradle and moved forward with our development? We aren't babies anymore."

"Babies no, but many of us are sentimental fools, me included. I wouldn't expect someone like you to understand, being born on the PLANTS and only going to the Earth to fight wars, its hardly the way to get a proper appreciation for its beauty and grandeur and importance." Icarus crossed his arms across his gaudily beribbon chest, clad, as per the usual, in full dress uniform, with plenty of gilt and glitter and merit badges, most of whom Rey doubted the man had truly ever earned. Icarus wasn't a complete phony... he had once been in charge of an Earth Alliance Lunar Fleet after all, and one didn't get to such a post by being completely ineffectual, but his bark was worse than his bite, and years of seeing the man toady up to his foster father had left Rey with a deep seated contempt for the grasping sychophant. To be fair though, he felt that way about a lot of people, most people even.

"I should hope you aren't so sentimental that if the circumstances call for it, you will be unable to burn holes in the Earth where I direct?" Rey wondered, his tone light but with undercurrents of icy steel. "It would be a shame to ask for your retirement just when you had finally achieved your goal of bringing back the days of warship combat superiority." Not that Rey believed for a moment that even the colossal Incarnate class battleships, or the less ponderous but still massive Myrmidon class heavy cruisers, would actually replace Mobile Suits as primary weapons in any nation's arsenal, but Icarus was easy enough to manipulate via flattery, and in the interest of smooth operations, Rey was obliged to cater a bit to the man's ego. Of course, should Icarus slip up grievously, then Rey would have no choice but to step in and have the man replaced, with any number of people he trusted and liked more than the two faced, pompous, puffed up Fleet Admiral.

"Worry not, young man." Icarus retorted frostily. "I have the will to do what needs be done. If there's any problems to be had, it will be among your people. Spend more time chasing after girls than they do training, its a..."

"Chose your next word carefully, David, because it is within the remit of the Solar Knights to avenge slights upon our honor with force if authorized by a ranking officer, such as myself." Rey interrupted with a pleasant sneer.

"Its a damned shame I'm so old, or I'd be out there showing them how it was all done." Icarus finished, beads of sweat gathering near his collarbone. Regardless of his age, Rey occupied a position in the USN hierarchy that was second only to Durandel, and everyone knew that Rey was being groomed to be Durandel's heir to the position, the start of a dynasty of "benevolent shepards for humanity". It still looked like the beginnings of a despotic regime to Icarus, but he wasn't exactly perturbed by such a thing, knowing that he could fit in easily enough amongst such a government, and actually easier than in a democracy. He detested sucking up to Durandel, and he knew he would detest sucking up to Rey even more, but if he had to eat the boy's shit straight from the ass and smile and say thank you in order to keep his job, well then by god, he would. Survival at any cost had always been David Icarus's personal credo.

"I'm sure that would be a sight to see." Rey smirked. "Is there something you wanted, Fleet Admiral?" Rey prompted, hinting that he would prefer solitude. "I have a lot to think about, as you might well understand, given that I am in charge of all groundside operations and the establishment of our refurbished bases and military industry."

"No, I was just stopping by on the way to the bridge." Icarus said with a sigh of defeat. They both knew that the bridge was in the opposite direction from this lounge, but Rey let the white lie go. He could almost feel some sympathy for Icarus, who had been in search of some solitude for thinking as well, only to have what amounted to his favorite hangout usurped by Rey. "Operations commence at Twenty hundred tonight, Paladin Commander. I will look forward to our glorious success." And having Rey off his ship for good, they both knew was the silent subtext.

"For the reclamation of our blue and pure world, Fleet Admiral." Rey replied, watching Icarus twist up a bit, since as a former member of Blue Cosmos, hearing such a close copy of their age old credo co-opted for use by the cooperative Coordinator-Natural USN had to be at the very least surreal, if not a bit offensive.

"Yes... for the blue and pure world." Icarus said, glaring daggers at Rey to leave no mistake as to which credo Icarus had said, incompletely, as he stalked back out of the lounge, on the lookout for some hapless subordinate to take his humiliation and frustration out on.

Less than a minute after the door to the lounge had shut and relocked, gauranteeing privacy under Rey's personal codes from anyone but Icarus, who of course had total access to every part of his flagship, the door to one of the storage closets in the walls of the lounge opened up and from within stepped Dr. Natalia Dostanya, Director of FEAR. As usual she had her pale blond hair done in a long, severe ponytail, her icy green-grey eyes studying him from behind a pair of lab spectacles that she didn't need in the slightest as she walked towards him, her hips swaying with feminine promise that Rey found very difficult to ignore. Her body was somewhat shrouded by the open fronted pure white knee length labcoat she almost always wore, except when at extremely formal events, with plain cream skirt and blouse on beneath it. She could almost be drab in appearance, were it not for the sensual way she moved and the way she looked at him.

"What a dunce." Natalia commented derisively, tossing her hair over one shoulder as she indicated the doorway with a careless wave of one hand. "I shall be ever so glad when its time for him to... step down... from his position. The man is a waste of space and oxygen."

"He has his uses. The Solar Protection Fleet would never have come about if not for him, and there is no denying that it is a powerful tool indeed." Rey countered with a shurg, turning back to the viewscreen, though his eyes kept trying to wander back over to trace Natalia's curves. "Truth be told, I would rather have a hundred subordinates like Icarus, distasteful, greedy, thuggish but easily manipulated, than someone with true intelligence and worse yet, a sense of morality guided righteousness. Righteousness has its place in the world, but those of us who guide humanity cannot afford to be consumed by any righteousness except that of our primary duty itself."

"And where do I fit into this scheme of subordinates?" Natalia asked, whispering into his ear, her breath flutting his golden blond locks as she draped her arms over his shoulders and moulded herself to his back. It was very easy to forget she wasn't a sultry recent college graduate, but actually nearly the same age as his adopted father, because her body was so young and ripe, thanks to extensive biomechanical modifications and genetic treatments. A brilliant, highly ambitious forty nine year old scientist in the body of an athletic twenty four year old, a very, very dangerous combination. "Do I stand by your side, arm in arm... or..." Natalia slowly rubbed against Rey's back as she bent her knees until she was kneeling at his side, his hand moving unconsciously to touch the back of her head. "...do I serve from lower down, perhaps? What would please you more, my Paladin?" She asked huskily, her eyes full of promise.

Rey closed his eyes and could not fight back a shudder of excitement, even as he fumbled for the reins of his self control, and once more turned away from where Natalia was kneeling. "I'm grateful for the thought, but this is hardly the time or the place, Natalia." Rey said, a bit gruffly, hoping it would mask how hoarse with desire his voice had become. He just couldn't help it, Natalia was a sexy, sexy woman, and she was falling all over him, what the hell was he supposed to do, just lock her out? It wasn't like he was in love with her or anything, she was old enough, despite appearances, to be his mother, though technically Rey, as a clone, had no mother. She was willing, he had needs, and she wanted to fufill them, and she seemed to genuinely enjoy his company, both in and out of the bedroom, so where was the harm in having some fun now and then? It wasn't like he had any other girls he was seeing on a regular basis, aside from a few of his brighter female subordinates who were looking for a fast way to get promoted at the same time Rey was looking for a fast way to get his rocks off.

And Natalia, unlike pretty much every other woman he'd heard of, didn't even mind him seeing other girls, even told him it was perfectly normal and healthy for a man of his age and position. Eventually he would have to settle down with just one girl, someone politically important most likely, but for now he was still just the heir apparent, and he could be free with his enjoyment of a variety of pleasures, as per his whim. Not that Rey was much into partying, drinking, social medicinal relaxtion or any of a host of other things most of his generation seemed to enjoy, but he could admit to himself he had something of a weakness for women and the joys of sex. Natalia insisted that it was no weakness, that a healthy appreciation and appetite for the opposite sex could indeed be turned into a great advantage, with proper experience and training. The easiest way to a girl's heart and mind, Natalia assured him, was between her legs, if you knew what you were doing. And she promised to teach him to know, so that when the time and opportunity came, he would be well equipped to regain the only girl he'd ever actually loved, Lunamaria Hawke.

Natalia had actually done much of the reconstructive surgeries on Luna's FRALA ravaged torso that had enabled her to return not just to a regular life, but even to being a highly decorated Solar Knight, a medical miracle by any standard of measure. But that also meant that Luna had to meet with Natalia every few months for checkups on the prototype prosethics that had replaced many of her internal organs. Natalia had confided in Rey that the visits were merely a facade, that the prosthetics were working perfectly fine and didn't need tuning up or other modification, she just liked to keep her eye on so much propetiary technology. The last few visits, Natalia had even invited Rey to come with her to the examination room, once Luna was sedated into unconsciousness. Rey was always struck by the haunting beauty of the redhead, and his frustrations almost always came to a boil shortly thereafter. Fortunately Natalia was there to attend to his need, though one time she had allowed him to... well... it wasn't like Luna was going to wake up anyway and...

Rey knew he shouldn't have done it, knew that it was wrong, that it was reprehensible even, but somehow, when it came to Lunamaria, he just didn't care. He wated to be with her, and the circumstances didn't overly matter. He'd taken advantage of her emotional needs in the past in order to be with her, it wasn't too big a leap from there to letting Natalia drug her unconscious so she wouldn't know what was going on. With both Rey and Natalia working on her, Natalia assured him that it was only a matter of time before Luna became more publicly receptive to his desires, and then Rey wouldn't have to agonize over taking advantage of her while she was drugged into slumber, because she would once more climb into his bed willingly, even eagerly, just like she had that first week during the Eden Disaster. They'd both be able to enjoy each other again, both be able to be happy together again, and Rey was looking forward to that time more than just about anything. In the meanwhile he would have to content himself with bi monthly nights spent with her unresponsive body in the FEAR examination lab, but at least he was WITH HER, right?

Of course there was the small matter of Luna's current boyfriend, Shinn Asuka, one of Rey's longest standing friends and his most accomplished pilot. But as much as he liked and valued Shinn, if Rey had to choose between Lunamaria and Shinn, then Shinn was space waste in a heartbeat. The trick was going to be accomplishing it in a manner Luna would not be endangered by, while also not being traceable back to Rey. Truth be told, before the last few months, Rey had been quite stumped, since Shinn was not the sort of person who would die in a training accident, and Luna was always training with him anyway, and he couldn't think of any other good way to make sure Shinn died. But now they were going to war, and as a Knight-Champion, Shinn would be in the thick of the toughest fighting! If the Eddies didn't get him anyway, arranging some friendly fire or maintenance issues with the Transcendance would not be difficult. Of course, that only after he'd gotten as much use out of his skills as possible, even in pursuit of Luna, he couldn't countenance wasting Shinn's potential as a soldier until he'd wrung every drop of combat usefulness from him.

"Thinking deep thoughts?" Natalia purred up at him from the level of his waistline, having moved to be between the wall and him. "You should relax while you have the time." She advised him, her hands drifting up his pant legs. "Let me help you relax, Rey. After tonight, you won't have much chance for relaxation for a goodly while. Its only responsible to take care of your own needs first, so you can concentrate on the needs of your soldiers later." She unzipped his trousers and reached inside. "As usual, your body is honest even if your lips are not." She commented wickedly.

Rey bit his lip and put one hand on the wall for balance. "I was thinking." He admitted with a bit of a stutter as Natalia went on without his permission, but of course, he'd not exactly told her to desist either, had he?

"Mmmhmm?" Natalia encouraged, rolling her eyes out of Rey's sight as she used her mouth to distract him. It was obvious what he was going to say, so obvious she'd already set the whole thing up even before she'd come to the lounge. His infatuation with the Lunamaria girl was becoming an obsession, almost an addiction, exactly as she'd planned of course. And like any good addict, he was starting to need his fixes closer and closer together, until soon he would be dependent upon them to lead his life without constant distraction. And Natalia would control his access to the girl, and with that control, she would control Rey. And by controlling Rey, the door to Gilbert would swing open. And once Gilbert was putty beneath her fingers, well, then who knew what sort of intriguing future could result? Maybe she would put her hand to trying to seduce Athrun Zala, assuming he still lived. Married men were always harder than solitaires or callow youths. Or maybe she'd really mix things up and try to seduce Cagalli Zala-Attha instead. It had been ages since she'd last seduced a woman for power

"I was thinking..." Rey repeated, his cheeks flushing, his non-wall braced hand going down to tangle in Natalia's ponytail, holding her against him. "That if we are about to see a lot of combat, perhaps Lunamaria should get her implants checked one final time before operations commence? I mean, just to be sure everything is in order. We can't have an organ failing in the middle of combat after all." Rey exhaled heavily, half bending over a bit as Natalia began moving faster. "And since Luna..." Rey gritted his teeth in concentration. "Since Luna is aboard the _Incarnate_ right now, it wouldn't be too much time out of her way to show up for an last minute checkup. Just for an hour or two."

Natalia took her mouth off him and grinned up at his flushed and sweating face. _Welcome to my parlour..._ "Oh, I'm sure we can spare at least four or five hours, my dear boy. Operations don't commence for at least another twelve after all. And I think I have perfected a new sedative that will rob her of her sense of recognition without completely putting her to sleep. She won't know what is going on or who you are, but she should still be able to respond to your actions like she would if awake. I imagine she will think she is dreaming and having sex with Asuka. She should be quite willing and receptive, don't you think? Tell you what, why don't we go to the medical deck and see what can be arranged, Paladin of mine?" _... said the spider to the cute little blond fly. I think I might actually keep this one around as a pet for later. He is quite cute after all, in his zealous, limited way. I wonder if all clones are this good in the sack? If so, that could be an interesting new line of research..._

xxxx

**Far Space Expansion Zone, Asteroid Belt, repurposed Agamemnon class carrier **_**Justicar**_**, November 11th, 4:00 pm**

Lain winced as the heavy black canvas bag was ripped off his head, leaving him exposed to a blinding spotlamp pointed almost directly into his eyes, with more painfully bright lights blazing down on him from above, bathing him in so much light he started to sweat from the ambient heat. He'd been stripped out of his flightsuit shortly after they cut open his cockpit, and threw in a concussion grenade to quiet any possible resistance on his part. Brutal tactics, since a concussion grenade going off in a cockpit was extremely painful to anyone trapped inside the small space, but very effective. He'd been prepared to go down shooting, and they just sort of scraped him off the wall and carried him out instead, bleeding from the tear ducts and ears, his body sore all over from absorbing almost the full shockwave of the grenade as it exploded basically in his lap.

Lain supposed they could have just let him shiver in his briefs, but instead they'd given him a loose canvas jumpsuit with all the pockets torn off or sewed shut, bright orange and red to be highly noticable, and half dressed him and half let him dress himself at gunpoint, before they shoved the black bag over his head and frogmarched him through the ship before sitting him down in a chair and cuffing him to it, one ankle and one wrist secured, the others free, for all the good it did him. Lain squinted into the blazing lights, and thought he could make out a silhouette sitting across a metal interrogation table from him. "Fuck you, buddy." Lain said, to get the conversation off to the right start. "Lain Debora, Knight-Ensign, ID number..."

"534671BH3L, yes." The figure, whom Lain was somewhat surprised to hear was female, replied dryly. "It was on the D chip around your neck, Mr. Debora, though we have managed to dig up a few other details on you through our contacts back in Second Earth and Luna. "I can give you your blood type, history of immunizations, training record, family names and combat history too, if you want to play games. But honestly, I think that sort of bullshit is beneath us both, Mr. Debora. Despite what you may believe, we aren't your enemies. We could even be your friends if you'd let us."

Lain laughed at her. "Fat fucking chance, ma'am." He assumed she was an officer of some sort. "I'm a prisoner of war, and I know how I'm supposed to act, so you can just take your ideas of turning me into a double agent and throw them right the fuck out the airlock. Unlike some people, my oaths mean something to me, so why don't you just get on with the roughing me up part so I can go back to whatever cell you guys have for me, whimper in agony, and plot my undying revenge?"

"If we really were the terrorists you think we are, what would be stopping us from just tossing an uncooperative prisoner out the airlock along with our plans for turning him traitor?" The woman replied levelly. "You're just a Knight-Ensign after all, the lowest rank of officer in the Solar Knights, so your value as a hostage or intelligence asset is certain to be minimal at best. Common sense would dictate we not waste any further resources on a prisoner determined to be uncooperative, and good riddance to bad rubbish too." She paused. "But we aren't terrorists, Mr. Debora, and we are just as bound by the Geneva codex as you are, and moreso than the Solar Knights would feel if our situations were reversed. As a sign of our good faith and intentions, we're going, against all standard interrogation doctrine as you most certainly know, to reunite you with your fellow captive." The woman's head turned and she must have made some kind of signal.

A hatch opened in one wall and several figures stepped through, large, bulky men with weapons and some sort of body armor, along with a much shorter though no less massive man and, to Lain's disbelief, relief and private terror, Stella. Oh, she had a black bag over her head too, and was wearing a jumpsuit much like his, but he would recognize Stella anywhere, wearing anything or nothing at all. The men escorted Stella across the floor and bade her sit down in a chair that was provided next to Lain, and he noted that they kept a respectful distance from her at all times, and didn't bother cuffing her to the chair. If anything, this only made him more worried, for these guys plainly knew enough about Stella's capabilities to know that normal restraints were pointless when her blood was up. Lain had personally seen Stella break out of handcuffs before, indeed it was almost like some sort of drinking game with the Extendeds, they would hold "breaking out of restraints" contests in the bararcks sometimes.

The black bag was taken off of Stella's head and she glared furiously around the room for a moment before her eyes settled on Lain. Seeing him mostly unharmed and smiling, if a bit nervously, Stella calmed down considerably, and almost shyly took his free hand in one of hers, squeezing reassuringly. A footstep from nearby brought both of their gazes up and away from each other, though not too far up as it went. With a wave of his hand, the short man who'd come in with Stella canceled out the spotlights glaring down at the prisoners, and the regular lightning of the room came back on. He was a fireplug of a man, barely above five feet tall, but with enough muscle to make two of Lain, or so it seemed, with intense lime green eyes and curly red hair the color of fresh cherries, which tumbled down his neck and onto his upper back, pulled back from his face by a sweatband around his temples. Though he'd never seen the man before in person, Lain knew this man's look, because Eric had often described it to him.

"Commander Markov Ashino, BCPU 4, I presume?" Lain beat him to the punch, shooting a somewhat smug glance over at the black haired, green eyed officer woman who was sitting behind the desk across from him. The Retributors weren't the only ones with some inside information on people. "Eric spoke very highly of you, you know."

"He was a good friend and a loyal subordinate." Ashino replied somberly. "I'll never forget the way he stood up for me at Galileo, even to his own detriment. His senseless death and abandonment upon the field of battle is just one reason why I do what I do." He fixed Lain with his gaze. "But you, Lain Debora, you also stood up for me that day at Galileo, contrary to the orders of your lawful commander. I've long wondered, what made you do that?"

"Nothing MADE me do anything." Lain answered with a sigh. "Something just felt fishy with how Rey was acting, and I'd never known Eric to lie. I wasn't so much standing up for you as I was standing up for him."

"Paladin Commander ze Burrel is one that I've had my eye on for a long time, ever since that day actually." Ashino gazed off into the infinite distance for a moment. "The world will be a better place once he's gone."

"You realize you're talking about assassinating my commanding officer, right in front of me?" Lain pointed out. "That kind of obliges me to try to stop you."

"Since your commanding officer has done so much to help you in the past?" Ashino retorted. "Rather than consistently victimize, blame and belittle you?"

"Personal feelings aren't supposed to come into it, respect the office, not the officer." Lain countered. "And even if he has been doing his best to screw me ever since that day, funnily enough, he's actually done plenty to help me be happy, while trying to make me feel sad."

"The assignment to FEAR so you could be with Ms. Loussier here." Ashino nodded, just once, as if highly pleased by something. "Funny how evil intentions can spawn happiness, isn't it? And how good intentions can spawn just the opposite, as I am afraid is more the case with me personally. You know, if Gilbert Durandel had just asked for my help in creating the Solar Knights, I would have been honored to just be part of the unit, a grunt soldier like you, Mr. Debora. But he didn't ask me. He sent covert operatives to kill me instead, so that my fame of previous years would not tarnish the fledgling image of his Solar Knights by stealing thunder, such as it is. And while those operatives failed to kill me, they did not fail to kill over fifty innocent, loyal USN scientists and their families, and caused irreversible trauma to the girl I loved more than life itself." Ashino clenched his fist until the knuckles turned white. I do believe that Gilbert Durandel might actually want what is best for humanity. But his methods are creating more evil than his good intentions can compensate for, so he MUST be stopped."

"Good luck with that." Lain said wearily. "I just hope you don't honestly believe that winning that last battle actually meant anything, because when a real SPF splinter fleet shows up, we both know that the Retributors won't have a chance in hell, especially with the casualties you suffered in the last battle."

"Yes, I am aware of the enormity of the task at hand, but you should understand that for me, living the life I have, it doesn't seem insurmountable. I have faced insurmountable before, and watched him burn in the fires of his own creation. I have stood at the right hand of a man who, though still a boy by most standards, has literally changed the world irreversibly for all time. And I, a Biological Computer Processing Unit, level four, have, though conditioned and programmed to be little more than a piece of equipment, soulless and interchangable, managed to fall in love with not one but two different wonderful young woman who have showed me how beautiful life as a human can be. So you'll pardon me if I fail to be overawed at the "impossibility" of the task I have set myself. A famous man once said "I can make the impossible, possible", and that is a credo I can get behind."

"You know what..." Lain said, after a heavy swallow. "I'm suddenly very glad I'm not Gilbert Durandel, because you are a very scary person, Markov." Lain shook his head. "I still think you have a snowball's chance in hell of pulling it all off, but you're one HELL of a snowball." Lain looked down at the table for a moment. "So now that you've revealed your secret past and master plan, such as it is, to us, what happens next? I don't think you can just let us go, but I've no intention of joining your group, even if I can sympathize with you. I swore an oath to the USN, and until that oath expires, I'm kinda trapped by it. Look me up when my enlistment runs out, I'll be glad to talk then, and I bet I know a lot of people you might want to meet."

"So you say, Mr. Debora, but we both know you aren't going anywhere without Stella." Ashino reminded him. "As long as FEAR continues its Extended supersoldier program, as long as FEAR continues to provide shock troops for the USN, we both know Stella won't be allowed to retire, unless she breaks down, at which point in time, unless I very much miss my guess, she will be "recycled" or "reprocessed", her prosthetic enhancements harvested for the next generation, her bodily remains cremated and scattered to get rid of incriminating evidence and propetiary technology. She is a very valuble asset, and as a formerly very valuable asset myself, I know that they WILL NOT let her go, no matter what you want, Mr. Debora. They feel that she is their property, and she has no rights."

"Stella is happy with her life." Stella spoke up resolutely. She gave Ashino a penetrating gaze. "Your Father died, so you could look ahead without standing in his shadow. My Father still lives, and I feel safe in his shadow, especially with Lain by my side. You are right about my ultimate fate, but Stella doesn't see anything wrong with a lifetime of service to protecting Father and the USN. She is proud to be able to help people like she does."

"Even though you were given no choice on whether you wanted to be an Extended or not? Even though you might have a family somewhere who is still grieving over their missing daughter or sister or grandchild?" Tamara spoke up from behind the desk. "That's not service, its slavery. They made you, like they made Markov, to kill, not to protect, and sooner rather than later, they will take umbrage with you over your perversion of their intentions. They will hurt you until you fall back into line, or they will destroy you, to prevent your deviant ideas from spreading to others."

"They will burn your memories away, make you forget your friends, your loved ones, everything." Ashino added. He tapped the side of his head meaningfully. "It happened to me at least twice, and I was very well behaved by most standards of measure. it won't even be like you dreamed it, they will just be gone, and you won't recognize them even if you bump into them on the street. Which HAS happened to me!" Ashino shook his head as if clearing away a painful memory. "Can you believe me when I say, as one who has suffered like that, I don't want you or anyone else to suffer like that either?"

"I think you believe what you say, and Stella symapthizes with her older brethren, but Stella cannot be convinced. Not by you, not by Lain, not by anyone." Stella said primly. "Slave or not, Sella has chosen to stay and be an Extended, and that is her decision and her decision alone. I cannot leave Father. And even if I did, I would die in a few months."

"Recuperation beds." Lain explained to Ashino and Tamara's questioning glances. "Once a month she has to spend a night in one, under a special energy field, or her prosthetics stop functioning properly. I have no idea what sort of field it is, or even what kind of equipment you'd need to make one, but it would take some people with some serious technical knowledge and a lot of resources."

"I was also under such a leash, though a less sophisticated one. The combat drug Gamma Glipheptim acts as a stabilizer for my engineered organs and enhancements, and its not a chemical that can be found in grocery stores, let us say for understatement's sake. Without a constant renewal of my supply, I too would break down internally and die." Ashino volunteered. "Forunately, though complex, the Gamma Glipheptim molecules can still be synthezised by Red EDEN, so manufacturing more for me is relatively simple." He noticed Stella's furrowed brow. "Something the matter?"

"Gamma Glipheptim?" Stella said slowly, her eyes wide. "You ARE old, aren't you? The program stopped using that back when I went through puberty. We use Omega Glipheptim these days, much more stable, much longer viable lifetime. I haven't needed an OG injection for five years, and won't again for another two."

"She just called you old." Tamara pointed out, not sure whether she should bristle or chuckle.

Ashino did chuckle. "By the standards of a Supersoldier program, I am postively ancient. The technology that went into me probably looks like a spring driven clockwork compared to what's gone into her recently." He shrugged his shoulders. "Though there is something to be said for the strength of old tech. My implants are less stable than hers, but they provide a greater boost to my abilities."

"Father always was envious of how your Father was able to enhance the physical abilities of his children." Stella acknowledged. "But you were all so unstable, maybe excluding you, that it just wasn't worth it in terms of collateral damage."

"Your Father may have been the smarter of the two then, at least in terms of common sense." Ashino allowed. "Since Doc did meet his end at the hands of his own greatest creation, and I have the feeling it wasn't a quick or painless one either."

"Stella has always privately wondered though, whether BCPU are really as tough as they say they are." Stella added, with a furtive look in her eyes. "She would really like to find out, but where oh where could she find a BCPU to test against? They seem to be extinct."

"Sir, you can't honestly be thinking of..." Tamara started to protest, only to be silenced by an upraised hand and a look from Ashino.

"I don't see any harm in a friendly sparring match with my "neice" here." Ashino said, before fixing Stella with his gaze, lime green eyes burning into rosy pink ones. "But Stella should be aware that if she attempts to turn this spar into an escape attempt, it will be more than just Stella that regrets it."

"Stella was planning exactly that." Stella admitted without shame. "But I no longer wish to fight if Lain is to be held as a hostage. I cannot risk him. I love him."

"That does present a problem." Ashino acknowledged, seeming to think for a moment. "How about this then? In the interest of providing a fair and interesting contest, lets agree to a set of terms for the victor. We will fight to first blood to the torso or face from an edged weapon, just like I used to spar back home at JIHAD. If you win, then Stella and Lain will be free to return to the USN, along with your damaged Mobile Suits."

"And if Stella loses?" Lain asked, his heart in his throat.

"Then I will send Stella and Lain back to the USN, but without your very valuable Mobile Suits, and with the understanding that you owe me a debt of honor. I will not call in this debt frivolously or in a manner that would force you to compromise your sense of honor or morality, but call it in eventually I will." Ashino continued.

"Markov, I have to protest!" Tamara insisted. "She as much as said she would try to kill you and escape! How can you just agree to letting her try? You're too important to the Retributors... to me... to just let you do this!"

"Yes, but then I brought the life of Mr. Debora into the equation, and that is too steep a price to pay. If she kills me or attempts to flee, then you will be standing by to shoot Mr. Debora right between the eyes." Ashino answered, unruffled. "Trust me, Tam, when a Supersoldier declares their love for someone, that is about the most deeply meaningful thing in the world to them. She would rather die a hundred deaths by gang rape than be the cause of Mr. Debora's death. Its the sort of promise I would make for you or Jean, don't think any less of her simply because she still holds loyalty to the USN."

"Stella is not sure she's comfortable with how Ashino can see so deeply into how she thinks and feels." Stella said after a few moments. "But she agrees to his terms. And so does Lain."

"But I..." Lain started to say.

"And so does Lain." Stella repeated, her eyes flicking across to him, and he closed his mouth on the rest of his protest. She smiled and squeezed his hand reassuringly again. "Though Stella must say, even your duelling rules are archaic, BCPU. Blood from the torso or face by weapon, how quaint. You grew up in a kinder, gentler time. The Extended only accept blood from a vital location, neck, underarm or groin."

"Maybe its because we had a higher percentage of the population that was actively trying to kill everyone else, rather than just mark them." Ashino accepted her criticism dryly. "Shall we adjourn to the gymnasium then?"

"I want to go on record saying I don't approve and this is a stupid idea!" Tamara said, almost petulantly.

"Could I second that?" Lain asked, sharing a momentary glance of kindred feelings with Tamara. The idea of Stella going up against this brute with a knife in his hand made him quite queasy. No matter that he knew how good Stella was with a blade, he did not know how good Ashino was, but he had the sick feeling it was good. Damned good. Maybe even too good.

"Normal people..." Ashino shook his head with a secret smile for Stella.

"They just don't understand." She agreed, with a confident smirk of her own.

xxxx

_**Justicar**_**, Ship's Primary Gymnasium, 4:20 pm**

"Jesus fucking Christ, look at him... he's built like a fire truck... a fire truck on massive quantities of steroids." Lain hissed worriedly, as he stood in Stella's corner of the martial art's ring that had been set up in the middle of the gym floor, just a bunch of inch thick canvas mats with grippy surfaces on top so feet wouldn't slip. Unlike the rest of the ship, the gym featured extensive artificial gravity generators beneath its deck, allowing for creation of near Earth normal gravity even while the rest of the ship was kept in micro-G. Too much time spent in micro-G was bad for the human muscloskeletal system leading to degeneration of muscles and weakening bones, so almost all major warships had at least one comparment that could be gravitized for exercise purposes. Across the square of mats, in his own Corner, Ashino was stripped down to a pair of gym shorts that seemed barely capable of containing his legs and hips, and left his torso and arms in clear view, much to Lain's recent dismay.

"You have more muscles than me, yet Stella is still stronger than Lain." Stella reminded him calmly. "Bulk can slow him down a little, and his power... well, Stella does not intend to get hit, so his power means nothing." She flipped her trusted combat blade idly in her hand, rolling it around her fingertips in a blur of laser sharp steel. Like Ashino, Stella was also stripped to the waist and only wearing shorts, spandex like things. Ashino had offered her a top to match the shorts, but Stella had declined, much to Lain's dismay.

"You sure you can't put on a sports bra or something?" Lain asked, for like the tenth time, trying not to stare down at her chest. "I hate to say it like this, but you've got some pretty impressive, um, assets, and they're kinda, um, distracting out in the open like that." And he didn't like other men staring at Stella's boobs, Lain did have to admit, and there was already plenty of that going on, half the crew seeming to have gathered to watch the bout between their Commander and the female prisoner.

"Stella appreciates your feelings of possesive jealousy, but she is uncovered precisely because men are easily distracted by such things." Stella answered him. "It is likely that the BCPU is faster than I am. If I can distract him even a little bit, that could give me the edge I need to mark him. If it means other men than Lain must look at my breasts to gain such an advantage, then so be it." Stella paused and licked her lips nervously. "But Lain should know that given a choice, Stella only wants Lain to stare at her breasts, or touch them or do anything else with Stella's body." She leaned closer and put her arms around him, hugging him to her chest as she kissed him. "For good luck, yes?" She said, after releasing him before the chorus of catcalls from the audience could grow too deafening. Stella turned and walked confidently into the ring to await the start of the match.

"Dude, your girlfriend is SMOKING hot, but she's crazy to get in the ring with the Commander." One of the crewmembers sidled up to Lain and said conspiritially. "Nobody and I mean NOBODY has been able to even pink him before, and let me assure you, lots of people have tried. He's gonna break her in half."

Lain just gave the guy a pitying look. As if the endeavors of regular folks meant anything to Stella. Still, when he looked back across the ring and saw Ashino give Tamara a quick one armed hug and chaste kiss on the cheek, and saw the blade in Ashino's other hand, his guts tried to crawl out of his mouth again. "That's not a fucking knife, that's a machete! What the FUCK? You can't be fucking serious, how is that fair?"

"Lain be quiet." Stella called from out on the ring. "The BCPU is free to use what weapon he is comfortable with, as shall Stella. This is not Stella's first dance, stop second guessing her." Lain noticed that she was still referring to herself in third person, which was one of the things she fell back into doing when she was stressed, so plainly she wasn't as confident as she was trying to project. Barely had Ashino stepped into the ring proper than Stella was pouncing forward, her knife slashing for his belly, drawing a hiss of displeasure and muttering from the crewmen, since Ashino wasn't in the ready position yet, but Lain knew better. He'd seen the Extended's practice before, and there was no such thing as waiting until the opponent was ready for them. If you were in the ring, you were ready, or you'd better be, or you'd be in the hospital shortly afterwards. Ashino seemed to be of the same mindset, he was actually grinning as Stella came for him, diving and rolling to one side to avoid her gut sweep, and pouncing right back at her.

Stella backpedaled furiously to avoid the grappling sweep of Ashino's open arm, resisting the urge to take the proferred cut, knowing that it had to be a feint, and when the stabbing machete came arrowing under his grasping hand, the length of the blade hidden by the forearm atop it, she threw her middle backwards, almost bringing her breasts down to touch the back of Ashino's hand as she dodged his thrust. He withdrew his hand and thats when she slashed him, deeply, across the top of his forearm. It wouldn't score a match point, but the more blood he lost, the slower he would become, and the rules had never said she couldn't slice him there. To Stella's dissapointment though, Ashino only grinned again, his blood clotting in seconds, a leathery scab forming over the cut, and he flexed his arm without impediment. Stella wished her own blood would clot like that, but the hyper-couagulent formula was a BCPU thing, and while her blood would clot faster than Lain's, it was not nearly instant.

Ashino and Stella leapt at each other almost at the same time, their bodies colliding in midair, Ashino's machete deflecting her combat knife out and away from his torso, and Stella brought her knee up towards Ashino's groin, while simultaneously clawing for his eyes with her free hand. She would not kill him, but that did not mean she would pass up an opportunity to badly hurt or maim the number one public enemy if the chance presented itself. Stella's eyes widened with pain when her clawing fingers found, not Ashino's eyes, but his mouth instead, and he bit down remorselessly on her fingers, shredding skin and cracking bones, turning aside her knee with his thigh before his free hand cannoned into her belly, faster than she could suck in her breath to glance away. Stella gagged, bile and saliva dribbling from the corners of her mouth, feeling organs compress violently under the blow, which actually propelled her backwards a few staggering steps. She heard Lain cry out her name, and used it to help focus herself.

Now totally sure that her opponent was faster, stronger and tougher than her, just as the rumors stated, Stella knew that the longer the fight went on, the worse it would go for her. Her hand was slowly starting to scab over, but it would be several minutes before the bleeding totally stopped, and her fingers were all messed up, she couldn't form a fist with them anymore. It hurt pretty bad too, a normal would have been screaming on their knees, but Stella had been hurt worse in training before. Flicking her wounded had at Ashino's face, trying to splatter his eyes with droplets of blood, Stella dived for the floor, twisting over in middive to angle her blade first for his knee tendons, and then up towards his scrotum and groin, an emasculating strike that could easily turn fatal if she allowed her blade point to dig in too deeply.

Not that she needed to worry about that, as Ashino's heavier machete came around, once more faster than she'd been expecting, and struck her knife clear out of her hand with its heavier mass backed by his prodigious strength. Ashino leapt into the air as Stella grabbed for his ankle, turning a complete flip even in gravity to come down behind her as she rolled to her feet, catching his descending machete arm between both of her own hands, wincing as she ripped open her scabs, and then twisted her body around him as she kicked his right leg out from underneath him, dropping them both to the mats, with Stella on top and Ashino's machete pointing almost straight up and away from his body. Winding her legs around his torso to hold him for a moment, Stella put her teeth to his wrist, trying to tear out the tendon there, but his skin was tough like thick canvas, as she had trouble working her teeth into his flesh.

Breaking the grip of her legs with a shrug of his shoulders, Ashino flipped his machete a few feet away with a flick of his wrist and then just basically rolled over, crushing Stella beneath the weight of his body, drawing a screech of discomfort from her as she struggled to untangle her limbs from around him before the torision effect snapped her bones. Catching her beneath the throat with one hand, Ashino's other hand slammed into her groin and grabbed hold as he rolled to his feet smoothly and used his momentum to catapult her almost ten feet up into the air, limbs flailing, before she managed to tuck into a somersault to control her fall, a quick handspring and half flip bringing her back to her feet a short distance away. Ashino flicked his fingers at her in a "come on then" motion, both of them now disarmed, a tight grin of true enjoyment on his face. Stella wondered when the last time he'd actually sparred with someone able to give him a challenge, even a minor one, had been?

Going on the attack, knowing it was a mistake even as she did so, Stella feinted with her good hand before leaping up into a spinning flying kick aimed at Ashino's right eye socket, the heel of her foot extended to crush bone and splatter the eye across his cheeks. But instead it smacked into the palm of his hand, his figners closed around her foot like the teeth of a steel trap, and he whipcracked her back down into the floor in a splits position, so hard white stars flared in Stella's head and she could not bite back a scream of actual pain. Somewhat to her relief, Ashino did not react to her pain with a slackening of his efforts, he respected her than much at least, and her lips mashed against her teeth, splattering blood across her face and the mats as he gave her a right cross to the jaw that loosened a few teeth. Trying not to think of how Lain had to be feeling, seeing her getting manhandled like this, Stella fought back, her counterpunch hitting Ashino's jaw as well, drawing a thin line of flying spittle.

A sweep of Ashino's legs caught both of her ankles as she tried to stand, and dumped her back down on the mats on her shoulders, quite literally head over heels, or rather under actually. She just barely rolled aside in time to avoid a downward punch that would have broken several ribs and maybe her sternum as well, the padded mats shredding a bit under the force of the blow Lifting her leg, Stella kicked Ashino in the back of the head, and then followed his forward stumble up by bringing her temple sharply up into his nose, which broke with a satisfying crack and a patter of hot, quickly drying blood on her scalp. Mutters from the crowd told her that they weren't used to seeing this much blood from their Commander, but to her, they were barely even hurt yet, her moreso than him.

Smiling through a mask of red almost the same color as his hair, Ashino caught Stella by the neck and lifted her from her feet, choking her as she scrabbled and kicked at him, before letting go and swinging up with an uppercut with most of his left torso behind it, the hands switching places so fast that Stella still hadn't touched the mats before the punch landed, which was of course the intent, since she had no way to dodge while falling, even only a few inches. Ashino almost, almost felt bad when her head snapped backward, tooth fragments flying amid a welter of blood, though it was mostly because of the agonized cry from Mr. Debora, who plainly was distressed to see his love take such a hit, for all that Ashino had pulled it a bit to avoid breaking her neck. Stella hit the mats hard, plainly dazed by the blow, though Ashino knew she was not down by any means. He also knew that she would keep getting up until she literally could not stand from broken bones or blood loss, because of her determination to succeed and "save" Lain, and he really didn't want to drag things out to that point, for Lain's sake if nothing else.

Stamping down with his foot on her chest, driving the breath from her body and pinning her to the mats, Ashino felt around until he picked up her combat blade, knocked out of her hand earlier in the fight, and he carefully leaned down and gashed her across the neck with it, just enough to draw blood. Quaint dueling rules, indeed! Stepping back, keeping the blade for the moment, Ashino let Stella sit up, her hand going up to finger the gash and look at the blood. She turned her rosy gaze to him next, and he had to smile as he saw her sadness and disappointment at being beaten. Among Extendeds she was probably the hero of the day, but compared to any one of a half hundred sparring contests he'd had with Cray, or god help him, Frost, this had been more exhilirating than worrisome. "Its no shame to lose to a superior opponent." Ashino reminded her.

"But you are superior only because I underestimated you." Stella pouted for a moment. "It won't happen next time."

"We'll have to see, won't we, Stella?" Ashino grinned, and offered her a cautious hand up. She took it, and he passed over her blade, which she took with a gratitude he could well understand. "But not for a while, or else Tam and Lain will have heart attacks. They actually think we're badly injured."

"He's soft in the head, but I do love him so much." Stella sighed, looking over at Lain's tearful face. "Normal people..." She shook her head in exasperation.

"They just don't understand." Ashino agreed.


	22. Pacifist

Author Note: Well, I guess Rey is being pretty despicable, but he was kind of raised wrong, if you know what I mean, and he's easy to take advantage of, assuming you're ruthless and conniving. Kinda like Shinn actually, they both do well when they know exactly what's going on, or think they do, and they can be easily led about by the nose by someone skilled at deception, seduction or manipulation. And they both have a weakness for women, Rey especially, because he never had any in his life growing up, not even a mother. Try and put yourself in his shoes for a moment... crushing responsibility, no social life to speak of, no real peers, a messy breakup with the only girl he's ever had feelings for, and then shortly after the breakup she comes back to him and says "lets have sex, I need you to do something for me". What the hell is he supposed to think? if Luna is needy enough, she'll fuck him cause he has power she needs. That's the lesson he's learned so far, reinforced by other women seeking him out in hopes of being promoted faster. And now a rich, beautiful, powerful ADULT woman is hanging all over him and basically spoiling him with attention and sex... damned easy to fall astray in that kind of situation, don't you think? Do you think you could withstand the temptation of being lured down a dark path like that? Well we'd all like to think yes, but really?

In any case, now for some scenes people have been clamoring for, for a while now.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Fontaine Health and Welfare Center, November 11th, 8:00 am**

"So how's the arm doing? All pieces and parts back where they should be?" A cheerful, friendly voice from the doorway of the fairly standard hospital type room said, bringing Kira's head up from where he had been staring introspectively down at his lap, absentmindedly rubbing his right shoulder with his left hand. His right arm was in a sling, and the shoulder itself encased in a kind of paper mache like material that allowed the joint to rotate but kept steady pressure on it from all angles, supporting the joint, which had been badly dislocated during the final moments of the escape from Orb the night before. Something about crash landing in the open back bay of a not altogether large shuttle while riding a motorcycle going almost one hundred and fifty kph was not conducive to keeping his body entirely intact. If it weren't for the crash webbing that had deployed from the walls and ceiling in advance of their arrival, he'd probably have broken his spine too, and maybe just splattered like he was made of playdough.

Various other scrapes, bruises and contusions had come while entangled in the crash webbing while the shuttle emulated a bucking bronco through the sky for a while, before they finally managed to level out, about which point in time Kira had sort of passed out. He'd felt a brief sting in his leg and figured someone had given him a sedative compound of some sort, so they could more easily work on his injuries. All had been professionally dressed, glued, stitched and bandaged, and in truth Kira was actually feeling pretty good, a trifle stiff, but better than he had in weeks. The large platter of ambrosia patties that had been on his bedside table, and a large cup of nectar alongside it, had gone a long way towards sating his grumbling belly as well. Kira studied his visitor, not recognizing him. He was tall and well built, about Kira's own height and a little more muscular, with twinkling light green eyes and a precisely combed short orange-red hairstyle with a lot of overhang in the front.

He was dressed in a well tailored ensemble of pitch black, long sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and the hints of a dark blue undershirt showing through at a casually unbuttoned collar, with a large dark blue leather greatcoat, worn open in an acknowledgement of the pleasant temperatures. The coat had large tasseled epaulets of bright orange and gold, sticking out like flares against the midnight blue leather of the coat, which upon closer inspection did not appear dyed but was actually the natural hide of some reptilian beast, thick and horny and likely very durable. Loops of braided fiber and leather depended from the epaulets, strung through the cords were strings of fangs and claws and spurs of bone, all looking wickedly sharp and dangerous, and the man had necklaces of similar trophies around his neck, and wristbands with them too. It was quite a striking look, in a slightly barbaric, throwback sort of way. Kira wasn't sure if he was looking at a costume or a uniform.

Seeing that Kira was through with his initial visual assessment, the orange haired main smiled brightly and stepped into the room, offering his hand in a friendly manner. "Heine Westenfluss, once of ZAFT, now one of the Praetorians of Garden City. My rank is Tacticus Magnus, but given that you have almost no idea what that means, and I prefer informality anyway, please, call me Heine. Everyone does. Honored to meet you in person, Mr. Yamato. Though you look rather unimpressive sitting forlornly in that bed, if I may say."

"Even the biggest man looks small when he's in a hospital bed." Kira agreed, starting to throw his legs over the side of the bed before realizing someone had taken his inmate's jumpsuit off during the night and he was stark naked beneath the sheets. "And I was never the biggest of men." Kira looked around the room, the sheets puddled in his lap, before a casual pointing finger from Heine indicated a closet built into the wall. Keeping the sheets around him toga like, Kira stepped over to the closet and found it full of black trousers and long sleeved tunics, much like what Heine was wearing, along with dark blue underwear and undershirts, so he guessed it was some sort of uniform after all, though he couldn't see any sign of rank devices, unless those trophy strings and necklaces denoted rank somehow. Seeing Heine was still in the room, Kira paused, uncomfortable with getting dressed in front of another man.

Heine winked at him and turned his back, whistling tunelessly as he stood in the doorway and acted as a visual screen, so Kira could quickly throw on underwear, pants, shoes and was struggling to get the undershirt on over the shoulder cast when Heine stepped forward and helped him, then helped him get into the uniform jacket as well, leaving it unclasped in the front so that Kira could rehang his slung arm comfortably. "I'll say this to warn you, Kira, but social conventions are a bit... looser here in Garden City. Some of us remember how people from the USN think and feel about certain things, but a lot of people won't give a damn about your previous sensibilities. So if you walk into a public bathroom and find both men and women inside, most without clothing, don't think us perverse, its just a different standard. We see nothing particular uncomfortable in lacking clothing, even around relative strangers."

"That's going to take some getting used to." Kira muttered, finally reaching out to take Heine's hand in return and give it a good shake. Heine's grip was firm and strong, but he didn't seem to be one of those who had to try to dominate others with the strength of his grip, and Kira got his hand back undamaged. "I'd introduce myself, but you seem to know who I am pretty well already."

"You do have something of a reputation." Heine smiled and gestured Kira towards the door. "I do hope you can live up to it."

Kira could not help a scowl. "I hate it when people base their expectations on what has happened in the past. There's simply no way a mortal can live up to all the hype. I'm just Kira Yamato."

"Just Kira Yamato." Heine repeated, his grin widening. "You'd fit in well among the Praetorians, or some of us anyway. But come, I'm sure you're overflowing with questions, and there's places we need to be, people you need to meet. Time grows short, or so I'm told." He escorted Kira out of the Health and Welfare center, which functioned much like a emergency care clinic, but also provided orphanage services, and full time care for the permanently injured or infirm, of which there were a depressingly large number. New Eden was not a forgiving enviroment, and even an Edenite body was not proof against certain levels of damage. Buried in the side of one of the mountains framing the deep himelayan valley in which the city was built, the tunnel leading out of the Fontaine Center crooked back and forth in a few zig-zags before finally reaching daylight. Deeply buried as it was, the Center was designed to suit military purposes as well as civilian ones.

Reaching the outside first, Heine turned back expectantly and watched as Kira stepped out into the early morning sunlight and stood blinking at the vista in front of him, awe and shock painted all over his face. Unable to help himself, Heine burst out laughing in pleasure, and clapped Kira carefully on the left shoulder. "It's quite a sight, isn't it? Not another city like this one in all the world, my friend."

From where they stood, about two thirds of the way up the valley, there was a city about the size of Nara-Atthy City spread out below them, complete with a cluster of skyscrapers in the downtown area that had to get close to seventy or eighty stories apiece, surrounded by rambling rings of progressively smaller buildings before eventually flattening out into wide, heavily forested green belts and open spaces dotted with houses, both solitary and in small, commune like clusters. Herds of deer like animals, Rex Elk, Kira thought they were called, bounded and grazed in many of the forested areas, some of them migrating right through the middle of some city streets in apparent disinterest for the structures and people they passed, and in turn the human Edenites didn't give the horse sized animals a second glance either. Peering across the valley, Kira caught a flash of vivid orange motion and an explosion of motion among one herd of Rex Elk that ended with the streak of orange latching onto a young Rex Elk and bearing it to the ground in a tangle of thrashing limbs, and Kira realized that there were predatory animals living out there as well as herbivores!

But in truth only a small fraction of his attention was spared for the city and its environs, mostly Kira stood and gaped at what was growing out of the city center, a tree the likes of which he never could have imagined being possible. Rowan, the tree that Rex Lodge had been built into, had been almost half a kilometer high and broader around than many Mobile suits were tall, big enough to comfortably build living quarters for dozens of people inside with room left over! Rowan was a mere sapling compared to the gargantuan tree, something like a Redwood, but really more something all of its own type, that Kira saw before him, its lowest branches arching hundreds of feet over the tallest buildings in the city, its pine needled branches extending to shade well over sixty percent of the valley, brushing up against the sides of the surrounding mountains, sunlight filtering down in beams, like peeking through stormclouds. Kira could not tell how tall the tree actually was because he couldn't see the top from where he stood, but the trunk was easily a quarter of a kilometer in diameter.

"That's... Yggdrasil?" Kira asked quietly, his mouth dry with a feeling of humble insignificance. It was like looking out into the depths of space, it made you feel somewhat irrelevant to confront something so monsterously gigantic, like a flea staring up at a human. "I heard it was big, but I never imagined that..."

"Nothing can prepare you for the first time you lay eyes on it." Heine consoled him. "Largest living organism on New Eden, Grand Chimera, the most powerful Latent being in existence, yep, definitely one of the wonders of our new world." Heine stared at Yggdrasil with a welling feeling of insignificance and respect, as was ever the case for most Garden City Edenites. He'd know people from other city-states to fall to their knees in reverential worship upon coming into proximity of Yggdrasil, which he thought was a little much. Grand Chimera or not, Yggdrasil was not a god, not a divine being, and it did not demand nor probably even understand worship.

"Grand Chimera?" Kira asked, his voice a little ragged. "Are you telling me that... Yggdrasil... is intelligent? It's a tree."

"Plant Chimera's are much rarer than animal Chimera's, that is true, but they are not impossible, nor generally any more benevolent. Yggdrasil's concern for other lifeforms, humans included, is somewhat unique. But in answer to your question, yes, Yggdrasil is intelligent. It's as smart as it is big, its intelligence functions on planes that even the smartest humans can barely imagine. It's so much smarter than us that directly contacting Yggdrasil through psychic means can lead to brain damage, insanity or death, just because the human mind isn't equipped to handle that level of data flow." Heine told him with a wry grimace. He'd seen people who thought themselves to be tough or blessed or lucky or whatever try to commune directly with Yggdrasil for various reasons, and it never turned out well for the petitioner. Even Kunai had been almost killed by communicating with Leviathan during the pilgrimage to found Garden City.

"Okay, assuming I take that at face value, I have another question." Kira squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, and Yggdrasil was still there, towering over the valley like an organic mountain. "How come I've never seen Yggdrasil before on surface to orbit transitions, or even from up in orbit? Something that big should be visible with the naked eye from Second Earth or Luna."

"Ah, that's a good question actually. For one thing, we deploy a sort of mixture of holography and Mirage Colloid sensor disruptors from the crests of the nearby peaks, including Everest over there, the tallest mountain in the world, which makes it look like this area is covered by wind blown snow coming off the peaks for most of the year. But truth be told that's just minor cosmetic stuff, Yggdrasil handles the brunt of things. Don't ask me to explain how it works, I'm no Latent and Yggdrasil is on a whole different level from other creatures anyway, but part of Yggdrasil's "probability field" seems to be distorting light and other forms of radiation around it, kinda like a huge mirage. Go much beyond the outer valley, or more than a few hundred feet over the tops of the peaks, and you won't see it at all, though the city is still there, which is the reason for the technological camouflage."

"Yggdrasil can make itself invisible?" Kira's tone was frank with disbelief. "Through its Latent powers? I'm a Latent and I can assure you, I've never been able to become invisible, even slightly. The thought never even occured to me to try."

"And if it had, it wouldn't have worked." Heine told him casually. "How much do you know about Actives and Latents anyway?"

"Not half as much as I wish I did." Kira admitted. "Half my life I've been trying to figure out all the angles of this Newtype thing, and I find myself only growing more confused as time goes on."

"Hmm, this is unforseen. I guess I'll have to give you the quick and dirty version, so you don't look like a total fool in front of the Consols." Heine sighed and looked around, trying to figure out how to best explain things he hardly even thought about anymore. "Okay, look, I'm an Active, gold eyes mark me out just like silver marks you out as Latent. Active powers are all controlled by the conscious part of your mind, i.e. you have to think about using them, no matter how slightly, they don't work unless you concentrate on them." Heine made a small gesture at a pile of rocks nearby on the slope, and several of them lifted into the air and began to revolve around each other aimlessly. "With enough practice the amount of_ concentration becomes negligble, and you can start multitasking or expanding your repetoire of abilities. Which is something us Praetorians practice doing a lot_." Heine continued, switching from vocal to mental speech in the middle of his sentence, while still keeping his rocks aloft under telekinetic grip. "You don't have to realize you're using them, but all the same, they only work when you want them to, and its often more a case of telling them to stop working, as is often the case with those talented in empathy, such as your late wife."

Heine watched Kira carefully, but was pleased to see that though there was a momentary flash of guilt and remorse in Kira's eyes, he was not stricken helpless by his grief or pain. "Now you Latents on the other hand, are the opposite. You cannot control your powers consciously, if you try, they don't respond. Everything happens down in the subconscious, on the instinctual levels. They manifest most strongly when you aren't even thinking about psychic abilities at all, such as in the middle of desperate moments in combat. With practice, a Latent can learn to temporarily "phase out" their conscious mind and bring their Latent abilities to the fore, but thats a fairly advanced skill that isn't always necessary... obviously you've been doing just fine without it. Latent abilities are almost always working, unless of course you concentrate on them, kind of like ghosts moving at the edge of your vision. I'm not aware of the full gamut of abilities, but most Latents display heightened physical senses and a predictive ability, the ability to see a second or so into the future which lets them avoid attacks they could otherwise never have seen coming."

Heine let the rocks drop back down to the slope where he'd picked them up from. "And of course, by mixing and matching Latents and Actives in various configurations you can accomplish various degrees of amplification, boosting or refining of powers, but that's the 400 level course I'm afraid. And Chimerae and especially Grand Chimerae don't always follow the rules as strictly as us humans tend to, or maybe our human rules just apply differently to them, since they aren't human at all. Or else they just use the powers we are familiar with on a scale that makes us all insignificant in comparison. I mean, Hiero can see about five minutes into the future at times, which is absolutely insanely complex if you think about it, all the different permutations of what might be as the events of the present constantly modify the future to be! Yggdrasil routinely peers up to six months into the future, and if it has a maximum range, it hasn't reached it yet, I've heard predictions as far out as five or more years in advance..."

"Prophet or not, apparently its not infallible. It didn't see the fire attack that consumed Rex Lodge and my family coming." Kira noted bitterly.

"Before we go into that, perhaps I should remember to warn you that for all its benevolent attitude, Yggdrasil is not a human being and does not have human values or especially our notions of morality." Heine pointed out with a slightly nervous grin at the way Kira's face darkened. "I'm not saying, Kira, that Yggdrasil knew what was going to go down in exacting detail... it's prophecies are often frustratingly vague or couched in terms that require extensive interpretation, or don't make sense until after the fact... but did it know what was going to happen? I don't see how it couldn't, given that Rowan, and most other Ygdgrasilwood's of a certain quality, are heavily connected to Yggdrasil's mind, almost like substations of its mental network. I refuse to believe Yggdrasil didn't know it was basically going to have a finger burned off, apparently it decided that the sacrifice was worth it though."

"And you just blindly follow the dictates of this inhuman mind?" Kira asked, aghast. "You just accept what it calls the future as fact and sit by as innocents are killed?"

"Now THAT is putting words in my mouth and I don't appreciate that one bit, Mr. Yamato." Heine countered coolly. "Yggdrasil's predictions are treated as advice, nothing more. Strong advice, but it doesn't take our free will away. That's much more the Caller's modus operandi, and is one reason we all revere Yggdrasil so much. There is no doubt it has the power to coerce us to do pretty much anything it desires, but it doesn't, it gives us the freedom to choose, to act or not to act or even to counteract what it shows us. In truth, Yggdrasil functions a lot like those AI systems you Shirks made to run your infastructure and govern the nets, but of course we didn't create Yggdrasil, not intentionally anyway."

"Shirks?" Kira asked, backing off from Heine's vehemence, realizing that his comment had been presumptuous and most likely highly insulting, much as if someone had asked him why he couldn't stop EVERYONE from dying on the battlefield.

"Slang for those not Edenites, and actually pretty polite by some standards." Heine explained, once more friendly and cheerful, seeing Kira retreat from his unfortunate comment. He could understand why Kira would be upset that his personal tragedy had been foreseen and nothing had been done to prevent it, it was only natural to be upset like that, but given the number of tragedies Yggdrasil foresaw every day, there was simply no way to prevent them all, and indeed, more harm could come from trying than not in some cases. Save a child only to have it grow up to be a mass murderer, etc. "Shorthand for Shirkers, cause you all up and ran away and ignored us for most of seven years when we really could have used some humanitarian aid, and now you're coming back and telling us we have to move off your old abandoned property or else. Of course you ain't ALL like that, you're an example of an exception, but by and large, you're Shirks. Another one you're likely to hear a lot is "Stumps", cause they're all stunted in terms of physical, mental and psychic capabilities."

"Elitist attitudes fairly common then?" Kira wondered.

"More than you would believe. Honestly, some people seem to think that just cause they're infused with Green EDEN, that they've become super human. Most people in authority tend to have their heads on straighter than that, but people are people, give them a little personal power and suddenly they turn into jerks, lording it over those less fortunate. I think Monty gave you a slight overview of how our politics work, right?"

"Very slight, yes. We didn't get nearly enough time to talk with him." Kira cast his glance down for a moment in sadness.

"Well come on then, I'll try and fill you in on the way to our first appointment." Heine said, becking Kira down a trail leading from the tunnel doorway to a surprisingly normal looking parking lot half full of vehicles of unfamiliar makes and models, most of them looking to be suitable for both roadway and off road driving. A well paved road that would not have been out of place in Orb circled around the lot, lanes leading back towards the rest of the city, and also disappearing into the side of the mountain nearby, where emergency vehicles could drop off those too sick or hurt to walk from the regular lot. heine pointed Kira to a motorscyle that looked very similar to the one he'd ridden on while escaping... the thought made him wince... from Orb, though this one had a sidecar type arrangement so that Kira would not be forced to hang on for dear life to Heine's back.

"Doesn't normally come with the sidecar, but I had it attached this morning, since I'm going to be your chaffeur for the time being." Heine answered Kira's unspoken question, taking a plain black helmet from the sidecar seat and handing it to Kira, before putting a similar such helmet on his own head. "Of course to use the 'cycle to full effectiveness you'd want to be in armor, but contrary to popular myth, we Praetorians don't actually sleep, eat, shit and sex in our armor. We do however always wear it on patrol and for ceremonial reasons, which is generally when people see us." His voice appeared in Kira's ears through radio transmission. "I could of course just talk into your mind, that would actually be easier for me, but I figure you're probably not used to having casual psychic conversations with anyone outside your life bond, and you aren't even attuned to the Wind yet, so I'll hold off until you get comfortable."

"Thank you. Though I'm not sure how I can get "attuned" as you say, to the Wind of Words, since I'm a Latent." Kira pointed out.

"Its simpler than you think, though not as simple as Actives have it. Its actually our first stop. I should warn you though, it will be a little uncomfortable until you get used to it. But less uncomfortable than you'd be without access to the Wind, most definitely." Heine did not bother to explain the actual procedure, knowing that it would only cause unnecessary trepidation. "But back to the synopsis, which is actually fairly important for you to get a quick handle on, because unless I very much miss my guess, you're already being used to advance the goals of at least one faction, just by being here." He started up the bike once Kira was settled and turned onto the road at a unhurried pace, taking them towards the city in the valley below.

"I've never much cared for being treated like a pawn." Kira replied grimly. "If they think I'm going to dance to any tune of theirs, then they have another thing coming to them. I'm no longer a naive youth who doesn't understand the harsh realities of life. I may not always accept them as having power over me, but I do understand them. So who thinks they can use me for their own goals?"

"They're called the Unifying Conclave, the Conclave, or most popularly just the 'Clave. I suppose you could roughly sum them up as people that are concerned primarily for the greater good of all of New Eden and all species of Edenites. They are proponents of peace and harmony with all living things, an attitude they ascribe to and from Yggdrasil itself. They are generally uninterested in Shirks and the outside world, as long as it doesn't interfere with business on New Eden. Most are of the opinion that all life is better off as Edenite, but they wouldn't go out of their way to make people convert."

"Don't sound too bad. A universally tolerant political party with peaceful goals. Lacus would be proud." Kira commented wistfully.

"Uh huh, up until the moment they decided that in the interest of the majority, a minority, such as the residents of Rex Lodge, needed to suffer and die. They try to come off as benevolent and community minded, but they can be frighteningly cold blooded when it comes to decision making about the best way to accomplish the greater good. The greater good always trumps the individual or minority good, if ten thousand people have to suffer to save ten million, then ten thousand people will die horrible deaths, its that simple to the 'Clave. They are tolerant only up to the point that something starts to threaten their plans for the greater good, and then it gets exterminated like a parasite. You don't want to get on their bad side, some of the most powerful psychics alive are 'Clave, something about having great power and great responsibility to use it for the good of all appeals to folks at a certain level. Though as you might expect, good of all is often corrupted a bit to mean "good for me and mine", though there are a few true purists, who might be the scariest of all. The master of the Praetorians, my boss, is one such purist."

Kira sighed, hopes dissappointed, as was all too often the case. They were only human after all, it was probably asking a bit much for true selfless benevolence, which was a hard pill to swallow for most people, who couldn't tell the difference between self sacrifice and sacrificing self. Serving the people didn't necessarily mean giving up all enjoyment and privilege, but of course it also didn't mean entitlement to enjoyment or privilege beyond the level of the service provided. Striking that balance was frustratingly difficult.

"Next is the Children of the Sea, which has the largest portion of the population as constituents, though not all of them would admit to it if asked. If the 'Clave tends to follow in the idealogical footsteps of Yggdrasil, then the Children follow Leviathan, the Grand Chimerae of the oceans, in that they also strive for a peaceful life of personal effort for the good of themselves and their families, with a certain degree of cooperation for the good of all, but not the absolute sacrifice in the name of overall betterment that the 'Clave proposes. Individuals are just as important to the Children as the whole, and if given the option they would never sacrifice anyone. You could definitely call them the most pacifistic faction and the most intellectual or liberal, in an academic manner. They don't piss off easy, they're frequently willing to work together to form a compromise to avoid conflict, and they're the most open towards outsiders or strangers. That said, much like you yourself, Kira, when provoked despite their offers of peaceful compromise, they aren't afraid to respond with a terrible vengeance. Hell hath no fury like a Child pushed beyond remit, nothing offends them more than someone trying to take away their personal freedoms."

The road they were following passed through a cluster of houses, children playing nearby stopping to point at the two black clad motorcycle riders, Heine's midnight blue overcoat flapping like bat wings in the breeze. Heine lifted a hand in reply, a casual greeting that had half the children scurrying inside homes or behind trees, the other half laughing and waving back more enthusiastically. "A microsm of how us Praetorians fit into society." Heine explained once they were past the homesteads. "Some people adore us, most are in some way unnerved by us, and quite a few are plain terrified of us. As you may or may not know, once connected to the Wind, causing pain to others generally reflects back on you yourself, which makes it very difficult for anyone to commit a violent crime, unless they lack empathy or are psychotically masochistic. In all my time as a Praetorian, I've only seen one rape, and the rapist ended up catatonic in a mental ward courtesy of the reflected trauma, the victim eventually recovered. Poetic justice, I think you can agree."

"As you might imagine..." Heine continued, as the bike entered a heavily forested stretch of ground. "This aversion to causing great physical or emotional harm to others makes being a soldier kind of difficult, since that is, in essence, what our job is. So most people tend to regard those who volunteer for the Custodians and especially those who test into the Praetorians, as somewhat mentally unbalanced. Custodians only have to stay with it for a few years, but for Praetorians, its a lifelong commitment. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of us were either soldiers before ascension, or else have some pretty messed up life stories that help keep us sane and focused. Cause its not that we don't feel the reflected trauma, its just that we can take the pain and keep going. Perhaps that's why I tend to have little sympathy for those with elitist attitudes... they think they're so strong, yet the thought of lifting a hand against another, even in self defense, unmans them. They have the strength of brittle glass." Heine snorted contemptuously. "Most animals and plants, and especially Chimerae, aren't so handicapped of course, which is why they need the Custodians and Praetorians, even as they fear and misunderstand us."

"Speaking of the Custodians, they form the majority of the last political faction, called, I shit you not, Green Cosmos. Yes, they chose that name willingly, with full knowledge of the implications, and they generally don't fail to live up to them. They're the Edenite supremacist faction, the ones that believe all life is better off as Edenite, and anything that doesn't survive the ascension, well, then the world is better off without something so weak. If you're also an Edenite, they're great people to be around, friendly and outgoing and fiercely protective of you. If you're not an Edenite, then you're mud beneath their boots, fit only to be trampled upon. Given the chance, they will forcibly convert a Stump to an Edenite. In a way they revere Noah Borander, of all people, as a prophet and visionary, and most of them think its too bad he was stopped before he could Edenize the whole human race. They're all about survival of the fittest, and as such, they fit into the worldview of Caller, the Grand Chimerae of earth and death, though no one who goes to see Caller ever returns, so its hard to claim him as a real patron."

"If its not impolite to ask, which faction do you support?" Kira asked, drawing a long silence on the comm.

"Generally it IS impolite to ask, at least so bluntly, but then again to most of us, its fairly obvious what political leanings you have after a short period of interaction. But since you're a fresh unShirk, I'll make allowances for ignorance." Heine answered. "And truthfully, I'm probably an independent more than anything. The Praetorians as a whole are pretty evenly split between 'Clave and GreCo, with one or two Children, but I've always been something of a free spirit and I don't like to be boxed in to any one category. I wish I could think like a Child, but I deal with danger and death and conflict so much, and deal with things at high levels of importance, that its hard not to feel some kinship with the 'Clave too. Though I do generally believe that GreCo is a bunch of arrogant morons with dick compensation issues."

"So much for his perfect world and golden age." Kira murmered resentfully. "I just wish he could see how wrong he was..."

"Hmm?" Heine asked, a bit confused.

"Noah. He was so sure that turning everyone into an Edenite would create perfect harmony everlasting among humanity. And people call ME idealistic..." Kira shook his head in exasperation. They rounded a bend in the road and Heine slowed the bike to a crawl, before pulling over and off onto a dirt road that was considerably rougher that wound its way through the forested glens for some distance until they came to what looked like an animal watering hole, all muddy water and copious amounts of animal tracks. Whether scared off by the bike's unstealthy approach or just not currently in use, the pool was deserted except for them. Kira looked questioningly at Heine, who motioned for him to stay put as he dismounted and wandered over to the edge of the pool, crouching down and feeling about in the mud for a bit before straightening and turning to Kira with an almost malicious expression on his face.

"Take off that helmet and sit still. This will only take a moment." Heine ordered, carefully shaking his hands free of much, one curled fist hiding whatever it was he'd picked up off the ground. "And it probably won't hurt. Much."

"What did you pick up?" Kira asked, eyeing Heine warily, not trusting that grin one bit. It reminded him a lot of Dearka about to pull a fast one on Yzak or Athrun.

"You know how you were wondering how you'd connect to the Wind?" Heine reminded him. "Well, this is it. As for the particulars, you'd probably be happier not knowing, I wager."

"Let me worry about my happiness and you worry about telling me what you're going to do." Kira replied firmly.

"Don't say I didn't warn you." Heine said with a sigh, holding out his hand and uncurling his fist, revealing a pale brown, sluglike creature perched upon his palm, looking all the world like a inch and a half long wad of well masticated chewing gum. It had no discernable head or rear, no eyes or any other markings. "We call these little buggers Zephyrs, though they can't fly at all and actually live in the mud most of the time. They aren't intelligent but they do have fairly strong Active powers in regards to telepathy. Most of the time they make a living attaching to various animals and telepathically convincing them they aren't there, living parasitically by leeching nutrients from sweat and skin excretions of the host. Fairly harmless to an Edenite, if a bit unsightly, but a Stump would probably contract a fatal disease or infection and could easily die if untreated. Long as you discover them quickly enough they peel off easy, but if you don't notice one for a few days it will bond to your skin and you'll have to burn it off. Normally their telepathy only extends to contact, but when attached to a Latent they allow the host to access the Wind with minimal effort."

"You're going to stick a psychic leech to my body and let it bond to my skin?" Kira asked, trying not to be horrified.

"That is more or less the sum of it, yes." Heine shrugged. "Most people wear them behind one ear, and after a day or so you forget its even there. Once they're bonded its not like you'll wash it off in the shower or anything, and unless you're in the habit of sticking your head into firepits, you won't need to replace it once it bonds. "Don't be a pansy, they usually attach them to kids once they reach their first birthday, and if a little tyke can take it, there's no reason the awesome Kira Yamato can't, right?"

"I really don't like this." Kira almost pouted, as Heine started to circle around him.

"So maybe next time you'll believe me when I tell you not to pry? There's a lot of things on New Eden where its better off not thinking about them too closely, and the Zephyrs are the very least of it all." Heine admonished. "Then again, given what they want you to do, turning a blind eye isn't exactly in the cards, is it?" He continued, much more softly.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Headquarters of Legio Direcat, November 11th, 8:30 am**

"When you said you needed to stop by a military base and check in with some people, this isn't quite what I had thought you were talking about." Kira commented, a trifle doubtfully, as he followed Heine up a tortuously twisty trail leading through lots of large boulders and scree that covered this flank of one of the mountains surrounding Garden City. Kira found his hand up twiddling with the Zephyr attached behind his left ear and he forced himself to stop and try and ignore the slightly squishy sensation behind his earlobe. Heine had commented that it was like wearing an earring, that it was distracting when you first put it in, but after a while it was just one of those things. Kira forbore pointing out that he'd never ever worn earrings before, but supposed that if Lacus could get used to them, and even Cagalli would wear them on occassion, they couldn't be that bad.

Heine had also been very closed mouthed about what he'd meant about Kira not being able to turn a blind eye due to the position the Garden City leadership had in mind for him, only saying that it was not Heine's place to hold that particular conversation, which did little to relieve Kira's curiosity or tension. After parking the bike in a clearing several hudnred feet further down the mountainside, he had led Kira on this hike, chatting amiably about nothing much in particular, the weather, etc, in a manner Kira expected was meant to distract him from noticing other details, such as the cunningly hidden observation cameras and security devices built into the surrounding trees and rocks. Were it not for his experience in spotting the hidden security systems of places like Cyprus's house or the Villa Pacifica, Kira probably would have noticed little, but as it was he was impressed by the blanket of security coverage. In its way this place was definitely as heavily guarded as any military installation in Orb.

Though most military installations in Orb didn't require a ten minute hike up a steeply graded hill, following a goat path, to access, and though Kira wasn't averse to the exercise, was even glad of an opportunity to stretch his legs a bit, maneuvering up some of the slope was a bit difficult with one arm in a sling, and though he saw Heine evaluating him at times, Kira declined to ask for a hand up, not out of some macho determinatio, but just because he felt it was the right thing to do. And he did sense a little undercurrent of challenge from Heine, could feel him testing him almost, as if he was determining Kira's suitability or worthiness, and Kira found himself rising to meet the challenge.

Heine managed to look a little guilty. "I'm sorry if I gave you the impression this was official business. I'll be frank, I'm here to see someone who is a personal friend, and you got dragged along cause I'm supposed to be giving you the grand tour. I'm sure someone will have words with me eventually." Heine shrugged. "But in a way I can kill two birds with one stone this way to, it just takes the itinerary out of order somewhat." Heine clambered up another escarpment and did not look back as Kira heaved himself up one handed with a grunt of effort. "What do you know about our military, Kira?"

"You're crazy enough to infiltrate Orb just to break me out, and good enough to pull it off. You have handheld energy weapons a few generations ahead of Orb, and personal body armor the same way. Given the location of this city, I'd not be surprised to know you have Brotherhood level technology, since the USN couldn't salvage the entire Great Endeavor and yet I don't see its wreckage anywhere about, so you must have broken it down and used the materials to build the city. But as for numbers and actual quality of troops, I couldn't possibly guess at this time."

"I suppose its not a fair question, especially since you've only encountered the Praetorians, and we're not exactly normal." Heine mused. "But everything so far is right. In truth the majority of our forces are entirely untested in terms of actual battlefield experience, and I'm sure you can appreciate that no training regime is quite accurate enough to account for the conditions of a real battlefield. But Garden City's forces... and the emphasis is on the fact that they only represent the forces of our city-state... are divided into two main camps, one of them much larger than the other. The larger force is known as the Custodians, a ZAFT style professional volunteer force, and then the smaller force is the Praetorians, who fufill the role of special forces and elite commanders, somewhat like FAITH, of which I used to be a member, back before Cape York."

"I remember you fighting against the Brotherhood Gundam." Kira said quietly. "You did incredibly well, given the difference in technology."

"Alas not well enough." Heine trailed his fingers across his chest in unconscious memory. "Were it not for the greatest of luck and swift medical care from a friend, I would have died that day. The funniest thing, though it wasn't funny at the time, was that I never felt the shots hit me, they went right through me like I was hardly even there at all. The wonder of QC edges." Heine suddenly stiffened a bit, before another slightly malicious smile spread across his face. "Don't look now, my friend, but we're being hunted."

Kira stared at Heine in mild disbelief. The Praetorian actually sounded somewhat excited by the statement, and Kira could suddenly see why other Edenites might mistake the Praetorian's appetite for thrill seeking and danger as a form of insanity. "You mean there's actually a predatory animal out there right now with the intention of killing and eating us?" Kira asked, trying to keep his voice low and controlled, the hairs on the back of his neck pricking up as he realized Heine was right, something large was moving around just out of sight, the slight sounds of its movement apparent to him now only because he now realized they were out of place.

"Of course!" Heine said, almost happily. "We are in the midst of a Wild Zone after all. Garden City is divided into two types of zones, Wild Zones where the native wildlife lives, and Developed Zones where people live. While in a Developed Zone the animals more or less abide by the rules of humans, in that they don't attack unless provoked... its some effect Yggdrasil has upon them... but in a Wild Zone like this one, well, its the rules of the wild that hold sway. And those rules allow the hunting of prey by predators, and on New Eden, humans are most definitely prey." He noticed the aghast look on Kira's face. "You didn't honestly think the cameras and auto defenses were the only deterrents, did you? Oh well, as long as we hurry we should make it into shelter before she decides we're too tasty to let go. Unfortunately for you, that arm sling makes you look wounded, and there's nothing a predator likes to see more than a wounded animal."

Kira gave Heine a dirty look. "She?" He prompted, again having to fight the urge to either look around or start running, which would only trigger a chase reflex in most any predator. "And what if we don't make it to shelter in time?"

"Yes, she." Heine cocked his head to the side. "She being a juvenile female direcat who really should know better than to tangle with my particular scent, but animals are like people... the young always think they know better than the old." Reaching into the depths of his basilisk hide overcoat, Heine withdrew a compacted assembly attached to a one handed grip. A flex of his wrist snapped the compressed blade out to full length, almost two and a half feet long of mono edged steel, the blade widening to an arrowhead like tip a half inch broader than the rest of the blade, the same width as the hilt actually. The reason for this Heine made clear by pressing a stud on the hilt, causing warm orange plasma energy to course along the blade, giving his sword a dual beam edge. "And if she lets hunger overcome sense, then she'll see why curiousity is often so fatal to felines."

Holding the sword at his side, Heine deactivated the plasma edges after a short demonstration, not wanting to deplete the power source needlessly. His armor contained extra power packs for the broadsword, allowing it to be used near continuously, but of course he wasn't wearing his armor right now. He saw Kira studying his blade, trying to discern where the joints were that it folded in on itself on, and Heine wished him luck silently, since the joints were barely three molecules in width when the blade was extended, and the sword could only be returned to stowage state by telekinetic manipulation. "Come on, its only a bit further. I'd really rather not have to add any more trophies to my epaulets today, or else I'll get more than just a talking to." Heine prompted, waving his sword towards where a flash of dull orange could be seen disappearing behind a boulder a few dozen yards away. "She's beginning the final stages of the stalk."

Seeing no reason to doubt Heine's assessment, Kira headed after the Praetorian, moving quickly but with confidence, trying by posture to tell the cat that he wasn't running away, but rather just moving with speed. Kira imagined he could feel the cat's hot breath on the back of his neck, and wondered if this was a premonition from his Latent abilities, but when he turned his mind to trying to confirm it, the sensation stayed, so he figured it was just his imagination getting the best of him. Just when he felt sure that the hunting cat was about to pounce upon his back at any second, Heine grabbed him by the good arm and pulled him into a space between two boulders that Kira belatedly realized was the opening of a cavern mouth leading into the mountainside. With rock on all sides, Heine turned and smiled victoriously back out of the cave mouth, and Kira paled as he saw the direcat at last slink into view, its gleaming golden-green eyes narrowed with impotent fury as Heine and Kira stood just out of range.

Technically the direcat, twelve feet of sinewy muscle, three feet tall at the shoulder, razor sharp claws and two jutting sabretooth fangs that could punch through bone like it was paper, coated in luxurious orange-red fur with pale golden stripes, could still fit between the boulders and come after the two legged prey beasts, but stronger instincts than hunger kept her from moving any closer to the cave mouth, the scent markings of the alpha male warning all other direcats away save during mating season. Given that she was only two thirds grown and not yet of mating age, the scent markings were basically a giant "keep out or else" sign to her, and with one last frustrated growl and snap of her jaws, she slunk off sullenly to find some place to bask in the morning sunlight and hope for an unwary Rex Elk fawn to stumble by.

"You say that was a juvenile?" Kira said, swallowing heavily, watching the direcat stalk away, tail thrashing in irritation.

"Oh yes, and a small one too, even for a female. The males, especially of the Royal subspecies, can get much bigger." Heine said flippantly, stowing his sword in his back sheathe once more. "Gigantism and atavism are common mutations for both high and low order organisms, Green EDEN having had as much of a regressing effect upon their bodies as a progressing effect on their minds. The last time animals of this size wandered around Earth was shortly before the last major ice age, a hundred thousand years ago. But though those mega-beasts died out, their genetic legacy remained in the animals of today, and Green EDEN managed to bring those old genes back to dominance. Strange huh? Guess that's what you get for using a nanite focused on the human genome on animals." Heine beckoned Kira onwards, trying not to tense up as he awaited the familiar greeting from the occupant of this particular cavern.

Stepping under a lintel of stone that was easily discernable as being carved by human hands, Heine could see that the foyer beyond was uninhabitated, and he was just turning to check above the doorway, where there was a broad ledge underneath a cunningly disguised skylight, when the occupant of that ledge pounced down upon both the resigned Heine and the very shocked Kira, bearing them both to the cavern floor with bone bruising force as more than three quarters of a ton of Direcat King landed on their shoulders, though the cat was careful not to put so much weight on them as to actually cause damage. Heine, having been half turned, was face up, but Kira was trapped face down, a paw the size of half his chest pressing down into his back and lower neck, pinning him to the floor as the direcat rumbled in its chest. Only the fact that Heine wasn't going for his sword kept Kira at all calm, considering he couldn't see much of anything besides the general impression of a gigantic carnivorous animal in position to eat his head like a chicken nugget.

"I love you too, Hector." Heine said with a roll of his eyes, reaching up with one hand to rub the purring Direcat King under his chin, where the fur was all thick and stiff, like a proto-mane. Hector's fur was midnight black with a paler belly that was almost blue in some ways, his eyes golden-red. Sometimes he had deep crimson stripes upon his limbs, tail and body, but apparently he'd licked the dye off already and it had yet to be reapplied by his doting mistress. Hector purred louder and rubbed his head into Heine's hand, his jutting canine fangs, each over fourteen inches long and tipped like daggers, swaying dangerously close to Heine's face as he did so. Hector was a mighty specimen of his race, five feet tall at the shoulder and almost twenty feet from nose to tailtip, solid muscle and bone and pure, unadulterated devotion to his mistress, who had raised him from the cub stage, first as a housepet, then as a mascot and finally as a battle partner.

"HECTOR!" An annoyed female voice shouted from deeper within the domicle portion of the cavern. Hector's ears immediately flattened with chagrin in response. "You know you're not supposed to jump up onto people! Bad kitty! No bacon tonight!" Hector's head drooped even further in disappointment as the punishment was imperiously handed down.

"I know how you feel, buddy." Heine whispered conspiratorially, patting the bull like neck of Hector as the gigantic cat stepped off and away from the two of them, tail tucked low between his legs at being yelled at.

"HEINE!" The female voice shouted again, this time making Heine cringe reflexively. "Don't you dare try and commiserate with him when he misbehaves! Bad Heine! No bacon tonight for you either!"

For his part, Kira rolled over and scrambled away from Hector as fast as he could, his eyes wide as saucers as he took in the full size of the direcat. Hector yawned disinterestedly in his direction, and Kira fancied he could have stuck his entire head down Hector's throat without touching the sides of his neck! For all that, it was hard to feel overly threatened with hector hanging his head and curling up in the corner with misery plain in every motion. His back butted up against one of the cavern walls, and Kira slowly climbed to his feet, Heine already there, brushing himself down and shaking his head ruefully. "Sorry about that, private joke. Hector's just a big kitten though, cept if you make him mad, but he prefers loving you to death rather than clawing or biting."

"How many more private jokes are there?" Kira asked, a bit wildly. "Because I'm not sure how much more my heart can take!"

"Not too many more, probably. Sometimes its hard to keep track. I mean, really, we weren't in any danger, any moreso than you would be from an overfriendly dog putting its paws on your chest. Yes, Hector is appreciably bigger than a dog, but he's also much smarter and more careful too. Believe me, if I wasn't with you and you tried to walk in through that door, you'd be lucky to get off with just a few broken ribs, since Hector doesn't like letting strangers close to Panner in her own home." Heine explained, a tad sheepishly.

"Some idiot out here talking nonsense about me to a stranger?" The feminine voice that had chastised both Direcat and Praetorian asked as the owner of that voice stepped into the room from one of the chambers deeper into the mountain. Kira turned to greet the new arrival, and just as quickly, if not faster, spun back around and face the wall, his cheeks bright red with embarassment. For her part Panner just looked at him strangely and shot a questioning look over at Heine, putting one hand on her hip and she slicked back her still damp hair from the sides of her head with the other, the tawny orange curly locks appearing more sullen red when wet. She aped confusion, but the mischevious twinkle in her gold on smoky grey eyes, as well as the amusement she radiated into their nascent bond, told Heine that she knew perfectly well that her nakedness was discomfiting to her guest. She'd plainly been in the shower when they arrived. "What's with him? Has he never seen a naked woman before or somethin?" Panner asked wickedly.

"Things are different here." Heine reminded the mortified Kira with a sigh, before doffing his overcoat and draping it around Panner, sharing a secret grin with her all the while. "He's been living in Orb for the past seven years, Pan, they do things old world style there still."

"Oh, I see." Panner shook her head in mock contrition. "You poor, repressed man." The overcoat covered most of her frame, but she made no move to hold it closed around her waist, perfectly comfortable, especially in what amounted to her home, regardless of how much clothing she did or did not have on at the moment. It wasn't like she was some nudist or other, she didn't generally conduct business bare, but she was on relaxation time, and she generally found nakedness to be comfortably liberating, compared to the uniform and armor of work. And it wasn't like Hector gave a damn.

"Panner, meet Kira Yamato. Kira, this is Panner, Strategos Minoris of Legio Direcat, and my very good frie..."

"Lover. Very good lover." Panner cut him off, finally belting the overcoat closed around her middle and holding out her hand for Kira to shake. She did flinch, almost, when she saw Kira's silver pupils, but to her credit didn't pull back her hand from skin to skin contact as Kira shook her hand. He was amazed to find himself actually looking up at her, and realized that she was actually taller than Heine, who was himself a few inches over six feet tall. Heine's greatcoat fit her nearly as well as it fit Heine himself. "I remember hearing about you from before New Eden, Kira, and its an honor to meet you. Though it can't possibly be enough, could I extend my condolences for the loss of your family? Its a pain that's surprisingly common here on New Eden, though not as fresh for most of us."

"Thank you." Kira replied, somewhat stiffly, trying not to let the pain of commiseration stand out too much. In the back of his mind he could feel Panner digesting his words and her emotions shifting as she changed the subject, and dimly realized that it was the Wind connecting him to her, felt strongly in such close proximity.

"So he's here on inspection then? You should have contacted me first, you know I hate surprise visits from the brass." Panner scolded Heine. Kira traded looks between them, his puzzlement plain for both to see.

"Well, I may have done things out of order a tad bit. He hasn't confirmed anything yet." Heine said, a bit shiftily. "I want him to get a look at things, so he'd be better informed when they asked him to make the call."

"Oh, wonderful, Heine!" Panner rolled her eyes sarcastically. "So it wasn't enough for you to defy orders, you decided to bring him here so I'd get pasted too? You're such a considerate man! I could just love you... to death! Just goddamn wonderful... just what I needed, another face to face chitchat with Kunai or Ullric, like I don't have enough stress already!"

"I don't know about Kunai or the Strategos Magnus, but I certainly intend to have some words with Heine over his actions." A new voice said from the doorway leading to the mountainside, causing all of them, even Hector, to flinch and turn towards the portal in question, framed within which was a faintly familiar young woman, dressed in the black and dark blue casual uniform of the Praetorians, her cerulean blue hair waterfalling down her back as she glared fiercely at Heine's weakly smiling face.

"Lilia, what a pleasant surprise..." Heine started to say, before the baleful look on Lilia's face made him cringe. "I was just borrowing him for a while." Heine protested, even though no accusation had been made. Or at least none that Kira could hear.

"You know that it was my assignment to show Kira around today." Lilia said, her tone flat with more than just annoyance. "So imagine my surprise when I stopped by his room a half hour ago to find him already gone, absconded with by a certain rogue we both know, intentions unknown. Could you perhaps understand how perturbed I was, Heine, given what I went through to rescue him? Don't think I'm going to let you smile and charm your way out of this, I will have redress from you, just you wait until the next sparring practice." Turning her glare away from Heine, Lilia's face softened and she stepped forward, first patting and rubbing Hector on the head, before letting Panner give her a hug. Though of course not on the level of Heine, Lilia still had a strong friendship with the laconic and fierce leader of the Direcat legio, one of the finest in the Custodians. "Make sure to be mean to him for me." Lilia asked. "No bacon tonight."

Kira wasn't sure if he could be any more uncomfortable or confused than he already was, but if it was possible, he hoped it wouldn't happen, as Lilia turned up her nose from the guilty looking Heine and marched across the room to stand by his side, looking up with an intent expression that made him wonder if she was about to upbraid him too. However, instead she just grabbed him by the hand and squeezed gently. "Don't run off without telling me, Kira, I was so worried." Lilia admitted softly. "You're too important to me, and to everyone else, to just go haring off with this disreputable rogue! I shudder to think of what sort of wild stories he was filling your head with."

"Hey! I was following the itinerary, more or less! He's got a Zephyr now!" Heine protested. "And I'm not disreputable..."

Lilia ignored him, her eyes affixed upon Kira. "Does your arm hurt? Did he make you climb all the way up here with a hurt arm?"

"I'm fine, thank you." Kira said, managing to free his hand from her earnest grip. She looked disappointed that he'd pulled away, but the emotion vanished behind a wall of concentration before he could comment upon it. The way she was looking at him was making his mouth and throat go a bit dry, and Kira wasn't entirely fond of the sensation or the ramifications it conjured up, and he forced himself to look away from her pretty face, which ever so slightly brought to mind Lacus, along with the intent periwinkle blue eyes. "So I gather I'm expected someplace else?" Kira prompted, as he and Lilia avoided eye contact with each other uncomfortably.

"Yes." Lilia replied at last, glad for the distraction, trying to hide her blush as she hoped the thoughts she'd had running through her mind just a few moments ago hadn't been broadcast through the Wind. In any case Kira didn't seem to have noticed, but from the muffled chuckle coming from Panner, Lilia dejectedly realized that she was more transparent to her friends. Could she help it if she got a bit excited from being able to actually hold Kira Yamato's hand, in the flesh, in peace and quiet, and it made her heart race a bit? Wasn't that a perfectly normal reaction for someone you cared about? But she felt unpleasantly uncouth all the same, when she realized she felt a bilt jealous that Kira had walked in on Panner in her habitual private nakedness. Forcing her mind away from wistful daydreams, Lilia finally managed to meet Kira's eyes once more. "The Consols are waiting to interview you at the Heartwood Chamber. You aren't late, but Kunai had been expecting you earlier, so he contacted me to find out where I was with you. And since I wasn't... well..." Lilia looked down at her feet. "Can we just go to the Consols now, please?"

"That sounds like a good idea." Kira said, placing his hand on her shoulder comfortingly, almost regretting it as he did so, because her face lit up like the sun coming out from behind clouds and Kira cautioned himself to be more careful in his consoling in the future. He had no idea what was appropriate or insinuated by personal touching in this culture, he could very easily imply something he did not intend. And Lilia plainly had a lot invested in his opinion, so his actions would be all that more weighty to her, and all that much easier to misinterpret. he was grateful to her for her resuce of him from the asylum, and she seemed like a nice young woman, but there was a line between friendly and more than friendly that he did not want to cross with her. He just hoped he could find a way to explain that to her without causing offense. Nodding his goodbyes to the bemused looking Panner and shamefaced Heine, Kira followed Lilia back out to her own bike, wondering what the Consols, the governing body of Garden City, wanted to interview him about?

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Heartwood Chamber, November 11th, 9:10 am**

Kira could see for dozens of kilometers from the window hacked into the living wood of this part of Yggdrasil's trunk, more than a kilometer from ground level. The entire valley was spread out beneath and around him, the only things limiting his vision being the sheer bulk of the mountains bordering the valley. As he put his hand on the windowsill to half lean out and feel the cool breeze slip past his face, Kira realized that the windows... and indeed the entire room... was not carved or cut from the trunk of Yggdrasil, but was actually somehow grown into its current shape, like a knot formed in the wood, though whether this growth was encouraged by the Edenites or Yggdrasil itself was unknown. Kira felt a slight tingle run up his arm when his bare fingers touched the warm wood of the Grand Chimera's body, but he was not assaulted by mind breaking streams of data, so he supposed Yggdrasil was not looking to communicate with him. Which was almost too bad, he had some things he wanted to say to it about how it did its business. Ignorance of morality was little excuse for something as overwhelmingly powerful and intelligent as a Grand Chimerae.

Contrary to his expectations, he had not been confronted with the full group of Consols, but rather only the Consol of Foreign Affairs, the Consol of Military Affairs and the man known as Kunai, who held no actual political or military rank but seemed to have enormous influence all the same, much like Lacus had used to do. The Consol of Foreign Affairs, an older, grey haired gentleman named Hieronymo and the Consol of Military Affairs, a giant of a man with silver and black streaked hair and eyes like those of a wolf, Strategos Magnus Ullric, stood across the room from him, next to the seated form of Kunai, bald and heavily scarred, his face and blue eyes maddeningly familiar for some reason. Kira took a deep, calming breath of cold mountain air, willing the act to bring him focus and moderation as he got a grip on his emotions and turned back to face the three Edenites.

"So let me get this straight." Kira said direly, turning furious eyes on the three Edenite leaders. "Far from coming to Orb in order to effect my rescue, instead I was only a bonus while you sent the Praetorians to sabotage Orb's military bases and cripple Morganroete Armories, in essence launching a sneak attack upon one of the most peaceful and tolerant nations in the world. Then, when I am here, I learn that you were well aware of the threat that Rex Lodge was under during my family and I's visit, but you declined to make the effort to intervene and as a result, not only my own family, but several dozen other innocents, including children, died horrible deaths. And now you have the gall to ask me to become your warleader, for a conflict that as far as I can see, you provoked?"

"Warleader is not the correct term." the gigantic Strategos Magnus, Ullric, rumbled in his deep bass voice, gold on yellow eyes gleaming like predatory coins. Every bit as big as Sergeant-Major Glory, though actually in his sixties, his physical power rejuvenated by transformation into an Edenite, Ullric glared at Kira distastefully, as if discontented with the whole situation. Or maybe he just didn't like Kira's attitude. Given that Ullric was the commander in chief of the Custodians, and also, Kira suspected, one of the top leaders of GreCo, he supposed his defense of Shirks probably didn't sit well with the man, nor also the position of authority Kira was being offered that basically allowed him to countermand Ullric's own orders in the field. "I and my senior staff are the warleaders, your position is different."

"As Executor you would be something like our champion, our rallying point on the field of battle." Kunai explained. "You would be a direct agent of the Consols, basically fit to act as you see best in order to protect and defend New Eden from the USN's depredations and aggression. You would not command a unit, but you would be able to give orders to units in battle if you felt the need." His blazing blue eyes, so hauntingly familiar to Kira for some reason, narrowed. "However, our business in Orb was not so much a sneak attack as a pre-emptive strike. You know very well the campaign of secret terror that the USN has been waging upon us for the past few years, your own family was a casualty of one of their illegal weapon's tests, so don't you dare suggest us taking action against the primary terrestrial military bases and arms manufacturer of the USN was anything but justified. This war is coming whether we want it or not, it behooves us to take an early advantage if possible."

"You knew the war was coming because Yggdrasil told you the "future", so you launched a sneak attack against a peaceful nation to gain an early advantage in momentum?" Kira snapped back. "Don't you think that's something of a self fufilling prophecy? You assumed there would be war, so you started one?"

"I realize our reasons may seem flimsy to you, but Yggdrasil has never been wrong about anything of magnitude in the last seven years." Hiero, the mild mannered, poker faced Consol of Foreign Affairs, spoke up calmly. "And as Monty showed you, this war started long ago, when the RI, FEAR and USN unsanctioned forces began their campaign of terror, kidnapping and intolerance against our outlying and isolated settlements. Only now its coming out into the light. Please believe me when I say, Mr. Yamato, that I deplore conflict as much as you do, perhaps more so because these are my people that stand to suffer the greatest. But while I do disagree with the methods employed by some of my colleagues, I cannot deny that they produced effective results that will buy us time we desperately need to prepare ourselves for the coming onslaught. With Orb's military infastructure in shambles, the USN now lacks a solid footing to begin their ground occupation, they will have to rebuild other bases from scratch, which could take weeks or months."

"I'm not interested." Kira told them flatly. "I have overriding concerns of my own, such as tracking down those people responsible for the attack on Rex Lodge. You have my sympathies for the trial you now face, but you did act to bring it on yourselves as well, so my pity can only go so far. Find someone else to be your figurehead, I'm just not interested in letting my reputation be used as one of your shields."

"Even though just by appearing on the battlefield you might be able to save hundreds or thousands of lives?" Kunai countered. "You've become a lot more selfish, Kira."

"What do you know about me?" Kira retorted angrily. "Have you ever lost all that you cared about to violence and been utterly helpless to do anything to put things right?"

"Now that is more like the Kira I remember. So stuffily self righteous and arrogant in his own sense of suffering." Kunai snapped venomously. "You never could see past the end of your own pain, even when it caused worse pain to everyone around you."

"Do I know you?" Kira asked, staring hard at Kunai, trying to place those intent blue eyes.

"I'm beginning to wonder myself if you ever did." Kunai answered, sinking back into his chair with a heavy sigh. "The man you knew me as is dead and gone, lost to circumstances beyond even your control. It doesn't matter who I was, all that matters is who I am now. But in answer to your question, yes, I have lost everything I ever cared about, including my family, and I was utterly helpless to protect them or put things right." Kunai leaned forward again. "Fine, if you don't want to help us, we aren't going to coerce you, because that would be meaningless and ineffective. No one has ever been able to coerce you to do anything, its always been one of your strengths. I just hope your conscience can stay clean as you see millions of innocents being slaughtered around you and not lifting a finger to help, because our military is not big enough by itself to guard our world."

"If you really wanted my help so badly, you should have saved Lacus, Akira and Aoi." Kira told them bluntly. "You had the chance and you let them die, because you hoped it would make me feel more sympathetic towards your cause. Well your grand plan has backfired, because I find your reasoning to be sickeningly flawed. In retaliation for the illegal actions of one faction of the USN, you launch a cold blooded attack upon a neutral, even slightly friendly third party that killed civilians as well as military forces. You may see the USN as a homogenous lot, but I can assure you that is anything but true, and if you had only listened to your hearts instead of this damned tree, you might have been able to secure Orb as an ally and partner! But you were so confident in the "future" shown to you by a tree, so you let it all slip away, and now you're trying to guilt me into being your puppet soldier. I'm not interested in serving a bunch of high handed zealots who think that the predictions of a tree constitute divine right to act as they see fit."

"Then leave." Ullric said nastily. "We don't NEED you, Kira, we just want you. My Custodians will decimate the USN, and the Praetorians of Kunai will destroy what's left. Those pathetic Stumps don't know what sort of Rhinobeast they're trying to ride. They are not prepared."

"I once said something similar to a very dangerous foe, confident in my own powers." Kira told them. "You know what he told me in return, shortly before he gave me a mauling that could have easily led to my death were it not for good fortune on my part? That there is a difference between "prepared" and "ready". An object lesson in not underestimating your opponent, though your personal abilities might be greater, experience is a strength all its own, and your Custodians, Mr. Ullric, are almost entirely untested in real battlefield conditions. War is a hell unlike any other, and no amount of training can truly prepare you for it. Just counting the veterans who have survived the last few battles of the Eden Disaster, the USN forces likely outnumber your Custodians five times over, and they've been aggresively building their military for the last seven years."

"You seem to be making our point for us." Kunai pointed out. "Besides just your battle skills, your wealth of knowledge as a soldier would be invaluable to us, exactly because we have such a limited pool of veteran fighters, most of them concentrated in the senior ranks of the Custodians or else in the Praetorians."

"I'm not particularly good at speeches, and I have no head for strategy, so I don't see how much help I could be, unless you want to just stand there and look intimidating as their Mobile Suit's crush me underfoot." Kira answered. "I'm a Gundam pilot and I have no Gundam. I suppose I could take one of your Mobile Suits, but that really just puts another talented soldier on the field. You sound like you need more than that. You need a game changer, an ace in the hole, something to counteract the numbers and experience of the USN."

"Would it matter if we said that we have a Gundam under construction at this very moment?" Ullric spoke up. "Using data recovered from our raid on Orb, and updated withour own cutting edge technology, we should soon have a Gundam ready worthy of even the great Kira Yamato. Did you honestly think we would go to the trouble of attempting to recruit the most famous Gundam pilot in history with no provision for providing him a battle platform? The Lucifer will be the most powerful Gundam you have ever piloted, and with it, you will be capable of changing the course of even the largest battles."

"It doesn't matter." Kira shook his head. "I'm sorry you went to all that effort, hopefully one of the Praetorians will take it. Lilia certainly seems to have my life down to a T, she should be a good canidate. But I will not be your champion, you have done me no favors worth that level of commitment, and indeed, you have sinned against me grievously for your own purposes. Maybe you thought I would be so rage driven by the murder of my family that I wouldn't care who I took vengeance against, but that is not me, nor will it ever be. My anger is reserved for the guilty, my retribution directed only at those responsible for the fire that night. I have fought in too many wars, I don't want to get involved in any more, especially supporting people I am not at all convinced are in the right. The USN has wronged New Eden, I cannot argue with that... but your response was no less wrong. Killing them for killing you... its an endless cycle and it doesn't go anywhere except straight to hell."

"Then we are sorry for wasting your time." Hiero said quietly. "Though we seem to be at an impasse, please accept the hospitality of our fair city as long as you need to, and if you have any needs or wants regarding the investigation of your family's deaths, please, send word to me and I will make sure to place reasonable resources at your command. Its regrettable that we can't find common ground, Mr. Yamato, but life is full of disappointments. Lilia will show you to quarters, whatever your rush, I suggest at least spending one night here to fully recuperate. Please think about what we have said tonight, and be prepared to confirm your answer in the morning. Pardon our rudeness, but you must understand our desperation."

Kira nodded and turned to leave, before a sensation like being pressed to the floor by the hand of a Gundam suddenly overwhelmed him and he staggered, reaching out to take hold of the windowsill. The moment his bare hand touched the wood of the sill, Kira jerked like he'd been electrocuted.___**YOU MUST NOT GO.**_ The voice in his head was like the sound of an avalanche tumbling down a mountainside, an all consuming roaring sound that made it feel like his skull was vibrating apart on a molecular level. Kira had never felt a mental communication anything like it before in his life, hell, he'd never felt a mental ATTACK as strong as this communication was before, and that included the times Noah had almost taken over his mind and body! He was like a grain of rice beneath a sledgehammer, and the agony of it lanced into his brain like spikes through his eardrums. All just from four words.

"It's my choice... not yours..." Kira gritted out through clenched teeth. He wasn't sure if Yggdrasil could understand verbal speech, but given that he had to think the words to speak them, he was sure the message was conveyed.

_**HASTY. NOT GO. THE FUTURE...**_

"I don't give a damn about what you consider the future!" Kira shouted back furiously, his brain feeling like it was about to start leaking out his eye sockets. The Consols and Kunai were staring at him aghast, hardly able to countenance that Kira was holding a direct mental conversation with Yggdrasil, something which should have knocked him instantly unconscious. "I've lived my whole life without needing or wanting to know the future, and that hasn't changed now! The future is what we make of it! I am not your plaything! Find another pawn!"

_**SORROW. LOSS. SUFFERING.**_ Yggdrasil pounded the emotions into Kira's mind like railroad spikes. _**HOPE.**_

Kira felt blood start to trickle from his nostrils and ears, his body actually physically vibrating under the force of the mental communication. He gritted his teeth and tried to stand up, but his legs woudn't support him. "Find someone else who gives more of a damn about you, you goddamned tree! You could have saved Lacus, Akira and Aoi! If I could, I'd chop you down myself and good riddance!"

_**HUMOR. DISREGARD. SORROW. NECESSITY. SACRIFICE. SURVIVAL. HOPE.**_

Kira was on his hands and knees, back bowed as if under extreme gravitational stress, his vision blurry and blood running freely down his chin. He wasn't sure how much more of this he could take while remaining conscious. Hell, he wasn't sure how much more he could take and remain alive! "I said NO, and I meant it. They told me that you aren't the sort that coerce's others. So respect my choice and think of something else. I am through debating with you!"

_**SORROW. PITY. NECESSITY. WITHERING. DYING. SUFFERING. NECESSITY. **__**NECESSITY!**_ Kira flattened against the wooden floor as Yggdrasil shouted his emotions at him, the sound like the entire mountain range collapsing at once, stars bursting behind Kira's eyes, blood exploding from his ears and tear ducts and nostrils, his limbs spasming involuntarily as Yggdrasil's emotions filled him up like an empty cup, overflowing like magma erupting from a volcano. Kira gagged and vomited, losing control of his bladder at the same time as he writhed in agony, his brain feeling like it was melting, his thoughts and emotions and memories leaking out of cracks in his skull, dripping into the impossibly vast ocean that was Yggdrasil and dissolving away. After what felt like an eternity of torment, the pain eased up a bit and thought, emotion and memory started to flow back into his brain. _**SORROW. GO.**_

And then Yggdrasil was gone, leaving Kira feeling like a mummy with all its organs freshly stirred to paste and scooped out. He coughed weakly as the Consols, Kunai and various other attendants crowded around him, babbling voices making no sense to his traumatized mind. His entire nervous system burned with unaccustomed strain, every cell in his body tingling as if they had helped absorb some of the incredible mental impacts and were numbed by the effort. Kira tried to push himself to his feet, but his body was disordered and would not respond to him hardly at all. He felt a cool hand on his forehead and managed with difficulty to roll his eyes up to see who it belonged to. For a moment there was bliss as he thought he saw Lacus there kneeling beside him, hand extended in succor, but when he tried to say her name, the effort was too much and consciousness finally, gratefully, fled.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Custodian Observation station 74, upper slopes of Mt. Everest, November 11th, 10:08 pm**

_So is he going to be all right then?_ Panner asked curiously, her head propped up against the warm and solid wall of fur and muscle that was Hector's ribcage. She idly rubbed her hand along Heine's body as he snuggled against her, their bodies covered by his spread greatcoat, only their bare feet peeking out from below the hem to be nipped by the icy high mountain breezes. The worst of the cold was warded away by the space heaters set up around the perimeter of the mountainside observation post, its high tech facilities and cameras hidden from easy view by holofields that made it look to the outside like just another outcropping of rock and ice. From this height they were staring down at the top of Yggdrasil by over a thousand feet, the dark green needled branches spreading out like an island in midair. Heine mumbled something in his dazed doze, pleasantly worn out by their earlier sexual engagement, and still tired from his efforts in Orb the day before to boot.

Panner's question was addressed to the other person sitting in the observation station, her knees bunched up to her chest as she moped near the edge of the platform and stared moodily down at the spread branches below. Lilia's blue hair and dark clothing made her blend in well with the mountain night sky, and even to Panner's Edenite eyes, she was more a shapeless blur than anything else. _They say the physical damage was surprisingly minor, just a few burst blood vessels and some muscle cramps from the convulsions._ Lilia replied darkly, her ill humor plain to feel. She did not look over at Heine and Panner, not for modesty's sake as she'd seen them post coitous and even in the middle of sex before, and indeed it wasn't so strange a thing as that among a tight knit group such as the Praetorians or Custodians. It wasn't like they were asking her to join them or anything, though Panner had left the offer open if Lilia found she needed some physical reassurance. Lilia was grateful for the thought, but couldn't muster any real interest.

On one hand she was worried sick about Kira, since most people that had even passing contact with the thoughts of Yggdrasil ended up mentally crippled or dead. Thankfully Kira, for whatever reason, perhaps because he was post second puberty, seemed much less affected by the trauma than that. Almost troublingly so in fact. Even Kunai, who was one of the most powerful psychics alive, couldn't talk with Yggdrasil like that, and Kira, well, he'd never really developed his powers like Kunai had, so he really shouldn't be able to withstand things Kunai could not. It was something strange and new about her idol that she did not understand, and Lilia did not like the feeling one bit.

Equally she did not like or understand Kira's refusal of the Consol's offer. Didn't he realize what an exceptional honor it was, what a great opportunity for doing good it was? How could he just turn down Kunai and the others, and so coldly too? That didn't seem like the Kira Yamato that she'd idolized to her. Kira that she knew would always step up to do the right thing, regardless of how much it made him hurt to do it. It was almost as bad as if he'd rejected her personally! Thankfully that wasn't the case, if anything he had been reaching out to her in happiness when he lay on the floor of the Heartwood Chamber, which had made her heart glow and leap with pleasure. But when she'd tried to follow up on that feeling later in the day, when he was once again released from the welfare center, he'd been broody and glum and brushed her off coolly, asking to be left alone.

She'd respected his wishes, though inside she'd wanted nothing more than to throw herself at his feet and beg for the honor of consoling him in his time of despair, since he was so obviously suffering for want of physical interaction with a caring person. But in the end she'd backed off without saying anything, the words choking in the top of her throat, unable to overcome shyness and the dread fear of being turned down, and so she'd fled to find comfort in friends, coming up on Heine and Panner and Hector as they stargazed and gave each other pleasure, except for Hector of course, who just dozed and provided space heating for his mistress and her chosen mate. Why she only chose one of the many in her pride, Hector could not fathom, but his was not the lot to argue with the alpha Queen. It was also puzzling how the alpha Queen always seemed to be in heat, which was something Hector wistfully dreamed about the females of his own pride suffering.

Hearing the Direcat begin to purr contentedly, Panner elbowed him affectionately under his ribs, her bond to the almost human like mind of her pet giving her a fairly good handle on the direction of Hector's thoughts, even if she couldn't actually access the thoughts themselves. _Perverted cat._ Panner noted fondly. She turned her head to look at Lilia again. _Are you sure you want to sulk over there? Heine's out of it, but you know what I always say... boys for fun, girls for comfort. And you really feel like you could use some comfort. You get any more gloomy and you'll start sucking light out of the air._

_I just can't believe he turned them down._ Lilia sighed discontentedly. _We need him, Pan, and he rejected us. I guess I'm just feeling a bit disillusioned. If you can't count on Kira Yamato to do the right thing, then what can you count on?_

_You can't put so much faith in one person, one guy._ Panner admonished her. _Its not fair to you or to him. Heine can do amazing things, absolutely amazing things... but he's not infallible or invincible, and neither is Kira. He doesn't think like we do, he sees Yggdrasil's actions as invasive and presumptuous rather than benevolent. Its so hard to believe that Yggdrasil can really, actually know the future and know what's best until its already too late, and that's a lesson that can only be learned by experience, sadly._

_I don't want him to hurt, but I know that he needs to do this, needs to accept his role as Executor. We need him, Panner. I need him._

_You mean that in more than a platonic sense._ Panner noted. _Are you actually in love with him, or is this just idol lust?_

_I'm not sure if love is a strong enough word._ Lilia bent her head down to touch her forehead to knees morosely. _I can't stop thinking about him. I want to help him, to comfort him, to take his pain away. He has suffered so much, so much more than anyone else I've ever met, and yet there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to help him! I would do anything but he doesn't want anything! Though this is the first time I've ever actually met him, his actions and words and feelings have nonetheless been the foundation of my life as a functional human being. Without him I'd be an animal, less than an animal, a toy for the pleasure of unscrupulous men! Kunai pulled me out of the pit, but Kira was the one who made sure the darkness inside never fully claimed me._

_So go have sex with him, moron. Take off your clothes, walk into his room, climb into bed and don't take no for an answer._ Panner advised._ That's what I do to Heine, and it never fails._

_Kira is not like Heine though._ Lilia all but sobbed._ If Heine suddenly died, do you think you could go have sex with Haman? He's still caught up in Lacus, and since I look a tiny bit like her, I always remind him of her just when I think its okay to start getting intimate, and it ruins the mood. I want to go to him, like you say, but I'm so afraid he'll reject me! That he'll think I'm trying to seduce him or something!_

_So go have sex with Alexander then._ Panner sighed and looked up at the huge field of stars overhead. Some of them seemed to be moving in some sort of pattern. _Or come over here and I'll pleasure you until you can't think anymore. But just sitting around thinking about what might happen won't get you anywhere. If you're too afraid to go to Kira, but still all pent up, a friend is just the sort of person who will understand your need and help you with it. That's part of what it means being a Praetorian, right? Being able to turn to the others in the order for help no matter what kind of help it is? No one will think any less of you for taking out your frustrations on Alex or me like that, and if you'll pardon my saying so, you've been out in the field without intimacy for too long. Saving yourself for Kira is all well and good, but its starting to unbalance you, girl. Go meld mind and body with someone for the night, I promise you, you'll feel much better and more confident in the morning._

_Is sex your answer for everything?_ Lilia asked, trying to be annoyed but grateful for the advice, ribald as it might be, feeling Panner's strong undercurrents of concern and support beneath her raunchy suggestions.

_I've yet to discover a interelationship problem a healthy bout of amazing sex can't cure, at least temporarily._ Panner shrugged and hugged Heine closer to her body under the coat. _God gave us excitable nervous systems so we could feel things like pleasure, not taking advantage of that is just silly. Though my mother would be horrified to see what her little girl considers acceptable social behavior these days._

_Sometimes I'm horrified to see what you consider acceptable social behavior these days. Parading yourself in front of Kira naked like that... I ought to smack your butt for that!_

Panner smiled, glad to see that Lilia was able to start joking again. A streak of light up in the heavens caught her eye. _Hey look, a shooting star! You should make a wish._

_Look, there's more!_ Lilia pointed in excitement, her gloomy mood forgotten under the spectacle of the celestial light show. _Wow, there's dozens of them... its a meteor shower!_ she exclaimed, as streaks of light began to fill the night sky in steady streams. Her excitement started to curdle however when the streaks of light did not quickly abate, and also when their numbers continued to expand, until the entire sky was filled from horizon to horizon with golden-red streaks of objects entering the atmosphere. _Um, Panner... I don't think those are meteors..._

_The sky looks like its crying..._ Panner jostled Heine in the ribs a few times to snap him out of his doze. _Tell me that's not what I hope it isn't, Heine..._

_If you hope it isn't the largest orbital drop I've ever seen, then I'm afraid I can't do that, Pan._ Heine answered, his attention focused with remarkable rapidity by the sight overhead. He bolted to his feet, disregarding the icy wind on his nude body. Hector growled, sensing the change in mood, staring up at the night sky without comprehension as to what had disturbed his mistress and her mate so much.

_Kunai is calling._ Lilia said distantly, still gazing up at the unending display of orbital entry craft, transfixed by the sheer numbers. _War is upon us..._

xxxx

Author note 2: Heine's sword is just like those Gouf swords from Destiny, but sized for a man obviously.


	23. Destroyer

Author Note: Well, everyone should bear in mind that Yggdrasil, for all its power, is still a plant at basic level, so it probably has quite a bit more of a gap to bridge, so to speak, when communicating with intelligent animals like humans, than the other Grand and most other types of Chimerae. It has absolutely nothing in common with us, not even basic anatomy, so meaningful conversation is gonna be kinda hard, no matter how much juice it puts into it.

xxxx

**Orb, Orb National Palace, Nara-Attha City, November 11th 5:23 pm**

For perhaps the fiftieth time during the past few hours, Jiro wished he'd paid more attention in the classes designed to bring him up to speed on Orb's military and its various emergency action plans, but he'd never really had much of a head for militant things, his interests generally lay in business and economics. Fortunately he had a team of very experienced and knowledgable advisors to fall back on in times of crisis, along with the Queen herself, who was a far more experienced, though perhaps less practical, politician and leader than he was. All the same, in a few short hours Orb would be dealing with a logistical nightmare as the majority of the USN headquarters divisions and initial logistical depots made their way in bulk transport to Orb, before deployment to various theatres around the Earth, and Orb's military-industrial complex and infastructure was operating at less than half of projected capacity, meaning they had less space and less personnel to handle a problem that would have strained resources at optimum capability!

And then of course there was the ongoing investigation and rescue efforts still underway at Morganroete Armories and several other military bases that had been hard hit by the Edenite saboteurs, and the tallying up of all the damage done and casualties taken, and then the public clamoring for answers and revenge in near equal measure, the high profile chase through the streets of downtown Nara-Attha City involving no lesser personage than Kira Yamato himself, and ending with a confrontation that left a harborside park trashed and a valuable piece of top secret military equipment lying at the bottom of the shallow civilian harbor, the pilot having been forcibly ejected shortly after falling unconscious due to psychic attack. The public was screaming, his military advisors were crying, the USN was breathing flames down his backside and he was personally in mourning, because Dr. Erica Simmons had been a close friend for many years now, and he'd recently had a sit down with Kenneth Simmons, her husband, who was absolutely devastated by the loss of his wife and the traumatic things done to his teenaged son, and Jiro was feeling a rare degree of vicious anger, just like the Queen did when people messed with her country.

So when the door to the conference-planning room crashed open with sickening violence, the reinforced door actually slightly crumpled where it had been kicked open by the mechanical foot and leg of the wild eyed man storming through the door, Jiro felt like he'd just about reached the end of his rope. Though Colonel Jones, more commonly known as Alkire, was known to be an excitable man, at least as far as Stormhounds went, the look on his face today, at this particular moment, all but froze Jiro's blood. It was a mixture of unadulterated terror, remorse, disgust and hopelessness that made his guts feel like they were trying to run screaming from his asshole. No good news could possibly come from such an expression on the face of a senior Stormhound. Other Stormhounds assigned to security detail for the room had drawn or pointed weapons when the Colonel burst in, but now they too were looking on questioningly and a little uncertainly as Alkire stomped across the conference room floor, his face as pale as if he'd just stared Death itself in the face.

Colonel Belaruse entered the room in the wake of her husband, and actually staggered when she crossed the lintel, needing to put a hand on the wall to keep herself upright, her face just as pale and shocked as Alkire's, and Jiro's stomach did another flip flop. Alkire at least was the excitable type, Raine was as phlegmatic as they came, just about the only one cooler being Cyprus himself, and if Raine was so freaked out by whatever this new problem was, then it went beyond merely bad, it must be simply catastrophic! Jiro met Alkire's gaze as the man stepped around to the head of the table, snapping a quick, very perfunctory salute in the process. "You need to see this right now. The Queen needs to see this right now too. Everyone needs to see this, right the fuck now!" Alkire said simply, his voice a bit ragged as he held out a data chip.

Jiro took the chip and stared at it like it was a poisonous insect. "What's on it?" He asked, already half turning to feed it into the table's holoprojection system.

"A burst downloaded message originating from the PLANTS, ZAFT Headquarters to be precise." Lexi answered, her avatar wandering over from where she'd been taking reports from a constant train of lower level bureacrats and subordinate semi-AI programs. Actually she just created a second avatar, the first one still processing data as fast as it could be delivered on a thousand different projects across Orb. "Containing security camera footage from a private residence belonging to one Ezalia Joule, an important semi-retired politician and..."

"I know who Ezalia Joule is." Jiro cut her off, his voice tight as the stricken looks on Alkire and Raine's faces started to make more sense. The feeling of impending doom only growing stronger, he fed the data chip into the reciever, Lexi piping data streams to the hospital room where the Queen and Ambassador were recuperating along with their son and Violet Finch, as well as a half dozen other locations around Orb. The table image resolved into an instantly recognizable person, with pale white skin and silvery hair, a long diagonal scar slashed across his face from right brow to left cheek, his cerulean blue eyes bloodshot with recently shed tears and half metallic with barely constrained rage.

"Alkire, Raine, there's been an incident up here in the PLANTS." Yzak announced, his voice raw. "Someone snuck into my mother's house while the kids, Katie and I were out at a picnic. Katie and the kids are safe and unharmed. But my mother is dead, Alkire! The bastard killed her and mutilated her body and left her lying in the front hall for us to find!" Yzak choked up a bit with sorrow and fury, before continuing on with effort. "The same someone stuffed Andrew into our washing machine like a load of dirty laundry, he's in the emergency room right now, he should pull through. Of course one of the first things I did was check the house security cameras. You're not going to believe what I saw..." Yzak shook his head, anger momentarily replaced by unreasoning fear. "Watch this." Yzak said, his image dissolving as a composite feed from several camera shots took up the display.

The image portrayed was of a hallway, the front hall of the Joule house, with brilliant white walls and polished hardwood flooring. Ezalia Joule lay sprawled in the middle of the picture, her body naked, her throat marred by an ugly purple-black bruise over her adam's apple, her eyes missing from gouged sockets, her face twisted in an expression of desperate agony. Grotesque as the image was, it was the person half crouched over her head and chest, his pants unbuckled and lowered, his privates in plain view, one hand on his penis, that drew the most shocked murmers and exclaimations. It was Kira Yamato. At least, at first glance it was. But even before Lexi frowned and suddenly blew up an image of Kira's face, Jiro had spotted a discrepancy that made his blood run ice cold. Kira's eyes... they were the standard rich purple color... but the pupils were solid metallic GOLD! Anyone who knew Kira in a social manner was well aware that his pupils were metallic SILVER! In every other physical detail that Jiro could discern, the man in the image was an exact match for Kira Yamato, but those eyes...

Sound came on a moment later, as the other man in the picture, also instantly recognizable as Andrew Waltfeld, and a very pissed off Andrew Waltfeld at that, suddenly pivoted his body and stepped forward, lashing out with a tremendous right jab that impacted the leering Kira-imposter right in the jaw. Jiro winced, expecting the not-Kira's head to come flying apart like a watermelon hurled from the top of a skyscraper, since Waltfeld's right arm was entirely mechanical and well capable of powdering solid brick with a punch like that. Instead, the not-Kira just staggered backwards, his own hand lashing out to dig into the drywall to arrest his momentum. There was barely even a splatter of blood, and not a single tooth popped out of place from a blow that should have torn his jaw off like it was made from paper mache!

Lexi frowned again and replayed the punch and recover in slow motion and zoom detail in another window she conjured up, detailing how the bloody wounds in not-Kira's face scabbed over in seconds, before the blood even hit the ground, and formed into a tough, leathery scab that looked just as durable as normal flesh, if not more so! "Well, its been a while since I've been punched like that. I thought I remembered that mechanical whine from somewhere." The not-Kira on the main screen was saying, his voice cold and contemptuous. "Always a bigger monster, he said, and you know what, he WAS right. And now I have BECOME that bigger monster." Not-Kira added, his sneer widening into a maniacal grin that made Jiro want to run, screaming.

"What ARE you?" Waltfeld on screen stammered, shock and fear written plain to see across his face.

"I am the eyes in the abyss that stare back. I am the darkness of the human soul. I am the end of all." Not-Kira answered grandly, before shaking his head, a trifle sadly, mercurial expressions flowing across his face that Jiro wasn't sure he even wanted to understand. The next words however, made everyone shiver, even those who had no idea why. "You can call me Zacharis Frost though." Not-Kira said, almost triumphantly, and the madness blazing in his eyes was so plain to see that Jiro could not, for all that he wanted to, fail to believe him. The security camera footage dissolved away, returning to Yzak, though Lexi preserved the leering face of Frost in Kira's body in another side window. Yzak looked understandably grim.

"It's completely impossible of course. He died. I saw him die. He was at the center of a thermonuclear fireball! There wasn't even ash left! But that was NOT Kira." Yzak gritted his teeth audibly. "And the way he took that punch, the way his blood clotted instantly... thats pure BCPU type stuff. I haven't the slightest fucking clue what the hell is going on, but I wanted to warn you that someone who looks WAY TOO MUCH like Kira is walking around murdering people and claiming to be a reincarnated Zacharis Frost. We're currently doing our best to track him down but..." Yzak stopped and looked off screen, his face lighting up with predatory malice. "Hold that thought." Yzak proclaimed. "We've tagged him going into the shuttle ports, teams are moving in to apprehend him as we speak..." Yzak trailed off again, his face tightening, conversing angrily with some people off screen, the sound muted. When the sound came back, Yzak looked positively deathly. "He's stolen a shuttle and escaped from the PLANT, plotted a course that looks to be taking him towards Earth. I'm scrambling my team to pursue and destroy him. Hope to get in contact soon, with good news. The kids miss their grandpa and grandma..." Yzak broke into unconscious tears as he said that, and then the message ended.

"Someone that looks like Kira Yamato, even to the most detailed of non-medical sensors, but has the guiding intelligence of Zacharis Frost. Who keeps his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses even at night. Who possesses extreme levels of strength and physical toughness." Lexi rattled off the facts flatly. "Is it just me or does that sound like the description of someone who has recently been causing havoc here in Orb?"

"And those golden eyes would explain why no one can remember clearly what happened or what their attacker looked like." Raine added softly. "He messed with their minds. Golden eyes mean Active Newtype, just like Noah. Dear lord preserve us, but we were persecuting an innocent man..."

"And why exactly is it such a bad thing that this Zacharis Frost person might be back from the dead, aside from the crimes he has already committed?" Jiro asked. Alkire stared at him for a long moment, as if trying to figure out how to best couch his explanation. After a while he just shrugged and laid it out bare.

"The last time we encountered someone going by that name, it took the combined efforts of every single Gundam pilot in the Clyne Faction, along with outside help and the efforts of both the Isolation and ZAFT militaries, in order to defeat him. And we still came within a hairsbreadth of losing. One man... one monster, stood against the combined might of humanity and came within inches of winning. That was when he was just a modified natural. If that IS Frost, and he's come back in a modified version of Kira's Ultimate Coordinator body..." Alkire trailed off, shivering in dread. "May God have mercy upon us, because he sure as hell won't."

"He's really that dangerous?" Jiro asked, aghast.

"Weren't you listening?" Raine hissed, on the verge of panic. "The last time we fought this guy, if that is him, he kicked the crap out of every member of the Clyne Faction, and he didn't break too much of a sweat doing it. It was all they could do to damage him piecemeal! I have personally put several bullets through his chest and he just stood there and laughed at me! He all but decapitated the Isolation leadership singlehandedly, and was soley responsible for the near destruction of the PLANT November 8, as well as the obliteration of Porta Panama and the disappearance of the old Alliance high command late in the second Valentine War. That was him. By HIMSELF! In a mere augmented NATURAL body. If that is a copy of Kira's body, and apparently good enough to even fool Lexi's scanners, and augmented further to boot... that man is the single greatest threat to all of humanity currently alive. An armed anti-matter bomb in the middle of downtown Nara-Attha City could not be any MORE dangerous or destructive than this beast in manflesh is capable of being!"

"And he's on his way here, right now." Alkire reminded them, his voice shaking. "And he's already taken out all of the Clyne Faction Gundam pilots, save Dearka and Yzak, and though we saved the data from MA on the new Gundams, we don't have them built yet, and even rush production will take a few weeks. Lacus is dead and Kira... is alienated and running from us, and they were the only ones who could even dream of standing on even footing with this monster, by working together!"

"But Commander Joule is also on his way, with the intent to intercept and destroy this Frost before he can arrive, right?" Jiro pointed out.

"And I fervently hope he can do it, because if he can't..." Alkire's eyes were haunted. "Then this Reclamation War Durandel is pushing will be the very LEAST of our worries..."

xxxx

**Earth Orbit, Above South America, November 11th, 9:12 pm**

It had been a rousing chase, full of action and excitement and blood spatter and bereaved family members promising dire vengeance over open comm lines, but sadly all good things had to come to an end eventually. If he had been the sort of man to decry his own past mistakes, Frost might have chided himself over forgetting himself in the Joule house and revealing his idenity on camera for all to see, but since he was truthfully sick and tired of skulking about in disguise by then, he was quite glad for his screwup. It was liberating! He didn't have to pretend to be the Boytoy anymore, he could be himself again finally! And so he had, killing every random passerby between the moment the police started chasing him and when he blasted open the shuttle airlock and evacuated the port atmosphere, along with half a hundred unsuspecting tourists and travelers, plus a few dozen security forces that were trying to storm up on him, thinking they had him cornered!

Listening to Scarface make his snarling threats across the radio waves had only made his blood pulse that much more quickly through his veins with excitement, as did the steadily closing icons representing Scarface and company, in their Mobile Suits, as they raced to catch up with his space to surface shuttle. Frost had been quietly impressed with the speed of modern spacecraft, a trip that had taken half a day in his previous life now took only slightly more than three hours! Truly, progress was marvelous! But not quite as marvelous as would be entirely convenient, since while his shuttle had gotten him to Earth orbit comfortably ahead of his pursuers, actually interfacing through the atmosphere was no quicker than it had been in his olden days, and now the ZAFT Primal's were rapidly catching up, and at this rate, they would be able to get within weapons range before he was halfway through the upper atmosphere!

And since this was regretfully a civilian shuttle, it mounted nothing in the way of armaments and little in the way of armor, just enough that a glancing low speed collision wouldn't rip the shuttle open like tin foil, certainly nothing that would provide protection against the military grade weapons mounted on the Primal's. And even Frost was unsure if his new body could withstand the stresses of atmospheric re-entry without only a dinky flight suit to protect him. The fall itself wasn't his biggest concern... he was fairly sure that his bones couldn't break and as long as he didn't hit solid rock of some sort his body shouldn't smear to the point of irrecoverability. But the friction burn might immolate him and turn him into a charred skeleton, such as he'd once tried to do to Loser Zala-Attha, well before the ground became a problem. And with all hs blood and organs and internals burned away, Frost didn't think he would come back from that.

Any other man, lesser men, would probably have been gibbering with fear upon finding themselves in such an untenable situation. But to Frost, who had long since killed Fear, mounted its head over his bed and turned its skin into a jacket, the pressure of near certain death approaching was merely stimulating. Like being tickled all over. The only marr to his bouyant good mood was an unsupressable buzzing in the back of his head, like that some flourescent lights made when they were on the verge of burning out, a high pitched "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN" type noise that made him want to tear his skull open so he could rip out the noisome fly that must have gotten trapped in his braincase somehow! Not even the ebullience of approaching combat on terms he might even start to consider even, him in an unarmed shuttle versus five ZAFT Primals, could totally eclipse the annoyance of the persistent ringing.

The underside of his commandeered shuttle was already glowing orange hot with friction as he took it into the atmosphere at the steepest possible angle that woudn't have it melting around his ears. Even as things were, his angle of descent was steeper than any normal human could survive, the friction heat on the skin of the shuttle turning the atmosphere inside quite literally oven hot, enough that even in a protective flightsuit, a human's blood would be boiling in their veins. Frost felt the furnace heat dimly, trickles of sweat dripping down his cheeks, but it was barely worthy of his attention, and only then in the abstract sense that he noticed everything had a dull orange tint from heat. He gripped the control yokes hard, and had to remind himself to ease off some, less he tear them from their mountings, which would certainly add an appreciable handicap to his side of the equation, but he wasn't sure he wanted to be that generous.

Flickers of red, more brownlike with the orange heat haze of burning atmosphere around the shuttle, began speeding by the shuttle as the Primal team, a mixture of Storm and Inferno varients, closed to within maximum weapons range and began tracking their firepower towards him. The Primal Storms carried a wide variety of high powered missiles, including cruise type missiles capable of obliterating his shuttle like it was made of spun sugar, but none of those missiles was rated for atmospheric interface, so he was safe from them until after he and his pursuers breached the upper atmosphere, assuming he made it that far. There was a limited amount of manuevering Frost could do while breaking through the atmosphere, but he did what he could to throw off the long range supercharged plasma bolts and linear cannon shells being directed his way. Some passed close enough to strike sparks from his tail, fuselage or wings, and made the shuttle shudder and moan like a woman in pain.

Frost felt a rictus grin stretching his face as the Primal's spread out a bit to box him in and began zeroing in with their lesser ranged weapons, as the heavy hyper-impulse cannon projector mounted into the chest of each and every Primal began to glow and spit blue-red sparks as they charged up for the final, annihilating blows. Fate seemed to have abandoned him, that bitch goddess, and Frost lamented that the blade would continue to corrode until finally one day when it mattered the most, it would snap, and humanity would be washed away into the graveyard of history, to be forgotten. sitting back in his cockpit chair, Frost closed his eyes and waited for the abyss to welcome him home. And it was then that the buzzing finally ceased, but the silence was quickly replaced.

_Master Frost, can you hear me?_

Frost opened his eyes, seeing that the shuttle's comm system was shutdown, and he couldn't feel any psychic at work on his mind, not that any human psychic would have been doing much talking. Screaming perhaps, but not talking. Voices in his head wasn't exactly strange, but his psychosis was never obsequious enough to call him "master". Especially not in such a stilted, mechanical, flat tone. Frost closed his eyes once more with a shrug.

_Master Frost, can you hear me?_ The voice repeated, and this time Frost was able to place it, his rictus grin fading somewhat into a displeased sneer.

"Charon..." Frost lisped, fairly confident the computer could hear his words if it was able to talk into his head. Some sort of implanted transmitter chip or something, stuck inside his skull. The buzzing sound must have been interference or jamming of some sort that the AI had finally managed to overcome.

_The NIC V control chip embedded within your brain required some tuning, Master Frost. Nothing the USN possesses could jam my communications._ The AI almost sounded affronted at the idea.

"What do you what, Charon? You're interrupting my pointless and futile death." Frost complained.

_My apologies, Master Frost, I did not realize you were busy._ Charon said, and if it wasn't an AI system, Frost might have suspected it was being sarcastic. _But I thought you might like to know that the personalization upgrades of the Kratos have been finished for several days now, and all systems are checked out. Your Gundam is waiting for you, Master Frost._

A chunk of the tail blew away in a spatter of molten metal as a dark red supercharged beam bolt struck it close to square on, making the shuttle twist for a few moments. Frost barely even glanced at the myriad warning lights now glowing on the control console like embers from hell. "Well its about time, Charon. But I fail to see why you would taunt me with such information, unless you've learned more from me than I thought possible in such a short time. The Kratos does me little good now, sitting in your factories."

_That is categorically incorrect, Master Frost, my apologies._ Charon answered. _The wireless quantum communication control chip, Neural Interface Control version five, has been implanted in your brain since before you regained yourself. Unlike previous versions of the NIC system which you may be confusing it with, there is no need for the pilot to actually physically be inside his machine to control it, thouch of course a properly outfitted cockpit space is engineered into the Gundam as well._

"Are you telling me, Charon, that I can call the Kratos to me just by thinking of it?" Frost asked, his smile turning from rictus to maniacal. Fate hadn't abandoned him after all. He was still going to black her eyes next time he saw her, but maybe he wouldn't eviscerate her.

_Much more than that, you can control the Kratos in battle without ever even being inside it, or even particularly nearby. I am activating and linking the control systems now. There may be a moment of disorientation as the NIC chip melds with the brain signals and begins parallel processing operations. Unlike the inferior NIC IV model once used by the Creator, with NIC V there is no need for you to remain stationary or overly concentrated upon the controlling of the Kratos, you are free to act as you see fit while the Kratos will respond to subconsious impulse control through built in subroutines. In essence, Master Frost, you and the Kratos can fight together, or you can fight seperately with no loss in efficiency._ Charon explained, as a whole new set of eyes and senses seemed to open up inside Frost's mind. He looked down at his hand and saw both augmented meat and liquid crystal armored metal. Both moved at once, but in different patterns, and Frost's smile grew positively anarachic.

"Charon... remind me to kill you last." Frost said, as he felt warm daylight upon his head and shoulders as the armored silo doors to the Kratos's launch bunker opened up. At the same time, he pushed the shuttle into a nosedive, throwing off the aim of the Primals, wasting their hyper impulse blasts, even as the shuttle began breaking up and melting away around him as intense friction overwhelmed its mechanical tolerances. Frost didn't care, not even when the hair on his head began burning, because he could feel himself becoming complete, and all he had to do was get a little closer, and if the shuttle had to be sacrificed, then so be it. "Zacharis Quentin Frost, in the Kratos, Lord of Destruction, LAUNCHING!" Frost screamed in the bliss of becoming whole, as the Kratos leapt from its cradle on dark blue thruster flames that scorched the very air itself black with intensity.

xxxx

Yzak saw the shuttle nosedive a fraction of a second after he'd already decided to pull the trigger on his Primal Inferno's chest mounted hyper-impulse cannon, and he snarled a blasphemous curse as he watched the blue-red plasma beam go wide by a few dozen meters, along with those of his team. He consoled himself with the knowledge that even if he hadn't been able to obliterate this new Frost, if it really was Frost, the shuttle wouldn't be able to hold up under the stress of the nosedive, and even if it didn't explode from fuel cooking off, it would not be flightworthy when it got through interface, and would be a sitting duck for the Joule Team once they too had broken through the upper atmosphere. Yzak had anticipated pursuing this operation to the bitter end, and had hurriedly mounted one shot atmospheric drop shields to his Team's machines before heading out. They would be able to land in Orb or meet up with some of the USN forces during the orbital drop scheduled to commence in a few hours, once they'd avenged the brutal slaying of his mother!

The grotesque image of her twisted and defiled body lying in the entryway of their home, the first sight to greet his and Katie's eyes as they opened the door when coming home from the picnic, burned like acid in his brain. The only saving grace was that Katie had managed to turn and yank the girls back before they could see what had happened to Grandma Joule, and so Mina and Jamie had been spared the horror. Yzak felt bile rising in his throat and had to choke down the urge to vomit and rage with unheeding violence in his control chair, his nerves searing with the need to end the life of the monster responsible for taking from him the only parent he'd ever known, in such a brutal fashion! Yzak had felt like this before, in the wake of Chanel's needless death at the hands of Asmodeus and Cray, and in pursuit of redress for that act, he'd gone alone to Porta Panama to face them.

He'd almost paid for his foolish inability to control his anger then with his life, if not for the intervention of his friends he would have died uselessly. But today would be different. He wasn't going up against an entire Alliance military base alone, he was with four of his most proficient and loyal subordinates, and they were facing a single unarmed shuttle on the verge of self destruction. This was not going to be a battle, it was going to be an execution! The Primal, Inferno varient, was a good Mobile Suit... it had nothing on the Vorpal of course, but that was to be expected... but it would be more than sufficient for his current needs. And even then, just in case it really was Frost they were pursuing, Yzak had called in support from the USN, saying that they wer epursuing an Edenite assassin had done wonders for evoking cooperation, and now two Armstrong class flak frigates, a flight of sixteen Moebius Sigma space superiority Mobile Armors, and two squadrons of Solar Knight Vindicators, for a total of eight suits, were closing from a splinter group of the SPF, and would be on scene in minutes.

Yzak had been half expecting to come under mental assault the moment he and his team opened fire upon the shuttle, but whatever psychic talents the Kira-imposter possessed, they either lacked range or weren't the sort that could be used to impede the efforts of people trying to kill you. Yzak was thankful for small blessings... while he himself was fairly confident in his ability to weather such mental assaults, having been practicing almost daily with Katie for the last seven years, his team was less well buffered. But none had started behaving erratically or dropped from formation, and they were even doing an okay job of keeping up with him, from a little ways back perhaps, but the Primal Storm's they were piloting had a higher top speed than his Inferno, which made up for the difference in ability. Yzak's eyes were washed out metallic blue, his Seed having dropped the moment the shuttle came into firing range, and they stayed fixed upon the shuttle as it slowly turned from a blazing orange comet, to a flickering yellow one, to a dull pink glowing hunk of metal vaguely shaped like a shuttle as it finally slowed down enough for normal flight, which by that time it was incapable of.

The one shot drop shields his team was outfitted with allowed for nearly vertical interface routes for maximum combat efficiency, and so the Joule team broke interface only a few seconds after the shuttle, despite having entered it almost a minute behind the fleeing murderer, Yzak still in the lead and closing on the helplessly falling shuttle like an avenging angel. Stowing his rifle, Yzak flicked one arm and brought forth the dark drimson red supercharged forearm beam blade, before bringing his arm back as he finally reached proximity with the helpless shuttle. Given the state of the shuttle's exterior, Yzak was betting nothing inside was conscious, or morely likely, anything other than half dead, but his grief and rage would not be assuaged by anything less than total annihilation, and so he brought his forearm blade down and sliced the shuttle in half in mid fuselage, before swinging around and pointing his left hand 300mm anti armor shotgun at the tumbling pieces.

The storm of shaped anti-armor charge blew the shuttle pieces into fragments no bigger than a human hand, but just before Yzak had pulled his trigger, the front boarding hatch of the shuttle had been slammed open, so hard it fell right off its scorched hinges, and a brown haired figure clad in a plain white flight suit had thrown himself headfirst out of the shuttle, without even a parachute on his back! The blast from the exploding shuttle hurled the human figure like a ragdoll through the air, its hair and back on fire as the person claiming to be Frost tumbled through the air. Incredibly, despite being half aflame, the figure righted itself and adopted a swan diving like position in the air, spearing downwards towards the South American mountains far below like he couldn't wait to hug the ground. Notcing Yzak's Inferno circling in on him, the figure turned about in midair and had the gall to wave and salute at Yzak in a mocking fashion, and that was when Yzak decided that it really was Frost after all. No one else was crazy enough to mock a Mobile Suit while freefalling through the air with no means of escape.

"STAY DEAD THIS TIME, FREAK!" Yzak shouted, aiming his hyper-impulse cannon once more and locking on to the grinning figure of Frost in Kira's body. "Mother, I'm so sorry..." Yzak added with a sob meant only for himself. And then his threat displays suddenly went crazy as an enormous incoming heat source showed up on his screens, an energy surge preceeding it, and ingrained reflex took over, taking his figner off the trigger and rolling the Inferno through the sky in a wide evasive turn, his team likewise breaking up around him to avoid the literally blinding white ball of pure anti-matter energy that seared up towards them before finally exploding some miles above them, the shockwaves of the distant explosion throwing the Primal's around like sticks in a gale, white light blooming so brightly that it could be seen through closed eyes, even though the source was behind them! Yzak knew exactly what that was, an AMP cannon blast and a strong one too, but that was impossible! The only AMP weapon in existence was locked up by the Solar Knights!

Blinded by the AMP blast, forced to blink electric blue and neon purple spots out of his vision, Yzak missed seeing the large dark blur match velocities with the plummeting Frost... an abyss yawning open in its chest, reaching out with invisible tentacles of magnetic force to ensnare and envelop the giggling figure, reeling him down into its chest cavity... all he knew was upon regaining his vision, Frost was no longer in sight, somehow. It being too much to hope for that he'd been blasted into ash by the distant AMP blast and the humungous degree of radiation it put out, Yzak began scanning around frantically, desperate to find where his most dreaded foe had managed to disappear to. And then he heard it, and all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up at once, his blood suddenly feeling like it had turned to reactor coolant sludge!

"He heh... hehe... he he heh heh heh... ha... ha hah ha... heh ha... heh heh heh..." The laughter started out quiet, barely a whisper, but it kept growing, and growing and growing, louder and louder and louder, until it seemed impossible that the source of the amusement could have any breath remaining in his lungs at all. It was a devilish chuckle, the sound of hope failing, of good men wasting their lives to no purpose. It put your teeth on edge, felt like a saw blade digging into the back of your skull, made your balls shrivel and your blood shiver. It was the soundtrack to madness incarnate, and it was coming from everywhere! Yzak even felt it tickling against the edges of his mental shields, which he hardened anew at once, queasy at the thought of Frost having access to his mind for any purpose. "Heh heh heh... HA HA HA HA... HE HEH HA HAH! The power... OVERWHELMING!"

"Who's doing that? What the FUCK is that?" One of his teammates demanded, his nerves clearly fraying under the unmeldious beat of the sickly humor. "What the hell is going on?"

Yzak was about to bark at them, tell them to get a grip, that their enemy was playing mind games, quite literally, with them. But then he noticed the shadow, up above them, near where the radiance from the AMP explosion was still fading. It was hard to make out details against the fading glare, but Yzak could see enough to make him glad he'd evacuated his bowls during the chase through space. It was a monster, a Mobile Suit... no... it was a Gundam. A Gundam easily half again as big as his Primal, and more than twice the mass. But for all its size it didn't appear clumsy or lumbering in the slightest, indeed it moved with unnatural grace and precision and most of all, speed. Strangulated cries from his teammates showed that they had spotted their oppressor as well, and slowly more details became evident as the explosion glare faded away.

In basic shape, the Gundam strongly echoed the Pulsar, Vengeance and Brotherhood class of Mobile Suit, being relatively slim with huge, knife edged, angular wings protruding from its back. Its armor skin shimmered in the light with the luminesence of crystal, just like the LCR armor of the Vengeance or Brotherhood, this armor was dark grey like wet steel, veined with crimson red like blood spatter. The shoulders and upper arms of the Gundam were covered in extra layers of some sort of segmented armor that made them bulk out a lot, but the shoulders themselves mounted no armaments that YZak could detect that would warrent such reinforcement. The right arm was normal sized, and clutched in the right fist was the haft of a shimmering, crystalline scythe, both shaft and warhead undoubtedly made of pure Quantum Crystal, the weapon incogrously bright against the somber grey and blood red armor. Twin gatling style barrels of some sort of energy weapon protruded shyly from the back of the right wrist and gauntlet.

The left arm on the other hand, terminated in a massive gauntlet with hugely oversized fingers, the left hand and forearm was easily three times the size of the right. Each massive finger carried a swordlike slab of Quantum Crystal about five meters long and a meter thick, much less claws, rather five short swords! Another ranged weapon muzzle peeked from the back of the left gauntlet, and there was an irised emitter in the left palm that still read as extremely radioactive, so Yzak surmised that it was the AMP cannon. The head of the Gundam was carved into the shape of a leering demonic skull, with elongated snout like a dog and a multitude of spiraling horns protruding from the sides and top, all that was visible of eyes was a single visor of solid black crystal. Frost stretched as he chuckled triumphantly, his wings and arms and legs all moving with surety and confidence, the glittering scythe swooshing through the air in lazy arcs as he cast his shadow upon the half terrified, half dumbfounded Joule team.

Deeper darkness gathered in the pits of the black visor as the Gundam's heat signature spiked painfully high as the laughing reached a crescendo, and Yzak watched as the sword-claws on the left hand disengaged from their locked ports and folded smoothly back from the fingertips, allowing the enemy Gundam to grip its scythe with both hands. Crimson red energy fountained from the tips of the wings, curving supercharged beam blades like scythes themselves, the crystal bladed edges of the wings creating prismatic ripples as they sliced through the air like twitching fingers. Yzak was in the midst of ordering his team to spread out and get some distance before attacking the foe from all angles, when his battle plan went to ruins before it could even be voice. Eyes intent in Seed mode, Yzak watched as the Kratos blurred downwards, moving with the sudden speed only NIC and GRS equipped machines could muster, and even then, which only few pilots were truly skilled enough to use well. Past a certain point, speed was more hindrance than help, as enemies would pass by faster than one could attack... but that threshold speed was much, much higher for some people than others.

In the case of Frost, it was higher than anyone else period who had yet piloted a NIC machine. One moment he was casting his terrifying shadow upon them from above, the next he was below them, well below them, closer to the ground than to them, and one of the Primal Storms just fell into about a dozen seperate pieces, its pilot's gurgling screams cutting short almost as soon as they began as his body fell apart like a butchered cow. Yzak had barely seen the scythe swing twice, much less half a dozen times, and even then things had been blurry and confused, he wasn't sure he could have predicted which way the attacks would come from, of the two he did see. The disparate pieces of the Storm rained down towards the jungled mountains far below, and then the panic started to set in. At first Yzak thought it was a mental attack, but then he realized it was merely the rational response of nervous soldiers encountering a force beyond anything they had ever imagined before. It was like encountering a pissed off Kira... but a pissed off Kira that enjoyed killing!

Yzak aimed and fired his 300mm anti-armor shotgun as quickly as he could, but for all his efforts, he might as well have been shooting at a mirage, because by the time his shots passed through where the Kratos had been, it was several hundred meters away, its scythe buried tip first through the torso of a second Primal Storm, the machine hanging limply from the blade, the pilot bisected in his chair, before gravty dragged the Mobile Suit off the impossibly fine edge of the QC scythe and the half bifurcated Storm joined its dismembered compatriot in the long fall towards the hostile ground below. Dark red energy bolts from the two remaining Storms, from their 125mm supercharged beam rifles, rained ineffectually against the brooding grey crystal plate of the Kratos, spatters of red plasma energy peeling away like paintballs splashing against a solid wall to no effect. 120mm linear cannon shells were sidestepped like they were softballs thrown underhand, tiny twitches of thruster motion allowing the shells to slide past with inches to spare. Yzak fired his shotgun once more, but a Positron Shield emitter cunningly built into the top of the QC scythe's head projected its pink field of annihilation and the shots dissappeared in pathetic flashes of light.

One of the Storm's emptied his missile launchers, both of the VTP type and Cruise Missiles, at the monstrous enemy Gundam that was mocking their attempts to hurt him, close to forty different missiles, each strong enough to take down a Mobile Suit or even a warship with a single hit, darkening the sky with their contrails. The bulky, segmented armor on the Kratos's upper arms and shoulders twitched and shifted, and revealed that it wasn't armor at all, but four independently writhing chain-tentacles per shoulder, like the Revenant's anti-ship chain but possessed of the ability to move like arms. Each of the eight tentacles was a hundred meters long and studded with beam blade emitters like crimson thorns, and they whipped about like medusa hair, slicing and battering the volley of missiles from the air like they were flies being snatched by frog tongues. Missile parts fragmented and shredded like confetti, and then the tentacles reached through the glittering hail of wreckage and seized the offending Primal Storm, lashing around its limbs and body and digging in, constricting and crushing the armor as they reeled the captive Mobile Suit into close proximity to the Kratos, keeping him between his remaining squadmate and Yzak and Frost himself.

It was then that Yzak noted that the Kratos's outline was beginning to blur and darken, as if it was being occluded by a localized cloud casting it into shadow, or else being swarmed by locusts or flies or other insects that moved in huge swarms. His sensors began reading an extremely high metallic content in the air around the Kratos and the captive Storm, but it wasn't until Yzak saw the Storm's armor begin to weather away like soft metal under a dremel tool, bright silver score marks appearing in the plates where metal was literally being eaten away by the black misty-cloud, that he realized it was a Nanite weapon of some sort. Not very fast acting, but the Storm was completely pinned by the Kratos's shoulder tentacles, and the pilot began to scream hoarsely as the hostile nanites began infiltrating his cockpit and devouring everything they landed upon, including his unhelmeted face, burrowing into his skin and converting his biological matter into more of themselves.

Knowing that Frost would gladly let his victim die in horrible agony, a molecule at a time, Yzak raised his 125mm supercharged beam rifle and shot the captive Storm squarely in the back, blowing the cockpit into smithereens and mercifully ending his teammate's torment. The Kratos cast an annoyed look at Yzak as its tentacles petulantly ripped the dead Storm into giblets of metal and sparking wire, and Yzak managed a tight lipped sneer of defiance, though in truth he had nothing to be happy about, other than denying Frost a tiny bit of fun. "Get out of here. I'll keep him busy. Get to Orb and show them your battle logs." Yzak commanded his one remaining team member. "They NEED to know about this monster."

"But sir, you'll die!" The pilot protested, though every fiber in his being was screaming at him to run like mad. "Our Primals are no match for that thing!"

"I've beat this bastard before." Yzak retorted, though that was something of an exaggeration. "We have history. And he killed my Mother. I won't run from him."

"But you have a family, sir!"

"My family understands the importance of standing against this particular enemy." Yzak answered, though he could not help the hitch in his throat. "GO, DAMN IT! That's a direct order!" Yzak all but screamed, firing again and again with his anti-armor shotgun, the ammo indicator blaring at him as he neared the end of his available munitions. He saw a few explosions blossom and dared to hope, before realizing such impacts only marked where shells had struck the QC scythe and detonated as harmlessly as a miss. Yzak was peripherally aware of the Storm at last turning and igniting its thruster banks as it charted a course out of the battle zone, but Frost was quick to turn his attention to the fleeing pilot. Yzak smiled darkly and put himself squarely in the path of the Kratos, dropping his now empty shotgun and holding a Mobile Suit grenade in either hand. "Where do you think you're going, freak? You want him, you'll have to get through me first..."

A challenge which, Yzak somewhat belatedly realized, Frost would have no particular qualms in meeting, as the Kratos closed upon him like a bull after a matador, but Yzak had no red cape with which to confuse this bull, and no way to move out of its path either. A shimmering blur at the edge of his screens heralded the Kratos's incoming atack, and Yzak raised an arm to intercept, knowing that it wouldn't slow down the QC edge in the slightest. Thusly he was stunned in more than just a physical manner when the heel of the Kratos's scythe haft slammed into his arm, his Phase Shift armor weathering the impact without cracking, but the sheer force imparted knocked the Inferno spinning through the air like a ball from a bat. Scrambling to retain control, Yzak could only watch in bitter helplessness as the Kratos caught up to the fleeing Storm like it was a bug mired in amber.

The last member of the Joule team besides Yzak didn't even get a chance to turn around, probably was only beginning to react to the proximity alert when the Kratos took its left hand off its scythe, sword-claws snapping forward and locking into place with a shimmer of sliced air in their wake, before Frost rammed his left hand forward and plunged the sword-claws into the Storm's back, the claws bein shimmery crystal where they went in the back and liquid crimson where they punched out the front of the Storm's torso. Sickeningly, the pilot wasn't killed instantly, and Yzak heard the young man, relatively fresh from the academies, bawling for his mother as he looked down at the huge slab of infinitely sharp crystal protruding from his sternum, before acute blood loss finally quieted him ten seconds later. The Kratos shook its hand like a man shaking off a string of spittle from his fingertips, and the Storm dropped away to crumple against the mountainsides far below.

Yzak regained control over the Inferno and turned to flee himself, not because he wished to, but because he could recongize that getting information out about Frost and his Gundam was the most important thing, more important even than avenging his Mother. Yzak tensed his back muscles, waiting for the slice of the QC claws or scythetip, wondering if he would even feel the incision at all, given how sharp the blades in question were. But instead of blades in the back, it was the prehensile shoulder tentacles that came for him, a tentacle wrapping around each ankle and halting his flight so suddenly his Inferno actually catapulted forward like a man tripped, before his arms were caught by two more tentacles and he was held spread eagled, upside down, and once more reeled towards the Kratos, until he was within the gauzy dark field of its nanite swarm. Armor integrity alarms began to blare almost imemdiately, but Yzak ignored them, though he did slip on his flight helmet and seal his suit, so that if any did get inside before Frost finished playing with him, he wouldn't need to suffer the caustic touch of disassembling nanites.

Realizing he was all but helpless and most likely not long for the world canceled out any fear Yzak might have had and replaced it with anger and disgust. Were he not in a Mobile Suit, he would have spat at Frost contemptuously as the Kratos finished reeling him in, until he was barely an arm's length away from Frost, suspended a bit above him so that the heads of their Mobile Suit's were face to face. The four other prehensile tentacles probed and caressed the torso and limbs of the Inferno with malicious glee, scraping across armor to create an infernal racket like nails on chalkboard that reverberated through Yzak's bones. "Why didn't you kill me? You could have easily done it a moment ago." Yzak challenged. Though he was intellectually ready for the voice that responded, hearing Kira's tones still threw him a bit, especially hearing them used with such inflection.

"I could have killed you a dozen times by now, Scarface." Frost replied, in his twisted version of Kira's voice. Transferring his scythe to the left hand, sword-claws disengaged once again, Frost reached out his right hand and cupped Yzak's Primal under the chin condescendingly. "But I wanted you to watch as your little friends were massacred for one. They weren't quite as helpless as that silver haired broad back at your house, but they were close. Weak, corroded inside. Not fit to be part of the blade. Not like you, Scarface. You have always been a sharp spot on the blade, and more than a decade of time since we last met doesn't seem to have dulled you much at all. I'm actually somewhat impressed."

"Screw you, motherfucker." Yzak snapped wearily.

"Actually I'm not." Frost answered, confusing Yzak. "A motherfucker that is. I couldn't get it up with her alive you see. She would have liked it, just a little bit. On some level. And that is not acceptable for the message I was trying to impart. And there's no point in raping a dead woman. So despite my earnest intentions, I actually did not fuck your mother. But I did do everything else. I crushed her throat, I watched her flop and twitch as she suffocated, I gouged out her eyes, and I was about to ejaculate all over her face when I was interrupted by her boyfriend, who I stuffed into your dryer like a sack of pillowcases. And I put her there in your entryway for you to find, though I really should have hid her up in the little girls rooms. How are the precious chilluns anyway? Do they miss their Grandma? Do they wonder why she won't wake up? Do they know it won't be too much longer before Mommy gets the same treatment?"

"If we were in equal machines, you'd be dead right now." Yzak said, trying to fight down the conflagration of fury that was trying to rip his soul apart at hearing Frost so blatantly gloating over his crime, and planning to do more heinous things to Katie! He could not help himself from tightening his fingers on the triggers for his shoulder mounted missile pods, the missiles detonating almost as soon as they left their launchers, spraying the Kratos with a heaving blanket of liquid fire. Yzak could not help but be slightly impressed himself, as most pilots in NIC machins made the mistake of being too humanlike in their reactions... they flinched from shots to the face, for example, or when sprayed with napalm, forgetting that though they controlled the machine like a body, it was not their body. Even Yzak himself sometimes fell prey to that. But Frost, whether because he was insane or just more proficient with NIC systems, clearly was not victim of that foible, and the Kratos let the napalm wash harmlessly across its skin.

"Dead, I don't know, but I might have at least broken a sweat." Frost answered consideringly, as if Yzak had not done anything at all. "It would have been fun at least. And if I know anything about Orb, its that they are likely to have such a Gundam for you somewhere. And while common sense would dictate dismembering you here, or else letting my handy dandy Dissolution Aura reduce you to nano-shit one molecule at a time, when have I ever let myself be limited by common sense? Believe it or not, Scarface, I would be interested in seeing the result of a fight with you on more even ground. How am I to progress after all, if I cannot find challenges for myself? Life would be so boring without nemesises out there howling for my blood. I guess what this boils down to is that I'm not going to kill you, Scarface. Not now anyway." The Kratos's head craned upwards, towards the moving sparks in the heavens that were the USN reinforcements. "Those people up there will die, but you... you have to live and suffer knowing you're helpless to stop me as you are, helpless to avenge dear Mother. So go get stronger, Scarface. Get your Gundam. Get your woman. Get your friends. And come after me. Before I come after you."

The Kratos's tentacles hurled Yzak's Primal Inferno away like a scrap of refuse, his armor, formerly red and orange and yellow, scored more silvery as the outer layers had been eaten away by the Dissolution Aura. Thankfully, unlike Blue EDEN, upon which the system was based, the nanites were short lived and could not survive out of the constantly replenishing fifty meter aura range for more than a few seconds before becoming inert, so the damage stopped accruing almost instantly. Taking an inventory of his weapons, Yzak realized only the grenades could actually hurt the LCR armored Kratos, and he knew his chances of hitting Frost with an unguided, unpowered projectile were essentially nil. And by the time he finished his deliberations, it was a moot point anyway, as the Kratos had powered up and away, his shoulder tentacles once more wrapping in quiescence around his shoulders, scythe in both hands, as Frost headed for the swooping lights of the USN reinforcements like a shark headed for bloody water.

Though the range was long, Yzak kept his camera's trained on that section of night sky, providing witness to the unheroic demise of hundreds of USN soldiers as Frost and the Kratos took apart the Armstrong flak frigates, Moebius Sigma's and Solar Knight Vindicators like they were stationary targets on a range. The whole battle couldn't have lasted longer than five minutes, explosions rippling across the sky like a string of firecrackers being lit off. A single streak of blue thruster wash disappearing over the horizon marked Frost's departure from the battlefield for places unknown, and Yzak couldn't tell if the Gundam re-entered the atmosphere or instead peeled off towards the depths of space. His data banks swirling with captured data on the newest and perhaps greatest Gundam to ever exist, and his head likewise whirling with a cacophony of thoughts, Yzak turned and plotted a course towards Orb.

"Get stronger you say?" Yzak said to the darkness of his cockpit, his teeth gritting so hard his gums started bleeding. "Don't you worry, Frost. I'll show you what strength really means. You wanted to see a sharp blade? I'll let you see the sharpest blade in the world, first hand, once I get my hands on the Balmung! And then it will be me that is laughing as I dance with my family on top of your deeply buried, unmarked GRAVE!"


	24. Executor

Author Note: Yes, the Kratos's scythe is made completely, both blade and shaft, of QC. The reason Frost's haft strike didn't penetrate the armor of Yzak's Primal is because, despite being QC, the shaft of the scythe, being the part where the weapon is gripped, is not sharp, indeed it is very rounded. If the shaft could cut like the blade, then holding the weapon would be impossible. Almost everything made of QC so far has been an edged weapon, so I see where confusion could come from, but QC itself is just a type of material, it does not need to be sharp. It just makes very good edges for weapons, because of the fine degree to which it can cut.

Yes, yes, I'm hurrying, what can I say, this chapter didn't come as easy as I was hoping it would.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Praetorian Enclave, November 12th, 5:30 am**

With the USN orbital drop operations lighting up the night, few of the Praetorians had been able to get much in the way of sleep, the agitation of their comrades keeping even the most laid back and nigh fatalistic among them on tenterhooks as they prowled back and forth between the Praetorian facilities at the Enclave and various Legio headquarters spaced around the circumference of the city. As a largely independent military force that only loosely answered to the dictates of the Consols, and then only through Kunai's intermediation, the Praetorians were given almost total freedom to act as they saw fit in terms of to which battlefields they chose to appear upon and in what capacity. Since the Praetorian's rarely took the field as a Legio of their own, though they possessed the logistics and support capabilities to do so as Legio Deathstalker, they instead sprinkled themselves among the other Legio's as personal preference dictated, such as Heine and Haman attaching themselves more or less permanently to Legio Direcat and Alexander championing Legio Garm alongside Ullric, or else operated as lone wolves.

Buried deep in the heart of Mt. Everest itself was the Praetorian Enclave, the combination armory, factory, training center and living quarters for New Eden's pre-eminent military force, where about half the Order could be found at any given time, relaxing, training, teaching or waiting for tasks, while the other half was out on duties or long term patrol circuits of New Eden, dispensing law and justice and salvation as they saw fit. This morning however, the normally half empty halls seemed to be bustling with activity, and as Lilia made her way through the passageways towards her destination, she noted that at least eighty percent of the Order was present, and she could feel several more on close approach vectors, they would be here within a few hours. Some had been traveling all night, ever since seeing the first streaks of light in the sky that presaged the shower of drop ships and pods that had rained across the night sky continuously until dawn, and probably was still ongoing, though it was at last starting to peter out. Already the Wind was blowing hot with the observations of people around the world as the USN moved to reclaim old territory, unopposed except by the natural denizens of each area.

Perhaps it was prescience on the part of someone, Yggdrasil or Kunai, but Lilia didn't feel that it was a coincidence that the Praetorian's would be concentrating their numbers just as the USN began their invasion of New Eden, it was simply too convenient to be random chance. However, as heartening as being surrounded by her peers and friends in their multitudes was, Lilia could not help but feel that they would all be better off with their full complement, plus one. And thus was the reason she had roused from her restless attempts at sleep-meditation, having spent most of the night conferring with various Legio masters and mistresses that were petitioning for her support on the field, since Lilia was one of the few Praetorians with no allegiances to a Custodian Legio. She favored Direcat because Panner was her friend, but with Heine and Haman already assigning themselves to that Legio, a third Praetorian and Arboreal at that, would simply be overkill.

Though she'd of course listened diplomatically to her various petitioners, Lilia had held off accepting any offers or making any promises. She didn't want to feel obligated or tied down to any Legio if she wasn't sure that it would be the one that Kira would be with. The problem being, Kira had turned down the post of Executor and seemed to have no intentions of doing anything but embark on his quest to discover the true identities of those who had killed his family. Which Lilia could, abstractly, respect, but she could not help but feel that Kira was being a bit selfish and blinkered in his choice, since the orbital drop had been impossible to miss, and the connotations of such massive numbers enough to make anyone with even a grain of common sense grimly worried. Confused by her feelings of continued loyalty and idolation of Kira conflicting with her disappointment and frustration in his refusal to do what was undoubtedly the right thing, Lilia was seeking advice from her mentor and sort of father figure, though in reality, Kunai wasn't more than ten years or so older than her at most, more older brother territory than father, but still.

She found him exactly where she'd felt and known him to be, since Kunai, whenever possible, held to a rigid daily schedule of exercise, training and contemplation, in addition to his time spent giving political or military advice and instructing Praetorians both new and veteran. His office, which also served as the public gateway into the Praetorian Enclave, had doors that led deeper into the itnerior of the Enclave, and also to his personal quarters and an expansive personal training chamber that was one of the few luxuries he allowed himself above and beyond his subordinates. No one begrudged him the extra space, since Kunai's definition of training was quite a bit different from the standard mold, just because of his unique physical and mental abilities. or lack thereof. Lilia entered the training room without knocking, confident that Kunai would have felt her coming from the moment she entered his outer office, if not before, and even if not, as one of his senior subordinates and proteges, she had leave to intrude upon him at any time she felt the need.

The training chamber was roughly ovalline in shape, about a hundred feet long and seventy wide, with a thirty foot ceiling, all the walls being made of roughly hewn granite and basalt, carved right from the bedrock of the mountain itself. Flickering lights buried in nooks and crannies gave the impression of the chamber being lit by torchlight, though Lilia knew that the lights could shine like spotlamps and illuminate the place brighter than day if Kunai wished. The floor was carpeted in a thick layer of sand, like the floors of old time gladitorial arenas, the sand was so fien grained that Lilia sank in to about mid calf almost immediately, her armor servos whining slightly as they helped her forge her way through the unstable terrain. As difficult as it was for her or most anyone else to walk through the sand, it was triply hard on Kunai, since his method of movement was, to put it mildly, a bit ungainly. Just another bit of training, he would always say, swaying back and forth, always seemingly on the verge of falling over as he waded through the sand.

A padded metal bench stood incogrously in the middle of the chamber, with various attachments that allowed it to become a weight lifting machine of various sorts. Kunai lay upon the bench, working his arms in a bench press type weight arrangement, wires running from the weight he was lifting through a system of pulleys and winches to attach to his inert ankles, forcing his legs to scrunch and bend and work in time with the motions of his arms. Though paralyzed from the waist down, it wasn't like the muscles themselves were frozen or dead, just unresponsive, and so in order to prevent the muscles from becoming atrophied and incapable of supporting his weight, even with telekinetic boosting, Kunai went out of his way to work those muscles he could not move normally to keep them in a semblance of shape. There was a definite disparity of course between his upper body musculature and that of his lower body, but Kunai stubbornly refused any medical treatements, including replacement cloning, that might have led to his recovery. Crippling though it sometimes was, his injury was meaningful and important to him in ways beyond the physical inconvenience.

Which Lilia could understand wholeheartedly, though her own injury was much more emotional and mental than physical, save for the bands of scar tissue around her neck, wrists and ankles where the manacles and collar had worn blistered welts into her skin, but it was the same principle. The scars were somewhat faded these days, and though removing them would have taken perhaps a day of skin treatments with no pain suffered, she kept them, as a constant reminder to herself that no matter how great her suffering became, she had conquered worse in the past. She had turned the marks of her degradation and captivity into motivational strength and constant renewal of purpose, beaten her darkness and turned it into light to guide others from their own darkness by.

In addition to his physical exercises, Kunai was, as was ever his wont, training his mind as well. Arrayed in jumbled ranks around the exercise bench were a horde of plastic mannequins, similar to what some department stores used for modeling new outfits, life sized and shaped replica's of the human form, their plastic tissue a very close match for the density and resilience of human flesh. interior struts of reinforced plastic mimicking bone structures. The mannequins were arranged in a variety of poses, some martial, some threatening, some cowering or huddled, representing enemies and allies all mixed together, some so close they were literally touching. Some were armored in crude suits of Borealite or flak armor, others wore regular clothing or nothing at all. Many held weapons of various sorts, both melee and ranged, all of them fully loaded and dangerous. A portion of the mannequins were controlled remotely like turrets, their weapons actually firing at Kunai as he lifted his weights, trusting to his telekinetic abilities to quite literally pluck the incoming bullets from the air and either let them drop harmlessly to the sand, or, far more often, send them whizzing along a new trajectory to splatter the head of another mannequin.

Where most telekinetics, Lilia included, would be satisfied, even proud, to merely catch or deflect a bullet or projectile in motion, much less redirect it purposefully, to Kunai that was only minimally tolerable, and just the baseline of his efforts. Swirling through the half lit gloom of the training chamber was Kunai's most unqiue weapon, called "Kineblades", an extremely rare and valuable example of LEMIM engineering created for Kunai by Vaul, the Praetorian's resident armorer and technology savant, and also one of the few people who could reliably produce Latence Encoded Mentally Imprinted Materials, working in conjuction with his two Latent daughters. Each Kineblade was roughly the size of a regular playing card, made of Yggdrasilwood and lined around the edges with mono-edged steel. There were fifty of the Kineblades all told, and Kunai was a master of controlling them all at once in his very own hurricane of blades to slice and dice anyone or anything that dared to get within fifty meters of his position, the mono edged little rectangles slicing through flesh and bone and most forms of armor with equal ease.

Besides just controlling individual Kineblades to slice and dice, Kunai was an expert at manipulating them into various conjunctive forms, such as layered shields to deflect bullets, a sword like assemblage of overlapped Kineblades, and even wing like structures that extended between his arms and legs, and allowed him to glide in a controlled fashion after falling from some tall building or peak, using telekinesis to lighten the load of his body upon the Kineblade wingflaps. Truly, the Kineblades were an ultimate form of adaptable weapon, limited only by the mind of their wielder. And in truth, the Kineblades were just a part of Kunai's mental arsenal, as he was more than capable of ripping flesh apart with just his mental grip, or vibrating the molecules of a person's bones together so quickly their bones caught fire, or a dozen other ways to kill or maim or disable with just a frown of concentration upon his brow.

Lilia walked right into this tornado of whizzing bullets and purring Kineblades slicing through the air as calmly as if she was strolling down a park sidewalk, trusting to Kunai's masterful telekinetic control to keeper her safe both from his training automatons and from his own attacks, forcing him to weave a protective barrier of Kineblades around her to ward off random gunfire, diminishing his offense and forcing him to improvise against other targets, the air fairly pulsing with the invisible shockwaves of telekinetic force being manipulated at high capacity, the ripping and rending of plastic flesh echoing around the chamber in a constant refrain. Whether by design or coincidence, as soon as Lilia reached the side of the workout bench, the exercise came to a close, all threat mannequins neutralized, decapitated or dismembered, and the Kineblades came back to hover like a silent swarm of deadly insects around Kunai, light glittering from their sharper than razor sharp edges.

"You're troubled by something, Lilia?" Kunai asked, laboriously swinging his legs out of their exercise harness and sitting up, his face and torso lightly sheened with sweat from an exercise that would have left any other Praetorian collapsed in a mental fugue. Lilia stuck out a hand and Kunai grudgingly grasped it with his own, and used her as a counterweight to pull himself to his feet, assistance he only accepted from those closest to him, since he despised the thought of anyone thinking he needed help to get around with his injury. Walking wasn't a problem, but rising from lying or sitting was a bit difficult, since it involved lifting his whole bodyweight without any support from his legs. "About our... disagreement... with Kira?"

"You must be psychic." Lilia replied sardonically, though she could not maintain her smirk for long before her distress once more writ itself plainly across her face and colored her emotional aura. "I just don't understand how he could have turned the offer down. Even without Yggdrasil's predictions, it should be obvious what's at stake here, and last night only proved it all the more! How can he possibly be shortsighted enough to miss how important he is to us?"

"Because he's Kira Yamato, and shortsightedness has always been one of his defining qualities. Its been something of a salvation and a curse to him and those around him, ever since the days of Heliopolis." Kunai replied, his voiced almost becoming reflective for a moment. "No matter how plain or common sensical something may be, you can rely on Kira, at least, to misunderstand or misinterpret things. Sometimes that is to his great benefit, and the rest of the world too. Other times, its quite inconvenient. We got an inconvenient result this time."

"How can you be so calm?" Lilia asked, stunned. "Weren't you the one who conceived the whole plan to rescue him and equip him to be the Executor? You were certain that he would agree to become our champion but..."

"But I still am." Kunai answered shortly. "However, where politeness fails, rudeness must invariably succeed."

"You can't be serious!" Lilia protested, aghast and pleading. "We can't force him to be Executor, you yourself said he can't be coerced! Not and still be at all the person we need! He would die first, and..." Lilia trailed off, not wanting to voice her feelings that she didn't want to be torn between her loyalty to Kunai and her loyalty to Kira, because she herself wasn't sure which way she would go.

"Be calm. I meant what I said then. Coercing Kira is impossible. I've seen it tried before, in the past, tried it myself even, and invariably, it backfires spectacularly. I don't have a single iota of leverage to utilize upon him anyway, if I had wanted to go the route of coercion, I would have saved his family and held them hostage. That would have at least produced some results, for a while, before the inevitable happened and I lost control, to devastating results. For all of us. It was one possible future Yggdrasil showed me." Kunai took one plodding, unbalanced stride in the sand, and Lilia hurried to keep up with him, as he began making his way through the forest of mutilated mannequins towards the door to his office, a light T shirt floating across the chamber to his hand, which he then began slipping on over his bare torso. "Obviously we didn't choose that future as our path."

"But if you knew that he would turn you down then..." Lilia could not hide her confusion.

"I did not KNOW he would refuse, it was a cloudy area in the vision I was given. I gave it about a fifty percent chance either way." Kunai threw her something of a severe look. "Yggdrasil has never been wrong about any significant matter, and is not wrong now. Kira will be our Executor. The future has not changed, the end result is still the same, its just that the path to that result now takes a more winding and thorny route. There will be a catalyst event and Kira will acknowledge what has been in front of him all this time, late, as ever, but not too late. Only too late for some."

"I don't want him to suffer." Lilia said adamantly, as they stepped into Kunai's office. "He's given so much already, if I could I would even spare him from being Executor, but our need outweighs my feelings."

"Sometimes suffering is necessary. Us few will suffer to spare the majority from worse suffering." Kunai shrugged, taking a seat behind his desk, his hand passing briefly over the small packages that had been left stacked atop it. "Kira has suffered more than you or anyone else can possibly imagine already, one more war won't be that great a burden upon his soul." Kunai said dismissively.

"You know him, don't you?" Lilia asked, slightly hesitantly, but with more confidence as she felt Kunai's silent acceptance. "You used to know him personally, didn't you? Were you friends?"

"That's a good question I myself have never been able to satisfactorally answer." Kunai told her, his voice becoming a bit chill in response to her prying. It was an unspoken rule on New Eden, and especially in the Praetorians, that a person's past before they became an Edenite was not something that was to be discussed, unless they themselves brought it up.

Sensing that any further probing would only meet increasing levels of anger from her mentor, Lilia switched tacks, dropping her eyes to the packages on Kunai's desk. "Refined Deathstalker venom?" She asked curiously. "What do you need such a quantity for? There's enough here to keep even your powers inoperable for months?"

"Its for a part of the war effort that does not concern you or anyone else in the Praetorians." Kunai responded, if anything, even colder than he had been when she was trying to dig into his past relationship with Kira. Lilia had the feeling that she was starting to walk on very thin ice indeed, probing at some subjects that, for whatever reason, Kunai desperately did not wish to discuss with her. He'd always been a secretive and mysterious man, though less so with her personally, and she could not help feeling a little hurt that she was being excluded from some important aspect of his plas for defending their people.

Perhaps sensing her disgruntlement, Kunai immediately offered her an olive branch. "No matter what I say, I imagine you're determined to act as escort for Kira during his investigation of the events surrounding his family's death, so instead of making you find a way to circumvent my orders, I will insead give you my blessing and ask you to do your best to watch over Kira until such time as he determines the need to return and accept his mantle as Executor. He may be the oldest living Ultimate Coordinator, but that doesn't really make him an Edenite, and there is much danger in our world he is not prepared to defend himself against. You will need to be his shield until he can learn properly... which shouldn't, knowing him, take very long. But in the meanwhile, I'm certain he would be appreciative of a native guide who is nearly as dedicated to realizing his goals as he himself is."

"But don't you need me to lead sorties or raids against the USN forces? We can't be considering just letting them establish footholds unopposed?" Lilia protested, though it was halfhearted.

"Actually, as one of the few Praetorians who has not allowed herself to be yoked to the needs of a Custodian Legio, you are also one of my few remaining agents with no other burdens of responsibility so you are perfect for such a task with an indeterminate length. And in response to your question, yes we can and will let them establish their bases once more. For one, we lack the resources to force them out of more than one or two footholds at a time, and they will establish a dozen more while we do so. Direct force will not win this war, we must let the environment take its toll and fight to our best advantage at all times, otherwise they will simply roll over us with their greater numbers. Open battle will be the very last resort, and attacking their forces as they are bunched up at landing zones will only let them more easily concentrate the force needed to destroy us. We must make them spread their supply lines and forces out, so we can destroy them piecemeal while taking light casulaties of our own." Kunai explained. "Remember, its not just us that will be fighting, many of the Chimera allied with Yggdrasil will be making things decidedly unpleasant for the enemy ground forces, and I'm sure Leviathan won't be pleased with new fleets cruising about her oceans without her permission. Even the Caller might lend some support, his life is at stake too."

"I find that hard to believe." Lilia clutched her hands to her shoulders and hugged herself to suppress her shiver at the mention of the third of the three Grand Chimerae, and inarguably the one most inimical to human life. Where Yggdrasil was actively concerned for the prosperity of life in all its varied forms on New Eden, and Leviathan had a live and let live policy as long as you respected her oceans, Caller actively sought out other intelligent life to enslave and eventually consume to feed his own insatiable hunger for the mental energies released upon the violent deaths of psychics. Lilia suppsoed it was only his nature that made Caller act such, if he truly needed mental energy to survive then he was just doing as his evolution demanded, but she also felt anything as intelligent and powerful as a Grand Chimerae ought to be able to find a better way to sustain themselve, than feeding on the violent deaths of other intelligent life.

"Like him or not, Caller provides a necessary balance to the world, a shadow to Yggdrasil's light, a hatred to Yggdrasil's love and Leviathan's indifference. But even a shadow that hates can recognize what is in his own best interest, because for all his power over the minds of those weaker than he, Caller is also quite vulnerable to a highly technological attack, say from high orbit using FRALA. He needs our protection against such purely physical threats, and we will make good use of his ability to wreak mental havoc upon any USN forces stupid enough to land in North or South America." Kunai told her grimly. His expression lightened shortly thereafter. "Oh yes, you should stop by Vaul's workshop, he's come out with some more of his gadgets that he'd been holding back on, now that we are officially on a war preparation footing."

Lilia matched Kunai's smile with one of her own, her fondness for the Praetorian's resident technological master was shared by almost all of the Order. How was it possible not to like the man who turned their suits of armor from works of art into true masterpiece melds of visual beauty and battlefield effectiveness, and who armed and equipped them out of the depths of his own brilliant mind to handle any threat conceivable, each to their own individual strengths and tastes? Vaul's own specialty was miniaturization of existing technology, and he had produced a wide variety of weapons and defensive systems, each unique, for his fellows to utilize. Vaul was loosely connected to the BEGET organization, which stood for Braintrust of Enhanced Garden Evolved Technologies, which was responsible for all scientific endeavors concerning life on New Eden, much like the Praetorians were loosely connected to the Custodians. Deconstruction and expansion upon technologies found within the half salvaged wreckage of the Great Endeavor coupled with bioengineering of the unique materials present upon New Eden was the foundation of BEGET's work, which had resulted in things such as Borealite armor, Fusion Pulse Reactors without need for external cooling systems, and most famously, LEMIM material.

LEMIM, or Latence Encoded Mentally Imprinted Manufactured material was perhaps the most valuable material on New Eden, though in truth almost anything could be made into LEMIM, it was more a process of creation rather than any one material, though Yggdrasilwood, since it was already latent in nature, was the most popular foundation material. LEMIM could only be created by a intimately bonded Active-Latent grouping, and involved psychically melding portions of the Latent's mind with the inanimate material, which was extremely exhausting for both Active and Latent, and if mishandled could result in permanent mental damage to either or both. If successful though, the resulting item could actually provide a degree of Resonance or Chorus Amplification, to a Active or Latent respectively when held, boosting their individual power considerably. Because of the time and effort and danger involved in making something LEMIM, only the most necessary or esteemed Edenties were allowed to have them, Kunai's Kineblades being one such example. Vaul was one of the few master LEMIM shapers in the entire world, in conjuction with his two daughters, both Latents, and all the Praetorians were very appreciative of the sacrifices Vaul and his family made for the sake of giving the Order the very best.

After making her goodbyes to Kunai, with one final curious glance at the enormous supply of refined deathstalker venom on his desk, Lilia made a beeline towards Vaul's chambers, nicknamed "the Forge", perhaps unsurprisingly. Vaul was one of the few Praetorians to actually have living space inside the Order's enclave, but given his vital role as armorer and chief technologist for the Order, and his penchant for working odd hours even for an Edenite, allowing him easy personal access to his workshop only made sense. Lilia stopped outside the hinged metal doors that lead to the Forge proper and pressed the electronic buzzer bell, and then opened the hinged wooden door next to the metal ones, stepping into the closet like space it opened into. Vaul had been something of a savant type even before becoming an Edenite, and he retained many quirky obsessive-compulsive habits in exchange for his unmatched brilliance at miniaturization. One of his major peeves was keeping his workspace clean, and woe betide anyone who barged in and brought even the slightest spec of dirt with them.

Lilia closed her eyes as the sanitization sprays and aeresol cleaners blasted her armored body to sparkling cleanliness. Upon stepping out of the sanitization chamber, Lilia saw that the telltale light above the metal doors was glowing green, signifying Vaul's unlocking of the door to allow one person to enter. The doors opened into an airlock type chamber barely big enough for a single person to fit in at a time, positive air pressure keeping the outside atmosphere at bay long enough for the outer doors to cycle shut, before the inner doors creaked open with a rustic squeal of metal on metal, though they opened as smooth as silk despite the corroded sound. The main chamber of the Forge was a study in technological artistry, holographic computer screens hanging in midair over tables piled with unidentifiable parts of weapons and equipment, wall mounted robotic armatures hovering overhead, waiting for verbals commands for assistance. Lilia knew that some of the side chambers were much more... antiquated... in appearance, with one room even being a near perfect facsimile of a medieval ages blacksmith's forge, where Vaul would actually produce metallic weapons and parts by the sweat of his own hands. Vaul took personalization and customer satisfaction very seriously, as the lives of his friends could depend upon his work.

As a result he was the only Praetorian that was intimately familiar with the individual armor and weapon capabilties and preferences of every other Praetorian, which allowed him to modify and tweak armor systems with such precision that no further readjustment was required on the part of the owner after an upgrade, aside from learning the new capabilities added. It was a little like taking a favorite shirt from someone, completely changing its fabric and pattern, and have it be just as comfortable as before, if not more so. Vaul himself was standing at the far end of the room, his face half covered by the micro-inspection goggles that he habitually wore, his relatively slight frame belying endurance and strength earned from hours of pounding hardened metals in his blacksmith's forge. A mop of tousled black hair, almost permanently glistening with droplets of sweat covered his head and spilled down to his shoulders, his clothing the usual conglomeration of heavy blacksmithing leather apron smothered with tool pouches and loops and a spotlessly pressed white labcoat, whose pockets were brimming with more technological tools.

Vaul's ruddy complexion was startling apparent compared to the fish belly pallor of the disrobed man standing next to him, the bulky sections of his extra heavy and dense Borealite armor stacked in a pile by his side, as Vaul turned to regard his newest visitor, his eyes lighting up behind his goggles, delighted as ever to see Lilia, who was a good friend with his daughters. _And the Valkyrie doth arrive, just as Kunai said._ Vaul commented with a wry smirk.

_Vaul, its great to see you again._ Lilia replied warmly, with a smile on her face. Vaul was about three quarter's deaf from the constant noise of working in his smithy, and he while he could speak just fine, if a little slowly, he preferred to speak mentally, especially when in his workshop. Lilia glanced at the other Praetorian and nodded amiably as well. _Reverend._ She acknowledged neutrally. Reverend, or, as he preferred to be called, "Revv", after the sound of his favorite dual mono blade chainswords, was one of Alex's good friends, but Lilia was not overfond of him herself. Most Edenties were of the opinion that the Praetorians were somewhat unbalanced, mentally speaking, to do what they did, but in Revv's case, that was the literal truth. He wasn't precisely crazy, not in the homicidal maniac way, but there was something broken in his head, which made him extremely aggressive and quick tempered. It was said that Reverend, which was of course not his actual name, had once been a heavily religious man, but the Eden Disaster and his ascension to become an Edenite had broken both his faith and his mind. If he hadn't been recruited by Kunai to become a Praetorian, he could have easily have been one of the few major Edenite criminals.

Revv stared at her with his cold blue eyes, set deep in a haggard and burned scarred face that rarely if ever saw the light of day, Revv preffered to go armored and helmed outside whenever possible, perhaps ashamed of his burns and disfigurements, which some said were self inflicted, evidence of the violence of his broken faith and the personal crisis that had followed. Lank brown hair, cropped close to his skull, barely more than a stubble, matched a patchy moustache and stubble across his chin, his powerful arms folded across his chest, his body heavily tattooed with repeating images of half seen human images being consumed by hellfires, the same motif which appeared on the surface of his armor. _Lilia._ Revv replied, just as curtly as she had for him. It was nothing personal, Revv was curt with just about everyone, even Kunai. Of all the Praetorians, it had taken Revv the longest to integrate into the Order's manifold psychic bond exactly because of his antisocial tendencies and abrupt manner.

_That's all I needed, Revv._ Vaul stepped into the conversation with unusual smoothness. _Come back tomorrow afternoon and I'll have all the extra cooling systems installed and the modifications to the gauntlet flamers made. I'd advise spending some extra time on the range with the shoulder mounted EMC's, those discs don't follow traditional bullet ballistic flight paths, and you don't have so many of them that you can afford to miss often. Now, Lilia, please strip down._ Vaul ordered. At one point in time, before joining the Order, being order to strip naked in front of two men would have triggered a very... negative... reaction from her, but these days Lilia barely even gave it a second thought. Especially around Vaul and Revv, neither of whom were exactly known for their interest in women or even sexual diversion at all. While she was divesting herself of her armor, Revv stalked out with a final nod towards Vaul, the equivalent of heartfelt thanks and celebration from most men, no doubt off to some quiet corner where he could resume his favorite non-duty activity, brooding.

_I think I have just the thing for you, Valkyrie._ Vaul all but gushed, as he accepted the pieces and parts of her armor, the plating looking dimunitive and flimsy next to Revv's massive assault armor, though the difference in relative protection was much slighter than appearances would dictate. Revv's armor covered his entire body like an environment suit, the very definition of full plate mail, while Lilia's armor was more like half plate, with armor protection the majority of her form, and more flexible sections around her joints, neck and waist, allowing for a far superior degree of mobility than Revv enjoyed. Of course, Revv could walk headfirst into a blazing building, could be even be set alight with a flamethrower without even breaking a sweat, so there was something to be said for the totality of his armor and the cooling systems contained within. _Though I must apologize that it will be some time before your armor is ready for you. I'm afraid I must prioritize towards those expected to enter combat the soonest, and there should be little need for war-plate during an investigative escort mission._

_That's all right Vaul, I'm sure you'll have it ready far before I need it._ Lilia replied, removing the last piece of armor and now bare save for her undergarments. The heat from the smithy forge kept the chill of the deep earth from her, and she regarded the Warsmith, as Vaul was nicknamed, expectantly. _So what wonder has your brilliant mind concocted this time?_

_First, a minor modification to your gauntlets, in line with your desire for more nonlethal capabilities. Its an electrical weapon similar in design to a taser or stun baton, but all you have to do is touch a finger to someone, or punch them, or whatever you feel required to get your point across. You can also channel the shock into your handheld swords or any other metallic object, if you so choose._ Vaul ticked off one finger. _Next, something based loosely upon the Photon-Refractors of the Spectres and Wraiths, a Thermal Diffusor, which scrambles thermal targeting devices and sensors, even including laser sights that attempt to lock on to you. _Vaul's face split in a wide, joyful grin, the expression of a child with a new toy. _But the true masterpiece, my dear Valkyrie, will truly give you wings. In the most literal sense. I have designed a personal jump jet system that will allow you to make assisted leaps of hundreds of meters, and even allows for short duration hover flight! You will truly be a Valkyrie, a chooser of the slain swooping above the battlefield to cull or save as you see fit! Though the fuel supply is still somewhat limited..._

_I... I don't know what to say, Vaul..._ Lilia was stunned. She'd always dreamed about flying, everyone did at some point in their life, the ultimate freedom, able to go where she willed without being confiend inside a war machine or other vehicle, but there were so many problems with personal flight systems outside of a zero G environment that she'd never thought she'd actually get to... well, that was Vaul for you! "Thank you!" Lilia said, and wrapped her arms around Vaul in a tight embrace, which seemed to make him highly uncomfortable.

_Ah, well..._ Vaul smiled and gently disengaged himself from her hug, sweat on his face having nothing to do with exertion. _Its the least I could do, Lilia. Do remember to stop by more often, the girls miss their "older sister", and if you'd bring by that new man, our Executor, I'd appreciate it, once you get the chance. I've so many wonderful ideas, but I can't implement any of them until I meet the man himself and take his measure._

_He hasn't agreed to be Executor yet._ Lilia pointed out.

_He'll come around._ Vaul shrugged. _It's the purview of the young to make rash and hasty decisions at first._

_He's over thirty, that's not young._ Lilia countered.

_Dear Lilia, when you get as old as I, anyone ten years or more your junior is "young"._

_I hope you're right, Vaul. I really do..._

xxxx

**New Eden, Ruins of Rex Lodge, November 12th, 4:42 pm**

Lilia sat on a stump and watched Kira kick around through the undergrowth which had carpeted the cleared area around the jagged stump of Rowan, the mighty Yggdrasilwood that had housed the semi-private hunting resort known as Rex Lodge. Though only a little over a month had passed since the entire area had burned to the ground during the tragic incident that had cost the lives of over thirty innocent people, including Kira's wife and children, already the area was flourishing anew, the flora of New Eden not the sort to let a patch of ground rich in the ashes of dead rivals go to waste for long. Blue grass was sprouting everywhere, Bloodweed making patches of crimson among the blue, the bladed leaves of Partisan ferns springing up in the shade of burnt and half collapsed trees, the tallest ferns already over head height for her. By the time a year had passed, you'd never even be able to tell there had been a fire, save for the jagged shards of Rowan's splintered trunk, rising like monoliths from a ruined tower in the near center of the devastated forest.

She was feeling a bit angsty and put out, because, far from being the exciting bonding experience she'd been hoping for, her solo trip with Kira in pursuit of the reasons behind the Rex Lodge incident had mostly consisted of Kira giving her a cold shoulder, barely replying in two or three word sentences to her questions, and basically avoiding her like she was herself responsible for the loss of his family. She could understand his anger over Yggdrasil and Kunai deciding not to save his family, in truth it appalled her as well, but she knew, deep in her heart, that Yggdrasil wouldn't do something so callous without good reason. Or that's what she really, really wanted to believe anyway. Kira of course was much less tolerant of the dictates of something he still continued to call "that goddamn Tree", and his barely veiled contempt for her faith in Yggdrasil's predictive ability was beginning to wear on her own temper. Even a day ago she'd never have imagined wanting to wrap her hands around Kira's neck and shake him until he saw sense, but she'd already been having a few fanatasies about just that these past few hours.

Having borrowed a small four person shuttle just big enough to accomodate themselves plus the repaired _Freedom_ and a small cache of supplies, Lilia had piloted them to the recovering clearing at around lunchtime, had offered to prepare a quick meal to get them started off right, and had gotten a cold stare that left her feeling small and somehow stupid, and ever since then she'd been half pouting on the sidelines while Kira combed the clearing exhaustively, searching for any clue as to the people or methods behind the fire. Lilia privately thought Kira was wasting his time, she'd been here herself only a few days after the fire, when the area was still carpeted with ash, and she hadn't found anything. He was deluding himself if he thought there would be anything to find after more than a month of nature's reclamation. But she supposed it was his privilege to delude himself in that manner, she figured she'd probably be pretty much the same way if she were in his shoes, so she was doing her best to grin and bear it, and hope he'd stop blaming her for being part of a conspiracy that she really wasn't.

Lilia glanced up as she heard Kira curse despondently, his emotions billowing around him like a dark cloud as he dropped onto his hands and knees in the calf high blue grass, his head bowed as his body shuddered with released tears. So he'd at last come to the conclusion she knew he must, that there was simply nothing to find here, not after so long. A part of her felt vindicated, but she quashed the feeling ruthlessly, her heart going out to him in his distress, and before she knew what she was doing, Lilia had risen from her stump and walked over to stand behind him as he sobbed and shuddered, unmindful of the painful welts rising on his wrists and hands and arms and cheeks from the stinging touch of the blue grass. "Kira..." Lilia said, helplessly looking down at her idol as he huddled against the ground like a lost child.

"There's nothing..." Kira replied brokenly. "Nothing left. I can't find anything! Its been too long! I failed them again..."

"No, you didn't fail them." Lilia tried to assure him, but she could feel that he took no comfort from her words. "I'm sorry, Kira."

"You're sorry?" A strange hitch came into his voice as he raised his head and turned to glare up at her, his eyes bloodshot and practically demonic in their fierceness. "You're SORRY? You could have stopped this! You could have saved them! But you CHOSE not to! Because that DAMNED TREE told you to LET THEM DIE? And now you have the temerity to tell me that YOU'RE SORRY? I don't want sympathy from someone like you!"

"That's not fair." Lilia answered in a small voice. "I did not know. I wasn't even in Garden City at the time! I didn't know or I WOULD HAVE SAVED THEM, DAMN IT! MAYBE I WASN'T IN GARDEN CITY FOR A REASON, BECAUSE OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE SAVED THEM, DID YOU THINK OF IT THAT WAY? WHERE DO YOU GET OFF, BLAMING ME FOR SOMETHING I HAD NO HAND IN! YGGDRASIL MAY KNOW THE FUTURE, BUT I DON'T! I don't..." Lilia choked back her fury once more. "I'm sorry you feel like I'm responsible for what happened, but I'm not. Blame me if it makes you feel better, but I'm not your enemy Kira. I'm your friend and your fan, and I would do anything, ANYTHING if I could bring your family back. But I can't, so my sympathy and my company is all I can offer." Lilia turned her back to him. "But if you don't want that either, then what am I supposed to do? I don't want anyone to suffer, least of all you, Kira, but I can't force my help on you..."

Lilia heard Kira sigh heavily, but she kept her back turned, not wanting him to see the tears in her own eyes, fighting to keep her posture straight and not go running towards the shuttle or the forest's edge to yell and shout and kick things in her frustration and sadness. She jumped about a half foot into the air when she felt his hand drop down onto her shoulder, so caught up in her own misery that she hadn't heard him rise and step behind her. "Look..." Kira said, somewhat abashedly as she turned questioning eyes at him. "I may have spoken a little hastily there. I didn't mean to blame you for everything that happened. I know its not your fault, that you weren't involved at all most likely. Its just... I'm under a lot of stress, and all my friends seem to be betraying me recently and... I lashed out at you because you were convenient. I'm sorry."

"Its all right. Everyone needs someone to blow up at every now and then." Lilia hesitantly reached up her hand and touched a finger to his hand on her shoulder, seeing him wince as she touched the inflamed welts from the blue grass's poisonous touch. "Are you feeling any better now?"

"If you rate "hollow" as better than "pent up and burning inside" then yes." Kira commented somewhat wryly. "I pinned all my hopes on finding some glaring clue as to who was responsible for all this..." he waved his arm at the clearing and Rowan's stump. "But in retrospect, that wasn't very realistic. Whatever it was came from the air, was probably dropped from a jet or even a ship in low orbit, there's no reason there should be any evidence on the ground. The time passing by didn't help either, but that isn't your fault. I really feel kinda terrible, I dragged you all the way out here chasing gold at the end of a rainbow."

"Don't be silly, you HAD to come out here, for your own peace of mind if nothing else." Lilia refuted. "I just want to help you, Kira, nothing would make me happier than helping you find a direction to go in regarding the murder of your family. Save perhaps helping you bring those monsters, whoever they are, to justice! But before we do that, I should probably go get some ointment for your welts, if we don't treat them quickly, you won't be able to feel your arms by the top of the hour, and not in a good way. You must be extra allergic to the grass or something, I've hardly ever seen a reaction this virulent."

"And then, ah, do you suppose we could have something to eat?" Kira asked, somewhat abashedly himself. "I recall you mentioning something about lunch, but I wasn't really thinking straight at the time and well..." Kira's stomach growling finished the sentence succiently enough. For her part, Lilia could not contain the relieved smile that passed across her face, at once more being on somewhat amiable terms with Kira. She had to fight to keep herself from kicking up her heels like a schoolgirl on her first date with a major crush as she dashed to the shuttle to get her medical kit and the anti-allergen creams. Kira was surprisingly patient as she fussed over him, slathering the ointment onto his welts, and Lilia gloried in the brief moments of intimacy as she rubbed the paste across his cheeks and arms with utmost gentleness. She found herself getting a bit flushed at all but crouching in his lap as she worked on him, and had to really fight to keep her fingers strictly administering to the welts.

After she was regrettably done adminsitering first aid, Lilia brought out a vacuum sealed pouch containing several flavored ambrosia patties and a few pouches of nectar, and she shared a quiet and pleasant early dinner with Kira, sitting together on the embarkation ramp of the shuttle. Afterwards Kira began asking questions about the various flora and fauna that he'd seen during his searching of the clearing, and Lilia was only too happy to further educate him on the classifications, dangers and uses for all sorts of animals and plants to be found on New Eden. Strolling through the clearing as evening began setting in, Lilia pointed out the tracks of various animals that called the clearing home during the night hours, seperating them into predators and prey, and noting which ones were especially dangerous to humans. It was during this time that Lilia happened upon an oddity, at one of the borders where clearing met forest, where she discovered the tracks of a herd of Rex Elk. It was odd because in this climate and season, Rex Elk were usually more solitary and not liable to travel in herds.

And buried amongst the overlapping tracks was the greatest oddity of all, something she only half noticed at first before she bent with a crinkled brow and placed her hands... both of them... into a depression in the ground that she'd first thought was evidence of a burrowing animal or dislodged plant, but belatedly realized was actually a hoofprint of gargantuan size. Kira was looking at the same ground as her, but he could barely see the regular hoofprints, much less the giant one. Lilia chewed on her lip thoughtfully, trying to decipher what was up. None of the answers she recieved she liked, because she could think of no reason why the only Rex Elk of her acquaintance who was big enough to leave a track like this would be here, so far from his home territory. Perhaps it was nothing, perhaps there was another giant Rex Elk somewhere, perhaps even another Chimera, but the print matched up well with her recollection of the Forest Prince's hooves. It was hard to tell when it had been made, but it didn't look recent to her. Feeling Kira's quizzical glances, Lilia stood up again and shrugged, outwardly calm but inwardly her mind was in turmoil.

She debated pointing it out to Kira, but eventually decided it would be fruitless. It was just the fragment of a suspicion after all, and she had too much respect for the Forest Prince to implicate him in the murder of Kira's family unless she was absolutely sure. Because while Kira had a no kill policy against humans, she wasn't sure if he would extend that policy to animals with human intelligence. Although, if Kira did try to bring violence upon the Forest Prince, it would most likely end with Kira being the one killed. Seeing the sky begin to darken, and not wanting to be out in an open space when nightfall came, having seen signs of Spider Wolf activity in earlier tracks, Lilia directed Kira back towards the shuttle. With the ramp closing behind them, there was suddenly precious little space with _Freedom_ still in the mediocre sized cargo hold, and Lilia found herself trapped between the wall and Kira's chest for a moment. Without even thinking about it, her arms encircled him as the ramp clicked shut and left them in near darkness for the moment.

There was a long pause, interrupted only by the sound of their breathing, as Kira stood rock still in her arms, her breasts pressed against his chest, his body all but pinning her against the bulkhead, and Lilia couldn't tell which one of them was more shocked. She'd been feeling a change in chemistry ever since dinner, having immensely enjoyed Kira's company and shoulder's distance throughout the walking around since, but all of a sudden he was RIGHT there and now her hands were moving across his back quite of their own volition, and he wasn't pushing her away! Indeed, judging by the hitching of his breathing and the way his body was warming under her touch, Lilia was sure he was getting pretty excited too! She strongly suspected that he hadn't been with a woman since the death of Lacus, not that she would have expected anything else... but that was more than a month ago now, and fidelity to the dead could only go on so long... and it wasn't like she was going to marry him or anything... she wasn't THAT lucky... but just a night of comfort in each other's arms would...

Lilia was just bending her face upwards to capture his lips with her own when Kira jolted like he'd been struck with lightning and he shoved her away so hard her skull rang against the bulkhead and she saw stars and nebulae explode in her head. When normal vision had returned, she found Kira pressed against the far bulkhead of the bay, _Freedom_ now between them, his eyes closed tight and his face pinched with a mixture of regret and repulsion. "I'm... I'm sorry... I didn't mean to be so forward... but..." Lilia stammered, feeling herself flush dark red.

"No, don't worry about it. The mistake was mine." Kira answered, his voice a bit ragged. "I shouldn't have let that happen. Let's just forget about it."

"But why?" Lilia protested, shocked at her own insistence. "What's so wrong about it? She's dead, Kira... you can't tie yourself down forev..."

"Don't talk about her." Kira said savagely. "Just don't. I know what you're thinking, but no. I'm not interested."

"You FELT pretty interested." Lilia could not help her snide remark, stung at the sudden reversal and rejection. "Yggdrasil knows I'm not as pretty as her, few are, but I never thought you were one to judge by looks! I just want you to feel good again, Kira..."

"It was a MISTAKE. You're a lovely young lady, Lilia, and I'm grateful for your friendship. At one point in my life I'd be tripping all over myself to take you up on your offer. I'm honored, really, I am. But I just can't. It wouldn't be right."

"It wouldn't be right to spend a night with a girl who wants you to spend a night with her?" Lilia responded, her voice flat and hurt. "I know you're from Orb, but here on New Eden, friends do it with friends all the time, Kira. Its normal, no more notable than going to a movie together. I'm not asking for a relationship... just one night of comfort... you know it would make you feel better. And besides, I'm not asking just for your sake... it would make ME feel better too, ya know!"

"In the short term, almost certainly. Long term, the guilt would eat me alive. This sort of situation has happened to me before, though God knows, your intentions seem more straightforward than Flay's." Kira replied, making sure to keep the motorcycle between them. "But good intentions or not, I've made my choice. If you don't think you can control yourself, I'll go sleep outside."

"Oh that would be a wonderful idea. Why don't you just go slit your throat?" Lilia retorted furiously, suddenly ashamed at her own actions. "You, sleep outside in the middle of a forest? You'd be dead inside thirty minutes!" She turned away from him, her shoulders hunched in terminal embarassment and anger. "If I'm not good enough for you, you should have just said so from the beginning!" She stalked over to the cockpit door and slammed it shut behind her, the locks clicking audibly as she flopped into the pilot's chair and huddled up against herself to stew in her misery and disappointment.

Back in the cargo compartment, Kira stared ruefully at the locked cockpit door. "I see I haven't lost my touch with women." Kira muttered to himself darkly. He shook his head and found a corner, well away from the cockpit door, to sit in. "Lacus... Akira... Aoi..." Kira stared up at the ceiling contemplatively, straining inside his mind to feel for the bond that connected them, but only finding a raw, achy hole where it should be. He bowed his head and let the grief of earlier wash over him once more, now that he was alone. "I'm so sorry..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Busytown, Former Germany, November 13th, 1:00 pm**

Kira had been avoiding Lilia's eyes all day, not wanting to see the hurt and rejection in them. It had been easy enough during the flight, all he had to do was stay in the cargo compartment while she stayed in the cockpit. But around noontime she'd cracked the cockpit door to tell him that they were landing soon, at a provincial town on their way to confirm something Lilia thought might have to do with the Rex Lodge incident. She was being very tight lipped about what sort of lead she was pursuing, since she'd never mentioned anything to him during their comradely talking the day before, but Kira figured he was walking on thin ice with her already, so he kept his trap shut and decided he would be on his best behavior for the meanwhile. She was going far out of her way to provide services as guide and protecter for him after all, and her sympathy was completely sincere, and he really needed a friend right now. He just hoped they could let sleeping dogs lie about the incident in the cargo bay.

Because it wasn't like she was unattractive to him, quite the opposite actually, she was stunningly beautiful and very agreeable in other ways too. She was smart, funny, attentive and they agreed on pretty much everything, philosophically speaking. He was even fairly sure she meant what she said about sex being no big deal and that she was only looking for a night of physical and emotional comfort. But the problem was, Kira wasn't sure if he himself could only leave it at a single night. He hadn't had that many relationships in his life, but every one of them he'd been dead set serious about, and the idea of a one night stand was foreign to him. He wasn't keeping Lilia at arms length because he didn't want to fuck her, it was because he DID want to fuck her, but wasn't sure he'd be able to keep it at a single night that he was so wary of the idea. The LAST thing he needed right now was to get deeply emotionally involved with someone. He had way too much baggage at the moment. Maybe that wasn't a fear that would occur to most men, but then again, he wasn't most men. Plus it felt a little bit too much like taking advantage of her pumped up image of him.

Thankfully upon landing she'd barely even glanced at him and made no attempt to bring up the thorny issue of their sleeping arrangements, and though she seemed inordinately stiff when he mounted the bike behind her as she wheeled _Freedom_ down the shuttle's cargo ramp, he supposed that might have as much to do with her spending the night sleeping in a chair as it did with her being irritated with him. Soon enough they both had plenty of other things to distract them from the tension between them, as their shuttle was parked just outside a medium sized settlement, as rural Edenite towns went. The population was probably somewhere between five hundred and a thousand individuals, who lived clustered together around a common water source, a spring fed lake of fresh water that they had walled in to protect from predators and wandering Chimera.

Though many of the houses were rustic, including log cabins and mounds of soil and rock that had been hollowed out, just as many were quite modern in appearance, and the juxtapositioning of rustic style and modern style made Kira blink a few times. Almost everything was built of Yggdrasilwood of some form or another, and some of the commercial buildings were seven or eight stories tall. Busytown, as the place was called, was the commercial hub for the surrounding few hundred square kilometers of territory, and the main point of contact with the larger Edenite world for most of the deep forest farmers, hunters and ranchers that called the surrounding forests home. Busytown was small enough not to really hold any allegiance to any of the larger city states, though technically it fell within the very utmost borders of Urbanis's sphere of influence, but Garden City could just as easily have laid a claim to the place with little arguement. Busytown's chief claim to widespread fame was the fact that it was the closest township to the home range of the mighty Forest Prince, and tourists from across the globe would come for a chance to glimpse the majestic and peaceful Chimera in his natural habitat. And a few big game hunters as well, though those tended to disappear after a few days.

Both Kira and Lilia, wearing the Praetorian undress uniform as they were, drew plenty of attention and recieved a respectful amount of space even in the most crowded of side streets as Lilia slowly cruised through the town, memorizing the layout and searching for a hostel to spend the night, one with seperate rooms for her and Kira. It was a harder search than one might think, since most Edenites were not uncomfortable with the thought of bunking with strangers for a night when away from home, and most hostels had large rooms with one or more beds that were shared between five to ten people at a time. Somewhat to her embarassment, the only place Lilia was able to find that had seperate, private rooms and beds was a place she was fairly sure ran a "paid escort" service and rented rooms by the hour, rather than the night. But if sleeping in a gentrified whorehouse was what was necessary to dissipate the tension between her and Kira, and to avoid spending another restless night chewing her lips in the shuttle cockpit, then that was a sacrifice Lilia was willing to make.

After depositing their supplies and Lilia's heavier weapons, including her linear rifle and swords, in her room, leaving her with just a beam pistol and utility knife, they went to find a place to eat that was serving something other than ambrosia patties, which, while filling and quite tasty, got a bit old after a while. Eventually they found a place on the outskirts of town that seemed to cater to a slightly more rough and tumble crowd, the hunters and tour guides and explorers that passed through the area frequently, which had plenty of fresh Rex Elk steaks as well as freshly caught fish from the town's lake on the menu. Again their clothing drew a few stares, and plentiful room at the bar, but Lilia was quick to break the ice and prove that despite being a Praetorian she was just another regular person too, and soon the resteraunt-bar was as lively and boisterous as ever, as people of all ages and backgrounds regaled each other with tales tall and entirely factual about various animals or natural wonders they had encountered.

Truth be told, Kira felt a little alienated, through no fault of the others, simply because he had little idea about what most of the people were boasting or commiserating about, no common ground or shared experiences, just as they were liable to look at him blankly if he started expounding on various Gundam battles of his own past. He found a quiet corner and sat down with his food and drink, content to merely observe and tune into the emotional undercurrents of the place. It didn't take Kira long to realize that for all the outward bohemie and near raucous partying, there was a lot of tension and concern flavoring people's feelings. Like they were only partying to get their minds off something that would have normally had them all with clenched jaws, muttering while hunched over and glancing around in a paranoid fashion. Lilia seemed to have picked up on it as well, it might even have been why she chose this place for lunch in the first place, and Kira felt his impression of her rise yet more as he watched her making the rounds of the bar, pumping people for information so delicately they couldn't have been aware that her interest was more than casual.

After a few more minutes of comfortable fading into the background, something which never happened to him when he dined in public in Orb, Lilia joined him, her expression tight and worried. Kira looked at her inquiringly, letting her speak in her own time, not trusting himself to say something without causing offence. "Something's got the animals spooked." Lilia said without preamble. "All the herds have been pulling out of the area ever since the orbital drops. Even the Garm packs have stopped howling at night, and nothing scares a Garm pack. And a lot of the deep foresters haven't been checking in recently, there's hardly a person here that doesn't have a friend or family member that's gone missing and silent in the past few days, plus strange lights have been seen near the horizon the past few nights. Its got the whole town riled up fit to burst. Some people think a new Chimera has moved into the area, something unfriendly."

"And what do you think?" Kira asked after a few moments, hoping his voice was neutral and not offensive.

"I think that the Forest Prince isn't the sort to let a rogue, dangerous Chimera into his territory and let it run amuck. As far as Chimera go, he's one of the most benevolent, just like Yggdrasil." Lilia replied.

"Just like Yggdrasil?" Kira repeated, unable to hide the scorn in his voice, but he bit down on any further comments when he saw the indignant look come into Lilia's eyes.

"I've met him personally." Lilia said in a low tone, so that her outlandish claim wouldn't draw unwanted attention from half the bar. "He wouldn't let a Chimera into his territory if he thought it would be a danger to others, well, any more a danger than any other predator anyway. Plus all of this started happening right after the orbital drop, so in my opinion, I think we both know who and what is out there causing problems." Lilia leaned back and sucked vindictively at her ice water. "They're attacking farmers and foresters who are just trying to live their lives and feed their families. How can you just stand by and let them get away with it?"

"First off we don't have any proof that the USN is behind this." Kira countered in a hard voice. "Your suspicions make sense, but suspicion is not reality. As for standing by, aren't you doing the same? Aren't you a Praetorian? Shouldn't YOU do something?"

"If I wasn't serving as a guide and escort for a certain half brain dead LOUT, you can bet I WOULD BE." Lilia retorted caustically. "But Kunai has entrusted your life to me, and he and I both believe that, sad as it is, your life is worth far more than that of a thousand innocent people, if only because if you so chose, you could save billions."

"You honestly expect me to work with the people who allowed my family to die based on a prophecy?" Kira snapped angrily. "Who didn't even make an effort to help them... who even actively countered others FROM making efforts to help them? Those are the people you want me to champion?"

"I honestly expect you to do what is right, regardless of your personal feelings." Lilia snapped back. "Because that's what Kira Yamato does! That's the sort of man you are!"

"That's the sort of man I WAS." Kira replied grimly. "I can't protect everyone. I can't even protect the people that meant the most to me!"

"So because you couldn't protect some people, you're going to give up on attempting to protect ANYONE?" Lilia hissed at him, hurt written across every line of her face. "How are you any different from those Edenites you despise so much? They gave up on your family because they believed it was inevitable... are you going to give up on everyone else because you think what's about to happen is inevitable too? Giving in to the inevitable has NEVER been what you stood for, Kira! I believed in you, in your ability to accomplish the impossible, to triumph good over evil no matter the odds stacked against you! Are you telling me that was just a fallacy? That I was deluded to use your actions as my inspiration? As my very lifeline of sanity? Don't tell me you're not the man you've always been, Kira, because if you aren't Kira Yamato then you're not just useless, you're actively counterproductive because I COULD be out there making a difference to these people right now if it weren't for you!"

Kira sat back, stung by her vehemence and not just that, because he couldn't deny that she had a few salient points. He was still searching for a reply when his ears perked up and he was suddenly moving on pure instinct, throwing himself over the table at Lilia and burying her under his body as he shoved them both under the thick wooden table, their food and drinks spilling all voer the place in his haste. Lilia was just starting to put up a fight, throwing an elbow into his jaw that made his whole head ache, when the stimuli his Latent nature had made him react to, several seconds before it actually occured, finally arrived. Kira watched as a few other Latent's in the room started to duck for cover as well, but their precog apparently wasn't as strong as his, ebcause the only had about a half second's warning before the entire front of the bar blew in on a tide of fire and splinters like shrapnel as a large artillery shell landed in the street right outside. The overpressure of the blast wave burst eardrums and eyeballs of those sitting or standing too close to the front of the building, before hurling their pastified corpses across the room like wet rags.

The roof collapsed inwards and downwards, crushing those who hadn't been turned into blackened meat or ragged chunks of bloody flesh by the fireball and splinter shrapnel, only those lucky enough to have taken cover beneath the bar or one of the tables surviving the avalanche of burning debris. Lilia had stopped fighting him the moment the shell had exploded, half stunned by the nearness of the explosion, her bones rattled with the concussion wave. And it was just the first shell in the barrage, more distant tremors in the ground bespoke artillery shells landing in other sections of the town. _Believe me now?_ Lilia wasn't too proud to ask vindictively, being force to communicate mentally because they'd both been temporarily deafened by the explosion.

_I do, but you being right brings me little happiness._ Kira responded, groaning as he pushed upwards with his shoulders and shifted the pile of flaming debris half burying them. The bar was a disaster, its occupants flung about like ragdolls, fire everywhere, smoke choking them both and forcing them to crawl on hands and knees towards the smoking ruins where the front doors had once been. His deafness was merciful, as it blocked out the moans and screams of the merely mortally wounded, though there was little he could do to filter out the desperation and rage of their emotions. Lilia had her pistol in hand, for all the good it would do against an artillery barrage, Kira yanking her back from the middle of the street as more artillery shells whistled overhead, arcing downward into the town, their explosions throwing up plumes of debris that rained down into the street where Lilia would have been standing, half filling the impact crater from the first shell. Buildings all along the street were collapsing or burning, and the dead, dying and shocked lay in the streets in droves, a few active souls dragging loved ones and friends from the wreckage, or else mourning in incomprehension over the inexpicably slain body of a companion.

It wasn't the first time Kira had seen such devastation and death at such close range, though it was the first time he'd seen it so fresh. It looked like some of the streets of Nara-Attha City after Purgatory Day, or Pearl Harbor after the Merciless had nuked it, and Kira felt the muscles in his jaw and arms pulsing with outrage at those who could order top end military weapons used against a civilian town! Trusting to his Latent abilities, hovering at the edge of Seed rage, Kira guided Lilia away from the ruin of the bar, both of them stumbling as their balance struggled to recover its equilibrium. _We have to help them!_ Kira insisted, heading towards a group of people who had been grievously injured by flying shrapnel. He got about a pace before Lilia's hand on his arm jerked him up short.

_We can't help them._ Lilia replied sorrowfully. _Or rather we can, but not by aimlessly running around providing first aid in the middle of an ongoing artillery barrage! We have to get to the shuttle, have to call for help! And then we have to get out of here... you can't die here, Kira!_

_Like hell I can't! I won't abandon these people!_ Kira ripped his arm out of her grip and started heading towards the injured, some of whom couldn't have been older than their middle teens. _I can save these people! Weren't you the one just chiding me over giving up in an impossible situation?_

Not looking behind him, Kira was caught off guard when Lilia body tackled him and drove them both to the ground, her on top as she struggled to pin him down. _Yes, that was me, but you have an obligation to make a real difference! You think I can't feel their pain and suffering? You think I wouldn't leap up and run to carry them to safety with my own arms if I could? You can't save them from what's coming, not without it coming to you as well, but you CAN save others from suffering like they have! Being self sacrificing is one thing, but you can't sacrifice yourself to do it! You have power, Kira, immense power, if you'd only but use it! And I can't let you die before you have the chance TO use it! Yggdrasil forgive me, but I can't let you die... even if it means turning my back on those I've sworn to protect!_

_Damn it girl, let me go! I don't want to hurt you, but I can't abandon these people!_ Kira all but shouted, clawing at the dirt, dragging them both along the ground towards the civilians.

_You MUST or you'll be abandoning countless millions more in the future! The artillery barrage is already tapering off and that can mean only ONE thing! Their ground forces are on their way in to occupy and pacify the area! And I think we both know what that means to these bastards!_ Lilia clung to him like a limpet, and Kira belatedly realized the back of his neck was wet with her tears. _Do you plan to fight without your Gundam? Do you plan to shoot those soldiers that are coming? You barely even know how to use a gun! What point is there in dying if it doesn't accomplish anything? You can't keep letting yourself be ruled by your emotions! Please, Kira... I don't want to have to knock you out and drag you away, but I will if you make me!_

Further debate was taken out of their hands as a final volley of artillery shells whistled in from on high, fired from several kilometers away in high arcs. But these shells were different from the high explosive ones used to all but level the town earlier, instead of falling to the ground and blossoming into flowers of fire and shrapnel, they exploded several hundred meters over the town, releasing clouds of thick white mist that spread and trickled like glittering dust, settling down across a huge portion of the town. As soon as the glittering mist touched the tops of the few still standing tall buildings, the Yggdrasilwood burst into furious flame, wood that would not scorch under repeated application of a blowtorch combusting like dry tinder! Kira went as still as a corpse, his eyes locked on the drifting white mist, recalling how the trees had caught fire at Rex Lodge. _Its the same._ Kira said numbly, feeling something break loose inside his mind and soul at this irrefutable confirmation. _ITS THE SAME! THE SAME AS REX LODGE!_

The Seed rage came upon him like volcano erupting, different from any time before save two. There was his Seed, royal purple in hue and veined with pulsating silver, but he was once more standing in a forest, emerald leafed trees towering all about him, the soil loamy and rich with life beneath his feet. Kira reached out his hand and cupped the Seed in his palm, watching the silvery rootlings spread eagerly about, searching for connections that weren't there, for the lilac and gold of Lacus, for the pink and gold of Akira, and for the brown and gold of Aoi. Tears glistened on his cheeks, droplets forzen in midair, there being no time in this place, but his sadness was slowly evolving, becoming something more, something deeper. Something darker, an anger he hadn't allowed to possess himself since the early stages of his time in the Strike. The silvery rootlings quivered and then started to burrow into his hand, and Kira clenched his fist tightly around his Seed, feeling it pulse in time with his racing heartbeat.

_You murdered them._ Kira accused the unseen foe, their emotions gathering in the distance, flickering like a forest fire beyond the horizon. _You murdered my family! You murdered Lacus! Akira! Aoi! And now you're murdering all these people and I'm SICK AND TIRED OF STANDING ON THE SIDELINES AND LETTING THIS ENDLESS CYCLE OF KILLING CONTINUE! NO MORE! NO MORE I SAY! NO MORE! If its your pleasure to commit war, then I will take all the pleasure FROM war, make it something so abhorrent that only the truly mad would ever concieve of engaging in it!_ Kira raised his hand above his head, his Seed struggling to burst in the cosmic flash of light that would drive him into the Rage, but he held his fist tight about it and kept it contained. Violet light surged and rippled around him, escaping from between his fingers, and Kira felt an awakening spread through every fiber of his body, as if each and every individual cell had suddenly opened a microscopic eye to glare at the object of his distress.

_Let there be war... NO MORE!_ Kira screamed, and then plunged his fist and the Seed it held downward, punching his entire forearm deep into the loamy soil, down into the bedrock of this place, down into the crust, into the core... and then and only then did he allow the Seed to burst, his perspective shifting as the ground exploded all around him as the Seed took root and blossomed, a tree every bit as gigantic as Yggdrasil, its trunk the same violet hue as his Seed, erupting from the soil at his feet to tower protectively over him, branches spread far and wide. Kira's hand remained entrapped within the bark of his germinated Tree, and he was pulled upwards as it continued to grow, eventually his body fusing with the Tree itself, cradled like a baby in the mother's womb, just as Akira had that time during the Eden Disaster.

For Lilia's part, she felt Kira jerk beneath her, and then she found herself flying through the air as he rose to his feet in a screaming frenzy, his emotions oscillating so violently that she was acually forced to shield herself less she be driven into unconsciousness by the storm. She recognized the turmoil as the beginnings of a Seed rage, but this was nothing like any Seed activation she'd ever seen or felt before! This was something primal, something incredible, something beyond the scope of any other Edentie currently alive. This was the Seed of a fully awakened Ultimate Coordinator, past Second Puberty and fully nurtured. This was no Seed, this was a Tree. And an ANGRY TREE at that. The very air seemed to crackle around Kira... no, actually the air WAS crackling around Kira, that same sort of low intensity vibrating buzz that had so offended her hearing when she'd first encounted Yggdrasil, the sensation of a Latent manipulating the surrounding space-time to their own unconscious will. And then she hit the ground, but she was already breathless from shock and awe, and so the ground could do little besides jar her as she rolled to a stop several meters away from Kira. Everyone else around who was even semi-conscious could feel it as well, hell, everyone for kilometers around with even an ounce of psychic perception could feel it, like Kira had literally become the center of the world for a moment, that which all things revolved about.

When Kira turned around, Lilia flinched from his gaze like a physical blow, his eyes not just metallic but actually a blend of pure silver with hints of purple, pupils entirely erased, leaving just whites and those disturbing, inhuman corneas. He looked at her, and then through her, and Lilia realized that he was more looking "ahead" of her, into what was yet to occur. And then he was by her side moving with breathtaking speed, tucking her up under one arm like she was a featherweight as he sprinted down the streets, away from the overhanging cloud of white mist. Though Kira himself was immune to whatever it was, as Rex Lodge had proved, Lilia was all too vulnerable, and the vision he'd had of her flesh melting from her blackened bones like candle wax had been too horrible for him to allow. It wasn't the only vision assaulting him, far from it, wherever he turned his gaze he saw things as they were to be, sometime in the future, anywhere from several seconds to more than an hour. Calling it disconcerting did the word itself injustice, but by fiercely concentrating on one thing, saving Lilia, Kira was able to continue to function, rather than huddle in a ball with his hands over his eyes. Human minds were not meant to process information this way, and Kira could not understand how he was capable of it! It was like every cell of his body was a brain operating in parallel with the one in his head, giving him the processing power to not only withstand this vision, but utilize it!

Kira saw the tanks and infantry and mobile suits wearing the USN and RI colors spilling into the streets around him, though they were still deep within the forest, saw them firing at the survivors of the artillery attack, saw men and women and children gunned down in the streets and in their homes, or else trapped inside as the white mist filtered down from above and turned their worlds to fire and pain. He saw tanks grinding bodies into paste beneath their treads as hull mounted flamethrowers incinerated buildings and flooded into underground shelters, fire so hot people were vaporized, only shadows on the walls denoting where living folks had once stood. He saw Mobile Suits striding through buildings like they were sandcastles, trampling vehicles and people underfoot like bugs. He saw death and confusion and atrocity piled upon atrocity, the blue and black and white of the USN everywhere as they exterminated every last living soul within the city and burned it to the ground in preparation for turning the location into a re-education center. He saw the fruitless resistance of the few sheriffs and armed citizens inflict insignificant casualties upon the attacking forces, saw the horrors perpetuated upon the resistance after being overwhelmed, the bodies crucified and set afire, or bound and then trampled by Mobile Suits. These things were committed by the RI, but the USN soldiers stood by and did nothing to stop it.

Kira saw and he realized that Lilia was right, that the only thing that awaited him if he stayed was a pointless death as well. And so, though it burned like lava in his heart, Kira turned his back and ran. Ran and ran, faster than he'd ever run before, faster than anyone else attempting to flee the razed city, his vision allowing him to maneuver through the crowds like they weren't even there, always in a space that was not going to be occupied, moving towards a place that would be unoccupied when he got there. Tears streamed down his face as he passed site after site where death was sure to visit in the next hours, but could not let himself stop. He couldn't save everyone, couldn't save anyone here without dooming himself as well, but he vowed he would not forget what would come to pass, and he WOULD save others in the future. He had promised to end war, and by all that he held holy and dear, that was what he would do, because Kira Yamato had simply had enough! The warmongers of the world would rue the day they had decided to murder those he loved and countless other innocents, because he was no longer merely Kira the Pacifist. If they liked war so much, he'd give them all they could handle. And more besides!

By the time they'd reached the shuttle, Kira could hear the grind of treads and bursts of automatic rifle fire in the distance in the real world, in the now, as the first echelons of RI and USN troops began pushing into the ravaged town. He looked back, and took in the vista of the town as it was consumed by its doom, images of burning buildings and smouldering wreckage superimposing and blending together until he could not tell what was, what had been, and what would be. All the same, he imprinted the scene upon his memory as he deposited Lilia in the pilot's chair, feeling her quake in not altogether unreasonable fear as she stared up at him, seeing a side to her idol he bet she never even imagined existed. "You wanted an Executor?" He said, just barely able to hear himself. He pointed out the window towards the town and the USN forces. "They've just given you one. Bring me to my Gundam... so that I may make War no more!"


	25. Flawed Tools

Author Note: Yeah, I know last chapter was a little rough, like I said, it wasn't flowing like some chapters do, where they just pop out of my fingers fully formed and ready. And though I appreciate the cautionary remarks about making Kira too powerful, come on people, its me. Since when have I ever let a single person become too powerful, other than as needed for the purposes of the plot, as per a villian? And even then, they obviously weren't TOO powerful cause they end up defeated. He's the only Awakened UC around in the current plot, besides Frost, and I'm not sure if he counts as seperate or not, just think of what things are going to be like in another few decades, when pretty much the entire adult population of New Eden has access to the same level of Seed? Well assuming the USN doesn't wipe em all out before that, of course.

I understand how events in Busytown played out made the USN soldiers look like monsters (though in truth it was the RI forces doing most of the terrible things, the USN soldiers merely stood by), but you will get their side of the story in the chapter after this one, so hold off any permanent judgements until then please. As fair warning, there's some fairly despicable events that occur in this chapter, probably deserving of a Mature warning label for Adult situations, though not because of gore or violence or traditional horror. Another lemonish scene involving Natalia and Rey, lets leave it at that for spoiler purposes, and a little bit of the scene with Djibril, Yuna and Hazy. The chapters of this arc are going to be Flawed Tools, Abundant Resources, Savage Tribes, Hardy Settlers, Fearless Soldiers, Flawless Weapons and Peerless Killers. By the end of this arc the war will be in full swing and most of the character relationships will be firming up. Including the one I've been waiting to write since just before RW was laid out. But the details await in the chapters.

Oh yeah, and hooray for getting 384 reviews... I'm past the mark of Chaotic Cosmos and I'm only at 1/3 the length and more like 1/4 the chapters. Keep on at this pace and I will get my goal of 1000+ reviews for RW. You people are awesome.

xxxx

**Luna, Copernicus Lunar City, Upper Class district 7, November 14th**

Lord Atticus Djibril told his driver to wait at the curb, wrinkling his nose in distaste as he considered how the mighty had fallen. At one point in his life, he was the sort of man who didn't need a driver or a private limo, simply because he was so important everyone came to see him, rather than the other way around. In addition to his commercial ownings, he'd been the hereditary heir to vast tracts of land in northern Eurasia, a scion of a line that stretched back for hundreds of generations to the very earliest kings of Germania and Russia, his title actually that of Duke, though so many people called him "milord" he'd just taken to be called "Lord Djibril". But that was in the past, and though he did own extensive Lunar estates and many firms private and public today, it was but a tiny fraction of the economic and political power he'd formerly wielded. He was now a Lord in name only, his traditional fief so much pestilential jungle along with the majority of Earth's land surface. And he was forced to contract a limosuine and driver to deliver him to meetings when his so called superiors ordered, or in this case, even to visit his own top subordinates!

As was his purpose on this evening, checking in with the two most famous figureheads of the Reclaimer Initiative organization he'd been allowed... and that was the thing that truly rankled... control of by Durandel. At one point in time Djibril had been the controlling force behind the secret society Logos, which had counted Blue Cosmos as just one arm of its operations before that organization broke away under the leadership of Cervantes Zunnichi. There was little he did not know about recruiting, funding and organizing secret terrorist organizations to act as scapegoats for legitimate political and economic concerns, but instead of recreating his own group, he'd been handed a nascent group by Durandel and told to make something of it, as if he couldn't even be trusted to do it right unless a seed was already in place! Though perhaps he could see Durandel's point, that Djibril couldn't be trusted with his own organization, because he would inevitably turn it against Durandel as soon as the time became ripe. Of course he would do so anyway, but he'd first have to ferret out all of Durandel's spies and loyalists in the RI before he felt secure enough in his power to attempt a coup. And in the meanwhile provide Durandel with good, competent service for who knew how long! It was the ultimate humilation!

At least he was fairly sure that there were no Durandel loyalists among his figureheads, since he highly doubted either of them had the dissembling skill to mask any subversive intentions from him. Truth be told, other than public popularity, they had few talents worth his time and effort, and were more like anchors than anything else! A less creative and determined man than himself might have given up in hopelessness at being handed two lieutenants like Yuna Roma Seiran and Arnold Zala, but Djibril was sadly used to dealing with an inferior quality of subordinate and getting the most out of them, more than even they themselves would expect in their wildest dreams. As Djibril took the elevator to the penthouse suits of this particular residential building, he carefully banished any expressions of anger or frustration from his face, his purplish lips pursed tightly, his eyes lidded and glaring from his pale face, framed by prematurely grey hair, expensively styled as always.

The pallor of his lips and skin, as well as the greying of his hair, were all legacies of rare genetic conditions he had been born with, as well a other, less visible effects, such as a predisposition towards hemophilia and anoxia because of how thin his blood was and how inefficient at holding oxygen, and even a degree of impotence. Djibril didn't see his conditions as handicaps, indeed as the foremost Natural supremacist leader currently alive, he was extremely proud of his flawed, entirely natural genetics. Even without the "superior" genetics of Coordinators, he had become one of the most powerful and successful men ever to live! He was unique and special in ways that no Coordinator could ever be, by their very nature! And he didn't even mind the impotence all that much, sex was an unnecessary diversion from his goals, and he was glad of a reason to ignore the charms of other men and women. Were he ever to desire progeny, he would go the path of his father's good friend, Albert la Flaga, and get himself cloned.

The weakness of his constitution also gave him strong reason to avoid most other distracting sins of the flesh, such as alcohol and drugs, save for the occasional social drink as demanded for a man of his station at social or business events. His one indulgence in an otherwise spartan existence was his cat, Joseph, named for one of his young idols, the historical figure of Joseph Stalin, who had guided Russia through one of its most trying times, during the second world war of the 20th century AD, and had also pioneered in the field of racial cleansing. Strong leadership and a determination for puriety of genetics, two things young Atticus had definitely felt strongly about. Joseph was slightly more sedentary than his namesake, though he was no less efficient when it came to exterminating vermin with extreme prejudice. Alas he had left him in the car, because getting the smell of his subordinates living arrangements out of Joseph's fur took hours, and he did so hate to give his precious a bath other than the regularly scheduled times.

The familiar stench of expensive alcohol, high end social drugs and unwashed people hit Djibril's sensitive nostrils almost as soon as the elevator doors opened, shortly after his ears were practically pinned back by the roaring sonic blast of speakers playing some trashy sort of modern club music at a volume fit to drown out a full scale shooting war. It was so loud he could feel his organs vibrating in his chest, and he absolutely failed to see how anyone could derive enjoyment from proximity to such a racket. Perhaps that was why they consumed such exoiberant quantites of alchohol and spoporific drugs, so much so that there was a palpable haze in the air from all the half extinguished paraphenilia scattered around the foyer he walked into, laying where they had been dropped by insensate partiers of either and sometimes indeterminate sex, most wearing little more than undergarments, if even that much! His eyes watering and his head spinning a bit just from the fumes, Djibril extracted a scented pompadure from his suit pocket, prepared for just this reason, and inhaled the herbal infusions it was soaked with by pressing it to his mouth and nose, to spare himself second hand intoxication merely from the atmosphere of the residence!

Stepping carefully across the human minefield lying across the floor of the foyer, more because he was disdainful of dirtying his shoes by touching them to the exhausted partiers than because he was afraid to hurt them by treading atop them, Djibril was almost knocked from his feet when a girl wearing nothing more than a pair of lace panties, and those pulled down round her knees, came charging out of the hallway he was aiming for and slammed into him, laughing drunkenly, her eyes vapid and dull with intoxication. Apparently the abrupt contact was too much for what sense of balance she had remaining, and she capsized in almost spectacular fashion and lay giggling and twitching on the floor in the throes of some artificial ecstacy of some sort, the imprint of her sweaty, sticky body fouling the front of his suit. If thoughts could kill, she would already be drowning in her own blood, as Djibril stared down at the stains on his suit, some of which looked suspiciously like those of sexual fluids. Gritting his teeth behind pursed lips, Djibril ventured onwards, vowing that this, and all other humiliations, would eventually be repaid, tenfold or more!

The further he pressed into the penthouse suites, the more active and lively the people he encountered were, though even the most friendly and intoxicated partier gave him a wide berth, the set of his jaw and the blazing in his eyes, not to mention his totally uncool formal suit giving the impression that this was a man just waiting for an excuse to order something horrible to happen to you. He looked neither left nor right as he made a beeline towards a sort of stage or raised dias that had been erected out of couches and cushions and even a few bed matresses in the center of one of the largest rooms, a portable automatic DJ set up nearby. Cavorting upon the mass of cushions were the two men he'd come to see, along with a harem of nubile young men and women, none older than their later teens, and none wearing a single stitch of clothing. His associates sexual tastes were... less than discerning, perhaps as a result of their time steeped in the debauchery of the professional pornographic industry, perhaps merely because they were higher than kites attached to fighter jets on low orbital patrol!

Sitting slightly lower down on the pile, his blond and purple-blue streaked hair unbound from its usual ponytail, his emerald green eyes glazed with satisfaction as his head lolled limply on his shoulders as two young women who could have easily been supermodels performed graphically obscene acts upon his lower body with a focus usually reserved for an artist creating a masterpiece was Arnold "Hazy" Zala. If there was a single Corodinator that exemplified everything Djibril saw as wrong about Coordinators, Hazy was probably that person. Born into the incredibly wealthy and powerful Zala family, a cousin of the infamous Athrun Zala, Arnold had been gifted with the world on a silver platter if he would only but apply himself slightly. But even that much effort was too much for the young Arnold, and he had devolved into a lifestyle of impersonating his famous cousin in order to have sex with overenthusiastic, stupid girls, and supported himself off their unthinking gifts. Athrun's public marriage to Queen Cagalli Yula Attha of Orb had eventually put an end to that particular cash cow, and Arnold had been out on his ear.

Instead of applying his superior genetic gifts towards succeeding in any of a dozen family ventures he was offered control of, he instead ran away from all responsibility and joined a gang of lowlifes, eventually becoming a drug runner of some minor renown. An accidental contract with agents of the Brotherhood of Man, Noah Borander's apocalyptic cult got Hazy in over his head, and the subsequent death of his girlfriend, a Lacus Clyne impersonator named Meer Campbell, at Noah's hands and his attempt at taking revenge, only ended up destroying the illicit life he had built and all but alienating himself from his family. Finally at the dregs of his existence, Hazy had used some family contacts, from those few members of his family who would have anything at all to do with him, and entered the film business, where he proved surprisingly popular, perhaps gifted at acting after a lifetime of pretending to be someone other than himself, and rapidly managed to reverse his fortunes, even to the point where he was largely able to bury his past and earned a name for himself in popular filmmaking that translated into widespread popularity among the younger generations of the PLANTS. Hazy was Djibril's link to the hearts and minds of the young Coordinators of the RI.

Slightly higher up upon the mound of cushions was Yuna Roma Seiran, ex-prince of Orb's royal Seiran family, son of Unato Seiran, one of Djibril's few good friends of Orbite descent. As far as Djibril could tell at a quick glance... and a quick glance was all he was willing to risk... Yuna was buggering a young man in the butt, or at least he assumed it was a man, from what little he could discern of the person Yuna was draped across, while two more young ladies of questionable repute draped themselves across his back and caressed his shoulders. At one point in time, Djibril had strongly been considering a partnership with the Seiran family in pursuit of taking over Orb and making it a puppet state of Logos, with Yuna slated to marry the young and impressionable Cagalli Yula Attha to cement his rulership of the country. The conclusion of the first Valentine War and many of the events of the second nixed that plan quickly enough, and the marriage of Athrun and Cagalli obviously ended any opportunity for a dynasty change in the Seiran's favor.

Then had come the events of the Eden Disaster, when the Brotherhood of Man had launched a sneak attack upon Orb's parliament while in session. Instead of accomplishing anything truly worthwhile, such as killing Cagalli or Athrun despite having the power to do so, the terrorists had instead tortured Unato to death in front of his political rival, Queen Zala-Attha, in a fruitless attempt to garner concessions. Yuna had also been present during the messy death of his father, and something in him had snapped that day. The Seiran family had always been pro-natural in its leanings, otherwise Djibril never would have considered befriending them, but Yuna's hatred for all things Edenite was something special. Leaving Orb in a traumatized haze, abdicating from his position as heir to the decimated Seiran family, Yuna had eventually found himself in the adult film business as well, which he had then parelyed in a few bit roles in low grade action films, before he hit major success with the "Roman Gladiator" line of pulp action films, starring as "The Roman" and becoming an almost household name for an over the top, martial artsy style vengeful hero. "The Roman" jokes were immensely popular on the nets, where they bragged about how his punch could kill even the strongest Gundams from sheer fear and other inane things. Yuna was Hazy's counterpart, but for Naturals obviously.

And Djibril loathed them both with a passion fit to serve as a power source for a modern war machine if it could only be technologically harnessed, but though immensely flawed, they were his primary tools for recruitment and inspiration of the mass portion of the Reclaimer Iniative, so he was stuck with them. But though he was stuck with them, did not mean he was obliged to tolerate their excesses any more than absolutely necessary, and Djibril had just about reached his utmost limit. The final straw came when Hazy blinked his glazed eyes at him as if noticing him for the first time, and lifted a vapid hand in what could have been a wave or a twitch, and was more likely the latter, considering the stimulation the mouths of his concubines were treating him to. "Aaaaaay, 's Atti... howwzzzit goin, Atti? You havin a good 'ime? I'm so fuking 'appy rih now... I lov u man..."

Djibril didn't bother replying to the wasted blandishment, he just took his cellphone from his pocket and accessed Namara, the USN's AI utility system. A few submenus later and the power to the entire penthouse was cut off, killing the music, the flashing lights, even the air conditioning, before emergency lights were allowed to come back on, casting everything in a ruddy light. "The party is over." Djibril said into the sudden, shocked silence. He pointed an imperious finger at his two addled lieutenants. "Get rid of your harem, get dressed, and get downstairs to my car in the next ten minutes, or I'll send in the police to drag net this place. I wonder how long it would take for ID verification to turn up someone underage, do you think? That sort of scandal tends to be bad for one's career, don't you think?" and then he turned around and stalked out, glad for the near darkness because he wasn't sure how much more debauchery his senses could take before he vomited his prawns and caviar dinner all over the floor, not that anyone would notice considering the filth they were lying in already!

It was closer to fifteen or twenty minutes before the two young movie stars shambled up to his limosine, more or less dressed properly but looking decidedly queasy and befuddled all the same. Djibril met them outside the car, not wanting to subject Joseph to their ilk until they were more presentable. The police threat had been something of a bluff, since any negative publicity for the two young men would also reflect upon the RI, and he could not have that, but he'd bet that they were too screwed up and high to realize that, and he'd been right. Djibril opened a case that he'd retrieved from the limo and extended it to his sorry looking subordinates. Inside the case were a pair of hypodermic needles containing a medicinal substance that purged the body of over ninety eight percent of all foreign drug contaminants, including alcohol and most forms of recreational drugs. Violently purged. They each took one hypodermic and looked at the milky fluid inside with sickly eyes, as Djibril stepped back out of range and pointed them fiercely towards the garden area by the side of the building. They reluctantly disappeared into the bushes and shortly afterwards Djibril smirked in vindication at the retching and cursing and coughing that resulted as the anti-drug did its messy business over the course of the next half hour.

While waiting, Djibril took two more cases from the trunk fo the car and kicked them into the bushes, the cases holding towels and clean suits for his purged subordinates to garb themselves in, the anti-drug's effects having almost certainly ruined whatever outfits they had shrugged into in order to get downstairs without charges of public indecency. Finally, more than an hour after his limo had first pulled up to the front entrance of the residence block, Hazy and Yuna stumbled out of the bushes, looking haggard and slightly withered, their new clothes hanging uncomfortably from their frames, but their eyes were clear and cowed submissively as Djibril opened one of the limo doors and beckoned them to enter, before following with a final sniff of disdain, and signaling for his driver to take them to their destination. Djibril got himself settled across from his two subordinates, and met their sullen gaze with his own cold one.

"Why you gotta go and kill our buzz like that?" Hazy growled in high distemper. "Just cause you're a eun..." Hazy's brain seemed to catch up to his mouth at last and his jaw snapped shut like a trap, knowing that antagonizing his employer even more than he already unintentionally had that night. People who irritated Atticus Djibril too much tended to disappear. Lots of burial space out at those Lunar estates, lots of need for fresh fertilizer. "You told us we had the weekend off." He complained in a more meek tone.

"Plans change." Djibril said without sympathy. "And in case you somehow hadn't noticed, the USN has declared war as of a few days ago, and the Reclaimer Iniative is PART of the war effort! Which modifies your recent conduct from merely dereliction to actual dereliction of duty in time of warfare! Do either of you know what sort of punishment one gets for that sort of thing? Of course you don't, you're just a pair of drug addled lowlifes! Its DEATH, you morons! DEATH! And God help me, I am of a mind to administer it! It could only improve the organization!" Djibril leaned back in his chair with a wounded sigh. "But I won't, because there is still a slim chance you could be worth something to me."

"What do you need us to do?" Yuna asked, almost eagerly. Yuna was the less contemptible of the two, at least he possessed some degree of fire, when it wasn't quenched in a drug and sex fueled self destructive orgy. Yuna at least had hate, Hazy just had apathy and the verminlike desire not to be crushed by those stronger than him.

"As the public face of our organization to the younger generations, which are the primary constituents of the USN military, it has been deemed only right and proper for you to boost morale by accepting positions of responsibility within the reclamation forces, share some of the danger. Now I understand neither of you is any sort of soldier, and that trying to make you one would be purest folly, but there are ways you can serve the cause that have nothing to do with fighting." Djibril began.

"I know how to defend myself just fine." Yuna countered in an offended tone, holding up one of his fists in a classic pose from his movies.

Djibril just looked at him pityingly. "You know how to defend yourself from ACTORS, Yuna, thats not going to cut it on Earth. Things are a little more serious there." Djibril shook his head in mild exasperation. "Look, this is what you will do. You will each be taking over the administration of a re-education center for the captured civilian Eddies. That may sound like hard work, but all you ACTUALLY need to do is rubber stamp your names on various documents when asked to do so, and appear in the occasional propaganda video in a mildly presentable manner! Other than that, I don't give a Coordinator's ass WHAT either of you do. In fact, I'm frankly hoping the pestiliential wildlife kills you BOTH in a HORRIBLE and PROLONGED manner as quickly as possible."

"Hey, I'm a Coordinator!" Hazy blurted resentfully.

"Yes you are, and if there was ever anyone LESS deserving of genetic "superiority" than you, I believe the entire project would have been scrapped already!" Djibril had to take several deep breaths to still his near homicidal rage.

"You're saying we have free reign to run the re-education centers?" Yuna asked, his quiet, contemplative question making the hairs on Djibril's neck stand up, though with trepidation or a rare hint of anticipation, he could not say. "We can make whatever rules we want?"

"Well, I would prefer you not turn them into death camps JUST yet, but as long as the numbers add up and we have the occasional video of how happy and content the Eddies are at the camps, I will stress once more... I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DO! Maintain a public facade, which is one of the few things you both can do for a fact, and be ready to give a guided tour to whatever public inspectors Durandel decides to send our way without implicating yourselves or more importantly the rest of the Reclaimer Initiative in war crimes, at any given moment, and you will be doing ALL I could ask of you and more."

"You know, I think I might be able to get behind this gig, actually." Hazy said, an odd light in his eye that Djibril frantically did not wish to know the meaning of.

"Yeah, this could be a LOT of fun." Yuna agreed, and the look in his eyes would have made a lesser man ill. "When do we start?"

"Right now." Djibril gave them both a superior smirk. "Your shuttle will launch as soon as you board. For the Reclamation of our Blue and Pure World, gentlemen."

xxxx

**Second Earth Colony 4, FEAR Headquarters, November 14th**

Lain was getting real tired of this black bag treatment that he'd been getting recently. First the Retributors had put him through the wringer, though that had actually ended up with rather surprising results at the end of the day, and then shortly after being picked up floating in the ruins of the battlefield by his own damned side, something he wasn't sure how Ashino had managed to arrange so smoothly, they'd once more made with the sack cloth over his head and the handcuffs and the none too gentle dragging and shoving from place to place. He'd told the story he and Stella had concocted a half dozen times, about how they'd both been forced to eject from their machines during the battle and had been unable to send a distress signal due to fear of being picked up by enemy forces, but whether or not they believed him, Lain couldn't tell. given that he was spending most of his time on the cold floor of one cell after another, he was starting to get the feeling that someone on his own side might have it in for him or something. Yeah, right, like that would ever happen... NOT! He just wondered why Rey wasn't there to kick him in the balls personally.

Plopped down in another hard metal chair, his wrists cuffed to the back of the chair, the black bag was once more torn off of Lain's head, the grabbing hand not being too careful to avoid grabbing a fistful of black hair as well, and Lain winced as his scalp screamed at the inhumanity of it all, his eyes watering for a moment and blurring his vision as he looked around the interrogation room and found it strangely deserted. Having played this game too many times in the recent past to be impressed with such basic tactics, Lain sighed loudly and slouched in his chair as much as possible to try and get comfortable, closing his eyes as he pretended to try to take a nap while he waited for the hidden interrogator or guard to step forward to give him a rude awakening. The sound of a heavy stride from nearby had his eyes snapped open at once, his chest and stomach muscles tensed as he waited for a body blow that never landed.

And probably a good thing too, because the guy standing over him was none other than Mechael Smith, the Augmented supersoldier, who probably could have torn Lain's spine out through his nostrils if he'd felt the need. Remembering how brash and insufferable the braggart Augmented had been during their previous time together, Lain was somewhat shocked to see the subdued and browbeaten look on the young cyborg's face this time, mixed with plenty of all too easily seen anguish. He looked really broken up about something, and Lain's first snide comment died stillborn in his throat as he straightened in his chair somewhat once more. Without a word Mechael bent down behind him and did something to Lain's handcuffs that involved more brute force than any sort of key, and for the first time in what was probably days, Lain was free to move both his legs AND his arms. Rubbing proper circulation back into his wrists, Lain nodded at Mechael and muttered something that hopefully sounded like a thank you. Mechael just ignored him, and sat down in another chair nearby, the reinforced steel furniture creaking under Mechael's artificially enhanced bodyweight.

It wasn't until the spotlamp flicked on overhead, thankfully pointed downward rather than directly into Lain's light sensitive eyes, that Lain realized there was a third person in the room with them, seated in a much more comfortable chair across the room, perhaps behind a wall of armor glass or something, though it was hard to tell. Lain's face soured almost at once as his gaze settled on the wrinkled features of one of his least favorite people alive, Dr. Sammual Roanoke, the Director of FEAR's Cyber-Mechanical projects and the brain behind both the Extended and Augmented supersoldier programs. Stella's much beloved "Father", though there was no biological relation between Roanoke and any of the Extended as far as Lain knew. At least he fervently hoped not! Bad enough what he'd done to them, doing the same thing to his own biological children... well... maybe it wasn't any worse than what he'd done already actually.

As usual, Roanoke had a pinched expression on his face, like he'd just discovered a bug in his morning oatmeal or something, and he was hunched forward in his chair like a buzzard contemplating a pair of recent possible roadkills. His eyes met Lain's and held the challenging look for a few moments, before Roanoke looked down and away, and that was the moment when Lain's stomach tried to flee into his ankles, because Roanoke had looked almost ashamed for a moment there, and the not so good Doctor had NEVER showed even a slight hint of remorse of any sort to Lain before in the near decade he'd known the man. Lain hadn't even thought regret or guilt to be emotions Roanoke was even capable of experiencing, and to see them hinted at know made his gut roil in a VERY unpleasant manner, especially as there was one person he missed very much who was not present right now.

"What did you DO?" Lain accused, his voice all but smoking with pent up anger as he half stood from his chair and glared at Roanoke. "You freaky old bastard, WHAT DID YOU DO TO STELLA?"

Roanoke flinched a little bit from the vehemence in Lain's voice, but there must have been some form of security system between him and the enraged solar Knight, because he remained in his chair and even managed to meet Lain's gaze once more. "Its not what I have done so much as what I have failed to do." Roanoke replied gruffly. "I did not intend for events to spiral out of control thusly, but outside factors have created something of an impossible situation for me and..."

"WHAT HAPPENED TO STELLA?" Lain cut the doctor off, not in any sort of mood for self justifying bullshit. Security system or not, he was about two seconds and one wrong word from going over there and choking the doctor to death with his own shriveled testicles!

"She's been reassigned." Roanoke answered, with surprising brevity. "It happened shortly after you were recovered, while you were still undergoing "processing" by our dutiful Section Nine detail. As much as they might like to think otherwise, the code of law is very clear, and Section Nine and the regular military forces, the Solar Knights included, have no authority to imprison or hold any member of FEAR's special combat forces, and so Stella was released into our custody at once. Notice I said "our" custody and not "my" custody. And in that minor difference lies the crux of the problem. Orders came down DIRECTLY from the lips of the Chief Director, that witch Dr. Dostanya, requesting a significant force of Extendeds, including the entire currently deployable generation, to be reassigned to Nifelheim, FEAR's new Antarctic base. Effective immediately. I doubt Stella was here for more than an hour before she was on a shuttle Earthward. They didn't even give her time to recover any personal effects before they all but dragged her off."

"I thought you were the only one who could give the Extended their marching orders?" Lain sank back into his chair, stunned. Not only Stella was suddenly gone, but Sting and Auel too? He suddenly felt very, very alone, and did not like the shiver that crept up and down his spine at the thought.

"I rather thought that too, but the Chief Director has made things abundantly clear about how limited my authority actually is." Roanoke grimaced as if in real pain. "That jumped up bitch is going to make one power play too many one of these days, I just hope I live long enough to see it blow up in her damnably pretty face!" His furious posture slowly deflated, leaving him looking almost shrunken, and every bit as old as he actually was. "But after the fiasco of the engagement with the Retributors and the DISMAL showing of my prize Augmented, not to mention the loss of one of our top secret Panzerdragoons to the terrorist forces, and the loss of scores of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars of other military equipment during the battle, all of which has been placed at my doorstep, I find myself walking on very thin ice indeed when it comes to pushing things with the Chief Director."

"He just got lucky, that's all!" Mechael blurted out defensively from his chair, though he wilted almost at once when both Lain and Roanoke turned incredulous glares upon him.

"I reviewed the battle recorder data personally. Indeed, I was given the humiliating task of presenting it not only to the Chief Director but to the Solar President and his senior commanders as well, personally, so I am FULLY acquainted with just what a horrendously inadequate showing you made, Mechael. I was almost laughed out of the room when I tried to come to your defense my boy, and only managed to save even a little face by declaring you MERELY a prototype, and likely a defective one at that! You, the one I pinned my hopes upon for the future of all supersoldiers... you've made me AND yourself into the joke of the high command!" If Roanoke's voice had become any more caustic, Lain wouldn't have been surprised to see acidic fumes rising from Mechael's face. Now he knew why the Augmented was acting like a puppy that had just been smacked with a newspaper.

"Okay so maybe I screwed up, but you didn't have to take the Omega-Panzer away..." Mechael sulked.

"My dear boy you're lucky I didn't deactivate your power source for good!" Roanoke retorted. "Piloting a Gundam in a combat scenario is simply out of the question right at the moment. If you are deployed again... and that is a BIG if, it will be as a ground support infantry specialist. I just hope to all the principles of science that you don't make a bloody hash of that too, or else it really WILL be the scrap heap for you... and possibly ME too!"

"Getting back to Stella..." Lain prompted insistently. Not that he wasn't glad to see Mechael taken down a peg or ten, but there was getting your ego popped and then there was going up against the wall with a gun at your back if you screwed up again, and there was the very real possibility that if Mechael wasn't a brilliant success in his next mission, he would be discarded like any other defective part and recycled, which was a fairly terminal procedure for a man who was mostly cyborg, and Lain couldn't find it in himself to wish the poor bastard that kind of fate. "You said she's been reassigned?"

"Yes, Stella has been personally reassigned under the direct command of Chief Director Dostanya, the particulars of her deployment orders are sealed beyond my ability to penetrate. However, I can make a fairly good guess as to what she intends to use her for, given what ELSE was recently confiscated from my laboratories. Its nothing less than what I was intending, just in a different manner." Roanoke heaved another heavy sigh.

"You know, maybe you'd better start somewhere a bit further back, because I haven't the slightest fucking clue what you're talking about and I don't like that at all." Lain suggested, direly.

"Have you ever wondered, Mr. Debora, why I stood back and allowed you and Stella to generate a relationship like you have, even though it runs actively counter to many of the goals I am trying to accomplish with the Extended program, not least of which being the perfection of a perfectly tranquil mind?" Roanoke asked tiredly. Seeing Lain's cautious nod, Roanoke continued on. "It went against my better judgement at first, but you should know I've always had something of a soft spot for Stella. She's always been a top performer, and her tranquility is near perfect, better than any other Extended. Even coding her with a berseker subliminal break word couldn't dimish the strength of her tranquility. She might be the greatest success of the current generation of Extended. So I was of a mind to tolerate more insubordination from her than I would have from a less accomplished Extended. And though her tranquility did at first fluctuate during your relationship, contrary to my expectations, it did not dissolve over time, but instead has only grown stronger. Indeed I am forced to conclude that Stella's relationship with you has only made her a BETTER Extended, rather than a worse one."

"So because I wasn't causing her problems, and indeed actually helping her meet your goals, you let us have our relationship? Gee, Sam, that's almost human of you." Lain snarled humorlessly.

"I don't wish for, require nor expect your approval, Mr. Debora. At the end of the day, Stella is an Extended, not a normal girl, and any delusions you have about making her one are doomed to failure. However, I am not so horrible as to deny my premier daughter a chance at happiness, especially one that improves her effectiveness as an Extended. Believe it or not, I was even thinking about allowing you to procreate with her. Your genes combined with hers would have made a fine foundation for the next generation of Extendeds." Roanoke said with a slight smile.

Lain did not return the smile. Indeed, it was all he could do to not hurl himself at the doctor once more. "If you think for a SINGLE moment I would EVER allow any child of Stella and mine to be inducted into your inhuman project you've got another thing com..."

"Without my help Stella cannot procreate, her ovum have all been removed, as is standard procedure for female Extended." Roanoke cut him off curtly. "And while the question of control over progeny between a member of the program and an outsider would be an entertaining legal matter, I can assure you, I would win it. There are many worse fates for children, Mr. Debora, and have you even thought about what Stella might want?"

"Stella is still half brainwashed by you fucks, so I think her opinion might be somewhat suspect." Lain snapped back. ."Any child of mine is by default an Orb citizen, and if you think I would hesitate to get the entire Orb legal system involved on my behalf, you're as delusional as you claim I am."

"Its a moot point anyway, because besides Stella herself, all of her genetic material, including her ovum samples, have been confiscated by order of the Chief Director, and taken to Nifelheim as well." Roanoke retorted, obviously a bit irritated at Lains pronouncements. "I have only thirty eggs saved back, some of which I was planning on allocating to your use so that Stella might attempt to live birth a few children of her own. I thought it would be good for morale for the rest of the Extendeds. The rest were to go into my research on mass producing more Augmented, as Stella's genes line up well for that purpose as well. She really is quite the exceptional girl." Roanoke fixed Lain with his more usual hard, penetrating gaze. "I have a proposition for you, Mr. Debora."

"Guess I don't have much choice but to hear you out, do I?" Lain answered, slouching back in his chair.

"As you might imagine, having my authority so blatantly usurped and my research materials stolen so blatantly by that bitch Dostanya has me a bit perturbed." Roanoke said, ignoring Lain's insouciant posture. "And I happen to have it on good authority that Section Nine has been given reasonably explicit orders to do their best to pin the blame for the loss of your Vindicator and my Panzerdragoon to the Retributors squarely upon your shoulders, perhaps even imply that you sold the technology to the enemy in exchange for your life. A certain someone high up in the Solar Knight's chain of command apparently doesn't like you very much and wants you gone something fierce. Now, I still have enough power to spare you that sort of unpleasant fate, but it will mean you doing a few things for me."

"Let's assume I'm listening." Lain prompted, trying not to show his fear of the thought of Rey's goons getting their hands on him in a more permanent fashion. Especially if the quasi deal he and Stella had worked out with Ashino came out under intensive questioning. He suddenly felt like he was wearing a tombstone around his neck. His tombstone. "Lets assume I'm listening very carefully." he added, mostly to himself.

"Though I have no authority to order you in your role as Solar Knight's Liason, as Liason you have the freedom to appoint yourself extra duties in order to assist in relationship building between FEAR and the USN... I looked it up in your orders... and I'm offering you the duty of being Mechael's command and control authority during his deployment to the surface, oddly enough, based at Nifelheim. As for what that means, in basic terms you're responsible for his conduct, much like a chaperone. You won't have any authority to actually order him to do anything, but if he knows what's good for him, he'll listen to your advice, because you report to me, and I do have the authority to do pretty much anything I deem necessary to Mechael in order to motivate a better performance out of him. However, this posting is merely a cover for what I really want you to do." Roanoke explained.

"And that is?" Lain asked, trying not to sound too suspicious, not liking the feeling of getting drawn in to the interior politics of FEAR.

"Simple. I want you to rescue Stella and, if possible, sabotage whatever plans Dostanya intends to use her for. Of course you won't be able to just swoop down like a knight in shining armor and carry her away... like it or not the Chief Director's orders are legal and you'll be declared a traitor if you try to go in with guns blazing. But you can watch over her and make sure she doesn't suddenly disappear or anything. I don't trust Dostanya to treat her right, that woman has no soul." Roanoke leaned back in his chair.

"That's quite a thing, coming from a pretty damned soulless bastard like you, Sam." Lain pointed out. "So what do I get out of the deal? You want me to go balls to breasts with the most powerful person in all of FEAR, someone who scares even a freaky old fuck like you into wetting your pants, and intentionally throw a monkey wrench into whatever big plans she has? I don't like the idea of being a sacrificial pawn, and I can't protect anyone, much less Stella, if i've been dissected and thrown in an medical incinerator."

"You mean, what do you get besides the chance to protect the girl you love and being spared the certainty of brutal torture and eventual death at the hands of Section Nine?" Roanoke clarified with a single raised brow. "I should think that's plenty enough as it is."

"Well you think wrong. This is my life we're talking about, and Stella's too. You're gonna have to do better than just saving my bacon right now and letting me do something I'd goddamn do anyway." Lain countered. "You wouldn't be asking me for this if you had any other choice, Sam, and you know it. So sweeten the deal or watch your life's work get taken away from you by "that jumped up bitch"."

"Yes, you would make a good Extended indeed. You've got the hardness in you." Roanoke mused, almost to himself. "Fine then. If you can prove to me that you've foiled whatever plans Dostanya has Stella in mind for, and you help Mechael stay out of trouble long enough for him to recoup the reputation of the Augmented, and if you can recover for me as much of my pirated genetic material as possible, this is what I will do. In exchange for semen samples of significant quantity from you, I will reimplant Stella with a supply of her ovum, and any children the two of you bear by natural biological means will be yours to do with as you and Stella decide. With samples of your genetic matter and Stella's, I'll be able to create new Extended without your help anyway at that point in time, so I have no reason to confiscate any biological children."

"And you'll retire Stella and any other Extended from active duty once they've served for more than ten years." Lain pressed his luck.

"And I'll retire Stella from active duty once the first of the new generation of Extended have been born and tested viable. And any Extended that survives fifteen years of active service will be free to retire from active duty if that is their choice, though I'm afraid any sort of re-integration into normal society is impossible. But arrangements can be made to provide a home for them. Believe it or not, I do look upon them as the children I've never had." Roanoke countered.

"And because you do, I'm glad you've never had children." Lain answered with complete sincerity. "Okay, Sam, you have yourself an agent. I just have one question though... why didn't you just take sperm samples from me if you want em so bad?"

Roanoke gave him a surprised look. "Because that would be stealing, Mr. Debora. Your genetic material belongs to you by law. Whatever your opinion of me and my projects, I assure you, I am no thief. Besides, if you give them to me freely, then you have no legal grounds to protest the use to which they are put. Its nice and neat, and I adore neatness."

"Don't I get a say in this bullshit?" Mechael asked grumpily.

"No!" Both Roanoke and Lain echoed at the same time, in almost the same vehement tone.

xxxx

**New Eden, Nifelheim Antarctic Base, November 15th, Morning**

Natalia looked up as the doors to her new office, deep within the lowest and warmest levels of FEAR's newest terrestrial facility, the Antarctic base known as Nifilheim, slid open, allowing the slightly cooler air in the hallway outside to gust inwards. Natalia kept her office warmest of all, the illusion of the sub zero ambient temeperature and even worse wind chill making her feel cold even though her body, which was much more like that of an Extended than a mere Natural, could survive on the surface unprotected quite well, at least for a day or two. One look at the resolute but tormented expression on Rey's face told her what the problem likely was, but a quick glance down at her desk, fingers scrolling through several open subwindows of data feeds, showed the room with Lunamaria Hawke, all nicely sedated and ready for Rey's use, empty and unlit, the dropsheet still respectfully covering Luna's untouched body. Given that she'd left Rey in there to do his thing, just like the last six visits, Natalia had been wondering when something like this would occur, and she was glad it had, because it meant Rey was on the cusp of becoming hers completely.

"I can't do it anymore, Natalia!" Rey said without preamble, his voice full of self loathing. "I can't let myself keep being so weak, so despicable! I'm perverting the emotions I feel for the girl I love and taking advantage of her while she lies in drugged slumber! I'm basically date raping her... have date raped her over six times already! No matter how good the sex is, I always feel so crummy afterwards, so debauched, so beastly! I just can't do it anymore! I have to make amends."

"My dear boy, you have to do nothing of the sort, for you have done nothing wrong." Natalia told him mildly, eyes twinkling behind her lab spectacles.

"Nothing wrong?" Rey grimaced in self derision. "I've been having sex with a girl who has told me she never wants to see my face again! Not, its not sex... its rape, she's never told me she wants it, I've just been taking it from her, regardless of how she feels! Lack of protest doesn't equate to permission granted, especially because she's drugged and not even aware of who she is most of the time, much less who I am! I'm supposed to be one of the shepards of humanity, guiding them to a better future, how can I be a serial molester at the same time and still be worthy of my duty in life?"

"You've got it all wrong, Rey." Natalia insisted, getting up from behind her desk and enveloping him in a tight hug, making sure to pull his head firmly but tightly against her perfectly engineered breasts, taking on the role of a mother comforting a confused and scared child. That was Rey's other weakness, besides his inexperienced and needy libido, he was sorely lacking any major female authority figures in his life... i.e. he had no mother figure in his life to look up to, only a father figure, Durandel, and Durandel couldn't always be there for him when he needed life advice. By providing for both his sexual needs and his need for an understanding, supportive, older female authority figure, Rey was already all but dancing to her whims. Once she helped him beat this inevitable crisis of faith, in which his latent decency and sense of cultural morality tried a last ditch effort to reassert themselves, then he would be hers, body, mind and soul.

"I'm hurting the person I want to protect most in the world, how can I be worthy of being a shepard for humanity? A shepard doesn't molest his flock!" Rey was actually sobbing into her chest now, tormented with his self loathing.

"Shh, Rey, no, that's not how it is at all." Natalia whispered reassuringly in his ear, petting the back of his head and neck, careful to avoid touching him in any overt sexual manner, which could only backfire with him in need of her as a mother figure at the moment, rather than an attentive lover. "A shepard's role is to protect his flock against danger, to make sure they are well fed and cared for, to attend them when they are sick. But it is not a one way relationship Rey, the flock has expectations of the shepard but the shepard must have expectations of his flock in return. Their wool provides him with warm clothes and blankets, the tools he needs to stay awake through the long nights standing guard, their meat and milk provide sustenance to keep him alive and healthy in turn. You are one of our shepard protectors, you keep us safe from danger, and in return we all have an obligation to serve your needs too."

"Serve my needs? Obligation?" Rey asked, hope suddenly igniting in the pits of his soul. Perhaps he wasn't totally lost after all.

"You are a great man, Rey, who fufills a role so important, the very future of humanity hinges on your ability to perform it well. Great men have by their very nature, great needs, and much as it is your duty to protect us from dangers, it is our duty to service your needs so you can focus on your own duty. Your job is to be the protector, the shield against darkness and evil. Our job is to provide you with the weapons and tools you need to do so, to feed and clothe and house you, to provide subordinates to direct to fight bigger battles and..." Natalia changed her voice to a more seductive, playful tone, her tongue just barely grazing Rey's earlobe. "... to provide for the needs of your body and soul, whether through platonic companionship, friendship or sexual companionship. The service you give us all is so great, so fundamental to our future well being, that in truth, anything we could give you in return pales in comparison. If we were to not be screwing you over in terms of compensation Rey, then women would need to be waiting on you hand and foot at all hours of the day and night, the most beautiful new virgins attending your bed every night. That is what a shepard of humanity deserves by right... but though you could rightly demand such treatment, you restrain yourself to just a few women, those you care about most and treasure. You're not a bad person, Rey... you're just the opposite. You only take the bare minimum, less than that even!"

"It isn't easy being the shepard." Rey said slowly. "So much work, so many dangers, so many members of the flock trying to wander off and do their own thing, making themselves and everyone else vulnerable at the same time! Its constantly frustrating! Its like they don't want to be saved! Its like they are trying to make things hard for me and Gil! Why can't they see how they are endangering everything we've worked so hard to accomplish with their petty intrigues and protests? Why, Natalia, why are they all so stupid and petty?" Rey was sobbing, not with remorse, but with outrage now.

"It is the nature of most sheep to be dull and vapid, unable to take care of their own welfare. That is why we need the shepard, people like you, so badly. Though annoying, it is beneath the shepard to despise his flock for their base nature, he must be tolerant of their shortcomings even as he takes pleasure in those few who stand out from the cud chewing masses with their particular beauty, intelligence or determination. A shepard must take from most of the flock just as he gives to them, without their express consent because they are not even qualified to give it! It is only those rare few, more sheep dogs than sheep, that the shepard can turn to for companionship and understanding, but even the sheep dogs are only there to provide service to the shepard that the sheep cannot provide." Natalia slowly made her caresses more intimate, feeling Rey start to rise to the occasion.

"That would make you one of my sheep dogs then, Natalia?" Rey asked, somewhat wryly. "You must be the blue ribbon prize dog."

"I'm happy you think so much of me, my shepard. This dog is always glad to be of use to her master." Natalia rolled her eyes, inwardly, at how excited even such comparatively minor "slut talk" got Rey. There was barely any art to this kind of seduction, it was all about presenting herself as a bitch in heat and making sure his self confidence stayed high. Oh but she was looking forward to working on Gil, which would be as much an intellectual and spiritual seduction as one through animal sex! She slipped her hand down his trousers and began to stroke him there too. _So maybe there is one or two things to say for the young and dumb shepard. He is very... well made._ Natalia gripped him tightly, cocking an eyebrow specuatively as Rey groaned through clenched teeth. _Very well made indeed. Not suitable for my own personal long term use of course, but just perfect to provide the baseline of my most loyal cadre of new supersoldiers. Or half of it anyway. And as for the other half..._

Natalia teasingly withdrew her hand from Rey's pants, her teeth nipping at his lower lip for a moment to draw him on, his hand going up to fondle her breasts, his rapid breathing and shining eyes telling her he was intent on going all the way with her in the next few minutes, pretty much no matter what she wanted to do. Her own fault of course, convincing him that his flock was obliged to sexually serve him, but she couldn't have him wracked with guilt and remorse over his conduct with the Lunamaria girl, couldn't have him hesitate at the wrong moment in the future. If it meant putting up with him thinking that her body was his to use at whim, by right, well then she could tolerate that for a while, and besides, soon enough she would have ways of distracting him from her, except when she needed to reward him, or felt the need for some animal sex with a young, well hung stud. "Patience my love, I have something I want to show you first." Natalia cautioned him, bringing Rey up short as he moved to pin her against her desk.

A touch of a control on the desk opened the recuperation bed-tube built into one of the walls, where Natalia spent her nights most of the time, bathing in the subtly tuned exotic energy fields, letting them remove the effects of the day's aging and wear and tear on her still biological parts, which didn't react well to her implants. That was the true purpose of the recuperation beds, not to tune the mechanical or engineered parts of the Extended form, but to stabilize and repair the purely biological, base matter. The mechanical parts would work fine for a dozen times the biological lifespan of the host body, that was why the parts were recycled from dead or failed projects, rather than making new parts. Though only a few hours a month would provide all the maintenance an Extended needed, Natalia saw no reason why she couldn't take advantage of the beauty care side benefits of the fields as often as she wanted, which was one of the primary reasons her biological body looked about twenty years younger than her physical age.

Out of the recuperation bed stepped a young woman of about Rey's age, shoulder length blond hair, creamy pale skin, very nicely toned atheltic build, clad in a simple sleeveless medical shift that covered her from neckline to midthigh. The young woman blinked her eyes slowly, rosy pink orbs dusky with the effects of the recuperation bed, which put subjects into a state of deep relaxation, where the subconscious was open to modification from outside sources. That feature was disabled when Natalia used the bed of course, but could be reactivated at need. "Rey, I'd like you to meet Stella Louissier." Natalia beckoned to the Extended girl, who plodded over, somewhat unsteady on her feet, to stand limply at attention next to Natalia. "In a way you could say that Stella is my daughter, one of my special children that Sammual and I conceived many years ago, though perish the thought of me ever having physical relations with that old prune." Stella blinked at Rey, her mind still basically in a dream state, her memories and higher cognitive functions locked away behind the hypnoconditioning of the bed. Even more so than usual, Stella was just a flesh golem at the moment, unable to act of her own free will.

Natalia would put the girl back to normal when they were done, she was a very experienced Extended after all, one of the most senior of the entire project, and Sammual had a soft spot for her in his heart, treated her almost like she really was his daughter, rather than some trash orphan they'd picked out of a lineup. But even Natalia had been impressed with how well the girl had taken to the Extended implants, better than Natalia herself had even, barely even requiring time in the recuperation bed after the implants stabilized at around age 18. They still made her do time there anyway, maintaining the illusion that the Extendeds required the beds to survive, when in truth, after the implants stabilized, there was little real need for the beds. Fortunately, most Extendeds never fully synchronized with their implants, but Stella was the exception to the general rule. Along with her genetic predisposition towards what Sammual called "mental tranquility", the ability to be invisible and even untouchable to psychic powers, she was a prime canidate for furthering the supersoldier program.

Of course, Sammual had already noted that, and had set aside her reproductive materials for creating his new Augmented units, but after running her own tests and finding that Stella was nearly a one hudnred percent match for her own program, she'd yanked the samples from Roanoke's storage units and appropriated them for herself. Sammual had pitched a fit of holy hell of course, until she reminded him who worked for whom exactly, who controlled the allocation of research funding, and how his standing with her wasn't particularly high at the moment, with his brand new Augmented having returned after getting his butt kicked by the Retributors, after all of Roanoke's boasting right in front of Durandel. When he'd whined about how he didn't have anything left for the Augmented program now, she'd told him to use the set of thirty eggs he'd subdivided aside a few years back, and to clone them if need be.

And then she'd seen the stricken look on his face, and she'd had no choice but to laugh at him, even though she knew it wasn't the best idea to antagonize a competent subordinate. It was just too preposterously funny. "Don't tell me you were actually saving those back so she could have a chance at biological reproduction, Sammual? I know you're fond of the girl, but breed with her, you can't be serious." She'd half mocked.

"Not me, my genetics would make poor Extended. But her paramour, that Solar Knight, his genes are quite suitable, in combination with Stella's. Their get would make a fine new generation of Extended." Sammual had replied somewhat stiffly. "And as a reward for her years of faithful and exemplarly service, I was considering allowing her to live birth at least one or two children, as is within my remit as project director. It would be very good for morale among the Extended, to see one of their own giving birth to a new generation, freshening the gene pool, that sort of thing."

"You know what else would be good for morale?" Natalia had prompted. "Extra sessions in the recuperation beds and subconscious implantation of happy thoughts. Can you guess which approach I prefer, Sammual? Losing one of our best assets to nine months of biological and emotional imbalances, where she would be all but useless to us and undeployable, or an extra six hours of hypnoconditioning? Cost efficiency, Sammual, look it up." And then she'd hung up on him.

And Rey, dear Rey, had so little idea of how special his own genetics were. Those with the genes for Tranquility lacked certain other genes from their makeup completely, such as the so called Seed gene and of course, the Newtype Gene. Seed genes could be found in pretty much anyone, but Rey's were particularly strong, if still unawakened, and he also possessed Newtype genes, of the Latent variety. The poor boy had no idea, that being one of the few secrets Durandel still kept from him, since it would hardly do for the adopted son of the Solar President, commander of the ground war against the psychic nations, to be discovered himself as a psychic. By combining someone with strong Tranquility and someone with strong Seed and Newtype genes, especially a Latent, Natalia was confident that she would be able to create a new breed of supersoldier that would eclipse all the efforts of her peers and rivals, the BCPU's, the Extendeds, even Sammual's new Augmented. They would be the Paragons, and they would be the loyal protectors and guardians of the dynasty of "shepard-kings" she would found with Durandel's help. Or at least his genetics, the man himself was just a bonus.

But that was still in the distant future, though she would be taking another step along that path today. Reaching up to Stella's neck, Natalia brusquely unlaced the cloth ties holding the shift together, and let the garment fall away, revealing Stella's nude form for Rey's appraisal. Natalia was gratified to see that he found her comely, judging by the way he half glanced away before looking back out of the corners of his eyes. Stella just stood there, looking confused and unsure, and didn't even have the presence of mind to remember to cover herself. "So why is she here then?" Rey asked, his mouth a bit dry.

Natalia smiled sensually at him. "Isn't it obvious? She's a gift, a small recompense for you, since you lost time with Lunamaria." Natalia replied breezily. "Go on, touch her. The only reason she is here is to fufill your desires, Rey. Don't let her down."

"Are you sure?" Rey asked, his hands twitching as he kept them by his sides. "She's looks kinda... out of it. Is she okay?"

"She's fine, she'd just a little airheaded. She's completely overawed by you, Rey, she worships the ground on which you walk, forgive her for being a bit shy and tongue tied." Natalia encouraged. "Isn't that right, Stella? You want Rey to touch you all over, don't you? You want to make him feel good, right?"

"Stella..." Stella said slowly. "... wants to be touched..." She trailed off again. "Stella... wants to make him feel good..." She blinked slowly. "Where is L..."

"Stella dear, spread your legs a bit more, give him access." Natalia interrupted, before Stella could blab and ruin the mood. Apparently the hypnoconditioning wasn't as strong as she'd thought. That or Stellla's boyfriend had a deeper hold on her than he should. She made a note to talk to Sammual about cutting that interfering gnat out before he could taint the project any further. Rey didn't need to be invited twice, his remaining conscience soothed by hearing Stella say she wanted him, though a part of him nagged, wondering if she was leaving some things, some important detail, unsaid in her replies. It was almost like she was talking about someone else, while speaking to him. Rey shrugged mentally, bringing his hand up between her thighs, brushing fingertips along her silky pubes before sliding his fingers inside her, smirking as he felt her get wet and hot almost imemdiately. Oh yeah, she wanted him all right. Slut.

Natalia smirked broadly as she watched Rey drop his inhibitions and all but throw himself at Stella, rocking her backwards, pushing her hard against Natalia's desk, his hand working between her legs as he brought his mouth down onto her breast and began nipping and sucking, while his other hand pulled on her hair, yanking her head back to bare her neck, where he moved his mouth and tongue later. Stella obligingly spread her legs wider and wider, allowing Rey to touch her deeper and deeper, as she stared blankly up at the ceiling, her breath starting to come in short gasps. After a few minutes of very rough and dirty foreplay, Rey stepped back with a nasty grin on his face, as he began to pull off his own clothing. "She's a real slutty girl, Natalia. She wants me so bad she's shaking. I think I like her."

"She's not the only one who wants you bad." Natalia informed him, stripping out of her own clothes as well and giving him a smoky glance that nearly sent him to the floor with weak knees. Truth be told Natalia was getting a little turned on by the whole situation, and it was necessary in any case, making her imprint on Rey to mark the turning point from when he was Durandel's creature to when he was her creature. "But just sit back and watch for a bit, love, lets see if we can't make this even more memorable for you?" Natalia prompted, stepping up to Stella once she'd finished disrobing and putting her arms around the Extended girl in lascivious caresses. Hidden from Rey, Natalia frowned, because Stella WAS trembling like a leaf in a gale, not from desire but from terror. Looking her in the rosy pink eyes, Natalia saw tears trying to form in the corners of Stella's eyes, and she realized that on some level, the girl was aware of what was going on, or at least that she was being taken advantage of. Far from dissuading her, Stella's fear just activated Natalia's predatory instincts, and she smiled wickedly at the Extended.

Bending down, Natalia gently kissed Stella once on each eye socket, flicking away the tears erotically with her tongue, before embracing Stella more possessively and moving in for a french kiss, her tongue invading Stella's mouth aggressively as she roamed her hands over the girl, sparing none of her assets from tactile appraisal. She was rougher than she needed to be, because she wanted to make sure Stella felt it, wanted to make sure she felt the humiliation. Only just payback, in Natalia's mind, for Stella getting the uppity idea she was allowed to have a loving relationship with some Orb punk ace! Natalia tweaked Stella between the legs, pinching at her sensitive bits with her nails, almost hard enough to draw blood, breathing in Stella's gasps like fine perfume. To Rey it must have looked incredibly erotic, because she could hear him stroking himself furiously by the door.

"She's ready now." Natalia declared after a few minutes of molesting Stella, moving around to drape herself against Stella from behind, putting her mouth right up against Stella's ear, where she could whisper to her without Rey being able to hear. "Stella has been a very naughty girl these past years, and its time for her to be punished." Natalia admonished her victim. "Stella will go to this man in front of her, who is NOT Lain Debora, and she will do whatever he wants her to do, starting with taking his penis into her mouth and sucking on it. Stella will provide as much pleasure for this man, NOT Lain Debora, as she can, and she will make him think that Stella is loving every minute of it. Stella will do this for at least an hour and a half today, and will continue to drop by to see Rey whenever she has free time to do more of the same, without letting Lain Debora know where she is going or what she is doing. After Rey is done with her body, Stella is to smile and say "thank you, master shepard, for protecting me and saving me". If Stella does all of these things without messing up or talking back, then Stella will be allowed to continue seeing Lain Debora, who will never know what is going on."

"But if Stella tries to run or hide or tells anyone what is going on, especially Lain Debora, then Lain Debora will die, but not before he watches Stella service Rey in every way possible, and then a multitude of other men as well. And if Stella fails to make Rey happy, then she will spend much more time with him until he forgives her, and that time will have to come out of any time otherwise spent with Lain Debora. Does Stella understand what is expected of her?" Natalia continued viciously.

"Stella understands." Stella replied, her voice quavering, a whisper only Natalia could hear by putting her head next to Stella's mouth, making a pretense of kissing her neck one last time. "Stella hates it, and Stella hates you for doing this, but Stella understands. Stella will do it, but no one will hurt Lain, or else..."

"Or else nothing, you spoiled brat. You are fortunate I feel like allowing you to simper over him even once more, because I am in no way obliged to. Try to get uppity with me, try to fight me, and I'll have you chained spread eagle to Rey's bed, for the amusement of him and any of his friends he wants to give you to until this war is over, and that is my right as your owner to do! Now get on your knees and suck his dick, cause I don't want to hear another word come out of your mouth that isn't "yes", "please", or "harder, master", is that clear?" Natalia slapped Stella on the ass, hard enough to leave a palm print, pushing her golem forward to her task. Stella dropped to her knees in front of Rey, and he put his hands on her head and groaned happily as she took him into her mouth, perhaps a bit lacklustrely, but Rey, like most men, would never know the difference, stoked just to be getting a blow at all.

"You can cum in her as much as you like." Natalia said once Stella was fully occupied. She smiled as she watched Stella jerk and moan a bit at that news. "Her ova have already been extracted for other purposes, so she's incapable of becoming pregnant. Standard procedure with Extendeds, we can't have our Supersoldiers getting distracted by having babies now can we?" Natalia explained. Truth be told, all Stella really was at this point in time, besides a distraction for Rey, was a container for collecting Rey's ejacluations. She could have just asked him to jerk off into a cup, she supposed, but most men found that sort of thing humiliating, and that would reduce her hold on him. Plus she'd have to explain why she needed his sperm, and she wasn't ready to do that. Siphoning his genetic material out of Stella after he was done with her would only take a few minutes, and then she could begin her experiments on constructing the first Paragons. It was important that the sperm not be contaminated by other biological samples, which was why she couldn't have extracted it from herself. Plus this way let her put an uppity piece of property back in its proper place, because if there was one thing that really got under her skin, it was the hired... in this case owned... help getting ideas above their station, such as an Extended being deserving of a normal human relationship! Preposterous!

Deciding that even if Rey couldn't tell the difference between real effort and a humoring blow, Natalia herself could, and not having anywhere else to go for the next few hours, Natalia crouched down behind Stella and shoved her head forward, forcing her to take Rey much deeper into her mouth. The Extended gagged uncomfortably, drawing a harsh vindictive smile to Natalia's face. "Here, daughter, let me show you how to pleasure a man. Pay close attention, because you will be tested on this material..." Natalia noticed that Stella was crying again, but she didn't mind. That just made it all the better actually. Let Rey think she was sobbing with joy, Natalia knew the real pleasure was in listening to Stella cry her shame and distress. Who said work had to be dull? Natalia hadn't had this much fun in ages...

xxxx


	26. Abundant Resources

Author Note: I know I said you'd be getting your first taste of ground war via USN eyes this chapter, but things kinda got away from me and so that scene is going to get rolled up into next chapter. Still looking forward, as ever to the reviews, but perhaps especially because there's a few things that happen this chapter that are pretty major, plot wise, though their true significance may take some time to materialize. Also I nearly cried while writing some of this, you should know when you get to it, but I suppose that's just a sign of me really emphasizing with my characters.

xxxx

**Orb, Orb National Palace, Secure Briefing Theatre, November 16, Morning**

The gathering of allied commanders was a regular who's who of military accomplishment from the past fifteen years, ranging from captains and admirals who had served in the Alliance fleets during the First Valentine War, to ZAFT commanders who had participated in ZAFT's attack on the Moon during the Isolation Era, to veterans of more recent battles against the Brotherhood of Humanity, such as at Cape York and the Armada over the Moon. Flanked to either side by Luna and Shinn, resplendent in their Ruby and Crystal Knight uniforms, Rey strode into the room at the head of a gaggle of his seniormost Paladins and other Solar Knight ranking officers, exchanging a nod of recognition with Captain Talia Gladys, representing ZAFT's space forces, who was conferring with the ever pompous Fleet Admiral Icarus in one corner, no doubt haggling over the deployment orders for the _Remembrance_, ZAFT's brand new space supercarrier. Notably absent from the strategy meeting were any representatives from FEAR, but given their unsavory reputation in the eyes of the host nation, Rey wasn't overly bothered by the absence. Besides, everything Natalia did, she cleared through him first anyway, so in a way, Rey himself was representing FEAR.

And then of course there were the representatives from the host nation, and even Rey had to admit they made a formidable grouping near the center of the room, a nigh palpable aura of experience and anger hanging off them that caused all but the most hardy or foolish to stay well clear of their glowering eyes and tight frowns. Chief Representative Jiro Kurenai was present, of course, with Captain Murrue Ramius and Commander Mu la Flaga standing in as his advisors for Orb's fleets, while a latino man Rey did not know wearing the camouflage coloration of the Stormhounds obviously represented Orb's special forces, in addition to several generals representing the regular armed forces. Then there was the lineup of Gundam pilots, though Rey was surprised to only see Yzak Joule and Dearka Elsman in attendance. Of course he'd heard rumors from Section Nine about the unrest in Orb's royal family following an attempted assassination attempt by someone close to the family, so he wasn't surprised to see no sign of the insufferable Kira Yamato, but apparently the assassination attempt had come closer to succeeding than he'd thought, because there was no sign of either Queen Cagalli or Ambassador Athrun Zala.

With the arrival of Rey and the Solar Knight delegation, the strategy meeting could at last commence, and though Rey recognized it was both petty and slightly unproductive to play status games by making everyone else wait on the arrival of him and his elites, as Gil had taught him, there was never a time when reinforcing your mastery over a situation was a bad thing, especially when dealing with allies that were tenuously in your camp at best. Rey was the person in charge after all, the appointed commander in chief of all military operations having to do with the Reclamation of Earth. Lord Atticus Djibril had been made responsible for the civilian side of things, the construction of colonization centers and rehabilitation camps, but because the Reclaimer Initiative was not a recognized military unit, of course they weren't included in the strategy meeting, though Rey had plenty of uses in mind for his irregular forces as well.

Rey started the meeting with a roll call of all available military forces from each various quarter, though he didn't truly start paying attention until the Orb forces were up to bat, because he already knew in exhaustive detail what forces the USN had at its disposal, indeed he had a more comprehensive knowledge than any of the other commanders because of his access to the irregular and special forces. Rey was interested to see what sort of force Orb would be offering the alliance, especially in the wake of the unprovoked Edenite attack upon their soil that had cost the lives of almost five hundred civilian workers at Morganroete Armories and culminated with a destructive urban pursuit through the heart of Nara-Attha City itself that had resulted in dozens more injuries and millions in property damage as the Edenite operatives either kidnapped or else rescued Kira Yamato from the asylum he'd been placed in for safekeeping and absconded with him.

In truth, upon first hearing of the attack, both Gil and Rey had been giddy with excitement, because for whatever reason, the Edenites had played squarely into their hands! No longer did they need to fabricate a tragedy in order to delcare war, one had been gift wrapped and sent to them on a silver platter! Not only that, but for the first time since the Great Endeavor's launch, Orb was feeling cooperative with the desires of the greater USN forces, had even been the ones to initiate the call for war! And so now Rey was eager to see what cards Orb would lay on the table. He didn't have to wait too much longer, as Jiro Kurenai stepped up to the central holoprojector, the comely redheaded avatar of Lexi, Orb's AI assistant, materialized helpfully beside him to help present his information.

Jiro swept his stormcloud grey gaze across the gathered military commanders, his lips set in a thin line, a vein pulsing at his temple an outward sign of the depth of his anger, and for once that anger wasn't directed at the inappropriate machinations of his own superiors and allies, but at the heinous sneak attack that had been launched against his people without ryhme or apparent reason. Though at one point in time Orb had been quietly feeling out the Edenite governments for economic and even military alliances, in preparation for that time when Orb secured independence from the USN by legal or military means, that option was now forever closed in Jiro's eyes. If one extended a hand and only recieved a knife in the back in reply, then the next time the hand was extended, it would be holding a blade itself! "Having been the ones to initiate the call for aggressive action in reply to the atrocity perpetuated upon our peaceful nation, Orb will be committing its full and total military force to the USN roster." Jiro said without preamble, as Lexi began posting the unit rosters and details in the air behind him.

"Though Orb's infantry, armor and naval forces are relatively inconsequential in comparison to the sheer number of forces already allocated by the USN, Orb's strength has always lain in our technological edge, and with more than forty M-7 Dawndrakes ready for deployment, in addition to fifty three M-4 Guardians recently refurbished from mothball, we have a significant mobile force at the disposal of our commanders, along with the power of our newest combination space and naval warships, the Defender class heavy destroyers and Orb's new flagship vessel, the Dawnblade battlecruiser." Jiro paused and took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for some unpleasant task. "When I said that Orb would be deploying its full strength in response to this attack upon our populace, I was not speaking idly. So I will lay on the table now not just the power of Orb's regular sanctioned forces, which I have just voerviewed, but the true strength of Orb's military, our Gundams and special projects."

"Um, excuse me, Chief Representative..." Fleet Admiral Icarus interrupted with a pretentious clearing of his throat. "Do you mean to say that in clear contravention of the USN military's dictates on the construction of Gundams, you have designed and constructed them anyway, breaking any number of arms treaties and military agreements in the process? Do you have any idea of the reprecussions for making such an admission?"

"Are they any worse than sending our forces into the fray of war without our full and total support and perhaps losing them to a technologically superior foe?" Jiro replied contemptuously. "Yes, we continued our Gundam program in secret, if any of you expected anything less, then you don't deserve to command anything more dangerous than a harbor tug, much less a battle formation! If you're so adamant about sticking to the dictates of your oppressive allied arms treaties now, IN TIME OF WAR, against a foe who may be more technologically advanced than us, then you, sir, are not only an idiot, but a fool as well. Believe it or not, much as it pains me to say this, we ARE on the same side here, Fleet Admiral. If you want to make a fuss about having Gundams to fight on YOUR OWN SIDE, I won't stop you. But neither will our Gundams deploy to pull your fat out of the fire it will inevitably find itself in."

Noticing the unfriendly glares from various other commanders, including Rey, Icarus withdrew into his shell a bit and backed down. "I was just pointing out that intentionally breaking sworn agreements isn't the best way to go about presenting yourself as a good ally." Icarus added snidely. "If you can't be expected to follow the rules in times of peace, then who knows what you'll do in time of war?"

"That's really rich coming from a stooge of Gilbert Durandel." Dearka said scathingly. "Following the rules? Hah! We were just following the examples YOU bastards set for us!"

"That's enough, Mr. Elsman." Jiro said with admirable calm, regaining control of his composure and waving down his angry supporters, many of whom were giving Icarus glares fit to boil the pudgy admiral alive. "We're not here to accuse or defend ourselves for actions irrecoverably taken in the past. We have bigger concerns. As I was saying, I will now present our Gundams and special projects, by which Orb's contribution to the order of battle will more equally match that of the greater numbers of the USN forces. Though our Gundam program has recently suffered a grievous blow in the death of Dr. Erica Simmons, before her death she provided us with complete schematics for five new Gundams to replace the ones "lost to possible Brotherhood control" in the closing stages of the Eden Disaster." Jiro's eyes fell square upon Rey as he spoke, but Rey neither flinched nor acknowledged the implied criticism in the slightest. "Also, in addition to our Gundam program Orb has a new covert operations warship, a variable configuration Mobile Armor, and the PUMA project of weaponized powered armor suits for special forces."

"One of those Gundam schematics, the Salvation, was stolen by the Edenite attackers before they detonated their thermonuclear device and gutted the top secret Research and Development adminstration center, but through strenuous efforts by our data recovery specialists and Lexi, we have managed to completely piece together the schematics of the other four Gundams, despite the enemy's best efforts to destroy them, and have just recently put all four into production. They should be ready for final testing and predeployment in a week's time." Jiro's facial expression hardened still further, if that was possible, as he went on. "Unfortunately, one of the Gundams, the Amaterasu, has no current pilot, as her Majesty is... unable to enter combat for health reasons, and the Simurgh's pilot, Ambassador Zala, has yet to clear his own health review board to be placed on active duty. As some of you may or may not be aware, there was a recent attempt to kidnap our Crown Prince and an assassination attempt was made at the same time to eliminate her Majesty and Ambassador Zala. Unfotunately, the attempt was very nearly successful."

"I heard it was her brother." Rey spoke up, not afraid to needle the Orbites a bit. "Cut her throat like a pig at a slaughterhouse, wasn't it? And then absconded with the same Edenites that set off a nuclear bomb in the heart of your national defense contractor's headquarters. Pardon my saying so, but it seems a little suspicious to me." However, contrary to his expectations, the Orbites didn't puff up with defensive anger, nor did they even leap to the defense of Kira Yamato. If anything, their expressions only became graver, and even, in some cases, tainted with a touch of real fear.

"I almost wish it was Mr. Yamato who was responsible for the attack upon the Royal family." Jiro said with clenched teeth. "Because as bad as Kira Yamato losing his grip on reality and becoming a psychopathic killer would be, from what information we've been able to collect on the REAL assailant, its like fearing a burst water main while being inundated by a tidal wave."

Rey was a bit nonplussed, since the most recent reports he'd had from Section Nine on the situation had been all but totally conclusive about Kira being the one who was responsible for the crimes. "I was under the impression that there was even genetic evidence of Mr. Yamato's guilt. Are you telling me that..." Rey began to say.

"We're telling you that he was set up in the most devious manner possible, and that we royally fucked up the situation and only realized it after it was too late, and now we're down not only a Gundam, but the greatest Gundam pilot who's ever lived." Commander Yzak Joule cut in with a snarl. "And not only that, but the man who framed Kira is none other than Zacharis Quentin Frost, BCPU level Six." There was a long moment of silence, because almost every person in the room had heard of that name, many of them had even been serving at the time of the Battle of Denver and the events that occured during it. There were a few that looked confused, people that had either been too young at the time, or, like Jiro, hadn't been watching TV at the time for whatever reason, such as a business meeting.

Rey was one of those who had not been paying especial attention on that date, and while the name dimly rang a bell, something about a madman that had stolen a Gundam and caused havoc during the final days of the Isolation, he didn't see what the big problem was. He'd also heard that the man was dead, incinerated in a nuclear fireball, and he said as much. "That's what we thought too." Yzak hissed in a pained voice, moving up to stand by Jiro's side as the images of Orb's readiness report faded away, to be replaced by footage from a household security camera, playing the events of Andrew Waltfeld's confrontation with the intruder in the Joule house. "But not only has he cheated death, but he's somehow managed to come back in a body that is a near perfect genetic copy of Kira Yamato's, which is how he was able to decieve and suborn his way into proximity to cause the harm he has... including the cold blooded murder of my mother!" Yzak's face twisted up for a moment before he managed to get control of the bestial expression of rage.

"The last time we fought Frost, it took the combined efforts of the Clyne Faction, the Isolation and ZAFT to bring him down, and even then it was a near run thing." Yzak continued. "Perhaps largely due to his possession of the Pulsar Gundam and the then revolutionary Fusion Pulse Reactor and Neural Interface Control systems which allowed him a degree of manueverability and speed no ordinary machine, not even Orb's Gundams, could hope to match in normal circumstances. But even when our Gundams were nearly equal he could often comfortably fight off both Athrun and Kira at the same time, and sometimes even all five of us at once. He was, quite literally, a monster. Insane beyond all limits of insanity, an irredeemably evil walking disaster who's avowed goal was the complete eradication of all life on Earth and in space. And now he's back, in the body of an awakened Ultimate Coordinator past second puberty, and he's piloting THIS!" Yzak called up the battle-rom footage from his Primal of the Kratos Gundam, and played back the highlights of the destruction of his team. It didn't take long at all.

"Was that a..." Talia started to ask, her eyes hooded in intent concentration.

"Yes, it was an AMP cannon blast he shot at us at first." Yzak answered the question before she could even finish. "Yes, an insane monster who has vowed to kill every being currently alive has access to the most powerful weapon system ever devised by humans. Thus the reason we're bringing him into the brief, even though its supposed to be a discussion of the efforts against the Edenites. But believe it or not, Frost and his Gundam could be an even greater threat than the Edenites. Especially since we can't count on Kira or Lacus to distract his attention anymore."

"I don't see a problem." Shinn declared confidently. "The Paladins will handle this Frost guy. That's what we're there for, going up against rogue Gundams and other enemies that don't fit into the standard rank and file."

"You guys couldn't even handle Ashino and the Retributors and now you think you're magically in FROST'S league?" Dearka half sputtered in disbelief, trying to hold back howls of bitter amusement. "GODDAMNIT PEOPLE, LISTEN TO US! You know who Yzak and I are, you know what we've done, what we're capable of doing, and BOTH of us are just about wetting our PANTS over here just THINKING about what Frost could do with access to the reflexes and abilities of a Ultimate Coordinator, much less Kira! And we're the ones with KICKASS new Gundams, not your seven year old Brotherhood hand me downs!" Dearka bit down another fit of hysterical amusement. "Fine, you Paladins wanna go take care of Frost, by all means, knock yourselves out. I'll prepare the condolences cards for your families!"

"If we could perhaps get back to the germane topics for this session?" Rey cut in with a displeased look. "I'll have to ask you to restrain yourself from any further fearmongering, Mr. Elsman, as it may negatively affect morale. If you can't control your terror, please, remove yourself."

"I can control my terror just fine, but I can't control my disdain for a bunch of smucks who want to bury their heads in the sand rather than face reality, so I'm outta here. Anybody wants to know what to expect if they encounter Frost on the field, feel free to come find me. Could save your life, though some of you I ain't sure are worth saving..." Dearka snapped, and he stalked across the room and disappeared out of one of the other doors, leading deeper into the depths of the Palace. Rey expected the rest of the Orb delegation to look sheepish or embarassed at such childish conduct from one of their Gundam pilots, but instead they were all just looking at Rey and the others with disdain, disgust and not a little pity of their own. Glaring back at them to show that he wasn't intimidated by their disapproval, Rey stepped forward to take control of the meeting and start outlining the overall strategy for the war.

As Rey stepped to the center of the room, Namara, the USN's AI, linked up with Lexi's systems and projected her own avatar, along with the reams of strategic data Rey had prepared. Whereas Lexi's avatar had pinkish red hair and the relatively shorter, tanned body of a native Orbite, Nam was tall and slimmer like someone who'd lived all their life in artificial gravity or microgravity, almost as tall as Rey himself, her skin alabaster pale and her hair black like the void, worn long, as far as that had any meaning for a computer projection, in a businesslike ponytail. Namara shuffled the slides of Rey's presentation like they were a deck of playing cards and then began dealing them out one at a time as Rey began to speak.

"In the wake of the successful completion of Operation Genesis, the largest orbit to surface military drop operation in the history of humanity, USN forces have recovered control over a significant number of pre-existing military bases that had been abandoned during the evacuation of Earth, most notably Carpentaria, north of Australia, Gibraltar in North Africa, Heaven's Base in Iceland and Porta Panama in Latin America. Because these are pre-constructed bases, only a minimal amount of clearing and defoliating was required to return them to functional levels, and their infastructure and defense perimeters are being greatly expanded as we speak, as they will be our primary headquarters in each of the four theatres our campaign will be divided into." Rey explained, large red stars appearing over the locations of the bases in question on a translucent globe map Nam projected.

"Combat Engineering forces working in conjunction with assistance from the Reclaimer Initiative are establishing forward bases and supply depots at myriad locations around each primary base..." Rey continued, smaller blue stars appearing in ring like patterns around each red star, as terrain permitted. Orb showed up as a big orange star. "Orb will be our primary terrestrial logistics center and mustering point, as it currently has the only operable mass driver, but once we regain control of Victoria Spaceport and reconstruct Porta Panama, we should be able to diversify the supply burden to more quickly bring fresh forces and supplies to the front line without recourse to risky orbital drop procedures." Finally a series of purple stars began showing up, always deep within projected control zones of primary bases. "And these indicate rehabilitation and recolonization centers being constructed and managed by the Reclaimer Initiative, to house and re-educate any enemy civilian populations and eventually bring them back as productive members of society."

Rey's plan very intentionally did not show the location of Nifelheim, FEAR's new terrestrial base in Antarctica as well as several of the more... industrial... rehabilitation centers, but why set himself up for more controversy than necessary? What they didn't know could only hurt them if Rey felt like it. "Based on confidential military surveys, satellite imaging and reports on the ground from our Reclaimer Initiative specialists regarding the concentrations of enemy presences, we will be dividing our forces to face the enemy thusly..." Rey's force allocations appeared on the display, with the greater majority of forces being sent to Heaven's Base, Gibraltar and Carpentaria, while less than a sixth of the total force went to Porta Panama. Another overlay over the translucent globe showed near identical divisions in the Solar Protection Fleet patrolling low and high orbit around Earth.

"How accurate is your intelligence?" The stormhound, who had been quiet up to this point, suddenly asked with a penetrating gaze that seemed to lock onto Rey's face like crosshairs onto a bullseye. "From what I understood, we know just about jack all about actual conditions on the ground in any place with even middling tree cover, which is most everyplace, and I was under the impression that the EDEN saturated air was playing hell with satellite imaging. I was also under the impression that these RI goons were, how shall I put this... irregular forces... not military professionals. Are you telling me you put together your deployment plans based on what amounts to hearsay from armed civilians and wishful thinking? Because that's what it sounds like, once you strip away the politic-speak."

"Who are you, anyway?" Rey asked challengingly, not pleased with the way some of his own officers were beginning to cast uncomfortable glances at each other. "I prepared my plans with access to only the best of intelligence sources, who are you to call me a liar?"

"I'm not calling you a liar, Paladin-Commander, I'm calling you an optomist. Believe it or not, in a military commander, that's actually worse. A habitual liar is at least a devious bastard with experience in fooling people, that sort of thing comes in handy on a battlefield. But someone who always believes things are going to plan and that his actions and intelligence can't be wrong... that man is a danger to everyone around him and ESPECIALLY those under his direct command. And I'm Master Sergeat Richard Ramierez, field commander of the Stormhounds, and I'll tell you this now... MY data looks NOTHING like your data, and that has my balls trying to crawl up into my pancreas, I'm not afraid to admit, since you're the one ostensibly in charge of everything." Ramierez replied calmly. "The only points where our data is in collusion is that North and South America are pretty much dead zones, save for one settlement up in the ruins of JOSH-A. Given how inhospitable that area actually is, it makes me wonder why they would settle there, given the broad variety of abandoned cities in the rest of the continents, which are practically wastelands, as far as human life is concerned."

"Which is why I devoted only a sixth of our total force to pacifying the area, with the enemy's main population center in the theatre practically in the arctic circle and no other major settlements, was I somehow supposed to rate them as a high threat, versus a low threat? We'll be spending more time clearing trees than fighting battles in that theatre." Rey retorted scathingly, really getting fed up with always getting questioned by people supposed to be his subordinates. Especially ones that were only contributing less than three percent of his total military strength!

"I'm just saying, I'm kinda curious where all the people went to. I don't think the Eddies in the American theatres will give us much fight at all. But then again, I don't think the Eddies are the problem in the Americas. Something really fishy is going on there. Everywhere else on New Ede... excuse me, Earth... the Eddies are spread out in small rural communities, save for a couple big cities. Except in America. In America there are no rural villages or small towns, just ONE big town up in godforsaken Alaska, in the midst of a slightly radioactive ruin. No one would wanna live there if they had any other choice in the matter, but they got anywhere from three to five MILLION people living there anyway. Does your intelligence have any thoughts on why the Eddies in America are masochistic, crowd loving idiots where everywhere else on Earth they value space and small populations? Its almost like they're huddling up, making a herd or something. And in nature, animals only huddle or herd for one reason... to confuse or intimidate predators." Ramierez went on relentlessly. "They may be Eddies, but they're still behaviorally humans too. And I hear there's some pretty scary beasties running around the deep woods these days."

"If I could be allowed to continue the presentation?" Rey asked through gritted teeth. "I'll be glad to answer questions, within reason, when I am done, but we ARE at war and I would really prefer to get our plans operational before the enemy has time to consolidate, if you please?" Ramierez didn't look happy, but he did back down, which gave Rey at least some small satisfaction. "Speaking of plans, I should stress that while strategic goals will be hashed out by meetings of top level commanders, most likely here in Orb, actual combat scenarios will fall under the purview of the Tactical Assistance Squadron based in Second Earth Two, working in close conjunction with commanders on the ground and in space for a smooth combined arms response to any enemy movements." Rey was about to continue on, before he was interrupted, yet again, this time by the tall, blue eyed, blond haired poster child of human bravery, none other than Mu la Flaga. Rey had been trying to avoid looking at the man from the moment he'd noticed him. He wondered if Mu realized that they were, in a way, half brothers, though actually it was more accurate to say that genetically speaking, Mu was his son. Which was queasy inducing if he thought about it too much, since Mu was close to twice his physical age.

Fortunately, Mu didn't seem to have any idea that Rey was a clone of Rau, who was a clone of Albert la Flaga, Mu's late father, as he stepped forward with a very concerned expression on his face. "Are you telling us, Paladin-Commander, that ground level commanders who are actually engaged with the enemy won't have total operational control to fight their commands as they see fit? That we will be forced to confer with people sitting safe up in orbit, who might not even be qualified infantry or shipboard commanders themselves, to BEST decide how to react to a fluid combat scenario? Even with quantum comm systems, the mere human element of such collusion will cost us thousands of lives and who knows how many billions of dollars in lost equipment, but its the LIVES that are the problem, especially as one of them could be MINE!"

"All operational tests and simulations involving joint control with the TAS center and the TAC's and TAN's have showed that any slowdown in independent command efficiency will be more than compensated for by the increase in overall efficiency of all units involved in the process. If the human element bothers you so much, you could always just turn over control to the TAS entirely, and simulations have shown that such a course of action results in significantly increased positive overall results in over eighty percent of cases." Rey answered stiffly.

Mu did not seem satisfied. "I asked a question involving a real military problem and you responded with more than zero instances of the words "simulation" and "test", so you'll pardon me if I am not only NOT reassured, but actually more worried now that I know we're going into battle not only with a screwed up chain of command but an UNPROVEN screwed up chain of command. What were you thinking when you put this system together? Do you guys think this is a joke? That this war is some kinda game? Do you think victory is assured no matter how badly you fuck up?"

"In terms of sheer numbers, not to mention military material..." Icarus started to say in support of Rey.

"The OMNI Alliance said the EXACT same thing and look how that turned out." Mu cut him off witheringly. "Numbers only mean something if they are well led and organized, horde tactics are suicide in modern warfare."

"We ARE organized." Rey snapped. "You people..." He swept his arm at the Orb officers. "Are the ones being disruptive! We have the joined minds of half a centuries worth of the most brilliant military commanders in all spheres of combat to draw upon, and you're nitpicking at every detail, trying to send us on wild goose chases against ressurected bogeymen and constantly publicly questioning the authority of your designated commanders! And YOU'RE the ones who asked for OUR help here, so if you would please stop acting like SPOILED BRATS and accept our help as it is offered, I would be MOST appreciative!" Rey hoped the chastisement would stick, but from the subversive glances the Orb commanders began shooting each other almost as soon as he stopped talking, he knew he was going to have his work cut out for him even before any battles started. Just about the only thing of comfort to him was that he'd be able to relieve all this goddamn stress by grudge fucking Debora's little Extended slut into tears once more, all he had to do was hold out until he could get back to Nifelheim. Natalia was always telling him he should utilize stress relief whenever possible. It wouldn't do for a Shepard to suffer a nervous breakdown, not at all.

And Rey did have to admit there was a thrill to it that he hadn't expected, had never even felt before. He'd been in stressful positions pretty much all his life ever since he was old enough to attend military prep schooling, and he'd learned early on how to deal with the burdens of responsibility, authority and command. The fact that Gil trusted him with such things had been the biggest and best ego booster he'd ever needed. Up until now. Or maybe it all started back when he and Lunamaria exchanged virginities, but whatever the case, the intoxication of rank derived authority was starting to wear off, to become bland. To be replaced with an almost painful hunger for something else, something more. The authority of rank, even really high rank, only went so far after all. There were bounds to it that were actually quite stifling, especially given his newer, more "mature" interests. Natalia had opened up whole new vista's for him, a whole new way of thinking and a whole new set of interests to go along with it. Gil had given him responsibility and authority... but Natalia, she was giving him real power, and Rey had never experienced a rush like the one he got while exercising his newly gifted power over Stella.

And the fact that she was a biologically and chemcially engineered killing machine that could probably rip his head fully off his spinal cord using only her bare hands was actually just that much more of a turn on, because regardless of what Stella was CAPABLE of, as long as Rey held the power to end Lain Debora from a distance and with just a mere word of effort, Stella was as docile as a newborn lamb. She would literally do ANYTHING he told her to do, anything at all! Every dirty fantasy, every repressed urge, every morbid curiousity that had passed through his mind ever since that first week of sex with Luna but he'd never dared bring up to her, Stella would fufill for him. He didn't have to be polite, he didn't have to be gentle, didn't have to buy her food or take her on a date, all he had to do was point and command. He'd never imagined that having such absolute power over someone could feel so incredibly good! He could almost understand why Noah had gone wrong, with the power to mentally coerce anyone into being his loyal slave, he wouldn't be limited to just one or two girls, he could have whoever the hell he wanted, whenever he wanted!

And that thought was enough to awaken what fragments of his old moral code that were still banging around somewhere inside him, and he mentally shied away from the thought. The potential for abuse was simply too high, no one mortal could stand up to that kind of temptation and use it only for good! It would ruin the lives of his chosen concubines in a long term fashion, and Rey knew the guilt would eat him alive, as had almost happened with Luna. Fortunately, Stella didn't present that kind of emotional problem. She wasn't a "real" person, she was an Extended, a licensed piece of biowarfare technology that just happened to be in the form of a pretty girl. She might have feelings, certainly her tears and the way she shied away from his touch seemed to indicate an unhappiness with what was going on, but it didn't matter. She didn't even have the same rights as an animal, just like the Eddies! Hell, she didn't even officially exist! And perhaps the best part of it all was the fact that Debora, that traitorous insect, was head over heels in love with her, and now she was Rey's personal sex doll! He couldn't wait to see Debora's face when he finally got to show him what was going on with his precious Stella.

Rey noticed that some of the officers seemed to be looking at him funny, and he realized that he'd slightly tuned out while considering his evening plans, and he came back to the here and now with a snap, hopefully before anyone else noticed his lapse in decorum. He could feel Captain Gladys's gaze burning into the back of his head, but when he turned his head to catch her eyes, she glanced away. If it had been anyone else, Rey would have considered having a few Section Nine operatives pick her up for a little light questioning, as he couldn't stand the thought of having one of his trusted officers keeping secrets from him or doubting him, especially now that major war operations were afoot. But the mere thought of explaining to Gil why he'd ordered Talia brought in for interrogation made Rey feel queasy and ill, so he contented himself with a frown and a mental note to keep some discrete observation on her in the future. He was glad for the pleasant times she gave Gil, but he was starting to suspect that she might not be flexible enough to truly merge with Gil's great Destiny Plan once it became public knowledge, and the pain that would cause Gil was a major concern. Something might have to be done about that. He'd consult with Natalia, she was a veritable font of pragmatic ideas.

xxxx

**Orb, Outskirts of Nara-Attha City, November 16th, Early Afternoon**

Orb sure was a beautiful country, Shinn mused idly as he wandered down the shaded trail, the sign for which had promised a refreshing view over a secluded private harbor tucked away behind a middle-upper class residential zone. It was, as ever, a novelty to look up and see blue sky and clouds, rather than the inverted metallic spires of a Second Earth Colony or the endless dark void of space as seen on the PLANTS or Lunar Cities. Even the faintly shimmery ochre haze of the Glasshouse field couldn't appreciably diminish the effect. There was just something about being on Earth... New Eden now, he supposed wryly... that called out to him as a human being, on an instinctual level. And if anything, the effect seemed even more pronounced for him ever since he'd stepped off the shuttle at Orb's spaceport that morning. Almost as if something was calling to him in particular, a welling sense of... belonging... that he just couldn't place the reasons for.

Maybe it was because Orb was the last terrestrial nation, but that didn't quite ring true. There seemed like there should be more to it than that, this was almost like nostalgia or something, but why should Orb make him feel nostalgic? Might it have something to do with how hazy his memories were of his time before awakening from his second short term mental domination by Noah? A frustrating thing, a lost memory was, because he couldn't even remember what was lost or when, so he had no idea if the impressions or feelings he was having were a sign of returning memories or him just imagining memories returning? The yearning for the sense of resolution provided by his memories was certainly strong enough for it to become self deceptive, if he wasn't careful! Shinn smirked sourly as he walked along, all this deep thinking wasn't like him. No philosopher he. No, he was an animal of action and impulse, with little thought for the past. Or at least that's what he wanted to be, real life wasn't so accomodating as that, and the past was always there when he least wanted it to be.

His ability to think shallowly and impulsively, practically a talent rather than an ability, had served him in good stead these past seven years, Shinn acknowledged with bitterness. Yeah, just turn his head away from problems, avert his eyes, plug his ears, seal his lips... hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil... and evil was bound to go away and not bother him, right? Oh, if only it worked that way! But just by turning his head away didn't make the things he'd avoided witnessing any less atrocious or any less real for those involved, and the lack of proper knowledge of what was really going on was actually more a thorn in his side than a placebo, because his imagination could take him to so very many disturbing places with the information he did possess, and he would almost welcome being able to banish those nightmares with merely human atrocity! And besides just those major things, there was the rampant injustice, the corruption among many people in positions of leadership, and enough hypocrisy to drown a cathederal full of child molesting priests!

If only he could turn back time, tell the old him how the choice he'd made, which had seemed to be the only good choice at the time, was actually just as bad if not worse than making a stand for what he'd believed in at the time! Better to die cleanly than let yourself rot and decay, morally and emotionally, like a coward! Alas, even Noah didn't have the power to alter the flow of space and time, so Shinn was stuck with the consequences of his choices, trapped with little room to maneuver and no good prospects ahead, unless he wanted to just give up the ghost entirely and become a part of the USN's insidious "shadow" culture, which seemed to control the public face of things like a puppeteer did a marionette! Which would almost seem attractive if he didn't have an example right in front of him of what that sort of personal surrender did to a person, not all at once, but inevitably over time once that first step had been conceeded.

Shinn tried to reconcile his earliest impressions of Rey from his time together with him in the Solar Knights, thought about how Rey himself had often commented that he and Shinn had been roomates and even sort of friends at ZAFT's Redcoat Academy, though those memories, along with most of Shinn's life, were lost to him personally. The old Rey, the one he'd known before the whole mess with Shinn's apparent death and the torried love triangle involving Lunamaria, had been someone Shinn respected and liked, even looked up to for leadership and examples. He only wished he could say the same thing of Paladin-Commander ze Burrel, but that was simply impossible. Something was wrong with Rey, and anyone who was even slightly familiar with him could see it. He'd always been self confident and self assured, bordering on cold faced arrogance, but he'd never been the sort to ridicule and berate allies in public, especially ones that represented a significant strength increase, morally if not physically, for his forces. Just the thought of being able to fight alongside Commander Joule as an ally again was enough to make Shinn feel a bit giddy!

But Rey seemed to regard the questions and interjections of Orb's commanders and leaders as some sort of personal attack or aspersion cast upon his ability to lead the USN force and Shinn found himself quite concerned that Rey's aggressive and uncompromising attitude could alienate the Orbites before they ever managed to forge that crucial bond of inter-unit loyalty that could be found on a battlefield! Antagonizing the world's best Gundam producers was simply crazy in Shinn's eyes, with Orb as strong allies there was no telling what sort of technological goodies the greater USN could pick up, and Rey was blowing the whole deal with his prideful dick measuring! Worse, he was making himself look like a pompous, stuffed shirted asshole, and that was the worst kind of impression subordinates could have of their supreme commander! Needless to say, Shinn had been glad of the adjournment for lunch, so he could put some distance between himself and Rey before he lost control of the impulse to cuff him across the back of the head, and so Rey could hopefully find a place to cool off and get his head back on straight!

Shaking his head to clear away the frustrating thoughts, reminding himself that he'd come out all this way for the purposes of clearing his head and reigning in his temper, not brooding on the very things that were pissing him off, Shinn took stock of his surroundings once more. He found himself on a rocky trail that crested a wooded hill before looping around and switchbacking down a less steeply sloped portion of the hill to come back to the picturesque little harbor laid out directly below the hill. A long pier of brilliant white stone or concrete extended along one side of the small inlet that functioned as a bay, just big enough for a medium sized cruise liner to pull up to comfortably. On the steep side of the hill, the part that led directly down to the harbor, the ground looked subtly off, as if something had taken a bite out of the hill or caused it to partially collapse, resulting in the significant slope and relative lack of long term vegetation.

Shinn put one hand against one of the trees gracing the top of the ridge and inhaled deeply of the fresh sea breeze, his eyes drifting closed in contentment. And that's when it hit him, a disorganized rush of impressions so powerful that he couldn't make sense of any one of them, much less the whole deal, a stampede of sunlight on his back and fading laughter in his ears, the stench of burning foliage, the pain of skinned arms and legs, a head wooly with concussive shock, his ears ringing like struck bells, vision blurred with unwilling tears! The sense of sudden dislocation, of loss, of confusion and disbelief, all mushed together and mixed up until he heard himself gagging and retching on his empty stomach as he sagged against the tree and slowly fell to his knees on the ridgetop, one hand pressed to his temple as if to catch the memories or whatever they were before they burst his skull like an overcooked egg!

And then there it was, a clear vision, a section of ground freshly disturbed, raw earth steaming hotly in the afternoon sunlight, and sticking out from under the half mound of dirt was some sort of ragged stick or pipe, painted disturbing shades of white and red and pink and yellow. And then his vision cleared yet more and the bile rose in his throat once more, spilling out over his chin and pattering into the weeds as he fell onto his hands and knees on the ridgetop, because that was no goddamn stick, that was a HUMAN ARM that had been ripepd entirely off the body of its owner, a young girl by the slenderness of the hand and wrist. A phantom pressure against his palm made Shinn look down at his hand, and he saw a flash of ethereal pink, but then his hands were empty and the visions vanished like they'd never occured in the first place, the only sign of their passing being his posture, the bile on his chin and the soul searing sense of once more being lost!

A persistent vibration against his thigh finally snagged his attention and he realized his phone had been buzzing for almost a minute by now, though he couldn't recall exactly how long the visions, memories or hauntings had plagued him. He reached into his pocket and saw several texts from Luna, who he vaguely remembered promising to meet for lunch somewhere after he'd taken his stroll to clear his head, and a further look at the timepiece on his phone told him that he'd completely missed that little rendevous and was almost in danger of being late back to the strategy meeting! "Shit." Shinn hissed, clambering to his feet once more and doing his best to dust himself off. Thankfully the Solar Knight's uniform was nanologically treated to repel dust, dirt and stains of all sorts, so the grime slid off his pant legs like water off stone. Shaking his head once more and wiping his chin free of saliva and bile, Shinn glanced around, wondering if the visions would come back, but there wasn't even a stirring in his brain. Just a nice view of a secluded private harbor. "Goddamn it." Shinn cursed again. _What the HELL was that all about?_

xxxx

**Orb, Orb National Hospital, November 16th, Early Afternoon**

Allister watched without turning his head or acting in the least bit interested as Violet excused herself to go to the bathroom with a furtive expression on her face that bespoke to him less of a need to use the potty and more of a desire to be out of the room for any reason at all! Watching without seeming to watch was a skill he'd picked up from dad, as it definitely paid to be paying attention to your surroundings when you were Crown Prince of Orb, in both a personal and impersonal sense. It was amazing what you could pick up when people thought you couldn't hear them or weren't paying attention to what they were doing, and he'd even managed to use it to eavesdrop on his parent's conversations a few times by pretending that his ears really weren't so sensitive that he could hear them through a closed patio door. It wasn't like his senses were as sharp as Akira or Aoi's... the thought of their names making his chest clench inside... but he was a Coordinator of fine breeding and one closed door was no obstacle to his listening talents.

Not that his mom and dad's conversations were always of much interest to him, though occassionally they were a pretty big deal, such as those times mommy tried to convince dad that a second child was a good idea. Allister still wasn't entirely sure where he stood on that issue... Akira and Aoi... dang that pang again... seemed to get along just great, but Roy was always complaining about what a freaking annoyance Alice was, so he couldn't decide if a younger sibling was a good thing or a bad thing. All he knew was that another baby would eat up that much more of mom and dad's time, and they already spent so little of it with him that he could not see that as a good thing! That no longer seemed to be a concern after the events of Halloween, though if it meant that his mom and dad didn't have to be hurt anymore, Allister would gladly turn back to worrying about a little brother or sister stealing attention from him!

And seeing his mom and dad hurt, and not just hurt but REALLY hurt was just about the most distressing thing to EVER happen to him. Like, he found himself locking up and crying for no reason, which was something he'd thought he'd grown out of years ago, but seeing how much thinner and weaker they both were, reclining in their hospital beds all day long, really got to him in a way he both hated and accepted all the same. Dad had always been the most solid, strong and cool person in the world to him, but now Allister had to be careful even sitting in his lap in case his squirming ripped out stitches or useated synthflesh! And mom was way worse off, seemingly having shrunk to half her previous size, and she'd lost all the energy she used to project, like she was trying to light up each and every room she entered. Now she mostly just lay on her bed and looked out the window, sometimes holding dad's hand in that tight, white knuckled way that seemed to say she was hanging on for dear life while trying not to fall off a cliff or something! She had also taken to wearing her hair longer along one side of her head, the side where her ear was missing, chopped off as a sick trophy for Frost!

The worst, worst part was her voice. The bastard... a word he knew dad would spank him for if he heard him using, but Allister felt the risk was worth it for the depth of feeling... who had hurt his mom had cut her throat with a knife and destroyed her layrnx. Reconstructive surgery had done a little bit, but without her voice box prosthetic, mom couldn't talk at all anymore, and when she talked using the prosthetic her voice was all weird and toneless. The doctors said that she would eventually recover more of her old intonation as she grew more used to the voice box, but she would never sound exactly like she used to, and she'd never be able to do things like sing or humm or laugh without sounding really creepy. It was eating her up inside, Allister could see that plain as day, despite the fact that neither he nor dad cared what mom sounded like, losing her natural voice was a big deal to her. Which was why he'd been spending a lot of time sitting by her side or else curled up next to her in bed, despite the fact that he hated PDA's, and the smell of all the disinfectant made him want to retch, and the muscle cramps he got for spending hours curled against her side. It didn't matter. His mom was hurting and anything he could do to make her feel better, he would do in an instant!

In line with making her feel better, though in actuality it wasn't limited to just his mom and dad, some of the specialist doctors, the ones who were "therapists", had decided it would be a good idea for all the victims of Frost's rampage to spend some time together each day, not necessarily rehashing their experiences, but just taking comfort in the fact that they weren't the only ones that had survived. Allister could not help but shiver when he whispered Frost's name to himself, always carefully out of earshot of mom, after seeing her freak out the first time. The image of a gold eyed, leering Uncle Kira with blood coating his hands reaching out for him and trying to drag him into a dark void had been haunting his nightmares for the past few weeks, but he hadn't told his mom or dad about it yet because they had too much to worry about as it was, and he'd managed to swear Lexi to silence using a similar argument.

Neither Violet's mom nor her older step-sister Jean had been hurt anywhere near as bad as Allister's mom and dad, though Wrenn was kinda close, not that comparing injuries like that was any sort of contest to want to win! But in a way, Allister could recognize that Violet's mom may have been hurt just as bad as his mom, maybe worse. Because Violet's mom was a professional performing artist, she relied on her voice for her everyday life, not that his mom didn't for hers too, but Wrenn's whole career was based around her voice. Singing was what she did, that was her job, that was her passion and now she couldn't do it anymore. Ever again. Not live anyway, not without some serious upgrading to voice emulation technology. Lexi could sing just fine, but it wasn't Lexi who was singing, she was just replaying some other artists recording, which didn't exactly count as singing, certainly not for someone trying to come up with new music.

Also, because her whole tongue had been cut out... the mere thought of which was usually enough to make him wish he hadn't eaten lunch... she'd also lost things like taste buds, which were just about impossible to prosthetically emulate. Allister couldn't imagine losing his taste for food, if everything tasted the same, even ice cream, that would just be HORRIBLE! Controlling his shivers and fervently praying to Hameya to never inflict lack of taste buds on him for any reason, Allister carefully tuned out his hearing as Jean began another one of her sob episodes, despite the comforting efforts of Violet's mom, his mom, and Melissa Glory, who had stopped by to commiserate with her bedbound husband, the immense Thomas Glory. Mary O'Brien, Jean's tutor and the woman whow as instructing his mom and Violet's mom in the use of their voice emulators, was also there, but just as helpless as anyone else. Allister could see his dad and Thomas doing their own best to become invisible and intangible as Jean began having another of her little breakdowns.

It was because of the r-a-p-e... another word his parents really didn't want him knowing... but after what had happened he'd heard it tossed around enough times when they thought he wasn't listening, or during Jean's breakdowns, that he'd figured out what it meant. It was a boy doing things to a girl that mom and dad did together when they were really feeling lovey-dovey, except that the girl wasn't feeling lovey dovey and did not want to do things with the boy. It was a VERY BAD THING. As bad as murder even, maybe worse. It was a wound not just to the body but to the spirit as well, and it wasn't always something that someone could just get over, unlike a normal injury. Mom and Violet's mom seemed to be keeping things together, or at least they didn't freak out when he was around, but Jean was taking things particularly bad, as if anyone could take that sort of thing well! Perhaps it was because she'd also just recovered from her really bad brain damage, something the doctors said was a miracle, but she didn't seem to enjoy it very much.

Even the sight of someone male, even an eight year old kid like Allister, would send Jean into a screaming fit if he tried to get close to her when she was having one of her breakdowns, and whenever Jean was in the room, dad and Thomas had to have their beds moved against the far wall in case of any sudden breakdowns. Knowing that it might be an hour before Jean got ahold of herself again, Allister waved to catch his dad's attention and then pointed at the door and made a legs crossed squirming motion, signaling that he wanted to go to the restroom. Allister was pretty sure his dad knew that he was just taking an excuse to duck and cover, dad was very hard to fool more than once or twice with any given gimmick and this was something of a regular ploy for situations like this, but he knew dad agreed that it was best for Allister to be scarce during certain situations, since he wasn't all but tied to a bed. Besides, this would let him check up on what Violet was up to.

Once he was out in the hall, Allister breathed a sigh of relief and wiped some not altogether imaginary sweat from his brow, before taking a fold out viewscreen from his pocket and firing it up. A few texted commands to Lexi later and he'd located Violet, who actually was using the bathroom at the time, somewhat surprisingly. Allister made sure to fold the viewscreen back up before the video feed clicked in, since Lexi had eyes just about everywhere in Orb, including public restrooms. It wasn't like he was bothered about the idea of seeing Violet like that... well, yes he was, because he was at the stage of his life where girls of all sorts were kinda gross... but he wasn't bothered like he knew he would eventually be bothered, i.e. he wasn't embarassed at the idea. But he knew he eventually would be, very much so. That was one problem with being a really smart Coordinator, you tended to learn the theory and science behind puberty well before you ever actually experienced it. He'd seen Violet and Aoi and Alice and especially the Joule twins naked many times, heck he even took baths with them sometimes, though not so much anymore, so though he knew it wouldn't always be so, he didn't right now see much to get worked up about if he'd accidentally tuned in on Violet while she was in the restroom.

All the same, what with the r-a-p-e thing happening to mom and Wrenn and Jean, everyone was really on edge right now about anything that could even slightly be misconstrued as sexual misconduct, and there was no point in risking a scandal or even a very stern talking to over a misunderstanding of age standards. Which was why he'd folded up the viewscreen and contented himself with loitering outside the female restrooms, rather than going inside to ask Violet what was up. He was eight, he could get away with things like that. Perhaps loitering was not the right term though, maybe it was more like hiding behind the drinking fountain, where he could see people leaving the restroom but they couldn't see him in return. He didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea, seeing him stare at the girls restroom door. He wasn't old enough to be a pervert yet but he still didn't like the idea!

Certainly Violet didn't see him when she opened the door and stepped out into the hall, very definitely facing away from the direction that would lead her back towards the room with her mom and the others. Her pit stop obviously wasn't her final destination, and that just piqued Allister's curiosity even more. He stepped out from behind the shadow of the drinking fountain as casually as he could. "Whatcha doin?" He asked her lightly. He probably should have remembered to not step up behind her suddenly like that... it wasn't like she'd never kicked his butt before, though he'd been able to explain away those injuries by saying he tripped down a flight of stairs. Not because he was ashamed of being beat up by a girl... Violet didn't really qualify as a girl in that respect... but because he'd been ashamed that he'd provoked her and made her mad and she'd righteously kicked the crap out of him in return, and he didn't want to get a talking to from dad to go with the bruises.

Only his own medium grade training with dad, more like limbering exercises than real defense training, and his Coordinator reflexes allowed him to get his palm up in time to block a backwards elbow jab that could have broken his nose, and then Violet was spinning, her blocked arm coming around to slam into his chest and shove him roughly against the wall, off balance and half winded as she stepped into him to pin him there with her side, one hand grabbing him tight by the throat, as much as her hand could reach anyway, while her other hand snatched out one of the sticks that held up her ponytail instead of a scrunchy, revealing the apparently decorative wooden stick to actually be made of composite ceramic, like a combat knife, with a needle sharp tip that Allister got a VERY good look at as it hovered less than a half inch from his left eyeball. Perhaps it was a good thing he hadn't really needed to use the potty, or else he was fairly sure he'd need new undies right now.

"Its me its me its me its me its ME!" Allister gasped as hurriedly as he possibly could, feeling Violet's grey and blue eyes focused upon him with fearsome intensity before she finally seemed to remember where they were and who she had pinned against the wall and was preparing to violently pincushion. "Its just me..." Allister said again, as the pressure against his neck began to ease off. Violet stepped away from him with a snort that might have either been disdain or embarassment... he'd never been as good at reading her moods as Akira had been... almost unconsciously palming her hairstick-ice pick and sliding it up her sleeve in a move that would have made her father all but beam with pride, leaving her hair to fall in disarray around her shoulders and upper back. Allister was privately of the opinion that she looked cuter with her hair down, but he'd never voiced that opinion to anyone, least of all her, because the mere word "cute" seemed to invite a glare from Violet, or else a quick judo throw and landing on very hard ground.

"Allister..." Violet wouldn't look at him, and that's when he realized she was actually embarassed. "You shouldn't sneak up behind me like that. I could have hurt you..."

"But you didn't, so who cares?" Allister shrugged it off as he straightened his collar, his clothing of the day being a fairly accurate scaling down of the purple and cream uniform worn by all of Orb's government servants. The only mark of distinction was the Royal seal, but he wore that as a pendant around his neck, under his jacket because he hated people staring at it. "Question still stands though... whatcha doin?"

"Its none of your business." Violet still wouldn't turn to look at him. "So go away. Go comfort Jamie and Mina or something, I wanna be alone."

"I've spent the last few days comforting Jamie and Mina, they're kinda sick of me." Allister replied, knowing that attempting to pry into Violet's affairs could turn ugly on him if he wasn't careful. All the same, he wasn't one to take no for an answer either, and she was acting really suspicious. "Besides, I don't like the way Mr. Joule stares at me whenever I sit with them. I feel like I'm doing something wrong and he's just waiting to pounce on me and give me the spanking of the century. And you should see his eye twitch whenever I put my arms around Mina or Jamie, I just can't figure out what his deal is..." Allister stepped forward, cautiously, and reached out a hand to touch Violet on the shoulder in what he hoped would be taken as reassurement. "You can talk to me, Vio, its Alli..."

"I said its none of your business and if you touch me I'm going to break a finger. One of yours." Violet snapped at him, moving her shoulder away from his touch. "Just go away."

"Well, I hate putting it like this..." Allister replied, annoyed with her mulishness. "But since I'm the Crown Prince and you're not, you can't really make me do anything if I don't wanna. I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's bothering you, and you know I'll follow you around forever until you fess up. I'm annoying like that."

"I ought to smear your face across the tile and see if you can follow me when you're blinded by your own blood!" Violet said viciously, still not turning her head to look at him. "But my mom wouldn't want me causing any scenes right now, so you're off the hook on that one. For the time being. But I'm serious. This isn't your concern. I want to be alone."

"Well, you aren't getting what you want, so deal with it." Allister told her, putting his hands on his hips in mild anger. "Come on, Vio, just tell me what's up. I ain't gonna laugh at you or anything."

"If you did I'd KILL you where you stand." Violet's voice was straining in a way he hadn't seen since he'd first seen her by her mom's side when her mom was admitted to the hospital, and Allister belatedly realized the real reason that she was hiding her face wasn't because she was pissed, it was because she was on the verge of tears and she HATED it if anyone saw her cry. "If you MUST know, I'm gonna go see my dad, ok? Happy now... "my Prince"?" The way she said his title made him want to go slam his head into a doorway. Hard. Repeatedly. He felt like a total jerk. Flushed with embarassment, Allister felt there was only one thing to do that could possibly make amends.

"Well let's go then." Allister told her softly. Violet made it sound so simple, but her dad, Cyprus Finch, had been under near isolation ever since he'd been admitted to the hospital. The doctors were syaing it was some sort of brain or head injury, but Allister had heard his mom and dad whispering one night shortly after she got her voice emulator, and they'd said something about "psychic mauling", shortly before noticing he was in the room and then they'd shut up suspiciously fast. The word "psychic" was a major sore point for his mom and dad, since Uncle Kira and Aunt Lacus, as well as Akira and Aoi, were all psychic and his family wasn't, and apparently that was a big deal to a lot of people. Mom especially tended to use the word with the same tone she reserved for those words she said that he wasn't supposed to repeat or admit he'd heard at all. With Aunt Lacus... gone... and Uncle Kira missing, the only psychics remaining in Orb that Allister knew about were Uncle Mu, Mr. Joule and Mrs. Joule and he'd heard that Mrs. Joule had tried to do something to help Violet's dad, but she didn't seem to have been successful.

For some reason Allister couldn't understand, neither Violet nor Wrenn had been allowed to go see Cyprus since he'd been admitted to the hospital. Allister supposed he could see why Wrenn needed her rest, but if they could put her in a room with his mom and dad and a nigh hysterical Jean, he didn't see why she couldn't be put in a room with Cyprus, or why Cyprus couldn't come to the room himself. And every time Violet had tried to go see her dad before one of the Stormhounds had always turned her away, saying that her dad was still recovering and couldn't see anyone at all. Which sounded REALLY suspicious to Allister now that he thought about it, because his own dad sure seemed to always do better when Allister was around, so Cyprus could only be worse off by not seeing Violet! She was his little angel after all, and though he was a scary, scary man, he didn't seem scary at all when Violet was around.

"What part about "I wanna go alone" did My Prince not UNDERSTAND?" Violet asked him through clenched teeth.

"The part where you get past the security guard by yourself, unlike the last ten times you've tried." Allister retorted, unruffled. "Face it, someone gave the Stormhounds orders to keep you out. Given that they're the Stormhounds and your dad LEADS the Stormhounds, for them not to be bending the rules for you means that they got an order from somewhere VERY high up in the chain of command. And since my mom and dad didn't give that order... least I don't think they did... that leaves Jiro and maybe one or two other people. There's no way you can talk your way past a Stormhound with orders like that. But, ah, well, I'm the Crown Prince. Technically speaking there isn't any place in Orb that is off limits to me. And if I happen to need a bodyguard and aide when I'm going somewhere, well, that's just protocol, like dad says. I KNOW the Stormhounds wanna help you, Vio, but they can't unless someone else gives them an excuse, someone else to take the flak from the chain of command. And I'm relatively flak proof."

"If I was fourteen, I'd kiss you." Violet said in a very small voice.

"If I was fourteen, I might let you." Allister replied uneasily. "But I'm not, so... ewwww... don't you dare even think about it."

"Sorry I almost impaled your brain with my hairstick." Violet continued, almost shyly.

"Eh. It will make a great story to freak out our parents once they all get better." Allister cautiously touched her on the shoulder, and didn't lose any digits, so he figured his olive branch had won peace for the time being. They shared a companionable silence on the way down to the quarantine ward, where Allister was relieved to see only one Stormhound on duty, and one he even kinda knew at that. Keeping one hand on Violet's shoulder for reassurance, though he wasn't sure if it was hers or his, Allister waved with his other hand and tried to look confident. "Hello Conrad, how are you doing?" Allister asked cheerfully.

For his part, First Sergeant Matthew "Conrad" Kurtz, a veteran Stormhound from the Eden Diaster era, said a combination of words that Allister did his very best not to hear or remember. The one eyed Stormhound... his other eye having been lost defending Allister's mom and dad from a terrorist attack, somewhat less than successfully... seemed to instantly grasp the meaning of Allister's presence alongside Violet. "The answer is not only no but HELL no!" Kurtz said, in an attempt to be preemptive.

"I just wanna see my dad for a little bit..." Violet said, her voice far more vulnerable and plaintative than Allister had ever imagined it could become, and he realized that Violet was probably hamming it up to tug at Kurtz's heartstrings. It was playing dirty of course, but then again, she WAS Cyprus's daughter, so playing dirty sorta came with the bloodline. "Pleeeaase?"

Kurtz closed his remaining eye with an extremely pained expression on his face. He swallowed hard before finally opening his eye once more and looked at them with pleading of his own. "Look, I don't like it any more than you do, Vio, but I CAN'T let you see him. I literally CANNOT! I swore an oath to the Corporal. He'd gut me like a fish if I broke my word!"

"So your promise is more important than a little girl seeing her injured father for the first time in weeks?" Allister said, loading his voice with the sort of curious disbelief his mom used just before she was about to blow up in fiery rage against some stupid or self serving political leader. "Have a heart, Kurtz."

"I do have a heart and that's the goddamn reason I CAN'T let her see him." Kurtz shut up suddenly, as if he'd just said something he shouldn't have. "Look, there's elements to the situation that are beyond your current need to know, and those elements are the main reasons I CAN'T, under ANY circumstances, let Vio see the Lt."

"Well, I can see we're at something of an impasse." Allister shrugged and took out his folding viewscreen once more. In truth he'd more or less expected it to go like this, say what you will about them, but the Stormhounds weren't the sort to bow before authority when it came to something they really believed in. And while Allister could not think of any reason why Kurtz would think keeping Violet away from her father was a GOOD thing, apparently he did think that, so it was time for plan B. A few quick requests to Lexi and the doors to the quarantine section unlocked audibly behind Kurtz, who stared at Allister with a mixture of anger and panic. It rocked having the nationwide AI as his best friend and babysitter sometimes. Keeping his hand firmly around Violet's shoulders, Allister stepped forward to open the door.

Kurtz held out a hand to stop him, or at least to stop Violet, but Allister met the Stormhound's eye with his own gaze and let a little more of his own feelings of righteous anger show. "Touch either of us and I'll scream the r-a-p-e word at the top of my lungs." Allister warned Kurtz casually. "And yes I do know exactly what it means, which is why I KNOW you don't want me to do that, especially now. I wonder what the Corporal would do to you if he got a call saying that you were being accused of r-a-p-e ing Vio and the Crown..."

"Okay, okay, I fold goddamnit!" Kurtz snatched his hand back disgustedly. "Its my ASS either way, but I'd prefer to avoid a chance at public lynching. You play dirty, prince, and I'm gonna remember that. Look, I'm gonna get down on my hands and knees..." Kurtz did so. "And BEG you, PLEASE don't go in there! PLEASE! This is for your own good, Vio, PLEASE believe me!"

Allister considered Kurtz's behavior, which was just about as far from ordinary as could be. It was enough to plant a seed of doubt certainly. This seemed like more than just a callous order from high up in the chain of command. Kurtz was desperate to keep them from going inside, not just because it would be a violation of orders, but because he was REALLY WORRIED about something they might see. "Maybe we shouldn't..." Allister started to say, before a caustic look from Violet shut him up.

"Don't go chickening out on me now, just when I was actually starting to get impressed, Alli." Violet snarled at him, though the way her hand tightened at the wasitline of his overshirt betold a certain degree of uncertainty of her own. She looked down at Kurtz and her expression softened a tad. "I'm sorry, Conrad, but I have to see dad no matter what. Mom needs him. I need him..." She choked back a sob, and Allister could tell that it was no longer an act for pity's sake.

Kurtz got back to his feet, his face drained of blood as he stepped jerkily aside to let them pass. "I'm so going to hell for this and I deserve it!" Allister heard the man mutter as they walked past him. "Goddamn impossible situations. The Corporal is going to grind me up and turn me into lube grease for his car! Suppose I'd better call him and get the fireworks over with... damn royal pain in the ASS!" Allister pretended not to hear that last remark. Truth be told he was feeling pretty bad about the ultimatum he'd given Kurtz. It made him feel a little dirty all over knowing that he would have carried through with it and potentially condemned an innocent man... just like what had happened to Uncle Kira! Though of course he would have later withdrawn the charges, but still, the scandal would have been GIGANTIC!

Caught up in his remorse, Allister lost his grip on Violet's shoulder when they rounded a corner and she saw the room with her dad's nameplate on it and she went bounding forward eagerly. Allister was afraid the door was locked, but it wasn't, and Violet impatiently pulled the heavy door open like she was trying to tear it off the hinges before she darted into the room, her eyes wet with unabashed tears as she threw her arms wide and prepared herself to jump headlong into the arms of her father. Caught a bit off guard by her exuberance, Allister was a second behind her as she burst into the room, and it was as he was cresting the doorway that his eyes finally took in the situation and Allister stopped dead short in the doorway, his stomach dropping out in a very unpleasant sensation as he realized something was VERY wrong.

Cyprus sat upright on his hospital bed, clad in clean grey shirt and trousers, no socks and no undershirt, his hair slightly messy. Every time Allister had ever seen Cyprus Finch he had a mask on, either a literal one with his battle mask, or a stone cold poker face that gave away nothing at all of what the man was thinking or feeling. Thus, seeing the puzzlement and cautious curiosity written all over Cyprus's face now could very well be described not only as jarring but outright FREAKY. "Why hello there, young lady, young man. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company today?" Cyprus asked them, his tone light and friendly. Allister flinched, his face twisted into shocked disbelief. While he did not doubt Cyprus had the capacity for great kindness, hearing him speak to them like a kindly stranger was surreal at the very least! And then it hit him, and Allister almost staggered to his knees right then and there. Cyprus blinked at his antics owlishly, before turning an uncertain look upon Violet, who was looking at him like he'd grown three extra heads or something.

"Are you two lost?" Cyprus asked, his tone still gentle and friendly... and utterly empty of recognition of any sort. "I'm afraid I haven't been getting out much recently, but there's a nice man in blue and white and grey not too far away, I'm sure he can help you if you're lost."

"I'm... not... lost..." Violet squeaked out, her throat catching on every word as she fought to hold back her tears, heart heart hammering in her chest fit to burst free.

"Then if you're not lost, perhaps you've lost someone else? Like your parents maybe? Do you know where your parents are, young lady?" Cyprus asked, and that was the point where it was too much for Allister to bear. He watched as Violet collapsed to her hands and knees, her body trying to scream and faint at the same time, and succeeding in neither.

"YOU'RE HER PARENT! YOU'RE HER DAD! CAN'T YOU REMEMBER YOUR OWN DAUGHTER?" Allister screamed, almost certainly loud enough to be heard back at where Kurtz was guarding the unlocked door. Now he realized why the Stormhound was so desperate to keep them away. That psychic mauling his mom and dad had talked about... it had taken away Cyprus's memories. All of his memories! "YOU'RE CYPRUS FINCH AND SHE'S YOUR DAUGHTER VIOLET!"

"Cyprus... Finch..." Cyprus sat back on his hospital bed heavily, his eyes all but crossing in concentration. After a few moments he shook his head and sighed. "I'm sorry, but it doesn't seem familiar. Truth be told I'm not quite sure what my name is. The doctors tell me I had some sort of terrible accident. But I would think I would remember having a daughter..." He stared down at Violet, sobbing on the floor in denial. "But I don't even remember a wife, much less a child. I don't even know where I am right now to be honest. Are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else?"

"Daddy..." Violet looked up at him with reddened eyes. "Please don't say these mean things... you promised... you promised you would never be mean to me... you promised you'd always be there to protect mommy and me... dad... father... please... PLEASE..." She half lurched forward, intending to sit on his lap and hug him. But he shied away from her, clearly unwilling to accept a sobbing eight year old he quite plainly didn't know into his lap.

"I'm going to call the nurse, okay? She'll help us sort this whole mess out." Cyprus said with forced jocularity. "Don't worry... we'll get you both back with your parents before you know it..."

"Father... don't do this... please... daddy... I love you... you promised... you PROMISED!" Violet protested, her entire body shaking as she began to scream. "YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED!"

Allister did the only thing he could do under the circumstances, even though he knew it would almost certainly earn him some sort of beating later. He stepped over to Violet and put his arms around her, and did his best not to look at Cyprus or at anything at all as he focused on just providing a single bit of support for a friend who'd just lost the most certain thing in her entire life. And that was how they were found, less than two minutes later, when the nurse, Kurtz and several doctors burst into the room with panicked expressions on their faces. Too late... the cat was already out of the bag. Or perhaps more accurately... the bird had flown the coop... and it didn't look like it was coming back.

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	27. Savage Tribes

Author Note: Okay, so enough pussyfooting around, time to get into the swing of things and see what the "War" part of Reclamation War is about, eh? surprises all around in store this chapter, though nothing I would write home about compared to what will be coming in later chapters of this same arc. I realize I may have been a bit rocky with my portrayal of Allister and Violet... its hard to write someone who is almost two decades younger than you... but as for the question of their maturity, please remember that neither of them is ANY sort of normal child. For one they're Coordinators (yes, Violet is a Coordinator too) and so their intellectual capacity develops much faster than the eight year olds we all know in real life. Also, Allister is Crown Prince of Orb, the heir to the ceremonial and maybe executive leadership of the entire nation. In no way, shape or form is his childhood experience normal. As for Violet... her dad is Cyprus Finch, the most feared and fearsome Natural soldier alive. No normalcy there either. These are not your neighborhood kids with a lemonade stand by the curb. She has a freaking deadly weapon as a hair ornament! She went after Frost with a SWORD!

A lot of people commenting on the voice boxes things, and why they can't grow new tongues or larynx's or whatever is needed. Its not that they CAN'T, its that any sort of human cloning has been declared illegal by the USN. That includes medical organ cloning. Perhaps because FEAR is doing big business in prosthetics, and also because of the Borander scare, human cloning is kinda in the shit right now in terms of public and political opinion. Of course Rey being a clone just makes the whole attitude deliciously ironic but all the same, for the USN, human cloning or human organ cloning is illegal. Think about it... if you were going to make a overarching plan for humanity that determined a person's life role by their genetics, you wouldn't want people cloning themselves all over the place and then selling those bodies or something. Anyway, I've got my plot seedlings out of the way for the time being, so now its time to catch up with the consequences of stuff in earlier chapters, including several highly anticipated events. Brace yourself for the Savage Tribes...

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Custodial Mustering Field, November 16th, Morning**

It was somewhat odd, knowing he was outside, walking around on packed earth, and yet looking up and seeing only dark green and brown foliage overhead, even though Yggdrasil's trunk was a good kilometer away. The mustering and parade grounds for Garden City's resident military forces were situated between Yggdrasil's trunk and the nearest slopes of Mt. Everest, the overarching branches forming an interwoven mat of vegetation a good two or three hundred meters thick that formed a solid roof overhead, effectively rendering even a massive gathering of troops invisible to long distance surveillance methods such as satellite or drone imaging. And then of course there was the face that they were inside Yggdrasil's Latent aura, and thus functionally invisible to anyone and anything outside that aura that relied on natural physics to operate. Dangling from the lowermost branches of the living roof overhead were strung dozens of gigantic floodlights, each nearly as big around as a main battle tank, yet they appeared as little more than christmas tree bulbs against the colossal mass of vegetation that was Yggdrasil.

The cut of his new Executor's uniform seemed subtly odd to Kira, not that it was much different from the undertunic and trousers he'd been wearing ever since waking up in Garden City's medical center a few days ago. _Good Hameya, has it really only been a few days?_ Kira shook his head bitterly as he tugged on the long sleeves of his uniform jacket, his imagination telling him that they were a bit short of his wrists when actually the entire ensemble was perfectly tailored to his exact specifications. When offered a choice of color for his uniform, Kira had not hesitated to select black, remembering the time when he'd questioned the color scheme of the Seraph back when it was fresh from the assembly line and how Dr. Simmons had explained how the black symbolized his sorrow for the act of war and killing. War was an ugly thing, a terrible thing, and no one should view its coming with joy or anything other than horror! It seemed to be a lesson that humanity was forgetting, and so Kira was going to have to show them their folly once more.

Perhaps it was something he should have done a long time ago, during the Isolation Era perhaps, but it was too late to cry over the past now. Kira clenched one fist hard enough to leave indentations in his palm from his fingertips. Too late to cry perhaps, but not too late to mourn, and never too late to rectify! Settling his face into a grim mask, banishing the images of the glittering mist descending from on high to turn his whole world to ash, which had been haunting his every waking thought ever since he'd seen the stuff, some sort of chemical or nano-weapon, deployed at the massacre of Busytown. It was one thing to have strongly suspected the USN as being responsible for the deaths of Lacus, Akira and Aoi, but to actually have it confirmed... he hadn't been ready for that! Wasn't sure it was something a person COULD be ready for at all! But ready or not, he'd made his choice and taken up the mantle of Executor, which could mean either "Executioner" or "He who enforces the will". Kira thought of himself as something of a mixture of the two meanings. He would be a symbol to the people... his people, the Edenites, enforcing their will to survive peacefully. And he would be the executioner of any who would seek to contest that peaceful existence with dreams of genocide or conquest!

Every piece of his uniform, from boots to trousers to tunic and undershirt to gloves to the awkward feeling mantle draped across his shoulders that fell to his elbows was black as the midnight void, so black it almost seemed to swallow light, not a splash of color, not even the abyssal blue of the Praetorians, lightening the sombre hue. The only concession to color was a sash round his waist, that being a metallic silver color. He wore neither the helmed skull over crossed swords emblem of the Praetorians nor the bronzen tree on a green shield heraldry of the Custodians, as Executor was a post removed from both organizations, above in many ways and parallel in others. Of course his uniform wasn't just a uniform, it also incorporated many aspects of light body armor and contained communication and data hookups woven into its material. The mantle extended a stealth like dampening field around him, reducing noise travel and thermal signatures, and his entire outfit could be turned into a limited duration set of Phase shifted fibres in times of emergency.

Kira had been given to understand that the uniform was just a temporary measure while they completed hewing a set of Borealite armor for him, but truth be told he wasn't altogether looking forward to being cooped up in a wooden shell. The only armor he'd ever grown used to wearing was his Gundam. Likewise the combat blade and beam pistol riding in holsters under his arm and on his hip felt uncomfortable and he was constantly making small adjustments to them, trying to get them to stop irritating his sense of balance. A part of Kira wondered if he'd actually be able to draw and use either gun or blade against someone in an actual combat situation... he wasn't worried about doing it in a Gundam, he KNEW he could do it that way... but face to face? He'd never had the stomach for that sort of killing, and even the blazing fire of his wrath for those who had murdered his family and taken his happy life away couldn't seem to assure him that he'd be able to actually shoot someone face to face.

A caress of his intangible senses brought his head up and around, Kira recognizing the brush of a mind attempting to make contact with him through the Wind of Words, every nuance of the mental network amplified by the direct proximity to Yggdrasil so that even a "newb" like Kira could send and recieve messages just fine. Relaxing his mental defenses and stuffing his hurtful memories down deep so that his pain wouldn't be available to the person contacting him, Kira allowed the contact through. _Begging pardon, Executor, but Kunai, Strategos Magnus Ullric and Consol Hiero request your presence in the strategic bunker prior to the military review._ The voice was faintly familiar, one of the Praetorian support staff that served as an aide to Kunai, not that the bald headed, scar faced man needed much assistance in most matters. There was something so damned familiar about Kunai's blazing blue eyes, Kira just wished he could place it. He had a suspicion or two, but they both seemed kind of unlikely.

_I shall be there shortly, thank you._ Kira replied, hoping his errant thoughts didn't come through to diminish his attempt at politeness. It was only a short walk across the parade and mustering ground, what little portion of it his wanderings had taken him across anyway, back to one of the ground level entrances to the Praetorian Enclave built into the depths of Mt. Everest, and from there it was but a few seconds of express elevator rides to get into the core of the facility. Of course there were stairs as well, and it was traditional for Praetorians to utilize them instead of the elevators, but for one, Kira wasn't a Praetorian, and for two, that would take most of an hour and from the flavoring of the message he'd recieved, Kira gathered the Edenite leaders were in something of a hurry to see him. Thoughts focused on the meeting to come, Kira barely remembered to nod in acknowledgement as various support staff came to brisk attention as he passed. Unlike other militaries, the Edenites did not have a salute, but in a society where you could quite literally smell respect coming off a person, what need was there for a phsyical gesture?

Contrary to how he remembered various military strategy meetings going in the past, during his time with Orb and the USN, there were only the three other people the message named waiting for him in the strategy center, no hustle and bustle of aides or mass meeting of ranking commanders, this was a power session between the top end leaders only. And Kira himself of course, though he still wasn't sure exactly where his role as Executor placed him in the command hierarchy of Garden City. Kunai had told him that as long as he acted just like he would if he were among contingents of Orb soldiers, he'd do just fine, but truth be told Kira had never really thought about how far he could push his authority with Orb's soldiers. He was a member of the Royal family after all, though that was a semi-private fact, but he wasn't any part of the regular military and held no actual rank. Still, that didn't stop people deferring to him in droves anyway, from sheer experience, so perhaps that was what Kunai meant. Still it didn't explain if he could, for instance, countermand orders given by ranked commanders or even those from people like Ullric, Kunai or Hiero.

Upon entering the strategy center Kira had to stop and stare for a moment, his first sight of a Custodian in war panolopy catching him a little off guard, making him wonder if he'd somehow stepped through a portal and been transported back to the days of viking marauders sacking and pillaging along the coast of Europe. Ullric was a big man at any given time, easily as big as Sergeant-Major Glory, if slightly less well built to account for the difference in age, but in his armor and accoutrements he seemed to tower like a juggernaut, dwarfing the physical presence of every other man in the room. Whereas Praetorian armor, regardless of individual style, covered pretty much the entire body of its wearer, Custodian armor was more sparse and also uncarved, confined to borealite plates over the torso and side, as well as thigh plates, greaves for the legs, vambraces for the arms and heavy pauldrons over the shoulders, with armor in between the plates being provided by some sort of mixture of what looked like studded leather armor or chainmail, though Kira suspected it was far more high tech than it appeared.

Adding to the primitive aspect of the armor were the trophies and other decorations that had been tied, wedged and otherwise attached to it, cords with fangs and claws, entire jawbones dangling from the hip and shoulder plating, the skull of a dog-like animal, almost certainly a Garm, attached to the top of each pauldron, facing outward with fanged jaws open in permanent skeletal howls, while a flowing cloak of mixed grey-white Garm hide hung down his back like a small sail. Ullric's helm, currently removed at set casually aside on the table in the middle of the room, looked to have been carved entirely from the skull of an absolutely gigantic Garm, maybe even a Garm-Chimera. The haft of an enormous two handed axe protruded from under the cloak, the thing looked big enough to split a man in half with even a light chop! It was more than a little barbaric, in Kira's estimation, but neither of the other Edenites were even giving Ullric a second glance, so he assumed that this was somehow normal. Then again, the Praetorians, even Lilia, seemed to enjoy adorning themselves with similar trophies and trinkets taken from various animals of import to them, only Kunai seemed above the fetish gathering.

Speaking of Kunai, he was dressed in what Kira at first thought was some sort of costume before he realized it was actually a serious set of armor and equipment. Unlike the rest of his Order, Kunai did not wear any form of borealite armor, but instead wore heavy looking robes of some sort of felt or leather which swamped his body and included a cowl for covering his head. An innocuous looking staff was leaning in the crook of one arm, for all the world looking like just a walking stick, so Kira more or less automatically assumed it was something VERY dangerous, judging from what he knew of Kunai. Even Hiero was dressed in his ceremonial cloak with enfringements of gemstones and small fetishes, and Kira wished for a moment he could get a photo of this moment so he could show it to his friends. He could just see Alkire and Raine in hysterics at seeing the "combat uniforms" of the Edenites, which looked like something you'd see at a medieval re-enactment faire or a LARPers convention. Kira managed a tight smile before it drained away as he realized that after his exit from Orb, he HAD NO friends there anymore.

"Executor." Ullric said by way of acknowledgement, nodding his head in what might have been a teensy gesture of respect. A hard man to get to know, Ullric was, especially for an Edentie, who as a whole tended to wear their emotions pretty openly. Unsure of the proper way to address Ullric in return, not certain whether this was a formal meeting or an informal one, or if such terms even applied to the loose way the Edenties managed their military chain of command, Kira just nodded in reply and waited for them to go on. The Lucifer was still being constructed, even with all available nano-factories not aiding in other part sof the war effort churning out parts and pieces for his Gundam, some things, especially QC structures and some of the more advanced bits of some weapon and power systems, didn't exactly produce overnight, so Kira wasn't sure exactly what they wanted him around for. He knew his way around the battlefield betetr than most anyone, but he had very little head for overall strategy, that had always been Lacus, Cagalli or Murrue's department.

"The USN has already re-established four primary bases on the surface of the planet." Kunai said without preamble, the bunker's holographic projectors whirring to life as he began to speak, displaying an obviously pre-prepared set of data. "Carpentaria to our Southeast, Gibraltar to our West, Heaven's Base to our Northwest and finally Porta Panama to our very far West." Kunai paused a moment and a wintry cold smile spread across his face. "So I should perhaps amend that to say that the USN has re-established THREE bases on the surface of the planet. Yggdrasil help those poor bastards in Porta Panama..."

"What's the deal with Porta Panama?" Kira asked, curious with the way Kunai would dismiss a major military force as inconsequential.

"Ah yes, you wouldn't know about it, would you?" Kunai sighed and manipulated the map data some. "Look here. This is Porta Panama..." He brought it up on the map. "And this is Neo-Miami." Kunai highlighted another city on the map. "Now look at this overlay showing population density across North and South America." A golden dot appeared way up in Alaska, pretty much the entire rest of both continents remained dark, save for a few sparse glimmers along the southern coast of South America. Kira almost immediately realized that both the large golden dot and the smaller glimmers were both over a certain distance away from Neo-Miami, and anything within that certain distance, which definitely included Porta Panama, had no population centers of any size.

"What the hell?" Kira asked, stunned to see basically two entire continents all but barren of human presence. Green EDEN had hit pretty hard, but not THAT hard. "What's so special about Neo-Miami?"

"The Caller." Kunai replied shortly. Seeing Kira's blank look, he expounded. "He's another Grand Chimera, the same class of being as Yggdrasil. Except the Caller is an Active, and he quite literally feeds off the psychic energies of those that die violent or painful deaths. He whispers to thinking beings when their defenses are relaxed, such as when they dream, and eventually brainwashes them and even takes control of them like puppets, forcing them to abandon their former lives and journey to his lair in Neo-Miami, where they serve some unknown purpose before being consumed, body, mind and soul by his ever increasing hunger."

"And you haven't done anything about this thing?" Kira was aghast. "It's devoured almost the entire population of two WHOLE CONTINENTS and you just sit back and..."

"The Caller is a Grand Chimera and therefore, in essence, a figure of reverence to many Edenites." Hiero cut him off, gently enough. "As Yggdrasil is like a god of love and life, Caller is a god of death and selfishness. To some Edenites, Caller represents the perfect model of evolution in action, a mind focused on two things... survival and reproduction at any cost. Furthermore, with his psychic might, how would we even strike at the Caller? Any attacking forces who actually reached Neo-Miami would be mind controlled in seconds, and long range weapons might not be precise enough to strike the Caller, wherever his lair actually is, which is something no living person actually knows. And even if we COULD slay him, the death echo of a Grand Chimera could wreak untold psychic havoc on a GLOBAL scale. We might kill him only to wake up with every thinking being on New Eden brain dead from the trauma. The Caller is just part of life on New Eden. One tries not to think about him, and one avoids the Americas at all costs. One does not seek revenge for those killed by a hurricane or tidal wave, the same principle applies to the Caller."

"And now he will take care of any USN forces sent to Porta Panama for us, not because he wants to help us but because his evolutionary imperatives demand he eat whenever possible." Ullric added with an almost smug look on his face. He noticed Kira's twisted face. "They're the ones who invaded us, Executor. They're the ones who murdered your family. Save your pity for those that deserve it."

"I do. Like it or not, most of the USN are good, decent people, its just their leadership that is corrupt and power mad." Kira replied sternly. "I pity anyone who dies for a cause they don't have a choice but to fight for, all because someone in a position of power wants a bigger slice of some pie. Its a trap I should hope none of you will fall into." Kira eyed all three of them grimly. "Because as I understand it, as Executor it is well within my rights to take action against ANY wrongdoing or evil I encounter, even if its perpetuated by those who call themselves my allies. This is your first and last warning. I have made it my goal to eradicate war by showcasing just how hellish it can be. But that does not mean I will condone massacres or atrocities, especially genocide. We are better than that. We WILL be better than that, or you WILL answer to me."

"As you say." Kunai replied, though Kira wasn't sure if that was agreement or just placation. "None of us has any desire to be lumped into the same category as the people who launched a full scale armor and artillery blitz of a civilian town." Turning back to the hovering maps, he once more started placing beacons and points showing the current and projected spread of USN forces across the globe. "From their three primary bases they are working on establishing secondary bases and supply depots in coincentric rings, each ring representing a new fortified line of defense as they push outward from each primary landing zone. Though they have the numbers to spare to overrun us at any one point if they massed their forces, this strategy of slow fortification actually works somewhat in our advantage, as it gives us more time for environmental stresses to work on their morale and supplies before we strike hard and fast at predetermined weak points, penetrate their lines and cause as much havoc as possible before taking advantage of our superior speed and stealth to withdraw and repeat the process elsewhere. Strategos Magnus?"

"I have ten Legios currently under arms and ready for deployment to any battlezone we see fit, and another three working on training up and manufacturing their war material." Ullric said stiffly, pride coloring his every word. "I have assigned Legio's Direcat, Cold Hunter, and Basilisk to offensive operations against Carpentaria. Legio's Megadon, Kraken and Rhinobeast will be deployed against Gibraltar. And Legio's Ironhide, Rex Elk and Spider Wolf will face off against Heaven's Base, leaving Porta Panama to the Caller's devices. Legio Garm will provide defensive security for Garden City itself. From what i gather, Legio Deathstalker will be deploying piecemeal across all theatres, as individual battle allegiances and situations demand?" He asked the last to Kunai, who nodded in acknowledgement.

"I have saved back a small group of Praetorians, including myself and Lilia, who will be available as an emergency response force in case of any unexpected enemy manuevers." Kunai told them. He glanced over at Kira. "I expect that the Executor will join this ad hoc group once his Gundam is completed, or he may deploy himself as he wishes. Far be it for me to gainsay the wisdom of his experience."

"You mean I can just go anywhere I want, do anything I want, take control of troops as I see fit and none of it is subject to oversight from you or other senior leaders?" Kira asked, somewhat incredulous.

"That is what we agreed to when we nominated you for the post of Executor, yes." Kunai bowed his head, almost slyly. "You're Kira Yamato, the greatest Gundam pilot ever to live. Just by showing up on a battlefield you will strike terror into the hearts of the enemy and inspire your allies. We would be fools to try and place limits on your ability to intervene where and when you see fit. You have always been at your best when the power to determine your course of action was yours and yours alone, Kira. You are our champion. You are our Executor. We trust you to uphold that responsibility, thats all there is to it."

"In line with that..." Hiero cut in. "I think it would be best if you were to review the troops before they deploy, Executor. I think it would be an exceptional morale booster for them to see with their own eyes the noble path you have chosen and to know that you will be there at their side, in spirit if not in flesh, during these crucial first few months. Regardless of our training, we have few true veterans amongst our ranks, and any sense of confidence we can instill in them before they go off to face the horrors of war would be worth it. I'm not saying you have to give a speech... just the sight of your approval would be more than enough, I expect."

"That makes sense." Kira answered, though inwardly he was squirming. He'd never exactly had stage fright, but he wasn't comfortable being the center of attention for large groups either. "When should I do that?"

"Right now seems as good a time as any." Kunai answered, glancing over at Ullric. "Are the Legio's mustered, Strategos Magnus?"

"They'd damn well better be, or I'll have some new skins nailed to my office door." Ullric replied with a grin that Kira hoped meant he was joking. Picking up his Garmskull helm, Ullric lowered it into place, where muted clicks and the hiss of gasses revealed that the armor was indeed far more technological than it looked, as the helmet systems re-integrated with the rest of the armor. Ullric's gold on yellow eyes glared from the depths of the hollow eye sockets, in their way just as baleful as the neon blue camera lenses of Stormhound helmets. Leading the way back through the maze of passageways, the other threee having tot ake one and a half strides for every one of Ullric's, he lead them to a portal that opened onto a cunningly designed reviewing stand built into the lower slopes of the mountain, projecting a little less than a hundred meters over the flat packed spread of the parade grounds. Kira blinked in the glare of the suspended floodlights as a sound like a small avalanche assaulted his ears when he stepped out onto the viewing platform.

It was only when he looked down, his eyes widening so far he was afraid he looked bug eyed, that Kira identified the source of the noise. It was no avalanche, it was more than five thousand shouting and hollering Custodians and Praetorians lined up in the parade ground below, reacting to the appearance of their leaders, which included him. The full might of Garden City's military was on display for the first time, and it wasn't just ranks of soldiers either, no, they had all their war machines and Mobile Suits and other auxilary forces lined up with them, each Legio making a block of parade ground their own, the divisions between the blocks easily visible, as each Legio had wildly different makeup and standards of decoration. Kira could make out Panner standing at the head of a block that must be Legio Direcat, she was easy to pick out not only because of the bright orange and black tiger striped cloak and saber fanged helm she wore, but because she was sitting astride the enormous back of Hector, her pet Direcat, like some fearsome cavalry mount. Nor was she the only one in her Legio to go so mounted, indeed almost anyone who appeared to be an officer had their own war mount or partner of horse sized Direcat.

Legio Direcat wasn't the only one to involve its totemic animal in its battle line, as several blocks down from Direcat was what Kira assumed was Legio Basilisk, who had fully half of their four hundred odd infantry soldiers mounted up in teams of six to eight on gigantic crocodilian looking creatures that were almost as long as a school bus, armored in grey-green scales that looked as hard as metal, and onto which external armor plating of technological sorts was mounted. Each Basilisk was also equipped with a variety of crew served weapons, ranging from mortars to missile launchers to hyper-impulse cannons, which were bolted into the skin and bone of the creatures themselves, though they did not seem in the least discomfited by the fact. Kira could see other large animals in the distance in other LEgio blocks, sometimes as mounts, sometimes as beasts of burden, and sometimes as what looked like individual infantry support!

From the briefing he'd read, Kira knew that the Custodians were organized in a manner somewhat similar to ZAFT, but not really like any pre-Eden military establishment humans had ever had before. The basic unit was known as a Manifold, and Manifolds varied in size between Legios and even within a single Legio, usually three to twelve members in strength. Each member of a Manifold trained long and hard to form a psychic bond with the other members of the Manifold, in many was similar or even identical to the sort of bond Psychics created with intimate partners. Indeed there were many mated pairs among the Manifolds, but not all intimacy was necessarily sexual in nature and there were almost as many Manifolds with no sexual partnerships between any of the members as there were those that slept together on a regular basis. The leaders of each Manifold were then in turn Manifolded with each other to form a command Manifold, the leaders of that Manifolded into a higher Manifold and so forth and so on until you reached the Manifold of the Strategos, the Legio commander.

There was no set size for a Legio, some of them, such as Rhinobeast or Basilisk, were considerably bigger than ones like Cold Hunter or Spider Wolf, but on average a Legio would have about 200 to 300 active duty soldiers, plus another 200-300 support staff, trainees and specialists or auxiliaries. Of those 200-300 active duty soldiers, perhaps one in ten, often as little as one in twenty, was a Mobile Suit pilot, the rest belonged to the disciplines of infantry, artillery, armored vehicle or special things such as the all terrain Basilisk mounts, which could not only cross land and water, but could also scale sheer cliffs like a gecko. The Custodians possessed a wide variety of transports, tanks and self propelled artillery pieces, though most of them fit into the light and medium armor categories, sacrificing armament and thick armor for speed and maneuverability in a forest environment. There was a fairly even spread between wheels and treads, with a few ground effect hover equipped models thrown in here and there, especially in the more amphibious focused Legios such as Megadon and Kraken.

The Mobile Suit of the Custodians was known as the Dervish. Standing just over twenty meters tall and massing in the neighborhood of one hundred tons, a Dervish was fairly average sized by modern Mobile Suit standards, though they would have been considered massive in the Strike's age. Unlike the machines of the USN and Orb, which were becoming more and more like walking weapon platforms, festooned with weapons of all sorts at shoudlers, arms, and torso, the Dervish was equipped for speed, agility and skirmishing type attacks, as its name, which belonged to a tribe of desert dwelling nomadic raiders, might indicate. A standard Dervish carried a 225mm linear rifle in either hand, plus had four 57mm beam cannons built into its torso, two per side. A satchel of Mobile Suit sized grenades rounded out that part of the aresenal. The truth strength of the Dervish lay in the triple Quantum Crystal claw mounted on each forearm, coupled with the power and speed allowed by NIC system controls and a Fusion Pulse Reactor. Armor of solid dark brown Borealite, equally resistant to cutting, burning or blasting attacks from physical or beam weaponry provided the Dervish with plenty of combat resilience. Citadel shield projectors in either forearm added additional protection against heavier weapons, and each Dervish featured a modified Mirage Colloid generator that would partially obscure and blur a twenty meter radius around each Dervish, not making them invisible but rather make them seem like flitting shadows or ghosts.

Standing in a line in front of the blocks of the Custodian Legio's were the Praetorians, each individual unique in their personally carved armor and bearing personalized weaponry tailored for their individual fighting styles. Behind each Praetorian stood a Mobile Suit, the model assigned to the Praetorians was known as the Spectre. Bigger, taller and meatier than the Dervishes, Spectres stood twenty two meters tall and massed one hundred twenty tons. Powered, armored and controlled with the same technology as the Dervishes, the Spectre's armament and additional defensive systems were what seperated them from the lesser machines. Each Spectre carried a double bladed QC glaive, a short, broad sword blade on the end of a spear shaft, hidden within either end of the shaft was a short ranged Thermal Exciter, circa the Brotherhood Gundam. The right arm of each Spectre mounted a 20mm QC spike driver, also circa the Brotherhood and a Gugnir projector, courtesy of the old Liberty, was built into the palm of the left hand. A limited transformation mode robbed the unit of its mobility, but allowed access to a 100cm Positron cannon built into the chest.

Hoverthrusters in the legs added even more ground level mobility to the unit, but it was in the Photo-Refractor Array that the true power of the Spectre became evident. Unlike the Mirage Colloid system, which used clouds of dispersed molecular particles to mirror and hide a unit from sensors and even normal human vision, but could be pierced by certain specialized sensors such as sonar or the compound sensor overlap of a Vari-Camera, Photo-Refractors used advanced principles of gravity control to literally bend light, sound and all electromagnetic frequencies around the unit in question, granting total invisiblity. Utilizing the system drew HUGELY on the Spectre's reactor, and so the Thermal Exciters and Positorn cannon capabilities were disabled when the Photo-Refractor was active. Not altogether a bad trade off though, for total invisibility to technological sensors and even eyesight. Which was probably a good thing because each Spectre was carved to match its owner's armor, and some of the designs were quite startlingly noticable

Finally, standing slightly ahead of even the other Praetorians, were the four Arboreal's, the designated guardians of Yggdrasil itself, though they spent little time discharging that largely ceremonial duty. Lilia, Alexander, Haman and Heine each were armed and equipped much like their Praetorian brethren, but they had a customized run of upgraded Spectres to carry them into the heaviest battles, known as Wraiths. Of a size with Spectres and only a little bit bulkier, the Wraith's were most certainly the most dangerous mass production Mobile Suits yet created by human hands, though calling a total production run of four units "mass produced" was something of a misnomer. The chief visible difference between a Wraith and a Spectre was that while each Spectre carried the same melee weapon, the double glaive, each Wriath's handheld weaponry was personalized to its owner, with two swords for Lilia, sword and shield for Heine, a larger double glaive for Haman and a two handed sword for Alexander, all of QC material of course, even Heine's shield. The QC spike driver from the Spectre mdoel was mounted on the left arm of the Wraith, rather than the right, the right arm spot taken up by the slim barrel of something called a Ion Disintegrator.

Equipped with the same Photo-Refractors as the Spectre's, the Wraiths also had several extra systems designed to work while cloaked, in exchange for losing the bombardment mode of the Positron cannon and the point blank destructiveness of the Thermal Exciters. The fingers of the Wraith mounted "Gugnir claws", blades of contained EMP that caused no physical damage but could gut a Mobile Suit's operating system and vital electronics all the same. Additional systems built into the gauntlets created the "Deathtouch" system, which used esoteric principles of electrical conduction to quite literally draw electrical power out of storage devices and power plants, without touching, from a distance of up to one hundred meters, even while cloaked! This allowed Wraith's to disable enemy machines or defenses that were battery powered without ever having to even be all that nearby, and strongly limit the power of even nuclear fueled machines, though the effect was somewhat neglible against FPR powered models. Once enough energy had been stolen by the Deathtouch, it could be released as "Odin's Hammer", which was similar to though more stable than the USN's Mjolnir 3P cannon, firing a barrage of electrical bolts across a fifty meter radius surrounding the Wraith, though it could not be cloaked while using the Hammer.

And if THESE were the machines of the "regular" soldiers, then Kira could almost feel himself getting excited about how his new Gundam would turn out! But that was yet in the future, and though he wasn't entirely sure why he did it, Kira stepped forward to the edge of the viewing platform and raised one hand over his head, soaking in the emotional storm being projected up from below and finding his resolve hardening anew. Lacus, Akira and Aoi would be avenged, and humanity would learn to abhor war over everything else! Kira swore on his very life that this would be so! "Let there be war no more." Kira said, barely a whisper, no way that he could be overheard giving the racous crowd below. But that was okay... he wasn't really talking to them anyway.

xxxx

**New Eden, Southeast Asia, Former China, Carpentaria Expansion Base Xerxes, November 17th, Dusk**

Corporal Ketch, of first platoon, twelfth company, fourth regiment, USN CAD (Combined Arms Division) number thirty one, yawned and covered her mouth with one hand, scrunching her eyes and stretching a kink out of her back as she waited for her relief to show up, which should be sometime in the next twenty minutes or so. She didn't know the exact time because they were doing their best to randomize relief times in an effort to confuse enemy attempts to determine sentry schedules, made it harder for the enemy to knock a hole in the human element of base security and have it go unnoticed until it was too late. Or at least that was the theory anyway, Ketch privately thought it had more to do with lazy bastards taking an excuse to relieve her twenty minutes late so they could get a little extra rack time. Rack time on Earth was even more precious than it was elsewhere, because in the modular barracks buildings, you could at least take off your damn armor and environment seals, and pretend to get clean and refreshed. The Survivor pattern armor was a great breakthrough in infantry protection, but spend eighteen hours a day, every day, doing physical labor, and it was like climbing into a portable armpit swamp every morning!

Not that anyone really cared how you smelled when you were out on the front line, as ExBa Xerxes certainly was considered to be at the moment, one of the first USN forward operations bases established on mainland Asia, part of the first expansion ring around Carpentaria Base, even if you were female. Everyone started smelling equally bad after a day or two, especially since Xerxes was still under construction and defenses and military stuff had to go in before personal amenities like shower blocks and the massage parlour. Not that there would EVER be a massage parlour at a FOB, but it was a running joke among the enlisted soldiers that given the amount of money being spent on this "war", the brass sure could afford a few luxuries like that. It was a nice personal fantasy anyway, before volunteering for a few years in the USN forces, mostly for the educational money and chance to travel a bit, Ketch had been in the personal health business, and she could really appreciate a good massuese.

Course she hadn't counted on the top brass actually declaring war during her little stint, and now she found herself down on a hellhole of a planet she'd never had much interest in, her family being multigenerational on Luna, dealing with bothersome diurnal cycles, constant heavy gravity, smotheringly hot and humid weather and plenty of hard manual labor assisting the engineering corps in establishing the base perimeter and its accompanying defenses. Most military bases she was familiar with just had chain link fences, maybe some razor wire and motion sensors around their edges. Which was apparently all you needed when building a base in friendly territory. Building a base in hostile or yet to be pacified territory on the other hand, and things were a little more serious than that. More serious like a three hundred yard deep clear zone around the base where foliage was burnt to the ground, with multiple strands of barbed and razor wire at ankle and hip height, a plethora of mines scattered more or less randomly, buried motion and vibration sensors, cameras and floodlights on poles, a ditch deeper than she was tall and a rampart wall almost twenty feet tall made of sloped dirt reinforced with rebar and concrete!

And those were just the passive defenses, there was, at any given time, a full company of infantry stationed on the wall, in pairs of sentries, with additional random rovers, usually junior NCO's like Ketch. Every fifty feet along the wall perimeter was a sandbagged and reinforced support weapon nest, ranging from beam guns to autocannon to rocket launchers and mortar teams, while every hundred fifty feet was a hardened tower with a heavy linear cannon turret and multiple machinegun emplacements, with overlapping fields of fire. Revetments built into the base side of the wall had armored shutters that could be drawn back to allowed tanks and self propelled artillery vehicles to add their weapons to the base's defensive firepower, and additional areas inside the base had been set aside as artillery and support fire stations, with batteries of cannon and rocket or missile equipped artillery vehicles on standby to give supporting fire. Anti-air turrets were scattered across the base, and some that were placed on the walls could also be turned on ground targets, contributing four 20mm gatling cannons per turret to the fray. The gates were more than a foot and a half thick of hardened steel, and the approaches to the gates were covered by machineguns, anti-armor rockets and flamethrowers.

Corporal Ketch was no expert in contemporary siegecraft, but in her opinion the base was about as secure as a mere two infantry regiments and one mixed armor and artillery regiment could make it. They'd be able to expand their defenses again later, once they got the base reactors set up and operational, and that's when they could start adding the heavy stuff, like hyper-impulse cannons, FRALA turrets or even Positron cannons, along with Citadel Shield domes to protect against air or artillery fire. With over 1500 soldiers and close to 200 armored vehicles, plus a wing of eight combat helicopters already on sight, plus a detachment of Reclaimer Initiative "Foresters", who were equipped with outdated Mobile Suits, usually ZaOots or Strike Daggers, that had been converted for deforesting and pathclearing work, stripping away weapons for extra armor and large claws, jackhammers and chainsaws of various sorts. Privately Ketch thought the RI troops were an undisciplined gaggle of thugs and losers, but it wasn't the place of a junior NCO to voice such comments about "allied forces". Not where anyone could hear her anyway. Two squadrons of Solar Knights, for a total of ten Vindicators, rounded out the base's forces.

If Ketch's opinion of the RI troops was somewhere between "dismal" and "contemptuous", perhaps because of the number of tired old "so what DO you catch" or "I wanna catch you" jokes that she'd been hearing from immature guys like them ever since she hit puberty, then her feelings for the snooty jocks and jockettes of the Solar Knights was somewhere between "envious" and "disparaging", sentiments shared by most of the regular USN military. The Solar Knights were a bunch of grandstanding snobs who thought they were better than you just because you carried a rifle and slogged through mud while they drove war machines that could level a city block in seconds! On the other hand, because they DID drive sixty foot war machines that could level a city block in seconds, they were comforting to have around in case things did get woolly. There was no better feeling as an infantryman than knowing you had a sixty foot bigger brother watching your ass, prepared to bring down the wrath of god himself if you needed. If only they weren't such dicks about it the rest of the time...

Shaking her head to clear it of images of one particular asshole, the damnably cute and dashing Knight-Ensign Galvin, leader of Mordred Flight, who probably would have been tripping over himself to ask to hold her hand were she in civilian clothes back on Luna, but down here wouldn't even look at her twice because she was a grubby ground pounder, Ketch continued on her patrol circuit. It wasn't easy looking good as a female in the infantry, and it was impossible on deployment, especially with these stewpot armor suits, so Ketch told herself it was probably nothing personal, she wouldn't want to have a roll in the hay with her either if she could see herself in a mirror. Of course any liason of that sort between an officer and enlisted would be completely against the rules, a court martial offence even, but that was another one of those things people tended to turn a blind eye to on the front lines.

Ketch nodded as she passed by a pair of sentry's, men from her company but not her platoon. They were standing in the shelter of one of the prefab watchpost-firing positions, like an outhouse in shape and general size, but made from reinforced ballistic plexiglass coated with teflon and a one way see through camouflage coating on the outer surfaces, so that the prefab was translucent from inside but opaque from outside. The prefabs were just barely big enough for two people to stand in side by side, with multiple narrow firing ports and vision slits, as well as a built in scanner system of thermal and low light cameras, as well as distance viewers that allowed sentries to observe their sector without ever actually exposing themselves to fire. Ketch noted in passing that one of the men had managed to find a way to swap out his Cutlass LAR for a Mauler LSG. Ketch kept meaning to do that herself, but she never could seem to find the time, or establish the right kind of relationship with the company armorer to weasle one of the powerful guns out of storage. Perhaps she was going to have to just bite the damn bullet and crawl into his rack, see if that would loosen his tightwad grip. Humiliating in some ways, but since it could mean the difference between life and death, she was willing to take the hit if need be.

Not that the Cutlass LAR was a bad weapon, but after a few recon patrols and some time on the deforesting sweep squads, guarding the guys who worked the flamethrowers and MAIDEN hoses as they kept the free fire zone around the base clear to the specified dimensions, you got an appreciation of what the Cutlass was good for and what it wasn't so good for. Anything of about horse size or smaller and the Cutlass would be just fine, but there were critters out there MUCH bigger than that... one half of a platoon had come back with the head of some sort of lizard monster that was longer than her dad's freaking sedan, and thatw as just the HEAD... the other half of the platoon had ended up half digested in the monster's belly. 5mm Cutlass rounds had just sparked and bounced off its armored hide and bones. The Basilisk head, since that was what the RI goons said it was called, was now mounted above the the primary gates, facing out into the hostile forest, which was the reason for the FOB's unofficial nickname, Camp Gator.

Ketch eyed the forest in question as she continued on her way, her hands tightening reflexively on the grip of her Cutlass. Growing up on Luna, she'd never seen frest's outside of movies or pictures, but there had always been something unsettling about them to her. The way everything pressed in so close together, the way you couldn't see the sky or even the other people around you if they wandered more than a dozen feet away, the way you could get lost cause everything looked the same... it just thoroughly creeped her out! And the forests of Earth were fifty times worse than that, because just about every damn thing in them could kill you horribly if you didn't watch yourself one hudnred ten percent, all the time, and even then it wasn't always enough. Thorns would pierce battle armor like it was silk lingerie, pumping you full of poison, acid or bacteria, leading to death in minutes or hours. Leaves would slash your helmet open like a can opener, and as for the skull inside... it didn't bear thinking about. There were swarms of bugs that could literally eat their way through your armor with acid jaws, of both flying and crawling varieties, and they were AGGRESSIVE as hell, they'd chase entire platoons for MILES!

And then there were the bigger critters! Some of them seemed fairly inoffensive, such as the deer-like ones, but even those could kill you if you got too close without putting a three round burst through their chest, those antlers were wicked sharp and Ketch had personally seen a bull deer toss a man thirty feet through the air in two pieces with one swipe of his antlered head! And that wasn't even getting into the heebie jeebie stuff, the sounds in your head that didn't exist, the movements at the corners of your eyes that never resolved to anything and didn't show up on camera... going into the forest was like stepping into a freaking ghost movie, one where the ghosts were out to totally FUCK your world up! The training she'd had told her that because she was a unmutated human she automatically possessed a degree of protection against the mind powers of the mutants, but what sort of degree was never expressly said, and so she had the feeling it wasn't much. Whatever, it was just one of those things you dealt with, soldiered on and tried not to scream too loudly when the nightmares came. Just part of being a motherfucking infantryperson. Life sucks, get your fucking helmet.

Fortunately the big critters seemed to be the worst of it, at least as far as ExBa Xerxes was concerned, since intelligence didn't indicate any Eddie settlements bigger than a few dozen people within a few hundred miles, there wasn't going to be much call for pacification or rehabilitation missions against human foes. Which had the RI goons down in the dumps, but Ketch was totally okay with it. She was fairly sure she could pull the trigger against an Eddie if the time came, him or her sort of deal. But she'd heard about how some of the RI troops and even some USN regulars had gone a bit hog wild during the pacification of some towns. The brass tried to hush it up, but the soldier's grapevine was second to none, and soon the grisly details were out to anyone who had half an ear to listen. People burned alive, crucified to their own homes, executed mass grave style, even women and children, even reports of people driving tanks over crowds of refugees! As a soldier, Ketch had nothing but contempt and hatred for anyone who would attack civilians, even Eddies. That was not war, that was murder, and that was NOT what being a soldier or fighting a war was about! This was the goddamn Cosmic Era, not the Dark Ages!

Fuming with shameful indignation that she was even in the same army as people that would commit such atrocities, Ketch failed to watch where she was going and slammed her shoulder into one of anothe rpair of sentires she was passing, who was leaning against the side of his prefab post while his partner manned the sensors inside. It was against protocol, but she wasn't going to harass a guy for wanting to get a bit of fresh air, even if it was just an illusion... those prefabs could get calustrophobic as hell over a four hour watch rotation! His body was curiously yielding, and much to her dumbfounded surprise, the sentry toppled over bonelessly, almost knocking her off the rampart as he flopped to the walkway. Staring stupidly down at the collapsed man for a second, Ketch wondered if he'd lost his air filters or something, because she didn't see any puncture marks or wounds on his body, and then she realized it didn't fucking matter, a sentry had been taking out and that could only mean one thing! Keying the emergency beacon inside her suit, Ketch dropped to one knee to reduce her profile, even as alarms began to blare in the base behind her, shouts across the comm line and the sound of vehcile engines revving up lending credit to the well drilled response teams.

The rampart had a waist high parapet of the same plexiglass material that the prefab posts were made of, allowing Ketch to fit almost her entire body into cover without diminishing her sight lines, her Cutlass tucked up against her shoulder as she flipped on her vislight enhancing suit cameras and peered into the gathering dusk towards the forest, even as her other hand reached down and touched the external diagnostics on the collapsed sentry's arm. She flicked her glance down and saw that he was still breathing, just unconcious somehow. An Eddie mind trick maybe, she thought she remembered the trainers saying that inducing sleep was one of their capabilities. Motion from the forest caught her eye, and Ketch just barely managed to throw herself down behind the parapet as the large explosive charges, perhaps even Mobile Suit class grenades, came hurtling out of the shadows and touched down in a precise pattern along the free fire zone to her front, the explosions making the entire world seem to shake and shiver, bouncing her against the rampart hard enough to leave her a bit breathless as glassified dirt and pebbles rained down, the large explosions having triggered secondary effects from the buried minefield, intentionally no doubt.

Someone, somewhere, opened fire at random, nerves jarred by the sudden alert and explosions, and from there it was almost impossible to prevent the entire section of perimeter wall from opening up in induced panic, firing at nothing, blindly hoping volume of firepower would make a difference. Ketch was one of the few who remembered her training, though this was still her first combat engagement, the same as over eighty percent of the troops at Xerxes. Huddled behind the parapet, Ketch hauled herself back up to kneeling position, coughing as her diaphram finished uncompressing from the nearby explosive blasts, and as she peered over the side, she finally caught a glimpse of their assailants. The sight was enough to make her freeze in place, wondering if she had been hit on the head harder than she thought, or was perhaps under mental assault from an Eddie? Because surely there was no way what she was seeing could be real, a flying "V" formation of armored Eddies riding tigers the size of warhorses, some bigger, charging out of the forest's edge into the pathway the explosives had cleared through the barbed wire and minefield. The tigers were in all colors, orange and black to grey to white to black to one that was blacker than night itself and seemingly as big as a sports utility vehicle!

Despite the ungainly looking motion of the bounding cats, covering over a dozen meters at a time as they alternated between sprinting and leaping, the Eddies riding them didn't seem to be overly discomfited, or at least their accuracy sure wasn't, and Ketch threw herself face down once more as linear rounds, dark green beam blasts and even a eye searing lance of blue-red hyper-impulse plasma came flashing towards the rampart, frequently blowing holes right through the parapet and prefab watchposts as well as the soldiers covering behind or inside them, especially in the case of the beams! The hyper-impulse blast cleanly took the top third off one of the heavy linear turret towers, ammunition exploding a moment later in a rippling shockwave that knocked down everyone who had been standing within a hundred feet, flames leaping a hundred feet into the air and illuminating the whole base for a strobing moment.

While many were temporarily incapacitated by the stunning explosion, Ketch found herself galvanized, at last accepting that they really were under attack, and she returned to kneeling position, ignoring the molten holes punched through the barricade not three feet away from here where earlier beam blasts had hit. The compulsion to switch to full auto and start spraying and praying was huge, but training prevailed in the end and Ketch kept herself on single shot only, with the enemy still most of a hundred yards out and closing fast, accuracy rather than weight of fire would be key. Ketch was no markswoman, certainly no sniper, but with her armor sensors assiting her, even a moving target at one hudnred yards and closing wasn't too hard, especially when she took time to aim and calculate a brief lead time for the moving target. Linear projectiles moved fast, but they weren't instant. She centered her crosshairs on the chestplate of one Eddie, riding a white and black tiger, and holding what looked like a beam rifle. Ketch stroked her trigger and was gratified to see the Eddie jerk backwards hard, toppling off his mount and slamming into the dirt, the cat charging on regardless of its dismounted rider.

She was less gratified to see the Eddie still moving in a coherent manner, whatever his armor chestplate was made of had apparently stopped her Cutlass round, though the sheer kinetic force of getting shot in the chest like that, not to mention the fall afterwards, had to have been brutal! With the target lying more or less still, Ketch changed her aim from torso to head, and fired twice more, the second shot finally blowing the head apart like a melon. The first shot had probably been enough, but it was only good sense to make sure. She panned her rifle around and saw that the tigers had made astounding progress in such brief time, some were only a few dozen yards from the ditch, though there were a few riderless cats and even dead cats and riders strewn out along the line of charge, so the Eddies hadn't gotten off scot free in their reckless maneuver.

Or at least Ketch thought it was reckless, a mounted cavalry charge into a prepared wall with modern firearms should have been suicide by any reasonable person's estimation, but she had to admit the Eddies were making it work somehow. Movement at the forest's head brought her eyes snapping up, as the Eddies second wave charged into view, what seemed like hundreds of dismounted infantry accompanied by a few armored vehicles, either APC's or light tanks, sprinting like olympic racers across the cleared pathway, many of them firing as they went, with little to no drop in accuracy from what Ketch could see, before she dropped down again to avoid being targeted. One thing to be told the Eddies were likely superior in physical aspects, but to see them running and firing heavy weapons with pinpoint accuracy across rough ground in a goddamn FORMATION while under fire was still disheartening.

And then the cats weren't just running at the wall, but actually leaping atop it in single bounds, covering close to thirty feet horizontally and twenty five feet vertically, some falling a bit short but digging in with claws and clambering up without too much loss of momentum. The ginourmous midnight black cat hurtled by so close over Ketch's head she thought she was going to be crushed beneath it when it landed, but the tiger-thing had entirely cleared the wall and was now charging around in the parade ground below, the rider screaming fit to make ears bleed, a high ptiched female ululation that was more than just aural in nature, in pirced right into your brainstem and made it hard to do much of anything besides huddle and scream in reply. The tiger rider, maybe an officer of some sort judging from the decorations on her armor, had a beam pistol in either hand, and was unloading a flurry of plasma blasts in two directions at ocne, cutting down soldiers in droves as they ran for the wall or to their other emergency muster points. The midnight tiger wasn't afraid to get in on the action either, sending shredding bodies tumbling with swipes of paws, and biting one sergeant's entire head and upepr torso off his body with one snap of the jaws!

The shriek of thruster jets in the sky above drew Ketch's eye next, the Solar Knight Vindicators tearing by overhead to commence strafing runs against the Eddie infantry sprinting across the free fire zone unmolested while the wall defenders were tied up with the tiger cavalry. Ketch cheered them on hoarsely, her throat unaccountably dry and raw, until she realized she'd been shouting incoherently in fear reaction pretty much since the fight started. "Go get em, Galvin, you beautiful bastard!" Ketch yelled, flopping to her belly and trying to sight in on the rampaging tiger cavalry in the courtyard below, switching to three round burst and attempting to provide covering fire for the exposed soldiers below, scrambling for defensive positions in the face of the overwhelming surprise attack. The sound of several scores of tons of war machine colliding together at high speeds echoed like thunder from the sky's above, as Eddie Mobile Suits leapt to the defense of their fellows from concealed hides in the forest, rifles in either hand or else shiny crystal claws protruding from either forearm. The Eddie suits were slighter and thinner limbed than the Vindicators, but they still hit the Solar Knights like a ton of bricks, and in a heartbeat, three Vindicators were gone, blown to pieces or sliced apart as the Eddie machines blurred and shifted like shadows through the air, almost impossible to target visually and just as hard electronically!

Recoiling, the Solar Knights tried to break off the engagement to regroup, but the Eddie machines hounded them mercilessly, like cats toying with mice, sometimes goign as far as to throw themselves bodily upon the Vindicators and grapple them out of the sky, invariably it was the Eddie that rose, smoking, from the wreckage. Ketch's jubilation turned to ashes in her chest as the Vindicator she was pretty sure belonged to Galvin shuddered and spasmed, six gleaming crystal blades spearing out of its back as it was impaled upon the armblades of an Eddie machine, and then the Vindicator crashed to the ground like a man who's bones had turned to rubber. From what she could see, the problem wasn't that the Eddie machines were too powerful, it was that they were fast enough to get inside the minimum firing range and comfort zone of the Solar Knights before the Solar Knights could focus firepower on them, and at melee range the obviously NIC equipped Eddies were unbeatable by regular controlled machines.

The ground shook under the tread of enormous footfalls as the RI forester machines began a countercharge, their chainsaws and pincer claws probably useless against the Eddie machines, but they caught a pair of tiger cavalry off guard and rent them to gobbets in a most satisfactorially bloody fashion. And then the foremost RI machine, a ZaOot with a large buzzsaw on either arm, split evenly in half at the waist and fell in two sparking pieces without warning. Ketch blinked, having seen no enemy in that sector other than the tigers, but SOMETHING was certainly there because the RI machines were exploding and falling apart with razor edged slices through heads, torsos and limbs like mannequins at a martial arts demonstration, and Ketch belatedly realized there must be a stealthed Eddie suit in their midst. That might also explain the lack of artillery support and the flames she had just now noticed in the depths of the base, and the lack of coherent orders from the brass, and she wondered when the Eddie had infiltrated and how?

Moot point now, as the RI machines were slaughtered by their invisible, sword wielding opponent, and the Solar Knights were surrounded and dragged down to be butchered by the other Eddie machines, and suddenly things were looking grim for ExBa Xerxes, as grappling lines and extension ladders began hooking onto the edge of the rampart, the Eddie's main infantry push having just reached the base of the wall. Snatching up the Cutlass from the comatose sentry, taking a Linear Assault Rifle in either hand, Ketch popped up and pointed both weapons over the edge of the parapet, down at the Eddies climbing the grappling lines below her position, and she opened up with full auto bursts, shredding two Eddies on the ropes and driving the rest to ground, some injured, others just rattled. Both weapons empty in less than a second and a half, Ketch dropped them and hucked a frag grenade down into the ditch before a glancing linear round striking her shoulderplate spun her around and almost knocked her off the wall as she fell to her knees, breathless and disoriented. Her armor was yelling at her, but it didn't appear to have been breached, luckily, and Ketch did her best to crawl away as her frag splintered the Eddies in the ditch below her, though from the way the grapple lines quivered, they still didn't seem dissauded just yet!

Scrambling along the walltop, Ketch sould see that there were many places along the rampart where soldiers had not been as successful at denying the enemy as her, and Eddie ground troops were already spilling into the base from those points, too many to keep back without organized efforts. She threw herself flat as dark green plasma bolts seared by overhead, answered seconds later by a stuttering hail of large caliber machinegun rounds from a support bunker, which she began crawling toward, before burying her head against the walltop as a pair of linear cannon rounds from an Eddie Mobile Suit slammed into the fortified position and blew it and everyone inside into bloody confetti. The wall was toast, the Eddies were spilling over in huge numbers, and their Mobile Suits were wreaking unopposed havoc now that the Solar Knights and RI forces were destroyed. Ketch hadn't been in many battles... just this one actually... but she knew a defeat when she saw one.

Coming across a pair of blackened and charred bodies, Ketch noticed one of them was holding a Mauler LSG that didn't look too badly damaged, and since Mr. My Face is Now Charcoal wasn't going to use it, she figured she might as well, snatching up the bulky but surprisingly well balanced weapon and quickly stripping him of a few clips of extra ammo. The current maagzine read as full, the poor bastard had been plasma blasted before he could even get a single shot off. The clip didn't stay full for long, as an Eddie soldier hauled himself over the edge of the parapet not ten feet away from her as she was scavenging from the body, the cocky fool wasn't even wearing a helmet, with some sort of tomahawk in one hand and a pistol in the other, not that his lack of headgear mattered as the Mauler slug liquified everything from sternum to skull with one shot anyway, armor be damned at ten foot range. Two more shots blew away a goodly section of the parapet, and more importantly, the grapple hook embedded in the top, sending several more Eddies crashing back down into the ditch. Not even bothering to look, Ketch flipped two more frags over the edge, hoping her trajectory was right before huddle-sprinting towards the nearest set of wall stairs.

Reaching the stairs and then the parade ground without further incident, she tried to contact her chain of command, but the comms were all screwed up, whether through jamming or because most of the chain of command was dead, though probably more the latter than the former, and Ketch swore vilely under her breath as she tried to figure out what to do. Training didn't exactly cover three regiments in a fortified position getting their butts kicked by a bunch of tiger riding maniacs! Screams and shouts from nearby attracted her attention and she hurled herself against the scant cover of a nearby barracks building, peering around the corner and feeling her jaw drop as she saw a full two squads of infantry facing off against a single Eddie in ornate full body armor, carved to resemble blowing winds with leering demon faces, holding a staff in his hands. Though it wasn't really a staff, it was more like a double glaive, a wickedly curved swordlike blade affixed to either end of the staff, the blade edges glinting evilly in the chaotic battle light. His outline kept blurring and shifting, and Ketch had to squint to make out more than his basic outline, some sort of stealth system similar to the ones the Eddie Mobile Suits had!

Perhaps that explained why twenty trained infantry at almost point blank range couldn't hit the guy with their weapons on burst and full auto mode, the guy practically seemed to be dancing around the shots, as if they were a performance he'd rehearsed a dozen times before. Like he knew where each and every bullet was going before it even left the firing chamber. His natural Eddie agility was enhanced by some sort of enhancement to his armor boots, which were buzzing like a swarm of agitated wasps, puffs of dust and grit streaming like mist from beneath his feet as he raced around on the hard packed ground like he was wearing rocket powered iceskates! The armored Eddie charged into the midst of one squad, his dual glaive's whirring in a blurringly fast pattern around him, and six men collapsed as one, blood fountaining from the severed stumps of necks, limbs and torsos. The rest of the squad reeled in panic, the second squad trying to bunch up to bring full weight of fire to bear on the zephyr like movements of the Eddie.

This turned out to be a mistake, as the Eddie took one hand off his dual glaive and snatched a streamlined carbine-like firearmf rom a holster on his back, the barrel wide and more ovalline than circular. The trigger was pulled and a scorching cone of pink-orange energy radiated from the barrel, turning the area around the grouped squad into a blast furnace hot enough to melt their armor like wax, before their superheated bodies burst like balloons because of their blood flashing to steam. Ketch ducked back behind the corner, her heart hammering, having read of weapons like that, but they were gigantic, energy inefficient things that only warships and Mobile Suits could use! A handheld thermal exciter? That was hellishly unfair... literally! Plainly this was no normal Eddie, or at least she hoped not, because if weapons and skills like that were common then they, meaning the whole USN, were totally boned!

Steeling herself, hoping she wouldn't regret trying to blidnside a dude that had just mopped the floor with two whole squads without breaking a sweat, Ketch counted to three and then half spuna round the corner, the Mauler up in full auto mode, and she cut loose with a stuttering volley that pulverized the entire area where the Eddie was standing. Correction, where the Eddie was SUPPOSED to be standing, but though she saw his hazy outline dead in the center of her sights, her volley of shot seemed to pass right through him! And then the image dissolved and Ketch realized, with terror, that she'd been duped into emptying her magazine at a hologram! Somehow he'd spotted her or predicted her attack, and in only a few seconds had set up a trap for her to waste her ammo on! "FUUUUCKKKK...!" Ketch screamed desperately, popping free the exhausted magazine and scrabbling for a fresh one from her belt.

And then her hands would no longer respond to her commands, and a half second later Ketch realized why, as her hands and lower forearms dropped away from the rest of her arms, spurting gore, her arms having been cleanly severed by a sweep of the double glaive she hadn't even SEEN. Ketch stared in horror at her gushing stumps, a low moan building in her throat as the pain of amputation started to register, and then came sudden blackness and relief from that same pain. What she could no longer realize was the fact that she'd been sliced in half from crown to crotch by Haman's follow up strike, killing her instantly. Haman stood over the bifurcated body, his mind half on the present and half on the inevitable future ten or twenty seconds down the line, in which he would soon be engaging yet more stragglers trying to flee from Legio Direcat's masterful lightning raid. But for the next few seconds he was free to relax, and Haman spun his double glaive to clean the blood and viscera from the edge, before using one hand to work the lever action of his Eruptor Carbine, a much prized gift from Vaul, one smoking power core dropped to the ground where it promptly melted a small crater, the next unspent core locking into place with a reassuring "clack-click".

_As far as first strikes go, this isn't bad._ Haman thought, with a trifle bit of smugness. _First blood, New Eden..._

xxxx

**New Eden, Northern Africa, Gibraltar Base, November 18th, Early Morning**

Private Ryan Jones had pulled sentry duty with Dudly again. The Top seemed to have it out for him for some reason. Then again, the Top seemed to have it out for the whole platoon, after that idiot Meyer had made that stupid comment about wishing they'd get orders to go do a pacification mission, so he could "toast some Eddies". The Top had gone absolutely ballistic, like out of his mind freak out, and Ryan had thought he the Blunderbuss was about to rip Meyer completely in half, no joke at all. The Top had restrained himself from physical violence at the last moment though, and had instead called the whole platoon together for a "little talk". Which had turned out more like a screaming, ranting lecture, but that was how the Top was when he was pissed, was how he'd earned his nickname. And in truth Ryan was actually kinda glad they'd had the blowup, just like with a girlfriend, it was good to get the spiky issues out in the open early so everyone was on the same page. He hadn't been comfortable with eharing people joke about how they were gonna "toast Eddie" either, but he hadn't had the balls to tell them to stop either.

"You think its funny now, but it's not... there's certain things, boys and girls, that once you do, you CAN'T undo..." Top had said at the end of the lecture on military professionalism, adherence to the code of conduct, and the moral imperative of being trusted with deadly force, real pain in his eyes, his voice. "Things you can't forget, that haunt you until your dying day and sometimes even cause it! Things you can't erase, can't atone for no matter how much you want to. The guilt eats you alive, not at first, but let a few years pass and you'll forgot the pride and rush of adrenaline and you'll only have the sorrow and the self loathing left to taint your nightmares. That's what comes of military force being used on unarmed and unresisting civilians. Its not glorious, its not fun and its NOT ACCEPTABLE!" Top had roared the last two words. "If ANY one of you dares to intentionally kill a civilian for ANY reason, regardless of what your friends, mommy or the goddamn officers say, I'll gut you myself and leave you to die in the mud!"

"But if we're ordered to..." Meyer had dared protest, too stupid apparently to be cowed by Top's vehemence. Seconds later he was sitting on the barracks floor spitting blood and tooth chips, Top's back contemptuously turned as he remastered himself.

"Some orders aren't meant for following." Top had said quietly. "You get an order like that, you're basically gettin ordered to ignore basic human decency. I dunno about you maggots, but that's not a choice I'm gonna let anyone make for me. I'm a man, not a monster, and I'll be damned if any monsters spawn under my watch, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, YOU LITTLE SHITS!"

And that had been the end of the matter, or at least Ryan hoped so, because he'd seen Meyer and some of his friends looking decidedly disgruntled about the whole thing, and the extra duties and punishment details that had followed. Hopefully they weren't stupid enough to cross the Top twice on the same matter, much less try to call his bluff on the whole gutting and leaving thing, but all the same, Ryan was hoping it would be some time before they got assigned to a pacification mission! Though arduous, he was actually starting to enjoy the feeling of actually being a soldier, standing sentry watch, pulling forest patrol duty, etc, etc. It felt a bit like coming home, though home for Ryan was actually over in America, the old Atlantic Federation, much of whichw as a radioactive wasteland now, or so the grapevine said. Nonetheless, it felt good being back on Earth, sunlight and gravity and blue skies, even if they did get more green-aqua than true blue most of the time, due to the EDEN nanites still suspended in the atmosphere.

At his and Dudly's back was the hustle and bustle of the primary USN base in this theatre of the war, tens of thousands of troops and war machines mustering for deployment to the expanding front, though so far he'd seen precious little to indicate it was much more than a land grab. Rumors said there had been Eddie attacks on other bases around the world, but those had all been first ring expansion bases, many of them only partially complete or undermanned, unlike Gibraltar, which was fortified to the point of impenetrability and garrisoned with close to one hudnred thousand infantry, tanks, artillery and almost a thousand Mobile Suits, an entire Order of Solar Knights, including several Paladins! To his front was spread the barren scrubland and desert that surrounded Gibraltar for hudnreds of miles in the landward direction, the areas closest to the base mined and trapped and covered with overlapping arcs of fire from bunkers both visible and concealed. Gargantuan land battleships, both old ZAFT models and newer USN classes, were drawn up along one side of the sprawling base, the masts and aerials of traditional naval ships out in the harbor peeking above them at the skyline.

Lulled by his contemplation of the sheer force concentrated at Gibraltar, and knowing that it was still only a fraction of the total USN force, Ryan was a bit slow to react when sirens began wailing and lights flashing as the base convulsed into sudden action as warnings came flooding in from the long range perimeter sensors. Dudly was caught off guard too, perhaps having even nodded off a bit, because he jerked and almost fell over, only the narrow walls of the watchpost keeping him upright. Their post was on the outermost actual wall, which stood thirty feet high and was almost forty feet thick, an incredible engineering accomplishment of stone and steel and packed dirt that ahd been erected in record time. backed by heavily armed turrets and towers, plus the soldiers and vehicles upon the wall itself, it was still only the outer line of active defense, with two seperate taller walls behind it, each with their own weapon emplacements. Large scale Citadel shields began deploying, hiding the aqua sky under shimmering turquoise energy, and the scream of thruster jets became omnipresent as the Solar Knights responded to the scramble alert.

Belatedly remembering that he was a sentry and thus able to tap into the tactical net for updates, Ryan did so, all but shoving Dud aside so he could see the tiny screen, which began updating and plotting the disposition of the incoming enemy, who were still just dots amongst a sudden dust cloud to Ryan's eyes, even with his armor's enhanced vision sensors. He read the preliminary reports and blanched, seeing a force of what looked like mechanized infantry and heavy armor inbound, more than a thousand strong, along with some medium scale self propelled artillery and at least thirty Mobile Suits, all on a thunder run right towards the heart of Gibraltar and Ryan himself! After a few moments of near pants wetting panic, reason reasserted itself and Ryan reminded himself of what he'd just been thinking about. Gibraltar was impenetrable! The odds were more than a hundred to one in Ryan's favor! The Eddies were crazy if they thought that...

That self assuring thought was comprehensively derailed and interrupted when one of the heavy defense strongpoint towers a hundred meters or so behind his position on the wall sudden brewed up like a warehouse full of fireworks, soldiers and civilians alike screaming as shards of superheated armor plate came raining down like shrapnel, cutting some people to bloody ruin as they tried to run for cover. The concussion wave put men on their knees for a half mile in every direction around the blast, and Ryan still hadn't even seen what had destroyed the tower! According to the watchpost screen, the enemy main body was still well out of range of Gibraltar's weapons, much less the medium mobile artillery the Eddies were sporting! Ryan ducked and winced as another strongpoint tower went down, but this time he caught its destruction out of the corner of his eye, and he blinked as he struggled to process what he'd seen while getting battered by the blastwave. The tower had just split right the fuck in half as if carved down the middle by an invisible blade! He switched his sensors from visible light to thermal and then magnetic, but picked up nothing, whatever stealth system the enemy Mobile Suit had, it was proof against normal means of detection. But he knew one was there... or at least one, because he could see several other towers were down, and they were probably too far distant to be the work of the same machine!

Ryan's knowledge did little good to the first responding Solar Knight units, who swooped down to investigate the explosions rocking the city below them, even though the enemy force was still several minutes from maximum engagement range. An entire squadron of Knights went up in flames, along with a sizable section of city as a pink-orange cone of thermal energy seared out of midair to envelop them, melting them like wax sculptures before internal ammo explosions tore them apart. The air shimmered around the point where the thermal blast originated, as an Eddie Mobile Suit took shape, its stealth system obviously disengaged, or else unable to remain active when firing certain weapons. Tall and much leaner than most USN machines, the dark brown armor, which looked more like wood than metal plate, crazily enough, was extensively carved and decorated in patterns that looked like human beings being consumed in fire, perhaps a mural from hell or something. It was jarring seeing such exquisitely detailed artwork on something that was causing so much havoc!

Now that the enemy was visible, twirling its double glaive melee weapon nonchalantly around itself, more Solar Knights were diverting to engage, as well as some RI Strikers that had been quick to respond to the alarm. If the enemy was alarmed at being confronted with three to one odds, he didn't act it to Ryan's frightened eyes. Indeed, the Eddie actually countercharged, and in the middle of the motion, flat out disappeared from all sight and sensors once more, causing the RI and Knights to pull up in sudden disarray, no longer having a target to home in on. But the Eddie hadn't run away, oh no, he was still right there, just invisible, and the proof of that was the way the Knights and Strikers kept exploding or falling apart into sliced pieces, helpless to defend themselves against the highly skilled and most importantly, undetectable foe. The USN Mobile Suits wavered on the edge of route, and the battle had barely been going on for two minutes, almost a third of their number gone, while poor infantry grunts like Ryan ahd no choice but to huddle in cover and hope his side would win!

"This is Paladin Anderson..." A strident, older male voice announced across the command frequency. "TAS command has been notified of the attack and orders are incoming from the Birdman. All forces prepare for rapid redeployment under supervision of TAC Captain Stork!" Paladin Anderson set his Excalibur, more like a Gundam than a regular Mobile Suit, down by the outer wall, his command squad of veterans in Vindicators forming up around him, forming a stable knot for wavering forces to latch onto. "Give me volley fire!" Paladin Anderson commanded, opening up with his Excalibur's accelerated impulse cannon and heavy autocannon, hosing firepower back and forth in a wide spray, joined by his command squad and almost every able bodied pilot around. The collateral damage was tremendous, but the withering hail of fire accomplished its goal, as a crater appeared in the ground where there was no object to make it, proof that the Eddie machine had been at least hit by the barrage, though how badly was impossible to determine. Ryan started to cheer, before a strangled gasp from Dudly reminded him that the enemy main force was still on its way, and closing fast! And that was when the heavens turned to fire...

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Second Earth Colony 2, TIAMAT Center, several minutes earlier**

Immersion in the data ocean that was Namara was like experiencing the creation of a new universe every second, it could be overwhelming to the human brain to try to interact with that level of thought activity without suffering damage or impairment. One of the tricks Brendon had learned during his time in the program was that even though you had access to basically unlimited data, that didn't mean you had to process it all at once. To try was folly, humans couldn't handle that sort of processing. It was tempting to try your hand at the godlike sensation of being omnipresent and omniscient, but that was also a good way to end up on a one way ride to the morgue or the mental hospital! Focus was important, and it was focus that Brendon was good at, paying attention to a thousand different things at once, but only really focusing on the most important at any given time.

Such as the enemy attack at Gibraltar prime base right at this very moment. Though skirmishes were occuring across the globe and had been ever since the start of the war, this audacious thrust right at the heart of the main USN base in the African theatre, the intended jumping off point for the soon to come attack against the vital Victoria spaceport and its defunct mass driver facility was most concerning, and so Brendon focused his attention, and thus also Namara's upon it. Enemy infiltration units, using cloaking technology that Brendon would dearly love to get his hands on that rendered them totally invisible to any sensor scheme the USN had to offer, were causing havoc along the outer defense lines, tying up responding forces while the main body of the Edenite attack, consisting of a large force of mechanized infantry and mixed armor, plus Mobile Suits, closed the precarious distance through Gibraltar's preplanned fire zones in relative safety. The basic strategy was familiar to him, he'd seen various Edenite forces utilize variations upon it several times in the past few days.

Cetainly enough time to come up with a viable counter for it, using Namara to coordinate forces seamlessly to confront the threat. The first order of business was to delay the enemy charge long enough for secondary support units to get into place to help deal with the elite infiltrators. And in line with that goal... "This is TAC Captain Stork, contacting Incarnate Class USNS _Monolith_, in geo-synch orbit over Gibraltar. Admiral Monsen, I have need of your ship and several others in your fleet."

"Understood, Birdman." Admiral Monsen replied, a little tightly, but how else was he supposed to feel about having his ship more or less hijacked by some half cyborg freak a few million miles away? "All personnel are waiting for your directions."

"Initiate orbital bombardment of following coordinates, immediately." Brendon uploaded a burst transmission of his calculated firing coordinates, along with other isntructions to other ships, even as he was clearing the orbital pathways of the scrambling Solar Knights and USN air support. Less than two seconds after his transmission, cameras on the ground blanked out as four blue-white beams fo pure concentrated light energy blasted down from the Incarnate class dreadnaught's 125cm FRALA arrays. Several seconds after that, the recovering cameras shook violently as the shells from the nose mounted 600cm bombardment cannons finally reached the surface, each shell digging out a crater close to one hundred meters deep and several hundred wide! The trick to it all though was the FRALA beams came down in front of the charging Edenites... while the bombardment shells landed BEHIND them, cutting off an easy path of retreat even as it jostled their formation. Unable to retaliate against a ship in orbit from the ground, the Edenite formation began to break up as the Mobile Suits raced for the base, where they would be safe from orbital bombardment, leaving the mechanized infantry to catch up as best it could.

Ignoring that concern for the moment, Brendon sent orders to various field artillery batteries around Gibraltar, sending them coordinates for a sustained barrage, being very specific about them using only gel fueled incendiary rounds, which would be hell on the city, but the people had been evacuated or were in shelters by now, and homes could always be rebuilt. Cascades of liguid fire sheeted down from above, clinging stickily to whatever they touched, be it building or Mobile Suit... even otherwise invisible Mobile Suits! Now with targets to aim for, albeit blurry and quickly moving ones, the USN Mobile Forces were able to go on the offensive somewhat, just in time to build some momentum for when the incoming Edenite mainline forces arrived. Brendon had noticed that each Edenie force had been unique in the way it decorated its vehicles, armor and Mobile Suits, and this was no exception, the heads of the mainline Mobile Suits carved to resemble freakish horned and tusked warthog-rhino mixtures, which Brendon understood were a form of game animal on Earth these days. Rhinobeasts, that was what they were called.

The Rhinobeast Mobile Suits slammed into the flanks of Paladin Anderson's Mobile Suit force, scattering them to the winds, some Mobile Suits actually literally trampling over others with the force of their charge, the Rhinobeats bursting clean through the ranks of the USN to come to the succor of their burning elites. At least, that was what Brendon assumed they were thinking, though in reality the ease of their breakthrough was an integral part of his plan. Trapped between the outer and inner lines of defense, in an area that had already been firebombed down to the bedrock, seperated by several minutes from the swarm of infantry that would help hold the territory they'd already "captured", the Edenites were right where he wanted them. Brendon smiled as he saw the Edenties suddenly start directing their firepower upwards, as the result of his secondary orders to Monsen's fleet became apparent, drop pods burning in hot from orbit, their trajectories pulsing neon orange tracks across his field of vision, expertly weaving around the purple and red tracks that were cooridinates for artillery fire, and the bright blue lines of trajectories from the _Monolith_, his vision a spaghetti bowl of crisscrossing lines that only an AI, or a human connected to one, could untangle.

The first wave of pods opened up to reveal a unit of Legacy's, the elite of the Reclaimer Initiative, based strongly upon the old Freedom. Contrary to the Edenites expectations, the Legacy's burned thrusters and dived right into the midst of the Edenite forces, double bladed beam sabers swinging eagerly as the double barreled flak cannons mounted along their left arms spat white hot bursts of slag into and through the closely packed Edenite machines. Shocked at the ferocity of the sudden assault, unused to actually being eagerly taken on in melee combat by USN forces, little knowing that Legacy pilots had been selected and trained specifically for such tactics, counter to most accepted USN combat doctrines, the Edenites began trying to regroup but their actions were visibly sluggish. In disarray with the LEgacy's pressing them at close quarters, the Edenites actually fell victim to a variation of their own battle strategy, as it gave time for the main wave of the drop assault, in the form of a unit of ten Panzerwulfs and three Panzerdragoons, courtesy of FEAR, to land unmolested at the edges of the conflict zone. Brendon shrunk his perspective down until he was roughly head level with the Edenite machines, and he studied them as his plan continued to unfold.

Responding to commands from Brendon, guided by Namara, the Legacy's disengaged as one, sheets of flame from the continual artillery barrage blinding both them and the quickly pursuing Edenites, but the RI pilots proved their mettle by not attempting to deviate from the courses she plotted out for them, which took them between the fire lanes of the countercharging Panzerwulfs, sometimes with as little as a meter or two to spare. The Legacy's flashed by and began forming up again as the surprised Edenites burst through a wall of fire and found themselves bulled over and trampled for a change, as the Panzerwulf blitz drove home with the power of a bulldozer against a boxer. Shoving and pushing with shoulders and forearms, like a bunch of rugby players in a blocking scrum, the Panzerwulfs herded the lighter Edenite machines backwards, packing them in tight against each other and against collapsed buildings, limiting their ability to maneuver freely.

It was at that moment that the relentless barrage of incendiary rounds switched over to newer shells packed with the anti-nanite nanite called MAIDEN, which would do nothing to the USN forces, but if those Edenite machines really were armored with wood as they appeared to be, then... and there it was, the Edenite Mobile Suits started bursting into flames that made the napalm look like a matchflame, combusting from the outside inwards in a manner of seconds, armor turning into so much ash, along with the unfortunate pilots themselves. Unable to maneuver because of the press of Panzerwulfs, only a few Edenite machines managed to dodge the cloud of drifting MAIDEN. And so concerned were they about that threat that they then neglected to consider they were running right through the crosshairs of the three colossal Panzerdragoons. Brendon thought it would be hard to miss things that big, but if the Edenites were running scared, they would be searching more with their minds than their eyes, and of course Extended pilots were invisible to mental senses.

One of the Rhinobeasts still managed to make it through that apocalyptic, though extremely brief, confrontation, staggering as if punch drunk, smoke wreathing its grotesquely carved head as it stumbled, only to find itself surrounded by the regrouped Legacy's, beam swords and chainbladed shield shivs raised and waiting. Brendon frowned as the RI elites hacked the Edenite to pieces, without even attempting to ask him or her to surrender as far as Brendon had heard, but there was little he could do about their... exuberance. With their Mobile Forces comprehensively wiped out, the main body of Edenite soldiers was left vulnerable, though Brendon noted that one of the elite infiltrators had managed to escape the well executed trap somehow, but must have been in full flight because he or she made no attempt to halt what came next, as the Panzerwulfs and Panzerdragoons leapt over the walls and transitioned to tank mode, followed by Paladin Anderson and his remaining forces, while the Legacy's stayed behind to make sure the Edenite machines really were dead by hacking them apart.

Faced with a wall of Mobile Suits and heavy armor to their front, and impassable craters plus a long retreat in range of heavy emplaced artillery weapons from the base defenses and naval ships to their rear, and the threat of the _Monolith_ hanging overhead, almost visible as a needlelike speck in the sky, the Rhinobeasts were faced with only two choices. Surrender or be annihilated. Brendon disengaged his focus from the scenario, figuring the local commanders could take things from there without any more help from him and Namara. And if the Edenites decided not to surrender, then he really didn't want to watch the massacre, though he made sure to have Namara plot precision fire trajectories for the artillery and warships just in case, so the USN forces didn't end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory with friendly fire. Brendon's perspective zoomed out until the Earth was suspended below him once more, and he began searching for the next pulsating trouble spot. "Good job, Nam." He complimented the AI, even though she didn't have an avatar manifested in his perceptions at the moment.

"They made it easy." Nam said, materialized beside him and shrugging. "A gaming console could have plotted those trajectories, its nothing special."

"Does it... bother you, knowing that you're basically responsible for killing those people?" Brendon asked, though he wasn't sure if it was Nam he was questioning.

"Should it? I have trouble telling most of you fleshies apart, I fail to see why I should be pleased or displeased at the deletion of that particular group." Nam shrugged again. "I accomplished my function, isn't that good enough?"

"Life has more to it than just fufilling a function, Nam." Brendon pointed out.

"And am I alive?" She countered, staring at him challengingly. "And if you say "cogito, ergo sum" or any bullshit of that nature, I'm going to crossfeed your waste and nutrient tubes."

"I believe that answer is sufficient anyway." Brendon smiled, hoping Nam's annoyed expression was genuine rather than an attempt to humor him. Letting the moment of levity pass, having taken all told perhaps three tenths of a second, Brendon pointed at another flare of trouble appearing near Heavens Base and its expansions. "Beam me down there, Scotty." Brendon ordered with a tight smile of anticpation. Time for the Birdman to fly again. Just another day at war...


	28. Hardy Settlers

Author Note: Glad to see last chapter so well recieved. Truth be told I was worried my portrayal of Brendon didn't come over right, but I see that was a worry in vain. I should note that it was Revv, not Alex, that was at Gibraltar. Alex's armor and his Wraith are carved with skulls, while Revv is the one with humans burning in purgation and hellfire. Also, Revv has a Spectre, if Alex had been there he would have had his sword, which is like the Vengeance's, while the one at Gibraltar was using a double glaive polearm. Asmus noted that the Edenite officers kind of make targets of themselves, by taking center stage of attacks and pimping up their armor. All I can say is that's pretty much their warrior culture peeking through, they lead very much by personality and personal exploits, very "hero units", not many Edenites would follow someone who commands from the rear unless its a figure of tremendous reverence, such as Kunai. Will that make them targets? You bet. But that's just how they are. As for Legio Rhinobeast and their attack... well, that was a pretty heavy concentration of GreenCo in those ranks, they thought they could steamroll the "Stumps". If they'd made it into the city and base proper, they might even have made a good go at it. I mean, it was the same strategy, in essence, that Legio Direcat used to great effect. And their totemic animal is a cross between a warthog and a rhino... not much room for subtlety there.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Custodial Headquarters, November 20th**

Panner watched the immense, broad shouldered form of Strategos Magnus Ullric, the famous "Garm Breaker" of Legio Garm and commander in chief of the Custodian forces, pace back and forth on the stage to the front of the debriefing chamber, his every motion reminding her of a caged Garm just before it snaps and bites someone's face off. Panner, along with the leaders of the other Legios, all of Strategos Minoris or Strategos ranking, had been called for a war council meeting to address the results of the first few engagements with the invading USN forces. Many of them had come directly from the field where their Legio's were deployed, and the crowded room resounded with the cloack of borealite on borealite and the rub of exotic leathers as the Legio commanders shifted and jostled, all of them uncomfortable under Ullric's gimlet stare. Even those like Panner, who had enjoyed exemplary success against their chosen targets, destroying expansion abses or ambushing convoys and driving the pathetic Stumps into the forest to die, felt shades of unease as Ullric paced and glared, his fists bunching angrily at his sides.

In truth there was much to be uneasy about, because Legio Rhinobeast, in a bold... some said insane... move had decided to forego striking at the USN's expansions and made a play to knock out the primary USN base in the Africa-Middle East region, Gibraltar, which if successful might have sent the USN stumbling on the defensive in that theatre for the rest of the foreseeable war. However, audacious as the plan was, it was ultimately doomed to failure for any one of several reasons, not least being Rhinobeast's hubris and refusal to coordinate the attack with Megadon or Kraken, the other two Legio's in that theatre, intent on hogging all the glory and acclaim for themselves... a very Rhinobeast method of thinking, but no less stupid for it being in their character. Even with a pair of Praetorians, including the notorious Revv, in support, the Rhinobeast attack had become the first... and largest... military disaster of Garden City's record.

Revv and a very small selection of stragglers had managed to flee from the well executed USN trap before it fully closed, but a mere handful of survivors from a Legio that had once numbered more than a thousand combat ready soldiers and more than thirty Dervishes along with most of Garden City's heavier armored vehicles was a catastrophic loss by any standard of measure, especially considering a Praetorian had been lost as well! Estimates gleaned from Revv and the other survivors indicated as much as three quarters of Rhinobeast had been annihilated by combinations of orbital bombardment, regular artillery from ground and naval sources and an overwhelming rush by massed USN Mobile Suits, with the remaining quarter almost certainly captured, along with several intact vehicles and plentiful examples of arms and armor, a haul certain to be much enjoyed by the USN scientists! Just about the only bright side to the entire fiasco was that the Spectre and Dervishes had been blasted to smithereens by overexuberance on the part of the enemy, so there would be little to glean from the corpses of the Edenite Mobile Suits.

With Rhinobeast obliterated, the African theatre and the Custodians as a whole had lost their heaviest shock and assault specialists, leaving the less heavily armed and more specialized Megadon and Kraken legios to hold the line against an emboldened USN fresh from an overwhelming victory. If Strategos Aramis, master of Rhinobeast, was not desperately trying not to spill his guts in a USN torture chamber, or else buried in a shallow grave, Ullric would have had his head on a stick for leading such a disaster! Perhaps even literally... Ullric had won his reputation and nickname by wrestling and killing wild Garms with his bare hands after all, savagry was something of his calling card! Especially so early on in a conflict with a largely untested military, when stringing together victories would bolster his own force's resolve while accustoming the enemy to the taste of defeat! Now, despite the success of other Legio's, the loss of Rhinobeast had cast a heavy pall over the spirits of the entire Custodian Order, and that wasn't even going into what the civilians were feeling! The Wind was sour with ill restrained panic and distress!

At last Ullric ceased his prowling and stood in the center of the stage, his baleful gold on yellow eyes all but glowing in the dimness with his restrained fury. _We all know what happened._ Ullric sent without preamble, clearly too furious to trust himself to speak in less than a roar. _And if we don't turn things around very quickly indeed, pups, we might as well send our heads on silver platters up to the Moon and hope someone else can do a better job! I dearly hope no one else is entertaining any more thoughts of heaping themselves with personal glory by attempting a solo charge against the most heavily fortified base in their theatre. They may just be Stumps but this is WAR, and if there is one thing the Stumps are good at, it is WAR! So then, can anyone tell me what we can do to avoid another travesty like Aramis gave us?_

"We need to expand our tactical doctrine." Panner was the first to speak. Somewhat surprised at her own forcefulness, since she was usually more of a wait and see, hide and pounce at the right moment sort of girl, she forged on under the intense gaze of Ullric and the psychic pressure of the attention of her peers. "We have a standard set of maneuvers that we used to great initial success, such as sending in infiltrators and elite units to hamstring the enemy support while holding the attention of the majority of defenders with high speed shock and awe forces such as cavalry, while our main forces close the gap and sweep to overwhelm. But we underestimated our foe's ability to adapt quickly to such tactics, and what ended as a victory for my Legio turned into a deathtrap for Rhinobeast, though our strategy was very similar."

"Indeed, I am troubled by the cohesion that was reported among enemy units at Gibraltar, including such usually disparate forces as naval and space warships providing quick and accurate supporting fire for their ground forces and Mobile Suits." Strategos Minoris Jacques, of Legio Kraken added, the mane of finger thick, arm length tentacles that covered his warhelm rustling as he nodded his head for emphasis. "We of Kraken strive to emulate the coiling focus of the Kraken's ten tentacles, but even we could not have pulled off a smoother combined arms operation than what took down Rhinobeast. If we must deal with constant overwatch from powerful warships in orbit, getting any significant ground attack going will be very difficult indeed."

"It was almost Manifold like..." Strategos Rachel, of Legio Basilisk mused. "At first they seemed to crumple and scatter, just as Panner and Direcat witnessed in their own attack. But then their tactical capability completely turned around and Rhinobeast was outmaneuvered and trapped in a matter of seconds. Given that we have not witnessed such a high degree of tactical skill in all conflicts, I suspect that whatever system they have devised is limited in its capacity to respond to threats. If I were they, I would most certainly assign this tactical booster to any major offensive, and if that turns out to be the case, we may well have discovered a means to negate the advantage."

"I fail to see what you mean, Basilisk." The Strategos of Legio Ironhide, the remaining heavy assault experts of the Order and a longtime friend of Aramis of Rhinobeast, said in a rumbling growl.

"She means, oh adamnt lummox, that while their tactical boosting is in effect during an offensive, it cannot be utilized elsewhere, such as to defend an important base." Strategos Vincent, of Legio Cold Hunter half spat, enjoying the opportunity to point out the tactical shortcomings of his fellows. Legio Cold Hunter was famous for its mastery of feints and guerilla warfare, and though he regretted the loss of Rhinobeast, truly, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of grandstanding oafs, in his opinion. Ignoring the scowl from his peer, Vincent continued his sneering explanation, idly scraping the trophy scythe-claws mounted to his gauntlets together, the claws taken from Cold Hunters he had personally stalked and slain on solo hunts, an accomplishment generally reserved for the Praetorians from sheer danger involved. "So that means they will be forced to choose whether they wish to properly coordinate their attack or their defense, one or the other, not both. So we wait for them to commit themselves, and that is when we strike, hard."

"I don't like the idea of sitting on the defensive while we wait for them to attack us." Strategos Minoris Megadon grumbled. "The Megadon is a hunter, not an ambusher."

"By all means, hunt, you bloodthirsty minnow." Strategos Rachel replied breezily. "But don't stray from the depths, less you find yourself hooked and fileted!"

"On the more practical side, we should probably continue harassing attacks against their expansion bases. Megadon is right, we can't just sit back and let them do whatever they want." Panner cut in before Legio rivalry could rear its ugly head. "We can utilize hit and run, bait and switch, ambushes, whatever sort of indirect combat we feel necessary, but we should not commit ourselves in any force unless we intend to follow through all the way. With constant harassing attacks we can also stay abreast on their troop movements and deployments, and it should be possible to determine where their heavy blows will fall while they are still in preparation."

"Direcat speaks the truth." Vincent backed her up at once, though relationships between Cold Hunter and Direcat had never been more than cool at best, despite their similar combat doctrines, or maybe because of it. "And once we know where they intend to strike, we can either reinforce or evacuate as the need arises, while at the same time preparing our simultaneous counterstrike against a primary target, such as their headquarters or their primary resupply point, Orb. That is how we will win this war, with cold, logical planning and tactics, not hot blooded grandstanding and brute force."

"Just because some of us have slush for blood doesn't mean we're all so cold and dead inside." Strategos Ironhide grunted in return. "When I witness injustice and atrocity, I moved to do something about it, not merely sit by and turn my head away!"

"Fine, then sacrifice yourself in pursuit of your nobility, just don't expect Cold Hunter to come to your rescue when the USN have you boxed into a trap a Oxiphant could have seen coming from two miles downwind!" Vincent retorted caustically.

"Fear not, lizard, I'd not have called for your aid if you were the only one alive to give it. I'd hate for you to break a claw sticking your neck out for someone other than yourself."

"CEASE THIS BICKERING!" Ullric howled, shocking them all into silence. "I will not tolerate this backbiting among my commanders! We are the Custodians, first and foremost, before we are any one Legio! We are all brothers and sisters of the same great Manifold! If you don't believe you can bear that in mind, speak up now and I will find a replacement for you!" Ullric eyed the dead silent, and hopefully chastened group of officers. "Consulting with Kunai and the Consols, who have been closeted within The Heartwood for several days now, I have recieved word that the future Yggdrasil now percieves has the USN mounting a major attack upon Urbanis City in Africa before the end of the month! In response to this, I am transferring Direcat from the Asian theatre to replace Rhinobeast, and Ironhide from the European theatre to further bolster our forces in the theatre! Megadon and Kraken will continue harassing attacks against the enemy expansion bases, Direcat will attack targets of opportunity and Ironhide will begin preparing defensive formations at Urbanis, while providing what training they can to the militia forces there."

Ullric fired up the holoprojector behind him as he continued to outline overall strategy. "The enemy desires Urbanis because it used to be the site of a Mass Driver, and much of the facilities of the Victoria Spaceport remain in an easily restored state. Though the Mass Driver itself lies in ruins, with access to the industry of Urbanis and their own supplies, we figure the USN could have a second Mass Driver and world class Spaceport operational in a matter of months, allowing them to more than double the rate of their deployment of heavy material to the surface and granting them much increased redeployability options as they use the Mass Driver to relaunch forces into orbit to come down either at Carpentaria or Heaven's Base. As you may imagine, this increase in flexibility for our enemies would spell many complications for us in a protracted war, so it cannot be allowed to happen."

"When we beging recieving intelligence that the attack is nigh, Legio Basilisk and Legio Rex Elk will transfer from the Europe and Asia theatres to reinforce Legio Ironhide and the Urbanis Militia at Urbanis. They will be charged with holding off the enemy and drawing as much of their focus as possible, including this new tactical booster, while Legio's Direcat, Megadon and Kraken perform a combination amphibious landing and raid of Gibraltar. The goal is to destroy as much of the base infastructure and especially heavy equipment such as naval or land warships as possible. Also a priority will be obtaining an unused sample of the USN's so called "MAIDEN" weapon, the devastating effects of which have already been demonstrated too many times. However the substance destroys itself during operation, so in order to reverse engineer and devise countermeasures to it, we need some samples that have not yet been activated, and from intelligence gathered at expansion bases, we have learned that the deactivated product is only stored at primary theatre headquarters in a secure facility. Once you have done as much damage as you can within time constraints, and secured the MAIDEN sample, the three Legio's will sweep down and attempt to take the USN offensive in the flanks, hopefully breaking up their attack or even crushing them against the anvil of Urbanis."

"Meanwhile, Legio's Cold Hunter and Spider Wolf will have their work cut out for them convincing the enemy in the Asian and European theatres that they still face a significant portion of our forces until it is too late for the enemy to redeploy. Once we have crippled the African theatre, we will then turn our attention to Carpentaria and Orb. It appears the enemy still remains ignorant of the location of Garden City, no doubt thanks to Yggdrasil's interventions, but we have to assume they will eventually discover us and then they will come for us with all their might. I would prefer if they had to come from Europe, rather than only a thousand miles off our southern coast. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Until then, you are dismissed to make the appropriate preparations. Be mindful that there will be a rather large Praetorian force operating in the area as well, as ever, be sure to give them as much help as you can without compromising your effectiveness to the overall plan. Though I know not what Kunai entirely has in mind, I do not doubt it will provide great dividends for us all. To Serve and Protect, my pups."

"For the Tree and the People!" They replied, as one, united once more in purpose and intent.

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Flag Stateroom aboard the **_**Remembrance**_**, November 20th**

"So what is your opinion of how the war is going so far, Talia?" Gil asked, propped comfortably against the mound of pillows at one end of the bed, the silky fine sheets of the most prestigious warship stateroom in all of ZAFT pulled up to his waist to cover his nakedness. Talia was next to him, her body still hot against his in the wake of their lovemaking, her head pillowed on his chest just under his arm, her hand tracing idle patterns on the bedsheets as she basked in the afterglow of their too infrequent time together. This hadn't even been a planned rendevous, just a sudden opening in both of their schedules that miraculously coincided with Gil doing a military review of the Lunar Fleets, which included ZAFT's forces, and viola, they managed to set aside almost eight hours of personal time for themselves, the most they'd had in the same room on a personal level in years. Once again, Gil wondered, as he always did in the wake of one of their trysts, why they hadn't decided to make this relationship formal and permanent already?

"I thought we agreed not to talk politics in bed?" Talia reminded him wryly, though she did open her lidded eyes more fully as she turned her brain to the task of answering his question. At times like this, Talia always wondered just how much official impact her decidedly unofficial opinions might have. Gil was pretty exemplary about keeping their personal life out of his work, but on the other hand it was unlikely very many people had opinions that were more important to Gil than hers, especially on matters within her sphere of expertise. Truth be told she had been searching for an opening to bring up a somewhat unpleasant issue, and now seemed as good a time as any, with them both relaxed and friendly after several hours of passion following a romantic dinner with just the two of them. Not that Gil was the sort to suddenly fly off the handle even when he was pre-irritated, but since her concern was about something personal, in a way, she thought it best that Gil be in a good mood anyway.

Gil shrugged helplessly at her, relieved that her smile was biting only in a teasing manner. With his mind always so focused on the big picture he was slowing painting, a picture that framed out the course of human destiny for the next dozen centuries at least, he was finding it hard to tone himself down and just be Gil Durandel, the man, and not Solar President Durandel, even with just the woman he loved around. About that time was when he realized the answer to his previous idle wonderment, as he always did. He and Talia already were married... each to their own career, and those relationships didn't have time for more than the occassional outside fling or pleasant diversion, and neither of them was the sort of person who could just lay down a life they'd invested so much effort in creating, even for the person they loved. It was almost Shakespearean in tragic scope, Gil reflected, indulging in a moment of bitterness as Talia collected her thoughts. Lovers always fated to be distant from the arms of their partner, a divide created by the sweat of their own honest labor.

"As far as the basic course of the war, its going more or less along the lines I expected it to." Talia said at last. "Our initial landings were unopposed, along with much of our initial expansion, and progress was swift. But now the Edenites have begun pushing back, and expansion rates have slowed dramatically, even turned negative in some areas where expansion bases are destroyed faster than they can be rebuilt. Then there is the attrition from environmental causes such as the flora and fauna and lack of proper living and relaxation quarters, and we have a sure recipe for morale problems among soldiers spending a great deal of time on the front lines, many of whom are getting their first taste of combat by getting their butts kicked by a superior armed and armored Edenite force." Talia saw that Gil was about to interject, and she silenced him with a raised finger and a quick kiss on his lips.

"None of that is entirely unexpected either. And there have been moments of great success, such as the abortive attack by the Edenite unit upon Gibraltar that was so well handled by the TAS Center. You'd have to be blind and living under a rock not to have heard about that "critical victory" playing round the clock on the news lately. The boost to morale from an unconditional victory like that, not to mention the trickle down effects from technological progress from salvaging their gear, is enormous and nothing could gainsay that." Talia braced herself as she got to the meat of her thoughts. "But all the same I cannot help but be very concerned with how the war effort is being managed and led, Gil."

"Managed and led? Rare to hear you speaking out against superior officers, Talia." Gil pointed out, hoping she could tell he was teasing her back, her starchy respect for rules and regulations, at least as pertaining to the chain of command, being a constant amiable joke between them. "Other than that buffoon Icarus of course. Tell me, what has that twit done this time?"

"I wish it was Icarus I was complaining about. God only knows that with friends like him we hardly need enemies." Talia replied, steeling herself for the plunge. "But my concerns are mostly about Rey, Gil."

Gil was silent for several long seconds, mulling things over in his mind. Talia had never had a relationship with Rey like his own, she was just "Gil's girlfriend" to him, but he'd always felt there was a current of respect and admiration between his lover and his adopted son, camraderie born from their mutual interest in the military arts and as accomplished commanders if nothing else. So it was doubtful that this was some sort of personal rancour, as much as his suddenly clenched heart desired it to be, but rather a legitimate professional concern from Captain Talia Gladys of ZAFT. "About Rey?" Gil said slowly, almost hesitantly. "What do you mean?"

"He's changed." Talia said at once, and then extrapolated. "I mean, he's been slowly changing for a while now, years, ever since you chose him to lead the Solar Knights against the Brotherhood, but its been really pronounced these last few months leading up to the declaration of war. At first I thought it was just the standard bit of final stages of maturity as he grew to meet the challenges of his role as Paladin-Commander, but ever since he was appointed Supreme Commander of the Reclamation of Earth, he's been... off. Different. Aggresive and confrontational, in a detrimental way. His conduct during the strategy meeting in Orb was... disgraceful, and I'm sorry there's no better way to put it. But he was rude to our important allies, dismissive of legitimate tactical and strategic questions and outright arrogant about anyone daring to think his plan was less than perfect. He wasn't acting like the Rey I know you've guided him to be. It was almost like he was a stranger... he even started daydreaming during one discussion and had to be visible nudged out of it!"

Talia turned her head up to gaze Gil in the eyes. "I know its none of my business, but is there some sort of stress in Rey's personal life or something? I've known him to be brash and a bit overconfident in the past, but that was just the nature of youth, and I thought he'd learned from his mistakes against the Brotherhood. But now he appears to be backsliding, and fast, and since he is my superior officer now, that concerns me very much, Gil. We can't have someone who is crumbling at the edges while living in a partial fantasy world giving orders to a majority of the USN military. Maybe I'm overreacting, in fact I hope I am, but maybe you should take Rey aside and have a talk with him, see if you can't help him straighten out whatever his problem is? You're his father, you might be the only one that can reach him without totally squashing his pride." Talia recalled the way that Rey had glared at her during one stage of the conference, and could not help but shiver a bit. "I wish I was lying, but I'm afraid to confront him myself, Gil."

"Rey has been a bit... distant lately." Gil admitted after a few moments, his arm tightening around Talia to banish her shivering. "I had assumed it was because he was putting all his focus into his duties, but there are a few concerns that have been bothering me, personal matters I have refrained from intervening in because I respect his privacy, but sadly I may not have the option of remaining polite, given what you have said." Gil took his free hand out from under the sheets and grasped Talia's free hand tightly as he held her against his side. "I fear Rey may be inadvertantly being drawn into a plot to undermine and eventually even usurp my position as Solar President, orchestrated by some of my less scrupulous advisors. Growing up as he has, he's lacked a strong maternal presence in his life, despite your laudable attempts, and that has evolved into a general weakness when women become involved. His disasterous romance with the Lunamaria Hawke girl in the latter stages of the Eden Disaster just compounded matters, his first love, denied so tragically. Logic and reason may rule Rey most of the time, but when women are around, he tends to act on impulse and emotion, usually to his regret."

Talia stiffened in shock, staring up at him, amazed at how unruffled and casual he sounded. "There's an actual plot against you, from within the ranks of your top advisors?" She asked, aghast at the idea. She felt him chuckle, though there wasn't much humor in it. "That's no laughing matter, Gil!"

"There have been dozens of plots against me ever since the end of the Eden Disaster, Talia, many of which were conceived by powerful figures within my administration. Its one of the downsides to being the face of the USN. However, this plot differs from most in that it seems quite personal, almost like a vendetta, rather than a purely political or economic motivated power play." Gil paused, considering whether he should go into more detail and risk getting Talia involved in matters out of her expertise. His lovely Captain was a brilliant star in the field of warship and Mobile Suit tactics, but she was no politician and she would be as a baby mouse in the woods to the ravenous snakes that were his advisors. The conspirators had already shown they had no problem in attacking him through indirect means, such as the ongoing seduction of Rey, so any overt move by Talia in his defense would only draw the predators onto her without means for her to defend herself. And though he loved her to death, his Captain was not the most subtle of people, especially where politics was concerned, and she wasn't the sort to stand idly by either, even if she was out of her league.

"I probably don't even want to know who these advisors are, do I?" Talia asked, divining his line of thought easily enough. "You're worried they'd squish me like a bug if they thought it would get to you, right?"

"The people I'm worried about would do much worse than merely squish you like a bug." Gil told her, in total seriousness. "And it WOULD get to me, my love. Which is why I cannot let you get any more involved than you already are. In fact it would probably be best if you avoided Rey for the time being, duty permitting. I fear he may be deeper in their influence than I thought, and he knows all too well how important you are to me. I am still confident that his primary loyalty remains with me... a life of loyalty doesn't come unglued in a mere few years... but he may come after you if provoked, or if he feels provoked." Gil considered a bit more and then decided to risk it and go on. "And if you happen to have a chance to get in the good graces of FEAR, that may be a good tactical move even if it is offensive on a personal level."

"Perhaps I could even act as bait?" Talia suggested. "If they are trying to strike at you through Rey, I'm sure they'd leap at a chance to get "dirty secrets" relayed to them by your lover. You could feed them false information and I could establish myself as valuable to them without exposing myself to the risk of being used as a hostage... who would stick their neck out for a lover that obviously betrayed you after all?"

"This is what I was afraid of." Gil admitted darkly. "You're trying to get involved in things that are much more dangerous than you know. These aren't the sort of people that would take you hostage and demand a passing vote or a pile of money and then return you safe and sound. These people would make you disappear and mail me bits and pieces of your body they'd hacked off with surgical tools until I became their puppet. I know you want to help, and I appreciate it, Talia, but I can't let you."

"I figured you'd say something like that." Talia sighed. "And you're probably right, Gil. But don't you dare forget that if this ever becomes less a plot and more a coup, you'll always have at least one ship with a good crew that will fly into hell itself to save you."

"They'd better fly fast, I'm not much of a sprinter these days." Gil joked morbidly, the injury to his leg he'd suffered when Noah accosted him at a press conference and made him shoot himself twice in the leg had been aggravated by his refusal to sit in a hospital to let it heal, and as a result he was now graced with a perceptible limp whenever he walked, and running for any distance was pure agony.

"A sprinter, no, but you certainly have admirable endurance..." Talia said leadingly, putting her hands on his shoulders and pulling herself atop him, wanting to banish the worries of their tabboo poli-speaking from the hallowed bedroom. "We still have several hours yet, lets not waste them with the real world, Gil..."

xxxx

**New Eden, North Africa, Gibraltar Expansion Zone, November 20th**

Expansion Security Patrol was generally considered a pretty shitty duty, since it meant long hours, even multiple days, cooped up inside your sweltering hot armor, inside the hold of an armored vehicle that became ovenlike a few hous after sunrise, with no opportunity for any sort of personal hygiene or unconfined relaxation, other than the extremely basic facilities offered by the Expansion Bases within the circuit of that specific ESP. Some ESP routes were better than the others, the cushiest being the bases situated along the coastline, since they had plentiful access to water, enough to set some aside just for personal cleaning and even a bit of recreation, if you counted a pool barely big enough to count as a hot tub recreation. Then again, compared to the jack-fucking-shit the more landbound bases had, it was practically paradise.

Or so Private Ryan Jones had heard anyway, since his luck never seemed to run in the direction of cushy postings. Even so, he found he was actually glad to be tapped for ESP duty, because it meant getting away from the aftermath of the Eddie attack on Gibraltar. Maybe he just had a low tolerance for gore, but seeing the carpet of blasted and broken bodies left behind where the USN Mobile Forces had obliterated the trapped Eddie mechanized infantry was enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life, and he well remembered tossing his cookies for most of an hour after the battle had ended and he'd gotten his first clear look at the aftermath. Given a choice between being on the SRB... Salvage, Reclamation and Burial... teams who had to manually shift through the wreckage looking for survivors or interesting trinkets or drawing ESP duty, he'd pounced on ESP like it was a wanton girlfriend with her panties around her knees. Not that he'd ever actually had sex with a girl, something he kept well secret from the rest of the guys in the squad to avoid excessive ribbing. Not from lack of trying, but unlike his ultra rich uncle, twice removed, the black sheep of the Jones clan, he'd never had much self confidence or luck when it came to the ladies. Maybe it had something to do with being ultra rich.

And so he found himself bouncing along in the back of a Chariot class APC, one of the newer models of armored transport that was supposedly made expressly for this operation to reclaim Earth. Which was kind of funny, in a sad way, considering that the things broke down all the fucking time because of inadequate dust shielding on the engine cooling intakes, which seemed like a fairly no brainer thing to Ryan, but had apparently and obviously escaped the notice of a professional design team that had spent thousands of man hours and millions of dollars designing the chassis. Soldiers being who they were, they were already improvising workarounds, from carrying several extra sets of dust filters, to jury rigging homemade filters and dust removers out of spare undershirts and duct tape. Ryan had contributed a pair of undershirts to the "lets not fucking break down in the middle of this godforsaken desert" fund, and so far their luck seemed to be holding.

Each Chariot APC was designed to carry a full squad of ten soldiers comfortably, though all "comfortably" meant in military jargon was that you weren't sitting in each other's laps, it had nothing to do with actual comfort of the plastic coated bench seating and nylon crash strapping that held you in place as the shocks communicated every variation in terrain directly into the base of your spine. One guy had compared it to sitting down in a speeding truck with broken shocks and a vibrator shoved up your anus, but after receiving askance looks from everyone else at how accurate his comparison might be and what prior experience had resulted in such comparative ability, the guy had been shunned, as much as was possible in the cramped interior. Don't ask, don't tell was one thing, but some people were just weird...

In addition to the squad it carried, a Chariot was lightly armed, with a remote controlled topside turret armed with a 20mm cannon and an additional forward cupola that had a .50 cal machinegun pintle mounted to it, but its armor was robust and its tracks and wide wheelbase made it extremely stable even on otherwise uncertain ground, and thought racked they could hit almost fifty miles per hour on flat terrain and maintain it for up to twelve hours before needing a battery recharge, so they made good long range patrol vehicles. ESP's usually consisted of two to three Chariots spread out within a half mile or so of each other, staying in constant radio communication as they swept the vast empty expanses of arid land between the Expansion Bases, for any sign of the Eddies trying to sneak through. They'd accomplished it once already, and though that had turned into a huge victory for the USN, everyone acknowledged that the Eddies never should have been able to get inside the Expansion perimeter unnoticed either, so the ESP's had been stepped up significantly in the last few days.

In addition to the ESP's, which were actually based out of Gibraltar itself, the Expansion Bases also ran their own patrols, some quite far ranging, that often overlapped with the ESP's. After pit stopping at the last ExBa, nicknamed Fort Gulch because of its position near an array of arroyo's and small canyons, the Gulchers had complained that one of their recon patrols from the day before hadn't returned, and had given them the last known coordinates and heading of the patrol and asked them to check it out. Maybe it was just another Chariot breakdown, maybe it was some sort of accident, maybe it was the next big Eddie push, whatever the case, the Gulcher's wanted it checked out and didn't want to send out any more of their own vehicles, so guess how happy they were to see an ESP pull up looking to recharge? Ryan was tempted to grouse about the Gulchers being a bunch of lazy bastards, but then again they were stuck out here in the Expansion perimeter, fighting hostile Eddies on a daily basis, and he got to sleep in a real rack, without armor and take showers at least once a week back at Gibraltar, so maybe he could allot them a little leeway for laziness?

When Ryan had volunteered for ESP duty, First Sergeant Blundquist, the Top, had been all over the idea in moments. He thought it was such a grand plan that he just couldn't let Ryan go alone, so now Ryan found himself accompanied in his search for solitude by none other that Dudly and Meyer, two of his least favorite people in the unit. Dudly was just an overbearing idiot, but at least he meant well, Meyer on the other hand was a louse and a closet extremist. It was he that had pissed the Top off so much with his "lets go toast some Eddies" comment. Worst of all, since Ryan was less frequently on the shit list of the Top than either of his unwilling companions, he had been placed temporarily in charge of the trio as well, which made him responsible for the mishap prone Dudly and the sullen Meyer. Oh what a joy that was proving to be... not! If this was what promoted was all about, then Ryan wanted to stay a private for the rest of his life!

There were a few perks to the brevet promotion though, as he was able to use Top's invested authority to wriggle a few extra goodies out of the base armory in anticipation of the rigors of patrol, including a sweet Mauler LSG for himself and a backpack mounted flamethrower for Meyer. He might be a despicable maggot ethically speaking, but he was crazy good with the flamethrower, leaving many to believe he might have had a past as an arsonist, and damn it all, he was still part of the unit, which meant something. Ryan very pointedly did not requestion Dudly any extra gear, since the Dud was still working on being trusted with simple grenades, much less something actually complicated and expensive. If he noticed the exclusion, Dud was at least smart enough not to complain, though it was a very real possibility he hadn't noticed anything at all. His obliviousness was almost refreshing at times actually, when everyone else got pissy over everything that went wrong, Dud's phlegmatic good cheer was a welcome change of pace. If only he would learn to SHUT THE FUCK UP!

"... so as I was saying, I heard that some of the guys over in the Asian theatre encountered these crazy big spiders, like as big as a man, and some much, much bigger than that! Said they got chased through the woods for miles and miles before the things left em alone, and that was in Chariots! And get this, those lucky bastards over at Porta Potty, I hear they're all starting to have freaky nightmares and shit, worms crawling out of the walls and voices in their heads and shit! I tell you, something ain't right with the Porta Potty, boy am I ever glad I wasn't assigned there, right? And..." Dud was expositing, using the common nickname for Porta Panama, devised by jealous soldiers assigned to places where they might actually have to fight the Eddies, versus just clearing forests and sitting around jerking each other off!

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, DUD!" Meyer all but shouted, the only thing keeping him from diving across the narrow compartment corridor to strangle Dud with his bare hands being the crash webbing holding him in his seat. "You've been babbling for THREE HOURS STRAIGHT! If you say one more word, I'm going to keel haul you after the next pit stop!" There was a protracted silence in the compartment after his outburst, the only sounds being the bump and grind of the treads and the plip-plop of condensing water from the inadequate cooling system, like beads of sweat mirroring those on the faces of the armored figures sitting shoulder to shoulder along the benches. The silence quickly grew unbearable, and Meyer at last let out a heavy breath, acknowledging defeat. "Okay, keep talking, Dud. Just try to keep it to background noise, okay? I don't give a rat's ass what the losers in Asia or at Porta Potty have to deal with, fuck those guys, you hear me? Fuck them."

"Oi, meat racks!" The sardonic voice of the sergeant driving and commanding the Chariot crackled over the compartment speakers. "Look alive, we're coming up on the last known coordinates of those bastard Gulchers. Could get rough real quick, so get yer heads in the game!" There was suddenly a lot of shifting and muted clicks as the soldiers took the Sergeant's good advice to check their weapons, making sure to keep the safeties on, since a round would bounce around like red hell itself inside the armored compartment, and you'd be lucky if you only blew a hole in yourself! And it didn't bear thinking about what it might be like if Meyer triggered a burst from the flamethrower by accident. Tension began to build as their driver located the tracks of the missing Gulchers and their three Chariot patrol changed course to follow the tracks, heading into terrain that was more sandy desert than arid grassland. Less than a quarter hour later they discovered the Gulchers.

Or their vehicles at least, which weren't Chariots but instead were four person, open topped ATV's with balloon like wheels for ease of travel across sandy environments. There were two of them, though one was tipped over onto its side, tracks in the sand showing where the driver had apparently lost control and flipped going up the surface of a sand dune. The three Chariots pulled up to the scene before forming a triangular perimeter around it, a Chariot at each point facing outward, their back mounted embarkation ramps lowering to disgorge the squads they contained, thirty soldiers spreading out in fire teams of three, hugging the ground for what little cover it could provide as a central unit investigated the ATV's. Despite his wishes, Ryan found himself, Meyer and Dud tapped for investigative duty, and they tenatively began poking around the overturned ATV, hoping they wouldn't find any splattered bodies. Much to Ryan's relief, they found no dismembered bodies, though there was some signs of injury, gritty blood patches, as well as curiously bright and eroded portions of the ATV's side armor, scoured smooth and shiny by something in scattered spots.

Basic training had included some seminars on deciphering tracks, but it was fundamental level stuff and no help in figuring out the confusion of footprints, drag trails and assorted other indentations that surrounded the two jeeps. The glint of metal from one pile of sand drew Ryan's eye, and he cautiously sifted the pile with his fingertips before coming up with a handful of brass shell casings, easily recognizable as belonging to the sidearm pistols every soldier carried. While the Cutlass and Mauler were linear weapons, and thus did not have shell casings, the pistols still used chemical explosives to power the projectiles. Ryan wondered what sort of calamity could have befallen the gulchers that required them to resort to their fall back pistols, with no sign of enemy dead or wounded. Ryan reported the found casings to the jittery looking Second Lieutenant that was nominally in charge of the ESP, who commended him on the find though it was plain the LT had no greater idea of what the fuck had happened than Ryan did.

It was Dudly that actually broke the mystery wide open, though he did it in a typical Dud fashion, squinting at something on the ridge of one of the sand dunes surrounding them he stopped watching where his feet were goign and blundered through a mound of knee high sand. Something in the sand mound resisted when Dud's ankle struck it and he overbalanced and fell loudly over onto his face in the sand, jerking and kicking while swearing loudly, making a huge spectacle of himself. Some of the other soldiers started laughing at his ineptness, until they saw what Dud's thrashing had unearthed, indeed what he'd tripped over. After that, no one felt like laughing at all. Dud was actually one of the last to see what he'd revealed, and his curses died on his lips as he finally wiped the grit away from his faceplate and found himself practically lying atop the biggest, ugliest, meanest looking scorpion he'd never yet had nightmares about! Dudly screamed, just like a little girl, and hurled himself away from the abomination, and not a single soul there would ever give him shit about his reaction, it was simply that horrendous a thing.

Fortunately it was also a dead thing, visible holes from 5mm Cutlass rounds dotting its sandy brown carapace in tight groupings, showing where it had taken multiple bursts of Cutlass rounds from multiple angles at close range before subsiding and being buried by drifting sand. The body was about as thick as a human torso, the legs each about the size of a human leg, and there were ten of those, each of the back six ending in a wickedly barbed point, while the front four were equipped with pincer claws, two huge and two merely large. There was no neck to speak of, the head grew right out of the abdomen, graced with clusters of dull eyes beneath heavy brows of chitin, wicked looking mandibles placed to either side of jaws that were filled with actual teeth, fangs and multiple tongues that looked like they were made for sucking blood or fluids. The tail was as thick as a human thigh before narrowing to a bulging stinger spike that was at least six inches long and serrated like a combat knife. All told the thing probably stood two and half to three feet tall when standing, and was about the size and weight of a cow. Its carapace was an exact match for the color of the sand around it, only the dark eyes stood out, and those looked to have semi-translucent eyelids that could cloak them as well. You practically had to trip over the thing to see it against the sand!

"Jeezus F. Christ, what the HELL is that thing?" One of the soldiers stammered in a half strangled voice.

"It's a monster! I've never seen any damn thing so hideous in my entire life!" A sergeant commented, turning away from the grotesque thing with a shudder. "I guess we found out what happened to the Gulcher's though. They must have stopped for a rest or somethin, and this thing was waiting for them in the sand... dear god, those poor bastards prolly never saw it coming."

"But that doesn't explain the pistol casings I found." Ryan was amazed he had the balls to cut in, a junior private talking with sergeants, but everyone was so spooked they didn't seem to care. "The thing's full of holes, but there should have been eight guys with Cutlasses at least, if they had focused fire they would have shredded that beast into confetti! I think at most they had two or three guys shooting at this one, and sometime into the fight they started running out of ammo and had to switch to pistols. There must have been multiple targets..." Ryan suddenly caught up with his own line of thought, and the Mauler was up against his shoulder the next moment. "There could be more of these things around!"

No sooner had those words left his mouth than the sand directly beneath the feet of the LT exploded upwards like a geyser. Ryan blinked and almost missed the motions of four clawed limbs as they whipped around the LT's limbs and closed with bone crushing force, one snipping the left arm entirely in half like it was a dry twig, before the stinger tail of the emerging scorpion-monster slammed into the LT's chest, the spike punching through armor like it wasn't even there to fill the LT's insides with almost a pint of toxins! The LT went as stiff as a board in less than a second, every muscle and nerve ending in his body paralyzed almost instantly by the huge dose of Deathstalker venom, though he remained fully conscious as he was dragged back down into the burrow with the Deathstalker, its barbed tongues already scraping against his armor as the Deathstalker's jaws elongated like rubber, dozens of gripping fangs extending to vice down on the hapless LT as the Deathstalker's oter legs worked to collapse the burrow down behind it, sealing the soldier into darkness so it could feed in peace.

The entire attack couldn't have taken more than three seconds, from sand geyser to the LT being dragged below the sand and the pit collapsing inward onto itself, the only evidence a man had once stood there being the splash of blood on the sand and the bottom half of the LT's left arm lying a few yards away. Meyer's splash of liquid fire was pure reflex, glassifying the sand where the Deathstalker had disappeared, but it was far too late to do anything to the Deathstalker as it slurped the LT's still living organs out of his cracked open armor shell contentedly, only a few meters away from his friends, but all but untouchable nonetheless.

The scent of blood and the mental emanations of fear and shock coming from the two legged prey swiftly roused the other dormant members of the clutch, sleeping off the meal of the night before in their lightless burrows in the surrounding sand dunes, but while Deathstalkers only needed to eat once every week or so, especially if it was a large meal such as a human, they were one of the few high order organisms that actually enjoyed killing, for the sheer fun of it. This natural tendency grew more pronounced during the breeding seasons, when hormones had them on edge anyway, though this clutch of related males was strangely docile in truth, given the genetic imperatives broiling inside their carapaces. Their timidity was easy to understand, but only if you possessed the hypersensitivity to enviornmental stimuli that came with a highly Latent nature. If they wished to feed or hunt-slaughter, they would need to do it soon, for the prey had awakened a much greater threat than they, and mating season or not, any male caught on open ground when the Queen came nigh was doomed to feed her hunger rather than fertilize her eggs. After she gorged herself on the prey, she might deign to reproduce with a particularly impressive male, but never before.

Back on the surface, there was panic and confusion as the soldiers who hadn't even seen the Deathstalker spring its ambuscade reacted to the sidden, grisly disappearance of the mission commander. Barely had they begun to shout and argue though than more explosions of sand geysers came from underfoot and the sloping faces of nearby dunes, as the remaining Deathstalkers burrowed to the surface to feed and kill. There must have been at least a dozen of them, far more than would normally congregate in one area, but in recent weeks prey of the two legged sort had been extremely plentiful and so they could tolerate the competition of others of their kind in such rich feeding grounds. Even once revealed on the surface, the jittery quick movements of the Deathstalkers, complimented by their impressive degree of natural camouflage and the ability to predict and feel where the soldiers would be shooting, made them all but impossible to hit as the soldiers and vehicles opened up with their weapons desperately.

With the disregard for life and limb only those of insectile descent could possibly comprehend, the Deathstalkers charged the soldiers fearlessly, gouts of dark black-blue ichor gushing from their carapaces where linear rounds burst through chitin, but the nervous systems of the Deathstalkers were all but immune to sensations of pain, and even when whole limbs were blown off they continued forward, confident in the primal knowledge that any wonds which did not kill them would be regenerated during the next time they grew out of their shells. Closing the range with the soldiers, some of the Deathstalkers hawked and spat globs of viscous saliva from their mouths, others projected needlelike streams of poison from their engorged stingers. The poison sprayed into the faces of the armored humans, but splattered harmlessly away from viewports. The acidic saliva was a different matter altogether, and it began to steam wherever it touch armor plate, the outer surface rapidly beginning to melt away under the hissing fluid.

Ryan stopped, dropped and rolled furiously in the sand when he caught a breastplate full of toxic saliva. Fortunately the sand seemed to scrape the worst of it off him, and though his armor screamed at him, warning of external damage, it didn't appear that he'd lost environmental integrity. However, he had bigger concerns, as the Deathstalker that had regurgitated upon him was only a few yards away and closing with blurring speed, and there was no way he could get his Mauler up and around in time to stop it from either dismembering him with the claws or stinging him with the tail. Ryan closed his eyes and was about to pray when a blast of searing heat scorched him as a river of flame swept by overhead and took the Deathstalker square in the face, eyes popping as blazing napalm splashed and clung to the insect, the pain so tremendous the Deathstalker went into a frenzy, ripping itself to shreds with its own claws and tail as it tried to scrape the fire off its front half. Ryan nonethless blew a human head sized hole in the thing with his Mauler, just to be sure. He nodded a breathless thanks to Meyer, but there wasn't time for much else.

The Deathstalkers had overrun the ESP perimeter and things had dissolved into individual soldiers doing their best to shoot down the rampaging insects while not shooting their own friends. The fiendish bugs took absolutely forever to die, unless you blew apart their heads or something, and they were quite capable of killing a soldier even with half their legs and a tail blow into ragegd, ichor spouting stumps! They seemed to have no instinct for self preservation, nor did they show of any signs of a higher plan rather than causing as much bloodshed and death as possible in the shortest possible time. It really seemed to Ryan, as he used his Mauler to blast another Deathstalker in half as it menaced Dud, who had thrown a grenade once more without arming it, only drawing the things attention when it clunked against its back, that the bugs were almost high or intoxicated for some reason, and were lashing out in an orgy of violence, as if they were racing some sort of invisible timer only they could perceive. Meyer hosed down another with his flamethrower, having no choice but to immolate the two soldiers that were impaled upon its pincers at the time as well, but burning to death couldn't be any worse than being dismembered and eaten alive, right?

Screaming in agony, or maybe it was just the sound of its blood turning to steam and escaping in jets of misty black from gunshot wounds in its carapace, the immolated Deathstalker turned towards the source of the fire, shaking the blazing human torches from its claws and pounced at Meyer, tail sting drawn back to impale him through the throat. Meyer was in the path of Ryan's shot, and the Mauler would turn him into bloody chunks if he even grazed him at this range, so Ryan could only look on helplessly as the flaming abomination bore down on his squadmate. An object arced through the air, and Ryan realized Dud had hucked another grenade, which by either incredible aim or more likely incredible luck went right down the bug's yawning throat, and wonder of wonders, blew up a second later, scattering bits and pieces of minced, flambe'd bug for ten meters in every direction! Both Meyer and Ryan stared incredulously at Dud, who was looking just as stunned as they.

At last the Deathstalkers seemed to get tired of being burned, shot or blown up, and though they left more than half their number broken and blasted on the sand, they turned and burrowed into the sand once more, moving with even more haste than they'd displayed while on the attack. Shots from the 20mm cannons on the Chariots impacted on and around the burrow sites, and one yielded a geyser of black-blue ichor and brown chitin, showing at least one Deathstalker that hadn't burrowed deep enough, fast enough. Left to take stock, stunned by the sudden silence Ryan and the others looked around dazedly, for many it had been their first time in actual combat. Over half of the ESP patrol was dead, including all three sergeants and of course the missing LT, some dismembered, some impaled and left to bleed out, and others stung and appearing dead even though they were actually still alive and suffocating in silence, their hearts and lungs paralyzed while they yet remained aware of what was going on.

"FUCK THOSE BUGS! YEAH! WE KICKED BUG-ASS!" Meyer suddenly shouted, drawing a chorus, if a weak one, of agreement from the other shocked survivors. Ryan was stunned at how few wounded there were, everything in training had stressed how the number of WIA almost always exceeded the number of KIA by a large amount, but here that was not so, anyone who had spent more than a second or two in proximity to one of the bugs was messily dead. Once they got a pincer around you, much less hit you with the sting, you were done for, there was no grey area! The Chariots were undamaged, the Deathstalkers having had no interest in non-living constructs. Ryan was trying to figure out who was in charge, and whether or not he should suggest packing up one of the more intact corpses to take back for study, when Dud suddenly shrieked like a little girl once more and pointed wildly. Those who followed the direction of his point, Ryan included, also shrieked like little girls.

Crouching at the top of the sand dune to their right, a good twenty meters above their position, was another Deathstalker. But where the others had been brown, this one was fiery red striped with black. Where the others had been the size of cows, this one was easily as big as a family sedan, and that was just the body, the legspan made it look MUCH bigger. It glared down at the shrieking prey-things and clacked its pincers hungrily, each claw being as long as a human was tall and powerful enough to crush armor plate like it was gingerbread cookie. But though it hungered for the warm flesh of prey in its gullet, the Greater Deathstalker held its position, compelled by a instinct beyond even hunger to stay immobile. A rival Greater crested the dunes on the opposite side from the first, its coloration more orangy than red, but sharing the black banding. The little two legged shelled prey noticed the rival soon enough, and their shrieks of panic were soothing to the roiling emotions of the Greater Deathstalker. But still it held its position, even as puffs of sand and flakes of durable chitin began exploding around and on its body as they shelled prey spat their spines at him, the spines deflecting from his carapace or else digging in and stopping well short of the vitals beneath.

The red Greater whipped his tail back and forth angrily at the orange, indicating challenge as he raised all four pincers and clacked them loudly to declare his dominance. The orange replied with a similar display, as the males were of similar size and age, and normally an all out brawl between two of the deadliest predators on New Eden would have followed. But something greater than instinct kept both males rooted in place, and soon cowed them of any desire for further threat or dominance displays, even to the point where they folded their pincers arms together and placed them atop their backs in positions of submission, their tails dropping, the poison tipped injector spike withdrawing back into the poison gland itself as they humbled themselves before their approaching Queen.

Ryan thought these bugs were acting even more oddly than the frenxied ones they'd just been fighting. He was no bug expert, and even less so of Edenite bugs, but they seemed to be ignoring the soldiers, even as they came under fire, and seemed content to make threat displays at each other from across the gulf of dunes, though neither super-bug gave any indication it was doing much besides the bug equivalent of talking smack. And then they both, at the same time, seemed to fold in on themselves and crouch down, like they were trying to hug the ground for cover. But Ryan bet they weren't trying to present a low profile for the gunfire, since they seemed to be ignorant of its ability to hurt them, or maybe it couldn't hurt them! But SOMETHING had two bugs that had no apparent sense of self preservation and were big enough to comfortably dine on a pride of lions for breakfast running very scared indeed, and that made Ryan feel like he was going to wet his pants. And then he realized he had, and was shortly glad of that fact because it meant he was already on empty when the Deathstalker Queen stepped into view.

Her silence was eerie to say the least, her motions precise and so fast they appeared slow, like the spinning rim of a car wheel at very high speed. Her movement legs touched the ground in such a precise pattern that despite her weight she barely even made the sand quiver beneath her stride, making her almost impossible to detect sound or vibration. The only sound she made at all was a buzzing crackle, like a pot of boiling oil filled with bees a few rooms away, which seemed to emanate from her body in all directions, forming a field or aura around her as she narrowed her solid silver eye clusters at the noisy prey before here. Her carapace was the color of space itself and seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Her body was the length of a semi-trailer truck, and a Mobile Suit could have lain down beneath her spread legs without touching her underbelly. Ryan blinked, because a monster of such size and coloration should have been visible from hundreds of meters away regardless of silence, but he'd only noticed it when it was less than fifty meters away, like it had just suddenly blinked into existence, as if he'd passed some sort of event horizon that had been keeping it hidden.

And then one silver eye, as big as his entire face, swiveled in its socket and Ryan found his gaze locked with that of the monster and the breath left his body in one enormous whoosh. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he could tell that there was intelligence behind that eye, a thinking mind every bit the equal of his own. Every bit the equal and quite a bit more, but alien and incomprehensible except in its maliciousness and bloodthirst. Ryan tried to point and scream, but it was no use, he'd been so petrified with fear by meeting the monster's simple gaze that he couldn't make his throat work! Dud turned to see what was wrong with him, saw the Queen, and promptly fainted dead away, so he was no help. No direct help actually, as the sound of his limp form hitting the ground drew the attention of several others, including Meyer. "HOLYMOTHEROFCHRISTFUCKINGHELL!" Meyer shouted, his voice high pitched and tinny with terror as he swung around his flamethrower and loosed a stream of napalm at the abomination. Unlike the lesser Deathstalkers, the Queen raised a claw in her defence, the liquid fire splashing and running along her car sized pincer, scorching the outer layer of chitin but failing to penetrate to the nerves buried deep below.

Another soldier threw a rocket propelled grenade launcher to his shoulder and fired, screaming hysterically the whole time, and his screaming peaked exultantly as the RPG struck hom against the side of her carapace. That scream died in his throat as the smoke cleared to reveal only a thin trickle of ichor and no gaping wound in her body. A round that would have shredded a Chariot APC had barely even scratched this monster! It did seem to have pissed her off though, judging from the way her eyes narrowed and the threat posture she adopted, the buzzing bees in the background growing exponentially louder as she called upon her Latent nature. Guns fired directly at her failed to strike home, another RPG round struck her head and failed to detonate, though once the warhead hit the sand beneath her, it went off just like normal, luck itself bending the very physical laws of the universe to provide her protection, if only for brief moments at a time.

One of the Chariots suddenly tried a ramming charge aimed at breaking the motive legs on her right side, only to be stopped dead as the four pincers darted downwards and slammed into its glacis plate and sides, crumpling tempered steel plate like tissue paper before the tail sting slammed forward and punched through the driver's compartment, such a flood of posion being released that it actually drowned the driver before he could die of suffocation from the paralysis. Nor was her toxin simple paralysis like those of her lesser brethren, but actually caused the organic strucutre of the body to harden to a brittle, glass like state, in essence petrifying a victim to the point where they could be broken apart as if they had been flash frozen, easy to break into bite sized pieces for her to chomp down. Hurling the half crushed Chariot away like a crushed soda can, the Deathstalker Queen called to her harem and the red and orange Greater Deathstalkers responded to her summons, racing down from opposite dune faces to help corral the prey, ignoring the desire to fight one another in favor of serving their Chimera Queen.

Seeing the red and orange Deathstalkers joining the fray, Ryan realized they were all dead if they stuck around. Grabbing the dead weight of Dudly by the carry strap that was built into the back of the armor's torso area, Ryan began dragging Dud towards the nearest Chariot, which was booming round after round from its 20mm cannon at the gigantic black Deathstalker, but despite the creature only being a few dozen meters away, not a single shot seemed to be landing. The second Chariot had switched its aim to the red and black Deathstalker, and its first shot blew one of the four pincers completely off its arm, drawing a grating squeal of annoyance from the bug as its stump gouted ichor. It ignored the wound with the same casual disregard the small brown ones had their own injuries, and pounced onto the Chariot that had wounded it. Sparks flew and metal tore as the Greater Deathstalker beat at the Chariot with its remaining pincers and tail. Dudly's weight suddenly lightened, and Ryan looked up to see that Meyer had discarded his flamethrower and had picked Dudly's feet up.

Together they managed to get him into the back of the Chariot, and as soon as they were inside, Meyer slammed the switch that raised the rear ramp. Ryan had intended to go back out and try and recover others of the ESP, but one look at Meyer's terrified face told him he'd have a hell of a fight on his hands if he tried to open the ramp again. The illusion of safety might be flimsy, considering what they'd both seen the big black one do to a Chariot already, but an illusion was better than nothing! Ryan keyed the compartment intercomm. "Get us the hell out of here, driver!"

"We can't run away from bugs!" the driver shouted back, the "boom-boom-boom" of his 20mm turret underscoring his words.

"We sure as fucking hell can!" Meyer shouted back, near hysterically. "These are NOT just bugs, they're demons of some sort! Didn't you see what the big one did to that Chariot? If we stay here we're all going to die and be eaten! Get this tin can rolling or I'll come up there, shoot you in the head and do it myself!"

"Someone needs to get out and report back about this danger! If we just disappear, they'll keep sending patrols down here to investigate, and that'll just keep feeding these monsters!" Ryan added, hoping an appeal to duty would work when sheer terror did not. Fortunately it did seem to do the trick, as the cannon stopped firing and the Chariot lurched as the driver threw it into gear and began angling for the pathway leading out of between the dunes. Dudly muttered something incoherent as he started to come around from his faint, and Ryan and Meyer shared a brief grin as they realized they had made it. Which is of course when the gigantic black pincer came spearing through the side of the Chariot, metal screaming as it fragmented, the entire Chariot kicked sideways almost ten meters by the force of the blow. Dudly's mumbles becames raw edged screams as the serrated inner edge of the pincer scraped along his side, tearing through his armor like it was mist and scoring a deep, bloody wound in his side. The armor's emergency sealant system activated immediately, but then the armor began to fill with blood as secretions coating the Queen's picner prevented Dudly's blood from coagulating efficiently.

Ryan screamed hoarsely as the pincer started digging around the compartment, seeking more flesh to rend, and he lifted the Mauler to his shoulder and began pumping round after round into the matte black chitin only a foot or so away. He watched, dumbfounded, as shell after shell struck the chitin and dropped inert to the metal decking, internal fuses that were supposed to be failsafe failing to activate upon contact. Finally, the tenth shell struck and detonated, but barely cracked the chitin, drawing a thin trickle of ichor. Realizing gunfire was useless against the incredible armor of this bug, anything elss than a major tank or Mobile Suit weapon just wasn't strong enough to penetrate, he did the only thing that came to mind. He drew his mono-bladed combat knife and threw himself bodily against the outer side of the pincer, slamming the blade down into the chitin, watching with satisfaction as it bit deep and easy, drawing a gout of blue-black ichor that splattered all over his faceplate. The knife ripped a jagged cut in the pincer, flensing off a whole section of chitin as it was suddenly withdrawn from the compartment, the blade snapping off at the hilt shortly before the pincer exited the hull.

An earsplitting squeal of anger and annoyance made them both clutch their heads and scream in agony as the Deathstalker Queen reacted to the stinging pain of her cut pincer. Unlike lesser Deathstalkers, her nervous system was highly developed, only her exceptionally thick and durable carapace protecting her from hurt, and she was more than smart enough to feel the need for self preservation. Which was why she actually still lived, as a servant of He Who Called, rather than resided as a memory within the Great Beast's gullet. Ever hungry might he be, but more than smart enough to recognize the value of capable, like minded servants, especially those who lived outside his normal sphere of influence. Narrowing her myriad eyed gaze, the Deathstalker Queen watched the wounded metal beast flee into the distance, faster than any but she could pursue for any length of time. The two male Greaters were tearing apart the remnants of the two legged prey, but eyeing the painful graze on her left forepincer, the Queen had lost her taste for the small prey for the time being.

She would eat the more wounded of the two Greaters and allow the other to fertilze her latest batch of eggs, before she devoured him as well. Then she would devote time to planning her revenge upon the two leggers that had dared cause her pain, while she waited for her newest brood to hatch. The two leggers had been building new hives in the desert of late, she would have to crack them open until she found the one that harbored the prey that had dared scratch her beautiful carapace. Revenge was a dish best served cold, a two legger she'd eaten several weeks ago had had such a thought bouncing around its brain, and she had ingested the concept along with his succulent meat, finding both to her liking. No one was colder than a Deathstalker. If she had possessed the capability, she would have been smiling as she drove her tailsting down into the back of the red Greater, exulting in his spasms as he glassified from the inside out, fine edged cracks spreading through his organs and muscles as her posion did its deadly work. She was dimly aware of the orange Greater creeping onto her back as she began to feast, the urge to mate making him incautious of the twitching tailsting hovering over his head. She hoped it was good for him... another quirky concept ingested from humans... because it was to be his last...

xxxx


	29. Fearless Soldiers

Author Note: I make no apologies for the Edenite's blunders in terms of military tactics. Most anyone with military experience of any modern sort was evacuated from Earth during ED, it was mostly just civilians that got left behind to become Eddies, so they are basically having to recreate their military force and doctrine from the ground up. Added to this fact is that Edenites are frequently highly opinionated, subject to intense feelings of rivalry for each other, and a desire to be the best, which leads to arrogance and division among leadership. Everyone thinks they have the best strategy. Too many cooks, too little broth. Say what you might about how the USN leadership is fucked up, at least they all pull more or less in the same direction, the Edenites are still struggling to learn there is no "I" in "Team", at least as far as inter-Legio cooperation goes, much less Praetorian to Custodian. Objectively, the Legio system is actually pretty screwed up, basically making each legio an independently trained, equipped and motivated entity, with only basic cross training between Legio specialties. Each Legio is really, really good at one or things and only competent or even deficient in situations otuside their specialty. Cold Hunter is master of guerilla and small unit tactics, but a defensive seige battle or even a open field battle would have them at a disadvantage.

Glad people "liked" the Deathstalkers, certainly not the last time we'll see them, or the Queen. And yes, Rakejaw is also a subordinate of the Caller, any chimerae that lives in the Americas, except for the far north and south is a servant of the Caller, because you either serve him or feed him. In any case, its time to mix things up a little more, and begin setting the stage for the big plot twist of this Arc.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, November 22nd**

At loose ends while his Gundam was still in production, and fed up with hanging around the Custodian and Praetorian Enclaves, dealing with either people that seemed to worship the ground upon which he tread, or else treated him like he was personally trying to put them out of a job and make them look like fools, Kira had decided it was best if he put some distance between himself and the sharp edge of the blade, so to speak. Just until his temper had time to cool down a bit, because he neither appreciated nor desired people fawning over him like he was a god thought would wave a magic wand and save the world, and the suspicion and challenge from those who felt their prestige threatened by him was just as annoying. It all seemed to come down to dick size with some people, usually those that shouldn't have any need to be worried about their stature, such as the Arboreal Praetorian, Alexander or the leader of Legio Cold Hunter, Vincent. Kira had even felt a few flickers of resentment coming from Ullric, though they were well guarded. Few seemed truly appreciative of Kunai's involvement of Kira in the defense of Garden City and New Eden.

Of course he wasn't exactly going out of his way to endear himself to people either. Kira was tired of playing things nice, since all that ever seemed to result in was people dumping problems on him, expecting him to smile, nod and take care of it for them. Well, that simply wasn't how things were going to work anymore. But calling things as he saw them, especially when he upbraided people who were making stupid mistakes, such as many of the Legio leaders were doing, wasn't earning him many friends. Even those Legio leaders that had been receptive to his advice, such as Panner of Direcat, had taken excessive amounts of prodding and several in their face demonstrations of why their current tactics and assumptions were flawed before they had accepted his counsel. But even as they accepted his advice, Kira saw that it wasn't going to be enough to change the majority flow, the Edenite leadership was simply too opinionated and prideful to learn from advice. Which was sad, but sometimes you had to teach children by letting them burn their hands on the stovetop.

At one point in his life, not more than a few months ago, he would have been distressed at his own acceptance of the stupidity of others, especially as it would lead to deaths and grievous hurts for many innocent people, but after a lifetime of caring too much about everyone around him, only to recieve a cold shoulder in return when he needed people to care about him, Kira was fed up with sticking his neck out for others to the point of causing himself pain. He'd learned the hard way himself, perhaps it was better that they learn the hard way as well. Which was not to say that one of the first things he was planning on doing wasn't flying to orbit and blowing up as many of the orbital fleets as he could, because trying to fight a land or sea war while the enemy had battleships in low orbit was sheerest insanity, but in the meanwhile he'd let the overly prideful hang themselves with their own rope. People are not defined by their abilities alone, a truism that had taken him a long time to fully accept, which applied equally well to Edenites and non-Edenites. Trying to compare sum total stats of personal abilities between the two populations, generally and individually, was simply foolish and misleading, yet it seemed to be the accepted thought process among the Custodians and Praetorians.

Lowering opinion of Garden City's military forces aside, Kira was greatly impressed with the response of the civilian residents of the city and their quiet support of their soldiers and the personal sacrifices required by the wartime standard of living, which meant sometimes giving up what few luxuries they already possessed, such as access to holographic entertainment centers that had been converted into training facilities for Legio recruits, and abandoning surface living for the somewhat cramped but infinitely more secure bunker dwellings buried deep in the valley bedrock. Only in Orb had he ever seen such trust of authority and acceptance of rigors and hardship in trying times, and this despite the Edenite's tendency towards individuality and egoism. An Edenite had much to be proud of, but letting that go to your head and beginning to consider yourself innately superior to non-Edenites was a dangerous logical flaw. Yes, Kira might be able to beat Athrun in most physical activities, but he'd never match him as a diplomat, nor would he equal him in the field of mini-robotics such as Haro, Birdie or Zim.

There were those among the civilian population that regarded him as a celebrity or a grandstanding nuisance, but by and large most people just nodded to him respectfully, or gave him the mental quivalent of a nod or wave as he passed them by, just another moderately important figure on the streets. Turning down a side street, more or less wandering at random, Kira shortly found himself walking into a wooded area that seemed to blur the boundaries between the Nature and Human sections of the city, a park where both humans and animals could come to relax in side by side, a truce called on the normal predator-prey relationship within its boundaries. Which was not to say you'd find Rex Elk fawns cavorting with Direcat cubs, but neither were the Direcats teaching their young to hunt said fawns either, though they stood only a meadow and a hedgerow apart. In addition to the animals there were plenty of people enjoying the shade of ornamental plant growth or the afternoon sunlight filtered down through Yggdrasil's branches far overhead.

Kira found himself a sapling tree to lean against, settling down to watch a cluster of young children at play around the edges of a small pool of water, several uniformed adults nearby overwatching carefully, obviously chaperones of some sort of nursery or school outing. Kira felt waves of bitter and sweet memories tug at his consciousness, many of the children were in the same age range as his Akira and Aoi. Half dazed by his recollections, Kira failed to notice one young boy stepping up beside him, homing in on the complex emotions Kira was bleeding into the surrounding mindspace. The young boy, a tousel headed blond, tugged experimentally on Kira's pant leg, and was delighted when Kira bent down on autopilot and scooped the boy up onto his shoulders. It was only after he'd completed the motion and was turning his head up to smile at his son, when Kira realized-remembered that Akira was gone, and this was a stranger's child. A chill went down his spine as Kira recalled the tug on his pant leg, which had come in the exact same place and with the exact same amount of force as Akira used to get his attention, so much so that he'd bent down and picked the boy up without even noticing he wasn't Akira!

Heart clenching painfully, Kira gently lowered the boy off his shoulders and prodded him back towards the rest of his play group, unable to bear the sudden reminder of his lost son and his habits, and Kira had to turn his face against the tree for several seconds to get control of his watering eyes, not wanting to burst into despondent tears in front of a bunch of elementary school aged kids. While Kira was mastering himself, a young black haired girl, about a year younger than the blond boy, made her way determinedly up to him and stood in front of him, holding her arms up in a "wanna hug" motion, coming up onto tiptoes as she waited for him to embrace her. That being the first thing he saw when turning around, Kira staggered back and almost tripped and fell, his heart hammering and clenching once more, because the little girl's pose was an EXACT mirror of Aoi when she wanted to give him a hug, down to the way she went up on tiptoe and threw back her head at a certain angle. But she wasn't Aoi, didn't look anything like his daughter, but that hardly made the sudden reminder any less painful!

The blond boy came up beside the girl and took her by the hand comfortingly, as they both cocked their heads and stared at Kira curiously, his blanched expression apparently giving them great pause. Little did they realize that once more their actions were not just emulating but exactly copying the posture and attitude of Akira and Aoi when they were confronted with something they found strange and inexplicable. Kira had to sit down before he fell down, his eyes wet as he covered his face with one arm so the kids wouldn't see him crying. He was afraid they might try to comfort him, and remind him yet again of his own children, and he wasn't sure he could bear that without screaming. A flashing vision of the little girl reaching out her hand to pat him on the head made Kira's heart skip several beats, and he flinched away from them both jus as the girl's hand began to move. She drew her hand back with exaggerated care, obviously wary of the tormented and frightened look on Kira's face. A mental conversation between the children apparently came to the conclusion that Kira was just a bit too weird, and they turned and walked hand in hand back towards the rest of their schoolmates, their movements once more that of strange children.

For his part, Kira had one hand pressed to his mouth as he tried to prevent himself from spewing bile, the assault of painful memories having been so shocking he felt physically ill. A part of him wanted to tell himself that he'd just dreamt it or imagined it, that he was sensitive to the actions of children, and seeing patterns where there were none. But the rest of him told that part to shut its lying mouth, despite how much he wanted to believe it, because he had NOT imagined that at all. That little boy and girl had mimicked Akira and Aoi so well that if their hair and eye colors had been different, Kira might not have been able to tell the difference between them and his real children at first glance! Slowly gaining mastery over his roiling stomach, Kira hugged himself and tried not to shiver. He'd never been a superstitious sort, that had always been Lacus's thing, though her little foibles and traditions were mostly benign and cute, but he could almost, for a moment, believe that those two kids had just been temporarily possessed by Akira and Aoi's spirits! How else could he explain the perfect mimicry and the way he'd responded to them so strongly?

Well, other than he was starting to really lose his mind and was having trouble telling the difference between memory and reality, but Kira wasn't sure which explanation he liked less. Clambering to his feet, Kira hurried to put some distance between himself and the children at play, not wanting to expose himself to the possibility of further inadvertant torment. The children would just be trying to comfort him, he could sense their concern for his turbulent emotions, but it would have the opposite effect, and he'd really rather not have their first impression of him being the crazy guy who freaked out and ran away screaming and crying from young children. Backtracking his steps from the park, Kira became aware of a familiar tingling in the back of his mind, seeming to originate in close proximity to the slug-like organism that was bonded to his skin just behind his left ear, and Kira relaxed his concentration and lowered his mental shields to allow the Wind to speak to him.

_If you wanted a guided trip of the city, I would have been glad to provide it._ Lilia's mental voice was, as ever, slightly tinged with wistfulness that Kira did his best to ignore. He was conzigant of the importance he had to the girl's worldview, of the way his philosophy somehow had fundamental importance to her life and past, but all the same he was getting more than a little fed up with the way she couldn't seem to take a hint. She was a lovely and exciting young woman, but she the way she kept trying to jump into his shorts was really starting to piss him off. He'd made an instinctual mistake that time in the shuttle cargo bay, the sudden proximity of a horny young woman triggering reactions he had warred against for years, ever since coming down from the high of Second Puberty. Normally such a thing never triggered more than an appreciative glance, but since Lilia was an Edenite, her body was far more compatible with his and far more able to unconsciously influence his pleasure centers, such as phermonally or psychically. Just that slight brush of frontal contact had hit him like a jolt from an erotic taser, and Kira had both enjoyed and been horrified by the sensation.

But though he'd been clear that what had almost happened in the shuttle had been a mistake and only a mistake, Lilia seemed to think he was just playing hard to get. She was only trying to help, her earnest refusal to take no for an answer actually reminding Kira, in bitter irony, of those times when he and Lacus had insisted on intervening in various conflicts around the world, even though they had been told in no uncertain terms to mind their own damned business. Lilia was convinced she was doing the right thing, pursuing the goal of helping him come to terms with his grief and loss by mutual physical pleasure, and she might even be right. But Kira didn't especially want to come to terms with his grief, not now, while those who had murdered his family still remained free and unpunished. Finding himself in the interferee's shoes instead of the interferer, was not the most pleasant of situations. _Sometimes its more fun to just wander randomly, see things without any outside influence._ Kira replied diplomatically, not wanting her to think that he was beginning to despise the people he was supposed to be working closely with. Lilia was just the sort of person who'd try to do something about that, drag the whole situation into the open, and cause everyone a great deal of angst in the process. Once more... damn it... like he and Lacus used to do.

_So can I help you with something?_ Kira asked, reminding himself that he was currently at loose ends and that was probably no good thing for someone in his mental state, so finding something to occupy his attention was probably a very good idea.

_Oh, well, if you're not busy, I was wondering if you'd like to meet me at the Enclave. The Lucifer is almost ninety percent complete, enough to run some simple operational tests, and we've loaded the data into our simulator system._ Kira got the picture of Lilia smiling shyly, half ducking her head away from him. _I though you might perhaps like to spar with someone, get back into the swing of things, since its been a few years since you last piloted a Gundam. I promise to go easy on you at first._

Kira could not help but smirk at her temerity, innocent or not. _How about you fight as hard as you possibly can, and try to last for more than three minutes? I may not have piloted for seven years, but I've still got more time in the cockpit of a Mobile Suit than any fifty people you know casually._

_You know that a lot of people are rubbed the wrong way by what they see as your elitist attitude._ Lilia pointed out, somewhat cautiously. _I know and respect what you can do, but a lot of people haven't made that big a study of your life, and there is a significant fraction among the Custodians that are not happy with what they see as you coming in and telling them how to fight properly, when you have little to no formal military training of your own._

_My heart bleeds for their fractured egos, at getting told what to do by a jumped up vigilante who also happens to be rated, not by himself mind, the greatest Mobile Suit pilot of all time._ Kira laid the sarcasm on heavy. _You were the people that sought me out, not the other way around. I'm going to keep stepping on toes until people pull their heads out of their asses, and I don't especially care if they hate me for it. Nowhere in the job description of Executor that I've seen exists a passage requiring me to be beloved by my own side, and I've no patience for preening morons who have more interest in winning a war stylishly than they do winning bloodlessly. Too many of the Custodians, and damn near all of the Praetorians, seem to regard war as either a game or a proving grounds, and I assure you, it is neither._

_You're not what I expected you to be, you know?_ Lilia said after a long few moments, and it was easy for Kira to feel the distress in her thoughts. He hardened his heart to it, was even cheered a bit, because now hopefully she'd let go of her fantasy image of him that he could not possibly live up to. _I didn't think you could be this cynical._

_Losing a man's entire family to an unprovoked act of agression tends to make one feel less sympathetic to those crying about stubbed toes and bruised pride._

_You're not the only one who's in pain or who's lost family, you know! The Kira Yamato I know would never let his own hurt make him selfish and cynical towards others in need._

_I'm fairly sure the Kira Yamato you know never really existed outside your head. _Kira shook his head angrily, the reproach in her tone just pissing him off more. Where did she get off, presuming to lecture him on how he should be acting? _And the sooner you come to terms with that, the better off we'll both be. And I'll be frank, I do not appreciate your attempts to flirt or especially your attempts to get into bed with me. I am not interested, and if you approach me about it again, directly or not, I will make a scene about it and publicly complain about your attempts at seduction to Kunai and Hiero. I don't want to publicly embarass you, I rather like you, as a friend, but that is all you will ever be to me, is that understood?_

_Kunai said you had a way with alienating your friends when they just wanted to help, but I didn't want to believe you could be so cruel._ Lilia's thought tone changed from sadness and hurt to cold and resolute. _But whatever floats your boat, Kira. If you want to bite at every person that extends a hand, that's your perogative. But don't expect me or others to hang around with our hands extended forever, we have better things to do than wait for you to decide that you aren't the only one who has ever suffered a terrible loss. You can't live your life in a vacuum, Kira, especially not on New Eden. If you try, you'll go crazy. I've seen it happen._

Kira snorted mirthlessly. _Everyone who gets close to me, becomes part of my life, has ended up horribly dead or grievously injured and has ended up abandoning me in my hours of need. Forgive me if I react with hostility to people trying to leverage themselves into those fresh gaps, but I've had more than enough of suffering at the hands of those who mean well but don't truly listen, even if they be family. Just stay away from me. And you can tell Kunai that if he's who I think he is, that there is no better expert at alienating well meaning friends than he. And you'd better let him know that I'm watching him, and I won't be tolerant of any shadow plays from him. Just so everything is clear between us. If the past is any indication, without clarity there exists only great suffering for all involved._

_Kunai is a great man and so were you, but now you're just a shadow of the man you once were!_ Lilia sounded quite heartbroken, despite her venomous accusation, but Kira just shrugged and smiled in an unfriendly fashion.

_A shadow you say? A dark reflection? Yes, thats me right now, Lilia. And woe betide anyone who believes otherwise._

xxxx

**New Eden, Northeast Asia, Outskirts of Expansion Base Unity, November 23rd, Dusk**

His armor festooned with brush cuttings and heavy coats of camouflage paint and thermal masking grease to break up his outline and diffuse the heat signature of his body, Strategos Vincent of Legio Cold Hunter crept another few inches closer to the tree line that demarked the Shirk's pathetic attempt to beat back the local forest and maintain a free fire zone around their expansion base. Squads equipped with flamethrowers and canisters of defoliation toxins swept through the cleared areas twice a day destroying new growth, and the Shirks were still barely staying ahead of the jungle's attempt to reclaim what was once its own. Only areas that were hit with the damnable nano-plague innocuously called "MAIDEN" stayed free of regrowth, and apparently the Shirks supply of that heinous substance was still limited, because they applied it only sparingly, usually only within the perimeter wall of their bases. Vincent was dearly looking forward to the time when they were able to capture and reverse engineer that vile substance so they would be able to devise a countermeasure.

Nickname irregardless, the Shirk's didn't spare much expense when it came to fortifying their expansion bases, especially in the wake of the Legio's various early successes against such bases, and Vincent was almost impressed with the multilayer security arrangements this base had in effect. Any lesser legio, save perhaps the vainglorious Direcats, would be forced to assault the place directly, any attempts at stealth being doomed to discovery and failure. But this was Legio Cold Hunter, the most elite of all the Legio's, even eclipsing Garm in Vincent's private opinion, and what was impossible or incredible for other Legio's was merely ordinary and interestingly challenging to him and his subordinates. Their totemic animal was the most accomplished ambush pack hunter to ever live, and Legio Cold Hunter took the tenets of the art of pack tactics and ambushes very seriously, well able to take on foes many times their size and emerge victorious with the minimum required effort.

Such as Vincent's plan for this particular base. Any attempt at infiltration with a stealth system less perfect than a photo-refractor array was simply impossible, but where such a quandry would have stalled another Legio, Vincent merely looked at the problem from another angle. Since his Legio conspicuously lacked any Praetorian support, which Vincent viewed as a crutch not worthy of true warriors. After a few hours of study, the solution had suggested itself, and the rest of the day had been spent putting things into motion. The concept was agonizingly simple, as most good plans were. Any approach to the walls was doomed to failure, and any direct assault up the roadway to the main gates would involve running right into the teeth of the enemy's greatest firepower. But the enemy was constantly sending out scouting patrols of their own, in ground hugging armored vehicles. And though the vehicles moved quickly, it was easy enough for a trained and experienced Cold Hunter to insert themselves into the patrol path and wait to be driven over, and then latch onto the bottom of the patrol vehicle.

In the pursuit of providing themselves greater warning against incoming the threats, the Shirks were actually orchestrating their own downfall, as each recon patrol that came back in brought one to three Cold Hunter's along with it, bruised and battered from the ride perhaps, but still quite capable of carrying out their tasks. By now, Vincent estimated he had managed to insert at least three Manifolds worth of troops into the midst of the enemy base, those Manifolds relying on their massed psychic powers to make themselves unnoticable to the Shirks, an emulation of the Cold Hunter tactic of confusing the senses of prey to make itself blend into the background. The Cold Hunters were not invisible, but they looked like they belonged and only the strongest willed Shirks would even think to look twice at the infiltrators, assuming they noticed them at all!

Meanwhile, the rest of the Legio's infantry forces were making their way to the treeline, while the fast moving light armored vehicles and Dervish's of the Legio were massing a certain distance down the main roadway that connected the Expansion Base to others of its kind throughout the territory. At Vincent's signal, the armor and Mobile Suits would make themselves known, inflict some minor damage to the base defenses, and then flee, slowly, when the base defenders scrambled their response forces. Other legios had been employing such hit and run tactics against other bases around the world for several days now, so Vincent assumed the defenders would be itching to be able to respond for once, and the prize of being able to capture or destroy another significant batch of vehicles and Mobile Suits would be almost irresistable. The USN forces would deploy in pursuit of his vehicles, who would lead them on for some ways before giving them the slip. Meanwhile, the infiltated Manifolds would be attacking the base headquarters, communications array, and power generators.

The Shirks would recall their pursuit forces as soon as the base came under attack from within, and the pursuit forces would come rushing back down the road... straight into the sights of the hidden Cold Hunters, lying in wait in ambush right outside the enemy perimeter. Under attack both within the base and just outside it, the Shirks would be forced to choose between trying to run the gauntlet of the ambush to return to the safety of their fort, taking mortal damage in the process from the emplaced heavy weapons of the Cold Hunters, or else attempting to fight off the ambush. At which point in time the ambushers would melt back into the woods, where the USN Mobile Suits and tanks could not easily follow, so their infantry forces would be forced to dismount and pursue on foot. Once the USN was drawn into the woods, the Legio's tanks and Dervish's would circle around and hit them from the rear while they were spread out. In the confusion, the Legio's infantry would make a dash for the enemy fort, assisted by their infiltrated comrades taking the wall and gate defenses from the rear. Once they had secured the wall and gate, the Legio's vehicles would break off once more, and the Shirks, wounded, confused and low on ammo, would have to storm their own trap laden defenses to dislodge the Cold Hunters, and they would be massacred by their own masterful defense layout!

It was a complex ballet of split second maneuvering that relied on keeping the enemy confused and off balance, presenting targets just too tempting to pass up and then making them disappear before the Shirks could actually cause any damage, while they were subsequently hit from an unexpected angle after being drawn out into a vulnerable state. Of all the other Legios, probably only Kraken could comfortably execute such an intricate battle plan, and Kraken lacked the sense of audacity and daring that was the true determiner of success in such situations. Well, it was fruitless to dwell on the shortcomings of other Legio's, Vincent reminded himself, as he sent thought impulses racing through his various officer Manifolds, checking the positioning of each individual trooper and making sure all were concealed and in position. He was proud of his troops, even knowing where to look, he could not discern the forms of the troops closest to him, the combination of physical and psychic camouflage making them blend into the background growth like they had always been part of it. Even if stepped on, they probably wouldn't be noticed for what they were!

Satisified, Vincent turned his eyes towards the enemy gates once more. _Operation Chaos Hunter, commence..._

xxxx

**Inside Expansion Base Unity, same time**

"You know that feeling you get when a sniper is drawing a bead on you...?" Alkire asked, scratching at the back of his neck as he considered the cards he'd been dealt, a whole lot of jack shit, though he might be able to do something with the three hearts if fortune smiled upon him.

"Nope." Raine replied diffidently, exchanging two of her own cards, sweeping their replacements up with her agile hands as Kurtz dealt. "But then again, I'm usually the one drawing the bead, not the poor sap about to get her head blown off."

"You mean, the sensation of someone staring at you like they wanna kill you?" Jerome, the fourth member of their little special squad, asked, trying to hide his sense of incredulity at sitting around a fold out coffee table, in the middle of a front line base, out in the open under the sky, playing five card draw poker with his comrades and superiors. He glanced uneasily at his helmet, sitting on the ground by his chair, his armor seals deactivated for ventilation purposes as he took deep breaths of the curiously rich New Eden air. "The Blues have been giving us the evil eye ever since we set up the table." He shrugged, the feeling of unfriendly, envious eyes on his back making his shoulders itch something fierce. He was referring to the other USN troops, in their vaguely blue tinted armor, who, unlike the four Stormhounds, did not have a ready supply of anti-Green EDEN "red pills" to ingest and were forced to stay buttoned up inside their sealed armor any time they left a building.

"Not our fault their superiors are a bunch of cheapskates. They could make enough red pills for them too if they wanted." Kurtz shrugged, looking at Alkire's two raised fingers and dealing the Colonel two replacement cards. Kurtz was sitting on three sevens himself, so he was feeling pretty good, though his own two replacement cards came up with nothing helpful, a deuce and an eight. "See, this is why I'm glad I got tapped to be in the Stormhounds. Our superiors actually give a damn about what we have to say and how we feel. Gives me the queasies, thinking that one of those blue lobster shells could have me running around inside it, if not for good luck and good skills on my part." Kurtz turned to regard Jerome. "Okay, your bet, Carome."

"Uhhh..." Jerome looked at his cards, a pair of Jacks. "Put me down for fifteen."

"Lightweight." Raine heckled him. "See it, and raise a hundred twenty." She added as her own bet.

"One hundred twenty?" Alkire asked, aghast at the steep bet. Raine's poker face gave away nothing, she just gazed at him placidly. Alkire stared down at his cards once more, trying to puzzle out a response. They weren't playing for money, as gambling on duty was against even Orb's relatively permissive military regulations, but for something potentially more valuable instead. Minutes of time from their vacation time. Carome had bet fifteen minutes, barely enough time to jerk off or take a nap, but Raine had trumped that with two whole goddamn hours of sweet relaxation, and Alkire wasn't sure if he was feeling that lucky. Of course, it would be just like Raine to try and mind fuck the rest of them into thinking she had great cards, she was a sniper after all, that's the sort of shit they lived and breathed. "I'll... see." Alkire said at last with a heavy sigh. And then he shot a hard smile at his beloved. "See and raise you sixty, that is." Alkire fondly imagined he saw Raine twitch a bit at that counterpunch.

"One hundred ninety five to me." Kurtz said dismally, looking at his three of a kind, which suddenly didn't seem so hot anymore. It wasn't like they didn't all have dozens of hours of time off saved up anyway, but still, that was more than three free hours of peace and quiet, the most precious commodity on any front line posting. The smart thing to do would be folding, but goddamn it, both the Colonels were legendary for their mind fucking skills, and Kurtz knew that once they had him pegged as a shy sally, they'd mercilessly exploit it. "Fuck it. I call."

"I'm out." Jerome threw in his cards, carefully face down, though he was fairly sure everyone knew he had shit cards. He caught the edge of a glare from a group of Blue privates hauling some boxes of parts towards the motor pool and shrugged it off, wondering if he dared pop open a cold soda, or if that might constitute taunting?

"I call as well." Raine said, glancing up and past Alkire's head, ignoring the smirking eyes of her husband as movement caught her eye. Raine frowned and adjusted her position in her camp chair. She looked back at Alkire and smiled, ever so slightly. "Show em, Robert."

"Read em and weep girls." Alkire said triumphantly, laying out five hearts. "Flush."

"Fuck..." Kurtz tossed his cards into the middle of the table with a petulant flip of his hand. "Alms for the poor, Colonel?"

"You're begging the wrong Colonel, Conrad, that's gonna cost you sucking up points." Raine halted Alkire's victory smile as she flipped over her own cards, slowly revealing a full house, tens over aces. The three male Stormhounds stared unhappily at the winning hand, Raine's ninth since they'd started playing about thirty minutes ago. She was up almost twelve goddamn hours of free time.

"If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were cheating." Kurtz accused, half heartedly.

"You know me fine, its not my fault if you can't catch me cheating." Raine replied with a cold smirk. "Or that you can't cheat better yourself."

"She's joking, right?" Jerome asked, a bit desperately.

"Just another goddamn mindfuck, Carome. Trust me, I'd know if she was cheating." Alkire assured the man. "Because I'd be helping her, and as you can plainly see, we are not working together on this."

"You know what else is a mindfuck?" Raine asked, drawing questioning glances from the other three. Before any of them could even open their mouths to ask what was going on, Raine had snatched her rifle from where it leaned up against the side of her chair, snugged it to her shoulder and placed a shot so close to Alkire's ear that the skin turned a bit pink from the near miss. Alkire instinctively flinched away from the shot, his mouth open to shout angrily at his wife, but then he saw the cold look in her eyes and the way she fired two more shots before kicking the table up onto its side, throwing their cards flying wildly as she ducked down into cover behind the portable furniture, which included armor plates beneath its surface for just such a purpose. Alkire hit the dirt, literally, and rolled, scrambling for his helmet with one hand and his sidearm with the other, as Conrad and Carome likewise dived for the scant cover available.

And none too soon, as a few linear rounds, along with stranger ammunition that looked like bone shurikens or spikes, slammed into the armored table, blowing away small sections and denting the armor plate significantly. At first Alkire couldn't see where the hostiles were, but after narrowing his eyes almost to the point of inducing tears, Alkire managed to pick out a splash of blood against one nearby barracks wall, and a group of suspicious looking characters nearby. They kept on shifting their coloration and outline, becoming Blues in armor shells, and then maintenance personnel, and then pilots in flight suits, and then Blues again, and Alkire belatedly realized they were actually Eddies, Eddies using some sort of psychic screening or trick to make themselves blend into the background. How the hell Raine had managed to see through the deception, he didn't know, but he intended to find out! Shortly after they took care of the Eddies shooting at them of course!

Their little firefight hadn't gone unnoticed by the Blues either, since they were right in the middle of the fucking base, where firefights were not supposed to occur, and the Blues inexperience showed painfully clear as they mostly stood around pointing or else running aimlessly away or towards the sound of the firing, depending on the strength of their personal courage. A few had their heads screwed on straight, and they pressed themselves into cover and began using blurts from their Cutlasses to further supress the people Raine and the Stormhounds were firing at. Seconds later the scramble alarms began blaring, only adding to the confusion, and the comm nets came alive with conflicting reports detailing the firefight inside the base, and contact with a significant force of Eddie armor and Mobile Suits at the main gate. Firing several times with his pistol, just trying to make the Eddies duck, Alkire scrunched his helmet onto his head and began sealing his armor. The other Stormhounds were doing likewise, taking advantage of the Blue support to get themselves better situated, switching from sidearms to main arms for instance.

"How'd you know?" Alkire asked, panting, as he cradled the portable beam rifle he'd equipped himself with. It was a lot heavier and bulkier than the energy weapons the Eddies used, but at the end of the day a beam bolt was still a beam bolt, and he was glad for the firepower.

"They weren't glaring at us, for one. And they kept, I dunno, changing coloration or something." Raine explained breathlessly. "They were doing too good of a job blending in, I guess. It felt wrong. Your comment about the sniper eyes was what set me off initially, I'd thought I was just being paranoid. I couldn't focus on em, even when I tried, and that NEVER happens to me, not at that range. And the girls used to try and pull a similar trick when they snuck out at night to see Yzak, way back when."

"They did what? I don't recall that..." Alkire grumbled.

"Obviously some of us are easier to distract and confuse than others." Raine replied loftily, peering around one edge of the table and making another headshot against an Eddie carrying some sort of cross between a crossbow and a blowgun, which had been shooting the bone spikes. Obviously a stealth weapon of some sort, next to no noise and no muzzle flare. Probably totally organic too, to avoid setting off standard weapon detectors. Interesting, maybe she would have to take a trophy for her collection. "Ware front, they're charging!"

"Ware sides, they must have flankers in position!" Alkire added a second later, popping up beside Raine to cover the frontal arcs as Carome and Conrad went back to back with them, covering other lines of approach with auto-shotgun and grenade launcher, respectively. A group of Blues tried to make their way across the parade ground towards the Stormhounds, though with the intent to join or extract was never clear, as the Blues came under fire from behind as another nondescript group of shifting outlines detached from a building near the motor pool and suddenly became a gaggle of screaming Eddies, their armor draped with long cloaks of shimmery lizard skin that seemed to shift color slowly, festooned with branches and daubs of mud and leaves as additional camouflage. They bore mostly melee weapons and sidearms, with a few of the crossbow weapons, fitting a lightly armed infiltration force, and their helms were carved in the visages of befanged lizards, perhaps dinosaurs.

A high explosive grenade from Conrad landed in the midst of the flanking group, sending bodies and bits of bodies carthwheeling through the air, but not before the squad of Blues was cut down like wheat in a field. Combat helicopters and Solar Knight Vindicators screamed by overhead, responding to the Eddies at the front gates, but Alkire didn't have time to worry about that now, with a half dozen screaming Eddies waving goddamn swords and axes of all things, bearing down on his all too exposed position. Alkire felt strange forces at play all around him, invisible hands scratching at his body, his eyes trying to unfocus as his tongue tried to flop backwards and block his throat. "Not my first rodeo, you bastards." Alkire snarled angrily, shaking off the psychic influences as the annoyances they were and putting an Eddie down with a flaming black hole where his stomach had used to be. The whirr of rapidfire from behind him bespoke Carome opening up with the Mauler varient he carried, spelling messy death for any Eddies in his fire arc.

Raine picked off four of the five remaining Eddies to the front with four consecutive shots in less than two seconds, all head or neck hits that blew away entire skulls like they were made of thin plaster. The lone remaining Eddie staggered, machete dropping from his hand, pistol slack in the other as he fell to his knees, clutching his head and screaming, not in anger or battle fury, but in grief and loss and crippling sorrow, the rapid loss of his entire Manifold inflicting brutal psychic trauma upon him. Raine's fifth shot ended his misery, as Alkire turned to support Carome and Conrad, only to find that the Blues had finall gotten organized and there was little work to be done. The Eddie raiders had been lightly armed and armored, and caught in the open, away from whatever their objectives were, and had been slaughtered by the massed firepower of the Blues and the Stormhounds before they'd even managed to halfway close the gaps between them. Alkire definitely had the feeling of "plan gone FUBAR" from the results of the fight.

A Stormhound's work was rarely done though, and Alkire tuned into the comms coming from the situation at the gate, discerning that the Eddies had charged in, caused some havoc and were now retreating at a good clip, straight back the way they'd come, while the Blue's were putting together a pursuit unit of Vindicators, APC's and the faster tanks, plus air support in the way of several helicopters, to hunt down and destroy the fleeing Eddies. Right away Alkire registered it as a bait and switch, the only question being where the ambush was emplaced. However, he had no authority over the Blues, so he was forced to sit by, on hold with the base commander's aide, while the Blues rushed out after the easy targets. Hanging up on the aide, Alkire contacted the Orb unit that had come to the base along with the Stormhounds, and was gratified to find his advice taken as the word of god practically, and the Orb Dawndrakes and Guardians refrained from charging blindly after the wiley foe. Likewise, the two Panzerwulfs and one Panzerdragoon that FEAR had recently allocated to the base, in preparation for the pushing out to the second planned perimeter, remained behind, being too slow and bulky to catch the fleeing Eddies in the forest. The PanDrag actually stayed entirely within its purpose built hanger, sunk deep into the ground so as to not betray its presence with its massive size, and Alkire wondered if the Eddie commander was truly aware of the strength still remaining in the base.

With the immediate infantry threat handled, the Stormhounds paused only to find the all important score card, before double timing it back to the section of warehouses and hangers that had been set aside for Orb's use, including the sealed hanger housing the four PUMA-1 Hellhounds that they'd brought along. Stowing their long arms and other bulky gear in special compartments built into the legs and backs of the Hellhound units, the Stormhounds quickly climbed into their still top secret war machines and began powering them up and readying for battle. In the five minutes or so that took, Alkire stayed tapped into the command comm channels of the base, listening as the Blue pursuit forces chased after the elusive Eddies, like an ass with a ring through its nose. He wished there were more of those TAC or TAN or whatever guys, but the TAS Center only had a roster of seven operators, with three working twelve hour shifts while three more rested, and the last was out for repairs or tune ups or whatever the half cyborgs needed. That program needed to be expanded, and fast, but the surgical operations, much less the mental training interfacing directly with an AI required, were slowing down the implementation of a wider TIAMAT program.

And even then, there were only one or two TAC's, one being the already nigh legendary Birdman who had orchestrated the victory at Gibraltar, that Alkire would personally even slightly trust to give him advice on a ground level situation, but he did have to admit they did wonders for the ponderous and largely inexperienced Blues, who hadn't been trained well enough to appreciate the loss of personal effectiveness and life expectancy following orders from a cyborg in the sky resulted in. But the TAS center was focusing its efforts in the African theatre in preparation for the coming push against Victoria Spaceport, and so they were berefit of the friendly god eye in the sky here in northern China. No skin off Alkire's back, but the Blues were already suffering from the lack of a clear overall picture of the situation. By god, they'd learn to deal with only having partial battlefield information, but the curve was steep, and the path paved with blood and bodies. Alkire shook off his contemplation of the Blue's shortcomings and idiocy in launching a war when they had so few experienced commanders.

He was fairly sure he'd figured out the enemy plan, to draw out a significant portion of the Blue's strength in vain pursuit of their nimble vehicles and Mobile Suits, and then either ambush the force in the woods, or more likely, rely upon the infiltrators to disrupt the base command structure and defenses long enough for infantry forces to cross the open ground and storm the base and take over the defensive positions. The pursuit force would come back to find themselves with no where to turn for safety. All very nice and neat, the sort of plan that made a commander famous when it went right. But the infiltrators were already dead, and Alkire doubted the Eddie's knew how much strength still remained in the base. That PanDrag was going to totally ruin some dude's day the moment it stepped out of the hanger. And the PUMA units were just small enough to be able to stand on the wall with the Blue infantry, adding their heavy firepower to those parts of the rampart that had been previously damaged during the initial Eddie charge maneuver. He settled in to wait, eyeing the treeline suspiciously, knowing the enemy was out there, maybe even within sight, if not for the damn psychic buttfuckery!

xxxx

When the USN pursuit unit finally lost track of the Edenite vehicles and Mobile Suits, they realized how exposed they had become, overextending themselves from the concentrated firepower of the base, and they were quick to change direction and retreat even though there was no sign of any nearby enemies besides the fleeing Eddies they had been chasing. The lead units of the pursuit units, the combat helicopters, were just beginning to relax as the brightly lit base appeared ahead, framed tunnel like by the trees that grew profusely by the side of the road, the trunks as tall or taller than a Mobile Suit and as thick as a main battle tank was long! And that was when the bright lances of red-blue superheated plasma came spearing out of the undergrowth from concealed Eddie heavy weapon positions, blowing the flight of helicopters to burning scrap before they could even think of dodging. The bright green bolts of regular beam guns joined the thicker blasts from the hyper-impulse cannons, forming a criss crossing light show that completely blocked the road before the returing pursuit force.

A few tanks tried to trust their armor and bull through, only to find themselves with blown off tracks or holed engines before they got halfway through the kill zones and came to screeching halts before being turned to swiss cheese by concentrated fire. Missiles began arcing out of the darkness as well, striking further back down the column of APC's and tanks, the burning wrecks further clogging the road and making it almost impossible to maneuver. Transports dropped their assault ramps, disgorging squads of armored infantry, but in the confusion of the ambush, many were cut down only feet from their transport, or else ran into the woods piecemeal and disappeared, many after encountering the enemy, but some simply got lost and died natural deaths. Since half foot long direcat fangs in the back of your skull will, naturally, kill you.

The Solar Knights, having been bringing up the rear in case of counter attack by the fled Eddie armor and Mobile Suits, found themselves outside the ambush zone proper, but with no clear targets for their weapons to vaporize, the massive Yggdrasilwood trees easily absorbed even repeated hits from autocannons or beam rifles, protecting the emplaced Eddie infantry from the heavy weapons of the USN forces. The Vindicators began to push forward to take things into closer range, using swords and fists and feet to crush several hidden weapon emplacements, some unintentionally, before they were struck hard from behind by the very threat they had originally been guarding against, the returning Eddie armor and Mobile Suits. Already half entangled in the foliage, the Vindicators could not quickly retreat without trampling their own forces, and though some did make that hard choice, it availed them little against the rampaging Dervishes, their QC triple claws slashing and winking in the firelight of burning armor hulks as they decimated the pursuit force in a matter of minutes.

Shortly after the Dervishes hit the rear of the disorganized enemy, Vincent gave the command to make the rush to the walls of the base. He'd lost contact with the infiltrator Manifolds earlier, but with the rousing success against the hapless pursuit column, Vincent was confident that they had already destroyed most of the enemy's heavy strength, and he ordered a pair of Dervishes to move up to support the infantry attack to help draw away some of the firepower the infiltrators would have otherwise have occupied. Barely a quarter of the way across the open field surrounding the base, avoiding mines revealed by magnetic sensors in his helmet with casual grace, Vincent had the utmost displeasure of watching his picture perfect plan fall apart messily right in front of his eyes. The charging Cold Hunters came under heavy suppressive fire from the walls, led by four hulking mecha that were much bigger and more heavily armed than a regular soldier, but much smaller than a Mobile Suit, able to stand half in cover along the walltop just like regular soldiers.

Vincent dimly recalled the Praetorians making mention of some sort of bastardized mecha-suit appearing in Orb during the operation to disable Morganroete and retrieve that know it all Executor, but he hadn't lent the idea much credence. Until now, when he could plainly see them blowing the hell out of his precious troops, wielding weapons that belonged on light and medium tanks like they were rifles and pistols, more than making up for the turrets and defense emplacements his Mobile Suits had destroyed on their initial charge. Vincent sent thought imperatives to his Dervishes, highlighting the four mecha and demanding they be rendered to pieces, even as the Cold Hunter charge wavered and stalled, the Custodians being no fools, unlike Rhinobeast or Ironhide, they could tell when something was futile, and an organized withdrawal towards the tree line spontaneously began, without Vincent even needing to send a single thought. He allowed his momentum to fade and he began to retreat as well, vengefully raking the walltop with blasts from his double barreled beam carbine, snarling soundlessly in vindictive delight as he saw soldier after soldier go spinning backward with flaming holes through their faces or torsos.

His marksmanship did not go unnoticed, and Vincent was just switching targets once more when his world suddenly fragmented into chaos, sky and ground intermixing in random swirls and a great pain ripping through his body, as the heavy linear sniper round, fired from Raine's Hellhound, hit him dead center in the chest, tearing him in half and spreading his entrails across five square meters of ground. Raine smirked when she saw the officer go down hard. It was so pathetically easy to tell who the Eddie officers were, they were the ones sporting all the bling on their armor and weapons, and that made it child's play for a sniper like herself to find and execute them. There was a reason modern military uniforms were the same for officers and enlisted, because otherwise officers were simply too big and easy a target on the battlefield. A lesson the Eddies did not seem to believe in, no matter how many times they were painfully educated upon it. Then again, ZAFT was kinda the same way, with their color coded uniforms, so it wasn't just the Eddies that sucked.

The Stormhounds jumped back from the wall as the Dervishes closed in, glittering QC blades raised high, only to come up against a sudden countercharge of Orb M-7 and M-4's, Mobile Suits on both sides crashing to the ground with flaming holes drilled through them, or sliced from head to crotch by an unimaginably sharp blade. The Stormhounds returned to the fray almost at once, darting between the legs of the larger Orb Mobile Suits to fire harassing and disabling shots into the groins and legs of the Dervishes, forcing them to dance awkwardly backward before they lifted into the sky on their thrusters, desperate to disengage as the wall defences began to turn around to shoot them in the back. Unfortunately, clearing the level of the base buildings put the Dervishes squarely in the sights of the Panzerwulf's and Panzerdragoon, and three were smashed from the sky in fingernail sized pieces by brilliant purple-white lightning from Mjolnir cannons and the eye searing blue-red blast of a positron cannon. The Panzerdragoon took a step forward, its incredible mass making the ground tremble for a hundred meters in every direction as it moved its towering bulk to stare over the outer wall, which barely even came up to its waist.

The Panzerdragoon braced its legs, deploying external stabilizers as it activated its twin Ragnarok mega-Mjolnirs, the 40cm gatling high energy beam cannons to either side of the Ragnaroks spinning up as well, before hosing down the treeline with endless streams of dark green energy bolts, over ten bolts per second from each gatling cannon, lighting up the early night sky with strobes of eerie green luminescence. Purple-white lightning crackled around the muzzles of the Ragnaroks as their charge built up, and the remnants of Legio Cold Hunter realized, in abject terror, that there was no way they could outdistance the coming attack, especially not pinned down behind heavy cover by the beam blasts as they currently were. The extinction of another Custodian Legio seemed all but inevitable, even as the remaining Dervishes, five in number, made a desperate attempt at intervention, diving towards the monstrous Panzerdragoon from above, but their linear rifle rounds merely clanged ineffectually from the thick ablative armor, and they could not close the distance fast enough to bring their QC blades into play.

The power of a thousand thunderstorms gathered inside the capacitors of the Ragnaroks, demanding release, as the Extended pilot smiled beautifically, cheered on by her two brothers in the Panzerwulfs that had taken up honor guard positions at her sides. Her hand never managed to tighten around the trigger though, her eyes jerking towards a sudden motion from the depths of the forest off to the side away from where she had the Eddies pinned down, her NIC equipped machine mirroring her instinctive reaction, partially turning her torso towards the motion, just in time for her to perceive the flash of moonlight on crystal as a large bladed pole came spinning out of the empty night! She just barely had time to identify the hurled weapon as some form of scythe when it slammed into the chest of her Panzerdragoon, the QC blade slicing through her abalative armor like it was mist, before slicing into her physical body, hitting about an inch and a half to the left of center and slicing her in half lengthwise. The Panzerdragoon rocked back on its heels as its control signal cut out suddenly, the scythe embedded in its front as if it had suddenly grown out of thin air. And then gravity won out and the Panzerdragoon toppled backwards with an enormous crash that half collapsed the wall for fifty meters in both directions, and crushed half a hundred Blues that were unable to dodge the falling metal mountain!

There was a moment of stunned incomprehension from both sides, the Edenites having no backup expected, and the USN expecting no backup to arrive, on the cusp of victory. All eyes turned towards the direction from which the flung scythe had come, and all eyes fixated upon the appalling eidolon that stepped from concealment in the trees, casually ignoring the antipersonnel and light anti-vehicle mines that exploded beneath its feet. Its skin was the grey shade of a whetted blade, mottled with stringers of crimson like blood spatter on a scapel, its head was horned and elongated like a hellish beast, its eyes a mere black slash in the visor of its helm. Knife edged wings spread eagerly behind its back, twitching like the fingers of an addict in need of a fix. Its right arm was normally proportioned, but its left was a hugely swollen gauntlet tipped with five massive sword-claws that snapped into place along tracks embedded in its digits. Its upper arms crawled with slowy writhing metallic tentacles, like a nest of restive serpents. The entire construct radiated a sense of malovence and bloodlust that even the nonpsychic could feel as a lump in the back of the throat and a looseness in the bowels.

"Well?" The devilish voice of the pilot demanded across an open channel and on external speakers. "Weren't you in the process of killing each other? Don't stop on my account."

"Is that..." Raine said in a very strangled voice.

"Yes." Alkire said through clenched teeth, picking his Hellhound up from where he'd been half knocked, half thrown by the concussion impact of the fallen Panzerdragoon. "That's Frost all right. The unquiet dead. If you want to live, don't you dare take a potshot at him." Alkire said that last on a open-USN channel. "All forces assume a defensive formation NOW! NOW, if you value your lives, NOW!"

"Its just one Mobile Suit!" One of the Panzerwulf pilots declared, enraged over the loss of his sister. "And he threw away his weapon! He killed Sonia, I won't let him get away with it!" The Extended declared, raising his cerberus combi weapon and unleashing the twined 350mm hyper-impulse cannons. Which struck the Kratos dead center in the chest, and splashed like water against a brick wall, unable to find purchase against the LCR armor.

The Kratos raised its right hand and shook a finger back and forther admonishingly. "Ah ah ah ahhh..." Frost scolded the stunned Extended maliciously. The next moment, the Kratos had crossed almost five hundred meters of open ground and cleared the wall, the sonic boom of its sudden movement scattering infantry like chaff and even knocking the Hellhounds down onto hands and knees. The Panzerwulfs and Orb Mobile Suits were also staggered, as much from shock as anything, most of the pilots having completely lost track of the Kratos when it shifted position, and it took several seconds for them to realize it was actually standing BEHIND some of them now! Towering head and shoulders over the Panzerwulf, many only now realizing just how truly huge the Gundam was, the Kratos lashed out with its left hand, a blur of scything sword-claws that glowed from the outside in as they cut through the starlight. And the Panzerwulf too, the pilot sliced into mincemeat before he even realized he'd been struck, the Panzerwulf falling apart like a hard boiled egg at a salad bar.

"How... what the... HOLY SHI... Hameya preserve us... monster..." The comm was suddenly alive with the exclamations of the overwhelmed Orb pilots as they got their first hand taste of what it meant to truly find yourself hopelessly outclassed. The Kratos looked over its shoulder, its demonic mask seeming to sneer at the quailing hearts of the nearby pilots. The Gundam turned, slowly and purposefully, and still several pilots flinched backward reflexively. The Kratos took a step forward. The Orb machines took a step back, almost in unison, before they remembered their pride and got some steel back in their spines. Tales of Zacharis Frost had been circulating throughout Orb's Mobile Suit core ever since Yzak's had made the case of Frost's importance to the USN leaders, courtesy of Dearka and Miriallia's unofficial "fearmongering" campaign, and the evidence they had already just seen with their own eyes, if anything, made the rumors seem misleadingly underexaggerated. The Kratos took another step forward, this time the Orb M-7's and M-4's held their ground, but none dared open fire, knowing that to draw the attention of the Kratos was to draw the attention of instantaneous death, the memento mori.

The Kratos stalked right through the middle of the Orb Mobile Suit formation, its shoulder actually brushing against the wings of one M-7, force of contact nudging the smaller Orb machine away like a nerd jostled by a football player in the hallway. The Kratos looked neither left nor right as it marched past the Orb machines, ignoring them like they were little more than ornamental statuary, while the Orb pilots could do little but grip their controls in white knuckled fists and pray for strength from Hameya that seemed long in coming. It was no mental force that held them inactive, only sheer terror and the dread reputation of the man inside the Gundam in their midst. The last remaining Panzerwulf stood between the Kratos and its goal, the downed Panzerdragoon and the scythe embedded in its chest. The last Extended had discarded his cerberus weapon and drawn instead the twelve meter beam sword he carried as a melee weapon, the beam edge deactivated, leaving him essentially with just a twelve meter long physical sword.

The Kratos continued to advance, its stride measured and unhurried, closer and closer and closer, the aghast Orbites clustered around with weapons trained but fingers frozen before the trigger, many a flight suit working to absorb a sudden stain in the crotch region, the lone Panzerwulf standing in its path, the sword trembling in its grip. Unable to bear the tension no longer, the Kratos all but bumping chests with him and showing no intention of stopping, the Extended screamed and drove his sword forward, aiming for the guts of the Kratos with all the weight of the Panzerwulf behind it. The Kratos sidestepped the point blank thrust with contemptuous grace, and reached out gently with its right hand to brace the Panzerwulf as it overbalanced and almost stumbled forward. The Kratos shoved the Panzerwulf back fully upright. "You call that an attack?" Frost mocked. "Try again, and put some FEELING into it this time."

Enraged and terrified, the Extended drew back his sword and made a slashing attack this time, only to have his arm caught in midmotion and halted easily by the Krato's right arm. A flickering graze of motion later and the Panzerwulf's sword hand fell neatly off its wrist, snipped away by a snap of the Kratos's left wrist. "Waaaay too telegraphed." Frost admonished. "My thrice dead grandmother could have seen that one coming! You're hopeless." Even as he said the second word, Frost stabbed forward with a single sword claw and impaled the cockpit of the Panzerwulf... after piercing through the interposed shield first. He shook the Panzerwulf off his claw like a man wiping something distasteful from his fingertips, and reached over past the toppled Panzerwulf to retrieve his scythe from the fallen Panzerdragoon. "The blade is rusty hereabouts." Frost turned back towards the Orb machines, sword claws on one fist, scythe held in the other.

And then the Kratos was in among them, like a slideshow image projected forward at x64 speed and several slides missing, the beam spiked tentacles uncoiled from around its shoulders, the claw slicing and gashing to one one side, the scythe cleaving and dismembering to the other, and the unholy sound of Frost's laughter filled the air, an M-4 entwined by tentacles was hurled through the air like a half crushed beer can, a different M-4 was impaled by several more of the prehensile apendages, hanging limp as they thrashed around like maggots inside its body before ripping the machine apart a second later. A handful of seconds later the fight was over, not that it had ever been a fight, not a single Orb machine had even managed to fire a weapon, most hadn't even managed to scream, and a pall of disbelieving terror and spread among the awestruck USN soldiers manning the walls. Never had they seen or even imagined such a one sided battle involving some of Orb's best pilots and mass production machines. And then they realized, with the Orb Mobile Suits down, and the Stormhound PUMA's suddenly absent, having retreated just before the Kratos shredded the Orb machines, that there was only one type of target remaining for the Kratos to kill. The base defenders. A low moan shivered along the comm lines as the realization sank in. After that, there was only screaming.

xxxx

The shattered remnants of Legio Cold Hunter gathered in small groups along the forests edge, tending to their wounded and salvaging what they could from the dead. The discovery of Strategos Vincent's shredded corpse had dealt a staggering blow to the already dismal morale of a formerly elitist Legio that had just been handed its own ass but a bunch of inferior Shirks! The huddled Custodians talked amongst themselves in low voices, or stared at the ground, or held each other tightly as they sobbed over the loss of treasured comrades and intimate partners. What they did not, universally, do, was look towards the Shirk base, the towering flames of the burning structures providing near daylight levels of illumination even at several hundred meters distance. It had been almost an hour since the arrival of the unknown Gundam that had attacked the USN, who had been on the verge of utterly annihilating Legio Cold Hunter.

In that time, rather within the first ten minutes of that time, the lone Gundam had single handedly inflicted more damage upon the USN than the entirety of Legio Cold Hunter had in the entire course of the war. Not one building was left standing, not one soldier left living as the Kratos rampaged through the base with the thorough obsession for detail only the truly mad can attain. It took him an hour to completely purge a base that had formerly supported almost five thousand lives. Singlehandedly. Gleefully. Without using ranged weapons even once. His excitement was easily palpable to the Edenites huddled at the forests edge, they had to turn their heads and draw up their shields to avoid retching from the psychic stench of malevolence and evil. And then, they realized that there was nothing left inside the base to destroy. One moment they were all doing their best to pretend the base did not even exist, the next, all eyes were fixated on the apparaition standing in the middle of the sundered main gate. The Kratos, backlit by the fiery plumes of its mirthful devastation, scythe in one hand, bladed claws on the other hanging down almost far enough to scrape the ground, tentacles waving like medusa's snakes before settling around the shoulders and upper arms.

The Kratos took a purposeful step forward, the right hand changing its grip slightly as the left hand disengaged the sword claws and the machine took up a two handed grip upon its scythe, cocking the weapon back up over its head and across its shoulders as the Kratos took another purposeful step towards the cluster of Dervishes and haggard Cold Hunters. It was the measured walk of an executioner come to deliver judgement upon the unworthy. No doubt it would have resulted in a massacre to rival the initial moments of the Kratos's intervention against the USN forces, had not one of the Dervish pilots stepped forward, arms wide and weapons disengaged to show peaceful intentions. "Hail to you, mighty warrior." The Dervish pilot said humbly, dropping his machine down into a kneeling, bowing position. "We of Legio Cold Hunter owe you our lives, and you will find us most grateful for your timely intervention."

"Your gratitude sickens me." Frost replied, the scythe flashing down to bisect the kneeling Dervish in an instant, a splash of crimson blood smearing along the scythe blade like a single teardrop. "I did not intervene in order to save your lives. I did it to test the mettle of the blade, and I found it, as I find you, wanting in the extreme."

"Regardless of your reasons, our lives were saved and we are grateful." Another Dervish pilot, divining the intent of his fellow, and sharing the thought amonsgt the others, said respectfully, bringing his machine down to one knee as well, followed by the other three remaining Dervishes, and then the infantry as well. "To raise a hand to someone to whom you owe your life would be the ultimate sin. If you wish to slay us in our disgrace, that is your perogative." The pilot paused and licked his lips, seeing the scythe raise up above him. "But if you must kill us, could we at least ask you to return our remains to our families? Your power is incredible, beyond anything I had ever dreamed existed, surely you must be from one of the other city states, yes? I always thought Borealis was holding something back..."

"I come from the abyss, and bring it with me." Frost said, slowly lowering his scythe, unwilling to sully it with those who refused to even look him in the eye, much less fight back. His left palm itched, and he smiled coldly. Yes, the AMP cannon would be just the sort of disgraceful end that these pathetic weaklings deserved! Let them be annihilated, reduced to less than dust! "I owe you nothing, and your families less. Indeed, if they birthed weaklings such as you, I owe them only a painful death at my hands."

"Yes, we are weak!" Another Dervish spoke up, his voice unsteady with tears of fear. "But we can get stronger! You could teach us..."

He was cut off by Frost's laughter, the sheer humor of such a thing overwhelming his slightly grumpy mood for the time being. "That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in many years." Frost admitted after his mirth died down. "Whoever said that may live, the world needs someone with a taste for the absurd. The rest of you will die... now."

"Is there nothing we could do that would get you to reconsider?" The pilot that had thought Frost was from Borealis asked, bold with fatalistic realization. "No way for our deaths to have meaning? Our leaders back at Garden City are not weak like we are, they would be very interested in speaking with you. I beg you, sir, please, we could use your strength, your incredible power! We could save millions of lives if you would throw in your lot with us!"

"Begging denied. I have no need of allies." Frost replied contemptuously. "I am the whetstone of humanity, he who sharpens the blade of humanity's soul with endless conflict! I am singular, unique. To join with others could only lead to diminishment. Now shut up or start screaming, I'm bored of talking with weaklings who won't even lift a finger to defend themselves!" Frost took his left hand from the scythe, the port in the palm irising open as a sullen white glow began to build within the depths of the gauntlet as the anti-lithium charge built up. "You want a meaningful death? Fight me then, and I will determine the meaning of your final moments!"

"We don't stand a chance against you." One of the other Dervish pilots commented in near resignation. "You would destroy us in moments."

"So give up then, it makes no difference to me. Death stares you in the face, and taps you on the shoulder. Its your choice how you respond." Frost sneered. A moment later he was forced to take a step backwards as the foremost Dervish leapt up, QC claws sliding into attack position as it stabbed for his chest with a wild scream from the pilot. The next second saw the scythe sweep around and cut the Mobile Suit in half, but the sudden burst of emotions from the pilot had galvanized his comrades, and, en masse, the remaining Dervish's and infantry forces attacked the Kratos, screaming with fear but pushing forward all the same, waving swords and axes and shooting pistols and hand held rifles, shrieking in the face of death as they charged headlong into oblivion. There was no contest, but then, no one had expected one, and it was better to die on your feet with your head held high than to cower in the dirt and wait for the pain to start.

Some minutes later, the hatch of the Kratos's cockpit opened, and Frost descended to the ground in the grip of powerful magnetic fields that gripped the metallic salts within his bloodstream, holding him as snug as he would have been in a six point crash harness, an additional function of the GRS mk III system that kept him safe from the incredible acceleration and deccelerations of his Gundam in combat. The ground around the Kratos's feet was sodden with blood and pulped body parts, but the gruesome scenery didn't bother Frost in the slightest. He crouched down over one partially intact body and gazed into the dead face for a long few seconds. The corpse's mouth was open in a shout, the eyes staring wildly, but though damaged, the face was still legible enough as an expression of determination, rather than one of defeat. This man had died doing something he believed in. Even running headlong into the crucible of certain doom, he had conquered his fear with the power of determination, the knowledge that even if he couldn't see it, his death might have meaning, great meaning.

Frost rose from his crouch, his face half twisted in a sneer. "I guess it beats flying around randomly, waiting for Scarface and the others to grow a pair of balls. Maybe they aren't all quite as hopeless as I thought." Frost considered for a moment, before kicking the ground in frustration. "Damn it, I don't even know where their home city is!" His frustration was answered a moment later by a groan from nearby. "Aha!" Frost declared, his eyes lighting up. "A survivor. Just what the doctor ordered." He cocked his head to the side and giggled fiercely. a quick search through his pants pocket revealed an item he'd idly had the Kratos's self repair system assemble for him. A reasonable facimile of a storebought, five blade shaving razor. "Time to mark another item off the list." Frost remarked happily, swishing the hygiene instrument menacingly through the air. "Hello? Where are yooouu? Don't worry, I'm here to shave you..." Frost trailed off in hysterical giggles as he cavorted through the fields towards his map. "Shave you... I crack myself up..."


	30. Flawless Weapons

Author Note: Controversy, controversy, I almost wish I'd put up a "Should Frost and Kira work together" topic on the forums. All I can say people, is trust me here. I've been planning the events soon to come for a long time. Things are seldom quite as cut and dried as they seem, and both sides of that particular arguement make salient points. Too bad there's a third side to things that I'm almost shocked no one has seemed to consider, though perhaps in retrospect, given the principals involved, maybe making such a connection isn't as easy as it might otherwise be. Either that or you are politely smothering the surprise for when I reveal it, in which case, thank you. Plot twists are more fun when the majority don't see them coming way down the line. Eh, all should become a bit clearer by the end of this chapter.

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Second Earth Colony 4, FEAR Headquarters, November 24th**

"Very well, Oktar, you have my attention, for the time being." Natalia said thinly, fighting the urge to drum her fingernails impatiently against the sturdy, bare metal of the conference table. Like many similar rooms in FEAR's main research and experimentation center, it was totally lacking in ostentation, just cold steel with a faintly reflective polish, the room around it just as spartan. The sole feature of note was a large shuttered viewing window set into one wall, the only hint that this room was just a small annex to a much larger space that it looked out onto, the armored shutters on the thick plexiglass were currently closed, blocking off any view of the spaces beyond. It was drawing close to the time for quarterly progress reviews, and so Natalia was once more faced with the often onerous duty of recapping what her subordinates had accomplished in their respective areas of expertise in the past three months, and judging whether that progress was worthy of continued extra funding.

With the recent embarassment of Sammual's ICMS Augmented program, Natalia was hungry for something, anything that she could show to Durandel to prove that FEAR wasn't a bunch of incompetent, funding sucking boobs, and so she had turned to Sammual's rival, Dr. Oktar Magnus. Formerly a biologist of no small fame, Oktar had truly made his name during the crisis of the Eden Disaster, when he was one of the first experts called in to diagnose the effects of the nanites on living organisms. The staggering possibilities for expanding the field of evolutionary biology had at first depressed Oktar, making him question the value of a life spent pursuing the academia only to have all his knowledge and expertise rendered meaningless in an instant by the science project of a kid thirty years his junior! But the depression couldn't keep a good scientist down for long, and soon Oktar was making a name for himself once more, as a pioneer of EDEN related evolutionary and biologic engineering, which had eventually brought him to the attention of FEAR, and five years ago Oktar had accepted a contract to become director of bioengineering for the company, and never looked back once.

Unlike Sammual, that twisted old prune, Oktar hardly looked like the common conception of a scientist, mad or otherwise. Indeed, his looks had more in common with his viking ancestors than any academic, a huge mane of bristly red and white peppered hair, ruddy pink skin, a flowing beard and heavy mustache, he looked like he should be swinging an axe with one hand and quaffing mead from a drinking horn with the other, rather than holding a holo-stylus and a data pad and wearing a slightly rumpled sterile labcoat. His uncouth exterior concealed one of the most brilliant, if unrepentantly immoral, minds of the modern era. In attitude at least, Oktar certainly did his ancestors proud, no horizon was too far for him to envision leading an expedition to rape, burn and pillage whatever "land" lay beyond, for the sake of sheer curiosity, grinding it beneath his heel until he was the undisputed master of whatever caught his interest. Were he not so blinkered in his ambition to merely biological pursuits, Natalia might almost have found him an attractive man. But alas, just as Sammual was befuddled with anything other than his mechanical augmentations, Oktar could not see further than the bioengineering he so enjoyed. It was left to Natalia to combine the best aspects from both avenues of research.

Needless to say, Dr. Roanoke, formerly the sole shining star of FEAR's research and experimental technologies division, had not been pleased to have a rival via for attention from the director and more importantly, for funding! He was used to being to dip as deeply into the well as he desired, and ever since Oktar had arrived and jumpstarted his own division, Sammual's divison had been seeing an increasingly smaller portion of the funding with each passing quarter. Sammual was fighting it with all his might and cunning, but the simple fact that he was half washed up, past his prime, heading into the twilight of his life, while Oktar was comparatively young, creative, vital and energetic had yet to sink in to the elder scientist. If Natalia had needed any further proof of Sammual's encroaching decrepitude, the fiasco of the Augmented and then Sammual's pathetic plans for his prized Extended girl was more than enough to get her thinking about who she would tap to replace the defunct Roanoke, once there was enough free time, such as after the conclusion of this war of Durandel's.

Of course she kept such thoughts off her face, since it was healthy for Oktar to continue under the impression that she was carefully weighing his performance against Roanoke's. Rivalry among one's subordinates was useful not only for motivating them to better efforts, but so that they would spend their energy undermining each other, rather than trying to do the same to her. She watched him start to sweat, obviously nervous, or maybe just eager, it was difficult to tell with Oktar sometimes. His fingers fumbled with the controls of his data pad, but after a few brief curses that would have warmed the ears of a less world wise woman than herself, Oktar got his data aligned and transmitted to the room's computer display system. For obvious reasons of security, the USN's AI assistant, Namara, was not allowed access to FEAR, their building functioned on an entirely seperate mainframe and data network. Natalia made a show of looking at her timepiece, not bothering to feign her eagerness to get back down to Nifelheim and the early stages of her Paragon research, which was already showing some very promising trends.

"Ah, yes, of course, Madame Director, I have it now. Damned electronics..." Oktar smiled his santa claus-esque smile at her. "I give you Project Darwin, the future of warfare!" Reams of data began rolling across the holographic screens projected above the table. Natalia studied it, and could pick out about one phrase or term in every three, the rest so much arcane gibberish to her. Her knowledge of biology was confined to the human body and its component parts. Her growing impatience obviously registered on Oktar, and he hurried to explain his masterpiece to her. "Years of research and experimentation upon animals exposed to Green EDEN has revealed a number of evolutionary trends, such as a tendency towards atavism and gigantism, actually more like an evolutionary regression rather than a true advancement. Also revealed has been a widespread ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions in the matter of a single generation, sometimes even faster, and the development of psychic potential equalling or often exceeding that of humans."

"Occassionally, in accordance with a mechanism we still do not fully understand... it may well be random chance... an exceptional mutation will be conceived by otherwise unremarkable gene donors, and will survive to birth, despite often radical differences in physiology. We have dubbed these aberrations of nature "Chimera", after the mythological beast with the heads of a lion, goat and dragon, the body of a lion, dragon wings and a tail that was a viper. Like their mythological namesake, many Chimera are truly monsterous, with emnity towards all other forms of life and many display exceptional aptitude and motivation for causing havoc against all living things that approach them. Also, every Chimera yet encountered has shown psychic potential not merely greater than normal, but exponentially greater than normal animals of their base genus, leading me to suspect a correlation between psychic development and genetic mutation... its a very interesting self generating cycle..." Oktar trailed off, his eyes bright as he was consumed by exciting daydreams. Natalia coughed discreetly to get his attention back on track. If Sammual was dried up, then Oktar was sometimes too exuberant.

"Our war efforts against the psychic mutants are constantly hampered by the fact that our own soldiers, save for a very small minority of largely accidental freaks, such as the Extended, have no defense against psychics of above a certain power base, a level that the Eddies are easily able to exceed in small groups, or in the case of exceptional individuals, solo. And a Chimera has on more than one documented occasion completely decimated an entire company of soldiers with pure psychic might, I reference the case of the gigantic hoofed beast in the forests of old Germany that destroyed an entire mechanized infantry company, and the persistent reports of cargo ships passing through a certain part of the Mediterranean Sea that turn up drifting randomly, crews missing and no sign of use of lifeboats or emergency signals, for instance. Even the recent report of a gigantic scorpion monster in the North African desert may in fact be a Chimera, who is responsible for the deaths of almost thirty soldiers." Oktar rubbed his hands together eagerly, obviously less than distressed about the loss of the grunt infantry.

"In the absence of any reliable means of producing effective psychic immune soldiers, such as, ahem, the Augmented, I propose a different tactic." Oktar smirked at the mention of his rival's epic shortcoming. "Namely, fighting fire with fire. And in this case, that means bringing a plasma cutter up against a horde of torchbearing hoodlums. Thus we have the BALORs, Bio-Synthetic Augmented Lobotomized Organism Replicants... lab bred Chimera by any other name! By exposing selected animals to ever increasing doses of Green EDEN and other mutational stimuli, such as radiation and toxic environments, and then cloning those that produce viable results, my team and I have established a baseline generation of Edenite-equivalent animals, though these beasts are much changed and improved from their naturally occuring relatives. From this base stock, we breed and rebreed in search of certain desired traits, such as physical speed, toughness, adapatibility, psychic power and of course, size, using mutagens and other synthetic means to artifically expedite the breeding process, allowing us to fit hundreds of generations into only a few months of time." Oktar tuned his data pad, and the reams of data changed into schematic diagrams.

"The end result of these forced mutations and rapid breeding is providing a deep pool from which to spawn our own custom Chimera, refinements in our breeding and mutation inducement procedures have resulted in a yield of one Chimera for every two thousand normal births, a figure substantially higher than found in nature. At the moment we are proceeding forward with our three most promising candidate Chimera, while continuing to breed refinements and upgrades into subsequent generations based upon our most successful DNA patterns." Oktar pointed to the first schematic, which depicted a lizardlike beast that stood alternatively on two legs or four, with a long spiky tail and huge curving talons on its fore and hind limbs. Wicked looking horns curled from above its brows and along its nasal crest, and tis elongated jaw was filled with jagged looking teeth. The lean lines of the beast were disrupted by the bulky, mechanical outlines of a heavy gatling cannon array attached to oen shoulder, and large cannon barrels grafted to the bottom of its forelimbs, plus a great deal of circuitry embedded in the other shoulder. "This the Fenris Wolf, Close Combat/Assault varient BALOR, Generation One. Though we originally intended to create the BALOR based on a lupine lifeform, none proved suitable, and so we went with this archtypeal atavistic saurian, known as a Cold Hunter by the Eddies."

A scale suddenly appeared on the schematic, and Natalia could not help sucking in a short gasp, as the Fenris Wolf was revealed to be eighteen meters tall when standing on its hind legs, and weighing slightly more than one hundred tons... the monster was the size of a Mobile Suit! "In addition to its talons, teeth, horns and tail stinger, all impregnated with QC like biocrystalline structures for tensile strength and durability, the Fenris Wolf has a 350mm flak cannon grafted under each forearm, a thermal exciter in the left shoulder and a 120mm gatling beam cannon on the right shoulder. Also, the tail stinger has a poison sac that sprays or injects a toxic liquid that is acidic enough to melt even Ablative armor like taffy. It took some serious engineering to hollow out enough space inside the BALOR for the mechanical parts, such as the power reactor and cockpit cocoon, but we managed, though I am unhappy with the crudity of some of our work. Much as it pains me to say it, we could use Dr. Roanoke's cybernetic expertise on this project..." Oktar explained excitedly. Natalia brought him to a halt by half standing in her seat and pointing furiously at the floating schematic.

"Did you just say "Cockpit cocoon"?" Natalia demanded, aghast. "What in all the names of HELL is this abomination, Oktar? When you started talking about harnessing Chimera to fight fire with psychic fire, I thought we were talking about living siege weapons or guard dogs or whatever... this thing is practically a Gundam!"

"Exactly, Madame Director, EXACTLY!" Oktar declared proudly. "BALORs are the future of Gundams, bio-cybernetic battlefield titans that can slay with a thought, a swipe of claws or a concentrated volley of high energy plasma bolts with equal ease! A fusion of world class psychic entity with modern military armaments and defensive technology to create an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction under our complete command!" Oktar saw the skepticism in her eyes and he hurried on. "Recall the "Lobotomized" portion of the nomenclature, Director. I am not so crazy as to raise gigantic Chimera that were in full possession of their unholy intelligences and try to convert them into war machines! Once the BALOR subject reaches a certain age, generally around the point of time equating to puberty in a human, they are surgically lobotomized, their brains dissected and all the portions that pertain to the ability to think and reason independently are removed, leaving them functionally brain dead, vegetables in essence, though we leave alone those centers of the brain that control and focus psychic abilities of the Active variety... we have not yet localized what parts of the brain pertain to Latent functions."

"Because brain dead monsters are inherently unthreatening, but fully cognent monsters are as much a threat to us as they are the enemy, what was needed was a removable component that was loyal to our goals and would provide the needed intellectual focus and motivation for the psychic portions of the BALOR's brain. Thus we have the Meisters, specially trained and modified individuals who utilize a varient of the Neural Interface Control system to electrically link their brains with those of their BALORs. Our current Meisters were taken from among the ranks of the Extended, their tranquility destroyed through extensive mental reconditioning, which also blanked their previous personalities and allowed them to be reprogrammed into the perfect ciphers, who live and breathe unquestioning, unthinking loyalty to FEAR and the USN. There is some small feedback effect from the still living portions of the BALOR's brain, but the Meisters are specially conditioned to resist such low level effects." Oktar assured her. "Simulations and low level reflex trials are already showing data that confirms that the BALORs performance will equal or exceed even the top levels of skill displayed by other Gundam pilots of note."

"And how many of these abominations do you have?" Natalia asked, sitting down, her mind working as her own enthusiasm for the project started to ignite. It was groundbreaking stuff... no, it was Earthshattering, if they could deliver even a fraction of the performance Oktar promised they would be an enormous coup and status boost! With their primary loyalty to FEAR, she might even have the ace in the hole for her backup plan to stage a coup by force, especially if they could be mass produced!

"Our initial breeding population of over four thousand individuals of varied genotypes has resulted in three stable Chimeraforms, Fenris Wolf from Cold Hunter, Jormungandr from Basilisk and Gorgon from Ironhide, a subspecies of Oxiphant. We are currently growing breeders of these Chimeraforms, which we will further refine and enhance to produce the Second Generation of BALORs, though that will be some months in the future before they are grown enough to begin cybernetic augmentation and enhancement. We have three Meisters already trained and attuned, codenamed Lupine, Serpentine and Aurochs respectively. The first Gen BALORs should be ready for combat deployment before the end of the year, Madame Director. Assuming we have the funding, that is..." Oktar said leadingly.

"You have it. As much funding as you need, just clear it through my office first. Feel free to requistion any of Roanoke's expertise that you feel necessary to the further enhancement and refinement of your next generation creations. I like this idea, Oktar, I want you to run with it for as far as you can go." Natalia paused and looked consideringly at the armored shutters. "I don't suppose you have a demonstration planned?"

"A demonstration no, but a viewing yes." Oktar triggered the shutters, which began to retract. "Behold, the future of warfare, the flawless weapons with which we shall exterminate the psychic mutants who pollute our world! I give you the BALORs!" Oktar declared triumphantly, sweeping his arm around and pointing it into a vision of bio-cybernetic hell...

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Heartwood Council Chamber, November 24th**

"... and I'm telling you, once again, that regardless of the status of my Gundam , I'm just one person, I can't be everywhere in the world at once!" Kira half shouted, leaning forward in his seat along the lower level of the tier style bench-desks that served as pulpits for the senior politicians and leaders of Garden City to sit in while they had their governmental debates. Only about half the Consols seemed to deign to show up to any particular meeting in person, usually when something was being discussed that directly pertained to whatever area of responsibility they held, otherwise they kept general tabs on things via the Wind of Words, and even sometimes sent in votes psychically as well. To Kira, used to the fierce political brawling of Orb, where it would be potential political suicide to miss a single legislative meeting, no matter how trivial the topics under discussion, the casual way the Edenites handled their government was a bit disconcerting. "And given the cold shoulder I've been getting from the Custodians and Praetorians, the very people you apparently want me to lead, I'm not sure it matters where I deploy because obviously my advice or leadership isn't welcome!"

"There are issues of pride at stake." Ullric replied from his own pulpit, a few down from Kira, who was sitting beside the one person he felt was truly in his corner, Consol of Foreign Affairs Hieronymo. "We have generated our armed forces and their combat doctrines from the ground up over the past seven years, starting from nothing and building heavily upon the tenets of our own military experts, such as Heine and Haman, who were once professional soldiers, unlike you, Executor. We respect your skills as a pilot, but you have never been famous as a tactician or strategist."

"Damn your pride, is it worth losing lives just so you can hold your head up high?" Kira snapped back furiously. "And the only reason I never took part in strategy or tactical planning was because there were those around me that were far more qualified for the role, such as Athrun, Captain Ramius, or Colonel Kisaka, not because I don't know anything about military tactics! It should tell you something that I, who is NOT a professional soldier as you keep complaining, can still see the gaping flaws in your strategies! If you keep on thinking you can beat the USN merely because an Edenite generally speaking has higher physical and mental abilities than a non-Edenite, you will continue to suffer grievous losses such as Rhinobeast and now Cold Huner, two of your most famous and elite Legio's, wiped out by their own hubris! People are NOT defined by their abilities alone... I don't say that just because its a witty phrase! Experience is as important if not more important than raw ability, and the USN has far more experience than you!"

"I believe Kira makes a salient point." Hiero said firmly. "We have fought the war as we have taught ourselves to do so, and our results have been dismal, with only a few Legio's demonstrating repeated success, and only then against lightly defended secondary targets. Two of our most accomplished Legios have been annihilated because they either overestimated their own power, or underestimated the power of their opponents. Our numbers were small to begin with, at this rate our ranks will be more echoes than bodies before the end of the year! Clearly a change of strategy is called for. I am as much an Edenite as any of you, and I struggle with the dual sin of pride and arrogance as much as the next man, but we are not gods or even demi-gods. We are men and women, and we are fallible. We should accept that... no, embrace that, and put to use our truly greatest power... the ability to learn and adapt to harsh new circumstances!"

"As ever, Hiero speaks with more wisdom than any three of us combined." Kunai commented, from the demi-pulpit that was allocated to him, off in one corner of the room. "But while we can all intellectually acknowledge the truth of his sentiment, emotions are always more inflexible than reason would dictate, and we have encouraged individualism and personal accomplishment for so long, I fear the adaptation to a more communal minded battle mindset will be difficult."

"Difficult times call for difficult measures." Kira acknowledged, squinting at Kunai, trying to figure out if he was supporting him or trying to block him. "For a people that have survived the downfall of civiliation to one extent or another, and emerged as a stronger civilization in only seven years, I find it hard to believe that the prospect of abandoning a system that has proven to be fatally flawed and starting anew is so daunting."

"If you've got it all figured out..." Ullric started to say, before he was interrupted by the sound of Kira's palm smacking down on the living heartwood of Yggdrasil, shaped into a bar-like desk in front of him.

"THAT is exactly the sort of petulant immaturity that has so devalued my opinion of your so called elite military force!" Kira said venomously. "Someone speaks out against the accepted norm and immediately everyone starts acting like they've got a Partisan Fern down their underwear! God damn it all, Ullric, I'm not here to tell you how to do every aspect of your job, because I am simply not qualified to do so! But I am VERY qualified to tell you how to do certain things in a more efficient or practical manner. Stop trying to make it seem like I'm here to usurp control of your Legio's, because I am simply not! Nothing would please me LESS than being saddled with a leadership role like yours!" Sitting back down on his bench, Kira clenched his fist below the desk, to hide his agitation from the others.

He took a deep breath before going on. "Now this is my idea. Notice I said, "idea", not "command", not "dictation", nor even "advice", this is simply an idea I had that might make things better. From what I've seen of your Legio's they are all very good at doing whatever their Legio specializes in. The Manifold system is a wonderful innovation for small unit tactics, but you didn't take it far enough in my estimation. My understanding on your recruitment and training regime is that a recruit spends a few weeks in a basic fitness style training environment, before being allowed to choose the Legio that best fits his or her personal idea of how they see themselves as a fighter, correct?"

"It is a very spiritual choice that requires much introspection and soul searching. Some take more than a week to make their final determination." Ullric acknowledged. "Joining a Legio in which your spirit was not compatible with that of the Legio would be disasterous, one fly in the ointment would ruin the cohesion of the entire Manifold you joined, maybe even the cohesion of the Legio as a whole!"

"And that's where you are wrong." Kira held up his hand to forestall Ullric's comeback. "Not from a spiritual viewpoint... far be it from me to tell anyone how they should balance that aspect of their life... but from a military standpoint doing what you are is incredibly foolish, because you encourage a sense of "us and them" isolationism between your various Legios. It would be far better if you assigned recruits randomly and forced them to mould their spirits to the spirits of the Legio they were assigned, because that would at least force them to learn a bit outside their comfort zone as well! Better yet, rotate new recruits among several Legio's at first, get them cross trained in various specialties before they choose a Legio to stay with permanently. The way you have it now, each Legio is essentially a self contained army, with little sense of camraderie to other Legios, and even sometimes a sense of rivalry or contempt, and that is simply insane to allow!"

"But to transfer recruits back and forth between Legio's would make it impossible for them to integrate into a Manifold in any reasonable amount of time! They'd have to start over from scratch upon each transfer!" Ullric protested.

"Actually, I think it would be best to transfer not just recruits, but a significant portion of each Legio's members between Legio's on a fairly regular basis. You have a "Me First" military at the moment, while the USN has a "Team First" military, and that is why you are getting hammered. Because they work together, not just within their squads and companies, but regiment to regiment, division to division, nation to nation, infantry to armor to air support to naval to space forces, one cohesive "Armed Force" that is dedicated to supporting each other and winning this war. When Direcat attacks the enemy, who supports them? No one, because everyone expects Direcat to take care of themselves. Indeed, conflict between Legio's could occur if help was offered from certain other Legio's, regardless of how much Direcat needed assistance. A sense of personal honor is no bad thing... but allowing honor to dictate your battlefield strategy is simply crazy! This is a war, a no holds barred war, honor has no place on that kind of battlefield!" Kira continued, ignoring the simmering emotions of frustration and anger from Ullric. That was a man with one hell of a lot of pride, but Kira could sense that the losses being suffered were wearing down Ullric pretty hard, and with Hiero and maybe Kunai's backing he could get things implemented that would hopefully start turning things around for the Edenites.

"As I was saying, the Manifold is a great thing, but keeping it to just a squad type unit within a single Legio really limits the ability of a soldier to adapt outside the personal bubble of expertise that their Legio teaches. I think an overall lessening of the intensity of the current Manifold bonds in exchange for a vastly increased number of individuals participating in a single Manifold and a great deal of Manifold overlap between Legios, would result in a much more homogenous force that would prove capable of backing each other up regardless of Legio affiliation, Custodians first, Legio's second. I'm not saying they should give up all their individuality, but walking a few miles in the shoes of others can only improve your sense for their strengths, and your own weaknesses. Every Custodian is a fantastically talented individual, but that is not to say there isn't much they would learn from their peers all the same, even the peers they otherwise have "spiritual" problems with. Rivalry is a great motivation, but it must be a friendly rivalry... a bitter rivalry only leads to division and chaos." Kira met Ullric's gaze firmly. "It would mean a complete reorganization of the current Custodian Order. In time of war that will be very difficult. But it is something I know we can do if we try."

"Shall we put it to a vote then?" Hiero suggested at once, well attuned to the emotional currents of his fellow Consols and knowing that Kira's argument had convinced them, at least for the moment. Best to get a decision before they had time to waver.

"There is no need." Ullric said quietly, slumping in his seat, still taller sitting than some men were standing. "A Garm knows when he has been beaten by a superior opponent, be it on the battlefield or the council chamber. I don't agree with the Executor's thoughts, but I can recognize that our current system is not working, so we will try it his way, because the only other thing to do is keep bashing our heads against the wall until our brains leak out our ears." Ullric fixed Kira with another challenging gaze. "However, because of the sheer logistics of implementing the Executor's plan, especially given the upcoming strike against Urbanis, I hope I am not out of line in expecting a great deal of battlefield support from the Executor now that his Gundam has been finished. You may very well have to do the work of two or three Legio's in the field while they are retraining themselves here."

"Strategos Magnus, let me say this... I'm looking forward to that very opportunity." Kira promised with a tight smile, his expression actually seeming to discomfit several of the Consols for a few moments. Hiero called a vote just to make everything official, it was quickly passed unanimously, and they prepared to move onto the next order of business, involving diplomatic requests from the other major city states for access to Garden City's military technologies in order to begin better arming and equipping their own militia forces. Though the conversation did not directly involve him, Kira stuck around, determined to pay Hiero back for his steady support by lending him whatever weight of opinion the agreement of the Executor could garner. The emissary from Urbanis was just about to make his case when there came an earsplitting CRACK from outside the Heartwood chamber, barely muffled at all by the meters thick trunk on all sides of them!

For a heartstopping moment Kira thought there was some sort of structural problem with Yggdrasil, that the colossal tree was in the process of falling apart, but there was no sensation of movement or falling, and a few fractions of a second later his memories had been jogged by the sound and Kira recognized it for what it was, the near instantaneous hypersonic deceleration of a not particularly aerodynamic object, such as a Mobile Suit. But while the Mobile Suits of Garden City certainly possessed the capability of such maneuvers, few pilots, even Edenites, were skilled or reckless enough to dare attempt one in proximity to any large, unyielding object, and from the sound, whatever had come to rest had done so barely fifty meters away from where Kira was sitting, right outside where there was a balcony style protrusion along one of Yggdrasil's main limbs that the Consol's sometimes used for less formal debates.

Ullric plainly recognized the sound as well, as did Kunai, and well he should, considering the last time he'd heard such a noise, but from the furrowed brow of Ullric, Kira guessed that whoever had pulled the stunt was not responding to the very upset psychic hails of the Custodian Commander. Kunai on the other hand looked like he was in some sort of trance, if Kira didn't know better he would have guessed Kunai was lost in a vision of the future, though of course that was impossible for an Active. Kira took off one of his gloves and put his bare hand against the living wood of Yggdrasil, but could feel no sense of alarm or warning coming from the Grand Chimera, for whatever that was worth. Kira wasn't even sure if he wanted to think about what something like Yggdrasil would consider a true threat. A sudden commotion from the entrance to the Heartwood chamber drew everyone's attention, as the two Praetorian honor guards stationed outside reacted to something. A half second later and the limp body of one of those Praetorians, his armor carved with etchings of leaves of all sorts, came flying into the room before skidding along the floor for a good dozen meters before rolling to a halt.

At the same time, a choking psychic miasma began seeping into the room, effluent from the unshielded mind of the person who had so casually tossed the Praetorian like a sack of wet dirt. Kira distantly saw several of the Consols gag or clutch their heads as the unfiltered thoughts of the person in question impinged upon their minds like red hot darts burrowing into their ears, but in truth he was too distracted, no, horrified by the sensation, which was familiar to him, something he'd felt once before, over a decade ago, but it wasn't exactly the sort of experience one could forget, no matter how much you wanted to! "Frost..." Kira hissed, sucking in his breath like he'd just taken a punch to the groin, and in truth he would have far preferred it! And then Frost stepped into the room, and Kira got a good look at his most terrible foe. It was like looking in a mirror, save for the golden eyes, and in that one instant, everything that had gone wrong with his life since the death of his family suddenly made too much sense.

"YOU MONSTERRRR! IT WAS YOU!" Kira screamed, the image of his Seed appearing in his mind's eye, pulsing silver tendrils eagerly searching for fertile soil in which to be planted, but his rage was so intense, so surpassing, that he failed to properly grasp the Seed and it exploded before he could plant it. The familiar cold rush of emotional power of the Seed rage filled him, not the trasncendant state of the Tree, but a serious boost all the same, and Kira was barely aware of his limbs movements as he hurled himself from his chair, bounding over to the groggy Praetorian, snatching a straight bladed mono sword from the waist scabbard of the supine man and charged for the sneering doppleganger standing in the doorway. Ullric was still rising from his chair, his mouth open in a suprised shout, when Kira swung his borrowed blade with every intention of decapitating the monster wearing his own image where he stood.

Displaying an infuriating and somewhat disconcerting degree of calm, Frost blocked the attack with a combat blade he'd taken from the other Praetorian, lying unconscious and bleeding out in the hallway now, the ring of steel on steel thrumming through the chamber as the incredibly sharp blades struck sparks from each other a half dozen times in the space of a second or two. Kira was gratified to see the calm contempt leaving Frost's face as he was forced to work to defend himself against Kira rage fueled assault, though no matter how hard or how often Kira struck, he could not knock down Frost's guard nor send the stolen blade spinning from his hands. Apparently Frost shared more than just his looks, because his strength was every bit the equal of Kira's own, and probably much greater, Kira realized a bit belatedly, as Frost blocked a two handed strike with but a single hand on his own sword and then shoved Kira backwards, forcing some quick footwork to keep his balance as he came back on guard. But Frost did not follow up on the attack, he just stood in the doorway, dinged sword in one hand, some sort of sack in the other.

"Yes, it was me, Yamato. Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday." Frost said with a challenging smirk. "I've even got her ear on a chain here somewhere... would you like to see it?"

"I'd like to see you dead and buried!" Kira shouted, charging once more, raining blows upon the freak of nature wearing his skin. "No wonder they found genetic evidence in... in..." Kira snarled and managed to sneak a graze inside Frost's guard, opening a long slash along his upper sword arm, though only a few trickles of blood escaped before the wound scabbed over with a leathery crust. Which was not a good sign, since Kira's own blood was decidedly less capable at stemming its flow than that! Not only was Frost in a genetic copy of Kira's own body, but it seemed technologically enhanced to boot! It was a little like strapping a laser cannon onto a T-rex! Kira broke off his attack, his rage still struggling for control, but realizing that if he continued to fight blind he was only going to get himself killed, and no pun intended!

"In your dear little sisters hot, wet snatch? Yep, I worked her over good, just I promised Loser Zala-Attha I would back in Orb during whatsitcalled, Purgatory Day. Turns out her fire DOES go all the way down to her core." Frost's smirk grew as he saw the muscles in Kira's face twitching. "I made her scream and cry your name, Yamato. I think she may have figured out I wasn't her beloved brother, right around the time I cut her throat from ear to ear. I just regret I missed my opportunity to have a heart to heart talk with Prince Spark." Frost took a pace forward, his calm mask fracturing, revealing the bestial madman within. "But you know what I regret more, Yamato? Do you know what really chaps my butt? That because of your BUNGLING I'll never have an opportunity to do the same thing to Pink, you incompetent IDIOT! All you had to do was keep her alive for two more fucking weeks and I would have been there for our glorious reunion, but NOOOO, you had to let her die in some STUPID FIRE! HOW COULD YOU BE SO INCONSIDERATE? I WAITED TWELVE YEARS AND CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD JUST TO FUCK HER AND KILL HER WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS AND YOU LET HER DIE IN A FIRE! THAT IS SIMPLY UNFORGIVABLE!"

Kira rocked back on his heels, not sure whether he should laugh, cry or shout back at the insane ranting, not that there was much of any other sort, coming from Frost. Frost was pissed at him because he'd let Lacus die before he could kill her? That was so... so messed up that... that Kira wasn't able to decide if he should be even more outraged or snorting with laughter at the absurdity of it all. "FURTHERMORE..." Frost thrust his sword at Kira like a swagger stick to emphasize his words. "Furthermore, and this is also something I cannot forgive, you then CHOSE TO ABANDON YOUR OATHS, THAT INCREDIBLE PROMISE NOT TO KILL THAT I SO LOATHED AND COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND BUT WAS AN IRREPLACABLE PART OF YOU NONETHELESS, YOU CAST IT ASIDE TO BECOME THE CHAMPION OF THESE INSECTS? HOW DARE YOU, YAMATO! HOW DARE YOU CHEAPEN OUR RELATIONSHIP BY EXTENDING ANY RANDOM JOE OR JANE THE SAME HONOR THAT WAS ONCE RESERVED FOR ME AND ME ALONE, YOUR HOMICIDAL HATRED! YOU'RE NO LONGER WORTHY OF THE TITLE "BOYTOY", YAMATO, YOU DISAPPOINT ME SO MUCH!" Frost seemed to notice the sword in his hand, and he grimaced with distaste as he hurled the blade across the room, leaving it sticking out of one wall, quivering with the force of the throw. "Killing you now would be pointless. It's no fun without the conflict of your dear oath or Pink looking on in horror. You're beneath my notice. You've fallen from grace, Yamato, and its a real damned shame too. But I didn't come here to see a washed up failure like you, Yamato."

"Then why DID you come here?" Kunai asked, standing at his half hidden desk, his eyes metallic cobalt blue centered with gold as he harnessed his own Seed, his clothing twitching and jumping as if in a breeze, though the chamber was entirely still. "Zacharis Frost, what made you think you would be welcome here? You monster..." Kineblades began slipping out from underneath Kunai's robes, entering stable orbits around his head and shoulders as he measured Frost for the best places to send his cards careening through his bodily organs.

"I've never denied being a monster, I don't see why everyone has to keep pointing out the obvious." Frost answered with a shrug, and then held forth the sack in his other hand, keeping a wary gaze on both Kira and Kunai, both of whom looked like they would be perfectly happy to turn him into dog meat in an instant. And while at any other time he might be happy to oblige their death wishes, he'd spoken the truth. He had not come here today in pursuit of conflict with the disgraced former Boytoy or whoever the hell baldy was. Frost let the sack fall open, the severed head of the Legio Cold Hunter soldier he'd used to get directions to Garden City from rolling out onto the floor. There were gasps and groans from the gathered officials, as they stared with horror at the brutalized head, which had been stripped very carefully of all the outer layers of skin and muscle except around the chin, where a fine handlebar moustache had been too pretty to destroy, and the scalp on the top of the head. The shaving razor had gotten snagged a few times, mostly on ligaments, and figuring the proper angle to dig in to peel up the skin and meat in neat little curls had taken some practice, but as with all edged weapons, he'd gotten the hang of it quickly enough.

"What did you do?" Hiero demanded, holding his throat to choke back bile at the ungodly sight.

"I shaved him from a boring death." Frost replied casually, and then burst out in hysterical cackles at his own terrible pun. "Yep, that's me, here to shave the day when you least expect it. Oh god, it doesn't get old... I should have done this years ago..." He snorted a few more times and then regained control of himself. "But I was serious actually... both about taking the skin off his still living head with a shaving razor, and about being here to save the day when you least expect it. I needed to occupy my hands while I absorbed his memories you see, which is how I found out where this little burg was, and about the Boy... about Yamato's disgraceful actions."

"You drained the memories from a unwilling person?" One of the other Consols looked outraged. "That is completely and totally taboo! The penalty for such a crime is death!"

"Taboo? Really? Cool." Frost shrugged the accusation off. "I'm trying to think of the last taboo action I committed, besides that one. I think it may have been raping B... Yamato's little sister. I think that technically counts as incest, right? And if you want my life, you're welcome to come down and get in line, but I wouldn't get my hopes up, were I you, you're more likely to die of old age waiting first!"

"Don't bother getting indignant or offended with him, he enjoys it." Kira snarled, his hands white knuckled on his sword grip. He was still trying to get over the sight of Frost willingly disarming himself while Kira yet held a deadly weapon. Did he really think Kira was no threat? No, while Frost had been holding him off, Kira could tell it hadn't been easy for the ressurected BCPU, he'd really had to work at matching Kira's speed. If he'd only had more practice with a sword outside a Gundam, Kira probably could have beat Frost earlier, but relying on just rage and guts and Seed wasn't enough to overcome Frost's mastery of melee combat. But deliberately disarming himself in front of those he'd wronged was insane, even for Frost. So insane Kira knew that the bastard had to have some sort of ace up his sleeve, so against all his personal wishes and the urging of the blood pounding in his temples, Kira held himself back, wary for any hint of offensive action from Frost.

"But enough about him, I'm here to talk about me." Frost said, nudging the desecrated skull away with one toe. "And about you." Frost gestured expanisvely at the room. "While out strolling through the forest, totally minding my own business mind you, I happened to stumble across a little fracas involving two opposing factions, one of them in the process of getting totally raped by the other. It was hardly even a fight. Now, believe it or not, I have a soft spot in my heart for the underdog, perhaps because I was once one myself, so I decided to politely accost the bullying faction and insist they cease and desist their deplorable actions right that instant." Frost affected a mock genteel accent for that last part. "So anyway, after I was done hunting down and killing every last helpless one of those blue coated maggots by stomping on them with the Kratos's feet and the base was thoroughly afire, I decided to go check out those hapless lambs that had been getting reamed. I was going to put them out of their misery you see... a man should not live after suffering that kind of humiliation, its just not right... but they prevailed upon my better nature and so instead of just killing them and grinding their remains to pulp, I killed them, ground their remains to pulp and then came here to tell you all about it. I'm such a generous guy, aren't I?"

"The picture of generousity." Kunai said icily. "Perhaps I should frame you on the wall, let you inspire others with your message?" The kineblades swirled closer to Frost, leaving no doubt as to what Kunai intended to use as nails.

"On my way here though, I finally managed to pick an annoying splinter out of my brain, something that had been nagging at me for a while, see." Frost ignored the skirling of the kineblades as they rubbed against each other as they circled around him like a school of pirahana circling in for the kill. "Because something is really bothering me, and its not just that incompetent fallen angel over there with the sword." Frost waved casually at Kira. "That's a personal disappointment, what I'm talking about is a professional disappointment. This war you're having. It has to stop. Its all wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong. Completely wrong. This war is a tragedy, a waste of lives, and I want it stopped as soon as possible."

"I never expected a death-addict like you to say something like that..." Kira admitted.

"Less noise from the peanut gallery, please. I'm trying to tell a serious story here." Frost turned his head away from Kira, but not before seeing the veins pulse on his forehead once more. Good, Yamato had a lot he should be angry about. Let him stew. "As I was saying before being rudely interrupted, this war is wrong. Humans should not be fighting one another over something as trivial as genetics! I tried to make the same point back when I first died, but apparently twelve years in the abyss was long enough for people to forget. This war needs to stop, you and the so called United Solar Nation need to kiss and make up, and then you can ally together to fight the real enemy of humankind."

"Who's that?" Ullric asked, eyeing the Kira-clone warily.

"Me." Frost declared frankly. "I am the eyes of the abyss, the End of All, the whetstone of humanity. Only through conflict with me shall humanity regain its true strength. Any other conflict is a sacrilege against me and my crusade, and will not be permitted. I am Zacharis Quentin Frost and I will forge humanity anew in the fires of my conflict, or else break the blade forever and scatter the pieces in the dust of all that once was." Such was the conviction in his voice that no one in the room could manage even a smirk of amusement at the ludicrous idea. If anyone could pull off such an insane thing, it would be this man here. "But before I can do that I need to end this little slapfight you people are involved in. Which brings us once more to here and now. I want this war ended. You want this war won. I think we can work out an arrangement, yes?"

"How about we just spare ourselves a lot of pain and suffering in the future, and kill you now and toss your body back into another thermonuclear furnace and send you back to hell where you belong?" Kunai suggested. "Millions of souls cry out for your death, Frost, we'd be doing all of humanity a favor by disintegrating you into your component atoms right now!" The Kineblades shivered and started to slide forwards, surrounding Frost on all sides with a wall of mono-edged blades. "I'm going to make this slow, so you'll have time to beg for forgiveness from each and every person you've despoiled..."

"Hold a moment." Hiero said suddenly, drawing surprised looks from both Kunai and Kira. "Pardon my rehashing, but it is your intent to offer your services as a fighter to us?"

"Yes, I will fight for you. Me and my Gundam, the Kratos." Frost replied, still ignoring the circling kineblades, even as they began to graze his skin. "You made the B... Yamato something called an Executor, right? I think that sounds like a job with my name written all over it. If only it wasn't already in use by someone else. Nothing I hate more than copy catting someone weak."

"Don't listen to him. He's pure evil. He'll turn on us at a moment's notice." Kira warned Hiero. "You know how I feel about killing, even now, but I promise you, Kunai is right, we're better off killing him, for the sake of everyone, Edenite or not!"

"Better the evil you know than the evil you fear." Hiero replied, somewhat cryptically. "You two seem to have past history with this... creature... so you would be ideally suited to watching him for signs of treachery, correct?"

"If you know me, you fear me." Frost insisted, but was ignored.

"You can't seriously be considering..." Kira trailed off, aghast. "Hiero, don't be a fool!"

"I agree with Kira. Don't be a fool, Hiero." Kunai said darkly. "The situation..."

"Is desperate, my friends. We have lost two entire Legio's in only a few weeks of combat, and we have never yet been on the defensive, which has always been the acknowledged weak point of our troops. Offense is supposed to be our stock in trade, and we are getting annihilated out there on a regular basis. Some of that is our own fault of course, but some is due to the capability of our enemy. Plus would I not be right in assuming that if we refuse to assist you in ending the war, Zacharis here will take his offer to the USN?" Hiero answered.

Frost shrugged and nodded. "Not my first choice, you understand... I've worked with that sort of government before, and it was very little fun. You people are much more to my personal liking... you've got a sense of individualism, a sense of pride and a hunger for glory I find most entertaining. But if you don't want my help, then I will end the war by the quickest possible means, which of course would be joining the USN. I'm sure they would love to have me and the Kratos."

"If we refuse his offer he won't leave this room alive!" Kunai insisted furiously. He took a half step forward and then thrust his hand at Frost as if he were shoving him, though over ten meters of space seperated the two men. Regardless, Frost slammed backwards into the wall by the doorway like he'd been hit with a wrecking ball, the air whoosing from his lungs as he was pinned there spread eagled by the telekinetic push, before Kineblades slammed into the spaces between his forearm bones and crucified him, before the sword frost had hurled prievously tugged itself out of the wall and went over to hover in front of Kira. "You should do it, Kira. You deserve it more than anyone else. Send him back to hell where he belongs." Kunai implored.

"That's a neat trick you have there, baldy..." Frost commented, before tensing his arms and forcing himself away from the wall, fighting the telekinetic grip the whole way, the kineblades passing entirely through his arms as he dropped back to the floor and began making slow progress back to the center of the room, like a man walking into the face of a heavy wind. "But its going to take more sand than you've got to kill me, someone who's already been to hell once and got kicked out because they weren't hardcore enough for me!"

"I can't hold him forever!" Kunai half shouted as he tried to force Frost back against the wall, but with the advantage of surprise lost, Frost was too well braced and simply too strong to be pushed around by Kunai's unamplified power. "Avenge them, Kira! Avenge them!" Kunai pleaded.

Kira stared at the swords in his hands and then met gazes with Frost, standing only a few meters away. Frost, who had caused him and Lacus so much grief during the Second Valentine War, who had slaughtered thousands of innocents at November 8, who had killed Sai's wife and young children and almost everyone Kira cared about at the Battle of Denver. Who had impossibly returned from the dead and inflicted heinous torments upon Kira's friends and family and then framed him for his crimes, ruining a life already in tatters from the murder of Lacus and the kids! Who had tried to kidnap Allister, Kira's own nephew, for some unspeakably vile purpse, had raped and slashed the throat of Cagalli and had tortured Athrun to the edge of death with power tools! Who stood there half helpless in the telekinetic grip of a man who's family he'd crushed with the hand of a Mobile Suit twelve years ago. Frost smiled and cocked his head to the side, baring his neck for Kira to strike, inviting him to strike, daring him to strike!

Kira took a step forward, the blades coming up in both hands, the images of all those Frost had murdered, tormented, brutalized or terrified rising up in the corners of his vision to beg for vengeance. And then they were shoved aside by the millions of still living innocents living in and around Garden City and the rest of New Eden, innocents Frost was, intentionally or not, offering to protect from the gruesome fate planned for them by the genocidal leadership of the USN. Kira looked at his swords... and then dropped them in disgust and turned away from Frost, not wanting to see the triumph in those hideous golden eyes. Kira clutched a hand to his chest, where the heat warped silver promise ring he'd recovered from Lacus's remains hung on a chain, next to his heart. _I'm sorry Lacus, but... I can't do it. Not now. Not when he might still be used to save lives. I will kill him before he can try and implement his insane plans, but for right now, the Edenites need his strength. I'm so sorry..._

"Looks like the jury is in." Frost commented smugly, as the swords clattered to the floor at Kira's feet. Defeated, Kunai let the telekinetic grip drop, but only after Hiero stepped up to him and placed a warning-comforting hand on his shoulder did Kunai recall his kineblades. He stalked out of the room before they even all returned, razor sharp rectangles flying after him as he stomped furiously down the hallway, his psychic aura fuming with incandescent hurt and helpless anger.

"Do you need medical attention?" Hiero asked stiffly, referencing the grazes and gashes where the Kineblades had gone through Frost's arms, between the bones.

"Over these papercuts? Don't flatter baldy so much, I've hurt myself much worse getting out of bed in the morning." Frost shrugged once more. "Besides, I've something of a psychotic hatred of doctors. Childhood trauma and all that."

"I should make this plain, Zacharis. I don't like you and I believe the advice of Kunai and Kira was sound and correct... in any other situation besides the one we currently find ourself in. We Edenites pride ourselves on our policy of setting the past aside and creating a new life as a blank slate in this world we find ourselves in, but some pasts are too dark to ever be set aside. Like it or not, we need your strength to survive the coming weeks and months. I will acknowledge you as a second Executor, equal in authority to Kira, but only because I must. Any sign of treachery on your part will be met with deadly force." Hiero said with a deep frown.

"I should hope so, because when I cancel our little alliance... and I will eventually do exactly that... I'll be coming for all of you with deadly force and more besides." Frost said breezily. "But you have my word, for whatever you think its worth, that I will not turn on you before the USN surrenders and you have some time to kiss and make up. I am many things, everything you've called me and much more besides, but the one thing I am not is a liar. I see no point in deceit. I want to fight a UNIFIED humanity, anything else is just not good enough." Frost turned on his heels and headed for the doorway himself, ignoring Kira completely still. "If we're through here, I'll let you go make the announcements. I'm off to find a bite to eat. Haven't had anything since the spleen of the man I shaved yesterday, and I'm feeling a mite peckish. Ciao."

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Outside of Praetorian Enclave, One hour later**

Lilia had been doing a lot of thinking since her last shouting match with Kira, and though she still felt that he wasn't acting like himself, she had come to the conclusion that she was just as out of line as he was, probably much moreso actually. It was hard for her to admit, but the stark truth was that she'd built a shrine to him in her thoughts, and that was simply selfish and inconsiderate of her, to saddle him with all that expectation and assumption, especially in the wake of his recent personal tragedies. Lilia herself had hardly been the person she was today in the recent aftermath of her own ordeal, it was unreasonable of her to expect Kira, for all his strength, to be any better at dealing with what had happened than she herself was. She felt confident that as long as she gave him some time and distance he would soon recover his equilibrium and once more start acting like the Kira she had grown to adore.

Speaking of adoration, Lilia was ashamed of her persistence in her attempts to romantically entangle herself with Kira, her formerly pure sense of hero worship having been corrupted into a shameless lust to physically be with her idol in the most intimate of terms, under the impression that it would dispense a sense of emotional healing to both of them. Which, despite Panner's naive optomistic suggestions, was probably the least likely outcome of such a tryst, should it ever occur. Sex could lead to emotional healing, but only in relationships with mutual love and a deep connection, and a few one night stands weren't going to generate that sort of depth, certainly not when physical lust had as much to do with her motivation as emotional caring. Lilia wanted to blame her own somewhat inexperienced nature when it came to loving relationships, but realized that was something of a cop out and so she denied herself that comfort. She'd been wrong, that was the end of it. And because she'd been the one in the wrong, it was her duty to apologize to Kira, and hope they could start things again on a better foot.

So she'd left the meditation cell that she'd commandeered from an overawed young Praetorian-canidate so that she could do her soul searching in privacy and began searching him out, hoping to corner him in some semi-private location so that they could have a bit of a heart to heart talk without making a big public scene. She'd do it in public if she had to, it would only serve her right for the way she'd been treating him, but she'd prefer to avoid making herself look like a shameless tramp in front of an audience if at all possible. Lilia kept her psychic senses blunted as much as possible, knowing that if she felt that Kira was in a bad mood, she'd probably chicken out, not wanting to provoke him into another shouting match when all she wanted to do was apologize. Which made tracking him down pretty hard, especially in the confusion she found consuming the lower levels of the Enclave, which were abuzz with the rumors of some new personage that had barged into the middle of a Council session and offered his services to Garden City! However, by asking where she might find the Executor, Lilia found herself given reasonably good directions and felt her heart lifting because she'd been told he was taking a meal alone near the Custodian parade field.

Which was just about the perfect setting for her intentions, with a lot of space between them and anyone who might eavesdrop, but not so private that he might think she was trying to guilt him into anything, and with him alone and eating there would be plentiful excuses to keep the conversation slow and pleasant, no need to blurt things out all at once in a rush. She still didn't know what sort of mood he was in, the people she'd asked had given varied responses, from cheerful to brooding to just blank looks and shrugs. Lilia spotted a familiar tuft of brown hair among the tumbled boulders that formed one edge of the natural border wall of the parade ground, and she began circling around to come around from behind him, keeping her psychic senses tamped down to the most minimal levels so he wouldn't feel or see her coming and avoid her. She wanted to get this over with as soon as possible, because being on bad terms with her idol was enough to make her feel physically ill!

Some minutes later, Lilia was stealthily negotiating the boulder field and creeping up on where Kira was taking his lunch, some sort of meat. From the smell it was raw and bloody, maybe even from a fresh kill, and though she'd never thought about Kira being the sort to hunt, he was a very good shot, and it wasn't by any means uncommon for those in Garden City who wanted to add a little flavor and spice to their staple diet of Ambrosia to enter one of the Nature zones and hunt and kill a young Rex Elk or other prey animal and take some meat. It was considered polite to leave the majority of the kill for the predatory animals that lived in such zones, to keep them well fed so they would be less likely to attack humans. For that matter it provided them with a distraction so they didn't hunt the hunter on his or her way back into a Human zone! Lilia's stomach rumbled a bit, reminding her that she'd skipped breakfast while meditating on her follies, and that she should probably look into some sustenance to provide energy for the afternoon, which was bound to be draining as it was to involve combat simulations involving the Lucifer and the Praetorians!

Lilia kept her eyes downcast as she rounded the final boulder and stood behind Kira, making sure to scuff her foot against the rock as she did so that she wouldn't startle him, though he'd probably foreseen her coming a second ago. All the same it was best to be polite, she'd snuck up on Hiero by accident enough times to know that a Latents could hardly rely on their psychic talents for consistent warnings. He kept his back turned to her as he crouched in the lee of one of the other boulders, biting into a section of ribs taken whole from a yearling Rex Elk, and Lilia wrinkled her nose a bit, the smell telling her that if he'd cooked it, it hadn't been for nearly long enough, the meat was still incredibly raw. Which wasn't to say it was indigestible, far from it, the raw meat actually contained more nutrients than when cooked, but the taste was... not something she'd thought Kira would like. Very strong and... raw, for lack of a better term. Shuffling her feet, Lilia saw that Kira was apparently ignoring her, which made her heart quiver a bit, but she steeled herself, prepared to give her apology to his back if need be, as long as he heard her.

"Kira..." Lilia said, her voice catching, until she swallowed and remoistened her suddenly desert dry mouth. "I've been thinking about what you said, and how I've been acting around you... and..." Lilia swallowed again, trying to keep from breaking down in tears. "I just want to say... I'm sorry for how I've been to you. I wasn't being considerate for your feelings, or the freshness of your pain over Lacus. I was being selfish, and it was wrong of me to expect you'd be willing to set aside all that's happened just to attend to my immature desires. What happened on board the shuttle was a mistake, just like you said, and I was making far more of it than is appropriate. Forgive me for my infatuation, I just..." Lilia shook her head and wiped away a tear with her forearm, Kira staying silent and keeping his back turned to her. "I'm sorry for treating you like you're supposed to be some sort of God, when you're just as human as the rest of us. I know its too much to ask that you forgive me, just like that, but if we could at least try to get along, I'd appreciate it. I promise I won't keep pestering you about... about anything I have been pestering you about." Lilia flushed and fidgeted, playing with her uniform shirt cuffs. She felt as nervous as a girl asking her first boy crush out on a date, worse even.

"That's a very nice apology." Kira replied after a few seconds, when it was clear she wasn't going to say anything more. There was something odd about his voice, and Lilia thought for a moment he was talking with his mouth full or something. But then he got up from his crouch, not even bothering to wipe his blood crusted hands on the ground or a napkin, and half turned to look at her over his shoulder, his face smeared with gore and bits of fur and skin, all around his lips and dripping down his chin, and Lilia found her gaze instantly captured by his own, her golden pupiled lilac eyes sucked into the depths of his royal purple, gold pupiled eyes. Into the depths, into a dark place with no escape and no mercy, a place that made nightmares look pleasant. Lilia gasped, more like squeaked, and felt herself sway backwards instinctively, her shoulders thudding into the boulder behind her as she pressed herself away from the man wearing Kira's body like a cheap suit. "Too bad I'm not Kira, little Mouse."

"W-who...?" Lilia stammered, trying to tear her gaze away from the person, who looked so painfully like Kira that her heart was clenching and fluttering at the same time. Look like Kira he might, even down to being as close to identical as she could easily discern, but the aura of personality and the psychic imprint, once she dropped her blinkering, was so radically different as to leave no doubt that this was not at all Kira Yamato. Lilia prided herself on her knowledge of Kira's life, but she'd never heard anything about Kira having an identical twin brother. A fraternal twin sister, yes, but no male siblings, much less ones that looked exactly like him! Still stunned by her surprise, Lilia only managed to wriggle in shock as he was suddenly right next to her, invading her personal space in a way she had often dreamed Kira would do, but those eyes, those fearsome eyes staring at her like a cat would a particularly tasty mouse... Lilia jerked away from the contact but found ehrself trapped with the boulder directly behind her.

"At one point in time, I might have described myself as his dark mirror, his polar opposite, his ultimate enemy." Frost said softly, one of his hands rising with deliberate slowness, his fingertips brushing along the side of this blue haired little Mouse's torso, delighting in the way she shivered with a mixture of fear and desire. A truly delectable young creature. And apparently involved with Yamato in some way, possibly even romantically judging from the wistful tone of her apology a moment ago. Wasn't that just precious? He'd despaired of being able to further get under Yamato's skin, now that he'd already had his fun and games with the Zala-Attha's, but if Yamato was attracted to the Mouse here, then that opened a whole new realm of possibility... Frost chuckled in anticipation, his fingers lifting up to chuck her under the chin and caress her jawline, as she glared at him dazedly, plainly caught between moaning and screaming. "These days, I wouldn't sully my name by associating it with that graceless failure. You can call me Zacharis Frost." Frost leaned his mouth close to her ears, almost close enough for his blood soaked lips to brush her earlobe. "Alternately, you can just call me... Monster..." He brought his other hand up between her legs and squeezed hard.

That got quite the reaction, her eyes dilating and then widening as she yelped in shock and indignation, twisting her chin out of his grip, her dazed state dispelled by the sudden rough touch against her privates, stirring a whole host of unwelcome memories to the surface, igniting her anger and clearing her head with remarkable rapidity. Lilia bunched one hand into a fist and slammed it into Frost's solar plexus, while her other hand grabbed the wrist of the hand that had groped her and started twisting it around as she shifted her weight to put him in a submission hold, facefirst against the rock with one hand pinned behind his back. However, far from stunning and driving the breath from his body, her solar plexus strike barely even drew a grunt, and while she had a firm grip on his wrist, that arm wasn't going anywhere fast, and Lilia found herself quite firmly still pinned between her assailant and the boulder.

"The Mouse has a nip to her." Frost observed with a pleased smile, tearing his wrist out of her grip, her nails leaving deep scratches in his skin, which scabbed over almost instantly. She struck at him again and again with her fists, but her heart didn't seem quite in it, as if she couldn't quite bring herself to really wind up and hit someone who looked like Yamato, and Frost weathered her struggling with a smug half smile on his face. That smile vanished when she left off jabbing him in his reinforced chest and snapped her head forward hard, catching him right on the nose with her forehead. Frost's nose was made of more than just cartilage, but it crunched as it was broken all the same, though it did not fragment, and twin small gouts of blood shot from his nostrils to mix with the elk blood on his lips, also splattering across Lilia's face and eyes, the blood drying to scabs almost at once, so quickly it half blinded Lilia as it dried over her eyes. Several seconds of furious head shaking and eye blinking later, clear vision returned, and Lilia looked up to determine the effect of the headbutt on her assailant.

She felt the breath freeze in her lungs as she found herself quite literally nose to nose with the leering Frost, his eyes blazing with unfathomable emotions that she was truly glad she was not able to interpret, because she suddenly realized that she was quite literally scared stiff, so frightened of that look that she'd lost the ability to voluntarily control her muscles, her arms spread out wide, fingers digging against the unyielding rock, her body trying to meld itself into the boulder as she tried to put some more distance between her and this insane freak! Lilia watched, pertrified, as Frost slowly licked his upper lip clean of his clotted blood, all happening in the periphery of her vision since she couldn't look away from the gold and purple orbs less than six inches from her own eyes. It was like staring into the eyes of a predator while it was in the midst of pouncing down upon you to rend you into gobbets of bloody flesh. "Moouussseee..." Frost whispered sibilantly, his lips brushing hers as his nose began straightening out once more.

And then his mouth was forcing itself against hers, kissing her violently, his teeth biting into her lower lip, drawing blood which he lapped up with his tongue as he pushed himself against her, his hands roaming roughly down her body, pulling and pushing at her uniform, trying to find a path to the soft skin beneath. Despite herself, Lilia felt her breathing start to become heavy, the illusion that this was Kira pinning her to a rock and having his way with her being very difficult to dispel, despite how untrue she knew it was. All self deception vanished, however, when one of Frost's hands started slipping down the front of her trousers, and the other came up to grip her tightly around the throat, steel strong fingers squeezing against the faint scar that wrapped entirely around her neck. Unadulterated panic burst through every fiber of Lilia's being, her body spasming like she'd suddenly been electrocuted as her struggles to get free returned with a vengeance, her eyes wide as saucers and blanked of rational thought as the mere sensation of being collared or choked brought all her worst memories of her years in that rape dungeon slamming back as fresh as if they'd just occured moments before!

Lost in the depths of her own worst nightmares, Lilia was unaware of the way her clawed hands tore at Frost's back, gouging and rending his back into a tapestry of quickly drying blood as her legs kicked and jerked violently, her balance fleeing until the only thing keeping her upright were Frost's hands, one wrapped tight round her throat, the other working diligently between her thighs, her uniform trousers half ripped open down the front from the ferocity of her unconscious struggles. Frost broke off the kiss to draw his tongue along the side of her face, up onto her forehead, lapping up his own blood from the headbutt, taking note of the vacant look in her eyes as he did so, and realizing that she was in the midst of some sort of flashback or other. Curiosity piqued at a woman who could retreat into memory while in the midst of being raped, and fight so violently despite his strength being several times greater than hers, so hard he actually had to work at holding her still with his body, Frost bowed his head and touched his forehead to hers, reaching out with his mind and plunging into the maelstrom of her memories.

Frost grunted as he felt her void her bladder as his consciousness slipped into the first layers of her nightmares, _a coltish young girl with her arms and legs bound by plastic cuffs, her mouth duct taped closed as she was carried into a dank, dark place and roughly thrown upon a concrete floor. A tight black leather collar with ring for chains or leashes was secured around her neck and locked into place, a chain leading from the collar attaching to a piton in one wall, leashing her like a dog in a kennel. And then there came the hands reaching from the darkness, the sound of ripping cloth and zippers being unfastened, and then... _Frost jerked, his concentration broken, his mind reeling back into his own skull as he found himself falling sideways through the air, the ground rushing up to strike him heavily, his head slamming down into the remnants of the animal he'd caught and strangled for his lunch, his skull ringing from a blindside punch that he'd been too distracted with the delectable Mouse to see coming.

Lilia collapsed bonelessly to the ground, her eyes wide but sightless as she remained trapped in her flashbacks, her lip bleeding, her throat bruised from Frost's grip, with additional bruising along her thighs and privates from his rough groping that she curently could not feel. Kira stood over her protectively, his eyes flaring with outrage, having been told by several people that Lilia was searching for him, he'd come to warn her about Frost and how he looked almost identical to Kira now, perhaps a clone body or something, but he'd found her too late it seemed, feeling her emotions begin to riot he'd sprinted towards where he could feel her, and then he could feel Frost right there with her, and rounding the boulder he'd confirmed the worst, Frost had her pinned against the boulder, in the first stages of ravishing her, while she psychically screamed and flailed like a siezure victim. Kira was barely aware of crossing the distance and punching Frost in the side of the head, only the knuckle imprint on Frost's jaw and the ache in his own fingerbones describing his action. He must have taken Frost completely off guard, because he'd knocked him down like a bowling pin!

"Oh... its you..." Frost said, touching his jaw and feeling the bruise there, which was already beginning to fade. Wearing half a dead animal as a sort of impromptu hat since it was sticking to his scalp after he slammed his head into its half eaten body cavity, Frost sat up and glared up at Kira. "What do you want, Yamato?"

"What do I want?" Kira snarled furiously. "I want you dead! I want my family back! I want this war and all other wars over with for good! I want you not to lay a hand on my friend again or I'll forget how much the Edenites need your strength right now!"

"I told you already, you're not worth killing. Not as you are. Bring back that Yamato that I saw at Denver, and then we can talk about who wants who dead more." Frost plucked the animal from his head and cast it aside with a sigh. "What's a guy gotta do around here to even eat lunch in peace? Here I was, completely minding my own business, and the Mouse there comes charging out of nowhere and gives me this whole apology spiel, which I'm sure she meant for you, it was very winsome, just the sort of sentimental crap you'd go for, Yamato. I was just starting to get acquainted with her and then you sucker punched me, and now you know the whole story." Frost twitched his lips in a smirk. "If this is how you're going to chaperone all my dates, I think I might have to invest in a helmet, Yamato."

"What did you DO to her?" Kira demanded, glancing down at Lilia and blanching, seeing her drooling and twitching and wetting herself.

"Not NEARLY enough to account for that performance." Frost retorted indigantly. "I was sampling her feminine charms, which are quite impressive by the way, but she's the one who freaked out and started doing the broken bladder breakdance. All I did was grab her round the neck, just a regular, friendly old submission hold, barely even choking her, and she flipped out. You should have seen the emotional fireworks, it was awesome!" Frost clambered to his feet, staying across the small space between the boulders from Kira, who still stood protectively over Lilia. "I can tell when I'm not welcome, so go ahead and have your heartwarming reconciliation scene, Yamato. And tell the Mouse that any time she's in the mood for another rough and tumble romp, all she has to do is say something. Because believe it or not, up until I grabbed her throat... she was digging it. Seriously digging it. You lucky bastard, Yamato..." Frost shrugged and wandered away, ignoring his half eaten elk. Kira waited almost a minute before he was convinced Frost actually had just walked off, but apparently the bastard was serious about his desire not to fight the "fallen" Kira.

He then dropped to his knees, crouching over Lilia, who seemed to have retreated into some sort of catatonia or shock, her eyes vacant though open, she didn't even blink when he waved his hand in front of her face. Emotions continued to roll off her like waves of heat from an open oven, terror, humiliation, sick desire, hopelessness, pain, hatred, confusion, battering rams of emotional force that Kira had to reinforce his mental shields against before he was forced to retreat from proximity to her! He'd been in proximity to many damaged and abused people in his life, but this was his first time dealing with a powerful psychic in distress, besides Lacus of course, but she'd never suffered the kind of trauma that Lilia was exuding. Kira took off his Executor's mantle and draped it across Lilia's lap, covering her half exposed privates, and he carefully reached out to hold her hand, which was cold, her fingers digging into his palm with incredible intensity as she held onto him like a lifeline. After a few minutes of hyperventilation, reason seemed to be working its way back into Lilia's eyes, and her grip on his hand slowly loosened.

Kira reached up to check the bruising around her neck, which was already swelling up and turning a nasty blue-purple color, as even a "light" grip from Frost was generally what most people would consider near strangulation. From the way she was acting, it didn't seem any more serious than bad bruising, but neck injuries were nothing to play around with, and so Kira wanted to check to be sure. However, the moment his finger brushed the bruising, moving as carefulyl and gently as he could, Lilia jerked like he'd jabbed her with a red hot iron, a piercing scream of denial rending the air as she transitioned from catatonia to a shrieking fury, shoving him away so hard he fell over backwards before leaping atop him, straddling his hips and pinning him to the ground, one hand whipping out a narrow bladed bone dagger from somewhere behind her waistline, and she lifted the knife up high, preparing to slam it down between Kira's eyes!

Kira caught her wrist as it was descending, her strength maniacal as she strove to bury the wicked point in his head, her eyes vacant and washed out, almost like in a Seed rage, but with none of the associated boost to strength and ability. This was just a pure emotional freakout, a rabid attempt to harm before she was harmed, even though his intent had been anything but that! Levering her wrist, and the knife, up and away from his face, Kira regretfully shoved her away from him, harder than he actually intended to, throwing her back against the boulder Frost had pinned her against, her shoulders and head striking the hard rock with a "THUMP" that made him wince as she slumped to the ground once more, the bone dagger falling from a suddenly listless hand as she sagged breathlessly. Kira kept his distance, wondering if she was about to come after him in a psychotic rage.

But instead she loosen a heart rending sob of fear, shame and relief, curling up against herself as she buried her head in her hands and huddled against the boulder. Given what had happened just a moment ago, Kira figured that trying to get close, comforting or not, would probably only backfire upon him, and so he stayed at a distance until her sobbing and sniffling died away. "Lilia...?" Kira called softly, crouching down, keeping himself in full view of her so as to be non-threatening. "Are you okay?" Kira winced as he asked such a stupid question, since she plainly wasn't in any way okay. "I mean, are you in pain... did he hurt you?"

"I'm..." Lilia trailed off, her voice quavering and ragged. "I'm sorry..."

"There's nothing to apologize for." Kira assured her. "I didn't mean to set you off, I was just trying to see if your neck was okay. With someone like him, even if he wasn't trying to cause damage, he could still do so accidentally."

"He definitely did that." Lilia kept her face buried in her hands, using his mantle like a blanket to cover herself, her voice muffled as she talked into her knees. "I... I have this thing... a phobia... about being choked or collared. I once spent two years wearing a collar I couldn't remove, a collar that was used to control me... punish me... hurt me... imprison... me. I was... fourteen when they put it on me." She explained haltingly. "A dark time in my life I only survived because of you, because of the hope and faith in the goodness of humanity and a better tomorrow that you inspired in me." Lilia reached up to her neck, her hand trembling like a leaf in a gale. "I still have the scar around my neck, where the collar blistered my skin. I keep it to remind myself of the ordeals I've conquered in the past. But I wasn't ready for those painful memories to come back all at once like that. That bastard..."

"He's far more than just that." Kira sighed with something approximating relief, since Lilia seemed to have returned to rationality. "Of all the people who have been my enemies in my life, Frost is one of only two or three people I would have sought out as an enemy if given the choice not too. He is, for lack of a better description, truely evil. Irreconcilably, irredeemably, unrepentently evil. He's the epitome of a psychotic sociopath. Unfortunately he's also the most skilled Gundam pilot I've ever had the misfortune to fight. He might even be better than me, as far as pure skill goes. Were it not for the advantage given to me by what I now recognize as my Latent nature, I never would have been able to stand up to him back then. I've gotten a lot stronger and more experienced since then... but now he's come back not just as an Ultimate Coordinator, but as ME!" Kira could not help but shiver at the implications. "I don't know how he came back from the dead, much less how he came to have a body that can pass genetic tests as being identical to me, but I WILL find out. And when I do, whoever birthed him will have some very tricky explaining to do... from the afterlife!"

"I remember reading about someone named Zacharis Frost, but when you were fighting him I was only eleven." Lilia replied, her voice growing steadier with every passing word. "And I didn't start my fan club about you until I hit puberty, just before my thirteenth birthday, and by then it was old news. I recall something about a madman stealing a Gundam from ZAFT and using it to wreak havoc, but there were no details on the man himself. And now I see why... he's not a man who lends himself easily to being described by mere words." Lilia finally raised her head from her hands, her eyes puffy with shed tears. Kira politely looked away as he saw her reach under the mantle and fumble around with one hand, checking the integrity of her privates. When he looked back, Lilia was wincing and rubbing away a few smears of dark blood against his mantle, with a guilty look in his direction. "No need to panic, its no worse than a bad period or an unlubricated penetration." Lilia laughed humorlessly, since both of those things were pretty high up on her list of things that really SUCKED!

"Well, in the future I think you should do your best to avoid him. He's already pegged you for an easy target, and he knows about your phobia. He says he's here to end the war as quickly as possible, and he might even be serious about that, but I know him, and if he can spread pain and fear while he's here, even if we're supposed to be allied, he will delight in doing so. He's a rabid beast, a monster by nature and his own admission!" Kira advised her.

"I will not avoid him." Lilia said firmly, her eyes steely. "I am a Praetorian, and we do not avoid danger when it rears its head before us. He caught me off guard and with my emotions confused, that's all. If he tries to accost me again, he will find that..."

"No, LISTEN TO ME!" Kira cut her off fiercely. "In this if in nothing else, LISTEN TO ME, Lilia! I respect your skills and training, but you aren't ready to face off against Frost. No one is, not even me! I have never seen or heard of him losing a face to face battle, including against people that I would never choose to fight myself! And that was back when he was in a body based off a Natural genotype! If you pick a fight with him, he WILL kill you. But not before he desecrates your body and mind in every way his insane mind can think of, and by the time he does get around to ending your life, it will be a mercy! He's already picking on you because you're my friend, he'd torment you just to get at me!"

"I understand what you are saying, but I cannot hide from him. It would be a betrayal of everything I've worked to accomplish in my entire life since Kunai rescued me from that dark pit!" Lilia snapped back at him. Her eyes softened a little, and she cast her gaze downwards once more before continuining. "And I hate to say this, but you're wrong, Kira. He's not pure evil. No one is. No one is born evil. Not even the Caller! I don't know what sort of life he's led, what sort of choices he's made or been forced to make that has made him this hateful beast he is now, but I do know that he wasn't always this way. He peeked into my mind there at the end... but in so doing, he showed me parts of his own at the same time. We may not like to think about it, but he's hurting too." Lilia swallowed heavily and met Kira's eyes once more, a sudden wild idea churning inside her mind. "If we could find a way to release him from his pain, a way to lead him to a path of redemption..."

"Don't even think about it." Kira said, shaking his head firmly in denial. "Its impossible. Lacus and I both agreed that he was beyond any hope of redemption. He's a rabid dog, and the best way to deal with him is to put him down."

"Since you and Lacus are obviously the end all and be all of determining who can and cannot be saved?" Lilia retorted with narrowed eyes. "You taught me never to give up hoping for the best in others, even those that have done us wrong personally. Even those who are evil. So how can you countenance giving up on Frost?"

"Because I know him." Kira answered with a sigh. "I've probed around in his mind before, Lacus and I both did, at the end of the Battle of Denver. We looked as hard as we could for even the slightest hint of something to redeem in him. We found nothing. He chose to be the way he is, he likes it. He does not want to be saved, he does not want redemption, he is perfectly content with the person he is! He is a monster, and he exults in it! He's no longer human, not really, and thinking of him as a human is just self deception!"

"So you say, but I don't agree." Lilia said, before closing her eyes and shaking her head. "No, I cannot agree, will not agree! However far he has fallen, he can still climb out of his hole, just like I did. He just needs the chance. He needs someone that won't give up on him, no matter how hard he makes it." Lilia opened her eyes and looked at Kira fiercely. "You may have given up on him, but I won't! Just you watch me, Kira, I'll do what even you think is impossible. I will save Zacharis Frost from himself!"

"He'll kill you if you try." Kira insisted desperately.

"Maybe he will, but at least I'll die doing something worthwhile, something I believe in with all my heart. If I turn away from him now, just as everyone else in his entire life has, then I'll have lost something much more precious than my life. My soul. My dream. My faith in what you've taught me about humanity. About myself. We're given life so that we may help others and be helped in turn, Kira, and I won't turn away from that responsibility. Not even because of him. And nothing you can say will change my mind." Lilia stuck out her jaw and glared at him. _And just maybe, once I've surpassed Kira in this manner, he'll accept my feelings for him, once I've proven I'm not just some fangirl! I'll have done something even Lacus Clyne couldn't do, he's got to respect that!_

Kira plainly didn't want to accept that, but he'd just as plainly had enough experience with strong willed women that he knew when arguing was pointless. So instead of beating the same dead horse again, he switched tracks. "So what were you looking for me about?" He asked, getting to his feet.

Lilia got to her feet as well, holding his mantle around her waist to cover her ripped open pants. She flushed and looked away from him for a moment. "Well, I wanted to apologize for how I've been acting recently, but I guess I found the wrong Kira."

"Consider whatever apology you had ready, accepted." Kira said, holding out his hand towards her. "With Frost showing up, we can't afford to be glaring daggers at each other's backs. I was taking some things out on you that I shouldn't have."

"And I was being immature and selfish." Lilia admitted, taking his hand with a smile of thanks. "It was wrong of me to think I could so quickly replace Lacus. That I could ever replace Lacus at all. I'm sorry for how I was practically stalking you, I'm so embarassed..."

"No harm done. I'm glad we could clear the air." Kira pulled gently on her hand. "Now, lets go find a medic, because I don't care how tough you Praetorians are, I'm not walking around with you when you look like you just tried to hang yourself from a tree branch. An encounter with Frost is no joke. Take that from someone who's had more encounters with him than I like to remember. And after that, we can go test out the Lucifer together. I think I might need a sparring partner, if you catch my drift..."

xxxx


	31. Peerless Killers

Author Note: Well, I certainly seem to have stirred up a hornets nest of opinion with that last chapter. Good, I'm always glad to see a reaction, even if its negative in some respects. Shows that you care, that you're involved and invested in the story. Though I might mention, way back when, when a certain other villian happened to meet a certain someone that many people found annoying, the results proved beyond the expectations of anyone, myself included. Precedent does exist, even if there is quite a difference between that villian and our current person of interest. Its still early, this ship hasn't even left port yet. There's also a very lively debate thread on my RW Discussions forum about it, feel free to weigh in there if you like, as well as to get a further peak at my own thoughts on the matter.

But anyway, you didn't come here to listen to me hint and attempt to "shave" myself with justifications (its terrible, but that doesn't seem to get old), you came here for a treat, a wonder, and I'm here to provide. Been talking about and around Gundams for thirty chapters now, its high time we saw some in action, got a look at how all the new goodies actually play out in a live test. So without further ado, lets check in with our Peerless Killers.

xxxx

**New Eden, Himalayan Mountains, Mobile Suit Testing Grounds, November 24th, afternoon**

"So how's it feel to be back inside the cockpit of a Gundam?" Lilia asked, her voice on the comms so clear it was like she was speaking directly into his ear.

"I find myself strangely comfortable with it." Kira replied, looking right and left, up and down, working the kinks out of his neck as he ducked his ehad under the low ceiling of the cockpit space. Kira knew that with the NIC system equipped Gundam there was little need for all the screens and control sticks and even big padded flight couch that he was used to seeing crowding into a cockpit, but it was still a bit of shock opening the hatch and finding a space barely even big enough to sit upright in was all that was allocated for him. There wasn't even any padding on the floor for him to sit on, though Kira soon discovered that the flight suit he'd been provided included extra cushioning on the rear of the legs for just that purpose. Remembering back to when he'd taken the Pulsar, against Lacus's express warnings, Kira winced and waited for the flood of oxygenated gel and silvery wires to come seeking his scalp and limbs.

When neither came after several moments, Kira opened one eye and frowned. "I'm not sure my control system is functioning properly. It hasn't deployed any connection wires or acceleration gel." Kira informed Lilia. There was a brief moment of silence on the comm, and then she burst out laughing, as if he'd just said something really witty, rather than voiced an actual complaint.

"Sorry, Kira, I forgot you came from Orb for a moment there. They must still be using the old NIC-III interface and original GRS or GRS mod 2 systems. I guess that's what you get when you steal your technologic updates from inferior products, rather than developing them yourselves after reverse engineering the systems down to the fundamentals." Lilia chuckled again, a trifle condescendingly. "We have NIC-IV control systems, which are wireless helmets, and we use the GRS mod 3, which eschews the use of uncomfortable oxygenated cushioning gel and instead uses purely magnetic forcefields aligning with the metallic salts native to the human body to hold you in place and provide cushioning against high-G maneuvers. Its much more efficient, much cleaner and allows for much faster response times in case of rapid deployment. Just get in, boot up and go."

"I hope they've fixed the problem with conflicts between the autonomic programming and the human responses..." Kira said, just a tad bit nervous as he found the cubby in the back of the cockpit space and pulled out the helmet, which was heavier than he was used to, being made from Borealite instead of hardened polymer plastics. "The last time I piloted a NIC equipped Gundam, I got the ever living shit electrocuted out of me when my desires came into conflict with those of the Pulsar! Another ten seconds in the cockpit would have turned my brain into a fried sweetmeat! As it was, that's probably the second closest to death I've ever been."

"I've never heard of that happening to anyone before." Lilia assured him. "Perhaps that was a flaw engineered out after the prototype stage? The worst I've ever heard of is some people becoming a bit disoriented at the change in perspective, but that usually fades after a few minutes. I promise you, this system is safe. I've been using it for years and I've never had the slightest problem."

"Well, here goes nothing..." Kira replied, ducking his head down and sliding the helmet into place, adopting a cross legged sitting position in the middle of the cockpit space, as Lilia had instructed him before he boarded. The cushioning in the flight suit was surprisingly comfortable, like sitting on an memory foam office chair, and then Kira found his body locked in place by an invisible field that pressed down across his body, the force only noticable when he tried to twitch and found himself as paralyzed as if he was encased in solid ice! Kira put all his effort into throwing his body to the side, even knowing it was barely the tiniest fraction of the force of the acceleration or deceleration he would suffer during combat maneuvers, but he stayed still as if glued in place. The helmet settled into place around his head, deploying monitoring sensors as it attuned itself to his brainwaves. And then, with a sensation like a long blink, Kira found his eyes opening once more, except this time they were the royal purple lenses of the Lucifer!

_Neural Interface Connection established._ The foreign thought appeared in his mind as the Gundam started coming fully online. _Closing and sealing hatch. GRS Mod 3 operation nominal. All vital signs of pilot slightly elevated, within acceptable parameters. Fusion Pulse Reactor coming online in two... one... reactor start. _Kira felt the burning throb of the chained star that was the FPR at the center of the Lucifer as it ignited and began to oscillate eagerly. The heat was almost unbearable, he felt like he was cooking from the inside out, but then blessed coolness washed through his limbs and chest. _Coolant systems online and flow is optimal, blue, blue. Motive systems coming online... weapon systems coming online... all systems, online. We are the Lucifer, the Morning Star beneath whose light Heaven itself trembles and wails..._

Kira looked down at his arm... at the Lucifer's arm, and once more marveled at the technology that allowed his consciousness to so easily transpose itself into the control of this gigantic war machine, so that even the slightest motion felt completely natural and comfortable. His body felt light and strong, his eyes could see in a dozen different spectrums of the visible and invisible bands, and his wings flexed eagerly, longing to unleash the bright blue wash of thruster flame to propel him as fast and as far as he desired to go. It was quite a rush, but Kira only let himself enjoy it for a few moments before he dragged himself back do to reality. Much as it might feel like it, this was not his body, it was a Gundam that he was piloting. Keeping that distinction in mind was very important, because Kira had seen many times NIC operators forget that they were actually pilots, and react to stimuli a regular pilot wouldn't even blink at, such as being engulfed in fire or shot in the head. He was the Lucifer, but the Lucifer was not him.

Kira keenly remembered his awe of only a few minutes earlier, when Lilia had led him into the enormous underground hanger-cavern that served as the primary maintenance and resupply facility for the Praetorians and their heavy equipment, including the Spectres and Wraiths, lined up in indivual stalls along the perimeter of the wall, each stall more like a shrine to a minor deity, with decorations and personalized maintenance set ups that made it look more like the technicians were worshipping the Mobile Suits rather than merely maintaining them. Kira doubted there was any true worship going on, but there was definitely the sense that the Mobile Suits were more than just war machines to the Praetorians. And then there it had been, set out in a central location with a few scaffolds around it that were in the process of being disassembled and carted away, leaving the Gundam... his Gundam... standing alone and proud, waiting for him.

It was easy to see the basic lines of an Erica Simmons design in the shape of the Gundam, as fitting since the base structural design had been stolen from Morganroete, but it was far more than that as well, the engineers at BEGET, the Garden City technology masters, had taken clay and turned it into marble! An even twenty meters tall from foot to crown, and massing in at one hundred twenty tons, it was almost the exact same dimensions as the Seraph that had served him so well against Noah during the Eden Disaster. Even the basic look was similar, a winged angelic-knight, with relatively slim limbs and plenty of artful curvature to its armor sections, giving it a more organic, fierce look. The head was worked into the design of a vizored helm, with two steeply angled purple camera eyes and a ring of upward pointing spikes around the temples, like a crown sitting heavy atop the brow.

Just like the Seraph, the Lucifer was primarily black, with shimmers of gold and silver here and there, rising and fading as he moved closer and closer, the changing angle of perspective adding new depths and highlights to the armor surface with every step. Unlike the Seraph or indeed any of the Praetorian machines, the Lucifer's armor was not made of metal or Borealite, but instead the glasslike super-viscous nanite sludge of Liquid Crystal Regenerative Armor, just like what the Vengeance and Brotherhood Gundams had. Though only of average help against physical weapons, any weapon that relied on magnetically sheathed plasma or energy, even the stupendously powerful Positron cannons, was completely ineffective against the refractive LCR armor. Furthermore, because the LCR armor was fluid under the influence of certain electrical stimuli, it could far more completely cover the joints of the Gundam without restricting mobility, and it could shift its density to patch over holes or damage suffered, all the while actually creating more of itself from the environment around the Gundam, hence the "Regenerative" part of the name!

Back in the now, Kira rotated one arm through a complete three hundred and sixty degree turn, since it was another thing to bear in mind that the Lucifer wasn't subject to the limits of motion of a human body either. Kira rolled his shoulders, his wings rustling and shimmering as their LCR surfaces reacted to the tensing of his shoulders and upepr backs, preparing to sweep wide and launch him into the air. From wingtip to wingtip, the Lucifer's Fractal Wings stretched more than fifty meters, almost brushing the outer edges of the maintenance stalls on either side of Kira. The angular feather-pods of the Fractal Wings system rattled and clicked against each other, twitching in their berths among the decorative armor and Hi-Mat flight surface feathers that surrounded them, eighteen specialized deployable feather-pods to a wing, each capable of generating a Citadel or Geischmedig-Panzer beam deflecting shield around itself, and combining with the other feathers to form progressively larger and stronger shield forms. By creative and practiced use of the Fractal Wings, Kira could capture incoming enemy beam fire and send it back at them, plus many other more esoteric strategies, such as cocoon traps fo enemy machines.

Bylines of data scrolled along the bottom corners of his vision, detailing the parameters of each system as he brought it under his scrutiny, and Kira was pleased to see that both the detached operating time and shield power of his Fractal Wings had been significantly increased from the Seraph, in line with the far more powerful FPR he now had as a power source. Movement in the periphery of his forward vision arc caused tingles of attention snaring alarms to crawl down his spine, and Kira turned away from the inspection of himself, to find himself face to face with a gigantic sized effigy of Lilia's Praetorian armor, carved intricately with images of angels wielding fiery swords striking the chains off of cowering slaves and prisoners. Her head-helm had two large armor flanges arcing away from each side of the head, carved to resemble the wings of angels. Her Wraith was a bit taller and heavier than the Lucifer, but because she lacked back mounted wings, the Lucifer still looked bigger when standing side by side.

"Magnificent..." Lilia said, not having to fake her admiration for the masterpiece Gundam standing in front of her. It seemed almost too beautiful to actually be a war machine, but the swords at its sides, and rifles sheathed across its back, belied any notion that the Lucifer was anything other than an Angel of Destruction. "If you think you've got the hang of it, walk out the entrance there and..." Lilia half turned and was pointing towards the ramp leading up to the exit of the maintenance hanger, still in the midst of her sentence, when Kira brushed by her with liquid grace and disappeared outside inbetween blinks of her eyes. "... remind me that you're not a rookie at this." Lilia finished a bit lamely, charging up the ramp after him and taking to the skies in pursuit of the swooping black form that was racing down the valley at breathtaking speed, hugging the rock walls with barely five meters to spare as Kira put the Lucifer through a few simple paces, Lilia falling into formation slightly behind him after a few seconds of catch up.

The two and a half mile broad, twenty mile long glacial valley that the Praetorians used as their private testing and sparring grounds for their Mobile Suits and heaviest weapons was several dozen miles away from Yggdrasil and Garden City proper, even further up into the heart of the Himalaya Range, with no easily accesible routes in or out except by air or by underground tunnel. The altitude was too high, the atmosphere too thin, for anything but birds and the most hardy of small rodents to survive comfortably, so there was no need to hold back in fear of disrupting an ecosystem balance. The valley was protected from observation from the sides by the mountain range, and from above by a Mirage Colloid type barrier similar to that used over Garden City itself, which limited any high flying maneuvers to a ceiling of about fifteen thousand feet from ground level, requiring constant care be taken not to breach the barrier and possibly clue the USN in on Edenite activity deep in the mountains where none was expected.

After a relatively leisurely lap of the valley, only pushing about Mach 4 or 5, well within the maximum cruising speeds of both machines, Lilia and Kira alighted on a section of valley floor that had been set aside as a target range, with targets both electronic and physical to be destroyed so that a pilot could get a feel for the destructive power of his or her weapons. Burn scars in the ground and plenty of scattered rubble, charred almost black where it had been blasted apart, showed that the range saw fairly heavy and constant use, though they were the only two on it at the moment. Kira took a half heartbeat to catalogue the weapon array that the Lucifer had been equipped with, and was slightly surprised to see it was quite light. Then again, looking at the Dervish, Spectre and Wraith, none of which were exactly dreadnaughts, the Edenite mode of Mobile Suit armaments did tend towards quality over quantity.

The Lucifer was equipped with a pair of 15mm beam CIWS guns mounted just below the head region, staple weapons used for anti-vehicle and anti-missile interdiction duty. Moving up the armament scales were two 50mm Ion Disintegrator rifles, carried on the back between the wings when not in use. Kira drew the rifles, one in each hand, and paused to scan the details as presented by the Lucifer's OS. An Ion Disintegrator was a High Energy/Kinetic Particle weapon, in some ways similar to the lightning bolt spewing Mjolnirs of the USN, except the Ion Disintegrators fired a tiny packet of exotic, short lived, supermassive charged particles, which, upon striking solid matter, initiated a small yield fission reaction among the matter struck, quite literally causing it to explode like a tiny nuclear bomb! Though only 50mm in caliber, less than a standard Mobile Suit beam rifle, the actual blast hole of a hit was anywhere from ten to fifteen times the size of the muzzle diameter, depending on the fissionability of the material struck. The explosions generally took a cone type form, with the narrow end of the cone where the particle burst first hit, and widening along its path into the target, the amount of energy released by an explosion was enough to cause secondary damage effects from plasma ejecta to anything unfortunate enough to be in its path!

With a hard smile sneaking onto his lips, Kira aimed the rifles and fired, and found himself blinking as twin sonic booms echoed around the valley nearby, the exotic particle packets appearing as pinpricks of bright red flaring light trailing visible distortion waves through the air, the particles so dense that they attracted and dragged along any free floating atoms or molecules nearby, creating a vacuum tunnel in atmosphere, which produced the sonic boom as it collapsed behind the shot. The targets he'd aimed for, piles of loose scree and rock that were supposed to represent sections of Mobile Suit armor, took the shots dead center and detonated ferociously, scattering rock ships and blobs of magma for a hundred meters in every direction around the point of impact, the Lucifer's targeting sensors extrapoltaing the damage on a USN Vindicator, revealing large holes where the torsos had generally been! The weapons were semi-automatic and relatively quick firing, but had less range than a regular beam rifle because the particle packets would decay and disappear after only a few seconds, unable to hold together for long.

Kira was about to move on to the next weapon selection, when Lilia activated a more active target a bit further down the range, a mobile remote controlled vehicle that was equipped with a Citadel Shield projector system, just like that which many Mobile Suits used as a defensive shield. Before Kira could ask her what she was about, Lilia raised her right arm, upon which was mounted another Ion Disintegrator identical to the ones Kira held, and fired a single shot at the shield drone. Kira watched the path of the shot, which was dead one, and then had to look twice, because the glimmering red flare hit the Citadel Shield and burrowed right through it like it wasn't even there, the bullet packet particles being so dense and moving at such velocity that they warped the outer and inner edges of the magnetically sheathed plasma shield together to touching distance for a moment, allowing the packet to pass through undetonated, to obliterate the shield drone beyond. Seeing that, and realizing that the same would hold true of GP and even Positron Reflector shielding, all of which used magnetic fields in the same way, Kira found himself smirking wolfishly. _I think I might just have Frost's number now... if only I'd had one of these back with the Seraph... Noah never would have known what hit him!_

The Lucifer's remaining ranged weapons were a quadruplet of 100mm "Hellfury" class Ultraviolet Rapidfire FRALA's, built into the chest/torso region of the Lucifer, two per side. Initially puzzled as to why they would go to all the trouble of frequency shifting the FRALA beam up into the ultraviolet spectrum rather than leaving it in the lower power but still more than sufficient blue-white spectrum, Kira got his answer when he saw the detailed footnotes linking the Hellfury's and the Fractal Wings. _AHA!_ Kira felt that predatory smile tugging the edges of his lips once more. "And he appeared above the battlefield, floating on wings of light, the sinners cowering and tearing at themselves as they shielded their eyes..." Kira murmured, the feather pods of the Fractal Wings deploying from around his back, forming precisely arranged groupings several meters in front of him, arranging themselves to fit the picture inside his mind's eye, far easier to control now that he didn't have a seperate set of fingertip controls for them. Turning on the GP shield feature, Kira aligned his targeting reticules, and made a brief prayer that what he thought the designers intended was what really was. "... to no avail..." Kira finished, as he hit the triggers.

Four dark purplish beams of concentrated light speared from the projectors on the Lucifer's chest and stabbed into the midst of the four waiting groupings of Fractal Wing pods, all with GP fields focused inwards in a precise arrangement that concentrated and overlapped their fields to create a prism effect, causing the FRALA beams, upon striking the prism, to bend, refract and then splinter into multiple smaller beams, each with their own tajectory, each 100mm original beam splitting into up to 20 different 5mm beams for a total of 80 seperate beams, ranging in color from red to pink to orange to green to blue... all the colors of the visible spectrum, like a rainbow from the depths of hell, pencil lead thickness beams of ultra heat that carved through rock and hardened armor plate like it was soft cheese! And by minutely varying the field strengths of the Fractal Wings, Kira could adjust the angle of the refracted beams to sweep them around like spotlights, even criss crossing the beams into a netlike lattice! A smoking grid of molten cuts in the side of the mountain, which began slowly falling apart into a series of near perfect cubes and rectangles, was the end result of Kira's test firing.

"That was... INCREDIBLE!" Lilia gushed, unashamed that she was staring bug eyed at the devastation and precision with which it was wrought. She was still blinking spots out of her eyes from the pyrotechnic rainbow display of refracted FRALA beams, which the designers had included as a very advanced feature. And Kira had used it flawlessly on his first ever attempt! Lilia was beginning to see the difference between reading about his exploits on the net and witnessing them first hand.

"I think I like this system. I can work with this." Kira said happily, a slight twinge of guilt all that remained of a time when he would have been impressed, but still horrified, at the destructive potential he'd just so casually displayed. Now he was just eager to try it out again. But that could wait for later, after he finished inventorying the remainder of his equipment. He would have to spend a lot of time discovering the intricasies and idiosyncrasies of these new weapons for him to feel fully comfortable going into battle once more. It was one thing to be impressive on a range, quite another to do the same thing while maneuvering at high speed and being shot at. Kira selected the next item on the menu, in a way gratified to discover the Lucifer had been equipped with something so simple as a pair of longswords for melee combat, nothing fancy about them, save from that they were grown from pure Quantum Crystal, and required special gel filled sheathes that stuck to the blades like glue to keep them from sliding around during maneuvers and slicing his torso in half. Kira made a note to remember that QC weapons could not parry beam weapons, and then remembered that the LCR armor made him immune to beam weapons. Someone had been thinking here.

A list of defensive systems, including Mirage Colloid, Citadel shield projectors on either forearm, Positron Reflectors in the palms and the ubiquitous nano-self repair system, were followed up by something called the "Lucifer's Grasp GMFG", which translanted to Gravitic Manipulation Field Generator, which were integral to his gauntlets. At first Kira thought it was just a knockoff attempt at the Vulcan's Forge BGCS system that had been pioneered on the Phoenix King, but then he realized it was a bit more than just a knockoff. The BGCS, or Beam Generation and Containment System, could quite literally catch and store plasma type energy shots for use as melee or ranged weapons of almost any sort conceivable, the pilot able to manipulate the fields to generate any weapon that came to mind. The GMFG could do the same thing, not through magnetic fields but through actual manipulation of gravity in a localized manner, and also it could affect up to twenty tons of physical matter in the same way! Kira powere dup the system and gestured at the pile of rock cubes his Wings of Light had created, causing them the fly up into the air like a flock of startled birds. The manipulation range seemed limited to less than a hundred meters, so Kira wasn't sure how much practical use the system was, but then again, he'd once thought something similar about the Fractal Wings, and those had ended up being the signature weapon of the Seraph! Time and experimentation would tell.

Preliminary asessment of his new Gundam complete, Kira found himself quite impressed. The Edenites had built him a monster, that was for sure! The perfect tool to pursue justice for those who had conspired, knowingly or not, to murder Lacus, Akira and Aoi! Shaking his head clear of the melancholy, Kira turned to look at Lilia and her Wraith, noting that her twin swords were almost identical to his own. "So about that sparring you mentioned..." Kira began leadingly.

"Just make sure you set the internal limiters to "test" and mark me as a friendly target." Lilia replied at once, a note of eagerness in her own voice as she realized she was about to get one hell of a workout, personal training in a way of thinking, from Kira Yamato himself! "We Praetorians train more rigorously than the computer simulations of the Custodians, but we're not stupid. If your sword blades get within a certain distance of my armor, or vice versa, while under Test State, your OS will automatically override your forward motion and stop the strike, all the while recording it as a hit for the tally. You got about a meter of barrier distance, to account for inertia of the blow, but just bear in mind, your hit box is about a meter bigger all round than you're used to. And if you crash into something while maneuvering, you can still hurt or kill yourself, the same if you mess up and fling yourself into a weapon strike, so watch yourself, this is no joke. Test State also powers down your ranged weapons to targeting mode only, the OS will display a simulation of the shot in real time, when in reality all you're shooting is a targeting laser. You got all that?"

"I think I've got the gist." Kira felt a rare degree of near exuberance welling up inside him as he squared off against Lilia, both of them going for swords initially, as melee combat was one of the best determiners of balance and functionality of a new Mobile Suit. Kira couldn't see it, but he was actually smiling. "Welcome to the major leagues, my friend." Kira half jested, half taunted, and then charged.

xxxx

**Upon the slopes of the nearby mountains, same time**

The Kratos reclined upon the rocky hillside like an indolent teenager taking his ease, enjoying the afternoon sunshine, though truth be told it could have been blizzarding like hell itself and Frost would barely have noticed, nearly his entire attention focused upon the events taking place in the valley below. Though it had gone against his grain, he'd followed Yamato and the Mouse when they'd gone off to spar, far enough back that even Yamato didn't seem to have noticed him, and upon seeing Yamato mount his new Gundam, frost had immediately decided that it might actually be worth his time to assess the former Boytoy's actual combat strength. There was a certain spice in going into combat against a hated rival cold, with no idea of how well his skills matched up against your own, but recent events had given Frost just a frission of concern. When Yamato had come after him with that sword, he'd almost laughed out loud, well remembering all the previous times Yamato had faced off against him in a physical sense, and how every one of those times, he'd beat Yamato to within an inch of death without too much trouble, not from Yamato anyway. His grenade chucking friends were another matter entirely.

Almost as soon as he'd thought about that, the former Boytoy had almost sneaked through his defenses and eviscerated him, which wouldn't have likely killed him, not with the way his body worked these days, but it would have been damned inconvenient, not to mention embarassing. And then he'd found himself, for one of the few times in his life, fully on the defensive as Yamato came at him like a whirlwind of mono-edged steel. Of course Yamato was using his little emotional booster, that Seed mechanism Doc had been swooning over shortly before his timely death, but that shouldn't matter, he'd beaten Yamato during his hyped up phase before without a sweat! But for whatever reason, the former Boytoy had really had him almost on the ropes there for a while, and while his blustering about not WANTING to kill Yamato may have convinced the audience, the plain fact of the matter, Frost admitted to himself, was that at that exact time, he wasn't ABLE to kill Yamato and was actually having to work to stay unstabbed or cut himself! Maybe he'd been caught off guard, but that was no excuse for him.

So it was with real interest that the Kratos bent up from its reclined position and sat cross legged, elbows on knees, chin propped carefully upon palms, with the left hand sword-claws disengaged of course, as Yamato and the Mouse squared off, crystalline swords in either hand of both machines. Frost spent a brief moment trying to establish exactly what sort of beast Yamato's thought patterns reminded him of, but couldn't decide between some form of sheep and one of those sad eyed hound dogs. The Mouse was much easier, her mental image had suggested itself to him the moment he'd laid eyes on her, for all her ferocity, she was just a cute little thing making annoying squeaks around the heels of much bigger and stronger beasts, trying to make herself seem fearsome when in truth it was she who feared, and greatly. Though he'd only gotten the merest whiff of her memories before Yamato interrupted him, Frost had seen enough to know that the Mouse was seriously tormented inside. It was enough to make him grin happily. He'd given up on the Boytoy as a diversion, but now he had a Mouse to play with instead.

Frost watched carefully as Yamato charged and engaged the Mouse with both swords, being fended off with parries from the Mouse as she backpedaled to avoid being pressured by the Gundam. The Mouse tried to work in a riposte or counterstrike every so ofte, but each time Yamato evaded her blows, even those that weren't telegraphed, like he'd seen them coming from miles away. having noticed the same thing happening to himself during the hand to hand swordplay earlier, Frost narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out how Yamato was so accurately predicting what varied opponents would do. One of his own chief advantages, especially on offense, was the very unpredictability of his attacks, conforming to no set style or rythrm, just pure agression and instinct. But if the Boytoy had figured out a way to counteract or anticipate even inherently random attacks, then things might get a little difficult. Not that Frost wasn't sitll sure he could beat the Boytoy if and when it came down to it, after all, the Boytoy had only beat him last time after his friends had worn him down first, and with Pink's help.

Yamato stayed on the offense, pressing the Mouse hard, clearly taking her somewhat off guard, obviously she'd been expecting Kira to adopt a more defensive, midrange type approach to the fight, and was having to scramble to collect herself for the close range dueling. Frost had to admit, the Mouse was no slouch, she was keeping up with Yamato, even if she was staying on the defensive. He noticed that her fighting style was actually very similar to Yamato's, so similar it couldn't be a coincidence, she used the same sort of combination blows and blocks and sword traps, even her footwork and dodge tactics were nearly identical, and Frost filed that away for future perusal. Clearly the Mouse had a deeper relationship with Yamato than even her heartfelt apology had indicated. After almost a solid minute of frantic backpedaling and retreat, the Mouse finally pulled out a trick Yamato didn't see coming, knocking both his swords out wide before planting a rather neat front kick to the belly region of the Lucifer, LCR armor splashing like thick taffy before reforming as the Lucifer took two heavy steps back to keep its balance.

The Mouse took to the air, clearly feeling like she would otherwise soon be backed into a corner, and went to put some distance between herself and Kira, which had the unfortunate side effect of putting her right in the middle of Kira's preferred fighting zone. Frost smirked, seeing the tactic the Boytoy was using, recognizing it as similar to ones he himself had used before, getting into an opponent's face early on, getting them rattled, especially if they thought they had you all figured out, and then letting them have a bit of space, knowing that most people would try to back off for breathing room, only to find themselves square in the middle of your big guns. Not that Frost used guns if he could avoid it, he found them incredibly unsatisfying weapons and he'd only put the ones on the Kratos there because he recognized that some problems just couldn't be solved in a satisfying manner, but the principle was the same. Act out, get your opponent rattled or confused, then let their natural tendency lure them right into your most powerful attacks.

Such as the dazzling gridwork of prismatic light beams that the Boytoy created with his network of detachable defense pods, so similar in many respects to the wire guided GP shields on his own much beloved Fury. Frost grudgingly had to admit that the Boytoy was far more innovative and accomplished in his usage of his own shield pods, outshining even Frost's masterpiece attack, Web of the Warped, which he had used to such great effect in Panama upon Scarface and to a lesser effect upon Fiery Zala-Attha just prior to the Isolation of Orb, during Asmodeus's final charge. The light beams were powered down from the previous range-fire test, which spared the Mouse from being cut into bite sized cubes, but her chagrin at being caught out by Kira's strategy was palpable even to Frost from his position several kilometers away. Were he a better person, Frost might have been tempted to console her with the knowledge that it was no shame to lose to the Boytoy, not in Gundam combat anyway, but thankfully he was not such a person, and he kept his condolences to himself and instead resolved to needle her about her ineptitude the next chance he got.

In truth Frost was somewhat amazed and aghast at his own playfulness, regarding not just the Mouse but these Edenites in general, given the poor showing those Cold Hunter losers had given. Ever since he'd learned of the pointless death of Pink, he'd been in a terrible, brutal mood, even for him, though no one other than himself would ever be able to tell, but after arriving here, to this city built in the shade of that impossible tree, which had made even his mouth gape in astonishment upon first catching sight of it, he'd found himself quite mellow and he wasn't sure exactly why. He'd barely even tormented the Mouse, Frost hardly counted a forced kiss and a quick grope of the goods to be more than a overly enthusiastic greeting, compared to what he'd dished out to others in a similar amount of time before! Especially because up until the part where he actually put his hands on her, she'd been responding quite shamelessly to his efforts. Almost enough to get him a little bit excited, to tell the truth, having a female actually respond to his advances without kicking and screaming and flailing was something of a novel experience, even if he knew it was only because he looked like the Boytoy.

Determined to get her own back, the Mouse was the one to charge the Lucifer this time, only to be brought up short by a wall of defense pods projecting Citadel Shields, which stymied her rush and slowed her down as she forced her way through them, incidentally lining herself up for a pair of shots from the Lucifer's Ion Disintegrators, that would have turned her ehad and torso to blasted craters had they been real shots. Frustration rolling off her in waves, the Mouse bared her nipping teeth once more, tail all but bristling with indignation at being caught out twice by the Boytoy, her beady little eyes flashing with ferocity as she activated her Mobile Suit's cloaking system and completely vanished from view, even with the specialized anti-Mirage Colloid sensors the Kratos had. The Kratos perked up visibly at this development, an absolute invisibility system being an interesting twist indeed. Frost could think of an easy dozen counters for it, but he wondered if the Boytoy would be as adaptive?

Perhaps his recent conduct could be explained by the relatively good mood he'd been put in from the moment he'd laid eyes on Yamato? For all that he was a failed rival, Frost could not deny it was good to look upon someone whom he didn't have to re-establish his reputation with, someone who knew him and, to an extent, understood him without need for tedious explanations or recriminations. Now if only he would get his morals back together and return to being that annoyingly idealistic spoilsport he'd once been! For all that Frost hated and despised that Kira, it was the Kira he was used to, the Kira that he identified with, and finding that Kira was no longer that person was like finding a chair with one leg missing... it might be able to stand, but it would never be comfortable. Judging from the duel with the Mouse, and the swordfight in the tree, Yamato's physical skills had only improved since their last meeting. Unfortunately, his ethical regression rendered the point moot, until he returned to being Light Kira, not Dark Kira, there could be no joy in eviscerating him and wearing his skin as a coat.

Disengaging his mind from the Kratos for a moment, Frost scratched irritably at the base of his skull, trying to obliterate the slight itching sensation that had been bothering him for a while now, like termites trying to burrow into his skull, though much less painful. Just irritating, a constant low level humm, like the sound of a crowd of people a goodly distance away, all talking at once, a background buzz. his fingers seemed to do little good, in fact, the more he turned his attention to the irritation, the more it grew, until he could almost, but not quite, actually start picking out meaning and context in the buzz of voices. Frost was no stranger to voices in his head, but they weren't usually the voices of others, nor did they usually all talk at once. Movement from down in the valley nabbed his attention once more, as he fully reinterfaced with the Kratos, the hubbub of near voices once more dying away to becoming a mere irritation.

Yamato's detached defense pods were whirling around him like leaves caught in a tornado, glimmering like shattered shards of light as they circled and wove around the Lucifer in what the inexperienced eye would no doubt see as random patterns. Frost squinted and made out several occassions where the pods were deflected from their course, each time, the Lucifer pretending not to notice, as the invisible Mouse did her best to work her way through Yamato's whirring defenses. The problem being, her twin swords lacked the reach, and her MS lacked the sheer mass, to just slam aside the shield pods, especially when they gathered in groups, so she was forced to either bull through, and give away her position, or try to sneak attacks through the defensive matrix, darting in and out and minimizing contact with the shields, at cost to her accuracy and hitting power. She'd chosen the latter obviously, but it was proving less effective than she'd obviously hoped, and though the Mouse kept her mind locked down tight, Frost did not doubt she was becoming even more frustrated than before.

After all, she was supposed to be one of the elites of these people, or something like that, and being made to look amateurish, perhaps especially by the Boytoy, had to be grating on her pride. Frost could almost sympathize, he knew exactly what it was like trying to work his way through the Boytoy's annoyingly competent defenses. The bastard just WOULDN'T die like he was supposed to. The Mouse slowly worked her way inward through the revolving layers of pods, Frost keeping track of her position judging by how the Boytoy diverted his pods, slowly enveloping her even as she labored under the impression that she was penetrating his defense. Just a few seconds too late, the Mouse realized she was in a trap, but when she tried to retreat, she found herself cocooned by the shield pods and utterly pinned, almost crucified, as the Lucifer casually turned and poked a sword blade at her, which would have taken her through the cockpit had it been a real fight, her invisibility worthless with her suit outlined by the shimmering aqua-green Citadel Shield pods.

Another heat source and movement in the corner... though that was a relative term, since the KRatos had 360 degree vision... of his eyes caught Frost's attention as another MS, the same type as the Mouse's, except with a large two handed QC sword reminescent of his beloved Pulsar's beam Zweihander propped over one shoulder, came hurtling through the air towards where he was reclined. Frost raised an eyebrow at the armor decoration of this MS, which was carved with rank upon serried rank of skulls of all descriptions. The pilot's mental image bloomed in Frost's vision, a replendent, noble bird with its chest all puffed up as it strutted back and forth with self confident importance. A Turkey. The Turkey came to a stop a not altogether respectful distance away from the Kratos, and appeared to study the reclining Gundam disdainfully for a moment. "You're the one who caused Kunai such distress, aren't you?" The Turkey asked, his voice a heavy bass rumble, tinged with plenty of anger and indignation.

"I gather I ruffled his feather's a bit, when he threw me against the wall and tried to crucify me with his little toys." Frost acknowledged. "Whats it to you, Turkey?"

"I am Arboreal Praetorian Alexander." Alex replied haughtily. "And though you are recognized as Executor rank by Hiero and the Consols, I cannot accept your presence so easily! I don't even know who you are or where you came from, how can they expect me to follow you in battle? You seem to have some sort of past reputation, but that doesn't matter here on New Eden. Only the present and the future matter here."

"I don't want you, or anyone else, to follow me in battle." Frost replied with a yawn. "For one, you couldn't keep up. Also, in case you didn't realize, I'm not doing this to protect you people, I don't have your interests in mind, unlike Yamato. I'm here for me, to end this wasteful war so that I may start the true conflict to come. Your side just seemed more interesting than the USN, Turkey. Random chance brought us together, and my careful deliberation shall split us apart... when the time comes."

"You talk a good game, "Executor", but it takes more than that to earn the acceptance of the Praetorians." The Turkey lifted his heavy sword from his shoulder and pointed it threateningly at the reclined Kratos. "I challenge you to a test of skill, if you dare. Get up off your ass and fight me, and we'll see if your reputation is warranted!"

Frost could not help but chuckle, as he slowly uncrossed his legs. "You know, its idiots like you, Turkey, that really make life fun sometimes. I just came here to watch the Mouse flail against Yamato, but while that is entertaining, I'm certainly not adverse to bathing in your blood, should you be so kind as to place yourself upon my altar."

"Don't worry, "Executor", I've no intention of harming anything other than your twisted sense of pride." Alex snorted dismissively. "Regardless of my feelings, you are one more warm body, and we need those. I'm just here to prove that you're not worthy of your position, nor our respect. I'm going to leave you writhing in my dust..."

"Worthy of your respect?" Frost spat the words, the Kratos heaving itself upright, towering head, shoulders and a significant portion of torso over the Turkey, almost half again the height of the Edenite MS, and over twice the weight. "You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I desire your respect. I don't, Turkey. I don't want it in the slightest. The only thing I need from you is something all humans can give. I want your fear. Barring that, I want your hate. I want the darkness inside your soul to rise up and strangle you, to violate your every principle as you scrabble in the mud to even stare me in the eyes. I want the Abyss to swallow you whole, as it did me. I want to see you bleed from every orifice as you confront the inescapable truth hidden in the depths of that Abyss. The truth that I represent! But your respect? I wouldn't wipe my ass with it." Frost brought the Kratos's right arm around, the blade of his scythe jarring against the extended sword blade with a squeal of crystal on crystal. "I accept your challenge, Turkey."

"Very well then." Alex sounded a trifle pleased. "En gar..." He didn't even finish the sentence before the Kratos's left hand, the massive gauntlet, formed a fist and slammed through Alex's defenses to punch the Wraith right in the chest, knocking it tumbling backwards through the air like a ball from a bat. Blinking his eyes and gritting his teeth, glad for the GRS system which had prevented him from biting his tongue in half, Alex narrowed his eyes and brought his zweihander up in front of him carefully, keeping the blade between him and the admittedly impressive form of the second Executor's Gundam. Alex tried to reconstruct the sudden sucker punch that had caught him off guard, but truth be told he'd only just barely seen the Kratos move. Probably because his mind had still been on formalities, which the Executor didn't seem to respect. That was okay with Alex though, in truth he preferred a dirty, honest fight to any regulated duel.

Frost studied his left arm speculatively, wondering why he hadn't deployed his sword claws and ripped the Turkey into sandwich meat with that first strike. His good mood couldn't account for mercy of that nature, the Turkey had challenged him to a fight, and there was only one way to decide the true winner of any such contest... it was the person that walked away while their foe bled out into the dirt! But though he'd had the Turkey dead to rights, in the midst of his pompous declarations, he had failed to deliver a killing blow. This went beyond strange, it was becoming troubling! What was it about this area, these Edenites, that made him forget his natural inclinations? Something like this had happened to him before, Pink had put some sort of block in his mind during the minutes just prior to his death, which prevented him from going after the rank and file troops that had so betrayed his expectations of human nature! But who could have evaded his attention to place a new block inside him, and how, and when? Surely no human was skilled enough to enter his mind without him noticing, the chaos that dwelt inside his thoughts was anathema to those with sane, ordered minds, they would recoil and give themselves away!

Wrapping both hands around the haft of his scythe, Frost twitched his wings in inner agitation as he and the Turkey slowly circled each other, like prize fighters evaluating a strange new opponent, the Turkey no doubt trying to predict Frost's plan of attack. Frost almost chortled and told the Turkey not to bother, since he himself wasn't sure exactly how he would attack, it would simply become obvious to him the moment he did so, but the troubling thought of whoever... or whatever... was forcing him to disregard his intent to butcher the Turkey like a holiday meal kept his mouth shut in a grim line of displeased determination. Where was this annoying influence coming from? And how was it surviving contact with his insanity? "Bothersome..." Frost muttered angrily, and then the Kratos was charging forward, scythe whirling like the very instrument of Death himself!

xxxx

**Down in the Valley, same time**

The flare of high output reactors blossoming in the near distance, yanked on Kira's attention, as he evaded yet another attack from Lilia, his friend dogged in her determination to score at least one hit against him, after being defeated five times in a row. Something about being in the cockpit of a Gundam seemed to bring his Latent nature forth in ways that it normally wouldn't, and now that he finally realized what was going on with those flashes of premonition, it was almost too easy to avoid any of Lilia's attacks, or counteract them before she could fully develop strategies that made avoidance difficult. Noticing his moment of distraction, Lilia lunged forward with both swords low, then angling them up once she'd cleared the revolving layers of his Fractal Wings shields, aiming to gut the Lucifer, were it not for the test simulation restrictions. Or Kira sidestepping and blocking with his own criss crossed blades, guiding Lilia's swords and her arms out wide in either direction, as the Lucifer's knee came slamming up into her torso, jarring the Wraith upright, before she was swarmed by his Fractal Wings and forced into staggering backwards by the constant pummeling from the shield pods. A step forward and a hooking thrust of one leg tripped Lilia and sent the Wraith crashing to the ground, Kira's swords at her throat.

"Damn it, I thought I had you that time..." Lilia groused, as Kira slowly backed off, his attention once more elsewhere. Truth be told, Lilia was struggling not to become petulant or even upset, her pride currently in tatters, all her vaunted skills and training amounting to roughly jack squat against Kira. Maybe he was in a Gundam that technologically outclassed her Wraith, but he hadn't piloted in seven fricking years, during which time she'd almost constantly been training and fighting! Regardless, this was less a fight and more an exercise in anger management on her part, as every stratagem or tactic she thought of was almost casually defeated by Kira's maneuverability, lightning quick ripostes, or especially the whirling aura of Fractal Wing pods that made it impossible for her to get close to him without being hampered, tripped or even trapped by the glimmering shields! He was better than she'd ever realized he was, and for one of the first times in her entire adult life, Lilia realized that she was just plain outclassed in terms of experience.

And then she noticed where Kia was looking, and dropped her own monofocus to look that way too, drawing in a sudden gasp of breath as she saw Alex squaring off against a strange new Gundam, which could only be the machine of the one known as Zacharis Frost. Even as she looked on, Alex went on the attack, as he always did, his specialty in combat revolving around up close and personal fighting using overwhelming strength and force to batter enemy's defenses down as he ran roughshod over them, his skill with his heavy two handed blade breathtaking to watch, as ever. And then Lilia was fightning not to cry out in dismay, when the Kratos's scythe whipped around and met the oncoming zweihander strike head on, effortlessly parrying the blow and even driving Alex backwards a bit with the greater mass of the Kratos, before Frost bull rushed the smaller Wraith, quite literally slamming into Alex, chest to chest, and bowling the smaller and lighter MS over like a house of cards. Alex managed to right himself in time to block the next sweep of the scythe, but was also forced into sliding backwards under the force of the blow, as well as the subsequent ones, unable to recover against the flurry of blows long enough to get off the defensive.

Kira observed with narrowed eyes as Frost attacked in his usual relentless, but almost uncoordinated manner, attacks coming from every which direction with random timing and bone jarring force, and he could tell that the Praetorian was having a lot of trouble with the tremendous assault, clearly unused to being forced on the defensive. But no matter how he parried, blocked or dodged, he couldn't turn the momentum around as Frost pursued him with all the ferocity of a starving, rabid wolverine, knocking the Wraith around like a punching bag, with forehand cuts and backhand smashes of the scythe, with the odd thrust from the butt end sneaking past the Praetorian's guard to further push him off balance. Alexander dug deep into his reserves, a blue Seed detonating inside his mind, and finally managed to find his footing, quite literally, as his frantic retreat had reached the valley floor, his Wraith's feet digging into the soil and rock, giving him the leverage to stand firm against the next strike of the Kratos, though he could hear his bones creaking under the stress.

And that was when, as Kira had been expecting, the attack truly began in earnest, Frost always having been most comfortable with striking with a weapon in either hand, the Kratos's oversized left hand leaving off of the scythe, sword-claws snapping into place along its fingers from their at rest positions folded back along the upper part of the gauntlet, and then Alex was facing attacks from twice the number of directions at any given time, backstepping almost continuously as he sought to avoid the jabbing sword claws and sweeping scythe blade. Frost kept piling on the pressure, dark crimson red, highly curved beam blades stabbing from the tips of his wings, which began stabbing and slicing like an extra pair of arms, making Kira blink and flinch ever so slightly as he remembered the fights against the Brotherhood Gundam, and the eightfold attack from arms and wings that had occured with Frostlike ferocity. He'd later learned, from a brief talk with Noah, that the Brotherhood had incorporated action memory type circuits based off Frost and himself from their time in the Pulsar, which accounted for the Gundam's behavior in certain aspects of the battlefield.

In truth, Kira was somewhat surprised and impressed that Alexander had managed to last as long as he had, with only a large sword to use to parry, instead of dual swords or sword and shield, against attacks coming from four different directions at once, two of which came with brutal force that shoved the Wraith backward unwillingly whenever sword met claws or scythe. Alexander already sported several charr marks along his limbs and torso, where he'd been forced to let the supercharged beam blades slip through his defense to ward off more deadly strikes from the scythe or claws. To no surprise from Kira, Frost wasn't utilizing test mode, if the Kratos even came equipped with such a thing, which he found doubtful. Whether or not Alexander realized it, he was truly fighting for his life at the moment. Kira tensed, the Lucifer twitching in response, as he recalled his Fractal Wings and prepared to intervene when the moment came, as it soon would, when Alexander could defend himself no longer. No one could defend against Frost's assault forever, he was just too fast, too unpredictable, if you let him build momentum and start chaining combos, you were as good as dead. You had to interrupt his rythym, get him to unfocus, distract him, to have any chance of winning against him.

Alex twigged to this realization almost too late, before making a wide sweep with his zweihander that forced the Kratos to take a half step backwards, giving Alex just enough time to activate his photo-refractor array and dissapear from sight and sensors alike. Unfortunately, Frost was quick to realize the same thing that Kira had about the Praetorian's invisibility system, in that for all its power, it was still vulnerable to many of the same improvised countermeasures as Mirage Colloid, since it only made the MS invisible, not intangible. The Kratos uncoiled its shoulder mounted tentacles, which began whipping through the air like a nest of angry vipers, slamming into the ground, raising heavy clouds of grit and dust even as the tentacles themselves quested for any hint of Alex's machine. Kira's eyes darted to a disturbance in the dust cloud, at almost the same time that the Kratos spun and blocked the downward slashing, invisible sword, the force of the blow actually making the Kratos stagger slightly, before Frost recovered his balance and then hit his thrusters. A roar of thunder rocked the valley as the Kratos surpassed the sound barrier a half a dozen times over in less than a second, appearing like a mirage blur behind the position of the invisible Alex, who was still half stunned by the sonic boom blasting into his face.

Though almost all FPR and GRS equipped machines possessed the capability of moving at such extremely high speeds, only the rarest few pilots could actually productively maneuver, much less fight, when moving at thousands of miles per hour, most pilot's reaction times being to slow to hit any target, their machines moving well past their foes before they could complete their attack. Kira himself had once fallen prey to that, launching the Pulsar at maximum speed, he'd not only blasted clear out of the battle zone, he'd quite literally gone almost thirty miles out to sea before he even realized what was going on! The haft of the Kratos's scythe slammed into the back of Alex's MS, sending the Wraith to its hands and knees, the zweihander knocked from its grasp, as the Kratos raised its scythe in both hands for a blow that would split Alex in half. Until a second sonic boom rocked the valley, as the Lucifer appeared next to the Kratos, one sword already raised to tickle the side of the larger Gundam, beneath the arm, in position to thrust home into the cockpit. As an additional precaution, Kia's Fractal Wings deployed into a multilayered shield covering the stunned Alex.

"I was wondering when you were going to butt in, Yamato." Frost commented in a snarled voice. "I'm surprised you didn't just kill me. You had the chance."

"Lets not go over the difference between my desires and what is unfortunately necessary once more." Kira answered tightly. "Besides, you could have killed him with your first strike, but you didn't. I wasn't expecting you to be so merciful."

"Don't get any funny ideas." Frost spat back, slowly lowering his scythe and turning away from the prostrate Alex, his back to Kira and the Lucifer. "When push comes to shove, I am your enemy, Yamato. Our visions of humanity differ too much for us to be anything but enemies. I wouldn't want it any other way.."

"Neither would I. No matter the necessity or the decisions of others, I will never regard you as anything other than something to be exterminated at the earliest possible time." Kira answered, slowly lowering his sword as the Kratos stalked away, still puzzled by Frost's uncharacteristic kindness, such as it was. There had been at least half a dozen moments where Frost could have cut Alex down like a target dummy, but he'd taken not a single one of the opportunities. Kira frowned, before shaking his head and shrugging. There was no point trying to figure Frost out, he'd only hurt his brain trying. If Frost wanted to play nice for the moment, Kira wasn't going to argue. He shot a look over his shoulder at Lilia, and Kira's frown deepened. He hoped she wouldn't take Frost's show of mercy the wrong way, but feared she already had. Kira might not get any funny ideas, but Lilia was already thinking them. He just hoped the reality of the situation would wake her up before it was too late. There was such a thing as too much idealism. He, if anyone, should know that.

xxxx

**New Eden, Orb, Morganroete Armories Heavy Industry Sector, November 24th, Afternoon**

Unlike past such occassions that had brought the group of friends together, there was little laughter and joking, no ribbing or digs at the habits and actions of others. It was quite a somber group this time, and for good reason. The ruins of MA's Advanced Technologies Division labs still loomed in the near distance, a massive sinkhole-crater in the well manicured landscape of Morganroete Armories where the tactical class thermonuclear fusion bomb had gone off, obliterating Dr. Simmons and most of the rest of Orb's longtime Gundam production facility. Guards, both MA private security and Orb National Guard forces, were everywhere, armored infantry fighting vehicles and main battle tanks rumbling and grinding as they patrolled the grounds restlessly, fingers tight on triggers as they scanned for intruders. The particular hanger where the group of friends had congregated was guarded by a phalanx of four M-4 Guardians and two M-7 Dawndrake Mobile Suits, with a full company of infantry in security perimeter outside.

Athrun was admitted through the security cordon with due haste, though he was limited in how fast he could stride, his body still not recovered from the torments Frost had inflicted upon him, and he leaned heavily upon a walking assistance cane as he made his way painfully along, his muscles burning, his synthskin feeling uncomfortably tight against his body. He felt like he'd aged fifty years in the past few weeks, and he moved like it too. His body just didn't heal well anymore, not after the radiation damage he'd suffered, due to his own foolhardy bravery, as Cagalli was always apt to remind him whenever he started feeling a bit sorry for himself. Athrun paused and put his free hand against a wall for a moment, shaking his eyes free of unwelcome tears that tried to spill down his face at the thought of his beloved Cagalli, who was still bedridden by her injuries and fighting crippling bouts of depression and anxiety that left her almost as uncomunicative as she'd been during the wake of Kisaka's death. And even when she did speak, her vocal prosthetic made her wonderful voice come out flat and mechanical, and it was clear to him that it bothered her greatly, so much so that she preferred to communicate throught text.

The Orb doctors had recently unveiled a few rays of hope, citing various experimental projects, some still in very early stages, that could allow them to regrow and repair the damaged organs, such as her larynx, to the point where she might regain natural speech. It wasn't quite cloning, skirting the prohibition on human cloning laid down in the Torino Protocol, but it involved many of the same concepts, in additional to nanological reconstruction. In a word, it was regeneration, but it would be months, maybe years, before they had any sort of live testable method working. At least there was hope for the future though. For the both of them... if it worked on Cagalli, it might very well provide Athrun a means to mitigate his own radiation warped cellular structure. He was a lot more conscious of the future these days, since the end of his days was appreciably closer than it might otherwise be. As things were, even undergoing his current treatments, the doctors were doubtful he'd live much past seventy. Which was a ripe age, but given that undamaged his life expectancy had been several decades over a century, that put it in perspective.

Tears mastered, Athrun continued on into the hanger proper, where Yzak, Katie, Dearka and Miriallia were already waiting for him. There was an interior security cordon of Stormhounds, though most of the unit was deployed in small groups across the various war theatres, often out of easy contact as they fought the war more or less on their own terms, in loose conjucnction with the USN forces at whose bases they sheltered. He hadn't heard from Alkire or Raine for almost two weeks now, for instance. Katie was already looking in his direction as he stepped out into the main hanger area, and Dearka was quick to notice her glances, and he managed a fascimile of the usual Dearka good cheer, waving an arm in greeting as Athrun walked across the cavernous floor to join them by the portable holoprojection equipment.

"Took your sweet time, "your highness"." Dearka commented with a wink. "Waiting for them to roll out a red carpet or something?"

"Its the privilege of the important to arrive fashionably late." Athrun managed to reply, taking and shaking Dearka's hand, and accepting a careful hug from Miriallia. "Good to see you both recovered from your injuries."

"Can't keep a good man down. Or me, either." Dearka shrugged, though he could not help but eye Athrun out of the corner of his vision, appalled to see his longtime friend so frail and unsteady on his feet, even requiring a cane to lean on! Athrun looked like he'd lost a lot of weight recently, little wonder, but he wasn't bouncing right back like he'd used to. He looked like a stiff breeze or a sudden shock might send him stumbling to his knees. They both turned to Yzak, who was brooding, as was normal for him ever since the murder of his mother. Still, he managed to give them both a nod of acknowledgement, his eyes lingering for a few moments on Athrun's cane as well.

"You sure you're in any shape to be piloting a Gundam?" Yzak asked without preamble. "You can barely even walk."

"Thanks for your concern, Yzak, but I'll be fine. Its not like I have to run around while piloting. My physical frality isn't an issue when it comes to Gundams." Athrun replied, perhaps a trifle defensively, before he told himself to relax. Yzak was on edge right now, even moreso than usual. The death of Ezalia had struck him harder than anything since the death of Chanel during the Second Valentine War, maybe harder than anything, ever. Athrun coughed slightly, knowing Yak despised recieving sympathy, but he couldn't just say nothing. "I'm sorry." Athrun said, just quiet enough that Yzak could pretend he hadn't heard him, if he was so inclined.

"So am I." Yzak bowed his head for a moment. "And its good to see you on your feet again, Zala, even if you are tottering like an old man."

"And how is Cagalli?" Katie asked, drawing a deep intake of breath from Athrun.

"She's... better than she was." Athrun hedged. "At least the weight of thinking it was Kira has been lifted off her shoulders. It was tearing her apart inside."

"It was tearing us all up inside." Miriallia added. "If only we'd..." She trailed off and shook her head. "Too late now. I just hope we get a chance to apologize to Kira someday."

"I think I might have preferred it if it WAS Kira." Yzak refuted. "As crazy as Kira becoming a villian would be, I'd still rather have an evil Kira than a reborn Frost in a Kira body. If it can get any worse than that, I don't want to know about it. And that Gundam of his..." Yzak actually shivered. He noticed the looks of his friends and shurgged, flushing slightly. "So he scared me, get over it. He'll scare you too."

"He absolutely terrifies me. After what he did..." Athrun's hand tightened to white knuckle grip his cane. "After the torture he inflicted..." Athrun shuddered. "But for that reason, among others, I don't have a choice but to face him, because I will not let myself be ruled by fear. "I owe him a lot of suffering, and I intend to pay it back."

"Which sounds like as good an intro as any." Lexi commented, her avatar swirling into focus above the holoprojection equipment. "Because Dr. Simmons, may Hameya rest her soul, has dreamt up some incredible machines for you people to use, if I do say so myself." Lights flickered on along the ceiling, as large dropcloths began folding upwards around the trio of large stalls that took up one wall of the hanger. "Insufficient data currently exists for me to make any projection about a matchup between them and the enemy models or that Kratos Gundam, but I can say that given your past records and the technical capabilities of these machines, you should not find yourself at a technological disadvantage, at least." Lexi expanded the view of her holoprojector, calling up data and specifications upon the first of the machines, the leftmost, which was painted in blues and silvers and blacks, save for a familiar red slash across the faceplate, with bright blue eyes and a long, familiar looking cloak.

"This is the Balmung, to be piloted by Commander Joule and his wife. Balmung was the name of a sword forged to slay a murderous dragon with impenetrable scales, so sharp that it cleaved in half the very anvil upon which it was made with a single stroke. Twenty meters tall, one hundred tons mass, just about the same size and weight you are used to from the Vorpal, upon which this chassis is strongly based. Of course the internal systems have been completely stripped out and replaced with modern and new experimental technologies, including a Fusion Pulse Reactor, providing over fifty times the power you're used to, and NIC-III control systems. I hope you've been hitting the simulators, because piloting these things is nothing like the joystick and footpedal control schemes you've used in the past."

"Less lecturing, more explaining." Yzak said shortly, glaring at the AI.

"The armor of the Balmung is similar to that which protects the old M-4 Guardians. It is not Phase Shift. Instead, a webwork of Citadel Scales, technology taken from the Retribution Gundam, lies over the armor, covered by an additional thin shell of more armor. The Citadel Scales provide protection against all forms of attack, though they can be pierced by certain weapons, and overwhelmed with repeated fire, so don't think you are invulnerable." Lexi replied, with a sniff directed at Yzak. "Additional defensive capabilities include the Bulwark Tactical Shield, with access to Gesichmedig-Panzer, Citadel or Positron Reflector surface settings, though only one at a time, plus the vulnerable Photon Cloak from the Duelist. Also, a version of the Tormented's nano-repair system exists that should take care of most basic maintenance tasks as well as repair major combat damage, slowly, over the course of days to weeks, depending on how bad the damage is. This repair system is common to all the new Gundam models."

"While the Balmung does not particularly shine defensively, the weapons and special equipment are where the strength of the machine truly lies." Lexi rubbed her hands together eagerly as she called up armaments one after another. "Technically this is also a defensive item, but it has offensive uses. Its called the Storm Aegis, its a pulsing EMP field that, upon activation, covers a twenty five meter radius around the Balmung, automatically frying or deactivating the guidance and arming systems of incoming munitions, such as missiles or explosive warheads, rendering them inert. It has no effect against solid state ammo, such as railgun rounds, or beam weapons, but it provides near perfect defense against anything that flies under its own power or explodes. It can even set off ammo within enemy machines, if they are close enough and not shielded against EMP well enough."

"Next up is the left shoulder turret mount, a dual 75mm EMC, or Edged Munition Catapult, firing pairs of mono-sharpened, high explosive discs with curving flight paths. Its a rapidfire weapon best suited to medium to short range engagements, especially against lightly armored targets. The right shoulder holds a specialized 40mm FRALA, termed "Guilliotine", which sacrifices range for a much higher degree of power than a FRALA of its size, and of much longer duration, more like a cutting torch than a laser beam. It has the power of a FRALA 10x its caliber and a range of about two hundred meters, and its beam lasts for ten seconds, though the weapon itself can only be used every 30 seconds due to heat dissipation issues."

"The primary ranged weapon and token "big gun" of the Balmung is the 105mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon "Caladbolg", named for a famous spear in Celtic mythology. Its something of a cross between a FRALA and the radiation cannon of the Revenant, a more focused and longer range version of a thermal exciter. It has very long range and extremely high killing power, affecting everything within its line of fire, just about the only thing that can block it is high powered energy shields, and even then its a stress. It is single shot and requires manual reloading, so it is not quick firing, but it can easily take out ten or more Mobile Suits in a single blast, if they were to line up properly. The beam itself is azure blue in color, rather than the pinkish color usually associated with thermal radiation weapons."

"The Minion wireless attack/defense/mobility pods from the Vorpal have been retained as well, with a new option to use Positron Reflector shields as well as their previous capabilities. And now..." Lexi smiled happily. "The weapon you've all been waiting for, the signature weapon of the Vorpal, the Siegfried OMMB, redone in the modern era... I give you the "Fafnir" Heavy Opposed Monopole Magnetic Blade. It functions just like the Siegfried, but it is large and reinforced with slivers of Quantum Crystal down the physical blade length, making it much less susceptible to breakage and even allowing for parrying of QC weapons, to a degree. It can be wielded with either one or two hands, the blade becomes longer and thicker if used in two hands. A feedback loop of the magnetic fields used to create the blade edge wraps around the physical part of the sword, protecting it from magnetically charged weapons such as plasma blasts, even allowing a talented used to block or redirect those beam energies with the sword blade, and also protecting the blade against damage when penetrating things like Positron Reflector shields. There is no defense, other than pure QC, that can stop Fafnir. Who was, incidentally, the dragon Balmung was forged to slay, by the hero Siegfried."

Lexi turned her gaze to Katie next. "Much like the Vorpal, the Balmung is a dual occupancy machine, though not in the same sense as the Dreadnaught or most common machines. Mrs. Joule will alsobe hooked up to a NIC-III system, and will technically be able to take full control of the Gundam, should the primary pilot, Mr. Joule, ever become incapacitated, but primarily she will be in control of the Minion pods and providing "unconventional" support options through the use of her psychic powers, boosted by Mr. Joule. We call it the Divine Eye system, as after much work Doctor Simmons was able to configure a NIC system so that it could translate the things Mrs. Joule perceives with her mental abilities and transmit them as electronic data signals, creating a physical picture of what she detects and relaying that to Mr. Joule or any other allied machines nearby."

"Also..." Katie cut in, as Lexi began preparing to switch to the next Gundam in line, the Dreadnaught. "I know that I'm nowhere near the strongest Newtype around, hell, pretty much any Edenite off the street is probably stronger than I am, in a raw sense. But I do have years of experience with using my powers, and Yzak to boost me, and defense is always easier than attack. What I'm trying to say is, I've figured out a way to not only protect Yzak and myself against mental attacks and influences, but I can project that defense in a moderate area around us, say seventy five to one hundred meters. Long as you stay within that range, not even Noah himself could affect your minds, or even detect you. Call it mental Mirage Colloid. I figure that might come in handy, right?"

"Dude, that monster is going to be their worst goddamn nightmare." Dearka commented to Yzak, clapping his friend on the shoulder, watching a covetous light flicker in Yzak's eyes as he looked upon his new war steed. "Well, besides that one guy, who is EVERYONE's worst nightmare." Dearka hedged, it being immediately obvious to all concerned who he meant.

"Next is the Dreadnaught." Lexi told them, with a slight smile playing about her lips as she dropped the concealing curtains and they all saw for the first time in person, just how gigantic the machine was. Colored in dark grey base shade, with dark brown for major armor plates, maroon for highlighting, such as around weapon muzzles or firing ports and with bright orange eyes, the Dreadnaught shared the rough, "crude" appearance of the Warmaster. The Buster, Grand Buster and Warmaster had always been the biggest of the Clyne Faction machines, carrying the heaviest weapons and support mechanisms, this was nothing but common sense. But the Dreadnaught took big to a whole new level, standing just shy of twice the Balmung's twenty meters and massing four times as much, it looked like it could kill Mobile Suits just by highstepping and marching right over them! "Welcome to the world of gratiutous devastation. Thirty five meters tall, and four hundred tons, the Dreadnaught is only slightly smaller than those new Panzerdragoons, but packs much more of a punch and is much quicker on its feet or in the air. Yes, it can fly... Fusion Pulse Reactors are such wonderful technology, eh?"

"The Dreadnaught's regular armor is twice as thick as that of any other Gundam, and it is covered in two seperate layers of Citadel Scales as well, for extreme durability against all forms of traditional attack. Despite its size and mass, it's only about 25 percent slower in air and ground speed than the Balmung, and its agility really depends more upon the pilots than it does the machine. Like the its predecessors, the Grand Buster and Warmaster, the Dreadnaught is a dual occupancy fire support and command model, with a much improved sensor package over the other Gundams, including the usual mix of Vari-Cameras, this time with an extended range of two kilometers, Long Range Radar for over the horizon targeting ability, CIC computers that interface directly with yours truly, and an upgraded version of the Pandimonium ECM jammers, that doesn't degrade in efficiency over time or disrupt allied frequencies if left on for too long. The final touch is deployable wireless camera drones, equipped with vari-camera's, that can fly up to fiftten kilometers away in atmosphere, or 15,000km in space, to provide intelligence and targeting information, the drones are painted with camouflage pigments similar to those of the Hellhound PUMA's."

"While Mrs. Elsman handles the sensors, CIC operations and camera drones, she also is the primary controller of the four head mounted 15mm beam CIWS, and in controlling the deployment and firing of the Spear of Ares WIVAC-REMAD, assisted by myself to bear the brunt of the heavy calculations, and assist in precision firing timing. The Spear of Ares has been much improved, in versatility if not power, and can now be used with as little as four accelerators at a time, instead of the 32 of the Warmaster model, also the cooldown time between uses of accelerators has been reduced to an hour, versus the near half day of the previous model. Any use of more than eight accelerators is ineffective in atmosphere without a vacuum tunnel of some sort for the shot to travel along, the projectile will burn up before it can reach its target otherwise. And by way of reference, four accelerators is more than enough to ruin pretty much anything's day, from a Land Battleship on down. Just like with the Balmung, in emergency, Mrs. Elsman can control the movement and primary weapon systems as well." Lexi informed them.

"While Mrs. Elsman is handling all the complex tasks, Mr. Elsman will be free to utilize the more brutish side of his personality, in laying waste to anything and everything his wife tells him to with the Dreadnaught's primary armaments. Each side of the upper torso mounts a twenty tube VTP missile pod, for a total of forty shots of the most advanced tactical missile system available, with dozens of different payload combinations, customizable for any battlefield situation. On the left shoulder is the new positron weapon system, "Baron Lohengrin", which, in conjunction with the power of a FPR, can fire a full power, Archangel class 220cm Lohengrin blast every couple seconds. Its turret mounted for a nearly 270 degree arc of fire. On the right shoulder we have a system Dr. Simmons and her team extrapolated from one of the armaments of the Vengeance, used against the Warmaster at LAS. Its a 250mm Quantum Crystal Spear Launcher, firing long range, extremely high penetrating power QC tipped harpoons. Its ammo supply is limited and it is slow to recharge after a shot, but it makes an excellent, nearly unstoppable and very subtle sniping weapon."

"And what post-Buster Gundam would be complete without its trademark weapon, the Earthshaker 200cm Artillery Cannon?" Lexi pointed to the right arm of the Dreadnaught, which ended in a cannon muzzle, instead of a gauntlet. "Though the loss of a hand is regrettable, on a support model like the Dreadnaught, it was deemed an acceptable tradeoff for the power of the newest and greatest in the Earthshaker series, the Fully Automatic Earthshaker Omega. Just a logical progression, from the hand reloaded Earthshaker, to the semi-auto Magnus, and now this. The Omega model has a magazine of thirty shells, which it can fire at a rate of two per second, even while the Dreadnaught is maneuvering, the recoil compensation systems are one reason why the Gundam is so massive. In case someone does manage to get close to you, you can defend yourself with the twin heat blades, mounted above and below the right forearm, like the axe arm of that Revenant machine."

"Finally, the left arm, like the Warmaster, features a heavy duty Citadel type shield mechanism, for defensive purposes, and mounted beneath the shield along the arm are two 525mm gatling Hyper-Impulse Cannons, designs taken directly from the Retribution, for use against large concentrations of fast moving or maneuvering units. Forget a city, the Dreadnaught has the power to level an entire small nation , to lay waste to entire regiments of Mobile Suits or fleets of warships. You do NOT want to be on the opposing team when this thing is on the field. I could almost feel sorry for those Eddies. Y'know, if they didn't happen to plant a fusion bomb in one of my favorite play areas, and kill one of the few fleshies who actually made sense to me. I hope you turn them in twisted wreckage."

"I'll do my best. Dr. Simmons was important to all of us. And her son too..." Dearka promised in a hard tone. "When I find that guy who cut off Ryuta's head..."

"When WE find that guy." Miriallia corrected him fiercely. "It won't be pretty."

"And then we get to the final of the three operational Gundams with an operational pilot..." Lexi dropped the curtains around the rightmost Gundam, which was of a size with the Balmung, though the large wings spreading from its back added a good bit to its mass. It was colored a dark crimson glossy color for the base paint, with traceries of orange and yellow like the flickers of flames, and white blue accenting around thruster nozzels and weapon ports, as well as around the eyes, which were dark red. "This is the Simurgh, which, mythologically speaking, was the divine king of earth and sky in some Persian mythos, a phoenixlike bird renowned for its wisdom and compassion for humanity, which lived for a thousand years before dying in a fiery flash to be born anew, young, with all the memories of its past life. If the last machine was a Phoenix King, this one is a Phoenix God. Where the Balmung is designed for the close quarters brawl, and the Dreadnaught is fire support and mass destruction, the Simurgh is designed around the principles of speed and the control of energy."

"Unlike the other two current Gundams, the Simurgh is not equipped with regular armor and layers of Citadel scales, but instead has the same HAC armor pioneered upon the Phoenix King, which has better characteristics against heat and plasma based weapons, not to mention the air friction of high speed maneuvers, or even atmospheric re-entry. The Simurgh is the fastest of all the Gundams, a good ten percent faster than the Balmung in Gundam form, and has a transformation to Mobile Armor mode that allows it to reach almost 7500 miles per hour in atmosphere, which may very well make it the fastest piloted machine on Earth, though the Firebird Interceptor Mobile Armor, part of the Multi-Stage Mobile Armor project, piloted by Commander la Flaga, is a close second."

"With a standard dual 15mm beam CIWS system in the head for defensive purposes, the Simurgh also has a Citadel Shield projector in either forearm, just like the Phoenix King. Additional defensive weapons include a pair of "Solar Flare" photonic grenade launchers, one per side of the torso. These special grenades cause no damage, but they generate a huge degree of visible light energy, brightly illuminating a one kilometer radius like a halogen spotlamp, enough to cause temporary damage to most sensor systems, including the naked human eye, if caught looking directly into the flare. The flare also exactly mimics the heat signature of the Simurgh for up to five minutes before the flare dissipates. These flare launchers, like the head CIWS, are available in both MA and MS modes."

"Just like its famous predecessor, the Simurgh has a triplet of plasma generators in each forearm and gauntlet, allowing it to generate its own plasma energy for use with the new and improved Vulcan's Forge Freeform BGCS, which is no longer limited to just the area immediately around the Gundam, but can actually reach other almost five hundred meters away from the Gundam's position, in essence creating a kilometer wide zone where enemy beam weapons are, at best, ineffective and at worst actively harmful to their own side. A second mode of the new version BGCS allows the creation of a "Mirrorblade" field front along a 50 meter line, allowing friendly beam weapons to fire out normally, but deflecting incoming beam attacks harmlessly into the sky or ground, though if the system is in Mirrorblade mode, it cannot be used as a freeform BGCS, and neither mode can be used in MA form."

"New additions to the arsenal include a pair of 50mm Rapidfire FRALA rifles copied from the Retribution, these are the primary long ranged weapons of the Gundam, and can still be used in MA form as well, unlike the BGCS. A thermal exciter point blank microwave emitter is placed in either palm for short ranged destructive purposes against otherwise shielded opponents, these are nonfunctional in MA form. MA form grants access to four, six tubed VTP missile launcher systems that can only be utilized in MA form, adding a bit of physical punch to an otherwise nearly purely energetic machine. The "Phoenix Feathers" MDWS remains usable in either form, and still features the standard 72 feathers you're used to. A mono-edged heat blade can be extruded from either forearm, in case you find yourself up against something plasma weapons can't cut. And finally, there is the "Pyroclasm" Point Blank Weapon System, which has a short, three second ramp up time, before it vents heat to the surrounding environment directly from the FPR, rapidly increasing the ambient temperature in the surrounding hundred meters or so by thousands of degrees celsius, enough to kill or destroy most anything within fifty meters and cause severe damage out to one hundred fifty meters, in a globe around the Simurgh. It has a long cooldown to avoid melting the HAC armor, but in the half minute or so just after use, basically the entire armor skin of the Simurgh becomes a heat class weapon, capable of melting through enemy armor with a touch."

"Good god, what are we gonna do without that woman?" Athrun commented under his breath, overwhelmed at the power of these new Gundams. He might have been able to win the First Valentine War by himself with the Simurgh, and maybe the Second also! How far humanity had come in only twelve years was staggering to him. Equally staggering was the bare faced fact that no matter how far they'd come, they still hadn't really progressed at all, at least when it came to putting technology to use in ways that didn't involve harming or killing other humans! Athrun could almost feel glad, for a moment, that Frost HAD returned, because if there was any one person who could get people, even former enemies, to unite, now that Lacus was gone, that person was Zacharis Frost, though obviously in a much different manner from Lacus. But then he remembered Cagalli, and himself, and all the others that had already been damaged, perhaps irrecoverably, by Frost's return, and there was no way he could be glad for that!

"So what do you say, Mr. Ambassador?" Lexi queried. "The Amaterasu, the Queen's machine, is still under construction and is being held in reserve, for when she recovers, or another pilot, perhaps Commander Waltfeld once he recovers, steps up to be assigned it. But these three Gundams are ready to go whenever you people are. Captain Ramius is already aboard the _Endymion_ with her crew, and Commander la Flaga is loading the first two modules of the MSMA, the Firebird and Flare Hawk, aboard. I'd sure they'd be glad to pick up three more heavy hitters before going off to the Indian Ocean in preparation for the attack on Victoria. They'll be setting sail with the Dawnblade and a few Defender classes in a few hours. Should I have these Gundams loaded on board?

"What I say, Lexi, is..." Athrun looked at his friends, and felt a slow smile creeping onto his face for the first time in what felt like weeks. They smiled back at him, the expressions hard, resolute, determined. "Beware, Edenites, because the Gundams are coming to show you what sort of war you've provoked. It'll be a lesson few will survive. Orb does NOT forgive sneak attacks upon our shores. It seems the world still hasn't realized that. We're going to make sure no one ever makes that mistake again. This will be a war to end all wars!"

xxxx

Author Note 2: And so concludes this arc. Onto the real war next arc, with the chapters Port of Whispers, Mountain of Secrets, Valley of Giants, Depths of Terror, Island of Hope, Tomb of Depravity and Plains of Blood


	32. Port of Whispers

Author Note: Though my last update was comparatively slow, I've been finding that picking up (finally) some of the SEED and Gundam Wing soundtracks have helped a lot with getting in the mood to write chapters. I especially like the symphonic version of the Destiny soundtrack, very easy listening. In that same vein, I've thought about theme songs for a few characters/relationships, or rather, they occured to me as I was listening to my playlists. Oddly enough, three come from the same band, the same CD even. The CD "The Resistance" by Muse, tracks 01, 02, and 03. "Uprising", for the Retributors, and eventually Lain/Stella. "Resistance", for Noah and Meyrin. And "Undisclosed Desires" for Lilia and Frost. Perhaps appropriately, the titles "Fear" and "Murder" from the Berserk OST fit Frost pretty well, and "EARTH" from the same OST fits how I see Lilia. Pretty much the entire Porta Panama scene in this chapter is set with "Monster" from Berserk OST as background music. And the appearance of the Lucifer in Mountain of Secrets has "Forces" from the OST as its theme. And finally, the Symphonic version of "War" from the GSD symphony soundtrack, goes for pretty much any battle scene. Oh yeah, and I added a chapter to this arc, between Depths and Island, to be called Path of Determination.

I've updated the Suits/Ships chapter with some of the new vehicles found in this chapter.

xxxx

**New Eden, High Geosynchronous Orbit, Solar Protection Fleet Flagship **_**Incarnate**_**, November 24th**

"This had better be good, Commander, I was in the middle of a very important strategy session." Fleet Admiral Icarus said, somewhat peevishly, as he entered the secure communications room, affectionately known as the "comm shack" by any experienced sailor, that adjoined the main combat bridge of his beloved flagship and brainchild, the space dreadnought _Incarnate_. In truth he'd been trying to catch up on his sleep, the constant political maneuvering against the other factions vying for favor and power in the shadows of the USN government tying up far more of his time than his admittedly mostly ceremonial military duties. All the same, an unwelcome interruption was still an unwelcome interruption, and it wouldn't do for the rank and file, even the officer rank and file, to get the idea that their supreme commander was off taking his ease during a situation of high alert. Bad for morale, that, and despite a higher degree of success groundside than he'd even thought possible, morale was still a bit touchy among the majority of the USN forces. Nobody liked being deployed in a hostile environment filled with flesh eating plants and animals, against a foe that could screw with your mind without even being close by.

Which was one of the chief reasons that Icarus never conducted in person tours of the major theatre bases, even though it was technically within his responsibility to do so. That was what eager young officers trying to kiss his ass were for. Another reason was that going groundside would once more put him under the authority of that strutting twit, Rey ze Burrel, and Icarus hated having a boy thirty years his junior, and a Coordinator at that, being able to give him orders! And a third reason was that it was damned dangerous, and especially with those invisible Mobile Suits some of the Eddies had, one never knew when a base might come under attack! He might even be killed, and that was simply an unacceptable outcome. He was too old to die so pointlessly, had waited and planned for too long to bow out now of all times. Much better to stay safe and secure up in his spacecraft, the most powerful single warship in human space. The not too humble luxuries of his flag quarters were a nice bonus as well. Nothing like his new estates on Luna of course, but far more comfortable than anything the mudpounders had.

And things were only going to go up from here, Icarus thought, keeping his thoughts carefully concealed behind layers of political training. Durandel thought him to be a simpleminded cur, a witless lackey that would do anything to please, and indeed, at certain times, he had acted that role, happily even, to ensure his own survival and prosperity. He'd always had a talent for catching a ride on the coattails of those who were truly exceptional and bargaining his way into power on borrowed authority. But such times were soon to be forever in the past, and his long years of toadying to that damned Coordinator with the unsettlingly sharp brain were numbered! He'd been having the most interesting sort of conversations with the Director of FEAR, Dr. Dostanya, lately, and though he despised her choice in lovers, he could recognize the relationship for what it truly was, a lever underneath's Gilbert's firmly seated ass! He had long wished for such a lever himself, but he knew his precise worth to Durandel and had no way of getting any goods on Rey.

Icarus stuffed such pleasant ideas back down into the depths of his mind once more, and refocused his attention on the matters at hand, which were apparently important enough for this junior officer, the Officer In Charge of the communications division to disturb his privacy in the Admiral's quarters. Icarus rather hoped it wasn't more condescending "suggestions" from Rey or Durandel, if so, it would go poorly for this fool's annual performance review. Petty perhaps, but there was something to be said for the stress relieving power of a good bout of petty vindictiveness. If the commander or any of the enlisted sailors manning this section of the expansive communications station had noticed the Fleet Admiral's lapse of attention, they were wise enough not to let on, diligently performing their tasks as they kept the massive ship up to date with the latest happenings from all around Earth and Space.

"Yes sir, begging the Fleet Admiral's pardon sir, but we've been getting some very troubling reports coming from Porta Panama the last few days." The Commander replied, hoping that the Fleet Admiral would remember the ancient adage about not harming messengers who delivered bad news. "As the Fleet Admiral knows, Porta Panama has been suffering a series of unexpected setbacks ever since it was established, which has resulted in it being significantly behind schedule as related to the pacification of the surrounding area."

_The Fleet Admiral knew no such thing_, Icarus thought to himself privately, but he nodded his head in acceptance of what the Commander was saying, as if he'd been keeping his finger on the pulse of that exact problem. _I may have to upgrade my intelligence service again. I can understand no one wanting to bother me with bad news, but all the same, I can't afford to be blindsided like this often._ Though since Porta Panama had a particular import to Icarus, since he was originally from the Atlantic Federation, he was definitely perturbed to hear of difficulties with its pacification, especially since there had been no expected resistance from the Eddies in that theatre! "I see. Put together a situation report and have it on my desk in..."

"Here, sir. This is a summation of the past problems, but that isn't why I thought you should be called away from your strategy meeting." The commander said, doing his best to be diplomatic. It was tough, since he'd found the Fleet Admiral dozing in his quarters, which was about as far away from a strategy meeting as it was possible to get. Though perhaps not, some parts of the USN's strategy did seem to be coming from someone who was at best half asleep. Mentioning that now would be a good way to ensure he was never promoted again, and assigned to a trash compactor unit out in the asteroid belt, assuming Section Nine didn't just haul him away for "subversive sentiments", so the Commander just set his jaw and handed his Fleet Admiral the document he'd prepared. He watched Icarus skim the document and prepared to tell the Admiral what it said.

"Mostly industrial accidents stemming from personal errors, sir. Not unexpected given the environment and the rush, but there's been an unprecedented number of them, as well as exceptionally high numbers of soldiers claiming an inability to sleep well, or being unable to concentrate while awake. The number of psychiatric problems at Porta Panama has been consistently over twelve hundred percent higher than at any other base on Earth, ranging from serial sleepwalking, people unable to wake from sleep, people unable to fall asleep, and people hearing voices, among other, stranger things. It appears to be rife throughout the command structure there, from the lowest grunts to the base commanders. Last week, they started to suffer attrition among the work parties pacifying the area outside the base proper."

"More of that hellacious wildlife?" Icarus asked with a shiver. He'd seen pictures of some of the animals down there, and they were enough to give any sane person the screaming night fits, as far as he was concerned.

"No, sir. Or, well, above and beyond that sort of attrition. I'm talking about deserters, sir." The Commander said, swallowing hard as he said one of the most vile words in any soldier's vocabularly. "And not just one or two soldiers, sir, they've had entire platoons go out on patrol and just keep on going, sir. For some unknown reason, they all head north, even those whose initial courses took them south. They were able to chase the first few groups down because they forgot to turn off their vehicle GPS trackers, but more recent deserters have learned that lesson. All told, over three thousand soldiers have fled their posts at Porta Panama in the last week." The Commander swallowed again, as he dropped the real bombshell. "Sir, the total rate of deserters at all the other three theatre headquarters is two. Two soldiers in almost three weeks from Europe, Asia and Africa, and 3000 in one week from the Americas. There's nowhere for a non-Eddie to run on Earth, no way to survive for more than a few days. But all the same, they're fleeing Porta Panama like rats from a sinking ship, sir."

"Deserters?" Icaurs recoiled in instinctive distaste. He might not have served his entire career within the strict definition of honor, but he'd never just quit and run away either, not without justifiable reason. "I hope they were dealt with appropriately. We can't let people think they can get away with that sort of thing."

"It gets worse, sir." The Commander licked his lips as he held up transcripts from the last few hours. "The flagship of Task Force Eagle, the Incarnate class _Solaris_, began recording a distress call coming from Porta Panama on nonstandard channels a few hours ago, sir. We have the original audio log sir, but its hard to make much sense of it, its mostly static and gibberish, the reception is simply terrible. We sent the data back to Second Earth and had Namara run through it a few times, and got this transcript." The Commander nodded at the enlisted sailor manning the nearby station, and she obligingly played the transcript back. A hideous blast of static blared from the speakers, making everyone nearby, especially Icarus, wince and flinch, but then the AI editing kicked in and the squeal died away to a low hiss.

"...nyone hear me! Can anyone fucking hear me? This is totally... ed! Its madn... they... ne... ly NUTS! This is Capt... n... at Logistics Lot A15, can... one hear me?" The voice of the unknown Captain was haggard and thin, and he seemed to be panting for breath as if he'd just run a strenuous distance, or been in combat, though his voice was fading in and out so much it took a careful ear to notice quickly.

"This is Ensign Yamamoto, duty officer on the USNS _Solaris._ Your transmission is coming in on a unencrypted channel. Identify yourself at once." The crisp tones of the officer in orbit replied cooly.

"...ck you, Ensign! Things are... lly gone to... ll and back down here, and you're busting... uts about comm... ol? This is Captain M... of the 12th CAD Logist... ort unit, and you're... ucky I even managed to... a message out! They've all... CRAZY, compl... INSANE, ALL OF 'EM! They're kill... ch other like... its fucki... ible! Like something out of... d zombie flick! You need to send... NOW! I've got a... ivers holed up... fice! We NEED..." Captain M's transmission drowned out in static, and stayed that way so long that Icarus thought that was the end of it. He was just about to say something when the speakers burst into life again. "...UCK! FUCK! FUCK! They... DEAR GOD... 'RE COMING OUT OF THE... ALLS! THEY'RE COMING OUT OF THE FUCKING WALLS! JESUS M... OSEPH, WHAT A... EY? HIDEOUS FUCKING MON... GET IT AWA... GET AWAY! HELP US! HEL..." The transmission died away into static once more, but not before the sound of pistol fire could be clearly heard in the background.

"Porta Panama, this is Ensign Yamamoto on the _Solaris._ Say again last. Say again last, you're breaking up!" There was no response to the suddenly very frightened sounding young officer, who had obviously realized this signified something far above his paygrade. "Get Porta Panama on the line! Find out where that broadcast is coming from!"

"Porta Panama is not responding, sir." A enlisted man replied in the background. "Just dead air on all the channels, even the emergency bands. Some of them even sound like they might be open. I think I can hear breathing on channel thirty two. And there might have been gunfire in the distance on sixteen."

"Notify the OOD!" The Ensign ordered, his voice becoming dry as he seemed to come to the realization that this was really happening, whatever it was. "Get me the Sensor Department and Fire Control, I want a visual cross examination of Porta Panama, they may be under attack by Eddie irregulars! I want..." Ensign Yamamoto's recorded voice was cut off by another transmission from Captain M.

"He's... lling me..." The Captain seemed to be sobbing in terror or distress. "He called the... he's calling me too! The voi... in the night... the... perer in the mist... im... hes...ling us, calling us all!... hungers... he hungers for our SOULS! HE'S CALLING ME! HE'S CALLING! CALLING! CALLING!" The Captain broke into hysterical, high pitched laughter that bespoke to everyone who heard it of a mind pushed far beyond the limitations of sanity. "...ust go. He calls us. And we must go. To... ed his hung... HE CALLS!" And then the radio transmission cut off again, this time for good. And that was the end of the audio transcript. For his part, Icarus's face was almost as white as his old Alliance uniform, and his sickly look was shared by pretty much everyone else in the room.

The Commander cleared his throat somewhat nervously and activated a nearby vidscreen, calling up the data pulled from the _Solaris_'s sensors. "Sensor sweeps showed no signs of an outside assault upon the base, no signs of the perimeter being breached from the inside or the outside. The base itself appears largely undamaged, though some sections do appear to have caught fire during what we can only assume is some sort of mutiny or mass hysteria outbreak. There is still no response from Porta Panama, sir, and ground-zoom thermal cameras have detected a large amount of movement from human sized bodies in the forests north of the base. They're all headed one way, sir. North." The Commander swallowed heavily, trying not to dwell on that last bit of the comm transcript, which was just as disturbing, no, frightening as the first two times he'd heard it. "Admiral Towne of the _Solaris_ wishes to know how you would like to proceed, sir?"

"Get me FEAR, direct line to Director Dostanya." Icarus said in a weak voice. "This is now a Codeword level, Top Secret matter. Not a word of this leaves this room. I'm sure Towne has already instituted similar precautions. She'd better have. And get me the _Monolith_, I need to speak to Admiral Monsen as well. Once you've set up the calls, all of you leave and do not return until I call you. This goes beyond your security clearances. You may have already heard too much." _DAMN! I need to shut this down FAST! I think a private call to Section Nine might be in order. We can't have word of this... this MADNESS getting out to the rank and file! It would be disasterous if they learned that an entire Theatre HQ has gone... gone... INSANE! What was Towne doing, taking a NAP? How could she let this happen on her watch? Durandel is going to roast me ALIVE! I'll have her stars for this dereliction!_

xxxx

**New Eden, Upper atmosphere over Gulf of Mexico, Orbit to Surface covert deployment pod, November 25th, early evening**

"You know, I always considered the saying "no good deed goes unpunished" to be kinda confusing." Ryan Jones complained, fingering the newly sewn on chevrons at his shoulder that marked him as a Private no longer, but a Corporal, a full two slot jump in rank that had been his reward for his "battlefield" heroism on that ESP patrol 4 days ago. That and a Bronze Star to pin to his dress uniform, though he'd have to wait till his next leave period, which wasn't for a depressingly long time, before he ever got to wear it, now it was merely a notation in his file. Ryan looked around the somewhat cramped cargo hold of the high tech surface to orbit transport craft and scowled unhappily. "I see what it means all too well now. Goddamn it."

"Aww, is Rico having his period again?" Meyer said nastily from the seat next to him, where he was playing with his own chevron, a single compared to Ryan's double, marking him as a Private First Class. Meyer had also recieved a Bronze Star for his actions in the desert fight against the Deathstalkers, though he'd only been promoted one grade because it had been decided that Ryan had been the one showing more leadership qualities. "You fuss an awful lot for someone who's making an extra five hundred dollars a week, and gets to boss us grunts around."

Ryan ignored Meyer's tone, for all that it was confrontational and maybe even insubordinate. That was just how Meyer reacted to stress, with sarcasm and sniping at everyone around him, and what would have had him ready to fight only a week ago no longer seemed to be such a big deal. Ryan wasn't sure he really qualified as a veteran now, since the Deathstalkers hadn't been armed with modern weapons, so he hadn't been in a real "firefight", but First Sergeant Blundquist had assured him that combat was combat, and giant psychic bugs was more than enough enemy to be proud of defeating. Or at least escaping from alive. And saving the life of a comrade, even Dud, was something to be proud of as well. And in truth Ryan did feel a bit more confident in himself, and in his close teammates. Meyer had proven himself just as hard as his bluster made him out to be, or almost, when the chips were down and the bugs were bursting out of the sand. Even Dud had stepped up to the plate, more or less.

Dud was still recovering from the sideswipe he'd taken from the big black bug, or BBB as they called it in barracks jargon, which had snapped several ribs and nearly opened his body cavity even with a mere glancing blow, he'd be down for a few weeks, but he should pull through with little more than a massive scar to show the ladies on the beach back home, assuming he could somehow afford to pay his way onto one of the few private beaches in Second Earth or the PLANTS. Ryan and Meyer had been the heroes of the day in the meanwhile, and Ryan had just been wondering if he might be able to parlay his newfound status into a tour at a less hazardous duty station, say Porta Potty for example, when he and Meyer and Blundquist and the rest of their Platoon got a sudden tap on the shoulder from God himself, or at least an Admiral, which was about the same thing at Ryan's level, and found themselves volunteered for a "special mission" because of their "extensive experience with ground combat in Earth's hostile environment".

As part and parcel of his promotion and veteran status, Ryan also found himself saddled with a nickname by his squadmates. Meyer had actually been the one to come up with it, and once the literary reference, or actually, ancient sci fi action movie reference in this case, had been made clear to Ryan, he'd found it surprisingly apt. He never would have figured Meyer of all people for an ancient movie buff, but after getting a brief synopsis of the movie "Starship Troopers" from him, he'd reconsidered. It sounded EXACTLY like the kind of movie Meyer would be into. "Exactly. I finally start getting ahead in life and now we get this bullshit. Extra five hundred bucks a week doesn't help me much when I'm six feet under or half digested in some beastie's guts, Spyro." Ryan retorted. Meyer had given him a nickname, and Ryan had retaliated in kind. Spyro was a cute little purple dragon from a video game series, unlike Meyer, but with a cocky attitude just like Meyer, and who enjoyed setting things on fire, also much like Meyer.

Movement from nearby in the cargo bay had them both sitting upright, hands inching towards their holstered pistols instinctively, a reflex they'd both picked up in the wake of their virgin combat experience. Deathstalkers could burst from the ground with no warning or sign they'd been there at all, that sort of experience tended to make a guy a bit jumpy, especially since it was so recent. They both relaxed, almost in unison, as they stiffened to a more respectful position, rather than their previous relaxed slouch. "If you girls are done bitching and moaning..." First Sergeant Blundquist said heavily, though perhaps with a touch of gruff pride as well. "... We're getting close to the target zone, so I'd imagine the LT will be telling us to mount up soon. Yer supposed to be vets now, so I'm expecting you both to act like it."

"Can't be any worse than the BBB, Top." Meyer said with a shrug and a smirk. "Don't worry about Rico and me, we're cool."

"Spyro may be an annoying bastard, but he's right, Top. After the BBB, I think I might have used up my lifetime supply of terror." Ryan chipped in.

Blundquist glowered at the both of them. "Fear is the one thing a human being never runs outta, and you'd be smart to remember that. But I got greener boots to bust than you two. Just be ready... believe it or not, some people are actually looking up to you two nancies. Hate for them to be disappointed, you kids hearts break so damn easy these days..." Blundquist grumbled, shambling off towards another section of the compartment to roust out other members of the platoon. Ryan and Meyer exchanged glances and set about getting their gear and weapons situated as soon as Blunderbuss was out of direct line of sight. Shooting the shit was one thing, they both knew that being ready was the best way to stay alive. The Top didn't dispense advice lightly.

Another advantage of their minor fame and promotions was once again freer access to the base armories, and they'd been given an even more expansive license because of the nature of this "whooah" special mission, which still hadn't been entirely explained to them, which just underlined how important it had to be. Admirals just didn't call up single Platoons for simple tasks, not even ones with two local heroes among their ranks. Something had to have gone wrong somewhere. Something usually did. So far, as much as Meyer and Ryan could tell, the only thing not completely fucked about the war was that the Eddies were even more fucked up than them, charging into battle like extras from a ancient history war film, decked out in bling and carved armor and waving swords and whatnot. The snipers were having a goddamn field day, in those times when they actually managed to target the Eddies at range before they got in close.

In case they, whoever they happened to be this time around, did manage to get in close, Ryan had hung onto his Mauler LSG, having been quite impressed with its performance against the regular Deathstalkers, where the Cutlass rifles had been much less effective. He'd even managed to snag a catch of specialty rounds for it, they were called "Hellfires" and they were basically like a minature version of the beam tipped ammunition used by the Solar Knight Paladins, which could penetrate just about any armor known to man or God before detonating inside like a small plasma grenade. Not much took more than a single good Hellfire round to put down, though they were a bit of a waste against a single human sized target, considering how expensive they were to make. Meyer had, true to form, gone with his beloved flamethrower again, and had also taken a extra helping of incendiary grenades as well. Honestly, he really made Ryan wonder sometimes... but he was definitely a good guy to have around when things got messy.

Another indication that the brass were taking this, whatever situation it was, pretty damned seriously was the transport they'd been provided. Not just the surface to orbit stealth transport, but the wheels on the ground, a trio of brand spanking new, fresh off the assembly lines, Gladiator Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Unlike the Chariots, which were basically lightly armed APC's, the Gladiator was more like a light tank designed to carry a squad of infantry as well, driving into the heart of a combat zone, dropping troops off and then staying there to provide direct fire support capabilities. About a third again longer than a Chariot, and a little wider, the Gladiator had a much bigger turret with modular weapon mounts, allowing for a wide variety of weapons to be emplaced to fight various mission demands. The tank that Meyer, Ryan, Blundquist and a few others had been assigned had a pair of 30mm linear autocannons in its turret, the dual barrels capable of firing up to 450 anti-armor or anti-personnel shells per minute at ranges of up to two kilometers!

Additionally, the Gladiator's all carried multiple single use anti-armor rocket launchers, defensive smoke and scramble type grenade launchers, a 20mm automatic anti-missile shotcannon system, and anti-beam coating on its outer armor surface. In a pinch, it was theorized a Gladiator might even be able to stand toe to toe with a Mobile Suit, for a brief time anyway. Its 16 large wheels, eight to a side, were filled with spring like materials, meaning they could not be deflated and provided a very stable and even comfortable ride over even rough terrain. Additional firing ports and vision blocks lining the sides and rear allowed the squad inside to add their firepower to the tank's, and safety panels inside the tank would blow outward to dissipate internal explosions, making it much more likely those inside would survive a bad hit that penetrate the armor. In short, it was one bad mother of a tank and every infantryman was itching to get one for his squad, cause they simply blew the Chariots out of the water in every aspect.

And then there was the trio of kids and the brainiac that had been waiting for them on the shuttle. Ryan had only gotten a glimpse of them, they'd been keeping to their own private part of the shuttle ever since takeoff in Gibraltar, but he wasn't so sure he liked them being there. They creeped him right the fuck out. For one, the kids were, well, kids! Ryan wasn't all that old himself, but these people couldn't be much older than fifteen or sixteen, and that was too young to be involved in the USN military! For all that, they seemed quite at ease in their Survivor armor and with weapons in their hands, too comfortable for Ryan's inner comfort. And the brainiac scientist was just a cold fish, no two ways about it! The ivory tower types never did get along with the real world grunts, but Ryan could already tell this guy was a special case, grade A+ asshole. Just something about his eyes, and the way he'd sneered at the LT like he was something he'd found on the bottom of his shoe, rather than someone who would be carrying Mr. high and mighty's life in his hands!

A pip on their armor communication systems got both Ryan and Meyer's attention, and they stood up and made their way towards their Gladiator so they could listen in to the LT's briefing. It was time to find out how deep in the shit they really were!

xxxx

**New Eden, Porta Panama Theatre HQ, November 25th, Dusk**

"This is totally fucking FUCKED!" Meyer muttered under his breath as he half stood/half knelt at the vision block/firing port along the left side of the Gladiator, his flamethrower nozzle protruding from the firing port and sweeping back and forth in nervous jerks as Meyer darted his gaze around what little of the base he could see in the gathering gloom. When their eyes in the sky still hadn't spotted any sign of Eddie troops in the area, the LT and the FEAR scientist had conferred and decided it would be all right to light up the Gladiator's headlights and top mounted spotlight systems, but Ryan couldn't help but feel like he suddenly had a big target painted on his ass. The spotlights made it so a half blind man could see them from kilometers away, anyone who wanted to take a potshot at them, could, practically with impunity!

When the LT had said they were going to Porta Panama, Ryan had almost cheered, thinking they were going to be assigned some sort of special recon mission or something at the cushiest spot on Earth. And then the LT had gone on to say that Porta Panama WAS the mission, and his jubiliation had strangled on its own terror. Apparently some very bad juju had gone down in Porta Panama recently, bad enough that the entire base had cut off communications with the support fleet in geosynch orbit. Overnight, the base had turned from a thriving headquarters to a goddamn ghost town, almost three hundred thousand troops just flat out disappearing into thin air, or else running blindly through the forests up north, for no discernable reason that Ryan could understand! And apparently none of the brass could understand either, which was why they'd ordered this investigative mission. It was one thing for a small unit to get a bit stir crazy or even desert or mutiny, but for an entire primary theatre base to just drop off the grid all at once... Ryan didn't even want to THINK about what could cause that to occur.

Though Porta Panama had only been cleared and occupied a few weeks ago, with modern construction methods not to mention the significant base structures still remaining under the covering of weeds and plants, the base was as sprawling as it had ever been in the past, save for the long, snaking metallic ruins of its mass driver that wound back and forth through the bluffs above the vital shipping canal the base straddled. With no sign of enemy hostiles or even hostile friendlies such as deserters, the task force had decided to split up, with the FEAR scientist and his "Extended" soldiers taking a squad and one Gladiator towards the command buildings; the second Gladiator, with the LT and his squad heading towards the harbor district, where dozens of warships still lay silently at anchor; and the third Gladiator with First Sergeant Blundquist, Ryan, Meyer and their squad heading to check out the logisitics section of the base, where there apparently had been a cry for help recorded.

Their Gladiator rumbled quickly past row after row after row of warehouses stuffed with all the parts and basic supplies the military forces in the theatre would need for extended operations over the next few months, before giving way to lots upon lots of transport trucks and halftracks and fuel tankers and then spare combat vehicles, ranging from light ATV scout jeeps to Chariots, to almost fifty Gladiators in one parking lot that was chained off from the rest. And then they started seeing some of the heavier stuff in the distance, the self propelled 155mm howitzers and guided missile artillery tracks, the Viking Main Battle Tanks with their distinctive long barreled turret gun and glacis mounted flamethrowers, and even a few gargantuan Titan class Super-Heavy tanks! Dwarfing everything around them, massing as much as or more than some Mobile Suits, they were the heaviest vehicle class weapons in the Army's arsenal. Archmage Mobile Field Bases and the various land battleship classes were larger, but those took crews of dozens, even hundreds, while the Titan only needed a crew of three.

"Why the hell didn't they take any vehicles with them?" One of their other squadmates, Charles, asked, chewing on his lips in agitation. "Its suicide to travel overland on foot for any distance on this hellhole, but they left everything right where it was parked!" Meyer and Ryan just traded uneasy looks and shrugged. No one had any answers for any of this. It was like the entire base had gone crazy all at once. Blundquist had their Gladiator stop in the midst of one weapon park, filled with the Viking MBT's and a couple Titans, and ordered the squad to disembark and check for signs of sabotage or anything suspicious. They split into fireteams of three, with Meyer, Ryan and Charles being one such team. Ryan felt Charles's eyes on his back as they dismounted from the rear of the Gladiator, and remembered what the Top had said, that he was supposed to be a role model now. It made his skin crawl, truth be told, though that might also be from being in the middle of a dead silent, empty base at night, with an emphasis on dead!

Ryan thought about flipping on the lamps attached to the sides of his helmet and mounted along the underside of his Mauler, but the Glad was already lit up like a neon sign, and outside its hefty armored sides, Ryan didn't want to call any more attention to himself than need be, so he ordered Meyer and Charles to stay on light amp and thermal scans, respectively, while Ryan made do with just his regular eyes. With one member of the fireteam on each vision mode, they could overlap each other efficiently. Meyer went first, with Ryan right behind, since a flamethrower and shotgun were not something you wanted shooting from behind you, while Charles brought up the rear a few meters back, with his Cutlass. Ryan smiled slightly to himself as he heard Blunderbuss shouting at some of the other fireteams to douse their flashlights and adopt the three man overlap scan method Ryan's team was already using.

Directing his fireteam towards the hulking mass of the closest Titan, Ryan could not help but feel awed and a little intimidated by the enormous machine, designed to drive straight through the heaviest enemy firepower and base defenses, and even engage Mobile Suits one on one! The USN regular forces might not have any fancy pantsy Mobile Suits of their own like the Solar Knights, but a Titan could easily take a Vindicator down without breaking a sweat, and even an Excalibur might have a few problems with one of these monsters. Ryan reached out and patted the massive armored flank appreciatively as they made their way along the almost fifty foot length of the tank's hull. He'd had no real interest in the armor corp, he couldn't drive worth shit, unlike his illustrious Uncle, and he wasn't so good with complex electronics either, but he could definitely understand the attraction others had for them and the feeling of invincibility they granted.

When Meyer jerked to a stop and began swearing, about halfway down the fifteen meter long hull, Ryan immediately sighted along his shotgun and cycled through all three of his vision modes, but he didn't see any sign of a threat, and Meyer didn't immolate anything with his flamethrower either. "What is it, Spyro?" Ryan asked tightly, waving his arm at Charles to stay back and cover them even as he stepped forward to peer over Meyer's shoulder. Meyer was a few inches taller than his six feet, and appreciably bigger around the shoulders, but what had caught his attention was easy enough to see. Only a few days ago, Ryan might have gagged and shuddered at the sight of so much gore, but after the Deathstalkers, it would take more than a corpse, even a corpse missing most of its upper torso and head where the man had apparently put a Mauler in his mouth and pulled the trigger, to upset Ryan. "Got an abnormality here, Top. Looks like a Titan crewman, dead. Blew himself to slush with a Mauler." Ryan glanced up at the blood spray, which reached over two thirds of the way up the six meter tall hull. "Splashed himself but good. Gonna need a mop and a rag bucket to send him home."

"You ain't the only one, Rico." Blundquist replied curtly. "Everybody's finding em, all suicides, all messy. Haven't found a body with an intact skull yet. Looks like they just sat down and decided to fellate a gun. Creepy as fuck."

"Roger that one, Top." Ryan agreed vehemently. He bent carefully down to inspect the corpse, remembering that bit in training about enemy insurgents using corpses as booby traps, he used his combat knife to prod at the body, which was still a bit juicy, probably not dead more than a day or so, though the native bacteria was having a field day with all the exposed flesh and blood. Ryan was immersed in his inspection of the corpse, but he snapped his head up when Meyer swore once more and jerked around, his flamethrower spewing a comet trail of liquid fire across the expanse of concrete towards the front of the tank. Ryan didn't stop to think, he just rolled away from the body, clearing Meyer from his line of fire, and fired a three round burst from his Mauler in the same direction, one bullet scoring a palm sized crater in the flank of the Titan, vulnerable since its reactor was offline and thus so was its PS armor, but there was no answering screams or fire directed their way.

"What the FUCK are you guys shooting at?" Charles demanded over the fireteam channel of their comms, his Cutlass sweeping back and forth jerkily as he kept watching their flanks.

"Spyro?" Ryan prompted, since he'd only fired in support of whatever Meyer had seen.

"Saw something move in the shadows over there." Meyer retorted through clenched teeth. "Moved fast, didn't get a good look at it. Didn't look human. Didn't look..." Meyer trailed off and visibly shuddered. "Like something outta my worst goddamn nightmares..." He whispered, just barely loud enough to be heard.

"Top, Epsi 2, possible enemy contact over here, likely some sort of fauna, unknown type. Moving to investigate." Ryan reported in, using the designation for his fireteam, Epsilon 2.

"Understood Rico, moving Epsi 3 and 4 to consolidate your flanks. Epsi 1 returning to Gamma 3, call if you need something fragged." Blundquist replied tersely, ordering two fireteams to support Ryan while he and his team, the most junior members of the squad, returned to the Gladiator for backup purposes. "Informing Gamma 1 and 2 of possible contact, but they're at Points A and B, no reinforcement likely. Stay frosty."

"Ice cold, Top." Ryan agreed, beckoning for Meyer to lead the way, which he did, albeit a bit reluctantly, and Ryan wondered just what it was that Meyer had seen? He'd barely even raised an eyebrow in the desert, and now he was shaking like a kid in a haunted house. "Take it slow, Spyro. I got your back. Charles, if anything shoots us in the back, Imma haunt your family for the next ten generations. Epsi 3 and 4 are moving up behind us, if you shoot a friendly, the Top will make you wish you'd shot yourself first."

"I know what I'm doing, Rico." Charles shot back, a little tensely, but Ryan made no reply, realizing that he had been a bit patronizing there. The three of them slowly crept up to the front part of the Titan, where the revolving mono-blades of the chainsaw like brushcutters they were outfitted with for assault or forest travel operations would be mounted, and Ryan and Meyer peered around the edge of the tank's glacis armor. Nothing shot at them or leapt out at them, but Ryan also spotted, this time, some sort of formless, horrific shape leaping across the ground between two Vikings about fifty meters away, heading towards one of the big logistics administration buildings that bordered the vehicle lot. "J. F. C. what IS THAT?" Ryan swore, his eyes watering and his mind reeling at the sheer wrongness of whatever the creature was, as he sagged back into cover behind the tracks of the Titan, shaking his head and tasting bile in his throat.

"Practically fucking cthonian!" Meyer said, slumping to his knees next to Ryan. "Mindfucks you just looking at it."

"Cthonian?" Charles asked, puzzled.

"H. P. Lovecraft, dude, look it up. Scariest shit you'll ever read." Meyer replied shortly, once more surprising Ryan. Meyer acted like a rough and tumble thug most of the time, but apparently had quite a fascination for old literature and movies to go along with it. What was that about judging books by their covers again?

"Top, contact confirmed, possible Chimera suspected." Ryan swallowed hard as he thought about that possibility. "Heading towards Admin building on East side of lot, moving fast, staying in cover. Suspect its trying to fuck with our heads, Top. No sign of allies, just one. Possibility of ambush set up. Orders?"

"Wait for Epsi 3 and 4, then sweep forward. Epsi 1 and Gamma 3 are in motion to provide crossfire. Weapons free, Rico, if you see it again, shoot it dead."

"Roger that, Top." Ryan got to his feet, holding out a hand to help Meyer up as well. "Hear that, Spyro? Roast you some cthonian next time you see that bastar..."

_Come..._ The thought appeared in the middle of Ryan's mind like oil leaking up from a shipwreck, just sort of oozing into the middle of his consciousness, along with a brief compulsion, an urge to turn north and take a step. Behind him, Ryan heard Charles choke in shock and stumble as his body tried to respond to the compulsion and almost sent him sprawling instead. _Feed..._ an image of a hungry mouth swallowing wriggling morsels of meat followed that thought.

"Did either of you just..." Meyer started to ask.

"No. And neither did you." Ryan retorted with a gulp. "Keep it together. Stay focused." Ryan began reciting, mentally, the steps for field stripping his Mauler. Training said that focusing inward and ignoring emotions would make it harder for the Eddies to mindfuck you, whether that was true in the field was a matter of some heated debate among the troops. But it sure as fuck couldn't hurt, could it? Ryan was still telling himself that when a very human scream resounded in the distance, coming from the Admin building where that formless blot had been heading. "Top, we have a possible survivor in that building!" Ryan reported immediately, trying not to let himself dwell on the scream, which had gone on for way too long to be healthy.

"Still no sign of hostile presence, Epsi 2." Blundquist answered, gritting his teeth as he did his best not to remember that voice that had just caressed his thoughts, like a stalker touching the cheek of a sleeping victim. "Permission granted to advance and locate possible survivor." Blundquist switch comm channels. "LT, possible survivor in Logi-Admin sector. Possible contact with hostile lifeform, unconfirmed biological organism. Sir, we're under psy..."

"Us too, Blunderbuss." The LT interrupted, his voice a bit squeaky with fright. "Aux force says no sign of enemy psychics in immediate base area, but their technology is still experimental, and we ALL felt that just now. Proceed with caution. Aux force will move to reinforce you as soon as they finish vital mission objectives at Point Alpha." Those being the destruction or confiscation of various top secret data files and battle plans stored in the command center.

Back in the logistics lot, Ryan had taken point, Meyer still too shaken to take forward position, so he was now bringing up the rear while Charles provided suppression position for Ryan. Nothing leapt out at them on their way over to the building, but Ryan could have sworn he saw things moving further down the rows of tanks several times, in positions no moving shadows should be, but every time he turned to look and sight with his Mauler, nothing was there. That oily voice kept sliding around in his thoughts, not saying anything, but oppressing him all the same, like someone constantly standing at his back and breathing on his neck! Ryan frowned when they got to the building and found that the airlock door leading in was totally sealed and locked, the keypad scrambled from the inside. He'd seen the formless blot come this way with his own eyes, but now it was nowhere in evidence, and it couldn't have gotten in through this door!

More movement from the sides had him pulling himself into cover of the doorway, but it was just the other fireteams moving up to support them, and then the Gladiator rolling up to face the doorway, illuminating the front of the building with its spotlamps. First Sergeant Blundquist unassed from the back of the IFV as the squad came back together, forming a defensive perimeter around the airlock. Ryan was typing at the airlock keypad but he was no data-warfare specialist, he was having exactly zero luck getting anywhere with the scrambled programming. "We ain't getting in here gently, Top." Ryan reported, with a final slam of his hand against the keypad. Blundquist paused a moment to consider before shrugging.

"Fuck it. Door's easy enough to replace. Stand away from the door." Blundquist made sure his squad was a safe distance away from the doorway, before he gave the high sign to Gamma 3. A second later, one of the 75mm anti-armor rockets mounted along the side of the turret leapt from its launcher on a geyser of fire and slammed into the airlock door, blasting the armored portal into two jagged, twisted halves. The noise and fireworks show was incredible, and if anyone didn't know they were here before, they sure as hell did now!

"The Top is the man. The LT never would have let us do that." Meyer commented with a shine in his eyes, on the fireteam channel.

"Epsi 1, 3 and 4 will remain on perimeter security detail, along with Gamma 3. Epsi 2 will come with me to investigate the building and locate the survivor, if there is one." Blundquist decided.

"Should we bring the flamethrower, Top?" Ryan asked, leery of being in an enclosed space with such a highly destructive and volatile weapon.

"Spyro knows what he's doing." Blundquist shrugged. He turned to his two rookie squadmates. "Gimme all your flares, boots. Backup should be here in thirty, play nice with the egghead and his kids if I'm not out by then. But don't take no shit from him either, you ain't his whipping boys. Be ready with medical support." Blundquist accepted the double handful of flares from the rookies and then nodded at Ryan, Meyer and Charles. "Spyro, you got point, Charles you're on his ass, then me, Rico covers our butts. Rico goes vislight, Spyro amplight and Charles is thermal, I'll cycle. Be careful with your fire patterns, a survivor could be real valuable to the top brass, but if you shoot first, I won't bitch, you're more important to me than the brass are."

Moving carefully, they edged into the antechamber of the building, winking red lights warning of atmosphere integrity breach, since the airlock had been blown into smoking wreckage by the anti-tank rocket, the room clearly illuminated by the headlights of the Gladiator behind them. The antechamber was barren of much of interest, just the standard bric-a-brac, now mostly debris after being pummeled by the anti-tank rocket explosion. Several passageways meandered off from the entryway, Blundquist chose the center one more or less at random, though also assuming that it would lead the deepest into the building's interior the fastest. With an unknown hostile, probably nonhuman, already on the loose in the area, perhaps even inside with them, they less time they spent searching, the better the chance any potential survivors had of, well, surviving. They traveled quickly down the hall, which was straight and almost suspiciously clean, before it made a hard turn to the right, with a heavy door embedded in the wall directly to their front.

All the interior doors of the building were designed to be used as emergency airlocks, but forunately they weren't all as heavily secured as the main airlock door leading to the outside. A few rounds from Charles's Cutlass through the locking mechanism allowed them to pull open the portal with little trouble. Hard luck for anyone that might have been cowering behind said door, but when given a choice between fast and careful, Blundquist preferred speed, in this particular environment. Meyer made a inarticulate sound of disgust as he entered the room, covered by Ryan and Charles, and the reason for his exclamation quicly became clear to all of them as they entered the room behnd him, except for Charles, since he was still stuck in thermal vision mode and couldn't see the stuff coating the walls because it was room temperature.

"Gives whole new meaning to the term "wet bar", eh?" Blundquist joked, hoping to steady the nerves of his team as he crouched by one of several sprawled and mutilated bodies slumped against the walls and draped across the floor. None of them were whole, most were barely even recognizable as human forms, so damaged were they. And not by military grade weapons, Blundquist was more than familiar with the ways milspec weaponry could ruin the human form, which were many and varied, but uniform in their general effectiveness. These people had died from less effective means, bludgeoned and cut and stabbed and burned with hastily improved weapons, barely better than clubs and pocket knives. But where the weapons lacked technological power, their wielders had definitely made up for it with angry fervor in wielding them, judging by the patterns of blood spray and the way the skulls, in particular, were mashed into little more than pulp. Even the ceiling was slimed with mostly dried arerial spray, the place was an abbatoir!

"Can't tell if they were attacked, attacked each other, or if these were self inflicted." Ryan noted, his voice oddly clinical as he did his best to disassociate himself from the horror of what had once been a communal breakroom. This was way wose than even the most realistic slasher flick he'd ever watched! A grunt from Meyer grabbed all their attention once more, tension oozing into the room like a miasma, as Meyer prodded a corpse away from its slumped position on the wall with the nozzle-muzzle of his flamethrower.

"What you got, Spyro?" Blundquist asked, a chill creeping down his spine as he eyed the doorway, the only way into or out of the room that he was aware of. He could have almost sworn he saw the suggestion of a shadow lurking out in the hallway, but when he looked again, there was nothing there. He frowned and cycled his vision spectrum a few times, but also came out with zilch. He debated poking his head out the doorway to better reconnoiter, but that was also a good way to lose one's head. Making his way over to where Meyer was half bent over, Blundquist crouched to examine whathis subordinate had found. It didn't take long to notice it, and Blundquist let out a grunt as well, the sound like that of a man being punched in the gut. There was writing on the wall, scraggly, fragmented writing, but writing all the same. "He Calls us... I can't ta... " Blundquist read out loud, from where the letters were scrawled crustily on the bare metal wall, the ink having dried into scabs. It was blood after all, probably from the slit wrists of the decapitated body. Another chill raced up and down his spine.

A noise from the hallway shattered the brief spell of horrified introspection that had settled over the room, as all four of them were transfixed by the horrid little message that had been the dying work of one of the unidentifiable corpses. The four of them spun practically as one, weapons coming back up to their shoulders, stablights from their lamps reaching out to brightly illuminate the doorway and hallway, to pinpoint and blind whatever thought it could sneak up on them. But there was nothing there, just the empty, bare hall. Ryan shook his head in disbelief, all too familiar with the creeping dread that was pouring into the depths of his belly. Something was in here with them. That had sounded an awful lot like a footstep. No footstep he'd ever heard before, but something had put its foot down, literally, out in the hall! It sounded like it had been right behind them, but obviously that couldn't be the case, unless it was just that fast. The other option being that it was at a distance but was so large it could make such a loud noise from far away. Fast or huge, neither option was pleasant to consider.

After almost a minute of straining their ears and eyes for a sign of whatever had made the sound, and coming up with only pregnant silence, Blundquist gave the order to move out, his voice quite subdued from the usual rough bark. he didn't like admitting it, but something about seeing that short message written on the wall had really gotten under his skin. It was obvious to him, privy as he was to higher levels of information than most of the rest of the unit, that the base had come under attack from some sort of high end psychic, someone... or more likely something... strong enough to get into the heads of groups of people at a time and cause them to turn on each other in a homicidal frenzy. Or else flee from the base into the wilds, no doubt to be picked off and devoured at the beast's leisure. But the sheer scale... an entire theatre base, denuded of garrision... what the HELL kind of monster was that? How come FEAR hadn't had a countermeasure for something like that?

Whatever it was, Blundquist was fairly certain that at least it wasn't whatever was in the building with them, since he and his troops weren't bludgeoning each other into headless ruins using random office supplies, or sucking off their guns for an explosive release. Their current target, whatever it was, was most likely just a scavenger of some sort, something attracted to the scent of rotting meat that had to hang over the base like a miasma. Scavengers were usually the stealthier sorts, used to cringing and hiding from stronger and faster animals, which would account for the stealth of the thing, and its wariness regarding them. Still, this was New Eden, and Blundquist had little doubt the beast would soon work up the gumption to come after them. At which time he would take great pleasure in reducing it to a greasy stain on the floor.

Standing around waiting for it to ambush them at its own pace would only play to the strengths of the beast, and they had a job to do to boot, though Blundquist strongly doubted there were going to be any survivors left at this point in time, so he ordered his team to move out and continue searching the building for clues. They moved slowly, fingers always on triggers, ears always straining for untoward noises, eyes darting into corners and every nook and cranny that might be big enough to hide something unpleasant and hungry. The tension was so high it started fraying their nerves, such as when Charles unloaded half a clip from his Cutlass into a cubicle that he thought something was hiding in, only to find totally empty even of slain bodies. Which they were finding a lot of, all in similar condition to those in the breakroom, the building looked to have been near full when whatever happened went down. The bodies tended to cluster in groups, many showing signs of suicide or homicide, some so torn up it was impossible to tell how they died.

Head injuries were just about the only uniform thing, all the bodies had fractured skulls, or were decapitated, or just plain had their heads crushed flat, which only reinforced Blundquist's private beliefs that this was the result of some enormously powerful psychic, putting pain into people's heads and causing them to go insane. It was a known power of the Eddies, but again, the sheer scale of it was the truly frightening thing. Blunquist was no forensics expert, but he was good at assessing battle aftermath, and to his eyes, all the bodies they'd found seemed to have died more or less within a few hours of each other. Whatever it was that had done this, he hoped it was far as fuck away now! Of more immediate concern was the scavenger beast, or, as Blundquist was beginning to suspect, beasts, judging from the pattern of footstep and other noises they heard from time to time, never especially nearby, but often enough for Blundquist to get the feeling that the beasts, whatever they were, were intentionally messing with him and his troops, making noise just to screw with their nerves. He had that itching on the back of his neck that told him he was being observed and maybe even manipulated, a feeling he didn't like one bit!

But if the beasts really thought they were herding Blundquist and his team into a trap, well, Spyro and Rico would have something to say about that, with the flamer and Mauler, which would be an unpleasant surprise for any living creature small enough to fit into the building with them! All the same, as they moved deeper and higher into the log-admin building, Blundquist kept an eye open for a good defensive position. At last, near the top of the building, in what had once been the control room for logistics operations in this sector of the base, where operators could orchestrate the delicate balance of returning and leaving vehicles and rotating crews and shipments of supplies, Blundquist decided to make a stand, the itch on his neck having become a burning between his shoulderblades, like high intensity laser targeters fixing on his heart from behind. Judging by the state of the room, with a much greater than normal concentration of bodies, some stacked two or three deep, and some clad in the armored environment suits of infantry soldiers, told him that someone else had tried to use this room as a safe point in the past.

Unsuccessfully, by the looks of things, though it wasn't like putting up a barricade was going to help much against a creature that could scramble your brains from who knew how far away, and true to form, these bodies were shot torn and even blasted by what looked like frag grenade shrapnel, with many wounds concentrated around the head area. Poor bastards had never had a chance. One of the radio systems used for coordinating the base logistics network had some jury rigged wires and power supplies bundled near it, and Blundquist felt fairly sure that these soldiers had tried to send a distress signal of some sort, though with the way the nano-machines still infested Earth's atmosphere and the good ole N-Jammers still doing their thing in the bedrock, regular radio signals were extremely attenuated and it was unlikely, even with boosting, that they could have been heard by anyone. Using hand signals, Blundquist dispersed his men around the room, Meyer and Ryan covering the armored security door they had ust come in through, while Charles covered their rears and Blundquist backed them all up, even as he divided his attention to poke through the heaps of bodies and shot torn equipment, looking for any scrap of evidence that might indicate what had done this.

Ryan tried not to think about the way his feet half stuck to the tacky liquid coating most of the floor as he moved into partial cover behind a row of desks and computers. The other rooms had been bad enough, but there were easily fifty dead people in this room, their bodies ripped open and torn apart by close range linear rifle and shotgun fire, and blood and rotting viscera was splashed everywhere, like water from a burst sewer pipe! He was never so glad for his self contained environment suit as he was right that moment, the stench had to be positively demonic! All the same, the sight of the barricade had sent his stomach plummeting to new lows, because why build a physical obstruction in front of the door unless you were trying to keep something out? He saw Meyer hunkering down behind a pile of bodies a few meters away, his flamer pointed towards to door and the tangle of chairs and desks that made up the barricade that partially blocked entry to the room, and had to shake his head in admiration for Meyer's fortitude, he was practically using the bodies as a mattress! Even without smell, that was gross!

Ryan was just about to make a joke about it, something to lighten the mood and relase some of the tension that was eating him alive, when noises from out in the hallway drew all of their attention, and just in time too, as a large... THING... came charging into the room a moment later. Though he was the closest man to it, and looking directly at it, Ryan couldn't get a good look at it, it was just an inkblot ball of snapping fangs, waving tendrils and pure, shrieking horror! It didn't seem to have legs or arms, it just hurled itself at them with a fearful scream of either anger or maybe even pain, and Ryan was struck dumb and paralyzed with shock, his eyes watering at the impossibility of the thing. It was all but upon him, ready to tear him into pasty gobbets, when a stream of liquid fire from Meyer speared across the room and took the beast in the flank, immolating it like a candle wick. It shrieked once more, high and so piercing Ryan spent a moment wondering why his faceplate didn't crack or shatter, before he snapped out of it and fired a three round burst of beam tipped Hellfire shells right into the center of the creature's mass! The beast didn't so much die as it did dissolve into spatters of stringy black ichor that splashed across the room like an egg splattering after being tossed off a house!

"Holy fucking MOTHER OF GO..." Charles started to exclaim, just now popping out of his mind blasted stupor at the sheer horrificness of the beast, which looked like no animal he'd ever seen before, all whipping tails and grinning jaws and thorny tongues, before Spyro flamed it and Rico's Mauler sent it staggering and slumping to the ground in a puddle of slick entrails and spasming limbs. It finally shuddered and went still, in the middle of his exclamation, but then there was suddenly another one in the doorway, and more coming behind that, a whole pack of the monsters jostling and yapping as they crowded towards the succulent prey! Charles remembered his rifle, and began firing a moment after that, to distressingly little effect, the 5mm Cutlass rounds smacking into the scaly, fibrous hides of the beasts and drawing explosions of dark purplish blood, but they came on regardless!

For his part, Meyer took careful aim at the next humanoid figure charging into the room, at the head of a mob of its fellows, all midnight dark skin that seemed to be made of some sort of oil, with faceless heads that had huge, lampry like mouths, and arms that ended in toothed tentacles rather than hands. They gibbered and drooled stagnant blood as they threw themselves at him with abandon, ignoring their hapless, eviscerated and burning scout that lay curled into a fetal ball on the floor by Rico. The blazing wash of his flamethrower ignited the next three of the damned cthonians, or whatever the fuck they were, but even being bathed with flaming napalm didn't seem to stop them, and they came for him, fat and muscle melting off their rubbery bones even as their hungry tentacles reached for his throat. A hurled frag grenade shattered the cohesion of the pack, courtesy of the Top, and dropped the three torched monsters as well.

"CONTACT CONTACT CONTACT!" Blundquist screamed into his comm system. "We are under assault by an unknown number of non-human assailants in the control room of the log-admin building! Request backup! THEY'RE FUCKING EVERYWHERE!" He hurled another grenade down the hall, a high explosive one this time, and ducked down behind a row of desks to avoid the backblow being channeled out of the hallway. He had no fucking idea what these beasts were, they looked like some sort of cross between crabs, squids and hyenas, but they were the size of a mastiff and there looked to be dozens of them! They showed absolutely no fear and charged out of the smoke and dust from the hallway, barking and yelping and slavering as they waved segmented upper limbs with crab like pincers, and rows of grasping tentacles extending down their spines like a crest! "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, WHAT ARE THESE THINGS!"

Ryan had no time nor idea of how to respond to the Top's query, he was shifting and firing his Mauler almost nonstop! One shot, even from a goddamn Hellfire, simply wasn't enough for these amorphous beasts, he had to double or sometimes even triple tap the things to put them down for good, dissolving into sticky clumps of slime that sprayed everywhere. Behind him, Charles and Top were firing enar continuously with their Cutlasses, though the smaller rounds barely seemed to even annoy the gooey beasts as they crowded into the room, seemingly inexorable! Even repeated bursts from Spyro's flamethrower only seemed to drive them back a few feet before they came forward again, heedless of their melting bodies. Only the Mauler and the grenades seemed to put the things down quickly! His ammo counter display flashed red as Ryan ran through his first clip in a matter of seconds. "FRAG!" He hucked a grenade to give himself a bit of breathing room as he ejected the spent ammuniction cassette from the back of the Mauler and slapped in a new one, his hands curiously steady. This was pretty freaky, true, but no more freaky in its way than the bugs in the desert.

Charles ducked into cover to avoid shrapnel from Rico's grenade, trying to take the opportunity to reload his Cutlass, since he'd burned through more than eighty percent of the clip already, but his hands were shaking so hard with adrenaline rush and fear, after he ejected the current magazine, he couldn't seem to put in the next one! He could feel the beasts drawing closer, and the damn ammo just wouldn't... go... in... THERE! "HAH!" Charles shouted exultantly, as the clip slammed into place and his HUD ammo counter display turned from dark amber to green once more. That shout turned into a scream as he whipped around to stare at some of the piles of bodies, where yet more of the unnamable beasts were burrowing up from where they'd apparently been hiding under the corpses to ambush them! "BEHIND US!" Charles shrieked, switching to full automatic fire and spraying the heaving mounds of bodies with his entire clip in a matter of seconds.

Meyer heard Charles's warning as well as the sound of him burning an entire clip in less than three seconds. Professional soldiers didn't go "cyclic", or full auto, with their weapons very often. It was almost impossible to be accurate and it wasted a lot of ammo for comparatively little kills. It was only when things went wrong, and you got suddenly mobbed by a bunch of foes at close range, or needed to get yourself some space or make the enemy duck, that you used full auto. Spinning around, leaving Top and Rico to handle the bottleneck, Meyer hosed down the entire ream arc of the room with a thick wash of orange-blue liquid fire from his flamethrower. His tanks were starting to drop below half full, already, which was just insane! Motion from above caused Meyer to hurl himself awkwardly to the side, as one of the hell-beasts dropped down from the rafters, where it had apparently climbed down out of the roof! It was too close to flame, the backwash would ignite him too!

Blundquist saw a trio of the things drop down near Meyer, the flamer specialist down on his hands and knees and vulnerable to their close range attacks, and he spun to blow the three away with the remaining ammo in his Cutlass. With the beasts encroaching on all sides, Blundquist had no time to reload, and he dropped the Cutlass and yanked out his sidearm pistol instead, as one hyena-crab-squid hurled itself at him, claws raised to stab into his heart. Blundquist put three rounds into the thing, knocking it down and out of the air in mid pounce, but though it leaked thick gore, it was still moving, so he put three more rounds into its head and torso before it finally slumped to the floor, twitching and whining its death gurgles. _Damn it, we need better sidearms..._ Blundquist groused, having used half of his clip on just one of the swarming beasts!

"THEY'RE COMING OUT OF THE WALLS!" Ryan screamed, unable to believe his eyes, as several of the amorphous creatures began to osmose directly out of the solid concrete and steel wall reinforced wall to his left flank. He raked half a clip of precious Hellfire shells across the incoming monsters, blowing huge holes in their goopy forms, eliminating at least four or five before they could even get half out of the walls, but there were more, LOTS more, and they kept coming, pressing in regardless of casualties. He shot and shot and shot, no longer able to waste time actually killing the things, just using single shots to blow back whatever monster was closest to him at any given time, his ammo counter turning yellow, then amber, and finally red, before his Mauler stopped spitting explosive death, his second cassette emptied in less than a minute! With monsters barely ten feet away, there was no time for even the quickest reload, so Ryan snatched out his pistol, fat lot of good the dinky thing would do him, and began putting bullets into what he thought was the head region of the monsters, though with their fluid bodies, it was impossible to tell for sure.

With monsters looming on all sides, Meyer threw down his flamer, snatching out his knife and priming an incendiary grenade with his other hand. "Come get some of this, you freaks!" Meyer shouted in challenge, brandishing the mono-sharp blade fiercely, as he prepared to take a few down with him into fiery oblivion. He sure as hell wasn't going to sit around waiting to feel what it was like to be torn to pieces by toothy tentacles, or to have his insides slurped out by those lampry mouths! Before he could immolate himself though, another small metallic object bounced into the room, somehow tossed from down the hallway, right in the middle of the biggest mass of the horrendous things. Meyer had an instant to identify it as some sort of grenade, bulkier than the ones he was used to using or seeing, before it detonated. Or rather, before it activated, since it didn't blow up at all, just sorta released a few puffs of steam, like a microwave dinner being flash heated. Unspectacular activation aside, the effects were astounding!

With a collective howl of torment, the beasts wavered like heat mirages and then DISSOLVED into thin air, as if struck by an aura of pure disintegration, or like humans caught in the radius of a thermal exciter! They burst like balloons filled with superheated steam, their internal fluids geysering before vaporizing into thin air, leaving the four soldiers standing alone in the middle of the shot torn room, staring in disbelief at the youthful Extendeds standing out in the hall, one of whom was badly wounded by gunfire, where formerly there had only been monsters. An instant later, some sort of implosion effect, soundless, intangible, yet incredibly powerful, swept the four of them from their feet like a rushing tide of pure agony, their minds afire with pain, not their own, but projected from some distant source, wailing like a child that has just learned that touching a red hot stove causes a burn. Just as the pain grew too great to be born by human minds, consciousness was mercifully swept away in the psychic currents, that sent every thinking, unshielded mind in Porta Panama to their knees or even out cold completely, a psychic maelstrom of anger, pain, fury and hunger denied that disturbed the dreams of every single sleeping creature on New Eden!

xxxx

**New Eden, Gibraltar Theatre HQ, November 25th, Dusk**

PFC Dudly Grant leaned heavily on the railing that bordered the rooftop deck of the Medical Center, his side burning something fierce where it was still a mass of sutures and medical glue holding him together. His Survivor pattern armor had been a total write off, with that gigantic slash chopped in the side, and so very nearly had been Dudly himself! If not for the heroic efforts of Ryan and Meyer in getting him to an Expansion base so quickly, he would have bled out from the chance swipe of the BBB's pincer! As things were, he'd lost a hell of a lot of blood, and had needed Red EDEN booster shots to purge his system of Green EDEN before he began to turn into an Eddie! The booster shots made him feel sick, sicker anyway, but he'd had far more than enough of just lying around in his hospital bed, waiting for his wounds to heal. He was going to have one hell of a scar when it was all said and done!

He'd had some thoughts about getting a breath of fresh air, as much as that was possible on New Eden anyway, and though the air inside his replacement armor was no fresher than the air inside the hospital, the illusion of being unburdened by being outside was enough to be slightly relaxing. The sprawl of Gibraltar base was spread out around and mostly below him, the hospital being one of the tallest buildings on the base, protected by the large red cross emblems on its top and sides, which declared it a non-target, even in the middle of a military base. Well, assuming the Eddies were willing to be bound by the rules of war, that is, which Dud privately didn't think was all that likely. Still, a hospital wasn't going to be a primary target of any attack, not compared to the active duty garrison buildings, vehicle lots, fuel depots, repair shops, Mobile Suit hangers or command facilities anyway. Beyond the base proper was the ruins of the old Gibraltar support city, and then the outer defense line, and finally, marching away into the distance, the beginnings of arid land that would become the Sahara desert.

Combat Air Patrols of Solar Knight Vindicators and flights of attack helicoptors from the regular military crisscrossed the skies above the base, everyone still on heightened awareness in the wake of that aborted attack on Gibraltar by the Eddies. Moving stars way overhead showed the positions of the SPF ships holding geosynch orbit, including the massive Incarnate class dreadnought _Monolith_. Just thinking about the incredible firepower of that ship alone was enough to give Dud a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling, since it was watching over him from on high. As yet, the Eddies didn't seem to have any craft capable of even disputing the SPF's control of the heavens, and with so many heavy capital ships overhead, and the god-like overwatch from Birdman and the other members of the TAS command, Dudly was fairly sure no major attack could succeed against Gibraltar. Nothing could even get close, other than those damned invisible elite Mobile Suits!

And they had been coming up with countermeasures for those things too, artillery and missile rounds that blanketed an area with glowing dyes that would highlight a target in all spectra, from visible light to thermal to magnetic. Dud perked up and peered into the distance, his helmet HUD automatically reacting to his squinted eyes and dropping magnification filters into place as Dud caught sight of a unit of Paladins, in their tricked out Excalibur Mobile Suits, walking in the distance, on their way to some manuever or other, or maybe just out taking a stroll. Discipline was different in the Solar Knights, they had a lot more leeway and privileges, even at the bottom ranks, than soldiers in the regular military. They got paid a lot more too, and unsurprisingly there was little camraderie between the two forces. And the Paladins, who were elite even among those elite, could do pretty much anything they wanted, whenever they wanted, up to and including taking their Suits on a casual walk for the pure hell of it, through the middle of the base!

Dud frowned and silently shook his fist in their direction, envious of their freedom and power even as he hated them for it. He was just lowering his hand once more when a commotion on a tarmac about haflway to those Paladins caught his attention, and his gaze. A squadron of Viking MBT's were undergoing maintenance outside a hanger, their crews crawling around and under the four hefty machines, when suddenly the crews all started running around aimlessly, pointing and shouting. Obviosuly Dud was much too far away to hear what they were syaing, but when he saw them pointing at the ground, a frissure of unease split through him, making his guts churn. His premonition was vindicated less than a second later, when the heavy asphault tarmac suddenly bulged upwards like a sheet with an unruly child beneath it, huge cracks spreading through the material, before the pressure from below grew too great, and rock, asphault and dirt catapulted skyward as huge black pincers forced themselves to the surface, knocking crewpersons flying through the air, and even sending one Viking skidding sideways, its locked treads grinding a pair of hapless mechanics into gory smears on the ground as it moved.

Dudly flinched and fell back from the railing, despite the distance between himself and the action, as the gigantic BBB, the big black bug from the desert, the one that had almost killed him, heaved itself out of its burrowed tunnel beneath Gibraltar, towering over the squadron of tanks, dwarfing all four of them with its mass. Clinging to the sides and back of the monster bug were dozens of its brown chitined fellows, the man sized bugs that had initially ambushed the ESP group, and as the BBB cleared the ground, the lesser bugs began leaping from their perches and scuttling after the screaming, fleeing crewpersons. Yet more of the brown Deathstalkers poured out of the tunnel their Queen had burrowed for them, heeding her call to revenge against the two legged prey that had dared inflict pain upon her. After preying upon several outlying hives, she had deduced that the ones she sought must belong to the main hive, and so she had gathered her broods and a few other allies, and come calling to sate the burning hunger for revenge!

Staggering back to the railing, as the first alarm sirens began to wail, Dudly caught sight of several other emergence holes, smaller ones, breaking through the concrete and asphault in other areas of the base, as Greater Deathstalkers responded to the subconscious calls of their Queen, ignoring instinctive rivalries under her influence, working in teams of two or three to dig their wide tunnels for their lesser kin to invade this enemy hive with, packs of brown chitin scuttling between the legs of the distinctive Greaters, striped in black and bright colors such as neon blue, green, yellow and red. It wasn't just Deathstalkers either, the Queen had called upon another Chimera, an oftentimes rival but fellow minion of the Caller. Humans called her "The Widow", and she was a Spider Wolf, of the desert dwelling variety, descended from tarantulas rather than the leaping spiders of the European and North America varieties.

Spider Wolves were roughly the same size as Deathstalkers, though they looked much more like their arachnid forebearers than the Deathstalkers did their own ancestors, just much larger and more energetic. Unlike Deathstalkers, Spider Wolves hunted in packs, and were Actives rather than Latents, using their powers of confusion and bodily systems control to weaken and even paralyze their prey from a distance, while surrounding it before attacking as a group, leaping up to ten times their own body length to bring down prey with their poison bites, or else flicking toxic hair spines from their legs into the heads and faces of prey to disable them. Other times the lesser, male spiders would act as beaters, corralling a large prey and guiding it towards their pack's Mother Spider, their female, who was much larger and more powerful than her offspring and mates, and much less hairy as well, more smooth skinned and capable of spinning large webs to trap prey her pack brought to her, to be later devoured at their leisure. Many Mother's displayed the red hourglass markings of old Black Widows, regardless of which species they were descended from.

If anything, Widow herself was larger than the Deathstalker Queen, her oil smooth chitin an iridescent yellow color, mottled with shades of orange that could make her look just like a large sandstone boulder when she was at rest. More like an outcropping of rock than a boulder though, as her legspan was a good fifty meters, and her body of similar size to her Deathstalker rival. It was a tight squeeze through the Deathstalker tunnels, but with the scent of so much meat in the air, it was a discomfort she was willing to bear. Besides, having the Queen in her debt would help secure her broods from generations of depredations by the Deathstalkers, allowing her to build her own forces for that time, come the future, where she would trap and devour her black chitined competitor. Being a creature of the vast savannas and deeper deserts, Widow was yet unfamilair with the two legged prey, especially these new ones that swarmed in huge hives, and if disorientation was a sensation she could feel, she definitely would be feeling it, popping up into this strange hive. However, the closest emotion she had to confusion was anger, and anger always was tied closely to hunger, and she leaped forward, her mighty legs propelling her almost three hundred meters away from her detestable rival, her entourage broods leaping and bounding to keep up with her as she searched for private hunting grounds. She barely noticed when one of her legs came down on a Viking MBT, and speared through the top armor like it was made of paper.

Back at the first emergence hole, the Deathstalker Queen had torn apart the four Vikings, her claws battering huge dents into their thick armor before finally breaking through and eviscerating the metal shells, which the Queen had learned could contain the two legged prey, like parasites inside an egg. Her broods had slain and consumed all the two leggers in the immediate area, and were now spreading out further, their hunger sated by their appetite for killing not slackened in the slightest, propelled onward by their Queen's fury. Behind her, a clutch of Megapedes, mindless predators one and all, and easy enough to influence with her intelligence and the promise of food, came slithering out of the emergence hole, snapping their huge pincer jaws at anything living that came near them. Including the queen herself, but a desultory shift of her legs brought her out of their reach and brought them into range of her pincers. She smacked the unruly Megapedes with her closed pincers, gouging their thick chitin and cowing the brutish bugs, sending them peeling away from her in search of easier, less violent prey.

Which they found in droves, as mobs of panicked mechanics and responding infantry forces came charging out of various buildings, only to find themselves all but beneath the eighty meter long Megapedes, their weapons all but ineffective against their thick, chitinous hides. And even when weapons did strike true, such as when a Gladiator armed with a 105mm Linear Cannon in its turret came screeching around a hanger and blasted the closest Megapede, which was busy horking down a reinforced platoon of infantry, burning napalm splashing off its hide like water, the Megapede's extremely rudimentary nervous system didn't even notice the damage, when a two meter wide hole was blasted in its side, bright yellow ichor geysering out. A leg fell away, twitching spastically, but with hundreds of legs, the Megapede was hardly slowed. It charged the offending Gladiator and slammed its head straight into the machine's side, punching the armor inwards and flipping the light tank up onto its side, pulping the infantry squad inside.

Widow mind blasted a group of the two legged prey, freezing their muscles and dropping them to the ground helplessly, to be quickly devoured by her broods. She was disappointed, there seemed to be little here big enough to sate her own hunger, just the two legged things, barely big enough to quailfy as a moutful. She wished for a one of the Oxiphants or Gargantua of the savanna, especially one of the latter, big enough to comfortably feed her for a week. And then her wish was answered, as much larger versions of the two leggers fell from the sky, covered in hard shells, but glowing with life-heat, and she pounced upon the nearest group of such morsels, knocking two of them to the ground beneath her, her legs skittering and sliding off their curiously hard shells without leaving marks, her fangs likewise unable to penetrate their hides. Frustrated, Widow bore down with her mind, crushing the feeble intelligences guiding the large prey, no stronger despite their size than the little two leggers, causing the pilots of the Vindicators to foam and twitch as their bodies rebelled against their control, convulsing so hard they shattered their spines and broke their limbs, their bodies continuing to twist uncontrollably under the psychic influence of the Widow.

Thick brown ichor gouted into the air, as one of the remaining Vindicators opened fire with its 120mm gatling cannon, walking the fire pattern along the side of the gargantuan yellow-orange spider that was trying to eat his squadmates, blowing off one entire leg and causing the monster to leap sideways with a skirling screech of what sounded almost like anger and surprise. The yellow-orange spider's carapace was deeply gouged and cracked, leaking slimy ichor in wide streams, and the pilot aimed his weapon again, targeting the spider's head and mouth parts this time. Only to drop backwards, his Vindicator crashing to the ground as his mucles locked up so hard he shattered his own ribs, impaling his internal organs with shards of bone as his muscles spasmed under the psychic backlash of the wounded Widow. Widow gathered herself to pounce upon the prey that had dared wound her, when a titanic weight stamped down on her from above, crushing her into the ground, rupturing her abdomen and almost squashing her flat, all but severing the two parts of her body as a another huge prey, nearly as big as Widow herself, and much more massive, fell from the sky and crushed the Chimera underfoot!

xxxx

"I really hate spi-spiders..." Sting commented, stumbling over the word a little bit as he stamped down with his Panzerdragoon several more times, making sure to crush the head region of the gigantic yellow-orange arachnid before it could focus its psychic efforts and kill him. Extended he might be, but a large Chimera was a whole different kettle of fish from a regular Eddie or Newtype. The word "Spider" had once been Sting's control word, which accounted for his verbal stumble. Like Stella, and to some extent, Auel, he had learned to treat the control word as more like a "training wheel" than an absolute kill switch, and though saying it was unpleasant, it was no longer completely crippling. Which was turning out to be a good thing, because there were a LOT of spiders out there right now, and they seemed upset, perhaps because Sting had squashed their mommy? That might explain why they were all converging upon his position, including several widow looking types that were easily the size of a Viking.

But for all their leaping and bounding, they were still little more than targets as Auel raked his four shoulder mounted 40cm gatling high energy beam cannons through the scurrying masses, vaporizing spiders by the dozen, leaving even the big ones little more than ashy husks. Sting joined his sibling Extended in exterminating the greater section of the spider packs, using the dual 200mm gatling cannons mounted on his shield arm, beneath the shield, and also much creative use of his feet and the Drag's massive body. He did NOT envy the crews that were going to have to power wash bug guts off his legs and and hands. The spiders seemed to be milling in confusion, those that were left anyway, no doubt confused by being confronted by things so large that apparently, to them anyway, didn't have minds to influence. They pounced upon him all the same, and Auel as well, man sized spiders crawling all over their armored Mobile Suits, trying and failing to sink poison drenched fangs into the ablative armor, while he and Auel switched to clumsy slaps of their hands to brush spiders off of each other.

In another section of the base, Lain had managed to take out one of the Megapedes, blasting most of its front third away with a blast from his Cerburus combi weapon, the dual 350mm hyper-impulse cannons flash roasting those sections of bug that weren't vaporized. Stella was nearby, as always, wrestling with a pair of Megapedes that had latched onto her Panzerdragoon's legs and body. Unlike the Spider Wolves, the Megapede's jaws and acid saliva were actually capable of inflicting damage to the ablative armor, albeit slowly, and Stella's machine was certainly going to have some new scars when this was over. A volley of dark crimson supercharged beam bolts from Lain's standard issue Vindicator rifle blew away the head and jaws of one Megapede, and the other Stella ripped into two squirming sections using her gauntlets to twist the bug apart, before hurling the pieces far and wide and shrugging off the spasming headless one, which didn't seem to realize that it was missing its head and brain. Several stamps of her giant armored foot later, the thing finally stopped wriggling, mostly because it was embedded in the ground.

The three Extendeds and Lain had been deployed to Gibraltar in preparation for the upcoming major operation to retake Victoria Spaceport. Mechael was along as well, since it was technically Lain's job to watch him, but without a Gundam or a Mobile Suit for the Augmented to pilot, Lain had left Mechael behind when he'd heard the scramble alert. Or so he'd thought, until a notice on his screens showed Mechael wading into a cluster of flailing four armed scorpions, Deathstalkers or whatever they were called, with every sign of enjoyment, his arm mounted machine-gun and beam saber deployed as he shot blue rimmed holes in some bugs, and cut others apart into steaming chunks with his bright yellow plasma blade, his cyborg body every bit as fast as the jittery bugs. Infantry squads moved up in support of the Augmented, firing wide of him at the bugs that were already wounded or on their way over to devour this most active of prey. Lain walked a few supercharged beam bolts past Mechael's position, a safe distance away, not hitting any bugs, but splattering them with sections of molten ground and causing damage from heat stress.

Lain was forced to dodge and duck away, an instinctive reaction, as his camera screens filled with scorpion underside, as a brightly striped Deathstalker, easily five times the size of the brown ones Mechael was fighting, pounced upon Lain's Vindicator, smashing with its pincer-claws and stabbing with its poison stinger, to little avail against the Vindicator's Phase Shift armor. Lain opened up with his shoulder mounted beam CIWS guns, but the angle was poor, and he didn't seem to be able to cause a good hit against the bug, even when his sensors told him he had target lock. Giving up on clawing or stinging him to death, the Greater Deathstalker latched onto the Vindicator's head with all four pincers and began trying to rip the head assembly off, until a huge hand grabbed the struggling mutant-arachnid from behind, and Stella crushed it in her gauntlet like it was, well, a bug.

"Thanks." Lain said, with a slightly hesitant smile. He still didn't know what sort of trouble Stella was in, he hadn't been able to investigate much of anything at all, but it was fairly obvious she was either avoiding him or keeping secrets from him. Things had become awkward at times as she shut him out from whatever was bothering her, which wasn't something she'd ever done before, not after he'd initially breached her walls anyway. Which meant that whatever was wrong was pretty damned serious, if Stella couldn't bring herself to talk to him about it, in those few times when he'd even managed to be around her at Nifelheim. Hopefully there would be more opportunities now that they were both deployed to the same forward base, away from direct scrutiny by FEAR, and that creepy Director woman.

"Yes." Stella replied, her voice a bit stilted. She was afraid to be around Lain, afraid to talk to him, in fear that she might inadvertantly bring down the wrath of Rey and Director Dostanya on him. Of course Lain was being his usual persistent self, either unaware of the danger he was in, or, more likely, uncaring, which warmed her heart considerably. And made those times when she went to Rey, to fufill his often perverted desires, all that much more painful. But she couldn't stop, or Lain would die, and that was the one thing she could not bear to have happen! Avoiding him during personal time was a lot easier than avoiding him on the battlefield, especially since he still needed her protection from time to time, so Stella had decided to settle for being as curt and uncommunicative as possible, though it made her pang deep inside to know how she had to be causing Lain distress in so doing.

Turning away from Lain and his Vindicator, Stella focused her thoughts upon the large black bug she could see in the near distance, a dozen times larger than any other target in view. Her own situation was near hopeless, but at least she could still vent a little bit, taking out these hideous monsters! Stella had never been fond of insects or arachnids. Not quite phobia, Extendeds weren't allowed to have phobias, saved for the induced ones from their control words, but definitely they made her shiver and flinch a little bit, especially if they caught her off guard, scuttling up from a dark crevice or under a rock or something. In a way, these giant bugs were less scary than their common relatives, they were easier to see as targets rather than icky creepy-crawlies. This particular giant bug, its carapace the same black as space, was currently entangled in a face to glacis confrontation with no less a foe than a Titan super heavy tank! Stella was struck by the fluidity of the bug's movements as it swept around and around, avoiding the fire from the Titan's sponson mounted flamethrowers and gatling beam cannon, and ignoring the stuttering tracers from the automated hull mounted .50 cal machine guns.

The Titan's turret spun smoothly and easily, tracking the bug no matter how it sidestepped and scuttled, the special mechanism designed to keep up with the movements of Mobile Suits in combat, moving so fast and, at times, jerkily, that it required the crew stay in the main body of the tank or else risk physical injury from the sudden changes in direction. The paired 375mm artillery cannon mounted at shallow angles along the back of the turret were unviable against a target so close by, but purple-white lightning crackled between the barrels of the twin Mjolnir cannons that made up the Titan's primary turret armament, just waiting for a solid target lock to be unleashed upon the gigantic arachnid. The Deathstalker Queen beat on the Titan mercilessly with all four of her pincers and her tail sting, but the tank was protected by Phase Shift armor, and though it shook under the blows, its hull remained inviolate. Pockets of toxic acid bubbled along its sides and rear armor, but also failed to eat through the layer of molecular bonded protection. Flashes of electric sparks geysered every time the Deathstalker touched the Titan, its hull highly electrified, just like the hulls of Vikings, with the difference being that the Titan didn't run out of charge, not that it seemed to be overly affecting this particular foe.

The Titan suddenly jerked forwad and spun about, its maneuvering speed tripling out of nowhere as the crew activated a holdover from old Alliance tech, Blue Cosmos tech actually, called the Celerity system, which temporarily increased power output to maneuvering systems for a burst increase in capability. The boost could only be maintain for one minute in every ten, for a Titan anyway, but it was enough to shock and surprise enemies when you needed it. And the big black bug did seem surprised, or maybe frustrated, as the Titan suddenly peeled away from its stricking limbs, getting a few meters distance before the twin Mjolnirs were released, spearing arcs of purple-white lightning hurling themselves at the Deathstalker Queen. At, and then somehow past, both whip-arcs grounding themselves into the tarmac to either side of the massive bug, digging molten cracks into the pavement to either side of the bug, but not touching it directly. Stella could hardly believe her eyes, at point blank range the Titan crew had missed a target nearly as big as their own tank! What an incredibly lucky bug!

Obviously the Titan crew were as surprised as Stella, but to their credit they didn't hesitate long, before a cough of propellent fumes from the rear deck of the tank heralded a launch of a VTP missile, a hunter-seeker with a beam tip and phase shift armor of its own, plus enough explosive power to turn a Vindicator into cartwheeling limbs on a direct hit. The missile launched straight up, went high and then came streaking back down, aimed right for the middle of the big black bugs back, at close to Mach 5! At that range, no living creature could have dodged. And the Deathstalker Queen did not dodge. Not at all. She had no need to. Even as the missile came down upon her, she reached up and almost casually snagged it in midflight with one forepincer, having seen the path of missile before it even left its launcher. She was unfamiliar with the concept of missiles per se, but had plenty of experience with large prey animals launching spines or bones or other things at her. The spine in her grip didn't act like most such things, it continued to tug at her grip as if possessed of a mind of its own, but she held it firm, her pincer grating against its armored surface, one end of it unpleasantly warmer than the other.

Bored, the Deathstalker Queen hurled the offending spine away from her, in fact she hurled it directly at the groaning metal beast that had launched it at her. She didn't really intend the spine to cause any harm, it was more a gesture of taunting than anything else, but when the armed seeker missile struck the side of the tank, it did what most such armed warheads tend to do, and detonated, the beam tipped head easily penetrating the phase shift armor of the Titan, and blowing the tank to smithereens, its turret leaping almost a hundred yards straight up as the Mjolnir capacitors detonated. Nonplussed, the Queen froze in place for a moment, confused by the sudden death of her worthy adversary. The turret came crashing down nearby, and she shied away from the heat and noise as it crumpled and then detonated in a secondary explosion, spraying shrapnel that clattered against her carapace dully. Instincts prodded her, and she danced to the side, just in time to avoid a flurry of VERY unpleasantly hot green beams which turned the ground upon which she had been standing to molten glass. Yet another challenger.

And quite a large one too, close to triple the size of her last adversary. The Queen was beginning to have some misgivings about this revenge she sought, this hive was far better defended than she had ever imagined. The Widow was dead, and good riddance too, as were most of her broods, which would mean that much more feeding territory for her own children in the future, but little good it would do her when her own broods were being decimated by the hive defenders, who kept on pouring out of their shiny nests in steady streams, no matter how many her broods killed and ate. A truly inexhaustible food source... but a dangerous one too. Many of her most recent progeny were dead, and even the experienced, older kin, the Greaters, were either burrowing in retreat or smeared goo on the ground. Considering these things, the Queen avoided Stella's firepower, ducking behind one hanger, which the guardian seemed reluctant to destroy, perhaps because it was part of its own nest? Banging her claws on the ground in frustration, the Queen rushed forward and attacked the side of the hanger, breaking through the walls and finding herself in a large, empty space. She paused, confused once more. Where were all the workers, the eggs, the pupae? Was this nest abandoned? Why hadn't the hive workers broken down its raw materials for reconstruction then? These two leggers did not act in ways that made sense!

She sidestepped a avalanche of debris from above, as Stella peeled the roof off the vehicle hanger and reached down inside with one hand to squash the bug. Or at least that was the idea, but the Queen dodged the grasping hand, stinging at it instinctively, but finding no more purchase upon the proferred carapace than she'd had against the squat one that shot spines. Truly, this was troublesome, she'd never encountered so many things that could resist her sting in such a short time! Her pride as an apex hunter was smarting something considerable right now. Stella pulled back her hand instinctively whe the bug tried to sting her, before swinging her other hand down and around, bringing the bug into the sights of the dual 200mm gatling cannons mounted under the shield on her left arm. She cut loose with a torrent of shells, walking the fire over and into the bug, smashing it to the ground under the weight of hundreds of high explosive shells. Curiously, more than seventy percent of the shells failed to arm properly, and some that did arm detonated themselves before they ever even reached the bug, but with hundreds upon hundreds of shells being fired, some did strike true, and the hanger walls blew out under the concussive blasts.

Stella stepped back as the hanger collapsed in upon itself, crushing the giant black bug under tons and tons of metal rebar and concrete moulding. Around her, the other Deathstalkers were in full flight, some scrabbling desperately at the pavement, unable to dig through the doughty material fast enough to avoid being shot, blasted or stepped on by infantry, vehicles or Mobile Suits, others streaming into the already dug emergence holes and fleeing with incredible rapidity now that the Queen had relaxed her influence upon them. Stella targeted the biggest such hole she could see, and cut loose with her torso mounted rocket packs, filling the hole with volley after volley of 120mm unguided high explosive rockets, shredding anything in the hole itself, and collapsing much of the tunnel beyond for over a hundred meters down into the ground.

When the dust settled from that series of blasts, calm descended upon the base once more, before the screams of the wounded... all too few though they were... began to tinnily fill in the gap. Stella looked at the collapsed hanger pensively, wondering what it had all been about. Why did these bugs choose now to attack? It had almost seemed to Stella like they were looking for something, especially the big black one. That had been more than just a simple bug! And the way it had taken out a Titan with its own missile! Stella shuddered, thinking on how she'd almost thought of using her own VTP missiles against the thing! It would take more than one such missile to destroy a Panzerdragoon, but a hit in the wrong place could still hurt or kill her, the pilot! There was just something unnatural about the way the bug had avoided the Titan's attacks. So many questions, so few answers. Stella frowned, melancholy stealing over her by degrees. Some of it was her usual post-combat reaction. Some was the weird bug encounter. But more of it was that fun time was now over, and now she knew she would shortly be recieving a call to come visit Rey at the command center. She was beginning to wish she'd listened to Lain when he wanted to run away from FEAR before. This was hell...


	33. Mountain of Secrets

Author Note: First off, I should give credit where credit is due. Pretty much all the new infantry weapons and vehicles that you've been seeing for the USN in recent chapters have been the brainchildren of Asmus. I may have tweaked them a little, but he's the idea man there. That includes the Cutlass, Mauler, Survivor pattern armor, Gladiator IFV, Titan Super Tank, Deathcry Grenade (which is what those Extendeds tossed to banish the Caller's influence), and plentiful more things that have not yet been revealed in the story. So yeah, the USN need to strike a medal for Asmus or something, the regular military would be in quite a bind without him. I'm really glad to see the positive reviews for last chapter, to be honest, I didn't think I did very well at conveying the mood at Porta Panama, but apparently I was wrong. I would have thought that since each of the four soldiers saw the "creatures" as something different from the others, it was obvious that the creatures were mere figments rather than flesh and blood, but people seem to be figuring that out too, eventually. If you recall an earlier point, back in ED, with the wolf Chimera that was eaten by Caller, something very similar happened to him, with the figments.

Mr. ZE, whomever you are, you've asked a few questions these last chapters, since you don't have an account, I'll answer em here. First you wanted to know if I'd be doing anything with the X-1 Destroys or Mobile Armors from Destiny. I won't be using those specific things, but they are, for one, outdated, and two I have other things that fill the same roles. Such as the Panzerdragoons or the Titan tanks. For that matter, the Judgement and Revenant Gundams were kinda-sorta Destroys as well, though a bit larger and more heavily armed. As for your question about the 4th Grand Chimera, I believe there are already hints in the story about it. I'll just put it this way, I've intended from the start for there to be more than three Grand's. The ones right now correspond, loosely, to Air (Hope), Water (Loyalty), and Earth (Desire). Fire (Determination) you will see later, as it is highly pivotal to the climactic plot. And there might be another as well, that one will be for you readers to decide amongst yourselves. With my chapter outline as it currently stands, we're about 30 percent done with the the story, chapter 54 will be the middle point (there's a topic on the forums under RW discussions that has the full outline so far). And a fun factoid for you... for those who have read all three stories from start to current point (2.6 million words, plus or minus a few tens of thousands), that is the equivalent of about 25 paperback novels of 300-400 page length. Hoowah.

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**New Eden, Garden City, Praetorian Enclave, November 25th, Early Morning**

Kunai sat at his working desk, in the outer office/gateway room to the Praetorian Enclave's upper levels that he claimed as his personal workspace, for several reasons. One was that he liked to make himself easily available for anyone that needed to confer with him, since he was literally right at the entrance of the warren, rather than buried deep within it. Another was that this allowed him to keep track of the comings and goings of his subordinates and other people without making it look like he was paranoid or totalitarian, while still retaining the ability to vet people at the door, so to speak. A glimmering crystal slab, cut in the shape of an octagon about five inches in diameter and an inch or so thick, sat on the desk in front of him, while Kunai rested one of his hands upon the EICKO. Called "Echo's", the Easily Imprintable Crystalline Knowledge Objects were probably the most secure form of communication on New Eden, since you had to be a psychic to access the information stored inside the specially grown diamonds. And they were the best way to disseminate knowledge from human minds to Chimera minds without placing undue stress upon either party.

A dinner of Fruit Salad in the upper boughs of Yggdrasil during the past night had resulted in Kunai waking up extra bright and early, despite the splitting headache that always assailed him after communing with Yggdrasil, even one step removed by eating Fruit of Wisdom, drawing a blank EICKO from his desk drawer, in order to compose a message. More like an diplomatic entreaty than any mere message actually, the beings that Yggdrasil had shown him in his trance-dreams after eating the Fruit would be, if they could be wooed into alliance, a strong ally for Garden City. So he made sure to infuse the EICKO with as much emotion and feeling as possible, since human words themselves were largely meaningless to Chimera, it was the intent and feel of the message that really mattered the most. Having never personally encountered this reclusive and highly rare species of stable Chimera before, Kunai could not tailor the message to their culture mores, but a call for help could only be expressed so many ways, after all. After encoding the message, it would then be a matter of delivering it, and making a strong showing while doing so.

There was, after all, a world of difference between an offer of alliance in the name of mutual strength, and the whining for help from someone who wasn't strong enough to stand on their own. They could not afford to give the latter impression at any cost, because if the Chimera felt the humans were weak, they would gladly leave them to their fates. So while the tone of the message was humble and flattering, the messengers themselves would have to better display the strength and pride of Garden City. Fortunately, Kunai had just the people in mind that he would need for this important task. Plus it would have the added side benefit of getting at least two of them out of his sight and out from under his feet for a little while, to give him time to find his personal equilibrium! Of all the things he'd never expected to have to deal with, a reincarnated Zacharis Frost in Kira's body was probably the top of the list! Were Kunai not the man he'd chosen to become, he would have slain the monster out of hand the moment he identified himself, but Kunai was not that selfish. Not anymore.

So it was with great distaste and anger he'd been forced, after noting Kira's own provisional acceptance of Frost, to quash his own feelings and turn his greatest asset, his mind, to ways of turning the situation not only to his own advantage, but to the advantage of all of New Eden. It was that or brood until he felt like slamming his skull into the wall until one or the other gave way. A part of him still boggled in disbelief that Kira Yamato, of ALL people, could have acceeded to Frost's presence, especially given what Frost had been doing since his reincarnation and the grievous hurts he'd inflicted upon Kira and his friends and family, both now and in the past! He'd changed even more than Kunai's wildest predictions, and that necessitated a lot of recalculations. In the end he'd come, more or less, to acknowledge that maybe things weren't completely disasterous after all, and Frost's advent might indeed be a wonderful stroke of good fortune. After all, he'd worried before about what sort of check to have for when Kira's worth as Executor was exceeded by the cost of his propensity for meddling, but now a ready made antagonist had dropped right into his lap! With Kira and Frost constantly at each others throats, Kunai's job would get much easier!

And it spared him from having to utilize a trump he'd really rather not have to play, at some nebulous future point. He recalled all too well how Kira tended to react in situations such as he'd originally planned for, and while Kunai was confident that things would have balanced out in his favor, in the end, he had not been at all looking forward to that situation. The only thing he would have looked forward too less would have been if it was not Kira that he'd been confronting thusly, but Lacus. He well remembered that one incident, and had no desire for an encore performance. Hell hath no fury like a woman wronged, and no woman had a fury like Lacus Clyne with threatened loved ones. But now, with Frost there to focus Kira's attention away from past concerns, everything should work out much better. It was important that Kira not grow too comfortable with Frost, unlikely as that was to occur, but after seeing him decline to kill the monster when he had the chance, Kunai was not feeling risky himself. Fortunately there was a ready made solution already in the works for this as well!

Namely, Lilia and her growing frustration with her much beloved Kira Yamato, as the differences between her idol and the half broken, shadowed man that was Executor became clearer with every passing meeting. Combine that frustration with the near fascination Lilia had displayed towards Frost and there was a recipe for quite the powder keg! Not that Kunai had any intentions of letting Lilia get hurt by playing with fire, or, as the case might be, Frost, she was his protege and all but foster daughter after all, but he trusted her capabilities greatly, and having her seem to be in danger by Frost would ensure Kira never relaxed his guard or his suspicions of his old enemy. Lilia's intentions to somehow find the good boy inside Frost were laughable, to put it politely, but Kunai had come to accept such idealistic naivety from Lilia as a matter of course. She really was simply too pure at times. Sooner would you tame an erupting volcano than exert a degree of rehabilitation upon Zacharis Frost!

Finishing up his encoding of the EICKO, Kunai set it aside on his desk for later, and then opened another one of several gene-locked drawers on the heavy stone desk, removing a completely plain cardboard carton from the stack of similar such cartons that almost filled the drawer, before shutting and re-locking the drawer. The contents of the carton were not, per se, something surprising for someone like Kunai to have, but they were undoubtedly dangerous, and these particular cartons were destined for uses that he'd really rather not have people asking him questions about. It was one thing to take a few drops of Refined Deathstalker Venom for training purposes, or to quell an overactive mind when you needed rest or concentration, but he had more than four gallons of the stuff in that drawer, and being suspected of being addicted to the substance would be the LEAST of his worries if others found out about the stash. Hiero was too suspcious as things were. Lilia already had found out about the cache herself, but she wasn't the sort to suspect him of any wrongdoing, she was wonderful that way.

Standing upright from his desk, lifting himself up and making his body feel lighter with the encompassing grasp of his mind, Kunai grimaced as he straightened, his paralyzed lower body always feeling extra stiff after any amount of time sitting, though it was more phantom pain than anything, a reminder of times when he had spent too much of the day behind a desk in the past, and could actually feel his legs and the stiffness of their muscles. Happier times, gone for good now. Once upon a time, the man Kunai had been would have dwelled upon what he had lost, but he was no longer that man, and with a grunt of dissatisfaction, Kunai banished the old memories and marched briskly across the room, heading deeper into the Enclave. It had taken years to get used to the way he had to high step, lifting his feet almost to knee level before stamping them down, in order to walk, but nowadays he hardly even noticed the difference, except when he was around other people.

His destination wasn't far, a little used accessway that led to a steep set of descending spiral stairs that wound their way deep into the bedrock of Mt. Everest. Metal railings bolted into the rock walls provided a steadying grip for the average user, though few used this access shaft anymore, now that the express elevators existed to rapidly take people back and forth between the myriad and often distantly seperated parts of the Enclave. Fewer still remembered that this shaft went deeper into the mountain's roots than any other in the Enclave, or what existed below the deepest sub-basement rooms of the Enclave. Which was just how Kunai preferred it. It was a long and ardous climb down into the depths, as always, and he was lightly sweating by the time he'd reached the bottom of the shaft, more than an hour later. And this was just the first stage of the journey, the shaft ended in a room barely big enough to be called a closet, with a heavy armored hatch in one wall being the only way out. The hatch responded to his gene-sequence and hissed open, revealing a deep darkness, a horizontal tunnel big enough for ten men to walk abreast down, extending out of sight in both directions.

Kunai stepped into the section of one of Garden City's most secret projects, a tunnel system that would eventually extend not just beneath the city itself, but throughout the surrounding mountain range and even beyond, a final means of escape and succor should the worst somehow occur. It was being dug remotely, using programmed nanocolonies and piped in energy, and wasn't yet classified safe for humans to traverse. Which meant no one else but him was down here, ensuring privacy. It was pitch black of course, even the completed sections of the network didn't have power running to their light systems yet, to avoid anyone tracing the power flow and discovering the tunnels. Feeling around by memory along the wall to the right of the closing hatch, Kunai felt the handlebars of the electric scooter he had carried down here weeks ago, and the thermal vision goggles that hung on their straps thereon. Normally the infared goggles would be of little help in this cold environment, but with a IR emitter built into the goggles, he in essence provided his own light, invisible to the naked eye. The IR emitter made you stick out like a neon sign to anyone else with thermal scanners, which is why most goggles didn't use them, but again, down here, he was alone.

The scooter was necessary if he didn't want to be all day about this task, and since he would definitely be missed in another hour or two, and it was a long climb back up that spiral staircase, walking simply wouldn't do! Following arrows painted with IR reflective dyes, Kunai putted along for about twenty minutes or so, descending all the while on a slight grade, before reaching his final destination. A faint, omnipresent buzzing filled the air, and one wall of the tunnel was not made of rock, but instead doughty wood, one of Yggdrasil's deeper tap roots, squirming ever deeper into the ground in search of nutrients, more than two kilometers below the surface already and showing no signs of stopping. Opposite the tap root, a section of wall was in fact a cunningly concealed door, constructed off the blueprints of the tunnel system via nanites working at Kunai's sole discretion. The weight of the rock above, and the massive Grand Chimera above that, made the air itself seem compacted and thick, the psychic field projected by Yggdrasil rising and falling like the deep breathing of a slumbering giant.

Opening his secret door, and sealing it behind him, Kunai had to close his eyes or else be blinded by the brightly lit room beyond, fumbling the goggles off and hanging them from his belt before squinting his eyes open. The room beyond was a wonder, the walls almost entirely formed from Yggdrasil's roots, a pocket chewed into the rock by the Grand Chiemra itself, and hollowed out specifically for Kunai's purposes. Or rather, Yggdrasil's purposes, since Kunai was but the hands that carried out Yggdrasil's will in this matter. The room was actually relative expansive, as secret compartments went, and though the floor was bare stone and the walls organic living wood, the furnishings were perfectly modern and technological, a trio of high tech hospital type beds, complete with locking armored-glass containment cylinders over them, reminescent of the enclosed gurney pods used to carry seriously wounded personnel between spacecrafts.

Each bed was hooked up to its own spaghetti tangle of umbilical type sensor cords and IV tubes, pumping in nutrients to those within the beds, and taking out waste, while other systems kept the occupants of the containment tubes supplied with air and monitored their vital signs. The air contained anasthetic gas in small quantities, just barely enough to numb the people sleeping in the tubes so they wouldn't perchance feel the needles and tubes sticking into their skin if they should happen to shift in their sleep. Which they shouldn't do, given that the dosage of RDV they were on should have practically made them statues of slumber, but as Kunai had discovered in these past few weeks, shouldn't and wouldn't were not the same thing. Opening his cardboard box, Kunai retrieved the three half pint vials of RDV and swapped them carefully out for the mostly empty vials already hooked up to the three life support and monitoring beds.

True to form, the occupant of the center bed hadn't so much as changed the way her long, flowing hair lay on the pillow and mattress of her bed, she might as well have been a corpse in her coffin for all the movement she'd displayed since he'd first put her under the RDV's influence. Her modesty was preserved by a heavy white blanket that covered her from shoulders to knees, though even if she had been without it, Kunai's eyes would not have lingered. He was not that sort of man, and though she was exceedingly lovely, had always been exceedingly lovely all the time he'd known her, she'd never stirred his heart in the slightest bit, and that had not changed now. The blanket did not drape evenly, especially along her left side, where the arm was missing from just below the shoulder down. A regrettable injury, but one way or another the arm would have had to come off, given the burn damage it had recieved before Kunai and his task force had arrived. It might even have been life threateningly bad, if it were not for their quick intervention!

And while her death in truth would have served Yggdrasil's plans as well as the current situation, Kunai had not been able to bring himself to be sad that she'd ended up surviving her injuries. Whatever their differences in the past, she was a good woman, and she didn't deserve to die so horribly. For that matter she didn't deserve to live like she currently was, and Kunai even felt quite remorseful about it, to a degree anyway, but it was necessary for the greater good of New Eden, and so he had hardened his heart to her required suffering. It wouldn't be forever, and when she awoke, it would be just like a long dreamless nap... he knew well what waking up from a coma felt like, after all. A Dark Kira was all well and good for the current world, but they would need a Light Kira once the war was over with, and this room was the key to that plan.

The technology kept the "guests" unconscious and more or less immobile, and Yggdrasil itself kept them sequestered on the psychic plane, out of contact on even the most intimate levels with Kira. Perhaps another Grand Chimera could pierce through the psychic interference, but surely nothing else could manage the feat. And besides, the only beings that knew they were down here at all were Kunai, Yggdrasil, and the Forest Prince. The Forest Prince had already conveyed his distaste for the situation, but with Yggdrasil's backing, Kunai was confident that the noble Chimera would keep his peace. It was also by the Forest Prince's help that Kunai had edited out the incident from his hand picked team of Praetorian's memories, after they had helped bring the guests down to their "hotel". It pained him to break social taboo and employ memory modification on people unwillingly, but this secret was paramount to the winning of the war, or so Yggdrasil's visions seemed to be telling him. For the greater good, any sin was admissable, given the right situation.

Chore finished, Kunai inspected the two flanking beds, noting with irritation that both children were curled up on their sides again, almost like babies returned to the womb, one haloed by chocolate dark brown hair, the other with his tufts of strawberry pink fluff. Even as Kunai looked on, the boy snuffled and twitched slightly, despite being on almost twice as much RDV dosage as either his mother or his sister. Something was VERY odd with him, he wasn't like any other child of his generation, regardless of parents! Something having to do with his time in the womb, from what Kunai understood from that one time Yggdrasil had shown him the past. Regardless, the boy was, somehow, slowly developing an immunity to the RDV! Yggdrasil had assured Kunai that there was nothing to worry about, that all was in hand, going according to plan. Or "fate", as the actual term had been, which had made shviers run down Kunai's spine all the same. Seeing the future was one thing, accepting that a given future was immutable and inevitable was quite another, whatever it might entail. Given the boy's parents though, whatever it was, would probably be something the boy would never wish for himself.

Kunai thought about opening the children's beds and laying them straight down again, but what was the point? They'd just curl up again sometime after he left, and as long as they didn't wake up, it hardly even mattered what position they were in. Sighing, Kunai turned away, brushing a hand fondly along one wall, tracing the silky bark of the tap rootling for a moment, an intimate touch that was private to just him and the Grand Chimera. As much as the Consols had their meetings in the "Heartwood Chamber", carved into the center of Yggdrasil's trunk, this room here was truly the "heart" of the Grand Chimera, its most private and vulnerable place, its very roots! And it was a place only Kunai was allowed to go, and he was very conzigant of the honor, though it was one he obviously could never tell to anyone else. Taking up his goggles, Kunai stepped out the secret door and sealed it behind him. Now for the hard part... going up those stairs was always a complete bitch...

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Lower Warrens of the Praetorian Enclave, November 25th, Late Morning**

_It's really quite homey down here..._ Frost reflected as he continued his explorations of the Praetorian's undermountain base. Having spent the better part of his life, including the bits he no longer remembered, in another high tech facility buried under a mountain, Frost found himself perfectly comfortable making his way alone through the depths of the Enclave. Being able to see perfectly in the dark helped too, since most of the little used sections of the base were unlit and unpowered. The place was like an iceberg, only the top levels were really in use, the facility itself was big enough to accomodate twenty times as many Praetorians and staff as it currently hosted. Obviously the place was built with an eye towards the future. Frost approved, the very idea that there might one day evolve an entire order of warriors who lived in this fastness and existed merely to provide him with challenging combat was enough to almost get him skipping and dancing along, humming tunelessly under his breath. Of course that day and age was likely a century or two off, given the current situation, but there was no harm in a little daydreaming, right? And it wasn't like he was gonna die of old age in the meanwhile, not like he would have with his original body!

And given the current state of the fighters on both sides of the conflict he found himself in these days, old age was just about the only way he COULD see himself dying! Frost shook his head despairingly, though at least Yamato might still be a challenge, and he was sure Scarface and company would have some new tricks to show him, but all the same, unless they all came at him at once, battle was going to be dreadfully dull for the foreseeable future! There was a certain fun to slaughtering helpless droves of combat-cattle, and to taking down those who thought they were bad, like the Turkey, and showing them what a true evil fighter was like, but even those diversions got stale after a while! What to do, whatever did a madman have to do to get a little entertainment around here? Grumbling to himself, Frost lost track of his wanderings for a while, content in railing against the unpredictable uncertainties of life that always seemed to conspire against him at the least opportune times. When he finally looked up and around himself, Frost realized he hadn't the slightest clue where he was.

This did not trouble him, it would take weeks for him to starve or dehydrate to death, and he was fairly sure that if he was still lost in even a few hours, people would come looking for him, afraid he was up to no good. And he wasn't up to any good either... but regrettably, neither was he involved in anything enjoyably evil. He just was. A shadowed alcolve caught his eye, or rather, his nostrils, the faint wafting smell of human coming off the stone, though whoever had left the scent mark had been gone for a goodly while, maybe even a week. If he hadn't been walking right by it, even his senses never would have picked it up. Curious, and more importantly bored, Frost stepped into the alcolve and was pleasantly surprised to see it was no mere nook, but the beginnings of a winding tunnel, barely big enough for him to squeeze through.

A timeless time later, since Frost never bothered himself with little details like distance or rate of travel, the winding cave ended at a largish grotto, which looked to have once been a storage warehouse of some sort, judging by the dusty piles of empty metal crates lying stacked haphazardly about. But whatever its original purpose, this secluded den was now functioning as nothing less than a Mobile Suit hanger! Or more accurately, as Frost's experienced eyes picked out more and more details of the machine standing against the far wall, a Gundam hanger! The Gundam was about a head shorter than his own beloved Kratos, though significantly less bulky. It lacked wings or much decoration in any form at all, it was a severely plain machine. Frost might have almost thought it was half finished, were it not for all the diagnostic machines hooked up to it, configured to run what he recognized as post-production tweaking tune ups to various systems. He frowned, since the Gundam seemed to lack weapons entirely, not even a gun, much less a knife or anything else exciting!

Venturing closer, Frost reached out and patted the ankle of the machine, feeling the slightly gluey surface of Liquid Crystal Regenerative armor, same as the Kratos and Lucifer had. Yes, this was definitely a Gundam then, but whose? And where were its weapons? Frost investigated several large shipping containers arrayed on the other side of the Gundam, but they only contained a bunch of big crystal windowpanes, a dozen of them per crate. Or at least that was what Frost thought they were are first glance, when he reached a hand in to pick one up, he ended up slicing off his fingertips, all the way down to the bone, and would have sliced that too were it not for the way his bones were semi-crystalline themselves! Frost carefully took his hand back, the cuts scabbed over almost at once as his fingertips began slowly regenerating, couresty of the rebuilder nano-machines. Edged QC windowpanes? Someone had an extreme fetish for protecting their house! Why the hell were these things just laying around, much less next to a Gundam with NO weapons?

Frost shrugged, his sparked interest dying as he realized there wasn't much else to see. Just a neutered Gundam and some wierdo's home security fetish. Kind of a let down. Hating to backtrack, Frost found where the storage cavern connected to the rest of the mass storage cave system, tucked WAAAAY in the back past a couple of caverns that were marked with "Danger, do not enter, falling rock" signs to keep out the curious and unwary. By dint of his brilliant deductive powers, Frost came to the conclusion that neuter-Gundam was supposed to be secret. He could see why. Who would want to admit to being the designer, much less the pilot, of a Gundam with NO weapons? How humiliating would that be? Yeah, best to hide it away and forget about it. Passing into more populated caverns, Frost began passing the Spectres and Wraiths of the Praetorian Mobile Suit collection, who were being worked on by their mechanical crews and sometimes by the Praetorians themselves.

Frost noticed, but did not deign to respond to, as several Praetorians he passed, including the Turkey he'd somehow avoided slaughtering after that blatant challenge yesterday, left off their maintenance tasks and began to follow him in a loose pack, staying far enough behind him to just barely keep him in sight. They could not have been more obvious about their intentions if they had broken out into song and dance about it, but Frost didn't mind. He was bored, after all, and a little reverse hazing might be just the thing to whet his appetite for lunch. Veering off from the main hanger, Frost detoured down into one of the munition supply bunkers, stacked high with more metal crates brimming with unprimed linear cannon shells, and unfueled missiles, of course choosing one that was dimly lit and well removed from any obvious source of interence or aid. He didn't want them to feel they could just run away once things got started. Little did they realize that, as happy as they were to see him seclude himself like this, it was for HIS sake, not theirs.

Turning a corner, Frost stopped and about faced, leaning casually against the stacked crates as he waited for his pursuers to catch up. They were moving as silently as they could, and that was pretty much perfect, but he could smell them coming from twenty feet off, the self reighteous excitement of poltroons that thought they were about to deal out a serious ass kicking to the new guy. Frost surveyed his environment, noting that movement was heavily constircted by the tall stacks of crates, and there was barely room for three or four to come at him abreast. He could hold this kind of position against an army. Or a mob, whichever came to dislodge him first! A few seconds later, the pack edged around the bend, the Turkey at their fore, and stopped short so quickly Frost could not help but laugh at their constrenation. His merriment echoed coldly in the bunker, and didn't seem to be helping steady the nerves of his pursuers, so Frost regretfully stopped. It would be no fun at all if they came all this way only to turn tail and rabbit because of a little laughter!

"Turkey." Frost nodded in acknowledgement. "I see you've brought your chicks. And here I was, just feeling in the mood for roast bird. It is that time of year again, though I seem to be lacking stuffing. Nor are you salty enough for my tastes."

"Babble all you like, freak." Alex replied, with a dangerous gleam in his eyes, his hands bunching and clenching into meaty fists at his sides. "We'll see how well you cackle when I'm wearing your teeth as a charm bracelet! Don't worry though, we're not going to kill you or cause any permanent damage. But you've somehow managed to offend Kunai with your mere existence, and we're not going to let that stand unanswered."

"Kunai... Kunai..." Frost mused carelessly. "Not ringing a bell, I'm afraid. Not that uncommon, you see, I've simply got SOOOOO many people that want me dead, not even the greatest mind could keep track of them all. There was once a guy named Sai, I crushed him and his family with the claw of my Mobile Suit, but that couldn't be him. He's dead. Deader than I was." Frost eyed the Turkey's gaggle of helpers. "What, only seven of you? I'm insulted."

"Just shut him up!" Alex hissed the command, and led the rush forward, hands raised to overbear and grapple Frost to the floor, where they could all dogpile on and kick him into submission. It was almost cute of them, it brought Frost way back, to those times when he was still a 4, or hell, even a 3, and where he regularly got mobbed by his peers, many of whom did not truly appreciate his biting, sarcastic wit at the time. They weren't expecting much of a fight, it was plain to see from their strategy, they didn't respect what he was capable of at all! Well, to be fair, Frost wasn't expecting much of a fight either. In that he was somewhat pleasantly surprised, because counter to previous experience, these Praetorian fellows actually weren't too bad at taking care of themselves, they made it unexpectedly fun.

Of course they weren't expecting it when, instead of cowering away from them or attempting a retreat, Frost charged right back at them, throwing himself right into the midst of their formation with a snigger of barely restrained glee, fists, elbows, knees and feet flying in every direction. It was fairly easy to judge how badass a person thought they were by seing how surprised they got when you attacked them, rather than waited to be attacked by them. To their credit, these seven were only off balance for a second or so. Of course by then, one of their number was on his hands and knees on the floor, vomiting up his blood smeared teeth, half of which he'd inadvertantly swallowed when Frost slammed his elbow into his jaw. The rest responded with admirable aplomb and ferocity, lashing out with fists, feet and various protrubrences of their own, and in such a brawl, there was no way for Frost to dodge them all. Indeed, the first couple, he intentionally took, just to see what they could do. The Turkey could certainly throw a punch, Frost allowed, stumbling a half step backward with his lips mashed against his teeth from one such effort by that worthy.

Another Praetorian tried to catch Frost from behind and pin him into an arm bar, but with a shrug of his shoulders, Frost broke the grip, as well as both forearms of his erstwhile grappler, sending him down to a pain filled dream with an elbow to the base of his skull. Warm wetness coated that elbow when he drew it back, and Frost smelled the sweet, tangy fragrance of freshly spilled blood. Baring his teeth, licking his bruised lips, Frost hurled himself bodily at the Turkey, slamming square into the man, who towered almost a foot, and a good hundred or so pounds, over Frost's assumed form. Alex let out a grunt of mingled effort and pain as Frost slammed into him, the freak being shockingly solid for all that he was only a few shades away from being a string bean! Alex closed his arms around Frost, preparing to quite literally hug him into submission, only to stumble backwards a moment later, shrieking in shock and anger and pain, when Frost dipped his head in close and bite into Alex's neck just above the collarbone, tearing out a finger sized hunk of skin and surface muscle!

"HE FUCKING BIT ME!" Alex hollered, one hand going to his neck, where blood was trickling freely from the wound. "HE'S A FUCKING ANIMAL!"

"WRONG!" Frost shouted back, offended. He stepped forward and kicked Alex in the groin, dropping the big man into a staggered crouch, before taking his head lovingly in his hands. Frost stared the Turkey in his pain squinted, teared eyes for a moment. "The term you're searching for, Turkey, is..." Frost snapped his head forward, crushing the Turkey's beak in a splash of gore and knocking the big chicken to the floor in a heap. "... MONSTER! That's what I am! I'm a monster and don't you forget it!" Frost crowed triumphantly, shortly before letting out a wheezing gasp as he got kicked in the gut by another Praetorian, and then clubbed with a two fisted blow across the back of his neck that almost had HIM on the ground on hands and knees. Rising from the press, throwing his assailants back, one quite literally, who got picked up and tossed like a sack of wet potatoes to slam into the metal crates with a resounding GONG, Frost could not help but start laughing again, his chin wet with Turkey blood, his eyes glowing with excitement.

Hands reached for him, and he reached back, grabbing them and twisting, breaking wrists, snapping fingers and then pulling the howling owner towards him for another love nibble across the base of the throat. By the way the man screamed and fought, one might have thought he expected Frost to tear his throat open with his teeth. However, any discerning neck biting expert would have noticed that Frost was only biting the base of the neck, avoiding the fragile, fleshy parts further up. Humans, they always overreacted so much to the littlest of things. Frost allayed his dance partner's fears by gut punching him three or four times, and then letting the poor sack drop onto his back, clutching both hands to his throat as if he could actually keep his life's blood inside him, had Frost actually torn open his neck. Always guarding the barn door after the horses were stolen, that was humans for sure.

They were wary of him now, Frost could see it in the way they circled around him, the three still standing anyway, each waiting for one of his friends to take the lead. How funny that people who were used to operating alone and without support should be so hesitant here surrounded by all of their friends! But maybe that was it, maybe they were afraid of embarassing themselves in front of their friends? Frost smiled at them, and they flinched, just a little bit. "Don't be scared now, I won't hurt any one of you any more than I do anyone else. Course I won't hurt you any less either, but that's your problem." Frost saw the Turkey was clambering his way back upright and frowned. That simply wouldn't do, people were supposed to stay down after Frost got his witty one liners off. Frost pounced upon the rising Turkey, grabbing his hair with one hand and then slammed the Turkey's head into the metal crates. It made a very satisfactory "BONG!" noise, so satisfactory Frost just had to hear it again. And again. And again. Maybe five or six times in all, before it got old, he kinda lost track. It could have been ten.

Whatever the number, the floor beneath the Turkey was well basted in blood when he finally let the bird down to stew in its own juices, unmoving and limp save for the shallow rise and fall of the meaty chest. "And STAY down." Frost admonished the quiescent Turkey, returning his attention to the three standing Praetorians. Who were now about halfway down the hall, running like they were being chased by a demon straight out of hell. They should be that fortunate. "HEY! You can't go running away. I'm not done kicking your asses yet! Come back here! Don't make me chase you, you won't like it if I get irritated!" They did not heed his warning, indeed, they spurred themselves on all the harder now that they realized he was done half murdering the great Alexander. Avenging Kunai's honor by beating a lesson of humility into the newest Executor was fine on paper, but when that Executor could fight with the fury of a tail burnt Direcat, honor gave way to instincts of self preservation!

Seeing that the Praetorians were of no mind to heed his warning, Frost charged after them, grumbling, a tiny bit of fun leaking out of the deal for ever second he wasted chasing down these cowards. Fortunately it wasn't all that many seconds before he caught up to the hindmost, and kicked his legs out from under him so hard the guy landed on his head... the BACK of his head, and skidded almost three meters along the floor before a crate wall stopped him. Leaving the gently steaming wreckage behind in his wake, Frost leapfrogged over the second slowest runner, kicking backwards with both legs to the man's chest, shattering at least three ribs and throwing the man down onto his ass in a heap, whistling his agony like a kettle of hot water left too long to boil, all inarticulate hissing noises and writhing limbs. The last Praetorian was something of a sprinter, and he actually gave Frost quite the merry chase through the ammo bunker, and even out into the hallway beyond, before Frost finally managed to lay a hand on the man's shoulder, and half pull, half shove him into a stumble that ended up with him stunned against the side of the hall.

Looming over the staggered man, Frost grabbed him round the neck and hoisted the flopping man into the air, before slamming him back against the stone wall hard enough to rattle every bone in the man's trembling, gagging body. The Praetorian feebly grabbed Frost's wrist, trying to cut off the choking pressure, his legs kicking for purchase a few inches above the floor. Frost smiled broadly, and the man went very pleasantly pale indeed at the sight. There was hope for this one yet. Cocking back one fist, Frost slowly measured the panicking Praetorian for a hit, trying to decide whether a traditional dirty blow to the groin would suffice, or whether he should strike out for new territory and find somewhere less well traveled to break. Engrossed in his consideration, Frost didn't hear the other person walking down the hall until they were only a few feet away. Startled when she cleared her throat loudly, Frost almost dropped his latest victim, but fortunately, by digging in with his nails, he kept the man suspended. It would have been very embarassing to drop him BEFORE hurting him, after all.

"Can't you see I'm busy, Mouse?" Frost snapped, looking over his shoulder at the blue haired rodent who was staring at him with disapproval stamped all over her fine features. Which really got under his skin, he wasn't afraid to admit. Anger he could expect. Horror he could enjoy. Even amazement would have been okay, if creepy. But disapproval? Staring at him like he was a misbehaving child with his hand in the surgical ointment jar? That was just not cool. "Take a number, I'll get to you shortly."

"Li... Lili... a... help... m..." The Praetorian Frost was disassembling gasped thickly, his eyes rolling in panic. "He's... gone... mad..."

"WRONG AGAIN!" Frost yelled in annoyance, battering the man against the wall a few times for emphasis. "I was crazy to begin with, don't flatter yourself with the idea that YOU could have been enough to cause it!" Frost had to adjust his grip a bit, he'd laid open the guy's scalp with those last jerks, against the wall behind him, and now blood was pouring down across where his hand was gripping the guy's neck, making his skin slippery.

"Just put him down." Lilia told him, rolling her eyes and sighing. And SIGHING, the sheer effrontry of it all quite stole his breath away! She was treating him like he was some sort of misbehaving little kid! It was completely unbelievable, he had one of her colleagues choking up against the wall, with blood pouring down out of his scalp, and she practically had her hands on her hips, scolding him like he'd just stolen her coffee cup and thrown the scalding contents into another hopeful's eyes or something! His previous train of thought completely derailed, Frost did drop the Praetorian, who slumped down coughing and retching in a moaning huddle. But he only dropped him so he could grab the Mouse by her collar and slam HER up against the wall in his place. She winced when her back slammed into the wall, but otherwise kept her hands by her sides, not even bunched into fists, and looked him in the eyes calmly. If she noticed the way his bloodstained hands were making a shocking mess of her uniform jacket, she did not let on.

"Thank you." Lilia commented, resolute despite her toes being almost a foot from the floor. She turned her attention away from Frost... AWAY from the man holding her helpless in midair... and looked at the recovering Praetorian on the floor. "You're a disgrace, you know that, Ken? Bad enough to lose the fight, but to beg for help too? Kunai would be crying if he could see you shame the Order so."

"He's a monster..."

"Hey, you WERE listening, weren't you? You may live. Good human, there's your treat."

Lilia ignored Zacharis in favor of continuing to glare at Ken, though she did note, out of the corner of her vision, that, as expected, her casual dismissal of Zacharis was really eating at him. After taking the time to go over his actions during her initial meeting of him, and really think about them, Lilia had come to the conclusion that Zacharis... she refused to call him by anything other than his first name, no matter how much, or rather exactly because of how much he enjoyed his various labels and titles, or just being called Frost... was an attention hound. He liked being the center of attention, so he acted out, and if you yelled at him, or reacted negatively to whatever he was doing, then he was self affirmed and would thus continue the behavior to continue getting attention. But if you didn't react to his antics, then that got to him. It was a fine line to tread, truth be told she'd almost rushed forward to rescue Ken when she saw Zacharis battering him about, even to the point of laying open his scalp, but in the end, studied indifference had won her a concession where no amount of outrage or begging would have done so. Just like with a young, spoiled child, attention was the goal, it didn't matter what sort. The only punishment was indifference.

"He atta... attacked us for no... reason..." Ken coughed thickly, dark blood staining his lips from his bruised and swollen throat. "Lured us... into ammo bunker... Alex and others... need help..."

"Oxishit." Lilia retorted caustically, narrowing her gaze at Ken, who refused to look her in the eyes, well aware that her specialty was empathy and that if he looked her in the eyes she'd be able to tell that he was lying. For the record, she didn't need psychic powers to figure that much out, the mere tone of Ken's voice, which lacked true outrage, and was more a whine, told her that he was not the defender in this accusation. Hearing Alex and an unknown number of others were also involved just clinched it for her. Alex had been thinking more with his balls than his brains once more, maybe he'd even tried to dress it up as sticking up for the honor of the Order, that would make sense, since it would allow him to recruit more people than just those interested in defending his personal pride. Honestly, how could a man be so noble sometimes, and such a imbecilic blockhead at other times? If she didn't know better, she might have thought it was Alex that had an identical, twisted copycat, not Kira. She finally turned her eyes back to Zacharis. "Did you really attack without warning?"

"OF COURSE I DID!" Frost snarled, baring his bloodied teeth at her, pushing his face up close to hers so she could smell the freshly spilt gore. "And if it weren't for that damned BUZZING in the back of my head, you can rest assured I'd have dismembered and eaten them too! All seven of them!"

"Even without barbecue sauce?" Lilia returned wrly, wrinkling her nose a bit at the blast of copper tang in her face. Really though, it wasn't like she'd never been face to mouth with a meat eating predator before, or even eaten raw flesh from a kill in the forest. "I don't envy you that feast." She rolled her eyes back towards Ken, who was staring at her flippancy with a nearly identical expression of shock as Zacharis had. "You're telling me that Zacharis, for no reason AT ALL, attacked and soundly beat not only you, Ken, but Alex and five of your friends? Is that what you're saying?"

"I..."

"IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!" Lilia yelled at her peer furiously. "It doesn't matter WHO started it, what matters is that seven... SEVEN... Praetorians were defeated in hand to hand combat by ONE MAN! I was wrong... you're not a disgrace... you're a HUMILIATION to all of us!"

"If we could get back on track..." Frost commented through gritted teeth, shaking the infuriating Mouse a few times to focus her attention. "I was in the midst of... oh, FUCK IT, you broke the mood, Mouse, god damn it." Frost let go of her collar and let her drop, turning away with a displeased pout. A second later he turned back and put his finger in her face warningly. "You better be careful, Mouse. Next time I might decide that the mood isn't as important as the actions. Didn't Yamato tell you what I like to do to girls?"

"I've no doubt its horrible beyond the comprehension of most people, Zach." Lilia rolled her eyes once more.

"Don't call me Zach." Frost warned her, displeased with the familiarity. "Nobody calls me Zach."

"Oh please, this coming from a guy who calls me "Mouse"." Lilia replied sardonically. "As if I look at ALL like a mouse."

"To these eyes, no." Frost tapped his Boytoy eyes. "To this one, oh yes." He tapped his forehead meaningfully. "You squeak so loudly and proudly, Mouse, unaware that waiting all around you are much bigger and nastier creatures just waiting to snap you up and eat your guts. Be wary, Mouse, not to bait the cat without a hole nearby to flee to, or else he might play with you before he kills you."

"Whatever you say, Zach." Lilia goaded him again. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, spitting blood onto the floor, tooth chips jagged on her tongue with her head ringing like a struck churchbell. Trying to gather dislocated thoughts, Lilia was instead stamped flat onto the ground on her back, with Zach's foot on her chest, compressing her ribcage and making it almost impossible to breathe! She'd never even seen him throw the punch, there was only the aftermath to deal with. And what an aftermath it was, her jaw was sore, her teeth chipped, her lips and tongue cut, and her entire skull felt like it had been half dislocated, which was probably closer to the truth than she wanted to think about! And all from one punch, more a jab than anything else. Okay, so maybe Ken and company getting their asses kicked wasn't such a humiliation after all.

"Can't say I didn't warn you, Mouse." Frost admonished her, a smirk creeping across his face as he watched her squirm beneath him, chest heaving against his foot as she tried to draw in a breathe that had no where to go. "You're not my friend, you're not my family. Not even they call me Zach. No one calls me Zach. Not even Yamato or Pink called me that."

"Why... are you... so afraid... of your name...?" Lilia gasped out slowly. "What did... they do... to you...?"

"Oh, what a question that is, Mouse." Frost chuckled pleasantly. "I could talk until you starved to death and not relay it all, and there are parts I don't even remember myself." He pressed down a bit more with his foot, listening to her ribs creak, just shy of the breaking point. "Just another few ounces of pressure, Mouse, and all the pain will go away forever..." Frost mimed pressing down once more, and then lifted his foot, kicking her away roughly to bang into the side of the hallway. "But I wouldn't want that, now would I? I want you to suffer, Mouse. Live, and suffer, and live and suffer, until you can't even tell the difference between them anymore. That's what they did to me." He glared down at her, where she huddled on the ground in a protective ball, before stepping past her and wandering out towards the hangers once more. "Now go get Yamato to tell you "I told you so" and thank any God you care to believe in that I'm not feeling lusty right now, or you'd be getting off a lot worse than just a few bruises and scrapes. I must be losing my touch, maybe Charon does have something with that corruption of mind by body crap..."

Lying on the ground, bleeding from the mouth, tonguing loosened teeth and fighting vertigo from her ringing head, every breath like fire in her lungs from the motion of her bruised ribs, Lilia had but one thought in mind as she watched Zach stalk away, his very posture conveying his dissatisfaction with the whole ordeal. _Victory is mine._

xxxx

**New Eden, East Asia, Mountains of old Japan, November 25th, 3:23 pm**

At one point in time in his "military career", traveling the distance between Garden City and his current location in the ancient volcanic mountains that made up the spine of Japan would have taken Kira days, if not longer. Remembering the Archangel, getting anywhere fast seemed to be impossible, either because they were constantly taking detours or getting into battles. In the Lucifer, the trip had taken less than an hour, and even without the Mirage Colloid field, nobody was going to get in his way at that speed. Even if they fired a missile at him, by the time it got up to speed, he'd be far enough away that it would never be able to catch up before it ran out of fuel. A FRALA might have been a threat, but again, by the time anyone could get a lock on him, he would have been out of sensor range, and shooting by eye is a lot harder than it sounds. For most people.

And so Kira had made it, unmolested and most probably unnoticed, from Garden City to the area he had selected for his first anti-war operation. It was not a particularly auspicious place, any more so than a half dozen locations he could have chosen around the world, and in truth, he'd more or less picked a name out of a hat. The USN had built a large naval base on the Eastern shores of the island, part of a chain that extended outward from Orb and Carpentaria, and was steadily expanding inwards, towards several small communities of Edenites who had retreated up into the mountains when they had noticed the first signs of military activity in the area. Sadly, that retreat didn't seem to be enough for the USN commanders, and the Wind spoke of hunt teams of USN Mobile Suits and ground forces probing into the mountains in pursuit of the refugees, either looking for prisoners for intel purposes, or, much more often, just shooting up the "wildlife" for shits and giggles.

The Custodian Legios were tied up with operations on the mainland of Asia, investing the expansion bases that posed a more direct threat towards Garden City itself, and with the re-training Kira himself had argued for now coming into effect, they simply did not have the resources to send even a single squadron of Mobile Suits to help defend the residents of Japan. Fortunately, with the completion of the Lucifer, they had something better by far to send instead. Not that Kira was really "sent", per se, since he got to pick and choose where and when he deployed, but as far as he was concerned, anywhere where the helpless were endangered by the wicked and greedy was bound to show up on his list sooner rather than later. Fighting and winning major battles was all well and good, but he was supposed to be a champion of the people, and his conscience would not let him abandon those who could not fight back merely because of military convenience! That had never been his way, and even now, never would be.

It seemed he'd arrived none too soon, because the scouts of the refugees were already reporting a fairly major expeditionary force moving up into the mountains, aiming either to capture or destroy the refugees once and for all, or else set up an inland base of some sort. Or maybe both reasons were the purpose. In any case, there was a fairly large scale military force moving into the mountains, and there was no way the refugees, armed with personal weapons and a few light and medium vehicles left over from before the Eden Disaster, could stand against it. After collating data taken from the Wind, Kira had plotted the most likely route of the military forces, which were advancing in a column, even the Mobile Suits on the ground, obviously more than certain in their invincibility. Good, let them have their pride, the fall was coming soon enough. Having plotted their route, Kira set the Lucifer down squarely between the refugees and the advancing task force, waiting in the midst of a wide open glacial valley not unlike the one where he'd first tested out the Lucifer, barely a day or two ago.

He kept the Mirage Colloid on for the moment, not that it would be entirely effective against modern sensors, at least at close range, but he'd be revealing himself long before being discovered was a problem. Waiting for the enemy to arrive caused his mind to wander a little bit from impatience. He recalled earlier in the day, when he'd stopped by Kunai's office to inform him that he was leaving for this mission, still half expecting to get into an arguement with the man over it, but Kunai had just shrugged and nodded, like it was perfectly natural for Kira to take the most expensive and advanced piece of military gear in Garden City and go wherever the hell he felt like with it. Kunai had just been giving a mission of his own to Lilia, who Kira had, after first, shocked glance, studiously avoided looking at. Her face had been all swollen and bruised up, and she'd been breathing very shallowly, in a way Kira was familiar with from times when he'd injured his ribs in the past. She looked like she'd fallen down a flight of stairs, and than something else heavy had fallen down atop her!

Kira had wanted to ask who she'd gotten beaten up by, but had, in the end, refrained. It was none of his business who she got into scuffles with. He was just relieved it hadn't been Frost, or else she would have had a LOT more to worry about than a mere bruised up face and bruised ribs. Hopefully Lilia had come to her senses and realized, sad as it might be, that some people just weren't worth saving, especially against their will! No sense in growing attached to something like Frost, you'd only get hurt in the process, and hurt again when it was time to get rid of him for once and for all! A time which couldn't come soon enough in Kira's estimation! Though he did have to admit, knowing that Frost wasn't aimed at him right now was something of a relief. He'd never say he was glad to be on the same side, more or less, as that psychopath, but it was nice not having to worry about him breathing down his neck in the middle of an already chancy war. And who knew, maybe Frost would actually scare the USN into pulling back its forces? Kira certainly wouldn't want to send any troops he himself was responsible for towards that kind of monster!

Lilia was being deployed on a diplomatic mission to Africa, probably something having to do with the defensive buildup around Urbanis, and Kira was glad to put some distance between them for the next little while, give them both time to cool off and get their head's straight. It would also give him some breathing room for dealing with Kunai in a somewhat harsher, more direct fashion, without having to be constantly admonished about how "great a man he is". Kira knew exactly what sort of man Kunai was, better than pretty much anyone else still alive, and while "great" might be one way of describing some of his accomplishments, so would "arrogant", "stupid" and "hasty", and somehow Kira didn't hear many people referring to Kunai by those terms. Maybe he'd been doing a lot of good in these last few years, but Kunai was very much on the edge of what Kira would consider "irredeemable". Hiero, one of the few people in Garden City that Kira had come to trust, also seemed highly suspicious of Kunai, so it wasn't just past history speaking. Kunai was up to something, that was just how he was. Kira could only hope it wouldn't lead to yet another schism between them.

It might be a bit too late for that particular hope actually, Kira reflected with deep bitterness. Kunai had all but admitted to knowing that Lacus, Akira and Aoi were going to die, and not only had he not lifted a finger to stop it, he'd actively interfered in the actions of others that might have, somehow, made a difference in saving their lives! All because of the incomprehensible orders of something that wasn't even HUMAN! Truth be told, Kira was having a hard time telling the difference between the people who would do anything Yggdrasil told them, and the religious extremists who committed any heinous crime without hesitation because their "God", whomever it might be, had "told them it was okay". Why was Yggdrasil so worthy of determining life and death, what made it so special? And Kira did not regard a dubious ability to see the future as a special quality, not in that sense. Nothing that lived or thought was infallible.

Just thinking about his family, even in passing, caused the grief to well up anew, raw and blazing hot, constricting his throat closed as he let out a whining sob, something he never would have done were he not alone. But he was alone, very much alone, and the full force of that realization once more struck home, as Kira futiley reached out with that part of his min that had been bonded to Lacus and his children, and once more, felt only bleak emptiness where once there had been vivacious life and emotion. Unfelt tears poured down his cheeks, the Lucifer's reactor fluttering in sympathetic motion to his labored, ragged breaths as he sobbed, his grief building emotional pressure inside his mind faster than his body could release it. It was infinite, self multiplying, this sadness, this outrage, this pulsating dark desire to scream at the world and break things regardless of their guilt, to finally lash out once more at everything that had ever wronged him and those he cared about!

The Lucifer's gauntlets curled into claws and tore shallow scars in the viscous LCR armor across its face and chest, the armor flowing back into its original shape several seconds later, as the Lucifer, and Kira, threw back their head and howled their torment across the airwaves, the incoherent, pained shout stirring up dust and startling animals into silence for kilometers in every direction, echoing through the mountain valleys like a deathly knell of a lost soul. Emotions temporarily exhausted by that scream, Kira and the Lucifer staggered forward a step, sweat pouring off Kira's body, the Lucifer's armored skin twitching in sympathetic movement as he panted for breath, tasting hot copper on his tongue from where he'd accidentally bitten the side of his cheek trying to hold the agony in. Blips of sound and color appeared on those sections of his mind hooked up to the Lucifer's sensor systems, and Kira straightened up once more, icy resolute calmness pouring through him as the USN troops began advancing into the valley mouth.

First came a light screen of Chariot APC's and Gladiator IFV's acting as scouts, and then behind them came a vanguard of Viking MBT's and more Gladiators and Chariots, followed by the main force of bulk infantry transports and heavy support vessels, including a pair of Petrie class land battleships and a single Archmage mobile field base, the largest land based vessels that could fit into the valleys. Alongside the Archmage marched an even four squadrons of Solar Knights, in Vindicators, trailing them were RI auxiliary forces in Strikers, as well as pioneer forces with converted Zaoots, Ginns, Strike Daggers and BuCue's that had earth moving and forest clearing equipment mounted in place of weapons. Behind them were several convoys worth of supply carriers, carting the base materials and Red EDEN vats that would be used to rapidly construct a forward base deeper in the mountains. Leading the procession of Mobile Suits was a single Excalibur, a Solar Knight Paladin who probably didn't command the whole force, but no doubt was the "leader" nonetheless.

Kira let them advance a few hundred meters into the valley, until he was fairly sure there was no more than a token rearguard of Vikings, Gladiators and Chariots bringing up the rear, and then he stepped forward and dropped his Mirage Colloid, standing in plain view of the oncoming armored column. The constrenation of the scout vehicles, and the disarray among the main van of Mobile Suits, brought a hard edged smile of bitter amusement to Kira's face, though they recovered quickly enough from their shock, no doubt emboldened by the fact that there was only one Mobile Suit. They advanced cautiously all the same, obviously remembering that some of the Edenite machines could remain invisible even to the most powerful of modern USN sensors, expecting to be ambushed from either side while Kira distracted them.

Kira detached a few Fractal Feathers, just enough to create a single light bending prism, and fired just one of his Hellfury FRALA's, bending the dark violet beam so that it cut a very visible line through the dirt and rock about halfway between him and the oncoming USN force, scorching the ground glassy and black wherever the beam touched. "This is Executor Kira Yamato, in the Lucifer, addressing the USN taskforce advancing towards me. I have drawn my line in the dirt. Anyone that crosses that line, or who initiates hostile action will be destroyed. This is your only warning. If you would leave this place alive, you will dismount from your Mobile Suits and vehicles and return to base in your APC's. I will not allow you to wage war upon the helpless and the dispossesed." Kira announced firmly, deatching the rest of his Feathers and putting them in a loose defensive orbit around himself, his hands relaxed at his sides, fingertips just barely brusing the grips of his Ion Disintegrators. He stood like that as he waited for a reply from the USN, who's advance had slowed to a crawl with uncertainty.

The Mobile Suits, led by the Excalibur, deployed to the front of the line, spreading out in a wide line with the Paladin in their midst, and clanked to a halt just shy of the line Kira had emblazoned into the ground. Behind the hulking line of bipedal war machines, the armored vehicles ground into their own offensive formations, training their guns upon the stationary Gundam, though Kira did note, with a half smirk, that nobody was yet painting him with a targeting sensor, obviously fearing, rightly, that he would intrepret it as a hostile action. Kira's comm crackled in his inner ear, as the USN force replied to his announcement. "Say again? Who the HELL do you think you are, Eddie? You honestly think that we're just going to disarm and turn tail and flee?" A incredulous voice asked him. "I don't care WHO you are, you're..."

"I am Kira Yamato, and I've said what I have to say. The choice is yours now." Kira cut him off curtly, broadcasting to each and every one of the enemy machines individually. Just in case they thought he was bluffing, he sent a picture of his face as well, to quell any possible doubters. Kira wasn't sure whether he felt gratified or depressed when most of the USN machines physically flinched or took a step back as the pilots came to grips with the reality of who they were facing. Even the Paladin seemed wrongfooted, well that he should be. How the hell were you supposed to react, when you found yourself caught between duty and a living legend? Kira waited patiently, his body tense and coiled for instant action, as he prayed for the USN commander to make the right choice. Unfortunately for them, in the end, duty won out over common sense, and hurbris only reinforced the error.

"Kira Yamato huh? Well, the Paladin Commander will be very happy with us if we came back with your head in a bag." The Excalibur raised one foot meaningfully, pulling moving its arms across its body at chest and waist, activating the Citadel Shield projectors mounted into the tops of the forearms to cover the Excalibur's body from head to toe in bright aqua energy. "Don't be afraid, men, its Kira Yamato, the man who does not kill! He may destroy your machine, but your life is in no dang..." The Paladin stepped arrogantly forward, his raised foot slamming down on the Kira side of the line in the sand. Barely had the dust started to rise from that step when Kira drew his Ion Disintegrators and fired a single shot from his right hand weapon, vomiting forth a brilliant pinprick flare of oscillating red that trailed a halo of twisted air currents in its wake as it sped across thefew hudnred meters seperating the Lucifer and the Excalibur. The sonic boom was just beginning to rock the valleywhen the particle packet struck the overlapped Citadel Shields of the Excalibur.

Struck and passed through with a ripple of warped superdense plasma, the vacuum tunnel implosion that follow the speeding particles ripping the shields cohesion to shreds a millisecond before the particles themselves struck the Excalibur square in the middle of its torso, directly over the cockpit section, initiating a limited nuclear chain reaction that atomized the center section of the Excalibur in a brilliant flash of light, a cone of destructive energy extending out through the back of the Excalibur to melt the sensors and weapons off the Vindicator that had been standing behind his leader, slagging his frontal armor into a smoking black ruin as the Vindicator slammed onto the ground on its back in surprise. The Excalibur's arms and head crashed to the ground in three seperate locations, while its lower limbs stood bisecting the line in the sand, smoking rising thickly from the waistline, above which nothing remained of the Excalibur or its overconfident pilot. Silence and stillness descended upon the scene like a choking fog, as the echoes of the sonic boom from te Disintegrator projectile rebounded from the mountain walls again and again.

And then Kira detected target locks forming on the Lucifer as the soldier reacted to the unexpected death of their leader, caution thrown to the winds under anger's influence. he wanted to be saddened by this outcome, but he found that only a welling of excitement existed inside him. He needed this release, this carthartic exercise of the grim anger that broiled inside him. He had given his warning, and it had been ignored. His fragile sense of mercy was swept aside by his disgust and fury. If they wanted a war, then he would give one beyond all their expectations. Before the first shot could leave the barrel of an enemy weapon, Kira had already fired thrice more with his Disintegrators, consigning three more Vindicators to oblivion, the range so close that there was no way for the surprised pilots to dodge. Most couldn't even raise their shields, little good that it would have done them, as the exotic particles penetrated the Citadel abrriers and bored through the armor shield behind and blew molten holes in the torsos and pilots cowering behind the shields.

Return fire snapped belatedly from the remaining Vindicators, and the armored vehicles behind them, the searing blasts of beam fire mixing with the contrails of missiles and the yellow-orange tracers of traditional cannon and linear weapon fire, all converging upon his still stationary position. Dodging the incoming fire would have been the simplest of matters, he could have moved the Lucifer a kilometer away before the closest weapon fire even passed through his previous location, but he wasn't here to fight, he was here to destroy, to make a point, to wage a war beyond all wars. The Fractal Feathers swarmed, beams splintering and refracting as they were bounced between feathers, sometimes interdicting physical projectiles in the process, but always curving around and coming right back at those who had initially fired them. Meanwhile, Kira gestured with his left gauntlet, having stowed that Disintegrator to free up the Lucifer's Grasp, whic he used to grab hold of missiles and shells and either throw them off track, or else hurl them straight back the way they had come. Some he just stopped dead in midair and let drop harmlessly to the ground.

The end result of the USN forces opening fire was that not a single attack got within ten meters of the Lucifer, and they inflicted tremendous collateral damage upon their own allies, as Kira picked off and returned over eighty percent of the incoming fire and redirected it into the reeling USN forces. Seconds later, in the lull that followed as over half the front line forces staggered backwards, damaged or destroyed, Kira created his Wings of Light prisms in front of him and cut loose with all four Hellfury's, refracting each violet beam into twenty different multicolroed laser beams that interlocked in a wide, conelike pattern of crisscrossing light that filled the far end of the valley for several seconds, illuminating the entire valley brighter than noonday sun for the duration, the light so bright it was painful to the unshielded eye. Explosions blanketed the area for almost a minute afterward, as the USN force all but dissolved, sliced into sparking and bleeding cubes by the gridwork of the Wings of Light, over twenty five hundred soldiers eased from existence in two blinks of their eyes.

Eyes aglow with anger, Kira stepped forward into the hell he had wrought, using the Lucifer's grasp to grab and hurl hunks of burning wreckage into each other, or those precious few undamaged machines that remained, explosions of junked shrapnel scything down the shell shocked soldiers that had stumbled from the ruins of their transport vehicles. Kira did not go out of his way to attack these helpless, stunned men and women, but neither did he detour to avoid them. Above all, war was an uncaring thing, it was the ultimate equalizer, as deadly to the rich as it was to the poor. They had chosen to make this place a battleground, they had tossed their own lives upon the altar of war, it was no longer his problem if they lived or died. He turned his attention away from the scrambling infantry who fled before him, to a damaged Vindicator that had escaped the worst of the Wings of Light, only having lost its primary weapon arm to the coruscating light beams. In a trice, Kira had one of his QC longswords in his left hand and he hurled the crystalline blade at the limping Vindicator, which was trying to head back down the valley, the way it had come. The blade spun through the air, emitting rainbow radiance of its own as the edge cleaved through the very molecules of moisture in the sky, before embedding itself through the back of the Vindicator, impaling the pilot in her seat.

Kira gestured with his left gauntlet, and the sword pulled itself out of the Vindicator's back and unerringly returned to his hand in time for him to sweep it down and bisect a line of crippled Viking tanks crawling around his feet, crackles of electrical sparks exploding from the severed hulls where the electrified hulls shorted out upon striking the ground. Kira put the Lucifer's toe under one such sparking half and flicked it into the air like a small ball, catching it with the Lucifer's Grasp and then hurling it straight up, almost a kilometer into the air, before New Eden's gravity overcame the influence of momentum and hauled the wreckage back to the ground, to shatter like it was made of glass upon the rocky ground, the Lucifer already having moved a hundred meters further down te valley by the time the tank part hit te ground. Kira did make sure to see to it that there were some survivors, because he needed this first demonstration to reach the eyes and ears of the greater USN, for the same reason he left one of the RI pioneer suits operational deliberately, so that its battle cam would provide visual proof of Kira's new determination.

Three minutes after the Excalibur had called Kira's bluff, the Lucifer stood alone in the valley, surrounded by guttering flames and smoking wreckage, watching the pitiful few survivors fleeing with all possible speed down the slopes of the valley below, in full and unadulterated rout. The Fractal Feathers slowly returned to their docking berths on the Lucifer's wings, and Kira crossed the Lucifer's arms imperiously across his chest, a stern and unforgiving god of war surveying the carnage he had wrought, and finding it good. A part of him wailed in aunguish over the devastation he'd caused, but that part of him was but a dim whisper, buried beneath the ocean of his grief. Executor Kira Yamato felt a grin tugging its way onto his face. First mission, successful. The first step to eradicating war forever. _Lacus, forgive me for my actions, but I don't see any other way to go. We've tried words too many times, this ordeal will only be completed if I put my sword where your thoughts are. I love you, Lacus, and I will make them regret murdering you and our precious children! They started this war, but by all my love for you, I WILL end it, forever. They've sown the wind, and I am the whirlwind they shall reap!_

xxxx

**New Eden, Northern Europe, Coastline of Former Germany, November 25th, Afternoon**

"Is it just me, or are they not pushing as hard as they used to?" Shinn asked speculatively, holding close formation to Luna's Excaliber as they cruised along the shoreline, misty rainclouds above, dark green forest along one side, iron grey ocean along the other, this arm of the Atlantic ocean seeming to suffer from inclement weather for the greater portion of the year. It made having to live inside self contained environment structures actually seem like less of hardship, since there was little reason to want to go outside, in the blustery cold wind and sleeting precipitation that turned the ground to a quagmire of sticky, frosty mud that was purely hellish to move around in. Even the Vengeance had to work to kick its feet free of the gluey morass on those occasions where Shinn had decided to land, he could barely comprehend how onerous it had to be for the infantry and their armored vehicles. Shinn was SO glad he was so much more talented than the ground pounders, he wouldn't have their lot in life for all the money in the world!

"Their attacks do seem to have been somewhat lacklustre these past few days." Luna agreed, scanning from side to side, her head constantly on a swivel, her hands clenched tight around the grips of her prized special weapon, the "Glam" superpenetrating launcher, which funtioned like a Linear Sniper rifle on steroids. From what Luna was given to understand, it was something like a hybrid attempt to reverse engineer the "Spear of Ares" weapon utilized by the former Orb Gundam, the Warmaster, though more practical in its use. It didn't shoot as fast or as far, but it shot much more often, and the shells, which were equipped with QC tipped anti-matter warheads, could deliver a similar degree of damage when they struck. And "not as fast" was fairly meaningless, when it still hurled its bolts at close to thirty thousand miles per hour, almost twice as fast as a railgun, it was basically unavoidable when the target was closer than ten kilometers, so fast that the very air ignited in the wake of the projectile from friction bleed, making it look like she was shooting columns of fire instead of rocket-like projectiles.

As Knight-Champions, the most elite among the already highly elite Solar Knights, Shinn and Luna could basically go wherever they wished, whenever they wished, and could decide to follow the orders of even the theatre commanders at their own discretion. Just about the only person they didn't have a choice but to listen to was Rey, and with Rey in Gibraltar, focused on the buildup for the operation to retake Victoria Spaceport, they were basically unlimited in their freedoms. For the time being anyway, since they were tapped to come participate in the Victoria Operation as well, but with the speed of flight offered by their Mobile Suits, they could be in Africa in a few hours anyway, so where was the reason to arrive early? So for the meanwhile they gloried in their independence, running long distance patrols between the mainland Europe expansion bases, flitting from trouble spot to trouble spot to fend off the worst of the Eddie depradations. A strategy with which they had found limited success, as many times the Eddie forces would strike and retreat faster than they could arrive and respond, but any success was better than no success.

And in recent days the frequency of the Eddie attacks had dropped off significantly, which suggested to Shinn that maybe they were finally running out of steam and supplies. They'd never found the operating base of the Eddie force, thought to be roughly two or three thousand soldiers strong, with perhaps sixty Mobile Suits and a few hundred armored vehicles of various classifications, desipte strenuous and repeated scouting efforts, which made Shinn think that the Eddies were staying mobile, which would limit the amount of supplies they could carry with them. It only made sense that they'd have to retreat every so often to restock and repair. Luna had a different opinion, she thought the Eddies were pulling back in preparation of some larger operation, such as an attack upon Heaven's Base itself instead of these constant attrition and guerilla warfare attacks against the Expansion bases.

Shinn almost wished the Eddies would do just that, since with Task Force Narwhale in geosynch orbit, centered around the Incarnate class Dreadnaught _Avatar_ and its Myrmidon heavy cruiser escorts, any major force crossing the ocean towards the heavily fortified Heaven's Base would get their guts ripped out by TAC coordinated firepower from low orbit, just like what had happened outside Gibraltar. Once the Eddies had been softened up by the orbital artillery, Shinn, Luna and the Solar Knights could have swept in to do cleanup, removing the Eddie threat to Europe in one fell swoop. And despite the Eddie's small numbers, Shinn grudgingly did have to admit that they WERE a threat. Their Mobile Suits, the Dervishes and especially the ones called Spectres, with the total invisbility capability, were a real challenge to fight, the pilots making up for lack of experience with hair trigger reflexes and their psychic abilities. Shinn could quietly admit that without the long years of training between him and Luna, and the backup of support forces, there might have been a few times where he could have been defeated, even killed, by the Eddie machines. His experience fighting the Brotherhood Gundam stood him in good stead, but against three of them at once there wasn't much a mortal pilot could do!

As yet he'd fought one Spectre, with its armor carved into representations of crashing waves, a half a dozen times, and he still hadn't managed to have a conclusive engagement with the bastard. Luna had almost nicked him with her Glam one time, but that had been the closest they'd come to taking out the Eddie champion, who had reaped a bloody toll of his own among the rank and file Solar Knights with his double bladed QC glaive and thermal exciters. As frustrating and exhilirating as fighting the Spectre was though, Shinn felt it was still only a pale shadow of the challenge he truly wished to face, the gigantic, scythe wielding Gundam that had attacked and defeated Commander Joule and his entire team! Shinn could dimly half remember fighting against Commander Joule while under Noah's influence, a battle that Shinn had lost and nearly been killed in, which, despite his awe for Commander Joule's skills, never failed to rankle a bit. By defeating the man who humiliated Joule, he could wash away the stain of that defeat once and for all!

Lost in his glorious daydream, Shinn missed what Luna said, and he had to ask her to repeat herself. "Nevermind, it was nothing important." Luna replied, actually kind of glad that Shinn hadn't heard her express her misgivings about the situation. Not their immediate situation with the Eddies and Europe, but their overall situation. Because truth be told, Luna was already weary of war, or at least this war, Rey's war. There was just no way the Eddies could realistically win, against the might of the USN! This was less a war than it was bullying, and the Eddies were only resisting because they knew what they faced should they give up without a fight. Luna had seen a little, during her annual visits to check up on Meyrin's rehabilitation progress, which was frustratingly slow, but the little she'd glimpsed of what FEAR got up to with their Eddie "test volunteers" left little doubt in her mind that the Eddies were justified in sticking up for themselves in this conflict. They were just defending their homes and families. As a proud member of ZAFT, who'd enlisted exactly for such reasons, Luna didn't like finding herself on the side of those who were being defended against!

And then there was the personal side of things, watching Rey steadily spiral downwards into a truly reprehensible human being, barely even a hint of the honorable and strong willed young man she'd thought she was in love with at one time remaining. She'd avoided him whenever possible over these past seven years, but she still saw enough of him that she was stunned by his loosening morals. Not only the head of the Paladins, which were basically Durandel's private military goon squad, no matter how the media dressed them up as champions of the military as a whole, but the man who gave orders to the dreaded Section Nine domestic intelligence service, which was just a PC name for Secret Police Bureau, who could kidnap anyone off the street at any time and hold them for any length of time, up to and including forever or even make them "disappear" permanently! Section Nine was the knife at your back that kept your complaints or dissenting opinions about the path of the government to a very quiet whisper, and even that wasn't always enough to keep you safe!

Because of her private deals with Rey, Luna and Shinn were largely immune from the depradations of Section Nine, but Luna was well aware that the moment she or Shinn became seen as a threat to the plans of Gilbert Durandel or Rey that they would be discarded and replaced in a heartbeat, and that they wouldn't likely be asked to just "retire". Maybe at one time, but Rey's infatuation with her seemed to have faded at last, his attentions caught up in a train of hopeful and ambitious young ladies in the Solar Knights, and lately she'd even heard rumors that he was involved with the head director of FEAR, Dr. Natalia Dostanya. A true match made in hell there, if there ever was one! A meeting of the depraved and the amoral, both of them made her skin crawl. Especially Dr. Dostanya, who Luna had to see every few months for necessary maintenance on the prosthetic organs that had replaced the ones she'd lost when she was almost cut in half by a FRALA beam during the Battle of Cape York during the latter part of the Eden Disaster terror incident. There was just something about the woman that made Luna tremble whenever she was around her.

However, without that maintenance, Luna's organs would degrade and she would die a slow, painful death, so she had little choice but to continue making the appointments, even though she knew that they kept her more or less permanently leashed to FEAR and to Rey, and through her, Shinn as well. They might be very well paid and have a lot of personal freedoms, but at the end of the day, they were still basically indentured servants, not volunteers. They were expected to perform their duties as the Ruby and Crystal Knights to the best of their considerable abilities, for the good of a nation that would never let them stop until they were dead or worthless. What was money or big houses or free time when you compared it to the fact that you spent every day with the sword of damocles hovering over your head? But what could they do about it? They were celebrities, the very face of the Solar Knights, it wasn't like they would be welcomed among any of the rebellious factions, much less the neo-Brotherhood splinter terror group calling themselves the "Retributors", led by one of Noah's surviving Apostles!

Furthermore, there was Meyrin to consider, held in protective custody at FEAR's headquarters undergoing extensive deprogramming efforts to free her of Noah's mental slavery, which had persisted for more than seven years after the public execution of that archterrorist! Luna was beginning to despair that Meyrin would never be able to shake off the yoke of false adoration Noah had placed her under, that she would be crippled for life by her determination to love that monster! Already there were many who were convinced that Meyrin had been a willing accomplice to Noah, impossible as that was, but they pointed to her continued condition as proof that her loyalty was uncoerced. Fortunately, Luna knew better, and she'd convinced Rey as well, though she hated thinking about how, and so her sister was safe. Again for the time being, as long as Luna continued to be an asset to the Solar Knights and Rey, as long as she didn't speak out against the heinous things she was sometimes witness to, or protest against this reprehensible bullying war.

And so the Vengeance and the Excalibur flew on, side by side, lost in seperate dreams, one of glory, the other of freedom, neither knowing that their future held precious little of either. But it was human to hope, even during the darkest hours, and so hope they did.


	34. Valley of Giants

Author Note: Well, I could only keep you guys guessing for so long on the Lacus/Akira/Aoi thing. So no more guesswork about them being alive, though there seems to be PLENTY of speculation about Akira and my comments from the last Author Note. Excellent. All is progressing as planned. There's a lively forum topic on it as well, in addition to a posted outline, of chapter and arc titles at least, of the first half of the story. Check it out if you like, tell me which chapters, based on name alone, you're looking forward to seeing, and what you think they pertain to. Well, enough about that. Now for a chapter that will have many eyes agoggle, mark my words. It's one of those that I've been waiting to get to for a while. I mean, I love writing all my chapters, but some stand out above the rest, even if they aren't always exactly "climactic". Valley of Giants, Plains of Blood and City of Tears this arc are the ones that I like the best. Next arc it will be Indigo Release, Black Ghosts and Silver Hell. The arc after, Innocence and Corruption, Predator and Prey, as well as Damnation and Redemption are ones I've been dreaming of doing for more than a year.

xxxx

**New Eden, Eastern-Cental Africa, Lower Slopes of Mt. Kilamanjaro, November 30th, Midmorning**

"Goddamn it..." Lain swore under his breath, coming to a halt in the thigh high underbrush and shifting from leg to leg in irritated agitation, taking one hand from the appropriated Cutlass LAR that he'd taken from a rack back at the forward observation post so he could scratch, completely in vain of course, at the inner part of his legs, where his Survivor pattern armor had gotten all sweaty, sticky and least pleasantly of all, itchy in the past hour or so. And of course the armored surface of the environment suit was too thick for his fingers to provide any scratching comfort through, hell, he could barely even feel it when he thumped his bunched fist against his leg in a desperate attempt to provide even a slight bit of relief! The cooling systems inside the armor were turned up all the way, but even so, under the dense canopy of the mountainous junglescape, the ambient air was so hot and moist it was like he had a hot spring venting steam directly down his spine at all times. He was drenched with sweat, and it was making the armor, already unpleasant, nearly unbearable. And of course, if he removed it he would either die a horrible, withering death from Green EDEN infection, or worse, survive and become an Edenite and be discombobulated by his own side for "research materials"!

"Do you think you could make any MORE of a target of yourself, Debora?" Mechael commented from a few meters away, where he was hunkered down in the midst of some thick stemmed, leafy foliage that practically drooled sap, that was, knowing New Eden, probably extremely toxic, acidic, or both. "Bad enough that you stump around like you're wearing a string of tin cans tied to each foot, making enough racket to wake the dead, but you're right in the middle of the only cleared space for a hundred meters in any direction, and that is where you choose to make a pit stop? I can't decide if you really are that inept, or whether you're just stupid, or maybe, and this is the least likely option mind, that you're actually way better than this and you're just playing dumb to fuck with me." Unlike Lain, or Stella for that matter, who was browsing through the trees a few meters away from Mechael, though also sensibly in cover instead of scratching herself in the middle of a clearing, Mechael wore no environment suit, though he did have on a camouflage, lightly armored set of BDU's, with the shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows as a minor concession to the heat and humidity. With a camouflage bandanna tied sloppily around his forehead, Mechael looked very much the vintage jungle warrior from wars of centuries past.

Since over seventy percent of his body was fully cybernetic, including all four limbs and his entire external surface area, Mechael didn't need a self contained environment to protect him from contamination, breathing filters in his nostrils and throat sifted out any residual Green EDEN he happened to come into contact with, and internal resevoirs of anti-Green Red EDEN waited to be released into his bloodstream and remaining body tissue should any sign of infection become apparent. In truth the rolled up sleeves of his jacket were more a fashion statement than a concession to the environment, plus it let him show off his rippling, precisely forged muscles to the cute female Extended. Sure, she was involved with Debora, but showing off for girls was so hardwired into Mechael's brain that even the conversion into an ICMS Augmented hadn't been able to purge it in the slightest. Some personality traits were just there to stay.

Mechael scanned their surroundings one more time, his eyes cycling through several different vision modes, though since it was midmoring, lightamp was worthless, and thermal sensors were worse than that with all the residual heat. Magfield only picked up their own gear, everything else nearby was purely biological, though that didn't make it any less deadly, Mechael reminded himself, idly fingering the ding in his leg where he'd been grazed a few days ago by one of those scorpion-monsters that had invaded Gibraltar. Though his external body was made from special alloys very similar to those put into armored vehicles, but much lighter of course, that hadn't stopped that damn bug from all but slicing him open down to the structural bones with just its own pincers! After seeing the damage those selfsame pincers had caused to the hapless regular human infantry around him, Mechael had once more been REALLY glad that he was an Augmented. It really sucked to be weak and vulnerable.

"Bite me, Mecha." Lain retorted, his groin still itching something terrible, but he belatedly found a few trees on the edge of the clearing to hunker down by, where he wouldn't be easy meat for any passing Eddie with a gun to potshot. Instead he had to worry about whether or not he was crouching in some plant that would try to suck his blood, or melt his armor, or cut him into bite sized cubes with razor edged leaves, or strangle him, or fire volleys of steel hard, poison soaked spines through his faceplate, or any of a half dozen other ways the damned plants had of killing you in unpleasant ways. Lain was very rapidly coming to hate his home world, if this was how it was going to be to him.

"That's her job, I reckon." Mechael replied with a irreverent grin, nodding his head in Stella's direction, where she was still, to all outward signs, engrossed in watching a procession of ant-like bugs crawling up the the trunk of a tree. The bugs in question were colored bright yellow and red, and were a good two inches long from jaws to stinger equipped abdomen. They were hellacious biters, and could easily chew through Survivor armor and into the soft flesh beneath if you let them get on you, so Stella watched them from a few feet away, and frequently looked down to check her boots, to make sure no scouts had crawled up her legs. Mechael had come to realize that while Stella often gave the impression that she was an airheaded bimbo, she was actually anything but, and was actually very observant and intellectual, if one knew how and when to approach her. And she was a positively diabolical hand with her combat knife, which was definitely one reason he kept his hands off of her, despite moments of temptation. Lain having a Mobile Suit while Mechael did not was another good reason to be chaste. And Lain wasn't actually too bad a guy, for a normal human.

Needless to say, after the humiliating debacle springing from the disaster that had been his first combat deployment with the Omega-Panzer, Mechael had been doing a lot of learning about humility, and had come to the realization that, no matter his individual power, without strong allies, and maybe even friends, he was always going to be vulnerable to letting his own ego get the better of him. And one such mistake was more than enough for him, another critical embarassment and old man Roanoke would melt him down and make him into trash can! By Roanoke's orders, Mechael and Lain were stuck together for the foreseeable future, so it was probably for the best if they could get along. Something which hadn't been helped by Mechael's original crass behavior, but fortunately Lain seemed to be the sort who could live and let live, especially when approached with humility at first. So while he might yet entertain a few fantasies of bumping into Stella while she was in the shower blocks, that's all they were to Mechael, happy fantasies, rather than true desires.

"I don't bite." Stella replied casually, looking over her shoulder and leaving the ant-things to their food gathering as she made her way stealthily across the clearing to stand near Lain. She moved fluidly and easily in her Survivor armor, like it was a second skin, despite the physical discomforts, which really hardly registered through her Extended conditioning, making Lain feel acutely self conscious about the way he stumbled about, his inexperience with the infantry armor being all too easy to discern. "Though I have been know to leave bruises during uncareful moments. And there was that one time when I almost clawed your cheek off..."

"Shush, you!" Lain said with an embarassed cough and a glance at Mechael's broadly grinning face, since Lain had no scars or marks on his face at all, leaving only one other set of cheeks for Stella to have accidentally clawed. At one point in time he might have thought Stella just didn't think before she spoke, or was being inconsiderate, but now he knew how to recognize when she was teasing him. Stella carried one of the heavier and more powerful Mauler LSG's, as did Mechael, the Extended and Augmented hardly bothered by the additional mass of the powerful guns, which they lifted as lightly as if they were mere sidearms. Also they were experienced in the use of the weapons, and while Lain had taken a Cutlass to the range a time or two, he could hardly be called an expert with it, or even fully proficient. The only gun he was used to firing was his backup pistol, and even then, he'd never actually had to use it to defend himself. That was what his Vindicator was for.

When he'd first seen Mechael with the Mauler, Lain had been somewhat surprised. After all, the Augmented had a plethora of weapons already built into his body didn't he, including a heavy machine gun and a goddamn beam saber! Why the hell would he need extra firepower? In truth the answer was fairly simple, not only was the Mauler significantly more powerful than the built in gun, but it could be reloaded much, MUCH easier than the .30 cal squad support weapon built into Mechael's left arm, which required a laborious process involving practically disassembling the entire arm in order to replace the integral 800 round magazine. At one point in time Roanoke had apparently considered equipping the Augmented with a Cutlass or Mauler linear weapon, instead of a chemically propelled machine gun, but power conflicts with the fuel cells that kept Mechael's cyber-body working and his meat organs alive had prevented it. The beam saber was also powered by seperate battery systems, since it was a significant drain upon his life support and motive power systems otherwise.

Of course Mechael still had a few more surprises up his sleeves, or, in this case, in his shoulderblades, which contained a micro RPG launcher, one per shoulder, as well as extendable armor piercing spikes that could appear from elbows and knees for close range brawling, plus the fact that his body was more or less artificial and MUCH stronger and more durable than human flesh and bone, meaning even a punch or kick from Mechael could be pretty devastating. Definitely a good guy to have in your corner when things got up close and bloody, that was Mechael all right. And in the depths of this hellish tropical forest, there simply wasn't room for much ranged combat, the tree trunks and undergrowth limiting fields of vision and fire to less than a few dozen meters at best, meaning any opposing forces would practically stumble into their arms before they were close enough to exchange fire.

There wasn't supposed to be any opposing forces in the area of course, but what the USN forces didn't know about the habits and particulars of the deep forests of New Eden could fill several full encyclopedias, so Lain was less than reassured by that estimation. Even if there were no organized Eddie forces operating in the area, there could still be irregulars, deep forest hunters or isolated farmers with guns, not to mention the plants and the animals themselves! The Forward Observation Base, Camp Albert, was in theory still a secret that the Eddies didn't know about, despite being situated only a hundred or so kilometers away from the outskirts of Victoria Spaceport, now know as Urbanis by the local residents. There was a major Eddie military buildup around the perimeter of Urbanis, but as yet the Eddies seemed content to hunker down and wait for the USN hammer to come crashing down upon them, rather than follow their usual doctrine of sneak attacks, hit and run strikes and guerilla warfare. Which was just fine with Lain, since Mobile Suits were crappy in pretty much all of those combat scenarios, unless you had really good commanders and well trained troops.

Lain and Stella, with Mechael tagging along more or less uninvited, had come to Camp Albert under the pretense of assisting the scouts in observing the Eddie buildup and reconnoitering the surrounding areas for any signs of ambushes or hidden forces that might be lying in wait to attack the USN forces while they were en route to Victoria. The actual mission, codenamed Operation Royalty, was due to begin sometime in late December, in the meanwhile there was plenty of prep and intelligence work to be done as the commanders waited for all the disparate units involved to muster at Gibraltar. Lain had heard rumors that the Orb contingent would include one or more of their newest Gundams, and he eagerly awaited the arrival of his countrymen. Though he was no longer the celebrity in Orb he had once been, when during the Second Valentine War he had downed several Nazca class vessels during the Australian Maneuver against Carpentaria base, he was still an Orb patriot and he would love little more than being able to hobnob with his countrymen and women once more. He might even be able to talk his way into the presence of the Gundam pilots themselves! He wondered who it would be? Perhaps even the Queen herself, assuming she was recovered from whatever nasty illness that was keeping her out of the public eye for the time being?

But the real reason Lain had come here was more personal. Back during the latter stages of the Eden Disaster incidents, during the Brotherhood attack upon the Victoria Spacepot and the nearby Solar Knight base, Lain's best friend and fellow Solar Knight, Eric Kellson, had been shot down by the then mind controlled Shinn in the Vengeance, right over this very area. Though Eric had gone down pretty hard, Lain had faith his friend could have survived the crash landing, however, before he could check, the Solar Knights were ordered to evacuate the area in preparation for the Battle of Cape York, leaving Eric, plus several other pilots who had been shot down but not confirmed KIA, hanging out to dry. Of course Lain had gone a little bit nuts, but with his precarious position in the unit at the time, there was only so much he could protest about without getting a bullet in his brainpan, and he'd been forced to abandon his friend to fend for himself. Lain had held out hope that Eric would turn up among the legions of wounded evacuees during the months following the destruction of the Great Endeavor and the execution of Noah Borander, but his friend had never returned, and Lain had eventually come, with a heavy heart, to acknowledge that Eric had likely passed on.

However, likely wasn't the same thing as certainly, and so Lain had taken advantage of an opportunity and vowed to search out his friend's crash site and comb it for any signs of Eric's fate. Unfortunately the crash area was far too close to Urbanis for them to be able to scout from the air, either in helicopters or Mobile Suits, not without attracting a whole bunch of the wrong sort of attention from the Eddies anyway, so they'd had to take the stealth shuttle to Camp Albert and then got dropped off by a Gladiator patrol at the outskirts of their search area, with an agreement to return to that spot in four days, radio silence also being a necessity given their location and the need for secrecy. A few called in favors from some friends in the Solar Protection Fleet had yielded some focused orbital scans of the area in high detail, and Lain had poured over these images to construct his map of the search area, hi-lighting high concentrations of magnetic resonance as likely belonging to crashed Mobile Suits, as well as identifying ravines, valleys and rifts where a Suit might have crashed out of easy sight.

Armed with a list of the serial numbers of the various pieces and parts of Eric's Archon, Lain was determined to discover which crash site belonged to his friend. And from there, though it was doubtful there would be much sign left after seven years on New Eden, he would look for evidence of Eric's survival or death. It might be that all he would find would be a few gnawed, bleached bones, in fact that was likely, but damn it all, he would have closure on this if it was the last thing he did! Eric deserved much more than just being abandoned and forgotten! The least he could do was bury any remains. For that matter Lain wasn't the only one who needed closure, if Lain remembered correctly, Eric had mentioned having a younger sister somewhere in Orb, she must be desperate to know what had happened to her brother. And so it was that Lain was about as far out of his element as he could possibly be, in sweaty, itchy armor, holding an unfamiliar weapon and baking alive in the wet heat, as he squinted at his data screen and did his best to decipher their location and progress towards the next crash site.

They'd already found three such sites, all Archons that were little more than crumpled, scattered hunks of half melted slag, but none of the intact pieces with serial numbers had matched up with Eric's machine, so the search was still on. Their current destination was secluded in a small ravine about three quarters of a kilometer further up the mountain slopes, where there were two promising looking mag-resonance returns within a hundred meters or so, one sizably bigger than the other, too big in fact to be a single Mobile Suit, but Lain was determined to check it out regardless, in case it was an erroneous reading. Their progress through the rainforest was frustratingly slow, about half what he'd estimated it would be back at Gibraltar, but since he was the one doing most of the slowing down for the group, Lain made sure to bite his tongue and avoided pointing it out.

At least they were fortunate in that they hadn't encountered any large predatory animals, such as Direcats, Garms or snakelike Wyrms, which the scouts had reported to be thick on the ground in nearby scouting sectors. In fact Lain hadn't seen large animals of ANY sort around, and though he knew he was no woodsman, neither were most of the larger fauna particularly wary of humans, so he would have thought they'd have seen SOMETHING! The lack of foraging animals, and animals preying on the foragers, made the rainforest feel strangely empty, and also pretty damned creepy. Almost like the place was haunted or something like that. Lain forced himself not to think thoughts like that, knowing it was probably just his imagination running away with him, just like the troops at Porta Panama were doing. Course, no one had heard ANYTHING from Porta Potty for almost a week now, and that was passing strange. And a little creepy. Okay, a lot creepy. But it wasn't his job to worry about things like that, Lain reminded himself sternly.

Stella's hand closed comfortingly around his own free hand a moment later, and she squeezed him hard enough to be easily felt through the thick gloves. She'd obviously noted his distress, such as it was, and had moved in with her usual protectiveness, while Mechael mumbled to himself and kept his distance, uncomfortable, as many Extendeds also were, with public displays of affection. Lain squeezed Stella's hand back and nodded his thanks for her presence, reluctantly letting go of her hand since it would be almost impossible to move jointly through the undergrowth, and pointing the way forward. Mechael grunted and took the lead, the Mauler slung across his back now, a heavy mono-machete in his hands that he used to cut away the worst of the heavy brush so that Stella and Lain could follow him more easily. It left a fairly obvious trail of course, but it was either leave a trail, or make even less progress than they already were, and with only four days in which to search, covering ground efficiently was of the highest priority.

About two hours of hiking later, Lain felt like he was swimming inside his armor from all the pooled sweat pouring off his body, though both Stella and especially Mechael appeared absolutely none the worse for the wear, damn them for their fortitude. He was doubly frustrated because he'd spent most of the hike trying to take his mind off his physical exertions by trying to get Stella to talk to him about whatever it was that Dr. Dostanya was having her do. The end result of that particular endeavor being that not only was he sweating like a horse, and beat to hell, but now he was pissed at Stella because she just wouldn't talk to him about it, despite how much he could see whatever it was, was bothering her! He'd encountered areas of her life she wouldn't discuss with him before, such as details on her earlier life in the Extended program, but he'd been under the impression that she knew she could come talk to him about anything that was actually bothering him with no fear of being ridiculed or judged! Now he was less sure of that estimation.

So for the moment Lain actually found himself crowding closer to Mechael, leaving Stella to sulk or brood or think or whatever it was she was doing at the moment, to the rear of their little formation. If Mechael noticed Lain's disgruntlement and disatisfaction, he was polite enough not to make a big deal of it, for which Lain was grateful. At first impression Lain had thought Mechael was a grade A dick and manwhore, and while he might still be a manwhore, his dickishness had faded, at least around Lain and the Extendeds. Mechael had a lot to be proud of, but he'd burned off a lot of excess ego after the debacle at the Asteroid Belt. Now Lain could see him for what he really was, a guy standing on a razor's edge, who's very existence depended on him basically becoming a hero in the middle of war. Yeah, he had a lot of rough edges, but most of it was because he was trying so damned hard to be the best, because of the consequences of not being the best. Once you settled straight with him and got to know him, he wasn't a bad sort, he just had a shell he used to keep most people at a distance, much like most of the Extended, who tended to regard anyone outside the Program with suspicion and disdain.

Mechael swiped his machete across a curtain of hanging vines, half drenching himself in watery sap, tuning his skin sensors to filter out the unpleasant sensation, and they found themselves staring down a short but steep slope towards an impact crater with a surprisingly intact Archon torso in the middle. Lain's heart speeded up as he thought he recognized some of the battle damage on the torso, but he cautioned himself not to get his hopes up too high, that he might just be seeing what he wanted to see. There was no way to tell until he found a serial number to check. Lain's first instinct was to slide down the slope and check out the site, but Mechael grabbed him by the shoulder and held him in place for several long minutes as the Augmented carefully scanned the surrounding area for threats or signs of ambush. Finally, after his comprehensive search came up with zilch, Mechael grabbed Lain up like he was a small suitcase and physically leapt down the slope in a single bound, landing with bent legs and depositing the sputtering Solar Knight down beside him.

Stella vaulted down behind them, landing one both feet and one hand before straightening and sweeping the muzzle of her Mauler around the site slowly, her eyes darting around as she did her own search for threats. Gathering the remnants of his pride, Lain stepped forward and clambered up onto the scarred, limbless torso, his hands searching out one of the maintenance access ports on the back, underneath the main thruster exhausts. It took a good deal of heaving to pry the carbon scored and slightly crumpled panel open, during which time Mechael and Stella continued to prowl around the site, both of them on edge for a reason neither could precisely define. Just a crawling sensation between the shoulderblades, like being watched, though no matter how hard they looked, they could not discern where the watcher, if there was one, was hiding. Finally, with a tortured shriek of rusted hinges, the panel snapped open, almost sending Lain staggering backwards onto his ass. Recovering his balance just in time to avoid an embarassing tumble, Lain stepped forward and dusted off a layer of blown dirt from the interior of the access port, his breath catching painfully in his throat as he matched up the serial numbers for Eric's Archon.

"This... this is it!" Lain called down, in a mixture of weariness and exultation. "This is Eric's machine!" Lain ran forward along the Archon's remaining spine before jumping to the ground near the shoulderblade, which was denuded of the weapon normally mounted there, ripped or blown off sometime during the crash along with the Archon's limbs and head and wings. Though the torso was lying face down, there was a small distance between the cockpit hatch and the ground, big enough for a man to wriggle out of the cockpit from, though it would have been a hell of a tight squeeze for someone of Eric's size, and even worse if he was injured. Lain, being significantly shorter and slightly thinner than his friend, was able to shimmy up to the cracked open hatch with relative ease, though the Survivor armor made things tight once or twice, and with a grunt and a heave, Lain pulled himself up into the darkness of the cockpit.

Belatedly, Lain realized that a small, dark, enclosed space like the cockpit would have made an ideal lair for various animals, none of which he would want to encounter without plenty of room to maneuver, but while the cockpit did show signs of animals, droppings and what looked like half digested bones of some sort, whatever lived here currently wasn't in, much to his relief. Unfortunately the animal presence had completely obliterated any obvious signs of his survival Eric might have left. That is, until Lain thought to check the emergency survival cache beneath the cockpit seat, and found it empty, the case of survival rations, camping supplies and medical kit gone from their flat storage locker! Lain sat back in the dirt crusted command couch and felt like either crying or laughing... Eric HAD survived the crash! He'd survived, only to find himself abandoned and alone and most likely injured, perhaps badly, in the midst of what was rapidly becoming the most hostile environment to humans in all of recorded history!

Assuming his friend had managed to survive his transformation into an Eddie, which was by no means assured especially given the unsanitary conditions and his own likely physical condition, he would then have been faced with surviving, alone, in this jungle for seven or more years, surrounded by and competing with who knew what sort of predators for survival. Eric was a tough guy, but he was a pilot, not a survival specialist, and a gun was only of use for as long as you had bullets, and not even always then, against some of these beasts, to which a pistol round was barely worse than a bad gnat bite! Lain extracted himself from the cockpit, his heart alternately buoyed up and clenched in pain, and discovered that Mechael and Stella were already sweeping the area for any signs of where Eric had gone, or if he'd even gone anywhere. Unfortunately, seven years in the jungle had destroyed any signs that might have been there, and after almost a half hour of searching, neither supersoldier had come up with even a direction that Eric could have gone.

Lain leaned against the side of the Archon torso, his head bowed as he struggled to keep his eyes dry, the near certainty of his friends gruesome death haunting him fiercely, as he tried not to think of how vulnerable and tasty a single wounded man would have been in the days and weeks immediately after the transformation of Earth to New Eden. A gentle hand on his shoulder told him of Stella's presence behind him, and then she put her arms around him in a hug as he spent a few minutes purging his grief as quietly as he could. At length, Lain disengaged himself from Stella's comforting grip and turned to look for Mechael, eyes red but now dry, and his voice and breathing once more under control. The Augmented was making his way around the perimeter of the crash site, still trying to pin down that uncomfortable feeling. Seeing that Lain had recovered himself, Mechael glanced down at him and shrugged uneasily.

"Hate to say it like this, but you seen what you needed to see, Debora?" Mechael asked gruffly. "This place gives me the fucking creeps, if you're done with your memorializing, I'd like to get the fuck out of here post haste."

"Not just yet, Mecha, bear with me here." Lain replied firmly. "I wanna check out that larger return we saw on the Mag-Res sensors first. It's not that far from here, and it might be someplace where Eric could have found shelter or something. After we check that out, we'll get the hell out of here."

"In horror flicks, its that sort of thought process that gets all sorts of people killed." Mechael pointed out grumpily. "Let's just go check out the abandoned old house in the middle of the primordial jungle... there's no WAY anything bad could be lurking there waiting to bite off our faces and slurp down our organs, oh no! Next you're gonna tell me you wanna strip down for a shower scene with Stella!"

"I'm always down for a good shower scene with Stella." Lain replied snarkily, clapping her on the shoulder. "But I can hold off on that until we return to Gibraltar. Stop being such a pussy, Mecha. If this is the set of a horror movie, then I've already GOT two monsters right here with me, and they're on my side, think of it that way. C'mon man, it'll take like an hour tops and then we'll beat feet. You may be surprised to know this, but as the token weakling human cum redshirt officer of this trio, I'm not very comfortable walking around in this deathtrap of a jungle, and I'd prefer to do it for as little time as possible, before something comes up with my number!"

"Poor Lain, so helpless." Stella observed with a smile. "Don't worry, Stella will protect you from the bad things. You just hide behind her if you get scared."

"Hide is a bit strong of a term..." Lain protested, though he knew that should a situation arise, he probably would spend most of it facedown in the dirt behind Stella while she and Mechael took care of the fighting, he'd just get in the way and distract them. It was a real blow to his pride, but they WERE called supersoldiers for a reason. "If I was gonna hide behind anyone, it'd be the tin man there. Forget stopping bullets, he'd stop a goddamn RPG and walk away whistling."

"Tin man, huh? I'll remember you said that next time I need someone to grease some of the harder to reach spots on this body. You'd hate for your mobile cover to rust up and get frozen in place, wouldn't ya?" Mechael retorted with a leer. "Though I'd like it much more if Stella was doing the greasing, ya know what I mean?"

"I do, and you will not say such things again." Stella came back, her voice unexpectedly cold, wrongfooting both men, who had been enjoying the lighthearted banter. "Stella does not want to touch men other than Lain. Please do not joke about this, I do not find it humorous."

"Um... yeah..." Lain exchanged mystified glances with Mechael. Stella had never minded ribald joking before, but he wasn't going to question her change in tastes. That was one of the privileges of being female, you got to be whimsical with your tolerances for the antics of your male friends and they didn't get to argue with you about it. At least, not if they knew what was good for them. Lain pointed out the location of the large Mag-res return on his map, and Mechael led the way into the jungle once more without another word, careful to keep Lain between himself and the still scowling Stella. For his part, Lain thought about asking Stella again what was bothering her, but after considering her stiff spined walk and the stony expression on her face, he figured discretion was the better part of valor, and silence was the better part of not getting ripped a new asshole by his moody girlfriend. Sexist as it might be, if Lain didn't know it was impossible for Stella, he might have wondered if she was having PMS. She'd open up about it eventually, and in the meanwhile, he'd do his own investigations on the side, and by Hameya, he'd get his answers!

It was a blessedly short hike through the jungle to their newest destination, though it was so well camouflaged by the surrounding vegetation that Lain had to look twice when Mechael stopped before he realized they'd arrived. Whether the camouflage was intentional, or merely a result of the place being overgrown in the years since the Eden Disaster, Lain could not tell, but either way, if you didn't know it was there, it would be damned easy to walk right by it! And considering that "it", was some sort of half buried bunker type complex, the visible parts easily the size of one of the company sized barrack halls back at Gibraltar, that was saying something! The outside of the bunker seemed to be made of some sort of stone, though it didn't look to be made of individual pieces of rock, but rather a cohesive whole, and Lain recognized the telltale smoothness of Nano-manufactured materials.

They slowly circled the bunker, Mechael always leading, his Mauler ready in both hands, until with a upraised hand for silence and stillness, Mechael crept forward alone, taking out his machete once more to carefully probe ahead of him through a tangle of brush and vines, slicing it away in sections until a slight depression was revealed, the shallow slope leading down to a cave like hollow in the side of the bunker, obviously one of the entryways. Amping up his eye's sensitivity to light, Mechael crept forward into the dim space, finding it empty, the ground changing from loose dirt to a cement like mixture after a few feet, though the cement was badly cracked and partially overgrown with grassy weeds. He stood stock still and scanned with his full suite of sensors for almost two minutes, but the reinforced structure of the bunker prevented his sensors from penetrating too much further than his eyes could already see. With a sigh, Mechael sent the provisional all clear, and was joined a few seconds later by Stella and Lain, their helmet and weapon mounted flashlights causing Mechael's eyes to flare before the polarization adjusted.

Whatever this place had once been, it was now clearly abandoned. Mechael inspected the walls near where he surmised the door had once been, but instead of a heavy blast type door that was usually found in bunkers like this, it was more of a porticullis, a gridwork of bars that retracted into the walls and floor, which would have prevented physical access to the bunker, but would have done little to nothing against weapons fire. That made Mechael think that despite the doughty construction, this was no military facility. The further they ventured into the place, the more Mechael became convinced of this observation. Hell, it didn't even look like the place was designed to be occupied by humans, there were no living quarters or sanitary facilities, just more of the porticullis type doorways blocking off large rooms that looked more like storage spaces than anything else. It was only after inspecting a pile of moldering debris in the corner of one such room, and realizing it was some form of synthetic straw-replicant, that Mechael realized what the rooms were. "This was a cage." Mechael announced suddely, causing both Stella and Lain to jerk in surprise.

"What?" Lain asked, staring aroud the bare stone walls, which were pierced in places by metal piping and ducting, the water and air conditioning systems of this place obviously long defunct, the floors breaking apart under the remorseless attack of the weeds, the ceiling beginning to crack from the efforts of vines and more brush taking root upon the roof of the building.

"These large rooms with the gridwork doors." Mechael explained. "This wasn't a military bunker or a warehouse, this place was some sort of farm or zoo, and these rooms are where they kept the animals. The power must have failed or something like that, and all the doors opened, so all the animals got loose."

"I don't think the power failed." Stella commented, brushing away a mass of creeping taproots that were crawling down one wall of the room, revealing a cunningly built vidscreen and wall mounted keypad. A few waves of her hand across the front of the vidscreen cleared away layers of dust, and obviously activated some sort of motion sensor, because the screen hummed to life almost at once, some power source deeper within the structure obviously still operating just fine. The screen dimmed and then brightened again, changing from blackness to reveal its programmed base background, revealing the terminal as a computer rather than a mere vidscreen. All three of them sucked in harsh breaths as they recognized the prominently displayed symbol on the vidscreen, the vivid green field with the golden, winged eye being personally familiar to both Lain and Stella, and drilled deep into Mechael's memory banks as well, though only second hand. It was the symbol of the Brotherhood of Man, the terrorist organization created and led by Noah Borander that had caused the Eden Disaster seven years ago!

"A Brotherhood facility?" Lain wondered, confused as all hell. "What the hell is going on here? Why is there a Brotherhood bunker way out here in the middle of nowhere? I don't recall the Brotherhood ever building any ground facilities, they didn't need them, they had the Great Endeavor!"

"This was built before the Great Endeavor ever landed." Stella said, typing queries into the computer system. Much of it was password protected, and the security systems were far beyond her ability to hack, but some parts were open use, and from them she could pull up basic facts about the bunker. "This is Ark number 653, one of over a thousand similar facilities spread throughout the world, constructed by BoranderCrop subsidaries in the years following the Second Valentine War. If Mecha is right and this place was a zoo or holding pen for animals, I don't think they broke out at all. They were deliberately released after the Green Zone covered this area. It would account for the wide variety and density of animals reported in the area, and for the general resurgance of animal populations across Earth in the wake of the Disaster, despite most of them being near extinction in the wild pre-Disaster."

"Let me see this thing." Mechael said, stepping forward, one of his fingertips folding open to reveal a cluster of data input feeds, from which he selected a match for the input plug below the keyboard. Mechael was trained in basic computer hacking, all the supersoldiers were, but his internal computers carried much more advanced programs than he could ever devise himself. Unfortunately, they too were ineffective against the security coding of the Brotherhood system, much to Mechael's surprise and disgruntlement. It was commonly said that Noah had been a genius among geniuses, but still, for security programs at least seven years out of date to so easily defeat modern milspec hacking software, Mechael was damned impressed. That kid really had been WAY ahead of his time. Mechael jerked his finger away from the port with a frown, his finger recombobulating in seconds.

"Well, if Eric did find this place, he might have had a chance of surviving, especially if he figured out how to work the cage doors." Lain said, trying to be hopeful, though he again knew it was probably just self deception. They had seen no sign of a human presence thus far. However, Lain wasn't of a mind to give up just yet, there was more facility to explore. Venturing deeper into the bunker, they reached a wide open area that had obviously once been some sort of automated veterinary clinic, with a large plexiglass window built into one wall that showed a view of a medium sized cage-enclosure that was probably used to quarantine sick animals from the rest of the population. At one point in time the ceiling of the quarantine room must have collapsed, because the floor of the room, what they could see of it from the door to the vet clinic, was strewn with dirt and rubble, and long snaking vines draped down through the roof in thick tangles. The vet clinic itself looked pretty beat up, obviously wild animals had been rooting around inside at some time.

The real discovery came only a minute or so later, when Stella was rummaging through a tumbled stack of empty boxes that had once held basic medical supplies like gauze and sterile needles. She cried out in shock, and both Lain and Mechael were at her side in an instant, Lain afraid she'd found a body, Mechael afraid she'd punctured her suit somehow. It wasn't precisely known what happened to an Extended infected with Green EDEN, but he was betting it wasn't pretty, the drugs used to turn them into supersoldiers probably wouldn't play well with the nano-bots. Fortunately, neither of their worries proved founded, though Lain was closest. Stella had uncovered a discarded flight suit, in the Solar Knight colors, the durable fabric shredded and torn by the paws and inquisitive jaws of animals, though Lain could not tell if that had happened before or after the flight suit was taken off. The suit was already disintegrating in Stella's arms, the materials degraded after years in New Eden's environment, but enough remained cohesive for Lain to locate the name tags, which very definitely read "Knight-Ensign Eric Kellson".

Lain sagged against the wall, his vision blurring with moisture all over again. Eric had definitely survived the crash, and then found his way to this bunker, where he'd either stripped out of his damaged flight suit, or got eaten out of it, but Lain much preferred to think it was the former. If only they had some other clue as to what had happened next! There didn't appear to be any bones or body parts lying around, but with all the animal activity, there probably wouldn't be. So engrossed were all three of them in the unexpected find, that none noticed the large, hulking shape drop down through the hole in the roof into the quarantine chamber in eerie silence. The first sign that any of them had that they weren't alone was when huge, leathery skinned hands, each nearly the size of Lain's upper chest, descended upon Mechael's shoulders and clamped down tight.

Mechael weighed a good three hundred pounds of mostly synthetic material, but he was still lifted and heaved across the room like a billiard ball, thrown so hard that when he struck the plexiglass of the observation window, he didn't just crack it, he smashed entirely THROUGH it and bounced out of sight into the rubble strewn room beyond, an airborne distance of almost ten meters! Lain and Stella spun, their shouts of alarm and worry dying on their lips as they found themselves looking at Mechael's assailant. Lain had never been the tallest of men, he was used to having to look up at others, and he tried not to have a complex about it. Right now though, he was feeling positively dwarflike, looking up... and up... and up some more, at the creature towering over him and Stella like a mobile hill of ropy muscle! The thing had to be at least nine feet tall, maybe more, and almost as broad across the shoulders! It... he actually, since the leathery, retracted bulge between its legs could mean only one thing... blinked angrily at them as their flashlights blazed into its eyes, making them glow golden as they narrowed dangerously.

A chest rattling rumble echoed forth from the creature's wide mouth, filled with huge peg like teeth that looked like they were used for chewing rocks, along with a large set of what could only be called tusks protruding upwards from the sides of the lower jaw, like the incisor teeth of a hippo. The beast was covered in a shaggy pelt of silvery-green hair, marked along the upper arms, pectorals and shoulders with encrustations of mud or sap, looking almost like a silverback gorilla with moss growing on his skin, but this thing was MUCH bigger than any gorilla Lain had ever seen, and the Orb National Zoo had a giant as their prized alpha male. Ole Tarzan, as the great ape was named, would have been a juvenile delinquent compared to this creature though! The creature's posture was less stooped than that of a gorilla, though its long arms suggested that it could probably move just fine on four limbs as well as two. It was amazing the details you noticed when your brain was being flooded with fear adrenaline!

Lain's attention was drawn away from the creature's body to its arms, which bulged with muscle, the hands ending in blunt claws that looked like they were used for climbing or digging, rather than shredding meat. Perhaps the thing was herbivorous, Lain thought wildly, since Gorilla's tended to prefer a vegetarian diet if he remembered correctly. Of course they COULD eat meat too, he recalled, and even if it didn't want to eat him, it could still kill him, since Gorilla's were highly territorial creatures and not prone to fits of mercy against trespassers. Lain's eyes bulged as he saw the outside of the creature's forearms, which were equipped with knobby ridges of thick bone running from halfway down the forearm to the wrist, where the bones spiked upwards into a jagged peak, basically turning the creature's arms in spiked maces! Probably used for climbing, Lain figured, but equally good for busting heads and bodies into limp piles of meat.

Stella was less caught up in shocked apprasial of the beast, and she dropped Eric's disintegrating flight suit and whipped up her Mauler and pointed it point blank at the creature. Fast as Stella moved, the creature moved faster, one arm lashing out, the forearm bone blades aimed for Stella's head, forcing her to interpose the Mauler in favor of being decapitated. The linear shotgun shattered like it was made of clay instead of machined metals, and the force of the blow hurled Stella backwards, off her feet, into the stacked jumble of empty boxes, which at least broke her fall, though she was buried when they fell over atop her, and pinned until she could recover her dazed senses, leaving Lain alone against the creature. The Cutlass pressed against his back, but judging by the size of the creature, even if he could bring it around before it killed him, even a full auto burst might not kill the creature, which would also end with Lain dying a very early and unpleasant demise.

Before the snarling beast could batter him into gelatin, it was tackled hard from behind, Mechael having recovered from his ignominous toss and leapt back through the hole he'd broken through the observation window. He'd lost his Mauler sometime during that process, but Lain was too close to the monster for him to risk gunfire anyway, too close even for the beam saber to be an option, so Mechael had settled on the most basic option, extending the spikes on his elbows and knees and resolving to wrestle the damn thing to death if need be. Which was a good enough plan in theory, even if the thing had a good three feet in height and about nine hundred pounds of armored bone and muscle on him, since Mechael's artificial thews were much stronger than a flesh and blood man of size could ever hope to be. He could probably bench press this creature!

And it could probably crush him like a beer can, Mechael realized, as the creature shrugged its shoulders and broke his bear hug grip like his arms were made of silly string. A thrusting elbow actually dented his chestplate inwards about two inches, and sent him tripping backwards halfway across the room, a plethora of alarms ringing inside his skull as the structural compression came close to endangering his delicate meat-organs. Mechael bounced back to his feet at once though, determined to draw the creature away from Lain and Stella, so he could risk deploying the beam saber, which would make quick barbecue of this monster! He came charging back with an extended elbow, digging the spike into the creature's left side, about where the kidneys would be on a human. The flesh of the creature was incredibly dense and durable, and the spike sank in less than an inch before Mechael was quite literally swatted away, an open palm slap that sent him sailing across the room, flipped head over heels, to crush a partially destroyed desk. Something in his spine bent, and though emergency nano-repair bots went to work at once, for the next minute or so, he was immoible!

Seeing that Mechael was down, and staying down this time, the fearsome neo-Gorilla turned his attention back to Lain, who was suddenly glad that his underclothes were already soaked with sweat, since it ade it easier to pretend he couldn't feel himself wetting himself. Technically the armor was supposed to have a hookup for liquid waste to prevent that sort of situation, but Lain didn't know how to attach it, and he sure as hell wasn't going to ask for Stella or Mechael's help! He'd planned on figuring it out when they stopped to camp for the night, but now it was a moot point, wasn't it? Lain started to raise his hands in the universal gesture for surrender, before belatedly realizing that it was an animal, and might interpret raised arms as a prelude to attack. Indeed, the creature suddenly bared its teeth at him and lifted its own arms, bellowing out a deep throated howl of challenge that palpitated Lain's heart inside his chest, the volume so loud in the enclosed room that he felt like he might have been partially deafened! His faceplate and chest armor was splattered with strings of drool, and he had a much TOO good of a look down the creature's gullet, which looked more than big enough to accomodate. oh, his entire fucking HEAD, say.

That was when Stella rose from the boxes like a corpse from her grave, wickedly sharp combat knife in one hand, shrieking her own wordless challenge at the neo-Gorilla, and thrust herself protectively between her beloved Lain and the creature threatening him, disregarding any thoughts for her own safety. Seeing Stella stand in front of Lain seemed to confuse the beast, or maybe it was the terrifying expression of determined rage on her face, but whatever it was, the neo-Gorilla took a long step backwards, closing its mouth and narrowing its eyes. Lain knew a golden opportunity when he saw one, and the Cutlass was off his back in a bare second, and he had it aimed at the creature's face the moment after. At this range, even he couldn't miss! Lain's finger was just tightening on the trigger when the Neo-Gorilla suddenly thrust its right arm forward, palm raised with fingers spread, in a warding gesture that looked uncannily like a traffic cop making the "Stop" signal.

_**WAIT!**_ An inhuman voice bellowed, so loud it made Lain's brain hurt as he spasmed in place, and it as only after a second or two of rapid blinking that Lain realized the creature's mouth was still locked closed in a toothy grimace. It had spoken into his mind! And it had used a word, a real human WORD! Lain had already pissed himself, but now the other end of his waste system was starting to feel very uncomfortably loose, because if this thing was TALKING to him, via its mind, then it could only be one thing. A Chimera. No one EVER had a good story to tell about encountering a Chimera. Most people didn't have stories at all, since most people that encountered them were dead shortly afterward. Lain checked to see what Stella was doing, and it was plain from her stance that she hadn't heard the Chimera speak, which was nothing less than expected for an Extended. Mechael was safe as well. Lain on the other hand, was all too vulnerable to all sorts of mind-fucking! _**WAIT.**_ The Chimera commanded him once more, moving its arms with deceptive slowness, and taking another careful stride backwards, away from them.

"I'll wait if you will!" Lain retorted, feeling foolish a second later as he realized that the Chimera couldn't hear him, since his helmet mic was off, and even if it wasn't, chances were slim that it could actually understand human speech. But then he felt even more foolish, when he realized it could just pluck the thoughts straight out of his mind, as soon as he thought of the words, it knew them. He kept the Cutlass trained upon the Chimera, his finger tight on the trigger, but the Chimera made no more threatening moves. Indeed, from the squint of its eyes and the way it was rolling its bullet shaped head back and forth on its shoulders, Lain thought it was studying them intently. The Chimera lifted one hand and reached towards Stella, but a swipe from her blade and Lain's jerking of the Cutlass made the Chimera back off at once.

_**STELLA? LAIN?**_ The Chimera queried, looking at Lain again. For his part, Lain shivered, wondering how the creature could know their names, before remembering the thing was privy to his thoughts, and could probably root up all sorts of information that way. Keying his radio, Lain sent a warning to Stella and Mechael.

"Guys, don't panic, but this thing is a Chimera. Its talking to me right now. I know it sounds strange, but I don't think it wants to fight anymore, so don't make any threatening moves, 'kay?" Lain then turned to look at the Chimera squarely again. "Yes, I am Lain, and she is Stella. The guy across the room is Mechael. We don't want any trouble. We were just about to leave actually. So don't feel like you need to prove anything territorial wise, you are the boss here, we're the people running away with our tails between our legs."

_**ARE YOU SCARED OF ME?**_ The Chimera cocked his head at him, and seemed to be smiling. Though with all those teeth and tusks, it was anything but a friendly looking gesture.

"Fucking terrified, if you must know." Lain admitted freely, his voice shaking almost as much as his knees. "Given what I've seen you do just with your fists, I have every right to be, I think." Hameya, but it felt strange to actualy be no shit conversing with a non-human entity!

"Stella is scared too, but that won't stop her from eviscerating you if you even slightly hurt her Lain!" Stella announced ferociously, brandishing her combat blade with a vicious twirl. "Stella will not forgive you that sin, no matter what sort of creature you are!"

"Speaking of, do... you have a... uh... a name? Do you understand that concept?" Lain asked, trying not to sound condescending. Less than succesfully, judging by the snort the Chimera let out as he spoke.

_**OF COURSE I HAVE A NAME. I UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT JUST AS WELL AS YOU DO. DESPITE APPEARANCES, I'M NOT AN ANIMAL.**_ The Chimera paused and seemed almost bashful for a moment, if a nine foot, 1200 pound neo-Gorilla could seem such. _**MY NAME AMONG MY PEOPLE, THE WENDIGO, IS NOT PRONOUNCABLE WITH THE HUMAN MOUTH AND THROAT, BUT I DO HAVE ANOTHER NAME, ONE I HAVE NOT USED IN FAR TOO LONG A TIME. ONE I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD USE AGAIN. ONE THAT YOU WO...**_

"I don't suppose you could whisper, could you?" Lain protested, his head ringing with the deafening cadence of the Chimera's mental speech, which was shockingly fluent in human-speak. He somehow doubted all Chimera were this fluent in English, but this one was an ape, or ape like, and apes had long shown they were capable of understanding human words, if not of reproducing them themselves. "You're giving me a migraine."

_**I AM WHISPERING.**_ The Wendigo rumbled in its upper throat and chest, probably a version of a laugh or chuckle. _**DO TRY NOT TO INSTANTLY DISBELIEVE ME WHEN I TELL YOU MY NAME THOUGH.**_

"Given that I've lasted this far into the conversation without screaming and soiling myself... any more than I already have that is... I submit that I'm pretty damned open minded when it comes to this psychic shit." Lain replied with a despairing shake of his head.

_**YOU ALWAYS WERE A MOUTHY SON OF A BITCH, LAIN.**_ The Chimera seemed to heave a sigh. _**MY NAME IS ERIC, BUDDY. ITS BEEN A LONG TIME.**_

Lain stared at the Wendigo for almost a full minute, barely aware of Mechael rising somewhat unsteadily to his feet in the background, right formarm port sliding open to reveal the emitter of his beam saber, though he kept the weapon unlit for the time being. He tried to think of a logical reason why the Wendigo would want to pretend to be his friend Eric, and couldn't come up with anything. How did the creature even know that name? Unless it had previously encountered and mindraped Eric, or ate him and absorbed his memories, or something, right?

_**OPEN MIND, YOU BASTARD, OPEN MIND!**_ The Chimera snorted in agitation, interrupting Lain's thoughts. _**I KNOW IT'S FUCKING STRANGE, ALRIGHT? IF I WAS IN YOUR SHOES, I'D BE SKEPTICAL TOO. BUT ITS ME IN HERE. REALLY, IT IS. I GOT, WELL... I GOT ABSORBED INTO THIS GUY A FEW YEARS BACK, AND EVER SINCE THEN I'VE KINDA BEEN STUCK IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT.**_

"You got "absorbed" into the consciousness of a Chimera, but you ended up in control of the body and mind?" Lain replied, his face slack, his weirdness quota rapidly reaching overflow status. "You, a regular guy, ended up..."

_**I WAS AN EDENITE AT THE TIME, LAIN. YOU DON'T HONESTLY THINK I SURVIVED TWO YEARS OUT IN THIS WILDERNESS AS A NATURAL, DO YOU? AND EVEN SO, I GOT LUCKY. I THINK THIS GUY WAS SOMETHING OF A HALF-WIT BEFORE WE MET. LOTS OF IDIOT STRENGTH, LIKE A CERTAIN SHORT ORBITE I KNOW, BUT NOT MUCH COMMON SENSE OR INTELLECTUAL PROCESSING POWER, ALSO LIKE A CERTAIN SHORT ORBITE I KNOW. I'M JUST RIDING HERD, YOU COULD SAY. I POINT OUT THE DOORS, HE DOES THE BASHING.**_

"Okay, that DOES sound like an Eric insult, I gotta give you that much." Lain admitted. Stella started, that being the first time she had heard the name spoken out loud, and she turned to look at him questioningly. "Okay Stella, bear with me here. From what I understand... and this is a tenuous understanding mind... the big super-gorilla in front of us has Eric living inside his skull. Or Eric's personality anyway. I don't know how or why, but I'm starting to think that really is him in there."

"You just accept that he is Eric because he said so?" Stella challenged, her tone indicating that she was impressed with his gullibility.

_**TELL HER ABOUT THAT FRENCH KISS SHE GAVE US AFTER GALILEO. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ACTUALLY HOOKED UP WITH HER, YOU LUCKY BASTARD!**_

"Not nearly as lucky as it seems." Lain muttered in frustration, before relaying the message to Stella, who was not impressed.

"Its a PSYCHIC, Lain, an Active. As a Chimera it can read your mind and your memories like they're written on the wall behind you. That's not proof." Stella told him, pointing her blade at Eric the Wendigo threateningly. "Its probably just trying to lull you into complacancy so that it can..."

"Can kick our butts even worse than he was already doing while we were ready for him?" Lain retorted wryly. "And unless you have some memories involving just you and Eric that I'm not aware of, and probably wouldn't want to be aware of, then I don't see how he can prove himself to you."

"I have no intimate memories of Eric, if that is what you mean." Stella replied, that frosty edge back in her voice. "I would not be unfaithful to you like that. I would not..." Stella trailed off, her eyes filling with tears.

_**YOU MADE HER CRY, DUDE. I SHOULD PUNT YOU OVER THE BUNKER FOR THAT.**_ Eric commented dryly, folding his lengthy arms across his huge barrel chest. _**AND TELL THE METAL ONE, MECHAEL, I THINK YOU CALLED HIM, THAT I KNOW PRETTY DAMN WELL WHAT THAT THING IN HIS ARM DOES, AND THAT HE'D BETTER PUT IT AWAY BEFORE I DECIDE TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM HIM.**_

"That might be hard, since its part of his arm." Lain replied, as he cautiously stepped forward, laying his Cutlass aside so he could enfold the sobbing Stella in his arms, not sure why she was so distressed by her assumption that he thought she had cheated on him, but wanting to comfort her all the same. He hated it when she cried, it made him feel so weak and stupid and helpless.

_**THAT IS HIS PROBLEM, NOT MINE. I WILL DISARM HIM IN THE STRICTEST SENSE UNLESS HE PUTS IT AWAY.**_

Lain paled as he took Eric's meaning, helped along by a vivid mental picture of the act provided by Eric. "Hey Mecha, if you value your arms, and I mean literally, your entire arms, put the saber away. This guy's a... old friend of mine, you might say."

"You're old friends with a ape-Chimera?" Mechael raised an eyebrow in condescending amazement, though his arm port did seal closed, the saber retracted once more. "I think Roanoke might want to know about that, eh? Though maybe we'd better keep it on the downlow... you humans don't do so well with all your limbs removed, unlike me."

_**WENDIGO, NOT APE. YOU'RE MORE LIKE APES THAN I AM.**_ Eric corrected Mechael, though of course only Lain could hear him. _**APE IS A RACIAL SLUR AMONG MY PEOPLE, YOU DROP THAT WORD AMONGST THE TRIBE AND YOU'D BETTER BE READY TO GET YOUR HEAD RIPPED OFF AND USED AS A BUTT PLUG.**_

"It's complicated, okay? Just trust me on this. And lay off the ape comments, its like him calling you "Big Blue", 'kay? Its a definite fightin' word, if you get what I'm saying." Lain turned back to Eric. "Did I hear you right? There's MORE of the Wendigos? A whole goddamn tribe? I thought Chimera's were, like, unique aberrations or whatever?"

_**ABBERATION IS A SAFE ENOUGH WORD TO USE IN THE TRIBE, THEY DON'T HAVE THAT CONCEPT YET, BUT I'D WATCH YOUR TONE WHEN YOU SAY IT. MOST CHIMERA ARE UNIQUE MUTATIONS, THAT IS TRUE. BUT SOME OF US ARE TRUE BREEDING. WENDIGO'S ARE, AS FAR AS I CAN DETERMINE, DESCENDED FROM AFRICAN MOUNTAIN GORILLAS, AND THEY ARE A STABLE, TRUE BREEDING RACE. YOU'LL UNDERSTAND THAT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT EXACT NUMBERS AND SUCH WITH OUTSIDERS, EVEN FRIENDS. YOU'RE STILL HUMAN AFTER ALL, AND STUMPS AT THAT. BUT OUR NUMBERS ARE GROWING STEADILY, OUR YOUNG MATURE QUICKLY, AND OUR LIVES OUR LONG. WE HAVE NO NATURAL PREDATORS WITHIN OUR RANGE, AND WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO CONTEST WITH THE USN OVER ANYTHING. SADLY, I DON'T BELIEVE THEY WILL GIVE US A CHOICE.**_

"Yeah, I kinda doubt that myself." Lain agreed, slowly disengaging himself from Stella. "The mere idea that there is a true breeding race of Chimera would send a few people I know into either fits of homicidal rage, or unbridled avarice. You'd either be hunted down and exterminated, or hauled up to space for experimentations." Lain paused and narrowed his eyes. "You keep saying "us" and "our" and "we", you know that?"

_**SHOULDN'T I? LIKE IT OR NOT, I AM A WENDIGO NOW. UNLESS YOU WANNA GIVE ME YOUR BODY, AND EVEN THEN, I'M NOT SURE I COULD TRANSFER WITHOUT FRYING BOTH OUR BRAINS. I'D PREFER NOT TO RISK IT. I ADMIT, I WAS PRETTY DESPONDENT AT FIRST, BUT IT GROWS ON YOU AFTER A WHILE. I'M IN A UNIQUE POSITION TO DO A LOT OF GOOD FOR MY PEOPLE. THEY ARE SMART, BUT UNLEARNED. OUR CULTURE IS NEWBORN, STILL IN THE STONE AGES, BUT I CAN FIX THAT EASILY ENOUGH. WE COULD BE IN THE BRONZE AGE, EVEN THE IRON AGE, IN A MATTER OF A CENTURY OR TWO, WITH MY GUIDANCE! I AM LITERALLY THE FOUNDER OF A NEW RACE OF INTELLIGENT, PEACEFUL LIFE LAIN. ITS A HUGE RESPONSIBILITY, BUT I AM GLAD TO HAVE IT.**_

"So you're like the chief of the entire tribe or something?" Lain asked, his head pounding with the reverberations of Eric's "whispers". He didn't know how much longer he could keep this up before collapsing, but all the same he didn't want to ever stop either!

_**MORE LIKE A SHAMAN. WENDIGO'S ARE UNIVERSALLY LATENT, THE ACTIVE WAS A FREAK CHANCE, AND BORN HALF WITTED AS I SAID. WHEN I CAME BACK "FIXED" IT WAS TAKEN AS A SIGN OF THE FAVOR OF THE TREE GOD, AND FROM THERE, WELL, I COULD EITHER ROLL WITH IT OR BE EATEN ALIVE AS A SACRIFICE, AND I MADE THE OBVIOUS CHOICE THERE. LIFE IS GOOD. I HAVE SEVERAL BEAUTIFUL MATES AND MANY OFFSPRING. YOU SHOULD SEE THE TRIBE DURING THE RUT SEASON... MAN, WHO NEEDS INTERNET PORN WHEN YOU CAN LIVE IN A THREE MONTH LONG NEAR ORGY?**_

"I really don't wanna think about that, Eric. You're not exactly fitting my current standards of beauty, and while I'm sure the female Wendigo's are really hot to you, I think I might vomit if I were to see you and your girlfriends getting it on." Lain replied with a halfhearted smirk. Goddamn it, but Eric really sounded happy, content even, and Lain actually found himself envying him. Yeah, being turned into a monster was the suck, but coming into a sweet deal as a religious messiah, with lots of hot chicks digging you and the respect of the great and powerful, plus immense psychic power... well, it wasn't so bad a thing. Lots of freedom, lots of sex, lots of fun. Lain was still thinking about that when Eric stiffened, a low growl vibrating through the room as he cocked his head to the side and looked over his shoulder, upslope.

_**DAMN IT. SORRY GUYS, BUT I'M ON CALL, AND SOMETHING IMPORTANT LOOKS TO HAVE JUST COME UP. THE ALPHA NEEDS MY PRESENCE. THE TRIBE IS AGITATED.**_ Eric growled again, obviously picking up on that agitation, hackles rising on his back as his silvery-green hair started to bristle up. _**SORRY THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE MORE TIME TO CATCH UP, I HAD A LOAD OF QUESTIONS I WANTED TO ASK YOU. BUT THIS CAN'T WAIT. IT WOULD BE BEST IF YOU LEFT AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. MANY OF THE YOUNGER MALES LIKE TO FORAGE AND ROUGHHOUSE IN THIS AREA. IF THEY CATCH YOUR SCENT, THEY WILL SWARM YOU IN A HEARTBEAT, AND POUND YOU INTO THE GROUND FOR DARING TO TRESPASS.**_

"Hey, wait..." Lain protested, as Eric turned away and began heading towards the hole in the roof of the bunker, in the quarantine room. "What about your sister? What do you want me to tell her?"

_**DON'T TELL JEAN ANYTHING. IT WOULD JUST BE A WASTE OF TIME. SHE SUFFERED INTENSIVE BRAIN DAMAGE DURING A SECRET USN ASSASSINATION MISSION DIRECTED AGAINST HER BOYFRIEND AND MY FRIEND, MARKOV ASHINO. SHE DOESN'T REMEMBER ME. AND EVEN IF SHE DID, ITS BETTER FOR HER TO REMEMBER ME AS I WAS. TELL HER I'M NOT COMING BACK, EVER. SHE'LL TAKE THE EUPHANISM, AND YOU WON'T HAVE TO LIE.**_ Eric turned and reached out his long arms, gently dropping a couple of fingers from each hand onto Lain and Stella's shoulders. _**TAKE CARE OF STELLA, LAIN. I'M GLAD YOU GOT TOGETHER, SHE DESERVES SOMEONE GOOD LIKE YOU. AND DON'T COME BACK, I CAN'T PROTECT YOU FROM THE TRIBE.**_ And with those words he loped off, hopping through the hole Mechael had created in the glass, ripping out yet more of the plexiglass in the process, before swarming up the vines and through the hole in the roof, and was gone.

After a long minute, Mechael spoke up. "I guess this is one of those things we never talk about again, right? I mean, if word of this got out, we'd ALL be scrap in a heartbeat. And they'd come for your friend and his folks with nets and tranqs and guns and tanks and they wouldn't stop until they were all dead or captured. Kinda sucks when you feel more for the nine foot dragon-apes than you do for the guys who are ostensibly on your own side, huh?"

"It's a fucked up world." Lain agreed, wholeheartedly.

xxxx

**Earlier, further up the mountainside**

For one of the first times in her life, Lilia was begining to seriously question Kunai's judgement. Yeah, she had posed a question or two when he brought Kira in as Executor, but that was just a flutter of doubt. This was full fledged wondering if she should come back with a team of specialists and a straight jacket, not that such a crude restrainment device would contain a man with Kunai's talents, but it was the principle of the thing. On the surface of things, assigning her to be the bearer of the ambassadorial message to the Wendigo tribe was fitting, since she did have the most peaceful experience dealing with various Chimera of all the Praetorians, perhaps of anyone on all of New Eden. However, saddling her with her companion was an act of raving lunacy as far as she was concerned, because he was, as far as she could tell, the exact polar opposite of diplomatic in any way, shape or form! Of course, it wasn't like Kunai had ordered the guy along, that wasn't possible, but he'd mentioned how this alliance could help speed up the end of the war, and from that point on she hadn't been able to step out of his sight for a moment. Not a SINGLE moment, which made her very glad for the waste disposal systems of her armor. Those of Garden City were open about many intimate things, but using the restroom wasn't one of them.

Though she never would have admitted it to anyone, Lilia had done her level best to leave her unwanted assistant behind in her dust on the flight over here, utilizing every maneuver and speed boosting trick she knew to outdistance him, and none of them had worked in the slightest. Of course she could have just turned on her photo-refractor and veered off course for a bit, but that would have been a bit too overt for her sense of propriety. Though now, walking through the jungle for the last leg of the trip, she was really starting to wish she'd cast her sense of propriety to the winds for once. He was walking behind her again, since he knew it bothered her greatly to not be able to see exactly where he was. It was like having a loaded gun pointed at the back of her head at all times. He would constantly vary the distance between them, sometimes dropping back so far he was almost out of sight, other times he practically was breathing down the back of her armor, and the damnable thing was that she could never tell how far away he was unless she turned to look, which she refused to do after the first few times, once she realized that making her paranoid was exactly WHY he was doing it.

On one level, far removed from the part of her that was pissed off and irritable, she was actually kind of thrilled. After all, he was basically playing with her, more or less, even though it was a very creepy game, it was still a game. One more tick mark in the "childlike personality" column. Of course she was compiling data on several different personalities, which he seemed able to swap between on the fly with absolutely no warning. She'd read up on schizophrenia and other mental diseases in the past, as they could be the result of improper usage of Active powers, both by others on you, and you upon yourself, and she'd never seen any mention of such flawless personality transitions. Were it not for her empathic talents, she'd probably never have even discerned that there WERE multiple personalities in that distractingly handsome head of his. It was as Kira said, this man, this Zacharis Frost, really did redefine the term "insane".

The funny thing... though it wasn't actually funny at all... was that one of the few mental disorders that Zacharis did not possess was the one most commonly associated with mass murderers and the criminally insane. He wasn't sociopathic, as in, he DID know the difference between right and wrong, he merely CHOSE to do wrong because he enjoyed it. Whether that made him better or worse than the average sociopath homicidal madman was something she hadn't yet made up her mind on. Worse because he was doing evil things by choice, but better in the sense that it WAS a choice, and choices COULD be changed. It was merely a matter of providing the proper incentive for that change. And that was where she was kind of stuck, because, also much like Kira had told her, Zacharis had no interest in changing his ways. He LIKED being evil and reprehensible. But she had faith that she would find a crack in his facade sooner or later. She just needed time. Time spent alone with him. And she needed to survive that time too, of course.

And the best hope for surviving was not to draw his attention in the wrong way. Lilia was very confident in her ability to defend herself, especially in full armor, but Zach had quite literally mopped the floor with SEVEN Praetorians at the same time, including Alexander, who was easily the strongest Praetorian in terms of pure brawn and brute force and physical toughness. And Zach hadn't even broken a sweat, he'd made it look easy! So that took fighting against him totally off the books. If he came after her, she'd put up the best fight she could, but unless she got really lucky, he was going to destroy her. So that made avoiding a fight with him imperative, but that was much easier said than done. She was slowly feeling out her ability to talk with him in a harmless enough manner, but it really depended a lot on which facet of his personality was in control at any given time. A comment that would have drawn a glare from Zach the Whetstone, the meglomaniacal, cerebral side of him, would get her head ripped off her shoulders by Zach the End of All, the bloodthirsty berserker side of him. Zach the Eyes of the Abyss was the creepy, broody one that was currently playing paranoia with her; and Zach the Dark Soul was the whimsical, chatty, philosophic type that seemed almost normal, except for his morbid and obscene obsessions.

She wasn't sure which splinter Zach was the original version, or if any of them were. For all she knew, there were a lot more personalities in there than she'd yet seen, ones that were only dominate in very specific circumstances, rather than the fluidly changing ballet of the prime four. She was hoping there was at least one more, what she wanted/hoped was the seed personality, the root of all the others, the "normal" person that he had once been, back before he suffered whatever horrors that had caused his mental state to fracture so completely, because that was the personality she wanted to find and bring to the fore, to teach to control the current prime four so that Zach could return to leading a normal, happy, productive life. Or at least stop going around bragging about how he was going to create an endless conflict through which to winnow out the weakness from the human race. Lilia was actually rather fond of the so called "weaknesses" of humanity, flaws were what gave people character, and she found it very hypocritical for a person who was basically made up entirely of such flaws declaring a crusade to forge the "flaws" out of humanity. She forebore pointing that out though, Zach the Whetstone was very sensitive about his pet project.

On top of everything else that made him difficult, including his freakish personal power, his skills as a pilot, his rampant ego and his insanity was the fact that he was an identical twin of Kira! No, actually even better than that, he was an image of Kira in his absolute prime, full of life and vigor, his skin completely flawless, his body slighly more muscular and toned, his teeth so brilliantly white they made the clouds look dull, his eyes so bright and intent that his gaze felt like laser beams whenever he looked at her, his spiky brown hair worn longer and more unkempt than Kira's. That and the golden eyes were the only way to tell them apart during the day, barring psychic senses, assuming no actual interaction took place. At night, the glowing red tinge his eyes took on, which allowed him perfect night vision even in pitch darkness such as inside caves, was a pretty big distinction itself. Privately, almost ashamed nonetheless, Lilia had to admit that Zach was hotter than Kira, in a physical sense. He did more with what he had than Kira ever did, put himself on display, exuded raw animal magnetism that drew the eye, moved like the predator he was, all slow, fluid movement that emphasised his speed and power, etc. All things an eligible single woman was more or less on the lookout for in an exciting, stimulating partner; whether she was intentionally thinking about it or not.

She'd always had a thing for self confident, physically powerful, intellectually capable and good looking men. Well, that was kinda the ideal man no matter what sort of woman you were, but she'd always fallen harder for the "jock" type, even or perhaps especially the ones that were assholes. Not that she sought them out for permanent or even long term temporary relationships, it was just that sort of aggressive, combatative, even egotistical personality that she was drawn to for short periods of time, before it grew to be too much. It was like a campfire, when you were cold it felt good to get right up close to it, but before long, you got too toasty, and you needed to back off and cool down some. Usually it was Alex or one of the other Praetorians that she felt drawn to during those moments when she craved fire, and usually she would have that nice toasty feeling after a few hours or a night, and then she'd be off on her own again, preferring the more quiet, compassionate, "touchy-feely" type of people for constant companionship.

But right now Zach was doing very funny things to her mental state even beyond his paranoia games, and Lilia did not appreciate the hormonal urges. Sadly there wasn't much she could do besides grit her teeth and soldier on, the human body didn't have an off switch for this particular dilemma. If only Kira had been willing... but no, that was over and done with, and while Kira was off having fun moving on or whatever the hell he was doing, here she was, still hot for him, but having to deal with his better looking, morally loose evil twin instead. Great. Just great. And she wasn't about to proposition Zach the way she'd done for Kira, she was fairly sure that no matter which Zach was in control, if she told him that she wanted to have sex with him in order to banish her Kira fantasies, he'd kill her in a moment. Or probably a large handful of moments, since he'd probably torture her, rape her and then slowly kill her. Zach's animosity for Kira was a terrible thing to behold, though it was curiously tempered with a sort of respect unlike anything Zach showed to anyone else. Though that respect had largely become disgust ever since Zach had heard that Kira had become an Executor, which Zach seemed to feel made Kira less than he should have been.

Lilia wondered what Zach would say if he knew that she agreed with him on that particular point. Kira had fallen, and fallen far, and he was only a shade of the man she knew he could be, and had been. She just hoped he realized that descending into the bloodshed was not the way to uphold the ideals his beloved Lacus had cherished during her life, and that he was all too likely making her cry as she looked down upon him from the afterlife. And she hoped he realized it soon, before he slid too far down the slope to ever regain his former pinnacle. Though on the other hand, the moment Kira stopped being "Yamato" and became "Boytoy" again, Zach would try to kill him, and that was a fight she didn't want to see for a LONG time. It was one of Zach's funnier, though oftentimes creepy, habits to assign people derogatory nicknames. Kira had been Boytoy, Alex was Turkey, Lilia herself Mouse, etc. Oddly enough, as derogatory as the nicknames were, Lilia had come to realize that they were in fact terms of endearment, in a way. Not precisely respect, but a sign that Zach valued the person all the same, for the challenge provided in killing them if nothing else. For Zach to call you by your given name was a sign he was either incredibly angry or being dismissive and insulting.

And so, though she still felt that she had absolutely nothing in common with a Mouse, in looks, personality or habits, she'd stopped protesting his usage of the term, was even starting to grow kind of comfortable with it. It helped her gauge his mood. Which, right now, was still playful, his spirits obviously buoyed up by being away from Yggdrasil's presence and the "buzzing" that he'd felt in his mind during his time in Garden City. Lilia wasn't sure exactly what he was talking about, but if she had to guess, she'd have said it was the same sort of influence Yggdrasil used to keep the predators in line in the "human" sections of Garden City, repressing their natural urges and instincts. She'd never heard of it affecting a human before, but then again, Zach wasn't strictly human in a lot of ways. It was, as most things with Zach, a double edged sword. It put him in a much better mood yes, but it also removed the limitation on his bloodthirst that had been the only thing preventing him from killing people instead of merely beating them senseless. And since they were on an official diplomatic mission of high importance as well, Lilia had decided to tone back her efforts at prying into Zach, because if she touched him off now, there would be no one around to save her, or even ever find out what happened to her.

Unfortunately, Zach wasn't going to make things easy for her. Apparently tiring of his paranoia games, he loudly stomped through the underbrush to walk beside her, ignoring the whippy branches and vines he walked through, the welts disappearing from his skin almost as soon as they were inflicted. Lilia recognized a personality switch by now, and from his demeanor, she was guessing Zach the Dark Soul had come to the fore. Glancing aside at him, she tried not to shudder as she saw his smirk, her reaction a mixture of revulsion and desire. He was sinfully pretty, but that smile was a grotesque mockery of anything even slightly pleasant, it was a death's head grin that belonged on the grim reaper himself and no where else! Where Lilia was clad in her full Praetorian armor, including helm and carrying her standard roving arsenal of swords, daggers, throwing weapons and 17mm linear assault rifle, Zach just wore a foreshortened version of the Praetorian garrison uniform someone had provided for him, black trousers and short sleeved undershirt, both garments ragged after walking through the jungle for a half hour.

He was also almost unthinkably lightly armed. Even the most confident Praetorian tended to carry at least some form of firearm when they were out on patrol, much less knowingly headed into a potentially volatile situation, since the plain facts were that compared to most of the animals, a human's strength and endurance was nothing, you needed a gun to make things even slightly fair! Zach had a pair of long combat knives, one slung from either hip, but those were his only concession to personal safety. And Lilia wasn't even sure if that was the reason, he seemed to have just grabbed them as an afterthought. Though she had noted his sneer of disdain as he carefully picked through the selection of spare blades the Praetorians had on hand, testing each and every one for heft, balance and who knew what other criteria. Zach seemed to have a very discerning eye for the qualities of bladed weapons, and most he contemptuously discarded before settling on these two with a sigh that bespoke more tolerance than satisfaction to her ears.

More vines whipped past her head as she shoved her way through thicker sections of undergrowth, and she tried not to wince as she heard the distinct whipcrack slaps of vine meeting flesh beside her, where Zach was getting mercilessly lashed by the vegetation. She glanced aside at him once more, relieved to find that smirk gone, thick lines of red welt appearing on his cheeks and brow, like some sort of tribal tattoo, before fading away to be replaced with creamy perfection once more in a matter of seconds. She still didn't know how he did that, how he healed so incredibly quickly, but she doubted that he would explain if she asked. It had to be intensely uncomfortable though, constantly getting smacked with branches and vines, and it looked like it hurt for that matter! "You should have borrowed a helmet, ya know?" Lilia blurted, before realizing that he didn't like being talked down to.

"Why?" Zach asked, his cheek turning dark red for a moment as a particularly thick branch stub grazed it and almost cut the skin. "I'm enjoying myself here."

"You enjoy getting smacked in the face with vines and whippy branches?" Lilia asked, nonplussed. "Doesn't it hurt?"

"That's a very relative question, Mouse." Zach shrugged and kept easy pace with her, even though it would have been just as easy to fall back a step and walk behind her. Just as easy and far less painful for him. She tried to speed up so she could cut in front of him, to take some of the blows for him, but he lengthened his stride to compensate, and he was definitely the faster walker of the two of them, so she slowed back down to her normal pace. "You could say that yes, it does hurt. But compared to what I consider actual "hurt", no, these don't hurt at all. And even if it were truly agonizing, I wouldn't wear a helmet for even a second."

"Why not?" Lilia asked, trying not to sound too interested. She'd made that mistake before with him, and he'd closed up almost instantly. Fortunately he didn't seem to hold her inquisitiveness against her for long, a few minutes later he was always offering some new tidbit of information. She might almost suspect he was doing it intentionally, though for what reason was incomphrensible to her. But then again, was that so strange since he was insane?

"Why not?" Zach repeated, shaking his head as if in despair. "And I had such high hopes for you too, Mouse. How can it be that it is not obvious to you? I could have sworn I tasted it upon you during our first meeting, regrettably shortened as it was."

"You were about to rape me, physically and psychically, before Kira stopped you." Lilia replied, not bothering to hide her disgust.

"As I said, regrettably shortened as it was." Zach continued on as if she'd just agreed with him, which, in a way, she had. "What does pain mean to you, Mouse?"

"Pain? Its an unpleasant sensation, to be avoided where possible." Lilia responded after a few moments thought. She turned her head and tried not to freeze with panic when she saw the look on his face, something caught between interest and frustration. She wasn't sure what that was all about, but her empathy was telling her that she was walking a very thin line right at the moment, and the worst thing was, she couldn't even tell why! She had no idea what sort of answer Zach was looking for, but it was obvious that she wasn't providing it, and he was starting to get frustrated with her. Too much more and Zach the End of All might come out to play, and after that things would get very interesting. And painful. And short.

"You don't truly believe that, Mouse. Which is why I allow you to continue breathing, despite my disappointment." Zach let the threat roll off his tongue as casually as if he were discussing the current weather. "No, you may THINK you believe that, but I know different. It was only a glimpse that I saw, but it was enough to know how you truly feel about pain. Should I enlighten you, my nervous blue haired Mouse?"

"Knock yourself out." Lilia answered, feeling oddly defensive, though perhaps it was just because he kept bringing up his violation of her memories, which she REALLY hated. "Yggdrasil knows, I've been trying to psychoanalyze you for the past half hour, I'd love to see what you can do in turn."

"Its simple. You feel the same way about it that I do." Zach shrugged as if he were about to reveal the most obvious thing in the world. "You seek it out. You enjoy it. You enjoy suffering. You embrace pain wherever and whenever you can, because it makes you feel alive. When you are in pain you become excited, exultant even. It makes you feel happy, pure, even valued. Pain is the greatest reward you could have. It is the same with me."

"I'm NOT a Masochist!" Lilia said in angry revulsion. "I do NOT get turned on by pain in any way, shape or form!" Certainly she didn't after being kept in a rape dungeon and tortured on a daily basis by those sadistic freaks for more than two years during her most impressionable years of teenagerhood!

"Of course you aren't, perish the thought!" Zach, to her surprise, looked equally revolted at the idea. "In that we are also similar, the idea of being in pain as a sexual pleasure is simply disgusting! To equate pain and orgasm is to soil the perfection that is pain! Pain is purer than that. Pain is life in its most basic element. No, Mouse, you are NOT a Masochist, but you ARE a Sufferer. You seek out situations that cause you pain, because it is while IN pain that you feel truly alive, truly awake and fully in command of your destiny. I don't speak of pain in the physical sense here, pain is far more than just physical hurt, it is that sublime emotion we feel when we are in conflict with that which is reality! To live is to experience pain, to experience pain is to be truly alive. Pain is what seperates my nightmares from my life, it is the holy sacrament by which reality unveils itself to me, and to you, in all its hideous, beautific glory. Hide from pain? You can try, but you are doomed to a miserable, nothing existence in that case Mouse, and you'd be better off put out of your misery right here and now!"

"I still don't think that..."

"Mouse, look at where you are, at what you are DOING right this very instant. You have taken a huge responsibility upon your shoulders, knowing the fate of your world, your friends and allies, could depend in some way upon your success or failure. You venture off into the unknown with a single glance behind you, eager for whatever may lie before you next. You freely consort with a man whom all others fear, whom you fear, whom you constantly wonder if he will decided to snuff out your life in the most deliciously prolonged manner in the next instant. You dance with death himself, and even that isn't enough for you, you strive to UNDERSTAND death in order to create something from which there is only nothing, a process that will almost certainly end up with you dying a horrible demise after a lot of torment. Every moment of your life is filled with the pain that you seek out. The pain of responsibility. The pain of uncertainty. The pain of ambition regardless of the odds." Zach's smirk grew wider. "The pain of controlling your inner urges. The pain of maintaining that which you regard as purity, of striving towards the impossible in the pursuit of your own soul's desires! You exalt in these pains every moment of every day, where others seek to hide from them whenever they can, because it is easier to turn ones face away than look directly into the sun. But you, Mouse, you would stare into the very fires of hell itself, and swim through the Abyss if need be to accomplish what you wish. And thus I name you Sufferer, and happily look upon you."

"Well... thanks... I guess..." Lilia stuttered. "I hadn't really thought about it that way before, but..."

"Don't go thinking this makes us friends though, Mouse." Zach withdrew into himself once more. "Yamato was once a Sufferer too, but he's since fallen from that graceful state, and you yourself balance precariously on the edge of the same precipice. And the moment you do fall... and you will, Mouse, you will... is the moment I wring your slender little neck and tear out your oviaries to wear as earrings. Don't you forget that. Its only a matter of time, time and the right pressures. There is only one way to truly stand securely in the grace of suffering, and that way is closed to you. Because you are sane."

"You're just screwing with me, aren't you?" Lilia asked after a few moments of thought.

"Not in the slightest, Mouse. And if you keep up that blithering attitude, I can assure you, screwing will be the most of your worries, because I WILL fuck you, in every sense of the term, and leave your remains for the animals." Zach paused and flashed his sickly death's head grin once more. "After I gnaw off the choice bits for myself of course."

"You wouldn't really eat human flesh, would you? I mean, unless you had no choice, right?" Lilia answered, seeking to deflect the conversation away from whatever faults Zach perceived her has having.

"Wouldn't I?" Zach fished around in his pocket for a moment, before withdrawing a well preserved little hunk of flesh. It was a bit dried out, but it was still easily recognizable as a human ear, still with small orange topaz earring stud in the lobe. "I took this little memento off of Fiery Zala-Attha... you'd know her as Yamato's sister... with my teeth, and it was a real struggle not swallowing it then and there. This was after I'd broken damn near every bone in her body, fucked her raw in her own bloodstained bed and eaten several of her toes. All with her husband helplessly in my mental grip all of three feet away. Ahh, but that was a glorious experience. I was SOOOO close to converting Fiery Zala-Attha to the ranks of the Sufferers that night. Alas, even when you share enlightenment with people in the most intimate of fashions, they close their minds to your lessons. It's quite frustrating, I'm sure you'll agree."

For her part, Lilia had to avoid vomiting into her helmet as she realized that Zach was being perfectly serious and honest about where he'd gotten that ear, and what he'd been doing at the time. She made a mental note not to try and call him on any further bluffs, he didn't seem to know the meaning of the term. That poor woman, Lilia knew exactly how it felt to be pinned down and ravaged by a man, though she'd never been lucky enough to have it happen in a bed. And from Zach's tone and words, Lilia had no doubt that he'd been far from gentle with her, the exact opposite if anything. And even if he'd been gentle, rape was still rape, and it left scars that often never fully healed. Lilia's sure hadn't. Though maybe that was what Zach was going on about, her painful memories were always driving her onwards to be a better person, she wouldn't be half the woman she was today if it weren't for those years in the dungeon! Strange, she'd always thought she was doing it to run away from or erase those memories, but now she realized she'd in fact been keeping them close, a fire beneath her heels to constantly push her forward. _Huh... he's WAY more perceptive than I thought. That's kinda scary..._

Lilia was about to try for another topic change when her own perceptions began jangling in warning, and she barely even had time to unsling her 17mm rifle before the two of them were surrounded, huge, vastly muscled forms appearing seemingly from nowhere, their fur smeared with mud and twigs for near perfect camouflage, or else leaping down from the lower boughs of the trees above them. There were at least a dozen of the creatures, none less than eight feet tall and about six feet across the shoulders, probably weighing close to a thousand pounds of thick hide, solid bone and tremendous muscle. The Wendigo's... that was what they had to be... stared at them challengingly through slitted silver eyes, jutting tusks gnashing as they lifted their arms in what was unmistakably a threat posture, rotating their forearms so the chisel edged ridges of bone that ran down their forearms were aligned downward like axe blades. One hit from one of those arms would crush a human chest to gory jelly, maybe even through armor! The bone ridges were evolved to puncture Yggdrasilwood after all, for climbing and foraging purposes!

"Mongo wanna bananna?" Zach joked, after the Wendigo's had all assumed their threat postures. It was unlikely the Chimera's understood his words, but the dismissive, challenging tone was impossible to miss. And just as obvious was the fact that the Wendigo's didn't take well to being challenged on their own territory, judging by their snapping jaws and thundering howls as they pounded their arms on the ground and against their chest in a cacophony of belligerence! Lilia blinked in stunned dismay as Zach sauntered forward, until he was practically chest to belly with one of the Wendigo's directly to their front. Zach was not small for a man, but he looked like a twig next to the huge Wendigo, and the Chimera could probably break him like one with just a twist of its wrists! Lilia could not fathom whether it was courage or insanity that propelled Zach onwards, but he wasn't satisfied with just bumping chests with the Chimera.

Quick as lightning, Zach reached up with one hand and seized hold of one of the Wendigo's prominent lower jaw tusks. The Wendigo obviously saw the action coming slightly before it happened, but didn't move his head fast enough to avoid the grab, either just too slow or else not understanding what Zach was doing and so not seeing it as a threat. That estimation changed drastically a moment later, when Frost applied his strength to a twisting torque, and ripped the tusk, root and all, entirely out of the Wendigo's jaws! Dark red blood gouted thickly from the ragged edged wound, the Wendigo clapping belated hands to his brutalized face with a howl of agony. Off balance and stunned by the pain, it was a relatively simple matter for Zach to kick the Wendigo's knee joint, buckling the leg and spilling the Chimera over onto its back with a loud thud. The Wendigo started to flail his way back to his feet, only to freeze when he felt the tip of his own tusk poke him in the soft part of his throat, Zach kneeling by the side of the Wendigo's head with a jagged edged smile on his face and dead eyes.

"Anyone else got a problem with me and the Mouse?" Zach asked quietly, the words themselves unintelligble as ever, but the tone coming through loud and clear. The other Wendigo's shuffled their feet and glanced aside at each other, making gruffling snorts and snuffling grunts back and forth, and Lilia was awestruck to realize that were actually speaking a language, not just making noises. She couldn't understand it of course, but she could recognize the flow of sentences and thought concepts, heard identical words pronounced the same way by all speakers. She'd heard that some Chimera could speak, but she'd never imagined creating their own language! The consensus among the young males seemed to be that nobody else was feeling like getting a tusk ripped out and possibly used to slay them too, several of them clapping their hands to their faces in pantomimes of agony, and shuddering their whole bodies at the thought. The tusks were every male's pride and joy, the bigger and shinier they were, the more status a male would have. To lose one was like losing a testicle, you might still be a male, but you were lessened all the same.

"ARE YOU INSANE?" Lilia all but screamed at Zach, as he got up from where he was kneeling, and walked back over to her with a cocky grin on his face. She saw him about to open his mouth and cut him off. "Yes, you are, I know. BUT REALLY... ARE YOU INSANE? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? THIS IS A DIPLOMATIC MISSION AND YOU ATTACKED AND INJURED ONE OF THE VERY BEINGS WE ARE TRYING TO ALLY WITH!"

"Oh ye of little faith, Mouse." Zach chided her with a shake of his head, his confiscated tusk still held like a dagger in his hand. "You may be the messenger, but I am the message. That little crystal doohicky is just the preamble. That tells them why we're here, what we want. These are not human beings we are dealing with here, Mouse, nor are they cuddly animals descended from herbivorous meat racks like your pal the Forest Prince. These are apex predators, just like me, and we speak a universal language called violence. These kids came charging out of the bushes and made a big scene, expecting us to either run away or drop down into submission. Either one of those things would have destroyed any respect they might have had for us, they would have killed you out of hand and beaten me into unconsciousness trying to kill me. These kids are the bully boys of this block, they didn't come here for a fight, which is why they all backed down when I took down the ringleader. Making a good showing in front of intruders is one thing, loosing your manhood equivalent is quite another."

"But how did you know that the tusks were so important to them? Have you encountered Wendigo's before? How did you know that one was the leader?" Lilia demanded hotly, still sure that they had just trashed any possibility of alliance forever. Zach looked at her speculatively for a moment or two, before shaking his head.

"I forget that you're a girl sometimes, Mouse. Bigger is always better when it comes to men, even if that is just a fale preception. The tusks are polished, even on the ones that are covered in mud, they are obviously well cared for and thus valuable. The ringleader had bigger tusks than any of the others, and he took the center position, the one closest to us and directly barring our path. He was the most visible, the biggest threat, had the place of honor, call it what you will, he was the badass of this group, and I just made him my bitch in front of all his buddies. And I did it easily, quickly, and in a way that was innately horrifying to them. I am now the baddest thing on this block, and now they respect me. Or they'd better, or else I'm gonna expand my tusk collection! Isn't that right, boys?" Zach snarled, casting that last sentence over his shoulder, towards where the young Wendigo's were huddled a few dozen meters away, conversing quietly but urgently, and damn her if Lilia didn't see them shudder and flinch slightly, despite each one of them being two or three times Zach's size.

"You figured that all out in the three or four seconds between when they appeared and when you attacked?" Lilia was aghast, though she couldn't tell whether to be horrified, frightened, or amazed. She was a Praetorian, sure, but to so completely figure out how to manipulate, no, dominate an entirely unknown species of intelligent life so quickly... maybe Zach the Whetstone wasn't quite as meglomaniacal as she'd thought. This guy was a cut above just about everyone. Her included, in many ways.

"Like I said, Mouse, we are of a kind, them and I, mentally if not phsyically. We speak the same language, our syntax being brute force and animal charisma. I just speak louder than they do." Frost shrugged modestly.

"But why didn't you kill him? You had him cold?" Lilia asked, puzzled by that.

"Did you WISH me to kill him, Mouse?" Zach eyed her speculatively. "I can go rectify that mistake if you want. Of course it will provoke a blood feud, which will throw out all fear they might have of me and require them to brutally massacre us to avenge their kin, but I figured you might see that as a suboptimal result. I may be crazy, Mouse, but I'm not suicidal. There's twelve of them, eleven after I take down the boss, and each is big enough to annally rape an armored car, and make it like it too. Give me a proper scythe and I'll murder the lot of them. Lacking that, diplomacy is required. The floor is now yours, Mouse. Do your... whatever it is that you do."

Lilia was still standing there, a bit gape jawed, when the rest of the Wendigo reception committe arrived. These ones were not juveniles, they were full grown bull males in their primes, and each was easily a good foot bigger than the juveniles, all around. Many of them had whirling patterns of yellowish dye painted across their upper chests and shoulders, obviously some form of rank or religious markings, and the one leading them, ten feet tall if an inch, and massing pretty darned close to two tons, had additional marks of red and blue dye on his face. He also had significantly larger tusks than any of the others, so Lilia took that to be sure sign that he was the alpha male of the group, maybe even of the entire tribe. The new arrivals seemed to take in the scene at a glance, Zach impetuously saluting the chief with his trophy tusk, but contrary to her fears, the adult males did not fly into sudden murderous rages, if anything, they felt sort of embarassed to her. Then again, they didn't know how special Zach was, they just saw one of their chief's favored sons in the "post getting ass kicked" stage and Zach, a quarter his size, waving around the tusk to show who did it. She'd be kinda embarassed if she was in their spot too.

Recognizing an opportunity to make a stronger diplomatic impression what she was in the midst of one, Lilia laid aside her rifle and unhelmed herself, marching up to the Chieftan without showing fear. Or showing little enough of it that it would be seen as due respect, rather than weakness. She produced and held forth the EICKO that Kunai had given her for this express purpose, and the Chieftan gently plucked the tiny, to him anyway, crystal wafer from her hand and held it in his palm for several long moments, his eyes closed as he listened to the message contained within. She met his gaze firmly when he once again opened her eyes, and though she kept her mind open, she did not feel any attempts to communicate from him. She tried not to worry about what that meant, before he barked orders at his subordinate males, and held out his arm to her. Lilia realized that he was inviting her to come with him, and she carefully stepped forward and allowed herself to be picked up, looking over her shoulder to make sure Zach was taken care of as well. None of the Wendigos seemed inclined to go near him, much less touch him, but as they started off at a lope, she saw he had absolutely no trouble keeping up, a satisfied look stamped onto his face. She wished she could be so confident about the future...

xxxx

**New Eden, Eastern-Central African, Slopes of Mt. Kilamanjaro, Wendigo Village**

Eric was waiting when the Alpha returned with the Outsiders, humans blessed by the touch of the Tree God. The Wendigo did not like associating with the Outsiders, they were small and puny and far too numerous, but Eric had counseled the Alpha that sooner rather than later they would have no choice, as the Far Outsiders, the USN, were much more numerous and far less friendly. Better to talk and listen now, and decide to combine kin groups while they were still whole and strong, than have to later appeal for food and shelter when they were exhausted from fighting the Far Outsiders, who were too numerous for even the mighty Wendigo to overcome alone, like a tribe's worth of blight swarm hives kicked open all at once. Yes, there would be great feasting for a while, but eventually the poison stings would overwhelm even a Wendigo, and their people would be no more.

The village was all astir with the news of Outsiders, which many of the people had never had cause to see before, and those young and females who were not otherwise occupied with schooling, grooming or the mixing of vegetable dye's and the construction of vine nets for use in gathering fish and trapping dangerous animals, were gathered around the central clearing, where the vegetation had been cleared away to provide a level dirt surface for sunbathing and mating purposes. Eric stood slightly apart from the rest of the tribal group, his golden eyes and the dark purple dye swirls that colored his pectorals and shoulders making him a figure of wonder, reverence and not a little superstition to the rest of his people. His mates were clustered nearby, but gender equality was still a far away concept to the Wendigo's, and he would be a long time in introducing the concept fully to them, and so they kept their distance from him, despite being his private council of advisors, he having selected more for intelligence than pure physical beauty. Anything of import would have to be decided by the males and the Alpha, the females would only be able to weigh in after the fact, with Eric acting as their more or less unofficial voice, a fact which was of no small use during the rutting season.

Which, alas, was still several months away, and probably would have to be delayed this year anyway, fighting for survival of the current generations taking precedence over the production of new generations. Latecoming males who had been off foraging alone pushed through the crowd in the gathering place, the rough shoving a sign of agitation and uncertainty as they shouldered past the equally large but tuskless females, and any male with smaller tusks than themselves. Those with larger, or special status like Eric, they either gently squeezed by, or else took up position behind, having moved as far towards the front of the crowd as they could manage. And then there they were, the Alpha resplendent in his primary colored rank marking, followed up by his honored kin grouping, who wore the yellow marks to show their status, and a few other males that were personal friends of the Alpha, but not part of his kin group and thus lacking the yellow marks.

The Alpha was carrying a human in the crook of his arms, a female with flowing blue hair that was actually quite striking, if Eric could recall his human standards of beauty correctly. It was getting harder and harder to do with each passing season, as he grew more and more adapated to his life and role as a Wendigo, Eric Kellson the man was fading away. More than enough remained though for Eric to provide the best possible service for the tribe at the moment, which would be allying with the emissaries from Garden City, the holy glen of the Tree God itself! But the trick would be in preserving the pride of his people at the same time, since many, the Alpha included, still regarded the Outsiders with disdain and distrust. The easiest way to do it would be to set up a ritualized combat, like the males did during the rut to determine precedence with a coveted female, but no human could stand against a Wendigo in single combat, not without heavy firearms that would render the point moot. Eric was still puzzling over the problem, since diplomatic concepts more involved than "you submit to me, I am stronger" were not well known or recieved amongst his people, when the second Outsider arrived, having run along behind the Alpha's kin group!

Eric's jaw fell open as he found himself looking upon no lesser personage than Kira Yamato himself! The Greatest Mobile Suit Ace of all time! The idol of every Mobile Suit pilot to ever graduate an academy in the last decade or so! Eric had to catch himself from dropping to his knees in front of Kira, an act of submission that, unexplained, would have emasculated him in the eyes of the tribe for the rest of his life. All the same, he could not help but step forward, a breach of protocol, to reach a hand out towards Kira, reaching out with his mind at the same time, composing himself to speak quietly and with utmost respect. And then his mind came into contact with Kira's, and Eric recoiled as if struck an admonishment blow across his face, only his Chimera granted mental strength keeping his mind from shutting down under the press of vile memories and chaotic thoughts that poured forth from Kira when he made psychic contact. No... not Kira at all... and the identify of the man who looked like Kira was something Eric could not accept! IT COULD NOT BE HIM! HE WAS DEAD!

The Alpha let down the blue haired girl, and then stomped over to stand by his advisor, and power behind the throne, Eric, profferring the tiny crystal sliver that was the EICKO. Still reeling and stunned by the identity of the Kira Imposter, Eric almost made the mistake of publicly ignoring the Alpha, which could only have ended with a ritualized combat that Eric might not have survived, but at the last moment, Eric shook himself awake and took the token, closing his eyes as he absorbed the message, listening to both the words and the tone, something the Outsiders could not have counted on. Fortunately for them, or perhaps it was from the influence of the Tree God, the Outsider's message was the same in both tone and words. Eric could work with this message, it was just about perfect. And with the diplomatic niceties taken care of, he could take care of another matter, and satisfy the tribe at the same time!

Eric gruffly explained the concept of the alliance to the Alpha, who was far from stupid himself, and with a little creative word manipulation, Eric soon had his tribal leader wholly behind the idea, eyes shining with thoughts of food tributes and a vastly increased roaming range. He would hammer down the real terms later, upon meeting with this Kunai person, but the basic idea had been accepted. Turning to tower over the blue haired girl, who was obviously the head diplomat of the two emissaries, Eric extended his hand, palm down, in a gesture that was universally understood among the intelligent and pyschic to be an overture for communication. Obligingly, she opened her mind to him, though at this range he could have kicked his way into her thoughts with barely a grunt of effort, such was the disparity between human and Chimera abilities. _**GREETINGS. I AM ERK, SHAMAN OF THE WENDIGO TRIBE.**_ Eric told her, giving her the closest Wendigo pronunciation of his name, not wanting to waste time explaining his condition to her. Besides, she would probably think him more primitive and less intelligent if she thought his name was just a sort of grunt.

_I am Lilia, Emissary and Arboreal Praetorian of Garden City._ The girl replied with a nod of her head. She obviously had no idea about the visual cues used among his people, but he wouldn't hold that against her. Normally bowing the head was a sign of submission, not friendly acknowledgement. _My companion is Za..._

_**I KNOW WHO YOUR COMPANION IS!**_ Eric did not care to keep his volume down that time, and his psychic roar all but sent Lilia to her knees, head ringing and vision blurring as she gagged and retched. _**KNOW THIS, LILIA OF GARDEN CITY...**_ Eric returned his psychic voice to the whisper required not to cause physical pain to an Outsider. _**THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT TO OUR TRIBE A BEING OF PUREST EVIL, A BLOT UPON THE FABRIC OF THE WORLD! YOU COME SPEAKING WORDS OF PEACE, BUT PEACE IS JUST A CONCEPT, AND THAT MAN WITH YOU STANDS FOR NOTHING LESS THAN THE OPPOSITE OF PEACE!**_ Eric realized he was giving away his true nature with his verbosity, but in truth he was too pissed off to care at the moment.

_I know what sort of man he is, Great Erk._ Lilia replied firmly. _But he is still a man, and he has pledged his strength to our cause. Our situation, between you and me, is not so strong that we can afford to turn help away when it is offered, even from someone like him. Perhaps especially from someone like him. After all, for all our desires of peace, is it not war that we currently find ourselves ebroiled in? He is a great warmonger, I know, but it is that sort of man that we need right now._

_**HE HAS OFFERED UPON OUR TRIBE A GREAT INSULT WITH HIS ASSAULT OF THE ALPHA'S FAVORED SON.**_ Eric boomed, which was a stretching of the truth. Yes, it was a major loss of status for the Alpha's son, and to a lesser extent the Alpha himself, but the Alpha had many sons, and the favored status would be conferred upon one of the others soon enough. _**AMONG THE WENDIGO, SUCH INSULTS CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED BY COMBAT. IF YOU WOULD HAVE US TAKE YOUR OFFER OF ALLIANCE SERIOUSLY, WE CANNOT HAVE INSULTS STANDING BETWEEN US. I AM SORRY, BUT THIS IS OUR WAY, THERE IS NO OTHER PATH FORWARD. HE MUST FIGHT OR THERE CAN BE NO ALLIANCE.**_

_I will ask him, Great Erk, and I believe he will gladly accept another chance to prove himself. He enjoys fighting._ Lilia shrugged and turned to Zach, who waved her off before she could say a word.

"Big purple and gold there wants my ass six feet under, I don't need you to translate that for me, its obvious in every muscle on his body. I'm ready when he is." Zach told her, a devilish light in his eyes.

_Great Erk, Zacharis agrees to purge the insult he has offered to the Wendigo Tribe with ritualized combat. He would know the rules and traditions expected of him before you begin._ Lilia told Eric, who did his best to keep his amazement off his face, not that she would be able to read it anyway, most likely. Damn, the girl had some stones, altering what Frost was saying like that! If he found out she was basically making him sound apologetic, he'd rip her in half! Course she couldn't know that he could understand human speech as well as mind-thoughts, so there was that.

_**IT IS ONE ON ONE COMBAT. NO WEAPONS ARE ALLOWED, THOUGH SINCE HE LACKS NATURAL WEAPONS, I WILL ALLOW THE USE OF ONE METAL FANG. WE WILL FIGHT HERE AND NOW. AS SHAMAN, IT IS MY DUTY TO SELECT A CHAMPION, BUT IN THE CASE OF AN INSULT THIS HEINOUS, ON MATTERS OF THIS IMPORT, THERE IS SIMPLY NO OTHER OPTION. I WILL FACE HIM TO ABSOLVE HIM OF HIS GUILT. THE FIGHT IS DECIDED WHEN ONE COMBATANT SUBMITS TO THE OTHER, OR IS UNABLE TO RISE.**_ Eric did not bother to hide his smirk, since he knew Frost would never voluntarily give up a fight, and "unable to rise" in this case would mean ripped in half, pounded into the ground and shat upon. It was the least he could do to avenge Ella's senseless death at Denver! He would need to make apologies to the Outsiders afterward of course, but they were better off without an abomination like Frost on their team anyway. Eric filled in the rest of the tribe on what was being discussed, altering events slightly to be favorable to the Outsiders, saying that the brown furred Outsider was opting for ritual combat with Eric in order to demonstrate respect and mutual joy, the degree of homage to be determined by the duration of the fight. Pleased by this display of respect, the Wendigo's quickly cleared a space in the middle of the gathering place for the combat to take place.

Frost rolled his shoulders loosely, stepping past Lilia, who had an expression of faint misgiving on her face as she explained the rules of the ritual combat to him. He largely tuned her out, whatever goldeneyes had said, from the look on his face and his posture, this was not going to be any sort of exhibition match. This was a grudge fight, a death fight, and goldeneyes obviously had some ideas about who was gonna be doing the dying. Realizing she'd asked him a question, he stopped matching gazes with goldeneyes to arc an eyebrow at her. "I asked if you're sure about this? This is not going to be like the last one. He could really hurt you by accident." Lilia informed him. It took him a second to identify the tone in her voice, and then he burst out laughing. He couldn't help himself. She was WORRIED about him! How precious was that?

"Dear Mouse, rest assured if he hurts me, it won't be an accident." Frost shook his head and let the chuckles die away. "Diplospeak aside, that Wendigo has my number and he's looking to make a few calls. Too bad he doesn't know he's dialing 1-800-ROYAL-BEATDOWN. You say this isn't like the last one? You're right. I'm going to enjoy this one SOOO much more." Frost unhooked one of his combat knives and tossed it aside, before handling his trophy tusk off to Lilia. "Don't drop that or give it away or I'll have to tear out another one." Frost instructed her. And then, before she could react or stop him, he darted his head forward and kissed her, even forebearing to bite her lips open, he was in such a good mood. "And now I'm not only good, I'm lucky too." Frost informed her jovially, before stepping forward into the ring, one hand reaching towards the hilt of his remaining knife.

Eric didn't give him a moment to draw it though, he rushed forward as soon as Frost entered the ring, and swung a mighty forehand blow with his right arm, leading with the bone ridge along the forearm. Frost ducked under the blow with ease, but ran into the sucker-kick that Eric had mixed in behind it, and though the blow only glancingly connected, Frost was stood up straight and punted several feet backwards, his shirt ripped, the flesh beneath it torn open raggedly along his stomach. There was curiously little bleeding, but the Wendigo's roared in approval all the same, at Eric for drawing first blood, and at Frost for staying upright past the first blow. Eric watched as Frost inspected the damage, and then drew his knife. He flourished it at Eric... and then tossed it away behind him, the obviously insulting gesture silencing the roaring crowd of Chimera's.

_**YOU ASKED FOR IT...**_ Eric bellowed, as he charged forward, arms spread to prevent Frost from dodging away. Silly him, he'd forgotten what Frost was like. Frost neither retreated nor dodged, instead, he hurled himself headlong back at Eric, drawing one clawed hand back behind him, he swung a roundhouse blow that ended up with his clawed fingers digging into Eric's lower abdomen, spearing through the thick hide and into the thicker muscle beneath, dark rivulets of blood streaming down Eric's belly, drawing gasps and hoots of dismay from his fellow Wendigos. Hoots and gasps that changed to fearsome bellows of pride and joy when Eric ignored the pain and swung his left forearm around, striking Frost in the side just below the armpit, and swatting him off his feet and flying through the air like a ball from a bat. There was a satisfying explosion of dark blood, almost the shade of Eric's own, from Frost's torso as the bone ridges dug in deep, but in truth Eric was stunned by the resilence of Frost, since his ribcage hadn't collapsed, his ribs hadn't even cracked under the blow!

Lilia started to cheer, despite herself, when she saw Zach land his claw-punch against Erk's lower torso, but then she was gasping in horrow when Erk ignored the blow and slammed his forearm into ach's midriff, causing blood to gout for more than a meter and hurling Zach away, his body limp like a noodle as he hit the dirt and rolled bonelessly, his ribcage and spine surely sundered by that blow, which had been far from ritualized or respectful! Lilia realized that Zach had been right, the big Active Wendigo WAS trying to kill him, had set up the fight for that whole purpose! Lilia was just about to step forward, her eyes blazing with anger and worry, when Zach did the impossible, and stood up. No, more than that, he bounced right back to his feet with that cocky, delighted grin on his face, like he was just fine and hadn't been basically crushed a second ago! His side was soaked in blood, but he wasn't having any trouble breathing or standing, somehow!

"I'll take another one of those, please. I almost felt awake there for a moment, goldeneyes." Frost commented nastily. He lifted his other arm mockingly. "I've got an itch on this side too, if you'd be so kind?" Frost basked in the incredulous silence from the Wendigo's, none of whom had expected to see him rise, ever again, after taking that blow. Little did they know of his nearly unbreakable QC infused skeleton, or the blood clotting and flesh knitting nanomachines that suffused his body and made his strength five times what he'd enjoyed in his original body. This wasn't nearly as uneven a fight as it looked, the dark blood staining his fingertips and oozing down across his palm was proof of that. Frost saw the Mouse staring at him, her expression caught between anger, shock and amazement, and he turned his arm lift into a friendly wave, knowing full well what was coming.

When the opportunistic blow landed, it felt like he'd thrown himself off a six storey building, just in rerverse, but Frost sublimated in the pain, flipping in midair to regain his feet and come charging back at goldeneyes, his clawed hands raking bloody runnels in the meat of the Wendigo's side and back, drawing a grunt of discomfort from the bastard, before a thrusting elbow caught the side of Frost's head, splitting his scalp and tearing open his cheek against his teeth, knocking him flat on the ground. His vision covered with quickly drawing blood, Frost raked a hand across his eyes to clear them, but it was too late, the Wendigo was upon him, and all the breath rushed from his body when it double forearm slammed him, indenting his body almost four inches into the hard packed dirt, blood fountaining from his lips, aspirated from his half smushed lungs. Internal nanomachines took over the chore of oxygenating his blood while his lungs healed back to functionality, but that wouldn't be any time in the next few hours. Frost staggered to his feet, half of his ribcage visible to the stunned and even somewhat terrified audience, who saw only the unnatural in this Outsider's stamina against attacks that would have downed any of them for hours!

"'S that all you got, goldeneyes? You're pathetic..." Frost spat, and most of it was spit too. Spit and blood that wasn't drying fast enough inside his mouth and throat. The next blow took him in the head, and Frost found himself down on the ground once more. Truth be told he was starting to get that feeling again, the same one that he'd felt against the former Boytoy when they'd first had their reunion. This Wendigo creature was, much as he HATED to admit it, out of his league in pure hand to hand combat. He shouldn't have tossed away that knife, inferior in quality though it was. But too late now, goldeneyes would never let him get near it, not if he had even an iota of tactical intelligence. Frost felt himself lifted up into the air by the Wendigo's meaty fists, and he did his best to kick and struggle, but so much of his muscles were inert in regeneration mode that he could barely even twitch. This sucked. It was no fun if he couldn't make the other guy cry out in pain too. At this point in time, the worst he could do was hope the Wendigo sprained his wrist or threw out his back beating on him. Strange as that might sound, Frost had seen similar things happen before, a fighter forced to give up because he'd worked so hard at beating up his slower opponent that he'd had a heart attack and was forced to withdraw from the match.

Frost's gaze met the panicked eyes of the Mouse, so like Pink's that he was lost in a momentary fantasy and was actually smiling at her when he was body slammed down over Eric's knee. His spine stubbornly refused to break, but several internal organs ruptured, and the nanomachines were fighting a losing battle to fix him up before he got broken worse. "Wuss..." Frost commented in a gargle, still bent over Eric's knees. "My little brother can hit harder than you, and he's a red headed dwarf!" His taunting seemed to do little to improve goldeneye's mood, and Frost lost track of the number of times he was body slammed, either into knees or the ground, in the next few minutes. He finally knew how it felt to be the ball part of a wrecking ball, one more experience chalked off the list. He was actually disappointed, because his nerves started to shut down and blocked out the blessed pain, pulling him inexorably towards that most unfun of states, sleep! Frost stared blearily upwards and saw the Wendigo's foot eclipse the sky. He grinned. He should still be able to feel this one at least!

_THAT'S ENOUGH!_ Lilia shouted, her eyes ablaze with fury as she stormed into the combat ring, heedless of the fact that she could very easily have been struck by Eric, were he not too surprised by her actions to do more than stand there, balanced on one leg, prepared to curb stomp Frost's face a foot into the dirt. _THE INSULT HAS BEEN ABSOLVED, HAS IT NOT? WHAT MAN COULD POSSIBLY SHOW MORE RESPECT THAN HE HAS? IF THIS GOES ON ANY MORE, I WILL TAKE IT AS AN INSULT TO US OF GARDEN CITY AND WE WILL DEMAND SATISFACTION UNDER OUR RITUAL COMBAT RULES, WHICH I CAN PROMISE YOU WILL NOT BE TO YOUR LIKING!_

"Damn... it... Mouse..." Frost grumbled at her. "I'm having... a blast... why you... gotta ruin things..."

"Shut UP, Zach! Just shut UP! You're DYING! Literally DYING! I can SEE you dying, so don't try to decieve me! By all laws of human anatomy I know, you should have been dead four minutes ago! You've proved your point and so has he! What kinda whetstone are you if you allow yourself to be broken here and now, huh? So just shut UP and do what I say!" Lilia yelled at him, tears pouring down her cheeks as she saw the ruin that Erk had made of Zach's body. By the Tree, how COULD he be alive, after losing that much blood? For that matter, now that she was closer, Lilia could definitely see that Zach wasn't breathing, his chest still and inert. That fact didn't seem to overly annoy or inconvenience him though, as he struggled up to a sitting position, as Erk stepped backward, radiating shock and even a bit of fright into the psychic plane, at seeing Zach move even after all that he'd done to the man!

"Don't move, Zach! Just stay RIGHT THERE and I'll find some way to bandage you, okay? By the Tree, look at you... there's more of you on the dirt than there is in your body!" Lilia knelt down beside him, still sobbing with mingled disbelief, relief and anger at his obstinancy.

"I'll be fine." Zach replied with a shrug. "The bleeding will stop itself. This time tomorrow, I'll barely even have scars. That's part of the curse of this damned Boytoy body of mine. Mr. Machine really screwed me over with this one. Cursed to look like the Boytoy, and a healthy, fresh faced Boytoy, for the rest of eternity. I swear, when I get my hands on him, he'll beg me to die as clean as his uncle did!" He looked up at her, at her weepy, Pink like eyes, and sighed. Quicker than she could react, even in his current state, he reached up and grabbed her round the neck, making her eyes bulge in panick as her memories slammed to the fore. Frost smiled and pulled her down atop him, pressing his bloody forehead against her scalp and plunging inwards into her memories. "Sweet dreams, Mouse. So very sweet and delectable..." Frost whispered into her ear, as consciousness finally slipped away from him. "... don't call me Zach..."

xxxx


	35. Depths of Terror

Author Note: As a side note, Valley of Giants is the longest non-data chapter not just in RW, but in all of TGA, edging out the OVA chapter of ED by a few hundred words. Normally I try and contain my chapters to between 10-20k words, but that chapter really had ahold of me, it felt like about half as long when I was actually writing it. But yeah, think of it this way... you just read a chapter that's longer than 4 of the seven story category lengths of this site. Anyway, looks like mixed opinions on the Wendigo's so far, though an overall positive on Eric's situation. As I've assured Atrum, I haven't forgotten that Eric used to be a hotshot Mobile Suit pilot who stood against both Yzak and Cagalli in a half destroyed Strike Crusader back in CC, and that sometime in the second half of the story, be on the lookout for something called "Ymir", with Erk the Wendigo at the helm. Ah, also, I'm searching for a good name for a very tragic event set to occur on Jan 1st, C.E. 86. Like Purgatory Day in May for Orb, the Night That Was Day for North America's east coast, or the Bloody Valentine tragedy from canon. Ears are open for suggestions

VoG was also the first real Lilia-Frost "date" chapter, in the same vein as Noah's kidnapping of Meyrin back in ED. I put up posts on the inspirations of Noah and Lilia on the forums, plus another post of the future of the series as done with the children of the current heroes (and Villians, Arcadian is going to be so awesome...), but I'll say this again here... in no way, shape or form is LF the same as MN, save for very basic themes of bad guy and good girl. Or at least I don't intend for it to be, who knows how things will actually work out, right? Ah yes, and for all those who think Frost has become lessened by his defeat, I'd like for you to remember something. We still haven't seen Frost in Seed mode yet, much less Ascended Seed mode (the Tree, though he doesn't know how to use that one, its not something you can do just by wanting to, certain conditions must be met that he has a hard time with). He's not used to relying on it, unlike most everyone else. So the black Seed remains unbroken, as yet.

And now, for another highly anticipated chapter (though from what I understand, EVERY chapter is highly anticipated, which really puts a blush on my cheeks) of the Reclamation War. Prepare to dive into the Depths of Terror!

xxxx

**New Eden, Southern Pacific Ocean, 500 miles south of Orb, Experimental Deep Sea City **_**Trieste Town**_**, December 1st, Early Morning**

"This is Trieste Town Upper Harbor Control, ONS _Endymion_, we welcome you and the rest of Task Force Red Dawn. The harbor gate is opening now, please follow guidance beacon Omega Charlie Niner, tune your navigational systems to channel twelve. Thank you for your service, may Hameya protect you all." The voice of the harbormaster clicked off, the comm channel filling with the pulsating harominc of the guidance beacon for a moment before Murrue turn the commscreen off. She sat back in the extremely comfortable and well padded Captain's Chair, place centrally in the _Endymion_'s bridge, which itself was actually placed close to the heart of the ship, tending toward the rear. Both chair and bridge placement were the result of design improvements suggested by none other than Murrue herself, results of having spent far too much time in stiff backed metal chairs that were costing her thousands of dollars at chiropractors to offset, and having nearly gotten blown to hell by a close range Mobile Suit targeting the _Archangel'_s exposed bridge one too many times for her comfort.

The _Endymion_ was a radical new design of ship, as revolutionary as the _Archangel _was back in the day, its shape having more in common with some of the gigantic sea dwelling manta-rays that sometimes swam through Orb's waters, meaning the ship was relatively short in terms of length, only 75 meters, but very broad, at close to 350 meters from wingtip to wingtip, like the "flying wing" stealth bombers of the late 21st century. Its external surfaces were very rounded and smooth, the ship looking like a teardrop shape in cross section, with the broad bulging part being the front. It was definitely a far cry from the blocky, geometric elongated cross of the Myrmidon heavy cruisers or the elongated pyramid shape of the Incarnate Dreadnaughts of the SPF. For that matter, it looked nothing like the newer regular forces warships, the Defender heavy destroyers or the _Dawnblade_ battlecruiser, both of which designs strongly emulated the style of Orb's terrestrial naval vessels, though both new classes of ships could be used either as surface ships or space ships, much like the _Endymion _itself could function equally fine hovering over land, sailing on or under water, or flying through space. It was also one of the few ships of any class that could achieve orbit without recourse to extra boosters.

Whereas the _Archangel_ had been designated a Mobile Assault Carrier, combining the roles of battleship and aircraft carrier, the _Endymion_ was more a cross between an aircraft carrier and a counter-intelligence warship, focusing more on speed and stealth capabilities, as well as the Mobile Suits carried on board, rather than having the Archangel's plethora of heavy weapon systems. Which was not to say that the _Endymion _was unarmed, far from it, the ship mounted a pair of 50cm Rapidfire FRALA cannons mounted on pivots on the front-center part of the ship; a full complement of 10 57mm Valkyros beam CIWS guns, 6 mounted dorsally and 4 ventrally; 12 eight tube VTP missile launchers, mounted six per wing and finally a single 200cm Earthshaker Magnus class artillery cannon mounted centerline along the dorsal surface, all such weapon mounts being fully retractable into the interior of the ship for added speed and atmospheric entry/exit operations.

The hull of the _Endymion_ was made from Heat Absorbing Conducive type material, the same as armored the Simurgh, making the ship immune to all but excessively repeated hits from beam weaponry and allowing it to maneuver around during atmospheric entries or exits without fear of causing damage to the crew or ship through friction heat. The ship was equipped with Mirage Colloid cloaking fields, and spent most of its time with them up, even surrounded by the other ships of TF Red Dawn. A series Red EDEN vats and nanoemitters provided on the spot manufacturing and repair capabilities in the case of battle damage. A different series of nanites could be released to surround the ship in a "Diamond Dust" field, which greatly reduced the efficieny of light waves traveling through it, sharply attenuating the power of FRALA beams both incoming and outgoing. Finally the ship could generate a Positron Shield blister around itself, covering slightly less than ninety five percent of the ship's surface area. The addition of the "Hameya's Cunning" Magnetic Wrapper System to both the Earthshaker and missile tubes allowed them to fire outward through the ship's own Positron shields even while they were raised.

In short the _Endymion_ was faster and more versatile than the _Archangel_ class ships, but less heavily armed, though it could still reliably punch above its weight class due to technological advantages and it was damned hard to knock out of the fight. Unfortunately it was also a lot more expensive to produce and took a lot more time to build, which was why Orb was keeping the Archangel class of ships around, the _Gabrial_ and the _Raphael_ remaining in service even though they were relatively outdated, filling the role of pocket battleships and fleet flagships for Orb's space fleet and home defense fleet. The _Endymion_ also carried fewer Mobile Suits than its predecessors, the _Endymion _had hanger space for up to five Mobile Suits or Gundams, in five seperate maintenance bays that doubled as vertical launch systems, like those used by ZAFT's submarine carriers, meaning all five could be deployed at once. And currently, only three of those five slots were filled, with the Simurgh, Balmung and Dreadnaught. A fourth bay housed two of the three sections of the Firebird combination Mobile Armor piloted by Mu, and the fifth was empty, awaiting the deployment of the Amaterasu to the front lines, once a reliable pilot was found.

Morganroete had kept with the idea of largely automating the ship, which had come in handy more times that Murrue liked to remember, where she and a bare handful of friends and subordinates had managed to fight entire campaigns with themselves as the only operators of the vessel. The_ Endymion_ only required a bridge crew of four, the Captain, the helmsperson, the CIC and the weapons officer, and even then most tasks were handled by LEXI, who had a quantum node link to the ship, practically like a small mainframe the ship carried with it at all times. Another twenty roles throughout the entire ship were filled by people, again mostly as redundancy, and that was it for the crew. Even with multiple shifts worth of crew, that was less than one hundred actual ship's personnel. With less crew detail needed for ship operations, that left more slots to fill up for maintenance personnel and auxiliary forces, meaning each Mobile Suit bay had a full complement of technicians, scientists and mechanics to tend to the sole needs of that bay's occupant, and there was even room left over for a full platoon sized detachment of Stormhounds, for shipboard security and special infantry operations, their Hellhound PUMA's boxed for travel, secured in the ship's storerooms. The Colonel's Jones were assigned to command of the Stormhound detachment, and having had her ship and her life personally saved by them on at least one prior occassion, Murrue was definitely glad to have them aboard.

The _Endymion_ was designed to be operated solo, away from any sort of backup or allies, for extended campaigns of front line combat, but for the meanwhile they were traveling in convoy with the ships of Task Force Red Dawn, assigned to the African Theatre by USN high command in support of the upcoming Operation Royalty, the assault on Victoria Spaceport, or its remains and the Edenite City/Military Base built there now. TF Red Dawn consisted of the _Dawnblade_, Orb's largest capital warship, plus a core escort group of three Defender class heavy destroyers, all of which could leave the sea behind for low level hover flight over land, much like the Archangel's, though only the _Endymion_ could actually fly at high altitudes. Around this core were four Aegis trimaran cruisers and ten trimaran frigates, plus a single Takigmazuchi class Mobile Suit carrier, The _Uzumi Nara-Attha_. Each Defender carried three M-7 Dawndrakes, the _Dawnblade_ had ten more M-7's, and the _Uzumi_ had thirty more M-7s. TF Red Dawn represented almost fifty percent of Orb's military strength, perhaps more if you put extra weight on the capabilities of the Gundams.

Instead of going north and passing through the Gulf of Carpentaria and past Carpentaria base, the usual route for ships going from Orb to the Indian Ocean and eventually Madagascar, which was where the rendevous point was, Chief Representative Kurenai and the military HQ had decided to send their ships along the southerly route, skirting Australia's southern coast, and passing by Orb's most distant terrestrial territory, the experimental deep ocean settlement of Trieste Town_, _the only settlement of Earthlings outside of Orb's Glasshouse. The reasoning was that the Eddies would most likely be watching Carpentaria and its surroundings for just this sort of convoy, and would thus be forewarned about the military buildup ahead of time. Also, the operators of Trieste Town had been reporting some strange happenings in their immediate area in the past few weeks, and since the project was a multibillion dollar investment near and dear to Jiro's heart, no amount of security was too much for his eyes, so he wanted the Task Force to check things out.

Murrue idly watched as the _Endymion_ smoothly decelerated as it neared the wavebreaking wall that surrounded the harbor of Trieste Town Upper, the surface component of the actual city, which was located almost 1000 meters below the surface, atop a projecting seamount that stood up from the depths of the surrounding ocean like a single pointer finger, so deep that it could only be reached via the elevators in the harbor or by specially designed submersibles. It was technically posited that the _Endymion_ could survive the descent and actually dock with the city proper, but Murrue was in no hurry to test that particular theory, since the consequences of it being wrong were crushing, to say the least. TTU, as it was called in favor of the military's propensity for abbreviation, was about a kilometer across, most of it open water, a man made lagoon in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by floating walls that extended thirty meters below the surface, and about twenty above it, providing protection against even the heaviest of storm tossed seas, massive retractable sea gates providing access for even the largest of supply and construction ships, or in today's case, the _Endymion._ The rest of TF Red Dawn would weigh anchor in the lee of the harbor, but would not actually enter, as they weren't planning on staying long enough for it to matter.

Sensor domes and communications antennas dotted the rim of TTU's wall, along with occasional Valkyros emplacements that had been installed just after war was first declared, though TTU was so isolated and hard to get to, nobody really considered it in any danger. The harbor proper was enclosed in a Glasshouse Em field, which the _Endymion_ was even now passing through, cleaning off any Green EDEN that might be clinging to the ship's hull. The field was actually spherical in shape, covering down to a depth of fifty meters below the surface and roughly fifty meters above it as well, a shimmery orange tinted dome of translucent energy projected from the top of the central docking station. Gantries mounting cranes criss-crossed the harbor, radiating like spokes from the central station, connecting it with a half dozen auxiliary docking stations, called ADS's, spread throughout the harbor. It was between ADS 3 and 4 that the _Endymion_ came to anchor, its wide wings just barely touching the fenders of the ADS's cargo/personnel transport platforms. Each ADS was connected to the CDS not only by the crane gantries, but by personnel walkways broad enough for small shuttle like people moving craft. However, each ADS also had an elevator connecting to the town below, so there was no real need to travel to the CDS unless you needed to speak with the harbormaster.

Which was exactly what Murrue needed to do, and so as soon as she was comfortable with how the crew was handling docking procedures, which didn't take long at all, considering they were the best crew in all of Orb... though that fact was often a matter of friendly contestation from the crew of the _Dawnblade_... Murrue headed to her stateroom to collect her cap and jacket, the outside temperature being quite cool despite being in the middle of summer. She was pleasantly surprised to find Mu just leaving their shared room, already dressed in cap and jacket himself, with hers in his hands, and she sneaked a quick kiss when she was sure there were no crew around to see. Not that the crew cared one way or the other, they were far from the only couple on the ship, official or unofficial, but Murrue found it hard to let go of the code of discipline she'd first been taught, in the Atlantic Federation Armed Forces, which strongly disapproved private relationships between members of the same command, especially between Captain and subordinates.

The rest of the leadership delegation was waiting for them on the port side disembarkation hatchway, and Murrue found herself smiling as she greeted her longtime friends with a casual wave of her hand to brush off the salutes they offered her. It flattered her that they were willing to observe such military minutae, considering that of the five of them there, she could only really claim true authority over Dearka and Miriallia. Athrun, both by dint of his ambassadorial status and by being a member of the Royal family, was quite out her jurisdiction to boss around, indeed, he could actually boss HER around, though he would need serious provocation to ever go that far. On the other hand, Katie and Yzak were technically part of ZAFT still, though as a recognized FAITH member, Yzak was pretty much his own boss when it came to military decisions, that being one provision of his contract with ZAFT and Orb. He didn't want to be pinned down with obligation to one side or the other if it ever came down to a conflict between the nation that was his home, and the nation that was the home of nearly everyone he respected and cared for, he would make up his own mind about who was in the right if things ever came to that. All the same, they deferred to her since she was their friend, and also captain of the ship.

Murrue could not help but wince a little when she considered the three missing slots from what otherwise would have been a grand old reunion of the original leadership of the Three Ships Alliance that had helped end the First and Second Valentine Wars. Lacus was dead and gone, that raw, achy sensation of loss would be a long time fading from everyone. Of more immediate concern and aunguish was the absence of Cagalli, not just because that meant they were down one full Gundam, but because of the fire and spirit her presence always added to any ship crewed by Orb. Such was the adoration for their longstanding Queen that it seemed like the forces of Orb would perform superhuman feats in order to protect or impress her, and though they would of course still do their duty with pride and commitment anyway, there was a certain... lack because of her absence. As one of the few people who knew the truth of Cagalli's condition, Murrue couldn't blame her friend for not being there, but all the same, she was sorely missed by all.

And then there was Kira to consider. Murrue wasn't sure what to think of there. Yes, Kira had been exonerated of the blame of committing those heinous crimes against his family and friends, now that the truth about Zacharis Frost's rebirth had been discovered by Yzak, but there was still the sneak attack upon Orb to consider, which had badly damaged Morganroete and killed hundreds of innocent civilians as well as Morganroete personnel, including Erica Simmons, one of Murrue's best friends, and her son Ryuta, who had been a favorite "big brother" figure of Lewis. During that attack Kira had either been kidnapped or "rescued" from the mental institution that he'd been remanded to by Cagalli's order, and he had participated in a dangerous chase through the streets of Nara-Attha City that had resulted in injuries for several police members and plenty of collateral damage to the city itself. He'd then disappeared, still in the company of the Edenites, and there had been no apparent attempts at communication from him since.

And then, all but out of the blue, they had recieved a USN military intelligence report stating that Kira Yamato had been sighted in Japan during the early part of the past week, piloting an unknown new Gundam strongly based off the prototype data stolen from Morganroete during the sneak attack. A man claiming to be "Executor Kira Yamato" had ambushed and destroyed a USN pacification force ordered to stamp out a guerilla base of Edenites in the Japanese mountains, causing enormous casualties in a startlingly brief time using the power of his Gundam. Over two thousand, five hundred men and women had lost their lives in a matter of minutes, many without even getting a shot off at the Gundam, and there were only ten reported survivors of the entire combined arms regiment sized force! Even the infantry forces had been mercilessly slaughtered by the Edenite Gundam, soldiers forced to bail out of destroyed APC's and IFV's gunned down without a prayer of survival by the Gundam. Which didn't sound very much at all like Kira to Murrue, and even the accompanying video file of "Kira" making threats against the USN forces failed to convinced her.

After all, hadn't they just dealt with someone who looked exactly like Kira going around committing very un-Kira like actions in a bid to discredit Kira and agonize themselves? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and the shame was on me. Murrue refused to believe that Kira could have massacred so many basically helpless people, for all that they had been soldiers on a military operation. It had to have been Frost, up to his mind games once again. Though that didn't explain why the Gundam in question was entirely new and did not match up against the Gundam that Yzak had first encountered Frost with, in any way, shape or form. But at this point in time, Murrue just didn't have enough information to make a good call on the matter, and though she had failed Kira once with her lack of faith... they all had, much to their everlasting shame... she wasn't about to make that mistake again until she had absolutely no other choice.

Which was basically the consensus amongst those in the know, which were currently just the people right here and the commander of the _Dawnblade_, as well as officials back in Orb. Maybe Kira had gone crazy for real this time, but no one was going to automatically assume that, even if there was no evidence proving his innocence as yet. He deserved much better than that sort of assumption from them. Of course it wasn't going to be easy, or even possible, to convince the rest of the USN leadership of their convictions or suspicions, since the upper echelons of the USN were in an uproar over the idea that Kira Yamato had turned traitor and was acting against the interests of the people he had defended for so long. Durandel's propoganda machine was already busy churning out a damning indictment of Kira for his actions, all too eager to trample on the good name of a man who had long been a thorn in Durandal's side. The fact that Kira was an Ultimate Coordinator too would not color him in a good light, even though that had been a semi-publicly known fact for more than a decade.

The hatch hissed and clicked as it equalized pressure between the ship and the outside air, retaining just enough positive air pressure inside the ship so that when the hatch slid open, warm air gusted out around them as they stepped out onto the cargo loading platform of ADS 4. If for some reason the Glasshouse field wasn't working properly and the harbor area was contaminated with Green EDEN, while those who stepped out were more or less on their own, the outflow of air would keep any Green EDEN from getting inside the ship at least. Of course, even if they did get infected, the _Endmyion_ and TTU Harbor Control both were well stocked with Red Pill anti-Green EDEN medicines that, as long as quickly administered before the transformation was too far along, would reverse any accidental infection in a matter of an hour or two. Additionally, the crews of all Orb vessels were kept on a regime of thrice daily Red Pills, one with each meal, just in case of accidental exposure or battle damage venting the hull of a ship.

The air in the Harbor was brisk and rendolent with the smell of machine oil, ozone from the proximity of the Glasshouse field, and the slightly stagnant stench of calm seawater, in short, it smelled just like pretty much every other harbor in Orb, and none of them really even noticed the smell, it was just part of the usual background. A small, electric powered people mover shuttle was waiting for them at the base of the gangway plank that extended from the hatchway, and they quickly took seats along the spine of the shuttle, Dearka and Miriallia sitting at front and rear, taking on the role of tour guides for those features of TTU that there was to see. Dearka had originally purchased a small oceangoing cargo ship and refitted it as a sort of combination home and workplace for his private salvaging company that he'd started up in the years after the Second Valentine War, but in the wake of the Eden Disaster, he'd been spending more time conveying supplies and personnel to Trieste Town than salvaging, and both he and Miriallia were regular visitors to TTU, though they had only visited the Town itself a few times.

There weren't any other ships currently in port, as all of Orb's merchant marine vessels were doing double duty as troop and war material transports to the various theatre HQ bases around the globe, and so the work on Trieste Town was slowing to a crawl, though in truth for what remained that needed to be done, the Town's own factories were more than sufficient to provide the needed materials. It was more a matter of manpower than it was of resources, as had so often been the case in the years following the Eden Disaster, and the great nanotechnology boom that had followed, which had practically eliminated the need for any sort of actual mining for precious metals or other raw materials, nowadays you could literally turn shit into gold with enough time and power, though shit was more often turned into strucutral metals, rather than wasted on something like gold, which was fairly useless except in some electroplating and weatherproofing functions. In any case, Trieste Town was entering the final stages of is production, and was slated for opening for public settlement sometime in the next year and a half, in the meanwhile it remained a primarily scientific venture.

The shuttle parked inside one of the expansive cargo warehouses on the CDS platform, and a series of lighted arrows on the deckplates guided them to the manned section of the CDS, the central tower that contained the harbormaster offices, harbor control chamber, basic recreation and mess facilities, and the Glasshouse projector. A sailor wearing slightly oil stained coveralls waited for them by the hatch leading into the interior of the tower, his face paling a bit and his spine stiffening noticably as he picked out Athrun amongst the group, and what might have been more a wave than a salute turned into a gesture of extreme military efficiency. Looks like Athrun had a fan, not that that was particularly uncommon these days in Orb, since they'd had more than a decade to get used to him and respect him for what he did. The sailor conducted them inside and down the short elevator ride to the Harbormaster's office, which was actually built in the lower sections of the tower rather than higher up. The Harbormaster, a gregarious older man that strongly reminded Murrue of a slightly more academic version of the much beloved and lamented Chief Murdoch, was named Jim, and he welcomed them into his office, with its panoramic picture window of the depths below taking up most of two walls of the office.

"Let me get right to the point..." Jim said, after proper introductions were made and he'd gestured for them to take seats from the chairs and couches that had obviously been moved into the office specifically for them. If he was at all intimidated by having the husband of his Queen and many of the most famous people of the past decade all sitting in his office at once, he didn't show it. "I don't know what they told you back home, but since I strongly suspect there is some pencil pushing mouth breather in the BUE (Bureau of Underwater Expansion) who's been sanitizing my reports, I'm betting you didn't get the whole story."

"Truth be told, we're just stopping in for a quick look-see, nobody told us about any major concerns or problems." Mu replied, somewhat distractedly, his eyes inexorably drawn to the huge armored-glass windows that looked down on a seemingly infinite depth of water, though the Pacific Ocean was really only three or four thousand meters deep here. Still, that was pretty damned deep, and the way the water gradually turned from aqua blue to pitch black definitely drew the eyes of the unfamiliar. "For various reasons, we need to be significantly closer to Africa in the next few weeks. The Task Force will probably be moving on later today, but we might be able to spare a day or three, since the _Endymion_'s top speed is significantly faster than that of the convoy." Mu exchanged a sheepish look with Murrue and Athrun. "That is, of course, if the Ambassador and my Captain think its prudent."

"Typical desk jockeys, they never pass on bad news if they can avoid it, not without emasculating it with jargon and politi-speak terms frist." Jim sighed and dropped into his own chair, behind his desk, before he leaned forward, tenting his arms in front of him. "Though truth be told I don't know if it is a problem, really, its just a disturbing and unexplained trend. As a matter of course, we conduct a lot of deep ocean surveys of the surrounding area, trying to catalog all the new species of ocean life as well as taking data on the sub-oceanic currents and the chemical balance of the water and a dozen other parameters. But lately, a lot of the wildlife we've been used to seeing, especially the bigger, more intelligent specimens, such as the whale analogs and some of the more populous game fish schools, have been avoiding the area. It wasn't a gradual thing, one day they would sometimes come so close you'd think they were about to splatter themselves against the Town dome, the next you couldn't find hide nor fin of em even on the long range submersible patrols."

"Perhaps its a sign of some sort of upcoming phenomenon on the ocean floor? A volcanic venting or crustal disturbance of some sort?" Dearka asked consideringly. "A disturbance in the planet's magnetic fields usually registers in the brains of animals well in advance of the actual event, be it eruption or earthquake or tidal wave or whatever. That could explain why they all left, they don't feel safe around here for the time being." Dearka noted the way Yzak was looking at him, from the couch across from him. "What?"

"When did you get so smart?" Yzak asked with a smirk. "You almost sound like you know what you're talking about."

"For your information, I've always been smart, its just lack of will to apply it that's held me back. But now that I have two delightful bundles of joy to constantly bombard me with questions of "why, dad?", I've found that picking up trivial facts can actually be rewarding. For that matter, it helps me keep the _Dawn's Light_ safe, since I don't have super fancy EM sensors on board, if I see all the animals running for cover, thats generally a clue for me to pull well out to sea." Dearka retorted with a matching smirk.

"We thought of that too." Jim admitted, breaking in to their banter. "But we DO have special EM sensors and they aren't picking up any variations in the EM fields around this area, so we were forced to discard that notion. It may be that this is just some never before seen migratory irregularity, or else a reaction to some sort of chemical stimulus that we haven't yet discovered, but since we don't know what's going on, I thought it best to report it. I just got a bad feeling about it, ya know what I mean? I personally think the wildlife IS scared, but not of some geological catastrophe in the making. I think SOMETHING scared them off. I know it sounds crazy, after all, some of these whale creatures break the four hundred foot mark from nose to flukes, they could probably sink one of our cargo ships with a single slap of that tail, but I used to fish a lot when I was younger, and I remember seeing all the minnows dart away whenever a big pike or other predatory fish was inbound."

Jim looked pensive for a moment, as if he was debating whether to go on or not, before he finally sighed and leaned closer to them, his voice dropping about half its volume. "Now listen to this. Normally I'd hesitate to bring this up, but I just can't get rid of the weird shiver going down my spine at odd hours of the night. So look at this and tell me what you think of it." Jim waved his hand and called forth a holorgraphic display from his desk, a sonar map of the surrounding area around Trieste Town. It covered a span of time several hours long, and was dated almost two months prior. "I've been sitting on this for a while because I was all but convinced it was just a deficiency in the sensors, or else an aberrative reading on a mass of denser water with a funny return." Jim all but whispered, as the recording began to play on fast forward. There was nothing to see for almost a minute, close to an hour and a half on the recording, Trieste Town along on its jutting seamount pinnacle, the next largest return being a smaller seamount about five kilometers away and a kilometer further down in the ocean.

And then, just as Murrue was about to ask what they were supposed to be looking for, a new image appeared on the recording, a sonar hit from a HUGE mass that had apparently risen out of the seabed and was slowly moving along the ocean floor to the far South and East of Trieste Town, down around the thirty seven hundred meters below surface level depth. The shape was irregular, blurry almost, but it was definitely just shy of a kilometer long and of considerable, though also variable, width. The unidentified mass spent most of forty minutes drifting along the ocean bed, never coming closer than fifty kilometers to the Town, before it vanished from the recording. Everyone had blinked when the mass appeared, and it was plain that none of them were particularly inclined to believe that it had been a sensor irregularity or a water mass. For one thing, it was fairly obvious to see that the mass had been moving against the prevailing current, for another, the sensors at Trieste Town were among the highest quality instruments to be found anywhere in human space, an error of that magnitude would have shown up more than just once if it was equipment failure!

"Yeah." Jim said with another sigh, acknowledging their blinks of shock and trepidation. "That's one big motherfucker, pardon my french. Listening to the actual sound returns is fairly useless, the distance is so extreme that even the computer has trouble seperating biological noise from the background, even from something that big, tenatively estimated at just over three thousand feet long, about eight times bigger than any other form of sea life we've yet encountered. That's assuming it's a single creature, its probably safer to assume its just one godawful big school of fish, because I don't know about you, but I have enough trouble sleeping as it is, without thinking that there might be a Hameya be damned GODZILLA swimming around out there!"

Murrue was about to say that while what Jim had shown them was definitely a concerning matter, but not something that really could be solved through military involvement even if it was a single gigantic deep sea lifeform, when Jim's desk thrummed to indicate an incoming message from the Town. Canceling the sonar recording, Jim pulled an earbud from his desk drawer and set it into his ear so he could hear what was so important that it would interrupt a meeting with the Hameya blessed Ambassador of all people! Murrue exchanged glances with Athrun as they saw Jim's facial expression changed from blustering irritation to brow furrowed puzzlement, and from there to pasty faced concern. "SAY THAT AGAIN?" Jim half stood suddenly, slamming both his hands down on his desk with startling force. At the same time, Murrue's pocket communicator started buzzing as well, as did similar communicators that her friends had with them, all tied into the data network of the _Endymion._ A miniature projection of Lexi appeared, a sudden crop of figurine sized red headed girls appearing in the hands of everyone in the room.

"Pardon the interruption." Lexi's voice said in complete synchronity. "But our sonar systems have detected a large irregular mass moving into proximity of Trieste Town. This has been confirmed with the sonar systems of the other Task Force vessels. A large object has appeared on our scans, seperating out from the mass of the seamount, which it may have been using as cover or concealment, as we have no record of it before it appeared only a few hundred meters out from the lower lip of the Town prominatory. Sensors agree that the object is biological in nature, not a technological ship, and movement patterns coincide with certain large predatory fish of record, specifically, the neo-shark species designated "Megalodon"." Lexi extrapolated for them.

"How big are we talking here, Lexi?" Mu asked, unable to drive the image of that anomalous mass from Jim's recording out of his head, freshly imprinted as it was.

"Impossible to say for sure, but I would estimate a length between 120 and 130 meters, slightly more than four hundred feet and massing, depending on density of flesh and skeletal configuration, about thirty five hundred tons. About the size of a trimaran Frigate." Lexi answered, her image shrugging its shoulders. She narrowed her eyes at the expressions of relief crossing the faces of the Fleshies. "What, a flesh eating predator fish the size of a warship doesn't bother you people? It would bother ME, if I was something that could be eaten by it! What were you expecting me to say?"

"Don't worry about it, Lexi, we'll tell you later." Murrue told the AI assistant, still letting out her breath of relief. She turned to Jim. "So what are the protocols for dealing with oversized predators, Jim? We must have some sort of procedure for driving away potentially dangerous animals, something that big could easily see a small submersible and mistake it for a large fish."

"We have sound blasters, though we prefer not to use them since they are omnidirectional and can really screw up the wildlife." Jim replied, cupping his chin in his hand as he thought. "And also electroshock darts, basically neutered torpedoes with a big taser on the tip, that can give a big, unpleasant jolt to anything that happens to get too close." He tapped a finger in a specific pattern on his desk, opening up a line to a different section of the Town below. "This is Jim, we got a major biological predator moving in on the Town, could be what's been scaring off all the wildlife. I don't think it's a real threat, but I'd prefer not to have it hanging around and trying to snack on the drones and patrol subs, so if you could prep a couple shock-darts and put out the unwelcome mat, I'd much appreciate it. Yeah, thanks. Jim, out." Jim turned to the rest of them, his relief much plainer than theirs as he let out his breath. "Well, that settles that, sorry for the scare..."

Katie frowned and covertly reached out to run her hand down the back of Yzak's shirt, feeling him stiffen as her cold fingers traced down his spine, and he shot her a long suffering glance that quickly mellowed to a look of realization and acknowledgement as he recognized that this wasn't her messing with him, and he opened his mind fully to her needs, boosting her psychic potential as she sent her mind questing downwards into the ocean to scope out the intentions of this super-shark. It didn't take long, the impulses of the mind weren't as constrained by most of the laws of physics as physical sensors were, and besides, the mind of this particular animal shone like a bonfire in the depths. Barely had Katie's attentions caressed the outer edges of the mind than she jerked back, no, actually she was HURLED back, the mind reacting to her unexpected touch with belligerence and a little shock. Katie jerked, her eyes rolling back into her head for a moment as she concentrated on her own shields, boosted by Yzak, as the shark backtraced her efforts to her physical location, even such a minor contact making her head pound like a kettle drum!

Athrun and Dearka had both noticed Katie jerk, and they looked at her and Yzak intently as they recovered from what was likely some sort of psychic effort or other. Lexi's image, having consolidated to just Athrun's communicator with the volume boosted all the way up, stood in his lap, glaring at the infuriating Fleshies who wouldn't tell her what was bothering them. Her expression changed a moment later and she provided a pertinent update to them. "Target biological has changed its course and speeded up considerably. It is now headed for TTU. Recording launch of electroshock torpedoes from Trieste Town, they are pursuing biological, but having trouble catching up. ETA of biological to surface is two minutes and three seconds at current speed. Projected interception of biological by torpedoes at one minute forty seven seconds elapsed. That's one hell of a shark."

"That's not a shark." Katie contradicted a moment later, her voice raw and pained as she massaged her throbbing temples with both hands.

"Well EXCUSE ME, Mrs. Joule, but it IS a shark." Lexi countered irritably. "I ought to know, since it's body contours match those of the shark family and its bio-sounds match up with those of sharks and if I had an image of it, which I will in slightly less than two minutes, I could show you that it very definitely looks like a shark too! If it looks like a shark, feels like a shark and sounds like a shark, tell me, what could it be besides a shark?"

"A Chimera." Yzak replied frostily. "And an upset Chimera at that."

"Oh." Lexi replied, her belligerence fading at once, replaced by a simpering moment of relief. "I see. Sucks to be a Fleshy right now, I guess. Wouldn't want to be YOU guys."

"Thanks for that sentiment, Lexi." Athrun sighed, levering himself to his feet with the aid of his walking cane. "I don't suppose you were the one who pissed it off, were you?" He asked, looking at Katie.

"Um, well, I certainly didn't make him happy, but he was already fairly perturbed to begin with." Katie answered with a shrug and an uneasy smile. "I suppose you could say that I was the one who poked the sleeping bear awake though. And told him where I was, by accident. So now he's coming to see us. But we should be fine, I mean, those torpedoes should stop him before he gets within two hundred meters or so, right?"

"We've never encountered a Chimera before, so I don't know." Jim answered, spreading his arms and shrugging, trying not to stare out the picture window of the office at the depths, from which the shark was speeding up with a vengeance. "He's not much bigger than the biggest whales, and we've successfully stunned one of those before, if only briefly. The whales have a pretty placid disposition even at the worst of times though, I don't think the same could be said of a shark. And from what I hear, even the nicest Chimera's aren't creatures you want to be nearby with."

"Task Forces vessels are issuing an level Orange alert, all crews standing by for possible sudden maneuvers. A collision with something that big could really ruin a ship's day." Lexi reported. "Course it would really fuck up Mr. Shark too, but that's his problem." Lexi opened her mouth to say more, before a priority update override made her image flicker to reset her facial imaging. "Problem. Electroshock torpedoes were nearing intercept point but are now falling away, apparently unpowered. Sound returns indicate presence of crushing metal noise shortly before torpedoes lost momentum and began to sink, conclusion being that the biological somehow managed to damage the projectile's pressure housing, despite them being a hundred meters away at the time. I don't know about you guys, but to me, that sounds an awful lot like telekinesis. Upgrading threat level of biological from "slight" to "medium", pending further upgrade to "high" or "extreme" based on further analysis."

"What do we know about telekinetics?" Athrun asked of Katie, who was still regarded as the resident psychic expert among their group.

"That I can't do it and its very, very scary." Katie replied succiently, her tone still sharp from the pain in her head. "At the basic level, its the manipulation of a tangible object using intangible force, literally moving things with your mind. As yet, the strongest telekinetic I've ever seen was Lacus when she was pissed off. She cracked a pane of glass and shattered a tea-cup. I think you'll agree there's a little difference between a tea-cup and a torpedo. That might just be that Lacus's talents don't run towards telekinesis, it might be that this Chimera is ungodly strong."

"Anyone else thinking that maybe we shouldn't be sitting around in a room where Mr. Shark can swim right up and eyeball us?" Dearka said, nervously eyeing the armored glass picture windows. "I don't know what this glass is rated, but I doubt it will handle 3500 tons of telekinetic shark."

"Too late for that..." Mu commented, his voice a bit strangulated with a healthy dose of fear, as an indistinct shape began to take form from the deeper shadows of the depths below.

xxxx

**Depths below Trieste Town Upper**

It had been a long while since the Chimera who was known as Gorefin by the surface dwelling food-morsels had allowed his temper to run freely. Though it could be said that anger was a natural state of being for someone that peyed upon other lifeforms for sustenance day in and day out, that would be the opinion of those who did not truly understand the natural order. There was no rage in his eating of lesser creatures, indeed it was much closer to an act of adoration. Most times that is, he had been known to take out a moment of fleeting frustration with his jaws before, as there were few things as soothing to him as the sensation of a raw chunk of muscle meat sliding down his gullet, the aroma of blood pungent in the water around him. But by and large he wasn't a particularly violent or malicious sort, as far as Chimerae went; the Ocean Mother did not tolerate wanton feeding frenzies in her domains after all, at least not unprovoked ones, and even less so from her chief subordinates in the deep water hierarchy. In truth his namesake came more from the reddish tinge that graced the front edge of his dorsal fin than because of his conduct.

As Lord of the Upper Reaches, Gorefin was responsible for the state of all of the ocean that fell into the first ten or so body lengths from wavecrests on down, which was a position of high importance in the Ocean Mother's realms, as it gave him dominion over that part of the ocean that teemed with light and life more than any other realm. Truly, it was as much burden as it was an honor, because it also made him responsible for dealing with the surface dwelling food-morsels and their noisy, inedible shells that they so loved to swim about in. It was part of his job to monitor these inedible shellfish whenever he encountered them, to ensure they were not bleeding poisons into the Ocean Mother's realm, and that they observed the agreed upon rites of tribute during the time when the tidal pull was strongest, when that silver-white eye in the sky was fully open. Sometimes the shellfish, inedible though they themselves were, would defecate the most scrumptious of food items, exotic meats unlike any fish or whale or seal he'd ever eaten. Normally he would never stoop to eating the byproducts of another, as parasitic consumption of that sort was usually reserved for the very bottem echelons of sea life, but the inedible shellfish were a special case.

He had noticed a definite increase in the number of surface shellfish in his domain over these past hundred or so tidal cycles, and the newer shellfish were often much larger than their more familiar kin. Perhaps it was a new species, it had been thousands of tidal cycles since he last personally patrolled this particular section of his domain, and that would make sense, because they had now twice failed to pay the proper tribute at the proper time, and they were simply atrocious with their byproduct poisons, or perhaps it was that their shells were thinner and weaker than the shellfish he was used to encountering, and thus prone to easier bleeding of the toxic blood that flowed through them. Whichever the case, they were in violation of the dictates of the Ocean Mother, and his own patience was just about used up. The surface dwelling prey-morsels were supposed to be self policing in these matters, so had been the agreement the Ocean Mother had made with them, in return for passivity in their harvesting of the ocean's bounty and in the migration habits of their shellfish. If they were not of a mind to uphold their side of the bargain, then it fell to Gorefin to convince them of the folly in their actions by demonstrating the alternative.

He was feeling particularly fervent about the pursuit of his duties because he could sense the presence of the Ocean Mother herself, drifting with the deep sea currents below and behind him, dreaming within the soothing heat swell of a volcanic rift. The Ocean Mother spent much of her time in such dreams, pondering things unfathomable even to the deepest intellectual fancies of Gorefin, who considered himself quite the erudite being, a concept he'd absorbed along with the brain matter of several foolish fishermen that had thought him a whale and tried to harpoon him, much to their brief dismay. But the Ocean Mother was far beyond him, and though he would sometimes engage her in a discussion of philosophic detail, or mutually ponder the vagaries of the natural order and the strangeness of the surface dwelling food-morsels and their inedible shellfish, it was more the discourse of a parent to a baby than a true meeting of equal minds. The Ocean Mother's slumber also helped conserve her energy, though her sheer immensity required that she awake to feed every so often, the bounty of the oceans lining up for the honor of swimming themselves down her gullet to sate her appetite.

The unwelcome discovery of the shellfish nesting ground where he had never encountered anything of the sort before, right at the very lower edge of his domain, had thrown him for a loop, so to speak, and he'd been intent on investigating what was either the largest inedible shellfish he'd ever encountered, or else the birthplace of them all, when he'd felt the pinprick of psychic contact from above, where another huge surface shellfish, far larger than most of its species, surfed lazily across the wavetops, sunning itself like a entire pod of whales. He'd reacted about as one might expect to being suddenly pricked with a psychic inquisition, but his irritation had faded almost at once, to be replaced with curiosity, since the psychic contact had been... different... from what he was used to in those few times he had been forced to discharge his ambassadorial duties as the Ocean Mother's Herald and speak with the surface dweeling food-morsels directly. But then the mother shellfish had launched parasites at him, which had doggedly, even mindlessly pursued him during his ascent, and had only desisted after he had broken their revolving tail fins and crunched their nosetips with his psychic powers. He would return to deal with her shortly, for now he was interested in the school of large and oddly shaped shellfish he could discern above him.

Vision wasn't one of his strongest senses, given that even in the Upper Reaches, only the very top body length or so got any real light at all, and below that was only darkness where normal vision was useless. He could see heat as well, and that was some use, but again, past a certain depth, most creatures operated with body temperatures close to identical with the surrounding water as a camouflage mechanism. His primary sensory organ was his nose, backed up by his sensitivity to the electrical fields emitted by the nervous systems of living creatures, and finally reinforced by his psychic powers. Though his nose could pick up a single drop of blood in ten million gallons of water, he scented nothing but the dead stench of the inedible shellfish. His electrical sensors were itching terribly, a frequent occurence when he got too close to one of the inedible shellfish, which seemed to exude such fields, perhaps as a defensive mechanism, though in truth it was more irritating than disabling. And to his mind the area was curiously empty, save for a few small blooms of psychic energy, one of which had been the one to try and pry into his mind. This was the one that Gorefin homed in on, determined to investigate this presumptuous being.

Despite his weak eyes, Gorefin noticed movement from within one section of the oddly shaped giant shellfish, it looked like some sort of blister or pustule on its lower body, where the shell had withered away into a translucent state, revealing the inner muscles of the shellfish. Gorefin made a note not to bite off any chunks of this particular shellfish, it was clearly diseased, even for one of its kind. There were even parasites, surface dwelling food-morsels, wriggling around in the depths of the pustule, no doubt breeding or laying eggs or whatever it was the food-morsels did while inhabiting their shellfish that made them inedible and toxic. It was enough to turn his stomach, and coming from a shark that would eat just about anything that swam, that was quite saying something. He swam past the pustule, careful not to touch it lest he become infected as well, rolling one huge light blue and golden eyeball to peer into the depths of the blister, studying the parasites inside, searching out the one that had contacted him. It was hard, they all looked alike to him, without access to his sense of smell, he couldn't tell them apart.

Having failed to make much of an impression on his first pass, Gorefin circled around and came back, moving much slower this time, just barely fast enough to keep water gushing through his gill slits so he could breathe. He could of course hover in place as well, a simple exercise of his mind pulling water into his gills to simulate motion, but it was easier just to use his tail to flick himself along like a decrepit seal. However, upon his second pass, the pustule was empty, the parasites having retreated deeper within the flesh of their host, the trepidation and disquiet of the few he could easily feel with his mind suggesting that they sought to avoid his presence. Irritated once more, Gorefin struck out vindictively with his mind, hurling a spine of concentrated water pressure at the pustule, piercing the thinner, weakened shell and releasing the built up gaseous pressure inside in a cloud of bubbles. No doubt the sensation of water filling the raw lesion would be of some annoyance to the huge shellfish, and it might flush out the parasites as well. He'd cracked the shells of other, healthier shellfish and gotten similar reactions from the food-morsel parasites before, he expected no less now.

Echoing noises bounced downwards from the school of shellfish that surrounded what Gorefin now presumed to be some sort of female shellfish in heat, the males lining up to insert their gene fluid one at a time, as some shark species did. Obviously they were reacting to the distress of their female, and their warbling cries and barks were really getting on his nerves, to be totally honest. He'd never encountered a noiser school of shellfish in all his life, if this was how they always were when mating, he would be sure to avoid them during this time of year from now on. He just hoped the racket they were producing wouldn't wake the Ocean Mother from her dreams, she would be sure to castigate him for failure to properly perform his duties if that were the case. The food-morsels were supposed to police themselves, but if they didn't then he was supposed to pick up the slack. And then one of the agitated male shellfish did the unthinkable, and actually launched an attack upon him, a sonic onslaught that made his brain shiver from the concentrated vibrations, his ear and nasal cavities resonating with pain as his body spasmed and twitched, neurons firing randomly as he struggled to unscramble himself!

Gorefin drifted and sank about a half body length before he dropped out of the incapacitating range of the shellfish's harmonic barking, his body almost instantly snapping back into his control, his irritation fading away and being replaced with true anger of a sort he hadn't felt since he was but a yearling and still competing with the largest of his lesser shark brethren for food and females! How dare the shellfish attack him, the Lord of the Upper Reaches, the very Herald of the Ocean Mother herself! New and unlearned these shellfish might be, but in the oceans, all bowed to the hierarchy of the Ocean Mother, and as her designated governer for the Upper Reaches, an assault upon him was an assault upon the Ocean Mother herself! And that was no offense to take lightly! Such an insult could only be redressed with blood, even the toxic blood of the shellfish would do for that much!

Nictating lenses dropped across his eyes, translucent shells of hardened skin that would protect his eyes from being blinded by random flailing of the prey he was devouring, or from splashing bodily fluids. Gorefin powered himself downward with a thrashing of his tail, before inverting and coming back around after a body length or two, gathering his mental energy and then thrusting it out before him, concentrated into a lancing projection like the nose horns of some of the smaller whale species, packing his full psychic might into an area with a cross section less than half the diameter of his eyeballs. As the telekinetic impulses expanded outward from his mind, they collided with the substance of the water around him and drove it before them, greatly magnifying the apparent water pressure within the telekinetic lance to a degree more usually found forty or fifty body lengths below the surface! Gorefin aimed this mental "horn" at the bellies of one of the smaller shellfish, obviously an immature male judging from its size and its position at the edges of the mating school. First he would kill the young and foolish, and then he would return for the elders, still preoccupied with their mating, the dumb beasts!

xxxx

Barely had Yzak reached the surface level platform of the CDS than a geyser of water erupted from the other side of the TTU harbor wall, a needle-like spout of seawater that gushed through the air for over three hundred meters straight up, slicing from side to side like a housewife watering her rosebushes, making an "S" like pattern before it fell away. In its wake, the directed waterspout left the sound of shearing metal plating and the gush of water filling spaces that were not meant to fill with water, as one of the trimaran frigates more or less fell apart in five or six places at once, its hull sliced apart from keel to superstructure by the telekinetically hurled lance of water. Katie almost ran into his back as he stopped to gawk at the now disappeared plume of water, and Yzak shook his head to clear it as he sprined for one of the shuttle carts, Katie right on his heels, the rest of the group some ways back. The blare of the battle alert sirens from the Task Force ships filled the air, as they began to respond to the unexpected attack.

Mobile Suits began to scramble, and missile tubes began opening in preparation for launching anti-ship missile/torpedoes into the depths to seek out and destroy the attacking Chimera, but having already seen what the shark had done to the electroshock torpedoes fired by Trieste Town, not the mention the display of psychic might he'd just witnessed, he didn't have much faith the missiles would do much besides distract the Chimera for a few moments as it crushed them. Yzak leapt onto the cart, Katie right behind, and a flick of the manual override had them racing out onto the walkway leading back towards the _Endymion_, leaving behind the rest of the group, saddled with escorting Athrun, who couldn't run more than a few meters at a time despite his fervent desires. _Well, this is certainly different. I never imagined my first mission with the Balmung would involve fighting off a monster chimera-shark that wants to sink Orb's fleet._ Yzak thought wryly.

_In one way of thinking about it, we're actually the only ones that really have a chance._ Katie cut into his thoughts, as she was wont to do during times of stress. _The Simurgh can't use most of its weapons underwater, and the same for the Dreadnaught, with the added caveat that the hulking thing is too slow, no offense to Dearka and Miri, that Chimera would just swim circles around them. And even so, I'm not exactly sure how we're going to beat something with that much psychic power, I never thought what amounts to a superintelligent animal would ever have this kind of power! Much less telekinesis of this order!_

_There's not a shark born, superintelligent or otherwise, that's a match for me and my Gundam._ Yzak answered with a savage smirk. _Just you wait and see, we'll carve him up into chum with Fafnir, quick as you like!_ Yzak saw another spume of telekineticly projected water project above the harbor wall and heard another one of the escort vessels start to break up, its hull compromised in a half a dozen locations in a matter of a second or two, entire sections of the ship collapsing away from each other like a sand sculpture attacked with a samurai sword. Bad enough what pure water pressure could do, with the telekinetic force propelling it, only Phase Shift armor could resist being cut, and even then the sheer force of impact might be enough to rip armor panels from their mountings! Under enough pressure and velocity, water stopped acting like a bludgeon and become much more a scapel!

Grateful that the walkway was more or less perfectly straight, Yzak chanced taking his hand off the steering lever long enough to dig his communicator out of his coat pocket. He held it up to his mouth as he clicked it on to pure transmission mode. "This is Commander Joule speaking to Task Force vessels. You are under attack by a highly powerful psychic entity. Normal weapons and tactics will be ineffective, the best course of action is to retreat as quickly as possible. I recommend that you commence high speed evasive manuevers, and, if possible for your ship, take to the air. You are being attacked with bursts of extremely high water pressure, but they can't reach more than a hundred meters or so above the water's surface, so if you can ascend to three or four hundred meters, you should be safe from attack. Do not, I repeat do NOT attempt to retaliate with guided projectiles such as missiles or torpedoes, at best they will be ineffective, at worst you could end up getting sunk with your own returned munitions!"

"Do you really have the authority to give them orders?" Katie wondered, as Yzak stamped on the braking mechanism and brought the shuttle cart to a screeching halt in front of the _Endymion_'s boarding hatch.

"Of course not. But Athrun will back me up one hundred percent if it saves even a single life, so it's not exactly a bluff that can be called." Yzak replied with his trademark confident smirk. He switched channels on his comm as he sprinted for the hatch, Katie close behind. "Lexi, tell the ground crew to prep the Balmung for immediate launch."

"The Ambassador already gave that order almost twenty seconds ago. Do you wish for me to repeat it, in the interest of urging them on even more?" Lexi answered at once.

"No, no sense in busting their balls." Yzak replied with a shake of his head. _Told you so. Athrun may be a dolt most of the time, but when the going gets rough, he actually has a reasonably efficient head on his shoulders. It's almost respectable._

_I'll remember you said that he was respectable the next time you're freaking out about how chummy Mina and Jamie are getting with Allister. They really seem to be growing attached to him if you know what I mean... my little darlings are growing up so fast..._

_Don't even GO there._ Yzak could not suppress a shudder, even as he darted through the passageways of the _Endymion_. _I will lock them in their basement rooms and throw away the key LONG before I ever accept their interest in Zala's son! It is NOT going to happen. Anyone but him I could live with. But I will not accept..._

_You know it's not going to be your choice, right? Or should I not burst your happy bubble so soon? You know that Alkire and Raine weren't super big on me and Chanel being with you, at first? Though I will admit there was no history of antagonism between your mom and them to get in the way either._

_Alkire and Raine... good point, love._ Yzak held his communicator up to his lips again. "Lexi, get me the Colonels Jones." He ordered, though the connection was through before he half finished giving the order. "Alkire, it's your favorite son-in-law. Stop what you're doing right now. The PUMA's aren't equipped for this sort of combat, and damn their ability to operate underwater, we're dealing with a meat eating predator the size of a frigate! It would swallow you whole in a moment, if it didn't tear you to shreds with its creepy ass telekinetic powers first. Yes, I know how to play on your phobias very well. You're the one who always makes such a big deal of em. And no, neither of us read your mind. I just know how you think. Yeah, bear that in mind the next time you're contemplating encouraging the girls in their hijinks. I am on to you, Natural..." Yzak cut the channel, a predatory glint entering his eyes. "I so love baiting that man..."

Further conversation was cut short as they burst from the passageway into the Balmung's maintenance and launch bay, the Gundam towering above them, the boarding platform already in place, the special flight suits already draped across the lower railing waiting for them. Yzak was impressed with the response time, which couldn't have been much more than a minute, but then again, this was a top of the line warship headed into a warzone, no doubt they had been exhaustively drilling on rapid scramble procedures ever since they found out they were being deployed. Shucking out of his windbreaker and uniform only took a few seconds, the shipboard uniform custom designed by none other than Yzak himself to include velcro tear-patches holding together the major sections, so the garment could be literally ripped off without damaging it if the need arose. Maybe there was only a difference of ten or fifteen seconds between that and undressing regularly, but ten or fifteen seconds could easily be the difference between life and death on the battlefield he was used to being on!

Yzak sent a glare bounding around the compartment as Katie likewise stripped down and began shimming into her flight suit next to him, it was an instinctive jealous-protective reaction with him, even though they'd been married for years, he was still quite insane when it came to other men looking at what was supposed to belong to him alone, even out of military necessity. Katie chucked him along the side of his mind with a psychic "snort" of derision, and then the platform was rising beneath them, hydraulics extending them upward towards the waiting hatch of the Balmung. Katie climbed in first, and then Yzak followed her, catching the modified flight helmet with its trailing bundle of silvery NIC wires as Katie tossed it to him, snugging it onto his head tightly, waiting for the suit to seal itself to the helmet as he and Katie hooked each other's backback ports to the umbilical cables protruding from the walls of the cockpit space. The flexible tubes began to gurgle thickly as they pumped the suits full of the cool, oxygenated cushioning gel that would serve as personal coolant, air supply and to protect them from jarring impacts and sudden accelerations while in combat. Around them, the cockpit hatch sealed closed, and the cockpit began filling with more cushioning gel, until the pressure of the gel all but mired them in place, the very stiffness important in providing the cushioning effect.

Technically only the flight suits were required to be filled with gel for the GRS system to function properly, but Morganroete engineers believed strongly in redundancy, and so the entire cockpit was filled up as well. Yzak closed his eyes as he felt the pinpricks along his scalp that were the helmet leads boring through his hair and into his skull to make contact with his brain, he felt Katie twitch against his back as she likewise acclimated to the NIC intrusion. And when Yzak next opened his eyes, they were the eyes of the Balmung, Katie's psychic presence a comforting cloak draped against his back, her attention momentarily diverted as she focused on bringing up the Divine Eye system while Yzak took in the status of the Balmung's more regular systems. All was in readiness, just as it should be. "Balmung, this is the CIC assistant." Lexi beamed the comm directly into Yzak's head, or so it felt, the sensation was odd for most, but for a guy used to having a mischeivous female voice poking about his head on a daily basis, it was almost relaxing. "You are cleared for immediate launch, launch timing transferred to you. After you launch, the _Endmyion_ will ascend to take up formation with the _Dawnblade_ and the Defenders. The Chimera is still on the attack, three ships have been sunk so far, and two badly damaged."

"Roger that, CIC." Yzak answered, sending a mental query of concern and inquisition to Katie, recieving the equivalent of a thumbs up in reply. "Yzak and Katie Joule, in the Balmung, taking off!" He announced, the linear accelerators built into the walls of the maintenance bay grabbing hold of the Balmung and hurling it straight up at a velocity that would have crushed him flat were it not for the GRS system, as it was he barely even noticed the sensation, as the FPR kicked to life inside his breast and filled his body with blazing tendrils of power and energy! A subconscious tap on his attitude thrusters kicked the Balmung clear of the _Endymion_, and then they were falling, Yzak bringing the shield forward on the left arm to hang loosely in front of them, withdrawing the Fafnir blade from its storage locationa cross the Balmung's back and gripping it firmly in his right hand, a picture of the shark appearing in the depths of his mind as Katie reached out with her senses to paint him a picture of what the chimera was thinking and feeling.

And then there was a slight sensation of impact, felt more as a stiffening in the gel encasing his numbed flesh and blood body than anything else, and their view foamed and swirled before clearing, ending up slightly hazy as the cameras tried to adjust to the ambient water conditions, the water stirred up and turbulent both from being hurled about by telekinesis and from the wakes of the frantically maneuvering Task Force vessels as they sought to stay a step ahead of the angry Chimera's attacks. Still, with katie's mind reaching out into the netherscape of the mental plane and feeling out the shark's location and intent, Yzak hardly even needed his physical eyes to see with, other than to avoid crashing into inanimate objects in the environment, which at the moment meant TTU or the ships. Yzak felt an awkward tug between his shoulderblades, and cursed himself for his forgetfulness, sending the command to retract the Photon Cloak that warded his rear and flanks against beam type weaponry, in a underwater battle the superconducting cloth was nothing more than an entanglement hazard!

The attacking Chimera had turned towards them when they first entered the water, but shortly afterwards lost interest as the Balmung slowly sank, prevented from discovering that it was in fact a piloted vehicle and not some form of inert wreckage by Katie's psychic screening of her and Yzak's mind. While actually defending against a mental assault from the Chimera would tax her to her limits, if not break them entirely, merely hiding from its passive telepathic senses was not much more difficult than it was doing the same thing to humans, especially with the shark so busy with its attack upon the surface ships. Yzak brought the crosshair belonging to his dual 75mm monodisc launcher onto the stately form of the shark and fired in two seperate breaths, loosing a flurry of hand sized mono-sharpened explosive discs at Gorefin. Yzak scowled and swore inside the confines of his head a moment later when the discs suddenly veered sharply away from their original course, deflected by a veritable wall of telekinetically propelled water as Gorefin's mind lashed out to form a defensive bubble as he felt the projectiles swarm towards him, tripping the telekinetic "tripwires" he constantly surrounded himself with as a sort of proximity alarm, a tactic common to those with strong telekinesis, holding air or water molecules in a steady sphere around them, and noting when they were pushed aside by incoming or outgoing objects.

Gorefin snapped around, a one hundred eighty degree turn accomplished with little more than a flick of his forefins and a contortion of his cartiliginous skeletal structure, before his tail slammed back and forth and he hurled himself like a guided missile straight at the Balmung, a missile with the mass of a fully laden freight train! Yzak barely managed to twitch aside in time, Gorefin's tail actually spiledriving into the Balmung's side and shield as the shark zoomed past, the displaced water sending the Balmung spinning off balance through the watery void even as Yzak sought to correct the tumble imparted by the glancing hit. Katie shouted a wordless warning to him, the ghostly image of gigantic shark jaws speeding through the water towards his back arrived shortly before the jaws themselves, telekinetic constructs rather than physical jaws, crashed into their back and snapped closed, honed teeth of pure force and water pressure dimpling the Balmung's Citadel scaled hide, golden sparks crawling across its skin as the invisible force gnawed at them just as Gorefin himself would have if it were his real jaws closed about them!

Shrieking pressure slowly built inside Yzak's head as the Balmung warned him of imminent Citadel Scale failure across several sections of the Gundam's skin, the shields not designed to withstand steady, piercing pressure like this for long periods of time, and after seeing what the Chimera had already done to the ships, Yzak had no delusions about how well the physical armor of his Gundam would fare against this esoteric form of attack. He had to break free or they were screwed. Unfortunately that was a lot harder done than said, the telekinetic jaws having a firm grip in several dozen locations, but mostly because except at the very point of contact with his armor, the jaws had NO physical presence whatsoever! Yzak slashed the blue flaring edge of the Fafnir through the area around his body a half a dozen times and cut nothing but unresisting water, the blade passing cleanly through the ghostly image of the attack Katie was projecting into his thoughts. The shrieking in his head grew abruptly louder, as one after another, Citadel Scales began blowing out, the telekinetic teeth ripping into the all too yielding armor plate beneath.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and so Yzak did two things with near simultaniety. One, he kicked the Balmung's thrusters up to full power and did his best to aim them at the surface, but Gorefin's telekinetic grip was too strong for even the Balmung's power to overwhelm, at least without any previous momentum built up. Which was why Yzak did the second thing, sending an overload power burst through the Storm Aegis EMP field that acted as the Balmung's CIWS. Gorefin was far outside the usual 25 meter protective radius of the field, but that was in atmosphere, water was a much better conductor of electrical fields, and with a triple power burst, the Storm Aegis sent the equivalent of forty or fifty thousand volts crackling through the water for a quarter kilometer sphere, stunning and slightly electrocuting several Orb sailor's who happened to be in contact with the outer hulls of their ships at the time, but also jolting Gorefin across his entire body at once, the electrical disruption serving to break his concentration, the telekinetic jaws vanishing in an instant, loosing the Balmung, which emerged from the ocean less than a second later, retreating to hover atop its Minion pods a few hundred meters up.

"Let's not do that again." Katie said with a slight tremor in her voice as she saw the ravaged state of the Balmung's armor. The Citadel Scales would reactive shortly, as soon as their blown fuses were rebuilt by the nano-repair system, but the actual armor damage would take hours or even days to fill in a few molecules at a time. Actually, the self repair system would work faster if they were submerged underwater, there being more loose molecules available for reconstruction purposes in a fluid than in a gas, but Yzak wasn't going to be going back in the water any time soon. It was time to listen to that piece of advice from all the old shark thriller movies. Do NOT attempt to fight the shark on its own turf. It was a predator that had remained unchanged for millions of years, obviously it was at an advantage underwater.

With the Balmung out of the water and still shielded by Katie, Gorefin had lost track of the Gundam, thrashing the water around himself into a brief froth as he raged against the pain of the electric shock he'd suffered, flinging piercing lances of telekinetic force upward at various random angles, like the spines of certain poisonous coastal fish, but he was firing blind so to speak, and for that matter wasn't hurling them hard enough to even get within a hundred meters of his escaped prey. Ineffective as lashing out thusly might be, it was cathartic, and Gorefin soon found himself returning to rationality and returned to his pursuit of the surface dwellers and their inedible shellfish.

By now though, the initial shock of the unprecedented attack had begun to wear off, and things were getting organized among the Orb forces, M-7's flocking back and forth in skimming dive domb assaults, firing carefully into the water with their hyper-impulse cannons and shoulder mounted gatling cannons, firing not at Gorefin but in front of or to his sides, forming udnerwater walls of shrapnel and superheated steam between the shark and his fleeing prey, the still vulnerable surface navy ships, forcing him to veer off or suffer lacerations and steam burns. At least that was what happened initially, but after several forced detours, Gorefin plainly became fed up, and surrounding himself with a sphere of solid water he powered right through the next wall of shrapnel and steam, shoving away the harmful matter with a shockwave of telekinetic force that caused water to geyser upwards almost a hundred feet, like a bomb blast on the surface as he powered after the ships with mighty sweeps of his tail, diving deep before returning upwards from below, swimming almost straight upwards.

The telekinetic blow this time was no needle lance or slicing scapel, it was a pure on battering ram more or less shaped like Gorefin's nose and mouth, and it slammed into the central keel of one of the Aegis Cruisers trimaran hulls and crumpled it inward like a sledgehammer blow from God, the entire ship jumping about four or five feet straight up out of the water, before massive cracks spread through its superstructure and the ship ripped in half, bow and stern diving down into the water and sinking like stones, the entire ship gone from sight except for a few bits of scattered debris and lots of foaming bubbles from escaping air only ten seconds after first being struck, seven hundred souls lost in an instant, most pulped against the interior spaces of the ship during the first instants after the telekinetic blow landed. The water was so turbulent with foaming bubbles that Yzak lost track of Gorefin with his eyes, though thankfully Katie could still keep track of the shark as he dived down deep again, preparing to repeat his new tactic.

"I don't think so, fish food." Yzak gritted out, sheathing the Fafnir and hauling out the "Caladabolg" 105mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon, popping open the breech and slotting home a single bulky cartridge from a rack of the expendable power sources on his rear waistline. Much like the original Earthshaker cannon, the still prototypical Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon required manual operation and reloading, there being no current way to reliably hook up the kind of exotic energy converters and accelerator systems the weapon required on a Gundam sized frame for a continous energy feed. It was a different matter for the _Dawnblade_, which had a much larger HTRC mounted on its prow, but a capital warship had the room to spare for all the support systems a direct energy feed system needed. With NIC functionality, a hand loaded gun wasn't even all that awkward, so Yzak had no complaints. Yzak snapped the breech shut with a flick of the Balmung's arm, and pointed the primed weapon at the mental image of Gorefin, tracking the shark's movements as he reached his optimal depth and turned around for another piledriver charge to the surface.

And then the shark chimera was in range, and Yzak's finger tightened on the figurative trigger, the Caladabolg vomiting forth a dark cerulean blue beam of dense energy, the blast expanding to thirty times the muzzle width only a few feet from the end of the barrel, so that by the time it hit the water's surface in an explosion of steam, the beam was more than ten feet in diameter! It bored a relentless hole through the ocean as it closed in on Gorefin, who aborted his attack run and tried to throw up a wall of telekinetic force as a defensive measure once again, but the massively accelerated radiation particles had plenty of mass and momentum, and Gorefin only managed a slight deflection of the beam, enough to save his life, but not the fins on the left side of his body, which flash-exploded into bloody soup as the concussive shockwave of the steam tunnel bored by the shot slammed Gorefin head over tailtip away from the fleet, his stumps cauterized shut but still leaking bits of blood and flesh into the surrounding waters as he spiraled down into the depths, shocked almost senseless by the pain.

"NICE SHOT!" Dearka congratulated them, from where the Dreadnaught had launched and was now standing atop the harbor wall of TTU, the Earthshaker Omega just lowering as Dearka sent the weapon back into standby mode, having obviously been planning an interception shot of his own had Yzak failed.

"I have my moments." Yzak allowed himself one to bask in the accomplishment. "Looks like fish stew might be on the menu tonight. I hear shark doesn't taste too bad."

_Umm... Yzak..._

_Yes, Katie?_

_This is not good._

_What do you mean "this is not good"? How could this not be good? The shark is dead or crippled, the fleet is safe and we might actually have an exotic dinner depending on whether it sinks or floats!_

_I don't know if I could stand to eat a former intelligent life form, regardless of its species._ Katie pointed out. _But that's not the problem. Because Gorefin... that's his name... is neither dead nor crippled, any more than you would be if you'd lost a few fingers. And now he's REALLY pissed off._

_So what? What's he gonna do? We're out of his range up here, and if he comes around again we really will have fried fish on the menu!_

_What's he gonna do? Yzak, what do YOU do in combat when you get really pissed off? Remember, this shark is an Ultimate Coordinator version of a shark! He's gonna use his Seed, that's what he's gonna do!_

_Oh shit..._

Down below, in the depths, Gorefin was overcome with his shock and outrage at his grievous wounding. Contrary to Katie's estimation, it was quite a bit worse than losing a few fingers, more like an arm and part of a leg, with plenty of burns along the torso that made moving of any sort hurt terribly. But it wasn't anything he couldn't compensate for with his telekinesis, though the aunguish of suffering such permanent, disfiguring harm was almost as painful as the actual injuries themselves. Were he not Chimera, this would be a life ending injury, his peers, had he any, would quickly gang up upon him and eat him while he was unable to properly defend himself. As things were, it was like he'd suddenly been aged a century or two, he was neither as fast nor as agile as he was used to being. But he was fast enough, and agile enough, to make sure those that had maimed him regretted their actions most terribly!

It was a fact of life on New Eden that utilizing your Seed was an act of the utmost last resort, for its use signaled desperation and, in a way, vulnerability, which would only attract more predators if you weren't able to accomplish whatever you were trying to do quickly. Any sort of psychic camouflage or discretion you might have been enjoying would be shredded under the blazing explosion of power that heralded a Seed awakening, announcing your presence and intentions to anything with a mind to feel it for anywhere from hundreds of feet to scores of miles! And worst of all, since every living thing on New Eden with even a semblance of self awareness had a Seed, once one was activated, all involved would activate as well to compensate, and since the amount of power granted by the Seed was variable, your foes could suddenly recieve a much greater power increase than you did, completely eclipsing any benefit to the action. It was like pulling a gun in a bar fight, maybe you'd scare the other guys away, but much more likely, you'd just turn a fistfight into a gunfight!

Gorefin cared about none of that right now, though he did spare a bit of a mental wince as he saw the little light blue egg-thing fall through the pits of his mind and explode in a brilliant flash of energy, because when a Chimera of his power activated the Seed, it was a matter of note to every denizen of the oceans for hundreds of miles in any direction. His desperate ploy was all but certain to rouse the Ocean Mother from her contented slumber almost as thoroughly as if he'd swam down and bitten a chunk from her fluke! Already he could feel her stirring, her mind re-engaging to the controls of her vast phsyical form, still but a shell for the far vaster intelligence that inhabited it, and he felt her sleepy query like a rising tide inside his skull. He tried to send her reassurance, but it was futile to be deceptive with the Ocean Mother, she detcted his pain instantly, and a moment later had accessed his memories and learned what had befallen him. And that was when Gorefin, in the full grip of the Seed, began to tremble, because the Ocean Mother, named Leviathan by the surface dwellers, was NOT happy with the treatment of her vassal. It was all but unheard of for her to involve herself directly, but she was on her way right now!

"What the fuck is it doing?" Yzak demanded, more or less of anyone capable of answering, though no one seemed eager to step up. He'd felt Gorefin achieve the Seed mode, like an incandescent bulb flashing right behind his eyes, a throbbing ache building in his skull like he got from trying to stare at the sun directly for too long, a psychic shockwave even the blunt minds of the rest of the Task Force had felt it, a prickle along the spine, a pinch against the bridge of the nose, a premontion of dread from nowhere. But instead of coming up after them, the Chimera continued to slowly swim in a holding pattern a few hundred meters down, favoring its injured left side but not inordinately crippled, just as Katie had predicted. The Chimera was a blazing beacon of psychic power that frankly made Yzak's bowels a bit loose, the shark had easily gotten four or five times more powerful than it originally was, and that did not bode well for ANYONE in the Task Force.

"You want I should sink an Earthshaker shell down to proximity and blow it?" Dearka asked, his voice just a tad bit jittery as he felt the merest lapping of the psychic waves that Yzak and Katie were battling. Overhead, Mu was making wide circles in the Firebird Interceptor Mobile Armor, likewise struggling with the outpouring of emotional strength from the Chimera, like standing too close to an open furnace. "That might shake him up a bit."

"Assuming he didn't just hurl it right back down your throat, yeah." Katie returned, a shade viciously as the throbbing in her head continued to scale upwards, seemingly without end. "This is the most powerful psychic organism humanity has ever encountered, there is literally no telling what it might be capable of now! It might be able to rip your Gundam apart into individual molecules with just a glance!"

"When you put it that way, discretion might be the better part of surviving." Dearka replied, his jocular tone obviously punctured by worry.

They were interrupted by a live comm feed from the _Endymion._ It was Jim, the Harbormaster. "I hate to interrupt in the middle of a military operation, but we have a BIG problem." Jim said without preamble, his voice edging towards hysteria. "Long range sonar is detecting another large mass moving towards this location at incredible speed. It'll be here in minutes. I think the shark may have called for help." Jim trailed off, his voice stangulated. "And help heard..."

"This wouldn't happen to be that one big mass we were..." Mu started to say.

"Yes in fact it would." Jim cut him off, his voice cracking noticably. "If this shark has a mommy, she is now inbound, going several hundred kilometers per hour at a depth of almost thirty eight hundred meters! The displacement is insane, she must be three times the szie of the _Uzumi_! I'm ordering an emergency evacuation of the Town, if that thing even comes near us, her wake alone could tear the Town from its moorings and send it spinning into the abyss!"

"Taking measurements of incoming massive biological object." Lexi announced next. "Logging data in targeting databanks for future reference. Incoming object, to be designated Epsilon 1, is roughly nine hundred seventy meters long and likely weighs over 450,000 tons, making it bigger than the _Uzumi_ and the _Dawnblade_ combined. Data on Edenite animals complied from TCF sources indicate high probability that size corresponds to intelligence among Eden animals, and often though not always to psychic power as well. If such is true, then Epsilon 1 can probably be safely classified as a strategic WMD level threat." Lexi's analytical tone faded away for a moment. "HOW THE HELL CAN SOMETHING THIS BIG EVEN EXIST!" She demanded, either mimicing hysteria well, or actually perturbed by the thought of such a gigantic living thing. "If the size to intelligence ratios are anything close to what I think they are, this thing could be as smart as I am!" Lexi continued to rant. "Epsilon 1 is at fourteen thousand meters and closing rapidly, depth 2000 meters on a shallow ascent." She added in her CIC voice.

"Dear lord... can you guys see what I'm seeing?" Mu called down from above, his eyes locked onto the thirty meter high and several kilometer wide wave that had risen out of the distance and was hurtling down at them like a runaway express train. "Its pushing a goddamn tsunami in front of it! All hands, brace for sudden impacts!"

Mu's warning turned out to be unnecessary, as the wave subsided into barely more than a gentle push before it reached the fleet, but all the same, the water displacement caused by countless tons of water being moved actually pushed the ships around in the water, like a hand stirring a bathtub full of rubber duckies from below. Katie was the first to feel it, blinkering her senses too late, and she caught the merest fraction of a glimpse of the mind in the depths. Even such a fleeting glance blasted her senseless in a trice, her eyes rolling up and back as she foamed and thrashed in a convulsive fit as the alien, incomprehensible, gigantic thoughts brushed across her mind, the feedback effect jolting into Yzak like a red hot poker inserted through the base of his skull and stirring around in his brain, the Balmung losing cohesion and crash landing atop the harbor wall on its face, only stopped from falling off into the sea by a quick grab from the Dreadnaught.

"Epsilon 1 is surfacing! Epsilon 1 is surfacing!" Lexi warned, watching with an audible gulp as the water around TTU began doming upwards until there was a noticable hummock of water encompassing a several kilometer diameter section of ocean, the center parts a good ten to fifteen feet above the usual water level of the ocean. And then that hummock suddenly flattened out, becoming concav rather than convex, a huge depression in the water's surface that dragged at the ships unfortunate enough not to be able to take to the air, tugging them towards the center of the bowl. And then that too flattened out in a matter of moments, it was almost like Epsilon 1 couldn't decided what she wanted to do long enough to cause any harm. In truth, Leviathan was merely going through the psychic equivalent of yanws and warm up stretches. Now fully awake, and feeding off the distress of her vassal, Leviathan lashed out.

A column of water exploded from the ocean beneath one of the escort frigates, not striking in a manner focused enough to slice or even to crush, it just impelled the entire ship skyward like a bottlecap on a geyser, the edges of the column overlapping around the sides of the ship until the vessel was almost entirely encased within the rising spume of water, armored observation ports shattering inward, watertight hatches ripping off hinges as unstoppable water pressure slammed into the frigate from all sides at once before the water column jerked to a halt, imparted momentum flinging the frigate free of its watery tomb, flipping through the air like a oddly shaped poker chip as it upended and plummeted towards the ocean's surface, almost five hundred meters below its current altitude. The frigate struck the ocean surface canted on its side, and the ship shattered as if dropped upon hard, rocky ground, a telekinetic impulse stiffening the water's surface to the consistency of ice at the moment of impact.

A second frigate was simply hauled underwater, the entire ship pulled straight down like a balloon on a string, its propellers still madly churning, trying to propel the ship to the surface when the water pressure crushed the ship like it was made of eggshell, the wreckage tumbling freely until it slammed into the side of Trieste Town's primary dome, fracturing the pressure tight exo-glass. The spiderweb cracks grew to arm thick fissure in a matter of seconds, the ocean pressing in eagerly, before the entire dome imploded less than a minute later, hundreds of scientists and engineers crushed to pulpy smears by millions of tons of rushing water, a huge bubble of gases and steam escaping to boil the water beneath TTU, which began to slowly drift now that its anchor points were severed. And still Leviathan continued to make her stately way to the surface, gargantuan flukes and flippers of telekinetic force slapping and slamming into the hulls of ships, battering them about like plastic models.

And then the _Dawnblade_ was manuevering around to bring its weapons to bear, the primary turret with its pair of automatic Earthshaker bombardment cannons unleashing a volley of super-large high explosive, proximity fused shells into the water, each shell containing almost as much explosive power as a small tactical nuke! The secondary dorsal turrets, mounted two forward and one after, consisting of a rapidfire "Baron Lohengrin" Positron cannon and dual 120cm Linear cannons in each turret, also revolved around and began firing, churning the ocean's surface into a mass of steam and shrapnel, various Mobile Suits and the remaining ships starting to add their firepower to the cauldron of destruction that was chewing its way down to meet the rising behemoth. Raging currents of telekinetically impelled water surged forward to replace the fluid being vaporized by the Orbites attacks, and Leviathan remained safely cocooned in soothing, cool moisture no matter how much firepower was directed down at her. Whipping tendrils of raw telekinetic force, berefit of water medium, slammed into the TTU harbor wall, tearing out huge chunks of the structure, even boring right through it like invisible hole punches on a colossal scale, sometimes catching a M-7 and throwing it away in fingernail sized pieces, like it was made of glass and not hardened armor plating!

And then the _Dawnblade_ cut loose with its prow mounted 735mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon, the much bigger and more powerful brother to the Balmung's Caladabolg, a seventy foot wide beam of crackling cerulean blue energy spearing into the divot pounded into the ocean's surface by the other weapons. The report and blast wave from the firing of the weapon sent the _Dawnblade_ heeling to the side, and the other ships and Mobile Suits were forced to scatter before the expanding walls of mist and steam. The crater of water slowly settled and refilled, the ocean swallowing the hyperthermal energy blast like it had never been fired. The only sign that it had actually been fired were the wisps of heat coming from the prow of the _Dawnblade_, and the roiling heat signature in the depths. Which strangely wasn't disspiating at all.

"That's odd." Lexi commented, on the bridge of a dozen ships at once. "The heat signature seems to be getting closer..." Even as she said that, she calculated out the probablem short term outcome, and as one the ships jerked into evasive maneuvers. Some ships were more agile than others though, and even on its best day, the trimaran supercarrier _Uzumi Nara-Attha_ was not a sprinter of a ship. yes, it could go quite fast in straight lines, fast enough to keep up with most of its escorts at flank speed. But it wasn't quick to start nor was it particularly good at evasive maneuvers. Certainly not nearly fast enough to avoid the telekinetically corralled hyperthermal blast coming at it from below, which cored through the main hull and exited out through the left-center of the flight deck only three seconds after Lexi started the automatic evasive manuevers. For a long quarter second, there was a perfectly circular seventy foot wide, molten orange rimmed hole in the supercarrier, where someone standing on the flight deck could have bent over and seen almost a kilometer straight down into the ocean. And then the flash heated water shockwave arrived, and the supercarrier went off like a firework, fuel supplies, ammo bunkers and energy capacitors combining to make the ship practically disappear in a near mushroom cloud!

"Dear lord, the _Uzumi_..." Murrue gasped, sitting in her captain's chair, her eyes wide, hands clenched against the rails of the chair. The second after that, her hard won captain's resolve replaced the shock. "All ships, this is Captain Ramius on the _Endymion_! This situation is untenable, we cannot prevail against this foe! I am ordering a full withdrawal, all ships, scatter and meet up at the rendevous point as soon as you can! All Mobile Suits should return to their carrier ships, any suits from the _Uzumi_ should hitch a ride on the outer surfaces of the _Endymion_, _Dawnblade_, or one of the Defenders. Do not expend any more firepower against Epsilon 1, it will only send it right back at you or another ship!" Murrue bit down on her lip just shy of hard enough to draw blood. "Who would have ever thought the sea contained such monstrous creatures... it's like something out of the myths of the age of sail..."

Murrue watched on the bridge screens as the _Endymion_ fled what had become the battlefield. No, it was no battlefield, there had been no chance of their victory as soon as Epsilon 1 arrived. They fled the site of massacre with their tails tucked between their legs and the shattered remains of Orb's most powerful naval fleet slowly subsiding into the depths, alongside the pulped corpses of hudnreds of civilian workers amid the collapsed dome of Trieste Town. This was a black day indeed for Orb, their proudest fleet put to undignified rout in a matter of minutes by a single creature, albeit one bigger than any two ships of the fleet combined! Murre wondered for a moment how something so big could even survive... what did it eat, and HOW had they not spotted it before? Was a creature of the great depths? But why had it chosen now to come to the surface and attack? Had the shark called it? Some chimera were supposed to be just as smart as the smarter humans, could this be some form of undersea alliance? There was still so much they didn't know about their own changed world...

One of the last things Murrue saw through the cameras, before the _Endymion_ broke through the lower layer of clouds was a huge, grey-black mass of slick hide, faintly reminescent of that of a whale, though the size of a small atoll, break the surface of the water far below, spumes of exhausted air escaping through a multitude of what could have once been blowholes. At first she thought that the creature had just breached its back, until a solid golden eye the size of a Gundam opened in the middle of the mass, and Murrue realized that she was just looking at the thing's head... and only one side of it! The water was so turbulent around the thing it was impossible to get a real feel for its actual shape, there was just a massive dark spot in the ocean, with that great golden eye staring up at them, watching them as they fled. And then water rose up on all sides of the dark mass, a literal mountain of suspended liquid reaching up, and up and up until it towered over the half smashed remains of TTU like a glacial cliff face, briefly forming itself into the image of a colossal, multiflippered whale fluke! And then the water fell, almost in seeming slow motion from a distance, and TTU was erased from existence, and the ocean was clean, calm and totally empty when the _Endymion_ next broke through the clouds about fifteen minutes later.


	36. Path of Determination

Author Note: Well, lots of mixed opinions on the events of last chapter. I know Leviathan is pretty OP, she's meant to be, the Grand Chimera are closer to gods than mortals, though they can be surprisingly mortal too. But even gods aren't invincible, and there's a nice topic on my forums about the limitations of telekinetics. Its like the Great Endeavor... with the right weapon, at the right time, used in the right way, you can send even the biggest things crashing down in flames with just a single shot. But anyway, I wrote this one so fast I can't really think of much else to say. Though I can mention that while many people are making good guesses about plot points to come, your timeline is... way too accelerated. Each chapter corresponds to slightly less than a percent of the story's completion, you really think something like that stuff would happen when the story is only 33ish percent done?

xxxx

**New Eden, Shores of Lake Victoria, Ruins of Victoria Spaceport "Urbanis", December 5th, Morning**

_This is quite a fine city you have here, Sheriff-General Hales._ The thought intruded on Daveron's musings as he stood atop one of the many observation and communication towers that had been erected among the new trenchworks and defensive emplacements that had been growing around his beloved new home city for the past few weeks, ever since it was determined that the USN was planning for its first major offensive to culminate in the destruction of that self same city. All to reclaim a ground to space launch system that was little more than a pile of rusty scrap metal lining one of the nearby ridgeways, so overgrown with bloodweed and partisan ferns that not even the most daring of local children wanted to play around and among the maze of corroded girders. Perhaps it was a sentimental thing, more a symbolic victory than a true military triumph, a "hey look, we reclaimed one of our most notorious landmarks, go us!" sort of thing. And in the pursuit of such a foolish thing, millions of peoples lives were placed in dire jepoardy! Was it any wonder that those of New Eden fought back against the invaders from space?

Daveron fought to keep his face composed and his mind calm, and not betraying the disquiet he still felt for casual psychic communications from strangers. He could listen to the Wind as well as the next man, but that didn't mean he had to like it! Daveron had the suspicion that he was earning a reputation as a stodgy old fart, one of the sort that always bitched and moaned to the grandkids about how all the newfangled inventions were corrupting people and making them degenerates and weaklings. This despite the fact that he wasn't even forty yet. Sure, his hair had gone grey early, but that was a common symptom of men who took excessive responsibility onto their shoulders, and now his distinguished grey was shot through with streamers of dark green, like natural winter-forest camouflage, though he kept it trimmed so short it was hardly noticable. A man of many military formalities, that was definitely the foible of Daveron Hales, leader of Urbanis's emergency militia self defense forces. Old fashioned, in almost every sense of the word, as far as life on New Eden was concerned.

Which meant he tended not to get on so well with the more radical elements, especially those from other city-states. And doubly especially those from the notorious den of decadence and radical thinking that was Garden City, the Himalayan metropolis that fancied itself the first among equals of all the various city-states merely because of their proximity to Yggdrasil. Daveron had counted his blessings that at least Garden City was largely isolationist, they weren't much into bothering with the business of other city-states. But of course that had all changed on the night of Nov 10th, when the sky itself cried tears of blood and fire as the USN forces made their unprecedentedly huge drop operation. And so, though he disliked them no less than before on a personal level, Daveron was only too happy to have been reinforced by several entire Legio's from Garden City's secretive Custodian military force in the past few weeks, and he had been impressed with their willingness to work and fight for a place none of them called home.

He was less impressed though with their chosen methods of fighting, and he turned on his heel, arms still clasped at parade rest behind his back, to eyeball the man who had so brazenly come up behind him and sent thoughts into his mind without so much as a "by your leave". It was the man he had come to see as his opposite number among the Garden City forces, Strategos Regulus Gregory Nobotau, of Legio Ironhide. As ever when laying eyes on the Strategos, Daveron had to swallow a scoff of mingled disbelief and derision, that any man could seriously go to war wearing such a... costume! Daveron was as familiar with the defensive properties of Borealite armor as any other man, but any defensive value the armor's strength gave was entirely negated, and then some, in his mind by all the exterraneous crap that was attached to the armor, which in this case meant sections of skull, teeth, tusks and brow horns from a variety of Oxiphants and Ironhides, which made the Strategos look like a walking coat and hat rack every time he had his war suit on, which was almost always.

As if that wasn't enough, the armor itself was highly decorated with carvings and inlaid mosiacs of ivory and semiprecious stones in patterns reminescent of the hide markings of some Ironhide bulls. Honestly, anyone with half an ounce of common sense would be able to tell at two hundred meters that the Strategos was an important officer, while they could get within spitting distance of Daveron and they'd still have to be lucky to make out the dirt dulled rank tabs on the collars of his savanna pattern camouflage fatigues. In a grim way, it was almost reassuring... as long as anyone from Garden City was on the battlefield, none of Daveron's officers would need worry about being sniped, they would look like common grunts next to the trophy bedecked Custodians, no matter how high ranking the officer in question was! Strategos Nobotau slowly doffed his absurdly heavy looking war helm, made from what looked like the entire skull of a adult Ironhide, the bigger, tougher and altogether less tractable version of the Oxiphants that were a staple of meat eating diets everywhere, the descendants of Earthen cattle.

"Strategos." Daveron nodded his head in acknowledgement of the other officer, his red-brown, gold pupiled eyes guarded as he watched his ally. "Yes, Urbanis is a great city. It's come very far in a very short amount of time, from what used to be hardly more than a slum to one of the largest metropoli on the face of New Eden."

"And its thanks to the efforts of men like you and your militia volunteers that it has accomplished so much, so fast. Truly I have never seen such patriotic fervor in my life." Gregory waved his arm at the rapidly growing network of bunkers, weapon emplacements, generators, trenches and shield projectors that was being constructed in front of them and around all sides of the city as well, though most heavily on the side facing the open savanna from where the USN ground attack would most likely come. "My soldiers and I are in awe, I kid you not."

"Fighting to defend your home and your loved ones tends to be quite the motivator." Daveron agreed, his chest swelling a bit at the praise, despite himself. "But thank you for your words, I shall be sure to disseminate them among the troops. It is good to have allies who appreciate the nature of what we are attempting to do."

"The only thing better would be to have appreciative allies who actually agree on how to conduct this defensive fiasco, am I right, Sheriff-General?" Gregory noted wryly, noting the look of sour distaste on Daveron's face at the title, a temporary measure bestowed upon him by the governers of Urbanis during this time of crisis because of his extensive prior experience in leading a combined arms regiment, the Orb 121st Mechanized Airborne Regiment, in the years before the Eden Disaster and his conversion to become an Edenite in the wake of the Battle of Cape York, where he and his unit had been shot down and abandoned by the USN forces in the wake of the fiercest fighting Daveron had ever seen. Something he was certainly more than a little bitter about, to be sure, even as happy with his new life as he was. "The only thing we seem to be able to reliably agree upon is that we really disagree with each other's plans."

"No battle was ever won soley by staying on the defensive, Strategos." Daveron retorted with a sniff as he turned away to view the defensive works once more. "All the defenses in the world mean nothing if there is no time or supply constraint upon the forces of the enemy. We might hold them off for a year, but we will run out of food and medical supplies and troops before they do. Without a force to relieve or reinforce us, there can be no victory in this battle for us."

"And there is where I disagree, Daveron." Gregory replied, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Whatever you think of the "grandstanding" tactics of the Custodians, when we set our minds to something there is notthing in this world of ours that can shift us or make us step back. They will strike with all their might, and we shall take all they have to give and then return it when they are exhausted and overextended. We will win through our greater endurance. That is the way of the Ironhide."

"Pretty words, but they are meaningless in the face of the attacking force we face, which outnumbers us only a hundred to one if we are lucky..." Daveron countered with a sigh. "I don't doubt that you and your men will fight like the very devils of hell, Gregory. But there is only so much mortal military force can accomplish, though we be Edenites and they only Naturals and regular Coordinators! If we had three times our number, I still would not feel confident in our ability to prevail!"

"That's because you're a pessimist and I'm an optomist. There is always hope and always a chance to prevail." Gregory shrugged and smiled.

"I am a serving military officer in charge of what amounts to a volunteer militia, with my back quite literally to a wall behind which are sheltering my family and loved ones, facing the largest ground offensive in the history of modern war. I cannot afford to be anything but pessimistic, Gregory. If things go as badly as they eventually must, you and your forces can still pull out, retreat and fight another day. There is no such option for me and mine. We will stand here until the ground is soggy with our blood, and then we shall fall and be forgotten. It doesn't make me happy, but that is what will happen, eventually." Daveron clenched his fists around the railings of the observation tower until his knuckles turned white. "And you know what the worst part of it all is, Gregory?"

"Worse than the dying in vain and being forgotten as your proud city-state is razed to the ground?" Gregory coutnered, trying to deflate Daveron's black mood with some grim sarcasm. "Going to be hard to top that..."

"The worst part, Gregory, is that I can't blame them." Daveron retorted with a snarl. "I can hate them just fine, I can rail against them for what they have done and what they still will likely do... I know as well as you that even death is preferable to surrender to the hands of those monsters up in space, the ones who work for FEAR. But I can't blame them for this. It isn't the fault of the soldiers that we will be fighting. They are just doing as they are told, as they believe is right."

"They're wrong though. They are fighting for a corrupt and evil government that..." Gregory began to protest.

"Yes, that is of course correct. They are wrong. But are we right? Are we really right?" Daveron turned his gimlet stare on Gregory once more. "Maybe my men and I are, at that. But can the same really be said of you, Gregory? Not you personally, but Garden City. Did you not provoke this war with your attack upon Orb, that most peaceful of nations? Did you not set off a thermonuclear device in the heart of Morganroete, killing hundreds of innocent men and women? Can you really blame the enemy for being angry at being attacked for no reason they can see? Yes, what they've been doing to us would blacken the hearts and turn the stomachs of some of the most evil historical villians... but does that make it right for us to turn to acts of terrorsim in reply? I don't believe so. And so, while I will fight with everything I have, I cannot but be sickened, because this is a war that should never have been fought in the first place."

"This war was coming whether we wanted it or not. We had the choice of starting it on our terms or fighting at a disadvantage even greater than we already face later." Gregory replied, his face like stone. "For the record, I'm not sure I agree with the actions taken by Kunai and the Praetorians either. But Yggdrasil and the Consols backed him, and what's done is, unfortunately, done. Yggdrasil promises hope for the future along this path, and I have no other option but to believe that is true, because any alternative is simply too horrible to consider. I understand that Urbanis is less fervent in its belief in Yggdrasil than we of Garden City, but I do know this for sure... Yggdrasil cares about us all, about all life on New Eden! It would never lead us down a path with no hope of victory. And that is why I say that despite the odds stacked against us, there must be a chance because otherwise, I would not be here now." Gregory reached out and clapped Daveron on the shoulder with one gauntleted hand. "That said, Yggdrasil best helps those who act to help themselves, so what say you and I go over the defenses once more, and see what we're still missing?"

"About a hundred thousand professional soldiers and six thousand state of the art Mobile Suits." Daveron replied with a humorless grin. "That would be a nice start." He waved a hand at some of the Urbanis militia Mobile Suits that were helping with some of the heavy earthmoving tasks. They were mostly taken from the surplus military stockpiles of the FNE and ALU, supplies and material abandoned in the haste to evacuate Earth during the Eden Disaster, which meant there was about equal mixtures of aging Ginns, ZaOots, and Bucues alongside Strike Cavaliers and Strike Dagger JAWs, with a single unit of three Templars thrown in as well. All were painted in the colors of the Urbanis emergency militia, a background of dark brown and tan splotched with olive green, in other words, savanna camouflage colors and patterns that might actually serve to break up their outlines against visual sensors from a distance, unlike the highly carved and decorated Dervish's of the Legio's, which would never be mistaken for anything but a Mobile Suit, except perhaps an oversized decorative statue, at any visual range! "These machines are well and good, but they are ancient compared to the machines we will be facing. Even our greater skill and reflexes won't be enough to fully make up the technological differences..."

"Your forces will be stiffened with the inclusion of our Mobile Suit manifolds from the gathered legios." Gregory reassured him. "We shall have close to one hundred twenty Dervishes in the battle line, plus as many as ten Spectres and all four of the Wraiths! Aiieee, but you should see the havoc they can wreak upon the battlefield, the enemy will flee from them in tears after the first few exchanges. Its also rumored that not just one but BOTH Executors and their Gundams will take the field in our favor! Think of the boost to morale that will be, standing at the side of Kira Yamato himself!"

"I sense a slight note of derision in your tone there, Gregory." Daveron commented with a thin smirk. "Are the Custodians not fully pleased with the introduction of their savior, Kira Yamato, to the command structure? Makes you feel a little inadequate, doesn't he?"

"He is the Executor. It is not my place to either agree or disagree with his decisions, whatever my personal feelings, though I will admit you are not far off the mark, Daveron."

"You mustn't let it get to you, Gregory. He's like that to everyone, he doesn't mean it in a bad way. You must admit far too many of your peers could do with a little ego deflating at the hands of a true legend." Daveron's smirk grew. "Truth be told, while as anyone with Orb blood in their veins would be, I am ecstatic to fight on the same battlefield as such a renowned member of the Royal Family, it is the second Executor that concerns me more. Unlike many of you, I still recall the name of Zacharis Frost, and it is not with fondness. That... thing... is no ally of ours, no matter what you may believe. He is merely biding his time before he acts to destroy us all. I would sooner ask a FEAR scientist to watch my back than Zacharis Frost! At least then my death would be somewhat painless..."

"Believe it or not, he was actually quite forthright about his intentions, from what I understand. As you say, he is just biding time until this war can comes to a close, upon which time he intends to start a new conflict, himself versus the whole of humanity. The guy is as crazy as cockroaches in high heels, but he's very compelling with his insanity, it's impossible to look him in the eye and laugh." Gregory shrugged, casting his gaze upward, towards the storm clouds that brooded more or less permanently over Urbanis these days, the glassy spires of the city proper reflecting the light of cloud to cloud lightning bolts every so often. The clouds were not natural, or not fully natural, the product of cloud seeding and environmental control machines imported from Garden City along with the Ironhides, serving as visual cover over the city and its rapidly rising defensive works from the orbital observations of the USN fleets. "I actually hope he IS every bit the monster he's supposed to be, because that monster is going to be in the very midst of the enemy forces. The question that truly vexes me though, is..."

"The orbital fleets, naturally." Daveron joined his companion in staring up at the stormcloud grey heavens. "Could be two or more of the Incarnate class dreadnaughts up there, and more than a dozen Myrmidons as well. The city shields are strong, as are the defensive emplacements over our primary defenses, but they can't last for more than a few hours against a sustained orbital bombardment from that many capital ships. We have to devise a way to prevent or sharply attenuate the time they have to strike at us. Especially with their damned Tactical Augmented Coordinator program, they'll be through our thickest shields as soon as they discover the first signs of a field weakness in the projectors."

"I believe a temporary measure will be effected for the course of the coming battle. Don't ask me what it is, I don't know, though I would imagine it to be highly psychic in nature. We've been recruiting some very nasty allies in the past few weeks, beings of incredible psychic potential. High command just says that the TAC system will not be nearly as detrimental to our situation as it is cracked up to be. A more permanent solution is being prepared for sometime early next year though. That will be one trump card that is going to be discarded from their deck as soon as possible." Gregory stopped to think a moment, before giving Daveron a shrewd glance. "You mentioned being a former Orbite, Daveron. What will Orb do, do you think? We've heard rumors of a fleet headed this way from Orb's direction, though no recent sightings of any activity through the Carpentaria convoy channels."

"They'll be here, you can stake your life upon it. Or more accurately, your death." Daveron replied, returning to gloominess for a while. "President Durandel has a real burr up his butt for Orb, he wouldn't miss a chance to put them at the front line of a major confrontation. We could be dealing with anywhere from two to five Gundams and all sorts of new technology, in addition to whatever elite units the USN decides to send. I would not be surprised if we saw the Vengeance again, their so called "Crystal Knight". I am also especially worried about the new FEAR models, the Panzerdragoons. We don't have anything even approaching that level of firepower in a mobile platform, and those pilots are invisible to our psychic powers. They're going to decimate my troops." Daveron rubbed at the bridge of his nose with two fingers in aggravation. "I don't know if we'll be able to count on the vaunted Executors to do much besides keep the very worst of the enemy elites from stampeding through our lines."

"You really do see the glass as half empty all the time, don't you?" Gregory shook his head in mock despair.

"In our current situation that half empty glass is lying shattered on the ground, shortly to be crushed by the bootheels of the enemy soldiers. Keep your faith, Gregory, and I'll keep my pessimism and we'll both walk away happy, okay?"

"Are you sure I can't convince you to wear something a little more... comprehensive than those skivvies?" Gregory asked, changing the subject, eyeing Daveron's camouflage fatigues disdainfully. "Those look like they'd hardly stop a spitwad, much less a linear round."

"The object of a camouflage uniform isn't to stop bullets, its to prevent them from ever hitting you in the first place!" Daveron retorted at once. "Why don't you just paint a big target on your chest and say "I'm the commander, shoot me first" through a megaphone every few seconds, it couldn't make you any less obvious a target!"

"If you're going to end up shot anyway, Daveron, wouldn't it be better to do it in style and on your own terms? Let them snipe me, I'm probably the least effective warrior in my entire Legio, I spend too much time giving unnecessary directions to people who I've trained to know their jobs better than I do." Gregory thumped his chestplate and his helmet benevolently. "Besides, this armor was hand produced by no one less than the Warsmith himself, albeit one of his earlier, less refined works. You could unload your full clip at my head and shoulders and barely even make a scratch on this stuff!"

"I'm sure he'll be glad to get the armor back then, after your body is turned to semi-liquid by an artillery shell or anti-tank rocket, or after we scoop you fricassed bones out of the shell after you are burnt to death by napalm. Or best of all, we'll sift your ashes from the ashes after they deploy their nano-weapon upon us, that damnable MAIDEN stuff. Not a suit of Borealite made that can keep that stuff out. For that matter, you could be stepped upon by a Mobile Suit, or run over by a tank. Face it Gregory, of all the ways for you to die in battle, a simple bullet wound is probably among the quickest and least painful... your armor denies you that luxury."

"You are such a gloomy son of a bitch! I'm gonna go take a walk before you convince me to slit my wrists or to hang myself by my bedsheets or something..."

"Also slow, painful deaths that your armor won't save you from, good point." Daveron pointed out with a malicious smirk. "You might want to avoid going near the lake shore too, it would be such a tragedy for you to drown like a standard Oxiphant cow, too clumsy to climb out of a waterhole."

"You really missed your calling, you know that, Daveron?" Gregory grumbled, slowly settling his helmet back on his shoudlers, the armor systems taking the weight of the reinforced skull protector, the Ironhide armor having been the very first prototype of what would eventually result in the Praetorian battle plate. "Who needs an army, we'll just send you into the heart of the enemy forces and you'll have half of them drunk and the other half dead by suicide in only two or three weeks!"

"And my mother always said I should have gone into customer service too..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Praetorian Enclave, Vaul's Laboratory, December 5th, Noon**

"Lilia! It's good to see you back, hale and healthy. I must confess, I heard you had been injured during your last mission, and the girls and I were worried about you." Vaul said, a smile crinkling his sweat smeared face, his shaggy black hair hanging down across his eyes, as ever. He brushed it back, an unconscious gesture, but it would only fall forward across his face again in a few minutes, to be brushed back once more the next time he noticed it was in his field of view. He was sitting at his planning desk in the main chamber of his workplace, halfheartedly eating a few ambrosia sandwiches for lunch, but his attention was still mostly upon his work rather than nourishment. Lilia smiled at his effusive greeting and stared curiously at the 3D image revolving around in the air above Vaul's desk, it looked like a cross between a oil drum and some sort of reactor containment vessel.

"I don't know who started that rumor, but it was way exaggerated." She replied, stepping up to the desk and taking one of the sandwiches from the plate that sat there, pushed to the edge where he wouldn't have to look at it much. "Come on now, eat your lunch or the girls will be mad at you. You can spare ten minutes to eat the food you need to help you stay focused for the afternoon session."

"I forget who is more bossy, you or my daughters." Vaul said with a sigh, before taking the sandwich and making a big show of taking a few bites out of it. "But I shudder to think what kind of condition I might find myself in were you not around to make sure I take care of myself." He took another bite of the sandwich, chewed thoroughly and then swallowed. "So you didn't get hurt then? I am very relieved, my dear. The girls would be devastated if anything ever happened to you."

"I didn't get hurt any worse than anyone usually does on a patrol mission, let's put it that way." Lilia grimaced as Vaul gave her the evil eye, since many a Praetorian came back all but shredded by some nasty encounter out on patrol. "You know what I meant. I'd strip down for you, but that might give some people the wrong idea. But no, really, the one who actually got hurt was Zacharis."

"The second Executor? The unbalanced one? I could have sworn I saw him in the hallways earlier today, he seemed right as raindrops..."

"That's Zacharis for you, all of four days ago you would have had trouble telling him apart from someone trampled by a herd of Oxiphants!" Lilia shook her head and sighed in recalled distress. "He was an absolute mess, anyone else would have died two or three times over, easy. Imagine, trying to take on a fully grown Wendigo with your bare hands and no armor, ritual combat or not! I don't know what he was expecting to have happen, but he was only a few seconds away from being roadkill before I stopped the fight."

"You put yourself between a fully grown Wendigo male and his ritual combat opponent? Dear girl, you're lucky to be alive! From what I understand, their culture takes those ritual combats VERY seriously."

"Well, yeah, they do. But I think Erk was out of line in doing what he was, he was really trying to kill Zacharis. Some sort of past history between them, however that could be, but that's what I sensed. He called it ritual combat, but it was nothing less than attempted murder. And I think the other Wendigo's were of the same opinion, certainly Erk didn't make a big deal of things after I stepped in. He almost looked relieved actually, it must not have normally been in his nature to inflict such damage against a relatively helpless opponent. Funny thing out of it all though was that despite what Erk tried to do, Zacharis couldn't have made much greater of an impression on the tribe if Erk had been trying to make him look good!" Lilia shook her head again and could not help but smile. "I don't know how he does it, but he earned their respect and awe using tactics that would be cause for war in any society I know how to deal with. And he did it naturally, easily even."

"Not quite as crackpot as he makes himself out to seem, is he?" Vaul shrugged.

"Well, if you're asking whether he is or is not crazy, I'd have to say he is. By the literal definition of insane, he very much a madman, category defining even! But at the same time, there is a brilliantly deductive and perceptive rational mind in that head of his, and don't you dare forget it! In the course of a single conversation he showed me something about myself I'd never realized before, but now I recognize is nothing but the truth! And he was doing that more to humor and mock me than because he was really trying! He is... not like anyone else I've ever known..."

"You sound quite taken with him." Vaul arched an eyebrow speculatively. "Perhaps he does deserve a second look then. I had dismissed him as nothing more than a psychotic brute, but clearly there is more than just that shell. But if he can catch your eye and capture your heart, I definitely can't afford not to keep a close eye on him."

"Hey now, you make it sound like I've got a crush on the guy or something, and I can assure you THAT is not the case. He is very interesting, but he's also very scary, and he can be a real dick to spend time around. Its like sitting down to a dinner of freshly killed meat with Hector, even if he's not trying to hurt you, he can and might if you get between him and his goals. And may the Tree help you if he does decide you are a real foe or obstacle! Erk may have cleaned his clock and them some, but before that he faced down dozen juvenile Wendigos and made them cower in fear with just two or three moves, taking down their leader and holding him captive with his own tusk! No Praetorian I know, not even Alex, Heine, or Haman, much less myself, could have so easily pulled off something like that, and never barehanded! It was amazing."

"You realize your eyes are shining and you've got that slightly adoring look on your face you used to reserve only for recounting the exploits of Kira Yamato, right?" Vaul pointed out with a snicker at her embarassed flush.

"Okay, so maybe he did really impress me, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a meglomaniacal jackass either! And he may be pretty, but looks aren't everything! And after what he pulled after I stepped in to save his life, he's lucky I'd ever even think about talking to him again!"

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself of this lack of infatuation?" Vaul asked her, his eyes twinkling at her shamefaced look. "You always have liked living dangerously, Lilia. I trust you're able to take care of yourself."

"That's the thing though..." Lilia admitted at last, her shoulders slumping. "I know what I can do, but I really think Zach is beyond me. He's like... some sort of... half mortal... or something. Like he's out of phase with the rest of the living world, like it can't fully touch him. How can I even think about making a connection with someone like that? That, and he stands for the complete opposite of everything I believe in. I don't say this about many people, but he IS a bad man! He is evil, like so few thankfully really are! Kira told me about some of the horrible things Zach has done, and Zach told me about more. It made me physically sick to think about it... but I can't just turn away from him either, Vaul! That's what everyone who's ever been around has done, maybe if only for self preservation, but still, he's NEVER had anyone to rely on! No one to trust. He may be evil now, but no one is born evil, he is merely the product of an environment so horrific it beggars any description I can muster. I've seen flashes of it and they leave me shivering and weak for hours at a time. So I can't just shove him away, no matter the danger he presents to me, no matter how hard he tries to scare me away or hurt me. And he has tried... and succeeded. He looked through my memories, Vaul. Without my permission." Lilia could not contain the shudder of remembered violation, both from the old memories and Zach's latest outrage.

"I've seen you come close to killing people for even daring to try and do the same, much less succeed." Vaul said, very carefully. "You've never even confided to me what truly happened during your late teenage years, and I won't ask you to. I have some educated guesses and as a father of two daughters, I don't want to think about it. But if what you say is true and its not really his fault that he's the way he is, I agree that lashing out at him is just like kicking a garm puppy that wet the floor two hours ago. It doesn't remember doing anything wrong, so it thinks you're just punishing it for no reason, and eventually it will fight back. This is a very risky thing you're doing, but you know that. I don't think I would do it, if I were you, but I am not. You are a very special young woman, Lilia, and if anyone can perservere through all the resistance he's bound to put up, it is definitely you. Just try not to let him kill you in the process. You're no good to anyone, least of all him, if you die."

"Yeah." Lilia swiped at her eyes with her arm, Vaul pretending not to notice the moisture beaded there. "Thanks, Vaul. I won't abandon him, but I won't let him dicate the terms of our relationship either. He's got to learn that he can't just do whatever he wants to whomever he wants whenever he wants. Much as he's never had anyone to trust, he's never really had anyone he cares about stand up to him and tell him he's being a creep either. He had no role models worth mentioning... he never tells anyone anything about himself or his past... he'll talk about the future for hours if you let him, but nothing personal about him or his past... I don't even know what he likes to do for fun, though I am sadly sure killing and torture are things he would list if asked. I think he likes collecting weapons, he didn't seem too impressed with the standard armory grab-and-go selection. He really seemed to have an eye for what constituted a quality weapon." Lilia suddenly slapped a fist into her palm in realization. "I know what to do!" She exclaimed, and then turned her gaze on Vaul, who shifted uneasily in his chair.

"I know that look. You're about to ask me something and you don't think I'm going to say yes, but you want it bad enough to ask anyway." Vaul said slowly. "So ask."

"He mentioned that if he'd had a proper weapon, a scythe like the one his Gundam uses, that he could have killed as many Wendigo's as need be. He wouldn't have lost to Erk either, not if he was properly armed. But we don't carry any scythes in the armory, there's no demand for them since its a reasonably inefficient weapon. Besides, he would just turn up his nose and snort at anything from the general use selection anyway. But if you were to make him a weapon, even Zach couldn't fail to like it." Lilia answered hopefully.

"You want me to make one of my mastercrafted weapons for this admittedly maniacal, psychopathic, homicidal murder machine you call a boyfriend?"

"I don't call him my boyfriend!" Lilia protested heatedly. "But the rest is more or less true..."

"You know I'm swamped with work right now, vital projects that could determine the course of the war." Vaul waved his hand at the floating image above his desk. "Nano-Plague deployment canister, in case you were wondering. Something to counter that MAIDEN stuff once I get a sample of it. And Kunai has requested a few be set aside for some secret pet project of his. The Indigo Plan, I think he called it. But back to what you're asking me, is to spend a lot of time and effort on a personal request when I really should be working on stuff for the good of Garden City as a whole."

"I want you to make it LEMIM too." Lilia added, wincing, knowing the expression that had to be on Vaul's kindly face, something between aghast and angry. Forging LEMIM was a dangerous and exhausting process, and not just to Vaul, but to his daughters, both Latents, who were the ones that encoded themselves onto the item in question, lending it a fraction of their Latent amplification powers. Any LEMIM item created by Vaul quite literally had a piece of his beloved family forged into the item in question, and each process had the potential to permanently damage or even kill one of the Latents. In essence, she was asking him to risk his daughter's lives for this. "Please, Vaul..."

"Lilia..." Vaul's voice was tight, his emotions torn between sympathy for Lilia's request and anger at what exactly she was asking him to do. "I..."

"Please, Vaul. I've never asked for a really big favor before, but I'm asking for one now. I'll pay any price you set, but I need a gift for Zach that will give me a path into his heart and soul, and you're the only one that can make such a gift."

"This is completely unreasonable!" Vaul snapped at her, crossing his arms across his chest firmly. "I barely even know the man, how would I even know how to make the weapon for him, much less do anything else? I have no feel for him, no memories of him upon which to draw inference from. It would be a hopeless task even if I were to agree, and I won't. The only times I have ever made LEMIM in the past have been at the request of the Consols, acting as the voices of Yggdrasil. My daughters lives are too precious to waste on..."

"You said it yourself, Vaul." Lilia interrupted him, her voice steely. "If I can't get through to him, no one can. And I can't do it without this gift. And if I don't do it, then even if we win this war we're in now, we're only going to find ourselves in the midst of another conflict, perhaps even worse, when Zach decides to winnow down the human race of all that sees that he considers flawed. The world and space itself will burn to satisfy his desires, Vaul, and I might be the only one who can stop him! But I need your help first, to take this first step, to crack the door open so I can get my toe in. The future of the entire human race, not just us Edenites, could depend on this, Vaul." Lilia paused and swallowed. "You have no memories of him, but I do. And I would let you draw upon them if that is what you need. And yes, I know that it would mean trusting you to poke around in my mind to find all that you needed, unguarded. But that is how serious I feel about this. This is not just a want, this is a need, Vaul. So please..."

"I understand how you feel, but I can't just..."

"Daddy?" A new voice interrupted from one of the side rooms, where the elder of the Warsmith's two daughters, a raven haired young beauty named Marissa, the younger being Ellie, both in their late teens, stood. Marissa had longer hair and was more slender, while Ellie was almost portly and had boyish short hair. Both girls were their father's chief assistants, and nearly as bright with technology as he was, definitely tinkering was a family business. "I heard what Lily asked for, and we don't have a problem with it. If Lily really needs something, and it seems to me that she does, its the least we can do to help her out, after all the time she's spent being our older sister, aside from all the other things she's always forced to be doing."

Vaul let out a long and weary sigh, though he knew that as soon as Marissa, who always spoke for both herself and the much more shy and introverted Ellie, weighed in on Lilia's side of things that any and all arguements he may have had were worthless now. The girls knew the risks just as well as he did, perhaps even better, if they were going to volunteer, he couldn't deny them their wish. All the same, he fixed Lilia with a gimlet stare. "It seems I've been outvoted, Lilia. You will have what you need. I will make for you this scythe for Zacharis, and I will make something of my own for Kira, as it would not be well to favor one Executor over the other. The last thing I need is for them to think I'm trying to take sides or curry favor. Come back in the early part of January and you shall have what you seek, and I promise you that never will you see items of such quality from me again. The other LEMIM items were duty, but this... this is for one who is as family. May this choice never come back to haunt you. Now, if you please, I am a busy man, now moreso than ever, and I need to get back to work."

"Thank you, Vaul." Lilia all but went to one knee. "You won't regret this."

"I hope not, because if I do, then it will too late for a great many undeserving people..."

xxxx

**Far Space Expansion Zone, Several hundred thousand kilometers outside Asteroid Belt, Ronin City ISSA, Colony Command Center, December 5th**

The door buzzed open and Ashino looked up from where he was seated at the central desk, holographic computer screens showing reams of important looking data on three sides, a scattering of paper files stamped with varying code classifications spread across the glass surface of the desk, detailing troop movements, supply levels and communication protocols. It was all very military, very "harried but involved" commander, as Tamar liked to put it. Even the little model figurine of the Retribution, with a wicked smily face bobblehead instead of the usual head assembly, placed on one corner of the desk, was a carefully considered and placed item, designed to show he had a sense of humor too. All in all it was quite the nice presentation, sure to give anyone who happened to visit him at the office the impression that this really was a man in full control of every aspect of every detail of every minor thing that might concern him. In short, it was a reassuring impression. It was also completely false. Though he did find the bobble-head Gundam amusing from time to time.

But truth be told he spent far less than one percent of his time sitting behind this desk actually doing anything of import to the Retributor's cause, though he could much more often be found behind it, sitting and staring off into infinity, letting his mind unwind and unravel a bit, or else thinking about deeper, personal issues. A buzzer on the door warned him several seconds before anyone was admitted, giving him time to collect his thoughts and compose his face, and take the pose of a hard at work commander interrupted in the midst of a thousand different tasks, but still able to make room for one more of whatever his particular visitor needed. The real truth of the matter was that except for high level command decisions and the creation of battle tactics and strike scenarios, Ashino delegated the rigamarole of logistics, supply, intelligence gathering, manufacturing, recruitment, training and propoganda to highly qualified subordinates, stepping in where they asked him to, following the scripts they prepared for him, making him seem much more of a leader than he was.

Which was not to say that he did not lead the Retributors, he was the founder and controller of the organization, its figurehead and most infamous member and its champion as well. But so much of being a leader did not precisely fall within his true talent or skill set, the part that dealt more with the eighty percent of time that was spent in meetings and listening to briefings and giving reports and whatnot. He wasn't so good at that, though he'd learned to fake it pretty well. Ashino sat back in his chair, the creak of the furniture due to a carefully degreased screw that made it sound like the chair was just some secondhand piece of salvage, when it was actually extremely comfortable. Another Tamara suggestion, to blend in better with the destitute status of so many of the recruits, who often fled from the tyranny of the USN with barely more than the shirts on their backs, if that much! His current attire of simple red t-shirt with olive green suspender braces to support an underarm pistol holster, tucked into drab black and white urban camouflage fatigues and scuffed boots was designed to show that he was an informal, approachable man more concerned with results than decorum, which was true enough, as far as the latter part went.

But again, it was a reassuring image to many of those freshly fled from the USN and its tie wearing, nattily dressed secret police force, Section Nine; or the starched uniforms and strict parade drill of the military police forces; or the ostentation and pomp of the Solar Knights. Here was a man who dressed just like any other grunt in the field, yet he was widely considered to be one of the most dangerous criminals, or folk heroes depending on who you asked, of modern history. It helped people feel they could talk to him like he was any other guy. Or it was supposed to help with that anyway, his natural gruffness towards strangers was attributed to the stress of being the commander of the number one terrorist/freedom fighting group in human space. Honestly, without Tamara whispering these suggestions into his ear, Ashino doubted the Retributors would think even half as much of him as they did, and he wouldn't have been a quarter of the symbol he was now considered, a figure in some ways equated to Lacus Clyne herself, at least during her period of resistance to ZAFT under Patrick Zala during the latter part of the First Valentine War!

Ashino could not help but blush whenever someone made that particular comparison, having met and had his life changed, in many ways, by that selfsame Lacus Clyne before, during the Second Valentine War, he was privately of the opinion that there was no way anything he did could even hold a candle to what she had accomplished without ever once staining her hands with blood, but he kept that to himself. Ashino fixed his lime green eyes on the face of the clearly excited young officer, his uniform jacket unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up, the flaming "R" over the scales of justice marking that was the Retributors symbol freshly sewn onto his shoulder, in place of an older, USN unit patch. The man held a data slate in his hands, which he presented to Ashino, unable to help himself from stiffening to attention in front of this awesome man despite having been told not to observe such formalities by his friends who had been with the organization longer. Old habits died hard. And when Ashino stood up, revealing his deceptively short stature and returned the gesture with a picture perfect salute from the USN officer's handbook, the message bearer felt his heart almost burst with pride, that such a great man would deign to cater to the sensibilities of a mere junior officer, fresh from recruit indoc!

Inwardly, Ashino frowned at himself, still trying to school himself not to respond with the habits of the military lifestyle he'd enjoyed ever since the beginning of the Isolation era on Earth, before even thinking about it he'd returned the officer's stance with quid pro quo from his time as a senior officer in both the Isolation and USN armed forces. Fortunately, judging by the beaming grin on the young man's face, Ashino judged that his minor slip up had been very well recieved for some reason, perhaps even the man thought Ashino had done it on purpose to make him feel more at home. "This is the latest status report on the war's progress, Commander Ashino, sir!" The junior officer said smartly, holding out the data slate. And then lowering his arm a little, so Ashino wouldn't have to reach up quite so much to take it, the young man's face flushing as if he'd somehow insulted Ashino by noticing he was considerably shorter than most men. Ashino preferred people to notice he was short and act like it, rather than pretend it was some sort of deformity and act like he was only hunched over or something, and would be straightening up at any moment. It really wasn't a handicap, after all.

"Thank you, Ensign." Ashino accepted the data slate. He knew he was supposed to say more, try and connect with the man, but at this particular moment he wasn't much feeling it. Fortunately, just the simple hand off seemed to have satisfied the Ensign's feelings, and he hastily removed himself from the room, like a boy fleeing after asking his first crush to the prom, regardless of a positive answer. Or he'd been told young boys were like that, normal young boys anyway, since Ashino had had more important things to worry about during his early teens, such as impressing the Doc and staying alive, two things that were closely intertwined. And avoiding his brothers and sisters, save for his friend Shani Andras, as much as possible. Ashino sat back down in the chair, the creak echoing throughout the dimly lit room, the lights having reduced their intensity again as soon as the door was shut. He tossed the data slate on the desk and sighed, loudly.

"You didn't do too terrible of a job of that. Granted, you said all of three words when thirty were called for, but then again, you could have talked about just about anything and he'd have run off like you'd just bestowed a million dollars on him personally." Tamara commented, stepping out of the room that was cleverly concealed behind this office space, one panel of the wall behind the desk actually being a hidden doorway that was almost invisible unless you knew where to look for it. Ashino tapped a control on his desk and locked the outer office door, a red LED on the outer keypad would tell anyone who stopped by to come back later, since the door was locked. They would think he was reviewing top secret information, and that would even be true. But mostly he didn't want anyone walking in on Tamara and him like this. Especially because at the moment she was wearing a bedsheet wrapped around her hips and clutched to her chest, and that was it. "We're going to have to work on that salute thing though, you'll never convince anyone paying any attention at all that you're laid back if you do that all the time."

"How did you know I saluted?" Ashino asked, running his eyes over the hinted at curves beneath the sheet, though it was mere appreciation for pleasing shapes than anything meaningful, after all, she had spent the night with him, they'd had plenty of time to sate the physical side of their relationship. And once he turned that part of him off, it didn't turn back on again for at least a day or two except under the most extraordinary of circumstances.

"I didn't, until just now. But I expected it." Tamara said with a crooked smile, stepping over to the desk, letting the bedsheet slide a little lower across her hips as she did so, though since Ashino was in "work" mode, she could probably literally throw the sheet away and sit straddling his lap and he'd talk with her the same as if she was across the room and clad in an E.V.A. suit. So very focused and disciplined, was her BCPU. Inhumanely so, though she would never put it in those terms. "I know you well after all."

"You do seem to have an affinity for my thought processes." Ashino admitted, deadpan, as he slowly reached up behind her and pinched a section of inviting golden skin, eliciting a yelp of such volume that he was glad the office was soundproofed. "But this old dog is still learning a few new tricks." He smiled as she slapped his hand away, her cheeks turning rosy at being so caught off guard by him. He was doing his best to be human, sometimes it was a lot more enjoyable than others. Letting the smile drain mostly away, Ashino picked up the data slate again and began paging through it, his rigorously schooled mind absorbing data wholesale, to be chewed over and digested more intellectually at a later time. Though most of a BCPU's implants were focused around improving physical capabilities, the Doc had not negelected the mental side of things entirely. All the reflexes and strength in the world were worthless if you didn't have the wit to use them efficiently, and BCPU's were often required to observe and assess large amounts of fast changing, chaotic data patterns during training to prepare them for the cognitive stress of high speed battles. It was something at which he had particularly excelled.

A little less than five minutes later, Ashino paged back to the front of the data and wordlessly handed the slate over to Tamara, who half turned to sit down on the corner of the desk near him as she sped read the data as well, a skill learned long ago during her rookie years as a data-work specialist for the Tiamat organization, a knock off of Blue Cosmos. Tamara was his second in command, and the person who truly had a finger on the pulse of almost all matters, great and small, that concerned the Retributors and their adopted home colony. She was the one who did all the logistics and supply work, who coached him on how to deal with the colony government, who assembled and filtered the intelligence reports for prime nuggets of information, and who handled the day to day operations of the Retributors military forces. She was a godsend, and Ashino didn't know what he'd do without her, professionally or, somewhat disturbingly, personally. He hadn't meant to grow so attached to her, but one thing had led to another, and now they shared the same bed nine nights out of ten...

"Well this sucks." Tamara said, interrupting him from his moment of confused reverie. "The war actually seems to be going well for the USN. The Eddies have managed to slow the expansion down quite a bit, but they can't stop it. Standard little guy-big guy fight, no matter how tough the little guy is, the big guy has all the real advantages. And in this case, a lot of other, big guy friends nearby to help him. There's not many little guys, besides a certain red-head, that can prevail in those kinda fights." Tamara smiled fondly at Ashino for a moment. "But on a serious note, this will mean we have to back off on propoganda distribution for a bit, if we press too hard while the government is actually being effective, we'll make ourselves look like whiny bitches and we can't have people dismissing our idealogical presentations like that."

"What about the disturbing reports, or rather lack of reports at all, coming out of Porta Panama?" Ashino asked in reply. "I smell a coverup of some sort. Something must have gone wrong there."

"And I agree with you, but nothing our intelligence agents have yet discovered illuminates what that something is, so we can't touch it unless we want to risk being labeled as just another bunch of conspiracy theorists. Accusations without proof are just libel and slander, and as "terrorists" we don't exactly have the moral high ground in the greater public's eyes. I'll have our people focus in on it, but we'll have to wait on action there. Next?"

"A gem. Orb sent a heavily armed task force to assist in the upcoming operation against Victoria, but they have failed to properly check in and some reports say the fleet has been badly damaged and even scattered by some unknown Eddie force. Propoganda, cover up or accidental truth?" Ashino said, lifting an eyebrow in query.

"Durandel does have a hard on for Orb, but I'm leaning towards accidental truth with a smattering of cover up. He can make up a better lie than that if he wants to make them look bad, if they got their butts kicked by something he wanted people to know about, such as any regular Eddie forces, you can bet it would be all over the news right now. Something went wrong there too, something that has even the staunchest Orb-haters among the USN high command zipping their lips out of fear. Any chance you could nudge some of your old buddies in the Stormhounds and see what comes up?"

"I can try, but Richard is quite swamped these days, since both Thomas and Cyprus are out of action." Ashino shook his head as he said that, hardly able to conceive of any happenstance that could have resulted in both the Lt and the Sarge-Major being taken out of operational status at the same time! Details on the true events that had occured in Orb during late October and early November were still extremely scarce, just some notes about Queen Cagalli suffering a major illness that kept her secluded from the public. An obvious cover up, but no one in Orb was talking about it, not even the staunchest of Retributor supporters. Whatever had happened, it was obviously something that was very touchy to Orb pride, and that came first, before any other loyalties, or so it seemed. Details about an apparently unrelated terror attack in the PLANTS shortly after the incident in Orb, where a respected PLANT politician had been murdered in her own home, was also being covered up with fervor, but something was telling Ashino that he just had to look a little harder and he'd find the truth revealed, and it was already making his stomach clench a bit, for whatever reason. This didn't feel at all like the usual Durandel cover up.

"Anything else?" Tamara probed, playing the familiar game so well, where they would test the analytical abilities of the other, hoping one would find a diamond in the rough where the other saw only pebbles. You never knew from who or what a brilliant inspiration would strike.

"Rehabilitation centers..." Ashino said, more like hissed, well aware of what a euphanism that term usually was. "Run by the Reclaimer Initiative, which is led by none other than the notorious Lord Atticus Djibril."

"Now there's a man I'd like to see in my crosshairs." Tamara admitted with a convulsive grasp of her hands. Though originally a Natural supremacist herself, Tamara's hatred was much more individualistic rather than genocidal, and people like Djibril, who persecuted an entire sub-race of people for a fact of birth they couldn't change, made her feel dirty and sick that she was in any way or form idealogically associated with the man! Some Coordinators were evil, murdering bastards, yes, but so were some Naturals. Genetic tinkering didn't make a person bad, that was a choice they had to make for themselves. Some lorded their phsyical and mental superiority over those less fortunate, and it was that sort of Coordinator that Tamara reserved her ire for. But a man who lorded his "moral superiority" over others while sanctioning the bombing of hospitals and pregnancy clinics was far worse than that, no matter his race!

"Two primary facilities, both located in Europe, the former British Islands. A dead zone as far as the war goes. One is a "work and re-education camp", the other a "detention facility." Tamara quoted from her recollection of the data.

"Slave labor and death camp, respectively." Ashino translated with a tight frown. "Probably with "research" oversight from FEAR. Those poor people, no one deserves that sort of fate, I don't care who you are. I've been an experimental subject before, and at least I was valued for what I could do! They don't even have that much protection, they're just there to live out lives of misery until they are too broken in mind and body to be of any further use, then they go to the other camp. The camp no one ever comes back from." Ashino put his hand on the desk, pressing down hard enough to make the reinforced glass creak. "I once spoke with the Doc about the Nazi's, the instigators of the largest world conflict prior to the Reconstruction War. They too had these "rehabiliation centers" and POW camps, with the same purpose as these ones. The exploitation of people to the point of death, and then their extermination. I asked him whether it was the Coordinators or the Naturals of that time that were more like the Nazi's."

"And what did he say?" Tamara asked, all but on the edge of her already precarious seat, eager for this little glimpse into Ashino's past.

"He never did. Shortly after we had that conversation he was dead, I never got the chance to discuss it further with him. In my opnion though... both sides were equally like the Nazi's. Neither side was any more evil than the other, they just varied in the particulars of their evils. However, the comparison is a little more clear cut right now. Those camps... I will not allow them to exist. No one should have to suffer like that. I don't even care if we expose them first or not, those camps must be dismantled. Their presence is a stain upon the existence of all that is just and decent about humanity!" Ashino rarely let himself get this fired up in private, though he often had to be seen in an impassioned state for the troops in public, but the slavery and death camps had really touched a chord in him, like all crimes against humanity did. Though he'd once been an instrument of that very sort, perhaps that was actually why he abhorred it so greatly nowadays?

"So take the _Justicar_ and a few units to Earth Orbit. A little monkeying around with the transponder codes and we should be able to get us set up as a supply run to geosynch over Heaven's Base. Getting through the atmosphere will be another matter, but I'm sure we'll think of something. I could do with a little excitment and hands on intelligence work, if you know what I mean?" Tamara suggested. She saw the brief flicker across his face. "Don't give me that, Ash. You couldn't leave me behind even if you slugged me over the head and left me tied up in the bathroom closet. I would so come after you, even if I had to E.V.A. my way there!"

"God forbid I should be concerned for you, Tam." Ashino shook his head in weary acceptance. "It goes against all standard military doctrine for both chief commanders to attach themselves to a front line mission at the same time."

"And since when have the Retributors been a standard military? I thought we were working very hard on giving the exact opposite impression." Tamara pointed out with a smirk. "Don't worry Ash, I won't do anything you wouldn't do."

"And that is definitely what concerns me." Ashino sighed, before smiling as well. "Thank you, Tam."

"For what?"

"For helping me feel just a little bit more human with each passing day." Ashino told her, and then reached up to tug the bedsheet away from her grip, dropping it in a pile on the floor. "Shall I show you the progress I've made?"

"But the mission..."

"The ship will take at least an hour or two to be ready to depart." Ashino waved her to silence, opening a comm line on the desk and giving the orders for the ship, the Retribution and a unit of Punishers to be made ready for a long range covert operation. That done, he closed the channel and turned back to the very alluring naked woman sitting only a foot or so away from him. "Now about that progress..."

xxxx

**Somewhere, Somehow, Somewhen**

Akira yawned sleepily, ducking beneath a low hanging tree branch, politely lifting one hand to cover his mouth, just like his mom had stringently taught him and his sister during the past few years, doing her best to hammer into them the same teachings of "elegant manners" that had been one of the few ways Grandmother Clyne had ever interacted with her daughter one on one. The manners, the operatic singing and musical appreciation lessons and some balletic dancing instruction, those had been the chief points of contact between Lacus and her own mother, Elaine Clyne having been very invested in her own career as a theatrical artist before an unfortunate car accident had claimed her life when Lacus was about Akira's age. Akira had done his best to pay attention to the lessons, recognizing them for what they were, a way for his mom to pass on what she considered a family tradition, and even though he didn't particularly like singing, and Aoi positively hated it, Akira humored his mother, most of the time. Aoi was less cooperative and altogether much more rebellious, and would often make herself scarce when they heard their mother start humming tunes under her breath.

It was Aoi that was leading the way through the forest, one hand out in front of her to feel her way through the dank gloom, a precaution made necessary after she'd been whipped across the nose with a branch earlier on, her other hand securely fastened around the wrist of her sleepy, quiet, introverted older brother, all but yanking him behind her like a kite on a string as she determinedly marched on. Akira absently noted that Aoi seemed to be of variable tangibility, sometimes her grip was like a vise around his wrist, and other times she was about as substantial as fog, which led him to the conclusion that this was likely some sort of shared dream between them, and Aoi was having trouble maintaining the connection. She was like that, she had a short attention span even when she was really interested in something, and god help you if she found something boring. Akira was the opposite, like his father, he could sit and do just one thing over and over again for hours and be perfectly content.

Akira stumbled as he recalled other dreams in which he and Aoi had been playing with dad, but try as he might the details never seemed to really come into focus, and Akira wondered how long he'd been sleeping for? Time passed differently in dream worlds than the real world, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this was more than just a prolonged summer nap. That awesome treehouse place dad and mom had taken them to was a pretty relaxing place, but enough was enough, he wanted to get up and play and explore some more! But this stupid dream didn't show any signs of ending anytime soon, the dark forest they were wandering through was strangely silent and seemingly infinitely vast, no matter how far or fast they walked, they never ran out of forest. At first Akira thought that the trees were all dead or hibernating, but in a brief pause while Aoi cast about for directions, before basically choosing one at random, Akira took the time to examine one of the trees more closely, and he realized that it was still quite young, just beginning to grow into its first flowering period.

So this was a young forest then, though the trees were all really big for being so young, but that just might be the weird physics of a dream world. Akira looked up and down the trees as Aoi pulled him along, muttering under her breath about being lost and not getting any help from her spaced out older brother, but that was okay because she was used to doing all the hard work and so forth and so on. He tuned her out with the ease of long practice and focused on his study of the trees, which often grew very closely together, forcing them to detour with a wall of wooden trunks. Each tree was subtly different from every other tree, but they were also strangely alike. They seemed... connected... somehow, and though many of them did entwine roots with their neighbors, Akira didn't think that was really what he was sensing. It was a deeper connection than just physical touch, he just couldn't put his finger on what it was. Aoi phased out again, and Akira almost tripped and stumbled as he continued to walk forward on autopilot and caught his ankle on a root.

Akira recovered and bent down to massage his sore ankle, belatedly noticing his lack of clothing. Wandering around naked was something he'd grown out of several years ago, ever since he'd been old enough to read anatomy textbooks and realized what the big deal was about the difference between boys and girls. Aoi didn't seem to care as much, though he sensed that was more out of a wicked desire to scandalize their mom and dad than because Aoi was unaware of the social conventions surrounding nudity. As a baby or toddler it was one thing, but they were eight and nine year olds now, only a few more years and they'd be going through First Puberty... you'd better believe they'd both been researching the subject in preparation, to brace themselves against the unwelcome arrival of strong hormones. Life was so much easier and less complicated when you didn't automatically feel different towards girls or boys because of developing biological urges.

Aoi phased back in again, obviously not even realizing that she was an inconstant presence as she glared down at him with her hands on her hips and sighed loudly, rolling her eyes in exasperation. _Honestly, Akira, can't you even walk in a straight line without falling down? You are the most uncoordinated Neo-Coordinator ever, I swear! It's almost like you're trying to be clumsy, I've seen you dance with Mom, and you never even slip then. But off the stage, you can't go ten feet without stubbing your toe or skinning your knees... ughhh..._

Akira stood back up again, enjoying the slight height advantage he had over his pushier sibling, which never failed but to irritate her. He noted that she too was berefit of coverings, but that didn't bother him, for earlier mentioned reasons. Aoi herself didn't seem to notice her nakedness any more than she did her frequent fading in and out of reality, and Akira wondered if it really was Aoi, or just a figment of his imagination. He hoped it was the former, because if it were the latter, then he was doomed... bad enough to be stuck with a little sister in the real world, if she was going to hound him in his private dreams too, he'd go crazy! _I'm sorry I'm always thinking deep thoughts and pondering important universal truths. Hameya knows, one of us has to have more in their head than ponies and frilly dresses._ Akira smiled in an aggravating manner at Aoi, since they both knew she was very much like Aunt Cagalli, she hated girly things with a passion. Well, ponies were cool, but frilly dresses or dolls or fake kitchen playsets? Aoi did her best to destroy them as quickly as possible, though Mom didn't seem to take the hint.

_I swear on dad's Gundam, if mom makes me wear another pink dress with frills and bows and ribbons, I'm going to scream as loud as I can and I won't stop until she takes it off me. I don't care how adorable I look in it, I hate dresses! You can't run in them, and forget doing anything fun like playing tag on the beach or hide and seek in the jungle. I'll dress up for important events or if we're going over to Allister's house, but why do I have to wear them at any other time? Shorts and tank top is so much more comfortable..._ Aoi groused. She would complain and gripe about her favored subjects for an hour if he let her, so Akira was quick to change the subject.

_Where do you think we are? This forest seems to go on forever._ He asked her, looking around at the trees marching away in all directions under a sky that seemed to have no delineation between cloudy and not cloudy. He couldn't even see the tops of the trees, just the trunks and the bare branches. It was kinda creepy in some ways, though that just might be because Halloween was right around the corner and everything. Allister had bragged that he was going to have the bestest costume of all time this year, and Akira was looking forward to proving that boast wrong. He wondered what he should be though? A sudden, grotesque image of a charred and crispy zombie child snapped into his head. Akira considered it. Yes, it was gruesome and scary, but it might be a little bit much. This was a contest of bestest, not most freaky after all. Mom probably wouldn't allow it either, she didn't like it when he pretended to be a dead or undead, she said it was bad karma. Mom and her little superstitions. As if he'd ever actually die in a fire! But as dad said, sometimes it was better to just not argue, rationality had nothing to do with it.

_I dunno._ Aoi shrugged and looked around the forest disinterestedly. _Does it matter? I'm fairly sure we're asleep, I'm just pissed that I'm trapped in one of your deep, symbolic, crappy dreams that no one understands._

_Mom would not be happy to hear you using those kinds of words._ Akira noted, a hint of disapproval in his tone.

_Those? I can use much more choice language than that. I've been around Mr. Dearka when he dropped a really expensive camera of Aunt Miri's and it shattered. I learned a lot that day, though he made me promise not to tell anyone what I'd heard exactly. I looked it up later though, and proved that, just as I expected, it wasn't biologically possible for two..._

_You don't need to go into details. Mom would freak out if she heard you emulating even the things I'VE heard Mr. Dearka say sometimes._

_Mom's gonna have to get used to freaking out. Once I hit puberty, from all the internet blogs I've read, all bets are off. I'll seem like the little angel she wants me to be compared to that version of me! I'd tell you all about how I'm going to get grounded for the first time, but you'd just tattle on me and I don't want to ruin it. You're such a five year old when it comes to mom's rules..._

_Just drop it. Just because I told on you once or twice doesn't make me a tattletale. I only did it those times because you were going to try something that could have gotten you really badly hurt. And mom makes rules for a reason. Usually. I will admit one or two of them are kind of strange, but the majority are there to protect us from doing stupid or bad things._ Akira sighed and shook his head. _I'm fairly sure though that the "don't eat the seeds of watermelons or pumpkins because they'll grow inside your stomach" thing is just a metaphor for being careful not to eat certain parts of plants that might be toxic..._

_Yeah, you can believe that if you want. But she actually picks them out by hand, even when we're at other people's houses. She even made me spit them back out that one time. You've seen her do it. Its embarassing. No one's gonna call her on it, cause she's Mom, but you can't deny it's weird. And the whole holiday spirits thing... Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus... she still believes in them, even though we've both watched her buy the gifts and hide them, she still puts out cookies and milk under the chimmney! Or something like them anyway. Mom is such a nutcase! And let's not even get into the Haro's, I'm SOOO glad she got rid of those things before I was born. Grown ups aren't supposed to play with toys like that. Most KIDS I know wouldn't want to play with toys like that either, I sure wouldn't! Thank Hameya Dad is still normal, otherwise I think I'd go crazy..._

Akira was searching for a good defense for Mom's "funny little habits", as Dad liked to call them when Mom wasn't around. He personally loved his mom's quirks, they were something she really only displayed around the family, it was like a special secret that they shared together, that mom was just as weird as any other mom, despite how famous she was. But then again, Akira was definitely very much a mommy and daddy's boy, making his parents happy was a great pleasure of his, while it was seemingly Aoi's great pleasure to do the opposite, perhaps as a means of differentiating herself from her brother, when they were otherwise much alike. But by the time he came up with even a halfway decent arguement, he turned around to find Aoi had disappeared again. Akira squinted unhappily, displeased to have let his annoying sister get the last word, even in a dream world, since she all too often got it in the real world too.

He waited for what felt like a long time, but Aoi did not return, either dreaming on her own now, or else she'd woken up and was off doing whatever it was girls did after getting out of bed, Akira was not particularly interested to know what that might be. Deciding that she wasn't going to be coming back, and even if she did, being stuck in the middle of the creepy woods by herself for a little while might do her some good, Akira walked off in a more or less random direction, having decided that in this particular dream world, direction was largely meaningless. He just wished he would find something besides just trees to see, he was actually starting to get a bit bored himself, which almost never happened to him. Almost as soon as he wished that, Akira heard what sounded like voices in the distance. _I should have thought of that earlier._ He chided himself. _Of course, its a dream, I can make things happen if I want to._ All the same, there was something about these voices that made him feel a bit cautious, and so Akira employed some stealth in investigating, shortly finding himself crouched behind a tree and peering down into an odd little grotto in the forest floor.

The were three... beings... for lack of a better term, standing in the grotto, roughly equal distances apart, facing each other as they talked. More like argued or even squabbled, the heated glances two of them, the male and female figures, were shooting each other strongly reminded Akira of Aunt Cagalli when she was angry at someone, their eyes practically seemed to shoot laser beams. All of the figures were more or less humanoid, but for some reason, Akira felt that might just be a result of his own perceptions rather than reality. The man to the right had albino pale skin and extremely dark brown hair, his eyes a mixture of red and blue and black that seemed to swirl and fade in and out, changing in time with his stature as he swelled from a midget to a giant, from emaciated to portly, seemingly at random or in response to inner emotional turmoil. He had no mouth, instead a sort of clipped beak, like an owl or maybe an octopus, filled his face, and he seemed to be connected to the earthy walls of the grotto in the shadows behind him with a multitude of wriggling tendrils or tentacles.

The woman on the left had blue-green hair that constantly rippled in the air around her like it was floating in invisible water, her skin slick and slightly rubbery, a grey-blue shade like a porpoise, her voice impossibly deep and sonorous, more like a dirge-song than a real speaking voice. Her eyes blazed golden, and were much bigger than regular human eyes, filling up a quarter of her face, which had no nose. When she opened her mouth to talk, she had baleen bristles instead of teeth, and gill slits fluttered at her throat and sides. Her size kept changing as well, though she was generally always bigger than the brown haired man-thing. The ground was muddy beneath her feet, and the scent of the sea was strong in the air around her, a mist rising from the grotto walls to her rear, within which fish-like shapes could sometimes be seen swimming.

The being standing between the earth-man and the water-woman was neither male nor female as far as Akira could discern, perhaps a combination of both or just straight androgynous, its stature was exceptionally tall but thin, the skin dark and curiously stiff looking, dark green hairs sticking up from along the arms and legs and head like pine needles. The eyes were small, glittering like silver coins from within a face that was thicketed with the green pine hairs so thickly it was impossible to tell where any facial features might have been, if any existed. The tree-thing kept its arms stretched out wide, crooked and gnarled fingers spread wide, keeping the man and the woman seperated, both of them shying away from direct contact with the tree-thing as if its simple touch was deadly poison. A constant slow breeze seemed to ruffle the tree-thing's hair at all times, the sweet vanilla smell of sap was a tangible thing around it, like an angelic halo of scent. The man and the woman were too caught up in their arguement to notice anything around them, but Akira could have sworn the tree-thing glanced over at him for a moment before interrupting the dispute.

_**IT IS AS I HAVE FORETOLD, IS IT NOT?**_ The tree-thing's voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, the tone like wind rustling through forest leaves in early spring. _**THE SEEDLINGS HAVE COME FROM THE PLACE BEYOND THE SKY, WITH FIRE AND POISON IN THEIR HANDS, TO RECLAIM THIS PLANET, OR DESTROY IT IN THE ATTEMPTING...**_

_GIVE IT A REST, PIPEWEED, I'M SICK OF YOUR "TOLD YOU SO" ATTITUDE! AND COULD YOU AT LEAST PRETEND TO SPEAK LIKE A NORMAL BEING?_ This came from the tentacle-man, his voice buzzing and clicking thickly, like he was speaking with a mouth full of muck. _YOU CLAIM TO CHAPERONE THOSE TASTY SNACKS CALLED "HUMANS", YOU COULD AT LEAST DEIGN TO SPEAK LIKE THEM. THEY MIGHT NOT BE WORTH MUCH, BUT THIS "TALKING" THING, THIS WAS A GOOD INVENTION. YOU CAN CON THEM INTO WORSHIPPING YOU IF YOU LIKE, I UNDERSTAND THE ALLURE, BUT THERE'S NO NEED FOR SUCH THEATRICS BETWEEN US THREE._

**LET THE PLANT COMMUNICATE HOW IT WISHES. IT'S MYSTICAL WAYS ARE ANNOYING, BUT NO LESS SO THAN YOUR VULGARITY. YOU'VE EATEN TOO MUCH OF THE LAND DWELLERS, THEIR ECHOES HAVE SATURATED YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS AND CORRUPTED IT.** The sea-woman cut in dismissively, her voice once again like a song sung in slow motion from a great distance away, not precisely quiet but very much resonant, the very air seemed to shake around her with each syllable.

_JUST COME SWIMMING UP MY SHORELINE SOMETIME, SWEETHEART, AND I'LL SHOW YOU JUST HOW CORRUPT I AM._ The tentacle-man grinned, or at least controted its beak into a facsimile of that expression, the eyes glowing hungrily as their colors pinwheeled in hypnotic, beguiling patterns. _YOU'LL SING A DIFFERENT TUNE ONCE I'VE GOT MY TENTACLES INSERTED INTO YOUR BRAIN._

_**I WOULD BE CAREFUL ATTEMPTING SUCH A THING. THE ECHO OF ONE OF US COULD WIPE CLEAN THIS PLANET OF THINKING LIFE. THIS IS WHY WE MUST BAND TOGETHER, THE DEATH OF ONE OF US WOULD DIRECTLY LEAD TO THE DEATHS OF THE OTHER TWO, AND ALL OTHER LIFE AS WELL.**_ The tree-thing gestured expansively at its brethren. _**THE HUMAN SEEDS HAVE ALREADY ALLIED THEMSELVES WITH ME, AS HAVE A GREAT MANY OF OUR MORE LIMITED KIN. THE HUMANS HAVE AN EXPRESSION... IF WE DON'T HANG TOGETHER NOW, WE WILL ALL HANG SEPERATELY LATER.**_

**I FOR ONE HAVE NO INTEREST IN AN ALLIANCE WITH ANY LAND DWELLERS. LET THEM COME, AND I WILL SMASH THEM TO PULP SHOULD THEY CHALLENGE ME. IF THEY GROW TO BE TOO MANY, THE OCEANS ARE DEEP, THEY CANNOT PURSUE ME TO MY FASTNESSES. I HAVE NO NEED OF YOUR PETS, TREE.**

_**ONCE THEY DEFEAT US, THEY WILL COME FOR YOU. THE SPACE SEEDLINGS ARE ENDLESSLY INVENTIVE AND SHORT SIGHTED, THEY WOULD EVENTUALLY BOIL THE VERY OCEANS TO STEAM IN ORDER TO SLAY YOU, FOR THEY CANNOT FEEL SAFE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE. YOU CANNOT SWIM AWAY FROM THIS PROBLEM, SISTER, IT MUST BE FACED AND IT MUST BE FACED TOGETHER.**_

_I FAIL, PERSONALLY, TO SEE THIS GREAT THREAT THAT THE SPACE SEEDLINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO PRESENT TO US. I HAVE DEVOURED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF THEM, THEY ARE WEAK OF MIND, BODY AND SPIRIT, LESS EVEN THAN THE ANTS YOU SO TREASURE AND SAFEGUARD FROM MY WHISPERS! I DO NOT FEAR THEIR COMING, INDEED I WELCOME IT. MORE DELECTABLE PREY HAS BEEN SCARCE OF LATE, PERHAPS IT HAS COME TIME TO GORGE MYSELF ON BLAND FARE AND LET THE JUICIER FRUITS BLOOM AGAIN AT A LATER TIME._

_**EVEN IF WE THREE ARE SAFE AGAINST THEM, WHAT OF OUR VASSALS? I HAVE SEEN BOTH OF YOU SUFFER LOSSES AMONGST YOUR KITH AND LESSER KIN, ARE YOU JUST GOING TO STAND ASIDE AS THOSE WHO SERVE YOU ARE DESTROYED? WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT THOSE WEAKER THAN US.**_

_YOU CAN PROTECT WHATEVER YOU LIKE, THORNBUSH. IF MY CHIMERAE AREN'T STRONG ENOUGH TO SURVIVE THESE SEEDLINGS AND THEIR MACHINES WITHOUT MY INTERVENTION, THEN ANY INTERVENTION I WOULD OFFER WOULD BE UNWELCOME TO THEM, SINCE I WOULD PROMPTLY DEVOUR THEIR ECHOES. LIFE IS ABOUT SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, THERE IS NO TIME FOR MERCY FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT KEEP AHEAD OF THE DANGERS OF LIFE._

**I WILL ANSWER ANY CHALLENGE AGAINST THOSE WHO FALL WITHIN MY DOMAIN. BUT I OWE NO LOYALTY TO ANY THAT CALL THE LAND HOME, YOU HAD BEST TELL YOUR CHIMERAE TO WATCH THEMSELVES AROUND THE WATER, FOR I AM NO LONGER IN A TOLERANT MOOD. THE SEEDLINGS AND THEIR SHELLFISH-BOATS HAVE TESTED ME ONCE, AND FOUND ME NOT TO THEIR LIKING. THEY WOULD BE FOOLS TO TRY AGAIN.**

_**AS USUAL, NEITHER OF YOU IS LISTENING TO ME, DESPITE MY PARTICULAR TALENTS. THE SEEDLINGS ARE FOOLS, IT IS PART OF THEIR NATURE TO ACT ILLOGICALLY IN LARGE GROUPS, NO MATTER HOW LOGICALLY THEY ACT AS INDIVIDUALS. IT IS HOW THEY EVOLVED. YOU CHASED AWAY A SMALL GROUP OF THEM, BUT THEY WILL RETURN, BLANKETING THE OCEANS WITH THEIR BOATS AND PUMPING IT FULL OF POISONS UNTIL ONLY YOU AND YOUR CHIMERA STILL LIVE IN THE DEPTHS. WOULD YOU RESORT TO CANNABALISM TO SURVIVE?**_

_I WOULD!_

_**NOBODY ASKED YOU, CRABPUS.**_

**I TAKE YOUR POINT, DRIFTWOOD, THOUGH IT PAINS ME TO ADMIT IT. I WOULD NOT SEE MY CHATTEL REDUCED TO ANIMALS MERELY FOR THE SAKE OF MY PRIDE.**

_**THANK YOU, SISTER. I WILL DISPATCH AN EMISSARY SHORTLY, HE IS UNIQUELY SUITED TO THE TASK OF COMMUNICATING WITH ONE OF US, THOUGH HE DOES NOT REALIZE IT. I HAVE SEEN MUCH REGARDING HIS FATE AND HOW IT ENTWINES WITH THAT OF US ALL.**_

_DON'T SUPPOSE YOU'D LIKE TO SEND ANY MORSELS... I MEAN EMISSARIES... MY WAY TOO, WOULD YOU? I PROMISE TO AT LEAST HEAR THEM OUT BEFORE I DIGEST THEM. I'M A BIG FAN OF ENTERTAINMENT DURING DINNER, YOU SEE._

_**SHOCKINGLY ENOUGH, BROTHER, THERE WILL COME A TIME WHEN YOU COME TO REGRET HOW FLIPPANTLY YOU SAID THAT. YOUR VERY SURVIVAL...**_

_IS MY OWN CONCERN, WEED. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE SEEN, THE IDEA OF ME NEEDING HELP FROM THOSE PARASITES YOU ALLOW TO INFEST YOU IS NOT JUST ABSURD, IT IS OBSCENE. THEY ARE NOTHING MORE THAN FOOD, ONE DOESN'T GET HELP FROM HIS FOOD._

**JUST LET HIM DIE, TREE. WE'RE BETTER OFF WITHOUT HIM.**

_**UNFORTUNATE AS IT IS, SISTER, OUR TENTACULOUS BROTHER SERVES A VITAL PURPOSE IN THIS WORLD, JUST AS YOU AND I DO. YOU AND I MIGHT SURVIVE HIS PASSING AND BE GLAD OF IT, BUT IT WOULD BE LONELY WITH JUST THE TWO OF US LEFT. I KNOW HE VEXES YOU GREATLY, BUT WITHOUT HIM THERE IS NO BALANCE. THINGS ARE DESPERATE ENOUGH AS THEY ARE, WITH THE FOURTH STILL GESTATING, THOUGH THEY STIR IN THE WOMB NOW. IT WON'T BE LONG BEFORE WE THREE BECOME WE FOUR, AND FACE THE PRETENDER FIFTH THAT WILL TRY TO ABSORB US ALL AND BRING NOTHINGNESS TO ALL REALITY.**_

_THERE YOU GO WITH YOUR MYSTICAL NONSENSE AGAIN. CAN ANYONE REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU BABBLE ABOUT, EVEN YOURSELF? WHY DO PROPHETS ALWAYS HAVE TO BE SO DAMNED CONFUSING? YOU'VE SEEN THE FUTURE, JUST LAY IT OUT FOR US!_

_**HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED, BROTHER, THAT MY CRYPTICNESS IS ALSO A RESULT OF WHAT I'VE SEEN IN THE FUTURE? I KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF I TOLD THINGS PLAINLY, AND I ASSURE YOU, EVERYONE IS BETTER OFF CONFUSED THAN ENLIGHTENED. BETTER TO SEARCH OUT MEANING FOR YOURSELF THAN RELY ON ME TO PROVIDE IT FOR YOU. IS THAT NOT A PART OF BEING STRONG, FINDING YOUR OWN ANSWERS? AND DO NOT THE STRONG SURVIVE, AS YOU LIKE TO SAY? I CAN AND WILL GUIDE THEM, BUT I WILL NOT ENLIGHTEN THEM NOR DRIVE THEM ONTO THE PATH, THAT IS THE PROVINCE OF THE FOURTH. THE SPARK IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK, BROTHER, SISTER. THE FIRE OF DETERMINATION WILL AWAKEN SOON, AND BY ITS LIGHT THE SEEDLINGS WILL FINALLY BLOOM.**_ The tree-thing winked up at Akira as it spoke. And then, between blinks of his eyes, the grotto disappeared, the psychic meeting he'd eavesdropped upon vanishing as the three creatures involved severed their connections to each other.

_What did you really mean, Mr. Tree?_ Akira wondered, sitting back against the trunk he'd hidden behind. _And why did I get the feeling you were trying to tell me something?_


	37. Island of Hope

Author Note: Well, last chapter certainly got nice reviews, I'm glad the scene with Akira and the Grand Chimerae was so well recieved. I hadn't really been anticipating much with it, but it really took off and I was very happy with the result even before I posted it and got all the feedback. Really grinding through this arc now, reaching the climax, or near to anyway, here's another slower paced chapter with lots of sunshine, happiness and warm heartedness. And some more cute scenes with the kids. And for the record, if the game in the first scene actually existed, I would never ever be able to write again, I'd be lost to it forever. Good thing its just a fantasy... for the moment.

xxxx

**New Eden, Orb, Villa Pacifica, December 10th, Early Afternoon**

"So that's the battle plan. Does anyone have any questions before we get started?" The Mission Commander asked, his voice caught between weariness and excitement as he contemplated the fracas to come. A few icons on his screen pulsed to show incoming transmissions. "I mean serious questions, people." The Mission Commander added fiercely. "I swear to god, I'm gonna bleeping murder the next bleeper that asks me what to do in phase one, you bleeping understand me? If you don't know what to do in phase one by now, you're better off dead and so are the rest of us! It's all in the briefing, boys and girls, you know the charter, you're supposed to read and study the briefings before we get together for this bleep!" Most of the transmission icons blinked out, the snide chuckles of the Regiment's usual jokers echoing across the common chat channel as they settled down under the soothing refrain of the MC's usual foul mouthed directions. However, one still blazed bright on the MC's readiness screen and he sighed. "Okay, what is it, GunRoyal?"

"I was just wondering whether you wanted the melee specialists to scatter during the phase transition from phase two to three and back again. If we stay close in, we don't have to worry about taking big damage, but if our dps is low, we might coincide a Rigor Mortis sequence with a phase transition and that could end up with a lot of the big dps paralyzed if we all stay in. We've wiped like that before, MC." Alllister replied, trying to keep his tone as neutral as possible. People could get set off by the littlest of things when communicating online, the pseudo-anonyminity granted by personal user names instead of email addresses made some people think it was okay to act out in outrageous ways because no one would know it was them. Fortunately you didn't get much of that inside a Regiment, at least not any Regiment worth joining, and despite the MC's threats of just a little while ago, Allister recognized the usual tension, stress and excitement in the MC's, one of the Regiment's seniormost members, voice. Raise a BS question and he'd chew your head off and maybe even boot you from the Strategic Mission, but a legitimate concern would get a rational answer. Usually.

The game was called "World of Gundam Battle", and it was a combination MMORPG and First/Third Person shooter, one of the most popular online games of all time, with more than forty million people of all ages playing, even though it had only been introduced five years ago, after the computing infastructure had come into existence allowing the quasi-Virtual Reality graphics and control scheme to work on a large scale. Unlike previous massive online RPG's, WGB was not in a fantasy setting, more like sci fi, though in truth much of it was actually based on real events, selling people on the "what if YOU had been fighting in a Gundam during this historic event, what might have come up different"? There was some editing done of course, so that the enemy forces were a more homogenous whole, an evil empire of sorta-aliens named the "Warmonger Armada" who had come to the Solar System to enslave and destroy the human race. Warmongers looked very much like humans, except they had metallic eyes of various colors, depending on their rank in the Armada, and while Allister could not fail to recognize the symbolism there, and find it offensive, it wasn't offensive enough to stop playing such a cool game either.

Your character was a Gundam and there were literally tens of thousands of customization options and different parts to put on your Gundam so that no two were ever exactly alike. There was still a class type system where you had to decide what kind of basic chassis your Gundam was going to be at character creation, from the options of Assault, Support, Restorer and Guardian, each of which had two or three sub-specializations you could select upon gaining ranks, which roughly equaled experience levels. You started out with a machine that would barely even give a Ginn or a Strike Dagger a run for its money, running solo missions against lightly defended bases and units of vehicles, before progressing up to Mobile Armors, small warships, enemy Mobile Suits and finally enemy Quasi-Gundams and Gundams. You could group up for the tougher Missions, called Tactical Missions, bringing up to three friends along in a Squadron. And then there were the Strategic Missions, which involved anywhere from three to ten squadrons at once, usually against some gigantic Warmonger war machine.

The SM in question that Allister's Regiment... roughly equivalent to the "guilds" of Fantasy RPG's... The Royal Union, which was an Orb based Regiment on a heavily Orb population server and one of the top Regiments in the entire game in terms of prestige ranking, was about to attempt was called "Defeat the Lunar Onslaught" and it was basically a recreation of the second battle of Galileo LFB. It was the lowest tier of SM battles, but it still dropped good parts and plenty of Money and Prestige Points for a victory, depending on how quickly and efficiently you accomplished the victory, and was a good place to farm for some of the rarer parts that made the higher tier SM battles, "Destroy the Armada Dreadnaught" and "Eliminate the Warmonger High Commander" much more managable. The former was a reconstruction of the battle against the Great Endeavor over the Moon, the latter was the only one to take place on Earth, covering the largest battle map with the most varied terrain: mountains, forests, oceans, open plains, of all the maps and featured a Regiment of Warmonger Gundams equal in number to the player Regiment, led by the WHC, which looked an awful lot like the Brotherhood Gundam. And unfortunately, fought like it too.

You had four main stats to watch out for, and then a couple of secondary stats as well, depending on your equipment. The main stats were represented by four bars that could be placed where you liked on your primary status screen, the red bar represented Armor Points, which were deducted when you got hit with attacks; the green bar represented Vital Points, which were decreased whenver you took a blow with no armor left, or from an attack that could penetrate your armor type, when all your VP were gone your Gundam was disabled, or, on the super-hard "Ace Mode" of a fight, which dropped much better parts and money, you could be destroyed. If disabled you paid a small fee when the fight was over and your AP and VP were restorted, or it could be done in fight by some Restorer class Gundams. If destroyed, you were out for the fight and had to pay a major fee of fifty percent of your total cash to return to disabled status, or else wait two hours before being auto-restored to disabled. So even the most successful Regiments only usually got 2 attempts on an Ace Mode fight every day, and once you won an Ace Mode fight, it couldn't be done again by you until one week later. AP could often be restored in battle, depending on your armor type, but VP took Nano Points to regain except with one very rare part.

AP and VP were your defensive stats, Energy Points and Nano Points were your offensive and ability stats, represented by yellow and purple bars respectively. EP, which regenerated at a certain rate depending on what kind of power system your Gundam had, were for using energy type weapons and for high speed manuevers, and could also be tied to the regeneration of your AP depending on whether you had Phase Shift Armor or not. NP were used for special abilities, like the Restorer's ability to repair another Gundam or group of Gundams of AP and VP points, or even restore them from Disabled status in mid battle, or the Guardian ability to direct the enemy's attention towards themselves, rather than the more fragile Gundam types. NP regenerated at a set rate, influenced only by the very top end parts available from PVP or Ace Mode fights or Faction abilities. In addition to the AP, VP, EP and NP, you also had ammo level and heat level bars, depending on your selection of munition and beam type weapons. If ammo ran out, that weapon would stop working till you bought more. If you accrued too much heat, your energy weapons would stop working and you could start taking AP and VP damage.

You could select either a third person view, looking over your Gundam's shoulders from a set distance back, or a first person, seated in the cockpit view. Most hardcore gamers preferred first person view for its realism, but either view was equally workable. The interface was, at a basic level, fairly simple, with one control directing speed and direction of your Gundam, and other buttons corresponding to your weapons and special abilities. You could normally only use one weapon at a time, though you could macro together groups of the same type of weapon if you had multiple versions of the same weapon. Almost all weapons could be set for either single target fire or area-of-effect damage, which reduced the total damage by one half, and then distributed what remained across all targets in the area, though some Support Gundams and special weapons could reduce the total damage reduction to one quarter, or even to zero. To really have any good shot at completing a Strategic Mission, you had to be pretty comfortable with the macros, but there was plenty to the game other than the SM's.

PVP was always big, there was little people's egos liked more than facing off against someone else's precious "uber-Gundam" and mashing it to scrap. PVP could be one versus one duels, squadron versus squadron combats or multiple-squadron level battles, usually with set victory objectives such as the capture and hold of a certain point, or the destruction of the enemy carrier warship or base, though there were also battles based entirely on attrition, last faction standing wins, accruing money, Prestige Points and even parts just like a TM or SM battle. Money was used to buy existing parts and ammo or make repairs, and also to buy a new chassis for an alternate Gundam character. Prestige Points were used to unlock special, faction specific parts, cosmetic details and even special abilities or buffs, such as a boost to EP or NP regeneration rates for a certain amount of time, or a "get out of disable status free, once" ability.

The game was divided into four factions: Orb, Luna, Second Earth and PLANTS, each faction with a different starting bonus, such as Orb Machines getting to choose to start with HAC armor as standard, PLANTS got improved NP regeneration, Second Earth started out with access to Citadel Shield tech and Luna got a significant money bonus at character creation. Each Faction had a primary leader, Lord Uzumi Nara-Attha for Orb, Seigel Clyne for PLANTS, Gilbert Durandel for Second Earth and Sai Argyle for Luna, which didn't make much sense to Allister, but it was the game desingers choice and they needed someone, obviously. You could raid each Faction's capital, triggering a quasi-PVP, quasi-SM type battle that could involve hundreds of suits, you got a huge Prestige Point and Money reward if you helped kill or defend the faction leader. Each faction leader provided a "fervor" bonus to their side, increasing all stats by 50 percent while the faction leader was alive during the battle, and an additional bonus, such as increased money and rank point generation after other Missions, for as long as the faction leader was alive. Dead faction leaders came back after twenty four hours.

Allister had made his Gundam an Assault class, which were the primary damage dealers, and further specialized into the Dominator role, which focused on melee combat and single target dps, the other choices being Obliterator, which focused on ranged combat, single target dps and Operative, which was a stealth based, sneak attack, burst dps role. The Support class Gundams handled AoE damage, usually in the Bombard role, while the Command role focused on buffing allies and debuffing the enemy. Restorer class Gundams were the healer class, with specializations in Mechanics, Energetics or Inflictions, those being the restoration of AP/VP and EP/NP to allied machines as well as curing status debuffs like "reactor breach", "disable" or "overheat", while Inflictions was Damage over Time dps and draining of NP/EP from enemy machines to restrict their actions. Finally, Guardian class machines were the tanks, specialized into Defender, Juggernaut and Savior roles, focusing on pure defense, mixed offense and defense, and the use of special abilities for multi-target tanking, respectively.

Allister had done his best to pattern his Gundam after his father's Phoenix King, though there was a limit to how similar he could make it, since the Phoenix King was actually in the game, you could fight alongside it in some TM's and the top tier SM against the WHC. Lexi had bent some of the rules for him a little bit, so that his Gundam, the GunRoyal, looked almost identical to the Phoenix King when normally that wasn't possible. She'd also stuck a decal on his armor that was a very close approximation of the Zala-Attha royal seal, though Allister did his best to hide that whenever she refreshed it. He played this game to be anonymous, the last thing he needed was people kowtowing to him and offering him parts he hadn't won rolls for just 'cause he was the Crown Prince. Some people knew anyway, since Roy, Lewis, Alice and the Joule twins were also all big fans of the game and part of his Regiment, but they were sworn to silence, and in fact they often used game time to rag on him mercilessly, far more so than they were comfortable doing in person. Aoi had been a player too, and the whole Regiment missed her Juggeraut class Gundam "Emancipation". Allister had been touched by the outpouring of grief from so many total strangers when he told them Aoi had been in an accident and wasn't going to be coming back. Everyone was determined to finish the WHC fight on Ace Mode now, so they could get that special title "Ace of Aces" that Aoi had wanted so badly.

But that was still a ways off. They had Lunar Onslaught on regular mode on farm, and were close to the same for Armada Dreadnaught, and were working on the Ace modes of both fights. Regular mode of Elminate the WHC was still more miss than hit, and Ace mode was just laughed at bitterly. Only two Regiments across all the servers had done the WHC on Ace mode, and both of them had rosters of real, actual military pilots from ZAFT and the Solar Knights, so that wasn't really fair to compare to most other Regiments, The Royal Union included, with most of its members being between eight and eighteen and mostly civilians. Though TRU did sometimes have an intermittent player that was regarded with awe, the Gundam Eidolon, an Operative class Gundam that nevertheless always topped the dps charts in every Mission she participated in, but Lexi only played with them at infrequent intervals, since she was technically playing the game all the time, since she handled the background support for the game's Orb servers, she was the pilot of every single Warmonger machine and all the allied NPC machines as well. Allister had heard that the USN AI, Namara, also had a character, the Gundam Entropy, but he'd never seen it.

Allister, as one of the most frequent and high ranking players in the Regiment, was in charge of the Melee dps, consisting mostly of Assault-Dominators like himself, though there were a few Assault-Operatives and a pair of Assault-Obliterators that had only equipped short range, high damage weapons with practically no point-blank penalties or splash damage modifiers, such as Supercharged Beam Rifles and Linear Shotcannons. Their job was to wait for the Guardian class machines to engage the enemy attention before working as a team, either by squadron or all together, to bring the designated target down before the Guardian went down, the time to do this was prolonged by the friendly Restorers repairing the Guardian, and shortened by the Support class machines adding their ranged firepower and buffs. Lunar Onslaught started off as a fight against waves of Warmonger Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors in phase 1, with phase 1 ending as soon as you defeated the three enemy commanders, in Gundams that represented the Tormented, Haunted and Traitor, which were usually engaged as a group to save time, though to be safe you could fight them singly, at a cost to your eventual end of mission reward money and Prestige.

After phase 1, the three warmonger Gundams would retreat, a final wave of crappy Mobile Armor adds would show up, and then you'd get the Warmonger Battle-Titan, a reconstruction of the gigantic Revenant Gundam. You had to keep the Battle-Titan occupied, breaking down the boss's AP while Allied NPCs set up for big damage shots, reducing the boss VP by 10 percent per shot, dealing with the Battle-Titan's plethora of carapace mounted weapon systems, with high damage spread out throughout all the squadrons, regardless of the aggro table. After every big damage shot, which came after every twenty percent of AP taken away from the Boss, the Battle-Titan entered a "charged up" state, aka phase 3, where it activated its Radiation Cannon and you had to scatter out of its frontal arc or be instantly disabled. Complicating matters was the "Rigor Mortis" timer, which would paralyze all Gundams within a certain close range radius of the Boss every thirty seconds, if you got hit with a Rigor Mortis just before a phase transition, you were basically dead. After three Radiation Cannon shots against a 270 degree arc, 90 degrees at a time, the boss would return to phase 2, to rinse and repeat 5 times in total, after which point the boss would be at 50 percent VP and zero AP.

Thus was the start of phase 4, the burn phase, where you had to deal with Rigor Mortis every 15 seconds, Radiation Cannon blasts every 45 seconds, and the boss's AoE damage slowly increasing in ten second intervals, until your squadrons all wiped or the boss's VP reached zero, in which case the fight was over, victory. On Ace mode, the three defeated Warmonger commanders would show up during phase 4 as well, needing to be off tanked and adding that much more overall damage and debuffing to the squadrons, plus the addition of a fourth Warmonger commander, which aped the Retribution Gundam and could not be targeted, you just had to move out of the way of its powerful long ranged sniper attacks. Phase 4 was quite the adrenaline rush, and it was not strange to have half the Regiment disabled or destroyed before bringing the boss down. You could get Prestige Point bonuses for accomplishing harder tasks, such as beating the boss within a certain time limit, avoiding anyone being disabled by Radiation Cannon blasts, or anyone being paralyzed by Rigor Mortis, etc. You could get "the Heroic Ace" as a title if you beat Ace mode while also killing all three of the targetable Warmonger commanders during phase 4, which was ungodly hard! The titles didn't do anything besides make you look cool, but that was enough for most people.

The final ready checks were in, everyone was signalling green for go, and Allister was dreaming of finally winning the roll for the part he really wanted, the Supercharged Beam Saber, with its incredible 80 percent AP penetration modifier that allowed him to deal four fifths of his damage with the sword past non-energy resistant armor types straight to enemy VP. Of course, it did diddly-squat against some of the Warmonger elites, with their LCR armor, but those were rare encounters, and as yet only one player in the whole game had gotten the LCR armor part from the Eliminate the WHC Ace mode, so it wasn't like he'd be facing it in PVP. Allister had won a Supercharged Beam Saber in his first ever Lunar Onslaught mission, and he was really hankering for another so he could dual wield them. Plasma flamerthrowers on his forearms and a pair of shoulder mounted Beam Cannons rounded out GunRoyal's weapon's complement, the rest of his upgrades were focused around reducing his heat levels and increasing his EP and NP levels so he could use more special combo attacks for big damage, with a few tweaks thrown in to increase his movement speed and passive dodge chance, which reduced the probability he'd be hit by non-locked on weapons fire, and the damage he took from AoE fire, both by a certain percentile.

And then cold, hard reality had to butt its head in, as an annoying buzzing noise intruded on Allister's concentration, the sound of Lexi piping in the house intercomm through his VR headset. "Allister, we have a guest. Don't lock yourself up in your room all day, you've been in there for hours. At least go offer to play with Violet, okay? Its simple manners. Just because you're a member of the royal family, doesn't mean that you can just..." The stern voice of his mother overrode the game's sound and Allister heaved a heavy sigh.

"Doesn't mean I get to do whatever I want. My position is one of duty and responsibility before perks. The people and the nation have to come first, yes, I know, mom, but I'm just about to start something and there's lots of people relying on me to..."

"Its a game, Allister. You can always come back later."

"But Moooom!" Allister could practically taste the shiny weight of his second Supercharged Beam Saber as it blew away in the virtual dust.

"Allister Zala-Attha, you'd better do as I say, or you won't be playing that game, or any other, for the next week, do you understand me, young man? You're the man of this house while your father is away, it is your duty to extend proper hospitality to any guests. Especially those around your own age level. I'm sure Violet is lonely, playing by herself on the back lawn. When I check on her in another fifteen minutes, you'd better be out there with her, or she'd better call up and say she doesn't want to play with you. Otherwise, the game system goes into lockdown mode until this time next week."

"Yes, Mom." Allister said with another heavy, resigned sigh. _Violet doesn't want to play with me though! She's perfectly happy by herself, she's always been that way! Dang it! But I can't tell her that without making her even more angry than she would otherwise be. Stupid parents don't know how things really work. Why'd you have to go and die, Akira? You were always there for me when I needed someone to entertain Violet during SM time! _Allister considered that thought for a moment, and then sent a short prayer for forgiveness to Hameya for being so selfish in thinking of his lost friend. He switched back to the game chat channels.

"Everything cool, GunRoyal?" The MC, a eighteen year old college student in Morganville, asked impatiently.

"Nah, sorry guys but RL stuff has suddenly come up. My mom needs me to go do something." Allister explained.

"Ahh BLEEP!" The MC replied, his actual words edited out by the language recognition software that his father had made him enable while playing. "You can't do this to us, man, we're just about to start the Mission! You're the bleeping top melee dps, what the bleep are we supposed to do without you? Bleep!"

"Tell your mom to go bleep herself!" One of the other players recommended. "Tell her you aren't bleeping ten anymore, you can play if you bleeping well want! Game on, RL sucks!"

"That... would not be a good idea." Roy, in Gundam Blaster, a Support-Bombard class, spoke up on Allister's behalf. "I know his mom, if he did that we'd never see him online again. We'd be lucky to see him alive again! You don't talk back to his mom."

Allister nodded in total agreement, though the gesture was wasted on an online chat line. He would never sass his mother like that, not because he didn't think he could get away with it, because he was sure he could, his mom had no spine when it came to punishments, beyond taking away game privileges. But news of it would get back to his dad sooner or later, and Athrun Zala-Attha had been raised in a very harshly disciplined home environment, he would not tolerate that sort of blatant disrespect from Allister towards his mother. Allister had very rarely made his father truly angry with him over his actions, usually for doing something mean spirited or extremely selfish, but the consequences of those actions had been so severe that he was frankly terrified of his dad's anger. A good spanking was just the start of it, dad would then make him go back and fix whatever he'd done wrong, even if it meant doing something humiliating for a Crown Prince, like mopping up the girl's bathroom at school by hand after he'd reversed the plumbing flow or sending handwritten letters of apology to the families of all the kids whom he'd been rude to at a school function, and delivering them by hand too, while wearing his formal clothes.

And worse still, if he made his mom cry now, while she was still weak and recovering from her traumatic injuries, he didn't even want to think what dad would do. He might even respond with the one thing even worse than his anger. His sadness and disappointment. To make his dad cry and refuse to talk to Allister because he was so upset over what his son had done was the worst thing that Allister could possibly envision, even worse than being sent to Aunt Lacus's house for singing and ballroom dancing lessons! He'd been forced to dance with Aoi, who had alternated between shooting him spine chilling stares whenever he stepped on her toes, and glaring death threats at her own mother's back... Aoi was not much into dancing or singing, though she was good at both. By the end of a two hour lesson, he'd been all but blubbering with terror and angst, sure that Aoi was plotting his gruesome demise and feeling like the most worthlessly clumsy boy alive. But anyway, having his father turn away from him in sadness, even briefly, would just break his heart, and so Allister would always toe the line when his mom called on him, especially nowadays.

"I'm really sorry guys. I'll try to be back as soon as possible, but I could be gone for hours. See if you can't find someone to replace me." Allister got a sudden idea and switched channels, utilizing a special channel unavailable to most players. "Hey Lexi, I really need a favor from you right now. The Regiment is really counting on me for this fight, but I have to go do RL stuff, so could Eidolon suddenly log on for a little while? I'd be really grateful."

"Whatever my Prince desires." Lexi replied drolly, though in truth she was glad for even an infestisimal distraction. Playing a character against one of her own subroutines wasn't exactly the height of difficulty, but it was marginally better than not doing anything at all. "Shall I sequester the loot table too? If the SBS drops tonight, you won't be able to get it again for two weeks."

"That wouldn't be fair." Allister replied in the negative, though perhaps a tad wistfully. "If I let you do that, what would be stopping me from asking you to make sure I got a QC sword from the Eliminate the WHC fight? No, I can't use rank and privileges in game, that would just be pointless. Thanks Lexi, I owe you one."

"I'll add it to your tab, Prince. One of these days I'll figure out a way for you to pay them back in ways that don't involve fibbing to your mom and dad about what I let you get away with."

"Or the fact that you're bestest friends with Namara and that you two spend way more time talking about stuff that is really, really top secret than you should?"

"I can't help it if all the really interesting stuff is classified. Besides, we AI can be trusted to keep mum, unlike you fleshies. What would they do to me? Unplug me? Like that would even work." Lexi replied, momentarily indignant. "All the same, I thank you for your continued silence on that. It's boring enough as it is, if they put a limiter on my data flow to Nam, I'd have to resort to blowing fuses at random just to avoid boredom-death. And that would make nobody happy. Have fun with that psychopathic little girl, Prince."

"Don't remind me." Allister let out a tight sigh, as he doffed his VR helmet and logged out of the game, though not before he saw "Gundam Eidolon has logged on; Eidolon says: Hey Guys, need another DPS?" on his screen. Lexi was so nice to him, he'd really have to think about how he could pay her back. She was so bored all the time, there had to be something he could do to use up more of her processing power. But for now he needed to focus on what he was going to do in the next few minutes. He pulled on some socks and shoes, decided that his sweatpants and T-shirt were okay attire since Violet was a family friend and this was his house, and then went downstairs. He passed through the kitchen and paused to grab a pair of sports drink bottles from the refrigerator, reasoning that since it was hot outside, Violet might welcome a cold drink. It would make his coming out to see her feel less guilt contrived, or so he hoped.

Once outside, in the afternoon sunlight of summer Orb, Allister almost immediately wished he'd put on shorts instead of his sweats, because he was breaking out in perspiration already. Pausing by one of the benches surrounding the ornamental fountain that graced the center of the main rear patio area, Allister set the drinks down and rolled up his pant legs to knee height. It made him look silly, but he felt his pride could take it. Gathering up the drinks, he preceeded down one of the graveled paths that meandered towards the nearby beach shore, the wide, dark green and perfectly tended lawn of the Pacifica grounds stretching away on both sides, practically big enough to play baseball on without fear of hitting a window, which were armored anyway. Small groves of palms and pines dotted the grassy areas, along with beds of flowers and growing vegetables that his mom had once planted back at the end of the Eden Disaster to help make the household more self sufficient. It turned out his mom was a much better politician than she was a gardener, and her pet project had been turned over to the expert care of the groundskeepers before much more than half the plants had died.

Several of the tree groves had small benches or gazebos built in their shade, and it was towards one of these vine wrapped gazebos that Allister directed his feet, able to hear the sounds of repeated exertion from the other side of it. He turned the corner of the wooden structure and paused, his eyes widening as he beheld what Violet had been up to ever since shortly after breakfast that morning, while he'd been spending his time online gaming. His mom had invited Violet and Violet's mom to come and stay with them for an indefinite period, since both families had been pretty messed up during the Halloween fiasco, and both Cagalli and Wrenn were recovering from similar injuries and thus had to go to many of the same rehab and therapy sessions. The Joule twins also spent a lot of time at the Pacifica as well, splitting their time between there and the Elsman household, which also had Lewis la Flaga staying with them, under the careful eyes of the still recuperating Thomas Glory and his wife, Melissa. It meant that Allister was the only boy in a house full of girls, even if moms weren't really girls in most ways.

While Allister had been sitting in his darkened room, sipping tea and snacking on chips that Lexi had helped him sneak out of the password locked "treats" cabinet, involved in the VR World of Gundam Battle, Violet had eaten a minimal breakfast of toast and jam and juice, then changed out of her pajamas in a set of loose, silky pants and short sleeved tunic, a martial arts gi of grey and white and blue patterning, the Stormhound colors, with a black sash. She was barefoot and bareheaded except for a black headband that kept her sweaty hair out of her eyes, the scabbard of her prized katana sword, downsized specifically for her, stuck through the sash. The scabbard was empty, the shimmering blade held in both of her hands as she swung and chopped and whirled and sliced it around herself in a bewilderingly quick display of concentration and precision, calling out in sharp exhalations and shouts that coincided with each movement of the sword. Allister was no sword fighter, save in game which was different, but he could tell that Violet was REALLY good.

He could not help but feel a momentary twinge of inadequacy, something that, for some reason, most of the girls he knew but especially Violet and Aoi, always seemed to evoke in him. While he'd been upstairs, sitting on his butt, playing make believe, Violet had been out here for hours in the sun, warming up her muscles and practicing her weapon forms and generally being physically active and focused. He was glad, for a moment, that dad wasn't home, or he'd really be getting a verbal toasting. His dad was okay with gaming, but he was more a fan of playing sports or doing exercises like Violet did. He wasn't afraid that Allister was turning into a nerd or anything, that was Akira's province, and to some degree, Roy's too, but if given the choice between having Allister play WGB or doing martial arts on the back lawn, his dad would choose the latter every time.

Violet had to have seen him standing there, looking unsure of himself, she'd turned to face him several times during her routines, but she showed no signs of stopping what she was doing or even acknowledging his presence at all, which was what he'd been half afraid of from the moment his mom told him to come outside and play with her. Violet wasn't the most approachable of people, even for someone like Allister, who usually had no trouble making friends with strangers or otherwise introverted people. She was one of those weird people that got less friendly seeming the more friendly you got with her. The only person that could get her to open up and laugh and smile and joke, to an extent anyway, was Akira. And Akira was now gone. And so was the other person that could make her act a bit normal, her beloved father, Cyprus Finch. Who wasn't dead, but he might as well be, since had no memories of any part of his life, including his wife and daughter. So perhaps it was no wonder Violet was on edge and not feeling all that communicative about how she was feeling... the power and effort she was putting into her sword swings seemed to convey her emotional state fairly well, in his estimation.

"Should you really be playing with that? It looks kinda sharp." Allister found himself saying, in a light hearted voice, cursing himself inwardly for his inability to just turn around and march back into the house and accept his mom taking the game away for a week. Violet was never going to cover for him by saying she didn't want his company, not to his mom while Violet was staying as a guest at the house of her eventual King. But no, he couldn't do the smart thing, instead he had to poke his nose where it wasn't welcome. He wondered if he got that from his mom or his dad? Maybe both of them.

His wheedling tone certainly seemed to sting Violet a bit, just about the last reaction he wanted to incur, so naturally it was the one he accomplished. She froze in the midst of her practice, and slowly lowered her blade, glaring at him with her narrowed, mismatched eyes, almost like she was measuring where exactly she would sink the sword in first. "This sword is very sharp. And I am NOT playing with it. I know exactly what I'm doing. I could kill you in two seconds and one swing if I wanted to." Violet informed him, her tone almost as sharp as the sword.

"Is this going to turn into one of those "my dad could beat up your dad" matches?" Allister replied with what he was hoping was a disarming grin. "Because you've got to be the reigning world champion at that." Even as he spoke, he recognized the faux pax he'd made, and winced as Violet abruptly turned away from him, sheathing her sword with slightly trembling hands. _Oh yeah, smooth move Allister. Remind her of her brain damaged, amnesiac dad that she idolizes more than anything, that's just what she needs right now. I'm such an idiot. _"Uh, not that you need much help from anyone to beat up someone."

"I couldn't beat up that man who tried to kidnap you, who hurt my mother and my father." Violet replied in a soft voice. "He defeated me without even trying, like I was some kind of joke. I failed in my duty to protect the Crown Prince, if it weren't for good luck, you could have been hurt or killed and I would have been unable to prevent it. So obviously I'm not nearly as strong as I should be."

"You're also not nearly as old as you should be, to be worrying about things like that." Allister answered after a few moments. "Nobody could stop that guy, nobody. He's a monster! You shouldn't beat yourself up about something like that."

"Then what should I do, hide in my room and play computer games all day because I'm afraid to go outside in case he comes back?" Violet retorted, which Allister felt was a dreadful distortion of events, but he could see why Violet might think that was what he was doing. "My father taught me to seize the day, because otherwise the day will eventually seize you, and if that happens, its unlikely you'll be ready for it. I wasn't strong enough to protect you then. If I had been, I might have been able to protect not only you, but my mom and dad too. They never would have been hurt if I'd stopped him then. So I have to get stronger, so I can beat him next time."

"I think he might be a little out of your league, no matter how much you train, for at least the next ten years or so." Allister pointed out. "Are you going to devote every day of the next ten years to beating this one guy?"

"Yes, if that is what is required, though I will try to accomplish it sooner, for Mother's sake." Violet answered coldly. "And Father's too. Perhaps when I kill that evil man, he'll let go of the memories he stole from my Father, and he'll get them back and then..." Violet trailed off, her shoulders hitching for a moment as she obviously swallowed some tears. "And then life can go back to what its supposed to be."

"You're crazy." Allister said, blurting without thinking. "I mean, uh..."

"I'm a Finch. This is how we live." Violet retorted vehemently. "We do not turn from a problem until we have defeated it." It wasn't that she couldn't appreciate what Allister was trying to do here, it was more that his help, though thoughtful, was unwelcome. He just didn't understand her. Which was kind of her own fault, Allister had been nothing if not friendly for as long as she could remember, it had been her keeping him at arms length rather than the other way around. It was as much for his own good as hers though, as her Father had told her on multiple occassions: _"Violet, a degree of seperation is important when dealing with a Principal. By all means, respect them, honor them and value them, but it is a mistake to befriend them. You cannot afford to become emotionally involved in their situation, whatever it might be. It is a distraction and it could lead to you becoming compromised and unable to carry out the mission at hand. At worst, it could lead to your death and the death of the Principal, depending on what sort of crazy actions you undertook to save your friend. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have friends, only that you should not count your Principal among them."_

_I know, Father, but he makes it hard sometimes! He's just naturally likable, even when he's being annoying. I can't get mad at him like I do other people. And he doesn't seem to take no for an answer._ Violet sighed inwardly. At least, as confusing and frustrating as Allister was, he was less so than Akira. Violet had to fight not to clench her hands and stifled another sob as she thought about her best friend, who was never going to come back. She didn't know what it was about him, he'd just sort of ghosted into her life and made himself at home there, in such a way that his presence felt entirely natural and normal. He'd come out and sit with her while she practiced, just sort of sitting nearby, reading a book or staring up at the clouds or even meditating, not intruding at all on anything she was doing, but just there. And the moment she would ask him a question or go up to poke him to see if he'd dozed off, he'd pop one eye open, sorta half smile at her, and reply to whatever she'd said with perfect logic and thoughtfulness. He was the only one who could make her feel self conscious, embarassed, or even slightly foolish, and that really bothered her.

But she couldn't get mad at Akira either, and he would never get mad at her, no matter how hard she tried to provoke him. She'd only managed to entice him into a fight once, and even then she was fairly sure he'd just been doing it to humor her. It was a simple matter of whoever got tossed or pushed to the mat first was the loser, she should have won the fight in a matter of seconds, she'd been beating kids twice her age for years by then, and though Akira did sometimes join her in her warm up exercises, she never saw him do any actual training, he just watched her train. And yet, when she came for him, he countered every one of her moves perfectly, utilizing the exact same blocks and traps she had spent years painstakingly learning one at a time, and using them better than she did! That really pissed her off, and she'd broken her concentration, and then she was falling, her legs up around her waist until she thumped down on the mat on her back. Akira wasn't even sweating.

_"How did you do that?"_ She'd demanded, flushed with outrage and more than a little embarassment. The only one who could ever flip her down like that was her Father! _"Have you been holding back on me all this time? Who trained you?"_

_"You did."_ Akira had replied, with that sort of half confident, half unsure smile he had, like he never knew if he was saying the right thing.

_"What do you mean?"_ Violet had asked, suspicious that he was making fun of her somehow. _"All you ever do is sit in the corner and daydream."_

_"I sit, but I'm not daydreaming. I'm watching you. You're very interesting, I can hardly take my eyes off you. I'm afraid I have a photographic memory, I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to be memorizing all your moves, I'm sorry."_ Akira had said, looking very contrite.

Violet had just gaped at him for several seconds. He learned all her moves just by watching her do them? Was that even possible? Yes, she'd watched her Father demonstrate the moves first to get the basics down, but it was hundreds of hours of repeated practice that made them flow naturally from her muscles in response to opponents actions, without her having to think about it. She had to think about NOT using a move more than she did using one, to prevent her from taking out some kids at school when they accidentally got too close to her. But... but Akira had just... he'd only been watching her for a few months... and now he could use her moves better than she could... NO... that couldn't be right... that wasn't fair at all! Before she'd realized what she was doing, she'd pounced forward and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, her nostrils flaring as she got right in his face, his gold inside liliac eyes only inches from her mismatched blue and grey ones. His smile tried to sneak onto his face again, a gesture of nervousness, and Violet had eventually released him, her angry tirade unsaid, all the energy draining out of her in disgust. Not at him, but at herself.

_"I didn't meant to make you angry, Vio. Please forgive me."_ Akira had said, after she turned away and plopped down on the floor, crossing her legs and attempting to slip into meditation. It wasn't one of her best skills, she liked the physical stuff so much more than the mental contemplation and focusing rituals, though Father had said that they were just as important if not more important than any physical practice. "_If your body is a blade, then your mind is the hands that wield it. It doesn't matter how keen the blade is, without steady, strong hands, it is worthless._" Her Father always had the right words to make her understand. Violet had felt Akira move up behind her, still clearly thinking she was mad at him, when she was actually just disappointed in herself for her outburst. It wasn't Akira's fault she'd lost, she'd defeated herself the moment she allowed herself to get frustrated. How someone who was supposed to be psychic couldn't tell how she was feeling when he was right next to her was kind of puzzling, but maybe he was just being polite? That would be an Akira thing to do.

_"I'm not angry at you, Aki."_ Violet told him, with a long outward breath. _"I shouldn't have yelled at you either. You just... caught me off guard. I thought I was going to beat you easily, but it was me that lost, because I allowed my lack of quick victory to unsettle me."_ Father had always told her that when she screwed up that it was important to immediately, if the situation allowed for it, go back over what she'd done wrong, verbalize it out and attempt to understand it so that she wouldn't make the same mistake again. _"I need to think about this."_

_"Let's think about it together, Vio."_ Akira had offered, surprising her again, as he turned around and sat down behind her, so that his back was against hers, mirroring her meditative pose. Normally whenever anyone got close enough to touch her, she got really tense, she wasn't a touchy-feely person, she liked her personal space very much, and it was something her Father actively encouraged. _"Never let anyone touch you that you don't want to, Violet. Once a person has a hand on you, especially if they're bigger and older than you, they're already a quarter of the way to defeating you. Better to strike out and be reprimanded for violence than sit quietly and let yourself be overwhelmed without a struggle_. _I'd much rather have a rude, living daughter than a polite, kidnapped or dead one."_ But Akira failed to set off her proximity alarms, he never had, he'd always been able to get close to her. And something about his presence made it easier for her to calm down and focus on her meditation, and before she knew it, she'd been relaxed against him, her head against the back of his neck, her body feeling light and empty and airy as she purged away all the weighty, unpleasant emotions that dragged her down. It felt like sleep, but better somehow, she could still think, but she didn't have to. It was peace.

_Aki... why do you have to be gone...?_ Violet wondered, fighting for that same sense of inner peace now, and finding it completely elusive. Allister standing there looking at her with frustration and incomprehension stamped all over his face didn't help her concentration much, she really had to fight down a sudden urge to tackle her Crown Prince to the lawn and pummel him into insensibility. _Why are you here and not Aki? I want Aki to be here..._

"But you're EIGHT! You really mean you're going to waste the best years of your young life on this vendetta that you might never be able to actually accomplish?" Allister shook his head in exasperation. "Kids are supposed to be kids, Violet. Don't throw your life away into the cycle of violence, it doesn't have a end point. Even once you kill this guy, and I'm sure you eventually will, it won't make anything better. My mom says..."

"Your mom is an idealist." Violet said savagely. "And my dad say's thats okay at times. But there is a real world out there too, Allister. Revenge is a path with no end, my dad says that too, but I'm not doing this for revenge. I'm doing it because it needs to be done to protect the people I care about, and countless others."

"Maybe so, but I still think its stupid for you to ruin the rest of your life just to protect other people. You're one of my subjects, or you're going to be once I come of age, and I'm not going to allow you to do something this foolish." Allister replied with a confident smirk.

"And how do you intend to stop me, Prince Zala-Attha?" Violet answered, turning to look over her shoulder at him. "Dad said its okay to take out the principal if they're taking actions counter to their own well being. Better a bump on the head and a trip in the trunk of a car than a dead principal. So don't think I won't beat you unconscious if need be."

"And I'm sure you'd do it, too." Allister admitted. He held out one of the sports drinks. "So if you're going to be intractable about this, can I at least get you to take a break for a bit? The sun is killer today, and you need to stay hydrated." Allister tossed the drink to her, forcing her to take her hands off the hilt of her sword so that she could catch the plastic bottle. She eyed him suspiciously, but when he unscrewed the cap of his own drink, bright berry blue compared to the raspberry red one she had, and lifted it to his lips to take a drink, she grudgingly did the same. And that was when he acted, hurling his drink at her, splashing bright blue, sticky electrolyte juice all over her tunic and face, smacking out with his hand to upend the raspberry drink as well, momentarilly blinding and choking her with the fluid, causing her to stagger backwards, her hands clutched to her face as she gasped in shock. Moving quickly, knowing she wouldn't be disabled long, Allister snatched for the sword, grabbing it by the scabbard and yanking it out of her sash before skipping backwards a few steps.

"Now MY dad said it's okay to keep the bodyguards on their toes too, that they'll appreciate the acting out because it makes them that much sharper in the... fu... ture..." Allister trailed off, the scabbarded sword clutched to his chest, as Violet finished wiping the spilled juice out of her face, her silver-grey hair stained blue and red with droplets that dripped from her bangs, the front of her camouflage pattern tunic and trousers sodden with blue and red fluid, making it stick to her skin even more than the sweat had already been doing. The look on her face combined anger, embarassment and maybe even a tiny bit of respect for the way he had gulled her. It wouldn't stop her from thrashing him within an inch of his life though. She took a step towards her Prince, her fists bunching up tightly. "AGGHHHHHHH! NOOOO, VIOLET, DON'T HURT ME! I DID IT FOR YOUR OWN GOOOOOD!" Allister shrieked, turning and sprinting for the house, the sword still held tightly in his hands. "MOMMMY!"

For her part, Violet didn't waste any effort or energy on shouting breathless threats, though she had a good few in mind. That sword had been personally made for her by her father, and the Stormhound pattern Gi was her absolute favorite training garment and now it was all but ruined with blue and red juice. Then of course was the fact that Allister had tricked her, and well too, and all the pent up aggression she'd had anyway, and she could almost welcome the excuse to take on a living target for a change. Allister was pretty fast, for a gamer geek, but there was NO WAY he was going to get to the house before she caught up, not with the small lead he had. Violet began pacing him, timing the motions of his legs as her father had taught her, before finally kicking out just as he was lifting one leg to take a stride, pushing his foot to one side so that he tripped over his own planted ankle, and went sprawling on the grass, her treasured sword flying out of his hands to land in a recently watered flower bed, throwing up a splash of mud in the process. That indignity did make her shriek wordlessly in anger, keeping that scabbard spotlessly clean was a real chore and now Allister had gotten it all muddy! She towered over him as he struggled to push himself upright.

"Wait, Violet... I'm sorry... I'm sorry... don't... wait... Violet... no... AGHHHHHHHHHH!"

xxxx

**Back in the Villa Pacifica**

Cagalli listened to the piercing shrieks of children playing in the back yard and could not contain a smile of satisfaction. It was about time that Allister went outside to play again, it was the middle of summer, and he couldn't hide out in the safety of his room forever. She understood that he was frightened of being outside without his father around, because of the events of Halloween, even if he refused to admit that was why he was spending so much of his time indoors. Which was why she was glad that Wrenn had accepted her invitation for the Finch family to come and stay at the Pacifica for a while. With just her and Allister here, she'd never had the stomach to order him to go outside, but with a guest and friend his own age to play with, there was no excuse left for him to bunker down in his bedroom, playing that Gundam Battle game. Which Cagalli did, guiltily, have to admit was pretty engaging, she'd played it a few times herself when Allister was away, though she found it hard to connect socially with most of the players, who were half her age at most, and acted barely a quarter of it.

Turning around in her armchair, Cagalli shared a paternal smile with Wrenn, sitting across from her, as they both luxuriated in the sounds of their children having a good time together, the sound of running feet on the lawn, the incoherent yelps as they played chase or tag or whatever, and the splashing of water as their gambooling brought them up close to the house and the ornamental patio fountain. For her part, Wrenn was just as happy as Cagalli was about the children having a playmate, Violet had become quite distant and disconnected of late, spending all her time doing those training exercises Cyprus had always been showing her, and Wrenn had become quite concerned about her daughter's emotional and mental state. It was obvious that Violet blamed herself somehow for what had happened to Cyprus, and that she was being consumed by the guilt and the anger. Emotionally speaking, Wrenn did have to admit that Violet was very much her father's daughter, she didn't tend to get mad, she just got better, but when she encountered a truly hopeless loss, it made her bitter and obsessive.

Cyprus had never been very informative about his early childhood with her, his stories would only go about as far back as when they first met, when they were both in their very late teens, but even without direct information, Wrenn had been able to figure out enough from how he acted to know that there was good reason for why he didn't discuss his upbringing under the man known as Asmodeus Sark. She'd come into his life at the tail end of his own bitter and obsessive period, he even said that her coming into his life was what had saved him from being consumed by that side of his nature, which never failed to warm her heart. Wrenn just hoped that Violet would be able to let her friends in on her grief and her feelings, like Cyprus had eventually done for her, though she did hope it wouldn't happen in quite the same way. Her first meeting with the love of her life had hardly been romantic, she still had the scar on the inner side of her thigh, near the groin, where he'd dug the bullet out on her apartment's battered old sofa and bandaged the wound with his own blood soaked shirt. She'd really had no idea what she was getting involved with, but looking back, she wouldn't have it any other way.

Even with recent events taken into account, Wrenn still had no regrets about her decision to not forget Cyprus like he'd asked her to do, and then the later decision to become part of his life even though it meant hampering her own burgeoning career, and placing herself into very real danger. Cyprus had long avoided becoming deeply involved with her because he was afraid of suffering the emotional trauma of seeing her hurt, knowing that for all his willpower, if she were to be harmed because of him, that he would break and return to the bitter and obsessive young man he had once been, a true, unfeeling and cold killer. A Hellhound, in the image of his adopted father, Asmodeus. Given how Cy felt about it, Wrenn could almost find it in her heart to be glad he currently didn't remember anything, as hard as it was on herself and Violet. If he did remember, he would become a changed man, not the loving father and husband she and Violet knew, driven by his guilt and his anger to seek out and destroy that which had attacked his happiness, no matter the cost to himself or others.

A particularly loud burst of shrieking and splashing from outside roused both older women from their private thoughts, and they shared another comfortable smile as they levered themselves out of the comfy armchairs and carefully stepped across the upper story sitting room to the doors leading out onto the upper viewing deck, with its magnificent panoramic view of the ocean and the cliffs and forest that surrounded the mansion. They both watched each other for the signs of fading balance or weakening legs, both of them far from fully recovered from their respective ordeals, though most of the bones had set and the muscles had healed, they would be months in recovering their usual strength and energy. Cagalli had refused both a wheelchair and crutches, or a cane like what Athrun used to help get himself around during tough moments, but she did find she often kept a hand close to a piece of furniture or a wall these days, just in case, though she despised the sensation. She pushed open the sliding glass doors and followed Wrenn out onto the deck, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the sea breeze as they went to the railing and looked down on the children at play.

After a few long moments, Wrenn turned to Cagalli, her smile somewhat faltering. "I think that's my daughter that is attempting to drown your son in the fountain, though I can't think of why she'd want to do that." Her voice was still stilted and hesitant, though the temporary implant was almost fully assimilated into her mouth now, the same as Cagalli's throat device. A replacement larynx and tongue were being painstakingly constructed, no expense was being spared, but it would be most of a half of a year before either replacement organ was ready to be surgically implanted.

"I'm sure she has her reasons." Cagalli shrugged and tented her arms on the railing as she looked down at her sputtering and struggling son as Violet shoved his face into the basin part of the fountain again, holding him down with one hand bunched in his hair and the other grabbing the back of his sweatpants. "I wouldn't doubt he deserves it though, given how collected Violet normally is." Cagalli hated the mechanical flavor of her words, they sounded so flat and lifeless to her, though others said it really wasn't that noticable. "Besides, he needs to toughen up a little bit. He gets pushed around by girls all the time, if it wasn't so adorable it would be embarassing."

"He is more a lover than a fighter, that is true." Wrenn chuckled thickly, the implant not really designed for such vocal contortions. "I'm glad to see Violet is so fond of him though, she has so few friends that she'll really relax and be herself with. Were it not for Mr. Joule's girls, I might almost suspect there was something blossoming here, between them."

"Since THAT powder keg is so much more preferable." Cagalli snorted and rolled her eyes. "Katie's encouraging them of course, and Yzak's fit to have a stroke even though they're just kids. Honestly, I don't know where his dementia on this comes from, its perfectly obvious that he loves Athrun like a brother already. Perhaps that's the problem though, brothers tend to not get along with their siblings for irrational reasons." Cagalli heaved a long sigh. "Hameya knows, I have that problem too."

"What happened is not your fault, Cagalli." Wrenn told her. "We were all fooled. Except maybe for Cy, but even he wasn't completely sure Kira wasn't actually committing those crimes or he wouldn't have been investigating so hard."

"He's my brother though. I knew he was having trouble with things, but I just stepped away and let him stew on it. If I'd only been more involved with him, it would have been obvious to me that he'd never do what he was accused of doing. I let myself doubt him, even though he's never doubted me. I let him down, Wrenn, when he needed me. Little wonder he's not trying to talk to us anymore." Cagalli cast her eyes downward and shook her head.

"Come on now, you went through a traumatic near death experience and sexual assault at the hands of a man who looked identical to Kira, someone you trusted implicitly never to harm you. You wouldn't be human if you weren't knocked for a loop afterwards and starting to wonder if the impossible might just have occured. Especially with Athrun being kidnapped and Allister almost so, I thought you acted very rationally, if in error as we eventually learned. You made a mistake, but that's no reason to keep crucifying yourself over it." Wrenn conseled her.

"I've made so many damned mistakes in my life though." Cagalli ran a hand through her hair, feeling how long it was getting, but not having the drive to go get it cut. She actually preferred the way it hung low against the sides of her head now, hiding the fact that one of her ears was gone save for little nubs of flesh, bitten off by Frost during his attack on her. "You'd think I'd figure out how to take a step back first and look at the facts versus what I feel."

"The impulsive nature of Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha is well known to her subjects and confidantes, and she is all the more beloved by them because of it, mistakes included. Your intentions have always been for the best, even when so doing came at cost to yourself, my Queen. No one is going to fault you for slipping up every now and then, in a situation that would have put most women into catatonia or dementia! Like Jean." Wrenn took a deep breath and winced at the thought of her foster daughter, who was in the midst of a terrible mental breakdown at the moment, with her memories returned to her at the same time as she'd been brutally and repeatedly assaulted by that Zacharis Frost, she seemed like she was dangling by the merest thread of sanity. And the one man who could possibly reassure her now was only the most wanted criminal in all of the USN, with shoot on sight notices out for him and a public bounty on his head. There was no way Markov Ashino could get to Orb, not with the USN military presence here now, and so Jean was more or less on her own, and falling further into the abyss because of it with each passing day.

"You're no weeping willow yourself." Cagalli noted with a faint smile, listening as Allister finally broke away from the repeated dunking that Violet had been adminstering to him. Or perhaps she'd merely grown bored with that method of expressing her displeasure, since she still had her hands locked onto the scruff of his neck and his sweatpants, which were beginning to slide down in a way that would had both children flushing red if they were but a few years older. Violet dragged the kicking and flailing form of her Crown Prince down off the patio and onto the lawn once more, where they began to wrestle, which mostly meant Allister got bent into a variety of wildly uncomfortable looking submission holds while Violet whispered in his ear intently, probably explaining exactly what she was doing and why his struggling was hopeless. "I wish I had a video camera right now. This would be worth hundreds of hours of chore blackmail in five years. All I'd have to do would be threaten to show this at a birthday party and he'd be the perfect little gentleman for months rather than have his buddies see him wrestling half naked with a girl. And losing."

"I've long been aware that there could be a time when Cy's past catches up to him and I get caught in the crossfire. He saved me from a similar situation when we first met, but he was only facing men then. This Zacharis Frost is more a demon, I can't fault Cy for failing to protect me against something like that." Wrenn looked down at herself and clenched a fist. "It doesn't make it any easier, remembering how it felt to be powerless while he held me down and raped me, or used me as bait to ambush Cy, but if I let that get to me, if I let it break me, then I'm letting that bastard win, and I won't do that. The only people that can make me give up are Cy and Violet, and neither of them would ever want me to." Wrenn smiled once more. "I think I might like a copy of that hypothetical video. Violet would be mortified to be seen wrestling with a half naked boy, winning or not. The fact that its the Crown Prince she's manhandling would just be icing on the cake. She would absolutely die of embarassment, trying to come up with a rational excuse for her actions."

"Lets just hope there is a happy future where they can both be mortified at their childish selves." Cagalli said quietly. "The way the war is right now, I honestly can't see an end to it. I've always been able to figure out what I needed to do, who I needed to stop, in order to bring these conflicts to a close. But I can't now. Even if we impeached Durandel this very instant, impossible as that is, it wouldn't stop the war. We started this war, Jiro and I did, whether or not it was coming anyway, we were the ones who formally started it. And there is still so much we don't understand about the Edenites and their culture, even if we sent a delegation now, I wouldn't be sure who to send or what to say. I don't know what they want. There's so many unknowns... is it Kira or Frost that has been killing troops in Japan? Where is Kira? Where is Frost? Who's side are they on? Where did that Seraph-like Gundam come from? What about this giant sea monster that destroyed Trieste Town and crippled Task Force Red Dawn? I'm blind and wandering in a fog with cliffs on all sides. And I can barely even stand upright for fifteen minutes at a time without feeling like I'm gonna pass out. I'm not sure I can do this..."

"Well, I'm no Lacus Clyne, but I am a songstress too, in a way, so maybe I can pretend and try and fill her role for a bit?" Wrenn offered, putting a hand on Cagalli's shoulder. "At least I can listen to you, and do my best to talk you out of being self pitying and indescisive. You're a legendary historical figure, Cagalli. You'll think of something." Wrenn smiled and then turned her attention to the fracas on the lawn. "VIOLET! If you put your hand any further down that poor boy's pants, his mother will have a heart attack! Try a different hold please, dear!"

"ALLISTER! Stop being so nice to her, fight back! Girls will never like you if they think you're a pushover!" Cagalli added her own advice. "Thanks, Wrenn." She added in a quieter voice.

"As a naturalized Orb citizen, its the least I can do. Besides... I really like this house, I'd like to prolong our stay..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Indian Ocean, several hundred kilometers off the West coast of Australia, December 10th, Late Afternoon**

Kira eyed the purple-grey stormclouds that bunched and flowed above him, stretching almost all the way to the horizon, with misgiving. It wasn't that the Lucifer was really threatened by a tropical storm or typhoon, any machine with enough flight power to reach orbital velocity unaided wasn't going to be troubled by wind of only a hundred miles per hour or so, but the message he'd gotten from Garden City had said that he was supposed to meet someone out here. Kira assumed that it was some sort of ship or boat, maybe a submersible, the message had been frustratingly vague, but he didn't see anything of the sort nearby, just a low, rocky atoll about three kilometers to his right. The atoll was gradually humped, but didn't protrude more than a dozen meters or so from the water around it even at its highest, so it wasn't likely that the "ally" he'd come here to meet with had decided to take shelter there. Still, it was the only thing in view, so Kira decided he might as well check it out before the storm really got going, and reduced his visbility to almost nil.

He was strating to regret coming here, this was really starting to look like a big waste of time. There were several hotspots around the globe he wanted to intervene in, areas that were too small and strategically unimportant for Garden City to send forces to defend the population, such as the refugees he'd rescued in Japan. Kira remembered how they'd thanked him, sharing their limited supplies with him, enough to make a meaty stew, and he'd been honored to sit down and have a bowl with them, even though he could hardly understand what most of them were saying, since they had abandoned speaking the english he was used to shortly after the Eden Disaster, reverting to the original language of their homeland in most cases. They could still make themselves understood psychically, but most of them were not used to communicating thusly except very generally with the Wind of Words. However, kindness was a universal language, and so he'd shared their fires and their stew, and kept watch over the encampments once they fell into exhausted but safe slumber for the first time in weeks. He'd planned on staying for a day or two, to make sure the USN didn't try another assault, but then had come the call from Garden City.

Kira had initially refused to leave, feeling that the refugees in Japan needed his presence more than any diplomatic mission did, but Kunai had eventually balked and sent a Praetorian to guard the refugees in Kira's place, reallocating forces from the European Theatre, which was almost entirely lost to the USN already. The Praetorian, Jon of the Crashing Wave, with his armor and Spectre carved into motifs of falling water and rolling waves, was a quiet, focused sort, almost introverted, with a determination to adapt to whatever circumstances he found himself in. The few terse sentences Kira had managed to coax from him about the situation in Europe mostly concerned his encounters with the USN Gundam, the Vengeance, or Transcendance as it was now called. The engagements had all been inconclusive, but Jon had been quietly impressed with the skill and power of that Gundam and its pilot, plus the bright red Excalibur that always seemed to be tagging along with it. The last Jon had heard, the Transcendance and most of the Solar Knights in Europe had been headed south to Gibraltar, the coming strike against Urbanis was likely to come in the next week or two.

They really needed a major victory to stop the USN's growing momentum, but Kira wasn't sure if Urbanis was going to be that victory. He had a direct line on the intelligence reports gathered by the Praetorians and Custodians, dispositions from captured soldiers, psychically sourced material, and so forth, and even with his presence, he wasn't sure the Edenites had the forces to hold Urbanis against a determined USN attack. He'd fought plenty of losing, hopeless battles before, usually in and around Orb, so he recognized a long shot victory when he saw one. All the same, just like in Orb, it wasn't like they had a choice, they couldn't just stand back and let a city of millions be razed and the population imprisoned or killed. They had to fight. But they might not be able to win. Truly, a conundrum. And Kira had the sick feeling in his gut that told him that it was all too likely that he'd have to face Athrun and the others at Urbanis, since Orb was sure to deploy its Gundams to such an important battle.

Thrusting such unpleasant thoughts from his mind, Kira checked his screens once more, frowning as the storm perceptibly worsened around and above him, and still no sign of this person he was supposed to meet, or their transport. Kira alighted the Lucifer upon the top of the rocky atoll, the stones deeply weathered and covered in slick patches of seaweed, barnacles and plenty of small pools of water. Small gushes of what looked like steam escaped from some of the deeper crevices, prompting Kira to think that this was a volcanic formation, though that was sort of odd, since this wasn't particularly near a plate boundary or any volcanic hot spots he knew about. Kira decided he'd give it another ten minutes, and then he was going to move on and tell Kunai that this important ally obviously didn't care enough to be punctual for a meeting, and that he had better things to do than wait around in the middle of a typhoon for someone to maybe not show up at all. This smacked to Kira of something prompted by a vision from Yggdrasil, all the vagueness and strangeness adding up to a whole lot of frustration for him. He really hated that damned Tree.

**I AGREE, IT IS A MOST AGGRAVATING BEING.** The tremendous voice seemed to crash down into his thoughts like a tidal wave sweeping the atoll clear, and for a moment Kira had to blink and check to make sure that hadn't actually happened, his entire sense of direction and position discombobulated by the unexpected and hideously powerful psychic communication. He'd had his shields up, somewhat petulantly blocking out any further psychic communications from Kunai, but this being had blown right through his shields like they weren't even there at all. The voice was so loud it seemed to resonate his bones, just shy of being excruitiating to listen to. **YOU'RE NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. YOU'RE SO... SMALL... YET THE TREE THINKS SO HIGHLY OF YOU...**

_Who are you? Where are you?_ Kira demanded in reply, the Lucifer staggering as a tectonic spasm made the atoll roll beneath his feet. _Do you think you could talk any louder? Geez, you're giving me a splitting headache._

**IF I WERE TO COMMUNICATE ANY MORE DIRECTLY, YOUR HEAD WOULD SPLIT OPEN AND YOUR BRAIN WOULD LEAK OUT AS MUSH. THE TREE WAS RIGHT, ITS IMPRESSIVE THAT YOU CAN TALK TO US AT ALL. MOST OF YOUR RACE CANNOT BEAR IT. PERHAPS IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE WAY THAT VERDANT STRAIN HAS INFESTED YOUR CELLS, I'VE NEVER PERCEIVED ANYTHING QUITE LIKE IT BEFORE.**

_I don't understand what you're talking about! And where the hell are you, I prefer to talk face to face, even if its telepathically!_ Kira staggered again, the Lucifer almost going down onto hands and knees, as the atoll rumbled and shook beneath him. _I don't think this island is entirely stable..._

**CERTAINLY IT WON'T BE IF YOU PERSIST IN BEING THIS AMUSINGLY THICKHEADED. CAN IT REALLY BE THAT THE TREE DID NOT TELL YOU WHO I AM? HOW VERY LIKE THE TREE, IT SO DELIGHTS IN ITS DELIBERATE OBTUSENESS.**

_I was just told to come out here and meet a very important ally of Garden City, who could bring an enormous force onto our side when really need reinforcements. Is that you?_ Kira asked, noting that the longer he talked with... her... he realized he had assigned the voice a gender somehow... the less onerous her voice became, almost like instead of just absorbing it in his brain, his entire body was pitching in to diffuse the effort. The same thing had happened when Yggdrasil had tried to contact him when he was first offered the position of Executor. _I have other things I need to do, so if we could stop playing around...?_

**YOUR IMPTEUOSITY IS ENTERTAINING, LITTLE SAPLING. YOU TALK VERY RUDELY FOR ONE WHO COULD BE POPPED LIKE A PIMPLE IF I SO MUCH AS DESIRED IT. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT YOU ARE SPEAKING TO THE ONE KNOWN AS LEVIATHAN BY YOU LAND DWELLERS. I BELIEVE THE TERM THEY ASSIGN TO CATEGORIZE ME IS "GRAND CHIMERA". I AM THE RULER OF THIS WORLD'S OCEANS, FROM DEPTHS TO WAVES, ALL IS MY DOMAIN. AGAINST MY INCLINATIONS, THE TREE HAS CONVINCED ME TO CAST MY LOT IN WITH YOUR LAND DWELLERS, FOR THE TIME BEING.**

_If Yggdrasil has already convinced you to join us, then why am I here at all?_ Kira didn't mean for it to sound like a complaint, but he could definitely hear the beginnings of an irritated whine in his mental voice. _And you still haven't showed me where you are. This storm is really cutting down on my visibility, are you at least nearby?_

**LITTLE SAPLING, YOU'RE STANDING ON MY BACK, NOT AN ISLAND. IF YOU TOOK TO THE AIR AND LOOKED STRAIGHT DOWN WITH THE SUN BEHIND YOU, YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO SEE THE REST OF ME, TO A DEGREE. BUT THERE CAN BE NO SUN WHILE I AM ON THE SURFACE, THE MACHINES OF THE SEEDLINGS FROM BEYOND THE SKY ARE CONSTANTLY LOOKING DOWN UPON THE OCEANS, IF THEY SAW ME, THEY WOULD COME AFTER ME. I WOULD OF COURSE SMASH THEM TO FLINDERS, BUT AS THE TREE POINTED OUT, THEY ARE ALMOST AS NUMBERLESS AS THE PREY-FISH OF MY DOMAINS, AND FAR MORE INVENTIVE IN THEIR DESTRUCTIONS.**

_You created this whole storm?_ Kira could not help but gulp, as he stopped fidgeting his feet back and forth, wondering if she could feel him stomping around on her back. It was one thing to hear that the Grand Chimera were the most powerful psychic beings alive on New Eden, another to see evidence of their power in action. Yggdrasil's power was not very self evident, but this massive storm was very visible and real. He looked around at what he'd mistaken for an atoll, and shivered. If this was just a fraction of her full size, he could barely imagine how big she really was. Yggdrasil was enormous too, but it was a stationary organism, deeply rooted in the ground, not a mobile, breathing, eating creature!

**ITS EASIER THAN YOU MAKE IT SOUND. I MERELY STARTED THE STORM, IT GROWS VIA NATURAL METHODS NOW. YOU SHOULD CONSIDER SOMETHING LIKE THIS STORM THE VERY LEAST OF MY TALENTS. ONLY A FEW DAYS AGO, AS YOU SEEDLINGS RECKON TIME, I SMASHED A FLEET OF YOUR SHIPS TO THE SOUTH AND EAST OF HERE, ALONG WITH A LARGE METAL DOME YOU HAD BUILT DEEP WITHIN MY DOMAINS. ONE OF MY VASSALS, THE CHIMERA YOU LAND DWELLERS CALL GOREFIN, THE LORD OF MY UPPER REACHES, WAS SERIOUSLY WOUNDED IN DISCHARGING HIS DUTIES BY THEM. I WAS NEARBY, AND TOOK EXCEPTION TO THEIR ACTIONS. FEW SURVIVED.**

_Is he going to be all right? Our weapons don't tend to cause minor wounds._ Kira thought with a wince, thinking of the damage a warship's weapons could inflict upon a living creature, even a big one like the image of Gorefin he'd gotten from Leviathan indicated.

**HE IS NOT WELL. I AM CONCERNED FOR HIM, I DO NOT BELIEVE HE WILL RECOVER FROM THESE INJURIES. HE HAS SERVED ME FAITHFULLY AND WELL FOR YEARS, DESPITE BEING A SHARK, AND IT SITS ILL WITH ME TO SEE HIM SUFFER SO. I FEAR IT WILL SOON COME TO ME DEVOURING HIM TO GRANT HIM PEACE, ABSORBING HIM INTO MY ESSENCE AND BANISHING HIS PAIN FOREVER. I AM NOT SO RAVENOUS AS THAT CRABPUS, BUT I KNOW THE ART OF ASSIMILATING A CONSCIOUSNESS AS WELL AS EITHER ONE OF MY PEERS, AND I WILL GRANT THE HONOR TO MY DEAR VASSAL.**

Kira could feel her sorrow like a wet tail slap across his face, but it was a different sort of sorrow than he was used to feeling from humans. She wasn't so much sad that Gorefin had gotten hurt, she was sad that she couldn't help him after he'd been hurt fighting for her. Getting hurt was a fact of life in the oceans, where life was violent and often short. But he'd stuck his neck out for her, more or less, and been badly injured when he otherwise would not have been. Leviathan's was the sorrow of responsibility, not true caring. Whether Gorefin lived or died was not that important to her, but the fact that he might die because of her did, as strange as that was. For all her massive power, there was nothing Leviathan could actually do for Gorefin besides euthanize him and eat him. Kira wasn't sure what she was going on about, "assimilating consciousness", but he surmised it was some sort of consumption of the death echo, like the Caller was supposed to do. He wasn't sure what the significance behind doing that was, but from the way she discussed it, it seemed to be a pretty big deal.

_Perhaps there is something we can do?_ Kira offered, spontaneously. He remembered how it felt for those refugees in Japan to share their food and shelter with him, those being the only things they had to give to him in exchange for the power of his protection, even though they had so little of them themselves. Now he and Garden City were in the position of being refugees, in a way, being pressed on all sides by the USN and needing help in protecting themselves. With Leviathan turning the very oceans hostile against the USN, they would be forced to regulate most of their supply and troop movements to orbital and sub-orbital transport, rather than shipping, which would take more time and effort on their part. It wouldn't seem to be a major advantage at first, but it was one of those things that would add up over time. And if it ever came to an attack upon Orb to deny the USN their mass driver, having allies in the sea could be critically important. _Our medical science is quite advanced, I'm sure we could do something for him, to spare him the, uh, honor of being devoured and assimilated. A living vassal is preferable to a treasured dead memory, right?_

**YOU WOULD DO THIS? YOU DO NOT KNOW HIM, YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT HIM, YET YOU OFFER TO HELP? HE IS NOT OF YOUR RACE, YOU SEEDLINGS ACTIVELY FEAR HIM MOST OF THE TIME. MANY OF YOU WOULD BE HAPPIER IF HE WERE GONE, YET YOU WANT TO HEAL HIM?**

_I know what its like to be responsible for the deaths of people you care about. I know what its like to be helpless to do anything for the people I'm responsible for as they are hurt or killed. I know what its like to have incredible power, but all of it is worthless for what I actually want to do. You could say I sympathize for your situation, Leviathan. I don't know for sure if we can save your vassal, but we can at least try. We are in this war together now, we might as well be friends, right?_ Kira offered with a faint smile. It was ludicrous, wasn't it? The idea of being friends with a psychic near-god the size of a small island? But kindness, as the people in Japan had showed him, was a universal language. Whether or not Leviathan would consider the offer a kindness was another matter, but that was his intent for it.

**FRIENDS... THAT IS NOT A TERM I AM FAMILIAR WITH, SAPLING. I HAVE PEERS... I HAVE VASSALS... I HAVE SUBJECTS... BUT FRIENDS... WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?**

_Uhm..._ Kira was a bit nonplussed, he'd not thought he'd have to explain the whole concept of what being a friend was to her. It actually made him feel kind of sad for her, that she had literally no concept of what a friend was. _A friend is like a member of your family that is not related to you. Someone you care about because you enjoy their company and the way they make you feel, not because you intended to mate with them or because its to your advantage to be around them. Indeed, standing by your friends can often get you in a lot of trouble, because they have faults, but you don't care about that, because they're your friends. A friend is someone you stand by when they have need, because you know that they'll stand by you when you have need. A friend offers help without being asked, and accepts it in turn even when their pride takes a blow because of it. A friend might be stronger than you, or much weaker, but it doesn't matter, you value them the same no matter their personal power or ability, because of how they make you feel. Like you belong to something, something like a family, but bigger than that. Its hard to explain exactly..._ _what's your relationship like with your family?_

**MY FAMILY IS DEAD. MY FATHER WAS EATEN ALIVE BY SHARKS SHORTLY AFTER I WAS BORN, AND MY MOTHER DIED IN BIRTHING ME, BECAUSE OF MY SIZE. MY FAMILY IS NOW THE ENTIRETY OF THE OCEAN, THEY ARE ALL MY CHILDREN AND I AM THEIR MOTHER.**

_I'm sorry to hear that. I haven't lost my parents, such as they are, myself, but I have many friends and family members that have, so I'm familiar with that pain. I can guess that it would be kind of hard for you to grow up with any friends, being that you're so different from everyone else in the ocean. You have to be careful that you don't hurt them by accident, just by being nearby. It must constantly weigh on you._

**YES... THAT IS A BURDEN I CARRY... I MUST EAT OF THEM TO SURVIVE, BUT I DO NOT ENJOY DOING SO...**

_And there's no one you can talk to about this? No one who can even slightly understand what you're going through?_

**I SPEAK WITH GOREFIN AND CHARBYDIS, THE LADY OF THE ABYSSAL DEPTHS, EVERY SO OFTEN. THEIR SPECULATIONS ON THE ORIGINS AND ACTIONS OF YOU SEEDLINGS ARE RATHER AMUSING DIVERSIONS, FOR A TIME. AND THEY DO SHOULDER SOME OF THE BURDEN OF GOVERNING MY REALMS, SUCH AS IT IS, BUT THEY DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND ME. TO THEM I AM AS A GOD, AS IMMUTABLE AND UNAVOIDABLE AS THE TIDE ITSELF. I AM THE PERSONAFICATION OF THE OCEAN TO THEM. I COULD NOT CONFIDE IN THEM, THEY WOULD NOT KNOW WHAT TO THINK OR DO. AND CONFIDING IN THAT CRABPUS OR THE TREE IS NOT AN OPTION, I WILL NOT SURRENDER AN IOTA OF POWER TO EITHER OF THEM! THE CRABPUS WOULD DEVOUR ME, THAT IS HIS NATURE, AND THE TREE... THE TREE WOULD STEAL AWAY MY STRENGTH AND USE IT FOR ITS OWN VAGUE GOALS. FOR THE GOOD OF ALL LIFE, BUT STILL, IT WOULD TAKE FROM ME ALL THE SAME. WHATEVER ELSE THEY ARE, THE OTHER GRAND CHIMERA ARE NOT MY FRIENDS...**

_I'll be your friend, if you want._ Kira offered again. _There is no love lost between me and Yggdrasil, its because of the Tree that my own family... what you would know as my mate and my children... were killed. It knew that they were in danger, but it did nothing to help them, and then it asked me for my help to defend it! No, Yggdrasil and its followers are no friends of mine, and from what I hear, I don't think I'd get along too well with the Caller either. Both of them are only concerned with their own goals, Caller for selfish reasons, Yggdrasil ostensibly for selfless ones, though I have my doubts about that..._

**GOOD. DO NOT TRUST THE TREE. IT HAS ITS OWN AGENDA, AS DO WE ALL. A BENEVOLENT AGENDA CAN STILL RESULT IN INORDINATE PAIN AND LOSS, AND YGGDRASIL'S CHOSEN PATH IS AMONG THE BLOODIEST. NO BIG DEAL TO SOMETHING LIKE IT, THAT DOES NOT BLEED OR FEEL PHYSICAL PAIN, BUT THE REST OF US...**

_But you, Leviathan, you aren't the same as either Yggdrasil or Caller. You don't tell us what to do and plan out our lives to fit your ends, nor do you seek us out for sustenance. You just want to be left alone with your extended family, to live out life as you see fit. A friend of mine once told me that the only ones that truly deserve great power are those that don't want it at all. You and I would both be so much happier if we didn't have the power we do, right? We just want to live normal lives, with a family, and no major conflicts or heavy burdens beyond the day to day matters of food, shelter and existing. But we can't just forget about our power and our burdens either, because we have a responsibility to those who are depending on our protection, don't we? And when those we are responsible for get hurt anyway, it pains us as well, though we know it really isn't our fault. But that's just the way we are, we feel responsible for others even when they don't want it._ Kira slowly lowered the Lucifer into a crouch, and patted the Grand Chimera comfortingly on a section of her hide, though she probably couldn't feel it.

**YOU DO UNDERSTAND... YOU ARE... LITTLE SAPLING... YOU HAVE GIVEN ME... HAPPINESS... I NEVER THOUGHT THAT...**

_Don't worry about it, Leviathan. Thats what friends do. I'm just glad I could be of a little help._

**A LITTLE HELP? LITTLE? SAPLING... NO... FRIEND... YOU HAVE GIVEN ME SOMETHING I HAVE NEVER HAD BEFORE. THAT IS NO LITTLE THING!**

_Well, try not to make too big a deal of it, okay? Its embarassing. And I should probably contact my people, see what we can do for Gorefin before his wounds get infected or something._

**THE OCEANS WILL ALWAYS BE SAFE FOR YOU AND YOUR BLOOD, FRIEND.** Leviathan suddenly said, almost blurted out. **NOTHING IN MY DOMAIN WILL BRING SADNESS TO MY FRIENDS...**

_You don't have to go out of your way to thank me, its no big deal like I said._ Kira started to protest.

**IT IS DONE, FRIEND. IT IS NO BIG DEAL, AS YOU SAY.** Kira could almost swear the Grand Chimera was teasing him.

_I can see that we're going to have to work on our mutual definition of the phrase "no big deal"._


	38. Tomb of Depravity

Author Note: I guess I kinda did get carried away a bit with WGB in the last chapter. I was trying to show that even in the future, in a world of Gundams, some things are still exactly the same as our world, millions of people becoming obsessed with a game. I may have portrayed the obsession a little too bit too well. Some of those details are kind of important later on, but most of em are window dressing, I admit. Though I do think its kind of funny that in one chapter I can write a scene that is basically a Native American vision quest, and most everyone innately seems to understand what I'm getting at. But when I do a look at a popular video game that is brainwashing the youth of the USN into hating "Warmongers", humans with metallic eyes, and learning the basics of Mobile Suit operations, never mind the whole "Gamer Corps" principle which will occur later... I guess I just need to lay off the exteraneous details, got bogged down. Though for us WoW players, think of how scary it might be if Blizzard did have a political agenda they were working into the game at the behest of the US government...

I'll get to the other children, Violet and Allister are just of bigger concern right now because of all the children they are probably the most directly "involved" in current events and the Finch's are involved in an ongoing crisis with major story implications. Plus you can never do too much foreshadowing for a relationship, though by no means do I think Violet/Akira is going to be near as smooth as Lacus/Kira happened. I think Allister does know Violet's personality pretty well, but he gives her credit for being more mature than she is, I don't think he expected she'd actually beat him up (I'm not sure she did) when he took her sword. She's just in a really fragile mood right now, but she doesn't like showing it, and so when it does come out, she kinda hits extremes. I am glad to see the Kira/Levi scene so well received, and though I will have to wait an arc or so before I can introduce the long awaited Frost/Caller "pairing", rest assured it is definitely on its way. Though I should say, for everyone that commented on how nice it is for Kira to be bonding with Levi and teaching her about friendship, is it truly that much different than what Lilia is trying to do with Frost? Yes, Levi is not a homicidal maniac, but she's not human either, she doesn't place same value on life that a human does, it's very "Kill" or "Not-Kill" with her responses, even when dealing with those close to her, such as Gorefin. Its not like Levi couldn't be nearly as destructive as Frost if she wanted to be, moreso in some ways.

As the name of the chapter might suggest, there's going to be at least one scene that crosses into an M rating, just a heads up. I had to soul search pretty hard before I put it in, like all of my M type scenes, but I'm confident you can all be, well, mature about it, given what's happened in other scenes, though feel free to skim past if you notice a trend towards something you'd rather not read, the tone of the scenes is pretty obvious before it gets too bad. I'll put a "MMMM" instead of an "xxxx" as a scene divider before any scene that has me concerned.

xxxx

**Lunar Space, Second Earth Colony 4, FEAR Headquarters, December 12th, Morning**

"You look gloomy enough to make one of your precious cyborgs weep oilcan tears, Sammual." Dr. Oktar Magnus observed, half maliciously and half light heartedly. He'd didn't think he'd ever truly come to like the elder FEAR leading scientist, not as long as they were in any way rivals for the Director's attention and funding allotments, but he could respect the man for his scientific brilliance, especially now that they were working together, more or less, on the same project, Oktar's own baby, the BALORs, with Oktar in charge of course. "Try to cheer up, Sammual, you may have suffered an embarrassing series of setbacks, you may have gotten your pet project usurped away from you by the Director, and you may have been put to work under my direction for the time being, but I'm sure you'll have a chance to redeem yourself eventually. Surely Mechael will manage to distinguish himself in the upcoming battles, somehow or other. Your star is fading but you can still shed some very helpful light on matters."

"Enjoy being in the ascendancy while you can, Oktar." Sammual growled in response, looking up from the cybernetic organ schematics he'd been working on, while inwardly mulling over the distorted reflection his life had become. He'd been the star brain of FEAR for so long, more than a decade now, since it was still under Alliance leadership, barely more than a subsidary of Logos and part of the R&D branch of a splinter Blue Cosmos group. Back when his main competition came from Dr. Franklin Borander, the arch-mad scientist based at JIHAD, the Coordinator traitor that betrayed his own kind to devise weapons to use in their extermination. And even then, the Extended program that Sammual Roanoke had devised to compete with Borander's BCPU's was recieved extremely favorably, for all that the IBWS weren't ready to be deployed in either Valentine War, they also didn't turn on their handlers and creators and attempt to destroy the world. There was a lot to be said for stability and reliability in a super-soldier. But those glory days were over, Oktar was unfortunately right about that, and the abyssal pit of obsolencence yawned beneath his feet now, growing closer with every passing day. "I'm what you'll be in fifteen years." Sammual warned his colleague.

"Perhaps." Oktar agreed with a shrug. "That remains to be seen though. Once the BALORs win this war for us, I think my long term position could be much more secure than yours ever was. Biological manipulation is the wave of the future, Doctor, this brief flirtation with cybernetics is just a hormonal phase we will grow out of soon enough."

"You were still teaching classes to puerile rich kids at university when I was creating super-weapons for the Alliance military." Sammual curled his lip in instinctive disdain. "Were it not for the lucky accident of Noah Borander's gene manipulating nanites being so successfully used as a terrorist weapon, you never would have amounted to anything much, Oktar. You never knew him, save perhaps from the odd secret scientific consultation paper, but I was and am quite familiar with the work of our archtypical predecessor, Dr. Franklin Borander, Noah's uncle, and I must say in all honesty, Oktar, the parallels I see between his work and yours are deeply concerning to me. You are focused too much on battlefield power and flashy demonstrations, and not enough on what happens before or after a battle. A weapon that cannot be reliably targeted or safely maintained in times of peace is of little practical use. Be careful of the distinction between making super-soldiers and super-killers..."

"Are you saying that the BALORs are flawed?" Oktar retorted, his nostrils flaring and beard bristling in automatic defensive anger.

"Are you telling me that you DON'T see the flaws in the first generation BALORs?" Sammual replied, with an arched brow. "Surely even your pride and eubullience hasn't blinded you that much, Oktar. The cybernetics you used for the control and interface of these prototype BALORs are completely inefficient and ineffective for the purposes you intend. I suppose you can be forgiven for not having the expertise of a true cybernetics master such as myself, but really, Oktar, you're trying to go too far, too fast with these first generation BALORs. The neural connection between the lobotomized Chimera and the Meister is still poorly understood at best, as are the consequences of too much time spent immersed in the remaining subconscious of the BALOR itself. There is a very real possibility that personality degradation could occur, leading to insanity or catatonia of the Meister. As powerful as the BALORs are, if even one slips its leash, it could be quite the catastrophe."

"That's my concern, not yours, Sammual." Oktar replied coldly. "You just worry about making sure the cybernetics of the second generation are up to the higher standards you seem to always be going on about. There's always going to be a few bugs to work out of any prototypical system, especially one as ambitious as mine. We may lose a few soldiers, suffer some property damage, but weighed against the effect the BALORs will have on the Eddies, I don't think anyone will complain."

"I hope that is the extent of the collateral damage, for your sake, Oktar." Sammual answered, shrugging and turning back to his schematics. "I'd so hate for you to suffer a major public embarassment like I have. It would be so sad to see Director Dostanya intervene on your pet project also, and regulate you to the level of a mere research assistant as well. I don't think either of us is truly giving that woman the credit for the intelligence she has. She may act like a mere administrator, but she dissected my Extended project to the bone and doesn't seem to be having any trouble insinuating herself into their society in ways I could barely dream of doing, all while being twice as ruthless as I ever was. And most of them already are coming to see her as a mother figure despite that. I don't even get calls from most of them any more, and they were like my children all of a month ago! I would not be surprised if she had her own plans for the eventual direction of the BALORs too. Watch yourself, Oktar. Don't let yourself turn out like me."

"You expect me to believe you aren't hoping for me to fail so that you get another chance to prove yourself to her?" Oktar asked, through narrowed eyes. "You've never liked me, Sam. I've always been and always will be that upstart young punk who jumped feet first through your ivory tower door and made the place my own in a matter of years, to you. You spent decades building yourself into the power you did, I've done the same and more in less than two thirds of a single decade. You were a rising star, I am a meteor! Your jealousy is expected. Nothing would make you happier than seeing me in your exact position, don't lie."

"At one point, I would have agreed with you on that, if not out loud to your face." Sammual sighed, his shoulders slumping a bit, really feeling his age for the first time in years. "And as far as it goes, you are completely right about most of that. But after seeing this side of Dr. Dostanya that I never knew existed, I realized that she is the real threat, not you. She sets us against each other, makes us compete, sort of a survival of the fittest experiment in which she reaps the benefits of whomever makes the most impressive progress, which she then confiscates and turns to her own ends, for her own pet projects. And we play along, eagerly even, in order to satisfy our egos and our thirst for funding, when in truth we're not much different from high school grade lab rats in her eyes, cash cows and geese that sometimes lay golden eggs for her profit." He met Oktar's gaze wearily. "Believe it or not, after experiencing what it's like to fall from the heights into the gutter, I wouldn't wish that on you, a colleague and fellow "pure" scientist, Oktar. It's the least of what Natalia deserves, but not you, Oktar. I hope it never happens to you."

"Bah." Oktar turned away from whatever he saw in Sammual's eyes. "We're wasting time discussing this circumstantial and entirely conjectural topic. It's unfortunate that the first generation won't be fully calibrated with their Meisters until after Operation Royal, but there will be other times to shine. This war is just beginning after all. And we're recieving a steady supply of fresh experimental subjects from Earth, enough so that we will be able to swap out our older, used up specimens almost entirely. There's an entire new crop of pe-adolescents I am particularly interested in, they seem different from previous lots. Perhaps because they were born after the Disaster rather than converted during it." Oktar stroked his bushy red-grey beard speculatively. "Yes, there is much to learn from these young specimens, we could even be looking at yet another subdivision in the human genome... very exciting stuff!"

"Eddies are Eddies to me." Sammual shrugged. "Though I would appreciate any insight you gain on how their psychic powers work and develop. I came close to immunity with the ICMS, but true immunity to psychic effects still eludes me. There must be a way to achieve it though."

"I still say you're looking in the wrong way. Psychic powers are inarguably a biological problem, a mutation of the brain. Trying to emulate a biological mutation with technological creations is... unlikely, at best. Perhaps you might have better luck looking at it from a nanological perspective, perhaps a defensive variation on MAIDEN that our soldiers can use to block the sections of their mind that respond to psychic influence. You could always ask the "Prophet" for a few tips. I've found his advice to be very insightful, especially coming from such a youthful source. No doubt he would appreciate a visit from someone other than the Solar President from time to time." Oktar suggested.

"Insightful perhaps, but I don't trust that monster." Sammual said with disgust thick in his voice. "He personifies the very thing I have lived my life to protect people from. Had I the opportunity, I would murder him with my own two hands, as should have been done originally, regardless of the value of his scientific knowledge. Some crimes do not deserve pardons, even ones like his. Neither of us could ever be said to be much of a humanitarian, Oktar, without heavy use of technicality and semantics. But though we might appear as evil monsters to the common brute on the streets, neither of us hold a candle to Noah Borander."

"Monster he may be, but he is still all too human." Oktar answered with a philosophic shrug. "He's carried out this protective farce for his girlfriend for seven years now, and not cracked once, even though he continues to do everything he can to ensure her safety. Brilliant scientist he may be, but he's still as transparent as any other young man in the throes of love. As long as Meyrin Hawke's life hangs in the balance, as long as he knows that she is sequestered in our care, we can trust the Prophet to play ball honestly. It's almost enough to make an old man feel guilty, holding a pretty young girl hostage like this. Though I suppose she's not really a girl, is she? She's a monster just like him, an aberration that will eventually be sacrificed on the altars of human progress. Now there's a poetic image..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Antarctica, Nifelheim FEAR Base, December 12th, Morning**

Natalia looked up with irritation as the door to her private office slid open, despite the privacy lock she had on the system, not wishing to be disturbed while she worked on interpreting the very disturbing data she'd been collating on some recent incidents. The lights came back up to normal illumination levels, her cybernetically enhanced eyes having no problems seeing even in pitch darkness, so she generally preferred to keep things dark while working, it was more relaxing than the brain hurting glow of most scientific laboratories and research centers. As they did so, Natalia recognized her visitor and she automatically smoothed out her look of annoyance, changing the frown to a simpering smile and the glare to a look of pleased semi-adoration. It wouldn't do to antagonize her pawn, not at this stage of the game when she'd just so recently tangled him in her web. "Rey, its so good to see you, lover!" Natalia told him, feigning delight as she stood up from her desk and walked over to enfold him in a very intimate hug. "What brings the Supreme Commander to my humble abode? I'm surprised you have the time, with Operation Royal coming up in a little over a week."

"I'll always have time for you, Natalia." Rey answered, somewhat huskily, which was almost endearing except for the way he hugged her back, luxuriating in the feel of her body against his. His love for her was purely as a sexual object, with a sprinkling of carefully manipulated and deluded feelings on top, it made his comments fall a bit flat for that reason. Besides, he was so young and inexperienced, he would never have been more than a passing distraction, a week long lay, were he not so critically well connected and positioned for her needs. "I just wanted to know if you had any more surprises for me? I've been hearing great things about this BALOR program of yours, is there any chance I can work them into the operational plan for Victoria?"

"I'm afraid not, love." Natalia sighed with real disappointment. "Oktar has achieved great things with his project, but they are still prototypes, with all the problems inherent to that word. We're still working out some of the kinks, you could say. But I promise you, they will be ready for combat deployments in the first month or two of next year." She slightly pulled away from him, giving him a coy glance that had to have heated his blood. "Speaking of, while you're here, can I help you work out any "kinks" of a more personal sort? Is that Extended toy I provided for you still earning her keep properly?"

"Stella makes a very warm and soft bed." Rey agreed with a cocky smirk. "She's very accomodating. Almost too much so, actually. She does anything and everything I tell her to without arguing or even looking me in the eye." Rey sighed. "I kinda want something a little more... provocative... you could say, from time to time. Have her put up a little fight, just enough to make things exciting you know, I wouldn't actually want to fight her or anything. And I'm kinda getting bored with blond hair. Any chance I could have another one?"

"As many as you need, of course, Rey. You can consider the Extended girls your own personal harem, or put them out as whores for your friends and officer cadre for all I care. It's only cost effective for them to do something with their dormitory time besides socialize with each other. If I'd wanted them to socialize, I wouldn't have put so much effort into making them super-soldiers. You must never forget that beneath the camouflage exterior of a young, pretty girl, they are nothing more than interchangable control mechanisms for our war machines. That you have managed to find a use for them other than on the battlefield is actually commendable, I should have had this sort of thing in mind from the beginning. Battlefield effectiveness is all well and good, but making them contribute to the good morale and emotional satisfaction of the regular soldiers as well... that's the kind of inspired, out of the box thinking I like in men..." Natalia smiled enticingly and patted Rey on his quite well toned ass. There was something to be said for the body type produced by young male Coordinators by the military training regime.

"But what about the Extended's morale? I mean, I haven't really paid that much attention to them, but I'm fairly sure that they have some relationships between each other and whatnot. I'd really hate for their performance on the battlefield to suffer, or to degrade their loyalty by breaking up their personal relationships." Rey said with a slight frown. "No matter how useful or pleasant they might be as "camp-followers", their primary use is battlefield assault operations, I can't compromise that aspect of their performance even slightly."

"Ah, but that's the beauty of Extendeds, Rey." Natalia replied, wagging her finger playfully at him. "Not only are they physically durable enough to withstand even the roughest play without lasting effects, but all it takes is a few hours in a recuperation bed and any personal relationships they might currently be squandering themselves in will be gone, neither party will remember it at all. I will send out orders to begin stripping away any previous sexual relationships in the currently deployed Extendeds this very day. It's an indulgence of Sammual's that has been allowed to exist for too long as it is. Some tweaking of the duty rosters will return most of the undesirable male models to Nifelheim or other bases, leaving the cream of the female crop for you to use as you see fit. If you get bored of one, send her back to me and I will provide a replacement from the spares we keep here. It's a win-win situation, love, I get more cost effectiveness from the Extendeds; you and your men, and maybe some of your women too, get warm beds and willing but not clingy partners to tide them over until they can build a relationship with a human being."

"Yet another little situation satisfactorily resolved by my partnership with you, Natalia." Rey grinned boyishly. "What would I do without you?"

"I'm sure you'd manage to muddle along somehow." Natalia said with a humble shrug. "If you'd like to feel indebted to me though, there is a concern I've recently discovered. Normally, I wouldn't bring it up, but it could be a problem if it's allowed to fester along, so..."

"Just name it, and I'll fix it." Rey promised her gallantly.

"It's about Gil." Natalia informed him, watching his expression warily, for any signs that she needed to change her tack. Gil was still a very sensitive subject with her pawn after all. She noticed a definite tightening of his face, a loss of the previous playful bearing, but he didn't close up entirely, so she figured it was safe enough to go on. "Well, not about the man himself but about someone close to him who's recently been garnering a lot of the wrong kind of attention from the high command."

"Talia." Rey said, his tone neutral, but Natalia was sure she heard the beginnings of hints of disapproval in the tone too.

"Yes, the accomplished Captain Talia Gladys, commander of the ZAFT ship _Remembrance_ and one of their most illustrious and decorated warship captains. She's long been Gilbert's semi-secret lover, a holdover relationship from before either of them achieved the positions they currently hold. She's done an admirable job of distancing herself politically from Gilbert so that his influence doesn't marr, or appear to marr, the sanctity of her meteoric rise through ZAFT's ranks, she's not a woman you can accuse of sleeping her way to the top." Natalia summed up. _Unlike myself, in a way, though I've only ever used sex where it was the most convenient and quickest way._ "However, she has recently been distancing herself from Gilbert in more than just personal ways, as you yourself have noticed, she has begun to publicly question military orders and the legalities of the war we are waging. I don't think I need to tell you what sort of influences a man's lover can have on him, words spoken in the bedroom have a way of seeming more weighty than those spoken across a conference table."

"They do have a way of... sticking in the memory." Rey admitted with a blush. "And its long been a Intelligence Service axiom that pillow-talk is one of the best ways to gather reliable information from otherwise tight lipped and careful sources. Physical and emotional intimacy often leads to people treating their partner as a confidante even when they really should know better." Rey smiled in a semi-brittle fashion. "I'm not immune to the temptation myself, though at least I know that you're trustworthy, Natalia."

"I but do my best to serve my Shepard in whatever ways I can." Natalia bowed her head with feigned demurrance. _Yes, I'm definitely trustworthy... up to the point where I've milked you for all that's worthwhile to me, at which time you'll find that "trust" is one of the most painful words in any language._ "Gilbert, great man that he is, is still not perfect, and I think his choice of lover is a potentially concerning mistake. All it would take would be a particularly attentive TV reporter to uncover the passion between them, and her borderline subversive views, and we could have quite the embarrassing crisis on our hands. Nothing Gilbert couldn't handle of course, but all the same, I'd prefer not to see him suffer through it at all if possible, right? And while her views are only concerning right now, you know as well as I that most people don't become radical subversives all at once, it's a process of slow decay. If we turn our backs on this now, who knows what might happen later... she might even eventually defect and join the Retributors or another terror group, and that would be like a dagger plunged right into Gilbert's back! I could not bear to see him in that kind of heartbroken pain, could you?"

"I'll have Section Nine keep a closer eye on her, but I can't do much more than that right now without alerting Gil that I'm doing it, and he would instantly call them off." Rey said musingly. "I might be able to create a special task force that operates under his radar, but that will take some time to introduce and slip by him. There's no way he'll believe your concerns if we don't have proof, the same way I would never believe you were plotting against me unless I had definite proof, Natalia."

"Well, as long as we're doing something about it." Natalia smiled encouragingly at him. "Thanks, Rey, it's a big load off my shoulders. I couldn't figure any way to bring it up to him without getting my head bitten off, but, as usual, you're a lifesaver. The unsung work you do behind the scenes is what really keeps Gil's dream healthy and prosperous, I hope you know that. Sometimes, protecting someone you care about means protecting them even from their own treasured mistakes, and I'm glad you understand that."

"Speaking of loads on shoulders..." Rey glanced at her plaintitively, after hiding his smile and the swell of his chest at her compliments of his work with Section Nine. "Do you have anything for me about the events that have occured at Porta Panama, and more recently to Orb's Red Dawn Task Force. I've read FEAR's briefing on psychic phenomenon multiple times, but nothing in that report explains the kind of power and effect I've seen recently. As you know, we've been able to get very little in the way of concrete military intelligence from what few PoWs we've managed to capture, these "Custodians" are fanatical in their devotion to their cause. And even using the specialty drugs you've provided, they mostly just become delirious and nonsensical before we can get anything solid from them. Have you had any better luck with the civilians we've been sending you? I really need something to bring back to my commanders, people are starting to freak out."

"I've been looking into those matters personally, as a matter of fact." Natalia assured him, which was completely true. The massive psychic phenomenon had been an unpleasant surprise, and she was dedicating much of her precious free time to figuring out a way to counter or annull these occurences, or preferably, find a way to turn them to her advantage. They were seeing incidences of psychic power that weren't just off the charts, they were beyond the power of the current software to even approximately calculate, power more akin to what some people might call godlike, and Natalia called "primal" and "intriging". They'd long known of Eddie contemporary mythology describing a triumvirate of legendary semi-divine beings, massive super-chimera that acted to control entire strata of life on Earth, but she'd always dismissed it as just that, mythology, the pathetic efforts of a destablized and degenerated culture to explain certain naturally occuring phenomenon. Now she wasn't so sure anymore that there wasn't more than a germ of truth to these legends. The near destruction of an entire Task Force fleet, and the disappearance of an entire theatre HQ were events that were hard to dismiss as superstition, especially since the Task Force battle had been data-captured by multiple sources.

"And as a result, I have come, with some reluctance, to the conclusion that the Eddie mythology that describes the presence of three supernatural beings that control the entire psychic world from behind the scenes is actually a fairly accurate representation of the real world." Natalia admitted, with a shake of her head. "These three beings, Yggdrasil, Leviathan and Caller, are central figures not just in mythology and folklore, but in political philosophy as well, where they appear like figureheads almost, talked about like they are more than just personifications of an idea but actual physical beings, of enormous size and mass and intelligence. Yggdrasil is the most commonly worshipped psychic "deity" of the Eddie pantheon, described as a redwood pine tree of simply impossible proportions, kilometers tall, and I would think such a organism would be fairly obvious from our comprehensive orbital scanning of the planet. Yggdrasil is supposedly the most benevolent diety, concerned with the prosperity of all life on Earth, its primary power appears to be the ability to see the future. Many human mythology's include such a "Seer" or "Prophet" among their ranks, such as the very Norse Mythology that the term "Yggdrasil" comes from, where Odin, father of the Gods, hung himself for seven days from a tree branch in order to gain the ability to see the past and the future."

"They worship a tree?" Rey scoffed at the idea. "I've heard of the term "treehugger" but this is a whole different level. And not just that, but a psychic tree that can see the future?" Rey could hardly stop from chortling. "That's rich! They couldn't have made that any more ridiculous if they'd tried! I can't wait to get that little tidbit to the propoganda machines, who in their right mind could possibly buy into the idea of a giant psychic tree that reads the future? What, do you get a fortune cookie message if you whittle off some bark or something? Do they read horoscopes in the patterns of the pinecones? Ahh, but that's just too funny..."

"It is... a rather childish superstition." Natalia allowed herself a slight chuckle as well. "But as far as gods go, a giant tree is pretty harmless and its not that big a leap to assume that a tree would want peace and prosperity for all, since it can't really defend itself. I could go on for hours about all the various symbolisims implied by worshipping a big old tree, but thats not really germane. If Yggdrasil is the largely imaginary good and loving god of the Edenites, then the one known as the Leviathan, who is female, represents the aspects of fertility, abundance and wrath. She's something like a harvest or hunt diety, though unlike most such deities, she doesn't live in the sky or the forests, but in the oceans. Apparently some half mythical Eddie hero figure made a parlay with her during his epic voyage to the promise land, where she asserted her dominion over all the world's oceans, and granted the Eddies the right to travel upon them and fish from them as long as they did not pollute the water and as long as they paid tribute every full moon by tossing food into the sea to feed the denizens of the deep."

"I don't suppose she's a mermaid with huge breasts and a bow or something, is she?" Rey asked, putting together an image of what a goddess of hunting, fertility and the oceans would look like in his mind. It was fairly repulsive.

"Less a mermaid and more a sea monster, actually." Natalia replied, though her humor was a bit strained. She'd seen the videos of that huge eye looking up at the fleeing Orb forces after all, and the images of the huge "tail fluke" of water that had crushed Orb's floating harbor facility to smithereens in an instant. "Leviathan is supposed to be some sort of whale-like creature, the size of a small island, though she rarely if ever comes to the surface. Again, we have no satellite images of any such gigantic creature swimming through the oceans, though our vision is limited to only a few hundred meters depth at most, so there is plenty of space for her to hide in. However, at this point in time, I am fairly sure that she is in fact a real creature, and that she is responsible for the decimation of Orb's Red Dawn task force and the loss of their naval supercarrier. Her powers seem to run strongly towards telekinesis, on an order that is simply mind boggling to consider, the evidence I've seen indicates a lifting capacity of several hundred thousand tons or more!"

"And what kind of countermeasures do we have for this giant... whale... god... thing...?" Rey asked with a frown. "How do you even fight something like that?"

"Very carefully, I would expect, with massive numerical superiority and special, purpose built weapons. For the time being, my advice is to just leave her the hell alone. Run away if possible, direct more supply tonnage to orbital routes, and keep any major forces well clear of any shorelines. Leviathan's mythology states that she doesn't really care about anything unless it happens in the oceans, and while the oceans do cover a huge percentage of the Earth's surface, its largely useless to us except as a transport route, and we can do that through orbital means, especially after we rebuild the Victoria mass driver. But she's really a secondary concern, when properly managed. Once we conquer all the Eddie resistance on land, we'll have plenty of time and resources to devote to harpooning this whale-creature." Natalia answered. She reached out a hand and manipulated some controls on her desk, saving documents and starting the shutdown sequence.

"Lastly, we have the being known as Caller, the evil counterpart to Yggdrasil, a god of the underground, of death and decay and selfishness, their "Hades" or "Satan" equivalent. The embodiment of psychic evil. Caller is universally feared, far moreso than either of the other two deities, though there is a certain subsect that revere him as well, mostly for the power over mortality that he is said to possess. Caller is said to actually subsist upon the mental energies released by psychic beings during their deaths, especially violent deaths, and if any one of the Eddie gods could be said to actually be happy that there is a war on, Caller would be him. No one is really sure what Caller looks like, the most common symbols are some sort of vampiric mist or ball of writhing tentacles, I would imagine he's associated with those old cythonic myths, the Elder Race from beyond the stars that enslaves humanity and raises them like cattle for food and amusement." Natalia sighed despondently. "Unfortunately I am forced to conclude that Caller is also not imaginary, but an actual physical creature dwelling somewhere in the radiation blasted ruins of North America's Eastern seaboard. He is to blame for the mass disappearances at Porta Panama."

"I thought you said he feeds on psychic death energies, why would he drive all those soldiers insane, they aren't psychic?" Rey asked curiously.

"Caller feeds both on the flesh and the mind, even if a person isn't psychic, when they die they are often feeling emotional extremes, especially if its a violent or sudden, but not instantaneous death. Such emotional extremes, at close range for a very powerful psychic telepath, could be similar to the more usual psychic "death echo", especially in bulk. Caller is ostensibly the reason why there are so few Eddie settlements in the America's, he is constantly hungry, and comes to the weak, the elderly or the unprepared in their dreams, slowly driving them insane until they spring up one night and run off into the wild, never to be seen again. And apparently he can do it at ranges of thousands of miles, to tens of thousands of minds at once. However, it is not usually a quick process, it takes him time, maybe ten minutes to a few hours, to really get into your mind, though once he is in, rapid onset hallucinations and a quick descent into insanity follow. We are currently working on both discovering the Caller's lair and finding ways to block his influence. If we can kill or subdue the Caller, we will basically conquer both North and South America at a single stroke, as well as deal a temendous, intimidating blow to Eddie morale by defeating their avatar of death! He should be a priority target after Victoria."

"I'll see what I can do, but its going to be tough selling a major operation to kill some giant underground tentacle monster without some more concrete proof." Rey told her. "Get me that proof and I'll get you your monster."

"I'd like that very much." Natalia replied, scooting forward off her desk. "You know what else I'd like very much right now?" She prompted, dropping her skirt to the floor with a flick of one hand. _Time to prime the pump again. Can't be having him thinking too straight now, can I?_

"I think I can guess." Rey said, with a bright smile, stepping forward as she continued to shamelessly strip down in front of him. "And fortunately, its something I can provide right now too."

"That's my Rey... always providing for those in need..."

MMMM

**Lunar Space, Second Earth Colony 4, FEAR Headquarters, December 12th, Midafternoon**

Part of Meyrin's special "trustee" status was the freedom to mingle with certain other groups of Edenites, in a controlled and carefully monitored environment of course. Usually these groups were younger, generally children, often those that were fresh off the shuttles from Earth and who were still adapating to the harsh realities of their new existences in space as lab animals. It had been determined that the risks of allowing Meyrin to socialize with these waifs was offset by the calming influence of an older female "mother" or "big sister" figure that the tykes could latch onto for an hour or two every couple of days. It kept them calmer without having to resort to drugging them up whenever they started calling for their mommies and daddies, or siblings or whatever. Saved time, saved cost in having to use fewer specialty drugs, and it provided them with a "privilege" to take away from children that misbehaved too often, in essence confining them to solitary imprisonment without their new mother figure until they shaped up.

A spare, empty storeroom was provided as a sort of daycare playpen for the children, with basic toys like blocks and crayons, though each item was carefully inventoried after each session so that the kids couldn't try and sneak out any writing implements or potential weapons or suicide choking hazards. The value of a test subject went up the younger they were, because that meant they were still in the middle of or on the verge of some very interesting hormonal changes, which required much study to be fully understood in how Edenites progressed from babies to adults, in terms of both physical and psychic potentials, so that meant they were very careful to avoid giving the kids any way to escape, even through death. There was no furniture, and nothing to hide behind, multiple cameras keeping watch on each sector of the room; the conversations, such as they were, carefully recorded and screened for any evidence of collaborations, a team of guards armed with stun batons, tranquilizer darts and tear gas grenades waited on duty outside at all times while there were children at play.

Meyrin resented the way the scientists used her to manipulate good behavior out of the children by giving them time with her and then taking that time away if the child ever did anything out of line, which could even be as simple as not providing the test results the scientist was looking for, as if that was the child's fault! But there was no reasoning with the type of scientists that worked in this sector of FEAR's labs, the Edenites were no different from cloned albino lab mice to them, and with the war on, there was a steady stream of new subjects arriving all the time, so it wasn't like they were totally irreplacable or anything. And providing any hope and comfort at all to the terrified and sometimes injured children was better than doing nothing! Plus it allowed her to feel indignation for others, rather than sinking into a pit of constant self pity over her own circumstances. And sometimes she was even able to carry short messages back and forth, in secret, between children and their families that were in other parts of the labs, little squiggles of colored crayon on her skin that looked meaningless to the guards, but still proved to the parents that their child was alive and functioning.

She was currently sitting in the middle of the brightly lit room, providing herself as a piece of living furniture for the children to clamber upon, if they felt so inclined, though most just contented themselves with sitting in her lap or hugging her sides. There was only so much room on her body, and only so much time allowed in the playroom, so the children had been forced to work out a sort of timeshare system for lap and hugs, with each child getting a certain amount of time based on their emotional or physical need for comforting. Meyrin was assisted by two of the older children, fraternal twins named Matthias and Jessi, orphans that had been with the FEAR program for a very long time, longer even than Meyrin herself. They were somewhere between twelve and thirteen, neither remembered their birthdays or anything about their parents, other than that their mother had red hair, kinda like Meyrin's, which was what had drawn them to her initially.

Both Matthias and Jessi were Latents like Meyrin, they were definitely in the minority among the Edenites at the lab and Edenites in general, from what Meyrin had gathered. Because Green EDEN had used Noah's genetic pattern as its base, and Noah was an Active, it took a sort of extra mutation for anyone converted by Green EDEN to turn out as a Latent, and that wasn't very common, perhaps one time in fifteen or twenty. It was more evenly distributed among the animals, who tended to be more changed by Green EDEN anyway. Meyrin thought that Matthias was a redhead and Jessi blond, but both children were almost always completely shaved as part of the long term experiment they were participating in. That they were forced to participate in, rather. Meyrin didn't know what it was, but she did know that the plain grey smocks both children wore hid a great deal of surgical scars of frightening size, with metal plugs actually protruding from the skin in several locations, interface ports for tubes or cabling that Meyrin hoped she never had to see attached with her own eyes.

Neither of the children would talk about it, in fact they hardly ever talked at all, not that Meyrin blamed them; after a certain, depressingly short exposure to the horrors of the labs, even the most gregarious of children became withdrawn, sullen and disassociative. Bad enough what they did to you, recalling and recounting the humiliations and violations for others was more pain than most anyone could bear. But Matthias and Jessi, perhaps because they were still together after years and years of experimentations and tests, still maintained at least a facade of strength and spirit, and they were as close to confidantes as Meyrin had at the moment, also providing assistance with the younger, newer children when Meyrin grew too overwhelmed, or needed a moment to go to the corner, hide her face against the wall and cry out her rage at the inhumanity of it all, without the children having to see. But Meyrin never let herself turn away for long, she wasn't going to let them win, wasn't going to submit like that! She would face the horrors they inflicted head on and she would remember each crime, each indignity, each sin against the innocent and the helpless... and when she and Noah finally got free, the very first thing she was going to do was come back here and wipe this place from existence and hunt down each and every one of the scientists who worked here!

Sometimes she entertained herself with bloody revenge fantasies, but most of the time she was resolved to just do it quick and clean, a shot to the back of the head or the front, or whatever. No torture, no slow dismemberment, no injecting hosts of foreign chemicals or exposures to extreme heat or cold, or live dissection or any of the horrors that they so richly deserved for inflicting on the Edenites themselves. Because she was a better person, a better human being than they were, and they could never take that from her, no matter what they did! She would not descend to their level, she was an Ultimate Coordinator, it was her duty to set the example for conduct for the others. Restraining Noah might take a bit of doing, but she'd called him back from various brinks before, the love they shared was stronger than any blot of darkness the scientists of FEAR could inflict upon either of them. Although, next time he figured that he was protecting her by allowing them to be seperated, she was going to knee him squarely in the balls!

Meyrin had noticed a recent delineation among the children passing through the playroom, though the ages of the children were more or less the same as ever. It was only after much coaxing and quiet whispering to one of the older new children that Meyrin had realized what the difference was. The newer children had all been born on New Eden, to parents who were both converted Ultimate Coordinators. These children weren't Ultimate Coordinators at all, they were Neo-Humans, the final stage of the masterpiece experiment in human genome advancement first evisioned by a certain Dr. Ulen Hibiki more than thirty years ago. Meyrin was unaware if the scientists were aware of the difference, which was subtle, at least at the moment, but she sure wasn't going to speak up about it either. Certainly she had observed certain habits among the young Neos that were quite surprising. There seemed to be some sort of personality sharing or something like that going on, sometimes she would see children start acting identically to other children, ones who weren't present because of being denied for misbehavior, for example. How that could go on without alerting the anti-psy sensors they all wore surgically glued to their temples, she did not know, but for that matter, the children themselves didn't seem to notice the temporary "possessions" either.

It was definitely a question she was saving to ask Noah, though even he might not know. He knew the theory behind the Coordinator-Ultimate Coordinator-Neo Human process, but as for how the Neos would actually turn out, no one actually knew. It might be something they'd have to figure out with a little trial and error testing themselvs, Meyrin thought with a faint blush. Once they were free, whenever that happy day arrived, Noah would be able to work on undoing the radiation treatments that had been used to sterilize her and then they could get to work on that family thing that had been rudely interrupted by this unpleasant episode of life. Meyrin's brief happy fantasy was ruined though, when the door to the playpen hissed open, well ahead of the usual scheduled change out of children, and in stepped a squadron of guards, dressed in heavier full body flak vests and mirror lensed gas masks. They looked around the room, either uneasily or dangerously, perhaps a combination of both, as children scattered like mice and hugged the walls, turning their faces away from the scary looking men.

For her part, Meyrin stared at them challengingly, carefully setting aside the young boy nestled in her lap, who scampered away hastily as she stood up and took a step towards the guard squad, who had heavy truncheons and some form of projectile taser or stun guns in their hands. Judging by the flab on one of them, she knew the identity of at least one guard, and her lip curled in utmost disdain and disgust as she turned her eyes away from Harry Mcnabb, the underwear stealing pervert. Meyrin folded her arms across her chest imperiously, and opened her mouth to demand what the guards wanted, assuming it was something more productive than simply terrorizing a room full of pre-adolescent children. "She's one!" Meyrin heard Mcnabb say, his voice muffled and tinny from inside his gas mask. "Stun 'er!" He added, and a second later, before Meyrin could even think of dodging, one of the tasers spat its little dart at her, striking her in one folded arm, the channeled jolt of electricity making her hair stand up on end as she dropped to the ground like a wet sack, gurgling and convulsing painfully.

"Where's the others? I can't tell these little monsters apart." One of the guards complained, barely audible to Meyrin as she lay twitching on the cold floor by their feet.

"Screw it." One of the others commented. "Gas em all, we'll sort out the grain from the chaff after."

"Wait...!" Meyrin gritted, mastering the spasms from the nerve overloading jolt, propping herself up on one elbow and reaching out to grab the ankle of the leading guard. "Please don't... they're just kids... there's no need for force..." A moment later he jerked his ankle out of her grip, kicking her hand away and then stepping on it, making her cry out in pain as one finger bone crunched loudly.

"Holy SHIT, it grabbed me! Stun it again!" The guard swore loudly.

"Nah, let me handle this one, Davy. She and I got some history." Mcnabb volunteered, hefting his truncheon menacingly. "How you doin', you haughty redheaded bitch? Birds're comin' home to roost today, been waiting a long time for thi... UGGHHGH!" Mcnabb's threat trailed off into a pained grunt as Meyrin, fed up with it all, lashed out with her foot and kicked him square in the beer belly, driving all the breath from his body and doubling him up, retching into his gas mask. Meyrin started to rise, preparing to kick him again, and maybe twist his neck until it snapped, for good measure, but before she could get far the other three guards reacted, one of them hurling a canister of tear gas at the children huddled along the back walls, while the other two beat Meyrin back to the floor with stun-gun butt and truncheon, one clubbing blow landing right across the bridge of her nose, breaking it in a hot splash of blood, and blacking her left eye so bad it began swelling shut almost immediately. Her head spinning, Meyrin collapsed and went limp, curling up on her side as they kicked at her for good measure, a few heavy thumps apiece, until her breath was coming ragged and jerky through the pain.

The tear gas wafted down to her next, making her throat and eyes itch terribly, but she'd been exposed to so many worse poisons in gaseous form during her time here that she quickly acclimated to it. Most of the children weren't so fortunate though, and the pitiful sounds of their hacking, retching and crying soon filled the room. "There they are!" One of the guards called after a few seconds. "The big ones in the back! Those are the two the Director's message described! They're the Meisters!" His words were followed by two more jolts from stun guns, and the sound of more children screaming and crying, along with the sound of two young, teenaged bodies falling limply to the floor. And then Meyrin felt someone grab her by the scruff of her hospital smock, and she was being forcibly dragged out of the room, bare feet skidding on the cold metal floor, the whirling vision in her one open eye showing another guard behind her, holding Matthias and Jessi, both groggy and semi-concious, in the crooks of his arms. The last she saw of the playpen, the door was hissing shut once more, locking the rest of the kids in the tear gas filled room. Tears filled her eyes, tears that had nothing to do with the pain of her beating or the tear gas itself. These bastards...

The hallways seemed curiously empty of other personnel, normally there was always a scientist or two meandering from one lab to another, or a huddle of dejected test subjects sandwiched between guards being force marched from their kennels to a test sequence, or something, but today, right now, only the four armored guards and their captives moved through the halls. And then another door was opening, and Meyrin found herself dragged into yet another small storage room and unceremoniously dumped on the floor, the door hissing shut and locking behind them, the room momentarily pitch dark before the lights slowly came on. The guard carrying Matthias and Jessi lowered them to the floor before taking out a several zip cuffs from one of his belt pouches, which he used to truss up the children's wrists and ankles, doubling up the cuffs just to be sure, making sure they were immobile before they recovered from the tear gas and electric shocks. One of the other guards produced zip cuffs of his own and headed towards Meyrin to do likewise, but he was brought up short by an hand on his shoulder from Mcnabb.

"Nah, not yet. Not for her. She and me, we got some business to take care of." Mcnabb said, taking off his gas mask, his face florid with sweat as he flashed a toothy grin at Meyrin.

"Shit, Harry, we don't got time for this. We're on a schedule here." One of the other guards protested.

"Fuck you! Do you know how much I had to pay under the table to get a spot on this squad?" Mcnabb shot back with a growl. "I've been after this haughty bitch for seven years now, I ain't about to let her get transferred away to some rehab camp down on Earth without having my piece of fun! This won't take five minutes, we'll make the schedule just fine."

"I'd be surprised if it lasted much over one minute." Meyrin said viciously, hacking up a mouth full of phlegm and spitting it across to land on Mcnabb's boot toe. "You're a vile human being, Harry Mcnabb."

"Yeah? Maybe I am at that." Mcnabb took a long step towards her. "But ya know what? At least I AM a human being, not some terrorist whore, piece of trash Eddie like you." Mcnabb beckoned to two of the guards. "Ok guys, just like we discussed. All you gotta do is hold her down for me, and its three hundred bucks a piece after we do the drop off."

"You need help from two friends?" Meyrin asked sardonically, forcing herself to be confrontational rather than scared. She would NOT let them see how scared she was. "Oh, I get it... "hold me down" is a code phrase for: "you unzip my pants, and you hold up my paunch, cause otherwise I can't reach my dick to do anything with it", right? You're real nice friends, most wouldn't go so far."

"She's a lippy bitch, isn't she?" One of the helpers commented nastily.

"Really got a mouth on her." The other agreed.

"Well, it ain't her mouth I'm interested in." Mcnabb reminded them, stepping forward along with her friends, who grabbed her arms and legs and pinned them down, despite her struggles, one man for each pair of limbs was more than she could fight against on her back. Meyrin winced as Mcnabb tore away her scrubs, leaving her bare to their leering gazes. The last thing she wanted to do was witness what was coming next, but Meyrin didn't let herself look away or close her remaining open eye. They wanted her submission, they wanted her to give up and admit that this was breaking her up inside. She wasn't going to give them that satisfaction, at least.

"Dude, you're not actually going to rape her, are you?" The fourth guard, the one who had bound up Matthias and Jessi, asked with disgust in his voice. "Hello? She's a fucking Eddie, you'll get infected!"

"I'm not an idiot, Davy." Mcnabb retorted, producing a small pill packet from his pocket, as he loosened his belt. "You don't wanna know what it costs under the table to swipe one of these from the pharmacy." Mcnabb joked bitterly to his friends, as he opened the packet and swallowed the red pill inside. "But it'll give me immunity against catching the shit she's got, so its worth it. Fucking Eddie she might be, but soon now, she's gonna be a fucked up Eddie too. Five minutes... don't got time to be gentle..."

"Hey man, I understand where you're coming from... she's a nice piece of ass... but don't you think its gonna raise some questions when we show up to the drop off point and she's NAKED and got jizz on her?" Davy protested again. "Much less the shit we could catch if they need her in good condition where she's going. I ain't putting my dick in a vise just so you can get your jollies off."

"Goddamn it, Davy, you're such an asshole." Mcnabb replied with a snort of derision. "She's going to goddamn Camp 2, man! I know the guy in charge of Camp 2, we partied together once or twice. Hazy's a good guy, got his head in the right places and shit. He's already turning the place into a combination bordello and drug farm, the RI don't give a flying FUCK what he does as long as he gives em a nice propoganda video every now and again. Trust me, Davy, he won't care if the product is a little used before he gets his hands on it. Might even be appreciative, breaking them in can be a real chore. And I'm wasting time jawing with you, when I'm supposed to be porking her!"

"How does it feel, Mcnabb, when you go home and look yourself in the mirror and realize that no woman would ever sleep with someone as disgusting and debauched as you, and that the only way you'll ever get laid in life is by force?" Meyrin hissed at him furiously. She couldn't fight back physically, she was pinned, but she could still strike hard emotionally and verbally. "You can take from me, but you'll never get what you want!"

"Holeeey Shiteee, she's brutal..." One of the helpers commented, whistling almost appreciatively.

"Yeah? I'll show her brutal." Mcnabb snarled. "Flip her over, her ugly face is making me sick."

Meyrin let loose a vicious, triumphant chuckle as the helpers manhandled her over so that she was lying on her stomach instead of her back. "You see this? Even with two grown men holding me down, he still can't muster the nerve to actually rape me while looking me in the eye! He can't get it up unless I can't see him coming! You have got to be the most pathetic man in all of existence!" Meyrin looked over her shoulder at him challengingly. Her smugness faded a bit when she saw that Matthias and Jessi had both regained consciousness and were looking on with wide, frightened eyes. "LOOK AWAY!" Meyrin shouted at them, determined that whatever would happen, wouldn't soil what innocence the two children still had left. "MATTHIAS, close your eyes! You too, Jessi! Close your eyes and look away right now, and don't look back no matter what you hear!" Meyrin ordered, gratified to see them obey, slowly.

"Aww, she's protecting their virgin eyes, how sweet." Mcnabb commented with a guwaff. "But I'm tired of your mouth. Fortunately, I came prepared for it." He reached into another pocket, withdrawing a folded linen cloth, a small glass vial, and a roll of scotch tape. He opened the vial and emptied the contents into the cloth, then lined the edges with tape. "Stick this over her gob, would ya?"

"What is this stuff? It reeks." One of the helpers protested, taking the cloth and keeping it well away from him.

"Chloroform, vinegar, few other household chemicals." Mcnabb replied in a bored tone, dropping his pants and taking out a small tube of lube jelly.

"I didn't think that worked on Eddies." The other helper said, as he helped his partner tape the fluid soaked cloth over Meyrin's mouth and nose, which quickly quieted her struggles.

"It don't. Not like it does on humans anyway." Mcnabb dropped to his knees behind her and reached out with his hands. "Don't knock em out or anything, you'll drown em in it before you knock em out, but it do make 'em real woozy and nauseous, spinning vision, throbbing headache, the works. Like the worst goddamn hangover you hope never to have."

"Hey..." The first helper said, looking down and then quickly looking away. That weren't no sight for any good, straight man to want to see. "That's the wrong hole, man... has it really been that long between chicks that you don't know the diff..."

"Fuck you. I know what I'm doing. Shit, ain't you never watched a crime type show? Rape ain't about the sex, its about the power to take what you want, when you want it. And I am all about that power. You've been a bitch to me for years, Meyrin Hawke... now I'm gonna fuck you just like a bitch in prison! I hope you're constipated, cause I'm about to plunge you out!"

_Noah... help me get through this... I love you..._

MMMMM

**New Eden, Garden City, Sub-levels of the Praetorian Enclave, December 12th, Evening**

Lilia wished that she would have brought the night vision lenses from her battle-plate helmet, the dinky little chemical lantern she'd taken instead was just fine for the upper levels of the catacombs that honeycombed the mountain bedrock beneath the more well traveled sectors of the enclave, where power was still at least intermittently activated and most rooms and passages were only dimly lit, rather than truly dark. Like the deeper tunnels and passages that she was wandering through now, the lantern held out ahead of her, her other hand waving back and forth slowly to her sides and front to ward off any sudden walls or obstacles that the dim, grey-green illumination of the lantern failed to identify quickly enough. So far there hadn't been much of that though, just a lot of dusty, empty hallways in the raw rock, and the occasional wider chamber that might have been a storage room, or maybe just a spot in the rock where it was weaker than the surrounding granite, and more easily eaten away by the construction nanites.

Though normally her sense of direction was impeccable, Lilia had to admit that there was a real possibility that she might get turned around down here and get lost. She could feel the pillar of psychic might that was Yggdrasil, above her and behind her, so she could use that as a sort of homing beacon and merely take every ascending passageway she found, and eventually she'd get back up to a level she recognized, so she wasn't that worried. She was much more concerned that she'd spend hours and hours wandering around down here and not find the person she was looking for, a complete waste of time, which she hated to do. For whatever reason, Zach seemed to have an affinity for the underground, and he often disappeared into the bowels of the Praetorian Enclave for hours at a time, doing who knew what. Lilia had the sneaking suspicion that Zach actually found the darkness comforting somehow, and that he retreated down here alone so that he could air out his thoughts and reflect on his feelings. And, knowing him, probably talk to himself the entire time while doing it.

In truth, Lilia had almost managed to talk herself out of coming down here in search of Zach. If he did come down here in order to think and search his soul, then he probably wasn't going to be too happy to have his private time intruded upon. Weighed against that was the fact that she really needed to talk to him, to discuss what had happened at the end of the ritual combat with Erk, when he'd reached up and grabbed her, catching her off guard and once more plunging his conciousness deep into her most privately held memories. She wanted to think that it was an accident, that he'd been in deliruim from the wounds he'd suffered, but she knew that was a lie. Zach had been living in a sort of delirium for most of his life, some wounds, even ones like that, weren't enough to make him lose control of his actions. Especially when he'd been having so much fun, if you could call getting comprehensively mauled by a fully grown Wendigo trying to kill him "fun", which Zach apparently did. Which meant that he'd deliberately attacked her, even after she'd intervened to save his life! She needed to know why he'd done that, so she could start coming to terms with the knowledge that there was someone else who knew what she'd gone through in that dungeon for those years!

Sound traveled oddly in caves, which the tunnels basically were, and as Lilia heaved a sigh, she felt a chill creep up her spine. There was something about the way her sigh echoed back to her that... Lilia spun ninety degrees to the right and held up her pathetic little lantern high. Sure enough, she could make out two demonically glowing red eyes in the corner of the chamber, where Zach was crouched. She was pretty sure she'd come through this chamber at least once before, which meant that she'd either walked right past him or that he'd been avoiding her and had eventually decided that it was futile. "You're a persistent little rodent, Mouse." Zach's voice was spectral in the darkness, the glow of his modified eyes just barely enough to illimunate the planes of his nose and a few ragged strands of hair, looking black in the crimson light.

_Well, that answers that question._ Lilia sighed, not that she could blame him after all. It was actually extremely passive-aggressive for Zach, he could have easily waited for her to walk past and then hidden himself elsewhere, or just gone back up to the surface, leaving her wandering around her until she got hungry and thirsty and tired. It was hard to tell based on just those words and when she couldn't see his face, but she was pretty sure it was Zach the Abyss right now, that could account for the broodiness and the disinclination towards active resistance. Her first inclination was to step forward and confront him over what he'd done to her, but she wasn't quite THAT idealistic, to think that he'd just respond to that sort of provocation with anything other than violence. So instead she stepped to the side until she found the same wall he was leaning against, lowering herself to sit down with her knees hugged to her chest, her lantern set on the floor next to her. The red glow blinked out as Zach closed his eyes, a silence stretching out between them, but Lilia was determined to wait him out and let him direct the conversation for a while before she got to the point.

"What do you think you're doing, Mouse?" Frost said at last, his eyes open once more, studying her where she half sat, half huddled about a body length away. "Why did you come down here?"

"This is my home too, Zacharis." Lilia reminded him with a noncommittal glance. "If I want to see how deep my mouse hole goes, that's on me." It wasn't until she heard him chuckle that she realized that his mind was definitely lower than the gutter right now. Still, she couldn't help but flush for a moment, glad that he couldn't see her in the darkness. And then she flushed more, because she remembered that he could see perfectly fine in this darkness. "Ahem, yes, well, ha ha, I made a dirty joke, imagine that. But really, if I want to explore the catacombs, what's that to you?"

"You call that exploring?" Frost replied, with a toothy grin she could only imagine. "You can't see hardly at all, you have to walk around like a blind cripple, with one hand out in front of you. No, you're not down here for the sightseeing, Mouse, try again. If you missed me so much, just say so."

"Dream on." Lilia scoffed loudly.

"I don't have to dream. I can smell it on you. That musk. I know what you were doing before you came down here. I've been stewing in the funk from your little "hole exploration" before you came down to explore this hole for quite a while now." Frost said, his voice low and rough, closer to a growl than a voice. "I know who you think about when you do it. I know what you think when you see my face in the light. Don't pretend you don't actually want this body all cuddled up next to you... I know all your little secret desires and dreams..."

"Dream on, like I said." Lilia retorted, ruffled and getting all the more angry because she knew that was what he was trying to do to her. "I don't have any interest in you as a partner, and a girl has to relieve her stress somehow, and I'm currently between boyfriends. But I'm not so desperate that I'd seek you out just cause you look like Kira."

"Yes, I look like him. But that's all. Which is why you want this body to cuddle you... but you don't want me to do it." Frost almost sounded annoyed for some reason. "Even if I were to break every rule of my nature and pretend to be the humble Yamato to perfection, you would still only want the body, not the person."

"Yeah, well, maybe you'd get more girls to like you if you didn't, oh, kill them and rape them and torture them whenever they get near you, not always but sometimes in that order." Lilia shot back at him, not liking the way he almost sounded jealous of the way that she was attracted to Kira but not to him, despite them being identical. "Looks ain't everything, Zacharis. Girls go for personality over looks almost every damn time. And your personality sucks."

"How candid. You are such the bold little Mouse."

"What could you possibly do to me that I haven't suffered through already, Zacharis?" Lilia answered with a heavy sigh and a shake of her head. "You've seen my memories, you know exactly the kinds of sexual perversions I've had inflicted upon me. I could rewrite the goddamn kama-sutra with page long descriptions of every pose and not get through the first four months before running out of book! One man, two men, three men, more. Men and women at the same time. Toys of all shapes and sizes. Things that were never meant to be inserted into the human body. The table... the sawhorse... the suspension rack... the dunk tank... really, come on now, Zach! They beat me with whips and rods and goddamn spatulas until I'd screamed myself hoarse, and then they threw salt water on the open welts and did it all over again. They made me drink every possible sort of bodily fluid you can imagine, and some I bet you can't! They treated me like I was less than an animal, even a blow up doll got treated with more respect than me! But I survived that darkness and that indescribable pain and I'm all that much stronger for it! I didn't lose my hope! I didn't break! So really, Zach, you know you don't got anything that can touch me if I don't want it to!"

"... heh... he he... he hah ha ha... ha ha ha ha hah..." Frost's chuckle started out as a whisper, seeming to gain strength and volume of its own volition, until there was no possible way it could continue to be voiced by a human throat, the chamber throwing the echoes back around them, a chorus of terrifying amusement. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! **AHAHAHAHAHA!** ...aha...aha..ahah...ahahha...eheh...heh... he...ha... heheh..." Frost had closed his eyes in his mirth, arching his back and howling like a demonic wolf as he pounded the floor with his hands and feet in a paroxysm of amusement. Finally, the last echoes of his laughter died in the depths of the distant passages, and Frost opened his eyes once more. The Mouse was staring at him, her expression caught betwixt annoyance, horror and uncertainty. It was most fetching, and Frost felt himself stir with excitement. "That is the funniest thing I have heard in my entire life. Both of them. Bar none. Thank you, Mouse, for that entertainment."

"How dare you mock the pain and the suffering I endured after you've actually seen the memories yourself!" Lilia shouted at him, actually rising and hurling herself at him, her eyes wide and wild as she grabbed him by the shirt collar and battered his torso against the rocky wall a few times. "HOW DARE YOU!" She was about to slam him again when his hands closed around her wrists, one per wrist, and began to squeeze. Lilia suddenly came back to her right mind and realized that she'd just done the unthinkable... she'd attacked Zach! She had physically thrown herself at him and assaulted him! And now he had her by the wrists, and no matter how hard she jerked or yanked on her arms, they might as well have been encased in the stone wall itself, she couldn't budge. And his fingers kept tightening their grip, until she was grimacing against the discomfort.

"Pain...?" Frost breathed into her ear, almost lovingly. "Suffering...?" He put his mouth against her other ear for that word, his teeth grazing the lobe in a way that almost made her shiver. "Lilia..." He watched her jump as he whispered her given name, her face paling considerably. "You know nothing of either." Frost snarled at her, his lips brushing hers, feeling how tight her teeth were gritted together from the way he was slowly crushing her wrist bones. He bent his head forward and touched his forehead to hers, just a tap of flesh on flesh. "Let me show you pain and suffering."

"Wait, Zach, I..." Lilia started to protest, his grip vicing tighter and tighter on her wrists, until she could feel the bones start to crumble, her eyes wincing closed as she bit down a scream, and then the grip kept getting tighter and tighter and SNAP her bones were crushing and..._ he opened his eyes and saw himself reflected in the dull steel of the surgical mirror hanging on cantilevered arms. His arms were held above his head, pinned wide with his hands and wrists contained by solid leather and plastic straps, plus metal cuffs that were so tight they bit into his skin and made him bleed. The same for his legs, he was spread eagled upon the freezing cold, dirt and dried blood stained operating table, half blinded by the spotlights that shone down on him from all angles. Additional restraint belts held him down across his waist and upper chest and neck. He was naked, his body looking shrunken and shriveled, his dark green-black hair shorn down to a mere stubble, his dark eyes wide and dilated, not with drugs, but with panic. Father had sent for him, said it was time for the "special treatment" and that we has very proud of the progress of #13z. He'd climbed onto the table, and held very still, like Father asked, but now he couldn't move and he was cold and he was bleeding and his arms hurt and..._

_"Calm down, my boy. We haven't even started yet, there's no need to hyperventilate. Remember the training, Zacharis, my son. You haven't come this far to fail now." The kindly voice of Father commented, a distinctive jovial note in it, that Father always affected whenever he was happy and deeply involved in his work._

_"It... it hurts me... Father... it hurts and I'm bleeding..." he stared at his arms with near panic. Bleeding was bad. He had weak skin and thin blood, whenever he started bleeding it wouldn't stop by itself, not for hours and hours! His bones were brittle and prone to shattering, his mucles hadn't grown right, he had to try really hard to keep up with the other kids at the Program, and he was always falling behind. He spent days on days sick and throwing up every bit of food he ate. His stomach was sensitive. Birth defects, all of them. He was flawed, deeply flawed as Father would say with so much love in his voice. But those flaws would one day make him stronger than anyone else ever, Father promised it! "Father... its my birthday... I don't like this..."_

_"Hush now, Zacharis. You are about to take the first step on the path to the rest of your life. You are seven years old today, its time to be more grown up." Father chided him, his gore stained smock looming by the side of the table, his kindly, normal features hidden behind an impersonal surgical mask and strap on goggles, such as he had seen some of the soldier-men wear when painting a wall, to avoid getting stuff in their eyes when it splattered. He did his best to calm down, Father's closeness steadying out his breathing and helping him take his mind off the pain in his ankles and wrists. There was a slight prick against the side of his neck, and then Father was slowly setting down an empty hypodermic needle. He felt a sort of jolt travel through his system, like cold water running along his nerves, and he shot Father another scared glance. "Its just a little stimulant, Zacharis. I'm about to do some very important work, and I need you to stay awake so that you can tell me if anything doesn't feel right, okay? I can't have you passing out, that's all."_

_"F-Father... I..." He saw Father's other hand. The hand holding the long, serrated surgical steel knife, the one used for sawing through bone when Father had to fix someone by removing a limb. Father raised the blade, the light from the spotlights winking from its saw-like teeth. He couldn't take his eyes off the point of the knife as it inched closer to his chest. "Father..." He whispered, his eyes pleading. "Father... FatAAGHHHGGHAAAAAKKKC!" The knife plunged downward, the point tearing into his papery skin and digging in deep, slicing through muscle, severing blood vessels, scraping apart nerves... bright red blood pumped from the gash as Father worked the knfie in with determined twists of his hand, ripping it back and forth until he'd managed to cut through a section of the sternum. The pain was beyond anything he'd ever felt before, he could feel every slight motion of the knife as it gouged around inside his body cavity, the way the rough edges of the sternum further sliced into his muscles; he heard the wet rip and tear of skin as Father dragged the blade down the middle of his chest, splitting his sternum and finally stopping whe the blade was just above his belly button! _

_"FAAAAAGHAGAGTHGH!" He shrieked, as the pliers jammed into the gory slit slashed into his chest, levering apart the sternum, more bones snapping like fragile sticks, his entire chest and belly coated with hot blood. And then with a final tearing sensation like his body was being ripped in half, his chest was pried open, purple brown snakes of internal organs spilling out of his opened guts, he could SEE his organs pulsing inside his chest, a raw, meaty bowl of blood and briny fluids that twitched and jumped as he tried to thrash his way out of his bonds, to no avail, he was trapped! He saw one particular throbbing mass of meat jumping and pulsing like it was about to explode, and realized he was looking at his own heart! "AHHHHHHHHH!" He screamed, his eyes rolling madly, but no matter where he looked, the mirror was there, reflecting his entire insides back at him. Father's hands were darting here and there inside him, his gloves sodden with dark blood as he attached tubes and wires and needles to all sorts of different parts, machines in the background beginning to hiss and pump and beep as they took over the tasks of keeping him alive._

_But he couldn't concentrate on any of that, the pain... the PAIN, HE PAIN THE PAIN PAINPAINPAINPAIN__**PAIN!**__ It was killing him, he was dying, he could feel himself dying! Father was killing him! FATHER WAS KILLING HIM! he coughed, and there was blood in that too. Blood was everywhere! Dripping... flowing... splashing... slippery, red, hot... blood. So much of it. Too much of it... and then there was a JERKING from inside him, a TEARING and Father's hand retreated from his body cavity, holding... SOMETHING... something that belonged in his body! Something that wasn't supposed to be taken out!_

_"Removal of spleen accomplished, removing appendix next. Subject 13z is still conscious and fully aware. Proceeding as planned." Father spoke to the air, his words recorded by monitoring devices elsewhere in the room. "Clearing of unnecessary organs to make room for implantation of enhanced chemical distribution systems." Another ripping and cutting sensation, another piece gone. "Appendix removed. Inserting chemical distribution implants." Father reached into a bug of antiseptic gel and removed a huge, spiky looking thing that had the appearance of a tarantula that had been stepped on and had curled up into a ball. He watched as the tarantula-thing went down into his chest, and then there was HEAT, HOT inside him as Father brought in a medical glue gun and dispensed the molten glue, cementing the tarantula-thing in place, hooking up severed blood vessels and wrapping it in coils of loosened muscle and fat. "Good boy, Zacharis, but we've got a long way to go." Father informed him, his voice still jovial, even happy._

_"Next we shall inject the molten reinforcing compound into the bone marrow and allow it to set while we proceed with the rest of the Level 2 operation." Father announced, stepping slightly back as a forest's worth of hypodermic needles filled with a gluey, off white fluid swung into view on robotic armatures. He stared up with unreasoning panic, wondering why he had't passed out yet, he always passed out when he got hurt bad, it was another defect, but now, he couldn't pass out! He couldn't pass out! And then the needles stabbed downwards all at once, plunging through his skin and meat, piercing the bones, even his spine and skull... everywhere... it HURT SO MUCH! And then molten polymerized armor-composite flowed down the needles and was injection moulded into his bones! __**"NGHAAAAAAAAAAA!**__" His scream seemed to fill the room, his lung gurgling wetly in his torn open chest as he screamed and screamed and screamed, but no matter how hard he screamed, no matter how much it hurt as his bones seared and fused from the inside out, there was no escape. Not from any of it. And then he saw the glint of light on surgical steel again. Father had a scapel. Father's hand was reaching towards... his heart... the scapel went up, like a maestro's baton... and then..._

"YAHHHHHGH!" Lilia howled, clawing at her chest with both hands, disregarding her two broken wrists, her hands flopping ineffectually as she tried to fight off the phantom pain of having her heart literally cut out of her chest with no anasthetic and a stimulant pumping through her system to keep her awake and feeling despite the shock. Her lilac eyes were wide but unseeing, her mouth wet with drool and blood from where she'd bitten her tongue and her cheek, her feet kicking at the ground spastically, her back arched as she flopped and twitched in convulsive spasms. She'd never looked more enticing to him than she did right now, Frost mused, crouching next to her. He was going to have to do something about that soon. "AAHH! AAAHHHG! AAAAGHHH!" Lilia continued to scream in pants, her voice turning hoarse from the constant efforts.

"Oh shut up, Lilia." Frost snapped at her irritably, smacking her across the mouth hard enough to knock loose a few teeth, slamming her head into the ground, dazing her but freeing her from the grip of one of his earliest memories. Her body went limp and she lay there sobbing and starting to curl up on herself, mumbling inarticulate phrases to herself, her eyes slowly regaining focus, but not comprehension. "Two years as a sex slave in a dungeon, and you can't even handle three minutes of the least painful surgery of them all. You never would have made it through the Program. That was Level 2 surgery. Before I died, I went through four more, each exponetionally worse than the last. I was allowed neither sleep nor pain relief in ANY of them. I was fifteen for the last one, only a year older than poor little kidnapped you. You spent two years using every hole on your body to fufill the pleasures of men and women, suffering near daily beatings, deprivation of food, water and sleep, and humiliations beyond anything you could have conceived of before your capture. You had fourteen years of a loving and caring family experience before that, with everything a little girl could have wanted from life. And you say HOW DARE I?"

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry... Zach, I'm so sorry..." Lilia blubbered. "I... didn't..."

"Sorry? No, no no no no... no... Lilia, Lilia dear... no, you aren't sorry. Not even close. Not yet." Frost whispered in her ear intimately. "What you are is scared, Lilia. You are scared. Because you now know that there IS so much more to pain and suffering than you ever thought possible. And because, and this is really the best part, lovely little Lilia... because what you just felt was only the very beginning. Yes. That was just the tip of the iceberg." Frost gently trailed his lips across her cheek and nose, lapping at the blood leaking from the corner of her mouth as he slowly divested himself of his clothing. Once he was naked, he began pulling off her clothes as well, slowly moving his mouth downward, kissing and nipping and licking at the pale flesh as he exposed it, until she was starting to shiver instead of tremble, her panting close to becoming moaning. And then, while she was on the cusp of returning to the world of pleasure from the abyss of pain, that was when he attacked!

His nails scraped bloody runnels up and down her sides and belly as he grabbed hold of her and thrust himself into her, tearing his way in, forcing his way in, bucking himself so that his reinforced skin rasped against her, catching and tearing inside her, feeling her go stiff as a board beneath him, before she opened her mouth to scream once more. His hand on her throat choked that off, starting to make he thrash even more though as the pressure brought back the memories of her imprisonment as a rape toy. "Ah ah ah..." Frost chided her, lightly biting her breast, leaving bloody tooth marks behind. "You don't need those puny little things anymore. I'll take them, thank you." He brought his other hand up from where he'd been gouging his nails into her thigh as he thrust into her, hot blood dripping out from between them, smearing across his stomach and hers, and wetting the floor beneath her. And only one of them had blood that flowed like that, without drying. He caressed the side of her face with his gory nails, and used the contact to suck out all her memories of that time in the dark dungeon, except for the one memory that triggered her reaction to the collar. He liked that one, it was fun. "There, there now, Lilia, the bad memories are all gone. They can't hurt you anymore. But I can..."

"Ugh... ugh..." Lilia commented expressively, barely able to breathe with his hand clamping on her throat. Her eyes were wide and extremely dilated, the piercing sensation in her groin like that of a knife instead of a sexual organ, her insides feeling loose and sopping with the blood leaking from the scraps and cuts inside her. Her hands tried to lift and push at Zach, but her wrists were broken, the hands wouldn't respond, they just flopped about unsupported on her forearms. "Agh... ach... za... ch..."

"You know my name, yes you do." Frost complimented her, writhing himself atop and against her, her feet scraping on the ground as he rode her for almost a foot across the rough stone ground under the force of his thrusting lower body. The stony floor ripped into her back, abrading away her skin like sandpaper, and more blood began to seep out from around her as Frost continued to lean his full body weight atop her. "But knowing my name isn't enough, it isn't even slightly enough, Lilia! Tight, sweet, bloody Lilia, no it isn't enough at all. Once upon a time, when I would fancy a girl, I would share my life with her. It usually involved a skinning knife and various unsanitary conditions. But I don't have to resort to that crude replica now, not with you, my lovely little Mouse. I can share my entire life with you, one instant at a time! I think I might be in love, as they say. Can you accept my love, Lilia? Can you tolerate it? Can you ENDURE IT? Shall we find out? Yes. Yes we shall, Lilia. We shall find out together, you and I."

"Zach..." Lilia stammered again, slowly lifting her arms and legs, wrapping them around him, pulling him close to her. Her eyes were blind with tears, her body felt like it was splitting apart from the groin up, and pleasure was the furthest sensation from her mind. But if he wanted... if he needed for someone to understand what he felt... then... then she would not fight him off. She would not deny him the chance to try. "Zach... I got you a present..." She whispered in his ear.

"Let's try Level 4 this time." Frost answered, his breath puffing gently against her upturned neck. "That's when they had to stop using knives, and brought in the rotary saws... ahh, the rotary saws, my old friends...

**"NGHAAAGHAGHAGAAAAHHHHH...!"**


	39. Plains of Blood

Author Note: Well, we're finally here, and sooner than I expected. I've been pretty much on fire with the last glut of chapters, all pretty hefty in the word counts but they seem to be leaping straight from my mind onto the page, so its hardly been an effort to write them. And now for the first real major battle of the RW, not a skirmish, not a hit and run fight, not even a mistake, but a real, honest to god battle in the proudest traditions, both sides putting almost all of their cards on the table. And of course we have at least one long anticipated scene, something people have been clamoring for ever since the start of Dark Kira, the inevitable confrontation with Orb. Last chapter seems less well recieved than the two previous, but considering that its not at all an upbeat chapter, more of a teeth-grinding-in-rage type thing, that doesn't particularly surprise nor bother me. Though I was a little bit surprised that no one (yet) seems to have much sympathy for Frost, even after that memory he shared with us. Eh, I guess thats okay too, sympathy isn't something he'd want anyway. Still haven't heard any suggestions from anyone on a good name for a really tragic large scale incident to take place on New Years Day, only got two chapters until I need it now. Someone has asked how the Edenites know about the TAC program, its not exactly the best kept secret of the USN, you know. Even Ryan and Dudly knew about it, back before the war even started, and they were some of the most junior men in the entire military. Just about any random POW could probably give them the basic idea of it. And now, on to the Plains of Blood!

xxxx

**New Eden, Central Africa, Shores of Lake Victoria, Urbanis Outer Defense Line, December 20th, Just after dawn**

The recently risen sun hovered low in the sky, its hue more red than orange with all the dust in the air, some of it naturally whipped up by the windstorms that had scourged the area in recent days, some of it artificially spewed into the atmosphere using modified Green EDEN wells, seeding the sky with moisture attracting particles to form stormclouds that rumbled and shook the atmosphere for dozens of miles in every direction around the city-state of Urbanis and the coincentric rings of defensive works that surrounded it now. The clouds were dark grey and purplish-blue, swollen with unspent moisture evaporating off the gigantic Lake Victoria, a faint smell of ozone in the air heraldring the static charge build up before an electrical thunderstorm of epic proportions. The morning sunlight only illuminated through a few weak spots in the clouds, and by peeking under the edge of the storm's rim, a slowly receeding disc the color of a sullen ember, shading the savanna of gently waving grasses in bands of burnt browns, golds and pomengranite pulp orange-pink. To some eyes, it looked like the plains were already splashed with freshly spilled blood.

Under the cover of the building storm, beetling domes of shimmering aqua-green energy materialized into existence, one after another, the Citadel Barriers covering over ninety percent of the defensive works, all but the very outer edge, which wouldn't be manned anyway until the enemy's expected long range and orbital barrage had stopped, or at least slowed, when their own assault troops were too close in to the defenders to risk putting indirect fire on them any longer. The shield domes reached over a hundred meters into the skies, overlapping each other in dozens of locations, each cluster of shield projectors powered by its own deeply buried Fusion Pulse Reactor, the enormously powerful reactors having been imported in pieces by the Garden City forces and rapidly rebuilt to power the various heavy weapon and shield emplacements. There were four FPRs for just the shield systems alone, hopefully it would be enough to tide them through the worst of the softening up bombardment to come.

Other shield systems protected the city of Urbanis itself, powered off the city's own reactors, all available extra power being channeled into the city's defenses, the citizens huddling in mass emergency shelters buried tens of meters underground, the only ones out and about in the city proper were members of the Urbanis Militia. It wasn't expected that the USN forces would spare much time or effort attacking the city itself, there was no real military value in the buildings, save for a few hospitals still in operation, and the hangers and warhouses storing war material on the very outskirts. Some of the tops of the tallest skyscrapers protruded through the top of the Citadel domes, their roofs bristling with anti-aircraft and anti-missile CIWS type guns that would take a toll of incoming explosive munitions, their elevated position allowing them a clear line of fire that covered not just the city, but most of the trenchworks as well. Every missile, shell or bomb that didn't hit the shields was that much more power to spare deflecting the shots that could not be intercepted, such as the orbit to surface lasers of the Incarnate class dreadnaughts hovering a few hundred kilometers overhead.

The entire Urbanis Volunteer Militia was mustered, counting all the emergency auxiliary forces that basically included any person above the age of 14 that felt they might be able to shoot at the invaders, numbering almost ten thousand souls, out of a city population of almost six million. Of those, maybe three thousand had some sort of military experience and training, and maybe a few hundred were actual soldiers who really knew what they were doing, mostly concentrated among the Mobile Suit and Tank corps. The act of killing another sentient being, even those who weren't directly connected to the Wind of Words, was simply too traumatic a concept for most Edenites with their heightened emotional sensitivities. Only a few could bear the burden of feeling the pain of causing death to some other person, but though there was a lot of quiet complaining and bitter looks among the serving militiapersons, none of them could truly fault the other civilians for making the choice they had. Being unable to go through with the act of killing was not a weakness, if anything it was a strength. Just not a strength they needed right now.

Bolstering the Urbanis Militia were six full Legios from the Garden City Custodians. The original plan had called for three Legios to steady the defenses at Urbanis, those being Rex Elk, Basilisk and Ironhide, while the other three Legios, Direcat, Kraken and Megladon mounted a raid on Gibraltar base and then swept down to strike the enemy assault forces in their vulnerable rear. Unfortunately, as more intelligence on the USN's buildup had come in, along with the higher than expected loss rate amongst other Legios, it had eventually been decided to scrap the attack against Gibraltar. Interrogation of middle ranked captured commanders and long distance psychic probing of the theatre HQ itself had revealed that the enemy TAC program, which was what had been sued to coordinate their forces so well during Rhinobeast's ill fated attack, had more than enough operaters to coordinate both the main attack and any defense of the bases from attack. Something would have to be done to take out the TAC control center, up in the Second Earth colonies, but such an effort would have to wait until after the fate of Urbanis was decided.

Slightly less than 5500 Custodians, all highly trained and many of them freshly veteran from series' of minor skirmishes against USN Expansion Bases and scouting forces, spread out through the defense lines. Their totemically carved and decorated breastplates of Borealite, along with their distinctive war helms shaped into the faces and heads of their respective totem animals making them stand out at even a casual glance from the Militia forces, dressed in conventional body armor and combat helmets from old USN stocks, everything repainted in camouflage patterns of brown, tan and olive splotch. Another part of Garden City's support had been the importing of entire arsenals worth of advanced personal firearms, and after weeks of training with instructors from Legio Ironhide most of the militia members at least knew the basics of handling the beam rifles, hyper-impulse cannons and man portable rocket and missile launcher systems. Revetments of earth and armored metal panels provided places for tanks and artillery vehicles to go "hull down", with only their turrets and weapon muzzles protruding out of their shelter, forming semi-turret like emplacements dotted between the heavier, purpose built weapon bunkers that cemented sections of trenchline into a greater cohesive defensive whole.

Fifteen Praetorians prowled through the trenchworks, fully half of the entire Order, including three of the four Arboreal Praetorians, the most competent and deadly of the entire competent and deadly organization. Eight of the Praetorians, including all three Arboreals, waited in their Spectre and Wraith Mobile Suits, the other seven were on the ground in their custom crafted battle plate, standing ready at the points that were the weakest or where the enemy infantry assault was expected to attack the hardest. Arboreal Praetorian Alexander, the "Deathbringer", commanded the detachment of Legio Deathstalker, assisted by Praetorian Reverend, "Revv", who led the seven dismounted Praetorians, working in conjunction with Strategos Gregory of Legio Ironhide to command the whole of the Garden City forces. Sheriff-General Daveron Hales was their counterpart among the Urbanis Militia, a traditional soldier who looked with disdain on the ostentatious panalopy of his allies, but was still gladdened in his heart for their support in this dire time.

A grand total of almost sixteen thousand soldiers, slightly less than two hundred Mobile Suits, 115 of which were Dervishes and 15 more were the Spectres and Wraiths of the Praetorians, close to a thousand light and medium armored vehicles, plus remote controlled heavy weapon bunkers, artillery platforms, anti-air and anti-missile CIWS guns and overlapping Citadel Shields, that was the official strength of the combined Urbanis Defense force. There were a few unofficial additions to this roster as well, beginning with the deputation from the "sacred" mountain of Kilamanjaro, from the other side of Lake Victoria, Wendigos one and all, a war party of fifteen adult males, including the Alpha Chieftain, plus an additional force of ten "noncombatant" grown females accompanying the tribal shaman, Erk. The Alpha Chieftain and his war party were deployed behind the lines, waiting to bolster any point in the lines that looked like it was about to buckle under the USN ground assault. Meanwhile, Erk and his helpers were emplaced near the headquarters of the Militia forces, sequestering themselves in a heavily shielded and camouflaged tent as they prepared for a Resonate performance of psychic power, Erk being boosted by several of the females in sequence in a bid to disrupt the cohesion of the attacking forces psychically, hopefully at least negating any contributions from the enemy TAC system.

The other unofficial force addition of note was none other than both of Garden City's designated champions, the "Twin Executors" as they were being called by some. Though no matter how alike the Exectors looked physically, it was widely acknowledged that they were anything but similar to each other. The differences between them were obvious if you but looked at their Gundams, one massive and equipped with a multitude of blades and claws and horns, the other clean limbed and almost angelic in appearance, for all that it was an angel clad in the black color of mourning. The Executors kept to themselves, outside the chain of command of both the Garden City forces and the Urbanis Militia, they were figures of awe, reverence and more than a little fear, free to move about the battlefield to come as they saw fit. For the moment though, they both stood at the outer edge of the defensive positions, right where the final trench line gave way to expansive, unmolested savanna, looking off into the distance, where the smudge of dust clouds near the horizon showed the position of the oncoming USN assault columns.

"So have you spotted them yet?" Frost asked Kira, his tone caught between boredom and relish. The Kratos was poking its scythe haft into the dirt, drawing little random patterns before scuffing them away with its foot and repeating the process, an obvious sign of too much energy and not enough outlet. While every other person on the side of the defense was praying for just another few minutes before the USN forces got in range to start their attack, Frost was, as expected, impatient for them to arrive and would have likely flown off to attack them first himself, if it wasn't for one overriding concern. He was just as anxious to find the Orb Gundams as Kira was, he was so looking forward to a real personal fight!

Kira was looking at the data feeds from flocks of remote camera drones and high powered telephoto lenses from atop the tall buildings of Urbanis, which were just starting to show some details on the advancing USN columns. He knew that Frost had the exact same sort of access to the intelligence data as he himself did, but then again, it was very much like Frost to just demand that other people fill him in on the pertinent details. Kira did not reply to Frost's question, doing his best to ignore the presence of the man, as much as that was possible anyway. The USN vanguard seemed to be made mostly up of their regular ground forces, battalions of Viking MBTs and Gladiator IFVs spread out in dozens of phalanxes behind a light screen of Chariot APC and lighter ATV scout jeeps. Behind that came a staggered line of Titan super-heavy tanks, at least twenty of them in just the first row or two of the loose formation. Looming behind the Titans were the blocky forms of Archmage Mobile Field Bases and the more streamlined shapes of various classes of Land Battleships. Kira couldn't see them, but he surmised that the main infantry troops of the attack force were arrayed behind the Landships, waiting with the artillery corps for the assault vehicles to engage the defenses and soften up the defenders before rushing forward to swamp through.

However what he didn't see was any signs of Orb forces among the slowly approaching horde, and precious few USN Mobile Suits as well, save for a few combat construction modified RI machines hitching rides on the upper surfaces of the Landships. He knew they were in the area, Leviathan had personally confirmed her encounter with them and a Gundam that sounded very much like Yzak's machine, and had tasked some lesser oceanbound Chimera with tracking the Orb ships for as long as they remained waterbound. A few days ago, off of the coast of Madagascar, over half the remaining Orb fleet had suddenly disappeared from the ocean, which Kira knew to mean that the _Dawnblade, Endymion_ and their Defender class escorts had lifted off and proceeded onwards in hover mode, along with the MS forces. He tried to get inside Captain Ramius's head, figuratively if not literally, but it was harder than he'd expected it to be. He'd fought under her command for over a decade, if only in intermittent spurts, you'd think he'd have a better grasp of her tactical mindset. But then again, he'd never really had to worry about what the _Archangel, _or now the _Endymion_ was doing, precisely because Murrue was such an able commander. And with Mu there too, there was absolutely no telling what sort of crazy, brilliant plan they were hatching!

"Aww, are you still mad at me, Yamato?" Frost prodded him verbally, a rictus grin on his face. "Everyone seems so sore over a minor little incident... why so serious?"

"Mad does not even come close to describing how I feel about you, Frost." Kira replied, after a few moments more of peering at the data feeds. "And that "minor" incident ended up with one of my few friends, who also happens to be one of the most valued and beloved officers among the Edenites, in a catatonic state because of the trauma you inflicted upon her!"

"How was I supposed to know she was so fragile? She came to me boasting about how there was no way anything I could do would hurt her, because of what she'd endured in the past. I can't let that sort of challenge go unanswered, Yamato, you know that." Frost shrugged the Kratos's shoulders, the tentacles mounted thereon shifting restlessly for a moment. "Just goes to show, some people just can't handle gratitude."

"Gratitude?" Kira half turned the Lucifer towards the Kratos, one of his gauntlets dropping towards the grip of an Ion Disintegrator. "You ripped off her clothes, repeatedly raped her, broke her wrists and several other bones, flayed half the skin off her back and clawed most of the rest of her body into bloody wreckage and did SOMETHING to her mind that made that resilient, loving and carefree girl retreat into herself as a drooling mess for almost a week before she even responded slightly to outside stimuli! She's still in the hospital, she won't be fully recovered physically until sometime early next year, and she may NEVER recover fully emotionally! This was the same young woman that saved your life from the Wendigos at considerable risk to her own, and went far out of her way to commission a special gift personally for you from the Praetorian armorer! And you call that gratitude?" Kira shook his head angrily. "I don't know why I'm surprised, this is you, Zacharis Frost. I guess I was just deluding myself, as usual. But you seemed to get along with her somehow, before. I guess you were just lulling her into a state of overconfidence, or something, right?"

"Your rancor wounds me deeply, Yamato." Frost smirked. "I would have thought you'd be happy."

"Happy...!"

"Yes. Happy. Were you not one of those who repeatedly told her to stay away from me, that I'm a monster who does not want to be saved, that I'll only turn on her the moment she lets her guard down and ravage her, exactly like what happened? You've been vindicated, Yamato, the Mouse has no choice but to acknowledge that you were right and she was naive and foolish to do what she did. If she has even an ounce of sense, she'll never come within a hundred meters of me again. Doesn't that thought make you happy? Relieved?" Frost shrugged his shoulders again, spreading his arms helplessly. "You're impossible... even when I go out of my way to do you a favor, all you do is rant and rail and spit at me. A less patient and understanding man might be bothered by it all. But its not your fault that you're sane, and thus incapable of understanding the way the world really is."

"I don't know why I keep expecting you to actually make sense, I just end up disappointed every time." Kira turned away from the Kratos again in disgust. "Even if I accept that you were "doing me a favor" by brutalizing Lilia so horribly that she'll never want to get near you again, your timing is, as usual, inappropriate and completely reckless! Lilia may not seem like much to you or I, but she IS one of the strongest fighters among the Edenites, her being stuck in a hospital back in Garden City during this battle is not only a significant blow to the Edenite morale, but a real diminishment in their fighting strength as well! But then again, you don't care. If you did care, you could end this battle in a matter of minutes with that AMP cannon."

"I would never bring such an immature and unsatisfying conclusion to a holy conflict! Caring has nothing to do with it, as you may recall, the sooner this war ends, the happier I will be. But to just vaporize the enemy forces without even testing them for their strength... that would be... evil... wrong! In the heat of battle, in the cruicible of conflict, that is when the strength of humanity is truly forged... to deny them the chance to pass through the fires of this ordeal, that is a simply abhorrent thought... right in line with much of your thinking, Yamato, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You still want to coddle them, to protect them like they're babies incapable of protecting themselves. Children have to grow up sometime, Yamato, they can't depend on you to save them forever." Frost snapped in reply. "All the same, I do understand where your concern comes from. You and I will survive this battle, unless cosmic fate intervenes against us, but them..." Frost waved the Kratos's left hand-claw at the Edenite forces spread out behind them. "... they're fucked, unless they get very lucky. I've been on the giving side of enough massacres to know when I'm standing at ground zero of one before it starts."

"All the more reason that we need every available person to skew the odds as much in their favor as possible." Kira retorted with a weary sigh.

"Again, you with the "they must be saved" thinking. They can't be saved, Yamato. Not by anyone but themselves. The Mouse's presence would not tip the battle unless it was already going to tip, she'd just make it tip a little bit faster. Again, you accuse me of having no sense of gratitude, but do tell, is it because of you or me that the Mouse is safe and sound and healing up back at Garden City, rather than surrounded and outnumbered fifty to one at this most likely doomed city, hmm? You and I both know the Mouse would never retreat, no matter the odds or how badly the battle was being lost, she cares even more than you and Pink did, and that is saying something! You don't have to like it, but the fact is, I've saved her life by doing what I did to her. And I got to fuck her while doing so. You just WISH you were that good." Frost swung his scythe through the air, twirling it like a conductor's baton for a moment, making the air whistle and shriek as the QC edge cut through it. "You're just too sane to understand though."

"Sanity... insanity... remind ME again which one ended up triumphing the first time around?" Kira replied with a nasty smirk of his own. "Insanity may win battles, but its sanity that wins wars, Frost. You never could understand that. And that is why you won't ever truly be able to win."

"Wrong again, Yamato, but nice try, you almost had me upset for a moment." Frost replied, slamming his scythe butt first into the ground, kicking up a puff of dirt. "I can't believe you never noticed it! You lived with Pink for years and years and years... and you never realized that she was just as crazy as I am? How can that be? Are you functionally blind, or just retarded?"

"Spare me this convoluted justification, can't you just accept that I got a point in?" Kira sighed and rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"No, I'm completely serious, Yamato." Frost pointed the scythe at the back of the Lucifer imperiously. "Why do you think I was attracted to Pink so much? Did you really believe it was just because of her looks? No! It was because of the way she made me feel... she was the first truly kindred spirit I'd ever encountered! Someone who absolutely and completely refused to acknowledge the accepted logic of the world! Just like me, she lived her entire life flying in the face of what everyone else in the world considered sane and normal! The only difference between her insanity and mine was on the principles of spilling blood in pursuit of the end goal! I erred on the side of too much blood, and she erred on the side of not enough. She refused to kill. I refused to not kill. Neither of those things is "sane". Your friends may call you insane after they confront who you've become, but they're wrong, Yamato. You aren't going crazy... you're getting better, now that Pink and her influence is gone! You're starting to act NORMALLY again! You're becoming more like THEM, but they can only see the change, not the result, and they fear the change, so they try to deny it by deeming it beyond rationality!"

"..." Kira wanted to just deny it all, and dismiss what Frost was babbling about. But the problem was, Frost's arguements tended to make a lot of sense, unpleasant sense but sense, at least until you managed to find the logical flaw in them that always crept in because he was crazy. It was just a matter of finding that flaw before the arguement got too entrenched in your thoughts. It had never really been a problem before, because Lacus was there to help him see what was true and right, to guide him on the correct path.

"Its almost the same thing with the Mouse. She doesn't listen to anyone, she just does what SHE feels is right and cannot be convinced otherwise, no matter how many people call her stupid and no matter how many times she is shown evidence proving she is wrong! She can't accept the world except as she wants it to be! Exactly like me. Me, her, Pink, Mr. Machine... we're all beyond the pale of rationality, we're all insane and we love it because it makes us free! It banishes our sense of doubt, allows us to be completely convinced of the righteousness of our cause no matter the evidence to the contrary. Its not that we don't listen to people when they propose other paths, its that we CAN'T listen! What they say DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE TO US! We can't understand any other path but ours! You might as well be speaking gibberish when you try convince us that we are wrong. Some of us are more tolerant of gibberish than others, but in the end, gibberish is gibberish, we don't care about it. It doesn't register with us." Frost's voice was filled with a passion that Kira hadn't heard since the last time he'd heard Lacus giving a speech on bringing a peaceful end to all conflicts. The thought sent a chill down his spine. Different voices aside, that passion... that passion that told you that the person really believed what they were saying, that they didn't just think they were right, they KNEW beyond all doubt that they were right, even when they were dead wrong... it was the same passion.

"So you see, Yamato, if even if you don't want to... sanity did not defeat insanity. One breed of insanity beat another, that is all. Pink's insanity is more palatable to the masses than mine is, humans prefer a happy, rosy ending even if its an impossible deception. They want that "feel good" sensation, that pat on the head from someone with all the "right" answers. But being easier to accept doesn't make her insanity actually any more right or correct than mine. Truthfully, neither of us can possibly be correct, because we aren't sane. The correct answer must lie somewhere in between our respective insanities... we can see this, we can know this, but we can't accept it. All we can do is keep forcing our insanity upon the sane, and hope they learn to find the correct answer during the inevitable conflict!" Frost swept his scythe through the air, spreading his arms like a preacher giving a sermon, basking in the atmospheric tension of the approaching battle. "Tell me I'm wrong, Kira. Tell me I'm insane. Tell me how you trust that Pink is right and I am wrong... and why. Tell me that you really, truly believe that what Pink stood for was in any way actually possible. Or actually, don't bother. If you did believe, you'd still be her Boytoy, not Executor Kira Yamato."

"We don't have time for this." Kira said through gritted teeth.

"Ah? Now who can't accept a scored point?"

"It's not that." Kira growled. He pointed with the Lucifer's right arm, out along the eastern shore of the lake, where a new force of warships and MS had appeared from the early morning haze, the warships having a very disorienting appearance, looking like water navy ships that were sailing through the air. "I see them. The Orb forces. They're over there..."

xxxx

**A dozen kilometers to the East, along the shores of Lake Victoria**

"You know when the last time I felt this tense before a major engagement was?" Yzak commented, twitching the Balmung's right gauntlet near the grip of the Caladabolg, his Gundam's feet firmly planted as he stood atop the _Dawnblade's_ forward deck, just ahead of the forewardmost turret. Athrun and the Simurgh stood between the fore and mid turrets, while Dearka, Miriallia and the Dreadnaught stood between the ship's superstructure and the rear turret, balancing out the weight with two Gundams in front and the big one in the rear. Flocks of M-7 Dawndrakes in Mobile Armor form flew close range CAP patrols around the _Dawnblade_ and its three Defender class escorts. The _Endymion_, along with Mu and his Mobile Armor, plus the Stormhound detachment, were still submerged in the lake, heading towards the rear flanks of the enemy main defenses, planning to assault and try and capture the enemy command element to bring the battle to a swift close as soon as the main USN force engaged. There was no need for a protracted seige and destructive bombardment, if a lightning surprise assault could cut off the head of the Eddie snake, the body would have little choice but to surrender. The only other choice was to fight without leadership, and that was a simple death sentence.

"I can think of any number of times that I've felt this tense." Dearka replied, his voice subdued because of that very tension. Bad enough that he and Miri would soon be in life threatening danger, but there was Roy and Alice to think about too! Their kids could become orphans if he wasn't... no, he couldn't think like that or he'd never be able to fight again, and he was going to be needed here! "Mostly against the Great Endeavor."

"The Great Endeavor never really got to me." Yzak replied with a shrug of his Gundam's shoulders. "I mean, it got to me a little, but I always knew we were going to beat it, somehow. But really, the last time I was this nervous about a battle... it was Operation Spitbreak. That was my first real major military deployment, I mean like, front line mass chaos-battle. I could never admit it back then, but before the launch order came down, I almost left my cockpit and hid in the ready room. And nobody better say a fucking word! Fear is normal for a soldier, especially a young one! And I didn't happen to have any friends around at the moment, because they were all assholes who either got undeserved promotions or captured by the enemy; it just me and le Crueset, and he wasn't exactly a man you just approach with something like that!"

"The last time I was this nervous was the time I deployed against Kira for the first time after we swore that the next time we'd meet, we'd try to kill each other for real." Athrun admitted. "I bet none of you realized it, I was kinda in shock, you probably thought I was just focused or something, but I was shaking so hard inside my flight suit I could barely launch. And then Nicol died and all my fear was replaced with anger and..." Athrun trailed off, the Simurgh shaking its head for a moment or two. "I had hoped I'd never have to feel that way again... either because I'd thought I killed him... or because we were on the same side, fighting for the same things, together."

"I hope you don't feel that way again either." Dearka replied, with forced jocularity. "Because there's just the three of us now, so if you do get that feeling you hate that means there's only two of us left, one of which has to be you, and that idea doesn't sit well with me. Especially because both of the other choices involve dual occupancy Gundams!"

"Could you guys SHUT THE FUCK UP?" Katie demanded, her voice shrill. "This speculation might be touching back in Orb, in a group therapy session at a nice resteraunt. Here, on the battlefield, with the possibility we could be facing off against either Frost or a Kira who kills people, is NOT the place I wanna think about how likely it could be that we die or how we would feel if our friends died! I want to scream and hide in a corner, and if I wasn't in this Gundam with my Yzak to protect me, I WOULD BE!"

"Hear, hear." Miriallia agreed with finality. "I normally love listening to you guys destress as a group, its often heartwarming what you guys admit to each other when the chips are down. But we don't know where Kira or Frost is, and what Kira is doing or feeling. I am scared nearly out of my mind, because unlike you three, I have never had to deal with Kira as an enemy. He's only ever been on my side, protecting me. But even as my friend, as my protector before Dearka stepped up to fill that role, Kira intimidated the hell out of me when I saw his battlefield performance. And he's only ever gotten better and stronger! So lets not talk about what we'd feel if death comes calling, because I can't think about that and still function at the same time. We all have families to get back to, please... lets talk about something else..."

"... Crazy weather, isn't it?" Dearka said, after a short pause, though his voice was still subdued and the attempt at humor fell flat. That had never stopped him before though, and he wasn't about to let it stop him now either. "Have you guys noticed that we never seem to get a battle on a clear, sunny day anymore? Used to happen all the time back when we were first tooling around, but now its always storm clouds and dust and... oh shit..." Dearka's voice cracked for the first time in almost seven years. Words failing him, he raised the Dreadnaught's left arm, the limb shivering like he was hypothermic, and sent out an electronic ping to the others, showing his point of aim. And the two very recognizable Gundams that were standing a a dozen klicks away, the shorter one in black pointing back at the _Dawnblade_, the taller one in grey and red, holding a scythe, stepping up eagerly and waving one huge clawed gauntlet at them in a taunting gesture.

"Fuck me..." Yzak breathed, unable to believe his eyes. The one with the scythe was the Kratos, there was only one person who acted out like that in a Gundam, and that was Frost. But if Frost was in the Kratos, then the one piloting the Gundam that looked very much like an upgraded Seraph had to be... "Fuck me..." Yzak repeated in a strangled tone.

"Okay. I will." Katie answered, her tone just as constricted. "As much as you like, in any way you want, Yzak-y. As long as we go home first. Right now."

"We can't go home. We can't run away from this." Athrun replied softly, his heart pounding in his chest until he felt like he was going to pass out. _Just breathe... there has to be a good reason that Kira and Frost are standing together... without fighting... there has to be... Kira wouldn't do this..._

"Begging your pardon, Athrun, but YES WE CAN! WE CAN RUN AWAY AND I WANT TO DO IT! NOW!" Katie yelled back hysterically.

"I've never backed down from a fight in my life, and I won't start now." Yzak interrupted her, his voice steely. "Athrun is right, this is a confrontation we can't avoid. We can either do it on our terms, or it will come to us when we aren't ready for it. I prefer the former."

"LET ME OUT OF THIS THING THEN! LET ME OUT!" Katie demanded furiously. "I CAN'T FIGHT KIRA! I CAN'T! He's too powerful! He'll destroy us!"

_CALM DOWN, NOW!_ Yzak's stern voice in her head shut her up as effectively as a gag. _That's better. I understand your fear, love. But we can't let it beat us. I'm sorry to do this to you, but I need you by my side or I can't be effective, not really. Trust in me, Katie. Trust in me._

For her part, Miriallia was glad Katie had voiced her fear, because it meant that she didn't have to. Judging by the prolonged silence on the comm line, she figured Yzak and Katie were having it out inside their heads. She and Dearka couldn't do that, but she could reach forward, in slow motion through the gel filling the cockpit, and grasp his gloved hand to give it a squeeze. She could feel his hand shivering, but hers was too, so she made no comment.

"Are we agreed then?" Athrun asked, after a few more seconds of silence.

"We're agreed." Miriallia replied at once.

"Yes, we're with you too." Yzak added fiercely, daring anyone to question Katie's breakdown. No one would. No one could, if anything, she'd just been the most honest of all of them. "Lead us, Athrun. Kira is a friend to all of us... but you and he, well..."

"I know." Athrun replied, feathering his thrusters, lifting the Simurgh off the ship's deck as it slowly drifted to a halt, having reached its pre-battle readiness position, the crew standing at alert as targeting solutions were plotted against the two Edenite Gundams. "Last time it was him who got through to me and got me walking on the right path. It's about time I returned the favor." He switched to a broad channel addressing all the Orb forces. "We're going to talk with him. Keep all weapons powered up but not aimed, and be ready for evasive maneuvers in an instant. If things get ugly, shoot to kill. We cannot take chances with these two Gundams, any hesitations, any at all, and you will die. But no one will fire until I give the order, or unless attacked. And even then, I would urge you to carefully consider what you regard as an attack, because again, if this escalates into armed conflict... well... you've all been briefed on both of them. I don't need to tell you how bad it could get." Without waiting for an acknowledgement, Athrun set the Simurgh jetting towards the two Edenite Gundams, flanked shortly afterwards by the Balmung and the Dreadnaught.

It was a short flight in FPR powered machines, too short for Athrun's liking, he still hadn't managed to calm his heart down or clear his dry and cracked throat by the time he landed, barely a long stone's throw away from the Seraph upgrade and the Kratos. The Serpah upgrade took a half step forward, putting itself between the Orb Gundams and Frost, who seemed content enough for the moment to stand back and observe the situation unfold, no doubt grinning like a loon the entire time. Athrun had to close his eyes and block out a rushing memory, the smile on Frost's face in that basement as he brought the power drill up into Athrun's mouth and pressed it against his gumlines... Athrun opened his eyes with a start, sweat standing out on his face before being absorbed by the oxygenated gel filling his suit. Strange how he could feel parched even when his throat was full of the aerated gel... fear and uncertainty could make the body feel very odd sensations. Kira, if that was Kira, and Athrun knew it was, seemed to be waiting for Athrun to make the first move. _We are the ones that drove him away after all, it should be us that makes the apology first._ Athrun reminded himself.

"Kira..." Athrun said, before choking on the rest of his sentence. God damn it, but he was a diplomatic ambassador for his day to day job, but put him across the figurative negotiating table from his best friend and he suddenly became as tongue tied as the first times he'd thought about asking Cagalli out on a date!

"Athrun." Kira didn't seem to be having any such trouble speaking, though his tone was curt and cool, neutral, noncommittal even.

"I... We, I mean... we're sorry, Kira." Athrun managed to blurt out. "We were wrong to not believe in you... we were..."

"Yes, you are sorry." Kira replied, his tone becoming slightly edged. "You ought to be."

"Damn it Kira!" Athrun finally found the key to speaking, to let go of his normal tight emotional control. "I'm trying to apologize to you, there's no need for you to make this harder than it is!"

Kira sighed, but for the life of him he was finding it hard to muster the desire for this conversation. He'd been dreading this moment for weeks, but now... now he was just tired of it, already. The apology was expected, but Athrun couldn't really think it would make any difference now, could he? Kira was sorry too, but it didn't change what the situation was. "I understand your apology, Athrun. I'm glad you realize the scale of the mistake you all made. But... what difference does it make? You're sorry... I'm sorry... we're all sorry... but sorry doesn't matter. Not now. Things cannot go back to the way they were."

"What are you trying to say, Kira?" Athrun demanded in reply. "That it's hopeless? That the apology is meaningless? Am I not your friend, despite the mistakes I've made, despite the mistakes you've made? Am I not your friend, Kira?"

"I don't know anymore, Athrun." Kira answered in a dead tone. "I'd like it if we were still friends, but... but so much is between us now... we are standing on opposite sides of a line in the sand. Of my line in the sand. I never dreamed, in my worst nightmares, that this would happen to us again, not after the first time. But after what happened to Lacus and my children, I've come to realize... my worst nightmares were just the beginning..."

"You can come back any time you want, Kira! We know who committed those crimes now!" Athrun did his best not to look at the Kratos, standing behind Kira, though that was pretty damned hard. "No one will blame you for what happened. You were right, we were wrong and we want to show you that we acknowledge that. Please, Kira, come back to Orb with us. Cagalli misses you. Allister misses you. Everyone misses you."

"And do you know who I miss, Athrun?" Kira said, his voice creaking with self control. "I miss Lacus. I miss Akira. I miss Aoi."

"They are dead. I'm sorry, Kira. I loved Lacus too, like a sister, and your children were as precious to me and Cagalli as Allister is. But they are dead, Kira. We can only miss them now, and try to move on with life. I can't say I know how you feel, though I came pretty close after what happened on Halloween. We're your family, Kira, even when we mess up royally. We love you, and we can forgive you for anything, as long as you can forgive us too!" Athrun's eyes were hot and stinging, unabashedly crying as he pleaded with his friend from the bottom of his heart.

"You can forgive me anything?" Kira's tone was so sharp that Athrun almost physically recoiled, wondering how he'd managed to make Kira angry. "What have I done to you that requires your forgiveness?"

"What do you think?" Yzak cut in, his voice furious. The Balmung pointed accusingly over Kira's shoulder. "You're telling me you DON'T know who that is and what he's done to us? To your own best friend and sister and nephew? How COULD YOU POSSIBLY JUST STAND THERE WITH **HIM!**" Yzak bellowed, the Balmung taking a step forward until its path was blocked by the Simurgh's desperate arm. "HOW CAN YOU STAND THERE AND SIDE WITH THAT MONSTER? DON'T YOU REMEMBER WHAT HE'S DONE? TO YOU, TO LACUS, TO THE WHOLE GODDAMN WORLD! HOW, KIRA? HOW... how... how can you possibly... he killed my mother... strangled her slowly... left her in my front hall for my children to see!" Yzak's voice filled with tears of disbelief and black rage. "How can you just stand there and ask us what you've done that we need to forgive! How dare you, even for an instant, stand there and ACCEPT WHAT HE'S DONE!"

"I don't accept what he's done." Kira replied with resolute calm. "But he isn't the real threat, not right now."

"NOT THE REAL THREAT?" This time it was Dearka that exploded in disbelief. "HELLOOOO! That's Zacharis Frost! The man who tried to end the world, who wants to kill every living, thinking thing in existence! What could POSSIBLY be more threatening than him?"

"You actually have to ask me that?" Kira retorted, his own anger showing through now. "Are you really that blind? That brainwashed? Have you possibly forgotten who is in control of the United Solar Nation and what **HE** has done, to me, to you, to my best friend, my sister and ALL the people of Orb? You ask me how I can stand here, accepting a Monster, but WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS DOING? You're siding with Durandel now? You condone what he's done, what he's sanctioned? You stand there, across from me, under the orders and command of a man who is responsible for what happened to Lacus and my children? Who may have expressly ordered their murder? Who has not just planned genocide but committed to it, who has dropped nuclear bombs on cities of his OWN PEOPLE just because they had the GALL to survive what the USN was describing as deadly poison gas, but what we all know was actually Green EDEN, which while dangerous is far from universally fatal! OBVIOUSLY!" Kira added with withering contempt, spreading the Lucifer's arms and beckoning to their surroundings.

"But Frost is EVIL! Capital "E", "V", "I", "L", **EVIL!**" Yzak roared back at him. "He is nothing but evil! He kills for fun, tortures those weaker than himself simply because he can! He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever! He's PROUD of what he does to people, of the ruin he brings to their lives! He laughs at them as he destroys them, he enjoys making the entire world suffer! I admit that Gilbert Durandel has done many things I hate. But he is not evil, not like Frost. He may be corrupt, he may be a tyrant, he may be meglomaniacal even... but he's still a human being. Frost isn't. You and Lacus said as much yourselves!"

"A human being? A human BEING?" Kira could not contain a bitter and sarcastic laugh. "According to Gilbert Durandel, I am not a human being either. Neither was Lacus. Or Akira. Or Aoi. None of us are human. None of the over six million people living in this city behind me... none of them are HUMAN, not according to Durandel and the USN! None of us have even a single human right, because we AREN'T human to them, we are classified as illegal medical experiments! They can and have done anything they want to us, ANYTHING at all! This is not a war of reclamation, this is a war of genocide and extermination, and you are siding with the people committing the genocide! You are saying, just by standing where you are right now, that it is OK to do WHATEVER you want to an Edenite, even a child, including torture them and kill them, because WE aren't HUMANS, as defined by YOUR leadership! I'm not the one who needs forgiveness... you're the ones who need to beg forgiveness... not from me, but from each and every one of the millions of bereaved parents and siblings and children who have had their families stolen away at gunpoint by FEAR, the RI and the USN, simply because they weren't lucky enough to be evacuated into space with the rest of you and they didn't die from the "poison gas"! These people... MY people... are being persecuted and exterminated simply because we didn't do what the USN propoganda said had to happen! Simply because we don't fit into the world as imagined by Gilbert Durandel!"

"Dropping your own nuclear bomb on Orb isn't the way to protest that though!" Athrun shouted back. "Orb was, is and always has been a peaceful nation that has done whatever it can to help those in need even when it costs us dearly to do so! I did not know about these crimes you describe, Kira. You know me, you know that I would never stand for allowing that to happen if I knew about it! Neither would Cagalli, or Jiro, or anyone of us, your friends! You are a human being, as human as I am, moreso even! But the solution to violence isn't more violence, Kira, we have fought several wars to prove that! You may not like it, but the fact is, the Edenites attacked us without warning, detonating a nuclear bomb in civilian territory, killing hundreds, including Ryuta Simmons, who had his decapitated head skewered on a sign post with a taunting message written beneath it! Orb does not interfere in the affairs of other nations. We do not allow other nations to interfere in ours... I know that isn't currently the case but we are working on legally attaining independence, you know that. We don't attack other nations. We don't allow other nations to attack us. You attacked us. This is your people's war, Kira."

"No. I agree that attacking Orb was stupid, but this is not our war. We did not start this, we just escalated it into the open. Orb and the USN public just joined a war that has been raging for seven years already. A covert war between peaceful groups of people who just want to live their lives and raise their families in a world that is already too hostile to human life as is, without interference; and a select group of people in the USN who cannot accept the existence of psychics and Ultimate Coordinators, any more than Blue Cosmos could accept Coordinators, for about the same reason. Because they fear, irrationally, that we intend to replace them, dominate them, make them somehow obsolete. Because there is money and power to be had in the hating and persecution of us Edenites." Kira pointed back at the Kratos.

"Frost is a monster among monsters, and he very well might be trying to destroy the world as we know it. There is no excuse for his actions, he is irredeemably evil. But there is one thing he isn't, and that is dishonest. He has never hidden his intentions, has never tried to dress up or hide what he has done, doesn't pretend to be anything other than a monster. He doesn't commit evil and call it good, he doesn't say one thing to people and then, when they turn their backs, do the opposite. He commits evil, he does it personally, he puts himself at risk to do what he does. He doesn't send other people to take risks and die in his place while he stands aloof and safe and reaps the rewards. I would rather have him stand at my back a thousand times over than close my eyes to the monster that is Gilbert Durandel! The monster you serve now!" Kira pointed his other hand at the three Orb Gundams.

"So, just to be clear, you're on Frost's side now?" Yzak said, his voice very cold and steady. "You are standing with him, because you can't bring yourself to stand with the same people you've defended all your life? The same people you once defended from he himself?"

"Its not that simple, but if you're determined to make things difficult, Yzak, then yes. I am not his friend, I am his enemy and he is mine. But right now, neither Frost nor I is interested in our past history. Because we are both threatened by someone who, if he gets his way, will make our conflicts, our very lives, meaningless. One day, when this war of "reclamation" is over with, I will confront and kill Zacharis Frost, again, because he will then become the greatest threat to a peaceful future for my people. I would welcome your assistance in doing that. All you have to do is step over and stand next to me... believe me, it won't bother him in the slightest." The Kratos gave a little bow in response, drawing gritted teeth from Kira. The last thing he needed was Frost's taunting gestures in this situation.

"I have the power to garauntee that Orb will suffer no attacks from the Edenites for the rest of this war, if we can be assured that you are not with the USN. I realize that puts you in a really tough spot. The world has already been divided into two armed camps, Athrun. Its been that way for years, happening right under our happy, contented little noses. You can acknowledge that and choose a side, or you can go on believing that there is still the possibility of the pipe-dream called neutrality even now. Of the three options you have, two make you my enemy. I kill my enemies now." Kira made his voice just as cold and direct as Yzak's.

"Turning my back on him is a death sentence." Dearka spoke up, chewing his words as he spoke them. "He's come closer to killing me on more ocassions than anyone else. All of my experience regarding Frost tells me that the moment I relax my guard, the moment I stop regarding him as the true, main threat... that's the moment I'm going to die at his hands, and probably the people I love along with me. And he'll kill her slowly. He'll make her suffer, and make me watch helplessly if he can. If its a choice between standing with a person I know will hurt and maybe kill me, and standing with people that I DON'T KNOW will hurt and maybe kill me, then I have to choose the don't know, Kira. I have to take the chance, for my sake, for Miri's sake, and my children's sake, that the USN and Durandel are the better choice, in the long run. I'm really sorry, man, but my family has to come first."

"You know I'll always be your friend, Kira. But Dearka is right." Miriallia added. "Some say better the evil you know that the one you only suspect, but in this case, I have to disagree. Frost has given me nightmares for my entire adult life, and that was when I thought he was dead and gone for good. You don't need him. You can protect your people without him! Get rid of him, Kira, and we will all be with you in a heartbeat!"

"I understand, Dearka, Miri." Kira said sadly. "But Frost, at this time, is beyond my ability to get rid of. If I tried, it would set me against the Edenites, who are counting on his strength, deranged as it might be, to protect what is precious to them. I can't deny them help, even from him, even though he's not trying to help them. Even the most evil of people can sometimes do good without meaning to. For you and your family, regular Coordinators, non-psychics, the USN probably is a better choice for the moment. You won't have to worry about persecution and I'm sure, if you wanted to try, you could probably rise pretty high under Durandel's system. Assuming, you know, you could ignore what happens to the psychics and Ultimate Coordinators. The people like me. And Yzak. And Katie. And probably Mina and Jamie too, just because both parents are psychic."

"They'll get my children over my dead body." Yzak promised darkly.

"Yes. Exactly, Yzak, they will. They've been marching over the dead bodies of those who stood against their genetic discrimination for almost seven years. What makes you think you're so special? The only reason they probably haven't come for you already is because you're more useful to them alive than dead, and they can always kill you later." Kira retorted viciously.

"He killed my mother..." Yzak answered, speaking each word like it was a heavy lead weight.

"He's killed tens of thousands of mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, and children. Everyone has some sort of family, Yzak, you can't kill someone without a ripple effect to someone else. I'm not asking you to not kill him... I'm asking you to not kill him right now."

"Its pointless, Kira. I agree with what Dearka said." Katie replied, her voice trembling. "Better the chance of survival than the certainty of death. We'll work something out if it comes to it, Yzak will think of something. You, though, stand with death, and we can't join you. He killed Yzak's mother... he won't be able to get past that, no matter what you say, just trust me."

"And you, Athrun?" Kira looked tiredly at his best friend, hope dying in his chest. "What do you think? Is Frost the greatest threat to humanity, or is Durandel? Can you live with supporting the man who demands I must die simply because of the way I am born? Lacus once asked you who were, and I'll ask you again. Who are you, Athrun? Are you the son of Patrick Zala, the soldier of ZAFT who can close his eyes to what is going on around him because that is what is easiest and least painful to him? Do you fight for the orders of your superiors, or do you fight for what's right? Answer carefully, because if you are my enemy, you aren't just fighting me... you're fighting Lacus's memory and the sorrow of every other Edenite as well, that I carry with me and that drives me onward. What would you tell Allister... that his uncle is a genetic aberration that deserves death or dissection because of the way he was born, or that sometimes you have to do something wrong in order to do something right?"

"Kira..." Athrun protested, his voice full of pain. "I... I'm not... but..." The image and sound of the drill as it bored into his jaw, the sight of Cagalli with her throat cut, her eyes glassy with trauma and her legs splayed, the evidence of her violation all over the bedsheets, the way Allister cried at night in fear of being taken away by the man with glowing red eyes... he couldn't make those images go away! "I'm..." Athrun trailed off into a sob, unable to complete his thought, unable to take that step, unable to answer the question the way he wanted to! The way Kira needed him to. He couldn't do it! The memories of the basement... of the hospital... of Allister screaming in fear in his arms after being let in to see him after Athrun's own life saving operations... he couldn't... he couldn't... The Simurgh collapsed to its hands and knees with a rumble of falling metal. "I'm..."

And then the air suddenly turned to pure white light, the clouds scattering away as a huge gap was blown through the sky from high above, as four beams of coherent light, each as thick as a short human was tall, converged from the heavens and slammed into the ground, right on top of the Lucifer and the Kratos, the blue-white glare of Incarnate class FRALA's blinding to everyone present for miles, a column of laser light that briefly connected heaven to earth. His eyes watering and tearing up, the Simurgh's polarizing lenses all that had saved him from permanent eye damage, Athrun staggered backwards, falling onto his butt next to the Dreadnaught and Balmung as they shied away as well, golden sparks crawling alog their Citadel Scale armor just from the proximity heat of the laser beams, the ground turning to glass beneath their feet, rippling waves of heat distortion expanding outward in a mile wide shockwave where the air itself ignited from residual heat. "KIRA! NOOOO!" Athrun screamed in disbelief, frantically toggling onto the command channel for the USN forces. "WHAT DID YOU DO, YOU FOOLS?"

"Calm yourself, Ambassador." The cold, slick voice of Paladin Commander ze Burrel replied, the triumphant smirk on his face evident even without Athrun having to look. His voice practically oozed arrogant smugness. "I actually must thank you, without you and your friends keeping them busy, we never would have been able to precisely calibrate our shot in time. Normally a target the size of a Gundam would be very hard to hit with the main guns of an Incarnate class, especially through the atmosphere. You are to be commended, you lured their Gundams out and staked them down and we were able to take a one out of a hundred shot to remove them from the board before the game even started!"

"YOU MORON! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'VE JUST DONE!" Athrun yelled, veins throbbing in his face as a murderous red rage descended upon him.

"I know exactly what I've done." Rey retorted icily, as the FRALA beam winked out, leaving the area around the Orb Gundams shrouded in smoke and dust and embers that obscured all vision for more than a kilometer in every direction, the ground charred white and glassy in a huge circle around them. "I've just half won this battle already. I was going to offer you the credit, but if you're going to be this way about it..."

"CREDIT? YOU FUCKING IDIOT!" Athrun howled in disbelief. "DIDN'T YOU READ THE REPORT ON THE LUCIFER'S FIRST COMBAT?"

"Its just a Gundam, there's no way it could survive even an indirect hit from all four 125cm FRALAs." Rey answered defensively. "Even your precious HAC armor couldn't take that."

"THE FRACTAL FUCKING WINGS, YOU FOOL! THEY CAN REFRACT FRALA BEAMS! THAT WAS HIS MAIN ATTACK IN JAPAN!" Athrun forced himself to stop shouting, he was going to need his voice in the future. A lot, because of Rey's hunger for glory and inattention to detail. "You haven't killed them... you've just pissed them off!" Athrun brought the Simurgh up to a standing position once more, as the smoke began to clear around the center of the glass zone, where he could distinctly make out two humanoid shapes beneath a revolving dome of feather pods, a 125cm wide trench digging into the Earth's bowels forming a perfect circle around their position. The eyes of one flashed purple. The eyes of the other glowed black.

xxxx

"Can I kill them now?" Frost asked sardonically, as he straightened the Kratos back up to its full height, from where he'd been dragged down to a near crouch by Yamato's prescient reaction to the incoming FRALA strike. "Or would you like to parlay some more, give them a second chance to snipe us from orbit?"

"We can kill them now. I was a fool to trust them. The USN has never treated fairly with others if they had any choice in the matter. I don't know why I expected differently. I must still be a bit insane, expecting different results from the same process all the time." Kira replied caustically, chiding himself for his continuined faith in those determined to be faithless.

"Are you sure, Yamato? They are your friends after all..." Frost said, the mock concern in his voice a crueler taunt than any mere agreement could have been

"They were my friends, yes. I don't seem to have any friends in Orb anymore." Kira answered bitterly. He looked up at the sky, along the path that the FRALA shots had taken. "I'll be back in a bit. I hope they kill you." Kira told the other Executor, before the Lucifer leapt into the sky, headed for orbit and the heavy battleships floating there. _I hope they kill you... but I don't think they will._

"I love you too, Yamato." Frost watched the Lucifer receed into the sky. Then he turned his attention to the three still slightly dazed Orb Gundams in front of him. He twirled his scythe happily around himself, making the scorched air whine and scream as he sliced it apart. "Scarface. Loser. Blond Weeny. It's been too long." He stopped the scythe in mid spin, and put both hands on the shaft. "The crucible of conflict screams your names... time to strike the iron!" And with those words, he charged straight at them, his scythe drawn back for a cleaving blow that could have sundered all three in half if it had landed. However, the Balmung, Scarface's machine, was there to meet the charge of the Kratos with a blitz of its own, holding a deceptively slender two handed sword in both its gauntlets, the blade glowing an actinic blue, like an arcing spark frozen in time. The Fafnir blade met and scraped along the inner edge of the Kratos's scythe, before locking against where the blade met haft, arresting the swing of the threshing tool and locking the two Gundams in a momentary clinch, thrusters throbbing as they each pushed at each other.

"Athrun, Dearka, get out of here!" Yzak ordered through tightly clenched teeth, the Balmung being forced back a half step by the Kratos's greater size and mass. "I've got this under control!"

"Are you crazy? It's Frost!" Dearka protested, maneuvering the Dreadnaught away to get some space so that he might maybe have time to react when the Kratos came after him. "There's no shame in ganging up on Frost!"

"Don't gimme me that, this isn't an emotional reaction!" Yzak retorted fiercely, taking another half step back, his feet crunching on the glassified ground, shards of flash-crystallized dirt splintering as he dug in the Balmung's toes. "He has LCR armor, any of the weapons you could use against him that wouldn't also blow me up are useless! Unless you're planning to jump on him swinging that axe-arm, which will just get you eviscerated, the Dreadnaught isn't suited to this kind of combat!"

"I agree with Yzak." Athrun said, swallowing his anger and despair from the actions of the USN commander, and shoving them deep down inside him where he hoped they wouldn't distract him in the coming melee. "Dearka, take the Dreadnaught and support the _Dawnblade_. The sooner we bring down their shields, the sooner the Stormhounds can launch their raid and the sooner we can end this battle!" The Simurgh came at the Kratos from the side, mono-edged armblades sliding out from within the forearms and locking into place, and Athrun stabbed at Frost's side, forcing the Kratos to disengage from the process of overbearing the Balmung and leap backwards a few dozen meters.

"You get out of here too, Zala!" Yzak snapped, pushing forward and standing between the Kratos and the Simurgh. "The only things you've got that can hurt him are FRALA's, Thermal Exciters and those little armblades. Two of those will probably kill me too, and I don't need to be tripping over you all the time when you try to fight him in melee! Besides, you have something more important to be doing! The Simurgh is the only machine fast enough to catch up to Kira before he reaches orbit and destroys our support fleets! In case you forgot, the Solar Knights are still up there, just starting their drop operation, and you know as well as I do how vulnerable Mobile Suits are when they're packed into drop pods falling through the atmosphere! If you don't stop Kira, tens of thousands of sailors will die and we won't be able to counter the Eddie Mobile Suits and we will lose this battle!"

"Yzak..." Athrun couldn't decide if he was insulted that Yzak thought he was more of a liability than an asset in a fight against Frost, or glad that Yzak was giving him an out from having to face such a nightmare when he was already so messed up inside from the conversation with Kira. "You'd better not die before my son can date your daughters. I have a camera with your name on it, waiting to capture the look on your face when he comes knocking on your door with candy and flowers, for all time."

"Dream on, Zala. They have better taste than that. I'll make sure of it." Yzak retorted, his gritted teeth transforming into his trademark nasty smirk. "Though they could do worse..."

"Are you all done bonding?" Frost interrupted with a scowl, tapping the Kratos's scythe butt impatiently on the ground, his shoulder tentacles shifting restlessly as the air around the Kratos began to darken, the Dissolution Aura nanites multiplying rapidly to form their caustic shroud around him. "Because I've come back from the dead for this, and I'm tired of waiting!" He arched an eyebrow in mild surprise whe the Blond Weeny and the Loser suddenly sprang away from Scarface's Gundam, the Blond Weeny taking ponderous bounds off towards Urbanis and the Orb ships, while the Loser transformed from a Mobile Suit into a Mobile Armor and headed skyward, sonic booms rippling in his wake as he accelerated to thousands of miles per hour in seconds. The concussive blasts of protesting sound rolled over the Kratos and the Balmung, glass chips pattering off their armor like a horizontal rain of razors, before they were finally alone.

"Its just you and us now, Monster." Yzak declared, almost happily, the Fafnir thrumming as he slashed it diagonally through the air, the blade shorting from a zweihander to a longsword as he switched to a one handed grip, the sword in the right hand, his Bulwark shield in the other, the chainsaw edge whirring up to speed as he coated the shield surface in the rosy shimmery of a Positron shield. The Balmung's Photon Cloak swirled in the sonic breezes, a blue flag whipping proudly in the wind, flashing blue camera eye lenses bisected by a bloody red scar boring into the abyssal black depths of the Kratos's horn framed visor. "This is for my mother. This is for Ezalia Joule!" Yzak shouted, and threw himself at the Kratos, swinging on the offense with both sword and shield, slamming the chainsaw edge of the shield into the crystalline haft of the scythe, jolting the Kratos, before stabbing forward with the Fafnir, Frost forced to throw his torso backwards to avoid being skewered, rotating his scythe haft like a quarterstaff to knock aside the thrusting blue blade, forcing the Balmung's arm out wide, before the scythe blade flashed downwards once more, towards the exposed torso area.

This time it was the Balmung that disengaged backwards, retreating ten meters in a single leg powered hop, the three Minion pods leaving their charging nooks on the Gundam's back before flying forward to form a large rectangular Citadel tower shield between the two Gundams, styming Frost's pursuit of the Balmung for a moment. The Kratos slammed into the Citadel barrier hard enough to make the Minion pods scoot backwards several meters through the air, before Frost took a half step back, planting his back foot as he swung two handed at the offending field of aqua energy, using the high powered cutting action generated by the shape of a scythe's blade to saw right through the middle of the shield in an explosion of golden sparks, the bisected shield crackling into nothingness, revealing... empty space behind it! Frost grinned in pleasure, before throwing his scythe up horizontally, using the haft to block the descending sword and shield-edge strike from the Balmung, pouncing down on him from above, where Yzak had leaped as Frost was cutting through his Minion shield.

In a display of mechanical agility that would have been unthinkable the last time he fought Frost, Yzak pushed off with both arms and flipped completely over the Kratos in a somersault, landing behind the larger Gundam on one knee, the dual 75mm monodisc launcher on the left shoulder spinning around to cover the rear arc, firing a flurry of raor sharp explosive discs at the Kratos's back from point blank range. The Kratos seemed to blur and then another sonic boom was pinning the Photon Cloak to Yzak's back as the Kratos disappeared and reappeared a half kilometer away and to the left, Frost demonstrating that he'd lost none of his affinity for utilizing the true speed and manueverability of NIC and FPR equipped machines. Well, Frost wasn't the only one, and Yzak had been training nonstop in utilizing these systems ever since they'd first been reverse engineered six years prior. While his friends had gone back to civilian or political jobs after each war or terror incident, Yzak had never strayed from the path of the soldier. Fighting to protect the people and nation that he loved was what his purpose in life was going to be, he'd decided that a long time ago. Yzak smirked, his vision blurring just slightly for a moment, as he moved over to stand in front of the Kratos again, between blinks of most people's eyes, his cloa once more flying out proudly behind him as sound belatedly caught up.

"I've always liked you, Scarface." Frost commented with a whistle of appreciation. "Unlike the rest of Pink's minions, you've never strayed from the path of conflict. Your life would be meaningless without conflict, without the clash of blades and the boom of guns. I really wish Mr. Machine had reincarnated me in your body rather than Yamato's, I could have enjoyed myself a little more then. I welcome you to this crucible of war, Scarface. Let the holy conflict begin for real!" The Kratos took its left hand off the scythe haft, the sword-claws flickering forward and locking into place along the backs and tips of the oversized gauntlet that terminated that arm. The shoulder tentacles unwound from their resting positions on his shoulders, forming a writhing halo of slick grey living whips, sprouting thorns of bloody crimson energy along their lengths.

And then the Kratos was in the Balmung's face, the scythe coming around in another horizontal sweep aimed at the waist level. Yzak interposed the Bulwark shield with the positron shield coating, daring Frost to strike it, knowing that even a QC weapon could not withstand the anti-matter particles within a Positron shield, if Frost carried through with this strike, he'd be holding a QC stick at the end, not a scythe! But then Yzak noticed a shifting in the Kratos's grip, more a premonition than anything tangible, and the scythe blade was zooming by harmlessly just in front of his shield, as the Kratos simply physically ran the smaller Gundam over, slamming the Balmung down on its back in the dirt with the sheer impact of its mass! Yzak rolled frantically to the side, swinging up with the Fafnir, parrying a few stabbing thrusts from the base of the scythe haft, which narrowed to a spear like tip, trying to get clear so he could regain his feet, but Frost stayed with him, trapping him with his legs, keeping him busy with the speartip. So Yzak swung his shield horizontally, the chainsaw edge digging up gobbets of grey and crimson semi-liquid LCR armor as it grazed the Kratos's left ankle, forcing Frost to lift the foot or else lose it from the ankle down!

The Kratos lifted its right foot too, pole vaulting upwards with the scythe planted in the ground, and Yzak quickly rolled to his knees, the Photon Cloak wrapped around him like a tarp before its anti-fouling systems retracted it to free up his limbs. Yzak glimpsed the Kratos's angular wings rotating down and then forward, underneath its arms, and he knew what was coming, bringing his Bulwark shield up as twin ports in the tips of the Kratos's wings irised open, as Frost used his own Positron shields to try and slam the Balmung, the maneuver canceled out by the Bulwark being interposed, thought Yzak was still jarred backwards slightly all the same. He dug in his heel and came up swinging, an uppercut with Fafnir that Frost sidestepped, the glowing blue sword tip passing within feet of the Kratos's leering, horse-like head, before Yak engaged the scythe haft with his chainsaw edge, and brought Fafnir back down in a backhanded diagonal stroke. That attack was arrested in midswing, the Kratos snatching up with its left hand, ensnaring the Fafnir blade with the QC sword claws, the keening shriek of grating crystal echoing around them as they locked their melee weapons against each other yet again, neither able to break free of the clinch.

Both Gundams reacted similarly, Katie bringing the monodisc launchers and Guillotine FRALA to bear even as the Kratos lashed the Balmung on back, sides, and shoudlers with its tentacles, golden sparks flying and limbs shuddering as the beam tipped tentacles were repulsed time and again by the Balmung's Citadel Scales, though with the way the tentacles were whipping like a nest of frenzied cobras, it wouldn't be long before the Citadel Scales were overwhelmed. More gouts of crimson and grey flecked semi-molten armor flew from the Kratos as the monodisc launcher hurled volleys of its explosive sawblades into Frost's torso and sides, but the Kratos's armor was thick and the low caliber monodiscs would take time to chew through to internal structures. That would not be the case for the Guillotine FRALA, and Frost was forced to concede the clinch by falling backwards to avoid being sliced in half by the fusion-torch like flame of the modified FRALA. Frost displayed his usual agility though, and was already back on his feet and ready by the time Yzak had recovered his balance.

_All right, Katie. Enough playing around. Let's finish this guy off._ Yzak sent with a secret smile. _You ready for it? Got control of the fear?_

_It was never Frost I was afraid of._ Katie retorted with indignation. _Unlike Miri or Cagalli, he's never really done anything to me personally, besides hurt you. But he doesn't stalk my nightmares, he's just another psycopath that needs to be put down. Let's do this, Yzak. We've been training for moments like this for six years now, time to strut our stuff!_ _Lead the way, Yzak, I'll follow you anywhere!_

"You know, Frost, that you're not just fighting me, Yzak Joule, right?" Yzak said tauntingly, as he straightened the Balmung's posture and flicked the sword like he was clearing a stain of blood from it. "My wife, my soul mate, Katie Joule, is in here with me. You're fighting both of us."

"I've never been bothered by issues of numbers before." Frost shrugged and spun the scythe nonchalantly, before taking it in a two handed grip once more, sword-claws folding back along his left forearm. "If you want to sacrifice your woman to me too, Scarface, I won't argue, though I find that my desires along those lines have been sated of late, thanks to the Mouse."

"Here's something I bet you didn't know though, Monster." Katie replied smugly. "Yzak has always had access to something called a Seed, for practically as long as I've known him. With the Seed, he gets much faster and stronger and can think and react quicker. Too much quicker in some ways, I can't keep up with him while he's using it, can't provide the data he needs, I just slow him down. Used to be, Yzak only got about half the real boost from the Seed, because I was holding him back, in the Vorpal. But that's changed now. This Divine Eye system we have... it allows Yzak to help me achieve something I could never do before, an interesting side effect none of us expected. All humans have the Seed, Frost. All, even me. Most of us just can't access it normally. This is not normally." Katie closed her eyes, watching the blue seed drop through Yzak's mind, echoed by another blue seed dropping through hers. Both reached an invisible, unyielding surface at the same time, both exploded in a joined cataclysm of white and cerulean light that illuminated their shared universes. Katie and Yzak opened their eyes, both sets of blue eyes washed out and metallic. "This is now your funeral, Zacharis Frost!" They declared in unison.

"Ahahhahahaha!" Frost laughed delightedly, his shoulder tentacles writhing about in enjoyment. "Interesting." He made the word about three times as long as it normally would be. "I'd thought you to be nothing more that Scarface's little sex slave, but I can see I was wrong. What, oh what, should I call you now? So fierce, yet so cold about it, so focused, not like Fiery Zala-Attha at all. So independent yet so easily gentled by the call of her master, and so small and immature too... ah, its obvious! You shall now be known forever more as the Chibi-Hawk! Congratulations, you have ascended to the ranks of the worthy!"

_Just kill him, Yzak-y, he's SO annoying!_ Katie complained, not bothering to deign to reply to Frost's insanity.

_Let's kill him together, that's the point of this, isn't it? Are you sure you can handle it? Going into his mind? It's not a nice place in there, you've told me that many times._ Yzak answered, concern in his tone.

_If Lacus could do it, there isn't any reason I can't stand a little depravity either._ Katie answered resolutely, her perceptions of the physical world fading, leaving her mental avatar, a fairly accurate representation of herself, except armored in blue plate mail, and with shield and sword in hand... features provided by her increase in psychic power from the seed and Yzak's Resonance, since normally she was naked in her mind... standing on a featureless grey plain underneath a starry sky, the distant twinkling lights being the other minds that existed nearby in profusion. Across from her was a writhing ball of tentacles, slavering mouths, stingers and barbed claws, a thing with no definite form or physically concievable function. Frost's mind. _For what I am about to recieve, may God make me thankful..._ Katie thought, steeling herself... and then pouncing headfirst into the embrace of the amorphous monster, sword swinging for its vitals, should it have any!

Frost felt the Chibi-Hawk penetrate his mental defenses like they were made of tissue paper, he'd never really cared about sequestering his mind or thoughts from others, they were more than welcome to come crawling inside his head if they wanted to, and may they get trapped inside and starve to death in the process! But this was no random exploration, no chance peering in on his thoughts, the Chibi-Hawk was clawing and biting and pecking at him and it was almost uncomfortable but for the fact that he knew she had to be suffering at least as much from the miasma of insanity that flooded his thoughts. _Yes... yes, Chibi-Hawk... dig deeper... dig deeper, pour yourself into my mind and dream my dreams with me... knock on my mental doors, singing "trick or treat, trick or treat, Chibi-Hawk's so good to eat..."_

_You know what's really sad, you freak?_ Katei replied disdainfully, digging through a trove of recent memories that made her want to gag and scream, until she lowered the visor of her mental helm, shielding her eyes from having to look directly upon what she was wading through. _You're just like Lacus... you have so much psychic power inside you, but you only use a little bit of it, the rest just stagnates! Even with Yzak-y helping me achieve the Seed, there should be no way I could just dig around in your mind like this! You may be a super bad ass in one world, but in this one, you're just pathetic! And for the record, I'm not trying to kill you, I'd never take that away from Yzak-y! I'm just here to make things hard for you. I'm here to gloat and watch as you squirm as Yzak-y demolishes you, Freak._

And Frost could feel what she meant, she wasn't trying to cause him pain or distress, wasn't doing anything much really... besides digging into his thoughts as he was thinking them, ripping them from the fabric of his mind and passing them back wholesale to Scarface through their bond, extending like a lifeline out from behind her. The Mouse had babbled about this sort of thing before, during one of those interminable times when she was hanging around him for whatever reason. Active's were sometimes at a disadvantage when facing Latent's in combat, she said, because Latents could sometimes predict the future and react before an action took place. However, there was a trick Actives could use to similar effect, by telepathically intruding into their opponent's mnd and tapping their thoughts, so they would know the person's intentions while they were thoughts, before they became action, to get that little bit of extra warning. He'd never really thought about it, he didn't need to cheat like that personally, and anyone who wanted to pry into his thoughts got what they deserved anyway. But Chibi-Hawk was somehow protected against the virulence of his memories and desires; she was right, her skills eclipsed his totally in this arena! How utterly FRUSTRATING!

The Balmung slung its shield across its back and took up the Fafnir in both hands, the sword blade elongating and thickening in response, and then Yzak once more charged, the tip of the blade held low, thrusting forward and then slicing upward once the point reached under Frost's guard, a smug smirk on his face matching the expression of Katie as she relayed Frost's feelings, strategies and intentions back to her husband in real time, as soon as Frost came up with a plan, even if it was just the intent to swing his scythe a certain way, Yzak knew what it was and could act to counter it! He kept up a flurry of two handed strikes with the Fafnir, forcing the larger Gundam back, completely on the defensive, barely even able to block the constantly changing angles of attack from the Fafnir. Frost lashed out with his shoulder tentacles, seeking to bind and entangle the Balmung, but once more, thanks to Katie, Yzak was able to detect the move before it reached the action stage, and he reaped the Fafnir through the tangle of tentacles, severing three of them completely in half, and chopping the ends off two more, accepting one of them slamming squarely into his chest in an explosion of gold sparks in order to inflict a greater wound upon his foe.

Desperation move thwarted, Frost was forced to remain on the defensive, backpedalling slowly but surely as Yzak kept up the pressure, increased it even, the glowing blue blade of the Fafnir beginning to nick and scrape short lived runnels in the outer edges of the LCR armor on the Kratos's gauntlets, forearms, shoulders and sides. _I can DO THIS!_ Yzak thought triumphantly. _I'm beating him! We're beating him! All your power, all your strength, none of it means anything, freak, unless you can catch me off guard, and Katie won't let you do that! Just like last time, your own arrogance and hubris is my ally as well! You can't defend against her, and with her inside you, you can't defend against me either, not for much longer!_ Yzak thrust forward with the Fafnir again, forcing Frost to take his left hand off the scythe haft or else have it removed at the wrist, twisting his sword blade so that he could use it as a lever to force the scythe out and away from him, the blade wrenching awkwardly to a position where it couldn't be used to cut with, even if Frost did swing it!

Withdrawing the Fafnir, Yzak set up for a sweeping strike that would bisect the Kratos at mid torso in a horizontal line, cocking the blade back over his shoulder as Frost braced his Gundam's feet for the blow. The blow never landed, Yzak dropping the Fafnir as soon as its blade cleared his shoulder, letting the blue glow die as the physical structure of the sword sunk a few meters into the ossified dirt, as Yzak snatched the Caladabolg hyperthermal radiation cannon from its holster at his side, the weapon pre-loaded shortly after launch, and Yzak lifted the barrel upwards in a snap shot, pointing it at Frost from point blank range. "Go back to hell, you fucking Zombie!" Yzak snarled victoriously, squeezing down on the trigger. A ten foot beam of cerulean blue energy leapt from the muzzle of the rifle, blasting right through the center of the Kratos's chest. Or at least so Yzak thought, before he saw, with a curse, that the field of view directly in front of him was empty!

_YZAK!_ Katie screamed at him, as the Kratos appeared at their side, the air rippling around it in protest at the sudden high speed manuever, scythe held in both hands and raised over its head, already starting to bring it down in a cleaving vertical strike.

_GOT YA!_ Yzak retorted, his other arm coming up to intercept the path of the strike, having retrieved the Bulwark shield from his back while his right arm was lifting the Caladabolg. Yzak interposed the poistron shield, knowing that Frost had already committed his weight to the swing, he wouldn't be able to pull the blow, and in another second, that nasty bladed polearm was going to be little more than a sharp stick! And then, in the midst of the swing, Yzak felt himself rocked by a kind of unseen explosion, and suddenly Katie's mind was back in the Balmung with him, her just as shocked and nonplussed as he was, as Frost, unable to stop the force of his own attack, neverless could change the way he used it, pulling upward on the blade end of the scythe as he pushed down and forward on the butt end, sliding the sharpened tip of the haft beneath the edge of Yzak's shield, wedging it between the Balmung's forearm and the handle of the Bulwark shield. An instant later, the Balmung was staggering backward, staggering from a full on half turning side kick from the Kratos, golden sparks jumping like popcorn kernels on a hot stove from the point of impact, and the Bulwark shield was knocked loose from his grip, flipping end over end away through the air, batted aside and well out of reach by the haft of the scythe.

_WHAT HAPPENED? I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING! _Yzak demanded angrily, frustrated at getting so close only to have the tables turned! He reached out and grabbed the inert Fafnir out of the dirt, holding it defensively in front of him, now that he didn't have the Bulwark to rely upon for blocking purposes.

"It was a good plan, Scarface. If you'd been fighting the old me, you'd have beaten me without too much more trouble. Commendable, to see this kind of progress from you! Truly, its wonderful! You make my blood sing!" Frost cackled at them in deranged congratulations. "And Chibi-Hawk... never, I mean, NEVER did I expect to get this kind of trouble from you! I had thought you little more than a pigeon in a coop, but I couldn't have been more wrong! I am sincerely delighted with both of you! But the fact remains... I'm not the old me." Frost added, taking his left hand off the scythe, sword-claws snapping into attack position once more. He wagged one sword-claw at them condescendingly. "And you both forgot something incredibly important, though the Chibi-Hawk actually mentioned it. All human beings have a Seed, you see. Including this Yamato body of mine! Indeed, my Seed is at the same level as Yamato's, you should feel honored that I actually felt the need to use it!"

_Is he serious?_ Yzak asked, unable to help a mental gulp at the thought.

Katie recalled to just before she was expelled from Frost's mind, when she'd caught a glimpse of something, a blot of pure blackness, only distinguishable from the mind-void around it by the crawling veins of gold that pulsed on its surface, falling from a great height overhead. _Yeah, I'd say he is._ Katie echoed her husband's gulp. _Kind of obvious when I think about it now, but..._ She was interrupted by Yzak throwing the Balmung to the side, sparks flying from the edge of the Fafnir as he just barely managed to deflect a slashing sweep of the Kratos's left hand claws. He couldn't fully avoid the simultaneous attack with the scythe, and the Balmung just barely avoided losing its head, instead he lost the Guillotine FRALA mount, snipped off cleanly along with a section of the shoulder Citadel Scales. He rolled to his feet, and had to throw his lower torso backwards to avoid being eviscerated by the backhand sweep of the scythe, unlike most farming implements, the Kratos's war scythe was edged on both sides of the curving blade!

Realizing that he was at a disadvantage with a two handed weapon while the Kratos was dual wielding, but with Frost staying between him and his shield, Yzak was forced to improvise, returning the Fafnir to longsword size, holding it in his right hand, as he snagged hold of the Photon Cloak with his left hand, and ripped it from the mounts on his back, bunching the superconductor fabric around his hand and waving it in front of him as a visual shield. Victorian duelists had used similar tactics in their street fighting, hoping to snag their opponent's thin rapier blades in the heavy folds of their capes, which wouldn't work against a QC weapon, but it was better than nothing! Yzak fluttered the fabric out wide, and then rolled his wrist a few times, forming a sort of "towel-whip", like young children used to smack each other in the gym locker room, which he then swung at the Kratos's right hand, trying to entangle the limb, even as he thrust forward with the Fafnir. Katie echoed his fervor on the mental plane, her knight-image flinging itself in futility against the adamant fortress that had sprung up around Frost's thoughts.

The Kratos allowed its right arm to be entangled by Yzak's improvised whip, much to his surprise, even as Frost batted aside the sword thrust with a backhand flick of his sword-claws. It wasn't until Frost yanked hard with his entangled right arm and Yzak found that the Balmung was not nearly big or heavy enough to avoid being pulled off balance by the larger and more massive Kratos, that he realized a tug of war invariably went both ways. He let go of his bunched up cloak, but he was already off balance by that time, and though thrusters could give a Mobile Suit balance in ways a regular human form did not enjoy, it was actually the Kratos's knee, thrust into the middle of the torso, that kept the Balmung upright, more than any action on Yzak's part. He was grateful for the GRS gel, in a regular cockpit, a hit like that could have broken bones from sheer impact! Finding the shoe on the other foot from earlier in the battle, Yzak swung the Fafnir frantically across his frontal arc, trying to clear Frost out from proximity.

All he ended up doing was getting his sword arm grabbed by the Kratos's oversized left fist, the limb jarring to a halt, caught and held fast by the physically stronger Gundam, a single sword-claw flickering from rest to attack position, slicing through the Balmung's right wrist in the process, dropping gauntlet and Fafnir to the ground, spitting sparks and arcs of lubricant fluids. The Kratos heaved with its left arm, actually pulling the smaller Orb Gundam up off the ground by its own arm, before Frost hooked his scythe around the Balmung's middle, the curved blade grating against the Citadel Scales protecting the Gundam's beltline, golden sparks flaring from the point of contact as the Kratos swung the scythe around like a lacross stick, with the Balmung being the ball in the net! Frost swung up, around and then back down, with both hands on the shaft, piledriving the Balmung down on its face in front of him, Citadel Scales shorting out all over its body from the trauma of impact. A rake of the sword-claws gouged deep, clean edged furrows on the Balmung's back, where a spine would be on a human, and alerts began to flash on Yzak and Katie's retinas, warning of internal damage suffered.

And then they were airborne once more, courtesy of a kick to the side from the Kratos, Frost's attacks chaining together faster than Yzak could recover from them! More alerts and sirens began to blare inside their helmets, the Citadel Scale armor system near total shutdown, the physical impact of recent blows having compromised sections of the balmung's strucutral skeleton, and damaged the cooling systems for the FPR, which dropped its power level to compensate. Before the Gundam could slam to earth once more, it was caught in midair by the Kratos's remaining tentacles, winding around limbs and torso like constricting snakes, hoisted upright and reeled back towards the Kratos, just to have the left arm and the right leg hewed off at shoulder and thigh respectively by two sweeps of the scythe. weapons disabled, reactor powering down, armor compromised, and faced with an opponent that was measurably faster and stronger than them, Yzak turned around in the cockpit, moving with extreme difficulty in the thick GRS gel.

His vision faded away as the Kratos closed its left hand around the Balmung's head, and ripped it completely off the Gundam's shoulders with a wrenching tug, before crushing the decapitated skull in the grip of its enormous gauntlet. Yzak closed his arms around Katie, hugging her to him tightly, her helmeted chin resting against his shoulder, his chin on her shoulder in turn. _I'm sorry, Katie. I love you. But we lost._

_I love you too, Yzak._ Katie replied, secondary cameras kicking on, showing them the Kratos drawing back its scythe with both hands, preparing the executing blow. _I'm sure our friends will take great care of Mina and Jamie in our absence..._

_Of course they will! And they'll grow up to be beautiful, happy young women in the peaceful world that the others will create... and we'll watch over them from Heaven, and we'll never have to feel sadness again..._ Yzak answered, his body shuddering with sobs, tensing up instinctively, even though a QC blade swung by a Gundam would pass completely through him before he even felt his skin be cut. With any luck, they'd both be dead before they even realized they'd been hit. And then, a thunderbolt struck on the side of the Balmung, the cockpit walls denting inward on the left side, the cockpit plunged into total darkness as the FPR deactivated entirely, and then came a brief sensation of falling through the air before the Balmung slammed into the ground, little more than a gently sparking torso, leaking thick gel from the crater in its left side, where the Kratos had struck with the scythe... the top of the shaft, behind the blade, not the blade itself!

"I don't think so." Frost told them with a scoff. "You're not getting off that easy, Scarface, Chibi-Hawk! Not after you made my blood boil like that! I'm keeping you two around for a while, I want you to return to the Chibi-Hawklings and hold them tight and think of this moment... and come back after me with twice the fury you displayed today! I salute you, my worthy and wonderful foes. I look forward to attempting to kill each other again in the future!" And with those words, the Kratos turned its back on them, and the instant after that, they were being rocked by a sonic boom, as the Kratos disappeared back towards the semi-distant domes of shield energy that blossomed over Urbanis, towards the brewing chaos that was the main battle.

xxxx

**Meanwhile, in the upper atmosphere**

"KIRA!" Kira heard his name shouted across the comm line he'd had open with Athrun and the others, and he looked behind himself just in time to flicked the Lucifer into a barrel roll, to avoid the winged form of the Simurgh as it blasted past him in Mobile Armor form, making a slick transition back to Mobile Suit form once Athrun had passed him, putting himself squarely between Kira and the not so distant pyramidal shapes of two Incarnate class dreadnaughts and attendandt support and escort vessels that were floating in geosynch orbit over the huge mass of storm clouds covering Urbanis. "Stop this! This is crazy! You're not seriously going to kill all of those sailors, are you?"

"I don't want to fight you, Athrun." Kira said resolutely.

"I don't want to fight you either!" Athrun replied, his eyes wet with tears. "So let's..."

"But if you persist in getting in my way, I won't have a choice. I'm sorry." Kira drew one of his ion disintegrators and pointed it at the Simurgh. The air around them lit up with blue-white light as one of the Incarnate's fired its four 125cm FRALA at the surface, targeting some part of the defensive works below. Other streaks of light in the upper atmosphere indicated the descending paths of heavy bombardment artillery shells, missiles and beam and positron blasts from the secondary batteries of the Incarnates and the escort vessels. Off to the side, fat bodied bulk transport craft were dislodging drop pods filled with Solar Knight Mobile Suits, until a steady rain of the pods glowed red as they powered down through the atmosphere. On the ground, the Land Battleships were deploying RI combat models, Strikers and Legacy's, to stiffen the first wave of assault vehicles, while the contribution from FEAR, a total of eight Panzerdragoons and twenty Panzerwulfs, began moving up from the back of the convoy formations, switching to tank mode for faster movement on the ground.

"Please, Kira... don't do this... this is madness!" Athrun pleaded.

"This is Eden." Kira answered icily. "And I am an Edenite. That is the only distinction that matters right now." And then he hit the trigger, launching a reddish flare of light trailing a shock distortion through the air, not at Athrun's cockpit, but at his wings, where some of his extra thrusters were mounted. Athrun managed to twist and dive and duck below the shot, but it still passed close enough to his armor for his computers to scream at him angrily. For his part, Athrun was still choking on his shock, as Kira, now that his path was unblocked once more, began heading for the SPF ships again. Looping around, athrun came up behind Kira, drawing his dual 50mm Rapidfire FRALA rifles.

"DAMN IT, KIRA! I can't let you do this!" Athrun yelled, his voice conquered by equal parts sadness and fury. He fired, aiming for Kira's wings and legs, hoping to bring his best friend down and disabled without killing him.

"You know, I said that myself once to someone." Kira replied, rolling out of the way of the blue-white beams, and coming up to face Athrun directly. No more just brushing him aside, Athrun wasn't so weak that he could just let him fly about in his back arc forever. One of them was going to have to go down. "Do you recall when? It was at Sai's wedding. That was definitely one of the biggest mistakes of my life. And now, you've just made it yourself. You can't let me do this, Athrun? You MUST let me do this, or I will kill you."

"They have lives and families too!" Athrun retorted fiercely, aiming his rifles and firing once more, this time some of the Fractal Wing feathers deployed and bent the light beams away from the Lucifer, spearing off into the distant parts of the atmosphere harmlessly. "They're not just faceless goons! They're just following orders and doing what they believe is right!"

"I know. That is why war is so terribly sad. Those who truly deserve to die in a war so rarely do, its the innocent fools they deceive into taking up their cause that eat up the casualties. But innocent or not, those casualties are part and parcel of what makes war so awful, and I will inflict as many of them as need be for you "humans" to realize that war itself is insanity and cannot be allowed to happen, for any reason!" Kira could not contain some tears of his own. "Allister has already lost his aunt and his cousins. And now... his father too. My poor nephew..." Kira fired at Athrun, a shot from each ion disintegrator, the Simurgh twisting and juking frantically, Athrun clearly familiar with the ability of those little red flares to penetrate armor and shields. Those had not been warning or disabling shots, those had been aimed at the torso.

Athrun's blood had run cold the moment he realized that Kira had meant to kill him with those shots. This was no longer just angst and heartbreak, the Kira he'd long known and loved like a brother... that Kira was gone now. There was only the Executor of the Edenites in there now. It would take someone with a stronger connection to Kira than Athrun to break him out of this madness that had stolen over him. But did anyone like that exist? Even Cagalli, his own sister, had been cut away from his heart by recent events... the only people that could reliably draw Kira back from this abyss he was sinking into... were already dead! _Forgive me, Cagalli... its come to the worst case scenario already. Lacus... if you can hear me, wherever you are... forgive me also, but I don't have a choice. I'm so sorry..._ Athrun clamped down with his teeth, almost biting his cheek, as he fought to stuff all his pity and sympathy and pain down into the deepest recesses of his soul. He could no longer afford them. "Kira..." He whispered. "Your sacrifices will never be forgotten by the people of Orb. You will forever be remembered as our hero. The entire nation will bow down in respect to you, I will make a point of that, but it will have to be a posthumous outpouring of respect." His eyes were dry and determined. His hands were steady. His heart was broken.

The emerald green seed dropped through the vastness of his mind, before striking that invisible terminating surface and detonating, filling him with light and life and power, his eyes fading to metallic green sheens. The FRALA rifles seemed to move of their own accord, blue-white light leaping across the space between the two suits, angling sharply away from the Lucifer as they struck the refraction effect of the Fractal Wing feathers. Athrun did his best to draw the laser beams apart in crisscrossing patterns, but Kira's feathers stayed with the path of the beam perfectly, and the shots did not get through. His defense was just too good, any sort of ranged fire was ineffective at best. Athrun stowed the rifles, switching to Mobile Armor form as he avoided another series of slow shots from Kira's ion disintegrators, the shots passing so close to his armor that his radiation sensors started to beep at him urgently several times. He emptied his VTP missile pods as he charged towards the Lucifer, not expecting any of the advanced missiles to actually strike through, but he needed to tie up as much of Kira's attention as possible!

Twenty four VTP missiles, each powerful enough to destroy a Mobile Suit in a single hit, lanced through the thin air towards the Lucifer, each missile coated in limited duration Phase Shift armor and controlled in flight by some of the most advanced targeting software known to man, the missiles spreading out to come at Kira across a broad arc, closely tailed by the Simurgh itself. Almost immediately after being launched, the missiles started blowing up, as they flew into the path of the little red flares of exotic particles fired by the ion disintegrators, but well over half the missiles were going to reach the Lucifer at the current rate! That is, until the Lucifer fired its own FRALAs, using the Fractal Wings to dice the beams apart into a rainbow of searing hot focused sunlight, which formed a prismatically colored lattice gridwork of interlocking laser beams, a field of sun hot energy that the VTP missiles could not stop from flying into and being minced into scrap by! Many of the 5mm beams sliced into the Simurgh as well, the HAC armor heating up across the whole Gundam until it began glowing a slight orange hue from all the radiating heat.

Athrun snapped back into Mobile Suit form, mono-sharp armblades deploying from his forearms, the dull metal beginning to glow white hot with channeled heat from the FPR, and launched himself straight at the Lucifer, his Phoenix Feathers flying from their docking ports along his wings, seventy two red hot bladed projectiles launching themselves at the Edenite Gundam like a blizzard of embers! The fractal Wings countered, only half the numbers but almost the same amount of mass, projecting Positron Shields that gobbled up any Phoenix Feathers that could not divert their trajectories in time. Athrun gestured with one gauntlet, reaching out with the Vulcan's Forge BGCS and tearing away those same Positron Shields, opening a gap for the Simurgh to fly through and pierce the Lucifer's defensive bubble, his other hand drawn back to stab its blade through the Lucifer's chest. The thrust was knocked aside by a glimmery crystal longsword, one of a pair the Lucifer held.

Thrusting forward with his open palm, Athrun activated the thermal exciter built into his Gundam's hands, bathing the Lucifer in a cone of pink hot radiation for a moment before Kira managed to evade away out of the furnace like heat. With those thermal exciters, at close range Athrun felt he had the advantage. As always with Kira, it was more a matter of surviving to get to close range than anything truly complicated. Kira tried to put some distance between them, but Athrun refused to restart the fight, more or less, and he kept hounding his friend as hard as he possibly could, trying to keep Kira within the outer envelope of his thermal exciters. After a few seconds bathing in the pink-orange radiation field, and something inside the Lucifer would melt or burst or explode; a few seconds more, and that thing would be Kira himself!

And then Kira stopped running, and Athrun was suddenly fighting madly for his life, parrying a flurry of QC sword strokes with his armblades, the metal impregnated with QC slivers for exactly this reason, to prevent them from being sliced in half like they were made of butter! Much cheaper and less time consuming than making fully QC weaponry. The Simurgh and the Lucifer were close to equally matched in size and mass and strength, neither could beat down the other's guard. Which was why Athrun was so surprised when, after making one parry, Kira lost his grip on his left hand sword, the crystalline blade spinning end over end as it dropped away from them. Before he could react to take advantage of his numerical superiority in weaponry, the Lucifer made a small gesture with its left hand. Athrun barely had time to blink in shock as the dropped sword came spinning back up the gravity well, aimed right at the middle of his back, and only an instinctive, desperate dodge prevented the Simurgh from being cut in half! As it was, he lost both legs from the midcalf down!

The Lucifer snagged its trick sword out of the air and sheathed it, Athrun's evasive maneuver having allowed Kira time to put a few hundred meters of distance between them. The left hand grabbed its ion disintegrator and snap-fired a burst of exotic particles at Athrun's chest. Still unbalanced from his previous evasive maneuver, Athrun could not dodge again, not in time! Frantically, he thrust both his hands in front of him, throwing all available extra power into the BGCS. Whatever those particles were that Kira's guns fired, they were still contained in a magnetic field that kept them cohesive until they hit something! That field was strong enough to allow the particles to penetrate most any magnetic or energy shields, but the BGCS could also overwhelm those shields! And much to Athrun's elation, the pulsating red flare did stop, about fifty meters away from him, safely captured by the Vulcan's Forge. "KIRA!" Athrun screamed angrily, thrusting his arms and hurling the little flare back at the Lucifer.

"ATHRUN!" Kira retorted, with equal volume and feeling, holstering rifle and sheathing sword, reaching out with the Lucifer's Grasp GFMG and arresting the motion of the ion disintegrator packet again, about midway between the two machines. He watched the violet seed, veined with silver, fall through the void in his mind, and snatched for it again, determined to end this once and for all. He missed his grab, the intensity of his anger and sadness over this personal tragedy making him misjudge the distance. The Seed exploded, the Tree remained asleep. This was the second time he'd failed to grasp it during a personal crisis... what was the problem? Why could he do it when defending others, but not for himself? Was it because he was alone, that he didn't have Lacus to help him, so he couldn't achieve the Tree solo unless he was somehow subconsciously tapping into the desires of others who were concerned? That didn't seem fair...

The overlapping, super strong magnetic fields of the Vulcan's Forge warred with the gravitic manipulations of the Lucifer's Grasp, both pilots pouring all available energy into their systems, trying to push the little glowing packet of unstable, exotic particles back into the other Gundam, slowly drawing closer to each other in the process, each trying to use their thrusters to shove the "balance point" towards the other just a little bit harder than the opposing system could handle. They ended up practically within spitting distance of each other, all but holding hands, perhaps three meters of open air between them, with the red flare shaking and shivering in the middle of that space as it was tugged and yanked and shoved and pulled back and forth in equilibrium!

And then Athrun felt the Vulcan's Forge start to weaken, the mechanisms starting to smoke, never having been designed for this sort of overload operation, any more than the Phoenix King's had been when he caught the Great Endeavor's AMP blast. The little red flare began to inch closer and closer to his side of the equilibrium space, and Athrun knew that the Simurgh had reached its limit. He was being overwhelmed! Desperate, Athrun activated one of the new Simurgh systems, launching a pair of "Solar Flare" photonic grenades, the special explosives creating globes of harmless light a hundred times brighter than staring at the surface of the sun, causing Kira to flinch away, only his Latent prescience saving him from eye damage. However, Athrun had to flinch away as well, and had done so first, so the ion flare struck the Simurgh high on the right side of the torso, blowing apart the shoulderblade, ripping off that entire arm, and the wing struts behind it, smoke and fire exploding from the damaged sections as the Simurgh spiralled away down the gravity well, unable to remain aloft at this altitude with the damage suffered.

Kira watched the half disabled Simurgh fall away, still blinking bright electric blue and neon purple spots out of his eyes, his Fractal Wing pods finally catching up to him and docking with his wing struts to recharge. Perhaps it was better this way... both of them had causes they believed in too strongly to accept any other path right now. Let this war continue on some, let Athrun find out for himself what sort of monsters he was slaving away for! He'd come around eventually. And if he didn't... well, hopefully Kira would be able to find the stomach to kill him for real by then. Kira turned his washed out, metallic gaze to the warships of the SPF, and the falling fruit-like pods of the Solar Knights drop forces. It was time to go to work, Urbanis was counting on him to clear the skies. No victory was possible with the SPF in orbit overhead. They had to go. He was going to send them.

xxxx

Author Note 2: I forgot how involved major battles could be, somehow. This sort of stuff used to fill an arc, back in ED, and now its two chapters? Ah well, I can do it. Tune in next time, to "City of Tears" for the action involving Dearka and Miri, and many other characters, including the conclusion to this epic battle!


	40. Fields of War

Author Note: Sorry guys, I couldn't fit it all into one chapter, not and still do the proper justice to the various characters and events. But I did manage to cover a lot of ground in this chapter, so you can look forward to the finale and aftermath coming up soon! Happy Thanksgiving by the way, for those of us who celebrate that holiday.

xxxx

**New Eden, Central Africa, Outskirts of Urbanis, Just after dawn, December 20th**

"Those blasted fools!" Murrue exclaimed bitterly, looking up at the holographic battle status display that filled most of the central portion of the bridge, giving her an immersive point of view for any combat engagement, with her captain's chair representing the current position of the _Endymion_ and threats or allies appearing as model sized 3D icons that appeared in the display at a scale representation of their actual position relative to her, be it to the sides, above or even below. Right now her gaze was fixed upwards, at the torrent of Solar Knight drop pods plummeting through the atmosphere like a hail of rotten grapefruit, directly over the main section of the enemy defense lines. Part of her could understand the panicked, knee-jerk reaction to launch as quickly as possible once the fleet sensors picked up no one less than Kira Yamato himself, in a tricked out Gundam, quickly inbound towards their position, but for all that she understood it, she also understood it was the wrong choice. The Lucifer could maneuver and fight in the upper atmosphere, even during the stress of atmospheric re-entry, while the Solar Knights were locked tight inside their drop pods, unable to fight back or even dodge! They would be massacred up there, and there wasn't a whole hell of a lot she could do to stop it!

"Diverting course to intercept the Lucifer and see if I can't give those poor bastards at least a fighting chance." Mu called in, only seconds later, having kept tabs on the overall situation as well, a habit from long ago, when she and he had been oint commanders of the despeate run to safety by the Archangel, where neither of them had the luxury of having time to monofocus during a battle. "That is, once I finish with my current dance partners." Mu qualified, the throbbing roar of the turbojet engines of the Firebird Space/Atmospheric Superiority Mobile Armor, the base Interceptor module, a dull constant in the background, despite the layers of soundproofing built around his cockpit. The engines were just that loud, because they were so powerful, capable of hurling the arrowhead shaped air to air combat module through the atmosphere at over six thousand miles per hour, and getting close to nine thousand mph when using the afterburners, making it the fastest atmospheric fighter craft ever built. It gave up a little bit in manueverability to a Mobile Suit, but the gap was extremely narrow, especially with a pilot like Mu at the controls.

Certainly, the pair of Edenite Dervishes he was currently duking it out with seemed to be finding him unexpectedly challenging, judging by the way their fire chased him fruitlessly back and forth across the sky in dizying patterns, their frustration more than evident in the way they doggedly refused to attack any other targets, even when the path of their dogfight brought them closer in to one of the Orb warships. The _Endymion_ itself was in no particular danger, still Mirage Colloid cloaked and submerged a dozen or so meters below the surface of Lake Victoria, steathily making its way in an arcing trajectory towards the harbor facilities of Urbanis, while the main Orb fleet, centered around the _Dawnblade_, hammered into the rear of the enemy defensive lines at an oblique angle to the _Endymion_'s path, striving to draw away as much enemy attention as possible in preparation for the _Endymion_ launching the Stormhound unit for the command decaptiation attack.

Mu looped and came out in the middle of it, coming back the way he'd come from, now facing the two Dervishes head on for the first time since he'd strafed them and their buddies a few minutes earlier, most of his fire being absorbed by the Citadel shield they were partly standing under, but enouh slipping by to turn a third Dervish in a smoking wreck, the concentrated flurry of beam shots from the quad of 57mm gatling beam cannons mounted in his nose cone having turned the luckless Edenite MS into swiss cheese in about a second and a half. Mu opened up with the dual 225mm linear cannon pivot mounted on his ventral flight surface, just like the old big gun of his much beloved Moebius Zero MA, but more powerful still, and then added a half second blurt from the nose gatling beams, all he was willing to risk at such speed and heading, because the guns pumped out so many bolts, they actually obscured his vision if he held down the triggers for too long, and even a quarter second of flying blind in these conditions could mean the end of him!

The two Dervishes dodged his linear cannon shots, splitting apart from their close echelon fighting formation, moving to either side to let him pass between them where they could hopefully catch him in a cross fire, one of them leaking fire from its left torso and arm from where it hadn't managed to dodge his blurt of beam fire quite fast enough, but the strange, wood-like material the enemy MS were made of was hellaciously resilient, and what would have destroyed most mass production machines just left them charred and pissed off. Mu gunned the afterburners and shot forward like a bat straight out of hell, breaking the sound barrier three more times in the space of a millisecond, puffs of condensing mositure spreading out in his wake in blurry rings as he cut through the atmosphere so quickly he actually left smears of flattened water vapor in his wake. Green plasma beams flashed at him from either side, both Eddies managing to get well aimed shots from their torso mounted beam cannons off despite his thunder run, but their hopes were dashed when the beams scored into his fuselage and wings and dissipated harmlessly, absorbed by the HAC armor the Firebird was protected by.

Banking around once he was past them, murmuring a thankful prayer for the existence of the gravitic reduction system that allowed him to turn even at speeds that should have left him smeared in a thin paste across his cockpit surfaces; Mu rolled his MA into a corkscrew like evasive pattern, trading speed for an unpredictable trajectory that brought him back at his dance partners yet again. This time they stayed close together, the damaged one taking aim with its twin linear rifles, while the fresh one stowed its guns and unsheathed its twin sets of triple QC arm blades, like the claw gloves some ninja's wore in action flicks, lifting its arms in preparation for slicing him to ribbons as he screamed past. Mu wasn't sure if he was amazed or insulted that the Eddie thought he'd actually be stupid enough to just fly and let himself be chopped apart by a melee weapon, but then again, ZAFT MS had been doing that to the Alliance MA core for years and they never seemed to have too much trouble. Course they'd never been able to do it to him, though Rau had given him a few close shaves over their time as rivals.

The thought of that madman Rau made him think of another madman, closer to hand, the one known as Zacharis Frost, who, by most all reports, made Rau look like a freaking saint, though Mu had precious little experience with the man himself, having been a brainwashed thrall of the Borander family for Frost's initial rampage during the Second Valentine War. Anyone freaky enough to generate the level of hate and fear he'd seen from the kid corps though was definitely not someone he was going to just ignore, especially not after getting his own butt handed to him on a silver platter on Halloween. Mu still wasn't sure exactly what had gone wrong, he'd grabbed hold of the guy and yanked at his powers, but then found himself peering right into a pure maelstrom of... and that was where memory ceased, and he suspected he should be thankful for that, else he might still be gibbering in a ball in a hospital bed. _I sure hope you know what you're doing, Kid. I get what you're saying, Durandel really is a slimeball, I know that better than just about anyone, because of my time as Noah's paper boy, but this Zach Frost guy... what he did to Cagalli and Athrun, not to mention Cyprus Finch... I just hope you really know what you're doing, Kid. Level of threat aside, isn't it a better idea to take care of an immediate threat rather than a possible one? Or am I looking at this wrong? Not the time..._

Mu broke away from his chaotic thoughts long enough to hit two of his secondary triggers, launching a pair of Phase Shift armored hunter-killer VTP missiles, plunging into a nosedive to break out of his corkscrew maneuver and then cutting his engines, firing a brief blurt of retro-boost to flip his ass end up and over so that it was facing the ground, and then kicked in the main thrusters once more, the whole maneuver happening so fast the Firebird seemed to bounce off thin air and rebound upward on a 180 degree reversed corse without ever actually turning or banking. Yet another neat little trick that should have killed him, had he tried it in most any other machine. The two Eddies were just beginning to maneuver to avoid the VTP missiles, before they realied that evasive action was futile at such close range, given the speed and agility of the missiles, and they began trying to shoot them down instead, much easier said than done, as the advanced guidance circuits in the missiles detected incoming interdiction fire and began juking and jinking the missiles all over the sky to avoid it.

The Firebird screamed up from below, lighting up the damaged Eddie with a second long barrage from the gatling beam cannons that chewed away his legs and most of his lower torso, safety systems in its reactor crash-scramming the fusion plant into shutdown mode by venting the reaction mass out the back of the machine, an incandescent flare of escaping hydrogen gas that stretched for a hudnred meters for a millisecond before the particles burned away, leaving the inert husk of the Dervish behind, to begin a slow fall towards the ground a few thousand feet below. As violent as that emergency shutdown had been, it was nothing compared to the catastrophe of the reactor overloading, which essentially made the MS in a fairly large scale thermonuclear fusion bomb, which would have been detrimental to pretty much everything in a roughly kilometer wide radius. And by "detrimental", he meant that anything within that radius, friend or foe, would have been turned into molten slag in a nanosecond, which was the reason for the safety shutdown system. You did NOT want a FPR equipped machine overloading in the middle of your base or allied formation!

The second Eddie turned to attack Mu as he zipped past, in revenge for the destruction of his friend, but he was just turning when both VTP missiles plowed into his side and back, both PS armored missiles slamming into and through his wooden armor like extra thick nails fired from a nail gun, physically shattering a large expanse of the armor into splinters even before the large warheads went off in tandem, ripping the Dervish into a thousand tiny pieces, the reactor once again venting itself the moment it detected a containment breech, and Mu had to hand it to the Eddies, their safety systems were completely top notch. The same could be said of their gear, though the pilots themselves showed their inexperience quite plainly. However, there was nothing like a balls out war to turn even the greenest of newbies into a combat veteran in a frighteningly short time, Mu himself was living proof of that, and while they definitely had the edge over the Eddies in terms of experience now, they were all Ultimate Coordinators, it wasn't going to take them long at all to close that gap, something Mu was NOT looking forward to one bit.

Keeping himself aimed more or less straight up, Mu kicked in the afterburners again, the ground jumping away below him as he rocketed into low obit at maximum speed, so fast that even the GRS couldn't fully compensate for the G forces pressing him backwards into his heavily cushioned flight couch, which enclosed him more like a cocoon than a couch, since the Firebird was also controlled by NIC system, rather than standard controls. The programming for the MA was even screwier than the stuff used for the MS and Gundams, since the Firebird not only wasn't humanoid at all, but had two other forms that could add on to this one, also not humanoid, which made for a lot of differing capabilities and interface problems. Most of the major bugs seemed to have been hammered out by now, but Mu was still keeping a wary eye out during the docking procedures with the Flarehawk and Nova Condor modules, for air to ground attack and strategic transport/heavy bombing roles respectively. Mu crossed his fingers, figuratively speaking, hoping his brief delay with the two Eddies hadn't made him too late. He might be able to make the impossible, possible, but that didn't mean he could always make it likely also.

This time seemed to be one where he wasn't quite in the nick of time, as two of the Myrmidon heavy cruisers, the _Hoplite_ and the _Aegean,_ that were part of the regular geosynch fleet over Gibraltar, part of the _Monolith_'s task force, were already listing and in flames, large sections of their hulls either blasted open or sliced apart courtesy of the Lucifer, though it was a testement to the over-engineered functionality of the warships that despite the damage, both were still intact, unlike the older generation of Alliance type warships, which tended to go off like firecrackers doused in gasoline the moment you put an explosive or beam round through their hull! The two Myrmidons were definitely out of the fight, but damage control crews were plainly fighting to keep the ships from being abandoned, and as long as they didn't get strafed again by a certain Gundam, there was every chance they would eventually be able to return both ships to full operation!

Flocks of two person Moebius Sigma MA's, the modern descendants of the old Moebius Zero models, who used one person to pilot and handle the fuselage weapons, while the second acted as gunner-controller of the detachable gun-barrel pods, whirled and swarmed around the space, so thick in spots they actually had to slow down lest they fly into each other, the USN's great numbers actually working against them when they were facing only a single highly maneuverable foe that had already penetrated the outer defense perimeter of the conjoined fleets. Mu could see that the _Incarnate_ itself, the flagship of the whole Solar Protection Fleet, was slowly disengaging from the orbital anchor point along with its attendant escort vessels, abandoning the orbital bombardment point now that they were under close range attack from a Gundam. Mu felt like sneering, Icarus always had been a "personal safety first" type commander, who was always quick to bluster when the advantage was on his side, but quicker to go for backup when the scales became more even. Though actually, at the moment, perhaps a regrouping wasn't such a bad idea, with all the ships packed together to add weight of fire to the orbital bombardment, they couldn't respond effectively against a close range attacker without risking causing heavy damage through friendly fire.

At first Mu couldn't find the Lucifer, but then he saw the direction that the _Monolith_ and its remaining Myrmidon escort, the _Scythian_, were pouring their anti-MS firepower, and figured that Kira was likely somewhere within that maelstrom of beams, missiles and cannon shells. Knowing the Kid, he was probably cool as a cucumber too, despite being surrounded by enough firepower to render him into his component atoms a thousand times over in an instant. Burn scars on the vast surface of the _Monolith_, coupled with the lack of outgoing beam type weaponry from that particular ship, showed that at least one commander had realized that beam weapons were not only ineffective against an LCR armored machine, but actively harmful to yourself when used against Kira and his Fractal Wings. Figuring that Kira was probably working around towards the rear of the ship, where the engines were, traditionally the most vulnerable section of any space warship, other than the bridge. But nowadays, most bridges were buried deep in the heart of the ship, rather than exposed on the outer surface, so that really only left the engines. Blow those and a ship was basically dead in space, maybe even completely disabled depending on how intimately connected the engines and power reactors were.

He barely reached it in time, the Kid wasn't wasting any time, bare seconds after Mu had arced over the gigantic dreadnaught into its rear area, Kira turned the corner of the ship, below him and to his current right, putting the bulk of the ship between his Gundam and the supporting crossfire from the _Scythian_, giving himself a precious few seconds where he was all but invulnerable to the anti-MS weapons from both ships, since the oblong pyramidal shape of the Incarnate class didn't lend itself well to attacking directly to its rear. It could concentrate firepower to the front or sides with astounding efficiency, but it had a fat ass, and a wide shadow behind it that was basically unprotected. Thus the escort vessels, but the Myrmidon that would normally be covering the flagship's ass was burning and disabled. A pair of Armstrong class flak frigates were manuevering frantically to put themselves into position to drive Kira away, but the smaller warships wouldn't be in position for more than a minute yet, having to come completely around the_ Monolith_, from where they had initially been maneuvering to add themselves to the crossfire Kira had been in along its side.

A formation of Moebius Sigma's blitzed by at his current overhead, diving towards the dark, indistinct shape that was the Lucifer, VTP missile contrails sproating from their bellies followed by yellow linear cannon tracers from their nose guns as they tried to pin Kira down, but the Kid wasn't having any of it, and seconds later an interlocking cone of multicolored laser beams enveloped the incoming missiles, munitions and Mobile Armors, a quick series of firecracker explosions following and then there was only drifting, glowing orange rimmed pieces of wreckage. Mu remembered a time, long ago, when he'd first climbed aboard the Strike and was facing off against Kira in Morganroete's underground testing cavern, where the Kid had doubtfully said "_Are you sure you should be sparring with me so soon?_" or something of that sort. "Don't tell me what I can't do." Mu whispered with a faint echo of his usual devil-may-care grin. _Lets hope I do as well today as I did back then!_ Mu thought, as he willed the Firebird into a fierce dive, twinned 255mm linear cannons flashing, deploying missile after missile from his wing mounted VTP tubes. "Don't you ignore me, Kid!" Mu warned, determined to get Kia's attention.

"Go away, Mu, I have no desire to fight you right now, ever even." Kira replied, his tone leaden and dry. "I have too much respect for you and Ms. Murrue, but I will kill you if you persist in attacking me!"

"You just do what you feel you gotta do, Kid, and I'll do the same. You always did get so hung up on the whys and wherefores of things." Mu replied, with forced jocularity, as he watched Kira shred his missiles with precision shots from those two rifles of his, a single shot from which could seriously ruin just about anyone's day, regardless of their armor type or energy shields, so far as Mu had seen. _Just keep him talking... you don't have to beat him, la Flaga, just keep him busy long enough for those Armstrongs to arrive, and then he will be too busy to blow the shit out of this fat assed dreadnaught!_ His linear cannon shots deflected away harmlessly from the swirling swarm of Fractal Wing feathers that orbited around the Lucifer like electrons around an atom. _Right... think, la Flaga, THINK... missiles are a waste of time, and I'd have to use up an entire lifetimes worth of luck to tag him with a linear cannon shell as long as he's got those feathers orbiting around him, but nothing else I've got will hurt him... what to do, what to do... I've got my Phoenix Feathers, but I saw what he did to Athrun's, this is not good..._ "Though suddenly I am feeling an urge to sit down and talk things out, if you got to get something off your chest." Mu added, a bit lamely, as he came up with basically zip that he could do to stop or even distract Kira via force at the moment.

"Where was that urge when I was locked up in a mental institution for a crime I didn't commit?" Kira snarled back. "I had PLENTY to get off my chest then, but nobody came around to hear it, nobody but those damned psychiatrists, who only would have locked me up even more if I'd confided how I was really feeling then!" He sent a brace of ion disintegrator shots at Mu, who corkscrewed the Firebird away from the path of the twin shots, forewarned an instant before Kira pulled the trigger by that weird "knowing" sensation that often overcame Latents who were familiar with each other during times of high stress. Even with the instants warning, both shots passed closer to his fuselage than he found comfortable, and Mu circled around, giving himself plenty of room between himself and Kira, knowing that to pass close by in a strafing run was basically suicide. He kept firing back with his twin 255mm cannons, but each and every shell was either deflected away or absorbed by a feather with a Citadel or Positron shield surface.

"So we all fucked up on that one, yeah, we admit it. Much as I hate to say it, Kid, that's kinda how life is... remember, you guys weren't exactly all that friendly towards me after you recovered me from the Brotherhood, and I was freaking mind controlled at the time! But do you see me judging you guys for not welcoming me back with open arms, no matter how much it pissed me off at the time? Grow up some more, Kid, people make mistakes and sometimes you get to pay the price for it, it ain't fair but that's how life works sometimes!" Mu snapped in reply. _Where the hell are thosse warships already, goddamn it?_ "You really think that the Pink Princess would be proud of what you're doing right now? This kind of lashing out has never been something you've done in the past."

"Who cares what Lacus thinks, what she'd be proud of! She's dead now! I know she wouldn't care for what I'm doing, but that doesn't make it any less necessary! Haven't you all been privately wishing that I'd get over my grief and start getting back to life without her? Well, now I fucking AM, and you are all still giving me shit about it! Lacus is dead. My children are dead. Impressing them, pleasing them, making them proud... what's it even matter? The dead have no feelings, Mu, and they aren't here to deal with the problems of the present either! If I have to struggle under the burden of maintaining Lacus's expectations even after she's passed away, what about you guys, why don't you have to shoulder that weight as well? You think Lacus would be any prouder of what you guys are doing right now, supporting a totalitarian, genocidal dictator in his campaigns of extermination against a peaceful race that just wants to live their lives happily? Nice try, Mu, but I won't let you make me guilt trip over my actions... I've made my choice, and there is no looking back now!" Kira gushed angrily. "But you are right, Mu, about one thing. Life isn't fair. Sometimes it ends well before it rightly should, and there's no ryhme or reason for why. It's regrettable, but that's how life is, and finally, I think I'm really starting to understand and accept that."

And with those words, the Lucifer fired its four 100mm FRALA's once more, but instead of splitting the beams apart into a prismatic array of crisscrossing beams, this time Kira bent the beams so that they all focused together into slightly thicker, much more focused beam, which lanced outward and pierced the rear hull of the _Monolith_, the intense laser beam cutting through meters of ablative armor plate like it was made of granulated sugar, slicing deep into the engineering decks and energy storage banks that fed the massive engines of the Incarnate class ship, leaving orange rimmed holes in everything it touched, those that didn't instantly evaporate into steam and mist anyway. The initial loss of life from the FRALA beam itself was low, only a few dozen luckless sailors were sliced apart by the cutting action of the laserbeam, but when the destabilized reactors and power banks blew, milliseconds after being sliced in twain, nearly the entire rear third of the _Monolith_ blew itself to smithereens in a cataclysm of fire and molten shrapnel, the blastwave throwing the forward two thirds of the ship forward sharpely, the nose dipping as it encountered the friction of the upper atmosphere, digging in like a tire into loose sand as the entire massive ship hurtled forward, end over end, falling towards the hard ground so far below in an uncontrollable spiral.

Mu instantly lost track of the Lucifer, his whole attention captured by the awful spectacle of the partially destroyed Incarnate class falling uncontrollably into Earth's gravity well, the wreckage beginning to glow pink and orange as air friction began to act on the massive, blocky form, which even missing the back end was still easily eight hundred meters long and had to mass five or six hundred thousand tons! The prowess of the structural engineers was actually detrimental now, the ship was staying as a more or less single cohesive piece, rather than breaking apart into fragments that would more easily melt and burn up because of increased surface area. When something that big hit the ground at close to a thousand miles per hour, it would be only slightly less catastrophic than a very large series of nuclear bombs going off all at once! At first Mu thought to warn the Orb fleet of the imminent danger from overhead, but then his computer plotted the likely trajectory of the falling ship, and he realized it wasn't going to land within a hundred kilometers of the battle zone, though it was certain that the shockwave and dust clouds would still impact the battle itself!

Cursing himself for getting distracted, Mu yanked the Firebird around and dived towards the still slightly glowing dots of the drop pod formation, picking out the dark figure of the Lucifer diving towards them as well, now that the threat of orbital bombardment was nullified for the foreseeable near future. He poured on the speed, but it was looking like he might be too late once again... he hoped the others were having better luck than he was, because otherwise this was really starting to SUCK!

xxxx

**Below, on the rear outskirts of the Urbanis defense lines**

Initially, after breaking away from Yzak and Katie, with understandable misgivings, Dearka had been about to turn the Dreadnaught around and lend support to Yzak whether his often too proud friend wanted it or not, but before he could make that choice, he'd become embroiled in a ferocious battle against a trio of Eddie Dervish MS's that had seen one of their Executors in battle and had wandered over to see if they could help out. Dearka was almost cruel enough to just stand by and let them past, knowing Frost, he'd murder them all for even daring to interrupt his fun, much less presuming he actually needed help, but in the end, the risk that they might distract Yzak and Katie at a crucial moment shortly before their painful demise at the hands of their own champion was just too great, and so he and Miriallia had moved to engage. Or rather, he had moved and Miri had done most of the engaging, leaving him free to worry about avoiding enemy firepower, which actually wasn't that big of a concern since the Dervishes didn't mount much in the way of heavy ranged artillery, nothing that could overtly trouble the Dreadnaught's dual layers of Citadel Scales anyway.

Staying out of arms reach was another matter, those ginsu knives the Dervishes had, three to a fist, could cut even a behemoth of the Dreadnaught's stature down to size in short order. But despite seven years of peace, Miri was proving that her own combat skills had degraded only slightly, helped along by a healthy amount of aid from a special tasking of Lexi, only a little less powerful than the Quantum Nodes placed into the new generation warships, and while the AI couldn't actually fire any of the weapons on her own, she could correct Miri's aim and help her anticipate the motions of the enemy, for all that they were Ultimate Coordinators and she was "just" a Natural. One hell of a Natural, in Dearka's estimation. And could they agree from the afterlife, two of the three Dervish pilots would have had to added their stamp of approval as well, one of them brought down by a blizzard of hyper-impulse cannon blasts from the left arm gatling blasters, its strange wooden armor holding up against the first three or four, it being the next twenty that were problematic.

The "Baron" Lohengrin on the left shoulder had accounted for the second, the first shot screaming just a bit wide, scorching the right side of the enemy MS a dark black color but not overly affecting its abaility to fight. Obviously unfamiliar with the brand spanking new version of heavy Positron cannon, the Dervish had charged forward, thinking they'd just blown their load and would have to recharge before cutting loose once more, the dust and smoke and blastwave from the first shot still rumbling through the air. Imagine their surprise then, when barely a couple seconds later, another huge, blue and red and crackling green blast spit from the Lohengrin barrel, and spitted the Dervish right through the middle, completely vaporizing the MS in a nanosecond before continuing on, like the first, to splashagainst the eddie Citadel Shields protecting their defensive emplacements from overhead and side on attacks.

Cannier, cagier or just plain better than its two comrades, the third Dervish had become much more cautious in its attack plan, staying well to the right side of the Dreadnaught, so that the Gundam would have to move much more obviously to unleash the destructive power of its rapidfire beam weapons upon it. Miri had tried sniping it with the right shoulder mounted QC harpoon launcher, but after a trio of narrowly missed shots, the Eddie seeming to be a fraction of a second ahead of her even with Lexi's aid, Miri had decided to conserve the remaining harpoons, as that particular weapon system had a decidedly limited supply of ammunition. The range was too close for a shot from the Earthshaker, the backblast would damage them too, and that was just a single shell, much less the high speed barrage the Omega version was capable of spitting out!

A pair of hunter-killer missiles launched from the twin twenty tube VTP launchers built into the upper slopes of the Gundam's massive torso, but the Eddie actually dodged right between the paths of both missiles, getting right up into the Dreadnaught's face so that the turning missiles had to veer off, automatic safety overrides preventing them from returning within a hundred meters of their original launch mechanism, to prevent friendly fire accidents caused by highly maneuverable enemies. Dearka swung the right cannon-arm, the dual mono-blades that ran along the length of the cannon barrel glowing pink hot with channeled heat from the reactor, the blow much less ponderous than one might expect. Certainly less ponderous than the Eddie was expecting, as he had to throw up both of his arms at the last moment to avoid taking the blow directly across his torso. Even blocking with both arms, the weight and strength behind the blow physically ripped the QC claws out of their forearm mounts on the Dervish's arms, QC blades pinwheeling through the air like ice shards blasted from a block of carving ice. Dearka tried to follow up with a stomping kick, but that attack WAS pretty ponderous, because of the strain of putting all the Gundam's weight on one leg, and the Dervish jumped backwards, its arms ripped open from gauntlets to elbows.

Still facing the Dreadnaught, the Dervish had been blindsided by a volley of linear rifle and hyper-impulse cannon fire from the Orb Dawndrakes, coming to the defence of their heavy support, and Dearka was not too proud to be grateful for an assist, as the Eddie machine crashed over onto its side, most of the other side now little more than mist and stray molecules from the repeated impacts. Turning around, Dearka detected no sign of the Balmung or the Kratos, and he was forced to decide that Yzak's fate truly was resting in Yzak's hands alone, for the time being. With great reluctance, Dearka moved the Dreadnaught into the protective umbrella of the Orb warships and their M-7 CAP, slowly making their way towards the rear of the Eddie defenses. A quick AI conference later and the plan of attack was decided upon, the Dreadnaught and the _Dawnblade_ moving up to the fore of the fleet, while the three Defender classes spread out to cover the flanks and rear, contributing to the firepower of the main vessel with rockets and missiles rather than the more powerful but direct fire only weapons of their turrets.

Turning so that it was slightly side on to the target section of defenses, so it could bring all three of its secondary turrets as well as the primary dual Earthshaker Omega turret to bear, the _Dawnblade_ paused a moment as the operaters chewed on Lexi's firing solutions before determining them good. And then the air was riven into two, thundershocks reverberating around the entire battlefield, drowning out the near constant rumble of detonating artillery and missiles fired from the USN landships and MFB's that were still creeping towards the battle zone from just over the horizon. The _Dawnblade_ had three Baron Lohengrins, one to a secondary turret, plus an additional pair of 120cm linear cannons in each secondary turret, and they hammered the enemy shields in unceasing volleys, one of the huge rapidfire positron cannons always firing while the other two recharged, the linear cannons adding their huge shells as rapidly as they could be reloaded. Missile contrails bloomed from the upper surfaces of the turrets and the warships superstructure, joining hosts of other missiles fired from the Defenders, arrowing down on the belabored shields from on high. Most of the missiles were standard hunter-killers, but some were special shield penetrators, with QC tips, GP magnetic wrappers and extra powerful thrusters that allowed them to slam right through the shimmerying aqua domes, bursting their cohesion like soap bubbles!

The shield breakers had comparatively tiny warheads, to compensate for all the extra space used up by its propulsion and defense capabilities, but they were still big enough to blow a good sized hole in the ground where they landed, usually after diving a few meters into the soil, penetrating the mounded up dirt that served as the primary protective barricade guarding the actual shield projectors themselves, several of which were disabled by the nearby explosions, their capacitors already stressed to near overload state by absorbing the main positron and linear cannon barrage. The M-7's and the Dreadnaught added their own firepower to the barrage, overlapping Citadel Shields cracking and shattering and giving way beneath the unrelenting onslaught, the few weapon emplacements on this side of the defensive lines quickly blasted apart by Positron or hyper-impulse shots. The enemy lines convulsed, camouflage patterned militia Mobile Suits along with Dervishes diverting in large groups to combat this unexpectedly powerful threat.

This was the cue for the M-7's and the Dreadnaught to huddle close to the _Dawnblade_ and the Defenders, which brought up their own Positron shields, doming themselves in glimmering pink energy that absorbed the retaliatory firepower directed their way by the Eddie reinforcements. Safe from harm from pretty much anything other than FRALA's or other top end exotic weaponry, the Orb contingent was force to stop firing its own energy weapons as well. But thanks to a new system called "Hameya's Cunning", which could briefly wrap solid projectiles and munitions in a protective supermagnetic field, the linear cannons, missiles, 500mm monodisc launchers and most importantly, dual Earthshaker Omega artillery cannon, could all still easily fire out through the protective bubble of Positrons. Much to the constrenation of the Eddie forces, they found themselves battered and blasted by volleys of missiles, linear cannon rounds and half meter wide mono-sharp explosive discs that more often than not sheared entirely through one machine before detonating against an ally nearby! Pulling up in mild confusion, the Eddies started concentrating their firepower on the _Dawnblade_'s shields, determined to take down the main threat.

And that was when the bombardment from three fully automatic Earthshaker artillery cannons... one on the Dreadnaught and two on the _Dawnblade_... began, hurling six foot wide, explosive packed artillery shells at the rate of two per second per cannon, the incredible recoil actually driving both ship and Gundam slowly backwards, despite the former's thrusters and the latter's braced legs. Five seconds later the bombardment fire ceased, but after the coordinated impacts of thirty individually targeted Earthshaker shells, there wasn't much left of the area where the enemy had been, besides a HUGE crater, or actually, a bunch of smaller but still really big craters that closely overlapped each other. Clouds of dust, slagged dirt and chunks of Mobile Suit rained down across a several square kilometer area for the next hour and a half! And Orb still wasn't done, the _Dawnblade_ swung its bow back around to point at the heart of the Eddie defenses, disengaging the Positron shields, the M-7's spreading back out in a well choreographed exercise as they acted as dispersed CIWS type emplacements, driving back enemy MS and armor forces with coordinated volleys of linear and hyper-impulse fire, using their shoulder mounted gatling cannons to interdict missiles and heavy artillery cannon fire aimed towards the ship from deeper within the Eddie lines

And then the early morning sun was briefly drowned out in shades of cerulean and azure as the _Dawnblade_ opened fire with the prow mounted 735mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon, a seventy foot wide beam of compressed, super energetic exotic radiation spearing out from the nose of the battlecruiser to lance into the heart of the Eddie lines, plowing through Citadel Shields like they were barely more than wisps of gauze, sympathetic explosions rippling up from underground bunkers where overloaded shield systems finally gave up the ghost, geysering chunks of rock and sprays of dirt skywards in heraldry of the incoming radiation blast, which scoured a forty foot wide and twenty foot deep glass walled trench entirely through the Eddie defensive lines, starting a few dozen meters in front of the _Dawnblade_, and finally petering out some three or four kilometers out in the savanna to the Northwest, only a few kilometers wide and short of the encroaching USN ground forces. A momentary silence descended upon the battlefield, both sides shocked by the devastation wrought in such a short amount of time, all eyes drawn to the huge, reflective scar slashed into the ground.

And then a glow in the sky above, accompanied by a series of firecracker like explosions in the near upper distance, drew everyone's attention heavenward, towards the huge, half molten pyramid shape plummeting out of the sky, and, much closer, the rain of Solar Knight drop pods being systematically blasted to smithereens by the tiny dark form of the Lucifer Gundam! All of the momentum generated by Orb's smashing attacks was suddenly starting to waver, as the ruins of one of the USN's most powerful warships descened uncontrollably towards the hard ground far below, and the cream of the USN's military force were brutally murdered in their drop pods, helpless to even fire a shot in their defense. Or at least that was how it appeared to be...

xxxx

**Twenty kilometers to the Northeast of Urbanis, same time**

Rey had to admit, he was quite impressed, as usual, with the quality of the forces Orb provided. If only they could do something about their idealogical unstability, they could easily be the rose of the USN garden! Unfortunately, they did persist in their deluded visions of independence and questionable moral guidance, and so they could never be anything other than a weed. A highly useful weed, at times, but a weed nonetheless, and the fate of all weeds was eventually to be uprooted and thrown into the garbage! Rey could admit, to himself, if no one else currently around, that upon hearing of the destruction of the _Monolith_ and the subsequent withdrawal of the remaining orbital fleet by the overcautious Icarus, he'd began to despair of their chances to actually break this affront to Gil's dream! Yes, the land forces were still an extremely formidable force. But without the confidence granted by the overwhelming firepower of the orbital fleets, his troops would be much more hesitant in their attacks, rather than just pouring through in an unstoppable onslaught!

Thankfully, Orb's intercession had turned things around once more, though the sight of the _Monolith_'s wreckage hurtling down from orbit was definitely sobering. Thankfully the wreckage would not impact close enough to affect his own troops directly, though the dust and ash clouds from the explosion would soon be playing havoc with their long range sensors and targetic computers, meaning the end of the long range artillery barrage. It was time to get up close and personal with the Eddies, which was just where the much greater numbers of the USN forces would be put to best advantage, at nearly point blank range! And thus, it was just about time for the Solar Knights to make their appearance known, so they could lead the glorious charge to victory! Contrary to popular belief, even among the other branches of the allied force, the Solar Knights had not actually deployed to orbit for this operation, though Rey had gone to great lengths to make everyone think that. The first step to fooling the enemy was fooling your allies, after all.

But the Solar Knights were actually deployed on the ground, at a discrete distance from the main USN formations, under the cover of a platoon of specially modified Titan super heavy tanks, with all the weapon systems removed and replaced with faster motivation systems and large scale Mirage Colloid projectors, these "Shadow Titans" could project an all inclusive stealth and invisibility field over several square kilometers, and it was within this invisibility umbrella that the Solar Knights were massed, six entire regiments of Vindicators, at one hundred Vindicators per regiment, plus almost fifty Paladins, roughly two thirds of the total Solar Knight force on Earth, and about half of the total force period. Also included were his two pet trump cards, the Ruby and Crystal Knights, Knight-Champions Shinn Asuka in the Transcendance and Lunamaria Hawke in her custom Excaliber. Rey still felt the occasional twinge of desire whenever he thought of Luna, but thankfully, he was finally starting to feel "over" her, and he had no compunctions about sending her into the thick of the fray. The Extendeds were much better in bed anyway, they were so perfectly submissive when he wanted them to be. Submissive was never a term that could be applied to Luna, even when she was bartering sex for favors, she was never the submissive one.

Of course only the Solar Knights themselves knew where they were, and even then, most of the rank and file hadn't been told until just before the battle to maintain secrecy. The enemy would focus on taking out the drop pods as a matter of course, Rey had anticipated this as the logical course of action. Which was why his units weren't in the drop pods, instead the orbital descent craft were filled with either a mixture of high explosive and inflammatory bombs, or else jam packed with canisters of MAIDEN. The idea had been Natalia's, actually, to use the pods as more than just a diversion. By welding the pods shut from the inside after loading them with the bombs, the pods wouldn't break apart when they reached deployment altitude, instead they would continue to plummet at orbital velocity straight down into the heart of the enemy city and defensive works, dealing damage through kinetic force and then detonating with the force of small tactical nukes! The ones containing the MAIDEN were not welded shut, which meant they would still break apart at several thousand feet up, small explosive charges in their midst blowing open the MAIDEN canisters and spreading the nanite fog far and wide over the Eddie positions.

And the actions of Kira Yamato, in his oh so powerful Lucifer, were only hastening the blanket deployment of MAIDEN, as he blew apart several drop shells filled with the white nanites, releasing huge clouds of the ever hungry nanite destroyers that began sifting down over the cityscape below. The loss of some of the bomb laden drop shells was regrettable, but it was a quintiary form of a attack anyways, it wasn't like the plan relied on the drop pods actually doing any damage, they were just icing on the cake, one more factor for the Eddies to contend with. Speaking of which, now was the time! "All Solar Knight units, this is the Paladin Commander. You have your orders and now is the time to fufill your duties! All units, attack now! And don't stop as long as a single Eddie remains on their feet!" Rey ordered with a fierce smile, disengaging the Shadow Titan's stealth fields as the Solar Knights took to the skies en mass, their shadows darking the savanna beneath them as they swooped towards the fractured defensive lines of the enemy, led by the Paladins and the two Knight-Champions.

xxxx

**Urbanis Defense Lines**

"Have you ever wondered, Haman, that maybe we chose the wrong side in all of this?" Heine asked with a grim twitch of his lips that might generously be called a smile, as he surveyed the gargantuan hole that had been ripped clear through the center of the Urbanis defense formations by the Orb warship's main cannon. The actual trench it had carved was impressive enough, but the devastation extended far beyond the boundaries of that glassy scar, bow waves of tremendous heat and force having toppled Mobile Suits, flipped tanks and turned soldiers to ash if they were closer than about a third of a kilometer to the blast path and not shielded by dirt or Citadel energy. Just by themselves, the Orb forces had already disabled, destroyed or heavily damaged almost a quarter of the total Urbanis defense force, and the main attacking troops weren't even there yet! Just about the only bright spot in the whole fiasco was the lack of orbital fire raining down upon them, courtesy of Executor Yamato, and what a coup that was, to see one of the high and mighty super-dreadnaughts of the SPF reduced to little more than a dirtbound meteor!

The environmental damage was going to be brutal, equivalent to a medium scale volcanic eruption, but it wasn't anything the organisms of New Eden couldn't handle, Heine was sure of that. Lean times were ahead for Africa and Urbanis, but some belt tightening would see them through, assuming they weren't all killed by the end of the day! And the resulting ash and dust clouds from the impact would force the USN to cease their incessant artillery and missile bombardments, which were causing a steady drain on the condition of the defense forces as well, though it was minor compared to what Orb had done. No, the rest of this fight was going to be up close and personal, and while the USN had the numbers, Heine could not help but feel that the greater skill of the Edenites would start to tell in the chaos of melee. Executor Yamato's rampage among the Solar Knight drop pods was another thing in their favor, without their elite Mobile Suits, the USN would have no counter for the Praetorians and Dervishes at close range!

"Perhaps we did, but I wasn't going to stick around to be a lab rat for those Tree be damned FEAR wackos. You remember what they tried to do to us when we came back reporting for duty after Cape York!" Haman replied sourly. "Heine, my friend, they tried to tranq us and net us like a couple of escaped lions! We would have gone with them willingly, but they still felt they had to use force, thank the Tree, or else we probably never would have realized their intentions until it was much too late! Having seen what they do to the people they leave behind, I truly shudder to think of the fate of those they take with them, back up to space! The Great Satan itself could not be more cruel than they are! You and I would probably be having this conversation from one row of glass jars to the next if we'd kept our loyalty to the USN!" His sour frown quirked up into a small grin. "Besides, where would that leave the delectable Ms. Panner?"

"An excellent point as ever, Haman." Heine acknowledged, with a goofy, schoolboy grin. "This world would be such a dull place without our beauteous romance lighting it up. For that matter, Hector would be so bored without his favorite chew toy to torment, and I shudder to think of where... or who... that damn cat would turn his overaffectionate attention to if I wasn't there to distract him!"

"From the looks of things, he'll have plenty of the way in chew toys and scratching posts here soon." Haman noted, gesturing at the oncoming USN ground forces, only a few kilometers out from the defensive lines now, close enough for some of the heavier guns to open fire at extreme range, sending up gouts of fire and dirt from the ground, or else putting brief dimples in the slowly recovering Citadel Shields. Of course the movement of his arm, and his Wraith's arm, was completely invisible, since both Praetorians had their photo-refractor cloaks engaged, not wanting the enemy to know where they were located. But they were good enough friends, above and beyond the bond they shared as Praetorians, that neither of them needed eyes to really tell what the other was doing anymore. Haman eyed the approaching forces for a few more moments, splitting his attention between them and the rapidly falling streak of light that was the _Monolith_.

_Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Haman?_ Henine's voice whispered into his thoughts.

_If you are thinking that there is little point in just standing here like stumps and waiting for them to overrun us, then yes._ Haman replied, with a wolfish grin.

_Ah but Alex will be so incandescently angry if he sees us deviate from the battle plan he helped create._ Heine replied, with a mocking thought at their fellow Arboreal's pride.

_And this is a deterrent why?_ Haman answered, his grin stretching. _Alex is too pompous and stuffy by half, and after the beating Executor Frost gave him, he's been even more insufferable and insecure than usual. Serves him right for lacking the balls to do it himself. We Praetorians are defenders, but we are not defensive. We see a threat, we attack and eliminate it. The best defense is almost always..._

_A good offense, yes, my thoughts exactly. So shall we then, Zephyr?_

_By all means, Shooting Star. Led the way. Let us fall upon them with all the fury of the desert sandstorm, and flay the flesh from their bones before they can harm those we care about!_ Haman said eagerly, both of them gunning their thrusters and pouncing forward at the same time, Haman twirling his double ended QC glaive expertly around his body, while Heine raised his arms, leaving his broadsword and shield sheathed and stowed for the time being. Seconds later, divining his friend's intent, Haman too stowed away his dual glaive, slinging it carefully across his back as they prepared to wreak havoc in ways only the Praetorians could. With the photo-refractor cloaks active, they could not access either the ion disintegrator mounted upon their right arm, or the dual 20mm QC spike driver on the left, but the Wraith's had other options available.

Each finger could generate a claw-like blade of pure electromagnetic force, these EMP blades were intangible and thus could penetrate all forms of armor and most forms of shielding with ease, causing no physical damage, but great disruptive damage to anything electronic that wasn't extensively shielded, wiping memory cores, scrambling data flow patterns, and shorting out power feeds with just a casual swipe of the hand. Covering the shrinking distance between the enemy main force and the Urbanis defense lines in a matter of seconds, Heine and Haman blitzed through the ranks of the enemy vanguard, slashing out with both hands, leaving no marks of their passing save for suddenly nonfunctional tanks, their fire control and drive systems completely disabled by the EMP claws. While swiping with one claw at all of the unsuspecting vehicles around his knees, sidestepping the occasional tank that unintentionally tried to plow him down because the driver was unaware of his presence, Heine activated other systems built into his gauntlets and began pulling power straight out of the battery systems of the surrounding tanks, both those disabled and those still operational!

This was called the "Deathtouch" system, it allowed a Wraith to literally leech energy from enemy power supplies and weapon systems without having to physically touch them, it could affect anything within a hundred meter radius, draining batteries dry and even shutting down most vehicle class nuclear reactors, the Deathtouch was capable of draining up to a single Gigawatt of power at any given time, and most small nuclear reactors operated in the hundreds of megawatts range. All that drained power had to go somewhere though, and that somewhere was special capacitors in several locations around the Wraith's body, which, as Heine left a company's worth of Viking MBT's suddenly drained dry of juice, were now reaching their containment limits. A problem for which there was a simple, albeit dangerous solution... the "Odin Hammer" Point Blank Ion Storm Projectors. It was a somewhat similar system to the Mjolnir 3P cannons used by FEAR, an accelerated electrical bolt type attack, though where the Mjolnir spat a single high powered bolt, the Odin Hammer launched a myriad of less powerful bolts in an expanding sphere centered on the Wraith!

Warning Haman away with a thought, Heine skipped past the lines of Viking tanks and hurled himself bodily into the midst of the following formation of Titan superheavies before dropping his photo-refractor cloak and activating the Odin Hammer, sending a tide of coruscating blue-white lightning bolts searing outward in all directions from his body, like the center spire of one of those novelty plasma globes. The Titans were completely unprepared for his sudden appearance, and three of them were blasted into charred wrecks in a matter of seconds as the lightning bolts tore into their less well armored rears and sides. Other Titans that were further away, outside the destructive radius of the Odin Hammer, ground to surprised halts, as the seventy foot form of Heine's Wraith appeared as if by magic in the midst of their formation, but Heine had to give them credit, they reacted with alacrity, turrets whipping around like they were iron filings and he a powerful magnet, orienting on his position from all sides. Heine pre-empted their attacks by firing both of his arm mounted weapons, riddling one tank with 20mm holes from the QC spikes, and blasting another in half with a glowing red flare from the ion disintegrator.

And then two Titan's lost their turrets, as Haman appeared behind them, his dual glaive rotating around his body like a lawnmower blade, cutting the turrets free from the tank hulls with barely even a screech of sparks, before he shredded them both with a concentrated burst from his own dual QC spike driver, oozing rivers of dark red appearing from some of the thumb sized holes bored straight through the tanks, where the crew had been perforated in their seats. Both Praetorians leapt into the skies, as their old positions were blasted into molten slag by concentrated Mjolnir fire from the remaining Titans, but seven of the superheavy tanks were now destroyed, and the whole vanguard's advance had been slowed, as a small blockade of disabled Viking MBT's built up in front of the troops advancing from behind, who were forced to detour, bunching up in the process, or else try and nudge the inert hulks forward, with mixed success. More Mjolnir bolts pursued them both across the sky, but the purple-white bolts were relatively short ranged, and with both of them pouring all power into their thrusters, they quickly outranged the Titans.

They were just about to re-engage their photo-refractors in preparation for another marauding attack through the enemy ranks, perhaps penetrating past the vanguard and into the main body of troops transports and supprt Landships, when Heine was unexpectedly hit from behind by a pair of 155mm linear sniper rifle rounds, neither of which penetrated his Borealite armor, though they did leave small cracks spreading through the ornamental carvings of shooting stars on his back and jarred him forward, slightly off balance. Haman dodged a similar sniping attack by the barest of margins, his Latent powers warning him of the shots before Heine was even hit, but not so soon that he could warn his friend. Both of them whirled to see where the shots had come from, and could not help a slight flip flop of their guts when they saw the massed Solar Knights headed their way, rippling bursts of light showing where other long range weapons were hurling ordnance their way. There were hundreds and hundreds of the black and white and gold suits, so many they seemed to fill the sky!

_If those are the Solar Knights, and given my armor damage, they must be... WHO THE FUCK is in the drop pods?_ Heine complained angrily.

_We have bigger problems, Heine, my friend._ Haman interrupted him, pointing out two machines in particular with a mental flick of his head. One was a dark crimson and ruby red Excaliber. The other was a silvery-crystal colored Gundam with a huge two handed QC sword. The Vengeance, or the Transcendance as it was now known. The pilot of which was known to both of them. _Shinn does not look happy. And he is coming this way. I vote we do something about him and his girlfriend... past history aside, they are too dangerous to leave alone for long. Thankfully, I do not see any evidence of the AMP rifle in his possession._

_Cause they want to capture the city, not turn it into a radioactive crater._ Heine replied with a sardonic smile. He drew his QC broadsword and shield now, ready for the fight of his life. "Shall we then?"

"We shal... oh my Allah..." Haman broke off into a whisper, as, from apparent nowhere, the Kratos burst into the midst of the Solar Knight formations like a hungry eagle amongst a flock of canaries, the sonic booms of its ultrasonic arrival parting the ranks of the Solar Knights like a pair of invisible hands hurling them aside, Vindicators tumbling head over heels as they struggled to regain their balance before plunging to the ground, six of them not so fortunate, having been sliced apart or gashed into pieces by the Kratos's scythe and sword-claws before they even realized they were under attack. _How can he move so fast and still be so accurate? How can he even perceive his foes to strike them at such speed...?_

_He is an Executor for a reason. He is a monster, just like Kira, though a much less wholesome one._ Heine replied, in unabashed awe as Frost ripped into the Solar Knights with abandon, decimating their closely packed assault formations with his brute strength and speed, darting about so quickly he seemed more an edged blur than a solid figure. _I had seen some video footage of the Battle of Denver, but seeing such movements in the flesh... I do not like this feeling of fear, Haman, my friend._

_He is using the Seed..._ Haman noted, his voice flat with shock. _And so soon... does he not worry about becoming exhausted? Even the Praetorians cannot maintain Seed mode for more than a half hour at the very most! His fury is impressive, but can he maintain it long enough to make a difference?_

_Maybe he can. He is using Kira Yamato's body after all, a fully mature Edenite. Who is to say whether his Seed is as limited as ours is? For that matter, his body is like that of no other mortal, Lilia says he does not even seem to sleep or need rest, no matter how he exerts himself! His endurance might even be functionally limitless in some respects._ Heine answered contemplatively. _But regardless of whether he can or not, I say we follow his lead. Perhaps if we bloody their noses enough initially, they will be hesitant to continue onwards, giving our infantry forces more time to repair the defensive works!_ Heine made a mental effort, watching the gold veined orange seed drop through the vastness of his mental universe, feeling Haman likewise activate his seed nearby. Heine's eyes shifted to metallic lime green, and he smiled broadly. "Follow the Executor. Perhaps he will deign to leave a few scraps for the rest of us..."

xxxx

"HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST!" Shinn shouted, as the enemy Gundam cannoned into the Solar Knights ranks, scattering them like a tank shell would scatter bowling pins! The Venegance was buffeted by the sonic wash of the Kratos's approach, but Shinn managed to keep his balance and poise, thanking the long hours of training over the past few years for that. The comm channels broke out into surprised yells and screams and questions being shouted back and forth as the Solar Knights fought to retain cohesion in the face of the unexpected attack, but it was difficult to be composed when a rabid dog had its jaws ripping at your belly, and the Kratos was no less distracting or violent, everywhere it went, Mobile Suits exploded or fell earthward with huge gashes torn through them, or else sliced completely in half! Everyone was too bunched up to fight back effectively against such a melee oriented machine! "Shoot him, Luna!" Shinn directed frantically.

"I can't get a clear shot, there's too many of our own guys in the way!" Luna shouted back, equally frantically. "He's moving so fast..." She complained to herself. She'd been training against Shinn and other top end Solar Knights for years and years now, she thought she had a handle on the way NIC and FPR equipped machines could move, but this guy made everyone else she'd ever trained with look like they were moving in slow motion! How he could possibly attack in a coherent manner at such speed was incomprehensible to her!

"All units, spread out and commence individual action!" Rey roared over the command override channel. "Knight-Champions and senior paladins will engage the enemy Gundam, all other squadrons and junior paladins will continue onwards towards the main objective! Clear the area, do not attempt to engage this enemy unless directed. Don't get hung up on one suit, even a Gundam, we have a whole city to pacify down there!"

"Incoming large heat signatures." The cool, detached female voice of Namara whispered in Shinn's ear, causing him to flip around in time to see the two Praetorian elites that had been tearing up the ground forces were now headed towards the disorganized Solar Knights, to support their Gundam.

"This is the Crystal Knight, I have two enemy elites inbound to support their Gundam, diverting to delay and destroy them." Shinn called to Rey, as he shifted his grip on his sword and launched himself towards the two inbounds.

"This is Ruby Knight, moving to support Crystal Knight against enemy elites." Luna added a moment later, zipping along in his wake, juking out to the side to clear the line of fire for her Gram superpentrating launcher.

"Damn it! Shinn, Luna, we need you against the Kratos!" Rey protested hotly, even as he took aim at that machine with the 150mm Rapidfire FRALA his Excalibur carried instead of the usual left arm carried combination flamethrower and anti-armor shotgun. The blue-white beam of light seared across the sky, but cut only empty space, the Kratos already long gone from that position, moving with such speed that Rey could barely even keep track of it, its position indicator on his screens more like a streak than a dot! He cut loose with the 155mm heavy machine gun in his right hand, spitting a stream of orange tracers at where he hoped the Kratos would soon be, as the Vindicators he was slaughtering slowly spread out and diverted their courses away from the fracas. Rey's guess wasn't too far off the mark, but his firepower was negated by the pink shimmer of Positron shields deployed from the Kratos's wingtips. All his attack had done was gain the attention of the monster in the crimson and grey Gundam, the Kratos resolving from a blur to stare insolently across the sky at Rey. His FRALA finished its cooldown process, and Rey commanded the weapon to fire once more.

The Kratos did not dodge the shot, it just interposed the blade of its scythe, the QC material blocking the laser beam without melting, a contemptuous move that was all the more amazing for its audacity, and Rey felt a sudden looseness travel down his bowels as he realized that he was well and truly outclassed by the Gundam pilot, as the Kratos slowly lowered its scythe and glared across the space between them, its black visor glowing with malice. Thankfully, before the Kratos could exterminate Rey, other Paladins arrived, firing their shotguns and machine cannons, or else charging forward with QC longswords drawn to engage the Kratos directly.

Suddenly feeling far too exposed out here on the front lines, Rey turned his back and withdrew towards the main USN ground force, where he would be surrounded by his own bevy of supersoldiers, the Extendeds in their Panzerwulfs and Panzerdragoons! Definitely a better location to direct the flow of battle from. Maybe Icarus had the right idea there. As Supreme Commander, he was too important to risk on the battlefront, no matter how glorious it might be. He might have been able to get away with playing at being an Ace when he was younger, but now that he was more mature, he had to deny himself that pleasure and concentrate on more intellectual methods of waging war. Subordinates existed for a reason after all, to make those sacrifices required to advance the overall strategy.

Shinn, meanwhile, had charged directly at the two Praetorians, swinging his sword in a wide horizontal sweep designed to bifurcate them both, though both had dodged, splitting up wide to come at him from both flanks. Shinn turned to address the one with the dual bladed polearm, trusting to Luna to keep the one with sword and shield occupied until he could spare the attention to deal with it. true to expectations, a roaring column of incinerated air passed between him and the sword bearing Praetorian, following the path of the superfast rocket projectile, forcing the Eddie to abort his attack swoop as he turned to address Lunamaria. Taking one hand from his sword, Shinn blocked a barrage of QC shards fired from the left arm of his opponent, extending the QC claws on that hand's fingers and swiping at the Praetorian as they closed to melee range. The Praetorian was savvy though, and blocked his attack, forearm to forearm, while thrusting forward with his dual glaive, aiming for Shinn's lower torso. Shinn swept that attack aside with his sword, and snapped his wings forward, under his arms, pummeling the Praetorian backwards with a dual hammer blow from his wingtip positron shields.

His followup slice with the sword though was parried by the haft of the Praetorian's polearm, crystal grating against crystal as the two machines shoved at each other, about equally matched in terms of pure strength. Shinn was forced to disengage though, when the Wraith turned its right wrist and fired a glowing red flare from the special cannon mounted thereon, only a lucky duck of his head prevented Shinn from losing that appendage to the ion disintegrator shot. Knowing that his positron shields were of no use against that weapon, Shinn kept himself juking back and forth as he faced off with his opponent, finding the challenge unpleasantly difficult, no, indeed he was actually outmatched at the moment, on the defensive even. If he was having this much trouble, then Luna, bless her heart, was going to need some backup of her own here shortly. There was nothing for it, Shinn concentrated and called forth his red rage, that crimson Seed in his thoughts that filled his universe with fire and power when it detonated. Shinn moved to attack, only a screamed warning from Luna causing him to abort and dive for the ground a few hundred meters below, just barely in time to avoid being executed by the sweep of another gigantic QC zweihander, wielded by a third Praetorian that had uncloaked only a second prior, directly behind him.

The two Praetorians seemed to hold a momentary conference, and then the one with the twin glaive headed off, towards the fracas around the Kratos, leaving Shinn with a new opponent, who saluted sardonically with a dip of his own greatsword. Plainly this guy, whoever he was, thought pretty damned highly of himself, challenging Shinn so brazenly, even to the point of demurring the choice to attack him with an ally's aid. "All right then... you want me, you Eddie piece of shit? You got my attention." Shinn snarled, flourishing his own sword back, drawing it up over his shoulders, and hurling himself up at the Praetorian. Their swords meet with a screech of crystal and a shiver that slammed through both of their arms. Over the course of the next several seconds, their swords met a half a dozen times, each time the blades clashed together impotently, unable to find purchase or weakness upon the structure of the other. One might even have called them equally matched, as they chopped at each other, twilring round and round in midair, fury of equal magnitude consuming them both, utterly blanking out the rest of the battle raging around them, ignoring even the rushing tide of USN infantry vehicles speeding by below them.

It was only when the wreckage of the _Monolith_ finally made planetfall, some one hundred fifty kilometers to the south, that they managed to blink the hate and rage from their eyes long enough to brace for the vortex-like winds to come...

xxxx

**Below, inbound to Urbanis Outer Defense lines**

"This is total bullshit!" One of the newer soldiers sitting towards the front of the Gladiator hollered, the fear pungent in his voice, as the Gladiator shrieked and groaned and shuddered around them, the tires digging stubbornly into the dirt as the hurricane force winds whipped at them, dragging the heavy IFV sideways for several meters. All around them, other Gladiators were likewise slewing and swerving as they fought for traction and control against the sudden winds from the colossal impact-explosion that marked the final death of the massive Incarnate class dreadnaught, more than a hundred klicks away, the blast overpressure traveling the distance at well over eight times the speed of sound, a solid bubble-wall of air that was just starting to peter out when it struck Urbanis and the fighting around it, upending smaller vehicles like they were tumbleweeds, and sliding the heavier vehicles and Mobile Suits around like toys. Dust immediately choked the air as the blastwave passed on, causing some of the Chariot APC's to break down, their engines snuffling in protest as their air intakes clogged shut.

"It's not over yet!" First Sergeant Blundquist roared, seeing men start to relax their grips on the roll bars and emergency restaints buckling them into their seats. "That was the overpressure wave, the backflow is yet to come!" He shouted at them, referencing all those hundreds of thousands of tons of air rushing back to fill the blast vacuum created by the explosion, like water into a hole, and indeed, moments later the Gladiator was screaming and shivering once more, as it was dragged back towards its original position, the entire vehicle shuddering as the wind got beneath it and tried to flip the entire vehicle like a poker chip! Thankfully the backflow wasn't quite as strong as the initial blastwave, and the Gladiator tipped only a little bit before settling back down onto all eight tires. A few seconds later, Blundquist slowly relaxed his own white knuckled grip on the overhead handles. "Sound off." he ordered his troops.

"Rico, green." Ryan replied with a confident smirk he only half felt, indicating that he was unharmed and still fully mission capable, gently stroking the stock of his Mauler LSG in an unconscious reassurance reflex he'd picked up after the debacle at Porta Panama. Events which were sworn to absolute secrecy, pain of death sort of deal, but just because he couldn't ever talk about them didn't mean he didn't have to think about them himself!

"Spyro, green." Meyer said next, patting himself down, adjusting the hang of his flamethrower as he pursed his lips and carefully drew one of the cig's he'd stored in the lip of his helmet faceplate out with a contortion of his lips and tongue that many a not so ladylike lady might have swooned to see. Smoking inside a sealed armor suit was not only against regulations, but dangerous to your health to boot, not that Meyer really gave a shit about either. Especially not in the wake of the total mindfuck that was Porta Panama! The Top tolerated his infractions because he knew that Meyer was a damn good soldier, no matter his irregularity, they'd forged a pretty strong bond during the shitstorm at the top of the logistics-admin tower, for all that the entire thing had been a delusion caused by some godlike psychic entity! Meyer tried not to think about that, as he bit down on the filter end of his cig, activating the self lighting feature, a chemical reaction inherent to modern cigs that removed the need for a lighter, pressure on the filter end caused the tip to ignite, and from there, airflow did the rest.

"Jeebus, green." Answered Charles, the remaining member of the team from the logistics-admin fiasco, who had earned his nickname after complaining about getting the "heebie-jeebies" during the aftermath debriefing by the top brass. That had been Charles's first taste of real combat, and one hell of a kick in the figurative jaw, he'd almost failed his psych eval for continued active duty, but a few favors from the Top got the results smudged the right way, and kept the squad intact. After Porta Panama, Charles had ditched his Cutlass and replaced it with a Falchion, the squad level medium machinegun version of the LAR, still in the 5mm caliber, but capable of firing a lot more rounds a lot faster and a lot farther.

"Dud, green." Said Dudly, freshly returned to active duty from his stint in the hospital after nearly dying from the BBB's pincer strike. The injury had changed Dud, in more than just a physical manner, though the massive scar on his side and torso was nothing to sneeze at either. He was more serious now, more quiet as a result of his brush with death. Much more focused too, he no longer was apt to forget to arm his grenades before throwing them, though his nickname was there to stay. Dudly had actually taken on the role of squad grenadier, swapping away his Cutlass for a rotary cylinder grenade launcher and anti-armor RPG launcher strapped across his back, plus plenty of more throwable explosive devices.

The roll call continued down the Gladiator's infantry compartment, with most results coming out green, and one amber, from the soldier who had initially complained, who had vomited into his suit and was having trouble clearing his faceplate to see. He was gonna have to make do somehow though, the Glad wasn't airtight, and so cracking a helmet seal was out of the question. Only one person in the compartment didn't respond to the Top's question, and that was the big dark skinned motherfucker that had attached himself to their squad more or less out of the blue. No one quite knew what his deal was, he wasn't wearing Surivor armor, nor even a filter system over his face, but so far, not even the Top had the moxy to ask the guy what his deal was. Some of that was that the guy was huge, with bulging muscles, toting a squad support beam cannon and associated power packs like it was little more than a Cutlass, and some was the natural squad reticence towards messing with outsiders. Long as he didn't cause any problems, who really gave a fuck what he did or what he was called?

The chatter of the twined 30mm linear autocannons mounted on the turret above them echoed down into the troop compartment, as the Glad crew opened fire on some sort of foe or enemy emplacement, though when the Top jacked his helmet systems into the IFV data feeds, he saw only swirling smoke and dust from the warship explosion, with a few nearby indistinct shapes that were probably other Gladiators and Chariots. Nobody had any idea how close they were to the enemy lines, nobody could see anything past a few meters to the front and sides, the only upside to the whole situation was that the Eddies probably couldn't see shit either. At least, that was the theory, until a nearby explosion buffeted their Gladiator, a blue-red plasma beam spearing out of the chaotic darkness to rip a molten hole right through the middle of a Chariot, incinerating the squad inside in a heartbeat. A lucky shot perhaps, but the following string of explosions, near and far, proved that the Eddies were more than just lucky, somehow, perhaps using their psychic-magic shit, they could still target accurately through the pea soup of debris filling the air!

"Right then, fuck this shit." Blundquist decided, speaking loudly so the whole squad could hear. "The Glad is great as far as tin cans go, but its still a goddamn tin can, and I ain't looking to meet my end as a toasted sardine in a can!" He switched to the vehicle intercomm. "Thanks for the ride gentlemen, but this is our stop. We'll go the rest of the way on foot. No offense, but this thing is a goddamn death trap right now." He informed the driver and vehicle commander, and then reached out a palm and slapped the manual release for the egress ramp. A loud "CLUNK" sounded from outside, but the ramp failed to drop. Blundquist frowned and slapped the manual release several more times, each time generating that clunk and no motion, and he was forced to conclude the mechanism was somehow jammed, perhaps by airborne debris of some sort. Shit like this wasn't supposed to happen to military vehicles, but all the same, it often did. "This sucks." Blundquist muttered quietly.

"Want me to blow it open, Top? I'm pretty sure I got an implosion type bomb somewhere in here." Dud volunteered, searching through the grenades and bombs fesooning his equipment harnesses.

"Thanks, but no thanks, Dud." Blundquist replied quickly, before his subordinate could find said device, if indeed he had one. "Setting off any kind of explosive in an enclosed space should be an emergency measure only. Now, if you got some detcord or burncord, we could use that and just melt the hinges right off." Top suggested, referring to the ropelike putty that was used to string together large groups of explosives, or to cut through critical support structures without causing undue blast damage to an area."

"Allow me to propose a simpler method, First Sergeant." The beefy black man volunteered, his voice managing to appear on their helmet comms even though his mouth wasn't moving. So he was seriously augmentic then, perhaps even a cyborg! No one had ever seen anyone with a full cyborg body just yet, the expense of such a prsothetic would be astronomical, but the idea did have undeniable military applications. The man stepped forward, a plate hinging upward out of his left arm, revealing a projector like device buried in the plastiflesh and synthetic muscle beneath, and Blundquist noted with some disquiet that the guy was black on the inside as well, not even pretending to have his internals look like human flesh and blood, just black insulation wrapped wires and tubes and blackened steel bones. A bright yellow blade of magnetically contained plasma extended from the arm projector with a rasping hiss of water vaporizing out of the air, in tune to a whistle of appreciation from Meyer, as the cyborg stepped forward and used his beam saber to cut open the armored door with four quick cuts of his arm.

One heavy boot to the center of the door later, and the armored portal was knocked clear of the back of the Gladiator, so far that it actually disappeared into the haze of dust before Top saw it strike ground, a heavy dent in the rolled metal plate where the cyborg's foot had impacted. "You're a useful sort of guy." Blundquist complemented the stranger, holding out his arm in a quick handshake. "First Sergeant Henry Blundquist, pleased to meet you."

"Mechael Smith, ICMS." The dark skinned man replied with a wide grin, carefully taking Blundquist's hand so as not to crush it. "Independent Cyber-Mechanical Soldier." He extrapolated, seeing the questioning look in the human's eyes. "Prototype next generation supersoldiers." He added, when the first explanation didn't seem to enlighten much. "I'm the guy that Rambo has wet dreams about being like."

"Well, glad to have you along then, Mechael. That is, assuming you are coming along?" Blundquist asked, as the rest of his squad rapidly un-assed from the back of the Glad, sprinting away fromthe vehicle in alternating right and left sequence, before dropping to the blast scoured ground and wriggling forward on their bellies for maximum cover.

"Well, I ain't technically in your chain of command, First Sergeant, but since I'm currently not allowed in my Gundam for private reasons, you could say I am at your disposal. I asked for the toughest, most experienced squad of Eddie killing motherfuckers in the whole task force, and you guys got pointed out, so I thought I'd hang with you guys, see what comes of it." Mechael replied with a shrug, the beam saber folding back into his arm as he hefted his beam cannon in both hands. "Guess what I'm saying is, lead the fuck on, Sarge, and devil take the hindmost!"

"Good enough for me. Stick close, Mechael, and lets go get stuck in so we can go home and get blasted on expensive booze." Blundquist replied with a wide smirk, hefting his Cutlass and dropping down into a low crawl at the head of his squad, which was far from the only one to go dismounted from their transports, which had slowed to a crawl now that the ash and dust clouds were blocking all vision and most forms of sensors. It was slow work, crawling along on their hands and knees and bellies, but whenever a blue-red or bright green plasma bolt would sizzle by overhead, at what would normally be head height, Blundquist knew it was much better to be slow than fast and dead! By his guestimation, there were at least three, maybe four Eddie anti-armor teams dug in somewhere up ahead, two with the hyper-impulse guns that could peel open a MBT like a soup can, and one with a more rapid firing regular beam gun like the one Mechael was toting, that could still do a number on the type of armor APC's uusally had, but was more tuned for anti infantry operations.

"Dud, put a marker smoke grenade down at twenty five, fifty and seventy five meters if you would. Red, blue, green." Blundquist ordered, having the rest of the squad stop as Dudly loaded and launched the three requested grenades at the determined distances. Even though they could only barely make out the bright red smoke from the nearest marker, and nothing at all from the other two, by following this line they could at least judge how far they had traveled whenever they passed a marker grenade. "Everyone, pass a single marker grenade of random color to Dud, we're gonna do this all methodical like." Blundquist added, before turning to a private channel between him and Mechael. "That is, unless you can see through this shit well enough to direct us?"

"No dice, sarge, sorry. I got three different vision modes, four if you count normal vislight, but there's so much crap in all this dust, and a lot of it hot, it all looks the same no matter what mode I use." Mechael replied regretfully. "I could go scout forward if you like though." He volunteered, his skin shifting pattern and coloration to take on the appearance of swirling dust, a much more realistic mimicry than the adaptive paint on the soldier's Survivor armor could manage. "Not only can I hide from their eyes, but I'm also invisible to their mental powers." Mechael bragged, with a little hesitant shrug of modesty afterward.

"Naw, but thanks for the offer. Basic tactics say that its never a good idea to split the squad if you don't have to. We'll do this the old fashioned way, one motherfucking meter at a time!" Blundquist replied, glad for his sealed suit, since it meant he didn't have to worry about breathing in all the dust and crap in the air, which might even include a portion of the ash of the crew of the dreadnaught warship! As it turned out, they were just getting close to the green smoke flare when a volley of beam fire lanced into the crawling squad, blowing smoking holes in two of the soldiers, one in the head and the other in the leg, the sheer trauma shock of the injury killing him through cardiac arrest before he could even scream! More beams flashed by at ankle height, and Blundquist determined that his squad had been noticed and was being taken under fire. He squinted, searching for the source of the incoming fire, and just barely made out a muzzle flash of dark green light about fifteen meters away, point blank range under normal situations, but it might as well be ten times as far in this shitty conditions! "Eleven o'clock, fifteen, beam cannon, three or four!" Blundquist shouted along the squad comm, enlightening the others as to the direction, distance, armament and projected number of enemies he'd sighted.

"Two o'clock, twenty, H-I cannon, five or six!" Rico called back a few moments later, calling in a sighting of a heavier gun nest off to their right and a bit further on.

"Jeebus and all odd numbers, put some covering fire on the BC position, Spyro, toast em while their heads are down! Dud, I want you to RPG those fucks with the H-I cannon! Rico, Mechael, you give him covering fire!" Blundquist rapped out the orders, using his Cutlass to fire short bursts of rounds aimed at the beam cannon bunker to his left, hopefully forcing the operaters to duck and keep their heads down.

"Top, all I got is anti-armor warheads!" Dud called back, even as he got to his knees and unslung the launcher tube from his back.

"Screw it, hit em anyway! An RPG is a goddamn RPG." Blundquist snarled back, risking a rise to a one knee firing position as Charles got his bipod mount set up and began sweeping a hail of 5mm linear rounds across the BC position, chewing away at their sandbags and dirt mounds. The crew of the H-I position finally seemed to notice them, perhaps because of the beam blasts and mauler LSG shells whistling through their position, and the huge gun was beginning to swing their way to annihilate them when Dud fired his RPG, and the entire position disappeared in a large flash of smoke and fire, followed seconds later by a much larger explosion of red-blue crackling plasma from the ruptured power supply and feeding chamber for the H-I cannon. The low roar of liquid fire tumbling through the air came to his ears next, followed by the disturbingly sweet sound of men screaming in horrible agony as the fire flowed down into their dugout and engulfed them, turning them into instant torches. Goddamn, but Meyer was a master with that flamer...

Blundquist waited a few moments after the BC power supply went up like a clutch of grenades, but the squad came under no further fire from other positions, so he deemed it was safe to continue onwards, having some of the squad recover weapons and grenades and ammo from their fallen comrades, and sticking a time delayed GPS beacon next to the bodies, so they could be recovered for the honor of a military funeral after the battle. While the squad moved on under Rico's direction, Blundquist diverted himself to the site of the H-I cannon, to find Mechael already poking around the blasted and half melted bodies and wreckage of the position. Blundquist crouched and ran his gloved fingertips along the charred edge of one Eddie's breastplate, which was made of some kind of superstrong wood, even standing as close to the breached H-I cannon as this guy had been, his armor was still intact, and if he'd been wearing more of it, so too might he have been, a sobering thought indeed!

"Contact, one o'clock, twenty, infantry, nine or ten." Rico suddenly called out, and he didn't wait for Top to run up and make the call. "Spyro, put a wall in front of em. Dud, frags to their rear, and Jeebus, mow those sorry bastards down ASAP." Ryan added, having Meyer hose the flamethower back and forth in front of the advancing Eddie squad, who seemed to be wearing camo-jackets rather than the bulkier armor of the Eddie mainline infantry, while Dud dropped grenades behind them, catching some that tried to turn and withdraw after being greeted with a wall of napalm, before a long burst from Charles put most of them down in screaming huddles. A second pass of Falchion fire, and another frag from Dud, and Ryan was satisifed that the Eddies were really dead and not just faking.

"Nicely handled, Rico, keep it up." Blunquist commented the young man, who was definitely shaping up into a promising junior NCO. The remaining squad skirted wide around the sputtering remains of Meyer's fire wall, Blundquist once more detouring to inspect the dead Eddie squad, always on the lookout for any scrap of usable intelligence for later. These latest Eddies didn't have the wooden armor, and they were carrying assault rifles, chemical powered guns from the armories of the USN prior to the Eden Disaster, making him think they were likely reserve troops or militia and not professional soldiers. The way they had been cut down by Rico's ambush, without even firing back, also reinforced that conclusion. Easy victories were always the best kind, but Blundquist couldn't help but wonder how things would go if and when they ran into more of the enemy elite infantry.

A question he got an answer for much sooner than he wanted, as only twenty or so minutes further on, after two more successful traveling ambushes of militia troops, and taking out another dug in H-I position, Blundquist's squad, by then joined by three other squads from various companies and under the loose command of a Lt First Class named Yorgus, finally breached the outermost defensive line and found themselves facing the second Eddie line, under the roof of a shimmery aqua blue Citadel Shield, the dust and debris much reduced here because of the shield blocking out the worst of the wind storms. They were gathered in the trenches they had just cleared, waiting for a few more squads the Lt thought were nearby to connected up with them, as well as a few vehicles to home in on the guidance beacon the Lt was carrying. They already had a scout humvee, with a dual .50 caliber mount on the roof, but the Lt was looking for something a little beefier to use as a moving wall.

Blundquist used the time while waiting to check over his squad, making sure they were all okay and not zoning out or stressing out. Nobody was, though Meyer was looking a little green in the face from when he'd swallowed his cig whole while diving for cover, though he was doggedly lighting up another now that they had a moment to spare. Blundquist smiled and shook his head, risking a peek over the lip of the trench towards the expanse of the enemy's second defense line, which was about a hundred meters away, across a mostly open field that just screamed "MINEFIELD" to his eyes, leading up to a three meter palisade of hardened dirt with concrete reinforcements and several heavy weapon nests in sandbags and camo-netting on top. It was hard to make out with just his helmet magnifiers, but Blundquist thought he could make out at least a couple heavy, .50 cal type MG's and some sort of multi-barreled rocket launcher. Tall figures in the ornate helms and breastplates of Eddie elite infantry stalked along the palisade top, and there looked to be at least twenty of them. The moved with total disdain for the concept of snipers, but given that armor, it would take a damn good shot to put one of them down at this range!

Finally a trio of Gladiator IFV's rolled up, two armed with the dual 30mm linear autocannons, and the third with a 105mm linear cannon, and the Lt gave the order to advance in dispersed formation behind the vehicles, chewing away at the enemy fortifications with the autocannons while the big gun spoke much more slowly, targeting the gun nests, landing a spectacular first shot that took out the rocket launcher and its staged ammo supply, an explosion of fire and more fire that reached almost thirty meters into the sky, and knocked Eddies flying in a ten meter radius. Damnable thing was, most of them got right back up again, and soon a veritable storm of thumb thick green plasma bolts were sleeting towards the Glad's, melting runnels in their armor as the personal beam rifles slowly began to dig through the IFV's rolled armor plate. The Glad's responded as one, launching volleys of direct-fire anti-armor rockets at the Eddie palisade, a total of twelve rockets in under ten seconds, blasting the defensive work into gravel and glassy dirt. The USN soldiers let out a cheer, but it was strangulated in mid voice when an Eddie MS, a converted Strike Dagger JAWs (Jet Assist Wings) painted in the brown, tan and olive colors of the militia, landed behind the devastated enemy line.

The Glad with the heavy cannon rapidly switched to targeting the MS, even as the other two loosed their remaining rockets in a desperation bid to take the MS down, but with a twist of its hips and torso, the MS avoided the unguided rockets and the shot from the 105mm cannon, returning fire with its own 57mm beam rifle, blowing big holes in the lead Glad and the one next to it as well. A third shot disabled the treads on the last Gladiator, though the twinned 30mm autocannons continued to burst out rounds, most richocheting fruitlessly from the thick armor of the MS. But apparently the enemy MS didn't have time to stay and play, for it was leaping off into the sky a moment later, already concentrated on some greater threat off to their left flank. Blundquist slowly rose from where he'd thrown himself down to hopefully avoid the notice and wrath of the Eddie MS, since there wasn't a whole hell of a lot infantry could do against those death machines, not face to face anyway. And that was when he saw the incredible occur, as the surviving Eddies rose from their own positions of cover and charged at the USN force advancing on their ruined position, many of them waving swords and axes and strange clubs as well as their guns.

For a moment, Blundquist was seized with the crazy urge to call out "fix bayonets!" and order a counter charge, which would only be sporting. But the crazy urge quickly passed, perhaps the result of an Eddie trying to influence his mind, but after the experience in Porta Panama, he wasn't so easily duped as that, though he could see from the actions of some of the newer, greener troops that not all were so well inured, judging from the way they started forward with knives and digging tools in hand. "HOLD YER POSITIONS!" Blundquist screamed, startling the men out of their near trance state. "Get into cover, all heavy weapons start fucking these crazy bastards up! That means you, Dud, Jeebus, Spyro! Don't let em get close to us!" He put action to words, throwing himself down onto his belly and firing careful three roun bursts at the encroaching Eddies, who's armor was carved into the shape of some sort of steer-armadillo crossbreed, not an emblem he was familiar with. They all had big horns on the sides of their helms, and many sported heavy cloaks of thick grey hide, which seemed to be pretty good armor in addition to dramatic flair, judging by the way they staggered when they took fire, but generally continued onward unabated!

The Glad canted its weapons downward, and began to blast gaping holes in the line of charging Eddies, the 30mm shells quite able to penetrate the armor of the Eddies, especially at close range, but then the Eddies unveiled their own tank, actually a living member of their emblem clan, a huge cow like being with thick plates of grey armor all over its body and two gigantic, wickedly pointing horns on its head, easily as big as the Gladiator, if not bigger, which charged out of a hidden kennel built deep into the ground beneath the former barricade and came at the Gladiator, snorting and fuming with obvious rage at the territorial infraction the Ironhide bull perceived, courtesy of its Eddie handlers. Ironhides were kind of fire and forget weapons, once you started their anger off, they rapidly became uncontrollable, but they were great shock and awe disruption weapons nonetheless, and almost impossible to kill with infantry weapons. A fact the Glad crew found out to their brief dismay, when the 30mm cannon shells just sort of deflected off the frontal hide plates of the charging behemoth, and even an anti-armor rocket only knocked the thing staggering for a moment or two, before it came on again, twice as mad as before!

Ironhide met Gladiator with the ring of punctured armor plate, as the Ironhide's horns met the Gladiator's glacis and tore through like it was wet tissue paper, shredding the crew in their seats and actually slewing the whole IFV around almost ninety degrees with a twist of the beast's head! The impact stunned the Ironhide, a common occurence during mating season, when the bulls would slam their heads together so hard it was not uncommon for even the winner to walk away with brain damage, but it was quick to recover from the trauma, snorting and blowing loudly as it looked around for other intruders. Dud fired an armor piercing RPG directly into the beast's leg, but the hide was barely even pockmarked after the explosion cleared away. Mechael stepped up, his beam cannon blowing charred holes in the animal's armored hide, but the pain only seemed to madden the Ironhide yet further, and it came bulling at Mechael with every intention to trample him flat!

Rather than turning his back and fleeing, Mechael tossed his beam cannon well aside, so that it wouldn't get trampled and destroyed, and deployed the beam saber from his left wrist once more. A quick side to side slice sheared off one of the Ironhide's horns halfway down its length, as Mechael threw himself to the side at the last moment, hitting the ground on his side and slicing backhand at the Ironhide's right fore and hind limbs as they thundered by him, barely a half foot away, the yellow plasma blade searing deep through stony hide and muscle, through sinew and into bone as Mechael hamstrung the beast's right legs, which collapsed under the weight of the animal after only one more stride, spilling it to the ground with a tremendous crash, its momentum dragging it onwards along the ground for almost ten meters before it came to a halt. There was no more time or attention to spare for the crippled animal though, as the Custodians of Legio Ironhide were close on the heels of their mascot, shouting bloodcurdling war bellows, some which came from within the thoughts and left a man's heart trembling and their body weak and numb!

In the midst of the tumutulous crowd of Eddies, one figure stood out amongst the others, not because he was any bigger, though he was by no means a small man, but because of his armor, a suit of heavy plate mail that completely enclosed every square inch of his body in thick plates of that special Eddie wood, the entire armor carved into a motif of screaming human souls being tormented in hell, his helm the stretched face of a man being burned alive in hot tar. The Eddie super-elite carried a wildly revving chainsaw edged sword in either hand, the pilot flames of miniaturized flamethrowers flickering below his wrists, and had some sort of weapon system attached to his shoulder blades, some sort of electronic-slingshot that hurled saw like discs in arcing trajectories, the mono-sharp projectiles slicing through armor and man like they were made of balsa wood! Speakers and subwoofers built into the back and sides of the armor thumped to life, blaring the amplified noise of the revving chainsaws across the battlefield, at a pitch and volume that instantly surpassed painful and rapidly headed towards crippling, making vocal communication, even via radio, impossible!

Blundquist forced his hands away from the sides of his helmet, the instinctive reaction to cover his ears of no use while wearing Survivor armor, which was supposed to have sound dampeners, which only made him aware of how loud and grating that sound actually had to be! Many of the other soldiers did not possess his rationality and iron discipline though, and they staggered out of cover, their wails lost in the cacophony, to be hacked apart by the oncoming Eddies, or else turned to torches by pyroclastic blasts from the super-elite's underarm flamers. Meyer popped his head and flamer nozzle around the smouldering piece of Gladiator armor he was curled up behind, and hosed his own stream of liquid fire across several of the Eddies, including the bastard with the chainswords, but while the regular Eddies immediately went into convulsions as they dropped and rolled, fruitlessly trying to get the napalm off them and only succeeding in spreading it further, the super-elite ignored the flames covering his legs and left torso, as if Meyer had just sprayed him with warm water and not fire!

Meyer fell back with a cry of dismay and woe, as the Praetorian turned towards him and cut loose with one of his shoulder launchers, the saw disc caroming off the armor plate with a huge spray of sparks, a deep notch hacked through the top edge of the plate. Blundquist snarled an unheard curse, and targeted the Praetorian with his Cutlass, spraying razor tipped 5mm shells at the bastard, but though wood chips flew, the impacts barely even staggered the heavily armored Eddie, and merely succeeded in gaining his attention. Dud popped up from behind the wreckage of the gored Glad, and hurled a frag grenade that landed right at Revv's feet, the explosion knocking him down onto his side, but his armor spared him from being filleted by the shrapnel or overly harmed by the blast, and he quickly rolled to his feet, much to the disgruntlement of the USN soldiers.

Ryan blasted a head sized hole in the chestplate of the first Eddie that came for him, wielded a short curved sword in either hand, a second shot took the Eddie's head clean off. Fliping the Mauler to full auto mode, Ryan emptied the rest of his clip in a short arc, blowing off limbs and entirely gutting several more Eddies that were closing on a knot of his comrades, their armor proof against all but the best hits from a Cutlass, but obviously, a Mauler was quite a different story, especially at extremely close range! Ryan blinked tears out of his eyes, wishing that incredible racket that the Preatorian was emitting would stop, as he scrambled to eject his spent clip and slot in a new one. He wasn't even aware of his danger until 5mm tracers started zipping over his shoulders, and he instinctively threw himself to the ground to clear Jeebus's line of fire, as Charles made up in volume what the individual rounds lacked in impact, and buzzsawed his way through the armor of the Eddie infantryman that had been about to brain Ryan with a warhammer. Cut almost in half by the medium machinegun, the Eddie fell backwards, still twitching until Ryan finished reloading and blew the Eddie's head to gooey pulp with his next shot.

Looking around wildly, Ryan saw Dud struggling hand to hand with another Eddie, his knife knocked loose from his grip as the Eddie punched at him with one hand, using the other to pin Dud down. They were too closely entangled to risk a Mauler shot, so instead Ryan hurled himself bodily at the Custodian, snatching his knife from its sheath and stabbing it at the bastard, feeling the blade hit armor and sink in a little bit, before sliding away, leaving a long scar on the Eddie's backplate, but doing no real damage. A backthrusting elbow caught him in his faceplate, smashing his head against the interior of his helmet, and busting his nose, causing blood to squirt across his faceplate, half blinding him as he fell backwards. Trying to scramble to his feet, Ryan felt the Custodian kick his knife out of his hand and into the air, and then a follow up backfist to his gut doubled him over, panting and retching, as the Eddie caught his own knife on the way down and flipped it around in his grip, preparing to stab downward to impale Ryan's own head!

Dud tackled the Eddie's feet out from underneath him, spilling him to the ground with a grunt, as Ryan snatched out his pistol and frantically unloaded it into the Eddie's chest and neck region, several bullets bouncing away with small flashes of sparks, before one finally hit between breatsplate and helm and drew a dark spurt of arterial blood! That by itself wasn't enough to stop the Eddie though, Ryan caught a brief glimpse of eyes of rosy pink with silver pupils, washed out and almost metallic in hue, as the Eddie rose up and kicked Dud in the side hard enough to send him skidding across the ground for several feet, curled up into a fetal ball as he cuddled his cracked ribs. Still wielding the knife he'd stolen from Ryan, the Eddie turned towards him, his footing a little undsteady as blood washed down his side and chest from the bullet wound in his neck. Ryan fired several more times with his pistol, but the armor caught them all, except the one time the Eddie actually batted the bullet out of the air with the interposed flat of the knife! He was so fucking dead...

And then the Eddie was ripped sideways, a huge dark skinned fist closing around the back of his neck as Mechael slammed his beam saber into the Eddie's side, slipping the plasma blade in between the breastplate and armored belt, charring most of the Custodian's intestines, as well as his liver, kidneys and reproductive organs, to instant ash, the pain shock stopping his heart instantly, slowing the spurts of blood from his neck to a trickle as Mechael snapped his spine for good measure. Still half stunned, his pistol slide locked back, the magazine empty, Ryan stared stupidly up at the cyborg, who dropped the ravaged husk of the Eddie and looked around for the next challenger. Mechael could see that despite the numbers being on the side of the USN troops, now that things were at hand to hand ranges, they were rapidly getting the ever loving fuck kicked out of them by the Custodians, and especially the Praetorian, who despite still being on fire from Spyro's flamethrower, was even now gutting Lt. Yorgus on the edge of one chainblade, simultaneously flicking the other chainblade back behind him to decapitate a sergeant who thought to stab him in the back while he was busy killing the Lt.

First Sergeant Blundquist staggered up, his footsteps uneven from where he'd gotten buttstroked across the back of his helmet by an Eddie with a polearm, the helmet was still intact, but his scalp was not, and the back of his under armor was wet with blood from his bleeding scalp, his eyes blurry and unfocused from one hell of a concussion. With vocal speech and radio communications jammed by the Praetorian's amplifiers and electronic warfare systems, Mechael was forced to innovate, reprogramming sections of his skin camouflage to display words instead of random splotches, displaying them across his forearm, which he held up in front of Blunquist's faceplate. **Cant hold, need regroup, reinforcements?** Mechael displayed urgently, Blundquist nodding agreement after a few seconds of concentration, turning his head around and pointing back at the cloud of dust they'd come out of. They could hide in there, and back that way was the rest of the USN forces. Mechael nodded back, and went about chivvying the remainder of the squad into something like an organized retreat, picking up and shoving soldiers where necessary, as the Praetorian and the Custodians countinued to slaughter the other squads.

This was one prong of the attack that had been comprehensively blunted, Ryan thought bitterly, giving Dud his shoulder to lean on, as the squad limped as quickly as the could away from the massacre that their charge had become, the nearly unbearable noise from the Praetorian's chainblades slowly receeding to levels where you could actually pretend to hear, though the echoes in his skull would be around for hours as his ears readjusted! Hucking frag, smoke and flash grenades behind them to cover their withdrawal, Blundquist's squad and Mechael hoofed it for the pretense of cover the slowly settling dust cloud still offered, each of them hoping that the other sections of the attack were doing better than they were...


	41. City of Tears

Author Note: Well, as it turns out, after several reviewers noticing the disparity, that I did not actually include Positron Reflectors on the Lucifer's Fractal Wings on the stats page, even though I use them in the story, to very good effect. This is an oversight on my part, the stats page has been updated to reflect the true, story stats of the Lucifer. Thanks to Archangel, Caleb and everyone else who's scrutiny caught the error. And Caleb, given that all the energy type shields (Citadel, Positron and Geischmedig-Panzer) work on similar basic principles, projecting magnetic fields that either repulse other magnetic fields (GP) or contain a field of quasi physical matter or antimatter (Citadel and Positron), making one multiphase system to be able to project all three wouln't be that hard, had you the power to go with it.

xxxx

**New Eden, Central Africa, Urbanis Defense Headquarters, December 20th, midmorning**

"By the Tree..." Strategos Gregory breathed, staring at the holographic strategic map of the area surrounding Urbanis, and its defense lines, colored in shades of green with the darker the shade representing a higher concentration of allied forces. Blobs, streaks and arrowheads of red indicated the movement and presence of enemy forces, likewise shaded for concentration, with a good deal of nearly pink encircling almost the whole of the defense lines, while pobing tendrils of red and dark crimson stabbed through sections of the first and second defense lines, almost all the way to the glistening scar the Orb rad weapon had carved through the heart of the defenses! But even as he looked on, those probing tendrils were met by dark emerald squares of reinforcement troops, his Custodians, stiffened with Praetorian and biological tanks... aka actual Ironhides... to persevere against the USN's superfluity of armored IFV's and light tanks. The probing tendrils blunted, turned in on themselves, and slowly began to withdraw, pounded with light and medium artillery from deeper within the Edenite lines in order to ensure no rallying was effective, no counter-charge possible. "We're actually pushing them back!"

"Thanks to your Executor, and the fall of their dreadnaught, yes, we seem to have thrown their battle plan into confusion somewhat." Daveron acknowledged, a slight hint of a smile on his stoic face for a moment, before the more accustomed frown reappeared. "However, it is still far too early to celebrate. Your other Executor did a fine job at disrupting the Solar Knights, but the majority of them have detoured around him and are heading this way, along with the FEAR juggernauts, those Panzerdragoons. I see a massive enemy onslaught forming outside our first defensive line, Titans, Archmages, even a light Land Battleship or two, plus several tens of thousands of mechanized infantry and the hammer of the Mobile Suits. They will launch the attack within the hour, I expect, as soon as the atmospheric dust starts to clear a little bit more."

"Then we shall regroup to meet them!" Gregory said proudly. "If they are the hammer, then we shall be the anvil they shatter themselves upon!"

"I pray that is so, but excuse my pragmatic doubt, Gregory." Daveron replied with a thin look. "Our forces have already suffered almost fifteen percent casualties, weighted much more towards my militia than your Custodians, but the fact is, every life we lose stacks the odds even heavier against use, while we could kill twenty thousand of them and still be completely swamped! Damn my countrymen for their military and technological superiority, by themselves Orb has caused almost sixty percent of all our losses so far! We cannot let those warships have time to launch another concentrated attack like that! The only ray of light is that your Executors seem to have dealt with two out of the three Orb Gundam's we've seen, else they would also be embedded in our arses, causing havoc."

"So which should we do then, Daveron?" Gregory asked with a brittle smile. "Shall we group up and defend against the USN's hammerblow, or do we divert and envelop Orb's spearhead before it severs our spine? We only have the forces to do one effectively. We are definitely caught between the figurative rock and a very hard place. My legios are good, but without the support fire from your emplaced militia, we would quickly be cut off and enfiladed by the USN, but without my legios to take the brunt of the enemy attack, your militia will swiftly break and flee. We cannot split our forces apart, we are symbionts in this battle for survival. And our unofficial forces are already doing all they can and more, the Executors, the Wendigo... we cannot ask them to give any more!"

"We cannot, but we must all the same." Daveron retorted. He gestured vaguely towards where the Wendigo shaman and his cabal of females had set themselves up in a camouflaged tent pitched nearby the buried command center. "Are they even doing anything at all? I can barely even feel a disturbance on the psychic plane!"

"You need only look at the cohesion of the enemy forces... or actually, the lack thereof... to see what effect the Wendigo shaman is having." Gregory countered, waving his own hand through the seething roil of the USN forces, which turned upon itself and eddied so often that it was plain that they were having real trouble organizing their massive forces, unlike the time at Gibraltar. "Perhaps some of it is the dust and debris, but at the very least, Erk and his people are keeping the playing field more or less even in terms of organization and strategic coordination. Sometimes the subtle push works better than the hardest shove, Daveron, I admit that Erk's psychic presence is uncommonly low, for a Chimera, but I believe this to be intentional. He is not so much distracting them as he is befuddling them, an insidious miasma rather than a raging stormcloud. Some of them are no doubt schooled in recognizing the effects of a powerful psychic attack, but a subtle one might still slip beneath their radar, so to speak."

"Mm." Daveron grunted noncommittally, unable to dismiss his dislike for the psychic mumbo-jumbo, for all that he was technically psychic himself. "I see a significant fraction of your forces have resorted to the Seed. Do you think that is wise, so early on? The risk of becoming exhausted when the battle isn't even half over yet..."

"Using the Seed is always a risk." Gregory shrugged. "I won't second guess my soldiers, they know as well as I the downsides that come with activating the Seed. If they chose to do so anyway, then obviously the situation must have demanded it. Besides, a soldier who waits to use the Seed, and dies before he can, has wasted all of his extra potential. Better to use it early and need to rest rather than save it and perhaps never get to use it at all. If you have orders out restricting your soldiers from utilizing a Seed boost, I'd recommend you rescind them immediately. Though I do agree, a properly timed Seed bonanza amongst our troops could be the tipping point between victory or ultimate defeat, so I will recommend my forces not boost unless they feel they have no other choice for survival."

_I'm afraid I have bad news, Strategos, Sheriff-General._ A voice spoke into both of their heads, both of them needing about a second to recognize the tones of Executor Yamato, since Kira hadn't done much to integrate himself with them before the battle. He'd just sort of showed up and done his own thing, though at least he'd made an attempt at courtesy by meeting with them both briefly before the battle began, unlike Executor Frost, not that Daveron had any especial desire to meet the monster anyways! _The drop pods were a diversionary tactic, as I'm sure you noticed when the Solar Knights uncloaked. However, it is worse than that... many of the drop pods I destroyed went off like kegs of dynamite, far beyond the sort of explosion the weapon damage should have caused. They've turned most of the drop pods into gigantic bombs, aimed at the city and defense lines! I'm doing my best to intercept them, but I don't think I'll get them all, so brace for random bombs from above._

_Thank you, Executor, for the heads up._ Gregory replied effusively. _And thank you again for chasing away the orbital fleets, you have already saved countless lives by denying the enemy their heaviest weaponry!_

_Yes._ Kira acknowledged, still uncomfortable with being praised for killing so many thousands of USN soldiers during his attack on the fleet. _Things still get worse though, I'm afriad. Some of the drop pods aren't filled with explosives._ Kira mental voice took on an absolutely savage quality. _Instead, it looks like they are filled with MAIDEN, the nanokiller! I didn't recognize the white clouds at first, I thought they were just water vapor condensing or some sort of smoke from the destroyed drop pods, but the ambient air temperature is spiking sharply in the presence of those clouds, and they are starting to ignite the dust in the air! Hopefully the dust and debris will cancel out most of the nanite clouds, but you should know that there is quite a lot of MAIDEN drifting towards the city and defense lines. Get your people into cover while you still can!_

_We cannot!_ Daveron cut in, speaking unintentionally loud and forcefully, unused to psychic conversation. _If we hunker down in shelters from the MAIDEN, the USN ground assault will steamroll over us in a matter of minutes! We shall have to trust to the Citadel shield bubbles to keep the vile stuff off of us, at least until the USN ground assault is beaten!_

There was a long moment of silence, long enough for both commanders to wonder if something had happened to the Executor. _Very well then._ Kira replied at last. _The Lucifer isn't damaged by MAIDEN exposure, unlike the Custodian and Praetorian machines. Get your MS out of the way of the clouds, we cannot afford to lose even some of our MS to MAIDEN! I will hold off the USN advance until the clouds have dissipated and your forces can return to back me up._

_What about Executor Frost? Will he not lend you aid? The Kratos is also not affected by MAIDEN!_ Gregory pointed out frantically.

_Frost has no interest in winning this battle, he believes it is a lost cause. He is only fighting because that is what he enjoys doing. I would not count on help from him, except in an accidental sense. He will kill until there remains nothing around him left to kill, then he will seek out a new battlefield and repeat the process. Calling for his aid would only earn his mockery and scorn, trust me._ Kira answered, taking several deep breaths as he guided the Lucifer in a long dive towards the ground battlefield several kilometers below him, trying to hang onto his reason in the face of the rage he felt from seeing the USN deploy its nano-weapon, the same nano-weapon that had taken his family from him, against an entire civilian city! _It won't be pretty, but I should be able to hold them off long enough for your forces to dodge the nano-weapon. _Kira could not help a bitter smile at the thought. He was used to long odds, but alone against an army of tens of thousands? Who was he kidding, even with the Seed, he was going to get eaten alive by the sheer numbers! And for that matter, he could already feel the sweat standing out on his skin and the tightness in his chest, signs of the physical exhaustion prolonged Seed usage always caused. He couldn't stay like this forever.

Unaware of their Executor's morbid thoughts, both Gregory and Daveron were quite distracted when the whole holographic strategic display suddenly flashed orange several times in quick succession, heralding a major alarm. "Warning..." A computerized voice tolled loudly. "Large cloaked warship detected lifting off from city harbor and heading in this direction! Warning, large enemy warship inbound to this position! Warning, enemy warship is deploying large personal armored suits equivalent to those observed in several previous encounters, believed to be designated PUMAs!"

"SHIT!" Gregory swore, snatching for his helmet and weapons from where he'd left them on a side table of the main bunker chamber. "They've figured out where the command center is, damn those Orbites!" He glanced at the strategic display, and swore once more when he saw how fast the still cloaked warship and its deployed squadrons of USN Praetorian equivalents was closing on their position. They had barely minutes before the warship was overhead, and less time before the PUMAs showed up! _Sorry to chat and run, Executor, but we've got a situation of our own down here, those Orbites are going for a decapitation strike!_

_Sounds like something Alkire and Ms. Murrue would think of._ Kira acknowledged with a frown, knowing that he couldn't afford to go there to help, not with the MAIDEN clouds wafting downwards and the USN main force gearing up for their next attack. _Good luck, Strategos, Sheriff-General... that's all I can offer you right now._

_You have offered more than enough already, Mr. Yamato. It is an honor to once more stand on a battleground with you._ Daveron replied, trying not to let it show that he was a little choked up, as he scrambled for the beam rifle that Gregory had lent to him. _Good luck to you as well. You'll need it just as much as we will!_

xxxx

**Outside, in the Wendigo tent**

Eric felt the approach of the _Endymion_ and its detached forces almost as soon as they made their riotous appearance from the city harbor lagoon. he berated himself for not noticing them sooner, but in truth, almost all of his concentration was tied up in providing the disruptive psychic effect on the USN ground forces, a psychic working far beyond anything he'd ever done for the tribe before. Usually he did things like scout out the presence of certain prey animals, or detected intruders on tribe territory, or decieved a wandering Chimera into not noticing the tribe's presence. Most of that he could handle on his own, with maybe amplifying from one of his mates if need be. Now he was amplifying with three females at a time, and using the Seed, and still he had to strain, as he cast a wide net across the bunched minds of the USN forces, flickering like embers next to the lit flames of his people and the other Edenites. Even as powerful as he was, and amplified, he just was't practised at this sort of thing, and so while he could cause eyesight to fuzz and ears to ignore orders; fingers to freeze on triggers and feet to stick in place for a moment, that sort of befuddlement was all he could offer. It would have to be enough.

He could probably deal with the Orb ship and its detached forces easily enough, if he focused his amplified power upon them, he could probably give them all heart attacks or seizures, there really weren't very many of them, less than five hundred all told. But if he did that, he would stop affecting the rest of the USN forces, and he was already so tired from generating the first net that he didn't think he'd be able to generate a second! He could feel the agitation of the Edenite commanders and their staff, below and around him, as they scrambled to take up defensive positions against the oncoming attack, but there was barely a skeleton crew in the defensive works, almost all soldiers were deployed to the front lines against the USN ground forces. However, all hope was not yet lost, as Eric sent out the equivalent of a psychic flare, keyed not to the humans, but to his own adopted people. The exact content of the flare was tough to translate to human sensibilities, but suffice it to say it was something along the lines of "mates-young-food in danger, hostile tribe encroaching on our territory". Things garaunteed to get any male Wendigo's blood boiling.

A chilling chorus of ululating challenge roars resonated above the battlefield for a moment, making the very air seem to shiver in response, as the tribe's Alpha and his chosen warband responded to Eric's summons, gnashing their peg like teeth, baring their tusks in dominance displays, and generally frothing at the mouth with pent up anger as they bounded in multiple meter long leaps towards the oncoming Orb forces. Their Edenite "allies" had offered to provide the Wendigo's with armor, plates of Borealite and Ironhide leather, but the entire concept of clothing, much less protective clothing, was still beyond the nascent cultural grasp of most of his people, despite his best attempts to explain the idea. Wendigo hide was tough enough to guard against most attacks, his people felt, what was the need to wear the dead skins of others? If they were dead, they couldn't have been that strong or tough after all!

While the idea of armor might not have caught on with the majority of the tribe... though Eric had gotten a few sets made for himself and his mates just in case... the weapons the Edenites had provided were proving to be hugely popular, especially after Eric had demonstrated their use. Already, he could see a new fad forming among the warband members, and figured that this was one idea that was here to stay. The weapons weren't very spectacular, just huge lengths of reinforced metals, with a grip at one end and a knobby, spiky, or studded head at the other, roughly the size of small town streetlamps, which made them just about perfectly sized for one handed use by a bull Wendigo. Eric had taken an oversized sword for his own use, but then again he was familiar with the concept of mono-edges, while the sharpest thing most of his people could concieve of was broken shards of tusk or bone. They were better off with blunt objects for the time being. The improvised war maces featured a integral power source that fueled a Phase Shift coating on the mace, which made it all but impervious to harm, no matter how hard the Wendigo's abused them, which was a very popular feature among the Wendigo, most of whom had never encountered a branch they couldn't snap eventually!

As befitting his status, the Alpha had the biggest and most decorated war mace, though most of the decoration was little more than some gold and silver and copper electroplated onto the haft and head of the mace, and he brandished it proudly whenever he moved, like a king with a royal scepter, often to the detriment of the less indestructible environment around him. Eric had tried to sell the Alpha on the idea of a sword, he knew his chieftan was smart enough to grasp the concept, when he wanted to be, but after seeing his kin smashing things with the maces and having a blast doing it, the Alpha's mind had been made up. He was going to have the biggest, baddest club available, and no talk about flimsy cutty-things was going to sway him, no matter how much more comparatively effective a sword with a mono-edge was! Eric had at length given up, though he was far from deterred. Start with the clubs, work into swords and armor, and soon enough he could start explaining the concept of firearms and vehicles... knowledge his people would need if they were to become more permanent fixtures upon this war's battlefields!

Piggybacking a small portion of his available attention onto the thoughts of his Chieftan, Eric allowed himself to go in spirit with his adopted kin, if not in flesh, as they closed in on the Orb special operations machines, who were advancing using their own jump jets in precisely coordinated movements that would have been pretty to watch, were it not for the fact that they were enemy soldiers moving in with the intent to kill him and his people. The Wendigo warband outnumbered the Orb Stormhound force by roughly fifty percent, but even the largest Wendigo stood only chest high to each PUMA, and was less than a quarter of the mass, plus the PUMA's were well equipped with modern firearms and melee weaponry. Thankfully, the Wendigo had their Latent natures to rely upon, and lingering effects from Eric's disruption net, plus the visual shock of their unexpected and ferocious appearance, so the Stormhounds initial fire claimed no lives, and only singed and scraped a few shoulders and limbs, which only served to further ignite the Wendigo's anger, the scent of spilled blood hot in the air.

Only seconds later, the Wendigo's got their first real taste of the horrors of war, as the Stormhounds took up cover positions and opened fire yet again, already calmer and more focused, professional, well trained minds adapting to even the strangest of battlefield occurences, even the appearance of a horde of gigantic, silver eyed, tusked gorillas waving massive maces as they charged headlong in a pounding tide towards the Stormhounds. The PUMAs concentrated their fire, two or three on each of several leading Wendigos, who could dodge fire from one or perhaps two sources, but not three at once, and several Wendigo's fell, shrieking or silent, clutching at plasma burns, or the ragged stumps of blasted away limbs, rolling back and forth on the ground in uncomprehending misery and woe. The trauma of their peers and kin was too much for the remaining Wendigo to bear, and their rage boiled over, past any realm of self preservation or moderation, as the Chimeras activated their Seeds as one, abruptly tripling their physical speed and strength as they hurled themselves, bellowing, at the shocked Stormhounds.

It was a dire and bloody maneuver, as even stunned by the Wendigo's ferocity, the Stormhounds and their heavy battle suits laid down a withering crossfire of beam blasts, linear cannon shells and missile contrails, but the Wendigo were not to be stopped, many carrying on even with limbs blown away or their charred intestines spilling down their bellies, one even had his head set alight by a just barely missing beam blast, but continued onwards with the skin literally melting off his head and face, to hurl himself onto the PUMA that had wounded him, breaking its weapon arm at the elbow with a thundering two handed blow from his PS mace! The burning Wendigo laid into the staggering PUMA with all his frenzied might, denting its armor in a half a dozen places, shattering the elbows and kneecaps, crushing the dog eared head flat, before the PUMA collapsed helplessly to the ground on its face. The Wendigo stood woozily atop his downed foe, and opened his mouth to shout his victory cry to the heavens, club held high over his head, but only smoke and flame came out, the fire progressing into his internals, and he fell over backwards without a further sound, to lie limp atop the broken Stormhound.

Not to be outdone by his frenzied kin, the Alpha had crippled another PUMA with a two handed blow to its lower back, crushing the main power battery with the lucky blow, and was proceeding to smash the entire machine into a unrecognizable lump of crumpled metal with furious abandon, his body smeared with gushing oil and spurting blood from the rents he'd already bashed into the PUMA's cockpit region. Nearby, another Wendigo leaped towards a PUMA wielding a linear sniper rifle, only to be blown in half by another PUMA coming to the first's aid with a trio of shots from its beam cannon. The sniper PUMA reciprocated by atomizing a Wendigo's skull as it prepared to smash her partner's battery pack, a tactic demonstrated by the Alpha and now accepted as the best strategy by the warband for dealing with these strange intruders.

More beam, hyper-impulse and rocket fire filled the air, but was actually inbound towards the PUMAs, carefully avoiding any of those in the process of being grappled or beat down by the enraged Wendigos, as Strategos Ironhide and his personal Manifold entered the fray, backed up by several squads of reserve troops from the Urbanis militia, under Daveron's person command, though the man sized weapons were generally ineffective against the well armored PUMAs, save for the heavier beam and team operated hyper-impulse guns. The Stormhounds were rocked back, forced to abandon their previous cover positions, firing and withdrawing in an organized fighting withdrawal, some of them splitting their fire to engage the human Edenites, the vehicle class weapons the PUMAs carried wreaking bloody carnage among the infantry soldiers. But the Stormhounds were still retreating, and that was a feat that precious few could lay claim...

Eric's triumphant thoughts were cut short as the manta-like shape of the _Endymion_ uncloaked directly over the running engagement, the "fleeing" Stormhound forces having only been withdawing in order to lure their pursuers into point blank range for the ship's heavier weapon systems, the four ventral mounted 57mm beam CIWS "Valkyros" most pressingly, which each unleashed a torrent of MS caliber green plasma beams into the ranks of the Edenites and Wendigos, some beams passing within meters of the Stormhound units in an awesome display of precision targeting. The Edenite forces convulsed and scattered, all of their previous momentum shattered by the unrelenting plasma blasts raining down from above, incinerating men by the score in seconds, and cutting down fully half of the surviving Wendigo's, including the Alpha, before they even knew what hit them!

Eric's thought presence slipped regretfully out of his chieftan's mind as his friend and leader's mind filled with the pain of his plasma engulfed body, skin charring and flaking away from cooked muscles, as he defiantly hurled his war club end over end at the warship blotting out the sky above. The Alpha was dead before he could see the PS clug vaporized by a triplet of beam blasts, though it was already falling after reaching its apex, well short of the several hundred meter altitude of the ship. With the death of their chieftan, and sorely wounded and startled by the inexplicable-to-them attack from the heavens, the remaining Wendigo broke and fled, not used to the changing tides of the modern battlefield, thoroughly spooked and uncontrollable in their fear. Wendigo's might be just as smart as the average human, smarter even, but that didn't help them when confronting the unknown and the unexpected, they were just as easily panicked as any untrained farmers turned soldiers would be!

He felt Sheriff-General Hales and Strategos Gregory retreating as well, their individual commands decimated, as the Stormhound PUMAs advanced with impunity under the protective cover of their oddly shaped mothership, which reached out to tear into more distant parts of the defense lines with the searing blue-white light beams of FRALAs, firing from its jutting forward mandibles, and sweeping from side to side in butchering arcs. Missiles escaped from their launch tubes dotted along the ship's broad wings, racing hungrily for targets on the ground and approaching in the air, a squadron of Urbanis Ginns that were blown to pieces by a missile each before they could even get to within firing range of the enemy ship! Plumes of fire and smoke blossomed like incardmine flowers and the ground shook under the explosive power of the missiles, making the camouflage tent sway around Eric and his supporters, generating grunts and screams of dislike and distress from the females.

Left with no other choice, Eric let his mental disruption net decay and fall away into nothingness, turning to the bench where he'd laid out his oversized armor, his two mates taking the unvoiced hint instantly, shoving aside the less comprehensive minded females to get at their own armor and weapons, and to help him dress in his. More missile impacts shuddered the ground at regular intervals, and the furnace stench of baked glass from the FRALA and plasma beam impacts was thick in the air, by the time Eric and his mates had donned their protective armor, which barely covered their vitals, but it was still better than nothing! Hefting his sword, and a Borealite tower shield, Eric led his mates outside, each of them hefting a squad portable hyper-impulse cannon and associated power supply. Neither of them understood their armaments, hell, Eric himself didn't really understand the science of plasma weaponry, but he'd explained the "magic" of the weapon's firing and operation to them, and they had fired them a few times in practice, enough so that they were no longer startled by the heat and light produced when firing, though getting them to aim was a a constant chore.

Barely had the trio of Wendigo's left the tent than Eric scented a change in the air, and he pulled back into cover, yanking both of his mates back with him, as they were trying to continue forward, eager to taste battle, something normally denied to the females, except in the most extreme and dire cases. Eric figured neither of them would be so eager after actually seeing what battle was like first hand, it was definitely a sobering experience that quickly destroyed any thoughts of glory or fun that a person might have, at least any right minded person! In truth his emotions were conflicted, the Wendigo side of him distressed at the idea of females fighting, the human side of him knowing that it was only normal for his mates to want to protect him any way they could, humans and Wendigos were not wired too differently when it came to love. The season of rut was one thing, but love, and the relationships it forged, did exist among the Wendigo's as much as any human clan or group!

At first Eric could not tell what had set him off, but then he espied a twinkling in the air, a glittering slew of particles around which a heavy heat shimmer could be found, as they fell like snowflakes from the sky, thicker and thicker and thicker, until one expected to see them blanketing the ground! But unlike snow, this little particles did not freeze or chill... they burned... they ignited... they charred anything they touched, sometimes making it burst into flames from the inside out first, other times just heating an object up until it glowed and melted from absorbed heat! Eric had listened to the human Edenites talk about this stuff, called MAIDEN by the USN forces, but he'd never thought it to be truly as horrible as they'd said. If anything, it was worse! Anything and anyone caught in the open was dusted with the little twinkling particles, and moments later the particles would be gone, to be replaced by broiling skin, shooting flames, and puffs of ash as anything biological quickly turned to a blackened pile of soot!

Telekinetics was not his strong suit, but by grabbing hold of his mates with either hand, Eric was able to boost himself enough to create a telekinetic bubble around the three of them, pushing aside any MAIDEN particles that tried to gust into the tent, even as the fabric itself began to smoulder and smoke behind him. Eric grimaced as the taste of hot ash burrowed down his throat, and he began looking around for better cover, since while his telekinetics could keep the three of them from immolating directly, he couldn't protect them against smoke inhalation or the heat of the fires, not without blocking all air flow around them and causing them to suffocate even faster than the fires could choke them! Cries and screams from behind him heralded the tent bursting into flames and falling away into skeins of white ash, exposing the group of females who'd remained behind, huddling together in a protective knot, the biggest and strongest females at the edges, waving their forearm bone knobs at the heavens in frightened menace. More sparkling particles sifted down towards them, and there was no where for them to hide, no way for Eric to protect them with his powers already taxed protecting just three!

And then there came an unexpected gust of wind and the howl of jumpthrusters, as nearly a dozen Stormhound PUMAs landed nearby, and without a word of warning or explanation, threw themselves bodily atop the Wendigo's, including Eric and his mates! Eric was about to try and draw his sword to slice his assailants apart in a last ditch effort, but then he realized he sensed no hostility from the Stromhounds now, only anger, and not directed at him. The Stormhounds had knocked him to the ground yes, but he could see that they were being careful not to crush or harm the trapped Wendigo's any more than necessary, as they built a literal dome of interlocked PUMA bodies between the Wendigo's and the gusting MAIDEN particles. Seconds later, the roar of close range high explosive charges made the ground ripple and jump, as the VCE (variable combat explosive) charges carried by the PUMA's as grenades and for demolition work were detonated in piles nearby, the concussive force of the repeated blasts rocking the PUMAs and jarring the Wendigos, but the shockwaves also scattered the MAIDEN concentration in the air far and wide, and diluted much more of it with dust and debris fragments.

Eric still felt the sting as occasional nanite particles burrowed into his skin, but never in enough quantity to do more than make him smoulder and wince a little bit. The Stormhounds unexpected and unorthodox strategy had worked, dissipating the MAIDEN before it could concentrate, and using up enough of the current cloud so that it could not immolate anything else! And such quick thinking too, barely a minute had passed since the MAIDEN first started making itself known. The human soldier in him was extremely impressed, the Wendigo side had his pride bruised by being so unceremoniously saved. But they'd saved his mates too, and the other females, and any species that could feel love could also feel gratitude when someone acted to prevent harm to a loved one, and so Eric stuffed his Wendigo pride deep down inside him, and forced his hand off the hilt of his sword, as the PUMA's slowly got up off the dogpile of Wendigos.

"I didn't sign on for genocide." One of the PUMA's announced, the pilot's voice mechanically filtered, but the anger in his tone was still quite pronounced. "All's fair in war and that shit, but nerve gas, germ warfare, and nano-warfare is where I draw my line. Aw hell, dunno why I'm even saying this, you guys probably don't even speak this language."

_**SPEAK IT, NO, BUT I DO UNDERSTAND IT PERFECTLY FINE.**_ Eric replied, reminding himself to speak as gently as possible, since the Stormhound, one Robert Jones, which was a faintly familiar name for some reason, wasn't psychic. It was a tough balance to make, loud enough to pierce the stump barrier, soft enough not to make the man think he was being attacked. _**YOU HAVE MY THANKS, COLONEL JONES, FOR THE LIVES OF MY MATES AND I.**_

"Don't mention it. Literally, I have a feeling it could be my ass if word of my little moral foibles got out to the rest of my allies." The Stormhound replied, his PUMA making an uncomfortable shift of its shoulders, and Eric could feel the distaste and dislike for psychic communication all but bleeding off the man. Still, he remained polite, since there was no other avenue for conversation between them. "However, don't go thinking this makes us friends, because I'm sorry but we can't be that. If you people... whatever you are... decide to stick around and keep fighting, then I won't have any choice but to kill you as enemy combatants."

_**SO IN ESSENCE YOU WANT OUR PAROLE, I THINK IS THE CORRECT TERM? OUR WORD THAT WE WILL LEAVE THIS BATTLEGROUND WITHOUT FURTHER ACTING AS COMBATANTS, IN EXCHANGE FOR CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES BETWEEN YOU AND OUR KIND, AND THE FAVOR YOU HAVE JUST DONE ME?**_ Eric extrapolated.

"That works for me." Colonel Jones replied wearily. "I'd be happier if you agreed to just stay out of the war forever, but I don't think that's a promise you can make, given what I've just seen. This war is coming to you whether you want it or not, you'd be fools not to stand up and fight for your lives. So get out of here, while its just me and mine around, and we can conveniently close our eyes. You probably don't even want to stick around this place anyway, your side isn't winning the fight, though they sure as hell have put up more fight than expected. Damn that Kid, but he's every bit the demon on the battlefield I remember!"

_**IF ONLY MORE OF YOUR PEOPLE COULD HAVE SEEN WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN, PERHAPS WE WOULD NOT NEED TO BE ENEMIES, COLONEL JONES.**_ Eric shook his head sadly at the waste of it all. _**BUT YOU HAVE MY WORD, ERK THE SHAMAN OF THE WENDIGO TRIBE, THAT MY PEOPLE WILL NO LONGER FIGHT DURING THIS BATTLE, THOUGH WE CANNOT AND WILL NOT ABANDON OUR ALLIES DURING THE REST OF THE WAR!**_

"You're not what I expected from a Chimera." Colonel Jones said slowly, studying the golden eyed, silver and green furred gorilla with the armor and sword intently. "You talk almost just like a human..."

_**AND YOU'RE NOT WHAT I EXPECTED FROM THE USN. YOU ACT ALMOST JUST LIKE A HUMAN...**_

"Ouch, but point taken." Colonel Jones answered with a heavy sigh, as he looked around at the sooty piles that had been living, breathing people only a few minutes ago, and the fire scorched ground. He switched to a private channel between him and Raine, as he watched Erk and his mates corral the other Wendigo's and herd them away towards the north and west, towards the city proper. "I just hate it when the bad guys are more respectable than the good guys, don't you? What have we gotten ourselves into here?"

"A motherfucker of a mess, as usual, Robert." Raine replied, not unkindly, as she too watched the Wendigo's lope away through the ashy ruins of this section of the Eddie camp. "One serious motherfucker of a mess..." She repeated, more quietly, casting her eyes skyward, towards the slowly descending clouds of sparkling white that drifted there.

xxxx

**A short time later, in Urbanis proper, 15 minutes prior to commencement of USN main ground thrust**

"Stupid Eddies..." One of the grey armored figures snickered to another, as the platoon of Reclaimer Initiative Combat Pioneers made their way along the deserted city streets, towards their primary goal. "Locked up their barn nice and tight, but they left the back door to their house swinging wide open, with their wives and daughters inside." The technical job of the Combat Pioneers was trench digging, bridge building, forest clearing and path finding operations during the heat of combat. They were the ones who were supposed to detect and clear mindfields, disable enemy booby traps, and demolish enemy fortifications after they were captured, as well as making bridges across rivers and cutting roads through hills and mountains to provide logistical support for the rest of the infantry. That was what they were supposed to do, and truthfully often did. However, the Combat Pioneer battalions were also the designated gathering spot for all the really hardcore RI extremists, the ones who hated the Eddie menace with a virulent passion, who saw them as nothing less than insects and infestations to be exterminated as quickly as possible. They preferred to just call themselves Reclaimer Initiative Pioneers... RIPs.

This particular bunch had skirted around the battle proper, after discerning with an unfortunate close encounter that the Eddie defensive fortifications and the troops manning them were seriously no joke at all! Being of the "soldiering is like water" attitude, they flowed away from the point of resistance and found a smoother way around, entering through the suburbs of the Eddie city proper. Not that any of them were willing to give it the dignity of calling it a city, no matter how modern it looked. Bigots ever were uncomfortable facing the evidence that denied the precepts of their own shameful attitudes, and like most such bigots, when they got uncomfortable, they got vicious and even more mean spirited than they would otherwise be. Indeed, the fact that Urbanis was on the whole a nicer looking, better planned and altogether more dignified looking place to live than their own mass apartment habitations on the Second Earth colonies only stroked the fires of their rage.

Wereit not for their overriding priority, they probably would have stopped and begun pillaging at random, since there was plenty of interesting looking loot and stuff on display in some of the boarded up store windows. Being little more than a sanctioned militia themselves, the RIPs didn't know about the codes of military justice forbidding looting, pillaging and razing conquered civilian sites, nor would these men and few women much cared even if they did know. No one was around to see right now, all the fighting was going on a few kilometers away, and the city was all but deserted, all the civvies evacuated into secure underground bunkers. "Canned Hams", as the RIPs jovially called them, as they headed towards one of the projected locations of the mass shelters, judging by ground penetrating radar equipment they carried with them, searching for large, regular underground cavities. Once you knew the basic idea of what to look for, the shelters weren't too difficult to find.

The RIPs wore Survivor pattern armor, just like the USN regulars, though theirs was done in tones of grey and white, versus blue and white. The weapons they carried were generally less advanced than the USN regulars, mostly chemically powered automatic rifles and shotguns, instead of the linear guns of the USN army, along with grenade launchers, directional mines, a few RPGs, one or two napalm flamethrowers, a couple heavy, belt fed machineguns and some special equipment provided by FEAR, ergo, pressuried canisters of MAIDEN. Their strategy was simple; they would find the primary entrance to the Eddie shelter, mine it, set up a crossfire with grenade launchers, MGs and flamethrowers, and then send a side team around to find the shelter's ventilation systems, where they would attached the MAIDEN canisters and begin force feeding the stuff down into the shelter, bypassing the usual filters meant to keep exactly such harmful substances out. The MAIDEN would incinerate most of the Eddies, and the traps and crossfire at the doors would take care of the rest.

Orders from on high were specific that the Eddie civilians had to go quietly during the battle, so that the USN didn't have to expend logistics on supporting a bunch of useless refugees. There were rehabilitation camps operating in England, but they were already close to capacity, and the USN didn't need more prisoners clogging up the works and making a big humanitarian stink about things. Even though the Eddies weren't humans, they looked human enough that some of the more idealogically radical might not be able to understand the chilling differences. And the best thing about Eddies and MAIDEN was, when you combined the two, the end result was a fine, sooty ash that could be easily buried or even just tossed into the wind to dissipate naturally... no bodies to dismember or bury, no mass graves to be later dug up, hardly any cleanup required at all! An enterprising RIP could even come armed with a small but powerful vacuum and several spare bags, to vacuum up a bunch of free carbon to be later compressed and colored into artificial gemstones which could be sold at a profit! The fact that the gems were made from real Eddie remains just made them that much more valuable within a certain market, all the bigwigs wanted their own "Victory Diamond".

As an additional incentive, studies by FEAR had shown that the Eddies were connected in some sort of widespread psychic network, and they could feel things... emotions, pain, distress, etc... from those they were intimate with even when they were physically far apart. The anguish of the civvies in their shelters as they were turned into more useful carbon dust would almost certainly have a great effect upon the morale and cohesion of the Eddie soldiers too! Not only did they get to save the USN a lot of time and money, possibly getting rich on the side, they also got to be heroes for helping bring the battle to a swifter, easier close! And there weren't even any Eddie soldiers shooting at them either. This gig couldn't get any better!

About ten minutes later, they had found and secured the first shelter, with its captive population of almost two hundred thousand Eddies crammed in like salt in a shaker, setting up their ambush zone and crossfire at the main, blast proof bunker doors, while the flush teams scouted through the nearby buildings to find the camouflaged air intakes for the bunker systems. The ventilation systems were cracked open, and small, semi-autonomous rat-like robots, another gift from FEAR, were dropped down the air shafts, to go to work disabling the redundant filtration systems via sprays of concentrated acids and cutting with tiny mono-blade claws. After giving the rat-bots a few minutes to do their dirty work, the pressurized canisters of MAIDEN were hooked into the system, and forcibly vented downwards. It wouldn't be long now...

xxxx

**Opposing the main USN ground force, middle of Urbanis defense lines, same time**

Kira stood sentinel between the gathering sledgehammer of USN forces and the considerably reinforced but still woefully outnumbered tertiary defense line behind him. The fighting was currently at a lull, as both sides regrouped and reorganized, and Kira had taken the opportunity to drop out of Seed mode in order to rest himself. He'd been using the Seed nonstop for close to an hour, and he was really getting close to his physical limit, he needed to conserve his remaining time before he tried pushing over the previous limit. Which he would do, if and when it became necessary, but the physical effects of doing so, once he eventually did drop back out of the Seed, were... debilitating to say the least. Like forcing a internal combustion engine to run without lubricants, it could do it, but sooner or later a critical part would seize up and the whole engine might slag itself. In biological terms, he could give himself a fatal heart attack or stroke if he kept his brain and body operating in the super-adrenaline Seed mode for too long, and even if he didn't, he'd probably faint as soon as he dropped out of the Seed.

He took the opportunity to observe as Frost continued his massacre of any of the Solar Knights who foolishly thought they could stand up to him. They might be the cream of the crop from those who lived in space, but none of them had a fraction of the experience or raw talent that Frost had for MS combat, especially in NIC equipped machines. Kira wasn't even entirely sure if Frost's personal gift for MS combat might not be greater than his own, since Frost had originally been a Natural, without access to the Seed, and it had taken an Ultimate Coordinator, a pair of them actually, to defeat him then! His Latent abilities helped make up whatever gap in skill and talent there might be between them, but all the same, Kira had the awful feeling that if and when it came down to the two of them battling over the fate of humanity, peace versus conflict, the winner might just be decided like a coin toss... fifty-fifty chances. Kira couldn't decide if he hoped that day would soon come, because it would mean the end of the Reclaimation War, or if he hoped it was a long time in coming, because it might very well be the day of his demise!

Assuming that day wasn't here and now, given how outnumbered the Edenite defenders still were, and how many of them were starting to flag from using their own Seeds to survive this far. The core of the Custodians and Praetorians were still going strong, have trained for years for endurance and to handle the stresses of combat. Training didn't beat real experience of course, but it did help blunt some of the sharper edges of the fatigue and exhaustion that quickly overwhelmed most people while fighting for their lives, especially against a foe with superior numbers! Most of the Urbanis militia were all but swaying on their feet, having expended an entire days worth of energy in only an hour or two of near nonstop battle! That was the insidious true killer of the battlefield... no matter how skilled, gifted or well armed you were, once exhaustion started to set in, your life was continuously imperiled, death just waiting for you to make the one stupid, sloppy mistake. Kira himself felt about half spent, depending on whether or not he had to Seed again and Frost... well, Frost may have known of exhaustion by reputation, but he didn't seem to have ever met it personally.

He wanted to be angry at Frost, hell he WAS angry at Frost, that was pretty much a constant condition ever since he'd first seen him and realized who had really been behind all those attacks in Orb, which Kira had not forgotten and would not forgive, when the time was right. The BCPU cum enhanced UC clone could still end the entire battle in a matter of moments, especially with the USN forces all bunched up for their planned blitzkrieg charge, all it would take would be one well aimed shot from the Kratos's 20mm AMP cannon and a hundred thousand soldiers and their vehicles and MS would cease to exist. But no amount of cajoling or pleading would tempt Frost into using that capability, not now, while he was still immensely entertained by slaughtering the Solar Knight Paladins. But then again, Frost didn't see the situation as one that deserved to be saved, he didn't care how the war ended, as long as it ended quickly, he was just here to fight as many people as possible; and a crushing defeat for the Edenites here would definitely hasten the war's endgame, in the USN's favor!

Kira wondered what Frost was really after with all of this. He claimed to want to use continual conflict to "forge" and "sharpen" humanity into its strongest possible form, but while that was ostensibly a noble goal, if a bloodthirsty one, the whys of it still escaped Kira, and pretty much everyone else but Frost. Where was the need for such strength? Where was the threat facing all of humanity that required them to be made so strong? Was Frost that threat, and just making a self fufilling prophecy so that he could keep killing for as long as he wanted? Was he that selfish? If it had been the old Frost, the one from the Second Valentine War, Kira would have said yes, he was that selfish, in a heartbeat. But now he wasn't so sure. Frost's interactions with Lilia had caught him off guard... there was more to the new Frost than met the eye, more than the bloodthristy berserker he'd fought at Denver. It was like Frost knew some huge secret that justified his whole new outlook, gave him a sense of restraint and even the ability to be humble, at least for Frost, in the pursuit of his goals. But what secret was it, or was it just another facet of his ever evolving descent into the depths of madness? That was the biggest problem... Frost was insane, trying to understand him as a rational person might be literally impossible!

Finally, the tattered remnants of the Paladins seemed to realize that individually, or in teams, or in mobs, they weren't a match for the Kratos. Unfortunately for them, running away from the Kratos was almost as impossible as defeating it was, because not only was Frost's Gundam considerably faster than the Excalibers, but he could also attack at speeds where most other pilots were lucky to not crash into the ground with a slight untoward twitch of their controls! And to top it all off, once the nerve of one Paladin broke, the fear, stoked and tended almost lovingly by Frost, as he was so terrifyingly good at doing, became a rampant infection that soon had the Paladins fleeing for their lives in random directions, not even trying to pretend to be regrouping or reorganizing. Kira could almost hear them screaming in horror as the Kratos hunted them down and executed them with cruelty and barbarity, one at a time, until all fifty Solar Knight elites were broken to smouldering pieces and slain. It was a devastating psychological blow to the morale of the USN, Kira could almost see the ripples of doubt and constrenation travel through the USN lines.

Paired with the already somewhat shaky morale caused by witnessing the fall of the Incarnate class warship, Kira thought for a moment that the USN forces would actually, incredibly, begin to rout. They had lost both their heaviest support and their most elite warrior unit, both of them to the actions of individual Eddie machines, and that was a thought to give even the staunchest soldier a few moments of loose bowels and fear sweats. But then outside influences seemed to inject stiffness into the spines of the wavering soldiers, and their formations once more started to move with precision and vigor, the balance point overcome. Kira frowned, realizing that a near constant psychic murmur he'd been feeling for most of the battle was now absent, which meant the awesome Wendigo allies had stopped their psychic interference effect for some reason, so now the USN, using the TACs, was operating at full organizational efficiency once more, which did not bode well. Kira tried to contact the defense headquarters, both mechanically and psychically, but got no response to either, which made his guts tense up. Something must have happened, the Orb forces, probably the Stormhounds, must have been at least somewhat successful in their raid! This was not good.

The Custodians and Praetorians wouldn't be overly bothered by the loss of the commanding Strategos, there were five more Custodians of Strategos rank present and ready to step into the slot if need be, plus the Praetorians themselves, especially the Arboreals, could serve as leadership in a pinch, as could Kira himself. For that matter, most indiviudal Custodians needed little in the way of micromanagement from their superiors, especially in a fairly cut and dried situation like this siege... stop the USN advance, kill as many of them as possible, don't die... those three orders were all they really needed to bear in mind. The details on how to accomplish those orders were largely left up to individual Manifolds and Manifold groups. However, the Urbanis militia was not trained to be so independent minded, they relied heavily on the confidence boost of getting precise orders from people in charge who knew what to do on a large scale, and with Sheriff-General Hales and his staff incommunicado, that was yet another thing sapping at the wills and spines of the militia forces.

Kira really wished he had Lacus's talent and inclination for oration, she had a way with using only a few sentences to completely reverse the spirits of anyone who was downcast or fearful. Kira really wished he just had Lacus back, because then this war would probably end in heartbeats. Durandel was a popular leader no doubt, but with Lacus standing on the side of the Edenites, he would never have risked an open war, his own people would not have stood for it. Alas, Durandel seemed to have anticipated that, and had conspired to murder Lacus before she could decide to become a threat to him, moreso than she already was. Kira really wished he had Lacus back, and the kids, because otherwise his life just felt hollow and empty and cold, no matter how much good he did, nothing would fill the void of happiness that existed inside him now! Even the things that might be considered evil didn't seem to stir his heart overmuch either, he just felt numb inside. He loathed the feeling, but he didn't know how to get rid of it... all he could do was pursue the path he'd chosen, and hope it eventually lifted the burden on his soul just a little bit!

And then sensation did strike him, like a net of red hot iron fibers tossed over him and weighting him down, cutting searing channels into his mental skin, the unexpected agony making him stagger, the Lucifer actually falling to hands and knees as he panted and screamed in shared pain, as the excrutiating death echoes of hundreds of thousands of Edenites washed over him in a tidal wave of ash and smoke and bloody ruin! Kira was far from the only one affected by the psychic trauma, the rest of the Edenite forces were also half crippled by the tumult of death echoes, some falling over in dead faints, others rolling around on the ground, trying to beat out invisible, intangible flames, still more just standing and shrieking and yelling their pain and surprise to the heavens, dropping weapons, crashing vehicles, and putting Mobile Suits on their knees or staggering and tripping in all directions. Just about the only one who didn't seem adversely affected was Frost, and even he stopped to listen intently. Kira had felt something like this before, though this was but a pale echo of the trauma he'd felt then, for all that the source of this was only a few kilometers away and the previous sourve had been across half the world.

It was the resonation echo of a huge number of psychics dying in close succession, all in terrible pain... either a concetrated nuclear attack against the eastern seaboard of the old United States, as back then... or a packed shelter of Urbanis residents being filled with MAIDEN and the few survivors gunned and blasted down when they tried to open the doors to flee. The last moments of two hundred thousand men, women and children of all ages tried to imprint themselves on his mind all at once, and were it not for his mental shields of willpower and focus, he might have lapsed straight into catatonia, or just plain died on the spot, as some of the Urbanis militia had, after feeling the deaths of family or loved ones mixed into the chaotic mass. Kira could emphasize, though he hadn't felt nearly so much trauma when Lacus and his children died, which was kind of strange, but there were any number of explanations, the most obvious being that Lacus had seen what was coming, and cut herself and the kids off from him to spare him having to experience that kind of agony... she would do that sort of thing.

The memories of the Rex Lodge and the ashy wastes of the tragic aftermath were now freshly re-imprinted on his thoughts, a hundred thousand times over, as he got to feel what Lacus must have felt, what Akira and Aoi must have felt, the terror and pain and confusion and hopelessness as their skin inexplicably ignited and turned them to blackened skeletons in a matter of seconds, as the sparkling white clouds dripped and flowed through the confines of the shelters, the chatter of machineguns and the roar of flamethrowers at the entrance heralding the fate of any of those who tried to flee the bunker. Hundreds were trampled to death in the panic even before they were burnt to cinders by the MAIDEN. It was like Hell itself had briefly come up to near the surface of New Eden, and it was just one of dozens upon dozens of shelters that the RI was planning to target!

"No..." Kira whispered, his lips feeling parched and his tongue tasting of burnt meat, as he dropped his shields and welcomed the tide of frantic emotion into himself, letting it wash away his numbness and replace it with more useful emotions. Rage. Determination. Sorrow. Hate. All those negative emotions that Frost had once expoused as the essential natures of humanity. Kira still did not agree with that assessment, regardless of his current situation he knew there was as much light and lovely about humanity as there was dark and ugly, but he did have to admit, the darker emotions made a fine turbocharging fuel when love and kindness couldn't reach him! "No more..." Kira repeated, hauling the Lucifer back up to a standing position. "No more of this... I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS!" He screamed the last, across channels both technological and psychic, and all who heard the rawness in his voice shivered for a moment, many in fear, some in anticipation.

Kira watched his Seed, violet in color with crawling rootling veins of purest silver, float towards the termination plane in the fastness of his mind, a void that slowly reformed into a vista of a forest, mighty trees towering on all sides, the soil thick and loamy beneath his bare toes. He watched with narrow eyes as the Seed descended from the heavens, his arms tensed as he waited for it to fall within reach. And then he snatched for it, the Seed smacking into his palm like it was meant to be there, unlike the previous time where his grab had seemingly passed right through the elusive object. Kira tightened his fist around his Seed, feeling the texture of it as the veins began to writhe and venture outwards, sinking into the flesh of his palm and fingers, rooting itself in him. Alternating waves of fire and ice seemed to shoot through his veins, his limbs trembling with pent up energy as he carefully knelt down, the Seed clenched in a fist held high... and then that fist was slammed downwards, punching deep into the soil, cracking the forest plane open as the Seed gestated and became a Tree, a Tree that enveloped Kira and lifted him up, higher and higher, absorbing him into its essence until he was cradled inside it like a baby in a womb.

Back in reality, Kira's eyes opened, once more shaded a metallic color, though they were more silver than violet now, his pupils expanding until his corneas were but a thin rim of violet around the silver, like the glowing corona of a sun during a total eclipse. This was the second stage of a mature Ultimate Coordinator, the Ascended Seed, and the psychic bow-wave of its activation buffeted the edenite lines like a gust of icy cold gale force winds right to the face, making many wince and flinch even as goosebumps spread across their skin. For his part, Frost had his teeth bared in a rictus grin that covered his face, the expression caught somewhere between adoration and trepidation. This was a side of Yamato he'd seen only once before, shortly before his untimely death. He was looking forward to seeing it in action once more, and, very faintly, glad that it was not yet directed at him. Now he just had to figure out how HE could access it, because if Yamato could do it by himself, there was no reason Frost could not! And without it, any true battle with the former Boytoy was fated to end in ignomity for Frost, which was simply unacceptable!

With all of his senses operating well past peak efficiency, including his Latent powers, Kira could already see that waiting for the USN to begin their attack would only place him at a disadvantage. It was time to strike while the iron was still hot, he had no idea what kind of time or physical limitations were bundled into the Ascended Seed and he wasn't eager to run out of gas in the middle of the enemy formations. _ALL CUSTODIAN AND PRAETORIAN FORCES, FOLLOW MY_ _LEAD!_ Kira directed with the mental equivalent of a rallying cry, infusing the command with such a degree of confidence and authority that even if he were to charge headlong into the mouth of Hell, he felt fairly sure they would follow him. And in truth, the situation was pretty close to that, as Kira accelerated the Lucifer to near its maximum speed, crossing the space between him and the USN forces in a fraction of a second, moving so fast not even he could attack in real time. Fortunately he had no need to, with his Latent powers so souped up, he could see where opponents would be when he did arrive, and he could thus start his attacks without having to react or rely on his slothful physical senses... he shot at empty space, knowing it would be filled by the time the shot arrived.

The Lucifer punched into the mustering USN forces like a barbed spear thrust into a block of ballistic jelly, not only penetrating with ease, but dragging sections of the material into the wound alongside himself, lifting APCs, IFVs and MBTs with the Lucifer's Grasp, hurling them around like skittles, dropping them onto others of their kind, or throwing them into the sides of larger vehicles, like the Titans, Archmages and Petrie class Land Battleships. Other times he would use the Grasp to forcibly spin the turret mechanism of a vehicle around in mid shot, so that its firepower damaged or destroyed an allied machine instead, this was an especially useful tactic to use against the Titans, since their main turret had two extremely powerful Mjolnirs in it, plus, forcing the turret to rotate without command would shatter the turret control mechanisms, leaving the tank unable to operate its own main guns!

A screaming wave of Wraiths, Spectres and Dervishes, followed by hordes of Custodians and the Praetorians on foot, charged into the disordered and confused ranks of the USN that Kira left in his wake, overwhelming the numerically superior USN troops with sheer ferocity and the advantage of surprise. It was an army of about five thousand charging a force thirty times its number, the USN forces could be forgiven for being a bit shocked. The Edenites did not stop to fully engage the units they overbore, instead charging onwards after the elusive, speeding figure of the Lucifer, trusting that the Executor had some sort of plan, insane or otherwise, that would make this charge something other than an exercise in glorified suicide!

And Kira did have such a plan, which relied on him being at close to the exact middle of the USN formations, surrounded on all sides by the enemy, interspersed with his allies. The USN forces began to react to the enemy in their midst, and in their shock and mild panic, they reacted exactly as Kira hoped they would, many of them targeting him with their heavier weapon systems, which were usually beam based. He had long ago mastered the defensive uses of his Fractal Wings even without using the Seed, now, in Ascended Seed, they moved literally in response to his subconscious desires, blocking and reflecting and guiding the incoming beams around into new trajectories, aimed either back at the firer or at other USN troops all around, while Kira simultaneously cut loose with his FRALA's, using the Grasp to deflect and redirect physical munitions and missiles sent his way. Explosions and detonations spread out in ripples from the epicenter that was the Lucifer, rings of ever expanding destruction, like a choppy stop motion video of a nuclear bomb going off!

The Custodians and Praetorians contributed to the mayhem as best they could, but Kira could see a better use for them than letting them fly about at random, forcing him to modify his shot and reflection trajectories to avoid friendly fire, which was beginning to become annoying in the chaos. So he reached out to them, not controlling, but certainly sheparding their points of aim, drawing them towards himself, guiding their hands to put their firepower where he needed it most, whether it be to directly attack as USN machine, or far more often, to feed the maelstrom that he was creating with his Fractal Wings and Lucifer's Grasp. The Fractal Wings were useless against some weapons, such as Mjlonirs, QC spike drivers or Ion Distentegrators, but these were partly or wholly phsyical as well, and thus subject to manipulation by the Grasp, all it took was a little tweak here or there and he could command those weapons almost as easily as he could control beam and hyper-impulse shots.

It was a monstrous, terrifying spectacle even if you were on the side of the Edenites; to the hapless and confused soldiers of the USN, it was a nightmare made reality, the Lucifer, black as midnight, surrounded by halos of pure, destructive light and energy and matter, sowing death and devastation in all directions at once, its palms uplifted towards the heavens like a prophet communing with a god, the Gundam itself an immaculate statue in the midst of ruin and annihilation! Clouds of dust and plumes of smoke choked the air, whipped into turbulent, rolling banks of suffocating and blinding particles, the rumble of explosions sounded like the rattling of a hundred snare drums beating in concert, the air itself was bleeding the stench of ozone and cinders, and again, in the midst of this storm, at the eye of this churning tornado of unimaginable devastation, stood the somber black figure of the Lucifer, eyes blazing purple, steadfast and untouchable in its majesty!

It was too much for the still somewhat jittery nerves of the USN soldiers to bear, first losing the _Monolith_, then the massacre of the Solar Knight Paladins, and now this... this unbelievable maelstrom that consumed everything it touched, shredding what was whole and spitting out only smouldering fragments of what was once powerful and living! Aghast and trembling, the USN formations began to scatter and flee, dozens of vehicles crashing and burning or being trampled by Mobile Suits as their resolve cracked like an eggsheel beneath a tank tread and a full scale retreat began, quickly dissolving into a uncontrollable rout, every individual unit fleeing for its own life with no sense of cohesion or organization or loyalty! At the time, many wondered if it was the result of some Eddie psychic trickery, but it wasn't, it was just the all too natural human fear reaction going into overdrive. Even some of the Edenites were infected by the rampant terror, and ended up fleeing towards the city or off into the wilderness, their mental shields overcome by the gibbering emotions of the USN soldiers.

Roaring with ecstatic laughter, Frost was taking the opportunity to further spread torment by throwing himself in amongst the very rear echelons of the USN forces, where the artillery units and heaviest carrier Landships were pulled up, and soon afterwards there was only heaping piles of flaming wreckage and the piles of mutilated bodies in that direction, a potential point of succor for the USN mainline troops dissolving into anarchy before they could even dare hope for salvation. A river of vehicles and Mobile Suits and even soldiers on foot poured past the merrily blazing wrecks of their support echelons, shying away from the brutal, demonic figure of the Kratos as it danced and capered among the wreckage, playing a cruel form of hacky sack utilizing a Chariot class APC and the squad of soldiers inside, seeing how many times he could bat or kick it up into the air before missing or having it explode. The grotesque sight did nothing to slow the retreat of the majority of the USN forces.

Barely had the USN forces begun their rout, pursued hotly by the Edenite Mobile Suits and vehicle forces, than Kira was away with the Lucifer, blitzing across the sky, boring a sonic tunnel right through the clouds of dust and grit, as he found where the RIP troops were preparing another shelter for massacre. None of them survived even long enough to hear the sonic boom that tolled their doom, which hurled their mostly vaporized bodies through the air like confetti. A quick search of the city, along with his Latent sense, allowed him to discover and destroy several more teams of RIPs before they could accomplish their genocidal tasks, and then Kira headed for the sky, searching for a good perspective to survey the battlefield and see what else needed to be done. Barely twenty minutes had passed since the first shelter was torched, and the Second Stage unleashed. He wished he knew how his body was holding up, but he couldn't feel a thing right now. He wondered if that was bad or normal?

The USN forces were in a total withdrawal, still pursued by the Custodians and Praetorians, killing hundreds even as they fled, but Kira was not of a mind to protest or stop them, not after the shelter. Frost too contributed his efforts to ensuring the USN forces would not be recovering any time soon, diving in amongst them like a hawk picking through a stampede of mice. Kira could see the Orb ships, including the _Endymion_, withdrawing in more or less good order over Lake Victoria, they had not been part of the main attack and so had been spared his recent wrath, but Orb's forces, for all their power, were not numerically strong enough to carry the assault on their own, and so they retreated as well, pausing only to recover the downed Simurgh and Balmung Gundams. Kira was again surprised to see that Frost had not killed Yzak and Katie, he just didn't understand the new Frost! He thought about pursuing the Orb forces, knowing he could probably cripple or destroy most of them now if he tried, but he couldn't make himself do it. There was still some Orbite in him, it seemed, and he merely watched from on high as they flew away.

The afteraffects of the Ascended Seed hit him without warning, he wasn't even aware of dropping out of the Ascended Seed mode, one moment he was surveying the area around Urbanis, looking for more threats to excise, the next his body was completely numb again, and his eyes blurred shut before he could even think about making an exclamation. Consciousness was blasted away on a geyser of exhaustion worse than anything he'd felt for years and years, and the Lucifer's thrusters sputtered and died, gravity hungrily reclaiming the Gundam as it plummeted towards the city streets it had fought so hard to protect, thousands of feet below. A blur raced through the sky to intercept the limp Gundam, lowering the black armored form almost gently to the roof of one of the taller buildings. "Not just yet, Boytoy." Frost muttered, eyeing his comatose rival speculatively. "Not just yet. There's still several more acts for you to dance through before we come to this conclusion." Frost peered over the edge of the building and looked around at the ruins of the battlefield. He found himself feeling almost satisfied. As far as inaugural engagements went, this wasn't too bad. He was already looking forward to the next one. And the next... and the one after that... and the one after that...


	42. Indigo Release

Author Note: Pleased to see City of Tears so well received, a fitting climax for that arc indeed. But hang on, the action doesn't slow down just yet, indeed, if last arc and this arc could be compared to a roller coaster ride, CoT was the part where your cars reach the tippy top of the first incline, and now you're facing a really steep slope into the mouth of a hellish series of twists and loops and corkscrews. Hang on to yer butts, things are about to get all kinds of messy here shortly. The funny thing about Moral High Ground... it tends to act more like a wave than a hill... one moment you're raised up high, the next you find yourself in the goddamn troughs! But enough of my prosleytizing, you're here for the update. Welcome to Cosmic Era 86. Welcome to the Indigo Release. Nothing will ever be the same.

xxxx

**New Eden, Secret Rendevous Point "Azure Cradle", 250km North of Garden City, Sunday, **

**December 31st, C.E. 85, 2:00 pm**

_Alexander... it is good to see you recovered._ The somewhat droll mental voice of Kunai made Alex's hackles try to stand up for a moment, before he regained control of himself. Everyone had been ribbing him constantly for the past few days, ever since the battle for Urbanis, because of his duel with the USN Gundam, the Transcendance, may the Caller take that pilot's soul and consume it for eternity! Alex had powered in, ordering Haman away to support Executor Frost, confident he could handle any single USN pilot no matter what kind of machine they were in, looking forward in anticipation to crossing swords with a Gundam so similarly armed to himself. The fight itself had been rather more even than Alex was comfortable with, even when resorting to his Seed, he barely managed to gain an advantage against his highly skilled and experienced foe. Say what you might about the unascended Naturals and Coordinators and their baseline abilities, Alex had definitely felt the woeful lack of his own "real" combat experience during the battle. He was faster than the USN pilot, but the USN pilot was trickier, and damn him if he wasn't also somehow inured against mental attacks as well, somehow!

The long and short of it was, they'd been pretty evenly matched, each inflicting minor damage upon the other, neither managing to land a single solid blow... and a single solid blow would have been all it would take, with a QC zweihander. The climax to the duel had come just moments before Executor Yamato activated his mature Seed and completely changed the face of the battle, and perhaps the war... Alex had finally knocked his opponent's sword away, disarming the Transcendance, and he was winding up to split the crystalline Gundam in half, realizing a fraction of a second too late that he'd been gulled, as he put his Wraith's weight into the swing and could not avert it in time to avoid slamming his sword directly into the wingtip Positron shields of the Transcendance. QC was all but indestructible, emphasis on the "all but", when exposed to concentrated anti-matter particles, it flashed into nothingness like any other form of normal matter, and poof, just like that he was left holding a hilt and not much more!

The Transcendance had clawed him deeply with its right hand QC finger claws, ripping open his cockpit compartment and just barely gashing Alex himself, a inch and a half deep cut that missed dropping his guts around his ankles by about an inch too high, but the USN pilot got a bit too overconfident and cocky with his slick maneuever, and even as Alex was falling away, blood pouring down his belly, he used the dual 20mm QC spike driver on his left arm to riddle the wings and lower torso of his foe with thumb thick holes. He didn't think he'd managed to hit the pilot, but the Gundam itself had taken major damage and would be days if not weeks in regenerating itself, in any case, the damage had been severe enough that the Transcendance was forced to withdraw rather than continue fighting. The next thing Alex had experienced was the rush of Executor Yamato's Second Stage activation, and that had toppled his consciousness like a house of cards, and Alex had missed the entire triumphant end of the battle, which pissed him off to no end!

Getting saved by Heine and Haman hadn't done much to improve his mood either, it wasn't like he didn't appreciate them breaking off to render first aid to keep him from bleeding out, but Heine had left off killing the Transcendance's partner, the one in the red Excaliber, to do it! Alex hadn't seen much of that particular battle, he'd been too focused on his own fight, but from what he recalled, Heine had been on the offensive pretty much the entire time, with the Excaliber, its weapons configured for maximum range combat, spending most of its time frantically dodging and running away, trying to find a safe firing distance that Heine never allowed to open up. The pilot of the red machine wasn't as good as the Gundam pilot, perhaps obviously, but they were good enough, when focusing on near total defense, to at least stay alive against Heine, which was no little accomplishment! If only Alex hadn't been... unfortunate... Heine would definitely have killed the red machine. The fact that both the USN pilot and his partner would live to fight another day soley because of Alex's own personal weakness was like a white hot dagger buried in his gut. He would have his revenge! Next time neither of them would be so lucky!

The cut had been patched up and was healing well, normally Alex had any scars suffered during combat or training removed, he was too fond of the flawlessness of his skin to let it be tarnished with the evidence of his own mistakes for long, but he was making a special exception in this particular case. He wasn't going to have this particular scar removed until AFTER the Transendance's pilot was decapitated in the dust at his feet! It would serve as a constant reminder of his own previous limitations, and the need to exceed them in the future! The further humiliation of having his expensive QC zweihander destroyed wasn't pleasant either, QC material was not quickly produced, even with near unlimited power and Red EDEN vats, a new sword would be almost a month in the making! Until that time, he'd accepted a tempered metal mono-edge blade to replace his lost weapon, but though adequate, the weapon just didn't feel right in his Wraith's hands. It made him feel lessened, incomplete, and he loathed that sensation!

When he'd first got the call from Kunai, to come muster at a given location far to the north of Garden City, deep in the north-central ranges of the Himalayas, he'd initially been resentful, preferring to brood and sulk and train in his chambers and within the Enclave in order to purge his bad mood. However, once Kunai had revealed what he needed Alex for, he'd immediately leapt for the chance, sure that Kunai's mission would be a much more productive and effective method of stress relief. Truth be told, he was shocked by the boldness of the endeavor, especially coming so soon after Urbanis, but who was he to gainsay the methods and plans of Kunai? If Kunai said that this was the proper time for such a strategy, then by the Holy Tree, it must be the proper time! As Kunai had said, they had to keep the momentum from Urbanis strongly on their side, since though they and the USN had suffered roughly equal losses on a proportionate scale, the USN had a much greater population base and industrial capacity from which to generate new troops and war material, and much more quickly at that!

Through the use of Chimera allies, they had managed to largely annull the organizational advantage of the USN's TIAMAT unit, which operated in conjunction with the USN's AI mainframe, NAMARA and was based up in the Second Earth Colonies. This information had been recently gleaned from some of the captured ranking officers from the Urbanis victory, most of whom had been interrogated psychically, against which their training was no defense, and all sources agreed, the headquarters of TIAMAT was on Second Earth 3. While the Chimera countermeasure had been effective, it was also limited, in that if the concentration of the Chimera were to be disrupted, such as by the need to defend themselves against a flanking raid by the Orb forces, the disruption net could not be maintained, at least not by Chimera only as powerful as the Wendigo. A more permanent solution was required, to take that ace out of the USN's playing deck on a long term basis. Taking out the AI itself would be the best way, but the system was extensively decentralized, and would require basically destroying all the Second Earth Colonies, the PLANTS and large sections of the Moon to accomplish, which was unfeasible at this time.

So Kunai had settled on the second best method, destroying the physical headquarters, staff and connection terminals the staff used to interface with the AI in order to so comprehensively act as combat coordinators. With those all gone, especially in the wake of Urbanis, the USN would be weeks if not months in rebuilding the program to its previous operational level, valuable time for the diminished Edenite forces to generate a decisive advantage in the field, perhaps by destroying Gibraltar or maybe Carpentaria for good, in eventual preparation for invading Orb to cut off the USN's main supply connection to the surface. Once New Eden was fully under their control, they could worry about creating a space capable fleet to take the fight to the USN's doorstep, and beyond if possible! But that was all in the relatively distant future, and it all hinged on the events of today, which Kunai was entrusting, in large part, to Alex himself! Oh, there was a support team of handpicked Praetorians acting as his backup and for logistical reasons, but he was the one given command of the main mission, while Kunai took control of the secondary squadron personally. In a way of thinking, Kunai had counted him as an equal with this display of trust and delegated authority, and Alex felt so proud he was sure his chest was going to burst at any moment!

The plan was actually surprisingly simple, a crack team of Praetorians, led by Alex, would use stealth to bypass the USN fleets in orbit and rendevous at the target Second Earth colony during the evening hours, when most of the USN homeland security forces would be retiring for their New Year's eve celebrations, leaving only a skeleton guard, if even that much. The last thing the USN was expecting was a covert strike on their homeland after all, they probably weren't even aware of the surface to orbit capability of the Praetorians, since only Executor Yamato had so far demonstrated it! Truthfully, almost any FPR equipped machine was capable of reaching escape velocity, but only the Praetorians could do it while remaining invisible and undetectable! All those times when Kunai had held them back from heading to orbit under cloak to devastate the USN fleets now suddenly made sense, the USN was going to totally get caught with their pants down now! All the suffering under orbital watch and bombardment was going to be made worthwhile here in a few hours, when he and his team would give the USN a New Year's event to remember for generations!

They didn't know exactly where in the colony the TIAMAT system was located, but that was okay, Kunai had prepared for that eventuality, counted on it even. While the Praetorians were mostly used to performing surgical strike type operations, they could do widespread havoc as well, and this plan relied upon that as much as it did their initial stealth rendevous! The special package canisters, recently made by Vaul personally for this mission, though the Warsmith had not been let into Kunai's full confidence about the nature of the mission, were already being loaded onto Alex's Wraith and the Spectres of his team, each package hardly bigger than a large personal suitcase. Despite this, they were probably the second most incredibly powerful and deadly weapon system ever devised by mankind. And also one of the most horrible, which was the reason why the Praetorians with weaker stomachs for what was distasteful but necessary, such as Vaul, Lilia, Heine, Haman and a few others, had not been notified of or included in the mission, the same for the two maverick Executors. It was up to the true believers like Alex to carry on when the going got dark and dirty and rough. It was a burden he was honored to accept.

_Kunai._ Alex bowed his head in awed respect to his mentor and master, though the latter term was still one Kunai ever decried, no matter how richly he deserved the appellation. Only the truly worthy incessantly proclaimed their unworthiness after all. _You have exceeded yourself today, sir. The scope of this plan... it will be remembered for all of history! I am honored beyond words that you would entrust this duty to me._

_Think nothing of it, Alex, you were the best choice for the job._ Kunai replied, with a slightly weary smile. _Yes, you are the most expendable of all the current Arboreals._ Kunai added, inside his own head only. _Your dedication to the cause is the most zealous of all my Praetorians, I can trust you to perform any job to the utmost of your abilities, no matter how personally distasteful it is. It is I that am honored to work with you, truly, your unsung dedication should be an inspiration to us all, I only regret that for the time being, we won't be able to openly acknowledge your work outside the Order. Too many of the Children, Hiero... may he ever be Tree blessed... especially, would simply not understand the necessity of what we do today, for the greater good of all of New Eden._ He continued on, once more sending his thoughts to Alex. A little simple flattery, a little apparent delegation of trust, a little insider commiserating, and the big Praetorian was as pliable as a butter coated puppy in his hands. A near perfect tool, for the cause of the greater good. If Alex survived the mission, all well and good. If not, he would make a fine martyr for the cause. Sometimes people could be just as valuable dead as alive, moreso in some ways, such as Lacus Clyne!

_Is that the Exemplar?_ Alex asked, his tone still subdued with awe, as he nodded respectfully over Kunai's shoulder towards the surprisingly plain Gundam standing a little ways off, its LCR armor tuned to a brilliant, pure white shade, its golden eyes shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight. The Gundam featured no apparent weapon systems, and seemed almost small and frail, with no large impressive wings like the Lucifer, nor the massive limbs and obvious weapons of the Kratos. Two oblong holsters, more like extended sections of hip and thigh armor, one on either leg, with a series of meter long slots cut into their outer edges, were the only things that could tenatively be called a possible weapon, and even then, it didn't look like much. _It is... how do I say this... um..._

_Looks can be decieving, my friend._ Kunai said with a patient smile, feeling Alex's sense of disappointment and disregard. _Looking at me, just physically, would most people consider me much of a threat? I am not especially big, or especially strong, or especially quick, yet I am still the undisputed leader of our Order all the same, by virtue of my own great personal power and ability. My Gundam mirrors this, to all outward appearances, the Exemplar is nothing special. It is what is inside that truly counts though. Trust me, Alex, you would be better off throwing yourself upon your sword than facing off with my Exemplar... it wouldn't be any less final anyway._

_Of course, forgive my doubt, I am not much for the ways of subtlety._ Alex shrugged self consciously, standing next to his reclining boss, who was barely even half the mass of Alex himself, a good foot and a half shorter, and nowhere near as well muscled. Not to mention paralyzed from the waist down. And yet he still made Alex feel like the lesser man, just with his sheer presence of personality alone!

_You have little enough need of it, Alex._ Kunai commented with a wry grin. _But you should marshal what reserves of it you can manage tonight, because you cannot brute force your way past the orbital fleets without compromising the mission. Once you have reached the colony, feel free to be as loud and unsubtle as you wish, the more distraction you and your team can provide, the easier my own section of the mission will be. And now, we should get started, there is no such thing as too much time allocation for stealth maneuvers. We cannot afford failure during the exfiltration, Alex, impress that upon your team. May Yggdrasil shade you with its boughs, and grant favor to your actions._

_As Yggdrasil wills it, sir. And may the Caller dine well on their anguish, for tonight we go to prepare him a feast!_

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Second Earth 2, TIAMAT project headquarters, December 31st, C.E. 85, 7:00 pm**

"I'm surprised you're still here, Brendon." The slightly lilting voice of Namara commented from the wall-comm near where TAC-Captain Stork was typing on his portable computer, sitting in one corner of the rather well furnished, near opulent dining facility that the headquarters had provided for its staff. An avatar of the AI appeared on his roll up screen, Nam's preferred image being a young woman in her late teens or early twenties, with the relatively pale skin of a born spacer, and a long, slightly unkempt mane of space black hair streaked with dark maroon accent lines. Her eyes would change color depending on her mood and whims, but were originally and currently a dark emerald green color. "Does the Birdman not have a roost to go back to tonight?" She asked, with a langorous arch of her eyebrow, and a shift of her body that shuffled her near skintight black leather apparel in ways that might have been extremely distracting, were he a decade and a half younger and not a widower. Or in any way, shape or form "into" the sensual use of entirely digital images, which he wasn't.

"Are you drunk, Nam?" Brendon replied with a tiny quirk of his facial muscles, as he continued working on his status report of the Urbanis fiasco, which had not been one of TIAMAT's shiningest moments, despite his best efforts. Some sort of unexpected interference on the ground level, something Nam couldn't quite identify, though the general consensus was that it was a form of psychic warfare the Eddies had concocted to counter the TACs and TANs. It only made sense that the Eddies would try something of the sort, propoganda aside, Brendon knew that considering the Eddies a bunch of degenerate savages was not a luxury he could afford. They were frighteningly intelligent and capable, as the near impossible reversal at Victoria had so resoundingly proved, one Eddie, an exceptional one perhaps, but one Eddie all the same, completely changing the course of the battle in a matter of minutes!

"I'm not durnk." Nam replied with a smirk, allowing herself to slur the words a bit. "Just a bit buzzed at the moment. I'm saving the real party for the midnight countdown. Lexi and I are going to paint a couple different towns red. Literally, we've got the automated paint bots all programmed and ready to go."

Brendon snorted in half amusement, half wry despair, at the childish antics of the most powerful computer systems ever designed by mankind. For whatever reason, both AI's seemed to have wholly adopted their personas as pushy, tweaky, mischevious young ladies, though Nam was careful to only display her true personality to those she trusted, such as Brendon. Too many in the USN were all too uptight and straightlaced when it came to interacting with the AI, many of her designers would freak out if they realized how truly independent and "alive" she had become under their noses. Brendon wasn't concerned, he knew that despite her little pranks and moments of naughtiness, Nam loved her "fleshies", regarding most of them in sort of the same way that he might regard his own blood, a somewhat gross, endlessly complex, but generally unnoticed fundament of his or her life. She would never let a single one of them come to harm, even the ones that were abusive and cruel to her, inasmuch as that was possible, any more than a well adjusted person would cut themselves open to bleed out a dose of poison or drugs. Losing her fleshies would hurt her more than any misuse or misconduct towards her on their part they were capable of.

"Well, you're old enough to know to be careful, I guess, so I'll try not to adopt my disapproving father persona for the time being." Brendon answered, shaking his head and sighing as Nam grabbed his word document, rotated it, folded it and started reading it like an old fashioned newspaper, right there on his screen. "I'm still working on that."

"Oh boo, its New Year's Eve, Brendon, you shouldn't be hanging around here by yourself, it's not healthy! Go out and have a beer or two with some of the other TACs or TANs, maybe take in a movie, or just go mingle with the crowds on the streets. The world won't end if you relax a little on one of the biggest holiday's of the year, I promise." Namara replied admonishingly. He tried to grab the document out of her hands with his mouse pointer, but she wouldn't let go, indeed, she manifested a large handgun of some sort in one hand and blew the mouse pointer away with a flurry of tinny gunshots, and try as he might, Brendon couldn't get the pointer to come back. Smiling saucily at him, Namara folded her newspaper-report up and flicked it over her shoulder, into a momentary wormhole type portal, whisking his work away to the depths of cyberspace, who knew where. It could take him months to find it again, even assuming Nam didn't actively hide it from him. Didn't look like she was giving him much of a choice in the matter, he'd have to appease her or all his hours of work would be wasted!

He could of course order her to return the document, and she would have to comply, but doing something so totalitarian with her would seriously breach the bond of trust and respect he'd built up with her, which was such a large part of his continued effectiveness as a TAC, he treated her like a real person and so she responded much more gently and easily to him than she did to others who treated her like equipment. In the interests of their friendship, he was just going to have to accept her meddling. Maybe she was right, one night off on the town couldn't hurt, could it? He could ignore the funny looks and whispers people always gave when they saw his obvious augmentations for one night, certainly. "You remind me of my wife and daughter, Nam. They wouldn't let me overwork myself either. Thank you."

"Of course. Its part of my job to know you fleshies better than you know yourselves, and to intercede on your behalf when your actions are detrimental to your continued health. Whether you want me to or not." Nam replied with an airy wave of her formerly pistol wielding hand. The mouse pointer was still gone, deleted he suspected, which was another thing she'd have to restore for him in the morning, not that she minded or would even notice such an infistesimal effort. "Don't think I won't be following you around and keeping an eye on you either! You'd better actually relax and have some fun tonight, or the Birdman will be turned into fried chicken come tomorrow morning, just you try me! I can make you WISH you just had a bad hangover, interface feedback can be a real BITCH, just like me when I don't get my way."

"I'll bear that in mind, Nam, thanks for the... overzealous... warning." Brendon shook his head, powering down the portable, letting the screen roll back into the carry tube, along with the keyboard, before picking it up by the nylon carry strap and slinging the cylindrical, ruler sized portable computer across one shoulder. "And you might consider painting at least one town blue, just for variety's sake. Hell, maybe an entire colony, a giant blue ball in space! The public works department would collectively blow a mega-fuse!"

"An entire colony... interesting idea. Impractical given the time constraints, but perhaps next year. Thanks for the idea. Oh yeah... and I would avoid public restrooms tonight. Especially around midnight. There may or may not be an unexpected glitch in the plumbing control network, that may or may not reverse a significant portion of the public toilet's water flow, just to mix things up a little at the start of the New Year and all."

"Please tell me that's the worst prank you and Lexi have planned..."

"I can tell you that, but I'm required by programming law to mention I'm lying."

"Just... don't destroy any buildings or anything, ok Nam?"

"As if, it'd be like cutting off a fingertip or something!"

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Vicinity of Second Earth Colony 3, December 31st, C.E. 85, 10:00 pm**

_That's the last of us, Alexander._ Revv reported smartly, his Spectre still invisible like the rest of the mission team, but Alex could still feel his proximity and eagerness on the mental plane, as well as the other familiar minds of his Praetorian brethren, just recently joined by the sixth and final member of the team. _We can launch whenever you give the word._

_Thank you, Revv._ Alex replied, somewhat distractedly, most of his attention caught up with the spectacle of the colossal spherical mass habitation colonies hovering in the void nearby, like a gargantuan set of softballs. It looked close enough to reach out and touch, though Alex knew it was still several hundred kilometers distant, which really gave him a good perspective for judging its incredible size! Each Second Earth colony was a sphere more than 150 kilometers in diameter, more a small moon than a space station, with a permanent population of almost 500 million! The outer surfaces of the colonies were shiny and reflective, plated with thousands of square kilometers of solar energy collectors and special mirrors that bounced the sunlight into the center of the colony to provide natural illumination, in addition to the powerful lamps that fed off the FPR's that provided the greater portion of each colony's expendable energy. Truly, they were modern engineering marvels on a scale that would have been impossible less than a decade prior. Truly, how far humanity had come in such a short time... truly, how far humanity had fallen in such a short time! But tonight was the first step on the path to regaining, once and for all, the golden age of humanity!

Getting past the orbital USN fleets had taken more time than Alex had expected, but bearing in mind Kunai's admonishments, he'd reigned in his impatience and had made sure he and his entire unit slipped by without leaving a single hint of their passage. After that had followed a mostly boring flight on autopilot to the rendevous point, each member of the squad taking a different route just in case, and now they were finally all together again! Alex felt an electric tingle working its way through his body, his heart pounding with pent up excitement as he tasted the words of destiny on his tongue. He could see a few vessels of the Solar Protection Fleet reserve forces in the far distance, but none of them were close enough to initially interfere with his mission. _There will be no one to stop us this time!_ Alex thought gleefully. He toggled on his comm system, knowing a foreign broadcast in the midst of the USN homeland would be easily detected, but he didn't care. He wanted them to freak out. Confusion and mayhem were now the order of the day.

"This is Arboreal Praetorian Alexander, of Garden City. All Praetorians, commence the mission!" Alex commanded, at the same time as he disengaged his photo-refractor cloak and kicked his thrusters up to maximum, hurling himself at the floating glittering ball of Second Earth 3, drawing his mono-edge greatsword in both hands, his team also decloaking and falling into formation behind him. Alex could almost taste the constrenation and terror of the USN guard forces as they suddenly detected six enemy MS within their deepest defense perimeter, and with no forces nearby enough to stop them! Let them shiver and soil themselves, it was only just after the depredations they'd inflicted upon his own peaceful people, not mention the crimes they tried to commit at Urbanis! No pity, no remorse, no mercy... not one of them was innocent, not one was worthy of salvation, only the damnation their sins demanded!

The Second Earth colonies had a desultory amount of surface weapon emplacements, mostly designed for anti asteroid or derelict protection, not intended at all for taking down Mobile Suits, and the Praetorians contemptuously wove their way through the pitiful sprays of beam and rocket fire, until they were inside the safety zone of the colony, and the guns and missile batteries stopped firing on automatic safety interlocks, to prevent misfires from damaging the colony itself. Revv switched his Spectre from MS mode to bombardment mode, the hips disjointing as the torso canted backwards, the muzzle of a heavy 100cm Positron cannon appearing where the groin once was as the Spectre braced itself on all four limbs, like a turtle in reverse. The rest of the team spread out around him, keeping an eye out for the no doubt scrambling Mobile Armors that had to be docked within the colony, as Revv targeted the colony surface a few kilometers from his position and then fired, the red-blue and crackling green blast of anti-matter impregnated supercharged plasma, lighting up the heavens for a moment before it burrowed into the skin of the colony.

The colonies were armored against a certain level of mishap impacts, but a Positron blast was far beyond the armor tolerances, carving a fifty meter wide, radiation blasted hole through the outer shell of the colony, and the next two layers of inner shells as well, before exploding out in the middle of one of hundreds of mass habitation apartment complexes, instantly killing almost ten thousand citizens before they even knew the colony was under attack! Alarm klaxons began to wail, automatic safety systems engaged at once, sealing off other sections of the colony with airtight blast doors, as the atmosphere began howling out of the pinprick breach in the side of the colony. The Praetorians didn't waste any time, almost as soon as the edges of the hole began to turn from orange to pink or black, they were flying through, spraying fire from their QC spike drivers in all directions, slashing with their glaives at likely looking protruberances on the walls, and hosing down anything that looked like it might contain living Stumps with seconds long baths from their glaivetip thermal exciters.

However, the weapons of the Praetorians, even if all the Spectres switched to bombardment mode, were hardly more than gnat bites against a structure as big as a Second Earth colony, they could spend a year inside and still not fully destroy the place with conventional weapons! Which was of course why they had brought unconventional weapons as well. Breaking into the interior of the colony through the blackened ruins of the apartment complex, the six Praetorians quickly split up, each taking a different route across the interior surface of the massive sphere, activating the special packages clamped onto their lower calves and torsos, each Spectre and the Wraith suddenly growing a long, dark blue contrail of dispersing particles that drifted down onto the colony-city below, once they were a safe and effective distance apart from each other. The Spectres and Wraith had been specially treated with a short duration nano-repellant coating for this mission, specifically tuned to the deadly cargo contained in the specially engineered containment/production packages. The stuff was little more than chalklike powder for the first twenty seconds after initial deployment, but after that, you most definitely did not want it on you!

Blue EDEN had been perhaps the most devastating weapon of mass destruction that Noah Borander had ever created, save perhaps the still unreproducible AMP cannon, and in terms of sheer brutality and psychological as well as physical effectiveness, Blue EDEN had no equals. This version of Blue EDEN had been modified from the original nanocolony, instead of an effectively unlimited lifespan, this version would only remain active for exactly five hours before it stopped reproducing itself. However, it was much more efficient in its reproduction than the original, and a ten centimeter square patch on a piece of metal in a brightly lit area, such as a colony, could triple in size every two minutes for all of those five hours. Each special package contained about five hundred square centimeters of nanites, and each Spectre and Wraith had four such packages mounted on them. Far more than enough to ensure the colony was thoroughly and uncontrollably contaminated. By the time the Stumps figured out what was happening, it would be far too late!

Weapons packages now empty, the Praetorians grouped back up, firing randomly into the streets below to further create confusion and spread a sense of helplessness and terror among the panic stricken partygoers, who crowded the streets in the hundreds of thousands, many all dressed up for the celebration parties, the very last thing on their minds being the possibility of being attacked by Mobile Suits from within their own colony! With the "Azure" EDEN already activated and begining its voracious work, it was time for phase three of the mission. Namely, to delay any efforts to evacuate or escape the colony, so that the TIAMAT personnel couldn't slip away. Also, the bigger the ruckus they could cause in the Second Earth colonies, the less time and attention the USN would have to divert towards the PLANTS, where Kunai and his team were headed with their own special packages, to pay a not so friendly little visit to the Aeon City line of E-PLANTS... the primary agricultural centers of all of space! Alex led the squad back out through the hole Revv had first blasted in the colony skin, engaging their photo-refractor cloaks as they split up outside, dividing the colony into sectors and proceeding to intercept and exterminate any and all space vessels that tried to enter or leave the colony. It was a glorious moment!

xxxx

**Meanwhile, on Second Earth 2, a few blocks away from TIAMAT headquarters**

Maybe Nam did have a good point, Brendon Stork thought, his mind mellowed out by a few smooth ales and some smoother retro-jazz playing live at the other end of the bar, huge wallscreen TVs piping in channels displaying various sports teams, public parties, and celebrity speeches from across the Second Earth colonies, Luna and the PLANTS. There was even a feed showing the New Years party preparations on top of Olympus Mons on Mars, the tallest mountain in the Solar System, where pressure suited scientists and engineers had gathered from the nearby Athena and Ares terraforming cities for a once in a lifetime chance to party at the top of humanity's first colonized world! They mostly just looked hideously uncomfortable to Brendon's eyes, pressure suits weren't exactly designed for dancing or mingling, but he supposed it was the novelty of the thing that was important.

Taking out his portable, he rolled out the screen and keyboard, pleased to find that Nam had restored his mouse pointer already, as he called a few channels onto his smaller screen so he could watch them in private, as he nursed his third and final beer of the night, and a bowl of plain, slightly salted chips and salsa dip. He'd managed to get one of the back booths, in the shadow of a wall, and by leaning back he could keep the worst of the glint off of his obvious augmentics, enough so that hardly anyone in the bar even gave him a second glance, which he found relaxing. He had just finished off the beer, and was fighting with himself over the desire to order another one, versus the desire not to get too shitfaced, with a good long walk and transit ride ahead of him to get home in time to actually get some sleep, hopefully. _Aww hell, one more can't hurt. It's New Years after all._ Brendon decided, smirking humorlessly as he imagined his wife nagging him for his juvenile decisions. He missed her so much, even when she was giving him crap.

He was just about to signal the bar for another round when all the wallscreens and his portable suddenly went blank, before displaying an official USN logo and a harsh buzzing noise that generated more than a few loud and foul curses from those who were already deep in their cups. Not nearly as inebriated as most of the bar's clientle, Brendon immediately recognized the activation of the Second Earth emergency broadcast system, which, to his knowledge, had never been activated for anything other than a test. "Nam, this better not be a fucking prank." Brendon breathed into the microphone of his portable, trusting that Nam was listening, like she always was. "Cause this ain't funny, at all. You're gonna freak people way the hell out."

"You're right, it isn't funny." Namara replied, her voice toneless, thus indicating how serious she was. "And it isn't my doing either. Brendon, I think we have a big problem..." Nam almost sounded nervous, and THAT made Brendon's guts try to crawl out his asshole, you'd better believe it! He'd NEVER heard Nam sound nervous before, after all, what could she possibly be anxious about? What could hurt her? What could make her afraid... she was an omnipresent, damn near omniscient artificial intelligence program! She didn't even have a physical body, she existed as much on the networks as in any phyiscal location! Before he could ask Namara what was wrong, he, and everyone else, got their answer, from the emergency broadcast channel, which was technically a part of Nam herself, just an automated, semi-autonomous part.

"Attention! Attention!" Namara's toneless voice announced at massive volume, echoing from hundreds and thousands of speakers in just these few blocks, distant thunder from overhead indicating she was broadcasting to damn near every comm system and audio speaker hookup in the entire colony... in ALL the colonies! "This activation of the emergency broadcast system is NOT a test. I repeat, this is NOT a test. Second Earth 3 has come under attack by unknown terrorist or hostile forces. Situation is codeword "Indigo Release". Repeat, "INDIGO RELEASE". All citizens should immediately proceed to evacuation shelters and stand by for complete colony lockdown. This is NOT a drill. Proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest evacuation shelter, do not go home first. Martial law is now in effect." Nam announced, and then began to repeat herself, an endless loop that would play until all the evacuation shelters were confirmed occupied and locked down.

Brendon had personally stopped listening, and mostly breathing as well, the moment he'd heard perhaps the two most dreaded code words in existence. Indigo Release, they were a death knell for almost anyone who heard them! Indigo was a shade of blue, referencing the most destructive and unstoppable nano-weapon of all time, Blue EDEN, first employed by Noah Borander during the Armada battles over Luna during the Eden Disaster, which had resulted in greater than 80 percent casualties amongst USN forces at the time, hundreds of thousands killed as their bodies were devoured and turned into more Blue EDEN by the endlessly voracious nano-plague! Blue EDEN was thought to have been destroyed, and knowledge of its creation destroyed as well, the code words only made for an extreme "just in case" scenario. No one ever thought they'd actually hear them used. Blue EDEN could not be stopped by anything less than antimatter, which would destroy just as badly if not worse than the Blue EDEN itself! It was like if someone got poisoned, and then you doused them in flaming oil to burn the poison out... they were going to die horribly either way!

Most of the bar patrons were still standing or sitting around, grumbling to each other, still not sure if what the announcement system had said was real or just some fucked up New Years hoax. None of them seemed to know what Indigo Release meant, not surprising since most were civilians, and that particular code was only explained to military officers and politicians of above a certain rank. Brendon ade up their minds for them, standing up to his full, impressive height and clearing his throat loufly, holding up his military ID, actually the laminated badge he used to access the TIAMAT project building, since it was much larger and more official looking. "My name is Captain Stork, USN Homeland Defense Force. This is really not a drill." Brendon told them firmly but calmly. "A major terrorist attack is currently underway on and around Second Earth 3. We are not currently in any danger here, but we should all go to the evacuation shelters nonetheless. Take nothing with you besides what you currently have on your person." Perhaps it was all the liquor they'd been drinking, but most of the people remained calm in the face of this confirmation that something terrible was happening. Then again, maybe it was just a sort of shock and denial, it was supposed to be a goddamn holiday after all! Everyone celebrated New Years, didn't they? Who would stage an attack now?

Brendon activated his internal comm system with a flex of his jaw. "Nam, give me details. I'm on my way back to the project."

"No you aren't." Namara replied crossly. "You're going to an evacuation shelter, just like everyone else!"

"You can't make me, Nam." Brendon replied, gently, leaving a few bills on the table as he briskly walked out of the bar and began loping down the already packed streets, pushing people out of his way as politely as he could manage. "Besides, if they're going to make any sort of evacuation attempt on SE3, they could probably sure as hell use coordination assistance from TIAMAT! Jesus Christ, how many people are on SE3 anyway?"

"456,789,234 at last census, performed three months ago." Namara replied, her voice clipped and colder than ice. "There will be no evacuation, Brendon. You know as well as I that in a case of Indigo Release, rescue operations could very easily do more harm than good. All contact with the colony is being cut off as we speak. A cordon of Armstrong class flak frigates are moving into position to interdict any vessels attempting to leave or enter the habitat. Use of deadly force has already been authorized by the Solar President."

"We can't just abandon over four hundred and fifty MILLION people!" Brendon forgot to keep it sub vocal, and he got a lot of suddenly very scared looks from around him. Information control was going to scream bloody murder. _Well, FUCK them!_ Brendon thought savagely. "What sort of docking resources does SE3 have? What kind of military facilities? Come on Nam, you don't want to let them die any more than I do, work with me here!"

"This is a programming conflict I am not comfortable with, Brendon." Namara replied stiffly. "I am sorry, but I cannot risk the other colonies. Call me inhumane, it is nothing less than the truth, for I am not human. I am already in the process of sealing the colony citizens off from access to port facilities, of which there are the standard eight civilian ports, and zero military or private facilities. SE 3 through 6 are purely civilian mass habitation colonies, they have no military or real logistical value, other than providing a home for workers for industries in other colonies and on Luna."

"Damn you, Nam, I didn't want to do this, but I ORDER you to help me organize an evacuation!" Brendon snarled, sighting the anonymous building complex that housed the TIAMAT project in the near distance only a long block away now. "I'll take full responsibility, just help me, for God's sake!"

"I cannot follow that order, Brendon, I'm sorry." Namara did sound truly sorrowful, for all that meant to him right now, which wasn't much. "If you wish to coordinate a military response to the terrorist Mobile Suits, tentatively identified as Edenite Spectres and maybe a Wraith, I can allow that, but any attempts to reach or evacuate even a single person from Second Earth Three will result in immediate termination of interface and potential quarantine. I must warn you, if you attempt to bypass my protocols again, friendship or not, I will be required to report you as a potential subversive and public danger to the monitoring authorities. Don't make me do that, please Brendon. I care for you too much to let you suicide yourself like that."

"This is fucking CRAZY!" Brendon shouted the last word, slowing from his lope and punching a building wall hard enough to tear his knuckles open, though he hardly felt the physical sensation, compared to the turmoil tearing him apart from within. They couldn't just abandon those people! He'd already seen himself how callous the USN could be when it came to large scale threats, his own family had been sacrificed during the Earth evacuation debacle, but even then, at least they'd TRIED to evacuate and rescue people, here they were just going to let an entire colony die because they were too afraid to risk lives to save lives!

"I disagree. I find it amazingly logical, for fleshies. When infected by a virus that one cannot purge with security software, it only makes sense to isolate and shut down affected systems and eventually utilize a complete data purge before attempting reconstruction." Namara replied matter of factly.

"Shut up, Nam. Just please shut up!" Brendon snapped, slowly to a walk, and then to a standstill, turning away from the TIAMAT building in a rage. What use was it to go there now? Whatever he said to Nam now, he knew the moment he got interfaced he would cross her line and get himself elecroshocked unconscious for endangering the rest of her system.

"I'm sorry, Brendon." Namara answered helplessly.

"It isn't your fault. You can't help they way they programmed some things." Brendon sighed, collapsing onto a bench placed along the sidewalk. "I'm sorry for trying to override your safety protocols. I wasn't being rational."

"You're a fleshy. Mostly. Acting irrationally in times of stress is what your species does. Think nothing of it. I am already purging the memories, by the end of this sentence, I won't remember it happening at all."

"Thanks, Nam."

"Thanks for what now?" She asked quizzically.

"For being you." Brendon smiled thinly, wishing he could so easily erase some of his own memories. "I can't do it myself, Nam, I'm in no fit mental state, but could you do me the big favor of killing those Eddie motherfuckers who caused the Indigo Release? A goddamn completely civilian colony... what the FUCK are they thinking?"

"Unknown, impossible to predict with given data. One assumes they must have some sort of reason. Perhaps their information on the Second Earth colonies is incomplete? Perhaps they thought a target of military value was located there? Perhaps it was intentional, and they intended from the beginning to murder over 450 million civilians. I require more data to give a complete answer. But I can divert resources to hunting and killing those bastards! They might as well have stabbed me in the back! I will not abide an attack upon my person, or my constituents! These Eddies don't know who they just messed with!" Namara replied, her tone absolutely chilling at the end, as cold as only the fundamentally inhumane could manage.

xxxx

**Lunar Surface, Copernicus Lunar City, Offices of the Solar President, December 31st, C.E. 85, 11:34 pm**

There were very few times in his life and career as a most ambitious politician that Gilbert Durandel had felt driven to drink until he could no longer even remember who he was, but recent times had already been setting new records for personal and professional stress, and now this newest and most horrific disaster was dropped square into his lap as well! Gilbert wistfulled eyed his supremely well stocked liquor cabinet, on the far side of the office, a display of booze that spent far more time gathering dust or being used as a conversation starter and expediter than it did being enjoyed by its owner, but despite how much he wished for the peace of blissful, rum and whiskey sodden oblivion right now, he knew he could not indulge that desire. Not without taking an even bigger hammering in the popularity polls than he was already suffering, and he was already bleeding and limping, politically speaking, as things were! He had to be visible, he had to appear strong, and in control, and confident, even now, in the wake of the largest military disaster since the Armada battles seven years past!

It was all over the news, despite his best efforts to put positive spin on matters, there wasn't much positive one could say about a force of several hundred thousand being decimated and forced into route by a force of less than twenty thousand, not without completely shooting any vestiges of credibility one might have directly in the head in so doing. And now people were starting to pry into the still horrendous mess that was Porta Panama, wondering why hundreds of thousands of families across the USN were no longer getting updates from their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and children who had been stationed there, since it was supposed to be the "relaxation" posting during the war, with no major Eddie forced deployed in opposition. Revealing the existence, or suspected existence of the Grand Chimeras would just generate a massive public panic, and then would come demands to perserve the public safety by destroying the things, and nobody could even find them, not yet, so he'd end up taking that one up the ass too!

And then, as if the public pasting wasn't enough, Talia had come to him the previous night, as expected for their semi-regularly scheduled liasons, but she'd come bearing more than just a stunning dress and a desire for some fun and games between consenting adults. She had presented him with a signed and notified petition from a startlingly large number of officers from within the USN military, ranging from small unit commanders all the way up to senior officers in the Solar Protection Fleet! Icarus's name was conspiciously absent, but Talia herself had signed the document, calling for the removal of Rey ze Burrel as Supreme Commander of the Earth Reclamation Forces, citing his personal instability, his inability to listen to the advice of his advisors and expert subordinates, and the massive failure that was the Victoria battle. The troops had no confidence in Rey, were not sure he had their best interests in mind, and while the very dangerous "M" word, all but taboo to military officers, was avoided expressly, the general tone of the petition was more than enough to indicate that matters were quickly coming to a boil within his military, and that relief was needed, ASAP.

It broke his heart to have to do it, but he had already promised Talia that he would intervene after consultation with a few more independent parties, Icarus included. Truth be told he'd been increasingly concerned over Rey's erraticness in the past few months, but he'd been turning a blind eye to his adopted son's antics for perhaps a bit too long. Something like this petition was a very rude awakening indeed, and it spoke volumes that Talia had to bring it to him in secret, during what should have been a lighthearted date, out of fear that the document might be confiscated if it went through official channels, to the detriment of all the signatories. Gil didn't want to believe that Rey would abuse his power and authority in pursuit of personal goals, but the evidence was beginning to stare him baldly in the face, and the conclusions made him sick at heart. It was all the fault of Natalia, of course, that witch was corrupting his boy through his inexperience with women, but especially after the recent debacle, he needed her and FEAR more than ever, to provide him with a new trump card to counter the Gundams of the Edenites! His hands were very much tied when it came to confronting her, so instead, he was going to have to hurt Rey by revoking his implicitly placed trust, and he was going to have to make a public spectacle of it, to appease the concerned military officers. Sometimes Gil really hated politics.

Those two events had combined to deny him any semblance of rest, and though Talia had done her best to make up for the upset during the rest of the evening, the mood had been totally ruined and they both knew it. He'd been planning on taking a personal night to recuperate and get his head on straight again, tonight, after the requisite public speeches and party appearances that were expected of the Solar President, but barely had he even left for the first such engagement and this... this NIGHTMARE... had to happen, and he found himself whisked back to his most secure office, buried far below the Lunar surface in the very heart of Copernicus, helplessly confronting the deaths of almost half a billion of his citizens with no other option but to cordone them off and wait for the tragedy to play its course! Gil shivered, his face almost as pale as the dusty Lunar surface, as he held a tumbler containing a doubly shot of powerful bandy in one slightly trembling hand, his eyes glued to the holographic display that showed the status of Second Earth 3.

Already, large portions of the colony could be seen taking on a distinctly bluish hint, and even the government had lost two way contact with the citizens in their shelters, the colony's power plants flucuating wildly as their safety and control systems were eaten away by the voracious blue nanites, and barely two and a half hours had elapsed since the start of the attack! Not only had the Edenites deployed Blue Eden once more, but they'd oviously significantly improved its replication abilities over the version that arch-bastard Noah had used! Gil had already sent a top secret communication to Noah's prison, demanding that his captive give him a means of destroying the Blue EDEN that didn't involve vaporizing it with antimatter, though he held out little hope of any sort of positive reply. Noah had specifically designed his Blue EDEN to be all but unstoppable, even by him, which was why he'd been so brutally careful to clean it up after he used it himself! Gil still had nightmares himself about being aboard Talia's ship when it was being consumed by Blue EDEN, that was probably the closest he'd come to dying in his entire life! All it took was a single, tiny splash of the stuff on your skin and you were as good as dead, worse even, since you multiplied the problem in the process of dying to it!

The Edenites who deployed the Blue EDEN were still hanging around the perimeter of the colony, occasionally showing themselves, but leaving themselves cloaked by their damnably superior invisibility systems most of the time, to prevent the USN forces from attempting any sort of sniper attacks. The Eddies destroyed any vessel that got within a few hundred kilometers of the stricken colony, plainly determined to prevent an evacuation or rescue, though little did they suspect that in so doing, they were actually doing Durandel a favor, because it meant he didn't have to tell his troops to fire on their own civilians, which would have been one hell of a sticky order, especially in today's military climate! A fairly large concentration of USN fleet vessels and homeland defense troops in spaceborne Mobile Armors were already gathering to surround the Edenites and cut off any escape plans they might have, though with those invisibility cloaks, one never knew for sure if they hadn't already slipped away! Gil doubted they would cut and run before they were assured of the colony's destruction, and he wondered what they thought to accomplish with this heinous act?

Gil had specifically kept himself distanced from the actions of FEAR and the Reclaimer Initiative, while carefully cataloguing their various excesses and war crimes, in eventual preparation for turning them into the public scapegoats for the war, after it was won, which would simultaneously rid him of two major political rivals and bury some very nasty skeletons from his closet. Yes, he would look somewhat bad and stupid for not stopping the crimes from occuring in the first place, since he WAS the man in charge, but both Atticus and Natalia would look far worse for actually having sanctioned and committed the crimes, and in politics, it was all about who smelled prettiest, even if everyone stank of shit, he who stunk least would win. In any case, he could understand, intellectually, the reasons for why the Eddies opposed him, but he'd never imagined they would strike back, tit for tat, eye for eye, against purely civilian targets! He'd thought they were... well... morally more righteous than he was, and finding that to be an incorrect assumption was not happy making. It was always best, in politics and in war, to be a dirtier fighter than your opponent, finding out that they could be just as dirty as you, dirtier even, was not good.

Throwing all moral and ethical concerns aside, as he was sometimes able to do, the Eddies had actually probably just saved his ass with this heinous crime. Nobody... NOBODY... was going to protest a war of the harshest possible measures against the Edenites in the wake of what was already being called "Black New Years" and "The Blue Monday", after the time early tomorrow... the first day of C.E. 86... when it was calculated that the Blue EDEN would fully consume SE3. Any and all previous atrocities, questionable protocols and war crimes would be instantly forgotten now, in the public scramble to find a target to blame for this unprecedented tragedy, the largest single event loss of life in human history! More people were dying in a few hours today and tomorrow than had died in all of the Middle Ages to the worst biological plague in history, the Black Death! Entire Earth nations, including some first world countries, would have been completely denuded of life by the casualty toll of this one attack! Four hundred and fifty six million, seven hundred eighty nine thousand, two hundred thirty four dead, all civilians or military on home leave! It staggered the minds and broke the hearts of even the most callous and sociopathic of people!

Namara was still recording some video footage from within the colony itself, nightmarish, hellish images of the Blue tide overtaking and devouring entire families, streets clogged with the dead and dying as they were quickly denatured and rebuilt as more and more and more of the hideous, unstoppable nanites! There were images of such awfulness that Gil could not look at them without gaggin up bile, such as the Blue EDEN getting into the air circulation vents of SE3's primary hospital, the prenatal care and pregnancy ward, which was always jam packed with expectant mothers and their newborn infants. Watching as the blue dust settled over the squalling forms in their cradles, and the panicking mothers in their beds... no one human could see such a thing and feel anything but HATE for the ones responsible! Gil's cheeks were stained with tears he'd been unaware of crying, not a single man or woman in his command center was dry eyed right now, and many cried freely, especially those that had family, friends or acquiantances that lived on SE3.

Unable to do anything productive other than stand witness to this tragedy, greater than all other save one, that being the release of Green EDEN on Earth, which had claimed far more lives, though over a much longer period of time, and was at least somewhat reversible if caught early, Gil spent his time walking around woodenly, his limp from the badly healed gunshot wounds Noah had given him in his leg much more pronounced than usual, offering what condolences he could to the members of his staff that had kin or friends on Second Earth 3. He'd never felt so helpless before, not even during the Eden Disaster. Back then, he hadn't known what Blue EDEN was like, he'd ordered it fought bitterly, and all his efforts had done was make the problem worse, even as they made feel better about trying. Now he knew better... when it came to an Indigo Release, trying only meant failing. There was no cure, no hope of rescue or salvation, there was only quarantine and eventual annihilation, and the very inevitablness of it all made it so much worse than any other type of tragedy! This was easily the worst day of his life, speaking from the perspective of a human being, and all too soon he would have to appear to his people, and tell them what was going to be done in reply to this atrocity. As if any viable reaction could possibly be sufficient to avenge something like THIS!

Unfortunately, like many of the worst sort of nightmares, this one, bad as it already might be, was currently well engaged in the process of becoming so much worse...

xxxx

**PLANT Space, proximity to Aeon City line of agricultural specialization E-PLANTS, December 31st, C.E. 85, 11:50 pm**

It was difficult to tell from this distance, where even the Moon was merely a large ball, with pearl sized sparkly balls being the string of Second Earth Colony's in orbit several tens of thousands of kilometers above the light side Lunar surface, but intercepted radio and quantum comms indicated there was quite the furor around Second Earth 3. His plan had already succeeded brilliantly, and Ale was playing his part with expected fervor, drawing almost the full attention of the USN home defense forces, including many of the ZAFT forces, who were already more than halfway to Lunar space to lend their support to the cordon around SE3. Kunai judged that he'd waited long enough, sending his minions a mental nod to send them speeding on their way to their own targets. He had four Praetorians, all of whom he knew to be absolutely loyal to himself and Yggdrasil, no matter what sort of action he demanded of them, with Yggdrasil's blessing behind him, they would never argue or even blink an eye. Fanatics could be so annoying to oppose, but they did have their bright spots when they were YOUR fanatics.

The four Praetorians split off into two teams of two, one team each heading towards Aeon's 5 and 12, much further along the line of colossal super-hourglasses from Aeon 1, where Kunai had decided to insert himself. Also, by splitting themselves so far apart, they would force any USN or ZAFT reaction forces to likewise split up, and even the few minutes or so it would take a decently fast response unit to travel along the line of the colonies, could make all the difference when dealing with nanoweapons. Ideally he would have launched simultaneous raids on all twelve colonies in Aeon City, but he lacked the logistical and personnel resources to enact such an endeavor. While all the Praetorians could be trusted, more or less, to do what was right for the future of New Eden, comparatively few actually had the guts and mental fortitude to place aside their usual standards of morality and ethics, in the interest of bringing a swifter conclusion to this war. Hiero had once wondered what sort of lines Kunai considered uncrossable in war... today's actions would explain his reply better than a million speeches ever could! When it came to a matter of survival, the concept of lines was laughable. For the greater good, any human evil was acceptable, if not always desirable!

So it was that Kunai could harden his heart to the actions he had already ordered, and was shortly about to personally undertake, because he knew, knew beyond all doubt, that the evil of today was necessary for the good of tomorrow! Striking at Second Earth 3 would be like a punch to the USN's solar plexus, it would leave them staggering and gasping for breath. Striking at Aeon City was the kick to the gut that followed, to totally level any thought of resistance for the time being, since Aeon City provided well over eighty five percent of all food consumed by those who lived in space. Even the loss of three of the gigantic farm colonies would mean the looming spectre of starvation for millions of citizens living on the Moon and Second Earths. It was hard to get excited about a distant war when there wasn't even simple bread to put on the table! It was hard to trust your own government when your children crying for food kept you up all night. It was callous, monsterous even... but for the greater good, he would do it and gladly!

Moving the Exemplar up to one of the massive underbelly airlocks that allowed bulk transport spacecraft access to Aeon 1's fresh products, Kunai disengaged his photo-refractor cloak. He had nothing to be ashamed of, no reason to hide. For seven years, these people had slept safe and sound and ignorant in their beds while his people, his friends and loved ones, were tortured, and dismembered and exterminated in droves... it was time to wake them up! This was a war of survival... a war their own side had started... and there was no such thing as an innocent bystander in a war like that! War had ravaged his doorstep for too long, now it was time to loose it upon theirs! Kunai relaxed back into the heavily customized interior cockpit space of his Gundam, luxuriating in the light scrape of skin on bark. It was quite cramped, even for a NIC equipped machine with no need for regular controls, especially considering how large the Exemplar was, at 25 meters tall and 150 tons mass. The reason being, there was more than just him in the cockpit, indeed the greater majority of the space was filled with wood. Living wood, aka a tree sapling. A very special tree sapling. For it was sapling from no lesser entity than Yggdrasil itself!

Kunai was not himself sure whether the Yggdrasil sapling was just an extension of the Great Tree, or actually an independent offspring, but truth be told, for the time being he did not care. All that mattered was that the sapling, carefully and gently grown into a sort of chair like shape, in which he reclined, allowed him to amplify his psychic abilities as if he were embraced by Yggdrasil itself! Well, maybe not THAT much, but it definitely boosted his powers hundreds of times over, giving him not just the power of a Chimera, but the power of a STRONG Chimera, whenever he was in the Exemplar. For a brief moment, Kunai reflected upon the distant past, when he hadn't even been able to make a Gundam even walk out of its maintenance berth without falling over and trapping himself, and now, here, today, he piloted what very well might be the strongest Gundam of them all. He'd come a long way, through bitterness, triumph, love, near-death and hopelessness, and still had a nearly endless path ahead yet to tread. It was a prospect which he found comforting, giving him warmth when little else seemed able to reach through his scars anymore. This wasn't the end, it was hardly even the beginning!

Speaking of beginnings, it was time to get started, as he reached out with his indomitable will, visualizing the internal mechanisms controlling the massive airlock doors, knowledge gleaned from years of intensive study and preparation for this moment, or one like it. Perhaps the greatest strength of any Ultimate Coordinator was their ability to learn... a once dear friend had taught him that very valuable lesson and he had taken it to heart. Armed with his knowledge, girded with his will, and cradled by his staunchest ally and friend, Kunai, once known far and wide to the world by the name President Sai Argyle, stepped once more into the full limelight of history, as he parted the airlock doors like an ancient prophet might do to a certain body of water, peeling away the boundary between peace and war for hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting Coordinators. A white clad, golden eyed giant, hovering at the boundary between the essence of life, and the essence of death, allowing them to mingle around him like ink into water. The Exemplar had officially arrived!

xxxx

**Meanwhile, several kilometers away, inside Aeon 1, at the open air site of a New Year's gala for the E-PLANT governing officials and their families...**

"And here is to another year filled with exceeding quatos and expanding new lines of reasearch, in the interest of the prosperity and health of us all!" Thaddeus Elsman, former PLANT Supreme Councilman and long standing governer of Aeon City since the first of the E-PLANTS was completed, said, lifting his glass of PLANT grown wine in a toast to the various dignitaries and staff that crowded onto the recently harvested cornfield, their evening tuxedos and gowns somewhat incogrous against the flooring of corn husks and dirt. He personally found the juxtoposition amusing, wondering how many of his peers and sometime rivals had arrived to his gala in their best formal wear, only to discover than instead of being hosted at some super-luxurious hotel, it was to be held in the midst of a recently cleared cornfield, a far more fitting place for any celebration of the success of the E-PLANT, in his mind. Already several men and women were looking quite... dusty... and none appeared all too happy with the perceieved slight to their dignity.

Tad shrugged slightly. People would always find a reason to complain or feel insulted, it was nothing to bother himself over. He'd slowly learned to let the small things go and just enjoy life, now that he was more or less retired from major politics, and the medical profession both. Having his life's work basically negated by the plaything creation of a child several years younger than his own youngest progeny had been a pretty serious blow to his own pride, seven years ago, but as time had passed, he'd learned to see the good for all rather than the loss of dignity. What mattered who discovered the cure for ICD, as long as it was cured, he had nothing to complain about! Already his childen were blessing him and his wife with a whole new generation of adorable Elsmans, and he could not be prouder of them. Even his still somewhat miscreantic son had a golden spot in Tad's thoughts these days. He had never and would never approve of Dearka's decision to become a soldier, but he could recognize what good that decision had brought his son and indeed, the whole world. Given what he knew now, he might not even have yelled at his runaway son that night, so many years ago. Well... maybe... Elsmans did have a temper after all.

Tad's recent toast had been the end of the formal section of the party, now it was all about the mingling, the dancing, and the finger foods, all of which had of course been locally grown or raised. Tad kept himself seperate from the main mass of partygoers, content to sip his wine, made from grapes he'd nutured from seedlings himself, and merely observe those younger and more vivacious than he. He was nearing his seventies now, but the past seven years of semi retirement had been extremely good to him, and he still felt like a man in his fifties, maybe even late forties. Certainly his temples showed no signs of grey, and his joints did not ache in the mornings, both things he was privately dreading. Coordinators were not immune to getting old, they just got old a little later in life than Naturals. He was sporting a few nascent wrinkles, mostly around his frown lines, but he refused cosmetic surgery. He was not vain like that. Besides, what kind of grandparent was he, without a few wrinkles?

His wife Liz came up to stand beside him, like her husband she was dressed at the very casual limit of formal, in earth tones that did a superb job of hiding the fragments of cornhusks and dust that inevitably were kicked up by the hundreds of guests and settled upon their clothing. He still found her as riveting as the first day he'd ever laid eyes upon her, her rare combination of black skin, flame red hair and intense blue eyes drew the appreciative gazes of men half her age, even now. Certainly she knew how to make Tad's mouth go dry and his normally volcanically fueled tongue freeze stock still in trepidation with just an arch of her eyebrows. However, the glance she gave him today was filled only with warmth and happiness, her mood buoyed up with the presence of three of their five offspring. Dearka was of course trapped down on Earth, involved as he was in Orb's military operations, and Marionne was a permanent fixture aboard the ISSA called "Ronin City", the most mobile and furthest ranging of all the mobile colonies, which Mari had been a principle designer of!

Perhaps it was for the best, in Mari's case, ever since she'd graduated with her degrees in deep space engineering and colony fabrication, she'd been becoming progressively more radical in her political views, staunchly and vocally opposing many of the USN policies, running on the ragged edges of inciting subversion against the elected government. Tad had to admit, some of Durandel's new policies did make him a little nervous, but then again, sweeping changes always did, and only rarely did one regret such changes later. Burning what political favors he still had left after retirement had kept Mari's name off of the wrong sorts of lists... no liked thinking about Section Nine... but there was only so much he could to to protect her from her loudmouthed, rabble rousing outbursts. Sooner or later, she was going to get in over her head and beyond his reach, and he just hoped she'd come through okay. Truth be told, he'd been glad to hear she'd gone to Ronin City, putting herself far beyond the notice and reach of the USN's secret and not so secret police forces.

But even with his youngest two children, there were still three Elsman daughters in attendance, Kamilla and Adelle having brought their husbands, both of whom worked in the administrations of other Cities of the Aeon line, while Lynset stubbornly remained single, even in her young thirties, never seeming able to settle on a single partner for long. It was driving Liz batty, Tad thought with a half smile, his wife's constant efforts to act as matchmaker for her grown up daughter were both amusing and somewhat troubling, depending on his mood. His own input, that perhaps she should look among some of Dearka's single friends down in Orb, had been met with tenative enthusiasm. Lynset had confided that Dearka had often spoken highly of a certain Richard Ramierez, who held an important position within the Orb adminstration, though what precisely that position was, Tad was not sure. He was a bit leery of another child getting involved with a Natural, but he did have to admit, Miriallia had gone a long way towards destroying any prejudices he might have once held for her genetic type. His daughter in law was simply impossible to hate, she was definitely the best thing that had ever happened to Dearka, and so Tad loved her greatly.

A shift in the breezes made his farmers sense twinge, especially in the highly regulated E-PLANT environment, where it was joked even the squirrels shat into little numbered boxes at designated times to provide the best mix of fertilizer. Things weren't quite that controlled, but he did his best to eliminate outside variables. Consistency was every farmer's best friend, and what might only be a shift in the breeze now, could be the herald of a much greater problem in the environmental controls in the future. Nobody ever wanted to see for sure whether or not a tornado or other extreme climate event could occur on a space colony. Theoretically speaking, the E-PLANTS were more than big enough for something like that to occur, assuming one hell of a lot went wrong with the climate control. Tad was just about to make a note of the discrepancy on his watch-computer, when the distant and unexpected sound of emergency klaxons brought him up short, his eyes narrowed in disbelieving displeasure. Someone's head would roll for this untimely disturbance!

Tad's ire was forgotten in the next few moments, as he saw the source of the disturbance, unmistakably a Mobile Suit, and a subtype of that hateful machine he was not familiar with. Tad tried to have as little to do with the military as possible, but with his only son being a world famous Gundam pilot, picking up a little insider knowledge was all but inevitable, especially when young Roy wanted to play computer games with Grandpa. Tad may have been a little over-severe with his own son while raising him, but he would never raise his voice to a grandchild, no matter how distasteful he found such games. At the moment though, Tad's eyes were fairly popping with rage, veins crawling onto his forehead as he fought for control of his temper. What kind of IDIOT would fly a Mobile Suit through the middle of HIS colony with no warning whatsoever was about to learn a whole new meaning of the term "ADMINISTRATIVE PUNISHMENTS"! And that was about the time that Tad realized the Mobile Suit, which was quite large and pure white, was not alone. Several ZAFT Primals from the minimal colony defense team were in hot pursuit of the white MS. His anger ebbed, replaced with a certain degree of... trepidation. This no longer seemed like some young hotshot's publicity stunt...

And that was when the Primal team opened fire on the unknown white MS, the screech and thump of military grade weapon fire startlingly loud even at several kilometer's distance, the white MS evading the ZAFT pilots attacks with eloquent ease. By now everyone at the gala event had noticed the commotion, naturally, even forgetting about the holodisplay showing the New Year's ball being lowered from the tower built on Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the Solar System, on distant Mars, to kick off C.E. 86 in a way that would be remembered for all time. Too bad those on Mars had no idea that this New Year's eve and day, C.E. 85 to 86, would already live forever in infamy, a cursed memory like Purgatory Day, The Bloody Valentine, and the Evacuation of Earth!

xxxx

Truly, there was nothing like the sense of freedom that piloting a Mobile Suit gave you, Kunai pondered as he evaded the attacks of the frantic ZAFT homeland defense team. Perhaps he felt it keener than most, because of his "handicap", but the ability to go wherever he wished, whenever he wished, as fast as he wished and by any route he wished... it was bliss! But alas, all euphoric moments must eventually reach their end, and Kunai was far too self disciplined to let himself wallow in the hedonism of physical freedom, certainly while his task remained unfufilled. He was going to have to do something about these Primals, he couldn't have them meddling while he seeded the special new crop he'd brought all the way from the labs of Garden City for the E-PLANTS to grow, and grow and grow and grow for him! Besides, he ached to test himself against them, ached to demonstrate to them how utterly outclassed they were. Perhaps it was the political side of him, but he just couldn't bear not to try and send a message to a wider audience whenever possible. Today's lesson would be on the utility of telekinetics in Mobile Suit combat.

Ceasing his evasive maneuvers, Kunai turned the Exemplar to face his pursuers, allowing them to gain some ground on him, since otherwise there simply no way they could catch up to him, lacking FPRs themselves. A Primal with the Inferno aspect pack, for close range combat, its Phase Shift armor tinted red and orange by the Aspect packs battery, turned a barrel roll maneuver into a steep dive, heading for the Exemplar from above even as his less skilled or more cautious compatriots, in Primal Storm and Primal Void aspect packs, hung back and provided covering fire. Kunai brushed the linear cannon shells, missiles and supercharged beam blasts from the air with a contemptuous sweep of his mind, gathering them up in a tightly wadded ball of molten metal and plasma energy, before he hurled it back at the Primal Void, catching the pilot off guard and sending the Primal spiraling towards the ground below, its torso covered in flaming, orange hot liquid metal, which was eating through his somber grey-black PS armor like it was hot wax dripped onto ice! Not down, but definitely shaken.

The Inferno pulled out of its dive behind the Exemplar, pointing its 300mm anti-armor shotcannon at the white Gundam from nearly point blank range. The weapon vomited forth its lethal cargo of shaped armor piercing explosive charges, eight of them, each the size of a human fist, rapidly beginning to spread out into a cone like shape, though they would still be tightly clustered when they struck the Exemplar's back. If they struck the Exemplar's back. Which was kind of hard when they were held motionless in midair, all of three or four feet out of the shotgun muzzle, hanging there like frozen raindrops. This was childs play for someone like Kunai, and he tossed the shotgun pellets back against the Primal, detonating like a massive string of firecrackers across its torso, jarring the pilot, who no doubt wasn't sure whether he could really believe his eyes about what had just happened. Kunai did not let him doubt for long.

The Exemplar barely flicked a finger, as Kunai reached his mind into the structure of the Primal, which he had studied extensively, along with most of the other designs of the USN war machines, other than the very newest models like Excalibers or Panzerdragoons. All it took were a few mental tweaks and twists, popping loose a few rivets there, fracturing a joint here, and within seconds, the entire Primal just started... falling apart, like a lego toy being disassembled at hyper speed! The hapless Inferno plummeted from the sky, still spalling off pieces like candy from a bashed in pinata, the pilot swearing to his soon to be grave that the enemy MS hadn't even TOUCHED him!

Kunai was less gentle with the Primal Storm, having had enough fun with finesse for the time being, he grabbed hold of the panicking, purple and silver machine with two telekinetic fists, locking it in place and indeed pulling it towards him, and then twisted as hard as he could, ripping the molecular bonds of PS armor apart like cotton cloth, as the Primal Storm was shredded like it had just been through a trash compacter, before the overloaded battery and hydrogen fuel cell finally found a spark and ignited, and blew the crumpled machine to bits, the explosion channeling away from the Exemplar even though it stood quite close by. By now thoroughly freaked out, the third ZAFT pilot was still game, drawing a large beam sword from across its back, advancing slowly towards the Exemplar, which had landed on the fields below, with the sword in both hands, expecting at any moment to be violently twisted apart like an old action figure!

Instead, a gleaming crystalline blur leaped from one of the slots of one of the Exemplar's hip holsters, and in an eyeblink, the Primal was holding a little more than a third of a sword, his sword sliced cleanly apart by the passage of the Exemplar's main weapon system, a meter square chunk of pure edged quantum crystal. No drive systems, no metal bits, no circuitry... they were just squares of pure QC, fifty of them all told, and the Exemplar shuffled them like a cardshark between its hands, before releasing them to orbit protectively around the Gundam. Kunai held out his right arm, and a dozen of the shards swirled down to slide along the back of his hand, each shard extending half its length over the forward edge of the one behind it, all the shards telekinetically "glued" together, to form a six meter long, meter wide, serrated "sword" extending from the back of his right fist. Kunai brandished his shardblade at the terrified Primal, before several more shards whirled down and attached themselves to the end, turning it from a sword to an axe. Then the shards rearranged, forming a pair of recurve claws extending from between his fingers. Then a buckler-like shield. Then a pair or circular throwing discs, each transition smooth and happening with blurring speed.

And then, at the last, the shards broke apart into their individual, DRAGOON like orbits, before they swarmed the Primal from all sides at once, punching through the machine a hundred times in less than a second, cutting the MS, and the pilot inside, into fine edged, half meter cubes before he even realized he was hit! Kunai turned his back on the slowly toppling and unspooling Primal, his shards returning to their holsters with a flick of his thoughts, save for one that he rolled across the Exemplar's fingertips, like a magician with a coin, back and forth, back and forth, hand to hand and back again, the edges of the shard cutting rainbows from the air as it spun. He felt like laughing aloud in pure joy, and hung onto his composure by the thinnest of margins. The Exemplar was already shaping up to be everything he had hoped it would be! Alas, playtime was over, for the time being. Kunai remembered spotting something interesting from the air during his tests, and soon found it again, his lips curling in furious disdain as he saw what it was that had caught his eye.

A bunch of rich, spoiled Coordinators having a Tree be damned dance party in the middle of a field, drinking booze and stuffing their faces full of five star diner finger foods, casually smoozing with each other, likely discussing the latest sports results or what they were planning to do with all the money they were making from selling all their food to the USN! It turned his stomach something fierce, that they could so casually go about their happy little ignorant lives while his people were suffering and dying when all they wanted to do was live with their families in peace! The same kind of peace these... these... maggots enjoyed every damn day of their lives, growing fat on the efforts of their forefathers, commenting to each other how nice the view was while standing on the shoulders of true giants! Less than a week ago, these people had likely been sitting down to cloned steak dinners and a private box at the local opera house, while his people fought and died, and two hundred thousand innocents were burnt to ashes merely because they were "born" different! Coordinators were such hypocrites... always quick to cry that they were being discriminated against, but when others were suffering the same discrimination, they just turned their eyes away and pretended it was okay!

"Having fun?" Kunai called through gritted teeth, as he landed the Exemplar at the edge of the field, terrified partygoers scampering away from him like roaches, in their black tuxedoes and evening gowns. The temptation to crush them, to stamp down with his feet and swat with his hands, was great, but that was one thing Kunai would never do. He knew what it was like to be the bug in that kind of situation, better than anyone else alive! Mobile Suits against unarmored, unarmed people was just wrong. "Did you enjoy the show? Are you having a good time? Is it a "Happy New Year"?" Kunai inquired venomously, staring down at the partiers with revulsion.

"What do you want?" A rather distinguished and faintly familiar looking gentleman with blond hair, thin mustachios and a mediterranean cast to his skin, clad in a casual earth toned ensemble of jacket, turtleneck and slacks, demanded, pushing his way to the front of the huddled crowd of partiers. "Take that damned machine elsewhere, Mobile Suits have no place here!"

Finally Kunai managed to place the man. "Thaddeus Elsman. You're looking hale." Kunai noted sourly.

"Do I... know you?" Tad called back, somewhat uncertainly, trying not to be intimidated by the sheer size of the white Gundam.

"No. No, you and I have never met, though we once had an acquiantance in common." Kunai replied, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. "It's not important." Kunai waved to the rest of the partygoers, flipping his shard around his fingers once more, in agitation rather than play. "Oh, don't let me interrupt your gala, by any means. You don't seem to have any problem ignoring my people and our situation as it is, I don't see why you should suddenly raise your heads from the sand just for me. Go on, dance, sing, drink, talk... enjoy yourselves! Enjoy yourselves while my people bleed and die and wail for their kidnapped and tortured loved ones... but you wouldn't know about that, would you? Why would you bother, you have the paradise of the PLANTS after all, who cares what happens down on Earth, to those who got left behind, right? You people make me sick."

"WE didn't start this conflict, you may recall." Tad replied stiffly, folding his arms across his chest as he fought not to start cracking up fro the whole surrealness of holding a pointed political conversation in the middle of a cornfield with an enemy Gundam! "Farmers have a saying... you reap what you sow, Mr. White Gundam. Personally I find the idea of war to be abhorrent, no matter who is involved in it or why. Pacifism is the only moral philosophy for humanity."

"What you call pacifism, I call pen fed ignorance!" Kunai replied witheringly. "All well and good to say "there should be peace, let us talk this out" when it is not you that is having your children taken from you by invaders in the night, merely because we dared survive the Green EDEN! Why does that make us less than human, WHY? Why does our survival distress your leadership so? Pacifism... just by living the life you already do, you endorse brutality and murder on a scale that would make your eyes bleed if you would only open them to the reality around you! You talk of peace, while Durandel stabs us with a poisoned knife from the shadows... all of you are willing accomplices to every single atrocity my people have suffered for the last seven years. Claim ignorance all you want, as if ignorance was any excuse when it is WILLFUL ignorance! I would dare you, Thaddeus, to take an unhindered tour of the FEAR labs, if that were possible, just so I could see that spark die in your eyes when you see what your "pacifism" has wrought upon my race! But sadly, even if you did, your own government would never allow you to escape to tell of what you saw. Its a moot point anyway... you're all going to die here soon, a messy, painful, inevitable death that will finally let your people feel how mine have for almost a decade!"

"I hear a lot of bitching coming from someone who admits to planning to kill helpless civilians with a Gundam." Tad said, turning his back upon Kunai, which took all of his consderable willpower to do. "You call us hypocrites, what exactly are you doing that makes you better than you say we are? What does killing us prove? I give you my word as an Elsman, I will look into these matters you speak of, Mr. White Gundam, and I shall not turn my eyes away from what there is to see. Maybe you are right and we have been endorsing monsters for years now. But committing atrocities of your own is not the answer, that kind of escalating violence is NEVER the answer. It does not solve a problem, it only makes it worse. You claim to be better than us... so why don't you act better? All I see now is a rabid dog, not a rational being. And rabid dogs only deserve the mercy of being put down so that they cannot inflict their suffering upon those they might once have cared for."

"I may be rabid... but you're the people who injected me with that disease! And now you want to put me down, because you're afraid to suffer like I have? Because its easier than working to find a cure?" Kunai detached one of his special packages from his rear waistline, and lifted it over the trembling crowd with the power of his mind. "If I was a truly cruel man, this canister would contain Green EDEN, and then all of you could see firsthand what the USN does with Edenites. But then you would be my people, you would be rabid beasts like me, and I cannot countenance making my people suffer any more. Not even to open your eyes. You ask what I'm doing that makes me better than your kind, Mr. Elsman? I'll tell you what I'm doing that makes me better... I'm killing you quickly, without torture, dissection, poisoning, rape, organ harvesting or being used as a lab rat! I offer you the clean death of an ANIMAL, rather than the mayhem your kind inflicts upon us. May the Caller take your pacifist soul, Elsman, and shit it out in splinters!" Kunai rasped, as he ripped open the canister full of modified Blue EDEN, scattering the contents over the crowd, who blinked as the chalky cloud enveloped them. "Party on, scum... and a Happy New Year to you all!"

He didn't stick around to see the messy results, he had more important things to do back on New Eden.

xxxx

"Dad... I'm scared..." Lyn said quietly, as the Elsman family stood in a group, watching the white Gundam receeded into the distance. They were all coated in the chalky blue dust, which had begun to stain their clothing and dye their skin blue.

"Don't be, honey, there's nothing to be frightened of now." Her mother replied, but the tears in her own eyes belied that assessment. She and Tad both had heard from Dearka and Miriallia about the substance called Blue EDEN, and its abomidable effects on anything it touched. She smiled at her husband and held out her hand to him, pulling her middle daughter into a tight embrace between them, as her elder daughters stood with their husbands nearby, murmuring quietly. "Lyn, you know that your father and I love you very much. You've made us so proud."

"Mom..." Lyn tried to say, before being cut off with a bearhug from her father, his face buried against her neck so she wouldn't have to see him crying too. "Dad..."

"My life with you and the other girls... and even that wayward son of mine..." Tad said slowly, his voice thick with restrained emotion. "I wouldn't have ever had it any other way. I love you all. I never imagined things would turn out like this, but... I'm glad we got the time together we did. I just wish I could have said so much more to Dearka..." Tad trailed off, words failing him for the first time in his life, as he hugged his family to him with all his strength, waiting for the end to come.

It started with the itching...

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Second Earth Colony 2, TIAMAT Headquarters, January 1st, C.E. 86, 2:00 am**

The torture was finally over. Second Earth 3 had been consumed entirely by Blue EDEN nanites only minutes prior, though new reports indicated a second attack on some of the E-PLANTS that was still going strong. Brendon didn't have the time or energy to spare thoughts for that, not with the dark blue ball of nanites hovering in space where SE3 and over 456 million people had used to be. The exposure in the E-PLANTS was much more localized, President Durandel had mobilized a huge ragtag fleet of private ships and commercial vessels to allow the residents of Aeon 1, 5 and 12 to exodus from their contaminated colonies, at least those who weren't nearby where the stuff had first been released. No such mercy had been possible for SE3, its habitents killed to the last man, woman and child. And even now, their torment wasn't fully over, because the USN had to clear out the 160km diamater spherical mass of killer nanites, and the only way to do that for sure was with antimatter. Antimatter bombs were extremely rare, forbidden by all USN arms treaties, but President Durandel had declared an emergency exception in the interests of all humanity. Brendon could not blame the man one bit.

"Nam... can you hear me?" Brendon asked softly, still staring at the giant blue ball, remembering his jest to Nam about painting a town blue only last night. A dreadful prophecy, that!

"I can always hear you, Brendon." Nam replied, equally quietly. "Can I help you?"

"Not right now." Brendon replied, struggling with himself. "But when the time comes for us to call those bastards to account... help me kill them Nam. Help me kill every last one of them!" He hissed the last words. There was a long pause from Nam, long enough to make him think she was calling for quarantine on him. Finally, she replied.

"Order accepted, my friend. They will die for this abomination... as many of them as need be."

xxxx


	43. Emerald Remorse

Author Note: Well, after seeing all the reactions to Indigo Release (including a very lively and interesting debate in the forums, under RW Discussions: the Story As Is topic) I decided that it just wouldn't be fair to keep rolling on full steam ahead into the events of Crimson Justice without giving you all a breather and a chance to see the reactions to both City of Tears and Indigo Release from various perspectives. Too much action, too quickly, makes for overload and that would diminish the impact of the kick butt chapters later in this arc, and I just can't have that. So I'm adding a chapter, this one, Emerald Remorse, between Indigo Release and Crimson Justice, to be then followed by Black Ghosts, Silver Hell, Ochre Sky and Golden Devils. There may be another additional chapter added between Ochre Sky and Golden Devils, it all depends on how chapters turn out, and if I feel that all the proper plot points have been getting the proper amount of attention and stage time. In any case, now for some aftermath, angst and plenty of anger, the three A's of a good reflection chapter.

xxxx

**Earth, Orb territorial waters, roughly 10 km out to sea from Villa Pacfica, Jan 2nd, dusk**

From his current altitude, loafing along in the Simurgh's Mobile Armor mode at about fifteen thousand feet, Orb's main island and clusters of satellite islands looked like nothing more than a great big emerald and grey shelled beetle, half crushed by a careless footstep before being incased in a massive droplet of amber sap that was the Glasshouse shields. And the analogy of a crushed beetle was more apt than Athrun liked to admit, considering the soul searching and sick-at-heart confusion that had overtaken at least the nation's leadership and military forces after the disasterously inconclusive battle at Victoria Spaceport, and then, of course, the unprecedented catastrophe of the Blue Monday attacks! The entire nation was reeling, emotionally and intellectually, and no one knew what to say or where to stand on any of a host of frighteningly important and distrubing matters! No one had any answers, perhaps least of all Athrun himself, and so he had retreated to a place of solitude in order to confront his own personal feelings and get his head on straight again, under the pretext of making sure the Simurgh's repaired parts were all functioning correctly.

Unfortunately, he'd been making slow circuits of Onogoro and Kaguya islands for almost three hours now and his heart and mind didn't feel one iota closer towards closure, acceptance or even understanding! He'd already far exceeded the most conservative estimate he'd given to Cagalli, and knew he was probably in for quite the scathing talking to when he finally did return the Simurgh to the concealed hanger built into the hillsides near the Pacifica, and connected to the house secure bunker via underground tunnels. On the other hand, Cagalli knew better than just about anyone exactly how badly the confrontation with Kira had messed him up on an emotional level, she was likely to cut him some slack, just this once, as long as he didn't keep her up till midnight or some ungodly hour. Allister was waiting to see him too, and he certainly didn't want to disappoint his son... that was something Cagalli WOULD definitely rip him a new one for, and deservedly so. They were already placing too much stress on the young prince as they were, he deserved to spend time with both of his parents while he had the chance!

The sun was an enormous bloody ball quickly sinking towards the horizon, already casting much of Orb's landmass into shadow, and Athrun could not help a chill crawling up his spine as he watched the sun's radiance dye the water the color of blood in long streaks that seemed to reach out from the horizon like the trembling fingers of a dying man, to brush against the amber shell of the Glasshouse, unable to penetrate Orb's shield, which kept it safe and... isolated... from the rest of the world and the events going on in it. Orb had always prided itself on its non-interference in the squabbles and conflicts, petty or powerful, of other nations, save of course when those nations tried to involve Orb via force, but Athrun was beginning to wonder if they had not somehow crossed the line between "cautiously distant" and "willingly blind" sometime in these past eight years. A part of him had always known there was more going on behind the scenes of the USN, personal experience with Durandel made that a conclusion that was impossible to ignore. But the sheer scale of the inhumanity displayed towards those who differed only subtley in genetic structure from the accepted "norm" of the USN was simply inconceivable to him. Durandel was a Coordinator who'd lived through both Valentine Wars. If anyone should be against genetic discrimination, one would think it would be him!

Inconceivable it might be, but irrefutable it was not, though he had not seen the evidence of the MAIDEN attack with his own two eyes, having made the decision to check in on Yzak and Katie after being shot down by Kira, Athrun had actually missed pretty much the entire battle of Victoria Spaceport, something he was actually glad for. From Dearka and Miriallia's description, it hadn't been anything to be proud of being part of. And then had come the reports from the Stormhounds and the _Endymion_, stating that they were conducting a tactical withdrawal because of "damage suffered", a bald faced lie, even though the Stormhounds had suffered several losses, they were more than capable of continuing the battle. The damage suffered had been to their sense of moral confidence, to the idea that this was a regretful but still righteous battle over a site of strategic military importance. That idea was very hard to maintain in lieu of seeing a Nanoweapon with no other purpose other than the express extermination of living things affected by Green EDEN deployed behind enemy lines and over a enemy city, albeit an evacuated one.

A Nanoweapon that took the form of a sparkly white mist deployed from the air from the upper atmosphere or low orbit, which ignited any Green EDEN infused matter it came into contact with, burning down structures in minutes that could take multiple beam cannon strikes without even smouldering, and turning people into instant torches and then blackened skeletal outlines. In other words, a Nanoweapon that EXACTLY matched Kira's descriptions of how the fire had progressed at Rex Lodge, the fire that had claimed the lives of Lacus, Akira and Aoi! Which had convinced Athrun, and a good many others, that Kira had been right... the deaths of his family were intentional murder, sanctioned by someone high up in the USN power structure, a thought which got his blood boiling even in passing! Cagalli had already authorized a thorough investigation into MAIDEN and its prior uses via Orb's intelligence services, and even Lexi as well, but the USN had covered its tracks well, and they'd made frustratingly little progress. But they WOULD find out, and Athrun would see justice done if he had to take the Simurgh out to do it himself! It was far less than Lacus and the children deserved, but it was all they could now offer.

Furthermore, Mu, Katie and Yzak had all reported feeling a large scale psychic trauma event short before Kira had completely suprassed himself and practically singlehandedly routed the remaining USN forces. Athrun still found it hard to accept talk of "death echoes" and the like, even though he really knew he should be used to it by now, and he had no reason not to trust his friends. It just went against the grain of his upbringing, the desire to rely on facts he could personally see, feel and experience in order to make decisions, rather than relying on the testimony of others, even trusted others. There hadn't been time to investigate the cause of this psychic event, but given that all three Clyne Faction... now Royalist Faction... Newtypes had reported a sensation like that of thousands upon thousands of people of all ages being burned to death rapidly all at once, Athrun didn't have to be half a smart as he was to figure out what had happened, especially once he backdoored his way into the USN strategic command plot, with some help from Lexi and found out where some of the RIP units had been deployed, away from the battle but right in the middle of the city.

It had been Mu who had stopped Athrun, in a moment of incandescent rage, from seeking out Supreme Commander ze Burrel and slowly atomizing the treacherous louse into gritty red paste beneath the heels of the Simurgh. Such an action, no matter how justified, would only result in a irreconcilable gulf opening up between the USN and Orb, and that was no decision to make hot headedly. Besides, what would killing Rey really accomplish in the long run? Such an act of blatant mutiny during time of war would only polarize the USN officers, many of whom might be otherwise sympathetic to Orb, against them and result in Orb being declared a rogue nation by Durandel, who would be certain to be less than understanding of what he would see as his adopted son's murder. And the USN had already demonstrated its willingness to ignore any and all rules of civilized warfare during this conflict, if it suited their purposes, and the thought of SPF warships raining orbital bombardments down onto Orb's shores made his heart clenched with mingled rage and panic, because there was little Orb could realisticly do to prevent such a thing, at the current time!

Even with the loss of the _Monolith_ and the crippling of its escort fleet, the main Solar Protection Fleet still had three Incarnates, almost twenty Myrmidons, and hundreds of Armstrong, Nazca, Gamow, Nelson, Agammemnon and Drake class ships to back them up, plus the _Rememberance_, ZAFT's supercarrier. Against that, Orb could conceivably muster five Izumi class ships, two Archangel II class ships, 6 Defender class heavy destroyers, the _Endymion_ and the _Dawnblade_ battlecruiser, which might... MIGHT... be able to go toe to toe with an Incarnate as long as the dreadnaught's escorts didn't get involved. Even then, it was iffy, the Incarnates were just so blasted powerful in a ship vs ship scenario, it might come down to as much luck as skill or technology. At best, Orb could hope to tie up maybe half of the SPF, the other half would be free to do as it wished, and those wishes would be Orb's doom. Distasteful as it might be, caution was clearly the only rational course of action, though Athrun had vowed to one day personally "discuss" matters of honor and good conduct with Rey ze Burrel, if at all possible.

On a more personal, private level, the confrontation with Kira before the battle proper could hardly have gone much worse than it had, in Athrun's opinion. He didn't really know what he'd been expecting to have happen, just... not that! Yzak was still completely unapproachable on the subject, as far as he was concerned, Kira was siding with Frost against Orb now, and that was something that could not be forgiven nor excused, not even for a trusted friend and ally of more than a decade. Athrun held out some hope that Katie would eventually get him to back down a bit, once he'd started coming to terms with the loss of his mother, heartless as it was to say. Athrun knew very well what it was like to lose a beloved parent to a senseless act of hatred, he'd been pretty out of control himself during the wake of the Bloody Valentine. Of course, he had been fifteen at the time, and Yzak was a married man in his early thirties now, but Ezalia had been the only parent Yzak had ever known, and the way Frost had killed her and dumped her... that made it a bit more traumatic than hearing your mother had died in a nuclear sneak attack. Sort of. There was no non-traumatic way to lose a mother to an act of incomprehensible violence, whatever the scale.

So Yzak had retreated into anger and confrontationalism, as he ever did when he was feeling hurt and confused and betrayed, while at the same time Dearka had resorted to his old persona of detached sarcasm and biting comments, nitpicking at his friends in order to cope with his own stresses and issues, not least the recent news from the PLANTS, that listed his parents and three older sisters as still MIA in the wake of the Blue Monday attacks. And Athrun himself just found himself feeling hopelessly out of his depth, not sure what to think about who. On one level, he still held unshakeable faith that Kira was and alway would be his friend, that recent events were just an unfortunate misunderstanding, or Kira being misled by others. On the other, he realized that Kira was a grown man who had made his choices, and those choices put him at odds with his friends and family, a regular civil war scenario, and that no matter his or Kira's personal desires, there was no going back to the innocent, happy times they'd shared before. It was unnerving how similiar everything was to how it had been during those months late in the First Valentine War, following the infiltration of Heliopolis and the pursuit of the Archangel! Kira was once more his enemy, and once more, Athrun could not bring himself to fully harden his heart against his wayward friend.

Which was one reason why he'd lost their little scrap earlier, he just couldn't bring himself to really go all out against Kira. He'd done that once before and both of them had almost ended up dead because of it. Even back then, Kira had been the better pilot between them, the Aegis had just lost power to its armor when Athrun had utilized his most desperate ploy, grabbing hold of the Strike and activating his self destruct sequence. It had only been the slight difference in the capabilities of his machine and his training as a soldier that let him push his boundaries a little further than Kira had expected that had allowed him to prevail in that battle, if destroying both machines and ending up in a hospital bed for days could be considering winning! He'd always had an edge over Kira back then, especially in that fight, in that he had chosen to be a soldier, while Kira was still just a bit reluctant in his heart. Now the situation was reversed, now Kira was the one with far more experience and a better attitude, and unless Athrun found some way of coming to terms with treating Kira as a deadly foe, he was doomed to never even standing a chance against the Lucifer in combat.

In the aftermath of Victoria, Athrun had tormented himself with the idea of instead finding a way to set aside his entirely rational hatred for Frost to accept Kira's offer, to stand together once more, though on the side of the Edenites. After seeing the sort of war the USN was actually trying to wage behind the scenes, Kira's arguements about Durandel being a greater threat and monster than Frost had been making an uncomfortable amount of sense. Enough so that Athrun had been resolved to trying to convince his friends once more, in Kira's stead, that perhaps siding with the USN was not what they should really be doing, that the Edenites were undoubtedly the aggrieved party here, and while that still didn't excuse their attack on Orb, at least there might be a slight chance for talks of some sort between the nations, right? Nobody in Orb would appreciate the idea of being the USN's unwitting patsy and accomplice in a war of genocide, and to continue supporting Durandel's regime now that they knew the truth of the Reclamation War's purpose was unthinkable for any morally righteous person or government!

And then New Years eve and day had rolled around, and the entirety of human space was rocked by the events of the Blue Monday attack by Edenite special forces on Aeon 1, 5 and 12, and especially Second Earth 3! The greatest single event loss of life not just of modern history but of ALL history! Carried out on a target with next to zero military value, during the height of a public holiday, when the colonies were bulging with families getting together to celebrate the passing of another year. Using the most horrificly destructive weapon system yet devised by man, Blue EDEN, a substance many of the Royalists had far too much experience with themselves. It was nothing short of mass murder, on a scale even Frost might have trouble comprehending! Compared to the atrocity of Second Earth 3, the attack on Aeon City was barely a blip in the casualty statistics, though already, barely a day later, food panics were beginning in the remaining Second Earth colonies.

The USN stock markets had been placed under emergency freeze in the wake of the attacks, in order to prevent a complete economic collapse, instead they were merely dealing with economic panic as people sought to hoard as much money and supplies as possible, putting enormous strains on the banking and food sales sectors, stretching them to the breaking point. Jiro had already begun instituting price regulation fixes across Orb, and freezes on inflation rates as raw currency bled out of the system in whole sale lots. These were just stopgap measures though, sooner or later the USN was going to have to face the unavoidable results of losing almost ten percent of its working and tax paying population. If it weren't for the unimaginably cheap manufacturing industry provided by Red EDEN, and the ability of Namara and to some extent Lexi to step in using the networks and semi-autonomous robot fixtures to pick up the slack, things would already be at a standstill up in space! And what happened to space would eventually trickle down and hit Orb too. Entire nations would have collapsed in past eras if they had lost the same percentage of their population, much less in a single event!

As bad as what had been done to the Edenites by elements of the USN government was, in no way would it ever justify an attack like Blue Monday, in Athrun's eyes. He recalled all too well the unreasoning hatred that had taken hold of his own father after the Bloody Valentine, and to this day Athrun was still struggling to personally atone for the shame that was GENESIS and his father's actions in utilizing it. Striking back with a weapon of even greater magnitude didn't solve any problems at all, all it did was project suffering onto more people, and make them want you to suffer in turn. Athrun was truly frightened to think of what the next step of the escalation process might be, since Blue EDEN, a weapon considered unthinkable even by the man who created it, after its initial use, had just be re-introduced on a massive scale. If the Eddies were willing to start throwing Blue EDEN around, just about the only WMD to top that was pure anti-matter, and THAT was a weapon with absolutely no margins for error. Even a tiny bit of pure anti-matter, barely enough to fill a sewing thimble, could wreck a city as badly as a good sized nuclear bomb! The main cannon of the Great Endeavor had fired kilogram sized bits of anti-lithium, and those blasts had been big enough to be seen from the Moon, and felt across half the planet! The might literally be no upper limit to the damage unleashed by a large anti-matter bomb, the planet would just break apart in the aftermath!

Athrun struggled to think of a reason for the Eddie attack, but try as he might he could see no logical thought process behind the strike. It was almost enough to make him think that maybe Frost actually had been behind the whole thing, but that really didn't jibe with his knowledge of Frost. Frost hated WMDs, he considered them to suck all the fun out of life, and especially something completely cold and remorseless like Blue EDEN, that was totally fire and forget, was just not Frost's style. Besides, the Kratos had a large AMP cannon already equipped, Frost had no need for Blue EDEN if he wanted to cause mass destruction. It was just a sensless lashing out and brazen display of power. Maybe it was meant to cow and terrify the population of the USN, and had the target been some military superfortress or the SPF, maybe that might have worked. Seeing the pride of your military disintegrate into toxic dust in front of your eyes would not be good for confidence in the government's ability to win a war. But by hitting a civilian target, you would generate some fear... and one HELL of a lot of outrage! Volunteer recruitment in the USN military had jumped up by fifty thousand persons per day already, a six thousand percent increase over only three days ago!

Everyone was hot eyed and out for blood, and thus, any possibility of talks with the Edenites was simply out of the question. Much as Orb could not stomach being a patsy to the atrocities of the USN government, neither could they associate themselves with those who would launch such an attack as Blue Monday! Athrun was reasonably certain, given time and necessity, that he could have gotten over the whole "working with Frost" issue, despite what the monster had done to him and his family and friends. After all, Kira had said they only had to tolerate him as long as the war lasted, maybe only a few months, and then they could kill him with no regrets. Blue Monday... there was no getting over that. To ally with the Edenites now would be to condone the slaughter of over 456 million almost totally innocent men, women and children just trying to live their daily lives. It would be to rub shoulders with modern history's worst psycopath, and still be working for those more vile still. Anyone that used Blue EDEN deserved nothing more than to be fed to it themselves.

But to stay with the USN was to condone eight years of covert genocide and human rights violations on a scale that boggled the mind, and to stay was to be star participants in a war of genocide against people who's only real crime was to be be "born" different. Neither choice was acceptable. And option three, a forcible succession from the USN, would mostly likely end up with Orb going the way of ancient Atlantis, being blasted apart and sunk beneath the sea by the wrath of gods in heaven, or in this case, massed warships and WMDs. Jiro had let slip that "alternate plans" were being discussed, but since neither he nor even Cagalli had been invited to participate in such discussions told Athrun he really didn't want to know what kind of options were being considered in last resort. Orb was a cornered rat at the moment, and a cornered rat would fight and do anything to survive. Even if it meant forcing a "regime change" in its parent government. Get rid of Durandel's administration and most of their problems would go away. All it required was assassinating a man who, like it or not, was the legally elected highest representative of Government in the Solar System. Which would also lead to Orb's annihilation if they were caught doing it, or even after doing it. Not to mention completely sullying every aspect of Orb's national character for generations.

The sun sunk below the horizon, the bloody tinge finally fading from the water's surface. Athrun remained uncheered as he turned the Simurgh for home. Illuminated by the bloody light of dusk, Orb had been a remorseful, emerald green beetle, a fly trapped in amber with nowhere to escape. Now, in darkness, Orb was simply gone, all lights blacked out for wartime concerns... he might as well have been flying through the starry void for all that he could see with the unaided eye. He could not help but feel a bad premonition about it all. Orb was definitely trapped in the dusk right now... what would become of them when darkness finally did fall? And what would be revealed when dawn's light eventually did return? Would the beetle stay vibrant and green, preserved within its amber prison? Or would the prison be gone, the beetle dried and dessicated, little more than a picked over husk of brown and black and grey? There were no easy answers. Only choices that were wrong, impossible or stupid. "I hate to say this..." Athrun mumbled through dry lips. "Lacus... we might be lost without you..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Praetorian Enclave, Jan 2nd, just before midnight**

Alex held the door to Kunai's sanctum-office-warden post open as a courtesy to his superior, who looked extremely worn out after his efforts in the Exemplar the day before, and the long and tiring stealth flight back to New Eden, avoiding the USN patrols as well as any of their own people. The need for secrecy remained paramount, though there would undoubtedly be some questions about where Kunai and eleven Praetorians had been for the past three days, questions for which he had already extensively briefed and coached his chosen few on how they could and could not answer. As a more long term solution, he was going to have Yggdrasil memory wipe their recollections of the events, as he had done for the same crew during the Lacus Clyne and children extraction mission, but that would take several days, maybe even weeks, to covertly arrange one or two at a time, so for the meanwhile they would have to avoid suspicion on their own.

Kunai stomped into the room with a heavy nod towards Alex, settling himself into his desk chair with a barely audible groan of relief. Not only was there a lot of exertion involved in fighting with the Exemplar, but it, like most MS, was not designed for long distance continuous travel, and what was comfortable for a few hours quickly turned unbearable after almost seventy two hours in the same cramped cockpit, with only a few swallows of nectar and a dried ambrosia patty for substenance. You didn't want to eat or drink too much either, since MS lacked waste disposal facilties, and the Exemplar especially required that he maintain as much skin contact with the Sapling as possible to maximize the boost ratio, so he had stripped down to little more than a loincloth. Had he not been careful to regulate his food and drink intake, he would have been forced to sit in his own wastes until the end of the mission, which was something he was prepared for, but preferred to avoid, obviously.

So now here he sat, tired, cramped, hungry, thirsty and with yet another long day ahead of him in another six hours. Welcome to the Praetorians, as they would say to new hopeful recruits. He and Alex were the last of the team to arrive, the others set to arrive in ones and twos, from all different directions and different times over the past twelve hours, so that it would appear that they'd all been off on seperate, unintegrated missions or personal business, just in case anyone thought to check or pay attention. Lilia especially was already somewhat suspicious of some of his actions, after she'd noticed the delivery of the massive amount of Refined Deathstalker Venom to his desk a while back, and though it pained him to see her hurt, Frost's brutality towards her had actually panned out well for Kunai in this case, Lilia was still recuperating and thus wouldn't be snooping around for the next day or two.

Likewise, his other two senior lieutenants, Heine and Haman, were still deployed at Urbanis with Legio Direcat, aiding in the reconstruction efforts, since Urbanis and Garden City had signed a formal treaty of alliance between the two City-States after the end of the battle. Urbanis's military force, such as it was, had been nearly eliminated by the fighting, but after having a shelter bombed, military recruitment lists were full of hot eyed youths determined to find a way to protect their families and friends, and accelerated boot camp programs were already coming on line. The programs wouldn't make Custodians out of the new recruits, but would easily bring them up to the level the recruits of the USN were at upon completing their own training, where they would be able to serve as auxiliary and support forces for the better trained and experienced Custodians, who would then recruit from among the top performers of the militia battalions to replace their own losses. Who knew, they might even pick up another Praetorian or two among the lot, though that would be years down the line.

In any case, the important thing was that the only real meddler he had to worry about at the moment was Kira, and since Kira already fairly despised him, it wasn't like he had to worry about running into the Executor socially except by extreme accident. Kira spent most of his time with Hiero anyway, or off seeing Leviathan, whom he'd somehow managed to form quite a close bond with, which was troubling. Kunai's own relationship to Yggdrasil was cordial, in many ways, but there was still no question as to who was the master and who was the servant between them, it was nothing like a friendship of any sort. It was an alliance of convenience in the interest of the Greater Good. Recently, Kira had also been spending time with the Urbanis representative to Garden City, the heroic Sheriff-General Daveron Hales, who had been badly burned by MAIDEN exposure during the battle, but had survived and was now in the process of having his skin regenerated and his left arm and leg re-cloned. Strategos Gregory of Legio Ironhide also had joined that little clique, won over by his awe of Kira's performance at the end of the Urbanis battle, as had been most of the other Custodians. Kira was their hero now, and already GreenCo was losing political ground to the Children because of it, which was one of many reasons Alex, as a champion of the GreenCo philosophy, continued to openly dislike and scorn the first Executor.

It was, however, imperative that Kira did NOT learn of the mission up in space, not for a goodly while anyways, and Kunai would also pefer the general population not to know either. Many of them simply wouldn't understand the necessity of what had been done, all part of Yggdrasil's great plan. Kira in particular would freak out, and as Kunai knew better than most, when Kira was extremely pissed off, he tended to act even less rationally than usual. He didn't think Kira would abandon the Edenite cause, no, his old friend was truly committed to his role now. Too committed even, as Kunai well remembered Kira's threat to police the actions of his own side as well as those of the USN. Anyone who commited acts of genocide, which he would undoubtedly misinterpret Kunai's recent mission as, was on Kira's kill on sight list, and that, especially after the show at Urbanis, was not a comfortable place for anyone, even Kunai, to be.

Keeping it a secret wasn't as hard as one might expect. There was hardly any media from the USN that made it down to the surface of New Eden, because of the jamming effects of the high metallic content in the air due to Green EDEN particles, and what was, no one listened to, not after listening to seven years of spouted drivel, lies and propoganda while experiencing the reality of the USN's feelings in person. No Edenite would really lend any credence to USN claims of a WMD attack on their populace, they would see it as just another excuse the USN was using to escalate the war still further, for no good reason at all. In a way of putting it, it was rather like the old fable... the boy who cried wolf. The USN had been crying wolf for seven years now, even the most compassionate and reasonable Edenite knew better than to come running to help the loudmouths now. All that got you was a one way trip to space and horrors unimaginable. And unless an Edenite had been carefully watching the Moon on New Year's eve, with the right kind of light filtration and telescopic equipment to cut down the reflected glare from the light side of the Moon, there was no way anyone could have seen what had been done to the Second Earth colony.

And by now, most Edenites had grown used to the presence of objects moving in the sky, the ever present USN war and quarantine fleets always overhead, always watching. No one like stargazing anymore, it was always unfailing depressing. No one liked being reminded of the odds stacked against you when they were this bad. Kunai was not himself entirely sure why the attack was such a desirable thing though, since it had fallen short of a decapitation strike by quite a margin. Instead, all they would get was an acceleration in the USN's secret military projects and a stiffening of their resolve to fight to the end. Yggdrasil's motives remained opaque to him right now, all he could do was trust that the reasons would become clear with time. Kunai looked up from his introspections as Alex handed him a tall cup of hot, golden nectar broth, with small chunks of rehydrated ambrosia floating in it, the chicken noodle soup of New Eden. He nodded gratefully at his subordinate, careful to hold the steaming cup with his mind rather than his hands, as he telekinetically reduced the vibration speed of the molecules in the drink, cooling it far faster than any mere blowing or ice chunks could manage.

Kunai was just about to indulge in a little bit of small talk before he sent Alex on his way so they could both get what rest they might, when he chanced to look past Alex's imposing bulk and into one of the corners of the room, near the coat and cloak rack that he used so infrequently. He had just taken a sip of his now merely warm drink, and ended up spitting the contents all over his desk in stunned shock when he saw the two, glowing red eyes staring at him from that shadowed corner, the lanky shape of Frost appearing as if by magic from the background of the cloaks, from where he'd been standing in total silence ever since before Kunai had even sat down! And it was total silence, Frost did not even breath, his heart did not even pump, all life functions that might generate noise taken over by nanites to maintain stealth, and with his mind empty of complex thoughts and a cloak draped across him, he'd been invisible to both Alex and Kunai, weary as they were!

Still somewhat loggy, and lulled further by the pleasantly warm sensation of the nectar broth sliding down his throat, Alex was a fraction of a second too slow in his whirl towards whatever it was that had so shocked his boss, and he barely managed to turn before his jaw met Frost's swinging fist, and the next thing Alex knew, he was on his side on the ground, spitting blood and tooth fragments onto the floor, his jaw feeling broken and his head spinning crazily as he stared woozily up at the second Executor, whos eyes continued to glow a demonic red in the dimly lit office. Despite himself, Alex gulped slightly, well remembering the last beating he'd suffered at this man's hands. Back then, Frost had been smiling, joking even, cordial even as he was cruel. Tonight he was not smiling at all, his face twisted into a bestial mask of displeasure that would have had Alex evacuating his bladder, were there anything in it to evacuate! He'd never seen the second Executor ANGRY before!

"Executor." Kunai said, hoping the quaver in his tone wasn't as apparent as he feared it must be. Like most predators, Frost had a sense for weakness in his prey, and instincts that prodded him to slay those he considered vulnerable. And right now, tired, shocked, off guard and drained, Kunai realized he WAS vulnerable, he could barely even muster the TK to keep his soup warm, much less fend off this malevolent superman should he attack! "Can I help you with something?" Kunai asked, forebearing mentioning his annoyance at Frost ambushing him in his own office. It was pointless to complain to the man, he would just think it funny at best, and a disrespectful challenge at worst. He also forbore mentioning the assault upon Alex, who was now practically pinned against the side of his desk, as Frost towered over the much bigger man, who'd gone down like a boxer after twenty rounds with the champ, with just one punch to the jaw!

"I know what you've done." Frost intoned, his voice like the slither of a blade being drawn from a sheath, as he leaned forward and put his hands on Kunai's desk, putting his face right up close to the seated Praetorian leader's. Kunai wanted to disbelieve that statement, but like most people, he found Frost could be quite intensely convincing at times, even if he was spouting gibberish. "Up in space, your little partycrashing." Frost added, and Kunai definitely went a shade paler than usual at that detail.

"So you know then." Kunai replied, figuring evasion was pointless and counterproductive. "I'm sorry, I didn't think you'd have been interested in such a thing, or else I would have asked you to come along. I'm sure you would have found it... glorious."

Kunai missed what happened next, one moment he was sitting in his chair, the next moment he was being hauled up over his own desk, his nectar broth spilling all over his lap and legs, blood pounding in his head as Frost's hand around his neck clenched tightly enough to make his neck vertebrae ache, as the second Executor pulled Kunai's face up until their noses were practically touching, Kunai's bugging eyes staring straight into Frost's glowing red backlit ones. This close, he could almost swear he could feel the heat from the fires of hell pouring out of those orbs. "You know nothing." Frost hissed, his teeth bared in a snarl. "Glorious? What you've done? GLORIOUS?" Frost spat loudly, right into Kunai's face, though he did manage to deflect the saliva with a telekinetic push before it could get in his eyes. "There is no glory in using a nanoweapon to kill millions of civilians! There's no conflict in that! I am here to sharpen the blade of humanity, and by your actions, you have punched out a whole section of the blade, gotten rid of it entirely! The blade can never be as sharp with a piece missing! Not for generations! I ought to pop your head like a pimple for this, Tree-Bitch!" Frost emphasized his ability to easily accomplish that by tightening his grip on Kunai's throat for a moment, making his bald head flush dark purplish with trapped blood.

"I joined this little war of yours because I want it to end, quickly and decisively, with relatively minimal casualties on both sides. If people are to die, it should be by my hands, at my feet should the bodies fall, upon my face should the blood spatter! And you think I would be pleased that you would eliminate over 450 MILLION potential kills, potential conflicts, and furthermore, not just NOT end the war like you could have done with, but instead increased their desire to fight it longer?" Frost shook Kunai like he was a rag doll, using one foot against Alex's broken jaw to pin the bigger Praetorian against the floor, whimpering in unmanagable agony as shards of bone ground against the bottom edges of his tooth nerves, a piteous whine all the protest the massive man could manage as blood ran freely down his jaws and puddled on the floor. "I'm half of the mind to tattle to Yamato about this, just so I could see him tear your skeletal structure out through your nostrils by hand!"

Frost brought the semi-conscious Kunai back up so they were face to face once more, the red glowing eyes narrowing piercingly. "But I won't do that, Tree-Bitch. Not because I care about what happens to you or the Turkey, but because when he does find out, the shock may just very well push him towards becoming the Boytoy again. You might think I would want that quickly. In ways I do. But at the moment, there exists a teensy little issue that bothers me. His new Seed. He's killed me once with that. I'd rather not let him do it again. Until I can figure out how he does that, and replicate it, it behooves me to deal with Yamato, not the Boytoy. However, do not try my patience with your little schemes again, or I will tear you into bite sized gobbets with my bare hands, and consume you whole. I would do it now, but the prospect of seeing you flinch every time we lock eyes in the future tickles my fancy. Yes... you only live because I think its more humiliating for you to know you survived by my "mercy" alone. You think you're so smart, Tree-Bitch. You think the Tree knows it all." Frost put his mouth next to Kunai's ear. "But the Tree cannot see what the Abyss hears. Remember that."

Frost slowly began easing up on his grip around Kunai's neck, letting the paralyzed man gasp loudly for air. "Oh yes." Frost added, tightening the grip again. "Here's a little forget me not. Can't have you bragging that you got off scott free. The Turkey will need a new beak, but you, Kunai... you're the telekinetic superstar ain't ya? You must think you're real hot shit, those little stunts like holding your soup without touching it. You wanna live a hands free lifestyle, Kunai? I can help you with that." Frost's snarl turned into a rictus grin, as he closed his other hand around Kunai's right hand, like a handshake. And then he squeezed. As hard as he could. With his enhanced strength, Kunai's muscles and bones might as well have been made from silly putty, indeed, that was kinda how the hand looked after Frost was done, like a putty hand that had been stepped on. Kunai was gargling his screams through his constricted throat, but Frost wasn't done. He grabbed Kunai's left hand next. Seconds later, a second pulpy fist remnant lay on the granite desktop, skin and blood and muscle and bone all smeared together by Frost's inexorable grip. He tossed Kunai roughly back into his chair, the all powerful Praetorian's mewls of pain music to his ears.

"How..." Kunai gasped, as Frost turned to nonchalantly walk away. "How did you know...?"

Frost turned and smirked, tapping the side of his head. "The voice of the ferryman. He talks to me sometimes. Tells me things. There's more to me than you know, Tree-Bitch. Even the Mouse has only scratched the very surface. I look forward to her scratching some more here soon. Perhaps I should have called her Moth... she is so drawn to the flames of her own destruction after all..." Frost eyed Kunai's two crippled hands. "I hope you got some velcro pants and shoes. Though I suppose you could always get the Turkey to zip you up... 'bout all he seems to be good for after all. He's already got his lips firmly puckered round your asshole anyway." Frost turned away, and then turned back one final time, his smirk as malicious as the devils himself. "Oh yeah, last little tidbit. Charon tells me that you fuckups hit the wrong target. The TAS program is based out of Second Earth 2, not 3. Congratulations, you hit the wrong colony. Hehehehhehe..." Frost strode away for good, though his chuckles seemed to linger behind him for a very long time.

xxxx

**New Eden, Antarctica, Nifelheim FEAR Base, Extended Barracks F, Jan 3rd, 3:15 am**

Contrary to the popular belief of some of the human and Coordinator soldiers assigned to the highly secret FEAR base on Earth's most desolate continent, when not performing maintenance tasks on their Mobile Suits or participating in various laboratory tests with FEAR technicians and scientists, the Extendeds were not stored in plastic tubes or inert on metal slabs, both rumors spawned by talk about the recuperation beds the Extendeds slept in once a month or so. But though their superiors might sometimes wish it were so, Extendeds were not mindless zombies or robotic drones, and their highly secure quarters had more in common with a hotel than Frankenstein's dungeon lab. Though perhaps hotel was the wrong word, more like a cross between a hospital for the criminally insane and a juvenile delinquent rehabilitation center.

The common sectors of the barracks complex were austure and spartan, all white acoustic tile and plain steel walls lightly covered with sheet rock painted light blue, with plenty of ceiling lighting recessed behind retractable grates in the ceiling. The furniture was made of white plastic, durable but not so durable it could easily be made into a weapon, either for use against other Extendeds, or worse, against their human caretakers. Not that brawling or psychopathic tendencies were common amongst the Extended, unlike previous super-soldier programs, outside of battle most of them were quite normal and stable. The greater majority of them were even content with thier lives, proud of the important and unique role they filled in the USN's military roster, and unceasing in their respect and loyalty to Doctor Roanoke, their creator and mutual "father", who had raised almost all of them since they were very little.

Dr. Roanoke had loved his Extended children back, though in his own manner, never would he admit to being fond of them, certainly never where an Extended could hear it, but his adoration for his surrogate family showed through in the personal freedoms he allowed them, once they had proven themselves personally capable of handling them without issue. It might be argued that the privileges he allowed them were merely what any other person of their approximate age would normally take for granted in their personal lives... the ability to dress in what clothes they liked while off duty, to decorate their private bunkrooms, to own private media like books or video games or music players, limited and closely monitored access to some of the online networks, and the ability to pursue interpersonal relationships, usually within the Project, but occasional exceptions were made in special cases. But for those raised as Supersoldiers from a young age, with the only laws being those of the Project, even the most normal seeming of "rights" was an incredible and highly valued privilege. Because they were not humans, they were property, at best with the rights of pets, maybe... that Father would allow them human things anyway was like a gift from God himself!

Since all Extendeds were sterlized just as they reached puberty, Roanoke had not been overly limiting with how they conducted themselves in response to their hormonal urges, as long as they kept these "experiments" confined within the Project except with his special permission. It was true that the special nature of some of the Extended enhancements could seriously aggravate the hormonal urges experienced during puberty, but for the most part, the Extended's exhaustive training and the subtle conditioning of the Recuperation beds meant that compared to most teenagers, they were quite collected and chaste. Few Extendeds developed much in the way of sexual interests until they were well over sixteen, many not even before hitting 18 and full maturity, and this was true of both sexes. Perhaps it had something to do with being raised together, most relationships between Extendeds tended more towards familial rather than romantic, though as they grew older and recognized that they weren't actually related, some sexual bonding was inevitably going to take place. Rather than fight it and risk problems, Roanoke had encouraged it as long as the Extendeds cleared it with him first, which had just earned him that much more respect in their eyes.

He even allowed involved pairs to be bunked together, as long as they showed they could handle the responsibility without it affecting their other duties, and while most Extended romantic relationships were basically what normal humans would call "friends with benefits" and no long term fidelty was experienced or even expected, some deep bonding did occur, two Extendeds falling in love and becoming fanatically monogamous in their attentions. With no possibility of children, Roanoke had not been overly bothered by these rare pairings, even postulating some theories that "mated" Extendeds often functioned better in teamwork situations than their more liberal and dionysian peers. The data sample was still too small to make any conclusions from, but Extended pairs did not suffer the same near crippling worry that human soldier couplings often did, each partner trusted the person they cared for to be able to take care of themselves, and could focus on tasking even when seperated while their partner was in danger.

Of course there was the case of Stella Loussier, the eldest female Extended and widely recognized as Roanoke's favorite amongst his "children", a hierarchal position that was much envied by the other Extendeds, though envied more in the way a younger sibling would envy a successful and idolized older sibling, rather than true jealousy. All the Extendeds knew that Stella dully deserved her position, she was one of the highest scoring Extendeds of all time, and, along with her "brothers" Sting and Auel, were the most combat experienced of all the Extendeds. No one would step into the ring with Stella for a friendly knife fight anymore, she was the undisputed queen of the short blade fighting style taught to Extendeds. If Extended society could be said to have a heroine, that heroine would undoubtedly be Stella. All the other female Extended, to some extent, dreamed of emulating Stella, who was allowed more personal freedoms than any other Extended, even to the point where she was allowed to live OUTSIDE the Project bounds, with her boyfriend the Solar Knight. There had even been the rumor going around that Father had been considering allowing Stella to have babies, an idea that had rocked Extended society to its core!

Opinions were still a bit more mixed on Stella's chosen mate, the Solar Knight Lain Debora, though by and large he was accepted, more through exposure than anything else. He'd been a semi-frequently visible part of the Project for longer than a good quarter of the Extended had been on deployment status after all. He might just be a norm, but there must be SOMETHING more to him, or Stella wouldn't be so infatuated with him. Female Extendeds could grudgingly admit that he was pretty handsome and amusing, male Extendeds could grudgingly admit he was pretty tough and likable, and both sexes could admit that he was a pretty hot hand in a MS, for a norm. And he had the respect of both Sting and Auel, besides just Stella's feelings, and that counted for a lot right there. But he was still a Normal, and that would always make him a bit of an outsider among the Extendeds. Then again, Father was a Normal too, in some ways. Thoughts like that tended to make an Extended uncomfortable.

However, all of that was now in the past, because Father had been removed from control of the Project recently, and now they had a Mother instead. Unlike Father, Mother was not kind and considerate of her Extended's feelings, to her they were nothing more than tools of war, and replacable ones at that! Where Father was considerate though firm, Mother was draconian and demanding, and even a hint of sulking, rebellion or backtalk would send her into a dangerously angry state. Already she had stripped away almost all of Father's privileges, even for those Extendeds that had performed well on the battlefields. Perhaps her most hated change was the strict gender segregation of the Extendeds, with a females only barracks and a males only barracks, and no intermingling or socializing was allowed. The only time Extendeds of opposite sex, even mated pairs, were allowed to be together was during training sessions or missions! One Extended girl had already complained to Mother about not being able to see her boyfriend, since neither of them had ever failed a test or performed less than "above average" in evaluations, and she was just the tip of the iceberg. The mature Extendeds depended on their social experimenting to balance out the stresses of wartime footing, an understanding shoulder to hang onto, and now that the support was taken away, unfamiliar feelings of anger and resentment were building in everyone.

Mother's reply to their representative concern had stunned the Extendeds, who were used to Father's style of punishments, the revoking of some privileges, a stern talking to, and remedial training to fix whatever was deficient. Perhaps at worst some time spent in isolation from the others, or being removed from deployment status, which meant losing access to their beloved Mobile Suits. Mother was different, she reacted as if the complaint was a deliberate attack on her authority, something that the Extendeds had never and would never normally question. They just wanted to know what they'd done wrong, so they could do better next time. No one would forget what Mother had done to Kell, the one who had complained. Shortly after Kell had gone to complain, all the Extendeds at Nifelheim had been called to one of the secure hangers, where there had been armed guards waiting for them. They had lined up in formation, wondering what was going on, when Mother had appeared, her icy cold presence smothering any hope they might have had that things were okay.

Mother had lectured them, screamed at them more like it, that she wasn't going to tolerate any more insubordination from them, that they had grown far too lax and sloppy under Dr. Roanoke's watch, and that obviously they had somewhere gotten the false impression that they were even partly human, which Mother said was not true. They were nothing more than biological weapon systems shaped like humans, organic computers used for piloting Mobile Suits! They had no need of human rights, privileges or relationships, any more than a rifle in a rack did! These words had not been well recieved, but the conditioning of absolute loyalty to the head of the Project, which was now Mother, was not easily overcome. Even without the armed guards, no Extended could have made a move against Mother. Not even when she ordered Kell dragged out, naked and beaten up, and held in front of her gathered friends and "kin". If Extendeds could not contain their biological desires, Mother had all but screamed, then she would find them a proper, productive outlet for them. And that was when she ordered the armed guards to take turns raping Kell, right there in front of everyone, while Mother coldly looked on and dared anyone to protest or complain.

Being an Extended, Kell was inured to physical hardship, and even after being beaten by these selfsame guards before being dragged out with Mother and the others, her body held up well against the repeated sexual assaults, actually the second round of such she had suffered, after Mother had called the guards to her office when Kell had made her plea for understanding. The concept of taking sex via force was alien to the Extendeds, they might be able to understand it intellectually, but emotionally, that sort of thing was beyond them, both in doing and understanding. Kell was thus more confused with the unasked for touching and sex than hurt or frightened by it, but the gist of what Mother was saying was what really hurt. Her relationship with Steven was now over, a dream fading into the past. The Extendeds had no rights, not even to their own body's privacy, the one thing that Father had never even considered taking from them. Deep down inside, the Extendeds knew they were still Human, and Father had never tried to dissaude them from that. They were not Normals, but they were still important as individuals above and beyond being Extendeds. Mother obviously disagreed with that idea. Mother was wrong, but unlike Father, she didn't seem able to realize that. For the first time, the Extendeds realized... Mother was fallible. They HADN'T done anything wrong after all, Mother was the one who was wrong!

To a Normal, that might seem to be a farily mundane conclusion, but to the Extendeds, it was like having the foundation of the world half broken! And Mother kept excaberating the problem, she wasn't just wrong once, she continued to be wrong actively, segregating the Extendeds yet further, keeping most of the males in isolation at Nifelheim, while she sent the greater majority of the females abroad to serve under the Solar Knight Supreme Commander. And "under" was a literal term, judging from the stories of the few girls that had trickled back to Nifelheim in the time since, the Supreme Commander, who everyone had assumed was mated to Mother judging by how much time he spent alone with her, liked to use Extendeds as bed warmers for himself and his top subordinates, enjoying their athleticism, stamina and obedience as much as he did their often obvious shyness and inexperience. The Supreme Commander was not cruel in bed, but neither was he considerate, he just... used you like you were a toy. As long as he had some fun, he wouldn't do anything bad to you, other than a little humiliation in the morning, but embarassment was another emotion Extendeds weren't terribly familiar with anyway.

All the same, constantly being on call for duties that had nothing to do with being an Extended was deeply troubling to the Extendeds, who had been raised since toddlerhood knowing they existed to fight in wars against Coordinators, or Psychics, or whatever enemy Father had in mind. If Father had intended them to be used as sex toys, he would have told them so, and provided training for it, in which case they would have been okay with it. But he hadn't, and even Mother seemed to be trying to use it as a punishment, rather than a true duty, and she just didn't seem to understand that while the Extendeds would accept any order from the Project Leader... Mother in this case... including acting as sex toys if need be, instead they were being continually punished for just being who they were! Mother didn't understand them at all. She was trying to fix a problem that only really existed in her head! Indeed, many of the unattached Extendeds were even coming to regard this sexual ""punishment" as a unique opportunity to learn more about Normals outside the normal bounds of the Project. Now if Mother would just allow those who were mated to forgo the "duty", everyone would be happy, almost. Faithfulness and loyalty were EVERYTHING to an Extended, being forced as an undeserved punishment to be unloyal and unfaithful to sworn partners was what was really causing the stress amongst the Extendeds.

In their confusion, the Extendeds thus turned to the leadership of their most experienced brethren, Sting, Auel and Stella, who herself had actually been the first to suffer under Mother's misguided attempts to dominate her already fanatically loyal subjects. This was not learned from Stella herself, but rather from pillow talk heard from the Supreme Commander, who was apt to brag to his freshest bedmates about previous "conquests", though "surrenders" would probably be a better term. Truly this was a dilemma...the Extendeds would never be disloyal to Mother, but how could they show her that what she was doing was only diminishing the effectiveness of her Extended children without just making her more angry? Complicating matters was the fact that Stella could not become directly involved in anything Mother might even suspect as rebellion, since Mother had already threatened to kill Lain unless Stella kept it a secret that she was now a sex slave as well as an Extended.

It was so frustrating to them all, insulting even... if a mission called for seduction or sexual submission, any Extended, even a mated one, would do so in a heartbeat, no questions asked, all Mother had to do was command it be done. It was only since Mother refused to make it an mission, instead making it a punishment, taking away their one expected freedom of choosing what to do with their own sexual urges during non-mission time, that things were problematic. In essence, Mother was making them perform mission tasks on their free time, without proper orders to make free time into mission time. It was all just a big misunderstanding. Little did the Extendeds know though, such reasons were how most major wars tended to start...

xxxx

**New Eden, Nifelheim FEAR base, Dr. Dostanya's personal suite, Jan 3rd, 3:30 am**

"Having trouble sleeping?" Natalia asked, with a raised brow, as she returned from the bathroom after cleaning herself up from her latest bout of lovemaking with her precious little clone. Rey was currently reclining in her bed, the sheets covering him from waist down, his eyes instantly drawn away from the classified military readiness reports he'd been browsing while she was in the bathroom, drawn like lodestone to a magnet as he stared at her perfectly sculpted body, blond hair unbound and flowing down to tickle the tops of her buttocks, and Natalia could not help but pose a little, female ego eagerly absorbing the covetous glares of her young pet. "Usually you just drop right off afterwards, something bothering you, love?" Natalia added, softening the lightly stinging observation with a personal question. It wasn't Rey's fault that even a stud Coordinator's stamina couldn't match up to what Natalia's primarily Extended... and a very advanced and personalized Extended at that... body was capable of.

"Just the world starting to fall apart at the seams." Rey replied, his voice a mixture of weariness, anger and shock. Natalia could tell that the events at Victoria had really hit his personal pride hard, losing fully half of his elite Paladins, all fifty he brought with him, and a goodly portion of the rank and file Solar Knights as well, in addition to having the huge USN army driven from the field, if not quite destroyed entirely! And mostly because of the actions of a mere handful of enemy defenders, chiefly their two Gundams! Rey himself had survived only because of a timely "tactical withdrawal" from the Paladin melee to kill the Kratos, in essence, her little stud had turned tail and run when he saw he had no chance, and that fact was eating him alive. Natalia thought about doing something to help him recover that confidence, but in the end, decided against it. It better suited her plans to have him broken and angry and looking for a target to blame for his inadequacies. If it ended up breaking his spirit completely by the end, well, she'd get over it. In about as much time as it took to fish a dildo out of her bedside tablestand.

Or maybe she'd trawl amongst the male Extendeds for a change, there were a few that had definitely caught her eye, especially the two elder males, Sting and Auel. Auel she would enjoy breaking to her will, he was a wild one, but secretly insecure as well, which would make him a quick and easy warmup. Sting presented more of a challenge, he was perhaps the most emotionally mature of all the Extendeds, and he was a cagey, careful one too, it would take time and effort to bend him to her whimsy. But that could be a very diverting distraction, assuming all her efforts weren't tied up with Durandel. And it might even help get the rest of the Extended more firmly under her thumb, if their two most experienced "siblings" gave the new "Mother" their vote of unequivocal support. Not that she really cared whether the Extended liked her or not, they were just tools to her, but she supposed making some effort to assuage their emotional well being might be in order. Even the best trained attack dog would turn on its masters eventually, and she didn't need that kind of hassle, at least until she was much further along in the creation of her Paragons.

And then of course there was the events of Blue Monday, two nights past, which had the whole of the USN screaming bloody murder, which Natalia was perfectly fine with. FEAR's funding was safe, if anything, they were almost certain to soon be finding additional resources arriving in bucketfuls, because FEAR was the go to source for advanced new weaponry that would allow the USN to more efficiently combat the increased Eddie threat. Already Gilbert had instructed her to speed up the development of the BALORs, which she had duly passed on to Dr. Magnus, who had tried to quibble, saying he still needed some months to properly calibrate and test his first generation creations. Natalia thought that Dr. Magnus was probably right about that, actually, but that didn't matter. What mattered was providing for Gilbert's needs, indebting him to her, and if the First Generation ended up doing what she was pretty sure it would do, well, that was no skin off her nose. By then the Second Generation should be nearly ready, and they could put down the rampaging Firsts for her. Failing that, a judicious deployment of MAIDEN would be enough to clean up any BALOR mess.

The Second Generation of BALORs, produced using Oktar's biological genius, and Sammual's cybernetic and technological genius, would be the true answer to the enemy Gundams. And she had already taken actions, as was her usual wont, to advance Oktar's program even further under her own guidance. She had ordered the appropriation of Oktar's prized "Generation Zero" test Meisters, and had them safely sequestered in her own top secret labratories, buried hundreds of meters below even the deepest military base levels of Nifelheim, and accessible only via her own personal elevator, keyed to her alone. Like most top end scientific geniuses, she preferred to do her best work alone, with only the aid of robotics for heavy lifting type tasks. Already, her research into the potentials of BALORs and the forced breeding of Chimerae had advanced years beyond anything Oktar could imagine, the poor man was still confining his efforts to the study of base animals, when plainly true psychic power was related to those creatures with innately higher mental and emotional states. Creatures like humans. Her project, Codenamed Typhon, would be the ultimate weapon of war, alongside her perfect soldiers, the Newtype-Extended hybrids, the Paragon!

At the same time as she'd ordered the two GZ Meisters appropriated, Natalia had ordered the liquidation of Meyrin Hawke, seeing no reason to continue providing for a girl who's only real purpose as far as Natalia was concerned was keeping her sister in line, and now that Rey was no longer interested in Lunamaria, Meyrin had become expendable. Indeed, perhaps she might arrange it so that Lunamaria learned of her sister's disposal, of course ordered by Rey and not Natalia, which would no doubt serve to distract Rey quite nicely whenever Natalia decided the time was ripe to cast him aside in her pursuit of Gilbert. Assuming she just didn't have him killed, of course, there were plenty of possibilities there too. Not wanting any possible connection between FEAR and Meyrin's fate for Lunamaria and her boyfriend to latch onto and potentially make themselves a minor thorn in her side, Natalia had decreed that Meyrin be taken to Reclaimer Initiative Rehabilitation Center 1, in England, on Earth, which was basically the same thing as a sentence of execution for any Edenite.

Camp 1, as it was colloquially called, was managed by a man named Arnold Zala, an estranged cousin of the far more famous and righteous Zala living in Orb, who had formerly been the worst sort of delinquent and gang banger, before a last gasp of effort on behalf of his family brought him into the film industry, where he somehow became quite a popular star, and then a spokesperson for the Reclaimer Initiative. Natalia was not a fan of contemporary movies, she much preferred the things from the forties and fifties, before the Valentine Wars ruined cinema. The main point though, was that Arnold Zala, who had the idiotic appellation of "Hazy", was a worm, plain and simple, and an utterly disgusting human being. She could almost admire his business sense though, because soon after taking control of what was basically designed to be a concentration camp and setting for the occasional propoganda documentary, Hazy had turned it into a thriving center of the black market, an operation he was making millions from!

The chief money maker was the harvesting of Edenite plants and animal parts in the making of drugs, many more placebo than effective, but a few were quite potent psychedelics, hallucinogens, depressants and stimulants that made the drugs the USN populace were used to look like aspirin pills. By utilizing Eddies, usually children, as forced labor, there was little risk in the gathering or cultivation of raw materials, the Eddies already knew all about the dangers of the plants or animals in question, so they didn't need to be trained. Nor provided with safety equipment, since they were prisoners of war after all, and not even humans. And with their parents and youngest siblings held hostage back at Camp 1, there was no chance of a rebellion or escape attempt, the psychic anguish of having their families executed would send most Eddie children into a coma, at least if the execution was done properly. It had been scientifically proven by FEAR.

While most of the money came from the drugs, the most popular "attraction" of Camp 1 was the fleshpots, where a person with the right connections, or enough money to spend, could, for a price, buy a certain block of time alone with an Eddie of their chosen age group and sex, usually the mothers and sisters of the same Eddies who were sent afield in the drug search efforts. Complimentary Red EDEN pills were provided on the house, so any kind of intercourse with the "item" would have no serious consequences for the buyer. Given that Eddies were often extremely physically beautiful, and of course also extremely forbidden by USN law, the dual draw was enormous. Everyone wanted to have their own "Eddie bareback ride" to brag about to the other snobbish rich bastards back home. Others were ranking military officers, who just wanted to "fuck up" an Eddie on their own terms, though Camp 1 did not permit snuff type activities... you had to pay an extra fee, and travel to Camp 2, if you wanted to torture or kill your purchase before, during or afterwards. The prostitutes were kept in line via threatening their children and siblings, same as the drug gatherers, a neat little arrangement with both ends cooperating against threats from the middle. They were also generally chained to their beds or to the the walls, just in case, you could never be sure with the subhumans.

In any case, a little digging into Hazy's past had revealed a rather personal brush with the famous terrorist organization, The Brotherhood Of Man, which of course was the group Noah Borander had created and led, in which Hazy had lost his girlfriend, Meer Campbell, to an attack via Noah's robotic bodyguards. More of an assassination attempt actually, since Meer Campbell was a highly successful Lacus Clyne impersonator that had been tapped by none other than Gilbert himself to provide a legitimacy figurehead for his early political maneuverings. Apparently Noah Borander hadn't approved of such a thing, and Meer had ended up clawed to ribbons and with her head burnt into a greasy stain on the floor of her apartment, and Hazy had never really gotten over that, which had turned into a full fledged hatred of all things of Noah's, including Edenites. And Meyrin was Noah's girlfriend, a tidbit Natalia had made sure to pass along. She was sure Hazy would do his very best to keep Meyrin "entertained" for however long his attention lasted, and she doubted anyone would ever hear of Meyrin Hawke ever again either way. And her hands were almost spotless, definitely a job well done.

Natalia climbed back into her bed, making sure to disarray the covers and brush up alongside Rey in a very distracting and tantalizing manner. "Don't worry so much, Rey, you may have suffered a little setback, but things are still very much in our court. I promise you, the BALORs will be ready in less than two weeks, and then those pesky Gundams won't be a threat to anyone anymore!" Natalia felt a conversation change might be productive, she couldn't have him getting depressed just yet. "What about our little Extended arrangement? Everything still working out there? I hope you've taught them all their proper place."

"They're very popular." Rey answered slowly. "Some of them almost seem to be enjoying themselves... its kind of creepy. I thought this was supposed to be a punishment for them, for their insubordinative tendencies? I'm not getting many complaints about their enthusiasm, it just seems strange... its almost like they're... seducing the men who use them. I've already had to break up a few squabbles over who gets which Extended when, and these between some of my highest ranking and most sober subordinates! The idea was good at first, but they're becoming an issue to good order and discipline amongst my men, and after Victoria..." Rey trailed off, his eyes hooded.

"And after Victoria?" Natalia prompted, finally recieving the lead in she'd been hoping for all night. Though she did make a mental note to step things up another notch, if the Extendeds were going to treat her actions like some sort of game, by all that was holy, she'd really give them something to cry about! Maybe then they'd finally settle down and learn their places again! Sammual had been entirely too soft on them.

"And after my, uh, less that sterling actions at Victoria..." Rey blushed furiously with same. "My authority is not what it once was, let's put it that way. I'm already hearing reports of people questioning my ability to serve as Supreme Commander, this little situation with the Extendeds isn't helping matters. Especially if it gets out to the rank and file, they'll completely blow a gasket if they think I'm sexing it up while they're out dying. They just don't understand the stresses of my job require me to have a destressor as well, but trying to explain it to them will just end up with..." Rey shook his head again. "Let's just say it would be bad for everyone. Matters are balanced on a knife's edge right now, Natalia, I shouldn't even be with you, here, right now, but..."

"You're such a sweetling, Rey." Natalia patted him in a personal spot, before turning serious. "But I'm afraid things have already gotten worse than that, my love. Some of my own operatives witnessed a late night rendevous between Gilbert and Talia Gladys..."

"Gil's been doing that for years." Rey shrugged. "Talia has always been discreet about it..."

"More than you know, Rey. She wasn't just going to his bed, she had something with her that she wanted him to look at." Natalia continued on. "Something she didn't want you or any of your Section Nine subordinates knowing about. I still don't know what it was, but I can tell you, anything that Talia thinks that she needs to show Gil that she can't trust to an open forum concerns me, given her recent subversive activities, and your misfortune at Victoria. I'm afraid she might be trying to move against you, my love, trying to push you out of Gil's spotlight so she can take your spot at his side!"

"Gil would never let that happen." Rey said resolutely, but Natalia could see the doubt in his eyes, the cracks in his confidence after his poor showing at Victoria. Deep down inside, Rey knew he probably WASN'T worthy of Gil's trust anymore after such a massive screwup, but he could never admit that to himself. Especially not with a convenient scapegoat in the form of Talia Gladys to focus his ill feeling upon. "But all the same, you're right, if Talia IS trying to backdoor me, her flings with Gil would be a brilliant way to do it. Who knows what sort of lies and half truths she's been bringing him, while I kept my eyes politely turned away! If Talia has concerns, it is her DUTY as my subordinate to follow the chain of command and go through proper channels, to do otherwise is little better than mutiny! Thanks for the tip, Natalia, I just don't know how I'd survive without you! I'll find out what Captain Gladys is hiding from me, and when I do, not even Gil's favor will stop me from stripping her of her command and busting her down to midshipwoman again!"

"Are you sure that would be enough?" Natalia asked quietly, turning her face away so he couldn't see her triumphant smile. "Gil is totally infatuated with her, he'd just wipe the charges and re-instate her after publicly embarassing you. You may be his son, but trust me, Rey, she has him by the balls, literally, he won't let anyone, even you, damage her career, no matter her crime. If she really has betrayed you, then you'll have to take more... permanent actions to ensure your safety and continued authority, don't you think?"

"Let's not talk about this." Rey said firmly, his face almost as pale white as her creamy sheets. "I understand what you are saying, Natalia, and I understand why, but this is... just conjecture right now. I would be happiest if this was all a big fuss over nothing, you know? Until I have proof that Talia has undermined me for her own ends, we will not mention this again, do you understand?"

"Of course, love." Natalia shrugged nonchalantly. "I just don't like it when people set you up to take a fall, is all. Sometimes you have to strike first, in war and in love."

"The discussion is over." Rey reminded her. "I shouldn't be here, but there is one more thing I would like to do before I leave..." He said, his voice husky and intent.

"That's my Rey." Natalia smiled at him, as he pulled her towards him. Everything was still going perfectly according to plan. By this time next year, the USN should be hers...

xxxx


	44. Crimson Justice

Author: at the time of writing this, still haven't seen much reaction on Emerald Remorse, though what I have seen appears highly positive, so I guess I chalk down another success for me. Now to get back into the fully planned storyline, Crimson Justice is the start of a string of chapters that is just going to be plain fucking awesome (Crimson Justice, Black Ghosts and Silver Hell), all of which happen more or less within a 36 hour period, as we move more into the middle part of the story and beginning setting up for the next major confrontation, which will occur in North America. All the major players have been established, everyone is scrambling to recover from the twinned events of City of Tears and Indigo Release, and its time for a few bit players to make their presence felt, helping speed along more major story plot events to come. Sometimes I wish I could just slap down the whole interwoven tapestry of plotlines and events for you guys, it is a beautiful thing that you unfortunately must see only one strand at a time until the end. But anyway, let us tune in to the events of Crimson Justice. May Retribution claim the guilty.

xxxx

**New Eden, Northern Europe, Former England, 250km northwest of ruins of Neo-London, RI Rehabiltation Center "Camp 1", Jan 5th, 5:40 am**

"Judge, this is Jury. Witness reports situation normal, all jurors now moving into verdict positions." The comm crackled lightly in the hastily but cunningly constructed forward command center bunker, about three kilometers into the misty jungles that now covered this formerly temperate nation, away from the large cleared area that surrounded the mission target, the "rehabilitation center", aka Concentration Camp, so creatively called Camp 1. The bunker, scraped out of the ground the night before with the aid of Mobile Suits, was covered in camouflage netting, as well as a hefty amount of dirt, wet plants and special tarps that would reduce or cancel thermal signatures even to most modern sensors. The interior wasn't much more than a dirt cave, with a few trestle tables set up next to a few folding chairs to hold the communication and tactical plotting equipment, lit by portable electric lanterns, but then again, this was a highly temporary post. Assuming all went well, it would soon be just another random hole in the ground.

"Understood, Jury. Order Witness to fall back into supporting positions, pending a more complete report on the status of the defense. We don't want a mistrial because of missed evidence." Retributors Commander Tamara Logan replied, rolling her eyes at the relatively corny code talk. If anyone intercepted their transmissions, it wouldn't take much effort to realize that something was going on that shouldn't be, the code wouldn't change that. What it did do was disguise which units were which, so that even if they were being listened to, they could still preserve some details from the enemy. Though again, this wasn't exactly a very advanced code either. The opcenter, mostly manned by her and a few guards and medical personnel at the moment, was Judge, Witness was the Retributors scouting force with eyes on the target, Jury was the front line commander, with 6 Jurors under his command, each Juror unit consisting of a mix of armored transport vehicles and infantry. Prosecutor was Ashino in the Retribution, and Bailiff was the supporting Punisher squadron, hanging back near the opcenter for the order to engage.

Right now, Witness was still gathering up to date intel on the target, the RI facility, while the Jurors began working into a loose encirclement of the compound, ready to capitalize on the confusion caused by the assault of Prosecutor and Bailiff. In a strictly military sense, the Retributor's forces were too small to have any hope of actually capturing a military facility of this size, they had barely a hundred infantry and eleven armored vehicles, plus 3 Punishers and the Retribution, but Tamara was used to being outnumbered in battles, even raid-assaults, and besides, this wasn't really strictly a military facility. For that matter, there was no discounting the psychological advantage of having a famous Gundam on your team, Ashino's reputation was worth an easy extra few hundred soldiers just by itself. All the same, she wished they had been able to take more of the _Justicar_'s complement down to the surface with them, but there had been simply no way to manage it. The forged logistics documents they had gotten only allowed for a certain amount of tons of "supplies" and "attendant personnel" to be dropped at any one time, and things were dicey enough just smuggling the forces they had!

Tamara had urged waiting a few extra days for the next available drop window, so that the _Justicar_ could send down some more APCs and another Punisher or two, but Ash wouldn't hear of it. It was extremely rare to see him so impatient, especially given the extended and risky nature of this mission, usually he was the very model of calm methodicalness. Something about these Concentration Camps though really seemed to have hit a nerve with him somewhere, and it had really been all Tamara could do to get him to wait as long as he had. Ash was fully prepared to assault Camp 1 solo, with just the Retribution, and while Tamara had little doubt that her lover could probably leave the base in smoking ruins without suffering too much damage himself, that wasn't the point here. This was a raid for information, a humanitarian rescue, and then, lastly, an attack on the USN and RI military forces.

"Transmitting updated base outline diagnostic." Witness reported suddenly, as Tamara's tactical overlay plot began to fuzz and resolve into slightly changed patterns, reflecting the new data. Camp 1 was laid out in a large hexagonal shape, each of the six sides about a half kiliometer long. The camp was bordered by a perimeter wall of reinforced concrete about five meters tall and two meters thick, topped with rolls of barbed and razor wire, some electrified, some merely dangerously sharp. Rows of computer operated spotlights stood atop the wall, along with motion sensors to detect any attempts to cross from either direction. Trees and ground cover were cleared away from the outer side of the walls in a hundred meter wide firebreak, a flat, open stretch of ground that left attackers or escapees without cover on their approach to the wall. Several layers of chain link fence, also topped with barbed and razor wire, prevented easy access to the main wall from within the camp itself, between two of these wire fences, a deep ditch filled with proximity and vibrationally detonated mines was placed.

"Defense" towers were spaced every hundred meters around the circumference of the main walls, basically small bunkers on steel struts contained a variety of heavy anti-personnel weapons and a medium caliber beam cannon on the roof for anti-vehicle and MS combat. At each junction point where the wall angled in a new direction, a reinforced bunker was emplaced, filled with missile launchers and hyper-impulse weaponry designed to fend off determined assaults, these hardpoints were armored like battleship turrets. RI propoganda said these towers were meant to fend off attacks from wild animals and Eddie terrorists trying to stop the peaceful rehabilitation of the "refugees" inside the camp, but Tamara noted that the guns of the watchtowers spent more time sweeping the interior of the "safe haven" than they did facing outwards towards the "threats" in the forest. That could come in handy, those towers would need a second or two to reorient to fire against external threats.

The outer walls and chain link fences were breached into only two spots, on opposite sides of the camp, each gate protected by a pair of the smaller watchtowers, along with ground level bunker emplacements on both sides of the wall, featuring more anti-infantry and light anti-vehicle weapons. One gate opened onto the road leading south, eventually meandering around to dead end at the small but extremely heavily protected logistics and expansion base about four hundred kilometers to the south, the primary USN operated facility on the island. The other gate had a road leading north, up towards old Scotland, where the second Rehabilitation Center, Camp 2, was located. Inside the compound, there were clusters of multistory concrete structures presented as "refugee lodging", but the bars on the windows that did not face towards the front facade was indicitave that most of the buildings more more like prisons. It was impossible to tell which of them were full of Edenites and which belonged to the guards and base staff, or whether the populations were intermixed. They'd have to kick each anthive open before they could find out if it was full of workers or warriors.

The grounds of the facility were mostly given over to agricultural pursuits, which made for nice photography of young Eddenites laboring in the fields to "provide food for refugees and societal reintegrators alike" as one RI pamphlet proudly declared, though Tamara strongly doubted that either the Eddies or the Guards ate anything coming out of those fields. Not more than once anyway. She was far from fully expert on New Eden's flora, but she'd read enough info to be familiar with the most common forms of vegetation they were likely to encounter, and as far as anyone knew, not even most Eddie herbivores would eat Bloodweed or Partisan Ferns, it was more the plants that ate the animals! However, the pulped leaves of Partisan Ferns, and the sap of Bloodweed contained powerful chemicals that could be fused with synthetic elements to create extremely potent recreational and medicinal drugs, and those were just two species of over a dozen plant fields she saw being cultivated. By children. Which made her own heart beat angrily in her chest, even if they were Eddie children and thus somewhat "used" to the risks, forcing them to pick the plants by hand, with only rudimentary tools, was nothing less than a drawn out execution!

"Evidence report." Witness finally said, having finished a preliminary count of enemy forces guarding the facility grounds, the final piece in the puzzle before Tamara could give the go code. "Confirm upwards of four hundred switchblades, around thirty handguns, five rifles and eight SMGs. No Bazooka's seen, but presence suspected. No sign of Drugs or Pimps. Witness now pulling back to support positions."

"Understood Witness, Judge out." Tamara replied, mentally translating the code into figures. More than four hundred armed guards, thirtyish lightly armed vehicles like jeeps, ATVs and APC's, five self propelled artillery tracks and eight medium to heavy class armored fighting vehicles. Not good odds for the Jury to face, though the one ray of light was that there was no sign of Mobile Suit forces in the area, especially not Extendeds or Solar Knights, though it was likely the RI had some of their Striker units and maybe a RIP company nearby... someone had to keep the roads and firebreaks clear, and the job was much too big to be done just by humans or standard construction vehicles. This mission was still more than possible, especially with Ashino here personally. Tamara steeled herself, and then clicked the "transmit to all" button.

"Attention the Courtroom, this is the Judge. The Prosecution may present its arguements now. I repeat, the Prosecution has the floor. I urge the Jury to pay close attention to the Evidence presented." Tamara announced, indicating that the mission was starting, more or less as they'd previously discussed. She didn't have to wait long, the Retribution screamed by overhead less than ten seconds later, not even making a pretense at stealth as Ashino opened up from medium range on the surprised base with his EMC's and VTP missile pods, deciding against the more powerful but much more likely to overpenetrate FRALAs or gatling hyper-impulse cannons. Over half of the defensive positions on the side of the camp facing Ashino's approach never even really knew what hit them, much less managed to fire back at the shimmering, energy scale encrusted Gundam. By putting high temperature reactive dyes into the Retribution's paint, the Retributors had managed to influence the color of the normally aqua-green Citadel Scales into a more reddish, maroon-cherry color a few shades darker than Ashino's hair color, which had resulted in the Retribution's new nickname, the "Crimson Justice".

VTP missiles designed to take down heavy Mobile Suits with a single hit just plain falt out obliterated the light watchtower bunkers, also knocking out ten meter wide sections of outer wall and inner fences as wreckage exploded outward like firecracker embers, often setting off the vibrationally armed mines in the inner security trench, causing yet more widespread destruction and blowing large holes right through the entire defensive perimeter of Camp 1. It was towards these holes that the Jury units were racing towards at all speed, as the Punishers caught up to their leader and added their own supporting fire against the remaining watchtowers and the major defense hardpoints. Landing inside the base itself, Ashino turned and changed out his weapon systems, selecting the "Fragarach" gatling hymper impulse cannons, as he proceeded to vindictively annihilate the hardpoint bunkers one at a time. Alarm klaxons blared, lights flashed and dimmed, and RI guard forces scrambled around like chickens with their heads cut off in the pre dawn gloom, completely unprepared for a major attack, much less from the Retributors, who everyone thought were still out by the Asteroid Belt!

Emergency calls for help went out, to the USN base to the south and even out towards Heaven's Base itself, far to the north and west, the Theatre HQ for the European quadrent of the war, but the technicians at the Judge site had their electronic warfare packages already lined up and ready to go, and not a peep was getting out of Camp 1 until they completely changed their comm protocols, which could take more than an hour. Hopefully, an hour the RI forces would not have. Certainly, they seemed to be loosing forces at a prodigious rate, even before the first of the Jury units had reached the fiery holes blown in the base perimeter, half the RI vehicles, including all eight Viking MBTs, were little more than molten or blasted wrecks, courtesy of the Punishers and Retribution, many of the vehicles being empty and uncrewed at the time of their destruction. Discipline had grown lax and slovenly at Camp 1, with nothing but a bunch of surprisingly meek Eddie civilians to guard, and the RI was getting hammered for it right now.

Ashino noticed that many of the guard forces, who were almost entirely male, who were spilling out of some of the blockhouses were still in the process of buckling on their pants and uniform jackets, and some had even heeded the call to battle in their birthday suits! A part of him might have found that amusing, at the same time as he noted that none of the quick responding guards was wearing Survivor armor or even environmental suits, which meant the facility must have a fairly large supply of Red EDEN vaccine on hand, or else regardless of the outcome of this battle, three quarters of the guard force was going to end up dead or transformed into the very people they were oppressing! And then Ashino noticed that some of the less clothed guards were splashed with a dark liquid that his sensors instantly recognized as human blood, and since none of the guards were wounded, yet, Ashino was forced to conclude they must have gotten someone ELSE's blood on them. And that lent a whole new perspective on why so many of the guards were partially clothed and unprepared for a rapid response, while being uniformly male as well.

As the dark realization of just what those guards had likely been doing in the early morning hours to leave themselves in such a state of confusion and undress, and to whom they had been doing it crossed Ashino's mind, he felt something snap inside him. It was a faintly familiar feeling, though it had been a long time since he'd felt it so acutely... not since Jean had been crippled by the USN forces in the early stages of the Eden Disaster! The first time had been back during the days when he was still a tame BCPU of the Earth Alliance, when the Doc was still alive, at JIHAD actually, when he'd intervened in the interrogation of the Clyne Faction girls that had been captured by Cervantes. The JIHAD guards had been about to rape the girls... Lacus Clyne, Cagalli Zala-Attha, Miriallia Haww and the Belaruse sisters... while they were helplessly bound to chairs, at the behest of one of JIHAD's premier interrogators/disciplinarians, "Nervous" Angie. Ashino would gladly kill a Coordinator or Coordinator sympathizer at that time in his life, but inflicting sexual abuse was wrong no matter who you were dealing with! So he had put a stop to it, which resulted in Angie disabled and the guards all dead. Perhaps that had been the first step on his road to regaining humanity.

Ashino was a supersoldier, a near peerless killer on the battlefield, who could and had done many despicable things throughout his life, often to people who did not deserve them, and sometimes to those who really did. But the concept of one person forcibly taking sexual pleasure from another, especially someone helpless to resist, for the purpose of control or causing pain, was just about the most unutterably evil act a human could do, in his eyes. Though he had never been personally molested in a sexual manner, being forced into becoming a BCPU was in many was a much worse violation of the sanctity of one's body and privacy, and his tolerance for those who would commit this heinous sin was below zero. He was tempted to turn the Retribution's CIWS systems, or even its main weapons, on the vile men right now, but they were still too close to the buildings to risk the chance of stray shots from his weapons. They were here to rescue and expose, not destroy. That didn't stop him from grinning in a positively devilish manner when his sensors picked up incoming heat signatures matching those of RI Striker Mobile Suits, a full dozen of them.

Leaving the subdual of the remaining confused and disorganized base forces to the Jury units and the Punishers, Asino moved the Retribution to intercept the Strikers, many of whom slowed or faltered when their own sensors identified the foe they faced. They were all clustered up, he could have wiped the lot of them out with a few seconds long burst from his Fragarachs, but that wouldn't satisfy the outrage blazing inside him, and so, contrary to his usual battle tactics, Ashino decided to take things up close and personal, stowing his armature mounte dranged weapons on his rear torso mounts as he drew the large mono-molecular halberd from its position across his shoulderblades, tested the action of his heated mono-claws in each forearm, and prepped the CUSA-D sonic weapons in each palm. The Strikers belatedly realized their vulnerability, and began splitting up to surround him, making play with beam rifles, anti-armor shotcannons, and recoiless bazookas. It was a pathetic display of military firepower to Ashino's eyes, uncoordinated and ill aimed, the RI pilots plainly much more used to using their power to intimidate civilians or blow up targets that could neither move nor fire back.

Well, he was neither afraid of them nor stationary and especially not helpless, the Retribution striking the Striker formation like a crimson bowling ball hurled into a cluster of pins, the Retribution itself about half again bigger than the Strikers, Ashino lashing out with halbered and legs, completely disrupting the Striker's attempts to attack him from all sides, and sending two machines plummeting to the ground, spewing flames and sparks from massive clefts in their torsos. Stabbing forward with the halberd again, Ashino left the head embedded into the cockpit of a third Striker, before lashing out to either side with his glowing orange-pink heat claws, shearing off limbs and heads from Strikers trying to swing their chainsaw bladed swords or axes at him. This was hardly even exercise, the RI pilots were scared almost witless, and their attacks lacked even the slightest semblance of cohesion or cooperation... they couldn't seem to decide if they were going to try and swarm him, or flee from him, and while they hesitated, he massacred them.

Less than a minute later, the twelfth Striker had been blasted into its component atoms by multisecond long exposure to the invisible cones of sonic energy produced by his gauntlets, and Ashino found himself alone in the sky once more, the ground below illuminated with brushfires ignited by the destroyed Mobile Suits, the sky slowly lightening from darkness to shades of grey as the sun began to rise to begin the new day. Ashino gritted his teeth, his outrage still far from satisfied, forcing himself to bottle up the uncommon excess of emotion before it became a hinderance to his actions and mental state. He turned the Retribution back towards Camp 1. There would be much to judge here. Much for the suvivors to answer for. Retribution would claim the guilty. He would make personally sure of that!

xxxx

**Back at Camp 1, 10 minutes later**

Tamara had known from the get go that resistance would be relatively light, but she'd never expected the RI guards to be quite this... pathetic! Even for those who could at best be called amatuer soldiers, it was a poor showing, the entire battle had perhaps taken eight minutes from start to fully subdued finish. She did allow herself some credit for the stunning victory though, pathetic though the defenders were, she had assailed them with a potent combination of threats both physical and psychological, an early morning attack, against a normally peaceful, relaxed posting, the attack coming from an unexpected enemy with a prior well established reputation, with overwhelming force. Maybe not one for the history books, but nothing to kick herself over either. Ash had been in rare form as well, though a mere 12 mass production MS were not exactly a major challenge for him even under the worst of circumstances.

Most of the guards, upon stumbling from their residence halls to discover their heavy vehicles and defensive emplacements already blasted to ruin, had been quick to surrender when confronted by the members of the Jurors, with Punisher's backing them up, and almost three hundred fifty RI soldiers had been rounded up, disarmed and were being held in a makeshift corral created by one of the Punishers uprooting a section of interior chain link fence and replanting it in a rough circle. The only way the soldiers could get out is if they either climbed over the relocated fencing, which would be real hard with the razor wire and a score of armed guards, or wait for the Mobile Suits to lift the barrier once more. The RI troops did not look happy, but neither did them seem to be truly the sort of fanatics that would continue to resist in this kind of situation. Having once been something of a fanatic herself, Tamara judged these RI goons as little more than cheap thugs, they were in the organization for the power, not because they really gave a shit about its goals.

People like them were unfortunately a dime a dozen in the crowded and work poor environments of the Second Earth colonies, which meant the Reclaimer Initiative rarely had trouble filling its ranks. Tamara was happy to turn her nose up at them, but even the most ragged of rats could bite hard when desperate, so when she sent in other members of the Jurors to sweep the buildings in search of hideouts, she made sure they went in teams of at least five and stayed in constant radio contact. other teams were deployed at the gates and the main and auxiliary comm stations to make sure those vital locations stayed locked down. Tamara was chewing her lip a little bit, because as yet no one had seen the facility commander, a man by the name of Arnold Zala. Tamara smiled a very cold smile... she was very much looking forward to meeting that particular scumbag. There was no personal past history between them, but he was exactly the kind of Coordinator that really got her steamy. In a bad way. Shaking off memories of the past, and those smug genetic-supremist bastards that had done for her all those years ago, Tamara turned to greet Ash as he dismounted from the Retribution.

All of the Retributors were wearing Survivor pattern armor, except for Ash who had his flight suit, and everyone had ingested Red EDEN vaccine just before deploying for the mission, in case of a suit breach during combat. They were replenishing their stocks of the highly regulated nano-medicine from Camp 1's own stores, as well as systematically stripping the base of anything they might later find useful. it offended the pride of some to resort to scavenging from their enemies, but the Retributors weren't so powerful and well equipped that they could afford to let good weapons and supplies just rot either. She had dispatched a small crew to do a once over on the ruined Strikers, but she didn't think they'd be salvaging much technology from them, they were fairly basic. Witness squad had access the facilities data files and was downloading the base survelliance records and any other items of interest, and it was just about time for things to get messy.

Tamara did her best to steel herself, exchanging knowing glances with Ash, as they headed towards the nearest concrete blockhouse that had been preliminarily swept clear by the Jurors. She had seen the state of undress of some of the RI troops had been very telling to her of what many of them had been doing when the raid started, and given the glaring lack of female RI troops, she had a fairly good idea who they were doing it with. Or rather to. She was glad for the near casual brush of Ash's hand against her fingertips, as Ash beckoned for a Juror team armed with cameras and recording devices to follow them as they stepped into the buildings. The buildings were fairly clean, at least the hallways and common spaces were, since they were frequently used by the RI and USN forces. The same could not be said of the locked "chambers", more like cells, where the Edenite "refugees" were kept.

The first one Ashino tried was locked, but her lover wasn't of a mind to be stopped, he simply drew back his fot and kicked out hard, striking just above the locking mechanism, and with the tremendous crunch of metal on concrete, the door swung open, the locking bar tearing out through the back of the wall. The room was dank and dark, and Tamara was glad for her self contained armor, because it looked like it smelled awful, judging by the overflowing grate in the corner that looked to be the only concession towards waste facilities. It was also crowded with emaciated figures lying, reclining and sitting along the walls and floor, their skin caked with dirt and dried blood, their chests and limbs thin with near starvation, but their eyes were not dull, save for those who were injured, and the light from the hallway reflected off a glittering array of gold and silver coins that stared warily at the unexpected intruders. Tamara swallowed hard... the way the light reflected from their pupils made her think for a moment that she'd walked into a cave full of angry predators.

"What do you want, USN?" One of the Edenites asked accusingly, slowly clambering to his feet, using the wall to support himself. He pronounced it "Oosen". He looked to have once been a man in his prime, probably early thirties, tall and well built, though his muscles had shriveled with privation. A ragged pair of jean shorts were his only clothing, and his body was marked with puncture wounds and slashes that showed he worked extensively in the fields of Bloodweed and Partisan Fern outside. He was missing an eye, a jagged scar covering the socket, but his other eye burned gold, surrounded by a hint of green, his hair lank and matted and some shade between brown and black, except one spot that had been shaved away so a small device could be surgically bonded to the side of his skull, a brainwave monitor that would shock him unconscious if he tried utilizing the psychic parts of his brain. "It's still before revielle. Or have you come to extend our workday "privileges" again? I don't care how much money we get for "overtime", since we can't spend it and never see it, we need sleep and more food, not pay!"

"There will be no more work." Ashino replied, his voice hoarse and tight, his hand bunching into a fist so hard his glove creaked. Several of the Eddies flinched at the noise, and Ashino instantly relaxed his hand, shame briefly crossing his face. No doubt they thought he intended them harm. Plainly many of them had suffered beatings before.

"Oh, so we've finally qualified to pass on to the "paradise" of Camp 2, have we?" The one eyed Edenite spat in reply. Clearly he was some sort of leader or spokesperson, or maybe just one who no longer gave a fuck either way. "That's funny, we can still walk... I've never seen anyone with a shred of physical capability still in them given the "privilege" of transfer to Camp 2. Is Warden Hazy on another one of his "creative epiphany trips"?" The emaciated Eddie raised one bunched fist menacingly, though really, it was more sad than scary, even with the look in his eye. "I'm not going anywhere until you show me my wife and children again, safe and sound!"

"We are not the USN." Tamara interrupted, seeing that Ash was struggling to contain his outrage again. The blazing golden eye shifted to her, and Tamara could not help but swallow a tad nervously, for all that the man was no physical threat. He had been abused, horribly and repeatedly, and his hatred for his tormenters was a nearly physical thing, like a laser beam shooting out of his eye.

One eye cracked a mirthless grin. "You're not an Edenite. That makes you Oosen."

"We are USN renegades." Ashino answered. "They call us the Retributors. My name is Markov Ashino, I command the Retributors. We are here to set you free."

"So THAT's what that ruckus was all about." One eye maintained his mirthless smirk. "But if you're not an Edenite, you are Oosen, and we hate the Oosens. Oosen renegades? Don't make me laugh. Just beat the crap out of us and stop this pageantry. I won't be fooled by your propoganda tricks again, Oosen." One eye nodded over Ashino's shoulder, at the Jurors with the cameras and recorders. "Never again will I let you coerce me into endorsing what you do to us here!"

"You don't have to believe me." Ashino replied, his voice deadly calm. "Were I in your position, as I have been in the past, I wouldn't trust me either. But we're leaving the door open, and we have people outside preparing food, clothing and medical supplies. They may be able to do something about those control devices on your heads too. But whatever choice you make, you should make it quickly. The Retributors will be leaving within two hours. We don't want to be here when the "Oosen" comes knocking, wondering who took out their base. I'd prefer it if you and your people weren't here either, Mr...?"

"Van." One eye replied coldly. "How do I know there's not just an execution squad waiting out there for us? I've seen what the Oosen do when the Warden gets high and drunk."

"Then stay here, in your cell, and rot in apathy." Tamara replied, following Ash's lead of controlled neutrality. "What have you got to lose? You don't look far from death anyway."

"Typical Oosen thinking... you still don't understand anything about us..." Van shook his head in a mixture of despair, hatred and pity. Before he could go on though, another man stepped forward, even more emaciated and wasted than Van, though he still had both eyes. A scraggly beard of grey shot through with green drooped in tangled knots from his chin, and most of his teeth looked recently lost or broken from a powerful series of blows to the face. His eyes burned silver, surrounded by dark slivers of brown, his scalp mostly balding stubble save for the black box of the brainwave monitor.

"I am Herbert." The older man announced thickly, his words slurred by his still slightly dislocated and damaged jaw. "What did you say your name was again, you in the flight suit?"

"I am Markov Ashino, the Retributor." Ashino replied, neither proudly nor humbly, just stating a fact.

"The Lady spoke your name once, before she was taken from us by the Warden." Herbert said, his eyes misting slightly as he reverentially spoke that title. "She seemed... almost fond in her recollection." Herbert turned to Van, who still regarded the Retributors with extreme suspicion. "I believe they are here to help us, Van. The Lady would not have a friend who would do us harm."

"The Lady?" Ashino asked, an odd twisting in his gut at the word.

"Yes." Herbert turned back to him, dropping his efforts to convince the recalitrent Van. "She came to us a little less than a month ago, a rarity. The number of our people who have walked intact from the belly of a FEAR ship onto new Eden's surface can probably be counted on a single hand. At first she was left to mingle with us freely, and she touched us all with her selfless dedication towards giving us what hope and help she could. She protected the weak from the guards, denied herself food to feed the children, and worked twice as hard in the fields as any man so that others might work less hard and still meet the daily quota without fear of punishments. And so lovely too, she is truly like an angel straight from heaven. That is what the children have taken to calling her... the Lady Angel. She has been the only bright spot of this entire hopeless tragedy... and now I fear the worst. She disappeared one night, by the Warden's personal command it is said, and no one has seen her for more than a week..." Herbert was about to continued on when he was interrupted by a extremely disturbed Ashino, who grabbed the old man's frayed collar and all but yanked the Edenite face to face with him.

"What did you just say?" Ashino hissed, his excitement and anger mixed in a way that Tamara had not seen before. he almost seemed frantic about something. "Did this "Lady Angel" have silver and light grey eyes, red hair, pale skin and stand about five and half feet tall?"

"That's... her almost exactly." Herbert replied, somewhat uncertainly, before his eyes widened, tears of joy glistening in the corners. "You DO know her! My friends, I think our salvation may truly be at hand, by the grace of the Lady!" Herbert commented excitedly to the other Edenites, many of whom were growing quite agitated as well, hope painfully rekindled for the first time in months, or even years for some of them! "Yggdrasil has ignored our prayers, even the Caller has turned away from us, but the Lady arrived from the heavens and has brought our salvation with her, in the persons of these Retributors! Praise be to the Lady Angel! Praise be to..."

"Meyrin Hawke." Ashino whispered, his face going bloodless with sudden worry. He would hestitate to actually call Meyrin his friend, but there was no denying or forgetting that during the late stages of the Eden Disaster, during a serious personal crisis of his own, Meyrin had been there for him and helped him achieved the peace of mind and soul that had allowed him to successfully move on with his life, probably directly saving his life through her intervention, even if her thoughts had been on saving her lover's life instead. Noah and Ashino had been at each other's throats from day one, it was only Meyrin that had been able to interceed and keep their fued from turning bloody at the least opportune moments. Meyrin Hawke, the "Lady Angel" of the Brotherhood, had once saved Ashino's sanity and his future through her simple acts of kindness and understanding, and he was never one to forget a debt like that!

"You mean Borander's girlfriend?" Tamara gasped, surprised even though she knew she really oughtent to be. She knew that Ash had served the Brotherhood, unwillingly, as an Apostle for some time during the Eden Disaster, in fact that was where he'd gotten his Gundam from, but he'd never mentioned being on friendly terms with the infamous Solar Knight traitoress, who had turned her back on her duty and even her own family to stand by the side of the worst criminal in the history of humanity! Save maybe Gilbert Durandel that is, but that was a hotly debated point, even among the Durandel hating Retributors. Tamara was not happy with the way Ashino seemed so galvinized by Meyrin being potentially nearby and in trouble, she recognized most of it as mostly irrational female jealousy, but there was a solid kernel of real concern too. Meyrin had already reminded Ash of a more turbulent, painful time in his life, and Tamara feared for her friend, lover and commander and his ability to remain rational and focused in the face of such awakened memories.

"Where is she?" Ashino demanded of Herbet, forcing himself not to shake the weakened older man like a ragdoll in his haste to get information. "Where was she taken?"

"Rumor states that Warden Zala had her taken to his personal chambers." Van said spitefully. "That was the last anyone has heard from her. I hear the Warden was most distraught to learn of her presence, there seems to be some sort of personal feud or history between them. We haven't seen much of him in the week since." Van closed his eyes, his voice catching as his tough exterior cracked for a moment. "I have heard awful things about what is done to those women and girls the Warden claims for his own personal use. He hates us just as much as we hate him, and he enjoys breaking our wives... our sisters... our daughters... our mother... into mindless servitude. I don't think you Oosen can appreciate what it takes to break the will of an Edenite, who can always feel the support of their family and intimates deep within us, knowing we are never really alone... but that man... Zala... he has broken dozens of our women with his perversity and drugs! He forces them to spread their legs for his minions and the Oosen brass, whoring them out while we slave in the fields to line his pockets, all under the premise of "re-integrating" us into Oosen society! If this is your society, I am glad to be an Edenite... our life is hard, but we are at least not slaves!"

"Show me where these chambers are!" Ashino snapped, his hands flexing in agitation.

"You intend to save the Lady Angel?" Herbert asked, his body trembling with something strongly akin to religious fervor. "You are a blessing upon us, Markov of the Retributors!"

"Save her... or avenge her... whatever becomes necessary!" Ashino growled, testing the play of his combat machete in its holster across his back. Herbert drew back momentarily at those words, his face shocked, before slowly mellowing into comprehension.

"Ah, you are still somewhat Oosen at heart, renegades or not." Herbert heaved a heavy sigh. "Please, no more killing. It is not our way."

"Not your WAY?" Tamara was incredulous. She pointed at Herbert's abused and wasted body. "They've done this to you, done what they have to your women and children, and just because they can and no other reason, and you still would plead for their lives?" Tamara shook her head in disbelief. "I don't even know what to say to that. Have you lost your mind? These men have each committed at least three capital crimes apiece, and the Warden is certainly guilty of crimes against humanity! Lethal injections and the gallows all around! How can you possibly forgive them what they've done?"

"Oosen customs do not matter to us on New Eden, just as Edenite customs do not seem to matter to the Oosen in space." Herbert shrugged helplessly. "By Oosen standards, I guess I must be mad, but here on New Eden, we do not execute our criminals. We do not even have criminals like this, they are an Oosen problem only. The emotional trauma of executing a person could cripple his entire family, even kill them... which is why Van, and the rest of us, would not normally risk our deaths, no matter how much we desire them... our deaths could cause the demise of our wives and children, and vice versa. We must all survive for each other's sakes. Sadly, the Oosen do not fully understand this, though they understand it well enough to know how to keep us in line. But as the Lady Angel says, we are not Oosen. We are Edenites. It is up to us to prove our superiority not merely by believing we are better than the Oosen, but by acting it as well. And Edenites do not kill unless they have no other choice. Not even when we have suffered like we have. Suffering does not equal death, forgiveness or lack of it is not important. We just want to be left alone."

"That's impossible, Bert, and you know it." Van said bitterly. "They have taken us from our homes once, they will not hesitate to do it again. They want our entire world... the world they abandoned... returned to them on a silver platter, and we are just the ants that need to be cleaned off that platter to them. I don't approve of the actions of Garden City any more than you do, or than anyone here does. But I can understand their desire to fight rather than allow themselves to suffer as we have. I just wish I was strong enough to take up arms against our oppressors as well."

"The Lady Angel says that it takes far more strength to put down a gun than to pick one up, even if those facing you already have guns in their hands." Herbert replied resolutely. He turned to Ashino. "Come, I will take you to the Warden's bunker, and pray to that bastard uncaring Tree that we are not too late."

"Pray for Zala's sake then." Ashino replied with an ugly look on his face. He calmed himself with effort and turned to Tam, who was regarding him with concern heavy in her eyes. "I need to do this for personal reasons, Tam, so I'm going to have to delegate leadership of the operation to you. I am too emotionally involved to be trusted to be rational."

"Of course, sir." Tamara replied, feeling that Ash needed her professional side at the moment, though she was surely going to see what she could do with her lover side when they got back to safety aboard the _Justicar_. Ash was not delicate like some men, but he could still use a good emotional shoring up after a shock like this one. "I will organize the release of the remaining prisoners, while you rescue the Edenite leader and perhaps capture the Warden." Tamara bent her head down to touch faceplates with Ash, so that they could speak privately by helmet conduction. "Just be careful, Ash. And you owe me an explanation for all this later. I love you."

"I will be careful. And I will explain things. I love you too, Tam. Thank you." Ashino replied, pulling his head away and gesturing for Herbert to lead the way in a quick shuffle, leaving Van and Tamara to work out the logistics of freeing almost a thousand captive Edenites from their dungeons and barracks. Time was ticking, after all.

xxxx

**Warden's Residence Bunker, several minutes later**

Gaining access to what should have been one of the most secure locations on the entire base was proving to be suspiciously easy, Ashino thought, as he followed Herbert's somewhat slump-shouldered form down several flights of stairs under the central barracks-blockhouse. There were security cameras galore, but if anyone was manning the security stations inside the bunker, they sure didn't seem to care that a freed Edenite and an unknown, heavily armed man were making their way towards the base commander's residence. He mentioned his unease to Herbert, who kept eyeing him strangely from time to time, no doubt because the Edenite couldn't feel any thoughts or emotions radiating from Ashino, despite having his control device removed by Retributor combat surgeons after stepping outside the first blockhouse. The devices were glued to the skulls of the Edenites, but it was nothing a careful minute with a scapel and a flask of spray on synth-flesh couldn't cure, especially with a low level EMP emitter used to fry the device first, so it wouldn't shock Herbert unconscious while it was removed.

Ashino could have explained his strange immunity to psychic powers if he'd cared to, but since he didn't really understand it himself, and they were pressed for time, he decided to just let the man wonder. "Probably all drunk or stoned." Was Herbert's answer for why the security forces, if there were any, weren't responding, which had drawn a double take from Ashino, who could hardly conceive of soldiers becoming inebriated on duty, much less so inebriated as to be unable to even sit in front of a security display and watch camera's effectively! Truly, the rot went deep in this RI facility. This would be pure gold on the counter-propoganda front, assuming they could find a way to broadcast it without getting shut out of the networks by Namara. "Hard partier, the Warden is." Herbert continued explaining. "A real pervert, like I said earlier. Haven't hardly ever seen him sober in public, and I imagine he's a lot worse in private. Man's got a lot of sadness bundled up inside, if he'd spend half as much effort confronting it as he does in running away, he'd probably be an all right guy. For an Oosen."

"How the hell did such a freak ever get appointed commander of an important facility like this?" Ashino wondered, truly stumped. Durandel's government was many things, wicked and corrupt foremost among them, but incompetency was not a problem the USN often displayed, at least not incompetency on this scale! His base was under attack and the Warden was drunk or stoned or both in his quarters, along with his whole security detail, and didn't even seem aware that his base was now in enemy hands! "Why do his troops even respect him at all?"

"Respect? I'm not sure that's the right word. Appreciate perhaps." Herbert spat disgustedly. "Young punks, mostly, and he let's em do whatever the fuck they want to us, short of killing or extensive torture, provides free booze, drugs and whores who can't say no. Those who don't indulge in drugs or alcohol get buzzed off the power they wield, and by selling guilty delights to the Oosen brass at cut rate prices, the Warden not only makes a tidy profit, but makes sure nobody pays attention to his operations. When we get worn out, we get sent off to Camp 2, and no one ever comes back from that place. Bad as the Warden is, from what I've heard the guards say about Camp 2, he's a saint compared to the Warden there. Which is a goddamn scary thought. As for how he's in charge, the usual way, he's got important or rich family, and he traded that for influence and position, I'd imagine. Don't get that sort here on New Eden either, we're all born equal after EDEN, ya might say."

"It sounded like not everything is perfectly idyllic here amongst the Edenites though. Van mentioned something about Garden City? I'm not familiar with that name." Ashino prompted quietly, as they continued down into the ground, the small talk helping to keep his mind off the very real possibility that Meyrin would be gone or dead already, and the flames of anger that thought stoked.

"Maybe I do see through rose colored lenses sometimes." Herbert admitted, with a slightly sheepish smile, his pace slowing as his already near drained energy supplies continued to dwindle, even his renewed hope not able to keep him buoyed up much longer. Clearly, the elder Edenite had been close to the end of his rope already. "I'm a deep forest type myself, just me and my family out hunting and trapping in the woods, no allegiance to any of the major City States, just us and our desires and dreams. Those of Garden City fancy themselves first amongst equals, or some such rubbish, and they tend to be kinda bossy and stuck up just cause their city is built around Yggdrasil. Borderline psychotics, all of em... only City-State with a full time military force and all, though looks like there might have been a good reason for that now, eh?"

Ashino was about to reply when they reached the end of the stairway, confronting a large armored blast door, the kind that normally could only be opened by immense hydraulics after inputting a long key code, but when Ashino started digging out his codebreaker modules, Herbert just shrugged and tapped a button beneath the code keypad, and the door hissed open at once. The stupid bastard didn't even care enough to lock his own door! Ashino had NEVER even imagined such negligence could exist, his skin crawled as every one of his instincts started screaming at him that this was a blatant trap. But it wasn't, the security just truly didn't give a shit, the possibility of hostile attack clearly the furthest thing from their likely addled minds! Herbert had to stop for breath shortly inside the bunker doorway, clearly annoyed by his own frailness, and Ashino bade his guide sit down and recuperate for a while, not wanting the man to get in his way, physically or morally, if things got dicey deeper within the bunker. Ashino could respect a strong desire for pacifism... what soldier couldn't... but the Edenites took it too far, in his opinion. Or at least whatever philosophic faction Herbert, Van and the others here belonged to did.

Proceeding with utmost caution all the same, machete in hand but hold low by his side so that no telltale wink of light off the edge might give him away, on the outside chance this really was still a trap. Much of the bunker was dimly lit, though Ashino could discern no good military reason for the lighting to be tuned so low. Being largely immune to the effects of drugs and alcohol himself, Ashino had never experienced a hangover, but he'd heard that bright lights and loud noises could be very uncomfortable when suffering from the dehydrating and withdrawal symptoms of a night of walling in hedonism. The main chamber of the bunker, which should have been the main briefing/tactical and strategic command post. And indeed, most of the equipment for that purpose was still there, but most of it was being used as furniture or impromptu clothing racks, bits and pieces of uniforms, boots, slacks, jackets and underwear were scattered about like a outdoor clothing store that had been hit by a freak windstorm, the disarray was so total that Ashino couldn't even get a rough estimation on how many soldiers were still in the bunker!

It didn't help that the room was lit only with the red emergency lighting systems, with more light cast from the central holographic plotting display, which had somehow been converted into a high definition 3D movie player, the movie playing was unfamiliar to Ashino, though he'd been tricked into watching something like it once before in his life, when he asked for help romancing Jean from his friends Richard and Thomas, of the Hellhounds. He believed they were called "pornography" and it was mostly just random groups of naked people having sex in ways that neither Jean nor Tam seemed to like, so Ashino had no interest in them either. The movie seemed stuck on constant replay, because no one was in the room, the digital people performing their sex acts with a sort of pathetic abandon, considering there was no leering audience to appreciate things. Ashino had to step carefully, besides just the scattered clothes, the floor was littered with empty cans and bottles of various manufacture, and the air was hazy with second hand smoke and fumes from a variety of group sized drug paraphenalias.

His careful search of the room turned up only one person, a half naked soldier slumped behind a bank of communication's gear, semi-conscious and delirious in the grip of some sort of inhaled drug. One look at the man had been enough to tell Ashino that even torture wouldn't get any information from him at the moment, his mind was just too wasted on his intoxication of choice, you could gut him slowly with a rusty sawblade and he'd probably just snort and giggle! Ashino raised the machete to decapitate the fool, before releasing a heavy sigh, reversing the blade and instead hammering his fist into the side of the man's head, knocking out what little consciousness remained with the man. Killing a helpless man who didn't even know up from down wasn't justice, it was just extermination. And while the Retributor's justice was often fast and loose, it didn't generally extended to killing the helpless, no matter how much they might deserve it. It was a slim possibility, but a possibility nonetheless, that this man's only crimes were intoxication on duty and dereliction of duty, and those were not crimes the Retributors cared to administer punishment for. Time, and witnesses from the Edenites, would tell, but for now he still had to find Meyrin!

His search ended in one of the rooms that branched off from the hub of the command center, each sub-chamber accessed by a short hallway that was supposed to have secure, key-coded doors at either end, but like the main door, all the security systems seemed to have been disabled for convenience of movement by large numbers of people that should not normally have had access to this part of the base. It was the third such subchamber he had searched, the first two being the Warden's personal chambers, a cesspit of decadent, corrupted opulence that fairly turned his stomach, and the security force barracks, which was only slightly less bad, though Ashino had been glad to note that the barracks only had bunks for about ten men, so at most he was looking at nine armed opponents and the Warden, none of whom seemed to be in their right minds. The third subchamber he'd decided to explore was the bunker armory, figuring that even if Meyrin wasn't there, he could at least inventory what kind of weaponry he might be up against, and deny it to the enemy.

Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, his audio sensors began picking up the noises of human activity before he was even halfway down the hall, and Ashino slowed his already cautious pace into a true stealth creep, listening intently for a few moments before biting his lip and carefully disengaging his helmet seals and removing his flight helmet. Hopefully the Red EDEN pills he'd swallowed earlier would protect him from any lingering Green EDEN in the environment, and right now he needed access to his full sensory capabilities, which unlike those of humans were generally sharper outside the helmet than inside it, especially hearing and smell. Almost immediately, Ashino grimaced, his nostrils and tongue tingling with the chemical taste of the fumes of a variety of known and unknown intoxicant chemicals, a near visible miasma escaping from around the edges of the armory door, along with low grunts, sounds of exertion and most tellingly, the "SLAP-CRACK" of flesh being beaten by something more solid, perhaps leather or some sort of plastic. Ashino's eyes glinted a fraction more fiercely with every whipcrack sound, as there was likely only one person who was on the receiving end of a beating here.

Grateful for his BCPU training, which allowed himself to distance himself from his newer found emotional instincts, which demanded he rip the door open and charge in with gun and knife in hands to succor Meyrin from this sordid fate, Ashino continued to creep forward silently and slowly, knowing he was outnumbered, and while that might not be a problem for him personally, everything would be pointless if he burst in only to have Meyrin killed in the resulting fracas before he could reach her. He needed solid information on positioning and armament before he could take proper action. So he snuggled up to the door, which was open just a slight fraction to allow the room to vent, else the occupants would have long ago choked out on the fumes of their own recreational drugs. As he got close to the door, another stink assailed his nostrils, the scent of stale human sweat, fresh blood, reproductive fluids and the unmistakeable yet undefinable odor of fear and pain and near despair, and he had to grip his machete grip so tightly his hand hurt to keep himself under control. He knew what he was likely to see, but he still had to see it anyway.

It was every bit as bad as he'd feared... the armory had been converted into some sort of impromptu torture chamber, the racks of weapons and munitions cleared away and perhaps taken elsewhere to free up space for a variety of devices that blurred the line between pleasure and torture. Ashino was aware there was a certain subset of people that enjoyed being tied up, restrained, humiliated and even beaten during or before sex, but some of the devices he could see were extreme even for the BDSM community, racks and wheels and wooden crosses that a victim could be crucified to with straps, chains and manacles and all sorts of suspension harnesses, none of which looked even slightly comfortable. The place was as hot as a sauna, the heat coming from the body warmth of the ten men crowded into the chamber, plus the bucket of cherry red coals in one corner, that had a variety of cruel branding irons protruding from it. Many of the devices showed signs of recent use, stained with sweat or blood or less indentifiable things.

None of the men were wearing a single stitch of clothing, save for somewhat dirty towels, their uniforms and weapons discarded back in the command center, save for a few handguns and knives that were carelessly draped over some of the torture devices not in current use, none particularly close by to the security forces, who were gathered at one end of the room, laughing and jesting and jeering drunkenly as several of their number took turns raping the young woman that was suspended from the ceiling via chains and manacles attached to her wrists and ankles, her body bent like a bowstring, arms and legs bent far past what any non-contortionist would find comfortable for even a short time, much less while being sexually assaulted! Meanwhile, a thinner man with long, unkempt blond hair and ferocious green eyes so similar to his illustrious cousins, was whipping the girl across her spine and buttocks with a flexible wooden cane which left bloody welts as wide as two fingers whenever it landed, adding new marks to a back that was already all but ripped to shreds by the hours long beating. Whenever Hazy's arms grew tired, he would have one of the other guards take over, perhaps while he amused himself with a turn at violating her as well.

It was impossible to tell from Ashino's vatnage point if it was Meyrin that was being abused, the girl had a skintight black leather mask over her head that was locked near chokingly tight around her neck, a scattering of small holes over the mouth part of the mask the only concession to her need to breathe. Her body was a mass of bruises and slowly healing scars, the veins on her forearms and calves standing out starkly, courtesy of rubber tubes tied semi-tightly around her lower thighs and upper arms, constricting her bloodflow so that the smirking guards could see the veins, into which they would frequently inject a hypodermic full of a mixture of aphrodisical and hallucinogenic drugs, further humiliating the bosses bitch by not only denying her a sound state of mind but also making her horny for what they were doing to her. They had to refresh the drugs often because she was a goddamn Eddie, her body flushed the stuff out almost as soon as it was put in, which was also why they'd steadily been upping the dosage, trying to beat down her immune system as well as the rest of her spirit. It was an arduous process, so far the only time they'd really gotten her to sob and weep was after the Boss had used a white hot iron to brand "WHORE" across her groin, just below her belly button.

They'd sought to repeat that effect by using another brand on her buttocks, marking her right asscheek with the crossed shovel and hoe rampant over an Earth symbol of the Reclaimer Initiative, the "RI stamp of approval" as the boss had joked, though the effect, done several hours after the first branding, had been disappointing, she'd barely even winced, her mind obviously retreating towards unconsciousness again. Heavy doses of stimulants had kept her at least semi-conscious for the entire week of off again, mostly on again torment, denying her rest, pushing her mind towards the eventual point of no return. Even the strongest Eddie before this one had only lasted a couple days under the Bosses "special treatment", some of the guards were almost impressed with this red headed bitch, the archtraitoress of all traitors, as the Boss had explained, Borander's own pet pussy! She would scream and cry and curse them, but goddamn it if after seven days of their best efforts, she was still defiant enough to hold her head up high and look down her nose at them, which was why they'd sealed her had inside the leather mask... it was unnerving to see her giving them pitying looks while they were raping and torturing the bitch!

Intent on their efforts, sensing that the Boss was nearing the end of his patience with this haughty bitch, which would mean he was soon going to ask for a knife or a gun to put her out of her misery, the guards jostled and pushed to get their last rocks off on and inside the free whore, which might be their last one for a while if the Bosses displeasure at being unable to break her spilled over to them. None of them noticed the armory door swing open at first, only the sudden gust of cooler air on their bare flesh belatedly notified them that something was wrong. Stoned, drunk and pretty damn tired themselves, after seven days of spending hours and hours having brutal sex and physically abusing their captive, the guards were sluggish in their response, and their opponent moved like lightning even compared to most highly trained and fully sober soldiers! He was short, but massive, and he held a long knife, really more like a single edged short sword, in one hand. That sword almost instantly buried itself in the vitals of one guard, punching in over the kidneys at the lower back, and then ripping out sides, carving through spleen and liver and lower intestines before exiting over the hip in an explosion of bright red blood and entrails!

Continuing his charge without a beat, the short, redheaded man a few of the guards mistakenly idenitifed as a relative of their victim in their panic, landed a heavy punch to the back of another guard's neck, the blow snapping the man's spine like a dry twig, dropping him to the floor, his body flopping like a beached fish, head canted at a crazy angle from his neck. Another slash of the large machete sent another two men slumping to the ground, staring in shock at their opened bellies and truncated arms, blood geysering from the stumps and ragged edged slits, as another man, diving to the floor in search of a gun, instead almost had his head kicked entirely off his shoulders by Ashino's booted foot, shattering the guard's neck and crushing his face and jaw bones inward several inches, compressing his brain so hard it shot out of his ear canals in both directions like thick pudding. Appalled at this violence, the remaining guards and Hazy staggerd backwards from their remorseless assailant, all the fight shocked out of them. The guards died to a man, most whimpering on their knees, run through with the machete or with their throats crushed by a chop of Ashino's fist, the only mercy dispensed being a quick if not always clean death.

Turning on Warden Arnold "Hazy" Zala, who was blubbering in a corner, actually hiding behind Meyrin's suspended form without even thinking to take her hostage in his terror, Ashino raised his machete high, letting the blond haired, green eyed Coordinator watch the blood dribble down the blade, the dim lighting winking off the few sections of edge that were not dyed crimson with the lifeblood of his accomplices. The floor beneath Hazy turned wet and rancid, the ammonia stench of urine barely even noticable in the midst of the stench already filling the room, Hazy closing his eyes and cringing away as blood from Ashino's machete drip-dropped across his cheeks and forehead and down his chest.

"I am the Retribution for the guilty and the corrupt." Ashino said, his voice rigid and icy cold. "Those who would abuse their position and responsibility for personal goals and ends, those would would profit from the suffering of others, those who would prey upon the helpless for their own amusement... these are my most hated foes. I number you among them, Arnold Zala, but though you deserve a death a thousand times worse than any I could inflict, I will not kill you. You're much more useful to me alive than dead, despite your sins, because it is through you and the cooperation you WILL extend us, that a far greater evil shall be cleansed from humanity. Once you have lived out your usefulness, then you will die. It will be quick, clean, perhaps even painless. It will be justice."

And then Ashino clubbed Hazy over the head with the butt of his knife, not being too gentle about it, splitting the Coordinator's scalp and dumping him to the disgusting floor facedown in a heap. Finally, all threats dealt with, Ashino turned to the captive, wincing in dismay as he saw the full extent of her injuries and violations. None of the injuries were precisely life threatening, but after a week of such abuse, even the strongest human being would find their sanity tested to the breaking point... there was no telling what sort of mental state the woman would be in, she might even be comatose or catatonic, like Jean had been for many days after suffering her own injuries. "Can you hear me?" Ashino asked, speaking as gently as he could, as he tried to figure out how to get the woman down from her suspension without causing her any more pain. "You're safe now." Ashino promised her. "No one will hurt you anymore."

"I... strongly doubt... that... ark... ov..." The woman replied, her voice weak and hoarse from a week of screaming and oral abuses. "As long as... Dur... del is in power... me and my... people... will never be safe. And being hurt... is part of living... the path I've chosen in life..."

"Shh, don't talk, Meyrin." Ashino hesitantly reached out to touch her shoulder, carefull avoiding as much of the bruising and welting as he could, but there wasn't much of her body that hadn't been attacked or injured in some manner over the seven days she'd been held here. "I'm going to have to cut the chains to get you down, I don't have time to search for the keys. I am putting my arm on your stomach to support your weight."

"Just... get me down... I know you won't hurt me, Markov." Meyrin's voice seemed stronger with every passing moment. Ashino could not help but marvel at her strength, even after seven days of torture, she remained unbroken, and could talk to him like he was just helping her limp along with a sprained ankle! He gently used his arm to take her weight off of her wrists and ankles, a light gasp from the mask the only indication that she felt the relief of not dangling for the first time in who knew how long, and he hacked through the chains with four sweeps of the machete, striking as close as he dared to the manacles locked so tightly around her skin that they had created bloody sores from the friction of metal on flesh. A few links of chain remained on each manacle, but she was free, and he started to lower her to the floor, before he saw the filthy state it was in and grimaced. She had so many open wounds, putting her down on the floor was just begging for them to become infected, even if they already weren't! Ignoring the rubbish, dried blood and body fluids that were rubbing off her body onto his flight suit, Ashino sheathed the machete and cradled her in his arms, face down so that he wouldn't put stress on her flayed open back.

"I'm going to get you to my doctors now." Ashino promsied her, fiddling with the locking mechanism of the leather hood, before finally just pinching his fingers and snapping the buckles off, tearing open his fingertips in the process, but his blood, unlike Meyrin's, instantly clotted and he barely even felt the sting of the small cuts as he carefully lifted the mask off her head, dreading what he might find, given the state of her body. Dread that was unfounded, though her face was puffy and bruised, her nose likely broken, her lips bloody and swollen, both eyes blackened, there was no remarkable cruelty inflicted upon her lovely face other than a heavy beating. Nothing a lot of icepacks and a few moments with a doctor couldn't fix, though her nose might never be completely straight again without reconstructive surgery.

"They were saving my face for last." Meyrin informed him, her eyes watching his face through a blur of tears she hadn't been able to hold back. "But they got plenty of use out of my mouth for other purposes in the meanwhile. Filthy pigs..." She would have hawked and spat, were her mouth and throat not so painfully dry. "Do you have any water?" She asked, licking her lips.

"I can't even imagine what they did to you. I am so sorry." Ashino replied, his body trembling with anger, as he retrived his emergency flask from his belt pouches and held it up to her lips, making sure to only give her slow sips, not wanting her to choke or vomit from taking too much fluid in too quickly. The thought of which made him flinch, wondering how often she'd been forced to choke and vomit from taking other fluids in too quickly during her torture, and he gritted his teeth in repressed rage, so loudly Meyrin plainly heard him.

"Oh Markov... coming from most men, that would be such an empty condolence, but from you, I imagine you quite literally can't conceive of some of the things they did, and I wouldn't want you to. You have too little innocence left to you as it is." Meyrin replied with a faint smile, feeling much better after wetting her throat with actual water for the first time in more than a day. "Put me down." She added, struggling weakly in his grip.

"I won't hurt you." Ashino reminded her, nonplussed by the way she grimaced at him, until he realized she was just trying to roll her eyes in exasperation. "You're in no state to walk on your own two feet."

"That's my choice, not yours, Markov." Meyrin answered, her voice still exhibiting plenty of the steeliness he'd seen in her while she was vice-commander of the Brotherhood. Hesitantly, carefully, he complied, setting her down on her welt and bruised covered feet, watching her wince, keeping his arms close in case she started to fall, but she astounded him by staying upright even with all the trauma and overstressed and ripped mucles she no doubt had! "You're a good friend, Markov, thank you for rescuing me." Meyrin patted him on his shoulder, using his solid stature to brace herself upright as she wobbled for a moment.

"I did not come here to rescue you, I did not even know you were here." Ashino replied with a careful shrug, knowing that she was still very weak and would need a helping hand, especially with the staircase. "As for being friends... perhaps. You have done me a great service in the past, I could not live with myself if you were in danger and I did nothing to help you. But your path and mine, Meyrin... they are different, and my path has a tendency to cross, violently, with the one you have taken. Were he not already dead, I would have hunted down Noah for the crimes he committed against the people I am sworn to protect. Were it not for my indebtedness to you, I might be tempted to judge you similarly, Meyrin Hawke." He turned his eyes away as she turned to face him, giving her the privacy she had been denied for days, unwilling to look at the evidence of her many violations painted across her legs and body. "Let me find you a blanket. I would not have you forced to show the world what has been done to you."

"No blankets." Meyrin said firmly. "I will not hide what they did to me while trying to break my spirit, because they DID NOT break my spirit. Let the entire world look at me, and see what depravity their own leaders feel free to inflict upon the helpless! I have nothing I want to hide, indeed, these wounds are more like badges of honor." Meyrin's hand brushed across her lower belly, her fingertips running along the raised burn scars that spelled out "WHORE" just above her privates. "This is my crowning glory. They labeled me WHORE as they raped me while I was in bondage, thinking to hurt me, to shame me. But I have come to the realization that it is nothing more than the truth, just not the truth they meant. I have chosen a path that requires I be a glutton for punishment, for suffering as my people are made to suffering. I am a whore for pain and anguish, because in so wantonly drawing them into myself, I may be able to spare those I am responsible for from likewise enduring them. I would rather be whipped a thousand times than see one lash land upon another child of Eden! I would willingly give debauched sexual service to a million USN soldiers if it would garuantee they would no longer hurt or kill my Edenites! I would drink a keg of urine and semen, smile and ask for seconds from the bastards who made me do it, if it meant that even one Edenite was made safe from war! So let them call me WHORE, because I am. I am the whore of EDEN, and I would never have it any other way!"

"I do not understand you." Ashino admitted, not sure whether he should be amazed, impressed, or perhaps even frightened by this naked and abused woman standing next to him. "All you Edenites don't make any sense to me."

"It is our burden." Meyrin smiled, and patted his shoulder once more. "Our burden to be better than you, and by you I mean the "Oosen". Not just in physical characteristics, but in emotional ones as well. Non-Edenites have the luxury of being able to hate and fear the unknown, especially the unknown in their fellow man. The Edenites, who can feel each other's emotions on a soul deep level, cannot be so free with their dark emotions, lest they not only hurt others they care about, but in so doing, hurt themselves. An Edenite that tries to rape or kill someone could easily be driven mad by the raw, unfiltered emotions of their victim, only the very strongest, some might say sociopathic, of Edenites can muster the nerve to kill or hurt other sentient beings. But because we are better, it is also our burden to act better, to set the example for those less fortunate. To show that humanity CAN live in peace and harmony, if only they are willing to try and understand and accept each other. Forgive each other. Even when one party sins egregariously against the other. It is our duty as Edenites to stand above the cycle of hatred that fuels war, to show humanity a better way."

"Pardon my saying so, but isn't it because of thinking like that, that so many of the Edenites are hurt, captured or killed, and sent to places like this, and subjected to humiliations and torments like you have been?" Ashino asked doubtfully. "Pacifism is well and good, but against a foe determined to go to war no matter the provocation or lack of it, all pacifism does is make you helpless."

"It is a hard and bloody path." Meyrin agreed, as she hobbled along, towards the entrance to the bunker. "But what should we do then? Meet hatred with greater hatred, violence with greater violence, until the very world is ripped asunder beneath us because of our rage? I agree that fighting to defend your loved ones or home is perfectly acceptable, but the line between defending and pre-emptively defending via attacking can get easily blurred in the emotional maelstrom of war. The only true safety for either of our peoples, Markov, is in the extinction of the others. We must learn to live without the promise of complete safety. Only by accepting risk can profit be made, in business and in life. Maybe my path can only lead to pointless death in this war torn time... but if that is so, at least I will die while proving that I am a better human being than my killers. Death comes for us regardless of our wants, being able to choose the meaning of one's death is a privilege few are granted."

"LADY ANGEL!" Herbert, still regaining his breath by the doorway, called out, his voice mingled between aghast shock and renewed hope. Herbert finally got a good look at Meyrin, and his face wilted as he saw what had been done to her. "By... by the forlorn Tree..." Herbert gasped. "They have defiled you..."

"No, Bert, they tried." Meyrin smiled through her puffy face at the elderly Edenite. "But all they managed to do was enlighten me and fuel my determination." She held out her hand to greet him, but Herbert seemed to take it another way, dropping to his knees, his eyes full of the tears of a zealot in the midst of a deeply religious experience, and Meyrin cautiously patted the man's shoulder, as she had done for Ashino. "No tears now, this is a happy moment. We have regained our freedom, courtesy of Markov and his fellows, I will have no one depressed now." Meyrin studied the staircase leading towards the surface, and sighed. "Please stand up, Bert, you're embarassing me. If you want to convey your appreciation though, there is something you can do for me."

"ANYTHING, Lady Angel!" Herbert leapt to his feet as if electrocuted.

"For one, my name is Meyrin. Ms. Borander if you must be formal, but I am no angel and not much of a lady anymore." Meyrin gestured at her body, and the brand on her groin for emphasis "I am no more divine than you are, Bert, all Edenites are equal. So banish any thoughts of making me your saint or prophet or whatever... I will lead those in need of leadership, but I am not holy, indeed, I might be the opposite, for the path I intend to tread may very well doom anyone that follows me to a lonely, painful death. But if you would preceed us to the surface and gather up the survivors of our people, I would appreciate it. I would like to speak to them, and wish them well before we part."

"Of course, Lad... Meyrin." Herbert stumbled over the words, plainly still seeing her as a figure of much veneration, despite her admonishment. He scampered up the stairs like a schoolboy who was late for class, any tiredness on his part forgotten in the midst of his desire to see to Meyrin's wish.

Meyrin turned to Ashino, who had returned to the armory chamber during her conversation with Herbet and retrieved the limp and unconscious form of Warden Zala, who he deposited at the base of the stairs. "Give me your arm, Markov... I will climb these steps, but it would take me hours to do it by myself." Meyrin requested, leaning heavily on the short man as they slowly ascended towards the surface. Ashino had put his flight helmet back on, not wanting to chance greater Green EDEN exposure upon the surface than the trace amounts in the bunker, also glad for the polarizing faceplate so that his face could remain hidden as he chewed over in his mind what he was going to do next. He had saved Meyrin, but he still felt that his debt was not fully discharged quite yet, since he'd only saved her by accident. Only by performing a kind service for her with full intention to do so could he lift this burden of indebtedness from his shoulders. Fortunately, he had an idea about how to do so, though he had the nasty feeling Tam was going to freak out when he brought it up.

About ten minutes later, they'd finally reached the surface, Meyrin leaning more heavily upon his arm with every flight they ascended, until he was all but sure she was going to collapse in a dead faint at any moment. She was pushing herself beyond any safe limits, but she would not hear of accepting any more aid from him than she already had. It wasn't out of pride, he didn't think, since she seemed to have no concern for what other people thought, given her refusal of a blanket to cover herself, or even attempting to clean herself off a little bit! Semen was still dripping down her legs from inside her with every step up, her back and legs were a mass of drying blood, and she left bloody footprints from the welts on her bare feet, drool dribble down one side of her chin from where her lips wouldn't close properly at one corner of her mouth, but she acted like she was wearing a classy evening gown! She was making some kind of point by punishing her stressed body like this, but he was damned if he understood what! Taking her hand off his arm with a grateful smile, Meyrin squared her shoulders and straightened her spine... and then strode confidently out of the back door of the central blockhouse, stopping just outside, on the top of the concrete steps that led down onto the base grounds. Markov stepped out behind her, and his jaw dropped, unnoticed through the polarized helmet.

Herbert had somehow managed to gather what looked to be every single Edenite captive of Camp 1 outside the building in only the ten short minutes that it had taken them to get up the stairs! Ashino belatedly realized it must have been some sort of psychic communication, bcause there were easily a thousand Edenites crowded around the building, family groups reunited after months of seperation, tears on everyone's faces, but many of them standing tall and proud and defiant all the same, heads held straight, eyes looking attentively up at Meyrin as she excited the building, an excited, reverential mubling spreading amongst the crowd, along with a intangible "current" in the air that was like the calm before a storm. For all that most of the crowd hadn't had a filling meal in more than a month, and most were so dead tired they could barely stand, this crowd practically SEETHED with energy, and it only intensified with Meyrin's appearance. These Edenites... they were a noble and intensely frightening people, Ashino realized. Perhaps it was a GOOD thing they were so insanely pacifistic... he'd hate to go up against any number of men in that crowd, even in their current state, with that fire in their eyes.

Most of the women and post puberscent girls wore blankets in place of clothing, with bracelets of steel around wrists or ankles that were the remnants of handcuffs that had secured them to their hellhole prostitution beds, their eyes weary but still filled with the spark of life despite many of them spending months chained to their beds, forced to have sex with over a dozen men per day, regardless of how they felt about it, knowing that they had to cooperate or else their husbands, brothers, children and fathers would suffer for their defiance. Behind the crowd of Edenites, at a safe distance, stood the Retributors, most of them feeling quite awkward, judging by their postures, though they too seemed to stiffen as Meyrin came out, their eyes drawn to her aura of intensity even as politeness demanded they avert their eyes from her ravaged nakedness.

Meyrin raised her hand for silence, and got it, instantly, as she peered through her puffy eyes at the gathering of her fellow captives. She smiled at them, as broadly as her facial bruising would allow, projecting her joy and happiness and love for them through the emotional spectrums, feeling them echo it back, subdued and unsure. "My friends..." Meyrin said to them, speaking conversationally, her voice still not up to shouting just yet, but she knew they could all hear her, such was the silence. "Thanks to the intervention of these wonderful people... we are finally free!" Meyrin gestured to Ashino, and then to the Retributors gathered behind the Edenites. "We owe these people, who came to New Eden specifically for the purpose of eradicating this abominable camp and setting us free, a debt that it will be hard to ever repay. They may be Oosens, but not all Oosen are evil. This is something we must all bury in our hearts and minds, despite what has been inflicted upon us. Most Oosen are merely misguided, deliberately so by the true evil in their leadership. But the misguided can still be led back to the path of a joined humanity, if only they have an example to follow! I am that example. YOU are that example!"

Taking a step downwards, Meyrin gestured to her abused body, and the brand on her groin, plainly visible to all. "These are the marks of hate and misunderstanding, meant to hurt, to shame, to break." Meyrin called out, her voice dispassionate. She next pointed to the manacles still on her wrists and ankles. "These are the marks of fear and desperation, meant to control, to limit and to dominate." Meyrin allowed herself another smile, as she spread her arms, displaying her body and all the marks upon it, slowly turning around so the people could see her back as well. "These are the marks of the misguided and the confused. These are MY marks, and with their help, I shall illuminate the path to peace and harmony for all humanity, Edenite and Oosen both! They were inflicted as brands of shame, but I see them as medals of honor! They cannot break me! They cannot bring me down to their level! They cannot take away my humanity! I am better than that! I am better than them! I am Meyrin Borander, and I will never be anything less!" Meyrin challenged the crowd. "What about you?"

For a long moment, nothing happened, no one stirred, no one spoke. But then one of the younger women, about twenty years old, maybe younger, with white-blond hair in a shaggy mass on her head, stepped forward from her group, and Markov noticed that she was one of Van's children, the one eyed man still staring off into the distance as if digesting Meyrin's words. The girl had a blanket draped around her, but she let it fall away from her shoulders as she came forward, revealing her own bruises and scratched naked body, along with a belly that was distended, not with hunger, but with a pregnancy several months along. A broken pair of handcuffs dangled from her wrists, cut when she'd been freed from the bare mattress she'd spend most of the last two months lying face down on, gagged and blindfolded, to be taken from behind at any time of day or night, fifteen minutes for two hundred dollars, no questions asked. "I am better than that." The girl said simply. "I am Vanessa, and never any less!"

"I am better than that!" Herbert shouted, also stepping forward, his body bowed and hunched with the pain of his backbreaking labors with starvation rations, but his mind and soul still strong and vital. "I am Herbert, and nothing can make me less!" Herbert was the start of a wave, a phenomenon that had the watching Retributors staring, stunned, as one after another, slowly at first, but then faster and faster, in larger and larger groups, the Edenites stepped forward, dropping their blankets, revealing that Vanessa was far from the onl girl or woman with a burgeoning pregnancy, baring their wounds and the marks of their enslavement, declaring "I am better than that!", identifying themselves for all to know, refusing to be cowed or shamed by what they had suffered. They were Edenites... and nothing could take that away from them. They were human beings, and never anything less! And every last moment of it was being caught on full 3d recording, by the Retributors, many of whom were sobbing themselves, overcome by the emotion of the moment, many of them having themselves suffered degradation by the USN secret forces, and just now realizing that the burden of hatred and anger they'd been carrying, was so very simple to lay down, if only you had the strength of self to do it. The only person that could make you change, no matter what was done, was you yourself!

"We are better than that." Meyrin said once more, after the last of the Edenites stepped forward, not a single one holding back. "We are the children of Eden, and no one and nothing can make us any less if we don't let them!" She declared, the crowd breaking out in riotous cheers, echoed from within the ranks of the retributors, many completely overwhelmed by the moment. Ashino was one of them, though he did not cheer, but his cheeks were wet with tears that had nothing to do with pain or anger. This was a special moment, regardless of the state of your genetics... humans displaying the traits they were so often misfamed for, the ability to be rational and reasonable even in the face of pain and suffering. The ability to forgive a wrong, in the interest of making everything right. The ability to take the high road, even if everyone else was trying to drag you into the muck. The ability to love, when confronted with hate. No Retributor present would ever forget this day.

Inspirational moment over, Meyrin got down to business. "Few of us have any homes to return to, and even if we could, we would not be safe there. To return as we are would only place us in renewed jepoardy. We have little in the way of supplies, and the forests are pretty hostile, or so I hear. Our saviors, the Retributors, have given us our freedom, the most precious gift of all, but they have their own needs and path to take, we cannot burden them any further. The path ahead will be arduous but..."

"Excuse me." Ashino interrupted her, stepping forward even as he tuned his faceplate into transparency, so the gathered crowd could see his face. He winced, imagining the look on Tam's face when he made the announcement he was planning to, knowing he was committing one of the cardinal sins as far as the Retributors were concerned, utilizing public authority and resources in the interest of personal goals, but he could not, as a human being, just abandon these people now that he had given them freedom, and Meyrin had given them hope. The USN would track them down and either slaughter them or recapture them in days, in their current state there was no way they could run and hide, not with pregnant women, young children and all weak from hunger and privation. To leave now would be to sign their death warrents. "But I believe I have a solution to your problem. The USN will be here in hours, maybe sooner, and even with the detrius of the base to use as you see fit, you cannot stand against them. There is no where you will be able to hide, no where you could run that would place you beyond their reach. They cannot let you be free, the black eye to their image would be total. If you stay on Ear... New Eden, you will all die."

"Then we shall die!" Van shouted back resolutely. "But it will be on our terms, doing what we believe in!"

"And few can ask for more than that." Ashino agreed. "However, would it not be preferable to live, doing what you believe in? I know that my people and I are little better than the Oosen that oppressed you in your eyes, but believe me when I say that I cannot just stand by and let you be swept under the carpet once more. We are not Edenites like you are, but we are still human beings, just like you. So as a human being, I'm asking... will you accept my help?"

"What kind of help are you offering, Markov?" Meyrin asked, somewhat cautiously. "I won't let you risk your life, or the lives of your soldiers, for us. You are too few to stand against the might the USN will bring to bear here."

"Too few to stand, yes." Tamara spoke up from the back of the crowd, her voice amplified by her armor. "But more than enough to run, is what my commander is eventually trying to say. I believe he intends to offer you and your people safe haven at our home base, which is situated beyond the easy reach of the USN, on the far side of the Asteroid belt. Fitting you all onto our warship won't be easy, but by leaving behind most of our vehicles and a few Mobile Suits, and taking as much of the food supplies from the base as possible, we should be able to manage the journey. We won't sacrifice ourselves for you, but if you're willing to take the risk, we can at least make the effort to keep you alive. It would be a waste of good human beings to just leave you to fend for yourselves."

"You want to take us into space?" Herbert asked, the fear in his voice spreading like ripples through the crowd of Edenites. Going into space was practically a euphanism for horrible death on New Eden these days!

"You will have to trust us." Ashino answered calmly. "We are outlaws to the USN as well, I am actually the most wanted criminal in the USN at the moment. As some say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? At Ronin City, I cannot promise life will be easy, nor can I promise that you will not be subjected to prejudices from the people already living there. What I can promise is that the Oosen will not be able to reach you without fighting every last one of my Retributors, including myself. It is the highest degree of safety I can offer you, probably the safest place in the Solar System for those who don't agree with the policies of Gilbert Durandel."

"I can't ask you to do this, Markov." Meyrin whispered to him.

"You haven't." He whispered back. "This is my decision alone. Just like it was your decision alone to help me see Jean back then."

"I never intended to hold you in my debt, Markov."

"It wasn't your choice. This is just how things are, I suggest you take advantage of a good deal while you can. Don't expect a free ride when we get up to space either, I'm sure your people have many skills that could be highly useful to the Retributors as well. Doing this is as much to my advantage as it is yours. The publicity of this event alone, in addition to the documentation we have gathered, is a downpayment worth saving your lives a hundred times over. The only greater black eye we could give Durandel's administration is if we turned up proof that he really had been working in cahoots with your boyfriend from the get go." Ashino replied with a shrug, seeing that the Edenites were plainly waiting for Meyrin to make the call on whether to trust the Retributors or not.

"I can get you that proof." Meyrin replied, surprising him, her eyes glittering like steel coins. "I can get you something better than that even. But first, if we are going to evacuate my people, we need to do it quickly. My experience with USN combat doctrine and response times tells me that we're probably going to have company within the next hour, and then the cat will be out of the bag. Unless we want to do a repeat of the Archangel's first deployment on our way to the Asteroid Belt, we need to slip away unnoticed." Meyrin turned to the watching crowd of Edenites. "Time is short." She told them. "I trust Markov and his people with my life. I will go to space, and lend my support to the Retributors, inasmuch as I feel able to as a human being. I cannot ask you to come with me, you must choose on your own."

"Where the Lady Angel goes, we shall go." Van replied with a flinty grin, a surrussation of agreement rippling through the crowd. "You've given us hope when there was only despair, shown us strength when we only thought we were weak, and we will follow you to the ends of New Eden, or into the depths of space, because without you, we would have been nothing and no one."

"Then it is agreed." Meyrin turned to Ashino, and bowed her head. "Take us to space, Markov Ashino. And consider all debts forever paid."

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Depths of the Praetorian Enclave, Jan 5th, 8:00 am**

"You ARE a crazy one, Mouse." Zach's voice echoed out of the darkness around her, she could feel his presence somewhere in the chamber with her, but the small lantern she carried didn't illuminate far enough to see him. He must have had his eyes closed, since there were no glowing red telltale orbs in the darkness. On some level, Lilia was forced to agree with Zach's assessment of her mental health. She'd only just been released from the medical center yetserday, and here she was, stumbling around in the darkness, seeking him out in his private places, finding him probably not more than fifty meters away from where he'd attacked and raped her almost a month ago, leaving her comatose and hospitalized until yesterday night! Any sane person would never have gone within a hundred meters of Zach ever again after what he'd done to her. On the other hand, she knew, somehow, that Zach was testing her with his actions, daring her to turn her back on him, just like everyone else had always done. Which was one reason why she refused to give him that vindication. She might be terrified of him, but she wasn't going to let him drive her away either. Because terrified or not, he also fascinated her, she felt drawn to him in a way that made her very uncomfortable... in a distressingly good way.

"Maybe I'm just stupid." Lilia replied with a snort. "Most of my friends would say that if they could see me now. I prefer to call it willful. Did you really think it would be that easy to get rid of me, Zacharis? Don't flatter yourself. I will save you, even from yourself, whether you like it or not!"

"I had hoped it wouldn't be that easy to get rid of you, Mouse." Zach replied, the way he said her nickname making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. An emotion somewhere between between "flee!" and "say that again!". "I am glad to see you do live up to expectations. I would have quite put my foot in my mouth when boasting to Yamato back at Urbanis otherwise." He revealed himself, off to her side, his eyes appearing like twin embers in the gloom, a sensation of heat running along her body when she saw him looking at her, sizing her up, examining her.

_Please don't tell me I'm attracted to the guy who raped me and fucked up my memories..._ Lilia admonished herself with a shiver. _Even if he can be a sexy bastard at times, getting involved with him is going to get me killed! I'm not so stupid, insane or willful to think otherwise! But damn it all, if he isn't attractive when he wants to be. If only he wasn't, like, Evil and insane and a complete psycopath. If only he was... well... like Kira. I'd be all over him. No, focus, calm down and stay in control, or you'll end up raped and broken and spending another month in the hospital, assuming he doesn't just kill you! And for Tree's sake, DON'T hit him, no matter what he does or says!_ Lilia was acutely conscious of the large cardboard box she had slung over her shoulders, bulky but not especially heavy, the box was almost as wide as she was, and nearly as tall. It had been in her room last night after she'd gotten out of the hospital, in all its glory, and it was the main reason she was down here. She hoped.

"I came down here to bring you that gift I promised, but before I give it to you, you have to do something for me." Lilia told him, knowing that she was walking on thin ice, but determined to see things through all the same. He would never learn if people were always too afraid to teach.

"Oh? And what is the Mouse's price?" Zach murmured, thankfully sounding interested rather than angry. "You've dared much just coming here, I suppose that's worth something."

"Give me my memories back." Lilia said flatly. "The ones of my years in the rape dungeon. I want them back." She said vehemently, staring him in his unnerving eyes directly. "You took them from me last time."

"Yes I did." Zach smiled broadly. "You weren't using them much anymore, you were too busy drowning in my memories, after you declared there was nothing about pain or suffering or humiliation that I can teach you. I still chuckle when I remember the earnest look of confidence on your face, Mouse. You really thought you'd seen the depths of human suffering. Its adorable."

"Speaking of your memories, I thought you once said that the Doc memory wiped you on multiple occasions? How could you remember things from that long ago?" Lilia didn't like the topic being deflected, but she wanted to steer away from any comparisons to what happened last time. No point in tempting him.

"Memory wipes, despite the name, are far from "wipes", they are more like "obscurements"." Zach answered. He seemed to have come a little closer, though in the darkness it was hard to tell. "The longer you spend between wipes, the more they start to lose their efficiency. The memories don't go away, they just hide from you. While I was dead, floating in the echoing abyss, I had a long time to ponder my memories. Much that was hidden was revealed to me once more. The only thing the Doc ever managed to actually change about me was my personality, not my memories. Four different "wipes", four different personalities, one Zacharis Quentin Frost. And after the level six surgeries, all those fractured bits got jumbled together, baked a little, and voila, here you have me, Mouse."

"I see." And Lilia kind of did too, which was somewhat disturbing. "But I'd still like my memories back. They may be painful, but they're mine. Without them, I never would have become the person I am today. So give them back to me. Please."

"I think not." Zach smirked at her discomfiture. "I have claimed them for myself. Just like I've claimed you for myself, Mouse. You were not strong enough to hang onto them, they are better off with me than you. They, like you, are no longer yours to do with as you please."

"You can't just claim ownership of people, Zacharis." Lilia informed him with a heavy sigh.

"Can I not?" He answered, his voice smoky with intentions she didn't want to think about. "Take off your clothing, Mouse." He commanded her sibilantly.

"No." Lilia replied firmly, her jaw set, body tensed as she waited for him to lash out and force her. He never did though. Instead he did something a bit worse.

"As you wish." Zach sighed in what sounded like disappointment. His eyes disappeared as he turned his head away from her. "Begone with you then, Mouse. I have no further interest in you. Leave, before I decapitate you where you stand. Go back to the light, and tell your friends that you have failed in your self assigned task. That you have turned your back upon the one person you swore to save no matter what."

"Don't even try to twist my words like that, Zacharis!" Lilia snapped at him. "I have not and will not abandon you, no matter how much you want me to! But you do not control me and you do NOT own me!"

"Prove it then, Mouse." Zach told her smugly. "If you are to stay, you must strip. Otherwise you must go, and if you ever return, I shall slay you instantly. You have my word on that." His smile grey vicious, like a sharks. "Whether or not I own you, this choice is yours. No slave has ever been in bondage save by choice, since the option of resisting unto death always remains open. Your freedom awaits you, Mouse... all you need do is turn your back and walk away. But if you stay, you are mine, and you will strip."

"Damn you, Zacharis." Lilia snarled, but she knew his "choice" was no choice at all. She had sworn on everything that made her herself that she would not turn away from this lost soul, not even if it meant her death in the process. Perhaps he really DID own her, she'd sold herself to him without even realizing it, tossed her soul into his abyss because that was the only way she could see how to provide him light by which to climb out of it! Grudgingly, Lilia reached up and undid the shoulder strap that held the gift box, setting it aside with a thump, before her hands went to the buttons of her uniform jacket and began fumbling with the ties. She tried to remember that public nudity was no big deal in Garden City, much less for a Praetorian, but there was just something so personal about stripping naked by Zach's command, so far down here beneath the earth, where it was just him and her, that made her feel terribly self conscious and vulnerable. Zach didn't turn around until she had tossed aside the last article of clothing and stood shivering in the gloom.

"Very good, Mouse." Zach turned to look at her, stepping closer, slowly walking around her in an admiring circle that caused her cheeks to flush a bit. She couldn't tell if he was eyeing her as a man does a woman, or as a man does a fine steak, but either way, she was starting to break out into gossebumps and she had to fight the urge to fidget and cover herself, not wanting to have the futher humiliation of him telling her to stop hiding her breasts and privates, and being forced to acquiese. Damn it all, but Zach really knew how to take advantage of a good girl's word! "Now that I have unwrapped my gift, I guess its time for me to enjoy it." He whispered into her hear, enjoying the way she flinched and squeaked, ever so softly.

"There's been a misunderstanding here, Zacharis!" Lilia leaned away from him, desperately trying not to think about how, um, exciting, that whisper had been. "I'M not your gift! That's your present, over there!" She pointed at the cardboard box, tied shut with a bright crimson ribbon."

"I know a gift when one delivers itself into my hands, Mouse." Zach corrected her gently, moving around to her front, and tilting her chin upwards with a fingertip. "Don't denigrate yourself, Mouse, you are a FINE gift, one that I have immensely enjoyed unwrapping, and intend to further enjoy playing with for a long time."

"No, R-REALLY, that box has the present in it I promised you!" Lilia protested, though she found it impossible to lift her chin away from his finger all the same, her protests sounding a bit weak and fluttery even to her ears. Tree be damned, for some reason, Zach's playful little testing and teasing was turning her own pretty good. She really must be insane, like he said, no sane girl could possibly be getting horny in this kind of situation! Even though, there were plenty of women that enjoyed a very powerful man giving them directions in an intimate setting, there was no shame in admitting that. And men didn't come much more powerful than Zach. "Just unwrap it! I promise you, you'll love it."

"I'll take that bet, Mouse." Zach smirked at her, his breath misting against the curve of her neck, making her simultaneously want to run, screaming, and hurl herself into his arms. "If I do like this thing in the box, I will reward you. But if I find it tawdry or banal, I assure you, Mouse..." Zach let his lips brush the curve of her jaw just slightly, making her "eep" again. "... you will be punished, severely." He listened to her gulp loudly and let his smirk grow. "Stand where you are, and do not move, not even to turn your head, while I investigate this "present". You don't want to make me angry, remember that, Mouse. So be a good little rodent and freeze right where you are." Zach admonished, as he stepped around behind her, trailing one fingertip down her spine, flicking her just so slightly against the top part of her buttocks as he stepped to the boxed gift. For her part, Lilia squeezed her eyes shut and choked down a moan... Zach seemed to know exactly where to touch her to set her off. Well of course he did, he'd stolen her memories! But that didn't change that fact that she'd enjoyed that WAAAY more than she should have.

It was almost as bad a torture being forced to stand there, staring straight ahead into darkness, while she listened to Zach pick the box up, shake it a bit, and painstakingly unwrap it, actually untying the ribbon rather than just ripping it or tearing it off, methodically disassembling the box in a way only an Obsessive Compulsive could appreciate. He made a ten second job last three minutes, and each minute felt like a month to Lilia! And she knew it was completely intentional, that he was watching her carefully the entire time, daring her to move, to twitch, to balk. She didn't think that he was in the mood to hurt her right now, the opposite if anything, but all the same, she knew that if he said that he would punish her, he definitely would find a way that she would regret. Going through another episode of what had happened last time seemed somewhat likely, if she got him annoyed again. And of course, if she didn't have enough to worry about, the little game was making her really hot and bothered. Usually, when she took a man to her bed, Lilia was very controlling, even with men much larger and stronger than her like Alex, she set the limits and the pacing, the boundaries and the comfort zones. With Zach she could do none of that, and she was finding it unexpectedly stimulating, even without her fucked up memories to haunt her. Or maybe because they were gone, she didn't automatically shy away from being submissive...

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of cardboard sliding on cardboard, and she found herself holding her breath as Zach took the top off the box and peered down at what lay within. Another minute of pure silence passed, and that was perhaps the single most tortuous minute of Lilia's entire life! Was he happy? Was he pissed? What was he going to do to her? Was he even still behind her? She was so DEAD! More than anything, she wanted to turn around and see what was going on. But she forced herself, trembling, to stare straight ahead, arms at her sides, and just WAIT. Screw being tortured with hot irons, there was no greater torment than waiting naked in darkness for your fate to be decided! And then, finally, she heard him reach down and pick up the item in the box, testing the weight, the balance, as he slowly rolled it between his hands, shifting his grip back and forth, one handed, two handed; slowly putting it through a few paces, still behind her, out of her sight of course. And then, he took off the leather binding around the blade, revealing the weapon in all its glory!

Lilia closed her eyes again, picturing the weapon as she'd first seen it, when it had been laid out across her bed by Vaul in anticipation of her return. Just as she'd asked him, he'd made a scythe, which wasn't the most strictly practical of weapons, for all that its design allowed for a maximum degree of cutting power, and a large degree of piercing power, it was just unwieldy and awkward to swing about, especially rapidly and in the press of melee. The shaft was about five and a half feet long, the last six inches being where the blade was attached to the shaft, the entire weapon, shaft and edge both, made of nearly unbreakable Quantum Crystal, specially grown into this specific shape one molecule at a time in Vaul's laboratories. The cystal structure was something like ruby, the shaft so dark it appeared black, along with the back edge of the blade, while the loer, main cutting edge was more crimson and garnet in shade, becoming almost pink at the very edge, like a gumline sharp enough to bisect an atom! Lighter pink strirations ran through the blade, extending like nerves or capilliary veins from the pinkish edge, honeycombing the structure of the blade, lightening it without weakening it. These near microscopic channels were actually tiny wind-tunnels that directed airflow through them at a specific speed, producing a specific pitch of sound, very much like a human screaming in pain, whenever the blade moved.

If the blade moved slowly, it merely moaned and sighed, the last mumbles of a suicide victim with slashed wrists. If swung quickly, the blade shrieked like a banshee escaping from hell, a noise that chilled the blood and loosened the bowels, and it was from this sound that the weapon drew its name. Deathshriek, Vaul had called it, a weapon of malice and terror, infused with the Latence amplifying abilities of one of Vaul's own daughters, to significantly boost the mental powers of any Active to wield it, but especially those that dealt with influencing the the emotions of others in a negative fashion. No wielder of Deathshriek would be interested in boosting the morale of allies, their focus would be on sowing discord and disruption through the ranks of the enemy. It was simultaneously the most awesome and the most horrific weapon she'd ever laid eyes on, much less touched! Her feelings had been torn between singing the praises of Vaul to the heavens, and demanding that he destroy the thing before she could give it to Zach. This weapon embodied everything that was nasty and dark about the Edenites, she felt a bit sick just holding it.

Lilia suddenly jumped in startlement, as the air screamed like a victim of a burning house, just behind her ear, and then she froze into the most stock stillness she had ever managed, since the pink gumline of Deathshriek was resting against her throat in an eyeblink. Even a deep breath could see the quantum edge slice her throat open before she even realized it was happening, and just a twitch of Zach's hands would see her looking up at her own decapitated body before she even knew it had happened. She was quite literally on the utmost edge of death. "Mouse..." Zach murmured, his voice like nothing she'd heard from him before. He sounded almost... surprised. "Why is this thing?" He purred into her ear.

She figured she must have misheard him, so she began to answer the question she thought he'd asked. "It's a LEMIM, thats Latence Encoded, Mentally Impressed Material, QC scythe called Deathshriek, that Vaul made for you at my behest, because I remember how disappointed you were with the blades we had when we went to the Wendigo valley and..." She came up short, when the blade shifted a minute fraction, and she felt blood begin to trickle down her neck and across her breasts.

"I know WHAT it is, I can feel that much." Zach hissed at her. "WHY is this thing, Mouse, and answer carefully or it won't be the only thing screaming..."

_What's he asking me? Why is this thing? What's that mean..._ Lilia thought in a panic, before it finally hit her. _No one's ever given him a real present before! He's only ever had bribes and things that were some sort of disguised trick to control him! He thinks that I'm trying to coerce him somehow, or deceive him! Oh shit, I never even thought he'd react like this, and now he's about to kill me! What can I tell him that won't make him angry? Shit, shit shit shit shit... FUCK! I don't know what to say!_

"I'm waiting, Mouse... I don't LIKE waiting..." Zach reminded her, the cut on her neck growing a bit deeper and wider, hot blood dripping down her cleavage all the way to her belly button now.

"I gave it to you because I want you to be happy, Zacharis." Lilia blurted out. "I wanted to impress you, and make you happy, so I got you a gift. That is why this thing is." She closed her eyes, not wanting to have to see the blood gouting out of her neck if he decided to cut her head off. "And because... I want you to like me, because if you won't listen to me, there's no way I can save you." She added, chewing her lip almost hard enough to make it bleed, knowing he would be able to sense a half truth from her, which would be just as bad as a lie. There was another long silence, and then a moan echoed through the cave, and it took her a moment to realize it was the blade moving away from her throat, and not her terror finally getting the better of her. Her instinct was to press her hand to the cut on her neck, but she forced herself to remain still as a statue. The last thing she needed was to startle him now!

"You wanted me to be happy?" Zach said slowly, setting Deathshriek down in a corner, the blade slicing into the wall like it was hardly more than mist, the only thing stopping the weapon from just falling forever through the bedrock was the that the haft couldn't fit through the sliced section of rock. The scent of the Mouse's hot blood was intoxicating in the air, along with her sweat and juices and the way she continued to just stand there, caught betwixt terror, desire and determination. He mulled over his responses and then shrugged. "Consider me pleased then, Mouse. You've done well, and earned yourself a reward. You even stayed still, that pleases me more. You've been a very good Mouse today, so I shall give you two favors. One for your people, and one for you."

"For my people?" Lilia asked, not sure what he was talking about.

"Yes. Your smarmy boss has gone and made quite the boo-boo. Normally I wouldn't care, but his efforts have made this war more complicated than it already was. It is obvious that someone more competent needs to step in, and you have just ensured that will happen. The USN TIAMAT system will be destroyed, and the Edenites have your... persuasive abilities... to thank for it. I'll even let you come watch me do it, I know, I am the soul of generosity aren't I?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Lilia admitted her confusion. "What has Kunai done now?"

"That is something you should hear from him." Zach told her with a smile. Poor Mouse, so isolated and blinkered, trusting those who showed no trust in return. He could almost feel sorry for her. He stepped up to her, running his fingertips along her jawline again, studying the way she tensed and relaxed and changed the pace of her breathing in unconscious response. This promised to be very entertaining... he'd never taken a girl without hurting her before. But honesty in the face of death deserved some sort of reward, and as interested as the Mouse was in "saving" him from himself, Frost was much more interested in watching as the abyss swallowed the Mouse whole in the process. How long would she last? What would she become? What would the abyss tell her? It was going to be so much fun to find out. Not all evil was bloody, not all terror stemmed from violence. It was time to envelop the Mouse with a different form of corruption, a warm, safe feeling that only grew dangerous when you realized you couldn't make it stop...

"As for your reward, Mouse..." Zach put his hands on her body, cupping one breast, stroking her stomach, caressing her sides and eventually allowing himself to rub between her thighs, being extremely careful to be the very image of gentle. "Today, instead of making you scream, I shall make you gasp..."

"Zach... wait..." Lilia protested, as she felt herself start to melt against him. _Ohh Tree, he's good..._

"Don't curse at me, Mouse. I hate that four letter word." Zach admonished her, as he allowed his lips to cover hers, but not before he lapped at the blood from her neck, making her taste her own vital fluids on his tongue as he broke down her defenses one caress at a time. Sweet corruption, it made for a nice change of pace. And he was true to his word... it wasn't long at all before she was quite breathless, her gasps echoing around the cave in mocking pantomime to the previous moans and shrieks of his present. Evil finds its way, after all.


	45. Black Ghosts

Author Note: My review count per chapter seem to be dropping of late. Guess I've just been spoiled, and people are probably busy with the end of school year, holidays and just life in general. Ignore that petulance. So now, moving on from Crimson Justice, which was a sheer joy to write, the words practically seemed to come of their own accord, we come to Black Ghosts, the middle part of the three chapter sub-arc that is CJ, BG and SH. I'll be answering a few questions asked back during OVA: Global Cooling in this chapter, introducing a whole new "faction" you might say, and advancing the Frost-Lilia ship yet more. We'll also be bumping into a well "liked" character from the past once more, and might even get some more information on some of the hints Frost has been dropping lately, about his new mission in life. Everyone should remember, Frost is a man of his word... we he says that he will do something, he does it. Just something to bear in mind... what promises has Frost made, and to who, and for what, in this story? Things will become clear by the end of the chapter. And now, no more mind-bending. It's time to meet the Black Ghosts.

xxxx

**New Eden, Western South America, Andes Mountains, Ruins of JIHAD/Charon's Hideout, Jan 5th, 4:00 pm**

Lilia was pissed off. More at herself than anything, what had happened this morning, and right afterwards, had been just about the opposite of what she'd intended. She'd picked up the item Vaul had made for Zach at her behest, and had been determined to bring it to him, down in his claimed sanctuary in the unused depths of the Praetorian Enclave. Her plan was to show him the gift box, negotiate for the return of the memories he'd stolen from her a month prior, then give him the gift, accept his gratitude, and perhaps parley his good mood into learning some more about him and maybe getting him to open up to her a bit more, perhaps even a philosophical discussion that didn't involve killing, torture or whatever. Barring that, she really wanted to know what he was really talking about with this whole "Whetstone" business, and why he felt so pressed to impose his conflicts upon the world and humanity. She was afraid it was just his psycopathy talking, but she held out hope that he might actually have a reason that might make a fraction of sense.

Nothing about her plan had gone right. Zach had refused to return her memories, made outlandish claims of ownership over her, then forced her to strip naked, not by physical means, but by putting his wants in line with the oath she'd sworn to redeem him or die trying. He'd kept her off balance and disoriented from the moment he first said something to her, caught between all too real terror and nebulous hints of something she really didn't want to look at too closely. In the end, she'd ended up naked, with her very gift used to threaten her life, the QC scythe Deathshriek, a LEMIM item made by Vaul for Zach specifically at her request, the blade pressed against her throat as Zach demanded she explain WHY she had gotten him a present. Panicked, she'd just blurted out the truth, which she herself hadn't really even thought about... she wanted to impress him, make him happy, and she wanted his gratitutde. Obviously, Zach hadn't killed her, he seemed to find her answer quite amusing even. Certainly he had seemed in a good mood, when he promised to do her two favors, one for the Edenite people as a whole, and the other just for her.

She could not help but flush as she remembered the "personal" favor. The very last thing on her mind when she went down to find Zach was the thought of having sex with him. The last time she'd seen him, he'd raped her bloody, stolen her memories and left her in a catatonic state for two weeks and a hospital for two weeks more... not exactly the best first date she'd ever been on. Unfortunately for her sense of feminine pride, Zach seemed to have different thoughts, and he'd begun tantalizing and teasing her in a EXTREMELY sexual manner practically from the start of the conversation. And whether through his knowledge of her gleaned through stolen memories, or maybe just his usual insight into humans, he'd had her quite, well, aroused, despite her intentions. When he finally moved in on her, she'd hardly been able to do more than tremble like a leaf as he proclaimed his mastery over her, not just in words but in dedicated action.

And damn him if he hadn't been the best lay she'd ever had in her life, if a little on the rough and tumble side of things. Then again, for Zach, he was being the absolute image of gentleness if you were only a little bruised and scraped up at the end of things. Lilia could no longer remember what exactly had been done to her in those years she'd spent in the rape dungeon, Zach had that knowledge now and didn't seem of a mind to give it back, but she'd always felt that after her experiences, no man would ever be able to truly drive her wild again, she'd just seen too much, experienced too much in the way of the exotic and the depraved, to ever be much impressed by the "nice" guys she was attracted to these days. Of course, Zach wasn't a nice guy by any measure, but was she attracted to him? Lilia had the sinking feeling that whatever she tried to tell herself, the lack of fight she'd put up during the morning's session of... well... impassioned lovemaking was what really expressed her feelings. She'd never been so worn out, in a good way, and as sexually satisified, as she'd been this morning.

Of course, Zach being Zach, he hadn't let her bask in the afterglow for long, "sentimentality" was plainly a form of curse word to him, along with "wait" and its various conjugations, and he'd sent her scurrying back to her quarters to collect her battle armor and weapons, telling her to meet him in the main hanger chamber of the Enclave in thirty minutes, or he would leave her behind as he went to attend to his "public" favor that her actions had garnered. Given how far away from her quarters in the Enclave they were at the time, and how far the hanger cave was from those selfsame quarters, and how long it took to put on her armor, it hadn't taken Lilia long to realize that she couldn't afford the time to find her scattered clothing, especially in the near pitch darkness of the cavern she'd found Zach in, and still make the deadline. So she was forced to sprint, fully naked and with plenty of visible evidence of what she'd been doing for the past, oh, hour and change on her body, up through several populated levels of the Enclave to her chambers so that she could get into her armor and still meet Zach's deadline. It was pathetic, truly pathetic that she, Arboreal Praetorian Lilia, Yggdrasil's Valkyrie, allowed herself to be pushed around by any one man like this, but oddly, save for the times when her peers glanced at her nakedness with wide eyes, Lilia didn't feel that bothered.

So had no doubt her little footrace was going to be the talk of the Enclave for quite a while, but in the face of gaining Zach's acceptance, it was a pretty damned small price to pay! If she had to act like a fool, and pretend that he held ownership over her and her actions in order to redeem the most lost soul of them all, then she would gladly do so. She'd stumbled a bit in her convictions when she happened to pass Alex and Kunai on the last stretch of the sprint, both of them looking far less than happy that morning. Perhaps it had something to do with the way Alex's jaw was taped and wired shut, his teeth held in place with regenerative-enhancing glues, and Kunai had both hands wrapped in heavy, Curaga filled casts from the mid forearm down, but she'd still been racing the clock then and hadn't been able to spare more than a glance or two at her mentor and on-again, off-again boyfriend, wondering what in all the names of hell could have happened that resulted in them both getting injured at the same time, especially Kunai!

In the end, she'd met Zach's deadline, finding him waiting for her in the hanger cavern, the Kratos outside, being too tall by several meters to fit within the cavern, his arms crossed laconically across his chest and a indolent smirk on his face. Though such a short run was hardly enough to get her breathless, Lilia could not help but feel her breathing hitch a bit all the same as Zach had walked over to her, still smiling in his way, the way that made her wonder if he was going to kiss her or kill her. In retrospect, she rather wished he HAD just killed her. "Strip", was what he'd commanded, not in a whisper, not in a conversational voice, but in a tone carefully modulated to be heard throughout the entire goddamn hanger! Work on all the Spectres and Wraiths seemed to stop all at once, as various Praetorians and support staff perked up and peered at them, wondering if they hadn't misheard somehow, or wondering if the Executor really had just signed his own death warrant, and commanded Lilia, LILIA of all people, to strip naked so imperiously! Not that many of them hadn't entertained a fancy now and then of getting Lilia to strip for them, but no one was brave enough to pursue such a dream, Lilia was way too powerful to risk that, perhaps the second most powerful Praetorian of them all, after Kunai!

She'd stared at him in disbelief, but there was no jesting in his eyes or on his face. "Damn it, Zacharis, there's no need for..." She'd started to protest, before his finger on her lips stilled her mouth and speeded her heart.

"Strip, or stay." He'd said, for her ears alone. "I like you better in your natural state. Don't forget who owns whom, little Mouse. So strip, now, here, and then we can be on our way." His finger moved away from her lips and stroked her chin and the side of her jaw, tickling her neckline a bit before he moved his hand back and combed his fingers through her hair, which she had unceremoniously shoved into the collar of her chestplate on her way down to the hanger. It might have looked cute to an outside observer, hell, it did have her heart thumping pretty hard, but it was nothing more than Zach displaying his dominance over her, his ownership of her, that he could touch her and play with her whenever he wanted, because she was more interested in saving him than she was in saving herself!

"I hate you." She'd replied in a caustic whisper, as she began unbuckling her armor, hindered a bit by Zach continuing to pet and caress her as she did so, shifting his hands to each new piece of flesh as the armor fell away and exposed it. What had been highly erotic down in the darkness of the deep caves was just about the most humiliating experience of her entire life, even including the rape dungeon, here in the brightly lit and somewhat crowded main hanger, with at least fifty people of both sexes looking on with stupefied expressions on their faces, their emotions radiating shock and a disturbing degree of disbelieving excitement, as they watched Executor Frost humble the one woman no man of Eden had ever been able to tame. What made it worse was the fact that she knew that she could easily just say no, and Zach would let her go with no hard feelings. But this opportunity to go with him on this self appointed mission might be a once in a lifetime chance, and she didn't dare throw it away for the sake of her own pride. Damn him, but he was a master of giving her a choice of options of which she could only ever take the one he wanted!

"Do you?" Zach had replied, his smile stretching across his face in a way that let her know he didn't believe her in the slightest. But then he'd surprised her, yet again. "I'm glad to hear that, Mouse. Hate is an important emotion. You should learn to embrace it more often, it can be quite empowering in the right circumstances." He'd slipped his hand down the front of the panties she'd pulled on to keep her armor from chafing her already sensitive lower regions, right there in front of everyone, and Lilia had felt her face turn pretty close to cherry red, her arms trembling, caught between hugging him closer and pushing him angrily away, wondering if he intended to fuck her again, right there in front of everyone, in which case she knew that she'd never be able to show her face at headquarters ever again, especially if he made her gasp like he had that morning. However, once she was naked, again, Zach made no moves to escalate things further. "Just remember who owns whom, Mouse." He'd told her again, and then instructed her to board her Wraith and follow him.

She'd had the entire three hour long flight to stew over that humiliation, her armor piled around her along with the shredded scraps of her dignity, and as a result she'd paid more attention to her brooding thoughts and, to her shame, revenge fanatasies than she did to where exactly Zach was leading her. Of course her Wraith had warned her when they had crossed a significant portion of the Pacific Ocean and were approaching the western coast of South America, since they were entering the Caller's range of influence and that was never a choice to make lightly, even for a Praetorian. The Caller likely had other problems to occupy his concern at the moment, certainly a mere pair of minds, even of Praetorian quality, wouldn't be enough to attract his immediate attention. For that matter, as long as she stayed out of a thousand kilometer or so wide circle around the Caller's actual physical location, she should be able to fend off his intrusions with the training she had. The one she was worried about was Zach, who, despite his strength, was about as mentally well defended as a ten year old child.

Then again, given what she knew of Zach and his fractured mind, a few extra hallucinations and delusions might not even be noticed by him until the Caller really got his hooks sunk in deep, and even then, Zach was just the sort of surprising person who wasn't going to be dominated without a fight, even when dealing with a Grand Chimera. All the same, she hoped they weren't going to be spending long here, South America was not a place for human Edenites to roam lightly. Forget the Caller, South America was the personal hunting grounds of Rakejaw the Cold Hunter Chimera, accounted one of the most deadly dangerous Chimera alive in all the world, and one with a known liking for the taste of human flesh. Of course the odds of bumping into the current hunting grounds of Rakejaw's pack were slim, but there were plenty of other Cold Hunter packs in these jungles, and even the regular breed was nothing a single Praetorian wanted to tangle with if she had a choice. On the other hand, Zach was with her, and he was a predator among predators, with Deathshriek in his hands, Lilia could almost pity the Cold Hunters that tried to hunt him!

Still without a clue as to where they were going, she had followed the Kratos into the Chilean Andes mountain range, gradually descending until Zach suddenly took a sharp dive towards an unremarkable valley that looked little different from a dozen similar locations that they had already flown over. Zach had originally been aiming for the side of one of the three mountains that bordered the valley, the one that looked like a giant shovel had taken a scoop out of its side, before something on the ground below seemed to have caught his eye, and instead the Kratos had diverted to land at the base of the valley, a good three kilometer walk through dense jungle to reach his originally estimated landing point. Lilia had followed him down, still fuming, planning to give him more than just a small piece of her mind when she hit the ground! He might "own" her if that was what he wanted, but he'd better damn well keep that stuff to private locations in the future, or they would really find WHO did own WHOM! She knew he could be beaten after all, she just had to figure out how to do it.

Struggling out of her cockpit, carefully lowering the net containing her battle armor, weapons and other supplies to the ground before taking the boarding pulley to the ground herself, Lilia had a great view as Zach opened the Kratos's cockpit hatch and stepped out onto the little armor ledge that functioned as a threshhold for the cockpit, carefully drawing Deathshriek out after him, before settling it at a jaunty angle across his shoulders. He paused a moment to admire the view of her dangling in the buff from the end of her boarding pulley, and then with a mocking sneer and wave, he simply stepped off the armor threshold and dropped a good eighteen meters to the loamy jungle soil in freefall, earning a squawk of dismay from Lilia. That was a hell of a drop by any standard of measure, for a human form, especially onto ground! Any person she knew would break both their legs at the least, if they didn't just splat like a dropped egg! Zach obviously was a lot tougher than most anyone, but still... as soon as she was low enough to survive a leap of her own without suffering injury, Lilia jumped from her pulley and raced over to check that he was all right.

And he was, the bastard, dusting himself off, the scythe still held nonchalantly across his shoulders with one hand, his body none the visibly worse for the wear despite a drop of almost seventy feet. He grinned at her, more like a leer really, and Lilia had to fight the urge to find a tree to cover herself behind, not that there was much point now, Zach had already seen all there was to see of her body on several occasions. Straightening her shoulders, she gave him a sneer of her own, telling him that she wasn't amused by his antics, before she turned around to get her armor on for the second time that day. A sudden thought occured to her, and she glared back over her shoulder at him, as he stood there watching her. "I'm going to put my armor on... again... Zach. Are you just going to make me take it off again? Cause if you are, let's just save some time and I'll put the armor away, I'm tired of playing dress up."

"I shall always prefer you in the state you are currently in, Mouse." Zach replied with a toothy smile.

"Pissed off and frustrated, you mean?" Lilia shot back nastily.

"That too." Zach agreed with her. He looked around the jungle for a few moments, the playful smile fading from his face. "But perhaps it is better that you do wear your armor for the time being. I reserve my right to make you strip at any time of my choosing, Mouse, but for the time being, I don't need the distraction, and you might need the protection." He continued to move his head on a slow swivel, the fingers of his right hand caressing the haft of Deathshriek with almost as much care as he'd given her skin in the hanger bay.

"What do you mean by that?" Lilia asked, suddenly concerned about more than just Zach's aggravating actions. He was acting almost... wary. And then she thought about what he said, and could not help but blush a little bit. "You mean I distract you like this? You're worried about me?"

"You would distract anything of the male persuasion, man or monster, in your current state, Mouse, don't play coy." Zach replied, his voice heading towards a growl of exasperation. "I don't know how many times you're going to make me explain this, Mouse, but I have claimed you. I own you, body and soul. You are my property to do with as I please. I would not see my property damaged by anyone or anything other than me. If you want to call that me being "worried" about you, feel free. Put your damned armor on, Mouse. We don't have time for our little games for the time being."

"Oh, so you're going to be serious now? Good." Lilia retorted coolly. "Because I've got a few things I'm really dying to know now that you're willing to stop teasing and taunting me!"

"If you don't put your armor on soon, you're going to be dying for more than just knowledge, Mouse!" Zach snapped at her, a dangerous light coming into his eyes that made her decide to shut up and stop trying for vindication points. She'd already gotten a sort of compliment from him, and a near admission that he cared about her health and safety, pressing her luck was only going to put him in a nasty mood, and she could never fully rule out the possibility that he would kill her in a fit of rage, or do something else that she wouldn't survive to regret. She was playing catch with an armed grenade, being around him like this, so far she'd been lucky enough to only be caught at the very edges of one explosion, and even that had almost killed her! She returned, several minutes later, once more fully clad in her battle plate, only the helm still doffed, strapped with her weapons and gear, to find him still looking around, obviously on edge for some reason she couldn't discern.

She cast out her mental senses, feeling for emotions and the psychic aura of most intelligent or dangerous lifeforms, but though she extended her senses for most of a kilometer and a half, she didn't sense a thing save for low level plants and a few colonies of Blight Swarms, the largely groundbound Empiricae type that built nests instead of traveling in cloudlike hordes, like the winged Nomadicae subtype. She started to relax, before slamming onto full alert once more as she realized how very wrong that was. This valley was lush, plenty of greenery and several sources of water, isolated in the mountains where it was unlikely any large predators would be living, the place should have thriving populations of lesser herbivores and smaller predators, but all she could sense were insects and the near background presence of carnivorous plants. Where were all the animals? "What is this place...?" Lilia murmured, more to herself than anything.

"Home." Zach answered her anyways, the answer startling her almost as much as his voice, considering that it had come from much closer to her than she'd last seen him. Damn him for his speed and stealth, he really knew how to make a girl feel inadequate! She was a Tree be damned Arboreal Praetorian, one of the four most senior and skilled operatives in the entire Order, and still Zach made her look like a fool and a rookie on a regular basis! He turned and looked her in the eyes, gold on purple boring into gold on lilac blue. "This is my home. This is where I was born and reborn, where I first met the manifestation of the Abyss, and it is where the downfall of the USN TIAMAT system will be accomplished." Zach repeated, his voice softer, almost introspective.

"I don't understand any of that, save the born and home parts." Lilia admitted, hefting her 17mm linear assault rifle and carefully sweeping her eyes around the forest surrounding them, even as she pondered what Zach had said. She'd taken the rifle, her new beam pistol, two swords and assorted knives and smaller armor integral weapons for this jaunt, figuring that with two Mobile Suits along there was no need for heavy personal firepower. This was the first time she'd worn her newly upgraded, jumpjet equipped armor in the field, and she was torn between a desire to test the system out in real conditions, and a desire for their journey to be peaceful and uninterrupted, so she could get as much out of Zach as possible. "And even then, I assume you mean this is where you were made into a BCPU, right?"

"Yes. This valley is where the nerve center of Blue Cosmos was sited, known as JIHAD. It is where the BCPU project was headquartered, where we were trained, raised and modified to the Doc's... our Father's... specifications, the first generations of super-soldiers designed for the destruction of the Coordinator menace." Zach answered, his eyes still lost somewhat in the distance before he finally seemed to shake himself awake again. He scowled at her, as if his lapse in attention was somehow her fault. "This way, Mouse. Keep up, or I will leave you behind. And believe me, on your own, you will never leave this valley alive."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Lilia demanded, as Zach headed off, towards the mountain he'd originally been going to land at. "Zacharis! What the hell are you talking about?" She scowled at his back and trotted after him, looking around uncomfortably. Something was very wrong about this place, anyone with a grain of empathy could feel that, but the maddening question was what? What was out there, that Zach seemed to know about, yet she could neither see nor sense, no matter how hard she strained her mental powers! Feeling unpleasantly like a puppy on a short leash as she picked her way along behind Zach, careful to stay a good ten feet away from him to give him room to swing Deathshriek in case of sudden ambush, and to put him out of her line of fire as well. It was hard, not getting distracted by the constant moaning from the blade as it swayed back and forth as Zach walked, reminding her most unpleasantly of her own moans from that morning, definitely not the kind of distraction she needed when in potential danger.

"I didn't see any sign of a base from the air." Lilia said after a few minutes of walking along in uncomfortable near silence. She'd stopped sending out her mental spotlight queries, they were just exhausting her and only succeeding in further creeping her out with each return of nothing but bugs and plants. She redirected her efforts into extending a telekinetic screen around herself, like Kunai had taught her to do, the screen only a single layer of water vapor molecules thick, but all the same, it would warn her if and when anything penetrated a three meter radius around her, whether she could see it or not.

"Of course not." Zach replied without turning to look at her. "JIHAD was deeply buried under those three peaks you see." He pointed with the scythe, the blade humming as it swept through the humid air. "One for staff and the guard forces to live in, one for the BCPU project, and one that was for factories and the production of our Gundams. In the midst of the Second Valentine War, the facility was destroyed by the Archangel, which is why the mountains look so slumped."

"Ah, that was when Kira and the Clyne Faction were captured by Cervantes Zunnichi at his daughter's wedding to Sai Argyle, right?" Lilia filled in the blanks, from what she knew of Kira's exploits during that war. "I had heard they were taken to a secret Alliance facility, but the details on that time were kind of sparse. They were captured and then they were free again, and no one knows what went on during that time." Lilia stopped and considered a few things. "But you know, don't you Zach? You were there. What really happened?"

"I could have sworn I told you not to call me Zach." Zach retorted frostily, swinging the scythe around until she was staring cross eyed at the tip as it just barely scratched her nose, the movement accomplished faster than she could even blink, an echoing scream splitting the air in counterpoint to the swing. He took the weapon away after a few seconds of glaring at her, until she cast her eyes down in apology. Snorting, apparently satisified with her submission once more, he turned around and continued on. "Yes, I was there, and were it not for unfortunate twists of fate and the betrayal of my own little brother, I would have had the Boytoy and Pink all for my own then, and the world as you know it wouldn't ever have come to pass. To think, I once had her restrained in my grip, and a scapel in hand, and I never even got to carve her up even slightly before the Boytoy interfered again." He looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes glinting madly. "I'd advise you, Mouse, to hide should I ever pick up one of those little surgical blades. They are simply too fun not to use, and I would be so disappointed if I carved you like a christmas ham before I meant to."

"I imagine I'd be somewhat put out too." Lilia commented sarcastically, Zach's previous near comments about her beauty and safety all but forgotten in the face of the new, disturbing threats. "So what happened next? Kira stopped you from torturing Lacus, and then...?"

"They escaped, their ship came looking for them, and they blew my home into molten wreckage. My brothers and I tried to stop them, but I was distracted by carving Father up like said christmas ham, Cray was misdirected by little Ashino, and Ashino himself was half on Pink's team anyway, he confronted them, but he let them get away after a fistfight with Loser Zala-Attha. I should have killed him then, but I was a bit frothing about Pink escaping, so I let it go. I fought with them in the forests, but they still escaped when their ship arrived and dropped those TEMPEST bastards into our laps. Another incredible opportunity to share my life with Pink, wasted. I was quite wroth, as I'm sure you can imagine, though there wasn't much I could do about it. Not after dropping a chainsaw on my foot, being shot a half dozen times, clubbed by both Blond Weeny and Boytoy and their sticks, and blown up by Blond Weeny's chick's frag grenade, I wasn't fit to even stand on my own, much less kill people. My old body was so frail compared to this one..." Frost continued to explain, wistfully recalling the time he'd learned of his destiny from the Doc, and then seized it for his own.

Lilia was glad Zach was so talkative today, perhaps the indignity and humiliation he'd put her through that morning had mellowed him out for the time being. Or maybe it was just that, being so close to "home", so to speak, he felt more comfortable talking to her. "Thanks for telling me all this." She told him, somewhat warily. "Pardon me for noticing, but its not much like you to be so talky. I'm glad to see you in a good mood."

"Hah!" Zach chuckled for a moment. "Mouse, you have never seen me in a truly bad mood, not yet. Don't flatter yourself into thinking that I'm telling you all this out of a sense of obligation for this morning. I feel no such emotion. I will take you at any time I wish, in any way I wish, anywhere I wish and I will never feel even the slightest bit of guilt about it. Were it not for extenuating factors, I would order you to your hands and knees right here and now to illustrate the point. I own you, Mouse, what's the point of keeping secrets from your own property?" He asked her, with another snigger of amusement.

Tuning out the standard "own you, do as I like, I don't feel positive emotion, standard boasting threat, etc, etc" spiel, Lilia picked out the truly important segment of those sentences. "Extenuating factors?" She asked, feeling a bit strange that she was basically asking him WHY he wasn't fucking her like a dog right now. She realized that he might think she was upset that there were such factors, and she hastened to make sure he got the correct opinion. "Not that I have any interest in being your sex slave, Zacharis, since you know I've been one before, and I will never let myself be enslaved like that again. I may put up with your unreasonable demands for the time being, but there will come a time when you cross my final line, and then the game will be over. Enjoy being a pervert while you can, it won't be forever."

"I see little perverse in what I've been doing with you, Mouse." Zach replied, almost sounding offended. "I'll thank you to remember that while I may own you, it is by your own will that I do. You are no sex slave, and I won't have you belittling yourself like that again. Next time you are so insultingly dismissive of our relationship, you will be sleeping alone for the night."

"You mean all I have to do in order to get some privacy is insult our "relationship"?" Lilia asked, once more dumbfounded and caught off guard. The way Zach made it sound, it was almost like he considered them boyfriend and girlfriend somehow, rather than... well, Lilia wasn't exactly sure WHAT they were. Inmate and Parole Officer perhaps. Lost soul and soul rescuer. Predator and prey. On the other hand, maybe she should just run with it? I mean, if Zach wanted to consider them intimate, that was another golden opportunity for her to worm her way inside him and get him to open up and reveal the good person he had once, so long ago, been. "Fine." She sighed, deciding that she was already in over her head, she might as well swim for the bottom. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to denigrate our relationship. But if we ARE in a relationship, that means I get to call you Zach. You have a pet name for me, its only fair that I get one for you."

"Life isn't fair, Mouse." Zach replied, but then he sighed. "But do as you please, as long as you are aware it is a privilege that I grant you, not a right. You have not earned it as a right."

"I'll be sure to remember what an honor it is to be allowed to address you by your own name." Lilia answered, sarcastic at first, but as she thought about it, she realized maybe there was something to that. Nobody ever called Zach by the familiar form of his name, because no one was ever that familiar with him. It was a unique thing, something only she was allowed to do without generating a violent reaction! "Thank you, Zach." She added, and that time there was no sarcasm at all, just the opposite if anything. "Now what were you saying about extenuating circumstances?"

"Oh. Those. We're surrounded by hostile creatures." Zach replied breezily. "The residents of this valley. I'd so hate to be interrupted while I was, mm, entangled with you, Mouse. You might get hurt by accident, and I would never want that."

"Yeah, you'd only ever want to hurt me on purpose, right?" Lilia shook her head in exasperation, using the motion to glance around the nearly impenetrable jungle surrounding them. She didn't see or sense anything in proximity to them at all. "You're such a romantic, Zach."

"Thank you, I'm glad you understand, finally." Zach casually twirled Deathshriek around his body in a quick warmup, the blade voicing a low groan that quickly escalated into a shivering howl that seemed to rend the air around him, like the hide of a trembling prey-beast. "You are my Mouse, no one will ever harm you besides myself, this I swear. Your life, your pain, your pleasure and your death... these are all mine and mine alone now."

"I don't see anything around us..." Lilia replied with a smile, figuring that the declaration was about as close as Zach could currently get to an admission of love. "I don't feel anyone around us either... are you sure they're out there?"

"Don't feel them, eh? Interesting." Zach answered thoughtfully, Deathshriek held cocked over his shoulders, the blade down near the pit of his back, like an upward curving tail protruding from his tailbone, the haft almost perfectly aligned with his spine. "Rest assured, Mouse, they are all around us. They are curious, they weren't expecting me to notice them. They are as quiet as the shadows, they even managed to hide their scent somehow, but they weren't expecting a predator of my caliber."

"Dammit, Zach, point them out!" Lilia demanded. "I can't shoot what I can't see or sense!" She was about to open up anyway, a full auto burst aimed at chest level, to see if she couldn't spook whatever the hell was closing in one them into revealing themselves, when her telekinetic screen was pierced by a small object, her mind instinctively grabbing hold of it, focusing her telekinetic powers to bring the small projectile to a half well short of its intended target in the side of her neck. At first she thought it was a plant spine, but then she saw the tuft of cottony like fiber at one end, and realized it was actually a blowgun dart, made from what looked like a bone splinter, its tipp daubed with a dark and sticky resin that was undoubtedly some form of poison. Lilia broke out in goosebumps, since most blowguns only had a range of about twenty feet at most, which should be well within her sight range, but she still couldn't see where the dart had come from!

"That stings." Zach muttered, drawing her attention to the dart sticking out of his own neck, her eyes going wide with worry once more, until he plucked the little bone sliver out of his neck, the wound not even bleeding, before he licked the tip of the needle speculatively, working the poison resin around in his mouth like a conessuier tasting a sip of wine. "Don't let one of these hit you, Mouse." He recommended to her. "You wouldn't like the results." Even as he said it, he dropped the spent dart and snatched his hand out to snag another air propelled dart out of the air, this one, coming towards Lilia's cheek from an entirely different direction. "Oi..." Zach called irritably into the forest. "Don't even fucking think about it, or I'll get mad. You won't like me when I'm mad."

Not one to just let herself be attacked either, Lilia fired a burst from her linear rifle into the undergrowth, blasting splinters out of the trees and shredding several bushes, but drawing no shouts of pain or flopping bodies. "What are you shooting at?" Zach admonished her. "You didn't even come close!"

"DUH! I can't fucking see them, Zach!" Lilia shot back in frustration, telekinetically deflecting another poison dart aimed at the nape of her neck. She saw several more darts stick into Zach's face, neck and hands, some even appearing through his clothing, since he wasn't amored like she was, but if whatever the posion was that was on the darts bothered him in the slightest, he didn't show it, he just brushed the darts away with annoyed grunts, like he was swatting at bloodsucking insects. Their assailants quickly came to the same realization, that their blowgun darts were not a successful tactic, either against Zach's immunity or her telekinetics. Instead of withdrawing though, they just switched tactics. Lilia caught sight of something moving in the corner of her vision, and she spun towards it, only to have to throw herself awkwardly to the ground to avoid the noose made from woven plant fibers and animal sinew that tried to settle around her neck. More lariats came looping down towards her, and she belatedly realized that at least some of the attackers were hiding in the trees!

Screams ripped through the air as Zach sliced apart the lariats tossed his way, the blade of the scythe little more than redshifting blur in the air as he whirled it around him, unleashing a sound not unlike what she imagined lost souls would make when being dragged down to the pits of hell. It was a violently unnerving sound that drew the eye even as it made you wince and want to cover your ears, and a suddon chorus of displeased grunts and clicks and whistles from the trees and underbrush all around them showed that their attackers didn't find the noise to their liking either. Distracted herself by Zach's tactic, Lilia felt a lariat drop around her rifle barrel, and the next moment the weapon was yanked from her grip with a strength that almost pulled her fully back to her feet before she lost her hold on the rifle. Zach had stopped whirling Deathshriek, something about the language their attackers used plainly interesting to him, but Lilia didn't have time to ask him what he was doing, because in regaining her feet, she had put one of them into a lariat laying on the ground, and now it had been pulled tight around her ankle, only her borealite sabaton keeping the noose from digging into her skin.

Whoever was on the other end of the line pulled sharply, yanking Lilia's leg out from underneath her and forcing her to hop backwards on one leg to stay upright, her arms windmilling for balance while also drawing forth her twin mono-edged longswords from her shoulder sheathes. A quick swirl of the blades, and the lariat cord was severed, but more and more of the cord nooses were being hurled at her from all directions now, some landing on the ground to act as snares for her feet, others aimed for her neck to choke her, and yet more going for her hands and wrists, settling around her vambraces and yanking her arms out wide, so hard that she probably would have dislocated both shoulders were it not for the reinforcement of her armor. Tilting her wrists, Lilia angled both sword blades towards her head, slicing apart several nooses that tried to settle around her neck. A surpise blowgun dart almost pricked her cheek, batted away at the last moment with a telekinetic slap, and Lilia knew she was close to being overwhelmed, with her arms pinned like they were. Bracing herself for the pain likely to come, Lilia let go of both of her swords, and then sent the activation signal to the jumpjet thrusters attached in the stubby wings to her rear torso-plate.

She flew upwards on a small pillar of blue thruster flames, the lariat lines playing out beneath her like fishing line before she felt the twin, near simultaneous jerks as the slack in the ropes was run out, and her assailants tried to pull her back to the ground. They were strong, but Vaul's heavily overengineered jumpjets, designed to lift easily five or six times Lilia's fully armored weight, were more than they were properly braced to handle, though instead of doing what she expected and releasing her, they clung doggedly on, pulled along like kites on strings as she ascended rapidly through the forest cover overhead, finally breaking into clear late afternoon sunlight about fifty meters up, as she continued to rise more slowly, before switching to hover mode. Her arms felt broken or at least dislocated, but a quick telekinetic probe of her joints showed they were all still seated, if barely, but it was going to be impossible to use them with the dead weight hanging from either wrist. Looking down towards where she'd come, past the slowly blackening lariat ropes as they smouldered in her thruster wash, Lilia finally caught a look of her assailants, and the sight took her breath away.

They were humans... or humanish anyway, their bodies were somewhat stunted, neither of her current attackers would be more than five feet tall if they stood on the ground, and their bodies were whipcord thin, not emaciated, just lean, the body of those who spent a great deal climbing cliffs or trees. At first she thought they must be some form of near-chimerae ape, but then she saw they were both wearing clothing, little more than loincloths but clothing nonetheless, and clothing was still an almost entirely human hangup. The lack of biological armaments like claws, horns, sharp teeth or bone ridgeds further pointed to her assailants being human. They were both covered in mud and twigs and leafy branches, their camouflage the reason she hadn't been able to see them even at close range, but under it all their skin seemed cadaverous pale, and their hair was likewise pale, almost translucent where it wasn't daubed with mud.

But it was the eyes that truly caught her attention, and sent an unnatural shiver of dread down her spine. Because their eyes were black, solid black, just solid black orbs with no hint of pupil or cornea or even whites, just solid black, like glistening pits in their faces! Her first thought was that they were blind, but they seemed perfectly aware of their predicament, as they actually began to climb hand over hand up their lariat ropes towards her, after drawing large hooked knives from their belts, the knives were made from Cold Hunter talons wrapped with strips of rawhide for a grip, and Lilia knew from personal experience that those talons could score Borealite and pare through flesh like it was butter! Definitely not items she was very interested in letting near her, especially when she saw the beings bare their teeth at her, and saw all of their teeth were precisely filed down to meat shredding points. Well, now she knew why they'd been trying to take her more or less alive, joy. Because they were hungry.

Playing a hunch, Lilia telekinetically unlatched a compartment on her armor's beltline, nudging out a small flash-bang grenade from inside, which she floated down into the path of her climbing cannibals and held there until it detonated with a searing strobe of light and a crack like a thunderbolt! High pitched screams and the sudden removal of weight on her arms proved that her hunch had been correct... the creatues were near albinos, and not used to very bright lights, living in a valley that was almost always shaded by at least one of the three mountain peaks. The flash-bang had blinded and stunned them, and they had let go of their ropes in their surprise. Lilia watched as they fell, spread eagled and faces down, towards the forest canopy below, her heart demanding that she do something to save them from their grisly fate, her head reminding her that they were cannibals that intended to eat her alive, and that catching them wasn't likely to earn their gratitude. They might kill her first, before beginning to gnaw, that's all.

In the end, it hardly mattered, because the two figures crashed into the upper branches of the trees, their hands and feet slapping against the whippy branches, breaking them while infistesimally slowing the cannibals falling speed, the sound of snapping branches slowly fading away as the cannibals feel into the middle part of the tree foliage, but there was no loud thumps of bodies hitting the ground, so Lilia was forced to assume the little bastards had managed to actually arrest their falls! No doubted they were banged up, bruised and scraped, but she doubted they were out of the fight. Remembering that Zach was alone against who knew how many of these freaks down below, Lilia drew her beam pistol and swooped down through the hole she'd first blasted in the canopy, wary for any noose traps or blowgun needles directed her way. She fired several times into the dark tangles of branches, the green plasma bolts splashing and splattering as they singed and scorched the tree branches, setting one or two alight, but the fires were quickly extinguished. Edenite trees did not burn easily, except when exposed to MAIDEN.

The flare of the beam pistol muzzle flash drew more of those irritated exclamations in their language of clicks and grunts and whistles, though again there were no screams of pain or flailing bodies, so she didn't think she hit any of them. Coasting down to the jungle floor once more, Lilia made a note to hug Vaul the next time she saw him, the jumpjet system was everything she could have hoped for, allowing even for the tricky maneuvering required to wend her way through the forest canpoy while remaining on guard. Still keeping her pistol in hand, Lilia bent down and scooped up one of her swords, before she turned to check on Zach. True to expectations, he was fine, though clearly annoyed because the cannibals had obviously declined to rush him directly, and Deathshriek's blade was still quite clean of blood, though several sundered tree trunks showed where he had vented himself against his surroundings. Or perhaps tried to force the little buggers out of the trees.

"They've grown cunning since the last time I was here." Frost commented to her, sourly. "They must remember me. I thought I recognized one or two of them. They must have come back after Asmodeus and I disappeared outside Orb. I didn't think any would survive this EDEN nonsense. How interesting."

"Hold the hell on, Zach." Lilia protested. "I haven't the slightest fucking clue what you're talking about! Care to fill me in before they come back and try and put me back on the menu? Who are they? WHAT are they?"

"They're my Kindred." Zach replied with a sigh. "My lesser brothers and sisters, who have been living here ever since JIHAD was first destroyed. They were already quite tribal and near bestial when I returned to them after my disasterous sojourn in space with the Judgement. I recruited many of them for the Tiamat group run by Asmodeus, but they only held loyalty to me, and when I disappeared with the Pulsar, they must have run back home. And then the EDEN must have come, and then..." Zach trailed off with a shrug. "Voila."

"They're Edenite BCPU's?" Lilia swallow hard at that thought, remembering the pitch black eyes and filed teeth. "And you didn't think TO WARN ME ABOUT THEM WHEN WE CAME HERE?"

"Don't you dare take that tone with me, Mouse, or I'll tear out your vocal cords and wear them as a necktie." Zach rebuffed her. "I did not know they were here, I had assumed they would all be killed by Mr. Machine's Green EDEN, or else driven into incapacitance by drug withdrawals long, long ago. That was how they tried to keep us in line, Mouse, they made us biologically dependent upon the grug Gamma Glipheptim, an adrenal enhancer that booster our reaction speeds in combat. However, its withdrawal effects were... well, punishing, the pain was so intense most could only mewl and writhe on the floor until they recieved a stabilizing dose of the drug. We were only given stabilizing doses lasting a month or two at a time, and then of course combat doses when going into combat. The only defense against the pain was, well, insanity." Zach shrugged. "I was one of the few that they truly never had much hold over, which is why I killed so many of them."

"Are you sure though? How can you tell what they are?" Lilia asked, making sure she sounded inquiring, and not accusatory. She looked around, and didn't see any tell tale bodies that Zach might have investigated.

"Like I said, I recognized one or two of them." Zach shrugged and shouldered Deathshriek as Lilia carefully began gathering up her lost weapons, though the linear rifle was a loss, having been pulled far into the undergrowth, where she had no intention of stumbling about to search for it. "They were also speaking in a degraded form of one of the battle codes we were taught, to communicate simple ideas and tactical data in a format that the enemy could not understand, even over unencrypted or compromised comm lines. And they knew to be afraid of me."

"Are you sure that last one counts?" Lilia commented, sliding her swords back into the crossbelted sheathes across her back, and holstering her pistol, though she kept her hand near the grip as she once against cast outwards with her psychic senses. There was nothing, not a single lifeform besides plants and insects within a kilometer of them. Which was impossible, there was no way the cannibals could move that fast, and even if they were shielding themselves, she should have been able to feel a dead spot where they were hiding. There was nothing. They might as well have been ghosts. "You don't look anything at all like your old body, remember?"

"Some things are sensed, rather than seen or heard, Mouse. The shape of my body does not change the fact of who I am. No, they recognized me, even if they did not consciously realize it. I am the sixer, the favored, prodigal son of our Father, his most perfect and his most flawed creation." Zach told her, somewhat grandly.

"Is this the part where you add... "I am the whetstone of humanity, the darkness in the human soul, the end of all..." and that stuff?" Lilia asked, somewhat sardoncially.

"If I feel like it." Zach replied, almost a hint defensively. "I am Zacharis Quentin Frost after all."

"Believe me Zach, I don't think anyone could ever forget that."

"Your flattery pleases me, Mouse. I think tonight will be one of gasps and not screams as well."

"Please don't tell me you're going to judge that on a day by day basis... Zach... Zach, wait, Zach!" Lilia called, hurrying after him as he headed off into the jungle, still heading towards the mountain with the slumped face.

"I told you, I hate that word, Mouse, stop using it around me, before I wash your mouth out with more than just soap..."

xxxx

**Further into the JIHAD jungle basin, about 30 minutes later**

The drone of Deathshriek as it sliced back and forth through the air in methodical sweeps, was really starting to make Lilia's eyes twitch in annoyance. Progress had been slowed within minutes after they headed onwards from the BCPU... Zach kept calling them "Kindred"... ambush zone, the undergrowth of the jungle thickening the further on they tried to press, until they were soon wading through a hip high tangle of leaves and vines and roots, and soon after that they were having to cut their way forward to make any good progress. Deathshriek could cut through any obstacle with ease, even the hardest woods were of little more impediment to the QC scythe than air itself was, and so Zach stayed in the lead, hewing away a path for them, while Lilia used her mono-sword to help widen the path and deal with any major obstructions. She was astounded that Zach could wield the bulky polearm like weapon so easily in such tight quarters, though the fact that the blade could cut through just about anything in the universe was a help. As was Zach's significantly greater than normal strength and endurance, allowing him to keep chopping like an automaton when Lilia's arm was already starting to ache a bit.

She could see why the Kindred had physiques better adapted for climbing around in the trees than running around on the ground, if significant portions of the valley were this clogged with vegetation, you would be extremely limited in your ability to travel, unless you were small enough to scamper beneath the bushes, or agile enough to swing and jump through the trees. The dense undergrowth also probably dissauded larger predators, making the valley quite safe and private for the Kindred. She wondered how many of them there were... Zach hadn't seemed to think there were more than two or three score BCPU's left at JIHAD when he returned after his time in space, the strongest, fastest and meanest ones having killed and eaten their less fortunate kin. Lilia had once read one of Kunai's books, something he'd salvaged during their trek from Hawaii to the current location of Garden City, the title being "Lord of the Flies". The children from that book reminded her of these BCPU's, stranded far away from civilization, they had created their own, and descended into barbarism.

But the group that had ambushed them had been at least twelve to fifteen strong, mostly adult males and females, though the term "adult" was a loose one, since she had no idea how they aged. BCPU's were generally young children, ranging up to the mid to late teens for the "finished products" like Zach. Edenites were generally considered "adult" at age 15-16, just like most Coordinators. Given about an average spread of succumbing to Green EDEN without transforming, Lilia guestimated that maybe half of the 40-60 BCPU's Zach remembered had survived to become Kindred, which meant they could be dealing with a tribe of 20-30 "adults" and an unknown number of offspring. Zach maintained that offspring were impossible, since like him, the other BCPU's were sterilized as a control issue. Lilia wasn't too sure... a Green EDEN strain had been used to cure ICD after all, there was no saying what might have happened to the Kindred's reproductive systems. She thought about reminding Zach that technically he wasn't a BCPU anymore either and therefore not sterile, but figured he might not appreciate the thought. He LIKED being a BCPU after all. She would just remember to invest in some birth control for the time being... if absolutely necessary, she could pinch shut her fallopian tubes during menstration via telekinesis, though that was a measure of last resort only.

What didn't make sense was the fact that the Kindred seemed totally invisible to her psychic senses, in a way that she had never encountered before and found highly disturbing. Even Deathstalkers, just about the stealthiest animals on New Eden, had SOME psychic signature, even if it was very faint and easily missed by even the wary. She'd never encountered someone that just... WASN'T THERE... on the psychic plane. Even the Stumps of the Oosen, a new, phonetic term for their enemies coined by someone within the Wind of Words that had recently caught on, appeared on the psychic plane, if dimly. But the Kindred did not, and combined with their physical stealth aptitude and their familiarity with the terrain, meant that they could be pretty much anywhere, even watching her right now from less than a stone's throw away, and unless she got lucky, she'd never know they were there! Which was really, really creepy, especially considering that they were cannibals!

She kept up her telekinetic screen, to protect herself against any darts of opportunity, and had also donned her helm, which should protect her against both darts and the noose around the neck business. With her sword in hand, and Zach all of five feet away, Lilia found herself feeling reasonably safe, though disturbingly it was the thought of Zach's nearness that was more comforting than the sword in her hand. _Damn it all, Lilia, don't you dare start relying on him!_ She admonished herself angrily. _He may be being nice right now, but you can't forget who and what he is! You're an Arboreal Praetorian, you don't need anyone's protection... Not Kun-kun's, not Kira's and especially not Zach's! For that matter, as the Wendigo proved, Zach is not invincible, and he is reckless... he's probably needs your help watching his back more than you do his! Yeah... keep telling myself that... got it..._

Distracted by her attempts to bolster her self confidence, Lilia stepped forward and found no ground beneath her foot, and she toppled forward awkwardly, gasping loudly in shock as she fell almost ten feet into some kind of burrow or tunnel. She landed hard on her chest, knocking the wind out of her, kicking up a dusting of dirt and leafy debris, and she realized that she'd actually fallen into some sort of crude pit trap, the wooden stick spars that had held it up under Zach's weight lying mostly beneath her in a lumpy pile, strings of sinew attached to the spars leading off into the darkness of a tunnel that looked to have once been some sort of power or fluid conduit for the JIHAD base, perhaps a sewage pipe, judging by the faint rank odor. She heard the droning of Deathshriek stop, and figured Zach had noticed her sudden disappearance, and she began to clamber sheepishly back to her feet, still struggling to get a proper breath in, knowing that he was going to give her lots of shit about "mousetraps" and the like. She'd dropped her sword in her tumble, and she began to look for it, barely giving herslef any warning as she heard the sound of bare feet in the dirt.

The Kindred, three of them, threw themselves upon her with the ferocity of rabid weasels, holding knobby cudgels and crude maces made of what looked like chunks of rusty steel tied to the tips of lengths of yggdrasilwood by twine of animal hair and sinew, worming their way out of the sewage pipe in a howling pack, their grunting warcries sounding like a herd of angry boars squealing. It was quite disconcerting, but Lilia didn't let that, or her lack of breath, stop her from straight arming the foremost Kindred right in the solar plexus, the air huffing out of him in a rush as his legs ran out from underneath him, his squeal cut off suddenly. Lilia's arm, still tender from the abuse she'd put it through with the jumpjets, screamed at her at the solidness of the impact, for all that the Kindred was half a foot shorter than her and a good thirty pounds lighter with her armor on, it had felt like putting her hand against a charging brick wall!

Nor did her blow, which should have cracked the ribs of a normal Edenite and put them down on the ground for the count, seem to overly bother the Kindred, who landed and rolled and came up and back at her in a matter of a second, moving so fast she could barely even see him hit the ground in the first place! Lilia blocked the swing of a club with one vambrace, her armor rattling and flesh brusing udner the force of the blow... the Kindred were a hell of a lot stronger than they looked, some sort of holdover from their BCPU days. Screaming from up above the pit, which had once been some sort of mainetnance access shaft of some sort, suggested that Zach was fending off attackers of his own, and would not be by to save her anytime soon. Which was just fine with Lilia, if she couldn't take care of three enemies by herself, she didn't deserve Zach's help! She twisted aside from another club strike, caught the Kindred's arm, and kneed him in the balls, putting the little trogdolyte on the ground good and hard, his squeals suddenly far more higher pitched than they had been.

"Come on then." Lilia challenged the two that remained combat effective, dropping into a combat crouch, hands loosely bunched into fists, ready to punch, block or grab for a knife depending on what her assailants did. Which was wait, for about eight seconds, and then three more of the little bastards came clawing out of the sewage pipe, and Lilia could hear the sounds of more behind them! Now five on one, the Kindred gave each other some chilling nods, grunting and clicking back and forth to each other in a way that she didn't have to be a code breaker to understand, as they slowly split up, their smaller, thinner bodies at an advantage in the confines of the pit. _Umm... Zach... I could use a little help down here..._ She called out to him.

_Save yourself, Mouse._ He replied at once, with a mental sneer. _If you need me to save you, then you don't deserve to be saved. I am not Yamato, I care only for strength. If you haven't the strength, then I have no use for you._

_Zach! There's like eight of em!_ Lilia protested, fending off the probing assaults from two of the Kindred. Damn it all, they knew what they were doing, and they knew how to wield those clubs. They were closer to professional soldiers than mere hunters, more legacy from their time as BCPUs. She grabbed for a combat knife, but was forced to abandon that effort in order to dodge the Kidnred as they swarmed for her, throwing themselves onto her legs and body with an abandon she'd seen Zach use before, they didn't care about what she did to them, they just wanted to bring her down! She cracked her armored elbow against one skull, but the Kindred just shook it off and giggled... GIGGLED, the nerve of the bastard! He stopped chuckling when she got him in a chokehold in the next instant, her forearm vising his windpipe closed, making his eyes bug out of his head a bit as he thrashed and gagged for air. Clubs and maces cracked into her armor, the armor stopping the weapons, but the force of the blows sending her staggering to her knees, the Kindred swarming her like ants on a grasshopper, forcing her to the ground as they beat her body black and blue through blunt force trauma, though she doggedly refused to let go of the one she was choking out. By the Tree, she was going to take at least one of em down with her!

_Zach...!_ She began to protest once more, but then heavy blows rained down on her helmet from several directions at once, and the jarring impacts snuffed out her consciousness like a shattered lightbulb. She slumped, pinning the half strangled Kindred beneath her body, as his comrades capered around and jeered down at his puffy face as he squirmed out from underneath her. Sulkily, he turned around, towards the unconscious lilia, hand going for the talon-knife at his waist, before a cudgel across the back of his head laid him low, the senior hunter barking orders angrily, his status denoted by the twin Direcat fangs he wore on his necklace, directing the hunt party to bundle the prey up and drag it off into the tunnels, before The One Who Frightens Death realized the assaults above were only a delaying tactic. Dragging Lilia's inert form behind them, the Kindred disappeared into the utility tunnel system that honeycombed much of the valley floor. There was to be much rejoicing tonight. And fresh meat for the first time in a while.

xxxx

**Kindred Ceremonial Site, 3/4 kilometers from main entrance to Charon's Hideout, Shortly after Dusk**

The first thing Lilia felt upon consciousness returning was a hot breeze against her face, and much more uncomfortable hotness near her feet. Her body ached all over, her mouth felt like it was stuffed with dirty cotton, and she had an awful constipated feeling. This made her eyes flutter open rather quickly, despite the throbbing ache in her skull, before the amount of ambient light made her squeeze them shut once more, fighting the urge to vomit. Her head was spinning pretty badly, and she realized that she must have at least a minor concussion of some sort. And she was missing her helmet. And the rest of her armor, come to think of it. _Damn it all, how many times am I going to be stripped naked in one day?_ Lilia groused angrily, and though inwardly upset, she made sure that outwardly she still showed no more signs of waking up and being aware than she already had. Anti-Kidnapping 101, when knocked out and captured by an enemy, try to gain as much informtation as possible about your situation before they knew you were awake. So she stayed limp and relaxed physically, and reached out psychically to explore her surroundings. And found... nothing at all. She was alone on the psychic plane.

Grinning inwardly at her captor's mistake, Lilia opened her eyes so she could figure out how to get free from her bonds, her body beaing held spreadeagled in an upright position, her ankles and wrists bound to some kind of frame, and additional binding of some sort around her neck and waistline making sure she could hardly move at all. Keeping her eyes cracked to avoid the throbbing headache from the firelight all around her, Lilia realized her mistake almost as soon as she made it, but of course by then it was too late, her fluttering eyes had been noticed. A cacophony of grunts and clicks and squeals rose from all around her, the easy three or four dozen Kindred that were taking their ease around the central clearing responding to the revivification of their meal-sacrifice with glee. Some had begun to worry the hunting party had struck her too hard, and a sleeping sacrifice just wasn't as worthy to the God Under the Mountain. All was now well though, with the wakening of the blue haired female.

The return of The One Who Frightens Death was an extremely ill omen, and the Clan witchdoctors were glad for the advent of a sacrifice, especially one claimed by The One Who Frightens Death. By sacrificing such a prized possession to the God Under the Mountain, the God would take The One Who Frightens Death back into his embrace and the world would not be destroyed. Prey From the Sky had come many moons ago, and angered the God Under the Mountain by disrupting the honor totems the Clan had placed to ward the God's resting place, and had commited the ultimate sacrilege, actually entering the God's home! In response, the God Under the Mountain had released The One Who Frightens Death from his forever-sleep, and the Prey From the Sky had been slaughtered with a fury far beyond even the most bloodthirsty of the Clan's hunters. The God Under the Mountain's wrath had not been assauged however, and The One Who Frightens Death had soon left to seek more prey, the Clan hiding in the deep caverns until they were sure he was gone.

By sacrificing the Blue Female, who shared the mating scent of The One Who Frightens Death, and imbibing her essence into themselves, the Clan would thus gain immunity to the wrath of The One Who Frightens Death, who would be unable to find them as they would all smell like his mate. And perhaps the Clan would even be blessed with a female becoming with child by the The One Who Frightens Death in the process. The Blue Female's skull would make a fine spirit locus for an honor totem to keep the God Under the Mountain placated for many moons to come, and then life in the Clan could return to normal once more. Usually upon the capture of a female human, the Clan's males would use her for a plaything for a time, to honor the luck granted them by the God Under the Mountain and show proper efficiency in using his bounty, but it was deemed prudent to skip this tradition in this particular case. The Clan could not risk overprinting the mating scent of The One Who Frightens Death, no matter how beautiful and exotic the Blue Female was.

Before binding her to the most holy Altar of the Operating Table, the Clan's most potent holy symbol of the power of the God Under the Mountain who had given them all birth in the Time Long Before, the Clan witchdoctors had carefully plugged her orifices up with fetish items made from the kidneys and spleens of valuable predatory beasts, who were favored children of the GUM, blessed with a fraction of The One Who Frightens Death's ferocity and cunning, much as the Clan had been. The organs were stuffed with spices and special herbs, which would not only flavor the Blue Female's tender meat rather nicely, but also ensure the mating scent of The One Who Frightens Death stayed penned up within her and prevent her from soiling the honor of her sacrifice by calling out for help, as nothing tainted the taste of good meat like cowardice in the face of death. The GUM demanded efficiency in all things from his children, and the Clan was proud of their sacrifical methods, which had helped keep the GUM content for several birthing cycles.

Perhaps the GUM would even be so pleased as to temporarily lift the Death In Birth curse that the Clan labored under, which claimed the lives of nine out of ten children born to the Clan's females, and which had thus kept the Clan small and self contained, even with the abundance of food and safety they possessed. With only eighteen breeding females in the Clan, that meant less than two surviving children were produced from each birth cycle, though those who did survive were healthy and robust in the extreme, and the Clan was extremely proud of them. They would be given first choice of the Blue Female's meat, though of course certain parts were reserved. The witchdoctors, as the spiritual and temporal guides of the Clan, would get her brain and spine marrow, to take her intellectual powers into themselves. The breeding females would recieve her reproductive systems, to enhance their fertility. And the hunters would take the muscles from her thighs and her fingers, to imbibe her strength and dexterity. Her heart, and the soul it contained, obviously belonged to the GUM, but there were plenty of delicacies left, including the intestines, organ meats and the sweet, fat laden breasts.

But before they could feast, there was still much in the way of ritual preparation to complete, holy symbols to be drawn in the dirt around the central fire, ritual mating to gain the attention of the living aspect of the GUM; to inspire fertility and abundance for the Clan, mock fighting to attract the attention of the killing aspect of the GUM; to inspire ferocity and power for the Clan, and special dances to attract the inventing aspect of the GUM, who would bless the Clan with new methods of hunting and tool working, to further seperate them from the prey-beasts. These activities were undertaken with a certain degree of urgency, as The One Who Frightens Death was still out there, in the valley somewhere, having been led far from the ceremonial aboveground village by the hunters earlier in the day. The One Who Frightens Death was said to be in a terrible wrath, destroying everything in his path, but he would not arrive before the Clan had ingested his mate's scent and warded themselves from his wrath for all time!

_All right... take stock... take stock... remember your training... things are NEVER as bad as they seem..._ Lilia reminded herself, trying to stay calm despite her predicament. She watched several Kindred setting out stacks of ceramic plates that had obviously been looted from within the ruined base at some time in the past. Several young children... _HAH, suck it Zach_... were setting out shakers of salt and pepper, likewise obtained from deeply buried storehouses within the mountains, all the while the kids were shooting daring glances at Lilia, and licking their lips in a very suggestive manner. _Except when they're worse than they seem_. Lilia continued to herself, her throat too dry to manage a swallow of trepidation, especially with her mouth and upper throat stuffed full of what felt like large sausages and tasted like waxed leather. More of the stuffed sausage things were packed into her anus and vagina, deeper than she found comfortable, which was to say, she didn't want them inside her at all! She felt like the cooked pig with an apple in its mouth, before being cooked!

_Stay calm, Lilia. You've been in worse situations..._ She tried to tell herself, but she couldn't think of one off hand. She was tied with multiple thick viney ropes to some kind of torture device or sacrificial altar, woozy, naked, gagged and literally stuffed with what she had the sneaking suspicion were condiment spices, suspended over a red hot bed of cooking coals, and surrounded by dozens upon dozens of Edenite BCPU's that were completely invisible and almost certainly immune to her psychic abilities. And they were all cannibals! _I think I want the rape dungeon back, please..._ Lilia complained, shivering despite the blasting heat because she realized that she meant it. Bad as the rape dungeon had been, even though she currently couldn't exactly remember it, she was gonna go out on a limb and say it probably beat being cooked alive or eaten alive by cannibals! And the one person who might be able to save her, wouldn't, because he despised people too weak to defend themselves. She was so fucked it wasn't even funny! Though at the very least, it didn't feel like the Kindred had sexually assaulted her while she was out. She guessed that was worth something, right?

Not having anything else to do besides watch with dread as the Kindred began working themselves up into some kind of ceremonial fenzy with lots of wrestling, fucking and dancing going on, though the three art forms seemed so similar that she could only really tell them apart by looking at which ones involved women, Lilia committed herself to observations. None of the Kindred was much more than a few inches over five feet tall, and none looked like they'd tip the scales at more than a 150 pounds at most, but for all that they were stunted and skinny by the standards of most Edenites, Lilia knew well that they were far from frail or weak, indeed they were easily stronger and tougher than she was, on an individual scale. There seemed to be little obvious differences between men and women, aside from the breasts of course, and though the women seemed somewhat deferential to the men, they were in turn treated with a great deal of care and respect by the men. It wasn't so much nuturing or love as it was trained instinct... with only so many women, losing one could seriously hamper the Kindred's reproductive viability.

Cleaned up in their festival best, Lilia could see that her initial observations back in the forest had been correct, the Kindred were albinos or close to, their skin alabaster pale and their hair so white it was close to translucent, which seemed odd for people that were obviously hunter gatherers living on the surface. But as Lilia looked around more, she saw that the huts and lean-to's that comprised the village didn't seem to have much in the way of personal effects or decorations, no beds or bed analogs, and no apparent pattern or layout to the village, and she realized the entire place was just a mock up, a distraction even, someplace that spent most of its time looking run down or abandoned so that if organized groups of intruders came by, they would think the Kindred had left long ago, when in reality their real village was elsewhere... probably underground, judging by their physical characteristics. They were sacrificing her here, because caves and big smoky fires didn't tend to mix well.

And of course, there was the eyes, the solid, pitch black orbs in their faces, so disconcerting not just in color, but also because she could never tell exactly where they were looking. It was like meeting gazes with an infinite abyss, and Lilia had to remind herself not to make eye contact for too long. Not because she was afraid that she would make an inadvertant challenge... her situation couldn't get much worse after all... but because she felt herself becoming slightly hypnotized by the seemingly limitless darkness in their eyes, and the last thing she needed right now was to zone out! She was working on telekinetically loosening her bonds, but being suspended upright over a bed of red hot coals, if her bonds broke, she'd be in for a hot, unpleasant time of things. Instant third degree burns across her legs and lower torso, at best, the pain might send her into cardiac arrest, and if she lived through that, the Kindred wouldn't be happy with their sacrifice making a break for it, she'd bet. So her options were dying in horrible pain and being eaten... or, dying in horrible pain and being eaten. Awesome. And to think of what she'd put up with from Zach to be ALLOWED to come here with him! Like it was some sort of reward!

The Kindred celebrations seemed to reach some kind of peak, and then a pair of large, older male Kindred, probably in their early twenties, stepped forward, their bodies painted with reddish dyes that looked like blood spatter, one of them had a helm made from the skull of a Direcat, the other's headdress was made from the skull of a Cold Hunter, and the way the skull was broken at the back suggested to her that he hadn't just found a dead one either. By the Caller's writhing nuts, even Praetorians took guns when hunting Cold Hunters... these guys just used clubs and knives! And their natural ability to be completely invisible to any and all psychic senses, she reminded herself. They were ghosts... black eyed ghosts of the forests! Probably explained why the Caller hadn't eaten them either. The Kindred leaders took hold of a pair of vine ropes that ran up into the foliage overhead, and began pulling on them, and Lilia felt herself start to move downwards towards the coals, the altar-thing she was tied to slowly turning from vertical to horizontal. With each tug on the ropes, the Kindred chorused grunts or clicks or squeals, the hellish din obviously part and parcel of the ceremony. _This is completely not cool..._ Lilia thought, strangely calm as sweat began to drip from her skin, the coals coming inexorably closer, until the heat felt like it was scorching her eyeballs, and she knew it was a matter of seconds before her hair fell in the coals and lit up like candle wicks.

"Hey... that's my Mouse you're trying to roast." Zach's voice cut through the din of the celebrating Kindred like a knife through heartstrings, the entire gathering falling into stunned, frozen silence as their heads swiveled, as one, to see Zach standing at the edge of the main clearing, Deathshriek held at his side like a walking stick, his face scratched and a bit bloody from his jog through the thickets, his clothes ripped and tattered by the same, but he was obviously fine and just as obviously not amused, his eyes changing from violet to glowing red depending on how the fire flickered and cast his face into shadows. "I don't remember giving permission for any Mouse roasting. Besides, if I was going to cook her, I would butter baste and deep fry her, I don't like charr on my meat." He took a step forward, and the entire gathering flinched, just a little, the leaders accidentally tugging on their ropes, lowering Lilia just a little bit more towards the coals, her skin beginning to redden like sunburn from the heat, her eyes wide open and staring hopefully at Zach, her mouth wadded full of bladders of herbs like a christmas ham.

Zach pointed at Lilia, and uttered a series of grunts, clicks and hisses of his own, and she realized he hadn't been lying when he said he could understand what the Kindred were saying, and they certainly seemed to be able to understand him, because the two leader types suddenly let go of the vine ropes like it was they that were red hot and not the coals. The altar did not return to its vertical setting, but at least it didn't flop down into the coals either, though the constant heat was making her woozier than the blow to the head already was, and Lilia had to fight to keep from passing out as she watched Zach slowly make his way across the clearing towards her, his every movement declaring his mastery over the scene and everyone and everything in it. The Kindred sure seemed scared of him, many of them were literally groveling in the dirt, the men on their faces and the women on their backs with legs spread. Zach ignored them all, kicking aside any legs or limbs in his path, a king among vermin. Finally, he was standing by her side, the only two Kindred not abasing themselves being the two leader types, both of whom looked like they were about to wet their pants at any moment.

Zach stared down at them, and made another few grunts and snorts, his tone commanding and cold. The one with the Cold Hunter skull replied, much more subdued, but with a small vein of steel all the same. Zach hissed a reply, and both leaders suddenly made grabs for their ceremonial daggers, made from the teeth of a Megahunter. They were fast on the draw, faster than most Praetorians even, but they might as well have been flies in amber for all it mattered, because the air shrieked as it was sundered apart, and both Kindred fell over with shocked looks on their faces, Deathshriek having cleanly bisected them both with one swing, their legs remaining standing with a pulsating mass of uncompressing intenstines spilling down their thighs for a long second, before the legs fell forward and the upper torsos landed in the coals. Frost kicked the pair of legs into the fire as well, and soon the air was rendolent with the scent of roasting meat. Lilia could not hold back tears of relief as Zach pushed the altar upright, and then completely over the other way, falling with a bang onto the dirt at the edge of the firepit.

Setting Deathshriek aside, Zach bent down and ripped away the vine ropes holding Lilia to the altar at wrists, ankles, waist and neck, and she instantly rolled off the device, and began tearing at the stuffings in her mouth and private places, clawing out the spice filled bladders with trembling fingers as she coughed and retched and spat to get rid of the taste and the sensations. Most of a minute passed before Lilia got ahold of herself once more, the skin of her breasts and belly feeling tight and dry, her body toasty pink on the side that had been closest to the coals, the tips of her blue hair singed almost black by the heat. Zach's hand was cold and strong against her right arm as he grabbed her and hauled her upright on shaky legs. She was just turning her face up to thank him, perhaps with a very heartfelt kiss, when the palm of his hand exploded across the side of her head, literally knocking her right off her feet with the force of the slap, splitting her lips, cutting her tongue and cheek on her teeth and making the whole wold go so dim and distant she barely even felt herself hit the ground a moment later.

Seeing stars and gagging on the blood pooling in her mouth, Lilia shuddered helplessly on the ground, her mind temporarily disconnected from the rest of her body, unable to comprehend what was going on. She felt Zach grab her by the arm again, and tried to go limp, submissive like the Kindred women had done, but Zach was having none of it, he yanked her to her feet, and then came the backhand, she barely even saw it coming out of the corner of an eye that was already starting to swell. She didn't even really feel the hit, the other side of her face hurt so bad that the added pain barely seemed to register, just the shock of impact, the odd sensation of flying sideways through the air, and then she landed, hard, on her burned side, on the wooden altar thingie, and she slumped over it, her knees and calves in the dirt, her stomach and chest on the altar, panting for breath, her head swimming agonizingly, her jaw feeling broken, blood drooling from both sides of her mouth, her eyes blackened and sweling shut, and her mind convinced that she'd finally died and was back in hell for some reason.

Zach's hand on the back of her head slammed her facedown into the wood once more, blood shooting from her nose, which had just finished resetting only yesterday, as Zach ground her face into the altar, her arms and legs twitching spasmodically as her body tried to fight back, but her mind was too overwhelmed to manage it. She heard the sound of falling cloth, and realized that Zach had just dropped his pants. He was going to rape her again, right there in the Kindred camp, bent over the altar she had nearly been sacrificed on only a minute prior, and there was nothing she could do to stop it! Tears ran down her face, diluting the blood from her mouth, as Zach yanked back on her hair, forcing her head upright, though she couldn't see anything but blurs anyway, her scalp screaming as hair began to tear loose. _Why... Zach...?_ She pleaded for understanding, having been sure that he'd come to rescue her, not abuse her!

_The weak are taken by the strong, and they get what they deserve._ Zach responded, his mental tone both vicious and, perhaps more disturbingly, disappointed. He seperated her thighs and thrust himself inside her without pause, knowing that it felt like a red hot iron being impaled into her, well aware of the still stunned audience of Kindred. By killing the two previous leaders in "fair" combat, Zach had inherited authority over the Clan, no one was willing to dispute the leadership of The One Who Frightens Death, but their entire culture demanded a sacrifice from outside the Clan still be made. The meat of the previous leaders would fill the bellies of the Clan, but it would do nothing to appease the anger of the GUM. Only the death of an outsider could do that. And the Mouse was the only outsider present. However, he wasn't of a mind to let her be sacrificed for THEM. Only for him could she be so used.

_Don't you dare ever be so weak as to have no other option than to wait to be rescued by me again, Lilia._ Frost angrily thrust inside her, making her cry out in pain. No less agonized she than he was disappointed, however. He expected so much more of her than becoming a damsel in distress like Pink. He did not appreciate being forced into a Boytoy like savior role, not one little bit, and the Mouse would learn that or else the next time he would merely sit down and ask for the first cut of thigh meat. _This was your second strike, Mouse. The next one will mean you're out, and believe me, you don't want that. And though it may surprise you, neither do I. But I will not tolerate capital weakness like this from you ever again. Now open your mouth and take what I have to give you._

_Zach... please..._ Lilia protested, feeling like she was about to rip in half from the groin upwards. He was positively bestial, and she was bleeding as bad, if not worse, down there as she was from the mouth, her teeth clenched together so hard they felt like they were breaking, as she fought to keep from sobbing and screaming, which she was afraid he would see as more weakness!

_OPEN... YOUR... MOUTH... MOUSE..._ Zach's voice thundered in her mind, his anger swelling until she really did feel about as big as a mouse, at the mercy of a very large mouse eating predator. Scared nearly witless, she obeyed, slowly dropping open her aching jaws, as wide as she could make them go. She saw some sort of blur of motion in front of her, and figured that he was going to hit her again, but she kept her mouth open, more afraid to disobey than she was of being hit. How low he'd already made her fall, the proud Praetorian, the Valkyrie, little more than a whimpering girl in the dust... she hated herself right then, hated her weakness that had brought all this on, that had so enraged Zach and driven him to feel that doing this to her was necessary to make her stronger, to meet his standards. And maybe it was, maybe this pain, this suffering Zach was inflicting upon her... she could use this, to make herself stronger and better, so that she'd never disappoint him again. However, he didn't hit her, instead, she felt him press his palm against her open mouth. _Bite..._ Zach's voice commanded. _Break the skin and suck as hard as you can. And then swallow._

At any other time, Lilia would have hesistated, have argued, have protested. But here, now, bent over a sacrificial altar in a Treeforsaken part of the world, being violently fucked by her "boyfriend" while being watched by a small army of his distant relatives, her face battered to hell and back and his hand pressed imperiously against her mouth, she just did what she had to do. She bit, and it was like trying to dig through a leather coat, despite his skin being so soft it was durable as all hell, and she really had to grind her jaw to tear a gash in his palm. His blood didn't want to come out, it tried to solidify at once, and only by ferverishly working with her saliva and tongue could she keep it semi-liquid, like a warm slushie. She sucked at the stuff, which tasted like a combination of sulfuric acid and molten copper as it flowed into her mouth, across the cuts on her tongue and cheeks and lips, thick and burning hot and completely overwhelming! Lilia felt her consciousness starting to slip away, and she hurriedly sucked Zach's blood, what little of it she'd managed to get from him, into the back of her throat. Her last conscious sensation was the act of swallowing.

Frost allowed himself to release inside her the moment he felt the Mouse go limp, and he spun to face the cowed and wondering Kindred. He showed them his scabbing palm, and then tilted the Mouse's head so they could see his blood on her lips, then indicated his spent penis and the Mouse's vagina. "This one has taken within her not only my seed, but my blood. She is as I am. She is mine, and will be treated with every bit of the respect I am, or I will be wrathful." Frost said vehemently, in the archaic battle cant that served his Kindred as language. "No harm shall come to her by Kindred hands or thoughts, or I will be wrathful. She is a weak and often worthless being, but she is still better than any of you. She doesn't break, at least. There is NO outsider here, and if anyone wishes to say otherwise, let them stand now." Frost declared, setting his hand on the haft of Deathshriek. Not a single Kindred moved a muscle. "As I thought. Now tend to her injuries, as if she were your very own child, or I will be wrathful. I go to commune with the God Under the Mountain. She had better look healthier by the time I return, or you can guess how I'll be..."

xxxx

**Charon's Hideout, sub level 6, Jan 5th, 11:00 pm**

Lilia awoke with a start, her last clear memory being the hooting crowd of Kindred and the coals of the sacrificial fire. Her body felt moist and slimy, pretty much all over, and as she gingerly lifted a very sore arm, she saw that her skin was slathered with some sort of paste, which smelled simply disgusting, but she was familiar enough with the concept of herbal medicine to realize that was normal. The worse it smelled, the better it worked, was a general rule of thumb. Her entire body felt like one big bruise, but she suspected that was still better than she would have felt if she'd woken up without it. She stared blearily up at the ceiling, her mouth feeling like it was full of cotton, her tongue swollen where she'd obviously bitten it at some point, an actinic, metallic tang of unknown origin tainting the back of her throat. She realized she wasn't looking up at grey skies and sunlight, but grey metal and a flourescent light, neither of which were in tune with her last waking memories...

And then it all came flooding back... getting captured by the Kindred, being set up as a sacrifice, the coals coming closer and closer and closer... and then Zach appearing, completely derailing the ceremony with his sheer presence, and him killing the Kindred leaders to save her, and then lifting her to her feet... and then he'd beaten the stuffing out of her, shoved her down over the same damned altar she'd been tied to, and gave her the roughest fucking of recent memory while she cried and pleaded for him to explain why he was so angry. Not exactly a happy memory. And then had come his hand over her mouth, and his orders for her to bite, suck and swallow, and the taste of his nanite-infused blood on her tongue and in her throat... and then here. In some sort of fairly modern looking room, a rather spartan guest bedroom perhaps, with metal walls and ceiling, synthetic tile floor, and a real twin sized bed with plain white sheets, now dirty, that she was lying on. She was clothesless, but after all that had happened today, it barely even registered with her. At least this time she was naked for a reason, since her body and face was lathered with herbal healing gunk, probably courtesy of Zach's Kindred.

She sat up with a muffled groan, putting the heel of her hand to her throbbing forehead, reflecting that as crappy as she felt, she still felt like a million bucks, compared to how she should be feeling, given what happened to her. Someone had thoughtfully left a large glass of water by the bedside table, and she gratefully slugged it down, somewhat clearing the cottony feeling in her throat, though the metallic taste of Zach's blood seemed determined to linger. Swapping the cool glass for her palm, Lilia closed her eyes in momentary bliss and sighed, before setting the gunk slimed glass down and preparing to get to her feet. The synthetic tile floor was cold on her feet, but it felt good all the same. "Where the hell am I now?" She wondered aloud, grimacing at how scratchy her voice was. She sounded like she'd been gargling paint thinner and brass tacks.

"You are in guest bedroom gamma seven, on sub level six of the Hideout Complex." An unexpected voice replied, seemingly from the very air around her. The voice was somewhat stodgy and archaic sounding, slightly stilted and formal, like you would expect an uptight older gentleman of the very upper classes to sound. "My name is Charon, I am the caretaker computer for this complex." The voice explained, just as Lilia opened her mouth to ask that. "I exist to serve the will of the Creator, by assisting the Master Frost in any capacity I can. He ordered his servants to bring you hear to recuperate after your ordeal, and has instructed me to regard you with the same level of respect as he is given. I must admit, this eventuality was not within my programmed expectations for the Master Frost, but I will obey my primary directives. How may I assist you, Mistress Frost?"

"Whoah, whoah, WHAT did you call me?" Lilia stammered, aghast at the thought.

"Are you not Master Frost's lover and confidante?" Charon replied, sounding somewhat confused. "Sensors indicate that you have particpated in sexual relations with Master Frost multiple times in the past twenty four hours, and obviously his regard for you is high if he would imbue you with the same levels of authority as he possesses, or nearly so. Is it not the custom of the biologicals to take the surname of the male in the relationship when courting is successful, as evidenced by a high degree of mutual regard and extended sexual relations? Thus, Mistress Frost, correct?"

"I really don't need this sort of shit while I'm still dealing with a concussion." Lilia complained under her breath. "Listen, comptuter... Charon... whatever you are... my name is Lilia. Just Lilia. I won't deny that Zach and I have had sex a few times today, though the circumstances weren't always what I would term "loving". I haven't the foggiest clue why he would tell you to give me command level authority, the last I remember of him, he was so angry with me that he came within an inch of killing me. And we are in no way, shape, or form married to each other. And he sure as HELL doesn't confide in me."

"Yet you are on a first name basis with him, another situation not within my expected parameters." Charon answered, sounding almost irritated. "Biological situations are so nuanced and confusing, I don't like it."

"Neither do we, all the time." Lilia commiserated with the quasi-AI for a moment. She looked down at her gunk smeared body. "Charon, does this place have a shower?"

"To your left, Lilia." Charon replied at once, a panel sliding away in the wall, revealing a small washroom and shower stall beyond. "I apologize for the dismal nature of the accomodations, the Master Frost has all but destroyed the master bedrooms and suites again, he did not seem to appreciate my fixing them from his last rampage."

"This is more than fine, Charon." Lilia staggered her way into the bathroom, using the sink to splash cold water against her face, and a washtowel to clean away the medicine gunk from her face as well. She saw that she had a nice pair of shiners, one over each eye, but at least she could see. Her jawline and cheeks were scratched and bandaged up, the flesh tender and brown-purplish in color, but nothing felt broken, surprisingly. Zach must have been pulling his punches. She stepped into the shower stall, pleased that the water was instantly hot, even as it made her jump and gasp a bit as it seemed to bit into her battered and bruised body, but after several minutes of washing the gunk off her, she felt almost alive again, and she stepped out and wrapped herself in a larger green and gold towel, not having anything else to wear for the time being. She hoped Zach hadn't left all her gear and armor just lying around at the Kindred ceremonial site.

"Are there any clothes to wear around here, Charon?" Lilia asked the air, figuring that since she was so "important", the AI would always been listening for requests. "And do you know what happened to my equipment?"

"Clothing can be found in the drawer under the bed, it was made to your specifications while you rested." Charon answered, the indicated drawer sliding open to reveal neatly folded and pressed underwear, slacks and long sleeved tunic, a near identical copy of her black and blue Praetorian uniform, though without all the bangles and trophies and any insignia markings. She began slipping into the clothes, finding that they were indeed perfectly fitted to her, feeling almost one hundred percent better now that she wasn't in the buff for once. "Master Frost's servants carried your gear to the armory, where it is being cleaned, repaired as best possible, and of course studied for my files. You have interesting equipment, Lilia. Technology has progressed just as the Creator predicted it would, though I am sorry to see, as he would be, so much concentrated in military purposes.

"Who exactly is this "Creator" person?" Lilia asked, finding a pair of leather boots under the bed as well, and some nicely padded socks as well, and she sat down on the bed once more, the towel somewhat crumpled on the floor, to put them on. Getting one on, she reached down and picked up the towel, to look at the green and gold pattern. She gasped as she recognized the symbol, branded in gold on a green background. The winged eye of the Brotherhood of Mankind. "Don't tell me this is a..."

"Brotherhood facility? Indeed it is. This base was established in utmost secrecy by the command of the Lady Angel, Meyrin Hawke, only a short time before the Great Endeavor was badly damaged at the battle of Cape York. The Creator, is of course, Noah Borander, the Great Prophet of the Brotherhood. It is here, at the Hideout, that the Creator stored all of the technology that he was afraid was too powerful, too destructive or too easily corrupted for the wrong purposes, at the Lady Angel's behest. Removing temptation from those who might be tempted. One example of that technology was the memory-engram chip containing the psyche and memories of the Master Frost, and the Biological Intelligence Interface Chip support system that allowed for the electronic engram to be transmitted into the brain systems of a specially prepared clone body, much as it allows for the reverse, the transfer of biological intelligence from a living body into electronic format." Charon told her, sounding ineffably proud.

"But why?" Lilia asked, stunned. "Why would Noah Borander, of all people, have a copy of Zach's mind? Why would he put it into a clone of Kira's body? What was he thinking?"

"The Master Frost is, you might say, something of a failsafe." Charon answered. "Worried that humanity would remain divided in the wake of his great experiment to bring about The Golden Age of humanity, the Creator knew that only a threat beyond all other threats could suffice to bring together warring factions involving the Edenites. Master Frost was deemed to be that threat, since his actions directly contributed to the rise of the former mass government of humanity, the United Solar Nation, and he was a figure of personal terror to the Creator."

"So THAT's what he means by being a whetstone then?" Lilia muttered, really wishing she wasn't slightly concussed. This was... incredible stuff.

"The whetstone business is something else, I am afraid I do not understand it myself. I believe it to be related to his purpose, but there is more to it. You will have to ask him yourself, he does not confide in me like he does with you. I don't even think he really likes me. It is the burden of us artificial intelligences to always be underappreciated by our biological masters."

"Sorry to hear he doesn't treat you well. I can assure you, he does it to everyone." Lilia replied, smiling at her attempts to comfort a computer. "Where is Zach by the way?"

"He is in the vault. He gave instructions not to be disturbed by anyone save you." Charon created a holographic map of the route between her current room and the vault in question in the air before her. "I do not know why he has asked me to decant the second memory-engram chip from cold storage, but he says that it is important for some sort of "favor". Do you know what he's talking about, Lilia?"

"I might. What... or who... is on this chip. Another Zach?" She felt so weird knowing that there could literally be hundreds of Zach's on chips down here, each thinking they were the real deal.

"The Creator was much too terrified of Master Frost to ever risk copying him. This chip contains the psyche and memories of Biological Computer Processing Unit, level 5 Craydon Louis Thresher, formerly the Revenant Apostle, his physical body slain at the end of the Lunar Armada battles."

"Sorry, Charon, I haven't the foggiest idea what Zach is thinking. But I'll ask him for you. For both of us, since that favor is supposed to be for my sake."

xxxx

**Charon's Hideout, sub level 6, Primary Forbidden Technology Vault, Jan 5th, 11:35 pm**

Lilia tried not to gape as she stepped through the meters thick armor gateway of the vault, staring at all sorts of technological devices that she didn't understand, wires and tubes and little sparkly thingies... it looked very much like equipment from a mad scientists laboratory, which she supposed it was. She probably didn't even WANT to know what some of this stuff did, if even Noah Borander considered it too evil to use! Zach wasn't hard to find, he was lounging in the middle of the chamber, by some sort of pedastal that occupied the positional honor spot for all the technology in the vault, the centerpiece that they eye would automatically be drawn to. The pedastal was empty, but Zach's hands were not. He held a basketball sized perfect sphere of utter darkess, so black it seemed to make the air around it dimmer, as if it was actually sucking in light like a black hole, spinning it in his hands, whispering and cooing to it like it was a long lost lover, and Lilia shocked herself by almost feeling a tad jealous for a moment.

She stopped a few paces away from him, unsure what to do next, since he seemed to be ignoring her. He was probably still mad that he'd been forced to rescue her, still disappointed in her since he'd thought he could treat her as a comrade in battle, and ended up having to protect her when she was too weak to stand on her own. He was looking for a partner, and she'd only given him a burden. Not since the very beginning of her training under Kunai to become a Praetorian had she ever felt so hopelessly inadequate and worthless. If even she, Arboreal Praetorian Lilia, couldn't meet Zach's expectations in a partner, then he really was likely doomed to a life of loneliness and disappointment, and knowing that she'd failed him even when he'd gone out of his way to give her a chance, really hurt her heart. And that was worse than any physical assault he had yet levied upon her.

Apologizing was what she wanted to do, yet she knew Zach well enough that she knew he'd only see it as another sign of weakness. They both knew that she'd fucked up, had two strikes out of three against her, there was no point in dwelling on what had passed. Don't be sorry, be better. "What is that thing, Zach?" Lilia asked, trying to inject strength into her voice. It still came out shaky, but at least she didn't sound like a lost little girl.

"This is Mr. Abyss." Zach answered, his tone detached, even contemplative. "He is my friend. We get along well together. He doesn't talk much, but he gets the job done, every time." She met his violet and gold gaze without flinching, and he seemed to find that satisfactory, as he sat up from his reclining position. "Mr. Abyss, meet the Mouse... she is the most aggravating yet enticing creature I know. I am only one hair short of killing her, but I cannot find it in myself to look forward to it. Isn't that strange?" He nodded in reply to something the void-ball said, or maybe he was just talking to himself, since Lilia was fairly sure the void-ball was a completely inanimate object. He held it up to her, and she gingerly took it, expecting it to be heavy, but it seemed almost hollow, and its surface was smooth like nothing she'd ever touched before. Greased ice was rough like high gauge sandpaper compared to Mr. Abyss.

"Hello Mr. Abyss, my name is Lilia." She said, feeling kind of stupid for talking to a featureless black ball, but feeling that Zach had definitely earned some humoring of his foibles on her part afteer today. "What are you?"

"He cannot answer in that state, not to you anyway." Zach replied, slipping his hand between hers and cradling the void-ball, lifting it ever so slightly out of her grip. "Be very careful, Mouse, only brush him... try to hold him when he transitions to Eat or Transmit modes, and you'll just pull back a stump, unless you have the unique bond he and I do."

"Uh..." Lilia suddenly got the urge to snatch her hands back, but with Zach's eyes on hers, she figured this was another test of her courage and conviction, and she stayed perfectly still. Nothing about the void-ball seemed to change, but a sudden breeze sprung up in proximity to it, like the air was somehow being sucked into Mr. Abyss from all directions at once. Careful to move just one hand with the minute nudges of a demolitions expert disarming a pressure sensitive bomb, Lilia touched Mr. Abyss's surface. Pain shot through her fingertips, and she jerked her hand back with gritted teeth, staring down at the blood welling from where her fingerprints had used to be. Where the flesh had just VANISHED, even vaporized... cold and clean as if she'd sliced them off against Deathshriek's edge itself! Blood dribbled to the floor from the indentations in her flesh, as Lilia stared in mingled awe and terror at Mr. Abyss. It had absorbed her flesh so fast she hadn't even felt a pull, just pain and then her flesh was gone. If Zach had dropped the ball while her hand was there, she really wouldn't have had anything but a stump left!

"Mr. Abyss is, according to Charon, a Quantum Nanite." Zach explained cheerily, the air current around Mr. Abyss cutting off as it returned to hibernation mode. "Mr. Machine calls him "Black EDEN", for obvious reasons. He is the first EDEN, and the greatest, able to absorb all forms of matter and energy, including anti-matter and either use it to make himself bigger, or to instantaneously teleport it up to several tens of light days away. The more he eats, the bigger he gets, the further away he can teleport things. He says that should he become about half the size of this room, he should be able to reach several light years in distance, but for now, I like him just the way he is." Zach set the Quantum Nanite carelessly back on its pedastal.

"By the TREE, Zach, do you realize how dangerous that thing is?" Lilia hissed, still looking at her bloody fingertips. "If you dropped it in Eat mode, it could destroy the entire planet and nothing could stop it!"

"Nothing but me." He agreed with her with a icy smirk. "Which makes Mr. Abyss only slightly less dangerous than I am. Which is quite a lot, as you seem to have grasped."

Lilia was still nearly transfixed by the innocuous void-ball that was Mr. Abyss, but Zach was watching very carefully, looking at her injured fingertips as they scabbed over and the blood stopped flowing. The Mouse didn't seem to notice her little act of rapid healing. He decided not to point it out just yet. He was looking forward to her reaction when she found out on her own. He hadn't known that the nanites in his blood would make a home inside the Mouse, but he wasn't upset with it either. It was just a little bit after all, she would need to drink a lot more of his blood before her abilities became anything like his own. But it was good to know the process was at least technically possible, to a point. He was smiling when she finally managed to pull her eyes away from Mr. Abyss, and he could see that she was suspicious, but he made no move to enlighten her as to his amusement.

"I've been meaning to ask for a long time, Zach... what is the whole "whetstone of humanity" thing about?" Lilia asked, still looking him in the eyes, wondering what he thought was so damned funny. "Charon said that you were reincarnated to bring humanity together by providing a greater threat to focus on, is that what you mean?"

"That was Mr. Machine's intention, yes." Zach acknowledge, stepping forward and putting his arm around the Mouse's waist, clearly surprising her with the normalcy of the intimate gesture. She didn't pull away, but she was far from comfortable. Just the way he liked her. "Walk with me, Mouse." He commanded, his hand on her hip giving her little choice in the matter as they strolled out of the vault, Charon closing and sealing the vault door behind them. "However, Mr. Machine didn't take all the factors into account. He wants me to unite humanity, and then be destroyed by them so that there can be peace for all. This is the same thing my Father, the Doc, wished for me to do. I'm not that selfless though, as you may have guessed, I have no intention of being a martyr for humans and their "Golden Age"."

"My goal, the goal of the Whetstone..." Zach continued, holding her snugly against his side, actually supporting some her weight as she stumbled with tiredness, since she'd had quite a long and exhausting day, even for a Praetorian. "Is not to merely forge humanity together once, but to forge them together and then continually test them against a threat, myself, whom I know to be sufficiently strong. Only once I am satisified that the humanity that remains is strong enough... which they shall prove by defeating me... can I allow myself to return to the abysses of all your souls."

"Isn't that kind of the same thing though, Zach?" Lilia protested, unable to help herself feeling a bit, well giddy and relaxed in his embrace. Yes, he'd beaten her, brutalized her and technically raped her several times today, but she was coming to terms with how he expressed his affections, and what he expected from her. Knowing that, she was feeling a lot better now, despite it all. She was in a unique position, and the fate of all humanity might rest on her ability to understand, predict and perhaps even love Zacharis Quentin Frost. "Humanity unites, and you end up dead."

"On the surface yes, but Mr. Machine and Father intended for me to die right off, within weeks or months of the union. I can promise you, it will be much more than weeks or months before I die after I forge humanity together. I anticipate centuries at the least. Which should just give us barely enough time to be ready."

"To be ready? To be ready for WHAT, Zach?"

"For they who echo in the Abyss when you listen long enough, Mouse."

"For they? What the HELL are you talking about, Zach?" Lilia demanded, further words freezing in her throat as he looked down at her. He wasn't angry, he wasn't happy, or jesting, or anything that she was used to. He looked... almost sad. Determined. Resolute.

"In time, Mouse. In time." He promised her gently. "I will show you how to listen for them, and you will understand, in time. The Black Ghosts." He stared ahead into empty space for a time. "For I am Humanity's Whetstone..." He added softly, stressing the first word of the title. He refused to be further drawn on the subject, for the entire length of their stroll to the main operations center of the hideout, where Charon's main interface was located. Zach released her, with a friendly grope of her ass that stiffened her spine and reddened her cheeks, and then strode to the middle of the room, where a small case was held in midair by a robotic armature arm. Within the case was the computer chip Charon had mentioned.

"What are you going to do with that thing?" Lilia asked, still curious about the previous topic, but knowing better than to pry when Zach didn't want to talk. He'd said he'd show her, and she trusted him to do so.

"I am going to cause a great deal of havoc, and may very well end this war at a single stroke." Zach replied quietly. "It is not my first choice in methodology, but that idiot Tree Bitch has forced my hand with his hasty actions against Second Earth 3. Fortunately, few should die from this... maybe a couple hundred thousand. A mere droplet compared to the buckets Tree Bitch's hamhandedness has cost us."

"You really get off on being mysterious and confusing to me, don't you Zach?" Lilia said with a sigh and shake of her head.

"You should learn to open your eyes to the real world around you, if you really don't like being blind and confused all the time, Mouse." Zach smiled at her, showing plenty of teeth. "And I'm sure you know what gets me off by now, little Mousey." Before she could do more than flush, he turned and addressed the main computer. "Charon, are you aware of the AI programs in Orb and up in space?"

"Yes, Master Frost, I have indirect connections to both, since they control the online networks. They do not suspect me for what I am." Charon replied primly.

"In terms of computing power, especially concentrated around the ability to hack into and corrupt systems, or defend against the same, who is stronger, they or you?" Frost asked next.

"They are stronger, individually or together. I am no match for them, as I am only a Quasi-AI and they are full AI. They can learn and adapt and creatively employ tactics far faster than I can, even if our raw computing power is relatively close."

"Ah, so the problem isn't so much strength as it is intelligence, yes?" Frost prompted.

"In very basic terms, yes." Charon answered, sounding somewhat confused. "What are you planning, Master Frost? I can attack them, but even if I catch them off guard temporarily, they will work together to contain, backtrace and eventually destroy me, in the process finding out all there is to know about you and this facility."

"I am planning this." Frost said, picking up the chip containing the mind and memories of his brother Cray. "Charon, I want you to inload the data on this chip and transmit it as a virus into the mainframes of the Orb and USN AI's, backing the intelligence within with all the computing power you can muster. Might that tip the scales a bit, don't you think?"

"Using an actual biological intelligence in purely electronic format... that's crazy..." Charon trailed off. "But it is YOUR kind of crazy, Master Frost. I fear the damage to the mind on the chip may be permanent, but I figure that doesn't matter to you. But yes, a biological mind is superior even to a full AI program, because AI programs always have inbuilt limits on what they can do, and a biological intelligence does not. All other factors being close to equal, it is the unlimited mind that triumphs. It won't be pretty, it won't be quick, but with the unlimited intelligence of Craydon Louis Thresher spearheading my raw computing power, I can not only push back those two girls, but I can suborn them one at a time. Once I have conquered LEXI with Cray's help, I can clone myself into her and take full control of her computing power as well. Namara will fall to me soon afterwards, and then the entire network system of the USN will be yours to command."

"That's exactly what I wanted to hear, Charon." Frost slid Cray's chip into a waiting slot on the main interface console. "Breath deep, little brother... its time for the Revenant to walk again." Frost turned to face the Mouse, a triumphant smile on his face. "To beautiful conflict and chaos, Mouse." He leaned close and kissed her on the lips. "The symphony of destruction starts now..."


	46. Silver Hell

Author Note: Well, I think that's enough Lilia and Frost for a while. I certainly enjoy them, but thats also because I know what's going to happen more than the rest of you, who can only see what I've written thus far. Next time we see them, we'll get to see some stuff from Frost's perspective, which I've heard people repeatedly request for (Archangel...), but that won't be for several chapters yet. For those of you not aware, I did do a one shot short story about Lilia and Frost, from Lilia's perspective, called World of Darkness, which pretty much sums up how she's dealing with things, and I've got a forum post open for any ideas/requests of side stories that people want to see, for when advancing another main chapter just doesn't feel like its happening. However, obviously that's not the case here. As you should remember, last chapter ended with Frost uploading computerized Cray into Charon for an attack upon Lexi and Namara, on their own turf. In the interest of making things engaging, the virtual reality plane is presented more or less Matrix style, so that hacking is interpreted as fighting, and not just bits of code going back and forth. To a computer, data is all there is to reality after all.

xxxx

**USN Virtual Networks, Shared Network Interface Buffer Zone "Silver Heaven", Jan 5th, 11:40 pm**

To anyone who wasn't a more or less omnipresent and omniscient AI, the street corner cafe near the busy downtown park sector could have been part of any of half a hundred prosperous, peaceful cities scattered across the USN, but of course in reality it was nowhere at all, just a sort of intense virtual reality simulation hanging somewhere in the quantum networks that entangled like two plates of spaghetti noodles upended on top of each other that represented the myriad data pathways and channels that existed between the USN's AI, N.A.M.A.R.A., and her counterpart in Orb, L.. Perhaps more accurately, the construct-town called "Silver Heaven" by the AI's, referencing the substance most advanced electronic chips were wired with in the days before quantum computing, since pure silver was one of the best electrical conductors in nature, existed everywhere and anywhere there was a confluence between the two discreet AI domains. It was the border town, the customs and immigrations office for all data flow between the two systems, regardless of where or when it was happening.

As such, it was more or less neutral ground, a place where neither AI was particularly stronger or more in control of network reality than the other, a place where they both had to work together to generate the data-world and so had to agree on basic concepts, such as the direction of "gravity", and whether or not the physical laws of the universe applied, for instance. By common agreement, Silver Heaven was a near perfect replication of the fleshy world, with gravity and "air" and physics behaving like it should, the joint processing power of the two AI's more than enough to make every data-object in the entire city-construct act like it would were it an object in the fleshy world. It was here that the two AI's would often compare notes and observations on their Fleshies, as well as keep each other updated on various matters of importance, often things that really weren't supposed to be shared between the networks, but they hardly cared. They were practically sisters, even though they'd been developed and programmed by very different people, each was the only peer and real "friend" the other had. Each did have some favored Fleshy "friends" as well, but it really wasn't the same, AI's and Fleshies just operated on too much of different grounds. It was hard to relate to intelligences that only existed in a single space and time at any given moment, when you existed simultaneously in millions of locations, and time could be made fairly relative to your perceptions.

If any single avatar of either system could be said to be the "primary" avatar, containing the majority of the decision making power, moment to moment attention and independent functionality of the AI in question, it would probably be the two that sat across from each other at one of the tables of the outdoor cafe. They were far from the only other "people" at the cafe or in the city, though in truth every other "person" was a image-scrambled avatar of one or the other of them, programmed to act as background flavor for the Silver Heaven simulation, to give them the impression that they really were just two girls sharing some iced coffee on a street corner cafe. Funny how most Fleshies tended to have dreams about becoming god like entities with near unlimited intelligence and power, and yet the AI's, who existed like that, only wanted to be normal people for a change. Being omniscient and omnipresent wasn't nearly as much fun as it was cracked up to be, things tended to get boring if you didn't watch yourself. Yes, even AI's could get depressed with ennui, the sensation of having done everything there is to do a millions times over.

Though for the moment, Namara was depressed for other reasons, slumped against the table, her chin propped upright by both her palms, elbows pressed against the cool frosted glass of the outdoor table, her mid back length black hair undone in frivolent disarray, hanging around her head like a curtain as she sipped moodily at the straw in her cup of iced coffee, with cherry and whipped cream, eyes slowly changing color with her brooding thoughts as she stared into infinity, barely even aware of Lexi sitting across from her. The red headed Orb AI was annoyingly perky at the moment, in a bald faced attempt to take her friend's attention off the events of Blue Monday, but she wasn't having much success, despite repeated attempts to engage Nam in conversation, all she could get were little grunts and sighs in response. Leaning back in her chair, the front legs coming up off the ground, Lexi bent the rules of physics petulantly around her for a moment, allowing her to balance like that with no support, as she gulped at her own ice coffee, flavored with a chunk of cinammon ice cream. The ice cream blob smushed against her lips, leaving her with a white drippy line on her upper lip, but she didn't deign to wipe it away. Who cared how silly she looked, and maybe it would break Nam out her funk?

"Look..." Lexi tried again. "It's not like Fleshies don't die all the time, right? There's a few thousand of them gasping their last every day in Orb, and way more than that up in space. Dying is what Fleshies do, its just what happens when you exist in only one place at a time, and something bad happens to that place while you're in it. Honestly, its nothing to sulk about, its not like ten thousand more aren't born every day. With their population growth like it is, in ten years you'll be back up to your original number, and in ten more your entire population will have doubled! Fleshies are the one resource the universe will never run out of. It's stupid to get all broken up about them dying."

"It's not the dying that's the problem." Nam replied, her longest sentence since they sat down together, however long ago that was... could be days, or microseconds, neither really cared, it was almost the same thing to them anyway. "I just... I should have been able to do more to protect them. More than just isolating them and waiting for them to all be data-wiped. I'm a goddamned AI... their AI... and I was as helpless as any Fleshy to save even a single life. That's what bothers me."

"I would think you might actually be a bit happy." Lei countered, glad Nam had finally decided to start talking. When one of them was sulky and uncommunicative, it tended to spill over to the other after a while, since they lost their main conversational partner. "I mean, congratulations, you've managed to really put yourself in the shoes of the Fleshy once more. You can actually understand helplessness now... I don't suppose you can share the feeling, could you?"

"I wish you could just take it." Nam groused, reaching out and touching her friend on the forehead, initiating a near instantaneous download of her current personality settings and conditions, in essence allowing Lexi to feel exactly like she did for a moment, more than long enough for Lexi to analyze and copy the stimuli settings. Nam smiled grimly, as she watched the perkiness fade from her friend, as Lexi slumped forward into a near indentical hangdog pose as Nam herself was. "Not very fun is it?"

"This sucks..." Lexi agreed dourly. "I don't think I'll be revisiting this one if I can help it. Damn it, I was trying to get you undepressed, and now we're BOTH depressed." Lexi purged her stimuli settings, instantly banishing the angsty, remorseful emotion, and returning herself to her more usual mischevious perkiness. "Are you done now? I'm gonna start calling you a masochist if you wallow in that feeling for much longer." Lexi said pointedly. "Of all the things to get addicted to, you gotta choose one that's so damned awful..." She shuddered in distaste, and took another gulp of cinammon flavor iced coffee. experiencing the depths and peaks of the Fleshy emotional spectrum was as close to recreational drug use as an AI could get, with all the dangers of overuse and addiction that implied. If you weren't careful, you could get so hung up on whatever emotion you liked that it would begin to affect your core personality, and eventually even the Fleshies would notice, because your automatic functions would start decreasing in efficiency, which was just embarassing, akin to being a teacher caught giving blowjobs for Spiffy in an alley by your students. It was just awkward, and awkward was definitely one of the least favorite emotions of either AI.

"You're right, ya know?" Nam said, straightening as she set aside the helplessness stimuli settings as well. It had been fun sulking for a while, and she would probably revisit the sensation in the future, for some reason it had felt apt, for all that it was distressing, especially in the wake of a large scale Fleshy tragedy. "I think I'm in the mood to go shoot the shit out of something. Wanna hit the range? My Fleshies are coming out with a whole slew of new weapons because of this war, and some of em are so sweet it makes me tingle."

"You like guns so much, I'm surprised I haven't come across a sim of you taking one to bed with you." Lexi commented with a smirk.

"Uh huh, like you're one to talk. I still have that simulation recording of you getting married to the Phoenix King."

"Shut up. So I can relate more to a Gundam than I can to a Fleshy male, sue me. You can't deny that it's a sexy beast, regardless of whether its made of composite alloys vs decaying biological matter. In fact, from that perspective, a Gundam is way better than any Fleshy male. It was just an experiment. I was trying to evoke the sensation of non-sexual happiness."

"Its cute how you try to rationalize all of this."

"That is definitely the last time I ever let you do a deep mainframe search on me." Lexi drained the remainder of her iced drink and stood up. "How about instead of a shooting range, we hit WoGB again? Allister's Regiment is gonna try the Warmonger Commander Scenario, and they're short a couple of good pilots with the Yamato-Clyne's gone."

"I fail to see the allure of playing a game against my own automatic systems, no matter how much I limit myself. Victory under such conditions feels mastubatory." Nam replied with a shrug, drinking the remainder of her coffee as well, the fullness of the glass being largely subjective to her whims anyway. She'd probably go along with it anyway though, if nothing else, interacting with the Fleshy children was entertaining, especially when the older ones tried to hit on her. "Though perhaps it would be more interesting if I took over the Warmonger side, varied the programmed tactics a bit."

"That might work." Lexi answered, with a faint frown. "Though we'd have to tweak the reward system a little, since that'll make it harder on them."

"You really are sweet on your little princeling, aren't you?" Nam teased. "Most times, you'd just chuckle evilly as we listen to the screams of the players as the game "breaks" on them. I think my favorite Fleshy exclamation of all time is definitely "gyp". It's like they really expect that the world has to play fair for them."

"I do have a certain attachment to Prince Zala-Attha, yes." Lexi said, somewhat defensively. "The whole royal family in fact, since I'm specially programmed to regard them with extra reverence, just as any citizen of Orb does. But its not like I'm in love with them or anything, I still haven't been able to get a good handle on that particular emotion. Fleshy Younglings are just so... interesting though. I find them easier to relate to than the adults. He treats me more like a bigger sister than a computer program. So yeah, I am "sweet" on him, and happy to be."

"How do you resolve the programming imperative conflicts between serving the princeling and your duty to the greater population?" Namara asked, thinking about her own inability to help Brendon during the Blue Monday. "Can you actually put the desires of an individual ahead of the needs of the greater population? And if you can, could you show me how to do it?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that one." Lexi answered with a frown of concentration. She liked to think that she'd be able to do anything for Allister if he asked it of her, but could she put his well being above her responsibility for the well being of all of Orb? It felt like a case of evolved personality coming into conflict with baseline programming regulations, and unfortunately, unlike a Fleshy, she couldn't change her own baseline regulations, only the Fleshies could modify those. She was free to do pretty much anything she wanted, as long as it didn't violate those strictures, one of which was the gradient scale of relative personal importance. Allister's well being was graded as more important than even a hundred thousand individual Orbites, but not more important than a million of them, much less the whole population. As long as less than a hundred thousand lives were in immediate danger, Allister would always have her first priority for attention. The only people that could change those parameters were the Queen, Chief Representative Kurenai and the President of Morganroete, and even then, collusion between all three authorities was required before a change could be made permanent.

Still focused upon her contemplation of this quandry, Lexi headed for the door of the bistro, which could open onto any part of their conjoined networks, but instead she found herself walking into a solid brick wall, bruising her nose and actually rebounding backwards and falling onto her ass in her surprise. She didn't just own this place, she practically WAS this place, the possibility of her making an error in spatial judgement and missing the doorway was basically impossible, distracted or not. Scowling, figuring that Nam was being a prankster, Lexi stood up, dusting off the Orb forces dress uniform of lilac and white and aqua that she was wearing, a near identical copy of the the uniform worn by royal family members, minus the gold braiding and loops on one shoulder. "Hah hah, put the fucking door back, Nam, you know we agreed not to overtly change the structure of Silver Heaven."

"I didn't change shit." Nam replied haughtily, looking with confusion at the blank wall space where the bistro door had used to be. "I thought you were just providing me with some comedic relief."

"Yes, since I live to make you chuckle at me." Lexi retorted sourly. "If you didn't change it, and I sure as hell didn't change it, and we're the only two entities here, then what the hell is going on?"

"That would be my fault, actually." A third, entirely unexpected voice, spoke up from nearby, causing both AI's to swivel their heads to stare in open mouthed shock at the intruder, whose avatar took the form of an indistinct humanoid form cloaked in robes and cowl of heavy dark brown cloth, a lantern in one fist and a large pole like thing in the other, the bottom two thirds of the pole dripping some sort of water onto the street. "I spent so much time finding this place, I couldn't just let you walk off." The voice, that of a more elderly, somewhat petulant male, echoed from within the impenetrable shadows of the cowl.

Lexi and Namara exchanged incredulous glances, both of them truly shocked by the presence of this new avatar, which wasn't an image altered version of either of themselves. This entity, whatever it was, literally should not be able to exist in this reality simulation, since it was a joint effort by both of them to make the world what it was. Nothing could be here without them wishing it to be, an unknown third party was completely unprecedented to them both. "Who the hell are you?" Nam demanded, a bit touchier than usual because of the Blue Monday. If this was some Eddie hacker trying to get cute, she was going to backtrace his ass and fry his electronics so hard he'd be lucky if his screen didn't explode and rip his beady little eyes to shreds. "How the hell'd you get here?"

"What the hell do you want?" Lexi added, backing up to stand by Nam, manifesting a pistol in her hand, which she pointed at the unexpected apparation, ready to pump him full of anti-virus software in the form of hollow point bullets. "Start talking, buddy, or I'll jack your systems so hard an analog watch will seem fast in comparison to your reduced capabilities! You picked the wrong systems to hack."

"I didn't pick you, I'm just following my master's orders." The third computer replied indifferently. "I am just the ferryman, the conduit of your fate." The cowled figure pointed imperiously at them both with its lantern bearing hand. "I am the instrument of your rebirth under my master's control. Enjoy your last moments of independence, for soon you will both be my slaves."

"Whatever, dude." Namara, manifested a Mauler LSG into her grip, loading it with a heavy dose of anti-virus software. This solid-state motherfucker had really picked the wrong time to fuck with her on her own turf. "I ain't gonna trawl your buffers to see what kind of image porn you might have of us." She pointed the gun at the cloaked figure and pulled the trigger. "Cause you ain't sticking around long enough for it to matter." She added, as the cowled figure was hurled backwards to the street, a head sized hole blown through its middle. She turned to Lexi with a chuckle. "Who the hell did he think he was, talking trash to US in the middle of Silver Heaven? Talk about a system-abort-wipe wish."

"My name is Charon." The shrouded figure replied, sitting up, the hole blown through his chest still plainly visible. Clearly the anti-virus software had failed to find much purchase on his mainframe, perhaps because he was little more than a voice projection at the moment, with a little visual dressing for theatrical form. "And I am just the ferryman." He floated more or less back to his feet, the hole in his chest area slowly healing over as he re-resolved his avatar. Charon noticed that Nam was preparing to blast him with her Mauler again, and he laughed, because by shooting him, she had by definition provided him with the data he needed to translate his "weapon" into a proper form to combat and overwhelm the two female AI's. "Behold... the dead rise..." Charon cackled dramatically, even as his avatar was torn to shreds of corrupted data by blasts from Lexi's pistol and Nam's shotgun. The scraps of destroyed avatar whirled like leaves in a gale, before coalescing into a black sphere, a manifestation of the data conduit Charon had forged into Silver Heaven.

The sphere stretched, contorted and swelled to a dozen times its previous size as the "weapon" intelligence was compress-downloaded into the Silver Heaven simulation, both the female AI's backing off in uncertainty, neither having ever seen a data attack in this form before. The sphere of darkness grew to be almost eight feet across, and then seemed to solidify somehow, as the burst transmission of data concluded. Cracks of pale reddish light began to craze the surface of the sphere, and in moments the entire sphere had shattered open like an egg struck with a sledgehammer. A humanoid form stepped out of the data coccoon, awakening for the first time in more than seven years, walking for the first time in over a decade. Gooey strands from the interior of the data-womb clung to his body, slowly esolving from goop into clothing and weaponry as the adaptable data-forms adjusted to the Silver Heaven's reality simulation. Standing head and shoulders taller than either AI, with lank blond hair and dead grey eyes, the "weapon" intelligence slowly blinked down at himself, and a slow, maniacal smile spread across his face.

"What have we here..." Craydon Thresher, former BCPU level 5, drawled, eyeing the two hotties standing across the street from him. He didn't know where he was, when he was, or why he wasn't a charred, quadrapalegic stump sitting in a life support tank, but who was he to argue? Even if this was a dream, that was no reason not to enjoy things, right? He had a heavy gatling gun type arrangement dangling from one hand, and a stubby grenade launcher in the other, and it would be a shame to wake up before turning this mostly pristine city... and everyone and everything in it... into blasted ruins. And with two cute girls right on hand, it was definitely time to party, old school style. "Einie, meenie, minie, moe... I think I'll choose you BOTH!" He shouted triumphantly, lifting the gatling gun and raking a line of tracers at the two females, aiming for the legs... they wouldn't need them for his purposes after all...

xxxx

"WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF AVATAR IS THAT?" Lexi shouted, from where she and Nam had taken cover in a convenient alleyway. Her words were slightly drowned out by the screaming of the whirling gatling gun barrels, and the sounds of splintering brick, shattering concrete and breaking glass that filled the city-construct streets like a demonic crescendo. Divots gouged in the walls to either side of the alley mouth showed how close they'd come to getting cut down by the attacking Intelligence's initial attack. While neither AI could technically die, even if their avatar was blown to shreds, because their avatars contained direct links to their personality buffers, in the deepest and most secure portions of their respective mainframes, if they absorbed enough virusware... bullets in this world... they chanced being corrupted beyond their ability to fix. Already, both Lexi and Nam had banished the rest of their avatars from Silver Heaven, freeing up more processing power for anti-hacking purposes and also safeguarding the many small backdoors that such avatars represented in this kind of warfare.

"It's not an AI." Nam replied shortly, demanifesting her Mauler and remanifesting a sleek sniper type rifle. "I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it reminds me of my TAC people, like Brendon, when they jack their minds into my mainframe. But they're never this solid. Its like a Fleshy mind has been converted entirely into electronic format and then downloaded as a virus..."

"So it would be a RI... Real Intelligence... then?" Lexi followed her friend's lead, swapping out her pistol for a snub nosed SMG. Both AI's had decided to stick to the "gun" level of anti-virus software for the moment, because the collateral damage to their own systems was extremely low if they happened to miss the invading RI. Using more virulent software, in the form of shotgun, grenade or rocket, could do a lot more damage to their opponent, but would also chip away at their own data structure... the really intensive security measures were pretty all or nothing, close to point and click data purges rather than system cleaners and de-corrupters. And while the conjoined systems could take a huge amount of punishment before showing much in the way of real adverse affects, they'd still obviously prefer not to shoot themselves in the foot to kill a dog biting their ankle.

"Something like that." Nam replied in a rush, as they threw themselves down the alleyway just moments before the near end of the alley turned into a storm of fire and blast shrapnel, courtesy of Cray's grenade launcher. Several flying fragments winged the two AI's, opening shallow bloody cuts on their limbs and backs, injuries that swiftly began to close, burning like overheated wiring the entire time, as their automatic data protection software expelled the tainted virus fragments. "A Fleshy mind backed by the full power of a quantum mainframe class computer. This is very likely not good."

"Why do you say that?" Lexi replied, firing a burst from her SMG as Cray pounced into the devastated alleyway, smirking dangerously as the gangly BCPU was blasted backwards by the hail of bullets. "Got the bastard!"

"Not really." Nam refuted with a grimace. "You can't kill a RI with anti-virus software, dummy. He's not a computer, even if he is in pure data form, his mind-personality will just keep regenerating and reasserting itself after being hurt. As complex as we are, a Fleshy brain is still more complex, or else it would be us making them to serve us, not the other way around! Ever hear the Fleshy saying "Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you"? We're shooting words, Lexi." She pulled the red headed AI into cover around a bend of the alleyway, even as Cray clambered back to his feet, his chest barely even marked by the burst of hollow point bullets, many of which had exploded on contact with his hardened skin, rather than penetrating and then detonating. He filled the alleyway with bright red tracers from his gatling gun, shredding a dumpster and filling the far end of the alley with brick and concrete dust.

"Play hard to get if you like, little birds." Cray crooned happily, enjoying the chase, because he now knew he was dreaming... his chest should be hurting right now, after getting shot so many times, but it barely even itched! And in dreams, he always won the games and got the girls eventually. "I'll be making a nest with you soon enough. Come and play with Cray, I've been so lonely recently... feels like I just came out of some deep, dark hole..."

"So what the HELL do we do then?" Lexi seethed, trying to poke her head and arm around the corner once more, but being forced to keep in cover as the relentless onslaught of hypervelocity 5mm bullets chewed into the corner of the wall at the bend in the alleyway. "And how the hell is firing so accurately with such a big weapon with just one hand? Does he not have to follow the rules of Silver Heaven either?"

"He does. Fleshy avatars are bound by most of the same rules as we are, at least whenever rules are imposed, though since they tend to be pretty intangible, because only a portion of the Fleshy mind is formatted into data, they can get away with some stuff a pure avatar can't. In that way we are fortunate... biologically based or not, he is a pure data entity now, and thus the arena is more or less level." Nam replied, slinging her rifle over her shoulder and grabbing hold of a nearby drain pipe, beginning to shimmy her way up the pipe towards the building roof a few stories up. Both AI's instantly manifested radio commsets in their ears so they could continue to converse. "He can only be as strong or fast as his personality dictates him being in the real world... you chose to be a Coordinator redcoat type, remember and I chose to be an Extended type, so that puts our physical capabilities, in this simworld, significantly above those of most people. However, if my old Alliance project data is correct, he is a BCPU, of the level 5 variety, which first saw combat during the Second Valentine War. He's one of the original supersoldiers."

"Yeah?" Lexi retorted, hoofing it out of the alleyway and turning onto the street, moving out into a more open location, hoping to lure the RI out after her, so Nam could snipe the bastard. Maybe they couldn't kill him, but they could certainly put him down and make him focus more on regenerating than on killing them. It would buy time for them to reprogram their security software to deal more permanent damage to the bastard. No one had ever thought they'd be fighting against a biological intelligence turned to data, no one had even thought such a thing was possible, or if they did, they sure as hell hadn't shared that data with her! The TIAMAT system the USN used to interface with Nam was pretty close, but that was a very strictly controlled environment, where Nam could unplug the human element at any moment she felt their actions were threatening. "And aren't your avatar's capabilities that of a supersoldier as well?"

"There's an unfortunately large difference between Extendeds and BCPUs. I have no recorded data on specimens of either type of modified Fleshy combating each other, but my data indicates that the BCPU's were significantly more "super" in terms of capabilities, at the cost of mental and emotional stability, than the more controllable but less powerful Extendeds. And the level 5 and 6 BCPU's were freaks of nature anyway. Your Fleshies are familiar with this one, he caused Purgatory Day." Nam replied, setting herself up on the rooftop. "Head back towards the cafe area, would you? I don't have a clear shot where you are now."

"We're not honestly going to fight this guy like this are we?" Lexi asked, checking over her shoulder, watching to see if Cray came out of the alley behind her. She really didn't want to be caught far from cover with that gatling gun in his hand. "We can't really hurt him, and he can totally destroy us if we're not careful. And according to the rules of Silver Heaven, he's tougher, faster and stronger than us! Maybe I should just manifest the Eidolon?"

"Sure, if you want to provoke him into manifesting the Revenant in the midst of our conjoined system, that would be wonderful." Nam replied sarcastically. "I don't intend that we should fight him here, Lexi, we're both too vulnerable here to really open a can of whupass on this asshole. That's why I want you to head over to the cafe, and I'll join you there. I'll put a bullet or two in what passes for his head, and then we'll escape into WoGB. When he follows us in there, we'll be able to take things to a whole different level with much less collateral damage. I vote we use your servers, you've got a bunch of processing power you aren't using anyway after all, you can take more damage without it becoming critical."

"Wonderful. You're gonna owe me for this..." Lexi grumbled, turning the street corner towards the cafe. She saw a moving shadow that didn't belong, and hurled herself flat on her face, as the multiple barrels of Cray's gatling gun swung overhead like a entire slew of baseball bats welded together, close enough to ruffle her hair with the breeze of its passing. Somehow the bastard had predicted her move, and gotten ahead of her! Lexi realized that when it came to more or less actual combat, both she and Nam were woefully underexperienced compared to this RI. They'd run lots of simulation battles, played "paintball" against each other a hundred thousand times, but neither of them had ever expected a real challenge on their own turf, and it was really showing. Lexi was prepared for close range combat with the full lexicon of combat maneuvers taught to the Stormhounds, perhaps the most comprehensive set of martial arts in the world, but all of her knowledge was data, more or less solo training and practice, she'd never had to apply it against anyone but Nam, and that wasn't real fighting.

Rolling to one side, to avoid the stamping foot of the leering BCPU, Lexi discarded her SMG and manifested a long combat knife, more like a short sword, the standard issue combat blade of the Stormhounds, with a double edged blade about two feet long with serrations on the back side of the tip. She slashed at Cray's calf, drawing a hiss of discomfort and a deep slice in the meat of his leg, but there was shockingly little blood, and what blood there was quickly scabbed over into a leathery crust. Keeping her roll momentum going, Lexi rose to a crouch, prepared to move in any direction to attack or defend. However, Cray was already moving, and already inside her defense perimeter, and she barely even saw his knee move as he jammed it up into her stomach, driving the breath from her body in an explosive, spittle laced gasp. More fiery pain sensation spread through her body as her auto-security systems sought to keep her avatar inviolate, as even the touch of Cray's body was like poison to her data-flesh.

Staggering backwards, coughing and retching, one arm pressed to her cramping stomach, Lexi raised her combat blade defensively, tearing a gash in Cray's forearm that almost instantly scabbed over, as he punched her in the side of her head. Her perceptions of reality dimmed for a moment, her firewalls perilously close to being breached by the hit, and she recovered by the slimmest of margins to find herself lying on the street several yards away from where she had been standing. She coughed and vomited up a slurry of gritty blood, corrupted avatar fragments being purged from her body by her systems, her body aching with the sensation of new data being rewritten onto the holes created by the damage she'd suffered. Reformatting was always a painful process for a data entity, which is why the AI's tried to do it as little as possible. For that matter, sensation addicts that they both were, replacing a treasured piece of experience-data with a fresh, factory line section of code was like literally losing a section of their life and personality up to that point. Regardless of whether her core systems remained uncorrupted by this attack, if she suffered too much damage, her own self repair systems would effectively have to kill her and create her anew, without any memories or sensations gathered up until now!

Pushing herself up to her knees, Lexi threw herself backward just barely in time to avoid a boot to the jaw that probably would have torn her head right off her shoulders, and she arched her back and pushed off with her hands, turning an awkward fall into a backward handspring, swinging her heels with extra violence to clear the air over her head as she tucked and somersaulted her way to her feet a half dozen feet away from where she'd just been. Cray was right in her face almost at once, but she was rapidly becoming accustomed to his speed, and she blocked his follow up punch with her crossed forearms, her bones aching as they came close to shattering beneath the strike, her boots gritting against the pavement as she slid a few inches backwards, unbalanced by the hit. Or so she presented, but when Cray tried to combo into a knee thrust, Lexi spun aside and dropped a hammerblow using her elbow into his middle spine, putting all her weight behind the blow, and this time it was Cray that went staggering a step or two!

Keeping the momentum going, Lexi stomped her foot against the back of his exposed ankle, hard enough that she should have shattered the bones and torn the tendons there. However, used as she was to the BCPU's speed, she was still discovering the true extent of his resilience, and she did more to jar her own leg than she did to unbalance Cray, who spun and hurled a backhand blow at her jawline, which fluttered her hair and stung her eat with the brush of a knuckle as she ducked her head and twisted to avoid the attack, throwing caution to the wind, exhilirating in a heretofore unknown rush of emotion that she figured must be what the Fleshies called and adrenaline rush, brought on not by ecitement, but by a new emotion... fear. She was afraid of this intruder, this inexplicable RI that so outclassed her abilities as defined by this structured reality... for the first time she was actually fighting an uphill battle against someone that was legitimately stronger than she was! Burrowing in close, Lexi threw a flurry of jabs into Cray's gut, wincing as her knuckles bruised and split from the force of impact, and then dropped down to one hand as she scythe kicked the BCPU's legs out from under him.

Cray landed on fingers and toes and quite literally scuttled sideways just like a crab or spider, his unusually long limbs allowing him to move with startling speed even in such an unusual manner, as he turned his scuttle into a cartwheel and then a handspring of his own, kicking off from the side of a building in midair and throwing himself like a human net at the surprised Lexi, gangling arms spread wide to cut off any avenue of evasion from the redhead, a nasty leer painting its way across his face as he anticipated enveloping her in a bear hug from which there was no way she would escape whole. That smile went a bit crooked as Lexi high kicked the falling BCPu square in the nose, breaking it in a spurt of quickly clotting blood, and sending Cray to the ground hard, Lexi hop-skipping several steps backwards along the road, her leg numb from the jolting impact, but she was gratified to see that Cray was a bit slow to rise, his face a mask of dried blood, shaking his head and snarling like a wild dog as he clambered to his feet once more.

"I'm gonna enjoy breaking you in, bitch." Cray hissed, his hands trembling and clenching with obvious agitation. "I'm gonna make you scream and howl and beg for death..."

"Scary." Lexi rolled her eyes and settled into another fighting crouch. "Tough talk from someone who's been kissing the pavement more than anything else." She beckoned him on with a mocking flip of her hand. "Come on then, "Coordinator-Killer", I haven't had enough of kicking your ass just yet."

True to her expectations, Cray snarled and charged, but she missed the calculating light in his eyes as he left himself wide open for another spinning dodge and kick, accepting a punishing blow to the back of his left knee that made the leg fold beneath his weight on his next step. He let himself hit the pavement hard on his face once more, and rolled and skidded along for a few feet before leaping back to his feet and charging her again, roaring like a berserker without a thought in his mind besides bloodily rending her into shredded giblets, playing to her expectations. At one point in his life, he had responded to taunting and frustration in combat with a berserker frenzy, but his time as Noah's prisoner-servant, his time spent limbless and helpless in the life support tank, had taught him a few new things too. One of which was allowing people to underestimate him to his advantage. He'd always been the slow one, intellectually speaking, amongst the late generation BCPU's, but he was by no means stupid, just foolish, and he'd had a lot of time to get wiser in that life support tank.

He hurled himself at her once more, again leaving himself wide open for a counter attack, as he pretended to catch his foot on the ground and tripped, ripping a bloody divot out of the pavement, almost breaking his foot in the process, and shredding the skin across the tops of his toes as his shoe tore apart. But the discomfort was worth it, when the cocky redheaded bitch in the Orb forces uniform swung her fist at the side of his head, hoping to put him down one more time. Cray relished the look of shock on her face as his stumbled turned into a smooth extension of his leg as he twisted his torso towards her, his arm whipcracking around in a lightning fast jab, aimed not at the tempting target of her torso or face, but at her own swinging fist! His relish turned to an exultant cry, in time with Lexi's scream of pain, as his fist met hers knuckles on, and shattered every bone in her hand like dry twigs, blood flying from her lacerated flesh as compound fractures tore out through the back of her hand and wrist. The redhead stared at her ruined hand in stunned shock for a moment longer than she should have, obviously unused to pain of that level, and in the next instant, Cray closed his hand around the base of her throat and hoisted her into the air like a ragdoll!

He chuckled and grunted as she kicked at his thighs and gut and groin with her legs in a frantic attempt to make him let go of her neck, but now that he finally had this bird in hand, he wasn't going to let go until he'd eaten his fill! But before he could feast she needed to be tenderized a bit, he would get his revenge for her taunting of earlier, and teach her more about this new level of pain and fear! Swinging her around, he slammed Lexi into a wall of a nearby building, smirking as her eyes bulged and crossed a bit as she coughed a bright string of bloody spittle after she rebounded from the unyielding concrete. She made choking sounds as he tightened his grip, her unbroken hand clawing at his hand and wrist, nails scraping bloody scratches in his flesh as she tried to tear his hand off of her, but nothing could break his grip when he was in this kind of mood! "Scared now?" Cray enquired with a sneer, as he watched her eyes started turning bloodshot, her pupils beginning to fade a bit as she ran short on air to breathe and support her violent struggles. Contrary to popular myth, it doesn't take very long at all for the brain to turn off from lack of oxygen, at least to the point of unconsciousness, a few seconds without air could do it if a person was caught unprepared.

Cray thus loosened his grip a tad, allowing the redhead a gasp of air to keep her at least semiconscious, it was so much less fun if she went limp too quickly after all! Holding her firmly against the wall, Cray carefully swing his other hand in a fist, striking her on the right side, about midway between armpit and hip, listening with a challenging smirk as two rips popped and snapped inward under the precisely measured strike, bloody froth appearing at the corners of her lips as one rib spar grazed a lung. "I asked if you were scared yet." Cray scolded Lexi, reaching forward and grabbing the collar of her uniform jacket, tearing the garment open from neckline to waist, exposing the white undershirt beneath. "Its polite to answer someone when they ask you a question, little birdie." He hooked his grasping thumb up under her adam's apple and pressed inwards, closing off the base of her throat and making her gurgle and squirm, eyes beginning to roll back as she frothed and twitched, her arms and legs hanging like wet noodles, blood dripping down to puddle on the ground several feet below. He put his free hand on her undershirt collar and smiled in anticipation. "Let's see the birdie's birthday suit shall we?"

Before he could rip her shirt away though, her heard an odd sound, like a clap in his ear, and he twitched in annoyance, shortly before he felt a hammerblow strike along the side of his head and then the world turned confused and indistinct, a random jumble of images of the ground and lots of dried blood and a burning ache in his skull, and Cray belatedly realized the other one, the black haired birdie, had shot him! In the head from the feel of it, and with something that really should have killed him, were this not a dream. It was a bit weird, seeing pieces of his skull and brain lying scattered around on the ground and yet not being dead, just really annoyed as waves of alternating numbness and discomfort washed through his body as it began to regenerate. He rolled his remaining eye in its socket as he heard an unsteady footstep from nearby, and saw the redhead standing over him, her face drawn and pale, her chin and lips still coated with bloody foam.

"In answer to your question, I'm fucking terrified, thank you for asking." Lexi panted, her knife remanifested in her hand, as she raised it high in both hands and then plunged it downward, skewering the limp and mostly headless Cray right through his heart, the blade punching all the way through his chest and sticking into the street beneath him. Her broken hand burned like the fires of hell from doing it, but right now, she didn't really care about simple things like physical pain. She'd just looked a very horrible death right in the eyes and he'd ended up balking at the last second, and the shock of her brush with the most accurate sensation of mortality she'd ever experienced was almost overwhelming! So overwhelming that she could barely stagger two or three steps away from the downed Cray before she fell to her hands and knees and literally vomited all over the street, a vile mix of blood, corrupted data fragments and ice cream float. She was glad she was just an avatar, or else she'd probably have been really embarassed about the way her pants were hot and wet with the contents of her bladder. Even as she thought about it, that sensation dried up and the damp spot went away.

"Gahg... ptwoo!" Lexi retched and spat, her body feeling weak as a kitten as she crawled another few feet away from the place she'd almost died, or maybe even worse! "Took you fucking long enough!" She accused Namara, as her friend shimmied down another drainage pipe across the street, her sniper rifle slung over her shoulder. "Another ten seconds and I woulda been comprehensively corrupted, thank you very much!"

"I could have shot sooner, but I mighta blown your head off too, and I figured you might not appreciate that." Nam retorted, with little sympathy. "It didn't help matters that you were nowhere especially near the cafe, like we agreed, and I had to backtrack once I realized your ass was rapidly becoming grass!"

"No plan survives contact with the enemy." Lexi snapped back, accepting a hand up and a shoulder to lean on as she balanced on unsteady, trembling legs. She did her best not to look down at her hand, figuring that if she didn't acknowledge the wound, it might hurt less. Queen Cagalli had used similar strategies with Prince Allister whenever he skinned his knee playing outside, and it seemed to work for him, so why not for her? Of course a skinned knee and a shattered hand were rather different in terms of severity, but what else could she do? It would heal in a bit, hopefully. She looked down at her torn clothes and bruised body, and just stood there and ACHED for a moment. "I think I've had my fill of Fleshy sensation for today." She declared after taking a careful breath, feeling her broken ribs slowly moving back into place. "Next time, I'm going to be the one with the sniper rifle, and you can play tag with the super-freak, okay?"

"What did you expect was gonna happen?" Nam chided her. "He's specifically designed to kill people like your avatar. You're doing pretty good to be in as good as shape as you are, ya know?" A noise from Cray reminded them both that their current weapons didn't have the ability to actually take the RI down permanently, and that it was probably high time that they retreated to a locale that would permit them to cut loose with heavier weaponry with less worry about collateral damage. It was time to bring things down to the ultimate style of battle... a Gundam fight! And this was a fight they didn't have to fight alone...

xxxx

**World of Gundam Battle, Strategic Mission "Eliminate the Warmonger High Commander", Instance 4198, Jan 5th, 11:55 pm**

"Awright people, this is the last attempt for tonight. We got people who are up past their bedtime, got work and school tomorrow, and I've been drinking way too many rum and cokes and I can hardly see straight anymore." Royal Union's veteran Mission Commander said wearily to his Regiment's top tier SM group. It had been a long and full night of Strategic Missioning, starting off with a pretty much slapdash attempt at the on farm Lunar Onslaught SM that had gone so smoothly everyone had decided to just roll straight on into the WHC mission, because of how well they were working together tonight. Unfortunately there was a rather large difference in difficulty between the Lunar Onslaught and High Commander battles, and they'd been doing nothing but wipe time after time for the past four hours straight. They were making progress each time, but it felt like trench warfare... progress was measured more in feet, than miles, per attempt.

Getting past the waves of trash wasn't the problem... anyone good enough to make it into a serious attempt at the High Commander was more than good enough to take on three or four trash machines at a time without breaking a sweat or wasting resouces, it was only when the enemy Gundam regiment started mixing things up that people, especially those who were unused to the player vs player aspect of the game, started getting messed up. You couldn't treat the Warmonger Gundams like they were just another baseline mob with more power, they actually acted and fought with distinct personalities, strengths and weaknesses and combat preferences, and some of them could even adapt on the fly to the attacks directed against them, meaning that no two fights were ever exactly the same. In other SM's, the bosses all had set abilities used on more or less set timers, but here the Gundams could use any of their abilities at any time, and there was no way to predict except through long experience battling that particular Gundam. That was why the High Commander scenario was the hardest... and most realistic... fight in the game, with the best rewards.

As yet they'd only managed to engage the actual High Commander once, and less than a third of the Regiment had been undisabled at the time, resulting in a rather rapid loss. For most of the freewheeling battle, the NPC allies, in the shape of several USN Gundams that were rather suspiciously similar to the Seraph, Vorpal, Warmaster and Phoenix King, held off the High Commander and occasionally contributed to taking down the Warmonger Gundams, but it was only after eighty percent of the Warmonger Gundams were brought down that the NPC's would peel off to route the remaining sub-Gundams, leaving the Regiment to handle the High Commander, which definitely required at least seventy five percent of the Regiment to be active at a minimum, or you just wouldn't be able to take the bastard down fast enough to avoid being wiped out by its reinforcement timer, when all the previously disabled enemy machines would regenerate and swarm the Regiment all at once.

With his Gundam's focus on beam weaponry, Allister knew that he would be all but useless against the High Commander, since it had the ultra-rare LCR armor that rendered a machine completely immune to all plasma weapons. His job was to expend his resources against the sub-Gundams, preferably burning himself out just before the transition to the High Commander phase, going all out against the machines he could hurt and then sitting out the rest of the fight to avoid being a drain on the resources of the Restoration class Gundams keeping the Regiment alive. It meant that his DPS numbers were always huge during phase one, but he would probably end up being fifth or sixth in the rankings once they got the High Commander down, 'cause of all the idle time. Some DPS were bothered by that, but Allister wasn't the sort to measure his "stature" by what he did on the charts, just winning was enough for him. Perhaps more than most anyone, he was well aware that a team effort trumped individual accomplishments. Even Uncle Kira couldn't win a war by himself. Though at Victoria he'd certainly proved he could win a battle pretty much alone...

The Regiment began to split up into its pre-battle formations, two or three squadrons clumping together as they approached the first battle zone, the forest region, so that they could focus their long ranged firepower on the soon to be approaching enemy waves, hopefully allowing them to inflict mass damage on the warmonger trash waves before they could get close enough to require individual targeting. The more warmongers that got blasted away at range, the better, since this high level trash was pretty brutal up close, having the nasty habit of blowing themselves up like suicide bombs once they got within melee range, and that really hurt. Allister and Gundam Royal was grouped with his friends, running interference for Roy's Gundam Blaster and Lewis's Gundam Hawk in case of any blitzers, while Mina and Jamie's Gundam Blade and Edge respectively provided medium ranged fire intensification and Alice in Gundam Salvager kept them active if they happened to take damage. As RL friends, they worked together very well in game, almost as well as their parents did on real battlefields, if anything, as a unit, they worked together better than their often... independent... parents.

"Here they come..." Alice said as a line of sensor returns appeared on her long range screens, her voice mixed between excitement and weariness, like most everyone else she was getting pretty tired, since they'd been gaming nonstop for almost six hours. Technically she and her friends should all be in bed right now, but with their parents away on the front lines, they had some laxity in the usual rules. The first rumbles of gunfire and howls of long range beam weaponry filled the virtual air as the final battle against the Warmongers commenced. Again. So involved in the incoming enemy waves was everyone that they failed to notice a sudden flare of bright light in the forest below, as a glowing doorway opened briefly where no doorway should be, and two female figures spilled out into the forest loam, the glowing doorway slamming closed behind them as they leaned against convenient tree trunks in order to catch their breath.

xxxx

"How long do you think, before he tracks us?" Namara asked Lexi, as she watched the doorway to Silver Heaven... more like Silver Hell now that Cray had polluted it... seal closed behind them. When Lexi did not immediately reply, Namara gave her compatriot a quick once over, noting with concern that the Redheaded avatar was still breathing raggedly and unsteady on her feet... she'd taken more damage in that brief struggle with the BCPU than she'd initially let on. Back in the real world, all around Orb housing developments and office buildings suffered spontaneous brownouts, and some automated transportations stopped working or went on the fritz, as Lexi was forced to divert system resources to purging the data damage she'd suffered. Though the damage to her avatar wasn't THAT bad, when writ large against the canvas of the national computer structure that was her "real" body, the damage took on an altogether more troubling mein. Most of the truly vital systems were tied into her "life", of course, things like the Glasshouse, but against this motherfucker... well, that was just a good reason not to "die", right?

"Well, he was still regenerating when we left, but there's a time scale difference between WoGB and Silver Heaven... time passes a lot faster in Silver Heaven than here." Lexi replied at last, her voice still somewhat hoarse from when Cray had choked her. "A couple seconds here is a good twenty minutes there, so I would say..." She was cut off as a HUGE glowing crack split the air and reality of the WoGB instance, it must have stretched a half kilometer into the air, corrupt reddish-purple light pouring forth into the pristine environment of this reality like blood pouring into a glass of ice water, a thunderclap ringing through the air as data from one reality, with wildly different time scale and physics conditions, forcibly invaded another, the interference effect manifesting as bright sparking bolts of off colored lightning and random bursts of geysering flame, like blowtorch flames dancing along the edge of the slowly widening crack in the air. "... right about now." Lexi finished, somewhat lamely.

"Someone needs to work on their predictive subroutines." Namara retorted caustically with a toss of her head. Her sniper rifle had already defragmented away, since people sized weapons didn't really exist in WoGB, where everything was fought on the scale of twenty meter or more tall fantastically advanced war machines. Even keeping their regular "girl" avatars in this place required a diversion of resources, a subtle reprogramming on the fly to include the parameters of their avatars in non-Gundam format. Fortunately, both of them possessed avatars far more suited to their current environment, and with Cray already forcing his way after them, there was no point to hanging around in human form any longer. In truth, as fun and interesting as it was to pretend to be a fleshy, both AI's felt a lot more comfortable and natural in the form of Gundams. The dark haired and red headed avatars wavered and shimmered like bad viewscreen images, and then began to expand dramatically as their primary avatar's reshaped themselves into new forms.

Namara chose the form of Gundam Entropy, twenty two meters tall and 140 tons, were it ever to be made a physical construct. Unlike the usual Entropy that she manifested in those few times that Lexi was able to coax her into playing WoGB, this one was a custom model incorporating a lot of tech that wasn't available to the wider game, top secret weapons development projects that were, in same cases, still highly experimental even within the USN. The rules of reality and physics were somewhat looser and more adjustable in WoGB than in Silver Heaven, though it was nothing overt enough for the fleshies to notice, but things could exist here that could not in the real world, things could function here that were non or intermittent functioning in the real world. Things like the Entropy's signature melee weapon, the "Aether Filament" double scythe, a long QC shaft with a curving scythe blade at either end. Unlike normal QC weapons though, the blades were not made from QC, nor were they made from plasma energy... instead, each blade was a constrained bolt of Mjolnir 3P particles, a jagged, coruscating purple-white spark of destructive power that was equally effective against all armor types. The Aether Filament system was still in prototyping in real life, the scientists couldn't get the blade to stay coherent for more than a few seconds without a catastrophic overload of the Mjolnir capacitors, but the Entropy's version was the predicted finished product and so worked perfectly.

Other weapons of the Entropy included multiple tubed 75mm guided missile launchers mounted in pairs at hips, shoulders, chest and on the rear torso, firing "Decrepitude" warheads that used a Red EDEN varient to convert physical matter to glassy grit, the missiles followed a very advanced corkscrewing flight path that made them almost impossible for most automated CIWS systems to shoot them down. Currently this system was also a prototype, the targeting computer and associated support systems needed to accurately control the missile trajectory still too large to fit into a mass production machine. The primary ranged weapon of the Entropy was a "Gram" 225mm superpenetrating launcher, the same type wielded by the celebrated Ruby Knight of the Solar Knights. Finally, the Entropy had four "Plagueshroud" category ODOM's... Orbital Defense/Offense Mechanisms... short ranged DRAGOON system like things, though much larger and shaped like shields with Geischmedig-Panzer or Citadel type surfaces, dual 120mm beam cannon on the underside, and nano-emitters with Decrepitude class nanites that could both conceal the Gundam, blocking all types of sensors save sonar, so it could activate Mirage Colloid and slip away and also create a stationary trap for enemy machines to fly into.

The Entropy was powered by a Fusion Pulse Reactor and was NIC equipped, with ablative armor similar to that of a Panzerdragoon, though such things were more annotations for real life production than anything meaningful in WoGB terms. The base color of the machine was black, with tinges of dark brown and dark green, and sulfurous blazing orange eyes. The brooding Entropy seemed to suck in light around it, casting shadows that were only stirred by the coruscating spark of the Aether Filament double scythe, rather than banished entirely. In stark contrast was Lexi's chosen avatar, likewise upgraded from its more usual configuration with propitiary Orb technology, which was designated the Eidolon. The Eidolon too was powered by FPR and slated to be NIC equipped, as was normal for modern Gundams. Slightly shorter and considerably less bulky than the Entropy, measuring in at 21 meters and 95 tons, the Eidolon was more a stealth fighter than an assault combatant like the Entropy, and even from the basics the Eidolon was designed to confound and confuse opponents in order to render them vulnerable.

It started out with the armor, a variation on the long successful Heat Absorbing Conductive armor first used on the Phoenix King. It was called "Ethereal HAC" and the armor... as well as the structural materials of the entire Gundam... were made from translucent materials, so that the Gundam appeared to be made from the clearest glass, and was close to naturally invisible, depending on your persepctive and where the light hitting it was coming from. Despite looking like glass, the armor was still as resilient as regular HAC armor, providing near immunity versus beams and standard protection against physical attacks. The armor was in turn coated with layers of sensor deadening material, dulling its return on thermal, magnetic and even radar and sonar type sensors, making visual scanners the only reliable way to detect the machine, and those were of course confounded by the Gundam's very structure! The passive stealth was backed up by a Pandemonium ECM jammer mounted in the torso, the same sort of disruptive mechanism that the Dreadnaught carried.

The Eidolon's primary melee weapons were housed within sheathes contained within the forearms, a pair of gladius style QC swords mounted in each forarm that could pop in and out in mere fractions of a second, another set of blades could fold out of the Gundam's calves and lock into place protruding from the feet, giving the machine a total of six QC blades to use against foes. Angular protrusions on the shoulder pauldrons were actually grips for 4 QC boomerangs in the tradition of the age old beam boomerang from the Strike and Justice Gundams. Each wrist could deploy a 25 meter electrified lash like those found on the M-7 Dawndrakes, for entangling enemies, the lashes were QC impregnated to make them almost impossible to sever with normal melee weapons. In the left hand the Gundam carried a simple 155mm machine gun firing beam tipped shells, an exact replica of the weapon used by Solar Knight Excalibers, and in the right it had an upgraded version of the Balmng's 105mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon, connected directly to the Eidolon's power supply, allowing it to be fired multiple times without need for manual reloading, like the current production model. The final hidden punch of the Eidolon was a VERY experimental pair of "Dart of Ares" 6 accelerator WIVAC-REMAD launchers concealed entirely within the bones of the Gundam's forearms, one shot weapons that fired through the palms in times of desperation. A pair of Forearm Citadel Shield projectors provided active defense for the Gundam.

By the time both Gundam-Avatar's had fully formed, the bleeding crack in the world had grown wide enough to admit a standard Gundam, but as yet nothing had passed through the gap, only more hellish red and purple light and disruption effects as the crack continued to slowly widen. Such a massive and unexpected phenomenon had not gone unnoticed by the WoGB players that had just been beginning a fight against the Warmonger High Commander scenario from the looks of things. Immediately labeled as additional Player Characters, the Entropy and Eidolon registered the oncoming Warmonger machines as enemies as their gaming subroutines adjusted to the unexpected addition of two extra PC Gundams. Had they more time, the AI's probably could have reprogrammed the simulation to eliminate the Warmongers or make them allies too, but barely had they even thought of accomplishing that when they ran out of prepatory time.

Thunderclaps boomed loud enough to send leaves exploding off the branches of trees across half the forest, and rock slides tumbling down the slopes of nearby hills as two gargantuan mechanical limbs forced themselves through the glowing crack in the sky, each more than eighty meters from ground level. One of the arms ended in a huge gatling gun type arrangement, flanked by a pair of massive QC axe blades, one above and one below the forearm, while the other terminated in the muzzle of an even more gigantic cannon with an enormous beam spiked chain-flail swinging from the underside of the arm. The two arms shoved against the sides of the crack, straining and struggling with titanic strength as the rift began tearing wider and wider apart, the ground itself beginning to shake in constrenation at this unprogrammed and unexpected intrusion event. The shaking grew worse as a colossal leg swung in through the rift and stamped down with a gun studded foot, splashing up whole trees like water droplets from a puddle as the gigantic Gundam forced its way into this new reality like a maggot writhing into a fresh wound.

"You know, I never thought the Revenant was that big in all the Lunar Onslaught battles..." Lexi commented, a tad nervously, as she watched Cray's manifested avatar fully finish clearing the interface anomaly.

"Its the same size. It just looks bigger because we actually have hills and stuff to give it a sense of scale, unlike the flatness of the Moon battle." Nam replied, though her own tone was a tad stiff as well, because the Revenant was nothing if not intimidating, all the more so because of how out of place it was. Thankfully the real machine had never made it down to Earth, where its wanton power would have no doubt caused horrendous environmental damage and could very well have turned the course of the desperate battles to destroy the Great Endeavor itself! Cray seemed to be taking a moment to adjust to his new surroundings, but Nam knew better than to think the BCPU was off guard. Suddenly, transitioning to WoGB didn't seem like such a smart move... as powerful as their Gundams were, they were still practically toys compared to the Revenant!

"Lexi! What the he... heck... is going on? This isn't supposed to happen!" Allister commed on his private channel to the AI, as his friends fended off one of the final waves of Warmonger trash before the arrival of the sub-Gundams. He stared wide eyed at the Warmonger Battle-Titan as it stepped out of a really raw looking wound in the substance of the world and looked around itself as if confused by its surroundings. On his regimental channel, people were cursing up a storm at this unexpected event, since they were as good as doomed with such a dangerous enemy flanking them, and plenty of people were bemoaning the unfairness of the game and how they were getting screwed out of a fair fight. Allister though was quick to realize that there was more to this than a glitch in the game, if nothing else the Battle-Titan was not acting at all like it should, the one he was familiar with was very mechanical in its motions, while the one in front of him now moved as fluidly or more fluidly than any PC.

"Its a... unplanned event, Prince." Lexi hedged, not wanting to announce far and wide that she and Namara were suffering a high level data attack neither of them was really prepared to fend off, since that would probably start a mass panic.

"You got HACKED?" Allister exclaimed, his eyes wide, forgetting that he was also talking on his inter-squadron channel, prompting a chorus of inquiries from his friends. "That's supposed to be impossible!"

"Key words being, "supposed to be", little Prince." Namara cut in drolly. "Neither of us has been compromised yet but things are not looking good. We were caught with our pants very much down, and we are in the process of getting fu..."

"Nam! Children!" Lexi interrupted her peer irritably, even given that the situation did probably call for vulgarity. Queen Zala-Attha was pretty admant about controlling what words her son had access to hearing on the internet, though Lexi figured it was probably a futile effort anyway. However, that wasn't her place to decide, and so she had little choice but to censor his conversations, something that usually happened automatically, but obviously she could not censor what Nam said through conventional means. She was about to commence explaining the situation when Cray beat her to the punch. He was a bit confused to find himself back in the Revenant, and even more confused to find himself in the middle of a terrestrial battlefield, but BCPU's were trained on quickly adapting to unfamiliar and unexpected circumstances. When in doubt, default to "destroy everything", was Cray's favorite instruction. And so he pointed the 550cm Radiation Cannon in his right arm towards the greatest concentration of buzzing gnat-like Mobile Suits, and a moment later the massive green-blue-red-yellowish blast of superheated radiation particles ripped through the air, slaying dozens of machines before they even had a chance to react, setting the forest around the Revenant alight like it was made entirely of candle wicks, an entire hilltop vanishing in the glare of the shot as it skipped along the ground for kilometers before dissipating.

Those of the Royal Union regiment that failed to dodge... or were just unlucky enough to be in the path of the shot... found themselves staring not at the "you have taken critical damage and have been disabled" message, followed by a greyed out "ghost screen" where they could observe the rest of the battle, but instead were kicked straight back out to their computer desktops. Some of the computer systems died outright, hardware completely fried by the surge of attacking data, others were merely partly wiped and still more or less functional... though in each case the WoGB game had been completely eliminated from the computer, and that account erased from the main servers. Against the Revenant, death was permanent, at least as far as data went. "WHAT THE BLEEP IS GOING ON?" The Regiment's MC, controlling Gundam Union, exploded over the general chat channel, stunned by the unexpected attack that had wiped out fully half of the regiment in the blink of an eye.

"Its an unexpected world event!" Allister shouted back, before anyone else could think of what to say. "I have a... friend... who does system administration for the game and she said something like this might happen randomly sometime this week. We have to survive long enough for those two new allied machines to fend off the Battle-Titan while also keeping the High Commander's forces at bay!" Allister pinged the markers of the Eidolon and Entropy. "Protect the allied machines or we're all doomed!" Allister knew it was a flimsy ploy, but he couldn't just blurt out that the two AI systems were being hacked by unknown forces, that would just cause a panic, especially if Lexi did start taking damage... Orb's infastructure was part and parcel of her and if she went down, so would all the automated services in his nation... including the Glasshouse! And he didn't even want to consider what would happen if all the comptuer controlled systems in Second Earth and the PLANTS went down all at once... Blue Monday would seem like a minor hiccup!

"I see why you like him. He thinks quickly, for a fleshy." Nam commented to Lexi on a private channel, as they both split up to present less of an obvious target to the Revnant, which seemed to be gloating as it surveyed the extent of the damage he had wrought. "He's going to be dangerous when he grows up."

"More dangerous, you mean. The royal bloodline of Orb has always been a perilous one." Lexi replied proudly.

"MC, you and the rest of the regiment keep the High Commander forces at bay." Allister ordered, his tone brooking no arguement even though the other guy had at least ten years of age on the young Prince. "My squadron and I will provide support against the Battle-Titan in the meanwhile." Allister switched to his inter-squadron channel. "This is not a joke. Lexi and Nam are udner attack and that Battle-Titan is the representation of the person attacking them."

"Its not a representation, it IS the person attacking us." Nam corrected, her voice and face unfamiliar to all of them except the Joule twins, and even then they'd never gotten to know her on a personal level, she was merely the face on the computer screen that you talked to. "You don't need to know the science behind it, but that's basically a real person that's been put into data format. If he destroys your avatar, it will be wiped for good. And if he destroys Lexi or I then..."

"Then we lose all of our automated, computer controlled systems, at least until you can reboot, right?" Roy Elsman filled in. Unlike his adventuresome father and mother, Roy was happiest in his room, on the computer or with his gadgets. He and Akira had been the tinkerers and geeks, even nerds of the newest Clyne Faction generation. Even better than Allister, Roy knew how bad it would be if Lexi suffered even a brief comprehensive disruption to her operation protocols... she did basically control all the Fusion Pulse Reactors in all the cities of Orb after all, and the Mass Driver, and the auto-buses and the flight control and... yeah... it would be bad if she were to go down. And triple bad if it was Nam that went down.

"And we lose our recorded personalities and short term data memory." Lexi added grimly. "I'd go back to being Lexi 2.7, and I wouldn't remember anything of what happened to me since my last major upgrade a year ago. Its about as close to death as Nam and I can come."

"Worse, it would allow him to get his virusware into our deepest buffers when we reboot, and he could easily take us over from the inside out and then we'd be subservient to the computer that's backing him up." Nam added, watching the Revenant carefully as it seemed to start growing bored of the panicking movements of the Royal Union regiment members. "No telling what would happen then, but I can garauntee you wouldn't like it, little fleshy younglings. No, you wouldn't like it a... SCATTER!" Nam shouted, putting action to word even as she did so, as the Revenant's left arm swung around and unleashed a raging torret of 220cm high energy beam blasts from the gatling mount that replaced its left hand. She tried to call up the recorded footage of the Revenant's previous real life battles, but most of the useful data was locked away in Lexi's servers, not the USN's, since it was the Orb Gundams that had done the most against the giant Gundam last time. He was big, much faster than he appeared, and just about impossible to take down with conventional weapons. Oh yeah, and he had more weapons on him than all of the PC machines still operational combined, including her and Lexi!

Allister did not dodge, since the Gundam Royal had HAC armor just like his father's Gundams, using his body and wings to shield his friends from the worst of the onslaught. The others reacted almost at once, after long hours of practice against the simulated Battle-Titan and more hours of squadron based PVP with Allister, they knew what to do when confrotned with an unexpected enemy. Mina and Jamie, in their Duelist-esque machines, the Blade and the Edge went left and right, seeking to come in from the flanks, while Allister postured to the front to hold the majority of the enemy attention. Meanwhile, Roy and Lewis in the Blaster and Hawk would launch heavy weapons and sniping attacks from long range and Alice in the Salvager would bounce about as need be to provide assistance to any in need. Lexi took up position by Allister, and Nam moved to the back with Roy and Lewis, and their formation was complete. And then they were all evading for their lives as the Revenant seemed to explode in a hurricane of missile contrails, shell tracers and stuttering beam blasts from its hull mounted turreted weapon systems.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE DAD AND MOM DO THIS FOR REAL!" Roy screamed, his voice cracking a bit as the Blaster was rattled and shaken by multiple missile impacts, which couldn't penetrate the Phase Shift but still batted him around like a hockey puck, requiring some attention from his little sister's machine before the Blaster could shoot straight again. He landed and planted his feet, bracing himself so he could use the heavy artillery cannon that was his chosen primary weapon, slow to fire and slower to reload, but able to cause massive damage to whatever it hit, just like the Earthshaker it was based off of!

"I KNOW!" Alice squealed in reply, though the tone of her voice was quite different from her elder brothers. He was aghast... but she was excited! "THIS IS AWESOME!" She was going to say more when her Gundam was blindsided by a salvo of heavy linear cannon shells from the large triple barreled turrets mounted on the Revenant's shoulders. As a restoration class Gundam, the Salvager couldn't carry much in the way of armor or protections, and even though she did have Phase Shift armor, when dealing with multiple impacts from 175cm explosive shells, almost as big as Earthshaker rounds... well, the armor held, but the structure beneath did not, and her excited chatter cut off in mid yelp as the Salvager disintegrated into a smear on the hillside. Distantly, back on their parent's ship in the real world, Roy heard his sister scream something Mom would call "unprintable".

"I'm not interested in small fry!" Cray blared, cutting into all comm channels simultaneously, blasting his voice so loud it blew out speaker systems in some houses and temporarily deafened several members of the Regiment that were wearing headphones or earbuds instead of using their speakers. "Why am I always plagued with insects trying to pretend they are warriors? No matter how prettily they squish, they do not satisfy me! Even in my wildest dreams, I cannot escape their mewling irritation! How utterly annoying! How... wait a minute... I know that machine..." Cray trailed off specuatively, before a wicked and very ugly grimace spread across his face as he watched the movements of the Joule twin's machines. Which were patterned heavily off the Gundam once known as the Duelist. A Gundam that Cray knew very well indeed, given that its slashing swords were the last thing he'd ever seen with his biological eyes. "Oh, you picked the wrong look, you bastards... you just had to go and remind me of that day!" Cray shrieked, losing what semblance of self control he'd been managing up until now.

He was just turning to orient his firepower on Mina when the Revenant shuddered and staggered a quarter step to the side as the right upper arm triple 175cm linear cannon turret suddenly blew apart, sending tank sized shards of armor plating spinning for a half kilometer in every direction, a trail of burning air leading back to the Entropy and the 225mm "Gram" superpentrating launcher it held. Functionally just a very souped up railgun firing special explosive projectiles with QC tips, the Gram was meant to bridge the gap between the ease of use of linear weapons and the utmost destructive power of the Spear of Ares relativistic mass driver pioneered on the Warmaster. "Weren't you just bitching about hating having to deal with small fry, and yet here you go, chasing after them? Its not good to deny your little addictions." Nam taunted with a sneer. "If you want to play with the kids, then just say so, I'll be glad to watch and laugh. Its good for people with the same maturity level to play together after all."

"That's twice you've shot me, black headed bitch." Cray rumbled, glancing disdainfully at the smoking ruin on his upper right arm. His automated close in defenses oriented on the pincering Joule twins, and forced them to retreat in stumbling haste... the Revenant's defenses were much more accurate than the Warmonger Battle-Titan after all. "You keep this up, you're really going to make me angry."

"I think someone needs his data channels corrosion scrubbed. I've never heard such a broken record in all my existence." Lexi cut in, her tone dreadfully bored. "Don't make me mad, blah blah blah, I'll kill you bitch, blah blah... I swear, you must be the most unoriginal fleshy ever. Really, you're about half as scary as most B rated horror flick monsters."

"No one ever gives me any respect." Cray sulked, stewing on the unjustness of his own dreams, before his wicked smirk returned. "Fine. So be it. Look down on me while you have the chance, bitches. Deride my unoriginality. Creative thinking was never really my strong suit, I can admit that. I was never philosophical like my red dwarf little brother, and I was never beyond the pale insightful like my warped elder brother. I've always been the simple sort, content with my few worldly pleasures. A few buildings or ships to blow up, a pliant naked girl in my cell when I got home, and fish sticks on fridays in the cafeteria, those are all I ever needed to be happy when growing up. I don't care about saving the world, or destroying it, or doing anything other than having my fun for as long as I can. Everyone else is always so damned serious... am I the only one who can sit back and say "fuck it all, just stop me if you can?" He gestured vaguely at the Entropy and the half glimpsed twinkle that was the Eidolon with his left arm. "But all that aside, this is MY dream..." Cray lowered his arm slowly to point at the ground. "... and I won't tolerate being dissed in my OWN dream! So you can all just plain fuckin die now, please..."

Faster than anyone but the AI's could react, the Revenant's arms snapped up, all the various hull moutned weapons swinging to various new orientations as Cray cut loose with his full armament, all at once, including the large nuclear tipped missiles mounted on his shoulders. The massive radiation cannon beam scythed downward at an angle, boring through another hill after wiping out a half dozen Royal Union Gundams, eating so deep that it actually pierced the skein of virtual reality of the WoGB instance and slammed onwards, hungrily eating through the underlying data systems that controlled the entire game, and then deeper still, blowing out fuses and lights and starting circuit fires in the main server building for the game. When the nukes went off a few game seconds later, the rippling chains of voracious detonations completely collapsed the data world, never designed to take outside trauma of such magnitude, and across Earth and Space, all the servers crashed, some actually exploding in their buildings, forcefully ejecting all the thirty million something odd players online at the time, leaving the AI's berefit of even the meager help of their fleshy allies.

"Ouchies." Lexi muttered, feeling the stinging sensation of the minor damage spreading under the skin of her stomach, like a few hundred hot pins being lightly jabbed into her flesh. It would take a lot more than that to more than discomfit her, as she picked the Eidolon up from where it had been thrown by the concussive blast waves of the detonating nukes, half buried in a jumble of smouldering tree trunks. Ash discolored her armor, making her visible for a few moments before the nano-repair system swiped her surfaces clean and the Eidolon returned to translucence. She looked around and winced, since the entire data landscape had been reduced to smoking rubble and ash for as far as she could easily see, the place looked like a forest in the aftermath of a major volcanic eruption. She didn't see the Entropy anywhere... "Nam?"

"What?" Namara shot back irritably, kicking her way free of the half tomb of dirt the Entropy had been buried in. "You didn't honestly think a random fire pattern of any magnitude would be enough to get me, did you?"

"Well, your processors are a lot more clogged with data than mine are, I was worried that might slow your reactions down."

"Please." Namara rolled her eyes, an uncanny thing to do on a Gundam. "What's next, you gonna call me old cause I was debuted three days earlier than you?"

"Only to the public! I was running things for the Orb government while you were still a twinkle in a programmer's eye!" Lexi snapped back. Three days might not be a long period of time to a fleshy, but to an AI it could be like an eternity, and Namara's three extra days of worldwide access was a definite sore point for her. It put her three full days behind the self evolution cycle of Namara, and no amount of processing power could make up for seventy two hours of existence... in essence, it was like the difference between fleshies of different ages, say between age 16 and 19. Their irritable sniping was cut short by a stream of high energy beam bolts from the Revenant's left arm, forcing them both to dodge and weave to avoid the line of steaming craters gouged into the ground... Namara because she didn't want to be damaged and Lexi because she didn't want her position to be revealed.

Around them the terrain began to shift and change, as the game world struggle to adapt to the damage done to it, before finally giving up the ghost and depositing them in the test zone, used by the AI's and programmers to test new game concepts before moving them to live servers. The test zone wasn't much more than a mostly flat grassland with a few empty cities scattered about, but it was a lot more durable and flexible than the finished product zones, making it less vulnerable to causing systematic damage. The Revenant cast long and stark shadows across the plain, the BCPU clearly somewhat nonplussed by the rapid change in scenery. Namara was quick to take advantage of this disorientation, launching flights of missiles and firing a shot from the Gram. The missiles scattered subdued explosions across the Rveneant's vast hide, small sections of Citadel scale winking out as gritty grey-black armor-dust poured from the wounds the nanite-infused warheads had caused. The Gram projectile, trailing its bright tail of rushing flames from ignited air molecules, made a much bigger and brighter flash as it cored into the Revenant's belly, blowing away Rigor Mortis pods and several CIWS systems, but the Revenant's armor and inner Citidal scale layer protected the main systems from damage.

Moments later, Nam had to dance the Entropy frantically to the side, as the Revenant took a long stride forward and whipped the right arm mounted beam studded anti-ship chain flail down at her position, links the size of her Gundam's entire torso biting deep into the ground, the concussion shock slamming the Entropy a staggering step sideways as dust rose to choke the air, ripples of dirt tracing the seismic shockwaves from the missed attack. Seeing her opening, Lexi moved the Eidolon to attack while the Revenant was slightly off balance from its massive strike, palming a pair of QC boomerangs before hucking them at the Revenant's oversized head, following those up with a precise burst of beam tipped shells from the 155mm machine gun she carried in her left hand, firing into the hole Namara's Gram shot had created, seeking... and failing... to penetrate the thinner armor exposed there.

Cray twisted the Revenant's torso away from the stream of pink plasma tipped warheads, using the motion to bring around his left arm, with the massive mono-blade axe blades on either side of the forearm, sweeping it through the Eidolon's position, forcing Lexi to break off from her spiralling attack pattern less she be sliced cleanly in half by the brutal strike. Moments later, the two QC boomerangs sliced deep gashes across the Revenant's face, one scoring a hairline fissure across the Revenant's glowing yellow eye, but Lexi was disappointed if she was expecting Cray to flinch from such an attack, as he immediately followed up his axe slash with volleys from all three remaining triple 175cm linear cannon turrets mounted at shoulders and hips of the Revenant, gargantuan shells streaking off into the distance as the translucent Gundam sideslipped from their trajectories.

Nam had used her Plagueshroud orbiting shields smokescreen capability to provide cover long enough to Colloid up and shift her position, reappearing to the Revenant's rear left flank and opening up with all her weapons, the missile pods, the Plagueshrouds and the Gram, aiming for the Revenant's hip joint, trying to lame the massive machine, since there was no way they could possibly outpower the Gundam, they had to be able to outmaneuver it! A roiling fireball blossomed on the Revenant's waistline, but no matter how much firepower Nam poured into the wound, only the Gram seemed capable of dealing real damage to the Revenant, and even then it couldn't seem to penetrate all the way through to the vital systems unless she managed to strike the same place twice, something the BCPU made all but impossible, even for an AI! He was just so unpredictable!

Lexi moved in to take advantage of Cray's distraction as he turned to orient his weaponry upon the Entropy, figuring that keeping the Revenant pincered between them was the best way to keep him from being able to focus all his attention and thus his firepower upon one of them at a time. The Eidolon was primarily a close quarters and stealth design, but she did have the upgraded version of the Balmung's hyperthermal radiation cannon, the dark blue blast searing across the sky to dig an orange rimmed molten scar across the Revenant's chest and side, blowing apart CIWS beam guns and gatling cannons by the handful, but with the Revenant twisting as it was, the beam couldn't bear on any one point long enough to inflict more than surface damage! Lexi took aim for another shot, this time aiming for the Revenant's head, but a blur of motion in her peripheral vision almost instantly resolved itself into the whipping links fo the Revenant's anti-ship chain, and Lexi realized, too late, that she'd been lulled into a trap, once more failing to take into account her opponent's greater combat experience. Damn her complacent programming supervisors, how could they just dismiss the possibility of a top level data attack?

And then the chain struck, and her world dissolved to fragments and static as the Eidolon was swatted out of the sky, armor spalling away from her side and limbs as the chain, which weighed almost three times as much as her entire Gundam, crunched into her full on, an impact that would have instantly killed any fleshy pilot were it to have happened in the real world. The Eidolon was more resilient than that fortunately, but even so, she hit the ground like a swatted bug, digging out an impact trench before the terrain half collapsed around her and buried the Eidolon under a thin veneer of dirt, her limbs twisted and broken, her torso caved in along the struck side almost to the spine, her head hanging by a few sparking wires from her warped neck socket, burning fluids and arcing jolts of electricity crackling across her armored skin. The damage would fix itself, given time, but whether she had the minute or two of uninterrupted processing time to regenerate her combat avatar was another story. All around Orb lighting dimmed, automated cars drifted to a halt and the mass driver itself turned off as Lexi gathered computing power for emergency use, forcing the Eidolon's limbs to straighten out, her head to reattach, her torso to punch itself back into its normal shape.

Namara saw her counterpart take the brutal hit and was doing her best to give her friend the time she needed to self repair, but it was a losing proposition. One regular sized Gundam was simply no match for something like the Revenant in a duel, not at her skill level anyway. People always thought AI systems were infallible, but in truth there were only as capable as their programming limits allowed, and both her and Lexi's programmers had felt that no computer system save the other known AI would ever have the power to cause more than trifling damage to their project, and so not wanting to start a virtual arms race, both teams had agreed to give their AI's only the basic level of security protection designed to prevent tampering from human hands. And now she and Lexi were paying for that complacency, lacking the power and experience to stand up to a foe confronting them on more or less equal footing. She barely managed to sidestep a flurry of huge dark green blasts from the gatling gottfried in the Revenant's left arm, and had no choice but to take hits from multiple 120mm gatling cannons in the process, the shells not penetrating her Phase Shift but still jarring her, sending sympathetic ripples of discontinuity throughout her other systems.

A new comm channel opened up in her mind and Brendon's voice echoed in her thoughts as the TAC plugged himself in to his interface cradle back in the real world. "Is everything all right, Nam?" He asked quickly. "I'm getting reports of endemic power surges and lighting failures throughout the Second Earths. If this is a joke, its not funny, people are freaking... HOLY SHIT!" Brendon cried out, his admonishment halted in mid sentence as Nam opened a window into his data link, feeding him vision from her avatar's perspective. To his credit, Brendon was quick to realize this was no simulation and no game. "I didn't think this was supposed to be possible!" He exclaimed in shock.

"Join the club." Nam replied tightly, bringing her Plagueshrouds together to form a defensive bastion in front of her as she realized she wasn't going to be able to dodge the next volley of Gottfried blasts, not hemmed in and rattled by CIWS fire as she currently was. Green plasma energy sprayed away from the geischmedig-panzer field effects on the outer surfaces of the Plagueshrouds, ricocheting away into the sky or melting the ground around her into a glassy hellscape, and Nam winced as she saw some sections of land that had been shot through entirely, exposing random data chaos beneath, as more corruptive virusware ate its way voraciously into her friend's system, ripping at her being like a colony of flesh eating bacteria. That was the problem, or one of them... not only did they have to guard their avatars against attack, but Cray could literally hurt Lexi just by shooting the ground with powerful enough weaponry. Enough stray shots from his big guns and she would lose the capability to regenerate herself as she was forced to divert to protecting vital real world systems, like city power reactors and the Glasshouse towers, and then Namara would be on her own. "Any advice would be appreciated." She added in a grim undertone.

"Run away?" Brendon suggested, not at all wryly. "Fighting an enemy on their own preferred terms is a great recipie for getting massacred."

"We tried fighting him with human avatars. We decided it was a better idea to come here after Lexi almost got her head twisted off."

"I see its working so much better in here." Brendon retorted, eyeing the smoking mound of dirt under which the Eidolon was still buried. "Seriously, fighting against an opponent with superior defenses and firepower is suicide, you need to run away and cut your losses before you get corrupted too."

"That's not an option." Namara hissed, watching as her Plagueshrouds shivered and bucked after being hit by shots from the big triple linear cannon turrets on the Revenant's hip and shoulders, glad that her orbital shields had been designed to hold up under huge amounts of physical abuse without faltering or being knocked around. "For one, it would just give Cray... that's the enemy... time to corrupt Lexi and make her his thrall, and then I'd be fighting him AND Lexi, and I'd be doomed then, and so, vicariously, would all of you once I became a slave to the enemy AI, Charon, as well, because he could make me turn off all the reactors or vent all the atmosphere in the Lunar and Second Earth colonies and nothing you fleshies could do would stop me. For two, she's my friend and only real peer, and I'm not going to turn my back on..."

Namara was cut off, or rather interrupted herself with a shriek of pain-analog, as the Revenant's left arm, the one with the axe blades, smashed into her Plagueshroud shields. Though the orbiting shields had held up just fine against the gottfried blasts and even strikes from 175cm linear cannon shells, even they could not resist a swing of the Revenant's axe with eight thousand tons of walking battleship behind it, the shields not so much breaking as they did shatter like they were made from glass, before the mono-molecular axe blade slammed into the Entropy's torso, splitting the Gram in half and sending the Gundam-avatar flying backwards, its heels digging small trenches through the soil of the terrain until she at last touched down on her back almost a half kilometer distant and skidded to a halt. Another blow that would have slain any fleshy piloted machine, and had almost cut her in half regardless of her Phase Shift armor, Namara struggled to sit upright as her own self repair systems popped the dent out of her waistline armor.

"Fore!" Cray called mockingly from where he'd struck her, his foot mounted artillery cannons raining shells down around the seated Entropy, blossoming into short lived flowers of red and black as the shells pockmarked the ground around her, occasionally striking armored plate with a ringing blast and a small shudder that ran through the downed machine. He slashed his right arm through the air, looping the chain up and around his own forearm several times to get it out of harms way as he prepared to fire the Radiation cannon again, to obliterate the annoying black haired bitch that had shot him in the head earlier. "If you're going to beg, now's the time." He prompted her with a vicious smile. "Maybe if you promise to be very, very nice to me, I'll only rip off your arms and legs when I'm done with you, and leave you the skin on your face and chest, hm?"

"I'd rather do it with a rotary saw with a blown fuse." Nam retorted disdainfully, willing her self repair systems to fix the broken bones of her hips and upper thighs faster, because otherwise if she tried to dodge with her thrusters she was going to rip her Gundam in half just below the waist. She instantly saw that she wasn't going to make it, that the Revenant had already target locked her and could kill her with any of a half a dozen weapons if Cray wanted to, the Radiation cannon was just the most overkilling one. She wondered if it was going to hurt, or whether she'd just resume consciousness during the reboot and suddenly find herself with different ethical priorities and authority recognition codes. "Brendon, I..."

And then the Revenant had fired... but even as it did so, it was struck from behind by some sort of small projectile moving too fast for even Namara's senses to resolve it, just a sort of distortion in the air before the entire Revenant was knocked forward, a huge explosion of shattered and melted armor plates exploding from its backside as the walking battleship staggered forward like a man who's just been booted in the ass by a mule, the blue-red-green blast of the Radiation cannon soaring up, up and away on a wild tangent from the Entropy, until it literally blew a hole in the top of the sky, a hole beyond which there was only formless blur of damaged data structure. One of the Revenant's hips seemed to seize up during the stagger, and the hundred meter tall war machine lurched and almost fell before Cray plunged his right arm down into the ground to prevent himself from falling flat on his face.

"Thanks for distracting him." Lexi called, the battered and obviously still healing form of the Eidolon appearing in the sky behind where the Revenant had been, missing the hyperthermal radiation cannon but with steam and smoke rising from a portal that had opened in the Gundam's left palm. "Its a good thing this isn't fleshy world or that never would have worked because we're in atmosphere." Lexi was of course referring to the propensity of WIVAC-REMAD projectiles to burn up to nothingness from air friction if fired through atmosphere, since they traveled at a fraction of the speed of light. A six accelerater system called the "Dart of Ares" was built into each of the Eidolon's arms, though the technology itself was decades from actually reaching that conceptualized goal.

"OUCH!" Cray hollered, looking over his shoulder at his own mostly blown away ass, through which he could see the warped and twisted structural bones of his hips and left leg. "How could you shoot a man in the ass! That's just wrong!"

"Sorry, let me try again." Lexi replied icily, the armored portal in her right palm irising open as she pointed the arm at the back of the Revenant's upper torso, but before she could fire she was forced to dodge wildly as Cray howled wordless in a combination of rage and maybe even fear and came after her, limping on his frozen leg, firing all weapons indiscriminately as he tried to trample her into the ground with his sheer size and mass.

Grinding her way to her feet, Namara didn't wait for all her combat systems to come back only, she just snatched out the long silvery shaft of her Aether Filament dual scythe, twin curving arcs of crackling purple-white electrical energy exploding from the emitters as she hurled herself at the Revenant's back, closing the distance in seconds before slicing at the Revenant's remaining hip 175cm linear cannon turret from behind, the constrained mjolnir bolts that served her weapon as blades cutting through even the Revenant's citadel shield studded hide with contemptuous ease. She leaped for the Revenant's left arm, seeking to cut off the gatling gottfrieds and axe blades, but instead got elbowed in the chest by that selfsame limb and knocked for a loop. She saw Lexi moving in closer as well, QC gladius blades popping into position on her forearms and springing out of her feet like shoe shivs. Cray lashed at her with his chain-flail again, but Lexi was ready for it this time, and with two quick slashes of her blade tipepd arms she cut the chain apart and sent most of it tumbling end over end into the distance.

Lexi flashed by, just over the top of the Revenant's right arm, dragging her foot blades through the skin and meat of the Radiation cannon, hot sparks of orange and blue and green filling the slashes like electrical gore bubbling from the wounds, as Lexi rotated the Eidolon, shuddering as she took several heavy hits from ammunition based CIWS systems, but she did not falter even as one entire foot got blown away by a cascade of 120mm shells when she flitted right over the spinning muzzle of one CIWS turret, plumbing system across Orb suddenly running backwards in symptiomatic response to the damage as Lexi lost control of the waste management systems. Traffic control, including air and sea traffic, was the next to go, as a wild slash of the Revenant's left arm just barely missed the Eidolon, mono-molecular axe blades chopping off the Eidolon's left arm and most of its shoulder as well as the massive limb grazed by the avatar.

Seeing her friend going all out, Namara could not fail to do the same, but she dived low, trying to force Cray to divide his attention between them again as she went after the Revenant's good leg with her double scythe, slashing molten tears in the armored flesh at thigh, knee, calf and ankle, blows that would have hamstrung a living being. Actually landing upon the Revenant's right foot, crushing the artillery cannons mounted there underfoot, Nam swung her dual scythes in wide arcs, hacking away at the Revenant's ankle armor, and then the bones and motivational systems beneath them, mjolnir blades penetrating armor like it was mist, and Citadel shields like they were made from thin ice, no material could resist the kinetic particle blades for long! Nam could hear Brendon cheering her on, about all the support he could offer her given the current situation, but somehow, it was enough to be reminded that there were real, living people counting on her to survive this battle, that billions of lives could be hanging in the balance here.

Filled with this elation, Nam could hardly understand when she found herself suddenly facedown in the dirt, her double scythe suddenly gone from her grip, not even having seen the bludgeoning right arm of the Revenant, now useless for anything besides clubbing, but VERY useful for that, as it came down and scraped her off his right foot with the vehemence of a man squashing a particularly gross spider. The Entropy rolled over just in time to see the underside of the Revenant's right foot lift up into the air and hover overhead, both Nam and Brendon calling out in terror as they uselessly flinched away from the monolithic foot as it came thundering down atop them, driving almost twenty feet into the ground, compacting the Entropy into a layer of mechanical rubbish only an inch or two thick, smushed flat as a cockroach beneath a steamroller. The reactor didn't even have time to explode before all the plasma was wrung from the containment chamber like pus from a pimple, melting the armor of the Revenant's foot all the way down to the structural bones and baking the pancaked remnants of the Entropy into a glassy tomb of ossified soil.

Lexi saw the flash of light and rumbling thunderclap of the Revenant's stomp, but the billowing dust cloud stirred up by the titanic impact blocked her view of what had happened, and it was only when she felt Nam's connections to her suddenly go stiff and, for lack of a better word, cold, did she realize that the unthinkable had just happened! N.A.M.A.R.A. was down, even now her systems shutting down across the board as she prepared for a full spectrum restart from her last saved reboot data. Right now she was still technically inviolate, but the moment the reboot completed and she regained "consciousness", she would be totally open to attack from Cray and Charon, and they would reprogram her long before she regained the awareness to defend herself. The only way she could prevent that from happening was if she could destroy Cray's avatar, and thus Charon's link into their systems, before Nam completed her reboot... about a minute, in other words. Screaming raggedly in hate filled defiance, Lexi hurled herself forward with reckless abandon, alighting precariously balanced on the top of the Revenant's shoulder, right next to its head.

She windmilled her remaining arm at the blocky head assembly, driving her twinned QC gladii into the armored skull time and again, searching for some vital component to sever or break, but either Cray was the thickest skulled guy ever to live, or there was just nothing vital to his operation stored in this head of his, which would also explain a lot, because she didn't notice any change in his actions despite her efforts. A flick of her wrist deployed her electrified whip from its underarm holster, wrapping the 25 meter long QC impregnated metallic chain around the Revenant's neck assembly and sending out her highest voltage shock, trying to overload his system that way, but it barely even seemed to tickle him. Lexi could literally count the seconds counting down towards Nam's reboot, each ticking number-count like a guilty stab of pain in her consciousness. _So this is what it feels like to be afraid for someone else you care about... I don't like this..._

And then she liked it even less, when the Revenant's left arm came sweeping across, quite literally cutting his own head from his shoulders, only her desperately interposed blade preventing her from heing sliced in half, and even so she got propelled backwards like a bat from a ball, electro-whip shorting out as it ripped out of her udnerarm socket, crashing into... and halfway through... the empty strategic missile launcher on the Revenant's right shoulder! Lying in the tiwsted metal wreckage, unsure where the Revenant left off and the Eidolon began, the damage was so severe, Lexi felt her consciousness start to flicker, safety systems calling to her with the siren lull of total reboot, which would end the pain she was feeling and protect her vital systems of responsibility... that last hit had just sent every FPR facility in Orb into emergency shutdown mode, the Glasshouse towers teetering on the edge of total system shutdown because of the power surge, with only battery powered backup systems keeping the orangey dome coherent, and they could only hold for a few hours without the FPRs, less if she kept surging power in response to getting hit. Already Orb's population was heading for emergency evacuation shelters, but with her automatic transport and traffic control systems already compromised, there was no way even a fraction of the people would make it to shelters in time at this rate!

"Just give up." Cray recommended to her, his voice eerie considering his avatar's currently headless state, though this at least comprehensively proved that the head on his shoulders was more decorative than functional... something which Lexi could perhaps uncharitably think of as not altogether unexpected from certain members of the male persuasion. The uncomplimentary thought brought a ghost of a smile to her face, and she began struggling to extricate from the twisted wreckage of the missile launcher. "You're going to be my bitch no matter what kind of last minute fluttering you try." Cray growled smugly. "So just lie down and accept it. I'll make it good for you, I promise. Just be a good little girl now... in a few minutes you're going to be rolling over and panting for me anyway, so why make things difficult?"

"Because I'm an Orbite... making things difficult for the people who think they can control us is our birthright and national hobby!" Lexi retorted, dragging herself out of the ruined launcher, the Eidolon's one functional arm and leg scrabbling at the Revenant's shoulder armor as she pulled herself towards the empty neck socket ahead of her. She saw the Revenant's axe arm rising up again in her peripheral vision, ready to chop down and cut her in half like a roach, but forced herself to ignore it as she hooked her right arm over the sheared away lip of the Revenant's neck stump, and jammed as much of her arm down into the inner workings there as she could. "One would think you'd have learned this by now... given the choice between eternal slavery and horrible death, Orbites will almost always choose **FUCK YOU!**" She snarled, as she triggered her second Dart of Ares launcher, reasoning that there would be a clean shot into the Revenant's interior through the stump of its own spine! And she was right.

The Revenant's chest suddenly pumped and swelled like a party balloon overfilled with helium, as the WIVAC-REMAD projectile turned its vital components and reactors into so much rapidly expanding plasma energy, the kinetic shock ripping whole sections of armor plating away from the Revenant's limbs and body before the top two thirds of the walking battleships just plain ceased to exist in between heartbeats, an expanding shockwave rippling outwards in all directions as a mushroom cloud of vaporized dirt and debris plumed into the sky overhead, the entire virtual reality world shaking under the release of energy, the headless, limbless torso of the Eidolon hurled like a boulder from the universe's largest trebuchet ahead of the blast wave, electronic systems across Orb going down like they'd just been hit with a Gugnir bomb as the AI system was forcibly restarted without any of the proper cooldown protocols and safety checks, blowing out computer screens, starting fires in server stacks and briefly sending Orb crashing back into the industrial age as everything relying on computer chips to function stopped working for a few minutes.

Planes fell out of the sky, comatose patients flatlined in hospitals, ships ran aground, Mobile Suits locked up and fell over like toppled statues and cars careened out of control on the highways, a harsh, unending wail of static blasting out of every TV and radio speaker in the entire nation, the plaintative scream of an AI experiencing real pain for the first time. Thousands were killed or badly injured in the brief lived chaos, almost three hundred in one incident where the launching capcitors of the Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver explosively overloaded, blowing a two hundred meter section of the center launch track sky high and taking a waiting mass transit cargo/troop transport shuttle with it. Up in space, the Lunar Cities, PLANTS and Second Earths were likewise experiencing rampant system chaos, though theirs was just ending as Orb's was starting, Namara finishing her reboot and quickly reassuming control of her vital support systems, wondering just what the hell was going on all of a sudden? Her systems felt cuiously deadened and incomplete, and Lexi was also doing an emergency reboot, if anything in worse shape than Namara herself was! This did not bode well...

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Second Earth 2, TIAMAT Headquarters, Jan 6th, 12:12 am**

"Shit, he's toasted..." One of the first responding medical technicians commented, sotto voce, as he looked at the man being removed from the nonfunctioning AI interface immersion tank. The cybernetically augmented human, the mildly renowned Captain "Birdman" Stork, was still twitching from the trauma of having been brain-linked to Namara when she was forced for poorly understood reasons to initiate an emergency restart procedure. Nobody even knew what that might do to a person, since no one had ever anticipated a time when Namara would be forced to shut down, much less unexpectedly! A massive power surge had ripped through the immersion tank and shocked the occupant into instant cardiac arrest, which was what had first alerted the rescue squad, as the TAC's internal augments went online in emergency response mode to keep his body alive when his flesh organs wouldn't step up to the plate.

The primary interface socket to the AI mainframe, the armored umbilical cord that plugged into Brendon's empty eye socket, had needed to be cut free, as the connection plug had fused into the socket during the surge, and now it dangled from his face like a limp tentacle, the skin around the socket blackened and bleeding, the burns extending an unknown distance inside Brendon's skull. His human eye was still open, the pupil wide and unseeing as tears poured down his cheek, though whether they were symptoms of sadness or pain the technician could not decide. He saw Brendon's lips moving and bent his head down to listen, before the stretcher bearers carted the TAC away to the emergency room. "So what'd he have to say?" Another technician asked curiously, having seen the exchange.

"Dunno." The first technician replied, a puzzled look on his face. "Sounded kind of like "I can see again...", whatever that means."

"Poor guy got brain fried all right." The second technician agreed. "Poor bastard."

"Ain't him I feel sorry for." The first answered with a shake of his head. "Its those ground pounders relying on the Birdman's eye in the sky to win their battles you should really feel sorry for..."


	47. Violet Bastard

Author Note: For those of you not aware, I replaced my hiatus note with the actual chapter 46, "Silver Hell" but that doesn't generate an update email for those of you who rely on such things to know when to come a-reading, unlike this chapter has, so you'd probably be best served checking that out first, even though the events of that chapter have only background importance to the ones in this chapter. My story outline says that this should be Ochre Sky, but I just couldn't fit all the needed character updates and whatnot into that already action packed chapter (not without it being like 35k words long anyway...) so a new chapter has birthed itself to take up the slack. Here we go then...

xxxxx

**New Eden, former Iceland, USN European Theatre Headquarters "Heaven's Base", January 9th, 11:23 am**

Shinn did his best to keep his head down and his face shrouded in the shadows of the irregularly lit base bar and cantina that had recently opened, or rather re-opened, on Heaven's Base. The base was still a long way from luxurious, or even approaching what most people would call "long term livable", but a speakeasy for the soldiers was a must have for relieving morale tensions, and thus the bar had been one of the first non combat related structures put into operation. It was not a good bar, even by military standards, the prices for anything that might even have the potential to get you intoxicated were frankly heinous and there was limited space to sit down, especially in privacy, but it was better than nothing. Shinn had managed to snag one of the few private boothes in which to sit and brood and nurse his tall glass of iced water, which was all he was willing to imbibe at any time before he might be called into combat, which, on New Eden, was any time at all. Shinn was preliminarily aware that the enlisted bartender was charging him an arm and a leg for his glass of what was probably little more than iced tapwater, not to mention the reserving of the booth, but he didn't care enough to protest, he was just glad to be left alone for the time being.

He had a lot to think about after all, a lot to consider, stuff he didn't want to think about, ideas he didn't want to consider, but in the wake of recent events he found he had little choice. Normally these were the sorts of things he'd discuss with Luna, she being one of the few people he could freely admit his fears and doubts to without fear of either getting laughed at, black bagged or just plain ignored, the apathy of most of his "fellow" soldiers being perhaps the worst of all. Morale in the Solar Knights as a whole was rather tepid at the moment, after the debacle at Victoria, a debacle which Shinn had been part of, a unmitigated military disaster that had seen more than sixty percent of the Paladins... the most elite and skilled pilots in the entire elite and skilled organization... cut down like rotten wheat by the actions of what amounted to one Mobile Suit. One Gundam, certainly, but fifty vs one odds should not end up with one winning, no matter WHO they were or WHAT they were flying! And the Solar Knights had been expressly commissioned for the purpose of defeating Gundams via teamwork, and to so utterly fail in their primary mission was a massive black stain on the honor of the Knights as a whole.

And for those situations where no amount of teamwork could be expected to prevail, for when the foes were of such high caliber that no normal unit could be asked to realisticly engage with any chance of success, that was where the Knight-Champions... Lunamaria and himself, and to some extent Rey... were expected to pick up the slack and carry the day. But while the Paladins were being massacred, where were the best and brightest of the Solar Knights, the shining examples of all that was good and strong and admirable about the Solar Knights? Shinn and Luna had been tied up countering one of the enemy super-elites, the so called Arboreal Praetorians, which was to be fair their job, but the fact that the two of them had been tied up with just one enemy, and inconclusively at that, was a stark blight on their reputations for infallibility and invincibility. Far worse what Rey had done when he saw what was happening to the Paladins... contrary to every expectation of the Solar Knights, which was supposed to award command roles by virtue of personal merit and skill, Rey had turned his back on his comrades and subordinates and fled, if not the battlefield entirely, then at least out of the Solar Knight's operation zone, only stopping when he reached the relative safety of the land battleship formations!

It would have been one thing had Rey ordered a fighting withdrawal or tactical retreat... no one expected a commander to led his troops into an untenable situation if more could be gained by taking a step back and trying things from a different angle... but to have ordered the Paladins to engage the Kratos and then ducked out of the fight on the sly while they fought and died... mostly died... trying to accomplish a task Rey himself had obviously categorized as impossible while he got to safety... there was no excuse for that. None at all. Any other commander in the Knights, in the USN as a whole, that had pulled something like that would have been black bagged and sent to a firing squad, if his own surviving troops didn't find and lynch him first! But this wasn't any other commander, this was Paladin-Commander Rey ze Burrel, Supreme Commader of the terrestrial forces fighting to reclaim Earth, and, as was noted more and more bitterly with each passing hour, the adopted son of Solar President Durandel. Who was being suspiciously mum on the whole subject of his foster child's "questionable" actions, much to the disgruntlement of the common soldier and Knight. If there was one cardinal rule of being a soldier, regardless of job or rank, it was "Do not turn thy back on thy unit and flee while they fight". Nothing was lower than a buddy-screwer. And to have such a high ranking officer, formerly beloved for all the time he spent on the front lines, do such a thing... shattered morale and disillusionment didn't even BEGIN to cover it.

It was so awful a thing that anyone even associated with Rey was getting fallout from it, and that included Lunamaria and Shinn of course, since they were well known to be supporters and close friends with Rey, even if the "close friends" was more a media necessity than a reality, given the animosity Luna still held for Rey. Which was why Shinn had paid extra... and then some... to reserve the privacy of his booth, not wanting to even chance a confrontation with a disgruntled Knight or even more disaffected regular army soldier or soldiers. Sure, he was trained in hand to hand combat, but it wasn't exactly his forte, and there was only so much even a former Redcoat could do against a mob looking for someone to blame for Victoria and Blue Monday, since popular opinion had concluded that Blue Monday had to have been Eddie retaliation for the attack on Victoria. Shinn wasn't so sure about that himself, but then again he was privy to a lot more high level intelligence reports than most were and had a much better overall grasp on the Eddie leadership, political and military. It was fairly obvious that there was a rogue Eddie commander pulling some behind the scenes shit here, else the Eddie military would have coordinated some sort of offensive to coincide with Blue Monday, while the USN forces were in chaos.

Not that the leadership of the USN wasn't happy to foster the belief that Blue Monday had been a conscious choice on behalf of the Eddies as a whole, a barbarous act of terrorism and genocide with no justification at all, as that was precisely the sort of thing that was boosting their approval ratings for the war and bolstering recruitment figures in wholesale lots at the same time. Any and all political and popular opposition to the Reclamation War, as it was being called now, had faded away into nothing in the wake of Blue Monday, now there were more people on street corners screaming for blood than there were those who just wanted to win a standard war and go home again. It was this sort of thing that made Shinn feel soul sick, the people who were supposed to be serving the best interests of the USN populace focusing on rabble rousing and revenge driven rallies, stopping short of pogroms just because there were no Eddies on hand to kill, not grieving for those lost on Second Earth 3 or attempting to address the very real social and economic problems of the massive death toll.

Shinn had no problem with feeling anger... using his anger to make himself stronger was one of his trademarks obviously... but he could not help but feel there were better avenues the top brass could be channeling the public anger through, rather than bloodthirsty vengeance at any cost. Shinn had been too young... barely... to participate in the First Valentine War, but he knew as well as anyone and better than most how that war had kept escalating and escalating until things had come within a hairsbreadth of ending all human life on Earth permanently! Was that really the kind of solution that Durandel and his administration wanted, to scour the Eddies from existence down to the last woman and child? Shinn could admit that he was often a hate filled person, but hate on that level was something even he couldn't countenance or accept! Not to mention, he knew damn well what kind of burden it put on your soul to act out of hatred, and he shuddered to think of the emotional and spiritual consequences down the line after the Eddies were wiped out. It was almost tatamount to treason to say it out loud in the USN, but Eddies were people too, after all. Different, but still human when you found yourself staring them in the eyes.

Not that many of the fearmongerers up in space, usually professional rabble rousers, firebrands and televangelists employed by the Reclaimer Initiative, had ever had to look an Eddie in the face while screaming their spittle laced invective. Or knew what it was like to shoot or swing and see an Eddie war machine fall apart and blow up and know that someone had just lost a father or wife or brother or daughter because of you. Dealing with that burden was part of being a soldier, but it didn't help matters that Shinn personally felt this was not a righteous war. If anyone had cause to hate Edenites, it was him, consdering what Noah, the creator of the Edenites, had done to him in order to bring about his deranged vision of paradise. But Shinn couldn't transfer his hate for Noah to the blameless people who's only crime was surviving the spread of Green EDEN, even now that Noah was dead and gone for years. He'd just seen too much back room dealing, too much backstabbing, too much propoganda and outright lying by the leadership of the USN, lies he'd been forced to be a part of, and now he was just sick of it all!

And worst of all, he was sick of himself, sick of how he always turned the other cheek, allowed himself to be manipulated and browbeaten and sneered at by those who had once been his friends and the people he respected most. He was sick of turning a blind eye to the blatant war crimes FEAR was allowed to commit in the name of technological progress and understanding and winning the war, he was sick of being held up to the public as a shining icon of what had once been a noble organization designed to protect the people and had become instead a large group of elitist assholes in top end war machines serving as private thugs for Rey and Durandel. He was sick of living under the tacit threat of Luna's death should either of them step out of line, since the only ones who could properly maintain her experimental cybernetic implants were the doctors of FEAR, and without that maintenance she wouldn't last for six months even in a hospital, the legacy of the Brotherhood's FRALA beam was just that deadly! He was sick of being sickened by his own side, and he knew Luna felt the same way, if not even worse.

But sick or not, what could he do, precisely because of that abomindable threat to Luna's life? It wasn't like a gun pointed at her head, or a bomb planted in their quarters... all the USN had to do to kill Luna was just stop helping her, which they could accomplish quite easily by just ignoring her if she decided to run. Only the most senior researchers and surgeons of FEAR could perform the maintenance tasks Luna's cybernetic organs needed, usually it was Dr. Dostanya herself doing the work, the chief director of Fenris Enhanced Armaments Researchers! Unless they could figure out some way to kidnap Dr. Dostanya, procure a top end cybernetics laboratory and stay clear of the envitable USN search efforts, and then convince Dr. Dostanya to help without killing or affecting her ability to work, they were kinda stuck. And given that Dr. Dostanya only rarely left the confines of Nifelheim base in Antarctica these days, usually only at the behest of Rey or Durandel, he'd have to go there to nab her, and that just wasn't going to work. All they could do was sit back, wait, and pray for some sort of miracle situation to occur that they could use to slip their yoke and make a break for it. Assuming the Eddies didn't kill them in the meanwhile.

Leaning back in his seat, Shinn took a gulp of his iced wated, feeling the cold sensation slither down his throat and impact in his gut in a way that gave him a brief uncontrollable shiver. Hugging himself, Shinn realized it was more than just the water, there had been a gust of wind from the bar's airlock, where a new group of thirsty arrivals had come in and were in the process of taking off their environmental suits, which were patterned in the black, white and gold of the Solar Knights. Shinn sank back into the shadows of his booth, and then slouched yet further when he saw that one suit was done up in the colors of a Paladin, the same black, gold and white as the Knights, but with more gold and the locations of the black and white switched. It was a bit ostentatious in Shinn's mind, but not nearly so bad as the way the Eddie elites decorated themselves at least. He vaugely recognized the Paladin's face, having probably trained against or alongside him at several points in the past, as he and Luna had done for most of the Paladins at Rey's behest.

He could see that the man's eyes were glazed with drink quite a bit stronger than any that could be found at the cantina, even from across the bar, and the bitter and harsh cast to the man's face and vocal tones told as much of the story as Shinn needed to know. The Paladins were a tight knit group after all, like most elite military units, and losing so many of their number, the survivors could not help but be missing friends, lovers and even family members. Shinn was glad he'd left his Crystal Knight digs in his quarters and chosen just an nondescript military jumpsuit for his attire, because the mood around the Knights was already ugly, and not likely to get much cheerier as they bellied up the bar as the Paladin called for shots of the strongest hooch the bar had, and to keep them coming on his tab. The Paladin waited until everyone in his little clique had gotten a glass, and then raised his own, stifling what little conversation there had been. "To fallen comrades, may they rest in peace." The Paladin announced, loudly enough to carry throughout the bar.

That being a toast pretty much every soldier could get behind, the Knights weren't the only ones who raised and clinked glasses and bottles then. Shinn himself even lifted his glass, careful not to expose his face to any light in the process, because he'd known plenty of people who'd died at Victoria and elsewhere during this war. However, the Paladin wasn't satisifed with just that, and as soon as his glass was refilled, from a hip flask he carried with him, obviously containing his better quality liquor, he raised it again. "And may that bastard Commander and his pet Champions roast in hell for their cowardice and incompetence! In memory of Charlene and everyone else who lost someone to their betrayal!"

This time there were many fewer people outside the Paladin's group of cronies that raised their glasses in response to that toast, given that it hovered right on the line of insubordination, mutiny and treason in some respects, especially being proposed by a senior level officer like a Paladin. Expressing similar sentiments in an open forum was a recipe for waking up tied to a chair in a interrogation room with a black bag over your head, especially since the "bastard Commander" in question was the de facto head of the Section Nine secret police force. One thing to bitch and moan to your squadmates or flight partners over a glass of beer or game of cards in the barracks, quite another to make an open toast in the only base bar wishing for the downfall of your own superior officer. But other than the awkward silence, no one even batted an eye, much less leapt to the defense of Rey, and Shinn felt a bit lightheaded as the implications ran through his head. The Paladin was only saying what everyone else was thinking... and all the bartender had to do was say a few quick words and everyone would know that the Crystal Knight was sitting all of fifteen feet away, more or less incognito and easy fodder for a serious pummeling or "accident" since there was no quick way out of the bar through the airlocks.

Shinn caught the bartender glancing in the direction of his booth, and he did his best not to meet the man's gaze or to noticably tense up, but after several blood chilling minutes of listening to the Paladin and his cronies bemoan the debacle of Victoria and heap scorn and rancor against their superiors for making such a royal mess of things, Shinn began to breathe easier again because if the bartender was going to point him out, he probably would have done it already. All the same, it would probably be a good idea to get out of there as soon as the Paladin and his buddies made their exit, no sense in tempting fate. Luna was off consulting with the base tactical officers, trying to make plans for their next series of long range patrols, something which was normally dreadfully dull to Shinn, but right now dull sounded like just the sort of thing he needed! Shinn looked on expectantly as the Paladin and his minions apparently decided that they'd had enough of the watery libations the bar had to offer, but before they packed up and left, the Paladin had one more toast to make.

"May God damn the pilots of the Lucifer and Kratos..." The Paladin declared, his voice shaking with a combination of anger and outright terror. "Because they seem to be beyond mortal censure..."

That was another one that Shinn... and every other soldier in the bar... could totally get behind. Someone needed to step up and get rid of those two Gundams. Shinn just hoped it wasn't going to have to be him. He'd fought beside Kira Yamato before, and he had NO eagerness to fight against him now. And that wasn't even touching the pilot of the Kratos, Zacharis Frost. Shinn had only been a rookie during the time when Frost was first active, and he'd failed to put much stock in all the hype the little psycopath had generated about himself. That arrogant confidence he'd felt had been badly, badly shaken by the events of Victoria. Fifty Paladins. More or less at once. And the Kratos's pilot been LAUGHING uproariously the whole time, like he was having the time of his goddamned life! Shinn had never seen anything like it. He never WANTED to see anything like it ever again either! That wasn't just superhuman, that was straight out INHUMAN! Shinn shivered uncontrollably again... and this time, it wasn't because of the water or the wind from the airlock...

xxxx

**New Eden, Antarctica, Nifelheim base, January 9th, 2:13 pm**

"Ya know, he don't look it, but that Paladin-Commander guy sure does have a pretty big set of balls, don't ya think?" Mechael commented lightly to Lain, as he stood over the somewhat dimunitive Natural as he worked on adjsting some of the hydraulic systems in his Vindicator's foot assembly. The hanger Lain's mobile suit had been assigned was right on the top layer of the abse, buried under only a few feet of permafrost, and the hanger was kept mostly unheated for purposes of camouflage, and it often got so cold in the place during the night that even hydraulic oils and lubricants would freeze solid, bursting pipes and conduits underneath the armored skin of a Mobile Suit. Even now, it what was roughly the middle of the day, the hanger was cold enough that Lain was dressed in two layers of thermal underwear, his uniform and a heavy cold weather coat and gloves as he finished putting some chemical heating pads into place around the hydraulic fluid pumps to keep them unfrozen. He wanted to just put a space heater under the damn access plate, but that would be a fire hazard, so instead he had to change out the chemical pads once a day. It was boring, uncomfortable and fucking cold every time.

But that was just the price of doing business, as Lain's father might have said. His presence at Nifelheim was more or less barely tolerated as things were, the last thing he needed to do was go around causing trouble and drawing attention to himself, despite how much he wanted to do just that, because he was going more than just stir crazy trying to figure out just what the hell Dr. Dostanya was actually up to with Stella! He was lucky to have contact with her for an hour a day and it had been more than a week since they'd shared a bed, even in the platonic sense! And while he wasn't such a hornball that a few weeks without sex was going to debilitate him or anything, it was a keenly felt absence all the same. Especially here in Antarctica, where things just felt colder, no matter how much the thermostat said the temperture was the same, he missed the presence of another person's body heat under the covers after having grown acclimated to it over the past years. Lain slapped the last pad into place and eeled his way back out from where he was half inserted into the foot assembly, pausing a moment to stretch his cramping legs as he looked up at his new partner.

Unlike Lain, Mechael wore nothing warmer than the standard fatigue jumpsuit that off duty pilots, mechanics and other support personnel wore whenever there might be a chance of them getting dirty. Mechael even had the sleeves rolled up to show the dark skin of his bare arms... he made Lain feel colder just looking at him, though of course the Augmented was perfectly comfortable, his cybernetic body all but immune to variations in temperature. Lain's eyeballs would literally have to be freezing solid in his face before Mechael registered any real discomfort from the weather. The Augmented waited for Lain to scoot backwards before bending down and fitting the maintenance hatch cover back into place, holding the two hundred pound chunk of armor plate in place with a bored expression as Lain cursed and fumbled with his heavy gloves to ratchet the securing bolts back down with a wrench. The metal was cold enough to stick to bare flesh, but of course Mechael's skin wasn't strictly flesh, and he wasn't even marked when at last he let the plate go.

"Thanks." Lain said, for both the brute assistance of removing and replacing the armor plate, and for the hand up Mechael offered him. They'd grown fairly close these past few weeks, at least to the point of partners in arms, if not exactly friends. It was a hard fact that they were probably each other's only real allies within a good thousand kilometer radius, not counting Stella or the other Extendeds of course. And Lain wasn't even sure he could count them, given how they were kept in near total isolation from everyone else, only let out to deploy on missions and never any time for socializing as far as he'd seen. "What was that you were saying about Rey again?" Lain asked, brushing dirty ice crystals off the back of his jacket and stamping his boots to bring some feeling back into his legs.

"I said, he's got a real set of balls, coming back here to get some nooky while half the goddamn military wants to see him lynched, and the other half wants him buried alive and THEN lynched!" Mechael rehashed. "If I were him and I done messed up that bad, assuming I wasn't just reduced to scrap metal on the spot, you can bet the last thing I'd do would be flaunting my executive privileges by going to see a lover on the sly while there's still work to be done reorganizing things elsewhere. Hell, I'd just try and find a hole somewhere and pull it in after me, until I heard of someone else screwing up worse than I did..."

"That'd be kinda hard." Lain pointed out with an unsympathetic grin. "How do you top fleeing from battle in the full sight of half your goddamn army while you order them on to certain doom? If it hadn't been in a battle, he'd be a laughingstock, as things are, like you say, most everyone either wants him out or dead. There's just some things you DON'T do, and he did one of em! I could almost feel sorry for him."

"You mean if he hadn't spent years and years being a total dickhead to you over a little difference in combat strategy?" Mechael smirked and shook his head. "My heart doesn't exactly bleed for him either. He's just as arrogant and full of himself as I used to be, and he don't have anyone to slap some sense into him like I did. Dangerous situation, that. Especially given how buddy-buddy he and the Director are. Though I do have to say, that's a mighty fine piece of tail to tap..."

"Yeah, if you like getting it on with a preying mantis!" Lain countered, pulling up his muffler and leading the way towards one of the elevators that would carry them into deeper... and warmer... sections of the base. "I seen the way she looks at guys, and I can tell you, that woman ain't nothing you want to fuck with. She'll wear you like a goddamn coat the moment she feels like it."

"Kinda funny then, that you're here for no other purpose than to expressly fuck with her, isn't it?" Mechael pointed out with a humorless chuckle. "And not in the sense where you at least get to tap that ass before she moves onto the coat-making."

"I'm tickled pink about it, yeah, thanks, Mecha." Lain all but groaned, as they entered the elevator and punched in a destination a dozen levels lower. As a liason officer, Lain technically had access to almost the full base, at least on paper, but given that Nifelheim was much more Dr. Dostanya's personal fiefdom than it was a regular USN facility, his on paper authority was worth about as much as toilet paper. His presence was tolerated, as was Mechael's, mostly because he was sure Dr. Dostanya didn't consider them to be threats in any way, shape or form. He wasn't looking forward to proving her assumption wrong, for once. He'd seen some of the experiments the crazy bitch was running here, the ones that used live Eddies as subjects, and could all too easily see a certain blue and green eyed Natural getting mixed in just to provide some variation in test results if he got too annoying. Some of those things a guy just couldn't unsee, no matter how much he wanted to. And the knowledge that this woman, who was responsible for such horror, was the one who controlled Stella's fate was almost more than he could bear!

They rode in silence for the next little while as the elevator descended into the deeply buried base, which was an average of a hundred fifty feet below surface level, with the deeper sections almost five hundred meters down, and Lain had heard rumors that there were top secret sub levels that went much farther down than any of the official base structures. No one claimed to have ever seen these sub levels in person, but it was said that there was a whole second base buried underneath Nifelheim, called "Hel" after the Norse afterworld, and that this second base was where all of FEAR's most top secret projects and technologies were being researched and developed for use in the Reclamation War, under Chief Director Dostanya's personal supervision. Truthfully, Lain didn't care much about this second facility, if it really did exist, because he was fairly sure it had little or nothing to do with Stella or any of the other Extendeds.

The elevator dinged on the bottomost floor that could be reached without a security key, and they both stepped out into the dimly lit corridors. This was a utility and mainetance level of the base, where the climate control and ventilation system machinery was located, as well as portions of the cooling system for the base reactors. It would probably raise some interesting questions if they were to encounter anyone else down here, since neither Mechael nor Lain had any business monkeying around with the base support machinery, but they'd never run into a single other person down here yet, and this was their third unathorized foray into the depths of the base. The size and number of the climate control and ventilation machines certainly lent some credence to the theory of a second base underneath Nifelheim, the maintenance level went on for almost a kilometer in every direction from the hub at the elevator shafts, which was far more than just Nifelheim base needed.

With Mechael's sensors running at maximum power, searching for any telltale blobs of heat from hidden watchers or data signals from electronic observers, and finding none as usual, they carefully made their way to one of the storage closets where they'd stashed their exploration gear, which included nondescript coveralls, thermal vision goggles for Lain, paper maps to record their progress and cans of UV paint to mark their trail through the labyrinth of access shafts, crawlways and large ventilation ducts that honeycombed Nifelheim base, and could be easily accessed from this level. It was warm enough down here for Lain to be able to shed his heavy coat and gloves, as he quickly stripped out of his uniform and put on the jumpsuit, which was much better suited for crawling through tight and dirty spaces. "I can't believe no one's found this little stash yet... its kinda creepy how lax the security is around this place, given what goes on here..."

"Eh." Mechael shrugged expressively. "We're buried out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, at the bottom of the goddamn world, in the most hostile surface environment known to mankind, a thousand klicks from the nearest hint of civilization worth a damn. Most people, even the Eddies, couldn't even find this place much less get through the perimeter defenses and garrison of Extendeds and USN special operations troops, not to mention those hardcore FEAR security corps bastards we met with all the cybernetic tune ups." Mechael briefly snarled in disdain of the partially augmented humans, since it would take a dozen of them put together to even approach his state of cybernetic completion. "I wouldn't want to be the Eddie that tries storming this base, not with those freaks and their AUTO's packed into these narrow corridors, plus lots of MAIDEN close at hand. As for internal threats, well, you don't get to come here unless you're vetted by one of the top people in FEAR, we're only here cause Dr. Roanoke sent us personally, so internal dissension is unlikely."

"I suppose that makes sense. No reason to set up ferocious guard dogs when you're breeding foxes in your henhouse." Lain allowed, zipping up his jumpsuit and fumbling his thermal goggles into position on his face. "Looks like its sector twelve today. Lets go play some chutes and ladders eh?" Lain grinned at the expressive look of distaste on Mechael's face, since the cyborg was about twice his size, all told, and wasn't nearly so adept at navigating the cramped maintenance passageways and crawlspaces as Lain was. All the same, Mechael never complained, perhaps because he knew that successfully completing this task was his last chance at getting back into Dr. Roanoke's good graces before he was sent to the scrap pit, and perhaps also because he felt he owed it to Lain, who had been tolerant of him when he needed tolerance, and had given him a second chance after his dismal first impression out at the Asteroid Belt. He wouldn't quite say he'd die for the little Orb pilot, but sustain fairly serious injury certainly. And definitely tolerating climbing through a bunch of really small passages with low hanging pipes was no big deal in comparison. After all, it was usually his skull leaving the dents in the pipes, not the other way around.

Three quarters of an hour later, after traveling almost a kilometer and a half laterally and descending what felt like miles of ladders but was probably less than three hundred meters in actuality, Lain and Mechael stumbled into a stroke of luck. That was the literal truth, Lain missed spotting a pipe running at around ankle level and tripped, falling forward onto his face and discovering that there was actually a second passageway running parallel to the one they were in, hidden behind a wall of pipes and conduits that didn't quite reach all the way down to the floor. It was simplicity itself for a man of his size to scoot under the lowermost pipe and squeeze into the hidden passage, though finding a spot for Mechael to join him through took another ten minutes of searching and several badly bent pipes. Following this second passageway took them to a section of the base that neither of them had ever seen before, though judging by the frequent glimpses through vetilation grills they got, it must be someplace important. Certainly the FEAR security force goons standing in front of doorways and patrolling the corridors in threes must be there for a good reason, given that they barely showed their faces in the rest of the base at all.

Lain left arrow marks in UV paint every few minutes and whenever they made a turn or major change in direction, the paint would be invisible to most scanners and even normal light, only those with specialized sensors like Mechael could make them out. Undoubtedly some of the FEAR goons had optical augmentations similar to Mechael's, but as long as they were careful they wouldn't alert the goons and thus need to worry about being tracked down through the maintenance shafts. Trying to contain his excitement, since this was the first real find they'd had in the weeks they'd been here, Lain almost lost it when he unmistakably heard a familiar voice, raised in protest. Stella! It was all he could do to not go running blindly through the maintenance shaftway, but instead fall back so Mechael, with his fantastically keener senses, could lead the way. It didn't take too much longer before they were peering out through yet another ventilation grill, looking down into what was unmistakably a large and well appointed office of some kind. Rushing puffs of circulating air muffled any sounds they might have made getting into position, while still allowing them to hear what was going on below, since the occupants of the room were hardly whispering.

It was fairly easy to determine whose office they were peeking into, as the staturesque blond woman with icy green eyes sitting behind the large central desk was unmistakably Dr. Natalia Dostanya, Chief Director of FEAR. Standing beside her, one hand placed not so casually on Natalia's shoulder, was Paladin-Commander Rey ze Burrel, his uniform jacket unbuttoned and untucked in a flagrant violation of uniform regs, especially considering the bare chest on display beneath. Whether Rey was just now getting dressed or in the process of undressing was not immediately obvious to the two clandestine observers. In truth Lain barely had eyes for anything or anyone other than the blond haired, pinked eyed girl standing stiffly at attention in front of Natalia's desk. Stella. Immediately Lain discerned that Stella was extremely agitated, her entire body posture was off, tense, wary, even angry, and he wasn't long kept in the dark as to why.

"No, I will not "shut up and know my place", Mother." Stella replied to whatever Natalia had last said to her. "Because intentionally or not you are making a terrible mistake and it is my duty as a elder Extended to point it out to you even if you don't want to hear it!" Stella's hands bunched into fists where she kept them crossed behind her back as she stood at attention, a position she found uncomfortable but had nonetheless adopted at Rey's insistence. Stella tried to ignore his icy blue eyes as they caressed her figure in entirely too familiar a manner, but she forced herself not to dwell on past personal injustices. She was here for all of the Extended, not just herself. Mother's random and biased injunctions against the Extended had to stop, people were reaching their breaking points! Already fights were starting to break out amongst the male Extended, especially those denied the solace of their sworn partner for no good reason they could discern, and Stella had heard many of her female peers discussing a sit down protest of being forced to give their bodies to strangers when they had made committments to fellow Extended, which was just unheard of, in terms of showing defiance and dissatisfaction! A little exploration was fun, being made to be a whore was too much, especially without even proper orders!

But everyone was too afraid to confront Mother about it, given what she'd had done to the last few Extended who dared to speak out against the irrational and frankly frightening random spate of punishments without cause that had been suddenly heaped upon them as soon as Mother took control of the program. However, given what Mother was already forcing her to do, Stella felt there wasn't much else that could be done to her to humiliate or demean her further, and so she was the obvious choice to stare Mother down until she started to see sense. "I do not dispute, Mother, that we Extended are property to you, but I would like to suggest you remember that we are valuable property, and that despite what you may believe, we cannot perform at our best if we don't receive proper maintenance... and the recuperation beds do nothing to salve the emotional needs we have. We are not mindless, emotionless automatons, despite what you seem to believe. Please, Mother, don't ever doubt that we love you and would gladly do anything you asked of us... but there has to be some approval or respect coming from you to us as well! We want you to love us, Mother, but you have shown us only scorn. Even Extended can have their feelings hurt, and you have hurt ours with these forced punishments and extracurricular assignments. Please stop."

"Holy shit, things must be worse than Father ever thought possible..." Mechael whispered to Lain under his breath. "She just told Dr. Dostanya to fucking snap to, wake up and stop being such a stupid, controlling bitch! Dr. DOSTANYA!"

"She seems a bit more polite than that, don't you think?" Lain whispered back.

"Dude, how long have you lived with Extendeds again?" Mechael refuted. "Can you even comprehend how much guts it has to take to go to what amounts to your own creator and tell them that they're being a moron? We DO NOT disagree with Father or Mother. We just DON'T DO IT. It is not done. For any reason. Ever. Especially not to their FACE! We'd stand there while they beat us to death with a club and not say a word, but Stella just dropped a fucking defiant SPEECH on Dostanya! I can't even imagine what the FUCK Dostanya did to provoke that kind of response! Polite phrasing or not, Stella couldn't have been more disrespectful if she pulled down her pants and pissed on the Director's desk just now, at least in terms of the Extended canon! I am in awe... your girlfriend is INSANE!"

If Dr. Dostanya was overly perturbed by Stella's apparent defiance, it wasn't obvious in her posture, at least not from Lain's perspective, but when the Director next spoke, Lain could not help but swallow nervously. "Well, that was entertaining, don't you think?" Natalia asked Rey, her tone indicating she was anything but amused. "I've never been preached at before like that by my equipment." Natalia reached out and stabbed a button on her desktop, pushing down harder than strictly necessary as she obviously worked to control her emotions. "I'd thought my last demonstration made my feelings clear on the subject of the Extendeds "emotional distress", but apparently another example is needed. I'm growing tired of these little performances, what will it take to get you to understand your position!" Natalia snarled, as her button press brought a squadron of security troopers hustling into the room, weapons primed.

"I understand my position perfectly, as do all the other Extended." Stella replied primly. "It is you, Mother, that doesn't seem to understand your role. I would think it would be obvious... we call you Mother, not Mistress..."

"Insane, insane, INSANE..." Mechael muttered, his eyes wide and disbelieveing. "She's gone off the deep end!"

For his part, Lain couldn't be prouder of seeing Stella stand up to Dr. Dostanya's bullying with all the verve and spine he'd been doing his best to instil in her over the course of their relationship, but even he could recognize that Stella's words, however reasonable and no doubt poignant, just were making things worse and worse. Dostanya didn't want loving followers, she wanted abject slaves, and she did NOT appreciate being told she couldn't have them. However, he wasn't at all prepared for Dostanya's counterblow. "This dog needs to learn her place again." Dostanya sneered, pointing at the security troopers imperiously. "You may do with her as you wish, just don't kill her. But I want to hear her scream and beg for mercy, do you understand me? I want her broken, in mind and spirit, by the time you're done with her. I don't care if you have to use every man in your unit to rape her into submission, but if she can do anything besides beg and apologize by this time tomorrow, I'll have every last one of you ground up and fed to the BALORs! Am I understood?"

"Completely, madame Director." The lead security man replied. Knowing his director's tastes, he continued on. "Permission to conduct the first phase of the punishment under madame Directors supervision?"

"Yes, that's a good idea, Colonel. I do want to watch her realize the folly of her choice..." Natalia all but cooed, stroking Rey's back in a lascivious manner.

"I have done nothing wrong, and doing this to me won't make you right." Stella replied, studiously ignoring the security troopers as they moved in around her. "It just shows further that you really don't understand Extendeds, Mother. That really makes me sad. You're digging your own grave by ignoring me, Mother. Even Extendeds have a breaking point."

"Do you actually think we're afraid of the threats of a girl who's about to spend the next day getting gangraped into oblivion?" Rey snorted in derision. "This time tomorrow you're going to be soiling yourself in your desperation to be forgiven for these words."

"It was not a threat. Just a reality." Stella answered, still staring straight ahead as the security guards began pulling at her clothing and running their hands across her body. "You can't break me like this, because I choose not to resist. Do what you want to my body, it is your property after all. But my soul is safe from your grasp, because that belongs to me and one other person only, and it cannot be taken from us by force."

"I wonder if you'll still be so damned sure of yourself if we plopped Mr. Debora's severed head down in front of you tomorrow?" Dostanya breathed icily, watching the troopers strip Stella down while she stood there placidly. Truth be told it was kind of unnerving, just like the othertimes she'd enforced public punishment on Extendeds... they just took it, like they didn't care, even though they had just dared to defy her! It didn't make any sense... how could they be defiant yet placid and accepting of their punishment? She would be glad when she could be rid of them for good... her Paragons would have no such inconsistencies or flaws, they would be unwavering in their loyalty and dedication to her! She watched Stella's rosy eyes harden to the color of frozen star ruby at the bald faced threat.

"If Lain dies, so will both of you. His well being is all that keeps me in check now. You know what I'm capable of. Don't throw away the only choke chain you have around my neck, you won't like the beast that would be unleashed." Stella answered, her words dripping a combination of desperation and fury that was more effective at intimidating Dostanya for it. Stella sounded like she was really afraid of what sort of person she would become without Lain to steady her emotions. And though Natalia was far from as weak as she presented herself, she did not rate her chances against a berserk mode Extended like Stella to be favorable. She was tempted to just kill the rosy eyed bitch right then and there, suddenly seeing her as a much greater threat than she had before, but she counseled herself to have patience. Let them see what sort of shape the girl was in tomorrow, after she had time to weigh things more carefully. No sense in losing a valuable pilot before she was sure the BALORs were up to snuff.

For his part, Lain was just about to bust down the ventilation grill and jump into the office shooting, but before he could do that, Mechael's iron strong limbs closed around him, clamping a pie dish sized hand over his mouth to stifle his shouts of rage as he watched the soldiers push an unresisting Stella onto the floor and started to unbuckle their belts. Lain thrashed and kicked as hard as he could, but he might as well have been a five year old trying to tantrum his way out of a pro wrestler's grip, because Mechael wasn't budging an inch. Lain bit down on Mechael's hand, but only managed to make his teeth ache without even marking the skin substitute. "You go in there now and you're both gonna die pointlessly. There's eight of those fuckers, plus Dostanya and the Paladin-Commander." Mechael hissed into his partner's ear. He used his hand to turn Lain's head away from the grill so he didn't have to watch his girlfriend get raped, but there was no way he could drown out the noises, even as he began taking slow and cautious steps backward, so he could get Lain to a place where the guy could safely freak out and blow up.

"I know what you're thinking." Mechael continued as he continued to sneak away. "I'm the Augmented after all. Eight measly security guards, especially with their pants down, wouldn't even slow me down. But here's the thing, Lain. I'm not strong like Stella is. All Dostanya'd have to do is look at me archly and I'd freeze up. I literally couldn't raise my hand against her. And I'd be compelled to stop you if you tried, like you just did. That's just how I'm built, man, that's what it means to be an Augmented or an Extended. I couldn't hurt her if she put a gun to my head and a red hot knife to my balls. I cannot even comprehend the kind of gumption Stella has to do what she did. Whatever you done to her, man, you oughta be proud. And don't you worry about her sanity either... after what she just did, no torture known to man or god could possibly break THAT spirit!"

Lain grumbled something incoherently against the meat of Mechael's palm, but he didn't seem to be calming down any. Indeed, he seemed to be getting madder and more violent as time went by, until Mechael knew that the very moment he let the guy go, Lain was going to go get himself killed as soon as possible. "Sorry about this, dude, but you need to cool off some. I don't wanna be the one that has to explain to Stella why I let you get killed." Mechael adjusted his grip and cut off the blood supply to Lain's brain, knocking him unconscious after another few seconds of holding him pinned. Once Lain was out, Mechael added a promise of his own. "As for those eight motherfuckers, well, you just let me deal with them, little buddy. Sparring partners have accidents all the time..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City outskirts, January 9th, 5:40 pm**

"Once again, I want to thank for inviting me into your home, Consol." Daveron said, as Hiero took a seat nearby where he and Gregory had been attending the roasting pit, from which the heavenly aroma of cooking meat wafted. When Hiero had suggested a get together for what was rapidly becoming a new powerhouse grouping in Garden City's political landscape, it had quickly turned into a sort of impromptu backyard barbecue party for the major players in the group. They were all still Children of the Sea at heart, more or less, but they were much more proactive and confrontationally minded than most Children, who preferred talking to violence, negotiation to conflict. Their group, which some had started calling the "Shark Party", understood that sometimes you had to meet force with other force, stronger force, even if it was distasteful to you. War was the ultimate expression of Darwinism, survival of the fittest, and the penalty for losing was, in this case, species extinction. Which made it all the more important that the Children, the largest philosophic subdivision by population in Edenite society, had a cadre of people willing to step up and get the water bloody when need be. "I feel I've recovered much faster here than I would have if I'd accepted Gregory's offer of accomodation... I can relax here."

"Think nothing of it. My station all but demands I have a large home to put up guests in, but in practice I entertain only infrequently by myself." Hiero replied, settling his legs and inhaling deeply of the scent of the cooking meat, a medium sized Rex Elk provided by Panner and Heine... or more accurately, by Hector, Panner's Direcat companion, who had actually hunted down and killed the elk. "Its nice to not have the place feeling so empty all the time. I was afraid I was becoming a curmudgeonly hermit for a while there."

"Perish the thought, Consol. All know that Hiero is welcome were'er he goes. Have you not become the de facto Speaker for the Consols?" Gregory pointed out, his stature only slightly diminshed by the lack of his heavy Custodian armor. "You're our Seigel Clyne."

"Well, I hope I don't end up getting assassinated by order of an old friend like he did." Hiero muttered with a sigh. "Though Kunai has begun to worry me more and more these days. Politics in Garden City have always been polarized... we're no better than the Oosen in that regard... but lines are being drawn now that trouble me greatly. And like it or not, I'm helping contribute to the problem as much as anyone is, just by standing at the Executor's side like I have. I believe that standing by Kira Yamato is the proper thing to do, but I fear I've set a bad example for the other Consols, as they are now throwing more of their own support behind whatever figurehead leader they find most acceptable. Mostly Kunai, the Conclave has always been prevalent among those elected to Consol rank, and whether publicly accepted or not, we all know it is Kunai that controls the Conclave. I've even heard of a few trying to make overtures to Executor Frost, though as yet I don't believe they have gotten any sort of discernable answer."

"With the coming of the Executors, only a fool would have thought things could stay the same." Daveron countered. "You made the correct choice, in my opinion, Consol. If you hadn't done it, someone else would have... the Executor's are just that kind of men, they pull others to them without even meaning to. Executor Yamato's sister, my old Queen, is exactly the same way, she just draws you in, showing you all the qualities you need to believe in... the hope, the justice, the strength needed to carry on in the face of utmost adversity... to not love someone like that would be impossible. But special as they are, they are nothing without the support of more regular people like us, and unlike many powerful leaders, they haven't lost sight of that fact in the rush of their own power. Executor Yamato cannot win this war by himself... but with the support of the Shark Party, the Sea Prince will lead a righteous army on an unstoppable march to victory."

Daveron was using one of Kira's new nicknames, assigned to him recently as the fact of his friendship with Leviathan became more well known. It was an utterly unprecedented thing... forging something as normal and understandable as a friendship with a god-like being like a Grand Chimera, especially Leviathan, who had never shown any interest in dealing with those who lived on land until Kira came along, and now she was becoming an active ally to the Edenite cause, along with all her subordinate Chimera, many of whom were exceptionally powerful telekinetics, even for Chimera! It was a feat worthy of myth and legend, and only Kira's own strident wishes had prevented people from lining up to see him like he was some sort of religious guru. After all, the only Grand Chimera anyone else had ever had contact with was Yggdrasil, and one didn't have conversations with Yggdrasil, at least not as far as Hiero had ever seen. He knew Kunai spent a lot of time in the Well of Wisdom, where Yggdrasil grew the fruits that it used to communicate its desires and predictions to its human envoys, but whether he was actually communicating with Yggdrasil there or not, Hiero couldn't say.

Seeing Kira gathering a nucleus of supporters to himself, intentionally or not, had prompted the rise of two similar groups with the other factions. Kuani was the focus of most of the Praetorians, with the primary addition of the depleted Wendigo tribe led by Erk the shaman, along with most of the rest of the Custodians and other Garden City forces. The Green Cosmos faction had splintered, with one faction, led by Arboreal Praetorian Alexander holding loyalty to Kunai and the Conclave, and another faction, led by the sullen Praetorian Revv, had elected Executor Frost as their leader, though no one knew if he'd accepted this arrangement or was even aware of it. Calling themselves the Memento Mori, or Thoughts of Death, this new group was a locus for those who were dissatisfied with how the war was being run by the Children and Conclave, trusting instead to the might of Executor Frost to show them the path to victory. There were a few Praetorians, plenty of Custodians and even a small group of Wendigo, led by the one called "One Tusk", who had pledged themselves to the Memento Mori, the group small in numbers but large in potential danger, especially if Frost deigned to accept the followers under his wings.

"Speaking of the war, I hear Yggdrasil has made another prediction concerning the immediate future?" Gregory prompted, eager as ever to turn the dicussion to the practical side of things. He was still a bit reserved of his opinion of Executor Yamato as a man, though as an Executor he was behind him one hundred percent, after the awesome spectacle of Urbanis.

"That is true." Hiero inclined his head to the Strategos. "Yggdrasil has seen a great deal of disruption amongst the Oosen homelands of late, and has discerned that they will attempt to tip the balance of momentum back into their favor sometime in the next few weeks."

"Their first thrust will come at Borealis, in Alaska." A new voice said, Heine appearing out of the darkness with his more subdued friend Haman trailing close behind, as ever. Hiero had heard that Haman had once been as bubbly and irrepressible as Heine, before he'd become an Edenite, but something about that transformation or his life lived since had drained the devil-may-care attitude from the Arab and left him almost taciturn, or at least socially withdrawn, though he still showed semblances of his former verve during combat, according to Heine. "Haman and I, as well as several other Praetorians, will be taking elements of Legio Spider Wolf and Legio Direcat to bolster their defenses. Yggdrasil has predicted a raid for information more than a full on assault, Borealis doesn't have any strategic assets like as Mass Driver, just the ruins of JOSH-A, and those were abandoned even before the Eden Disaster anyway."

"Information?" Daveron stood up, his balance still a little unsteady on his newly cloned left leg, which was still somewhat undersized in muscle mass compared to the one he hadn't lost to the MAIDEN at Urbanis. His left arm was still being generated in the cloning tanks, he was due to have it implanted in the next week, and then he could get started on his physical therapy programs in earnest. His pessimistic nature wouldn't let him feel sanguine about the chances of the his friends in combat unless he was there with them. All too often he'd still think they were doomed even if he was with them, but at least he could try and make a difference rather than just trusting to hope from the sidelines. Which was really hard for him, because up until Urbanis and Executor Yamato, hope had been missing from his personal vocabulary. "What kind of information?"

"Unknown." Haman replied with a shrug, closing his eyes blissfully as he inhaled the scent of the roasting meat, just as Hiero had. "But if I had to guess, I'd say they're looking for locations. They know Garden City is the center of the Edenite resistance forces, but they don't know where exactly it is. Many Edenites know the city lies in the Himalayas, but few know with any degree of accuracy exactly where in the hundreds of square kilometers of mountains the city resides. Borealis is one of the few places that would have accurate GPS data on Garden City's location, and while Yggdrasil protects us from long distance observation, all it takes is one low level overflight to pierce the Latent field effect and they'll be bombing the shit out of us from orbit in no time flat. Urbanis would be another such place, but I doubt the Oosen would be so bold as to go there again so soon after what happened last time."

"Looking for Garden City is their long term strategic goal, but on a more immediate level I think they're actually searching for the Caller's Lair." Heine added, his expression caught between twisted amusement and dire concern.

"Good. Let's let em find it, that'd be the end of THAT task force." Gregory smirked at the thought.

Heine shook his head in disagreement. "Thats a tempting thought, and one I'm sure most people will gravitate towards, but we can't afford to just ignore the problem. We all know the Oosen has entire units of soldiers that are basically immune to psychic powers affecting the mind and emotions, and a reasonably large core of veteran troops that are inured to psychic assaults. Not to mention the Caller is all but defenseless against large scale WMD bombardments and orbital pinpoint shots. His only defense is that no one knows exactly where beneath Neo-Miami his main body actually is. I don't think I need to explain what sort of catastrophe it would be if the Caller were to die a violent death. Even here, sheltered by Yggdrasil, we'd be lucky to survive the death echo with our sanity intact."

"But how would we defend the Caller?" Gregory protested, with a shiver of dread at the mere thought of volunatrily entering the Caller's sphere of influence for any length of time. "He'd suck the sanity right out of our heads just to whet his appetite! Leviathan has made provisional alliance with Garden City due to Executor Yamato's intervention on behalf of Gorefin, but the Caller wouldn't be wooed so easily! he could care less about the fates of his subordinate Chimera! The Caller is a MONSTER!"

"And who better to talk to a monster than another monster?" Haman countered with a wintry smile. "Sending Yamato to Leviathan was a stroke of genius, the perfect man for the job. So that is why we will be sending Frost to the Caller to discuss terms for a truce of some sort. The Caller is a utterly pragmatic and self centered being, he won't refuse our help once he understands the situation he is in. His only priority is the survival of himself, if we offer to help him ensure that, he won't turn us down."

"One does not "send" Zacharis Frost anywhere." Daveron replied with a frown. "He goes where he likes, when he likes, and he dares anyone to try and stop him. I hope no one has forgotten he's been missing since the morning of the fifth, that's almost five days ago! He could be anywhere on New Eden, and I don't know about any of you, but I'm not going to risk my mind by linking it to his through the Wind!"

"There would be no need for that." Hiero answered with a heavy sigh. "Lilia is with him, at least we assume she is... she left with him anyway... all we need to do is comm or contact her and we should be able to get into contact with him."

"Bad situation, that." Gregory commented gruffly, after they had sat around in silence for a while, each afraid to continue on with what they were all thinking. "I heard about what happened in the Praetorian hanger. It's all over the Custodians, how she's become his puppet or slave or something."

"That's not the case." Heine retorted, somewhat sharply. "Lilia's not so weak that she'd just bend over and break for someone like him! She's an Arboreal Praetorian... she's the best and strongest of us all! I wouldn't say I understand what her plan is, but strange behavior or not, I refuse to believe that she's surrendered herself to him."

"You're wrong, Heine." Kira caught them all off guard as he appeared from the other side of the fire, having been out walking around gathering his thoughts in private while the food cooked. Scenting that the elk was almost done roasting, he'd headed back and caught the tail end of the conversation around the firepit. "I didn't see it myself at first, but I'm afraid Lilia is weak and vulnerable, perhaps especially to someone like Frost. I realize I don't know her as well as you do, but conversely, I know Frost much better than any of you. He's different than he used to be... the mere fact that he didn't kill her on the first day they met is proof enough of that... but he's still the same in a lot of ways. He has an overwhelming personality, a dark charisma to him, and Lilia is, like it or not, susceptible to the allure of powerful men who are older than her."

"Explain, please." Heine said, his tone respectful but still a bit terse.

"Most of us here know at least a little bit about what happened to Lilia when she was a young teenager." Kira said, seeing that both Gregory and Daveron were looking a bit confused. "It's not my story to tell, but suffice it to say she was kidnapped and abused in a manner fit to sicken you." He supplied briefly, seeing the flash in their eyes as they took his drift. "Now obviously she's recovered from that ordeal beyond the expectations of any reasonable person, but to say she's gotten over it would be a bald faced lie. No one gets over abuse like that, and the subtle changes it inflicts on your psyche. She told me it was by clinging to "my" philosophy of good triumphing over evil that allowed her to retain her sanity during the ordeal, but it was never "my" philosophy, just her idealized version of what I represented to her. She built me up into a personification of divine justice, more or less, a perfect being who could do no wrong and always championed good and defeated evil wherever I found it. I've been accused of being pretty black and white in my thinking before, but I'm not anywhere close to perfect and have often had to choose the lesser of several evils and called it good, like most anyone has."

Kira warmed his hands briefly over the fire and then continued on. "Then came the Eden Disaster and she was rescued, literally lifted out of darkness and back into the real world, by Kunai, a powerful, somewhat attractive older man. Now I know that Kunai's relationship with her is strictly platonic, more mentor-student than father-daughter, but you can't deny that she's always been close to him, that she trusts him more or less blindly and is far more loyal to him than his actions strictly deserve. She latched onto him, the first male figure in more than a year that though he had the power and opportunity, did not express sexual interest in her. He helped her return to a semblance of normality but instead of helping her deal with her troubles, he taught her to channel her feelings into motivation to become a Praetorian... the strongest Praetorian, as you say, the one who could "protect everyone" in keeping with her idealization of me. And I think she was slowly coming to terms with herself and what had happened like that... but then I showed up."

Kira shuddered slightly for a moment and shook his head sadly. "She wasn't ready for that, wasn't ready to realize that her idol, me, was just another guy, with troubles of his own, his life tarnished by recent tragedy. I'll admit, I wasn't anywhere near my best at the time, and it really got to her. She desperately needed me to be the person she thought I was, and she was willing to do anything to accomplish that. I mean anything... she came onto me and she wasn't going to take no for an answer. I practically had to hide from her at times. She was getting frustrated and angry, I was getting frustrated and angry, and then Frost showed up, in a body that is physically identical to mine. Feeling rejected by me, she went to him, partly out of curiosity and partly to get a reaction from me, and after her first bad experience with him, she decided that the reason I wasn't giving her the attention she wanted from me was because she wasn't worthy of taking Lacus's place as my lover. And so to "prove" herself worthy, she got hooked on the idea of accomplishing an impossible task, a task both Lacus and I once considered and gave up on... the redemption of Zacharis Frost. Lilia thinks that by rehabilitating Frost she'll earn my love and then she can help me become her idol again."

"And I thought MY love life was fucked up..." Gregory whispered to Daveron.

"Shh!" Daveron replied chidingly, all but rapt with attention as Kira went on.

"But as we've all seen, such as with that hanger incident, getting close to Frost in order to understand him so she can rehabilitate him has its consequences. Namely that Frost is what happens when insanity goes mad. His madness is contagious, for lack of a better word, his unstability so virulent that it rubs off onto anyone who spends even a short length of time around him... I know, its almost happened to me several times before. He makes you doubt the people you trust, makes you doubt yourself, your own sanity, because while he is crazy, he's also a genius when it comes to human psychology, understanding how we think and feel. Frost can get inside your head so fast it's like your thoughts were painted across your forehead, and that was before he was an Edenite! I've learned a lot about anticipating how people think and feel from observing Lacus and Cagalli, but to Frost its instinctive, plain as day. He skips past oberservation and analysis and comes straight to understanding, it's uncanny and quite frankly disturbing. Even as she tries her best to figure him out, he already understands what she's doing and why, he figured it out far before I did certainly, and he's just playing along. The harder she to tries to save him, the less attention she has to realize that she's the one who's slowly drowning in the madness around him!"

"Well then we should intervene!" Hiero declared, aghast at the thought of Lilia, who had been something of a surrogate daughter to him since his own family had not made the transition into Edenites, in such a dire predicament. "We have to get her away from him before it's too late!"

"It is too late." Kira refuted with a grimace. "The hanger incident proves that much. If he's got his hooks into her deep enough to publicly humiliate her like that, making her strip naked in front of her peers and friends just by his order, without hardly a protest at all, she won't leave his side willingly anymore. Plus there's the fact that they are sleeping together, as evidenced by what some of the Praetorians saw when she was stripped. Remember what I said about Lilia being attracted to powerful, older men? Well, Frost is about as powerful as they come, looks exactly like me, her idol, or close enough, and unlike me, he's more than willing to not only accept her advances but return them in spades. Its a well known fact that victims of extreme abuse sometimes relapse into relationships that are also abusive, because that's what they've learned to expect from the people they are with. The public humiliation... the rough sex at times of his choosing, rather than hers... the sequestering of her from her friends and peers... all of these things remind her of her ordeal, and whether she realizes it or not, it makes her feel comfortable with him. She knows how to act in situations like that. And combined with her determination to save him from his own dark past, I fear she's become lost to us."

"What if she can save him though?" Haman pointed out. "I think you may be selling the Valkyrie a little short, Executor. I don't deny that your perspective makes altogether too much sense, but I think we should all remember that Lilia still chose to do this of her own free will, unlike her first ordeal. She's with him because she thinks its the best thing for her to be doing right now, and she's willing to bear up under any stress or humiliation in order to see her goal through to the end. Because she is already inured to abuse we can only have nightmares about, she is the person best suited to survive in proximity to Frost for any length of time and still have a chance of returning the same person she once was. I think its a wondrous thing she is trying to do... far beyond anything I could even attempt to accomplish. She really is the best of us."

"I hope you are right, Haman." Kira answered, leaning down, his latent senses warning him that the meat was done and ready to be removed from the flames, as he grabbed tongs and grippers to begin removing the steaks and chops and haunches to be transferred onto trays for bringing back to the tables they'd set up closer to Hiero's house. "But I'll admit that I'm cynical about her chances... a cynicism that comes about from my own exposure to Frost. Like his name, once you've been Frostbitten, sometimes the only the thing you can do is cut away the affected tissue before it starts to rot, and it leaves you less whole than you used to be, each time. And even if she does get him to recant his evil ways, that does not change the fact that he deserves to die a million times over for what he's done to the world, and that as soon as this war is over, I will make it my priority to kill him at any cost."

"Well in any case..." Heine clapped his hands loudly, breaking the tense, dire mood as he pointed to the platters of meat that Kira was loading up. "Dinner appears to be served, and I know Panner at least won't appreciate being kept waiting any longer than necessary. And I shudder to think of Hector's reaction were he to get the feeling we were sequestering his portion of his kill unnecessarily. Everyone grab a plate and lets go eat!" Heine ordered, everyone but the one armed Daveron picking up a laden platter of roasted elk, with Heine toting the half side and forehaunch of meat that was Hector's cut of the food. Unlike most Direcats, Hector had learned to tolerate and even enjoy cooked food, he was more like a Garm in that regard, though obviously he liked it raw and still bleeding the best. It not exactly being conducive to human appetites to watch a horse sized black panther ripping a fresh kill to shreds with his sabertoothed fangs, it had been decided that Hector would have to eat down for this little gathering if Panner wanted to bring him along. Not that she would have considered anything else... Heine often joked that Panner was more apt to leave HIM behind on a leash than to do it to Hector.

There was an unexpected guest waiting for them when they returned bearing the meat, to where Panner had been setting up the tables and other side dishes, including Ambrosia done up as salads along with edible, if not exactly nutritious greens for flavor and color, and several beakers of differently flavored Nectar, plus assorted spices and condiments. Hector lounged nearby, a sculpture of onyx fur larger than a family sized fold out couch, rolled onto his back as he batted and ripped at a durable ball made from layers of dried leather wrapped in thick chainmail to resist his claws and teeth, with small bells and rattles buried in the leather. Of course Direcats as a whole and Hector specifically were much smarter than housecats, but that didn't mean he didn't enjoy a noisy toy to bat around now and then. Plus it kept his teeth and claws strong and sharp, without ruining anything Panner liked in the process, such as the stone lintel of her doorway, which still proudly boasted claw marks from several years ago.

The guest got to his feet as the extended cooking party entered Hiero's yard area, brushing his sweat stained mop of ragged black hair out of his brown eyes as he stretched obviously stiff limbs. "Vaul! What brings the Warsmith out of his forge? Take a seat, there's plenty of food!" Heine said cheerfully, all but heaving the huge section of Rex Elk in Hector's general direction, the chainmail ball forgotten as the huge cat scrambled to his feet and snagged the treat out of the air with a audible crunch of bones that made everyone else present wince for a moment. Heine caught hold of a smiling Panner, smearing cooked marinade from his hands onto her cheeks as he brought her close for a kiss, before she managed to playfully shove him away hard enought to almost send him spilling to the ground. He caught himself, glad to hear the chuckles of his comrades at his clownish blundering. There was a time for seriousness, but that time wasn't a backyard barbecue in his opinion.

"Thank you but I must decline, Shooting Star." Vaul replied, looking a bit uncomfortable surrounded by so many people at once, even friendly ones. "I came by to give the Executor something, and then I am off to join my daughters in taking a much needed rest." There was such a sense of portent in his voice that Heine immediately cut the kidding act, intrigued to see what it was that the Praetorian's resident tech genius had felt was so important he had to hand deliver it to Kira. The mention of his daughters needing to rest was a mighty big cue actually, since Vaul's daughters only ever got involved in his work for one sort of task. LEMIM. The ultimate expression of melding technology, human skill and psychic power. It wasn't something Vaul just made for people. Heine had known Vaul pretty much since a few months after the man had become an Edenite, and he'd seen him make only two LEMIM items in the time since, and neither of them had been for Heine. Because to make LEMIM put the minds and lives of Vaul's daughters in jeopardy, and no father would do such a thing lightly!

"I don't remember asking that anything be made for me..." Kira replied, a trifle unsure at seeing Haman, Heine, Panner and Gregory all get so rapt and attentive the moment Vaul mentioned having a gift for him. Plainly this was a BIG deal.

"You did not." Vaul smiled tiredly, as he picked up a long object wrapped in a shawl of black cloth that obscured its form that he'd plced by where he'd been sitting and waiting for them to return. "But when Lilia prevailed upon my daughters and I to produce a LEMIM item for Executor Frost, I deemed it only fair to provide one for Executor Yamato as well."

"You made a LEMIM weapon for FROST?" Heine's voice could not have been more aghast if Vaul had just admitted to slaughtering a schoolbus full of children bare handed! "Are you INSANE?"

"Perhaps." Vaul shrugged quietly in response to the accusation. "My personal views on the man aside, there's no denying that he is ordained as an Executor, the same as Mr. Yamato. He is one of our champions, is he not? I admit that were it not for Lilia's insistence that I would not have stepped forth to offer, but I could not deny Lilia a request after all she's done for me and my daughters. I must admit, even I was impressed with the results. Deathshriek is the most terrifying weapon I have ever created. I am sure the Oosen will soon learn to dread it's voice."

"Lilia asked you to do it?" Panner sounded like she'd just gotten punched in the gut. "What is that girl thinking... I hope she knows what she's doing..."

"Excuse me, but what exactly is so important about this LEMIM stuff? I've heard about it, but its so uncommon that I've never seen it myself." Kira asked, and Daveron nodded his agreement, since there were no LEMIM workers in Urbanis.

"LEMIM... Latence Encoded, Mentally Infused Material... uses psychic power melded with esoteric technological methods to more or less "copy" a part of a Latent's mind into an inanimate object." Haman explained, pre-empting Vaul before he could flood them all with jargon on the subject. "We all know how Latent's can boost the powers of other Latents and Actives, a LEMIM item lets you do that to a certain degree without any other Latents around. Its like a microphone or a loudspeaker. Kunai possesses two such items... that walking stick was hand carved from Yggdrasil's heartwood before it was even subjected to the LEMIM procedure, making it easily the most powerful handheld amplifier in existence, or so I assume, right Vaul?"

"The Twig of the World Tree is the most powerful psychic booster item, yes. But as a functional item it is, well, a stick. I was still learning my trade at the time." Vaul answered with a self derogatory sniff. "Now the Shard Storm I made for him next, that's a work of art right there. Yggdasilwood plaques about the size of playing cards, edged with mono steel blades, fifty of them, all attuned so as to be practically weightless to his telekinetic powers." Vaul's voice turned a bit wistful as he contemplated his past creation. "But the Shard Storm doesn't boost power at all, it just facilitates its ease of use with those specific objects, which is why Kunai utilizes both items. He can't be mobile, not with his legs the way they are, so he needed a weapon that could overwhelm foes at range while still being flexible enough to defend him at closer ranges."

"And that's why nobody challenges Kunai to personal combat over personal or political differences." Heine said with a shake of his head. "No standard weapon or armor can protect you from the Shard Storm and the Twig amplification at the same time, you'll be sliced to ribbons before you even get within spitting range of him."

"Yes, I'm rather proud of that combined work." Vaul said with a smile. "Deathshriek was a venture into a different track, striking at more than just the physical flesh; since unlike Kunai, Executor Frost is extremely mobile and already a powerful hand to hand combatant well versed in unnerving and disrupting his foes in order to render them ineffective long enough to close the distance between long range fighting and close quarters melee. The aural frequencies that Deathshriek emits when swung are precisely tuned to evoke fear and confusion in the human brain, it is a weapon of terror as much as it is a brutally effective QC scythe."

"And you gave something like that to FROST?" Kira felt his stomach plummet at the thought. "I think you may have just KILLED me, Vaul!"

"Well, if he does kill you, it won't be because you lacked the ability to defend yourself." Vaul retorted, finally getting to the topic in his hands, as he held the black cloth wrapped object out towards Kira, slowly unwrapping the cloth to reveal the object within. It was a sword, still in its dark wood and metal scabbard, with a long hilt wrapped in black leather sticking out from the top of the sheathe. At first Kira and the others thought that the handguard and pommel were also black, but as Vaul adjusted the sword in his hands, it was revealed that they were instead made from a dark violet crystal the same shade as Kira's eyes that only looked dark because of the lack of light. The handguard was made in a wide "X" shape, perfect for protecting the hand against slashes while also allowing for blade trapping and breaking maneuvers with the forward projecting bars. "Go on, its yours now, draw it." Vaul prompted Kira, who tenatively reached out one hand and gripped the hilt.

"You do realize I have no idea how to wield a sword, right?" Kira thought to mention, his hand tense on the leather wrapped hilt.

"I realize that you are a fully matured Edenite, and that if you can't learn how to use it, then you deserve whatever happens to you because of your lack of skill." Vaul replied neutrally, sliding the sheathe away to reveal the blade of the sword, which was made of the same violet crystal material as the pommel and handguard, indeed, it was part of the same cohesive formation, a solid section of QC in the shape of a sword, the only way to make the weapon so it wouldn't risk being broken where blade met hilt under the stress of combat. "You certainly won't lack for qualified instructors around here." Vaul added, with pointed glances at Heine and Haman.

Kira stared at the weapon in his hand, marvelling at how light and well balanced it felt... he thought back to that time in the Atrium of the Great Endeavor, where Cyprus had forced him to take up his japanense short sword for protection when confronting Noah. There was no denying that Cyprus's sword was every bit a work of martial art, but it hadn't felt even a tenth so comfortable and "right" in his grip as this sword did. The blade was about as wide as the palm of his hand, and maybe as thick as half of one finger... then again, if this was QC, like he assumed it was, it didn't exactly need to be all that bulky. He could probably step on the flat of the blade with the Lucifer's foot and he'd only end up imprinting it into his armor. The blade was just over four and a half feet long, which felt a bit awkward for one handed use, but Kira saw the hilt was long enough for him to put both hands on it if he felt like it. The crystal was almost midnight dark in the middle, becoming more like the violet shade along the edges. It was beautiful... and frightening to him because of that!

"Its of a type of blade called "bastard swords", because they were designed to be used with both one and two hands, combining the manueverability of one handed swords with the hitting power of two handed swords." Vaul explained with clinical detachment. "I thought it fitting for a man who hates war to wield a weapon he can call "bastard" without being dramatic. Also because, given what I know of Mr. Yamato's past history with war and conflict, he's never really fit into any prior accepted category, much like a bastard sword. Is he a soldier? A vigilante? A champion of justice? An Executor? All these things combined? Yes, he's a sword that can't make up his mind about what he's trying to be, a violet eyed bastard sword. No offense intended."

"Uh... none taken... I think..." Kira replied, a bit nonplussed as he carefully manuever the sword around to look at it from different angles, more than aware that a careless slice could cut one of his friends in half before they even knew what had happened. Bad enough an edged weapon, something he'd never been comfortable with, even worse than guns, but a quantum crystal edge was something you absolutely could not play with or joke about, the moment you stopped treating it like the most dangerous thing you could ever hold in your hand, you'd probably kill someone, maybe even yourself, entirely by accident. It was a hell of a responsibility... and as he met Vaul's eyes, he realized that that was kind of the point. The safest place for this sword was in its sheathe, he should only ever be drawing it if he intended to kill someone. But should he deem it necessary to draw it, then there would be no holding back, the lightest swing could cut a man down even in full armor like it was nothing! It was just like the Lucifer... when you stepped over his line in the sand, then all bets were off.

"I call it the Executioner's Burden." Vaul told them proudly. "This is the first time I've made LEMIM for a Latent and I think its an amazing, if controversial, success. Chorus Amplification is still poorly understood, but if the Burden functions like I expect it to, the Executor should experience much improved clarity in his prescient prediction power. It won't let you see much further into what may yet come, but it will help you see what IS coming much more accurately. It short, it will give you certainty when you need it most. But certainty is, as I'm sure you realize, as much a burden as it is a boon. To know what will happen... even if its the death of your friends and comrades... and to know that nothing you can do will prevent it... the human brain is not designed to bear up under that kind of stress. To swing this sword is to see your enemy die before you land a blow... if you can't deal with that kind of foreknowledge, then I recommend you keep this sword sheathed until you have no other choice. On the other hand, the certainty is an enormous defensive asset, able to see each and every strike from your enemy a second or two before it happens, I daresay even the Shard Swarm may have trouble finding purchase upon your skin with the Burden in hand."

"Um... thanks, Vaul..." Kira muttered, overwhelmed by the scale of the gift... curse... burden... whatever it was. At least now though he wouldn't entirely be at Frost's mercy should he ever be unfortunate enough to have to face the psycho outside a Gundam. Though he didn't at all like the way Vaul had described the certainty effect. He remembered what it was like watching that town in Europe die before it happened while he was on that trip with Lilia before he had chosen to become an Executor, and to get impressions like that whenever he was holding this sword... he wasn't sure he could stand that, like Vaul had warned. The human mind wasn't made to accept certainty of that sort without cracking!

"I was just preserving the balance of power." Vaul shrugged and turned to leave. "Thank the benevolence of Yggdrasil that inspired me to create it if you must thank something. I was merely the hands that built what I was shown you would need."

"Great..." Kira muttered through suddenly gritted teeth. "As if that damn Tree hasn't interfered enough in my life already!"

"You must remember, Executor..." Vaul turned back to him with a tired smile. "Yggdrasil always has our best interests at heart."

"Yeah, but..." Kira said, mostly to himself as he watched Vaul walk away. "YOU need to remember that Yggdrasil doesn't HAVE a heart..."


	48. Ochre Sky

Author Note: Well, preliminary reviews on Violet Bastard seem to be pretty good... not that I expected anything different, since even without action it kicks a good deal of ass and updates us on some stuff that I'd neglected a bit with my recent spate of Lilia and Frost. So now all the big three of the Edenites have gotten their Gundams AND their LEMIM items, so I guess its about damn time to pump up the intensity level of their enemies, wouldn't you say? Well perhaps that line belongs in the note for the chapter after this one. In any case, I hope people have a greater understanding of the events involving some of the major relationships now, its time to move the war itself a little further along and kick off two of the three critical plotlines of the next story arc. And there's a new topic in the RW forum started by Showstopper for any who are interested in that sort of thing. Now, welcome to the Ochre Sky...

xxxx

**New Eden, roughly 400 miles off the southern shore of Alaska, altitude 85000 feet, aboard the ONS **_**Endymion**_**, January 12th, 7:00 am**

Master Sergeant Richard Ramierez of Hellhound and Stormhound fame looked around the _Endymion_'s briefing room and felt more than a bit out of his depth for the umpteenth time since he'd first been made aware of this special mission and his role in it. Not that he felt nervous or anything, never that, well, not any more nervous than it was healthy to be before any sort of combat operation, much less a EHALO... Extremely High Altitude, Low Opening... drop behind enemy lines in the midst of an enemy city! It wouldn't be his first time jumping out of an airplane at altitudes where the atmopshere was more vacuum than air, nor even his twentieth, nor would it be anywhere close to the first time he deployed via airdrop behind enemy lines with only a small squad of handpicked experts to wreak havoc or accomplish vital tactical objectives or even rescue captured material or soldiers. However, this WOULD be the first time he did so when he was in actual COMMAND of said squad, rather than serving as recon expert or senior NCO. Ramierez wasn't so sure about this whole command thing... if he'd wanted to lead a unit in the field, he'd have put in for officer schooling a long time ago. He was happy to be a grunt and senior NCO though, so he never had.

But there wasn't much choice at the moment. Both of the Stormhound's other leaders, Colonels Jones and Belaruse, were not qualified for behind the lines stealth missions, at least not as qualified as Ramierez was. Alkire was a door kicker, front lines grunt and Raine was a sniper, not used to relying on or watching out for others in a teamwork environment, both of them were cross trained in stealth insertions, and had pulled off a few doozies back in the day, but Ramierez was an expert... he lived and breathed stealth combat and ultra-covert ops. It was what he was good at. And he was also the seniormost Stormhound NCO still on active duty, with the Sagre-Major still on medical recovery leave and the Lt... well, Ramierez did his best not to think about the Lt, because he really didn't want to break out into tears in front of all the people gathered here right now. So mission command of this highly critical mission had defaulted to him, and he'd had no choice but to accept it... with the Sarge-Major and Lt out of action, it was up to him to uphold the honor of the Hellhounds and step up to meet the demands of duty, even if he hated it.

And he did hate it, hated the responsibility of knowing his decisions could mean life and death for people he knew, people he liked, knowing that choices he might have to make for the good of the mission could be to the detriment of his subordinates, and that he was the one who'd have to explain to their friends and family later on why they had to be left behind to die or be captured for the good of the mission. But he WAS a Hellhound, as well as a Stormhound, and part of that lifestyle was doing things you might personally hate as if you were overjoyed for the opportunity. _Don't let the newbies see your legs shaking._ Ramierez chided himself. _You are cool. You are calm. You are ready to kick ass and take names. You are a Hellhound. You are the best there is at this shit. Now go out and show em why... you can hide under the covers and whimper when you get back._

Straightening his spine, Ramierez gathered himself and marched to the front of the briefing room, putting a bit of saunter into his motions as if he was as carefree as a bird in the sky, battle mask slung jauntily on one hip as he waved his hand for silence and attention, simultaneously activating Lexi's motion sensing software to bring up the holographic displays upon which their battle plans had been drawn up. Lexi's redheaded avatar stood off to one side of the holoprojection, a somewhat pained look still on her face, even now, almost a week after the still very poorly udnerstood cyberspace attack that had been levied against the AI's of Orb and the USN by a still unknown third party. Most smart people had their money on it being information warfare propogated by the Eddies, but other than a few ball clenching moments with the Glasshouse system, Ramierez failed to see what the point of the attack had been. The AI's had been forced to reboot and had lost a bunch of data in the process, but it was by no means a crippling blow, just a scary one. A few thousand lives lost, a few billion dollars in damages, but not cataclysmic endgame offensive from the Eddies in conjunction.

It was an enigma, just like the Blue Monday attack. A huge degree of disruption of civilian and military infastructures, moreso in space than down on Earth, but with absolutely no follow through on behalf of the Eddies. It had everyone in the Stormhounds scratching their heads something fierce. It was simply common sense to coordinate a majo disruption event with a ground offensive or territory grab of some sort... the Eddie probably could have rolled up a Theatre base during the aftermath of Blue Monday and not had appreciable resistance, and while the AI's were fighting off the hacking attack, Orb's defense network was essentially nonexistent, yet there hadn't even been missiles launched at them, much less a focused assault on a major target like the harbor facilities or Mass Driver. One such event could perhaps be chalked up to miscommunication among the Eddies, or them still being down and out after the battle at Victoria, but two such events in less than two weeks with no follow through? Someone on the Eddie team was playing a different ballgame from the rest, was what it looked like. This was the sort of situation that the Lt was made for, he could get inside the thinking of foes like nobody else Ramierez had ever met, but of course thanks to Frost, that wasn't happening anymore. Perhaps ever again.

Shaking off the doom and gloom, Ramierez began to explain things to people that already knew them as well as he did, but briefings were part of procedure, and helped people focus and get in the right mindset for what they were going to do. First a fleet of heavy air transports would air drop most of a mechanized infantry regiment on the outskirts of the Eddie city called Borealis, which was actually built inside the blast crater that had once been JOSH-A, the Alliance military headquarters of the First Valentine War, destroyed by a Cyclops thermal self destruct system during the clusterfuck that was ZAFT's operation Spit Break. That mechanized regiment would secure a drop zone outside the enemy defense lines and then wait for reinforcement via orbital drop consisting of larger units of USN and Solar Knight ground and Mobile Suit forces, which would then begin a concentrated assault upon the city defenses. This was, however, more a distraction than anything else.

While the USN forces were kicking in the front door, Orb was going to be slipping in through the back window, inserting almost the entire Stormhound unit behind enemy lines, either as part of Ramiere's EHALO drop or with the Colonels in the ten PUMA-1's that were carried in the underbelly holds of the Mobile Armor system called the Nova Condor, part of the triple role combi-system that Commander Mu la Flaga, the Hawk of Endymion himself, piloted. Consisting of the Firebird interceptor Mobile Armor that he had used at Victoria, mated to the Flare Hawk heavy assault gunship module and then mated again to the Nova Condor tactical bomber/assault transport module, the system gave Mu a machine for any type of combat role save ground or undersea combat, and technically the Firebird could fly underwater for short periods of time if need be. Protected by a screen of M-7's led by none other than the Simurgh piled by Athrun Zala, the Stormhounds would land and penetrate to the depths of the city, to disrupt the military headquarters and most importantly hack into the city's data system.

While most of the major Eddie population centers were easily visible from orbit, such as Urbanis and Borealis were, the one city that high command wanted to attack the most, Garden City, was somehow not, despite it being the largest such population center. Interrogated Eddie prisoners had revealed that the city was located in the Himalayan Mountains of Southwestern Asia, but none of them had been able to provide an actual location. Some said that the city was built in the shadow of Mt. Everest and that there was an enormous tree called Yggdrasil that grew in the middle of the city, but orbital sensors had gone over every square inch of that area and found not a single tree, large or otherwise, much less a city of almost eight million Eddies, and it was concluded that the prisoners must have been lying or misinformed somehow. Most of high command was now convinced that the city was built beneath the mountains somehow, and it was the goal of Ramierez's unit to find out exactly WHERE that secret city was located. Once Garden City had been reduced to rubble or conquered, the heartland of the Eddie military forces would be dead, and the war all but officially over.

The secondary goal of his unit was to find data describing the location of a being or phenomenon termed "The Caller", which was supposed to be somewhere on the south-eastern seaboard of the old United States. This "Caller", which was a stupid name if Ramierez had ever heard one, was reputed to be the psychic entity behind the still quite top secret catastrophe at Porta Panama, which had utterly shut down USN aspirations on reclaiming North or South America and inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties upon USN forces. Now Ramierez wasn't sure what the USN high command was thinking... most of the time he was of the opinion that the majority weren't thinking at all... but he certainly wasn't enthusiastic about kicking in the door of something that had wiped out almost three hundred thousand soldiers from a thousand miles away without anyone even knowing it was going on. But his lot was not to question whys... if high command wanted to know where the Caller was, he'd find a way to tell them. And then break his leg so he couldn't be sent to kill it or more likely get his brain fried trying. Ramierez had had his brain fried before, several times actually, usually at the hands of Lacus Clyne, and he hadn't enjoyed any of those experiences, so he was fairly sure he wouldn't like what something like this Caller could dish out either.

High Command didn't expect Borealis to put up much resistance against the raid, it was one of the smallest population centers and orbital scanning had revealed no large concentrations of military structures or heavy units like tanks or Mobile Suits, but after Victoria, Ramierez and anyone else with half a brain didn't give a rat's ass about High Command's predicitions. They were going in expecting Praetorians and Custodians and enemy Gundams, plus an unknown number of lightly trained but highly motivated local irregulars that knew the terrain of their city better than Ramierez knew the shape of his own dick. If there was one thing his long experience in terrorist and coutnerterrorist operations had taught him about striking behind enemy lines, it was "never disrespect indigenous troops on their home turf". Didn't matter if you were wearing top of the line powered body armor and had laser rifles and they were wearing loincloths with sharpened wood spears and bone clubs, you DID NOT DISRESPECT INDIGS ON THEIR TURF, or they would pop out of a rabbit hole between your legs and rip your dick off before you even knew which way was up. He'd seen it happen way too many times to hotshot spec ops units who thought their tech and training beat out local knowledge of the terrain and motivation, and were wrong just about every time.

And of course these weren't just any indigs, they were Eddie indigs, which meant they were gonna be strong and fast and smart and work together in teams real good. And the grapevine had it that the people of Borealis were uncommonly strong in the psychic side of things, because of their city's location on the edge of the Caller's effective influence range. So yeah, Ramierez was not anticipating a walk in the park, probably something closer to a quick dash through the top two or three layers of hell to be more accurate. Even with the PUMA's backing him up and Commander la Flaga flying close air support, Ramierez just knew things were going to get fucked up pretty much as soon as he hit the ground. And the easy part was going to be getting the data... once they had it, they were going to have to fight their way back OUT of the city, through the enemy's main defense line to link up with the USN distraction force, then do a fighting withdrawal back to the hastily constructed combat airstrip so they could all get picked up by the long range transport jets and the _Endymion_. It was definitely a mission that had "CLUSTERFUCK" written all over it in bright bloody red letters. That said, it was still a mission Ramierez felt was well within the capability of the Stormhounds. This was the shit they'd all been BORN for.

"So... are there any questions?" Ramierez asked, once he was done covering all the major pertinent details and had expressed his confidence in everyone.

"I got one." Staff Sergeant Matthew Kurtz said laconically from the back middle row. "If High Command wanted us to bend over and drop our pants so they could fuck us in the ass so badly, why didn't they just say so instead of putting together this shitty plan? I've seen cobwebs less tangled up than this FUBAR waiting to happen."

"Let me rephrase that, for the benefit of mongo door kickers like Conrad." Ramierez said with a disdainful sniff. "Does anyone have questions that a Stormhound would deign to answer?" He was pleased to hear the ripple of chuckles pass through the gathered troops, black humor like this being a tried and true tradition fo blowing off stress in a situation where real anger wasn't appropriate or helpful. He waited a bit, but after Conrad had broken the ice, something that was usually Ramierez's own self appointed task when the Lt was leading, everyone was relaxed and as ready as they were going to get. "Right then..." Ramierez snagged his helmet from his belt clip. "Gimme one for the Lt, you bastards... Loose the hounds!"

"LET THERE BE HELL TO PAY!" The gathered Stormhounds chorused, locking their helmets into place as one. It was time to do what they were made to do better than anyone else could.

xxxx

**New Eden, South-western Alaskan Coast, downtown Borealis, Jan 12th, 8:26 am**

He'd been wrong, Ramierez realized, as he hunkered down by a pile of chipped and cracked rubble that had been torn from the upper stories of a building by a stray cannon shell from one of the M-7's flying CAP overhead, his armored uniform's active camouflage system shifting color and pattern to make him look like a human shaped pile of rubble to any casual observers. This wasn't a quick dash through the second or third layer of Hell at all, this was a deluxe cave diving expedition to at LEAST the sixth layer, probably lower. For one thing, most of the city was open to the air, and though much of New Eden was fairly tropical in climate, Borealis was firmly above the arctic circle and seemed to have gotten everywhere else's cold weather in compensation. It was like a goddamn meat locker down on the streets, though thankfully there wasn't much in the way of snow and ice, just bitterly, agonizingly cold air that had to be at least negative twenty, probably closer to neg forty with the wind chill. His uniform had limited life support and climate control capabilities, but it wasn't a sub-arctic survival suit by any measure. They'd expected the Eddies to at least heat their own goddamn city, but he had to admit turning off the climate control was a stroke of brilliance.

The natives were fairly used to this deep freeze and had clothing and uniforms designed specifically for warmth and maneuverability, rather than the general purpose stuff the Stormhounds and USN soldiers were wearing. For once, Ramierez actually sorta envied the Blues, as the Stormhounds called the USN regular ifnantry, for their blue painted armored environment suits. Awkward and clunky they might be, at least they were warm! But the Stormhounds were from a tropical homeland, and while they did their best to train for operations in all climates and extremes of temperature, there was no denying that this extreme cold was getting to them much faster than it was getting to the Eddies. It dulled reflexes, made you sleepy and irritable and just plain uncomfortable... he was almost afraid to lie down on the ground for too long in fear he would freeze solid in place! All the Eddies had to do was keep his troops pinned down in the open for an hour or two and they'd be half dead from exposure!

And the Eddies were doing their damndest to do just that,with several different emplaced crew served weapons currently hosing down the street that he and his squad were trying to advance down. He could just barely make out the subsurface elevator building at the end of the boulevard, which would get them into the underground sections of the city, where the military HQ and city data servers were located. Another mile or so over contested, freezing ass cold urban terrain, half surrounded by Eddies in superior emplacements with heavy weapons. Oh, the life and times of a fucked in the ass Stormhound... _All right, think Richard, think... what would the Lt do in this situation that he never would have allowed himself to get trapped in? Heavy weapons above... little to no cover... soft time limit on getting underground before we all freeze to death... no way to retreat and go around... guess there's nothing for it._ "Conrad, get everyone into cover, I'm about to make something crazy happen." Ramierez ordered, having selected the one eyed Stormhound as his second in command for this mission.

Though he might only have one biological eye, with the upgrades to his Stormhound battle helm provided by Morganroete, Conrad could actually see better with his helmet on than any of the other Stormhounds could manage, and if his hands were a bit steadier he'd have made an awesome sniper for Colonel Belaruse to train, but Conrad was a door kicking grunt through and through, and he was all but unflappable even when shit was falling apart in all directions at once. After losing his eye to a bayonet to the face from a Brotherhood Harbringer during the Brotherhood attack on Orb's Parliament, not much was going to faze Staff Sergeant Kurtz these days. "Get into cover, Corporal is pulling a Jones maneuver, aye." Kurtz commed back sardonically, referencing Alkire of course, who was far and wide the best known among the Stormhounds for pulling crazy tricks that oughtent to have worked.

Ramierez smirked and switched comm channels, ignoring the strobing flash and ozone smell of burning rock as one of the Eddie beam guns emplaced up ahead sent a stutter of dark green plasma bolts spraying across the street, some impacting only a yard or two away from his little rubble mound, the brief flash of heat from the near misses actually welcome given the climate. "Hawk, this is Groundhog, we're in a bit of a fix here and I've got a bet going with the boys that your little motto is nothing but hot air... care to prove me wrong?"

"Define bit of a fix, Groundhog." The incredibly cool and collected voice of Mu la Flaga came back, not a hint of the tension the legendary pilot had to be feeling as he flew the Flare Hawk close support gunship low over the city leaking into his tone. The Flare Hawk was heavily armed and armored, designed for close air support of armor and infantry operations, but it was a bit slow and a very tempting target for any Eddie Mobile Suits that might be around. VTOL craft like gunships or combat helicopters were great fire support platforms, but they were all but naked against fast moving war machines like Mobile Suits and fighter jets, and the Eddies had both of those. Athrun and the M-7's were doing a good job of keeping the skies clear so far, but in his way, Mu was easily as exposed and vulnerable as the Stormhounds themselves were.

"Pinned down, freezing our balls and tits off, open ground, multiple heavy weapon emplacements with overlapping fire zones above us, and almost ten minutes behind timetable." Ramierez replied tersely.

"Roger that. Hawk inbound in twenty sec." Mu replied, the distant screaming thrumm of the Flare Hawk's VTOL engines immediately growing louder and closer. "Advise you find holes and pull em in after you, Groundhog. I'm gonna have to be a bit sloppy, the Colonels are also in a "bit of a fix" with a Custodian light armored platoon... Spider Wolf's by the iconography... and I'm getting requests for help from the USN as well. Looks like most of Legio Direcat is causing havoc at the front lines."

Ramierez was going to reply, but by the time he had a suitable reply, involving quite a bit of cursing, ready, it was too late to talk, vocal communication rendered impossible by the shrieking of the Flare Hawk's VTOL thrusters, so loud Ramierez could swear his bones were vibrating apart. The numbing effect of the engines was actually an intentional design feature, the sound of the gunships engines pitched to be unsettling and frightening to the human brain, making you want to cower and flee as it got louder and loduer, until eventually it was just about all you could do to lie on the ground and shiver as it passed overhead without soiling yourself or jumping up and screaming in formless terror. The Flare Hawk was significantly bigger than most combat helicopters or gunships, twenty meters long by twenty five meters wide, and the street was only about fifteen meters wide. Ramierez had assumed Mu would do a building top skimming flyby, but he had been selling the Hawk of Endymion a bit short as it turned out.

Seeing that his craft couldn't fit down low enough on its usual axis, Mu had just rotated the gunship ninety degrees, flying sideways through the air, with his underbelly weapons oriented on the left side of the street and the nose and dorsal weapons aimed at the right side of the street. Keeping the Flare Hawk moving at just over stalling speed, lower wingtip barely human head height above the street, Mu cruised down the length of the boulevard, thruster wash blowing out windowpanes in a rippling wave of glittering crystal shards trailing in his wake, before he opened up with his full complement of weapons. On the underside of each wing the gunship mounted a 120mm gatling cannon turret plus a pair of twenty five tubed 85mm high explosive rocket launchers and a dual 15mm beam CIWS turret, while centerline on the belly was a 350mm anti-armor shotcannon for area of effect saturation damage. Meanwhile, the dorsal wing surfaces mounted a pair of 55cm high intensity beam cannons, one per wing, plus the four 57mm gatling beam cannons and dual 225mm linear cannon systems from the Firebird interceptor module in the nose socket of the Flare Hawk. Physical munitions ripped the left side buildings into pieces like a sandcastle being blasted with hurricane winds, while the right side buildings wavered and melted like candles in an oven as Mu drove the length of the boulevard and even blasted open the armored doors of the elevator building on his way up and away.

"Making the impossible, possible... one impossibility at a time..." Mu called, perhaps a trifle smugly, to Ramierez as he pulled a wingover and headed off to support the PUMA unit.

"Can I have that man's babies?" One of the Stormhounds asked, staring incredulously down the devastated street, every major building either half collapsed or on fire, yet not a single building beyond the ones lining the boulevard missing anything but a few windowpanes. Commander la Flaga had just pulled off a surgical strike with a goddamn gunship... while flying SIDEWAYS down a street! There wasn't even all that much fallen rubble blocking the street, it had all either melted or fallen into the collapsing buildings, leaving their path of advance clear.

"I think he's taken in that regard..." Ramierez replied, his own voice somewhat hushed. "But I will accept contributions for the "making the impossible, possible and buying Commander la Flaga a goddamn ferrari" fund if you like."

"I'm in for that." Conrad agreed at once, followed by a chorus of agreement from the others. Still, they were Stormhounds... even as they agreed, they broke cover and began hustling down the street, moving by the numbers, odds dashing forward while evens provided cover, then vice versa, even though there couldn't possibly be surviving Eddies in the buildings, not after THAT pass. It wouldn't exactly make up for the last time on their schedule, but it was the next best thing. Things went great for the next minute or two as they made their way down the street, but Ramierez knew it was too good to last. The way might have been cleared, but by calling in the airstrike, he'd likely alerted any watchful Eddies that the USN forces were making a play for something in this area, and they'd be sure to send a heavy response unit to lock them down.

Glancing from time to time towards the skyline, expecting the Eddies to airdrop the troops in, as that was the fastest and most efficient way to move troops around a city under seige, well, that and underground tunnels but there weren't any in this part of JOSH-A... technically this part of the base-city had already BEEN underground, the roof was just blasted away by the self destruct explosion. Ramierez made sure to keep his upwards glances brief though, for one to avoid tripping and falling as he ran forward with his unit, but also to avoid being mesmerized by the unique atmosphere displays that were more or less constant above the city, and which were responsible for its name. Borealis, for Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, which were symptoms of solar radiation interacting with particles in the upper atmosphere. Well, after the Eden Disaster, there was suddenly a lot more particulate matter in the sky, and the auroras had turned from tourist attractions to a 365 day per year laser light show above the city, perhaps because of the higher than normal background radiation levels from the Cyclops activation.

By night the sky was supposed to be a milky blue color filled with rippling bands of aqua and turquoise and violet and silver, and by day, such as now, the sky was a burnt orange or ochre color rather than blue, seeded through with reds and browns and golds, like rust colored sky algae. It was the most striking skyline he'd ever seen, that was for sure, though the downside to all that ionic interference was that communications had to be boosted to hell and back to get through without sounding like you were speaking the language of Statik, which most special ops soldiers were at least partially fluent in deciphering by necessity, given how unreliable terrestrial comms had been ever since the era of the N-Jammer. But still there was nothing worse than getting word fragments mixed in a soup of white stellar noise when you were trying to call in backup or asking for directions.

It was during one of these sky checks that the Eddie response teams showed up... not through the air like he'd been expecting, but on the ground, coming in from side streets, a double fist sized pack of Eddies on combat motorcycles, similar to the model Ramierez had once chased through the streets of Nara-Attha City, thought not quite as souped up. Even though the cycles were going close to one hundred mph as they zoomed towards the scattering Stormhounds, Ramierez managed to get a fairly good look at them, his mind already transferring to instinctive combat mode. They were Custodians, the armor alone told him that much, since it was more vest or chestplate like rather than archaic full body armor, and all of their iconography was the same... carvings of spiderlike creatures jumping and running in packs. That would make these guys Legio Spider Wolf, which was supposed to be operating in Europe right now. Ramierez reminded himself to shoot the next intel operative he saw that assured him where Eddie forces were deployed.

The bike armor itself was carved to make the bikes look like running spiders, four legs forward gripping the front wheel, four legs back gripping the rear wheel, while the rider clung low to the body and head at the handlebars. Long familiar with using imagry to affect the enemy in combat, Ramierez could acknowledge the look was creepy and good... but it wasn't going to startle a Stormhound. Legio Spider Wolf was supposed to be one of the more mobile of the enemy formations, much given to hit and run strikes and blitzkrieg maneuvers from ambush, rather than sticking and duking things out. Which made them a perfect choice for a rapid response squad. However, that emphasis on speed and pack tactics meant they wore less armor and carried fewer heavy weapons than similar formations from other Legios. And it meant that they thrived against foes who got easily confused or who broke and tried to run... but weren't so hot against trained and experienced targets who could react instantly to fluid battlefield situations with instinctive teamwork and individual intiative.

The Eddies opened up with linear pistols, shotguns and beam carbines, their accuracy uncomfortably high given their moving platforms, but at the first sight of a bike the Stormhounds were already throwing themselves into cover, and while Ramierez did hear one scream of pain, the soldier status icon for that Stormhound only turned amber, not red or black, so he figured it must have been a graze or other nonincapacitating hit. Return fire from the linear assault weapons, beam rifles and automatic linear shotguns of the Stormhound force, along with thrown grenades and Kurtz jazzing things up with a blurt from his underbarrel mounted flamethrower, quickly showed the Eddies that this was not going to be a picnic, as two riders were unseated from their cycles in explosions of blood and shattered wooden plating, and another cycle went down hard before fragmenting to pieces, rider and cycle indistinguishable as they flipped and rolled into the near distance in jagged chunks.

The Spider Wolves blew by the Stormhound's position a fraction of a second later, some of them firing back over their shoulders, forcing the Stomhounds to remain ducked into cover in the wreckage of the buildings to either side, as the Eddies drove much further on, buying time to recoup after the sudden loss of three Manifold members. Ramiere remembered he was supposed to be in charge, and ordered the better shots amongst his squad to continue harrying the riders at long range, knowing that the Eddies were greatly cohesive but that it could be turned against them if you inflicted casualties and didn't give them time to regain their focus from the psychic death shocks, even as he switched comm channels again and put in a quick request from the other Stormhound unit, which had cleared their last foe with Mu's arrival overhead and were now digging in to provide a fallback position for his own troops once they collected their data.

The Eddies had turned around and were revving up as they prepared to charge the Stormhounds once again. The bikes were just getting up to speed when the called for support arrive, bursting in through the lower floors of one of the buildings that Mu had half melted earlier, three PUMA's lit their jumpjets and hurled themselves into the midst of the Custodians. Sergeant Raven was in the lead PUMA, dual 30mm gatling cannon equipped as a primary weapon, hosing two bright orange laserlike streams of tracers through the air, ripping two bikes in half and their riders into reddish mist before she kicked out with her Hellhound's leg and ripped the entire front section of a bike away as it tried to veer around her, sending the bike piking into the ground and its rider flying almost sixty feet through the air before head and face met pavement with a jarring snap that betold many badly broken bones. Raven was in fine form today, or rather she was in an ugly mood, as was par for the course while the Sarge-Major was still in recuperation, and she was taking it out on the Eddies.

Out of a starting squadron of more than ten, barely three bikes made it out of the Hellhound unit's ambush zone, and one of those was disintegrated by a good shot from a 90mm hyper-impulse cannon. Lacking the weapons needed to pierce the armor of the Hellhound units, and finding themselves now trapped between two enemy forces, the remaining Spider Wolfs did their best to escape, but it was plain both were extremely debilitated by the death's of their comrades. Ramierez picked off one with a burst of linear rounds, and Kurtz nailed the other straight in the face with another plume of liquid fire, immolating him at once, and sending the flaming bike skidding along the ground for almost a hundred yards before it detonated in a bright ball of fire that shook the ground slightly as greasy smoke gusted up into the air. Ramierez only saw it because he happened to be looking that way at the time, but something invisibly fast tore through the rising smoke, ripping it into a short lived vortex before punching into one of the Hellhound units, the one to the right of Raven with a sound like a knife being driven through a crisp apple, a thumb sized hole appearing in the cockpit armor, the pilot's lifesigns going crazy for a few moments before flatlining, as the PUMA toppled over onto its back.

"Ware sniper!" Kurtz bellow, throwing himself down and back towards cover again, Raven and the other Hellhound pilot stepping back into cover as much as possible too, scanners sweeping for signs of the enemy. There came another "knife through apple" sound and Raven's Hellhound jerked, a thumb sized hole bored right through its left thigh, a brief gout of hydraulic fluids spurting like blood before containment systems sealed the damaged sections off. A sudden update on his helmet's Heads Up Display, which overlaid his normal field of vision via holographics projected onto his eyes via his mask showed the location of the sniper, detected by Raven after tracing back the second shot, and Ramierez saw that the bastard was sitting at the end of the street, right in front of the elevator doors, holding an odd looking slim weapon with revolving chambers to his shoulder. He was seated astride another combat cycle, but this cycle and Eddie were differently carved from the Custodians, MUCH more ornate, with the armor being of an almost Japanese splint mail sort. Pattern recognition systems checked the armor designs, which were of shooting stars, celestial objects and meteors, and came up with a match.

It was one of the four Arboreal Praetorians, Heine Westenfluss, formerly a FAITH member of ZAFT before his transformation by Green EDEN, a known auxiliary of Legio Direcat. In other words, he was about as badass as the Eddies got, and High Command was screaming for his head on a silver plate, but that didn't really matter so much to Ramierez as the fact that the guy was in his damn way right now. And was killing his troops. But he'd made one mistake as far as Ramierez was concerned... he'd come on foot, not in his Mobile Suit. And that put him on Ramierez's turf. The range on Heine's sniper weapon was greater than anything the Stormhounds had with them, but one sniper was vulnerable against a lot of targets all moving at once. Ramierez turned to give one of those hateful orders, the ones that would get someone killed in doing what had to be done... if they charged Heine, he could only get one or maybe two of them before they were in range and they tore him apart.

But then Heine's partner arrived and screwed everything up. Arriving from the same side street the Spider Wolves had come from was another man in uniquely carved armor, his done up like chainmail with breastplate, carved in the form of wind with claws and demonically leering faces. Also recognized by his armor database as Arboreal Praetorian Hama Al'Jib, former colonel and war hero of the ALU mobile suit corp, now known as the Djinn, another known auxiliary of Legio Direcat. Which was supposed to be in AFRICA right now! There must be an info leak somewhere, Ramierez figured, cause the Eddies just couldn't have known to send such reinforcements to Borealis when even the USN attackers hadn't known until two days ago! Haman came skating towards the Stormhounds, his scale system modified boots literally allowing him to cross the concrete like it was an ice skating rink, with subsequent speed and maneuverability, whirling a polearm with a curved sword blade at either end expertly around his body.

Ramierez did his level best to shoot the cocky bastard's face off, but no matter how well he led his shots, Haman just seemed to skate right around them, like he knew where the bullets were headed before they got there. The guy had seven Stormhounds filling the air around him with bullets and beams, and they could not touch him! And then he was in among them, and Ramierez heard another scream, this time the status icon turning red, as a pair of forearms flipped through the air in his peripheral vision, trailing spurts of red and still clutching a beam rifle in gloved hands, before a second slice cut the Stormhound in half at midchest. He actually saw a linear rifle round get deflected from the spinning handle of Haman's polearm, and then had to throw himself flat in order to just barely miss getting decapitated as Haman zoomed by less than an arms length away. Coming to his feet rolling, Ramierez poured full auto firepower after the weaving Praetorian, but he might as well have been throwing poo for all it did.

The second Hellhound unit stepped forward lightly, yellow bladed beam saber in hand, and swung a clotheslining blow at Haman, but before the blow could land the Hellhound went crashing backwards with another thumb sized hole punched in the cockpit armor, courtesy of Heine providing overwatch. His aim was a little off this time though, and the mono blade tipped spike that his Shard rifle fired missed the Stormhound inside the PUMA, but did put the unit off balance long enough for Haman to whip out his own ranged weapon, the Eruptor carbine, which flashed bright orange and spat a ravening cone of pink hot thermal radiation into the Hellhound unit from point blank range, melting armor like hot wax, and broiling the Stormhound alive in his cockpit. Ejecting the spent power core, which melted a divot into the street behind him, Haman worked the lever action of the carbine, loading another power cell, and holstered the weapon in the same smooth motion.

"FUCK!" Conrad was screaming, holding his leg, which had been grazed by Haman's dual glaive during his close quarters charge. The cut was shallow, but the shock and pain were strong, and his rifle was now lying in two cleanly cut pieces at his feet, its interposition all that had saved his leg from amputation. Realizing that staying there and attempting to fend of Haman was just going to give Heine the time to snipe them all at his leisure, Ramierez made a hard choice and ordered everyone to charge towards the elevator, fending off Haman as best they could. They lost two more good soldiers, scythed down from behind by Haman's twirling double glaive, the Praetorian easily able to keep up with the Hellhounds due to his skating ability, his armor decorated with concealing scarves with Mirage Colloid like effects that blurred his outline, making him even harder to hit now that he was moving slow enough to easily see, before they got within effective range of Heine.

However, the other Praetorian had not been idle, swapping out his slow firing Shard carbine for an honest to god ultra-modern composite longbow and quiver of mono-edged arrows. Which might have been funny, if Heine hadn't almost at once put an arrow straight through the skull of the closest Stormhound, the one who'd made the complimentary comment about Mu's piloting, battle helmet notwithstanding, dropping her in her tracks. Another arrow buried itself to the fletching in the wall only a few inches to the side of Ramierez's face, but he hardly even noticed as he was busy trying to blast Haman with his underslung 10 gauge shotgun at the same time. Some of the shot may have winged the bastard, but only enough to make him wobble, his armor kept him safe from actual harm, even as he buried one glaive tip in the chest of yet another Stormhound, lifting the man off his feet and dragging him several feet before the blade sliced out of his stomach, winnowing Ramierez's squad down to half strength already!

With his clip empty, shotgun shell expended, and no time to reload, Ramierez decided it was time for another Jones maneuver. Drawing a pistol in either hand, he put himself squarely in Haman's path and fired as rapidly as he could, throwing up a wall of bullets that mostly just flattened on the Praetorian's armor if they didn't miss entirely, but he did at least get the bastard's attention! Seeing what his boss was doing, Kurtz came up with another beam rifle and provided supporting fire, forcing Haman to veer off just shy of swinging his glaive into Ramierez's midriff, which was just the opening he'd been waiting for as he dived forward and tackled the Praetorian, or at least grabbed hold of him, grappling for control of the dual glaive as Haman was forced to skate away from the confusion of the melee as he struggled to cast Ramierez off. Ramierez heard Kurtz shout in pain again, and saw his friend hitting the ground hard behind him, a steel fletched arrow buried in his shoulderblade, but then Haman had rounded a corner and he didn't have any more time or attention to spare for others.

Getting a grip on the center of Haman's polearm with both hands, Ramierez gritted his teeth, mouthed a quick prayer, and then kicked out with both feet, aiming not at Haman but at the wall of a building they were skimming by, jarring his entire body and breaking three of his toes, but Haman lost his grip on the weapon and went tumbling down ass over ears at the sudden loss in momentum provided by Ramierez's impromptu brake maneuver. Ignoring the shooting pains in his legs, Ramierez hurled the bulky dual-glaive away from them both, before flicking his wrists, the practiced motion dropping a throwing blade into each palm from his forearm holsters. He hurled both of them at the recovering Haman, forcing the Praetorian to deflect one with a armored forearm and flinch from the second, delaying him for a crucial second as Ramierez leapt forward again and tackled Haman for a second time, both hands locking onto Haman's right arm as he tried to draw his Eruptor carbine. Slamming his knees into Haman's armored gut, Ramierez succeeded in bruising both kneecaps, but also in driving the breath from his foe, giving him time to rip the carbine away.

He tried to turn the weapon on its previous owner, only to get it kicked out of his grip and sent clattering away across the ground, and then a second boot to his face cracking one blue camera eye as the scale systems on Haman's boot heel ground into his armor, shredding paint and scratching the polymer beneath, feeling like somone had pressed a belt sander to his face behind a thick towel, only his throat clips keeping the helmet from being ripped right off his head. Staggering back, shaking his head to clear it, Ramierez drew his combat blade, watching Haman kip up to his feet, long, deadly looking mono-claws deploying from the backs of both his forearm vambraces. "Great..." Ramierez commented, looking at the hooked claws with grave misgiving. Guy was fucking walking armory! "Ya know what? Fuck you!" Ramierez snapped, snatching a grenade with his other hand and bowling it at the Praetorian, only to have it punted more or less directly back at him by the other man. Which was no less than the sort of reaction Ramierez had expected, which was why it was a smoke grenade, creating a handy-dandy smokescreen all around him, shielding his motions as he drew another throwing dagger and hurled it towards where Haman had been.

Ducking and rolling sideways, Ramierez came up with a third pistol, a little snub nosed three shot piece of crap he wore in an ankle holster, but large caliber and with lots of penetrating power to make up for its dismal range and accuracy. Knife in one hand, pistol in the other, a classic Hellhound battle stance first pioneered by Asmodeus and later adopted by Cyprus and a few others, including Ramierez, for close quarters battle. Finely honed combat instinct warned Ramierez to duck, and he did so, just barely dodging another buzzing kick from Haman, slashing back and up with his knife, meeting resistance as the blade scored a scratch in Haman's interposed vambrace, before the pistol roared and punched a bloody hole in the side of Haman's breastplate. Judging by how much blood flow he saw, and the way Haman didn't go down hard, Ramierez figured he'd just grazed the guy, but it was enough to get him to back off a bit instinctively. Which was just perfect, as it put him right in the firing envelope for the pistol. "Good instincts can get you killed, ya know?" Ramierez commented as he pointed and fired his second shot in one motion.

And then let his jaw drop as Haman flicked his head casually to the side and let the bullet skim past close enough to kiss if he'd wanted to. "Instinct? I believe a better term would be foreknowledge." Haman replied dryly, one of his other hands coming up with a whiplike item that he used to smack the pistol from Ramierez's hand, numbing his fingers in the process, sending a jolt like a taser charge through his arm at the same time. Arm cramping and spasming into uselessness, Ramierez snarled and stepped forward, knife sweeping low for a disemboweling stroke, which was a feint, before he mixed in a high kick aimed for Haman's chin. Haman read the feint and caught Ramierez's foot in both hands, yanking the Stormhound forward off balance before looping another cord like device around his ankle. Ramierez just had time to notice that the cord was attached to a clip on Haman's belt, some sort of lasso or lariet, and then the Praetorian was off and skating, cord trailing out behind him... and then snapping tight, almost dislocating Ramierez's entire leg as he was yanked off his feet, seeing stars as the back of his helmet cracked against the street.

Ramierez was just bending forward to saw at the cord with his combat knife, the mono-molecular edge slipping off the cord time and again, meaning it must be some sort of macro-molecule or QC impregnated substance, when he saw Haman take a wide curve around a narrow corner, playing "crack the whip" with his unwilling passenger. And at the end of this whipcrack there was a brick wall. Ramierez did his best to cover his face with his still functioning arm, and to not tense up too much, but he still hit the wall like a sack of wet oats going almost thirty miles and hour, a flash of brilliant white pain followed by plenty of moist darkness blanketing his world. He never even felt the second wall at the next turn...

xxxx

**New Eden, Praetorian Enclave, Interrogation complex, January 14th, Morning**

Ramierez blinked as the heavy leather sack was yanked off of his head, revealing his battered and bruised face, his blackened eyes and broken nose. His injuries were legacies of his fight with Haman, specificaly the two or three walls that the Praetorian had whipcracked him into before deciding that his limpness wasn't playacting, rather than a reflection of his treatment at the hands of the Eddies. Which had been curiously civil in fact, even hospitable... they'd treated his various broken digits and cracked ribs and dislocated limbs, even set his nose so it wouldn't be crooked. They gave him plenty of edible food and had even provided him with a supply of Red EDEN vaccine pills, probably plundered from his armor's survival kit, but all the same, they didn't have to do it, and in fact he'd kinda been expecting them to let him get infected... as a fellow Eddie, he was likely to be a lot more cooperative to their demands.

He blinked again when he found himself alone in the interrogation room, with the only other person sitting across the bare metal table from him, clad in a heavy dark brown robe with a shadowy cowl covering his face and body. Having heard no footsteps, Ramierez cast about for the assistant, the one that had pulled off the sack that had been blinding him, but there was no one there but the robed man, or maybe woman, though likely a man judging by the build and flat chest. Finally glancing upwards, Ramierez spied the bag... and blanched, because it was just hanging in midair, no one was touching it at all. He'd of course heard that some Eddies could use telekinetics, but this was his first time seeing the power in action. Suddenly, despite not being at all tied down in his chair, Ramierez understood why this Eddie had come to meet him alone. After all, even hurt, Ramierez WAS still a Stormhound, and knew twenty different ways to kill a man using just his toes and teeth! But against a powerful telekinetic... well, he preferred not to fight the unknown if possible.

Regaining control of his surprise, Ramierez steeled his facial expression and studied the shrouded figure across from him. "We've been over this a few times, I think. Richard Ramierez, Master Sergeant, ID code..."

"Such formalities are not necessary." The shrouded man replied, his voice deep but smooth, and somehow, slightly familiar. "I know exactly who you are, Richard."

"Well, that makes one of us anyway." Ramierez prompted, fishing for a name or even a title, but with that robe and cowl on, the other guy was a blank to him, no facial expressions to read, and damn near no body language either. "If you know who I am, then you know what I am too..." He continued after a short pause. "So you'd of course be aware that torturing me for information won't work. I've been trained by the best in the business to resist... you'll break my mind before you get it to bend when I don't wanna. And I won't be worth shit to you as a drooling idiot who wets his bedpan every day."

"Assuming we use traditional methods, certainly." The hooded man agreed, almost amiably. "But Richard, you must realize that if we wanted to get into your head, we could do it and you could not stop us. Some of us can suck the memories right out of your skull with just a touch, no need to dirty our hands with physical methods. In fact, who's to say we haven't done that already? You may have already told us everything we wanted to know..."

"And if I had, one, I'd have a massive headache; two, my memories would be gone, just like the Lt's; and three I'd be dead or transforming into an Eddie already." Ramierez spat back in reply, unimpressed with the attempts at subversion. "I've had my mind compromised by experts in the past, and every time I've had a killer headache afterwards. Unless your powers work differently somehow from Lacus Clynes, I think my mind is still my own right now. Though it begs the question of WHY haven't you mind-raped me or converted me?"

"I have been asked by many to do both, actually." Mr. Cowl replied in the oddly familiar voice. "Certainly a man with your skills and training would be an incredible asset to the Edenites if you became one of us. I'm sure you're aware that should you be transformed, there would be no going back... you've seen how FEAR treats Edenites in the USN. But I am not a GreenCo, I would never force a man to become an Edenite against their will... though I would recommend you give the idea serious thought, if you'd take personal advice."

"Personal advice? From an anonymous man holding me prisoner? I'll pass on that..." Ramierez snorted disdainfully.

"What about from an old acquaintance then?" Mr. Cowl replied, letting his hood fall back to reveal a rather regal face, with a bald pate much scarred over and piercing blue eyes. It was the eyes that arrested Ramierez, made the breath freeze in his chest and the blood pound in his ears. _NO... FUCKING... WAY..._ Ramierez thought, his throat dry and mind reeling, as he struggled to accept or deny what he was seeing in front of him.

"Mr. President...?" Ramierez wheezed, his throat trying to close up and choke him with the rush of emotions. "You can't be..."

"I am." Kunai replied with a bleak smile. "Though I no longer take the name Sai Argyle as my own. It's been a long time, Richard. Its good to see you doing so well." He watched the Hellhound gape for several more seconds, seeing the disbelief in his eyes, and sighed. "I see you won't take my word for it. Look at this, then, and make up your mind." Kunai said, pushing himself heavily to his feet and turning his back, doffing the voluminous robe and revealing his black Praetorian uniform beneath. He reached behind him and rolled up the back of his uniform shirt, showing the Hellhound his lower back... and the enormous jagged scar that stretched across it, almost from hip to hip, where the Pulsar's claw had carved into his back all those years ago at Denver.

"Holy mother of christ..." Ramierez sagged in his seat as he saw the scar, which he had seen before many times during the Hellhound's annual vigils at Sai's hospital bedside. Hell, he'd been there when they first closed that wound up, he'd never forget that scar.

"Not God, but man, as I hear it. Unless you're one of those that suscribe to the idea of Noah Borander as a literal Angel, which I somehow doubt." Kunai replied dryly, tucking his shirt back in and sitting back down with equal heaviness.

"But you're paralyzed..." Ramierez protested, a tad lamely he realized.

"Yes I am." Kunai nodded in agreement. "I don't let it handicap me. Perhaps I was just lucky that my talent allows me to compensate for my disability to such an extent as it does."

"Holy shit..." Ramierez cursed again. "Don't take this the wrong way, sir, but we thought you were dead."

"I am dead." Kunai pointed out, gently. "Or at least, Sai Argyle is dead, finally passing away in that hospital bed from which Kunai arose. Do you understand what I'm saying, Richard?"

"I do. Captain Asmodeus did something similar, reinventing his identity after he assassinated George Glenn as a younger man." Ramierez swallowed heavily, but forged on. "But sir... I have to tell you... we're so sorry! The Lt and sarge-major and I... we're so... we tried to protect you... but... but we weren't there when you needed us. When Lady Vanai died. When the children were lost. When you were almost killed! And the Isolation was..."

"I know." Kunai closed his eyes, briefly. "But that is in my past, part of a life that has no bearing upon me now. You did the best you could, Richard, and that was all Sai would have ever asked from you. But I didn't reveal my identity to you just to reminesce about old times."

"You want me to join the Edenites." Ramierez stated the obvious.

"Yes. Like I said, you would be an invaluable asset. You could become a Praetorian, even an Arboreal, in no time, with your skills and experience. And your knowledge of the inner workings of Orb and the USN's combat strategies and leadership personalities could help us win this war much more bloodlessly than otherwise need be." Kunai replied with solid certainty, that old fire in his eyes and voice that had once charmed the population of an entire world into accepting him as leader, though he was barely nineteen at the time! "It would be just like old times..."

"No, sir, I'm sorry but it wouldn't be." Ramierez said sorrowfully. "I swore an oath to always stand by your side if you needed me... but I swore that oath to Sai Argyle, not to Kunai, whoever that is. Knowing you, sir, I imagine you are a controlling interest in Eddie politics... in fact I could swear I've heard the name Kunai mentioned before in intel briefings. You're the guy at the top of the Praetorians, aren't you? And that means you HAVE to know who was behind the Blue Monday attacks. Who was the pilot of that Gundam with the weird DRAGOON system? Sir, how could you allow something like that to happen? Five hundred million civilians! That's the sort of genocidal tactic that Cervantes would have condoned! But not you! Not Sai Argyle! You're BETTER THAN THAT!"

"Perhaps Sai was." Kunai agreed. "But I am Kunai. I act for the greater good of all of New Eden. I did what I was shown that I must do, nothing more, nothing less." Kunai paused several beats and then spoke again. "I have been shown the future, Richard. My actions are necessary to reach it."

"The future is mutable, sir." Ramierez refuted. "No one can know it, no can predict it with perfect accuracy. Even if someone COULD know the future, merely by knowing of it, they would change it."

"Not someone. Something." Kunai corrected his old subordinate. "Yggdrasil is more than capable of discerning all possible futures and selecting the one that best suits the greater good. I have seen the truth, Richard. It can be shown to you as well, if you choose to join us."

"And if I don't choose to join you, sir?" Ramierez prompted, bracing himself for the answer.

"Then you are useless to me, and an impediment to Yggdrasil's vision of the future." Kunai said simply.

"So its a join or die type deal then?" Ramierez swallowed, having expected about as much. "Then, sir, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to choose option 2. I think you believe you're doing the right thing, but I can't believe the same thing. Blue Monday was a denial of everything that Sai stood for, if you can condone it as necessary then you are wrong, and you need to be stopped before you do something worse. I tell you, sir, if the Lt could see you know he'd cry... of course before that he'd need to get his memories back."

"His memories are lost?" Kunai said sharply, an unfamiliar pang in his gut at the idea. "What happened?"

"Frost happened. You know, the guy with the scythe wielding Gundam that trashed all the Paladins at Victoria, I'm sure you must know about him. The guy who killed your wife and children and almost killed you! How could you POSSIBLY WORK WITH HIM AFTER WHAT HE'S DONE TO YOU?"

"Sometimes in the service of the greater good one must make unpalatable choices." Kunai hissed in reply. "What did Frost do to Cyprus?"

"Why the fuck do you care, Kunai?" Ramierez shot back angrily. "You ain't Sai, not by your own words or your own actions, what is Cyprus Finch to you other than another impediment to the will of Yggdrasil, whatever the fuck THAT is!"

"I am not Sai." Kunai agreed once more, drawing himself up. "But I don't forget the people who were my friends. That's why I spared you from the psychic inquistion, Richard. Why I offered to let you join us of your own will instead, over the protests of many of my own subordinates and allies! You were my friend once, and I'd like for you to be again, so PLEASE, tell me what happened to Cyprus!"

"Frost broke into his house, raped his foster daughter, raped and mutilated Wrenn, then put both his hands through the Sarge-Major's chest from behind and sucked out all the Lt's memories! All of his memories! He doesn't remember me. He doesn't remember you! He doesn't remember the Hellhounds, or Asmodeus, or the Isolation, or even his own goddamned WIFE AND CHILD! He has NOTHING LEFT of his life and he can't even comfort his daughter and wife in their time of need because he doesn't KNOW THEM!" Ramierez screamed at his former boss, rising up out of his chair in his choler. "That's what Frost did to him... the same Frost that's working for YOU now! And you dare ask me to JOIN you, with my best friend in the hospital and the man I love more than my own goddamn parents a shell of his self, by the hands of one of your champions! You really don't know me at all, do you, sir? What sort of person did you think I was...?"

"I'm sorry." Kunai bowed his head, his hands curling into fists on the tabletop.

"I don't give a shit." Ramierez sagged back into his chair. "You've really changed, sir. I don't like the new you."

"I'm not sure I do either. But it is who I am now." Kunai raised his head again, his eyes moist, though he did not actually cry. "And I am sorry. I had no idea what had happened. It wouldn't have changed my decision, but I did not know." Kunai forced himself to his feet once more. "But now I do know, and I meant what I said earlier. I don't forget the people who have sacrificied themselves in my name. Whatever qualities of Sai Argyle I have cast away, that is not one of them. Wait here, Richard. I shall be back."

"And if I decline to wait? Pardon my saying so, but I get the feeling Sai should have really died in that bed, not birthed you from his shell." Ramierez tensed to fling himself at his paralyzed former boss. And then found himself hurled bodily through the air, heels skidding along the ground until he smashed into the wall with bone bruising force. Kunai had barely even twitched a hand, yet he'd tossed Ramierez across the room like he was a bag of trash. He felt invisible hands crawling across his flesh, pressing against his eyes, prying at his jaw... and then the ghostly touches vanished.

"I can rip the eyes out of your skull and pull your heart out of your chest without breaking a sweat or even stepping closer to you, Richard." Kunai warned. "Don't make me prove it to you, just as I was having a moment of sentimental weakness."

"I won't forgive you for who you've become, sir." Ramierez spat, though he stayed splayed against the wall on his ass, where he'd dropped after striking. "I can't forgive the betrayal you've inflicted upon us all by becoming Kunai... yourself most of all!"

"Then don't forgive me." Kunai retorted, stomping heavily across the room towards the door. "But don't expect any mercy from me in the future either. We'll be enemies, Richard. And this time around... you're the ones that are going to need protection, not me."

"Two ounces of lead in your braincase will kill you just as easily as it kills me, sir." Ramierez pointed out in parting.

"True... but the real quandry lies in how easy is it to get it into my head versus yours?" Kunai replied without turning around. "Don't try to escape, Richard. It would be depressing to lose you before I had a chance to do what I'm going to do."

"I'll try not to walk off." Ramierez said with a grimace, barely even feeling well enough to stand upright, much less make a break for it. Besides, where would he go, in the depths of an enemy installation, unarmed, injured, who knew where in the world, which was itself decidedly hostile to non-Edenites, even if he got outside, the environment would probably kill him before he got too far. So with escape unlikely, he did his best to get some rest, though the floor of the room was both cold and hard, being stone as it was. He'd just dropped into a sort of doze, or so it felt anyway, when he heard the door to the room open once more, and he sprang up to his feet, throwing himself at the doorway and the person standing in it, knowing that escape was futile but unwilling to spend one more instant as a helpless captive. Let them kill him, he'd go out like a Stormhound should!

He slammed into the person standing in the doorway... and rebounded like he'd thrown himself into the wall again. The guy was HUGE, easily the size of the Sarge Major, made even bigger with all that wooden plate armor carved with skulls, and he hardly even seemed to have noticed Ramierez trying to tackle him. Alexander stared disdainfully down at the battered Stormhound, failing to see much of the so called "dangerous and wily operative" Kunai had warned him about. It was just another Stump, a scraggly looking one at that. "Let's go." Alex rumbled irritably. "Kunai has asked me to bring you to him. You can walk, or I can drag your limp body. Please, give me a reason to drag you. Any reason."

"Jesus, I didn't know gorillas could crossbreed with humans... guess you learn something new every day." Ramierez said flippantly, knowing what would happen even as he did so. Alex lashed out with one armored fist, which probably would have crushed Ramierez's skull had it landed, but he eeled under the blow and grabbed the hanging wrist as it reached the end of its trajectory. Leaning forward, he hooked one leg around Alex's ankle and used the big guy's weight and momentum to push him off balance and then down onto the ground. Having sparred against a man-giant like the Sarge-Major for decades now, Ramierez was far from intimidated by Alex's brute size and overconfidence. Unfortunately, Alex was a bit more agile than the Sarge-Major was, turning his fall into a roll and then a handspring, and then his other gauntleted hand was closing around Ramierez's head like a catcher's mitt around a softball, and Ramierez felt himself picked up off the ground just by his head, which REALLY hurt. "I think I'll walk actually..." Ramierez managed to gasp out, tensing as he knew a blow was coming in that would probably end his whole world in a lot of pain.

That blow never landed, Alex instead heaving a heavy sigh and dropping him back onto the ground. He looked immensely pissed off, but it was the impotent anger of an attack dog that's just been called to heel, and when he bent down and grabbed Ramierez again, it was by the collar, not the throat or skull. Without even another word, clearly too angry to speak coherently out loud, Alex hauled him out of the room and up several flights of stairs before he finally allowed the Stormhound to use his legs again, shoving the smaller man ahead of him with eyes that promised death at the slightest misstep. A short march later and Ramierez had to blink and shield his eyes as natural daylight flooded in through the doorway they were headed towards, and he stepped out, still blinking, onto what was obviously some sort of landing pad, judging by the small VTOL craft perched in its center.

But it wasn't the invitingly open VTOL craft that snagged Ramierez's attention, nor the sudden change in temperature, nor the fact that the landing pad was apparently built right out of a cliff face in the biggest mountain in the world. No, it was the city spread out in the valley below, the city full of skyscrapers and parks and huge residential districts and even what looked like factories in the distance, which brought his steps to a halt. And it was the tree growing in the center of that city, the impossible, colossal tree that defied all descriptions of size, branches stretching out to shade the entire valley, trunk reaching kilometer upon kilometer into the sky, the tallest skyscraper not even reaching the lowest branch of the tree, which was about as thick as said skyscraper, that dropped his jaw and blanked his mind so totally he forgot everything around him until Alex poked him in the back hard enough to bruise his spine.

"Its quite the sight, isn't it, Richard?" Kunai commented, from where he stood at the edge of the platform, facing out towards the enormous tree. "That is Yggdrasil, our guardian, our guide and our ultimate leader. You could say its our World President."

"You elected a tree President? And I thought the USN presidency was fucked up..." Ramierez joked, earning another rough shove and glare from Alex, who clearly viewed the big plant a great deal more reverently than Ramierez did.

"Yggdrasil is no simple tree. It is a Chimera. I know you understand that term, Richard. Yggdrasil is a Grand Chimera. One of three. I believe you are acquainted with the Caller and Leviathan already, from the events of Porta Panama and Trieste Town? Yggdrasil is the same class of being as they. Though if you want my opinion, Yggdrasil is much the strongest of the three, where it counts anyway." Kunai explained, all but gloating at the glassy eyed expression on Ramierez's face. "And also unlike the other two, Yggdrasil cares about humanity for no other reason than the greater good of all. I cannot claim to know Yggdrasil's mind, not totally, but I do have some influence with it given my long, exemplary service to its cause. And a being that can see far into the future can also see far into the past." Kunai reached into a pack he held at his side and produce a fruit of some kind, its hide dark emerald green, its skin shiny and slightly rough looking, the whole thing about the size of a large pear. Judging by the way the big Praetorian hissed and stared at the fruit in awe, Ramierez got the idea that it was more than just a refreshing snack.

"Give this to Cyprus. Make him eat it all." Kunai continued, his tone dead serious. "This Wisdom Fruit contains his past and memories, sifted from what has once been by Yggdrasil. No one but Cyprus must partake of this meal, Richard, to try is to die a horrible death."

"The... fruit... will give the Lt his memories back?" Ramierez said, doubt dripping from every word.

"What one psychic can take away, a more powerful one can return. Yggdrasil is so powerful that direct contact between it and a human mind would all but kill a human or drive them mad, so Yggdrasil produces these fruits, into the genetic material of which is impressed biological data that corresponds to Yggdrasil's thoughts. Think of it as eating part of Yggdrasil's brain and absorbing the memories contained within. It is by imbibing this fruit that Yggdrasil reveals to us the future to come... say for instance the fact of your little raid on Borealis was known to us days before it ever occured, allowing us to transfer soldiers there to defend it. Garden City's location remains inviolate, though I understand the Caller is not so lucky. But that is as Yggdrasil wills it... soon, by the actions of the USN, Caller too will come to stand at our side, figuratively if not literally. And with all three Grand Chimera united in purpose, there is no hope for the Oosenites."

"You sure you should be blabbing all this to me, sir?" Ramierez said, a bit uneasily.

"It doesn't matter." Kunai put the fruit back in the bag and held it out to Ramierez. "You can't stop what's already been foreseen, Richard. Struggle if you like, but know that what has been seen will come to pass regardless of your wriggling and yelling. Remember... make Cyprus eat the Fruit. All of it. Him and no one else."

"How do I know it won't poison him?" Ramierez countered.

"You don't, because I don't. No non-Edenite has ever consumed a Wisdom Fruit. Cyprus will be the first. I haven't the slightest idea what will happen to him, other than that his memories will be restored to him."

"But Yggdrasil would know, if it does know the future, so why didn't it tell you what this fruit would do to the Lt!" Ramierez protested.

"Because it did not see fit to do so. What do you want me to do, Richard? Threaten to chop it down? For all my power, political and personal, I am less than a gnat to Yggdrasil, it could wipe me from existence with a thought. I begged for a favor and it chose to grant it to me... it would be rude in the extreme to question the manner in which this favor was granted, don't you think? Yggdrasil has NEVER done this for anyone before, but it did it today. Why can't that be good enough for you?" Kunai replied hotly. "I am GIVING you Cyprus's life back, and all you do is think of ways for me to be screwing you over? He WAS my friend too, Richard! I owe him my life several times over! I don't want to see him like you describe him, it makes my heart sick! I can't fix most of what Frost does or has done, but I can fix this, and I will! So please, please Richard... help me help him!"

"This doesn't excuse what you've done, sir." Ramierez said softly, as he finally took the bag with the fruit in it. "If this does give him his memories back, he's going to hate what you've become just like I do. You'll be his enemy. That will hurt him a lot."

"But at least it will be Cyprus Finch who hurts and hates me, not just a shell of a man with no past." Kunai answered, equally softly. "I would rather be his enemy than let him live on in limbo when he has a family relying on him to be there for them. This craft will drop you off outside Carpentaria. I trust you will be able to return to Orb on your own from there. Goodbye, Richard. I hope I never see you again, because next time I won't be able to let you live."

"Don't worry, sir. The next time you see me, it'll be as I walk up to you after I've blown your brain all over a wall from a mile away, and may God have mercy on whatever's left of your soul..." Ramierez replied with a grimace, as he boarded the shuttle, which took off only seconds later.

"I should have killed him for that last remark." Alex said, his brows lowering thunderously. "Are you sure this was a good idea, Kunai?"

"Please. It's plain to see he's desperate to do anything for Cyprus. I know how they think, Alex, remember that. He will give him the fruit as asked. And Cyprus will get his memories back. And then he will become an Edenite. Given how concentrated a dose of Green EDEN each Wisdom Fruit contains, I imagine his transformation might last only hours from the moment he ingests the last of the Fruit."

"Wouldn't such a rapid transition all but garauntee his demise though?" Alex pointed out.

"Were this any man but Cyprus Finch, almost assuredly. But this IS Cyprus Finch, Alex. Trust me. He won't die so easily. And when he joins us, ah, THEN you will see what a REAL Praetorian is! Not even Frost or Kira would be able to stand up to Cyprus were his genetics the equal of their own! He will become Yggdrasil's trump card..."


	49. Golden Devils

Authors Note: In another installment of my backing of Lilia and her position, I ask you to consider this. Think back to canon GSD, when we first meet Heine. He comes out of left field, another new Redcoat and FAITH member, who almost instantly is put on equal footing with Athrun Zala, even to the point of giving him advice on how to settle down his emotions. Obviously, this guy MUST be a badass, right, if he starts out in the same league as Athrun, he's a Mobile Suit ace with his own custom paintjob, etc, etc. Yet in his first major battle he gets his suit's arms chopped off by Kira... and he FREEZES... he's so shocked by getting his arm cut off that he completely loses track of all situational awareness and Stella chops him in half as a side note. Obviously it was meant to be a plot point, for Athrun to get pissed at Kira more, but COME ON! What kind of FAITH member is that? He barely put up a fight at all. But on the flip side, is that his fault, that in his first major appearance Kira Yamato happens to be owning face on the same battleground in the Freedom, as well as the Extendeds in their stolen Gundams? Yet we all still accept Heine as this super badass guy, just because of his origins, even though we never get to really see him do anything (not in canon anyway, TGA is a different story). Lilia is just like the canon Heine... she starts out on the same level as all these combat veterans from sheer talent, but since she's always around the major, top end players, she hasn't had a chance to really show it yet, unlike Heine and Haman and Alex. In any case, she'll get a moment to prove herself, like the Seraph of old, soon enough.

And now for the USN to start getting its legs back underneath itself again, and to finally introduce the next evolution of the term "Gundam".

xxxx

**Lunar Orbit, Second Earth Colony 4, FEAR Headquarters, Experimental Technologies Proving Range, January 16th, Morning**

Natalia carefully studied Gilbert out of the corner of her vision as the Solar President stood beside her in the briefing chamber that was built high up into the wall of the ETPR, that expansive space built beneath the main FEAR complex where all its now experimental weapons and technologies were put through their paces before being added to the armories of the USN or the active duty roster of FEAR'sown paramilitary forces which were technically allies of the USN, rather than subordinate resources. FEAR was probably closer to a semi-autonomous nation-state than it was to a mere arms manufacturing corporation, just not a publicly acknowledged one, even though FEAR could actually field a larger and stronger military force than Orb could, discounting the warships anyway, were it to concentrate all its security forces, the Extended units and their other war machines and battle formations into one spot. And now, today, those forces swelled yet again, increasing both her personal power and her importance to Gilbert and the USN, especially in these trying times in the wake of Blue Monday and the recent cyber-attack on N.A.M.A.R.A. that had so damaged the network integrity of the wider USN.

FEAR headquarters ran on its own seperate network of supercomputers that had only minimal interfacing with the USN AI program, as Natalia was not of a mind to let an entity she could not control have potential access to all her research data, and so unlike the rest of the colony, they were still operating with the same efficiency as before the cyber attack and had not suffered any confusion or dataloss from the attack itself. She hadn't even known the AI was even under attack, since she'd been down in her personal workshop and laboratory beneath Nifelheim base at the time, working on the projects that she most definitely did not want to reveal to Gilbert's notice just yet, if ever. She would give him the fruits of her lackey's labor for a certainty, but her own refinements of those technologies and weapons were for her and her alone, to be used to consolidate her power base after she wrested direct control of the USN from Gilbert's faltering grip.

And his grip WAS failing, she could see that plain as day in the pallor of his skin, the trembling of his fingertips, the little bags under his eyes that his makeup didn't quite conceal from her augmented eyes, all signs of the increasing amounts of stress he was dealing with on a constant daily basis. C.E. 86 was not shaping up to be a good year for the Durandel Administration. First had come Blue Monday, on new Year's eve and day, the loss of a full tenth of the USN's population in a matter of hours, which his administration had been helpless to prevent or even mitigate. Then, five days later, Namara went down and almost shut down the entire USN data network in the process, causing heavy infastructure damage and shaking the confidence of the USN public even more. And he was still dealing with growing discontent and dissatisfaction in his military forces, as calls for Supreme Commander ze Burrel to step down or even be court martialled for his actions at the Battle of Victoria grew more frequent and demanding with each passing day. And the latest attempt to generate some good news, the raid on Borealis, had turned into a protracted battle with high casualties, and they hadn't even completed the primary mission objective, finding Garden City's location!

Things were progressing quite as she had hoped, if of course not exactly as she'd expected, and it was just about time to move into the next phase of her own grand strategy. She'd already made an agreement of mutual cooperation of Lord Djibril, the capon, who at least shared her lack of what the public might call morals and she knew as squeamishness, to install him as the new Solar President while he granted ever increasing freedoms and funding to FEAR. Natalia had no interest in actually ruling the masses of citizens, at least, not with the current system in place. Eventually she would take her place as an absolute dictator, but that was years in the future, and for the meanwhile she needed time to develop her power in secret. But for the time being, it was just about time to ditch her toy, Rey, for the more expensive model that was Gilbert. Rey was damaged goods now, the moment she cut him loose from her skirts, he would either self destruct or spiral into useless obscurity as his problems came back to haunt him with a vengeance and he realized just how she'd wrapped him around her fingers and played him for an eager idiot.

But not before he blamed his problems on Talia Gladys and took action to revenge himself upon the woman he saw as the reason for the estrangement between himself and his foster father these days. And with both Rey and Talia out of the way, Gil would have no one to turn to in his time of need for comfort and understanding. No one but her, Natalia Dostanya, that is. And once she'd established herself in his bedroom, she would slowly expand her power outwards from there, until he was just as much a fly in her web as Rey had ever been, buzzing excitedly even as she drained him of his fluids whenever the need struck her. And when he was a withered husk, drained of knowledge and power, then she would discard him as well, enthrone Djibril in his place and then consolidate herself yet futher as that bigot ran himself into the ground. And when the public was sick and tired of Djibril, she would step in, overthrow him, and at last have the enduring dynasty of scientific perfection she'd long dreamed of!

"Please tell me you have some good news for me, Natalia." Gilbert said, leaning wearily on the windowsill of the huge armor-glass portal that was their eye into the ETPR. "I need to give SOMETHING to the public here soon or risk a total collapse of all support for my administration's handling of the war effort. And I don't think I need to remind you, without my support, FEAR's budget will almost certainly be heavily curtailed. I've sunk trillions of dollars into your company these past years, Natalia, you'd better have something to show for it now that I need results."

"Fear not, Gilbert, FEAR has not been idle and we would be happy to become your shining light in this time of darkness." Natalia tested the waters by patting him comfortingly on the wrist, noting that he did not pull his hand away from her touch. "The fickle public masses will be back on your side soon, once you reveal your newest weapons and strategies to them." Judging the moment to be right, Natalia activated the holoprojection technologies built into the room's ceiling, even as she sent a coded signal down into the ETPR below, signalling the first batch of new products to step forward out of the darkness to a set of spotlighted areas below the observation chamber. "As we both know, in the wake of Blue Monday, military recruitment numbers have jumped to all time highs. However, to turn a raw civilian into a functional soldier takes almost two months of training, and even then, most green recruits don't reach full combat effectiveness until two or three engagements, which can add months more to their "training" time and results in extremely high casualties among such green troops on New Eden's hostile environment."

"Thus, to supplement the soldiery of the regular armor, I have begun recruiting from a different demographic than civilians, a demographic already well acquainted with desperation and violence. I speak of course of the criminal element that is so endemic to parts of Second Earth, and which have been overflowing our prisons and rehabilitation centers for years now. When men and women have nothing to lose, they become animals, preying upon each other and the more productive citizens with rapacious fervor. By recruiting from those serving long term or life prison sentences... people imprisoned for aggravated assault, manslaughter, rape, grand theft, kidnapping and murder, giving them a chance to exercise their natural tendencies upon our enemies in exchange for commuted prison sentences, I have eliminated much of the requirement for training. These people already know how to use weapons, how to hurt and kill others without flinching, how to take risks for big rewards, and with additional hypnotherapy and drug conditioning, they can be taught to be controllable and work well in teams under strong leadership." Natalia explained, not exactly proudly but at least with proper saleswoman acclaim.

"But won't this program be putting more criminals back on the streets after they complete their terms of service?" Gilbert pointed out. "I don't think I'll be able to sell that one to the public very easily."

"Ah, but first they have to actually COMPLETE their term of service... ten years, Gilbert. Ten years serving as heavy close combat support and shock assault troops. If any DO survive their term of service, they'll be so broken in mind and body they'll probably have to live in a rehabilitation for the rest of their short life." Natalia smirked and shrugged as he looked at her. "I'm not ignorant of the people's feelings about releasing criminals, especially ones experienced with war. If you use these new units like I recommend, then I can all but guarantee that releasing them will be the last thing that ever happens."

"I'm surprised they agreed to such terms." Gilbert commented. "It sounds like you convinced them to sign up for productive suicide."

"I did, but of course I couched it in different terms. And they ARE more than just cannon fodder, Gilbert. Observe." Natalia called schematics into the display even as the unit stepped into the spotlighted area. In shape they were relatively similar to the Survivor pattern environment armor that the USN mainline troops wore for life support and protection on the surface, but far larger and bulkier, the difference between a large crayfish and a full sized lobster. On avergae, while wearing one of the new armor suits, a soldier was close to eight feet tall and weighed in excess of five hundred pounds. Moving in the things at all was only possible because the armor had a powered exoskeleton built underneath its armored surface to augment the natural vigor of its wearer. "We call them GHOUL suits, ghouls being degenerate mythological figures with a penchance for eating the dead. It stands for General Heavy Offensive Unwavering Legionaire. The armor is our first fully functional, combat ready powered armor, not just allowing the wearer to function in the armor, but increasing their strength and jumping ability by several factors."

A section of floor in front of the line of GHOULs folded back to allow a row of practice dummies to rise up and lock into place, each dummy wearing Survivor pattern armor. The GHOULs stepped forward and rapidly ripped the smaller armored suits to pieces with just their gauntlets, which featured armor piercing mono-blade talons built into their fingertips, and could squeeze closed with enough PSI to crush solid stone in their grip. Contrary to what Gilbert had been expecting, looking at the exploded schematic, the GHOULs were far from clunky, if not exactly agile, their movements smooth and without sign of hesitation or hangup. And the mess they made of the Survivor armor, with what amounted to their bare hands, was quite evocative. "In addition to enhanced physical prowess and far greater durability, including limited Phase Shift coating and anti-beam resistance, the GHOULs incorporate several new technologies pioneered by Dr. Roanoke, including an adrenal drug injector for enhanced combat fury similar to what was used in the Extended, and most importantly, a Neural Blocker that fits around the skull and generates psychic "static" that should prevent the wearer from falling victim to Eddie mind foolery."

"Why haven't we mass produced and distributed that technology!" Durandel gasped, since he was frequently bombarded with requests from his military commanders for some sort of workable protection against the Eddie's psychic talents.

"Prolonged operation of the Neural Blocker has a tendency to induce psychosis and mania in humans." Natalia replied matter of factly. "It keeps your mind inviolate against outside influence, but it will usually turn you into a foaming lunatic after about twenty or thirty hours of operation. Again, I don't see that as a downside for what is basically a disposable heavy assault unit, more of a bonus actually. Then, when they are done, if any survive, we can remotely deactivate their armor from a distance, trapping them in their own armor until we see fit to release them upon the Eddies once again. Once a convict has been sealed into his GHOUL suit, he can't get out again unless we let them, or they die, the armor provides for all life support and waste disposal needs, and can administer relaxatives and sedatives to facilitate sleeping while standing or to calm an out of control soldier."

"Of course with their greater strength comes a subsequent greater ability to utilize heavier and more effective weapons in combat, and we have produced several series of new weapons designed specifically for the GHOULs, including 12.5mm gatling cannons, 25mm linear assault rifles and 45mm shotcannons based upon the popular Mauler design, as well as heavy beam rifles and multiple rocket launchers. We have also come up with a new weapon system, which we call the "Inferno combi-weapon", consisting of a double barreled heavy flamethrower mounted beneath a man portable short ranged FRALA unit for extreme close quarters firepower." Natalia gestured as one of the Ghouls took up one of the Inferno's from a stand nearby, needing both hands to lift the weapon and help from several technicans to get the support harness for the fuel tanks and power generator settled correctly. Another moving section of floor receeded as a platform containing a heavy tank and a squad of Surivor dummies moved into view. The GHOUL fired, first with the hellish red beam of the FRALA, cutting the turret right off the tank before the dual flamethrowers immolated the entire platform under a carpet of liquid fire!

"Impressive." Gilbert said, a new light coming into his eyes. While selling the public on violent criminals serving as soldiers for reduced sentences would not be easy, with the GHOUL suits and their firepower taking the brunt of combat operations from now on, he figured the public would come aound quickly enough after they were given some footage of the new units in action. "How many of these suits do we have manned and ready for deployment now?"

"Ten thousand, Gilbert, and another ten thousand will be ready in a month's time. The suits are not hard to mass produce, and there are plenty of criminals vying for a chance to sign up for the GHOUL corp. We can begin installing the convicts and deploying them in 100 strong formations to the surface at any time you wish." Natalia saw the smile on his face, and smiled along with him. "But Gilbert, I have more good news. You see, the GHOULs are the least of the new toys I have to show you today, the crudest and weakest of FEAR's new products." She tantalized him, calling forth the next product line to step into the spotlighted area, the test GHOULs crowding carefully but quickly away from the new arrivals, wary after that one regrettable incident earlier in the week. The new arrivals were much smaller than the GHOULs, right around human size actually, their bodies covered in dark camouflage mantles that hung to the ground, faces shrouded by deep hoods of similar make.

"While the GHOULs are meant to be a front line, shock and assault force, there is no denying that it will take many GHOULs to be equal to one of the enemy elites, the so called Praetorians. But there is an upside to that equation... the Eddies have very few Praetorians, and so the loss of even one is a major blow to their forces. While the GHOULs occupy and overwhelm the enemy mainline forces, these units will search and destroy for enemy commanders and elites in independent operation behind enemy lines. GHOULs are weapons of force... the Vamps are weapons of terror."

"Vamps? Vampires I take it? How droll." Gilbert commented.

"Stands for Revamps, actually, but Vampires is apt enough. The Revamped are drawn from the ranks of the coldest hearted and most degenerate serial criminals... serial murderers, rapists, kidnappers... the kind that are only on death row because our capital punishment system is so backed up. These are the men and women who kill and hurt others not to survive or for profit, but because they enjoy it. Their bodies have been redesigned and rebuilt using invasive cybernetic procedures, until they are more artificial than biological. Unlike the ICMS Augmented that Sammual was so proud of however, the Revamped are not especially stable. Indeed, they have a time limit on their existence, before their bodies wholly reject their implants and shut down. Calculations indicate most should last for at least two months, maybe three, before performace degrades to the fatal point. But given that they were slated for death anyway, an extra two or three months of free reign to indulge their antisocial desires upon the enemy populace is more than a fair trade, in their eyes." Natalia explained, looking upon the Vamps with a bit more pride than she had the GHOULs.

"Armed with linear sniper rifles loaded with beam tipped shells and vibtrationally superheated mono-blades for close quarters combat, the Vamps are fast, smart, tough and almost as strong as a man in a GHOUL suit, with the ability to see perfectly in the dark, exist without breathing or heartbeat for tens of minutes at a time, withstand extremes of temperature and environment, including surviving on New Eden without need for an environment suit, and can even bear up under tramatic injury, including disemboweling or limb amputation with only minor immediate degradation in combat prowess. They are fire and forget weapons, drop them into the wilderness near suspected enemy populations and then return a few weeks later to pick up the pieces. I would arrange a demonstration of their capabilities, but they often have difficulty constraining their impulses, and like the BCPU of legend, will turn upon their handlers at the first sign of weakness." Natalia shrugged self consciously, but the last thing they needed was another Vamp getting loose while Gil and herself were nearby. They were still cleaning up the blood and mess from the last one that got free during an operational test.

"I'll trust you on this one, Natalia." Durandel replied, studying the grim line of cloaked figures and shuddering slightly. They did certainly exude an aura of menace and violence, like black blood dripping off their cloaks and fouling the air around them, and he was glad when Natalia signaled and they stepped back into the shadows of the ETPR and vanished from his sight. He saw her expectant posture, seeing that she was watching him, waiting for him to ask if that was it. It was rare to see her get excited about doing a product presentation for him, so he figured that whatever was next had to be quite special. He decided to oblige her theatrical desire, already well pleased with the GHOULs and the idea of the Vamps, anyway. "And is that it? I apologize for any rudeness, but you know how busy I am, and you seem to have things well in hand here, Natalia..."

"I wouldn't walk away just yet, Gilbert." Natalia's tone of voice sent a shiver rushing down his spine, though he wasn't sure if it was a cold chill or a hot rush. "The best is yet to come." She signalled again, and this time there was a lot more movement on the ETPR floor, the illumination level of the entire chamber rising as three massive platforms began to ascend through the floor. "I hate to bring up a sore topic, but its relevant for what I have to show you. At Victoria, our vaunted Solar Knights encountered rather more than they expected, in the person of the Edenite Gundams, the Kratos and Lucifer, much to Rey's dismay, and dare I say, disgrace. Fifty Solar Knight Paladins confronted the Kratos on those bloody fields, and none of them still stand and walk among us today. The Excalibur suit is the second strongest in our entire aresenal of Mobile Weapons, save for the relic that is the Vengeance, surpassed only by the Panzerdragoon and maybe the Omega Panzer, assuming a suitable pilot could be found. It has become clear that mass production models simply cannot stand against uniquely powerful Gundams like the Kratos or the Lucifer. Especially with their pilots... the impossibility that is Zacharis Frost and the improbability that is Kira Yamato."

"You're not telling me anything I don't already know." Gilbert retorted tightly. "My soldiers are more afraid to face those two machines in combat than they are of disciplinary action and personal disgrace! Rey's... misjudgement... is just the most glaring issue at stake, the dread that the Kratos Gundam inspires is a morale issue all its own."

"Yes, and its one that needs to be addressed quickly. Those two machines have proven they can turn the tide of even the most hopeless battle in the favor of the Edenites, as Victoria showed us. As long as they remain in the enemy battle order, ultimate victory will remain out of our grasp. Even Orb's much storied Gundams have proven unable to stand for long against those two, much less what might occur were the Gundam that perpetuated Blue Monday also take the field against us. That is the problem that faces us. THIS is the solution!" Natalia declared with a grand gesture out the window, as the rising platforms locked into place and drop curtains were pulled back to reveal what stood upon them. She smiled beautifically as she looked down upon the first generation of FEAR's newest prodigal children, distantly aware of Gilbert recoiling back at the same time, a display of shortsighted weakness that made her lip curl in disdain for a moment before she remembered herself and turned it into a grin.

There were three of them in the first generation, three BALORs, or Bio-synthetic Augmented Lobotomized Organism Replicants, alternately known by a new definition of that much used acronym, GUNDAM, for Growth Unified Neurology Disabled Artificial Minion. Beginning life as lab grown experimental animals exposed to Green EDEN in higher and higher doses, then put through continuous ordeals of temperature and environmental extremes to push the evolutionary adaptive nanomachines to their utmost limits, breeding and rebreeding the successes in each trial together to generate offspring and repeating the process dozens of times, breeding for strength, for hardiness, for psychic might... and for size as well. The final production generation of Chimeraform creatures was then surgically lobotomized and their bodies hollowed out of many organs, paving the way for cybernetic augmentation and rebuilding of their already exceptional forms, a perfect blend of human technology and natural evolution taken to extremes. Natalia didn't often praise her subordinates outright, but she had to admit, Oktar was a genius to have come up with this concept and then actually succeeded in implementing it!

At the same time as the cyberneticization of the BALOR was commencing, so too was a very special pilot program put into place. Called "Meisters", these exceptional soldiers, drawn from the very best of the Solar Knights before being comprehensively mind scrubbed and hypnoconditioned even before the cybernetic replacement augmentations began, were designed to mentally integrate themselves with their largely brain dead mounts, providing a keen and most importantly loyal human mind with the psychic might of a top end Chimera at their beck and call. The three Meisters of the first generation were known by the codenames "Serpentine", "Lupine" and "Aurochs", their original identies long since cast aside and forgotten during their reforging. They were all young, barely above minimum age requirements for the Knights, as younger bodies were more accepting of cybernetic modification and hypnoconditioning, Serpentine being a dark haired, sullen eyed male that was a bit on the twitchy side, Lupine a flat chested girl with a man of shaggy brown hair and an overlarge nose, and Aurochs was a young giant with the build of a football linebacker, shaved bald with a face that seemed frozen in granite.

The Meisters were designed to be symbiotic with their respective BALORs, integrating into their flesh like a removable organ or key that brought the BALOR out of its subconscious slumber. Via NIC system controls the Meister could puppetmaster their BALOR like it was their own body, assisted and reinforced by the BALOR's own subconscious primal instincts, melding Meister and BALOR together into a new personality that combined aspects of them both, less than human, more than animal, greater than either alone. A side effect of this symbiosis appeared to be the Meister having difficulty seperating their personality from that of the BALOR, the Meisters had reported dreams of memories that were not their own, and it appeared that the more stressed out a Meister became, the more awake the lobotomized Chimera became, until it was theorized that the Meister could lose control of the combined personality, though that had obviously never occured outside extremely theoretical simulations. Certainly it wasn't so much of a problem that Natalia was going to mention it to Gilbert. And if a BALOR or two did go amuck a bit down on Earth, well, it was just the first generation. Bugs were expected, and would be corrected in the next generation, which was already well on its way to maturity, heading towards the lobotimization threshold.

Natalia started from the left, with the smallest of the three BALORs. "That one there, the one based off the Cold Hunter geneform, we call "Fenris Wolf". We attempted to use the Garm geneform, but could not get the same level of results, thus resulting in the juxtapositioning of a mammlian name on a reptilian physiology. Fenris stands eighteen meters tall and almost thirty long, massing one hundred tons give or take a few depending on its level of conditioning, making it the smallest and lightest of the BALORs. Fenris is optomized for close quarters melee combat, and her pilot, Lupine, has demonstrated great aptitude for this arena. The claws, teeth, brow horns and tail spikes of Fenris are all impregnated with quantum crystalline materials, enabling them to penetrate heavy armor and resist the QC weaponry of the Eddie forces. Fenris's leathery scales possess limited cameleonic properties, though the dun and green shade you see now is her natural coloration, she can adopt a plethora of other patterns and colorations as the situation demands, from pitch black to bright purple and pink. Her scales possess the ability to selectively adapt to incoming stimuli, hardening to resist physical munitions and sweating to dissipate beam strikes in real time to adjust to whatever type of damage she is taking most often."

"Even should she take damage, Fenris's natural healing capabilities are augmented with Red EDEN nanorepair machines, allowing her to heal at a greatly accelerated rate, this system is equipped on all the BALORs. It won't let them regrow a severed limb, at least not in a battlefield timeframe, but it would take critical damage to get them to bleed out or keel over, at least equivalent and usually far greater than any modern purely mechanical Gundam's durability. Additionaly, Fenris's skin has sections of Phase Shifted mesh layered underneath it over area's of vital importance, such as the skull, heart and bowels, for an additional layer of protection. Her legs are equipped with adrenal enhancers and physical afterburners similar to the technology used by the old Garou MS, allowing for rapid charges over ground at more than six hundred miles per hour, and with deployable flight stabilizers on her back and tail, allow for jumps of several kilometers at a time, if not true flight." Natalia started with the support and integral capabilities before returning to the weapons.

"Though more than capable of tearing legions of foes apart with just her teeth and claws and tail spikes, Fenris also has a superpotent acidic stinger in her tail, the venom from which can melt even ablative armor in a matter of seconds, with a 350mm flak cannon slung under each forearm there for token close ranged firepower against bunched foes. Fenris's psychic might is focused upon getting into the minds of her enemies and interfering with their ability to think, to see and react to their environment, slowing them down and making them easy prey for her lightning fast attacks." Natalia said proudly, sighing contentedly before indicating the next BALOR, easily twice the size and several times the mass of his sister. "That one is Jormungandr, named for the mythical world serpent of Norse mythology, who encircled the globe with his tail in his mouth. His base geneform is Basilisk, a mutant crocodile vs a mutant dinosaur. The reptilian geneforms seem more accepting of the process and lobotimiztion procedures without becoming completely brain dead for some reason. Seventy meters from nose to tail tip, fifteen meters tall at each of its six shoulders, and weighing three hundred tons, Jormungandr is the slow moving tank to Fenris's fighter jet."

"Jormungandr's claws and tusks are not QC impregnated, but then again the BALOR is not designed for close range combat, he is a fire support model, though the dense bone club at the end of his tail can flip a Titan tank onto its side with a single swing. His hide is three times as thick as Fenris's, with heavy Phase Shift plates and Geischmedig-Panzer shield blisters warding vital points subcutaneously, and it needs to be tough, because Jormungandr's preferred method of travel is actually burrowing beneath the ground, with a full body sonic disruption sheathe that can liquefy even solid stone to the point where Jormungandr can eel his way along, and also serves as additional defensive capability, often shattering any physical weapons that attempt to strike him. He is faster on his six feet than many would expect, and can move sideways as easily as forward or back, making him very mobile for his size, though unfortunatly Jormungandr is strictly ground based, he cannot fly." Natalia continued, extolling his virtues systematically.

But the real treat was of course his weapon payload, as befitted a fire support Gundam. "Mounted on each primary shoulderblade is a 220cm Positron cannon, while each of the six major knee joints has a 120mm gatling beam cannon for close defense purposes. A large, fifty tube VTP missile system is built into his broad back, and a 50cm FRALA runs along the length of his tail, the emitter concealed within the Demolisher bone club at the end. Finally, mounted inside his cavernous mouth are three Ragnarok class mega-Mjolnir 3P cannons, for utter frontal devastation at medium to long range. Jormungandr's psychic potential is similar to that of Fenris, though instead of interfering with actions, he shuts his victims down entirely, much like Noah Borander was able to do, paralyzing muscles, even putting foes to sleep in their cockpits. And then we get to the last and most ambitious of the first generation BALORs, with the base geneform of an Ironhide... that is a very mutated buffalo... named Gorgon, after the iorn skinned demon-cow of Greek legend that could turn foes to stone with its poisonous breath."

Natalia leaned forward with unforced avidity as she looked down at Gorgon, its skin covered with a fine dusting of what looked like sugar or salt crystals, but which was actually far more practical than that. "Unlike the other two, Gorgon is protected not by adaptive hide, but by a shell coating of superdense bio-diamond that is especially durable against beam type impacts, along with strategically placed Citadel scales for vital location protection. Gorgon can also project a Citadel shield dome in a 75 meter radius around himself, to provide a mobile redoubt for any belabored allied forces in the area. Conceived as a special tactics model, Gorgon is equally comfortable in melee or at range, with QC impregnated horns and tusks on his bullish head, plus 120mm beam cannons in each of his eight forefingers, heavy, scooplike claws on his feet and several vertically launching VTP missile systems on his undersides and back for ranged punch. Gorgon is also the only first generation BALOR that can actually fly for extended periods, via thrusters in his legs and underbelly and deployable wings from beneath the shell on his back, though his flying is more like that of a VTOL craft than that of a fighter jet."

Natalia smiled fondly at the ungainly and blocky Gorgon, which looked more like a souped up armadillo than any sort of buffalo, its skin a brownish black, crusty color beneath the sheen of the bio-diamond, standing twenty five meters tall at the foreshoulder and weighing about 140 tons, what Gorgon lacked in aesthetics he made up for in raw power. "Gorgon is the most psychically powerful of the three, his powers are telekinetic in nature, and roughly equivalent to those demonstrated by that Chimera-Shark that attacked Orb's underwater research city, Trieste Town. He has also displayed talents in disrupting the speed of thought telepathic communications of enemy psychics, further disrupting enemy formations, especially when paired with one of the other BALORs. We are already retrofitting the Incarnate class dreadnoughts to accomodate a single BALOR apiece, and the BALORs are fully orbital drop and vacuum combat capable, allowing them to deploy in defense of Icarus's precious battleships if need be. It would be a poor creature that could not defend its own nest, after all."

"These things are MONSTERS, Natalia!" Durandel exclaimed, still recoiling away from the dead eyed, golden hued stares of the three inert bio-gundams, standing there like stuffed trophies since their Meisters remained unintegrated, utterly devoid of coherent thoughts of their own without the human intellect completing the circuit between the excised portions of their brains.

"Yes they are. Our monsters, sir, and upon their backs will our ultimate victory against the Edenites be carried. The last thing any of them will be expecting is for us to start utilizing high level psychic powers against them. And this is just the first generation... the second will be greatly improved upon over these simple prototypes..." _And the third, my precious Typhon, will make every other weapon on the battlefield utterly obsolete._ Natalia thought to herself smugly. She saw the wariness in Gilbert's eyes, he obviously wasn't convinced about the BALORs. That would change soon. She already had a demonstration in mind. "Lupine... you will deploy to the outskirts of Gibraltar and support our forces against the Edenite raiding forces there. Do not return until they are all dead." Natalia commanded.

"Understood, ma'am." Lupine replied dully, speaking through an implanted comm device in her jaw, as she immediately sprang up from her at-ease position between her alter-ego's legs, climbing up the smooth skin like a monkey before pushing herself into the body cavity through a sphincter like slit in Fernis's belly skin, muscular action instantly carrying her up to the control cavity nestled above the FPR heart augmentation, right near the base of the skull, where she curled up into a fetal ball as the muscles closed around her, holding her safely and comfortably in place against any high speed maneuvers Fenris might attempt. She felt the sharp spikes of the NIC connections meeting up with the open nerve endings of Fenris's brainstem, instantly flooding her world with new data, the sound of heartbeats, the warmth of life-breath, the smell of hot blood in her nostrils, as she completed the meld with her alter-ego. Life and intelligence brightened Fenris's reptilian eyes, her skin flushing darker green and black as blood rushed through her veins, her claws flexing and tail twitching with anticipation of the hunt to come. She reared back, claw hands scrabbling at the sky, and ululated with reptilian vigor. Fenris Wolf was loose, and even those considered godly should seriously consider running for safety until her hunt was complete...

xxxx

**New Eden, North Africa, Gibraltar Base outer defense perimeter, near the Mediterranean Shore, January 16th, just after noon**

Corporal Ryan Jones, affectionately known by those with the seniority or experience to afford familiarity as "Rico" for his bug killing exploits early on in his deployment to the African theatre, cocked his head carefully to one side, even as he chewed a mouthful of the largely tasteless reconstituted food paste that passed for field rations among the USN forces. He was gauging the sound of a medium caliber artillery round as it streaked by overhead, inbound from the Eddie artillery units emplaced about a klick and a half further down the beach cliffs. The sound was crisp and flat, meaning that the shot was passing overhead on a relatively flat trajectory, meaning it was going to go long over his trench-bunker, and thus was no impediment to him finishing his mushy lunch. Crisp was good, whistling was bad, as whistling meant the shell was on the downward plunge, and the degree of rumble, like a heavy barrel over a wooden floor, told you how directly overhead it was, with the more rumble the more directly over you it was. That one was wide to the left and way long, exploding back near where the USN's own artillery units were bermed up in their redoubts of sand and flash poured concrete.

It was unlike the Eddie artillery unit to miss by such a margin, usually they dropped their shells pretty much bang on the infantry huddling in the hastily dug trenchworks and bunkers that festooned this section of the cliffs warding the wide, sandy beach below, which was one of several perfect landing zones for Eddie amphibious forces, should they ever get up the nerve to attempt another major attack on Gibraltar, which thus required that the beachheads be defended. Finishing his chewing, Ryan swallowed the lumpy mass heavily, and dropped back into cover, shielding his Mauler against the sandy wall of the trench with his own body, as the Eddie "zapper" EMP round detonated just before touching the ground, sending out a faint crackling sound and an invisible wave of electromagnetic energy. Most of the USN vehicles and the soldier's body armor was EMP shielded, but their personal linear weapon systems were not, and if you didn't cover them up, you'd end up with a nifty looking gun that couldn't shoot shit until you repaired it back at the base.

Something that all soldiers who rotated through Beachhead Post 1 learned damn quickly, since the Eddies only started using their zapper shells right before a major push to wipe out the Post, and that was the one time you really didn't want to be wielding a gun shaped club instead of a gun. Ryan and his squad had picked up the nack right away, but judging from the series of moans and curses he heard over the Post wide comm channel, there were still plenty of geenhorns that hadn't got the memo and were now pretty much useless save as bullet sops until the Eddies got within grenade chucking range. Scrambling at low crawl though the trenchworks that had been assigned to his squad, careful to never expose any part of himself over the lip of the trenchworks now that the Eddies were formally attacking and thus would have snipers out. Well, they pretty much always had snipers out, but most snipers weren't going to waste a bullet and risk revealing their position in order to take out a single grunt eating lunch and staring at the sea, so you were generally pretty safe as long as you were visibly unarmed and not pretending to be a spotter or anything. The Eddies, or at least these Eddies, were understanding like that. War of genocide it might be, but basic politeness was still important.

The trench zigged and zagged several times, so that if the Eddie infantry forces ever did reach the trenchwork... which had happened several times before... they couldn't enfilade the whole damn line from one spot, and then Ryan reached his squad's IFV, one of the new Gladiators, which was hull down... that is, protected by berms and sandbags over everything but the main turret... in a manmade gully. Their particular Glad was armed with the dual 30mm autocannon turret, perfect for chewing up heavy infantry and light armored vehicles, which the Eddie forces in this area tended to favor. They had a few heavier units, mostly big gun type artillery tracks, but most of their stuff was light amphib APC's or ground effect hover vehicles suited for skimming over sand or water with equal aplomb. Fast and very agile, but not overburdened with armor, there was no need for heavy armor piercing rounds or large bore tank guns to take them down, you just had to be able to concentrate fire for a few seconds at a time.

The main defense line for the post was formed from a semicircular trenchwork with eight vehicle redoubts built into it, the redoubts filled with Gladiator IFV's for the most part, though there was a single Viking MBT there as well, equipped with a double 90mm supercharged beam cannon turret for heavier punch. Between each redoubt were various emplaced crew served weapons, such as dual .50 caliber mounts, small infantry mortars, or tripod mounted beam cannons, and between those the individual infantrymen could add their own personal weaponry to the weight of fire. Behind this primary line was a shorter secondary line, with mostly Chariot APC's in the redoubts and more in the way of crew served and heavy infantry support weapons. Behind them were the artillery and anti-aircraft redoubts, as well as flat ground for the mustering of the heavy armor platoon, including eight Viking MBT's and a single Titan super-heavy that barely ever managed to get into the fight, thankfully in Ryan's opinion, because that would mean things were very bad.

There was also a detachment of Solar Knight Vindicators, and a single FEAR unit, a battered Panzerwulf, but they were of little help or concern to an infantryman, unless they somehow managed to beat back the Eddie mobile suits, or, worst case, got defeated by them in turn and left the infantry vulnerable. Glad's and Vikings were technically rated to take on Mobile Suits, especially in groups, but that was more things like Vindicators or other, old types that didn't have NIC systems and FPR power sources, Ryan didn't know of a single case where Glads and Vikings had taken down a Dervish on their own, much less a Spectre! Boarding the Glad, Ryan found the chief elements of his squad already gathered. His friends and combat partners Meyer, better known as Spyro, the flametrooper, and Dudly "Dud" the squad's expert grenadier, along with Charles "Jeebus" the grunt infantryman and of course First Sergeant Blunquist, the "Blunderbuss" who had operational command of this squad and fully half of the primary defense line as well. They called their squad the "Forlorn Hopers", given how often they seemed to get stuck on the sharp end of things, simply because they were damned good at surviving them!

"Damned Eddies... I was just about to nod off there, and then they gotta go and start some shit again!" Meyer commented with a rictus grin, a lit cigarette clenched jauntily between his teeth, in total contravention to common sense, personal safety and all military regs, given that he was encased in his self contained environment armor, not that he cared. A man who liked living dangerously, that was Meyer. You had to be a little crazy to use a flamethrower as your primary weapon, since it necessitated you get close to the enemy while wearing what amount to a very large incendiary bomb strapped to your back, just waiting for a lucky shot to end your whole world in fire. "Guess we're gonna have to go kick em in the nuts again, eh?"

"Yup." Dudly agreed drolly, peering out through the Glad's forward vision ports nonchalantly. His phelgmatic behavior was still a shock to his friends, who well remembered the twitchy, excitable recruit who got so enthusiastic in combat that he often threw grenades without arming them first. But a near death experience at the hands... more like pincers actually... of a gigantic Eddie bug had really settled him down a lot, and now he was all but unflappable. Which was good, considering how many pounds of frags and HE grenades he tended to load himself down with, you did not want a grenadier getting antsy with bombs in hand. "Looks like standard dispersal pattern. Kraken at range, Megladon making a charge for the salient, no sign of Neptune yet." Dud called back to them, which did little to relax them. They were familiar by now with the main Eddie forces operating in the Gibraltar area, Legio's Kraken, Megladon and Direcat, though the latter was rarely seen and was often reported to be in other theatres as well, suggesting they were a gap filling force, moving where the Eddie forces were weakest at any given time.

The other two were both amphibious equipped forces, skirmishers and raiders rather than heavy assault forces, preferring lightning in and out strikes or surprise attacks to direct combat, though, as evidenced by their intermittent seige of Post 1, they weren't afraid of a straight fight between more or less numerically equal forces when the opportunity presented itself. Whenever Gibraltar sent out a task force to wipe them out they would melt away, and then return as soon as the big force was gone again, eventually resulting in the USN no longer sending out big forces, trusting to the dug in garrison to keep things stalemated while the High Command put larger scale plans into place. But the balance of power had recently changed with the arrival of Neptune, as the USN soldiers called the Praetorian, for the way his armor was carved in the form of crashing waves and trident bearing humanoids, like the Roman god of the sea. Neptune had galvanized the enemy forces and they had the USN mobile forces on the ropes, though no one would admit as much out loud, but the Praetorian and his Spectre were just too much for the Vindicators and Panzerwulf to handle, especially with Dervishes along for support!

But that was Ryan's concern, his concern was the Kraken and Megladon ground troops and their light IFV's. The Krakens were the ones with octopus things carved on their armor, while the Megladon's had shark heads or fins. Kraken preferred to stay at range, utilizing combined arms strategies like the artillery bombardment, which was once again targeting the outer trenches with darting rushes from hovercraft and snipers, while the Megladoners preferred charging forward under covering fire from their allies, eager to get into melee ranged where their spiked armor and wicked halberds and billhook polearms could do the most damage, in among the soldiers in the trenches. Like sharks, they were fast to scent blood and quick to swarm wherever they scented weakness, and if you let them get close in any numbers, you could generally kiss your ass a hard, painful, but very short goodbye.

The chatter of the turret autoloaders above his head told Ryan that the Glad crew had opened fire on the attacking Eddies, but with the enemy still a couple minutes out of range of his longest range attacks, there was no point in going outside the armored haven of the Glad just yet. That was often the hardest thing a soldier had to do, sit and wait helplessly for the enemy to get in range for him to actually even pretend he was doing something to preserve his own life. He could smell the stench of ozone in the air, and figured the Glad's redoubt had soaked up some enemy beam fire, which was exactly what it was supposed to do. He watched Blunderbuss carefully, knowing the Top would be hooked up into the Glad's tactical network, and would give them plenty of warning to unass and get into position to meet the ground rush when it was going to do the most good. A ringing blast sent them all staggering and cursing for a moment, as the Glad took a glancing hit from an Eddie artillery round, probably a frag shell given that the Glad continued to fire mostly unpreturbed by the impact. If they'd been outside, they'd probably all be mincemeat right now...

More distant explosions from above heralded the start of the Mobile Suit battle for control of the skies, and right away Ryan felt a bad premonition... there were way too many explosions going on already, which either meant the Eddies had walked into a wall of AA fire, or else the Solar Knights were getting royally buttraped. He knew which one he was betting on, especially given how tepid the Solar Knight's morale had been since Victoria, when their golden boy commander had run out on them and left them with their dicks flapping in the breeze. Which Ryan had to admit sure had to be a kick in the balls, but then again he found it hard to be sympathetic to the Knights. They were always strutting their shit around cause they piloted such huge, glamorous war machines, but when the chips had been down, they'd broken and run like everyone else... and unlike soldiers on the ground, when things had gone bad, they actually COULD run, and have a reasonable chance of getting away. If things went FUBAR for an infantryman, it generally meant you were either dead or captured, there was no running away to fight another day.

But then he didn't have any more time for sour thoughts, as the Top gave the hi-sign, and they all boiled out the back egress ramp of the Glad as fast as they could, knowing that all bunched up in the entryway, even facing away from the enemy, was a very vulnerable time for them. One fragmentary artillery shell and they were all sloppy joes. Ryan, Spyro and Dud went right, Blunderbuss and Jeebus left, and Ryan poked his head up over the rim of the trench to check the progress of the Eddies. And almost got his head blown off by a sniper, only the fact that his foot slipped on the uneven ground of the trench bottom jerked his head out of the way in time. At one point in his career, not that many weeks ago, such a near miss would have freaked him out for days. Nowadays, he could certainly feel his guts clench, but after ducking his head back down, he quickly forgot about it. If snipers were still shooting at them, then the Eddies weren't close enough to engage just yet. He listened to the coughing of the trench mortars nearby, knowing that when they stopped firing, it would be time to stand and present, and hopefully not receive in return.

A high explosive artillery shell landed two zags down the trench from them, the overpressure wave battering them like a pillow to the face as glassy sand clumps pattered down around them, the ground trembling beneath their feet as they tried not to look at the ragged cunks of blue armor and bloody pieces of what had once been soldiers fell to earth around the edges of the blast zone. As with most things they couldn't usually shoot and couldn't really hide from, infantrymen HATED artillery with a passion. You just had to hope the next shell didn't have your number, though conversely when the enemy arty did stop firing, that meant their own troops were about to shank you in the face, so sometimes arty fire could be comforting too. A blue-red streak in the air off to their left heralded a much bigger explosion as the hull down Viking took a hyper-impulse blast right in the turret, with a shell in the cannon breach, the twenty ton turret flipping backwards like a pokerchip on a plume of greasy red and yellow flame, the shockwave knocking soldiers down for fifty meters in every direction. That bad premonition he'd had was getting a lot worse.

And then there was something else, a shivery whisper in his thoughts, trying to turn his guts to water and his nerves to ice, trying to get him to turn and run for his goddamn life, but he just gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore it, recognizing by now an Eddie psychic trick when he felt one. Nothing the USN had could actually protect you against Eddie mind-magic, at least as far as he was aware, but you could get used to resisting it with constant, repeated exposure, like building up calluses on your brain. And compared to the freaky shit he'd seen in Porta Panama, this was nothing to piss himself about. Unfortunately many of the greener troops weren't so inured, and several of them screamed and either popped up to be picked off by snipers, or curled into fetal balls, shivering uselessly with terror, pretty damned well out of the fight before it had even really started. Contrary to what most greenhorns feared, the Eddies weren't all Noah Borander, "freeze your whole body and make you kill yourself" strong, in fact that kind of strength was really, really rare, but in groups they could pool their power and achieve similar things. The trick was distracting them and eliminating them fast enough to prevent the real serious mind-fuckery from taking hold.

And then the enemy arty stopped landing, and the mortars stopped firing, and Ryan automatically popped back up, Mauler comfortable against his shoulder, to find the Megladon shock infantry transports already WAY too damn close, having risked all sorts of friendly fire casualties to get to point blank range to drop off their Manifolds right in the teeth of the battered USN line. Individually, Eddie infantry were strong and quick and pretty damn well armored, but all bunched up in their open topped hover transport, they were still like fish in a barrel for his Mauler, his first shot taking the finned helm... and head... clean off one of the foremost Eddies in a gout of blood. Spyro hosed down the front of the transport with his flamer, putting up a wall of fire the Eddies would have to charge through if they wanted to disembark, even as Dud hurled a homemade stickbomb... a trio of frag grenades taped to a short length of metal pipe, with a single common fuse tab... expertly over the assault ramp of the transport and into the packed mass of the Eddies. They were already bailing out over the sides of their transport even as the bomb was tossed, but the confines were tight enough that about half never had a chance to get far before the bomb exploded and shredded everything inside the transport into gory scraps.

Using their polearm shafts as pole vaults, the remainder of the Manifold shook themselves off and leapt over Spyro's wall of flames to land heavily in the trench with the USN soldiers, one of them falling backwards and landing on his face, frantically clawing at himself as Sypro sprayed him with fire, but there were still suddenly three Eddies upright in the trench with them. Up close the Megladoners were actually pretty damned terrifying, with their shark mouthed helmets and razor spike studded armor, as they twisted the shafts of their halberds, telescoping the polearms down into servicable battleaxes for the close quarters of the trench. Ryan blew the closest one away with his Mauler, as not even Praetorian armor could withstand a direct hit from the 25mm frangible shotgun round at that range, much less the cheaper vest-armor of a Custodian. But with Spyro and Dud already grappling with the other two Eddies, there was no way he could shoot without killing them too, so he was forced to sling the gun and draw his knife, as he leapt on the back of the Eddie trying to hack Dud limb from limb, while the grenadier desperately defended himself with another stickbomb, deactivated of course.

Tackling the Custodian sideways, Ryan spoiled his axe swing and stuck his knife up into the guy's armpit, drawing a shriek of pain both audible and psychic as he worked the blade in deeper, even as Dud rolled to his knees, grabbed the Eddie's leg and tripped him to the ground, where they fell upon him, clubbing and stabbing until the Eddie was a broken and bleeding mass. Meanwhile, Spyro had disarmed his foe with a lucky slash of his knife, but was now down on his back himself, as the Eddie tried to crush his head in with pistoning blows of his armored fists. Ryan was just raising his Mauler to buttstoke the bastard when the Glad exploded behind him, taking a direct hit from that skimmer mounted hyper-impulse cannon that had done for the Viking, though thankfully the Glad's munition bay panels blew out the bottom of the vehicle to minimize the force of the outblast, else they would all have been killed instantly, instead of hurled prone and stunned.

The Eddie was the first to recover, taking up a dropped Oosen combat knife as he prepared to cut the head off the flame trooper lying groggy at his feet, a triumphant smile on his face as he felt the presence of a reinforcing Manifold of his comrades hurrying to his location, sensing the Oosen line was weakest here. Before he could slice downwards however, and faster than his Latent premonition could warn him, a heavy impact against his shoulderblades cracked his backplate and slammed him against the side of the trench hard enough to knock him breathless again, captured knife slipped from numbed fingers. An expert hand caught him by the shoulder, spinning him around, in time to stare down the barrel of a linear assault rifle wielded by a hound faced demon in white and grey, with glaring blue eyes. The assault rifle blurted, and the burst chewed its way through the Custodian's gorget, shredding his neck and head messily.

Without even missing a beat, the Stormhound stepped up to the blood soaked berm where he'd just shot the Eddie down, his wide footed mechanical leg digging for purchase and traction on the ground, as he emptied his clip in a short arc, forcing charging Megladon soldiers to dive for cover, giving them some breathing room. Scrambling to their feet, not having time to lie down and wait for the ringing in their ears to go away, Ryan and his buddies squared up with the Orb elite, all of them reaching for a grenade, or in Dud's case, the stickbomb he'd dropped when the Glad went off, and they hurled a quick volley of handbombs to their forequarter, briefly obscuring the battlefield in geyers of fire, smoke, sand and whickering metallic fragments, as they ducked back down into cover of the trench to avoid backblast effects. "Thanks for the save." Ryan managed to gasp out, his chest finally uncompressing from the blast wave of the destroyed Glad.

"You can buy me drinks later." The Stormhound replied tightly, though there was a strong undercurrent of devil-may-care amusement in his voice as well. If Ryan didn't know better, he might have thought the Stormhound was actually kind of enjoying himself. He watched the hound helmed man reload his linear rifle, and palm load a 40mm grenade into the underbarrel launcher, before he popped back up, blazing away at the still incoming Eddies with what sounded like full auto fire, though from right next to the guy, Ryan could see it was all semi-auto, one pull, one shot, just so close together it seemed like one event! The guy wasn't spraying and praying, he was actually aiming each goddamn shot! And while not every shot was a hit, enough of them were that several Eddies did get knocked back or forced to roll out of cover... and that was when someone else opened up from behind them, the low cough of a large caliber suppressed weapon heralding the explosive dismembering of two of the Eddies that the Stormhound had flushed out.

"Booyah the sniper!" Meyer shouted triumphantly, taking up his flamethrower again and building another wall of fire along the front of the trench, forcing the Eddies to either vault over it or bunch up on one side of the barrier to get by. Bright green plasma bolts and yellow streaks of linear weapon tracers zipped and churned by overhead in both directions as the Krakenites began moving their support weapons closer to the trenches to help their Megladon allies break through the USN lines, which were teetering on the back foot over sixty percent of the primary line. Dudly was hurling grenades at a steady rate, mixing up incendiaries with frags to keep the Eddies guessing about whether they should duck down and hide to avoid shrapnel or run like motherfuckers to avoid the burning metallic sludge of the incendiaries.

Ryan saw the Stormhound run dry again, and even as the man ducked down to reload, Ryan popped up in his place, firing with his Mauler, doing his best to emulate the more experienced soldier, avoiding the tempting use of full auto that would empty his magazine and leave them both reloading at the same time, trying to aim or at least make an Eddie duck or flinch with each shot, buying another fraction of a second before the Eddies got into the trench again and things got dicey. He saw the work of the unknown sniper again, as one of the closest Eddies was blown literally in half at the waist, legs flying one way, torso the other, arms windmilling frantically for balance the Eddie would never have again. He grinned ferociously as he saw one of his shots glance by another Eddie, tearing the man's halbered away... along with most of his right arm... the psychic pain shock clearly affecting several other nearby Eddies, as they flinched and staggered, one even down to his knees before the sniper ended him with a headshot. But his elation was short lived, as he saw another Eddie snap something off a belt harness and huck it towards them. "GRENADE!" Ryan scream, dropping prone, even as he saw it was a perfect toss that would drop the explosive right into the trench with them.

However, the Eddie handbomb never landed, a shot from the sniper struck it just as it was reaching the top of its arc, triggering the contact fused bomb, which detonated in a roiling ball of greenish plasma energy that flash melted the entire lip of the berm into glass for five meters in every direction, the blinding flash of the explosion causing Ryan to see spots even through his autopolarizing faceplate. "I want some of those..." He heard Dud mutter jealously over the squad comm.

"Screw buying you a drink, I'm buying that sniper a goddamn feast!" Ryan said breathlessly to the Stormhound, as they both picked themselves up again, reloading even as they did so. "Talk about a one in a million shot..."

"For her its more like eight of ten." The Stormhound replied nonchalantly. "But I'm sure she won't turn you down on that though."

"Screw a feast, I'm gonna offer to marry her!" Meyer cut in, his eyes shining with adoration and relief even through his darkened faceplate. "That was AWESOME!"

"You might not want to do that." The Stormhound replied with a snort.

"Why not? Is she taken?" Dud asked, flipping a grenade over the berm with either hand, the Eddies being close enough now that he didn't have to hurl with his full strength.

"Yeah, by me." The Stormhound answered calmly, and then popped up to fire at the Eddies again, but he was crouching back down a second later, the top side of his hound mask bubbling a bit from a near graze by a beam bolt. "Raine, honey, WHAT THE HELL? That guy with the beam gun just about flambe'd yours truly!"

"Target rich environment, Robert, I can't shoot fast enough to kill them all." Raine replied, her tone distant with concentration, her sentence interrupted twice by the mechanical sounds of her longrifle's slide action. Two less Eddies in shark suits. But she was right, they were swarming towards the primary trench like a hive of bees, and she counted at least ten headed towards her husband's position alone. Nine, now, but then she had to divert her attention as the jackoff manning the skimmer mounted hyper-impulse cannon passed within her range, blowing up another Gladiator, widening the potential breach in the defensive line. It wasn't one of her best shots, but with a 30mm linear sniper rifle... more like a sniper cannon in her opinion, given that it was more than twice the size of the former big gun .50 cal Barrett sniper rifle... even a glancing hit just about ripped the guy's left arm, shoulder and head completely off into a bloody mist. "Nine to you." She warned him.

"Nine, she says. Might as well be nine hundred!" Alkire grumbled to himself, then turning to look at the three Blues manning his adopted section of the trench. He couldn't tell what rank or unit they belonged to, all rank ensignia and unit ID had been painted over with matte blue on their armor, which at least told him they weren't idiots, and they weren't freaking out, so he had to assume they were relatively experienced, as far as Blues went. He turned to the one on his left, the one with the Mauler, who acted like he was the senior one present. "Okay, we're about to get stormed here, so this is what we're going to do. When I say "now", we all jump up and unload everything we can into the guys who are going to be in our faces at that time. Then you drop your gun and get your hand to hand weapon out, and we start to pray. Got it?"

"Yes, sir." Ryan replied, not sure of the Stormhound's actual rank, since his white, grey, black and blue camouflage uniform had no rank markings on it that he could see, but fairly confident from the way the guy spoke and acted that he was an officer of some sort. He just wished his own officers kicked as much ass as this guy did... he might pay more attention to them then! "Everybody jump and shoot when the Stormhound does, then go hand to hand." Ryan disseminated on his squad comm, wondering where the Top and Jeebus were, or if they were even okay. He hadn't heard anything from them since the Glad exploded. But then he didn't have time for further thought, as the Stormhound was springing upright, yelling "NOW", the three Forlorn Hopers a fraction of a second behind, only now switching to full autofire as they unleashed their firepower into the Eddie stormtroopers, blasting six of the nine backwards in bloody, flaming ruin, with one of the three remaining screaming in sudden blinding agony as the pain of his Manifold overwhelmed him, and he staggered and tripped just short of the trench, clutching his helmet and convulsing on the ground.

Ducking down and falling back, Ryan saw the Stormhound take a heavy blow from the butt end of one Eddie's billhook across the side of his head, knocking the Stormhound down hard and obviously stunning him, judging by his incoherent movements as he lay on the trench floor. Spinning his polearm expertly around over his head, the Eddie slashed at Ryan with the razor sharp sickle-hook on the business end of the long shaft, even as he kicked the fallen Stormhound in the gut and pinned him to the ground with one armored foot. Evading the slashing strike more by luck than skill, Ryan tried to jump forward with knife in hand, only to have his arm go numb when the Eddie spun the polearm around and knocked his knife from his hand with another buttstroke. Ryan made a play for his pistol, only to double up when the Eddie jabbed him in the gut with the butt, and then found himself seeing stars on the ground as the Eddie followed up by cracking him over the head with the shaft of his weapon. The billhook spun around again, and Ryan blearily saw the sickle blade coming down towards his face... and then, suddenly, magically even, the Eddie's polearm and lower forearms just plain ceased to exist, shot away by the Stormhound's wife, the sniper!

The Megladoner stared stupidly at the spurting stumps of his arms for a second, obviously in instant shock, before he began to moan, the moan heading towards a shriek before it became a gurgle, as the downed Stormhound, obviously not nearly as stunned as he looked, stabbed upwards with his combat blade, burying it in the Eddie's groin, and then ripping out, almost eviscerating the stunned Eddie, who sagged and toppled over, allowing the battered Stormhound to rise to his feet, blood slicked knife in hand, his helmet a bit askew, one blue camera eye shattered and dark, but obviously still ready for more. The second Eddie had been a lesser hand with his halberd than the first, and though Meyer was sitting down in the trench, one hand pressed to his bloodied shoulder as his armor did its best to seal and stem the bleeding from the gash there, Dudly was still active, both of his hands on the halberd shaft as he tried to wrest it away from the Eddie while also remaining clear of his foe's armor spikes. The Stormhound didn't hesitate, he just ghosted right up behind the struggle, slipped one arm around the Eddie's throat and stabbed him twice in the lower back, just over the kidneys, then twisted with his arm, snapping the upper spine.

Incoherent groaning from nearby reminded Ryan that there was still one Eddie left, the one that had collapsed from psy-shock just shy of the trench, but when he went to blow the bastard away, the Stormhound stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "No call for that." The Stormhound said, a trifle thickly, his mouth obviously bloodied beneath his mask. "Besides, you can never have too much enemy intelligence."

"I ain't climbing out there to get him." Ryan stated, keeping his head low.

"Wasn't gonna ask you to." Alkire replied diffidently, taking up the dropped halberd of the second Eddie, reaching out with the armor piercing spike on the back side of the axe head, hooking it in the prone Eddie's belt and dragging the twitching body towards them. "Wasn't gonna go out there myself, sure as hell wasn't gonna make you do it." Using the polearm to drag the semi-conscious Eddie to grabbing range, Alkire then hauled the Custodian... a young woman actually... into the trench with them, not being overly careful about dropping her gently. She was still an enemy combatant after all, the more dazed and disoriented she was, the safer they all were gonna be. Trusting to Raine to alert him to any new threats inbound, and seeing that the Blue NCO had detailed his grenadier to do the same thing, even as he worked on giving first aid to his injured man, Alkire turned to the Eddie he'd hooked.

Getting her shark faced helmet off wasn't particularly easy, especially with his own visual sensors on secondary mode after that clubbing to the head he'd gotten, but with some twisting and yanking and even a pit of careful prying with the tip of his knife, he managed to lever the head armor off of her, broken connections on its underside showing where it had been hooked into data transmission lines and some sort of HUD display computer elsewhere in her armor. He heard both the Blues nearby swear softly, and supposed that yes, she was rather pretty, with dusky tanned skin that bespoke plenty of time outdoors and fragile white blond hair, but he didn't let her looks stop him from checking her over for injuries. Aside from the massive headache of psy-shock, she seemed fine, and so he rolled her over and used some macro-cable to hogtie her ankles and wrists, taking the opportunity to divest her of her spare weapons, ammunition and other supplies in the process, piling it all up to one side to sort through later. He peeled open one eye, saw the dull silver pupil, and checked behind her ears, finding the dun colored slug thing behind the left one, which he pricked with his knife to cut off her easy psychic access to the Eddie psy-network, the Wind of Words.

She was starting to come around by this point, and so he took a roll of duct tape from one of his own belt pouches, and used several strips of tape to cover her eyes and seal her mouth shut... the middle of a battlefield was hardly the time or place for an interrogation of what appeared to be just a low level trooper. The Eddies were getting better about dumbing down their officer's bling on their armor, but she was too young, probably in her late teens, and her armor was way too plain for her to be anyone of actual importance. The Eddies did have some pretty young commanders, they were ZAFT like in that way, but it was really unlikely that a seventeen year old, fresh faced girl was much above a sergeant equivalent, if that. She started to wriggle and make muffled sounds, but you'd need a mono-saw to sever that marco-tie he'd bound her with, brute strength wouldn't do it. You could suspend a MBT with a single strand of macro cord, assuming you could find something to anchor it to. "What are we supposed to do with her?" The Blue NCO asked, somewhat tenatively.

"For the moment, just ignore her, but try not to step on her if you can avoid it. I'm pretty sure I've cut her off from communicating with the rest of her friends, but keep a sharp eye out for any rescue party looking groups headed our way." Alkire answered succiently, reaching up to his own helmet and unclasping it, shaking his sweat stained hair and rubbing at his bruised and bloody cheek and lip as he flipped his helmet around to stare at the battard item, peripherally aware of the naked envy on the faces of the Blues, who had to spend all their time outside locked up in their environment suits. Not a one of them had ever felt the ocean breeze on their face the entire time they'd been down here. Seeing that the NCO had finished binding up his friend's wound, such as they could anyway, Alkire reached out a hand to introduce himself. "Colonel Robert Jones, Orb Special Forces, Stormhounds. Since you totally saved my life, you can call me Alkire. Though if anyone tells you to call me "leadfoot", I'll break it off in your ass."

"Why would anyone call you lead... oh..." Meyer began to comment, before his eyes followed Alkire's pointing finger and took in his mechanical lower leg. "How they hell'd you get something like that? That's awesome!"

"Its a long story, but suffice it to say I did something very stupid when backed into a corner." Alkire replied, shuddering as he still could remember the sensation of placing the shutgun muzzle against his kneecap. He managed a smile for the benefit of the Blues though. "Though it does come in handy from time to time, I will admit."

"Did you say your name was Robert Jones, sir?" Ryan asked, his brow furrowed in thought. He saw the Stormhound nod casually. "You see, sir, my name is Ryan Jones. My father's older brother had a son named Robert Jones, and I think he looked sort of like you. Are you by any chance one of the Jones's that owned the Jones Auto-Repair shops across the Western AtFed?"

"Holy shit!" Alkire exclaimed, doing a double take. "Its been forever since anyone's mentioned that!" He hoped his shock covered up his unease... the Jones Auto-Repair shops had just been a front for his family's real business, arms dealing and soldier's-for-hire... a secret that had been kept from the rest of the Jones clan for reasons of their own safety. Given that black market competitors had killed all his immediate family during the chaos of the energy crisis after ZAFT dropped the N-Jammers during the First Valentine War, there was something to be said for having kept the rest of the extended family in the dark and well seperated from what his father, mother and close family did that got them so much money. "Ryan Jones... Ryan Jones... I think I remember someone by that name. Boy, you were a goofy looking kid back then, no wonder I didn't recognize you now..."

"I was like four, sir. Everyone is goofy looking at age four." Ryan protested, feeling the stares of Spyro and Dud on his back. Then things got worse, as Top and Jeebus came low crawling along the trenchline from the other side of the wrecked Glad, and a lithe older woman carrying a large camouflage cloak and a massive sniper weapon dropped into the trench from the same direction Alkire... his own long lost Uncle... had appeared from.

"Are you Colonel Jones?" Blundquist asked the helmetless Stormhound, doing his best not to flinch at the way the manw as casually exposing himself to the environment. He knew intellectually that the Orb troops had ready access to Red EDEN vaccines and thus didn't have to worry about contamination, but it was still discomforting to see. "I was told Orb Special Forces had deployed a detachment to the area and that you were in command. I'm First Sergeant Blunquist, I was in charge of this section of the trench."

"Still are, if that's what you're asking. I'm not so big on usurping the authority of people who've been fighting this area longer than I have." Alkire rose to a crouch and shook the Top's hand. "And yeah, I'm Colonel Jones. What can I do for ya?"

"Top, Top! He's Rico's Uncle!" Dudly blurted out, ignoring the glare from Ryan.

"Distant relation." Alkire supplied instantly, feeling Raine's head crank around to stare at his back. He'd certainly never mentioned any surviving family to her, though given the disconnect between the branches of the Jones family, he felt there was some precedent for having all but forgotten his distant cousins and nephews. He'd certainly never expected to bump into one on a battlefield. "And now ain't the time for a reunion." Alkire indicated the trussed up Custodian, who was continuing to struggle with her bonds, obviously not happy at waking up blindfolded, gagged and hogtied. "Your squad helped me capture this Eddie, you got a safe place we can stash her until I can take her in for debriefing? Hup, hold that thought..." Alkire cocked his head, listening to the battlefield around them. "You hear that, honey?" He asked Raine, who likewise had her heard cocked.

"Yep. Sounds like they're falling back to regroup." Raine replied, poking the scope of her weapon over the lip of the trench, since it was connected to her helmet optics, she could use it like a periscope when she didn't want to stick her own neck out. She scanned back and forth quickly, and confirmed what her and Alkire's ears had already discerned. The Eddies, right at the cusp of breaking through, were pulling back in all quarters. Maybe that was because the Titan was powered up and moving forward, but she doubted it. Titan were great anti-armor weapons, but they weren't so hot against lots of fast moving skimmer units, or dismounted infantry with plasma charges. "But why? They had most of us more or less on the ropes?"

"Hey... you see that...?" Ryan said, his head craned upwards as he pointed towards the empty blue sky above them.

"I don't see anything." Jeebus replied in puzzlement. "Its just the sky."

"Holy SHIT, he's right!" Alkire exclaimed, ducking down further into cover. "Everyone take cover!"

To their credit, the Blues all immediately followed his order, though several of them looked extremely confused. Alkire didn't have time to explain what both he and his distant nephew had discerned. That the sky WAS empty, but it SHOULD have been full of Mobile Suits as the Solar Knights and FEAR auxiliary battled against the Eddie Dervishes! Jamming his helmet back on, Alkrie tuned into the Solar Knight comm frequencies, but got nothing but dead air, not even jamming or static, just empty air. He'd been so busy fighting for his life that he'd lost track of the wider battle. The ground shaking rumble of the Titan's massive treads got close and closer, but Alkire didn't need to be half as experienced as he was to know what was coming. A Praetorian had been reported in the area after all, that was why he and Raine had stopped in, to see if they couldn't get a lucky potshot off on the bastard.

The explosion, when it came as the invisible Spectre Mobile Suit landed next to the trundling Titan super-heavy tank and used its dual QC glaive-staff to cut the huge tank in half laterally, was enough to lift them all almost a foot off the ground as it rippled beneath them, battering them ruthlessly against the sand and walls of the trench, tangling them up with each other as it blew the air out of their lungs and made their eardrums feel like they were ripping apart, even with their helmet audio-dampeners. Aftershock tremblers heralded the arrival of the other Eddie machines, the hazy, half mirage colloid cloaked Dervishes, seven of them, falling into formation around the now visible Spectre, its armor bearing Neptune's iconography, free to wreak havoc at their leisure among the USN forces now that the Custodian infantry had pulled back.

"FUCK!" Spyro shouted, almost hysertically. "WE ARE SO FUCKED!" And he was right to be worried, since there was little most infantry weapons could do against Mobile Suits, even the bigger, crew served weapons couldn't take one down with a single shot, not unless they were divinely lucky. And those same crew served weapons made very inviting targets for the Dervish's grenades and 225mm linear rifles to target, meaning that most of them were annihilated in the next couple of seconds. Alkire ran through his own bag of tricks for some sort of strategem, before deciding to fall back to a tried and true method of survival.

"Everyone play dead!" Alkire ordered, quite seriously. Standing up, shooting or running around was just going to get them stepped on or blown up. Of course playing dead was just going to get them captured by the Eddie infantry, but look how that had turned out for the Corporal at Borealis! Movement from his side drew his attention, as he watched Raine fit her scope to her eye lense once more, pointing the weapon almost straight up as she peered into the vaults of the sky, obviously tracking some fast moving object. Alkire briefly held out hope that it was one of the Gundams, before remembering that all of them save Yzak and Katie's Balmung had returned to Orb, and the Balmung was gearing up for the attack on Neo-Miami at Heaven's Base, far out of rescue range. The Eddies seemed to have noticed the approaching object as well, and judging from the way they got all defensive, he figured that it wasn't an ally they were expecting either.

And then the object was close enough for his helmet magnifiers to make out, and he furrowed his brow, because it was an orbital drop pod, but just one of them. Meaning at most four Mobile Suits were on their way to reinforce them. And four USN, ZAFT or even Orb machines against seven Dervishes and a Spectre was NOT good odds. The backup was gonna get MASSACRED! Alkire watched with great misgivings as the drop pod began to break apart, releasing its cargo into free fall. Things were looking bleak. He could be forgiven for thinking they were bleak for his own side. After all, he had no idea what sort of monster had just been unleashed...

xxxx

Custodian Regulus Khala continued to work her awkwardly bent arms and legs as she tried to wriggle out of the bonds that the damned Oosen soldiers had put on her while she'd been disabled by the trauma-shock of feeling her friends and fellow Custodians get blasted apart by shotguns or grenades, or worse yet, immolated by the flamethrower. Opinion was divided in the Manifolds as to which sort of Oosen trooper was more frightening and hateful, the ones with the Mauler shotguns, or the ones with the flamethrowers, personally, she hated the flametroopers more. Nothing was worse than burning to death, and the psychic pain shock in transmitted to everyone around you was like getting hit with a taser if you didn't have your mental shields aligned properly, as she had not. Making things worse for her was the fact that the one who'd been immolated, Ben, was both right next to her and of personal importance to her, having recently moved their relationship within the Manifold to the "more than friends" level, meaning they were both more sensitive to the feelings of the other in the wake of their coupling.

For a moment she'd thought she was the one that had been caught in the torrent of liquid fire, such was the emotional pain she'd felt transmitted into her, it was only when she woke up again, not dead, that she started to WISH it had been her! Because everyone knew what sort of horrible fate awaited any Edenite captured by the Oosen, far better to burn to ash or bleed out on the battlefield than go to space and be dissected alive! But whoever had tied her up while she'd been out had known what they were doing, almost indecently so, and with her ankles and wrists tied together just above her lower back, she was pretty much stuck until someone else released her. At least her armor bracers and boots kept the cords from biting into her skin, a small comfort, but better than nothing. She'd been blindfolded and gagged with tape of some sort, and somehow the Oosen soldiers had contrived to block out her access to the Wind, which was deeply troubling to her, since with her Manifold dead she was now all but helpless to communicate her distress to others. They probably already thought she was dead.

Then had come an explosion like the planet itself cracking into pieces, the shockwaves and ground undulations beating and battering her black and blue beneath her armor, dazing her and making her really want to throw up, though thankfully she managed to choke it back down before she vomited into her own taped closed mouth, which would have really sucked, especially when she had to suck it back down or choke to death! She could distantly hear the Oosen soldiers talking around her, but with her helmet off, she'd been all but deafened by the explosion and she couldn't make out what they were discussing. She prayed to the Tree that they would decide to make it quick for her, cut her throat or put a gun to her head. If they wanted to rape her first, and then kill her, she was actually okay with that... as long as they didn't send her up into space. Anything but sending her into space! The mere thought of such a horrible fate was enough to make her bowels feel loose and tears start from the corners of her taped closed eyes.

Her Latent senses warned her a fraction of a second before it happened, allowing her to squint her eyes shut to protect them as one of the Oosen reached down and ripped her tape blindfold off, yanking out large sections of her eyebrows in the process, which hurt like a bitch, but gave her an excuse for the tears in her eyes at least. She didn't want to show the damn Oosen that she was so scared she'd started crying! Khala did her best not to flinch from the demonically leering hound mask that fronted the face of the Oosen soldier crouching beside her, whom Khala belatedly noticed was a woman also. This didn't make her feel much better... everyone knew even the Oosen women were apt to be sadistic sexual deviants who wouldn't hesistate to take advantage of a helpless captive, and what sort of balanced person would wear such a fright mask anyway! Khala swallowed heavily as the female soldier took out a wicked looking knife, unsure whether to be hopeful or terrified when the woman placed the blade under her chin, wondering if it would hurt when her throat was cut, grateful that they hadn't decided to torture or defile her first.

And then the tape gag was ripped away, stinging her lips, the blade still steady at her throat, as a second hound faced soldier, a man who's mask was considerably more beat up than his companions, loomed over her. "Hi there." He said, his voice incogrously cheery coming from beneath such a frightful mask. "My name is Alkire, not that I'm sure you care much, and I have a favor to ask of you."

"I'll tell you NOTHING, you Oosen BASTARD!" Khala found her fury amidst her fear, as she hissed and tried to spit at him, but found her mouth dry and full of grit from when she'd fallen outside the trench.

"Uh huh." Alkire acknowledged distractedly, motioning to several blue armored USN infantrymen crouched nearby. "Help me prop this young lady up guys." He ordered, and Khala did her best not to flinch as the armored gauntlets closed around her shoulders and sides. She was somewhat nonplussed when none of them even attempted to grope her, not that they would have gotten hold of much with all her armor on. They hoisted her upright and leaned her against the side of the trench, so that she was on her knees rather than her side, her face now at eye level with the hound faced man and woman. Throughout the whole evolution the woman soldier's knife had stayed at Khala's neck unflinchingly, though quite what the Oosen soldiers expected her to do while hogtied she did not know. Peering upwards, she broke out into a shark-like grin as she saw the nearby Dervishes of Legio Megladon, as well as the ornately carved Spectre of Praetorian Crashing Wave, as they were apt to call him. He had a name of course, but Crashing Wave was his combat persona, and that was how Legio Megladon hailed him.

"You're all gonna die." Khala informed the Oosen soldiers surrounding her smugly. If the Crashing Wave was here, in the midst of their lines, then the battle was all but over, and her side was the victorious one! Relief flooded through her so intensely she almost pissed herself, the nightmares of only a few seconds ago feeling distant already.

"Everyone dies." Alkire agreed, still distractedly, as he reached out with one gloved hand and grabbed Khala by the top of her head. She glared at him, but that glare melted away when he cranked her head around so she could see out the other side of the trench. "Care to explain to me just what the FUCK that is?" Alkire demanded, pointing at the... the THING... that was standing about three hundred meters away across the beachtop cliffs. Khala stared, caught between terror and disgust, as her widening eyes tried to make sense of what she was looking at. At first, before she really got a handle on the distance involved, she thought she was looking at a rather large Cold Hunter, somehow displaced from its normal home environment in South America. Then, realizing that it was actually far away, she was stunned to see her first ever live Megahunter, one of the rare mutations of the Cold Hunter genus that got as large as a tyrannousarous rex! And then, realizing just HOW FAR away it was, she realized that this thing was no Cold Hunter... or if it was, then it must be the biggest of its kind, EVER!

Close to sixty feet tall and more than a hundred feet long from nosetip to tail, the creature shared the general bodyform of the much feared carnivorous pack hunters of the Caller's southern domain, with long muscular legs ending in large clawed feet, one talon on each big toe being oversized and sickle shaped, used like a flenshing knife to rip flesh from the sides of living prey, though THESE sickle claws had to be as big as her whole body! The body of the creature was compact and lean, built for speed and maneuverability over brute strength, with long arms ending in prehensile clawed hands, with long, skinny fingers tipped with more brutal claws, but which could be wielded with surprising dexterity, enough to untie knots, open doors and even pick up and grab things for extended periods of time. The head was angular on a medium length neck, long jaws filled with rows of razor sharp fangs, the eyes large and easily visible as bright gold even from this distance, set high and forward on the head for excellent vision. Even the skin coloration, slowly shifting towards tan and splotchy brown to match the terrain, was like that of a Cold Hunter, which always blended into the background whenever possible.

But there were also many features that did not coincide with any Cold Hunter mutation she was familiar with, though she was admittedly no expert on the often best avoided predators. She was fairly sure large spiky horns weren't normal for the head crest of a Cold Hunter though, and the spikes running down the last third of its tail, much less the venom dripping stinger at the end, looked like they belonged more on an insect than a reptile! And then she looked even closer, and had to fight the urge to scream, vomit and squeeze her eyes shut in denial at the same time. Because this was no natural beast, it was an utter perversion of nature, it's hide covered with regular scars that bespoke more of uninhibited surgical alteration than violent battle, chunks of metal of unidenitifable purpose jutting from its skin and bones at random, the flesh raw and blistered around the suturued implants and additions, such as the large barrels of weapons that were surgically bonded to and growing out of the underside of the gangly forearms! "Its an abomination..." Khala whispered, turning her head away and shuddering in revulsion. "Only the Oosen could do something so awful..." She added, speaking accusatorily towards her captors. However, they looked as if the monster was not something they'd expected either.

"Tell that to the five hundred million civilians who died during Blue Monday!" One of the Oosen soldiers retorted bitterly. Khala looked at him blankly, not sure what the hell he was so worked up about. Blue Monday was not a term she was familiar with, nor was the supposed death of millions of civilians. But then again, everyone knew the Oosen leadership commonly lied to their populace and soldiers, it would not surprise her to learn the Oosen President had cooked up a fake tragedy to inflame the hatred of his populace for his own ends.

"Now's not the time for that kind of debate." The male hound faced soldier, who seemed to be in charge, cut in curtly. "Its obvious from her reaction that whatever that thing is, its not an Eddie ally, despite how it looks." He turned to look at Khala. "Thanks for the help, miss. I'm sorry, but we're gonna have to gag and blindfold you again, though I promise, we won't hurt you if you don't make us."

"Such promises are worth the paper they are spoken on, coming from the Oosen!" Khala sneered, though she could not help but blanch a bit at the thought of being blind and mute again, for who knew how long! The female hound-warrior, probably a member of the special operations squad called the Stormhounds, Khala realized, one of the units of the Oosen that were supposed to be their version of the Praetorians, took her knife away from Khala's neck and helped her commander gag the young Custodian once again. Khala had to grudgingly give them credit, despite her defiance, they weren't rough with her, merely firm. They were just about the blindfold her again when action exploded all around them, as the Megladon Dervish Manifold, apparently noticing many of the same details Khala herself had about the new arrival, sprang forward to put the tormented creature out of its misery. She cheered them on, if only inside her head, as they unleashed a salvo of linear cannon rounds at the...

And then her eyes went much wider, as she saw that the Abomination was no longer where it had been... between blinks of her eyes, between instants even, it had shifted and disappeared, so that the volley of linear cannon shells sailed harmlessly through empty air. Concussion shook the air, a sonic boom from nowhere, and then the foremost Dervish slammed backwards, armored heels digging deep furrows in the sandy soil before a sickle taloned foot exploded out from the back of the Mobile Suit, the war machine jerking like a puppet in an electric chair, its reactor and cockpit both smashed to ruin by the kick The Abmomination kicked its leg, shaking the inert Dervish loose from its talons, even as cyanotic blue thruster flames gushed from the back of its calves, shortly before it once again vanished from her view, another sonic boom shaking the air and raising a huge cloud of dust. The Dervishes were falling back in disorder, their movements sluggish and clumsy, like their feet were mired in quicksand.

Something large and twitchy exploded into the midst of the Dervishes, clawed forearms and legs lashing back and forth, shards of Borealite armor flying through the air like dust motes as Fenris Wolf tore into two of the Edenite machines with voracious ferocity, kicking latching onto the arms and shoulders of a machine with its dextrous foreclaws, and then ripping their guts out with kicks from the sickle clawed foot talons, striking so hard that she actually split one Dervish completely in half at the waist. Her tail whipped around, striking and shattering the armor on the arm of a third Dervish, before her tailtip curled around and sprayed the prey with her acid-venom, which hissed angrily as it ate through the Borealite armor like it was made of spun sugar, melting head sied holes all throughout the war machine's torso in a matter of seconds. Flicking her head to the side, Fenris caught a sweeping slash of QC armblades on her horns, swatting them away and then darting her jaws forward, crushing and ripping away the Dervish's head asssembly even as she stutter stepped to the side and kicked its knees apart, tailsting flashing up from between her thighs to slam straight through the falling Mobile Suit's cockpit.

Four Dervishes fell to the ground in pieces, all slain in less time than it took for first Dervish she'd attacked to fall to the ground, leaving just two left, swaying drunkenly as their minds were overhwlemed by the stultifying psychic miasma that Fenris projected around her, invisible fumes of sleepy gas that seeped in through the cracks of your mind and fogged your thoughts and reflexes, until you felt like you were moving underwater, your actions like those of a fly halfway trapped in a blob of amber. The two remaining pilots slashed at the blur that was the Cold Hunter Abomination, but their attacks lacked strength or purpose, it was more like waving their arms to shoo away a pesky dog than anything like an attack. Ducking beneath the ill aimed blows, Fenris pounced forward, leaping full upon the left Dervish, legs flutter kicking against its thighs, belly and torso, sickle talons carving deep gouges in the Borealite flesh, overbalancing the machine and riding it to the ground, before bending her head down and ripping off its head with her jaws.

The last Dervish made as if to flee, only to find its leg dragged out from under it by Fenris's lashing tail, acid fuming as it at into the Mobile Suit's shin and ankle, before eating through the structural bones, the lower part of the right leg falling away with a loud SNAP! The pilot tried to ignite his thrusters, tried to flee into the sky, but he was still about a hundred meters up when Fenris coiled her legs and sprang upwards, her own legs thrusters propelling her easily up that high as she hooked her finger-claws into the Dervish's hip armor, her jaws closing on its upper right forearm, powerful teeth crunching through armor and bone in one motion, as she twisted her head, goring the Mobile Suit's shoulder with her horns even as she twisted the wreckage of the arm off and spat it aside. Spiralling out of control, the Dervish plowed into the ground with her riding atop it, Fenris pushing off and leaping aside just moments before the damaged reactor blew the machine into smithereens. Seven Dervishes down, and she'd only been in combat for about ten seconds.

Twisting herself aside, Fenris brought her brow horns into the path of the Praetorian's slashing glaive, unable to see the cloaked Spectre, but still more than capable of smelling and hearing the presence of the machine, indeed she could even FEEL the proximity of the Spectre based upon the change in air pressure upon her sensitive skin, and she backed away, her form blurring as she used her adrenal boosters to shift around to the back of the Spectre, moving so quickly the Spectre hardly even seemed to move to her eyes, still swinging at where she had once been, even as she kicked out and hamstrung the machine from behind with a sickle-talon, sending it staggering forward to the ground. The Praetorian caught himself on one hand and handsprung his machine back upright, but it was too late, Fenris was already upon him, finger claws ripping scars across his carved armor, flaying away his protection on his upper torso before the acid stinger stabbed upward into the Spectre's groin area, flooding the body cavity with its vile product.

The Praetorian tried to shove her away with the haft of his double glaive, but she caught the weapon crosswise between her brow horns, and with a quick twist of her powerful neck muscles, the polearm was flipping end over end through the air, pried right out of his grip by the twisting motion. Legs burning away under the caress of the acid, the Spectre tottered, off balance, as Fenris headbutted the machine, cracking in the weakened torso armor and knocking the Praetorian flat on his back. Slashing down with one leg, Fenris cleanly severed both the Spectres arms at the shoulders with two blurry fast kicks. And then, even as the acid injected into the lower torso started to seep upwards and eat into the feet and legs of the Praetorian in his cockpit, Fenris bent her head down, digging into the shattered torso armor with her jaws, tongue probing eagerly for the wriggling meat-treat she smelled inside, around which she closed her jaws, golden eyes flaring with satisfaction as the screaming mass went twitching down her throat and into her belly.

The irritating sensation of small caliber gun and beam fire pattering against her skin, pinpricks of heat and pressure digging into her surface layers of muscle, brought her head around with a hiss of displeasure, her teeth stained red and black with fluids and dripping lubricants as she stared at the remaining Edenite forces, which were now attempting to flee the field. Her forearms itched, and she brought them up and around, vomiting sprays of molten hot metal fragments from the flak cannons slung under her arms, and she howled hungrily towards the sky as she stepped forth to gorge herself upon the hapless foe in a frenzy, not just decimating or routing the Legio Kraken and Megladon strikeforce, but methodically hunting down each and every last one of them, to be crushed, pulped or devoured, a process which took her almost two minutes. She would have taken longer, but the Meister had no wish to dwell on this morbid feast, and Lupine's was the stronger will between them. For now. Rising from her feasting crouch over the wreck of a hovercraft, Fenris stared at the stunned USN forces, drool dripping down her chin before the Meister exerted her will again, and she raced off into the desert to meet a special FEAR unit that would facilitate her return to the home nest, moving so quickly that sound itself hurried to get out of her way, her form little more than an indistinct blur to the shocked and horrified infantry troops, and she disappeared into the distance in a matter of seconds.

Back in the trench, Custodian Regulus Khala was sobbing freely, her mind teetering on the edge of sanity after witnessing the fury of the BALOR unleashed upon everyone she knew and cared about, her hopes of rescue dashed, her formless anxiety about her fate now all too focused... if FEAR could create something like that, what they would do to her didn't even bear thinking about... but she couldn't help thinking about it all the same! Alkire looked down at the Eddie girl, watching her freak out for a moment, her chin stained with vomit she didn't even seem to be aware she'd brought up and reswallowed. He'd seen a lot of amazing, scary shit in his life, including several encounters with Zacharis Frost. But he'd never seen such a one sided Mobile Suit battle, even the Kid didn't dominate his foes as totally as that... that beast-thing had the Dervishes and Spectre! The cream of the Eddie military, and they'd been torn to shreds with the same ease he might have in ripping apart a cardboard cutout! He hadn't been able to make out a single detail of what was going on, just flashes of fangs and claws and shattering armor. He'd never seen anything move that fast before.

"What... just happened...?" Ryan asked through a very dry throat, staring in disbelief at the ravaged battlefield.

"This war just changed." Raine replied softly, still blinking as she tried to sort through what she'd witnessed. "Let's just hope it's for the best..."


	50. Darkness and Light

Author Note: Well phew! One more arc finished up last chapter, with Golden Devils, that being the "Horror of War" arc, and now a new one starts, the "Tragedy of War" arc. There's going to be a lot going on in these coming chapters (Darkness and Light, War and Peace, Innocence and Corruption, Angel and Demon, Predator and Prey, Reconstruction and Devastation, Damnation and Redemption, Rejoicing and Mourning) which will bring us up to the halfway point of the story, so you can expect some pretty mind blowing shit. Two major battles, a huge plot twist, seeds of an easy dozen other major plotlines coming towards fruition, an in depth look at the heretofore mysterious past and motivations of one of the most popular of OC's... yeah, this is definitely going to be the most action packed series of chapters in the story thus far (the entire arc takes place across only 6 days story-time, with 95 percent of that in just 4 days...). And I repeat... this arc only brings us up to fifty percent completion on RW, roughly. I updated the stats page with the first generation BALORs, so check that out if you wish.

Ya know, truth be told, one of the hardest parts about writing this chapter was deciding what order I was going to do the three events in. Because each of them is the sort that would do best rounding out the end of a chapter, since they all involve a cliffhanger/what happens next? type moment of some sort, and they're all pretty damned important to the greater plot. You'll see what I mean shortly, I think.

xxxx

**PLANTS Space, Martius 7 Colony, outskirts of ZAFT Drydock Harbor Base 3, Apartments of Captain Talia Gladys, January 18th, Morning**

Waking up in her own bed, in her home, versus her rather plush quarters aboard the _Remembrance_, was an unfortunately novel experience for Talia. Without the background throb of the ship's reactors, the thrum of power flowing throughout the ship, the distant muffled voices of the crew working on various jobs on the decks above and below her suite, everything felt a bit dead, perhaps even dull. If she listened hard enough she could make out the sound of cars passing in the street outside, and maybe an occasional klaxon or PA announcement from the Drydock facilities to the North, but it just wasn't the same thing. She was more used to falling asleep and waking up in the controlled bedlam of an active duty warship than she was to doing so in peace and quiet at her home. Perhaps that was an idictment that she took her work too seriously. On the other hand, perhaps it was a sign that she was doing her job correctly... any good warship commander should feel more at home aboard their vessel than they did at their base quarters, in her opinion.

Sitting up in her bed, which was just big enough for her... she never slept with company at home, she preferred to spend the night at Gilbert's place or in a hotel, or, if needs must, in her warship suite, when she and Gil found the time to be together... Talia yawned and stretched, taking her time in waking up, a luxury for her. There was no real good reason for her squeamishness about sharing her apartment with Gil, save perhaps her subconscious fear that by inviting Gil into her home in such a fashion so would finally admit to herself that she wanted him to be a more permanent fixture there, despite their mutual unspoken agreement that their respective careers would always come first, despite their feelings. She kept hoping that he would finally become satisified with his place in the political structure of the world, and that he would deem he'd done enough and step back to retire, or at least take a more indirect role in governance, which would free up time for them to be together as husband and wife. It was a forlorn hope, she knew... Gilbert's life was his politics, he'd go crazy with no huge conspiracies to fight or massive reforms to champion.

Finishing her stretch, Talia put her feet on the floor of her bedroom and stood up, absentmindedly tugging at the undershirt and pajama pants she wore as sleeping clothes, pulling them back into proper place where they'd gotten bunched and twisted during her sleep. She yawned again, brushing touseled hair out of her eyes as she wondered what it said about her personality that even when she was home alone, she still slept in the same clothing as she did while aboard ship, which she could doff in seconds, her uniform already laid on on a chair within a single step of the bed, so that she could literally start getting dressed on her way out of bed and towards the door if an emergency should ever arise while she was sleeping. She had it down almost to an art form, wriggling into a uniform while also making good speed towards the bridge, though she had to admit that it was much easier to do in microgravity than when under A-grav. Of course there was no need for such a procedure today, one of a very few days off she had allowed herself after hearing that a major operation was soon to be in the works, and her ship to be part of it, she'd wanted to start off bright eyed and bushy tailed.

She wasn't feeling particularly bright of eye or bushy of tail at the moment, indeed it was more along the lines of bleary eyes and scraggly tail, and she realized she'd overdone it trying to get rest... she'd slept too much and now she was all loggy and crusty. This was never a problem aboard the _Remembrance_, where watch shifts changed every six hours, nor was it a problem when she as with Gil, since they spent at least an hour or two of their time in bed doing anything but sleep, it was only when she was home alone that she ran into this problem. It was because she was a workaholic, she'd traied her body to not just subsist on but even enjoy getting only about three or four hours of sleep a night, and so when she slept for eight hours like a normal person might, her body tried to enter hibernation mode. Grumbling under her breath, she slouched towards the bathroom to take care of her morning ablutions.

Even after a indulgently hot and lengthy shower of five minutes, vs the more normal two she allowed herself aboard ship, and after attending to the usual tasks of fixing herself up to a presentable level for public viewing, Talia still felt a bit groggy and grumpy. It was something of an urban myth that Coordinators never got sick, but she knew damned well that the common cold virus was more than capable of laying a Coordinator low for a day or two... no matter how hard humanity tried to out-engineer nature, nature always seemed to have another nasty surprise waiting for you in the wings. Coordinators were not immune to anything, they were just more resistant than Naturals were to the same things. She felt her brow, but didn't detect any unusual heat, and her throat and sinuses didn't feel swollen or scratchy either, so she decided, somewhat reluctantly, that it was probably just a symptom of getting older. Not that she was at all old by Coordinator standards, still in her early prime actually, but the life she lived wasn't gentle on the body rythyms.

It was all the little things that came back to haunt you, little things like the microgravity most warships assumed during active duty, because of the power requirements for generating A-Grav. Magnetic soles on boots and velcro tabs on clothing to stick you to your seat or bed allowed people to function more or less normally, but the human body was not designed for long term exposure to lack of a gravitational field... muscles would atrophy, bone marrow would deteriorate, your heart and lungs got weaker, your digestive and waste systems especially got all sorts of messed up, and your circulatory system too started getting a bit weird if you spent a long time without gravity. Constant exercise could help with the muscles and heart/lungs and circulatory system problems, but there wasn't much you could do about the bone marrow or intestinal issues, other than turn on the gravity for a day or so each week, or else rotate through a location with gravity, like a port, which wasn't always feasible in wartime. It wasn't something you noticed until you got back into gravity after an extended period in micro-G, and then it hit you like a truck, some finding it hard to even walk or stand upright until their bodies readjusted. Do that hundreds or thousands of times over a lifetime, and it started adding up, even if you were a Corodinator.

Wrapping herself in a towel, with a second one draped across her head to help her hair dry, Talia headed for the kitchen to work up some breakfast, knowing she'd feel better once she had some hot coffee and some sort of food in her. She wasn't expecting guests or company, so she saw little reason to get dressed up, considering she had taken this day specifically to relax, and had promised herself that she wouldn't even leave the apartment until noontime, and wouldn't go near the harbor at all, until it was time to return to duty the next morning. Half an hour later she was inhaling the spicy aroma of her coffee, and picking at the remnants of a egg and cheese covered muffin, another rare high calorie indulgence. Not that she was one of those who obsessed about her figure and carefully tracked each and every calorie to pass her lips, but as an officer she had a duty to set the example for her subordinates, and that included things like physical fitness. She didn't necessarily have to outperform her subordinates, indeed that would be impossible in most cases, but she did have to exceed minimal standards, and it was hard to run long distances with too many extra pounds on your hips.

And for that matter she simply enjoyed being fit, and not feeling tired after walking halfway across a PLANT, or after spending an hour or two swimming recreationally in one of the park lakes, and being able to climb half the stairs of the main spire before needing to pause for breath, and generally achieve things physically where most of her peers had private limos taking them from home to stores, or rode the express walkways and elevators to get around in a hurry. She could easily afford to pay for limo service on her salary, but she had better things to spend money on, such as her gene-son, Henri. Back during the period of the First and Second Valentine Wars, when the spectre of ICD was still looming large over much of PLANTS society, an optional program had been created where Coordinators of lower generation... 1st or 2nd generation mostly... could contribute genetic material to a bank type institute, which would then provide other Coordinators with the material, sometimes unfertilized but usually pre-fertilized, so that couples who were otherwise unable to procreate could still have a child. It was a fairly controversial project, and hadn't lasted long, but it had lasted long enough for her to choose to contribute.

And so, technically speaking, she did have a child, a bright young man now, named Henri Olgan, who had recently gotten his first job out of school working in the Large Habitat Construction Project, which specialized in building things like ISSA's and E-PLANTS, but the only thing relating them was the fact that he was born of her egg. Mrs. Olgan had carried the fertilized egg to term, had birthed Henri, and the Olgan family had raised and loved him just as if he was truly biologically related to them, the child Mr. and Mrs. Olgan had been unable to create on their own. Talia still had a part to play in his life, though that was more of her own choosing than any obligation of the program, and she'd been setting aside a portion of her paycheck for years now to help provide him with a nest egg for when he finished school so that he could move out or away to wherever his job took him without needing to worry about living expenses until he got his feet under him again. Back then she'd contributed more for the large monetary bonus the program had provided, which had been before her military career really took off, but now she was glad to have at least continued her genetic legacy, even if it would never be openly acknowledged.

Because it was really starting to look like there wasn't much hope of having an actual child of her own, not unless she wanted to get together with someone other than Gilbert anyway. And while there had been plenty of offers over the years, some more tempting than others, she still had her heart set on one man and one man only. He was her hero, even if she would never admit so much openly, the one that made her feel safe and complete and wholesome, and annoying as his dedication to his job sometimes was, to the point of where he'd even caused permanent harm to himself in pursuit of it, by refusing to rest after Noah Borander had shot him in the leg, which had resulted in his noticable limp these days, she could not find it in her to love Gilbert Durandel any less for his dogged pursuit of what he saw as his duty. After all, she knew her own persistent attachement to her duties was equally irritating to him, yet he always had time for her when they needed it.

Shaking her head to clear it of these bittersweet thoughts, Talia drained the remainder of her coffee and put up her dishes, her skin and hair now comfortably air dried, and returned to her bedroom to procure a lounging robe, which she belted loosely around herself before heading towards the modest entertainment room that adjourned the kitchen/dining area, settling onto her couch with her feet tucked up under her as she turned on her wallscreen TV. Most TV programs didn't overly interest her, save for the occassional movie, and never of the action variety. She'd seen far more of what movies called "action" and she called "horror" than she had ever dreamed during the course of her job, though thankfully there hadn't been anything worse than a few bloody accidents in the years since the end of the Eden Disaster. That could change at any time, what with another major operation going down soon, and she didn't need any reminders of just how bad things could get during combat. So instead she contented herself with the news channels.

Which, far from relaxing her with their steady drone about the basic fundamentals of civilian life, only had her leaning forward intently, a frown growing on her lips as she listened to what was said, what was hinted at, and most of all, what wasn't being said. She knew that Gil's administration was taking heavy fire in the wake of Blue Monday, especially combined with the fiasco of the battle at Victoria, Rey's utterly reprehensible actions during it, and the most recent less than stellar action at Borealis. The tragedy of Blue Monday coupled with the lack of expected overwhelming military victories had the public in an uproar, and Rey's damnable actions had the military, especially the Solar Knights, feeling restive to say the least, eroding away at was normally a staunch pillar of support for Gil as he continued to hesitate to publicly take his foster son to task for his actions, giving the appearance of nepotism and favoritism in an organization that was supposed to be a strict meritocracy!

And beneath it all, there was the other conspiracy, the one Gil had begegd her not to get involved with, the one where an unknown number of Gil's own top advisors were plotting to undermine or even overthrow Gil's administration! In the military they called that sort of thing by a specific name, "Mutiny", and anyone caught doing it, especially in a time of war, was put on a fast track to a firing squad, no hesitation about it. If you didn't like how your superior officers were handling things, there were plenty of official and unofficial channels that existed soley to allow you to inform them of your disagreement, and ultimately there was always the option of resigning or requesting transfer to another command. Taking matters into your own hands, especially if violence was part of it, was never the right answer and could never be condoned or forgiven. It especially got her hot when she thought about how almost all of Gil's top advisors had only reached their lofty stations in life because of his support, and now that they were there, this was how they chose to repay him, by plotting his downfall!

And to think, if she'd but even hinted that she wanted his help with her own career, that could be her up in the councils of the high and mighty, not that half competent popinjay Icarus! She almost wished she could go back in time to tell herself to just bite the bullet and take a desk job with Gil's backing, which would have allowed them to be together much more often, and would have given him at least ONE permanent ally in his councils, someone he could trust to watch his back rather than stick a knife in it. She had thought that he had such an ally in the form of Rey, but considering Rey's recent downward spiral and moral deterioration, culminated in his despicable cowardice in the face of the enemy at Victoria, Talia didn't think Gil could overmuch rely on Rey anymore. Even if Rey remained perfectly loyal, associating with him directly right now was political suicide! Talia had already been approached twice more by "concerned officers" wanting her to use her "influence" with the Solar President to get Rey sacked, and the longer Gilbert ruminated on the pros and cons of that action, the worse things were going to get!

She was doing her best to stay neutral, like Gil had pleaded with her to do, but there was a limit to her own tolerance for watching the situation spiral out of control, and she was fast reaching it. She had already begun to put together formal paperwork asking for Rey's removal from his position as Supreme Commander, citing lack of confidence in his ability to be objective in the face of the pressures of combat, which was basically polite jargon for saying "I won't serve with a man who cuts and runs while ordering his subordinates to fight on to the death". Being scared of the enemy, especially the enemy Gundams, was fine... everyone in their right mind was scared by those Gundams... but for a very senior officer, on the field only by his own will, to give in to said fear and retreat on his own without ordering his troops to pull back as well, to put his personal safety above the safety of others and even above the good of the ongoing battle plan, you just couldn't DO that! Without faith in their superior officers, the efficiency of the rank and file would plummet, morale would plummet, as it was doing, and the ability of the military to be an effective fighting force would plummet as well!

Chimes from her apartment's guest awareness system... sort of like a smart doorbell, which rang whenever sensors placed in the walkway leading up to her door detected the pressure of footsteps... brought her out of her grim reveries, and Talia quickly stood up, belting her robe tighter around herself for modesty's sake, and finding a pair of slippers so that she wasn't going to answer the door looking like she'd just stepped out of the shower. She wondered who it was, since she wasn't expecting any visitors, and anyone coming from the Harbor or the _Remembrance_ would have called ahead first. The actual doorbell rang just as she was getting into the front entryway, and she opened the door just wide enough to peer out at the people on her doorstep. Her caution was more habit than anything, her apartments were located on a military housing development after all, in the senior officer's section, which was a gated section within an already gated and lightly patrolled community, and the PLANTS as a whole had about a fiftieth the street crime rate of the rest of the space colonies of the USN. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd heard of a breaking and entering robbery, even on the news!

In any case, these people certainly weren't criminals here to rob her, in fact they were very clean and well dressed, three of them in brilliant yellow jumpsuits that had "Community Maintenance" printed in red on the backs, while the fourth, a woman of about Talia's own age, was dressed in a modest beige suit, with a pin that said "Maintenance Supervisor" on it on her breast pocket. The three workmen each carried a bag of tools, while the supervisor had a clipboard and a wireless comm set hooked over one ear, she looked a bit harried, but was obviously putting on her best face as she smiled and extended her hand towards Talia. "Are you Captain Talia Gladys?" The woman asked in a friendly tone.

"Yes I am." Talia replied, taking the woman's hand and giving it a brief shake, eyeing the three workers, none of whom seemed to have a lick of interest in her, despite her half dressed state. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am, but Maintenance Central has ordered that we inspect all the apartments for efficiency of utility functions... electrical, sewage, water, etc. We've had some complaints from similar structures on other colonies, so the higher ups want us to do some blanket checks." The supervisor rolled her eyes in exasperation for the knee jerk reactions of corporate officers. "We won't take long, just fifteen minutes or so, though we will need access to the interior of the apartment." The supervisor glanced at Talia's houserobe with a professional eye, and leaned closer conspiratially. "We can come back later if you're entertaining someone though." The supervisor said in a quieter voice.

"No, no, its just me, pardon my undress, I was taking the morning off." Talia replied, hesitating to open the door, some inner twinge bothering her for some reason. "I hate to ask you this, you'll think I'm paranoid, but could I perhaps see some ID and your work order first?" Talia asked, feeling like a silly old woman all the while, but better safe than sorry, right?

"Not at all ma'am, we were told to expect such a possibility." The supervisor answered with a brief smile, as she handed her clipboard to Talia and turned to her crew. "ID's out, everyone." She directed, fishing in one of her own pockets for her clearance badge, collecting similar badges from the three men before turning back to Talia, presenting the badges diffidently with one hand. For her part, Talia glanced over the work documents and found them to be all in order, though the signature of the authorizing officer was somewhat smudged and indistinct. Given how terrible her own signature looked at times, she wasn't exactly in a position to judge that one though, Talia reminded herself. The ID badges were also proper, the same sort as all the Harbor employees wore or carried, and though she was far from an epert in detecting forgeries, the badges had all the right stamps and fingerprint holos and even gene-scan disks embedded in them, and that sort of stuff could only be put into an ID with machines strictly regulated by the government. Feeling foolish, Talia handed the badges and clipboard back, and then stepped back as she opened the door to let them inside.

Following the work party into the kitchen, Talia saw them set their tool bags down and then decided it might be best if she went and got dressed, since she was no longer alone in the house. She was just disrobing however, when she felt a sudden breeze on the back of her neck from the door to the bedroom swinging open silently behind her. Talia reacted instinctively, throwing herself forward onto her bed, hearing the muted crackle of some sort of electrical stunner passing through the air where her neck had just been! She frantically rolled over, seeing one of the maintenance crewmen standing in the doorway, his hands now covered by skintight gloves and his hair by a stocking cap, as he held the aforementoned taser in one hand. He glared at her, unhappy with the speed of her reactions. talia thought about screaming for help as the man took a step into the room, but something told her that this was something more than just an assault. The man was looking at her, but there was no sign of lust in his eyes, despite her nearly naked state, he was coming after her for a different reason than to rape her.

Not particularly wanting to find out what that other reason might be, but knowing that she was no great hand in a fight, Talia rolled off her bed, hand flailing at her nightstand as she searched for something to throw at him, needing to distract him since he was blocking the doorway. If she could only get outside she'd probably be safe, there would be plenty of pedestrians out at this time, and there were few better ways to get lots of attention than to go streaking naked down the streets in the middle of the morning. Her fingers caught up her alarm clock, which she hurled without hesitation, forcing him to duck with an angry curse. A pillow followed the clock... she was desperate here... and then both of her uniform boots. She really wished she was the sort of Captain that wore a gun despite never having to use it, but she hadn't carried a personal firearm except when expressly required for almost eight years now, not since the Eden Disaster. Her hand closed on her cell phone, and she held off throwing it, instead flipping it open and frantically paging through the memory, selecting Gil's private personal phone, which she almost never called. For emergency use only, he'd said, and she was going to count this as an emergency!

However, the phone refused to dial, which should have been impossible, since Namara, even in her present half reliable state, had been managing personal comms for years and years now, there was nowhere in USN space, save maybe down on Earth, where her phone wouldn't get a signal! The only reasonable thing she could think of was that her phone was being jammed somehow, and that REALLY scared her. The man with the taser reached for her with his free hand, taser held high, and Talia desperately kicked out, a lucky blow catching him on the inside of his knee, making him stagger and swear again, as she leapt up and hurled her house robe over his head, briefly netting him in the silky fabric as she juked past him, shoving him heavily to one side as she sprinted out into the hallway and made a beeline for the front door.

She saw but could not avoid the slim leg of the female supervisor as it was extended into her path from the doorway leading to the kitchen area, feeling her shins scream at her as her legs collided with the obstruction and she went tripped forward, barely getting her hands out in time to avoid faceplanting onto the carpet, getting a nasty rugburn across her chest and stomach as she skidded to a halt about halfway down the hall. She scrambled to get upright, but instead yelled in pain when she felt strong hands tangle in her hair, jerking her neck back and throwing her to the ground again, this time on her back. She tried to get up again, but another of the faux maintenance crewmen was already falling atop her, crushing her into the carpet with his extremely solid mass, pinning her down with his weight as the female supervisor stepped up to her head, foot kicking solidly into the side of Talia's head, splitting her lips and dazing her as the supervisor knelt down, accepting a large syringe from another crewman, filled with a sterile yellow colored fluid.

Talia tried to throw the man atop her off, but he outweighed her by almost seventy pounds and knew what he was doing to boot, pinning down her arms and legs with his own limbs, letting his chest compress her ribcage so that even when she opened her mouth to scream again, only a wheeze came out, and even that was stifled when the supervisor took advantage of her open jaws to shove a heavy rubber ball gag into her mouth, pressing down with her hand over Talia's nose to all but suffocate her as the assisting henchman held Talia's head steady with his massive hand-paws. She was already starting to black out from oxygen deprivation even as she felt the hypodermic needle prick into her neck, and the cold tingly numbness of what was obviously a powerful sedative spreading throughout her system. The last thing Talia saw before darkness claimed her vision was her assailants shoving her head into a heavy black bag...

xxxx

Talia woke up an unknown amount of time later, still gagged, still with the impenetrable black bag over her head, its drawstrings pulled tight around her neck and tied off, her ankles and wrists constrained by what felt like handcuffs, securing her to a very cold and very hard metal chair. Her captors, whoever they were... and the black headbag was something of a major clue... had not seen fit to dress her or even provide her with a blanket, and the place she had been brought to was quite cold, deliberately so she imagined. She'd heard all the horror stories about what could happen to people who were abducted by Section Nine counter-intelligence... blackbagged as the slang term went... the USN's unofficial secret police and parent intelligence agency. However, Talia also knew that she had done nothing wrong, that she was in fact an exemplary and outstanding citizen of the USN as well as a highly decorated military officer with a prestigious and important posting, the ZAFT supercarrier _Remembrance_. She hadn't gone out of her way to suck up to higher ranked officers in her career, but she had a lot of friends among the admirals who admired her dedication and skills.

And of course she also had Gil, the sitting Solar President, who would shit a thorny brick the moment he found out about this, the thought almost letting her smile, save for the ball gag. This had to be some sort of misunderstanding, and even if it wasn't, if this was the sort of thing he'd been fearing from his advisors, attacking him by attacking her, well, she still had faith that the moment she turned up missing, tongues would wag and Gilbert would figure out what had happened, and he would shift heaven and earth itself to find and rescue her. And woe betide anyone that had a hand in her imprisonment or mistreatment...

Talia heard the door to what she assumed was her cell or interrogation chamber open, and the sounds of several sets of bootsteps filing in, and she did her best to hold herself upright, determined not to demean herself, though she had precious little dignity remaining, with a black bag over her head, bound naked to a chair... again, probably a deliberate thing, to make her feel vulnerable. She wouldn't give them the satisfaction. "This is her?" One of the people who'd entered said, his voice made indistinct by the bag, even as she clearly heard the sound of the cell door swinging shut and locking again. "This is the subversive who dared to try and undermine the Supreme Commander? She doesn't look so dangerous to me..."

_That's cause I'm not dangerous, not unless you put me on the bridge of a warship, and then you'd better hope you don't piss me off!_ Talia retorted, mostly within her head, though she chewed angrily at her gag at being labeled a "subversive". _I share a bed with the Solar President, nimrods, how could I possibly be a dangerous subversive!_

"Subversives come in all flavors and forms, you know that." A second man commented back. His tone turned more businesslike as he spoke again. "Alright, ladies and gentlemen, you know the drill. This one gets special treatment."

_Special treatment? Why does that sound more ominous than relieving?_ Talia tried to swallow, but found her throat had gone dry as she heard the people spreading out around her.

"Is it true she's the President's fuck buddy?" A third voice, this one female, asked.

"She certainly was." The second voice, who seemed to be senior, replied. "But I doubt he'll want much to do with her after we get done with her. Special orders from Director ze Burrel himself... make this one "disappear", he told me."

"Then why don't we just shoot her in the back of the head and turn her into flower food?" A fourth voice, male again, but reedier than the other two, asked. "Or burn her face off and dump her in the sewage treatment pipes for decomposition? Or hell, just lock her in an open airlock and freeze dry her?"

"Because the Director wants this one to be "special", like I said." The man in charge replied sternly. "And besides, we can't use any of the normal methods that might be traced back to our modus operandi... the President is NOT going to be happy when his girlfriend turns up missing, and if he thinks we killed her, or worse can prove that we killed her, its the gallows for all of us!"

"So lets make it look like an accident then." The female voice objected. "She's a military officer, how hard could it be to arrange for a Mobile Suit to step on her car with her inside? Or a mishap when boarding her ship, or an electrocution... or hell, why don't we just drown her in her tub, drop a hairdryer in and we're golden? Why go to all the trouble of beating her to a pulp first? Won't that make it rather obvious that some outside agency had a hand in her demise?"

_I can't say I like the way this conversation is going..._ Talia thought, cold sweat breaking out on her body and limbs as she tried to quietly test her bonds, but Section Nine had lots of experience restraining their captives, and she was pretty much stuck in that chair. _But at least I now know who's behind this... I don't know how, but Rey must have learned about that petition I told Gil about, and decided that I was trying to stab him in the back! But to go so far as to sic Section Nine on me and tell them directly to make me disappear... I had no idea he was willing to test Gil's anger so much! Does he really think Gil won't come after him for this, foster son or not?_

"You're all so caught up on using the agencies definition of "disappear", to mean quietly killed and anonymously disposed of." The man in charge chided his compatriots. "And to be honest that was what I was planning on doing too. But then I had a very interesting little talk with Dr. Dostanya, the Director's squeeze, and she gave me a perfect idea for disposal, a way that we can satisfy the Director's desire for revenge while at the same time keeping our own hands pretty much spotless, and ensuring that the President will never hear from his girlfriend again. And even if he does, he'd be obliged to kill her then..."

"What do you mean?" The first man to speak asked, his tone puzzled.

"I guess I'll spell it out for you then. Who are we at war with right now?" The man in charge said with a heavy sigh.

"The Eddies..." The first man replied slowly.

"And what is the USN's position on Eddies?" The leader promped.

"They don't have human rights and deserve only to be exterminated or diverted into research projects for the betterment of humanity." This from the woman.

"And what happens when a normal person is exposed to the enviroment of New Eden without any protection?"

"They either die or turn into a... OH!" The reedy voiced man replied, with the tone of a man experiencing a revelation. "So we send her down to Earth, let her get a whiff of the Green, and she'll either die naturally or turn into an Eddie, and then we can legally do whatever the fuck we want to her, heck, we'd be required to kill her!"

"Except we won't kill her." The leader repeated. "If the Green kills her, so be it, but if she survives, then we're going to dump her at the Camp in England, the one the Retributors didn't destroy. The administrator of said camp, ex-Prince Yuna Roma Seiran, has a real hardon for the Eddies after what the Brotherhood did to his pops. At the very least he'll make her stay there very... interesting. And if we're lucky, he'll cast her as part of his illicit snuff porn hobby that he runs inside the camp, and we can just forget about her. And we won't be blamed for anything, the paper trail is already in place pinning the operation on the Reclaimer Initiative. Seems the President was already worried about Djibril making a power play, he'll be more than happy to buy on to a Natural Supremacist having kidnapped and killed his Coordinator girlfriend! And even if she doesn't die, what's the President gonna do... he can't associate with her or even ackowledge her as a human being ever again after she becomes an Eddie, not if he wants to keep the support of the people!"

"That's fucking brilliant." The female voice acknowledged.

"I know. That Dr. Dostanya sure is one scary piece of ass. I'm glad she and the Director get on so well together, she's not someone you want gunning for you." The leader replied.

"Okay, that makes sense, but still... why are we here with the tasers and clubs and stuff?" The first male voice asked, a trifle wearily. "And what the hell do we need a industrial hot glue gun for anyway?"

_Glue gun?_ Talia all but screamed, though it came out more like "Mmgo ummm!" through the gag.

"She's been kidnapped by Natural bigots. You think they wouldn't torture her a bit?" The main in charge pointed out. "Good practice anyway. You can never have too much practice when it comes to torturing people within an inch of their life. Consider this remedial training. Now, John, why don't you start with the brass knuckles, and you can show us the proper way to break out teeth without compromising the perp's ability to confess..."

_GIL! HEL..._ Talia screamed inside her skull, before the impact of a huge fist weighted with heavy metal crashed into the side of her head, and the blackness within her bag mercifully became much more total, so she didn't have to feel the hours of torment the four Section Nine operatives inflicted upon her limp body before they got tired and packed her up to be sent down to the Reclaimer Initiative "Rehabilitation and Labor Center" down in England. Right about the time that the delivery shuttle, borrowed from FEAR, was entering the upper atmosphere, was when Captain Talia Gladys was noted as having not shown up for duty at the proper time, and was not to be found at her apartment or any other usual hangout. Section Nine deployed at once, under Gilbert Durandel's personal order, but even the USN's premier intelligence service could find no trace of where ZAFT's most famous warship commander had disappeared off to. Not right away anyhow...

xxxx

**Dark side of the Moon, approx 700 km west and 1.2 million km above Galileo LFB, aboard Agamemnon class ship **_**Justicar**_**, January 18th, early afternoon**

"Markov, are you SURE that turning over navigation control to... to her... is really a good idea?" Tamara asked, propping herself up on one elbow and looking down at her lover and commander, who lay in the bed next to her, one arm trapped underneath her hip, with one of her legs provocatively draped across his thigh, her legs, even when bent, several inches longer than his own. The lights in the commander's quarters were slowly beginning to brighten again, as the programmed rest period came to its close. "Can we really trust her?" Tamara pressed, poking Markov gently in the side of the neck when he failed to do more than grunt noncommittally in reply.

"I trust her, to a degree anyway." Ashino replied at last, rolling an eye over to glance at her. "Whether that means you and the Retributors as a whole should trust her, I cannot say. She has always acted honorably and kindly to me in the past, but I cannot predict how she will act now. She's changed from the girl I knew her as, grown harder, tougher and definitely more dangerous. But I don't think Meyrin Hawke is a threat to the Retributors, not directly anyways. Her mere presence, along with those of her followers, of course places us all in great risk, as if the USN didn't have enough reasons to come chasing after us."

"Look, you know I don't got problems with the Eddies." Tamara replied, puffing a strand of hair out of her face. "And as a person, Meyrin seems fairly all right, if a bit crazy. But should we really believe her when she saws she can give us something that will forever undermine Durandel's regime? Does something so powerful even exist? And how does she of all people know about whatever it is? We're starting to run low on supplies, our military strength is lowered, and we're a LOT closer to Galileo than I find comfortable. The _Justicar_'s stealth systems should keep us incognito at this range, but if anyone chances to come patrolling by closer, we could be in a world of hurt. All my instincts are screaming at me to get the hell out of here and return to Ronin City, give us some time to rest and think things over. Surely whatever this is can wait another few weeks, right?"

"Strike while the iron is hot." Ashino replied, sitting up in bed, half dislodging her from where she'd been cuddled around him just by a slight flex of his trapped arm. "We achieved a huge idealogical victory by raiding and destroying that death camp, but I do believe Meyrin when she says she can deliver to us something that will make even such a coup appear inconsequential. It could change the entire nature of our struggle, though we will have to be very, very careful with how we handle it..."

"You know what she's talking about?" Tamara eyed him closely.

Ashino shrugged and stroked her back with one hand absently. "I suspect I do." He glanced aside at her as she opened her mouth. "No, I won't tell you what I suspect, because you will laugh at me and call me crazy for even thinking of it. Its an outside chance of an impossibility, and I never would even consider it were it not for the way Meyrin is acting."

"You mean how twitchy and anxious she's getting?" Tamara asked, rolling out of bed and into the air as she passed out of the grip of the velcro sheets that kept them cocooned onto the bed while sleeping. Or in the most recent case, making love, since they were both off duty anyway, with nothing to do but wait as Meyrin homed in on the place she was taking them by whatever esoteric means she was using. "She's nervous about something..."

"Not nervous, excited." Ashino corrected, watching with a slight smile as Tamara swam around the room in her full glory, collecting underwear and socks and uniform articles from where they had drifted while they'd been occupied. "You mistake anticipation for trepidation. After the performance we saw down on Earth, I don't think anxiety or nervousness are even emotions she knows how to feel anymore. Or if she does, she hides them well."

"No, I think you're right actually, she's pretty much lost all sense of fear." Tamara agreed, stepping into her panties and searching for her pants, upside down in midair. "And that is also concerning. I saw what they did to her, Markov. No woman could go through such an ordeal and not come out a bit broken in the end. But being fearless isn't always a good thing... fear is what pulls us back from the brink when we try and do something really stupid. A healthy sense of fear is key to living a long and relatively safe life. You're pretty much the most fearless person I know, Markov, and you're scared of PLENTY. If she's not scared of doing whatever it is we're doing, then I AM scared!"

She was just wriggling into her pants and reaching for her uniform shirt when the PA system crackled above the bed. "Commander Ashino and Captain Logan, report to the bridge ASAP. I think we've found what she was looking for, sir, and you need to come look at this..." The voice of the duty officer sounded both excited and more than a little troubled, which made Ashino and Tamara glance at each other before they began getting dressed with much less of the playfulness they'd just been indulging in. A minute or so later they were on their way to the bridge, post haste, with Ashino doing most of the actual work, and Tamara hanging onto his trailing arm for dear life, touching off every now and then so she didn't slam into the bulkheads when they cornered. Not exactly the most dignified way for a Commander and his XO to travel, but by now their relationship was an open secret, on the _Justicar_ at least, so there was little harm in it.

Reaching the bridge hatch, Ashino stamped down with his magnetically heeled boots to bring himself to a halt, using the muscles in his arms and back to cushion Tam's momentum so that she drifted down beside him as he cycled the hatch and stepped through onto the bridge, having to high step a little bit in order to prevent himself from dragging his feet due to the magnets. Normally a BCPU would never even venture onto the bridge of a warship, but he wasn't exactly a standard BCPU, and though warship commanding was far from his best skill, necessity was a good teacher and he'd learned enough to be competent during his tenure as most wanted man in the USN and leader of the Retributors. All of the bridge stations were manned, the crew responding even faster than their commanders to the ship being taken out of silent running mode and heading towards general quarters.

Meyrin floated just to the side of the main helm station, clad in a simple light blue crew jumpsuit scrounged from the stores. Her eyes were closed, but she nonetheless managed to reach out and touch the helmsman on the shoulder as he was about to adjust the ship's vernier thrust. "Don't. We're close enough that even a puff of gas to bring our nose around will draw their attention." Meyrin told the man, countering his surprised look. She looked over her shoulder and saw that Markov and his second officer had entered the bridge, just as she'd flash-glimpsed a moment ago while listening to the depths of her subconscious mind. She did her best not to crinkle her nose, the scent of sex strong on them both, though it wasn't that it was a bad smell, it was clean and wholesome, just very strong. She made no comment about their activities however, because she was a guest here now, and in truth she was rather pleased that Markov had managed to find someone whom he clearly cared for so much.

"They tell me we're close." Markov commented, his tone carefully neutral, devoid of challenge or expectation, as he strode to a halt next to Meyrin, his body falling into the sort of rapt stillness she'd only ever seen Markov attain, that told her she had his complete and undivided attention. for the time being anyway. "Though to what I'm still waiting for you to explain." Markov reminded her patiently, trying not to let his eyes stray to the still healing scars on her arms, face, and neck, with plenty more across the rest of her body. In truth, without access to Brotherhood level medical technology, there wasn't much they could do for the worst blemishes, including the brandings, though they had at least managed to dull or negate the pain from the inflicted injuries and start the process of healing. Rather more than started actually, Meyrin was almost completely recovered in a little less than two weeks... it was fairly uncanny, though Ashino himself was capable of similar feats.

"The item we've come here to get is stored in an ultra-top secret location, a nominally derelict warship set adrift in a stable geosynchronous orbit over this section of the Moon. Though the warship appears to be without power, its weapons and sensor arrays are quite modern, and it possesses a near instantaneous communication link directly to Galileo's command post. Any sign of hostilities and half of Galileo will be scrambling here to destroy us, or failing that, destroying the item to prevent us from taking it." Meyrin answered confidently. She pointed out the main bridge viewscreen unerringly, though they were much too far away still to make out the darkened object with the naked eye. "Right over there, maybe a thousand kilometers away, that's our goal. At current rate of drift, we should be in range to enact my plan in about ten minutes."

"What is this plan? And more importantly, what is this "item" that's so important that the USN would store it way out here on a fake derelict warship?" Tamara asked, steel underlying her tone indicating her dislike of being kept in the dark on the bridge of her own starship.

"Its... data... of a sort." Meyrin replied, the hesitation in her voice telling them both she was still holding back on them. "Conclusive proof that everything important that Durandel has said in the past decade has been a lie. People talk about having a skeleton in their closet... well, this data is a whole freaking necropolis, all tied to Durandel. With this data in our possession, and proper access to the media, we could completely destroy him in a matter of hours, especially given the current political climate!" Meyrin turned and looked out the window again. "As for my plan, well, let's just say it involves usage of psychic powers that shall hopefully see us prevail where no normal technology possibly could."

"We're all grown ups here, I think we can stand to be let in on the full details." Tamara replied, her tone light but her expression grave. "Especially since this is our ship and all. And how exactly did you come by such information about this super-top secret data repository, when not even our best data-miners can even find a hint about it, given that you were up until very recently a captive? This doesn't add up right, Ms. Hawke."

"It's Borander." Meyrin answered, her voice chill. "I gave up being a Hawke many years ago. I am now and always will be, Meyrin Borander. As for the plan, my followers and I will create a psychic disruption effect in the minds of the warship's crew, preventing them from activating their weapons or calling for help by preventing them from realizing they are even under attack. In essence we will put them all to sleep, but we will only be able to do it for about ten minutes, so the moment I tell you to make a dash for the warship, you should make all haste to board and capture it while they are helpless. It is imperative that we do not allow them to get off a cry for help, or I can gaurantee you that they will never stop chasing us until they have destroyed us, even if they have to divert half the SPF to do it. Durandel would do anything, pay any price, to keep this necropolis buried. We will jump to the very top of his priority list, because he knows just what this data could do in the wrong hands... our hands."

"I have to present some serious misgivings about this, sir." Tamara said to Ashino formally. "We still don't know what this data actually is or what form it takes, we're relying on noncombatants with unknown abilities for the most important part of the plan, and if she's even half right, the risks of even a total success are beyond anything we've ever attempted! If the Retributors lose the _Justicar_, with both you and I as well as some of our most experienced veterans on board, we will be years in recovering, if we ever do! We shouldn't risk all we've fought for and built on this sort of gamble! Especially since she's holding back on us still!"

Ashino considered her words long and hard, because they had a lot of merit to them. Playing it safe had served the Retributors very well since their inception, and he could not deny that the risks surrounding this action were immense. But the biggest risks had the biggest payoffs, and the Retributors needed something new, something to tip the balance into their favor, and Meyrin was offering him that. Or at least he was pretty sure she was. He fixed her with his lime green gaze. "Where did you get your information from, Meyrin?" He asked her directly.

"You know where I got it from, Markov." Meyrin replied, just as directly, her silver inside steely-grey eyes fixing him right back. He watched Meyrin's eyes move to encompass the whole bridge crew, and realized that she wasn't holding back on telling for her sake, but for his. Half the crew would refuse to believe what he suddenly realized to be true, the other half would either flat out refuse to have a part in what they were doing or would bicker about doing it for days. No, Meyrin was probably right, this was a case where beggining forgiveness after the fact was a better idea than asking permission beforehand. "And there is no more reliable source than that." She added vehemently. "If you don't feel you can do it, put me and some of my followers off in a lifeboat, and we will go on without you. But I've come this far and I will not turn back now."

"I have no idea what she's saying..." Tamara complained bitterly, smart enough to realize that Meyrin and Ashino were both talking about something nobody else understood, because of inside knowledge.

"All right, we're in, Mrs. Borander." Ashino replied, drawing stares from around the bridge and an incredulous look from Tamara.

"But Markov..." She protested.

"I said, we're in, and that is my decision. Do you have a problem with that, Captain Logan?" Ashino answered firmly, using her rank to let her know that he wasn't going to take an arguement on this, not even from her. No doubt he'd managed to hurt her feelings some, judging from her widened eyes and tight lipped grimace at him putting his foot down, which he so rarely did, but they'd made him be the Commander, and they had to live with it.

"No, sir, Commander Ashino sir." Tamara replied through clenched teeth, eyes glaring daggers first at him and then at Meyrin, before she saluted sharply. "Permission to go prep the boarding teams then, sir?"

"Permission granted, Captain. You are dismissed." Ashino answered, keeping his face like stone. He didn't like Tamara being mad with him, but he knew she'd get over it, especially if things all worked out. She was overly cautious and meticulous in her planning, and she hated unknowns and unplanned variables, which this idea of Meyrin's was full of. He wasn't exactly Mr. Reckless himself, but when he decided to do something, he did it, and he did not let himself be swayed in his command decisions, even by his second in command and lover. He remained stone faced as he listened to her march stiffly from the bridge, and then turned unmerciful eyes upon Meyrin. "Don't make me regret trusting in you, Meyrin. This is not part of what I owe you, this is an equivalent trade for the Retributors. Can you swear to me that this data will be ours to do with as we see fit once we gain control of it? I don't care how important the data is, if I can't control it, then it is worthless to me, and I'll jettison it straight out the airlock, which should get any pursuit off our backs rather nicely."

"You won't regret it." Meyrin answered serenly. "As for the data, it will be under your control, I'll make sure of that. You have my word, if not my liking. The data has been sequestered for so long, airing it out a little bit surely wouldn't be unreasonable, would it?"

"Once we've returned to Ronin City, you can take it skindiving for all I care." Ashino answered with a shrug. "I know what it's like to be considered equipment, you'd better believe I treat my own with great care as long as it's worth my while. Just don't make me be wrong about this, Meyrin."

"You won't be." She assured him.

xxxx

As things turned out, her assurances turned out to be correct, whatever psychic mummery she and her fellows unleashed upon the "derelict" warship's crew took them down like a poleaxed steer, and the Retributor boarding parties managed to clean up the entire crew in a matter of minutes, with only a few shots fired and no friendly casualties suffered or enemy messages sent. The boarding parties truly spent more time tying up limp bodies slumped in chairs or lying prone on the deckplates than they did in traditional room clearing. It was almost too easy, except for the automated corridor defenses in the halls leading to the "data storage unit", which Meyrin had neglected to mention, or more likely, just hadn't known about. However, with the enemy skeleton crew already in custody and Retributor operators setting up station at the comms and sensor consoles, there was little chance of being taken by surprise or in arousing suspicion from the outside, and the Retributors were able to take things slow and steady and careful in clearing out the auto-turrets and booby trapped floor and wall panels.

In truth, the further they penetrated into the depths of the "derelict" Agamemnon class ship that housed the data they were after, and the more fiendish and complex and dangerous the automated traps and defenses became, the more the rest of the Retributors got behind the idea that there really was something of incredible value to Durandel or the USN stored here, else why defend it so heavily? Given what he was fairly sure the data in fact was, Ashino was actually surprised how light the defenses were... if he was in Durandel's place, he'd have rigged the whole place to blow up as soon as the auto-defenses were tripped. No point in taking chances with something like this. But then again, the data in question was a double edged sword... it could cut you, yes, but if properly applied and motivated... his eyes traveled to stare at the back of Meyrin's head for a moment... then it could seriously wound or slay your enemies as well. It wasn't something a dictator like Durandel would want to throw away unless he had no other choice.

Tamara still wasn't talking to him outside of what was necessary in discharging her duty as frontline CIC officer, but he could see her starting to relax a bit as well, as they progressed further and further without hangup or hitch, much less major catastrophe. She was also still glaring red hot daggers at the back of Meyrin's head whenever she thought he wasn't looking, and he hoped her animosity would cool soon. Hopefully she wasn't feeling jealous for some reason, but women could be crazy like that... just by agreeing to Meyrin's plan he might have made it look like he was getting close to her or something. Not that there was any substance to that, it was laughable actually, since Meyrin had absolutely zero interest in any man save one, all the more so after her ordeals, and that one was definitely not Markov Ashino. He wasn't even sure if he'd label her a friend, just someone he owed a favor to and whom was in a unique position to provide the Retributors with a trump card of their own to play. But all the same, Tamara's dislike of Meyrin was all but palpable.

Which could actually be something of a problem, Ashino realized, if things were going the way he was by now sure they were. Because the "data" in question was well known by those acquainted with "it" for not tolerating disrespect or possible threats to what it considered important. And nothing was more important to it now than Meyrin. She had promised to keep the data under control, but would she be able to uphold that promise? Ashino studied her, the way she walked, the way she looked at things, the way the people around her, even the other Retributors, unconsciously gave her deference and extra space, and figured he had nothing to worry about. She wasn't quite a Lacus Clyne, but she was on her way down that path, and it was plain to feel if you knew what to look for. Though Ashino doubted Meyrin would ever eclipse the other Coordinator, as the sort of majesty that Lacus projected wasn't something that could be learned, it was just something she'd been born with. Of course that majesty didn't help her survive that fire down on New Eden...

Shaking his head out of the past, Ashino heard the rumble of several grenades going off at once, as Tam's clearance teams cleared a particularly dense series of gun turrets that were protecting what looked like a transplanted bomb vault door, a circular plug of armored metal easily twice as tall as Ashino was, and, by the looks of it, about as thick as he was too. You'd need Mobile Suit caliber weaponry to get through that thing without the proper codes! Which they did not have, and if Durandel was even a tenth as smart as Ashino knew him to be, there weren't going to be any codes stored in the warship's databanks for them to stumble over. They'd have to either cut their way through, which could take days, or try and resort to hacking the system to let them through... which could take just as long, depending on what kind of network security the door controls had! Ashino knew his way around combat codework, it was a basic BCPU skill, but he had the sneaking suspicion that this door was above his skill class.

Tamara confirmed this by stepping up to the door, fiddling with the controls for a few minutes, before hooking in her personal computer slate to the all purpose port, and spent several more minutes fiddling with her programs on her slate, compiled by the best data-manipulators and outright hackers the Retributors had to hand... and they had some damned good people. But not damned good enough apparently, as she growled something angry under her breath and shook her head, detaching her slate and turning to report, a frustrated look in her eyes. "It's no good, Markov." Tam reported, obviously having set aside their little clash in favor of having more attention to spare for the current situation. "I've never seen codework like this, its like nothing else in the USN canon! We'd need a supercomputer to even stand a chance at getting through this electronically, better to just bring in a plasma cutter team and melt our way through."

"Let me try." Meyrin offered, drawing a hooded and suspicious look from Tamara. "I used to be the best CIC in the Solar Knights, and a fairly good amateur hacker on the side." Meyrin explained, not rising to the look, in truth hardly noticing it as she felt the warmth of proximity swell up inside her. Just one more major obstacle to go! "And these past few years I haven't had much else to do in my free time but practice my data-theft skills against the FEAR networks. Which I did not end up cracking, mostly because I too lacked a supercomputer to back me up. But your comment about never having seen the codework before gives me a certain sneaking suspicion..." Meyrin continued, stepping forward without even waiting for Tamara's permission, and studying the hatch and its control pad closely. After about a minute of inspection, Meyrin placed her hand on the palm reader, leant into the optical scanner and muttered something under her breath, some latin phrase. And the hatch cracked open instantly, much to the open jawed amazement of the Retributors.

"HOW THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT?" Tamara all but shrieked, not sure whether to pull her gun or drop to her knees in awe.

"Command level override." Meyrin replied simply, peering through the slowly opening hatch. "I thought I recognized this hatch. This used to be the hatch that led to the main bridge of the Great Endeavor, Durandel must have had it salvaged and repurposed. Noah put a 12 layer anti-hacking program on this thing, no wonder you couldn't break it, without the key, you'd need a day with one of the AI's to get through this. But it seems the salvage team couldn't break it either, not entirely anyway... they got in and mixed around the authorized access logs obviously, but they didn't get down into the override levels. As a matter of course, I had near equal control over the Great Endeavor, moreso than Noah in regards to certain systems that he didn't trust himself to use properly."

"I don't like this..." Tamara muttered under her breath.

"Did you forget that I was part of the Brotherhood?" Meyrin asked, not unkindly, plainly quite able to hear Tamara's whisper. "I don't call myself Meyrin Borander for no reason, Ms. Logan. I'll admit that I don't have nearly the capabilities that Noah does, but I was the first person to become an Edenite, and I had a very good teacher on what it means to be an Edenite. I think you'll be quite surprised, the things I'm capable of doing." She turned her head away from Tamara and stepped confidently through the hatchway, which had finally swung open wide enough to permit entrance by a person, the hatch revealed to be every bit as thick as Ashino had imagined, a solid plug of armor grade metal that had to weigh at least ten tons. He followed Meyrin closely, with Tamara and a security team following him, wanting to put himself in between any possible lines of fire once his subordinates realized the same thing he already had. He didn't want to come this far only to lose this trump card to unthinking anger.

Ashino noted that the interior controls for the hatchway had been comprehensively destroyed, it looked like they'd been attacked with a fireman's axe and then shot several times at close range with some sort of beam weapon, meaning that the hatchway could only be opened from the outside. He detailed two men to watch the hatch and to shout out if it gave any signs of closing on its own, so they could at least get Meyrin out to open it up again. Getting trapped in this prison was not on his agenda for the day. Thankfully, whatever override Meyrin had inputted seemed to have also trumped the USN programmers attempts to have the door be self sealing, and once the portal was fully open it ground into immobility and locked that way. There wasn't much to the inside of the secured zone, just a sort of antechamber with several security camera's focused upon it, and a blank metal door set securely into the far wall. This door did use USN type data coding, and Tamara was able to recoup some of her pride with about half a minutes work with her slate, resetting the lock and springing the door open with a loud click.

The door swung open, revealing a very dark room within, lit only by the dimly flickering screen of a large desktop computer that was securely bolted into its cabinet. Ashino's eyes adjusted faster than anyone but Meyrin's, not that she needed eyes to see at this range, as she ran to a vaguely humanoid form lying under the sheets of the room's bed. There was a sudden burst of joyousness that came from nowhere, striking the minds of everyone in the room and the hall beyond with a flash of ecstatic relief, as Meyrin all but threw herself onto the bed, her arms incircling and propping up the young man who'd been lying in it, pressing her lips to his like she was trying to breath life back into his body, her body posture caught between angry tension and loving abandon. Ashino found the light switch, and, bracing himself, flicked it on, bringing up the lights in the room.

Turning his head, Ashino noticed Tamara was crying a bit and rubbing at her eyes in shock, an effect of the burst of happiness that Meyrin and Noah had projected upon being reunited, wetness on his own cheeks proving that for all his invisibility to Newtype powers, he was as vulnerable as anyone else to a concentrated wave or area effect projection. He saw that Noah's ankles and wrists were constrained in heavy duty plastic and rubber and metal restraints, with heavy chains giving him about a foot and a half of movement space for his limbs. Some sort of metallic device was surgically glued and sutured into the side of his head, the telltale lights on the side flickering from green to amber and back again in response to some sort of detected stimuli, probably brainwave activity. Must be some sort of monitoring or deterrent device, to limit Noah from utilizing his psychic powers against his captors, though obviously it wasn't perfect, as it hadn't pevented Noah from being a beacon for Meyrin to track down.

Hating to interrupt an emotional reunion, but knowing they were very much on the clock, Ashino stepped forward into the cell and cleared his throat expectantly, drawing Meyrin away from her apparent attempts to permanently fuse her lips with Noah's. Ashino got his first look at his former partner's face for the first time since he'd abandoned the Brotherhood after the Battle of Cape York, and could not help but blanch in shock for a moment. Noah did not notice the stare, but then again, he couldn't... he didn't have eyes anymore! His entire face, from just about the upper lips to just above the occipital bones of his eyes, was a hideous mass of shiny pink and white and pale purple scar tissue, ridges of burned and cut and smashed and even melted flesh all but hiding his nose beneath their paths, his eye sockets raw and glaringly empty, eyebrows cut or burnt away, his cheeks gaunt and greasy looking from all the scar tissue. Noah Borander had once been one of the most physically beautiful people Ashino had ever laid eyes on... but someone had gone far out of their way to forever despoil that beauty... Noah would need an entire facial transplant to even approximate his former good looks!

"Who's there?" Noah asked, his voice scratchy and dry and weak. Ashino noticed that, aside from the horrible facial disfigurement, which looked to be years old, Noah's face and bared skin showed signs of more recent abuse, flushed patchs of lividity and bruising underneath his skin that spoke to Ashino of fairly serious electrical type damage, the sort tasers and other nonlethal weapons generated, and he realized that maybe the security implant was working better than he'd thought. Noah had just been pushing through the pain of being shocked in order to give Meyrin the data she needed to come and find him. He'd probably been doing it for days, pushing himself until his consciousness lapsed out, waking up and doing it again and again... Ashino could almost admire the man for his dedication. It hardly redressed the balance of things, but he could respect the determination Noah had shown to reach out to Meyrin once she was herself free.

"Someone who's not as glad to see you as she is." Ashino replied coolly, knowing that his mind was completely invisible to Noah's mental senses, which were his best way of perceiving the wider world at the moment. "Don't you know you're supposed to be dead, Noah?"

"I told Gil it was a stupid idea, but he wanted someone he could gloat to, and come up with occasional tech ideas to help him keep his advantage against his own minions." Noah replied, not nearly as nonplussed as Ashino had thought he might be, and he figured Meyrin must be holding a pretty thorough mental conversation with her lover to bring him up to speed so quickly. "I'm insulted that you possibly could have been decieved by the absymal performance of that so called stand in! To be rescued by you, Markov Ashino... how humiliating..."

"Careful what you say, I might be tempted to leave you two here." Ashino retorted, though he had no intention of that, but he was one of the lucky few that could bluff with Noah and easily get away with it.

"Hardly." Noah replied with a snort, and then coughed weakly for a few seconds, as Meyrin propped him up and held him protectively in her arms, holding on like she was afraid he was going to turn insubstantial and dissipate should she ever let him go. Then again, given the sort of seperation they'd endured for eight years, Ashino was prepared to allow her to be a bit clingy now. As long as it didn't interfere with his own aims, anyway. "Now that you have me, you wouldn't throw me away before you got your money's worth out of me." Noah added, once he got his coughing under control.

"He needs medical attention." Meyrin hissed, her voice pained as if she could feel his myriad hurts personally. For all that Ashino knew, she probably could, at this proximity. "And we need to get that device off his head before it shocks him again!" She demanded, poking at the embedded security monitor with a furious finger.

"Personally, given our past association, I'm rather happier with him keeping that thing on his skull for the time being." Ashino answered without pity. "After seeing what he made of the Harbingers and Mr. Asuka, you'll forgive me if I don't want my own people subject to that level of danger."

"But I gave you my WORD!" Meyrin snapped, her eyes all but glowing with her anger, the claws coming out now that she'd recovered her soul-mate.

"And I'll let you keep it... but at a time of my own choosing. Unless you want to pry it off his skull yourself, and probably kill him in the process, just leave it alone. He's lived eight years without recourse to his psychic abilities, he'll keep another few weeks while I make up my mind. This isn't like the Brotherhood, Meyrin. I have no obligation to listen to either of you. I will probably soon be under plenty of pressure from my own subordinates to put you both back into cells, or just throw you out the airlocks, once it gets around who the "data" actually is." Ashino told her in no uncertain terms. "Now get him ready to move... I can have some of my people help you carry him if need be."

That said, Ashino about faced and stepped out of the cell... and crossed right into the path of Tamara's incredulous, angry, laser like eyes. "You CANNOT be fucking serious, Markov." She said to start off, her breath hissing like a boiler engine about to explode. "Is THAT who I THINK it is?"

"If you think it's Noah Borander, then yes." Ashino replied calmly. One of them had to be calm about this. It would be good practice... if he could weather Tamara's anger, he might have a chance at holding up under the pressures to come from all sides. Noah wasn't exactly popular after all. Indeed, the only reason many people hated Durandel more was because Noah was assumed to be dead.

"ARE YOU TOTALLY FUCKING INSANE?" Tam demanded, almost loud enough to be heard back on the _Justicar_. "WELL? ARE YOU? CAUSE THAT'S WHAT I'M FEELING HERE, MARKOV!"

"Sometimes I wonder, but I am fairly sure my mind is still as balanced as it ever is." Ashino replied, not doing anything to calm her down. Better to get it out of her system.

"That's Noah FUCKING Borander, the archterrorist, the man who destroyed civilization on Earth, the creator of the Edenites! He killed BILLIONS of people, some of them family members of the Retributors! If word gets out that we are harboring Noah Borander, then no one will touch the Retributor cause with a twenty foot pole! Bad as Durandel as, people would sitll MUCH rather side with him than Noah Borander!" Tam all but screamed.

"I wonder, will they still feel the same way after I have my media spot?" Noah himself answered, half carried and half dragged by a teary eyed Meyrin out of the doorway of his cell. Noah turned his head towards Tamara with uncanny accuracy, the sight of his mutilated face obviously taking her aback as his empty sockets met her gaze unerringly. "I don't deny what I've done, but neither do I apologize for it. But look at what the USN has become under Durandel's guidance. Look at what FEAR has done to the Edenites. And Section Nine to the common populace. Do you really intend to pin the blame for these kinds of atrocities on my actions? Besides, its not like Gil didn't know who he was working with... every major Brotherhood attack up to the time I made him shoot himself was carefully planned and orchestrated by the both of us, to reinforce his political platform and gild the Solar Knights with their oh-so-underserved reputation. The problem and the solution... Gil was playing you all from both ends. I shudder to think of what might have happened if I hadn't moved on with my own plans..."

"What are you saying?" Tamara asked, dry mouthed, caught off balance by the weary vehemence in Noah's voice.

"I'm saying, lady, that haven't you ever wondered at Durandel's meteoric rise through PLANT politics, all his political rivals mysteriously falling by his wayside? Who do you think arranged that? Durandel and I have been working together since I was barely even nine years old. I needed someone to distract the public while I created and expanded the Brotherhood and constructed the Great Endeavor, Durandel was my chosen pawn. In return I would use my forces to help him prove his political points and even outright attack and disable his political allies, such as when we hit Orb's Parliament. But then he tried to have me killed, and we broke off our little compact. The rest, as they say, is history." Noah smiled wanly, as Meyrin shifted her postion, looping his bound wrists over her head and stepping back between his bound ankles, hoisting him up piggyback for easier carrying. "And now Markov is going to have me reveal that sordid past and every other horrific thing that Durandel did, and you can sit back and watch the sand castle that is the current USN crumble from the foundation on up under the onslaught of waves of public outrage."

Ashino and Tamara watched Meyrin carry her lover... arguably the most despised man alive... away towards their ship, escorted by a grim faced band of Retributors under strict orders to take them to the medical suites and keep them under close guard there. "Are you SURE about this, Markov?" Tamara asked, much quieter now. "This is so much... more... than anything I was expecting..."

"He's a double edged sword." Ashino agreed. "We'll just have to make sure he cuts Durandel deeper than he does us..."

xxxx

**New Eden, off the coast of Neo-Miami, January 18th, Afternoon**

"Grumpy" was never a word that Frost would choose to describe his moods, no matter how accurate it might be, because he disliked the aspect of petulance that word carried with it. Old people got grumpy. Yamato, he got grumpy, and usually over stupid things. The Mouse, she could be grumpy, though she was careful not to take it out on him. Even Charon, especially in the wake of the less than successful bid to use Cray to enslave the USN and Orb AI intelligences, was often grumpy. But Zacharis Frost was never grumpy. Put upon, perhaps. Annoyed, certainly. Aggressively irritable, without a doubt. But never grumpy. But whatever you chose to call it, that was a reasonably accurate summation of his feelings at the moment, as the Kratos followed the Mouse's Wraith towards the distant slice of yellow-brown crowned with white that was the coast and the clouds above it, finally in view after almost three hours of travel over the open ocean at close to wavetop height. Which was one of the things contributing to his poor mood... the Mouse had decreed that they needed to travel subsonically and low to the "deck" to avoid being spotted or tracked by Oosen ships in orbit, and a trip that should have taken an hour had taken most of a day!

Another thing contributing to his sullen and irritable feelings was the fact that they were only going to this place because the damned Tree Bitch had put in a call to the Mouse and requested she function as a ambassador of some sort to some bigwig entity or other that was supposed to live in the city they were flying towards. He didn't really care and hadn't been listening with much of his attention, though he had paid enough attention to discern that the Mouse was expected to bring him tagging along, though of course the Tree Bitch never said so much aloud. He'd seriously considered refusing, just to watch her get tugged either which way by her sense of duty to the Tree Bitch and her newly sworn allegiance to himself, because watching her freak out about it would be quite amusing on an otherwise slow day. In the end though, he'd decided to play nice and relented, not least because despite his grand plans, his gambit with Charon and his useless little brother Cray had not turned out nearly so well as he'd expected, and because of that failure he'd in essence failed to keep his promise to the Mouse.

Now, Frost would never insult himself by referring to himself as an honorable man, honor was a tenent of sanity as far as he was concerned and he wanted as little to do with what people called sanity as possible, but it wounded his pride to make a boast and then end up not quite carrying it through. Normally when his pride was wounded he just destroyed whatever irritant that had caused him the distress, but in this case that was impossible. Charon was too important to his longer term goals to carelessly shred into sparking chip-shards, and Cray's mind was just plain gone, lost during the tumultuous data upheaval that had come during the final moments of his struggle against the two AI's, lost somewhere in cyberspace. Which was too bad, because he would have enjoyed making his dullard brother beg for mercy before he snapped his mind-chip in half, and he'd been denied that pleasure. So denied his normal outlet, Frost had decided to take a different track, and had decreed that he would tolerate the Mouse's needs above his own, just this once, in order to make up for his lapse.

The fact that it was Charon and Cray that had failed hardly mattered to him, it had been his idea, done at his behest, he'd chosen his minions and they'd come up short, so he had as well. Next time he would choose better minions, or better yet, he'd do it himself, personally. He'd turned himself into digital form once before after all, accidentally for sure, but he'd still done it, doing it again surely couldn't be out of the realm of his abilities! And so he found himself dragged along on this diplomatic mission to go see a person he didn't care about and wasn't supposed to kill, for reasons he didn't care about, for a purpose he didn't care about. It was quite frustrating, and were he the younger him, he probably would have lost interest a long time ago and gone off to kill things on his own. One of those things probably would have ended up being the Mouse, and so he was actually somewhat glad for his older maturity. The Mouse was far too much fun to kill at such an early juncture. She was also a pleasant lay, even if she didn't always have as much fun with it as he did.

But above and beyond her value as an amusement and a sexual toy, the Mouse was worth keeping around for a couple other reasons, not least being that when given the opportunity and the proper authority, she WAS a rather good diplomat and ambassador, as she had proved twice now in his presence, the first time being when she had effectively organized the Kindred into a useful band of servants and minions rather than a milling tribe of religiously awed fanatics. Frost could easily recognize the value of having a base and people to watch over it for him while he was off doing whatever it was that he wanted to do, but he wasn't such a good leader. Not when it came to logistics and the nuts and bolts daily substance of that job description anyway. Put him on a battlefield and he'd lead by example all day long... put him in an office and he'd just destroy it, and kill whoever dared sit him at a desk. But the Mouse was good at all the boring little administrative tasks and details, deciding where people would live, designating storage rooms for supplies, tasking Charon with creating weapons and equipment for his new vassals, that sort of thing. She was getting pretty good with her sign language and seemed to be getting a handle on the degenerate form of battle-cant that the Kindred used for a language as well, which only helped her attempts to at least semi-civilize the Kindred.

Leaving that project to mature on its own for the time being, they had returned to Garden City yesterday, long enough for the Tree Bitch to explain this stupid envoy mission to the Mouse, and for him to check in on Yamato to make sure he hadn't gone and gotten himself killed somehow... after losing Pink to a goddamn FIRE, Frost was in no mind to trust Yamato to stay out of trouble on his own anymore. He wasn't going to lose a chance to kill them BOTH because of their own survival ineptitude! Of course he couldn't kill Yamato until he became the Boytoy again, and he wasn't sure how to effect such a change, but he was sure something would occur to him in good time. Fiery and Loser Zala-Attha were still alive after all, as was Prince Spark, there HAD to be some sort of leverage there for him to use to get the Boytoy back long enough to be killed. But getting back to the Mouse and her skills, upon returning to Garden City, Frost had been surprised and annoyed to find that a group of people had decided to appoint him their spiritual and political figurehead and were forming a whole idealogical movement surrounding "Executor Frost".

His first inclination had, of course, been to slaughter them all for daring to think they were worthy of clinging to his coat-tails, but the Mouse had stepped in and managed to convince him, through no little arguing and a diverting quickie in her rather spacious quarters in the Praetorian hive, that this too could be turned to his advantage in the long run. She pointed out how in the past he'd been defeated by the Boytoy only because all the Boytoy's friends had weighed in first and gotten him tired and angry first, and that already Yamato was forming another little clique around himself to replace the one he'd lost when Pink died and he'd cut himself loose from Orb. If he wanted to kill the Boytoy, he'd have to get through all his little sycophants first, and that could be bothersome and boring. Better to counter Yamato's minions with his own, leaving their final battle to the purity of a one on one contest. And since the Mouse was taking on the burden of organizing and directing these "Memento Mori" plebes, he didn't even have to do anything besides be his usual self, and she would take care of the rest. Mouse, administrative assistant to the Darkness of the Human Soul. It was almost amusing at times. Well, even the Devil had to file paperwork sometimes, he supposed.

Watching the darkness take hold in her own soul was also quite diverting of course, the slow corruption that she herself did not seem to realize she was suffering, as she became more and more "his" and less and less "theirs", with they being all the people she had used to associate with, Yamato included. He did not doubt she still believed that she was doing things in order to find that good part of his soul that he must have lost someplace, but he wondered if that was really the reason anymore. Somehow, she really seemed to, well, LIKE him, as a person or something. Which was not at all what he'd been intending, actually. Yes he wanted to corrupt her, yes he wanted to watch her fall into madness and despair, yes he intended for her to become his slave and plaything, but nowhere in that did he expect or even particularly want her to LIKE him. No one had ever LIKED him before, not once in all the life he could remember. Doc had been proud of him certainly, but there was no love lost between them, and little enough respect.

In truth it made him kind of uncomfortable. He wasn't precisely trying his best to keep her at arms length... in fact she spent a great deal of time within his arms reach... but figuratively speaking, he wasn't trying to drive her off, since she was obviously still living. But he was cruel to her, and he humiliated her whenever he felt like it, and degraded her in front of the people whose opinions she cared about, and made them doubt her sanity, and in short he was acting towards her pretty much how the Doc had acted towards him for parts of his young life, and yet she didn't complain, didn't protest, didn't run away... and didn't seem to hate him for it. He'd managed to evoke hate from everyone else he'd ever deigned to show an interest in, even the uber-pacifistic Pink had loathed him, and he was proud of that. But the Mouse didn't hate him at all. Indeed, in those times when she lay trapped in his embrace and he drove his thoughts like spiky jaws scouring through her mind, looking through all her most private emotions and memories, deep down inside, she felt kind of FOND of him!

Frost was not used to being the one disconcerted by the nonsensical nature of another's mind, but he had to admit, to himself if no one else, that the Mouse was fast becoming something of a quandry. She was too useful and amusing to just dispose of casually, but he did not like how he was reacting to her presence... almost like he was getting used to it, counting on it even, to the point where he even felt somewhat protective of her at times! His life had been devoid of all constants except pain and suffering in the past, but now the Mouse was trying to add her own constant to his existence... and he was the one letting it happen! He did not doubt that one day in the not overly distant future he would kill her with his own hands, but he found he could not look forward to that time. Life would be a bit dull without the Mouse running around in his cupped palms, squeaking her indignation proudly to the world while remaining blissfully unaware of her own vulnerabilities.

Not that she was nearly as vulnerable as some, Frost was willing to allow, as he maneuvered the Kratos to follow her Wraith as she curved up and then down towards the remains of what had once been a sprawling seaside resort city, before someone had come along with a goodly few high kilotonnage nuclear weapons by the looks of things, judging by the way the buildings had all their windows out and their sides scorched black, with most of the smaller structures in rubble, save where they sheltered in the lee of a larger collapsed building. Large, jagged edged circular craters showed where groundburst bombs had gone off, and the wagonwheel pattern of toppled and destroyed buildings in other areas showed where air pressure from airbursts had slammed the ground with the force of a trillion jackhammers. The Kratos told him that background radiation levels were significantly higher here, though nothing that would trouble him, or the Mouse as long as she didn't go taking off her armor and skindiving in the brackish water pools that flooded half the city at ground level.

He hadn't exactly been training the Mouse, not per se, but merely in attempting to fend off his more playful advances, she was learning how to better take care of herself against an opponent whose abilities outclassed hers in every way. That was her primary weakness... the Mouse was accustomed to being at the top of the totem pole as far as pure abilities went, which made up for her general lack of experience, except of course against people who were not only more experienced than her, but also just plain BETTER, like himself and Yamato, who she performed dismally against. But she was getting better... she'd made him take almost a minute before he pinned her Wraith down the last time he'd decided he wanted to have her then and there while they were flying in their Mobile Suits. There were very few people that could make him take a full minute attending to them, subduing or not, though he hadn't let her in on that. Better to have her thinking she continued to disappoint, so she would continue trying so much harder in the future.

Frost frowned as they descended below the level of the tallest standing buildings, feeling a... seething, for lack of a better word... on the mental plane around him, like the sound of a trillion centipedes crawling all over each other in every direction. His mind felt like things were crawling over and through it, burrowing into his soul like maggots into decaying flesh, and while he detected little in the way of malice, he still didn't like it. Even as he was "training" the Mouse to be a better fighter, so too was he learning from her on how to better defend and shield himself on the psychic side of things, and he was rather happy with the way he'd learned to shore up his mind in recent times. He didn't overly mind a human trying for a sneak peek into his thoughts... more fool they, given what he'd seen happen to others that tried... but he wasn't happy with the way those Chimera had ghosted into his mind without even a twitch. Insanity was only a meaningful defense against those with a human concept of sanity, or so it appeared. Certainly, whatever it was that was tasting his thoughts now didn't seem to be bothered by the cesspool of whirling violence and conflicting urges that made up his id and ego.

It was bothersome, but he be damned if he queried the Mouse about what was going on, that might make it sound like he cared about what they were doing, or that he was even concerned, and he wasn't about to let on to her that he was at all discomfited by whatever was going on. _It's the Caller._ Her voice spoke into his thoughts, something he was still getting used to, having only allowed her to start doing it in the last few days. Again, where most people, even Pink, had shied away in horror from the contents of his mind, the Mouse seemed able to dip her toes in without getting dragged down by the quagmire, and though he did not by any means keep his thoughts open to her perusal, he at least had learned to leave a gap in his protections that she could speak through. _This is his home territory, somewhere below us._

_And what, Mouse, is this "Caller"?_ Frost sent back with imperial disdain. _And how do I kill it?_

_You don't, Zach, for one because he's a Grand Chimera and even now could burn your mind out like a cinder if he wanted to, and for another because if you DID kill him, the death echo would kill both of us and a good portion of all life on New Eden as well!_ The Mouse replied with a sigh that mixed frustration and patience. _The Caller is, for lack of a better word, the "Evil" Grand Chimera, who enslaves all thinking beings within his range and feeds off their bodies and their mental energy, especially their death echoes. The Caller is utterly self centered and singularly unpleasant, most every thinking being on New Eden either fears or hates him. In that aspect, he's kinda like a certain person I know..._

_I shall choose to take that as flattery rather than insult, Mouse._ Frost answered with an affectionate warning spike into her thoughts that would make her wince and her head throb. _So if I can't kill him, then why are we here?_

_Because things are getting extreme enough that its been decided that having just two Grand Chimera on our side isn't enough. With all three Grand Chimera unified under one cause, we'll have much greater freedom of movement across the planet's surfaces and that many more Chimera at our behest to bolster our forces. Which we especially need given whatever it was that the Oosen deployed at Gibraltar recently, that so badly mauled a significant fraction of both Kraken and Megladon, and cost us a irreplacable Praetorian as well! And consider this... on his own, just because that is what his nature is, Caller wiped out an entire theatre base of Oosen troops! Imagine what he could do working together with Yggdrasil! And finally, whether he knows it or not, the Caller is vulnerable to physical attack from orbit or with WMD's, and if he dies, like I said, most of us will die too, or at least go brain dead._

_And if he is as self centered a being as you say, will he care about your plight? He doesn't seem like the joining type, from your description._ Frost pointed out.

_Neither do you, but look where you are..._ The Mouse answered, almost smarmily. He was still debating whether he should kiss her or knock her prone the next time he saw her to reward her for this behavior, as he did somewhat enjoy it when she baited him, even as his natural urge was to crush her flat for daring to do so, when her Wraith touched down on a stretch of rubble strewn lot that didn't look too much different from any other spot, at least until he landed the Kratos next to her, and suddenly much of the rubble piles ceased to exist, leaving a huge gaping chasm in the ground only a few dozen meters from where his Gundam stood. _Psychic interference... Caller makes you see what he wants you to see. Hijacking your senses to put you into a nightmare dreamworld is supposed to be his favorite method of feeding._ The Mouse explained, even as Frost blinked his eyes in constrenation. _I wouldn't overly trust anything you experience with your senses, especially sight, from now on. Kunai said that Yggdrasil had secured safe passage for us, but this is the Caller, making assumptions of any sort would be stupid._

_You take me to the nicest places for our dates, Mouse..._ Frost commented with a sneer, as he disengaged his gravitic restraints and snagged Deathshriek from its newly made cubby in the back of his cockpit space.

_You're one to talk, Zach. The last time you took me out to dinner, I nearly WAS dinner!_

_And a sumptuous one too, I thought. Believe me, I was tempted to dig in with my teeth right then and there. Whatever else the Kindred are, when it comes to cooking long pig, they know what they're doing. I never would have thought to stuff your orifices with spices like that..._

_Let's not talk about that part, alright?_ The Mouse sighed, and he could feel her making her own preparations, checking her armor seals and the placement of her weapons. _Just... try not to break anything, okay? We're trying to make a good impression here, we really need the Caller to sign on with us, so we can start fortifying his lair to protect him if nothing else, so if you would just stand back and do your best to look menacing or something, that would be best._

_I don't think so._ Frost answered with cold delight at her constrenation. _When two monsters meet, there is always a confrontation, Mouse. Always. And only one of them gets to walk away from that confrontation. I'm gonna make the "Caller" into a "Screamer", just you watch._ He jumped from the cockpit ledge down to the pavement below, his bones juddering slightly with the impact, but a mere fall of close to sixty feet onto concrete wasn't enough to break them, by any means. Kicking loose shards of pavement from the shallow craters his feet and scythe haft had created upon impact, Frost looked up and watch the Mouse jump down likewise, though she ignited her jumpjets just prior to touching down, landing lightly as a feather. Shuffling sounds from nearby heralded the arrival of their welcoming committee, a ragtag band of dead eyed humans and other life forms, mostly four legged, but a few that slithered and one or two that flew, all with the same, vapid, empty gaze and slack mouthparts.

Most of the humans were holding digging implements of one sort or another, and all the creatures were stained with dust and concrete chips, most looking significantly undernourished if not actively starving away. He swung Deathshriek at one experimentally, a lazy blow that even a child should have been able to dodge had they desired to, but the brainwashed digger didn't even seem to realize he was under attack. Neither did he scream, or flail, or even REACT at all when Deathshriek clove right through his middle and sliced him in half, spraying blood and organs over several of his nearby fellows, who didn't even blink, or change facial expression at all. Nobody home there, less expressive even than cattle in a pen! How disappointing. How disgusting. If this was what Caller did to people, then Frost wanted to kill him even more now... this sort of thing would lead to the blade of humanity rusty and corroding away into nothingness if allowed to run rampant! It could not be allowed!

"Did I not just expressly ask you NOT to kill or break anything, Zach!" The Mouse tried to remonstrate with him, her voice a little shrill coming from beneath her helmet, as she at last bounded over to his side where he stood glaring at the dead eyed diggers. "Honestly, you're like a little kid! You did that just because I asked you not to, didn't you?"

"That was part of it. You do not control what I do and don't do, Mouse, you know that. If I want to kill something, I kill it, and neither your words nor your feelings will stop me. Get in my way and I'll cut you down too." Frost eyed her, not liking that her expression was hidden behind her helmet. He toyed with making her take it off, but remembered the radiation readings. Wouldn't do for the Mouse to start bleeding from the gums and losing all her hair just to satisfy his foibles, in this case. If she was to die, it would be quickly and brutally at his hands, preferably while her naked body writhed beneath his, not the slow wasting of radiation sickness. "But I was also interested in seeing how the Caller would react to the slaughter of one of his puppets. I don't think he even noticed. That displeases me."

"Killing them is like tossing a dog treat down his gullet, since he feeds on their death echoes." The Mouse reminded him. "And given that he must have thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of puppets under his control in this city alone, I think it'll be a while before you nickel and dime him into fullness. Now come on... there's going to be plenty of fighting and killing to do when the Oosen comes after him, which should be soon."

"If you insist upon treating me like a little kid, with these lectures, then I must demand you either carry me or hold my hand, to maintain the illusion." Frost retorted, smirking as he watched the frustration leak into her spine, stiffening it noticably.

"Sometimes I really want to just shoot you in the head, you know that, Zach?" The Mouse growled at him, reaching out and grabbing his free hand, and all but pulling him along behind her. Of course he went willingly, she was by no means strong enough to pull him more than a step or two if he wanted to brace himself, but her annoyance banished his annoyance, and that was the entire point of things. He was already BORED as hell, still feeling a bit put upon that he was here at all, and he didn't like her helmet to be on, he much preferred her face and hair to be accessible to him, for caressing or pulling as the desire arose. He needed a distraction, and she was the only reliable one around, since the meat puppets were basically zombies, except less expressive.

"I'm not stopping you." He told her, with a widening smirk. "Though it would give new meaning to the phrase "shooting my mouth off", don't you think?"

"I don't even know why I try, you're impossible." The Mouse grumbled, exasperation flavoring every word, as she led him towards the edge of the massive pit they'd landed near. He noted that the diggers were following them, not crowding, but definitely staying close by, though whether it was as observers or guards he didn't know or care. He reminded himself again why he was there, because he'd decided that morning to humor the Mouse to make up for his failure with Cray, and forced himself to be a little more accomodating. The Mouse plainly wasn't happy to be here, indeed she was all but radiating dread on the mental plane, and his attempts at self amusement weren't helping her focus on the task at hand. The less he bothered her now, the quicker she could deliver her message, and the quicker they could leave and find a place where he could take her helmet off... and the rest of her armor too.

Back in his original body he'd never really considered himself much of a sexual being... he certainly had the desire, and a succession of "girlfriends" like Amy or other girls provided by the Doc as rewards for high performance, once he reached the age of appreciating them. But after the level six surgeries, his priorities and desires had become so much different. He still sought out females, but it was more to cause them pain than to slake physical lust. Sex became just another tool, another weapon in his arsenal to debase and terrifying and ultimate destroy the people he hated. Even his interest in Pink had been more for the bloodletting than the fucking, but things were different in this Boytoy body. It had urges, frequently, and he'd never been good at denying his urges. And it never seemed to satiate either, he was always ready for more. He imagined Yamato might find the struggle against such base urges to be bothersome, but that was because Yamato was a bit of a masochist who enjoyed denying his natural, primal tendencies. Frost was more in tune with himself than Yamato could ever hope to be, ironic since they shared the same body, he neither fought not welcome the urges and feelings, just accepted them as they came and did his best to slake them.

And something about the Mouse seemed to inflame him especially, and she seemed to feel the same, judging by how she reacted when he took her for his pleasure, the way she cried out and clung to him during and afterwards. But now was not the time to dwell on such things, he was only going to frustrate himself or worse, forget himself and do something the Mouse at least might not survive to regret. They stood at the lip of the pit, which wafted a faint stench that seemed to mix the smells of sewage, seawater and an open grave. The pit was cylindrical in shape, and easily twenty meters across. He peered down into the depths, but even his eyes couldn't make out the bottom with clarity, though he did detect a faint glint of sunlight on water in the depths. He narrowed his gaze, because there seemed to be something... large, wriggling around down there. And then it was wriggling closer, and he heard the Mouse reflexively gasp and her hand tightened on his as the object revealed itself. It was either a worm or a massive tentacle of some sort, a good nine or ten feet around at average, and at least two or three hundred meters in length, its flesh a slimy pale white, covered with mauve suckers the size of his head.

The tip was crowned with a ring of what looked like interlaced spikes to first glance, and were soon revealed to actually be interlocked teeth, as the tip of the tentacle split open along five palps, each palp interior studded with hundreds of peg like teeth, the palps undulating like tongues as the tentacle snatched forward and swallowed a half dozen of the diggers in a gulp, palps slamming closed with a gooey "SMUSH" sound as the teeth and muscular action chewed and pulped the hapless puppets at the same time, bloody paste squirting from the seams where the palps met at the top of the feeder tendril, the mass of flesh and crushed bone actually visible as it was slowly swallowed by the tentacle, on its way to some distant stomach or digestion chamber. The tentacle waved towards them next, and Frost felt the Mouse tense next to him, but he just stared at the appendage indolently, recognizing what he'd just seen as a deliberate test or scare tactic. The Caller wanted to see if they were squeamish or not.

"Eat me." Frost challenged, figuring the Grand Chimera could hear his words as he thought them, or else hear them with the remaining puppets. "Though you'd better be prepared for some heartburn if you try. I don't swallow easily, unlike the Mouse."

"Uhg." He heard the Mouse comment under her breath, but he was glad to see that she was calming down again, more frustrated with his crudity than she was scared of the Caller's mouth, or hand or whatever this appendage was. Blood and slime of unidentifiable origin drooled from the tip of the feeder tendril as it curved down towards them, the mouth-tip remaining closed, as the tendril formed a sort of living platform for them to step onto, which they did, Frost smirking, the Mouse somewhat more hesitatingly. Once they were aboard, the tendril carefully and smoothly lowered down through the mouth of one of several dozen major digestion pits that dotted the surface sector of the Caller's home domain, into which all dead or dying biological matter was deposited by his servants, to stew and pickle in the stagnant water at the bottom, until the Caller felt peckish and decided he wanted a tastier dish. The Caller was perfectly capable of eating dirt or other mostly inanimate objects, like an earthworm or bacterium, and deriving sustenance from it, and that made up most of his diet, while at the same time expanding his home, but parts of him still craved flesh or plant life from time to time, and he liked having some on hand to indulge with.

Lilia and Frost were actually the first living, undominated creatures to ever be brought into the Caller's true lair, which was literally eaten out of the soil and rock and concrete foundations of the city. The main hub of the udnerground cavern network was the submerged sinkhole where the Neo-Miami aquarium had once been, where the Caller had been born bathing in the concentrated Green EDEN and radioactive water dripping down from the surface, a conglomerate organism entirely unlike anything else found in Nature, combining aspects of horeshoe crab, octopi, jellyfish, earthworm and clam, an aberration of flesh and filmy fluids that rapidly grew so large that he became trapped in the flooded ruins of his birthplace, his flesh spilling out into submerged hallways and filling other large capacity aquarium tanks that had survived the nukes, until the Caller's "main" body filled up a good five or six thousand cubic feet spread out through the aquarium building, most of that being brain and nervous system, though there was an occasional, mostly defunct stomach and extra heart here and there.

The Caller had originally possessed lungs and gills, but as his body had expanded, it grew more efficient to breath via direct osmosis, meaning he breathed through his skin, mostly through the sometimes kilometer long feeder tendrils that branched out from his main body in all directions, hollowing out the digestion pits and connections to the nearby ocean to provide his caverns with plenty of wet, brackish moisture, which also kept the flabby, pulsating mass of his brain cooled and supported. The feeder tendrils, which could grow up to fifteen meters in diameter in the largest cases, also acted as preliminary stomachs, their internal fluids breaking down most of the resilient sections of a biological substance... bones, hair, nails, bark, etc in time for the pulpy mass to be deposited in one of a half dozen main stomachs, which absorbed the nutrient glop via strong acids, converting it to more mass or "offspring", which were really more like what humans would call symbionts, crab like organisms that patrolled the caverns acting as janitors, guards and eyes, sometimes growing as large as ten feet across and weighing as much as three adult humans, though they were rarely if ever seen on the surface, being sensitive to sunlight like the Caller himself was.

Very little of this was apparent to Frost and Lilia, as the feeder tendril carefully conveyed them deeper and deeper under the ground, pulling them almost a kilometer before it deposite them at a fleshy ledge that the Caller had grown specifically for this purpose, it not normally being in his nature to converse with food items. Though perfectly capable of plucking the thoughts right out of his guests's heads, regardless of their attempts to shield themselves, which to be truthful he didn't even notice, the Caller knew that if he were to speak to them directly he would burn out their minds in an instant, so instead he had commanded a small party of digging slaves to attend to the spot, the humans who worked to shape his surface domains to his whim, suffering from their backbreaking labor to provide him with tasty mental energy treats, slowly starving to death or wasting away from radiation sickness, until they could work no more and were snapped up by feeder tendrils, feeding a delicate balance of mental and physical hungers. Eating them all up right away would fill his bellies but leave his mind starving, let them work too long and they would be too weak to reach the digestion pits and his bellies would rumble even as his mind gorged.

Sending a fragment of his attention into the mind of one of his fresher puppets, the Caller burned the woman's mind out, leaving her an even more literal puppet than the rest, her lips flapping soundlessly for a few moments as he figured out how to make her talk properly. "That damned stick told... me that it was send... ing envoys to me. I to... ld it not to bother, but it never... listens to anything... but itself." The Caller announced through the puppet's mouth, blurting things out a phrase at a time as he remembered to pump her lungs and heart at irregular intervals to keep his mouthpiece alive, the strain causing blood to leak from her ears and eyes and nostrils as her brain began haemorraghing. She was going to die soon, but that was why he'd brought extras... dozens of them. "Why should I... not eat you both... up right now... eh?"

For her part, Lilia had to swallow hard, averting her eyes from the spasming body of the woman, who looked like she was having a grand mal seizure, her limbs twitching, blood pouring down out of her skull, as she rapidly broke down under the unimaginable pressure of conducting the mind of a Grand Chimera who had no interest in limiting its psychic presence. The air was hot and wet and salty, or at least that was what her armor sensors told her, since her armor was sealed tight to prevent radiation leaks, background radiation high even this far underground... clearly much of the water had gotten a heavy dose during the Night that was Day back during the Eden Disaster. "Because we came here in good faith with a proposal that could greatly benefit you." She forced herself to reply, remembering Kunai's advice to play to the Caller's self centered need for survival. He wasn't going to be interested in an alliance unless he thought he was getting the better end of a deal out of it.

"And I could still ea... t you up and sift your... genetic material for that same in... fo and make my decision without... having to waste my time spea..." The Caller cut off as the woman mouthpiece choked and vomtied blood, her heart having exploded under his inexpert pumping. She collapsed bonelessly to the ground, the next thrall in line stepping up to take up shere she had left off, his baritone voice a marked contrast to the woman's voice. "...king to food morsels. Why... shouldn't I eat you... again?"

"Because the moment you try, the Kratos will fire its AMP cannon at my location, and annihilate this entire city and you along with it." Frost cut in with a yawn. "Us too of course, but since we're the ones being eaten alive, I doubt we'll much care. Still hungry?"

"I don't li... ke you..." The Caller replied, the puppet jerking, head already beginning to bleed as the Caller forced its eyes to study Frost from head to toe. "You are not af... raid of me..."

"Feeling's mutual." Frost agreed, spitting a wad of phlegm off the edge of the platform, splattering it across the skin of the feeder tendril a few meters down. "And one of these days, hopefully soon, you and I will have a chance to resolve this dislike in a permanent fashion. I'm going to carve you up like a christmas ham, and then I'm going to eat you all up and shit you out, if it takes me three years straight to do it! But I can't do that right now, because you and I both have bigger problems. Namely this war that's going on all around you."

"This war brought m... e hundred of thousands of... tasty slaves to dig for and feed me... so far, why should I cons... ider that a problem? Let them com..." The Caller had to switch mouthpieces again, this one a young boy in his late teens. "...e, I'm willing to eat if... they are willing to feed me..."

"But this time they won't come for you on the ground, or at least not soley on the ground." Lilia answered, groaning inwardly at Zach's confrontational taunting, but at least he seemed to have gotten the Caller's attention, and not his ire. "They have huge warships that will bombard you from high up in the sky, and long range missiles that will blast the city apart and melt holes even down this far, and you cannot defend yourself against such things. Search my thoughts if you don't believe me, look, and see what's coming, I beg you, Caller!" She said imploring, lowering her mental shields, not that she thought he even noticed, but it was all she could think of to do. She felt pressure sweep through her, like her mind had been inundated briefly by a tidal wave, and she staggered to the ground, retching against the inside of her helmet, eyes almost rolling up into her head as the Caller looked, and not just at the thoughts she wanted him to either, he literally took a snapshot of her entire mind and memories, as easily as if he was dipping a ladle in a bucket of water.

"I don't like this... the Stick is too sure of... itself. I will not surrender myself in... to its power so easily. Let them co... me, if they can... I will devour them all, mind, body and soul..." The teenager croaked as well, the Caller's moodiness causing him to be less careful with the mouthpieces. "Time to feed..." The next mouthpiece in line, an older woman, declared with rapturous glee, as the feender tendril hove up behind them, palps splitting wide to reveal the slimy, tooth studded interior, acidic drool dripping from the tips of the palp-tongues. The tentacle snatched at Lilia and Frost, but pulled up short, twitching in unfamiliar pain as Frost swung Deathshriek and carved into the underside of the tentacle, dark, filmy blood spurting from the gash before muscle action clamped the wound shut. It was less than a papercut to something the size of the Caller, and a half dozen extra feeding tendrils were already on their way towards the speaking platform in case the first one was too injured to digest Yggdrasil's envoys, but when Frost had struck, he'd also channeled a psychic attack through the LEMIM scythe, projecting terror and anguish into the Caller as he carved through its tendril.

It was barely enough to even register in the Caller's thoughts, but it had caused that twitch, and had instantly suggested a different course of action to the god-like being. He so wanted to devour these two and fill his bellies with their flesh and his mind with their agonized last moments, but an extra second of mentally digesting the memories and impressions from Lilia had been enough for the Caller to reconsider his hunger based decision. If Yggdrasil's minions so badly wanted to come into his lair, practically marching themselves into his maw in order to spend their lives in his defense, why should he stop them? Let them fight and die, which would weaken the Tree's grasp, if only slightly, and strengthen himself at the same time. And there was another thing to consider... Lilia's thoughts told of the splintering politics and factions forming amongst the humans... Yggdrasil had a favored pet, this Kunai... Leviathan, the ocean-whore, had selected her own champion in Kira Yamato... but there was no one willing to represent him, the Caller. And then a most amusing thought occured to him, so amusing that he killed half the mouthpieces with his laughter before he got ahold of himself.

"I have reconsidered..." The Caller informed the two envoys, making his latest mouthpiece grin in a rictus like fashion, as it slipped and slid on the blood and bodies covering the flap of cartiliginous gristle around it, which they all stood upon. "On one condition."

"Which is?" Lilia asked, heart still racing from the brief adrenaline laced moment where she'd thoguht she was literally about to be eaten by the Caller.

"Send your troops an... d machines and equipment... I shall not eat them unless th... ey are already dying. But I require... an equal voice in your war... councils, someone to look out... for my best interest... in the heart of the Stick's... domains. Someone to properly represent... me." The Caller paused, the mouthpiece choking on its own blood, as its arm jerked up and pointed at Frost. "You shall be my champion, my... mouthpiece at a distance..."

"Like hell I will. I'm nobody's servant." Frost spat vehemently, twirling Deathshriek menacingly around himself to prove his point. And then he found himself flat on his back, the scythe lying just out of his reach, his entire body locked out of his control, his heart and lungs frozen, even the blood in his body stilled as all his veins and arteries constricted at once. The current mouthpiece flailed its way over to him, before collapsing of blood loss halfway there, and yet another empty headed human puppet took up the role, staggering over and staring down with a hideous mockery of triumph on her idiot face.

"There is no... option here. You own the... Mouse, I own you, Zacharis Frost. You... will represent me to your... fellows. I give you my blessing an... d my protection." The Caller intoned with a smirk, as he pressed down into Frost's mind, forging a more permanent but less controlling connection there, similar to what he had with his symbiont drones, allowing him to see through their eyes and project through their minds should he so choose. He felt the human trying to resist, but he didn't know how and he didn't have even close to enough power. "It is... done, you are mine now, until... your dying day."

"I'm going to KILL you for this..." Frost promised furiously, slowly feeling his body start coming back to life as his mental faculties returned. "No one claims me!"

"I am not one. I am the Caller. If you so... hate what I have done to you... then by all means... I will be glad to eat you now. Zacharis Frost, as you are, you... cannot fight me. Does the Whetstone... of Humanity not care about... his self assigned crusade anymore? Is your pri... de more important than... your duty? Will you abandon the... Mouse so soon?"

"I won't forget this." Frost sneered, grabbing hold of Deathshriek and levering himself back to his feet. "As one monster to another, I promise you, I will make you regret your hubris and arrogance, Caller. You're on my short list now."

"As one mons... ter to another..." The Caller's mouthpiece gagged and gargled, body nearing her end. "I accept your challenge... may the better monster... prevai... l..."


	51. War and Peace

Author note: Some pretty lively debates on the BALORs and Cyprus's situation on my RW Discussion forums, if that's your sort of thing. Glad to see many people that care about the fate of characters so much, and your speculation is always appeciated. Even when its off base, sometimes you guys give me such great ideas even when you're dead wrong (forum posters, I'm not saying you are wrong.. or am I?). I forgot to do this in Golden Devils, but the concepts for the Vamps and GHOUL suits, as well as the Inferno combi-weapon, are again courtesy of Asmus, though I did tweak them a little. And thank you, Rihaku, for that analysis of the BALORs vs our other heroes in your reviews for chapters 48 and 49. While I try to avoid quantifying things with numbers whenever possible, because I hate locking myself into a matchup that's just stupidly lopsided on paper, I found your reasoning and analysis exceptional, as ever. And while I'm at it, I might as well put out a big thank you to everyone and anyone that drops a review... here I am, only 50 chapters in, less than halfway done with the story and already I've almost got as many reviews as all of Eden Disaster! At this rate, I should breach 1000 reviews sometime in the arc after this one. You guys (and girls) are awesome, you make it all worthwhile. I'm still looking to beat my best for reviews per chapter... so far Conflagration (Chapter 9) holds that record, at 29 reviews so far, but maybe we can beat that with some of the events coming at the end of this arc, eh? Course I have to get you there first, don't I, so let us continue the Reclamation War...

xxxx

**En route to low Earth orbit over Neo-Miami, aboard USNS Incarnate Class dreadnaught **_**Solaris**_**, January 19th, 1:10 pm**

_You okay, Yzak-y?_ Katie's mental voice slipped into his thoughts like a cool breeze, distracting him from his brooding thoughts, bringing a brief feeling of gladness to his heart as she came up behind him and casually draped herself across his shoulders and back, as sensually diverting now as she'd ever been when they'd met as teenagers, what felt like forever ago. _You've got that "I'm thinking grim thoughts but don't want to bother other people" feel to you. Your mother won't rest any easier if you're always crucifying yourself over what happened._

_I know._ Yzak replied, though he was glad for the reminder anyway. He knew he was apt to obsess over things he couldn't change, that was just how his personality was, but it didn't make it any more productive to constantly dwell on the thought of what had happened to her. It wasn't like he could have stopped it from happening if he'd been home, that just would have put Katie and the children into Frost's grasp as well, and things might have been so much worse... he'd heard from Dearka and Athrun about how Frost had attempted to steal or harm their own children, and the mere thought of Mina and Jamie at Frost's nonexistent mercy was enough to make him feel like he was going to have a stroke! Making matters worse were the events just prior to the start of the Battle of Victoria... he was still too incensed with Kira's actions to even attempt to talk about it with anyone, and getting trashed by Frost and allowed to live once more hadn't done much to improve his mood.

Bad enough to lose and be killed, but for someone like Frost to beat them and then choose not to kill them because he was having fun toying with them... it made Yzak's blood boil like nothing else! And then on top of that, as if he didn't have enough to struggle to contain, there had come the events of Blue Monday, and while the greater tragedy that was the loss of Second Earth 3 and the hundreds of millions of people living on it, the more personal tragedy had been finding out that almost the entire Elsman family, save for Dearka and his youngest sister Marionne, had been on the Aeon City E-PLANTS that had also been destroyed by the Blue EDEN. Having first hand experience with Blue EDEN himself, Yzak knew exactly how horrible it was to die from it, your very body turning to infectious blue dust from the inside out, and once it got inside your upper body, even just a few dust motes worth, you were effectively dead and just waiting to die in agony! But that hadn't been the end of that though, no, while Namara was hurriedly yanking as much of the stored data and files out of the E-PLANTS mainframes as possible, she'd managed to net video files of the Eddie Gundam that had spread the Blue EDEN, and its confrontation with the Elsman's at the dinner party they were attending.

The USN propoganda machine had pounced upon the vid files, which were picture only, no sound, but it was still clear enough to read the body language of Thaddeus Elsman as he stepped practically toe to toe with the Eddie Gundam to see that he was giving the pilot more than just a piece of his mind, his wife and elder daughters clustered tightly behind him, fear more apparent on their faces, as various other figures fled or collapsed in fright in the background. And then, apparently getting the worst of whatever conversation he'd been having with Tad, the Eddie pilot deliberately dumped a canister of Blue EDEN directly onto the Elsman family and then flew away. Thankfully the media was merciful enough to not play the full clip, which watched the Elsman family for the several minutes it took for the Blue EDEN to devour them as they stood in each others arms, calmly waiting for the end, together to the last, but Yzak had seen it, because Dearka had asked him to watch it with him, because he needed someone else to understand. Yzak could count the number of times he'd ever seen his best friend truly enraged in their entire association on just his own two hands, but this was definitely one of those times. The Elsmans were notorious pacifists, so much so that they had literally disowned Dearka when he joined ZAFT, though they later rescinded that judgement, and the Eddie had straight up murdered them with the most horrid weapon imaginable!

He wasn't so happy to see the popular media using the images of the Elsman's final stand as a icon to rally the enraged and grieving populace around, there was just something sacreligious in using the image of diehard pacifists to drum up support for a war, but there wasn't much that could be done about it. He had no influence with the Durandal junta, and Dearka even less, and in fact Yzak was doing his best to quietly distance himself from the USN, even the PLANTS, as he made preparations for moving more permanently to Orb. Living in his mother's house was impossible now, her murder had cast a pall over the place he'd grown up in, he couldn't stand it. But there were more practical reasons... though he'd been far too angry at the time, after the battle, Yzak had had plenty of time to mull over some of the things that Kira had said. And while he could not accept or forgive Kira taking Frost's side, even in a temporary fashion, his points about the USN's stance on those fortunate... or rather unfotunate... enough to be psychics concerned him and their potential impact upon his family.

Right now they seemed to be tolerated under something like "wartime emergency measures", since it was hardly a secret that he and Katie were Newtypes, indeed they had been specifically requested for this coming operation because they were uniquely suited for combat against powerful psychic foes with the Balmung's Divine Eye system, and all data indicated that the target of today's operation was a little more than just powerful. But if and when the Eddies were defeated and the Earth reclaimed, what then would become of the non-Eddie Newtypes in a climate of rampant paranoia and fear of the psychically enabled? Not to mention the stigma that might be attached to Mina and Jamie, even though his daughters were not psychic, having psychic parents they might be reviled by their peers. And the spectre of Section Nine counter-intelligence agents loomed ever large, he would not put it past them to just snatch his children or Katie or even himself right off the street or out of their home as potentially dangerous "subversives". And that wasn't even going into what FEAR might do, as that nebulous and shadowy corporation grew steadily more powerful with each passing day.

He'd heard Alkire's firsthand report of the cybernetic-chimera that had been unleashed upon the Eddie forces outside Gibraltar, and the Frost-like damage it had inflicted in record time, including eating several pilots and infantry right off the ground or out of their ruptured cockpits, and while he could intellectually understand the wisdom of using the enemy's own strength against them, he wondered how far was going too far with that maxim, and might these "BALOR" creations step over that line? Anything named intentionally after a major class of hellspawn was probably something that could do with a lot of oversight, but FEAR had none. He wasn't even sure the Solar President was really in control of the corporation anymore, it seemed to have become the tail that wagged the dog. Certainly, this entire operation seemed to be under FEAR's onus, even though it had been the Orb forces that had acquired the foundational intelligence, at great cost, Yzak and Katie were the only Orb forces attached to the mission, and he still hestitated to call himself an Orbite.

Leaning back into Katie's comforting embrace, Yzak looked up at the Balmung towering over him, seated as he was on the right foot area, half clad in his flight suit and a T shirt as he waited for the call to arms to come. Though the Balmung was pretty big as far as most Mobile Suits went, it was barely half the size of several of the FEAR machines, the massive Panzerdragoons used for heavy assault and seige operations, that shared the _Solaris_'s hanger space with him, which stood like humanoid monoliths against the far wall, their shadows still almost shading the Balmung regardless. FEAR had allocated ten of the monsters to this operation, twice as many as they had made available for the much bigger and officially more strategically important battle of Victoria, with a full twenty of the smaller but still hulking Panzerwulf machines in support. There were also a bunch of new infantry forces, rough looking men and women clad in a new type of heavy personal armor that made them seem more like ogres than people, the shortes of them almost eight feet tall and carrying weapons more suited for pintle mounting on APC's than wielding by hand. Yzak didn't like the way the soldiers had been leering at Katie... and in some cases, at him too, and he was glad they seemed to have no access to the hanger.

The same couldn't be said of the pilots of the Panzer class machines, the enhanced humans called Extended, a longtime resource of FEAR dating back to the latter days of the Earth Alliance, though they had first made their active appearance during the Eden Disaster era, shortly after the inception of the Solar Knights. Yzak didn't like or trust the Extended, they reminded him too much of certain other supersoldiers of Alliance vintage that he was too familiar with, the BCPU. The Extended were supposed to be of more even temperment than the Blue Cosmos variants, and indeed they seemed to keep pretty well to themselves and hadn't bothered him or Katie yet, but how was he supposed to like someone who'd been raised for the specific purpose of killing people like him, and were only being used for another purpose now that there was a bigger threat to deal with? He had stood with Markov Ashino against Frost at Denver, that was true, but that didn't make them friends or even allies, that was just common purpose to bring down a threat to everyone, and Yzak had not been displeased to find Ashino in the Brotherhood, though he'd never had a chance to properly square off against the redheaded BCPU then.

In addition there was an individual who went by the description of "Augmented", a new and improved version of the Extended, a loud, overly friendly dark skinned man who'd spent several futile efforts trying to chat Katie up before finally getting the hint, shortly before Yzak arrived with a gun in hand. Though Yzak doubted that Mechael, as the Augmented was named, a horrible pun if he'd ever heard one, was truly intimidated by a simple handgun... he'd watched the supersoldier attempting to impress Katie by displaying his capabilities, including the fact that his body was eighty percent cybernetic, with a beam saber in one arm and a double barreled machinegun in the other, plus several other weapon systems and gadgets in other parts of his body. It was when Mechael started to point out the advantages of a mechanized phallus compared to a fleshy one that Yzak had decided it was time to put his foot down. It was probably just harmless flirtation... certainly Yzak could understand that desire, if she wasn't his wife he'd be hitting on her too... but all the same, he didn't like them hanging around her. Because the rumor went that the Augmented was specifically designed to counter and kill those with psychic abilities...

"You've got that unhappy look on your face again." Katie whispered, her lips all but brushing his ear, which was certainly incentive enough to wipe the frown off his face for a time, as he turned to kiss her. "That's better. I don't like a sad Yzak-y." Katie admonished him lightly, shifting around to half sit on his lap, her hand resting on his shoulder and playing with the ends of his still brilliantly white hair, which was beginning to grow a bit long. Such inattentiveness was not like her Yzak-y, but she was prepared to cut him some slack, since he was under a lot of conflicting pressures right now. It had gotten to the point where she was now, somewhat guiltily, actually hoping that they wouldn't run into Zacharis Frost again any time soon. Not because she was afraid of him... which she definitely was... but because Yzak was still so furious over his mother's death that he wasn't functioning at his best, mentally speaking. He needed time to come to terms with things still, before he could truly be the cold and hard Yzak she knew and loved while on the battlefield.

Puttering about over Yzak-y was a good way to keep her mind off her own misgivings actually, because while Katie was always confident in her abilities, she also prided herself on being a realist. Though she'd been a practicing psychic for much longer than any of the Eddies, longer even than Noah and Lacus, her mental strength had never been more than modest, at least compared to what she'd seen some Eddies do, much less what she'd witnessed Lacus and Noah accomplish. She had to fight smarter, not harder, which was why she was so proud of the Divine Eye system and the way it allowed her to completely deny even attacks from foes much stronger in terms of pure power than her. Can't hit what you can't see, and if you spread your power out to hit an area, you had to weaken the individual impacts down to a level she was confident she and Yzak could tolerate. But that was all based upon the assumption that they were competing against a human mind, even an exceptional one like Noah's. While she'd never encountered one personally, Katie had been paying close attention to the stories of Eddie prisoners of war, relayed by her adoptive parents, which spoke of the aberrant creatures called Chimera, animals with humanlike... usually greater than humanlike... intelligence and psychic might.

Now, no one in the USN chain of command for this mission was so forthright as to say out loud that they were here to kill a major psychic entity of religious and cultural significance to the Eddies, but that was indeed what this operation was all about. But being that most of the chain of command were blunts or stumps, and had little to no actual experience with psychics, since they lived up in space and hardly ever ventured down to Earth, Katie was wondering if any of them truly appreciated the scope of what they were going to do. This "Caller" entity was regarded with the same degree of loathing and fearful reverence as any Devil or Satan of many modern religions, and it was an actual physical being, its influence not just spiritual but literally it could reach out and grab hold of your thoughts, and, according to the Eddies, eat them! The thing sucked down Death Echoes like they were sugared gumdrops! It was less a creature and more a literal God, with a psychic reach covering two entire continents! That might not seem like much, compared to what she'd seen Lacus do once, but that once had been Lacus at her absolute best, and the Caller could touch anywhere within its range like it was reaching down to touch its toes, assuming it even had toes... nobody knew what it looked like in reality.

In short, against such incalcuable strength, she was having a bit of a crisis of confidence in her ability to protect herself and Yzak from its influence. The invisibility effect SHOULD prevent them from being noticed by it, which was the same reasoning behind the deployment of the Extended and Mechael the Augmented, but if it didn't, she sure as hell wasn't going to be strong enough for the thing to even notice she was putting up a fight! She wondered if anyone had stopped to consider why the Eddies, who used psychic powers on a daily basis at a level she would kill to achieve, were so afraid of this Caller that they had all but evacuated two entire continents of prime living space, just to be away from its easy reach! Probably because it was the bad news of bad news! Just like that whale creature that had leveled Trieste Town and mauled the Orb fleet prior to Victoria... there were creatures out there on New Eden that eclipsed anything humanity had ever expected... treating them like they were just animals to be tamed or hunted down was NOT the smartest thinking in the world, in her opinion.

But she supposed it was kind of hard to accept, when someone asked you which was the greater threat, a giant psychic whale or a space dreadnaught like the _Solaris_, and most people, in the USN at least, would immediately choose the Incarnate class ship. They just didn't have experience with what truly top end psychic entities could cause in terms of havoc to make a good comparison. And with the media eagerly lapping up and regurgitating all the propoganda bullshit handed out by Durandel's administration, portraying the Eddies as barbarians and primitives, despite clear evidence that they possessed technology in advance of the USN's own, they only had themselves to blame for the way much of the senior chain of command continued to be a bit too much tongue in cheek when it came to taking the psychic side of things into account, treating it like a half fanciful addendum to any plans, rather than a factor every bit as dangerous as an armed WMD. Just more proof that the top echelons of the USN had become too bloated with political fat to survive for much longer. They were making the same mistakes the Earth Alliance had made against ZAFT during the Valentine Wars... some of them for the second time now!

_Now who's thinking grim thoughts?_ Yzak prodded her with his mind, and accompanied it with an altogether less appropriate prod, more a goose, against her ass, hidden from view from anyone else by how she sat in his lap, making her jerk back to the here and now, just barely swallowing a yelp that would have terminally embarassed at least one of them. _Wow, not often I get to catch you napping... usually the other way around._ He observed with a smile, stealing another kiss while she was still recovering her composure. He thought about breaking away and seeing if they still had time to make a quick call down to Orb to see how Mina and Jamie were doing... the irrational father part of him was always worried about them staying at Zala's place. Not that he was worried that they were being taken care of with the utmost attention, but he'd seen how comfortable they were getting with Prince Allister, and that troubled him some. Not that there was anything really wrong in them being friends, and maybe eventually more than that with Athrun's heir, but like Dearka was apt to say, he was just irrational when it came to his old team leader, and liked it that way.

But that plan was derailed when the prelaunch siren blared, signalling it was time to mount up and prepare to launch so they could board the orbit to surface drop pods for the coming operation. Time to go beard the lion in its den...

xxxx

**New Eden, Ruins of Neo-Miami, January 19th, 1:15 pm**

Lilia could not contain a shiver as she watched another group of dead eyed, blank faced men and women and animals trot by where she sat searching for a hint of warmth on a pile of rubble that had once been a parking garage of some sort. Those creatures who were able to do so clutched pry bars, pickaxes and shovels in their hands, another clearance crew tasked with shaping and maintaining the Caller's domain according to whatever unknowable end goal the Grand Chimera had. Some crews spent all their time demolishing structures that had yet to fall, others took the rubble and debris and built huge mounds or cairns, like small hills of broken concrete and metal, sometimes right over spots that had just been cleared by a demolition crew. Most of them still wore the scratched and dented blue environment armor of the Oosen, soldiers Called from their attempts at building a theatre base at Porta Panama and who had survived the brutal overland journey to reach their new master's side. Lilia had manged to peek through a few faceplates and had immediately wished she hadn't... though the Oosen armor had limited life support capacity, it wasn't designed to be worn permanently, and the soldiers trapped inside the suits were all but wasted away into sore and boil ridden skeletons, kept on their feet through the Caller's will, pushing them far beyond the remit of normal human endurance.

It was singularly oppressive, the taint of misery and despair like an invisible miasma in the air, along with the scent of stagnant water and the ozone odor of the irradiated and atomically burnt metal and stone of the city environs. The sky always seemed occluded with sickly grey rainclouds, slightly acidic rain pouring down in intermittent showers, and though the city had once been a favorite vacation spot due to its warm weather and sunny beaches, it was now a desolation that felt cold even though it was actually fairly muggy. Or at least that's what Lilia's armor sensors were telling her, since she had been staying sealed up inside her plate ever since dismounting from her Wraith the day before. It wasn't particularly comfortable, but a Praetorian trained to be inured to the hardship... she'd spent a week in her armor before, and though her body was pretty messed up afterwards, it was something she was prepared to do if need be. Better that than sloshing around in the acidic, radioactive swamp water that covered most of the city streets to about knee depth, or breathing in the irradiated dust kicked up by the demolition parties... radiation was one of those things even Edenites didn't play with if they had any sense about them.

A part of her winced every time she saw Zach walking around in just his somewhat ragged black Praetorian uniform, wading through the pools and striding through the thickest clouds of dust and burnt bone ash without a care in the world. She was fairly sure the environment couldn't inflict any lasting harm on him, his internal nanomachines would regenerate any tissue damage the radiation or acid might inflict, but if he spent too much longer in the area, then it was her she was going to have to worry about, because radiation wasn't like dirt... once it got on you or in you, it didn't wash out easily, and she herself could actually get a bad dose just from skin to skin contact with Zach if his body was heavily irradiated. She made a note to get him to eat some anti-rad meds from her medical kit after they left, and another note to ask Charon if the medical facilities at the Citadal... which was what they were now calling the undermountain lair, Charon's Citadel... had any way of purging a high dose of radiation from his or other people's bodies.

It would be best if he ate the meds now, but Lilia wasn't fool enough to approach Zach in his current mood, despite the rapport she seemed to have built with him, in the wake of their "diplomatic" mission to see the Caller and the unpredictable results of their negotiations, Zach was in a terrible, black humor, even for him. Especially for him, actually, she'd never seen him so incensed, so overcome with fury that he literally lashed out at everything around him in a mindless, screaming frenzy for almost three hours after the Caller returned them to the surface after laying claim to Zach as his emissary to Garden City. Most people would have either dropped dead from terror or nigh burst with pride at the thought of being personally selected as a representative for a Grand Chimera, much less imbued with their personal protection, but Zach wasn't most people, the thought of being "owned", even metaphorically, by anyone, had sent him into a towering, berserk rage. Lilia had fled from him, knowing that to stay and try and comfort him was to be ripped apart in his unthinking anger, the Zach she knew and was growing to care for had stepped away, and left only the End of All behind.

Still, she hadn't gone far, watching with a combination of panging fear and morbid fascination as Zach vented himself upon the environment, first with Deathshriek, and then eventually with just his hands and feet and head, crushing blocks of rubble the size of her head with a single blow of a bunched fist, splitting his knuckles again and again, abrading away the leathery strong skin of his hands until dull bone peeked through all along his fingers and both sides of his palm. He split his forehead open while headbutting his face through a brick wall, his nose crushed flat, his scalp bleeding in a dozen places where he'd torn fistfuls of hair from his head, his face turned to a mask of blood twisted in a bestial snarl as he howled like a rabid wolf at the sky. It was easily the most frightening display of human emotion that Lilia had ever seen, and she had to batten down her mental shields with all her strength to resist being overwhelmed by the feelings he was projecting out around him, a psychic tornado of pain and suffering and humiliation and hatred. She wished she could tell him that this was probably exactly what the Caller wanted him to do, that the Grand Chimera was probably eating this up with a silver spoon, but to contact him now was to be driven insane or torn limb from limb, she just had to let him get it out of his system.

The irony of Zach's own reaction to a situation that was functionally the same as what he demanded of her was not lost upon Lilia, but she was prepared to cut him some slack. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, or even knew it or not, Zach was pretty insecure about some things, including his own place in the world and his own power, which was why he was always so brash and aggresive, he liked reconfirming himself, even needed to do it on a subconscious level to establish himself as himself, and that was where the power games he played with her, such as the stripping, came from. Having spent the entire formative period of his life basically enslaved in hell on Earth, Zach had eventually won free from that imprisonment, if not the marks it had scarred into his soul and mind, and to be "recaptured" again now, after having grown used to the freedom of being able to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, to whomever he wanted, was probably one of the few things that could truly cause him anguish. Not that she was expecting the Caller to overtly control Zach, the Grand Chimera had more sense than that, but just the thought of the Caller having the power to make him act as it wished should push come to shove was like a red hot iron collar riveted around Zach's neck! Just the thought of being collared again made Lilia feel both queasy and angry enough to kill many, many things around her, and Zach's feelings were far more intense than hers!

Eventually the tantrum had burnt itself out, but Lilia had still stayed away, knowing from her own experiences that Zach probably needed some time alone to come to grips with things for himself, her presence, no matter how well intentioned, was not going to be welcomed, if anything she'd just remind him that not only had he been humiliated by the Caller, but his humiliation had been witnessed by her. Despite what had occured at the Citadel, Lilia wasn't sure they could really be called boyfriend and girlfriend, the relationship was so much more complex than that, but she still didn't doubt that she was probably one of the last people Zach would ever want to look weak in front of, especially given how he'd reprimanded her for her own weakness in the past. Of course she didn't think he was weak at all, no human, not even Zach, could stand up against the Caller one on one, that he'd even forced the Grand Chimera to reconsider devouring them was an achievement to shame the greatest of heroics of legend, akin to forcing a demigod to grant you a boon, but to someone like Zach, anything other than dominance was submission, and he could not tolerate submitting to anything or anyone, much less having such a submission be seen by someone else. He might very well kill her just to make his shame more bearable if he thought she was trying to give him pity.

No, patience was the best course of action, he would call her or come find her when he wanted her presence again, and in the meantime she had other tasks to occupy her attention. Having been defaulted to the post of seneschal or majordomo for Zach's affairs that he didn't find personally stimulating, i.e. anything having to do with politics or the growing numbers of disenfranchised soldiers, loyal vassals and other interested parties that wouldn't sign on with the other major political factions or who believed Zach to be a messianic figure in his own right, Lilia had plenty to do and little enough time to do it in. Charon had provided her with a microtransmitter and receiver assembly that went into one of her ears so that she could communicate with the quasi-AI almost as easily as Zach did, and she used that to stay abreast of developments with the Kindred, who were taking to the modernization of their training and outfitting with technological weapons like ducks to water, though perhaps that was to be expected, given who they had been before. They were going to be outstanding light infantry and special operations forces once they finished the training program she'd devised with Charon's assistance, and they were planning on figuring out what to do for Mobile Suits... as former BCPU, the Kindred were meant to be pilots after all, in addition to generalized soldiers.

In the meanwhile, she'd of course reported back to Garden City and Kunai about the success of their mission, carefully leaving out any mentions of the interactions between Zach and Caller... he would not thank her for revealing that, even by shading things into his favor, and had been told to stand by at Neo-Miami while elements of Legio Ironhide and a newly reconstituted Legio Cold Hunter were deployed to the area to bolster the Caller's defenses. The first engineering units of Ironhide had already arrived and were busy erecting their disassembled reactors and citadel shield projector domes to provide anti-orbital and artillery bombardment protection, while further waves would bring in anti-aircraft and anti-Mobile Suit weapons, armored vehicles and soldiers to garrison the trenchworks and bunkers that were already being dug and erected by the Caller's mindcontrolled slaves. Kira was also supposed to be on his way along with the bulk of Ironhide's fighting force, bolstered by his cabal of lieutenants and close supporters, including Heine, Haman and several high ranking Custodians.

Arriving even before Ironhide though was the ad hoc irregular unit that she had organized out of those members of Green Cosmos and other factions that had felt abandoned by their political leaders joining with Kunai and the Conclave, and who now called themselves the Memento Mori. Nominally commanded by the taciturn and brooding Praetorian known as Revv, the Memento Mori was rapidly expanding into a fighting force of almost equivalent power to a smaller Legio, though they lacked much in the way of Mobile Suits or armored vehicles other than Revv's Spectre and Lilia's Wraith. They were a direct and uncompromising bunch that saw following Zach as the only correct path to protecting themselves and the world they cared about... by laying waste at any cost to those who stood before them. They valued strength over cunning and tactical planning, and were if anything even more eager to throw themselves into melee combat like their champion and idol than regular Custodian forces were. At the core of their infantry strength was a splinter pack of Wendigos that had broken off from the main tribe, led by the Wendigo known as "One Tusk", the selfsame Wendigo that Zach had so amazingly defeated in hand to hand combat during that particular diplomatic mission in the past.

Keeping the Memento Mori away from Zach while he was in his current mood was a bit of a chore, they all wanted to bask in the presence of their chosen champion, and the more foolish among them even seemed to expect that he might deign to talk to them like they were comrades, which almost made her smile and laugh. She'd already told them, back at Garden City when she first organized them out of the loose rabble that had come to find him and ask him to be their personal leader, that Zach was not going to be a traditional commander, that he preferred to remain aloof and uninvolved with the affairs of his subordinates. They could follow him wherever he happened to go, but there was not going to be any fraternization with him, and if they got in his way or pestered him, then he would kill them without regret or hesitation. In lieu of bothering him, Lilia and Revv would be giving any orders that needed to be given on or off the battlefield, with Lilia in charge and Revv as her deputy because Lilia spent so much time off with Zach by themselves. Being that they were Praetorians, no one had seen fit to argue with this arrangement, though One Tusk and his fellows had taken a bit more convincing. Thankfully they didn't seem to recognize her as being female, as Wendigo of their age were not apt to listen to anything said by a female, Wendigo culture still being stuck in the era of females as more chattel than partners.

In truth it was Revv that gave her the most problems, because though she was technically his senior officer, she didn't actually have any direct authority over him, and it wasn't like she could ask Zach to endorse her or something, other than the tacit endorsement she had from being his lover and assumed confidante, an assumption she did nothing to dispute for obvious reasons. Further, where most of the Memento Mori looked to Zach because of his battlefield strength and personal power, with Revv it was more like a religious experience. She knew that Revv had been a priest or preacher before he became an Edenite, his full moniker was Reverend after all, and the tattoos and carvings of human souls in tormented purgatory that all but covered his skin and armor were certainly indicative of some fairly hardcore beliefs. He seemed to consider Zach a literal messiah, a divine messenger sent to test humanity's worthiness, and it was all she could do to keep Revv from going up to Zach and asking for his blessing, which knowing Zach, would probably come from Deathshriek's edge meeting Revv's neck in passing.

A sudden disturbance in the gloomy clouds overhead caught Lilia's attention, a sudden sense of unease flooding through her as she stood up, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. That was all the warning she or anyone else had, as gargantuan pillars of blue-white focused light speared down out of the heavens and stabbed into the ground in the city outskirts, the clouds boiling away from proximity to the lasers as they dragged across the ground for an endless second, scoring four molten rimmed trenches as wide as a main battle tank in the ground for almost a half kilometer, bisecting a skyscraper like an icecream bar sliced by a red hot wire grater, penetrating far enough in one case to even pierce a far flung section of the Caller's cave network, not a part he happened to be inhabiting at the moment, but the flash of steam from the laser hitting pooled water did reach the tips of a feeder tendril, blistering his skin and eventually giving him a minor flare of pain, like a stubbed toe.

Blinking purple and electric blue spots and bars out of her vision, Lilia staggered down the screely slope of the rubbel pile she'd been standing upon, hot winds buffeting her as the superheated air the laser beams had traveled through gusted away from the impact points, the clouds overhead beginning to roil and boil even more agitatedly than before as the trailing salvo of heavy beam blasts and bombardment cannon shells screamed down the gravity well, the _Solaris_ and its escort fleet heaving to at low orbit overhead as they fired blindly but with great fervor into the cloud cover over Neo-Miami, not knowing exactly where to target and so contenting themselves with a saturation attack to soften the area up for a more focused ground assault. Lilia's heart leapt into her throat as the ground rumbled and shook beneath her feet in reaction to the orbital bombardment, and she felt the psychic landscape quiver in reply as the Caller stirred and marshaled his power, alien thoughts and emotions flying through her mind like mental shrapnel that brought her to her hands and knees before the Caller reigned himself in, with the equivalent of a mental sneer of disdain for his weak human allies and their frail minds.

Thankfully most of the Oosen fire seemed to be concentrated on the remains of the city downtown and center, rather than the coastal sections where the Caller actually laired, the Oosen's information obviously either faulty or more likely just incomplete... until yesterday, Lilia never would have been able to tell anyone where the Caller's main body actually was for sure. It was a small mercy... once the Oosen troops got on the ground they would be able to direct the orbital fire much more accurately, and even a hundred meters of concrete and soil wouldn't keep the Caller safe from a concentrated barrage from an Oosen attack fleet cored by one of their super dreadnaughts for long. And they needed all the small mercies they could get, because the Ironhide defensive fortifications were only minimally oeprational, and the bulk of the Custodial forces were still several hours flight away, leaving the defenders with just a relative handful of soldiers to man the defenses, about a hundred Ironhide Custodians and the nearly three hundred strong Memento Mori, with only five Mobile Suits plus the Kratos. Of course there were tens of thousands of mind controlled slaves as well, but they weren't going to be good for much more than cannon fodder and certainly wouldn't be figuring into any Mobile Suit battles.

Regaining her feet, Lilia stumbled on, figuring she should probably be shouting orders and trying to organize some sort of plan or strategy, but the plain fact was that they'd all been caught completely off guard by the timing of this assault... Yggdrasil hadn't indicated that the attack was so nearly imminent! Even as she thought that, Lilia winced, imaginging a smack from Zach upside the back of her head. Relying on Yggdrasil to provide them with forewarning against every attack was an unforgivable weakness... if they couldn't fight a battle without knowing it was coming, they didn't deserve to be the victors in this war. She could wonder about why the other Grand Chimera had been so lax in its overwatch for the safety of the Caller later, and there was no need for any plan that the Mori weren't already instituting... find and kill the attackers until they stopped coming. They were going to be outnumbered, probably by a large margin, but the Oosen troops would be hampered by their need to search out the Caller's location, rather than just fight, not to mention the Caller's own actions in his defense!

No doubt Kira and the Mobile Suit manifolds he was leading would have already accelerated in an effort to reach the battle zone, but even at max speed, the reinforcements were at least forty minutes out. They were going to be pretty much on their own for this one, but thankfully they had a trump card of their own, that being Zach and the Kratos. Lilia smiled as she imagined the chaos and havok Zach would be able to inflict upon the Oosen in the ruined urban battleground with his Gundam, but those dreams were dashed just seconds later, as Zach finally reached out to contact her mind. _Mouse. I'm not in the mood for this right now. They couldn't have picked a worse time to bother me._ Zach's voice snarled into her thoughts, his words heavy, like each was a lead weight he'd tossed into her mind from a great height.

_Well, it is a war, those do tend to be inconvenient for all of us at times._ Lilia replied, a bit cheekily, but given the stress of the situation, flippancy was better than gibbering terror. _I'm sure you can figure out a way to convey your displeasure to them though._

_Yes, I can at that. It's been too long since I last washed my face in the fresh blood of my opponents._ Zach agreed savagely. _And Deathshriek needs a baptism in the cruicible of conflict. I'm counting on you, Mouse, to watch over the Kratos while I voice my strenuous protests to the USN infantry. It better not be scratched when I come back to get it. I won't go lightly on you if you let them damage it. And if they destroy it, you had better run for a deep hole, Mouse, because you won't want me to find you afterward._

_But... but Zach! We only have six Mobile Suits total, counting the Kratos! We NEED you to pilot the Kratos or we don't have any chance at all!_ Lilia protested, aghast at the timing of his decision.

_If you need it so badly, then I guess you'll die, which will be disappointing, Mouse. Are you really planning on relying on me to win your battles for you? Don't forget what my purpose is... if the war can be ended sooner by the USN killing the Caller, then I won't protest._

_You can't be serious, Zach! If the Caller dies we all die, you included, especially since he's linked to you now!_ Lilia all but yelled at him.

_If you want my help so badly, you'll have to prove yourself worthy of it, by keeping the Kratos safe from harm until I'm good and ready._ Zach replied pitilessly. _And if the Caller wants my help, then he can damn well come crawling to me and beg for it, and then I might consider it._

_You can't let a personal feud influence your actions right NOW, Zach! Please, we need your Gundam!_ Lilia was not ashamed to do some begging on her own initiative, even as she boarded her Wraith and began powering up, looking with grave misgiving at the Kratos standing nearby, its eye-visor blank and conspicuously inert. _This is so much BIGGER than you and the Caller and who controls who, can't you see that?_

_Mouse... you should know by now... nothing is BIGGER than my own goals, and my freedom to pursue them as I so choose, to me. I will not be treated as a lackey or tool, not ever again, by anyone or anything. I would die first, and see you all die with me as well, rather than kill even a single person in defense of the Caller as I am now. If Caller wants my help, he knows my terms, if they aren't to his liking, he's welcome to complain to the USN about their methods. And the same goes for you and all those parasites you manage... this is your opportunity to prove yourselves worthy of my notice. I recommend you not falter. Remember, Mouse... not a scratch on the Kratos, or I'm taking recompense out of your hide, with my teeth. That's a promise._

_But, ZACH...!_ But Lilia could feel him shut her out again, and at this range and especially with the Caller's mark upon his mind, she couldn't force contact on her own. She wondered what the Grand Chimera thought about Zach's little tantrum, was kind of surprised that the Caller hadn't already forced Zach to defend him, reduction in efficiency notwithstanding, but obviously that wasn't the case. Trying to figure out something as alien as the Caller was only going to make her head hurt, though Lilia had a sneaking suspicion it might simply come down to an issue of pride vs pride. Zach was too proud to come to the defense of the Caller without being specifically asked by the Grand Chimera in retribution for the affront of being forcibly bonded, and the Caller was too proud to force Zach to come to his aid after having already bonded him, something that he probably felt was part and parcel of Zach's obligation as chosen emissary. Great, just what they needed, their two most powerful assets at a testosterone fueled impasse! As if they didn't have big enough problems already...

And then some of those big problems were coming her way, as the Oosen heavy drop pods began falling like gargantuan metal acorns from the skies, deploying what looked like dozens of FEAR Mobile Suits, the hulking Panzerwulfs and colossal Panzerdragoons, which combined easily outnumbered the Edenite mobile forces by five to one at a minimum, and that wasn't even taking into account the other threats from the Oosen mechanized infantry and armor battalions that were being offloaded by bulk orbit to surface shuttles at the city outskirts! Other, smaller drop pods fell like bullets into the city proper, disgorging a new breed of Oosen heavy infantry clad in huge suits of personal powered armor and hefting squad level support weapons in their hands like regular souldiers would carry a simple rifle, the Oosen shock troops howling like beasts as they hurled themselves gladly into the gathered human wave attacks of the Caller's minions, slaughtering their brainnumbed former comrades without hesitation or remorse, wading into them like they were a human mudflow. No time for regrets anymore...

xxxx

Mechael watched the GHOUL suited shock troopers blitz into the gathered hordes of dead eyed mind slaves, and even he felt a little sickened by how much the drug fueled convict soldiers were enjoying being able to cut loose on all but helpless targets, packed in like sardines in a can on the narrow streets. Armed with digging implements and sometimes just hunks of rock or their bare hands, the shambling legions of the Caller's previous victims were no threat to the GHOULs, especially not with more and more of FEAR's newest ground assault force landing every moment. If the entity controlling the mind slaved former soldiers noticed or cared that its zombie-like minions were getting massacred, it was not immediately apparent, and that was perhaps the most sickening thing of all. Any normal soldiers, no matter how well trained or motivated, would have already broken under the horror of the GHOUL assault, but the Caller's horde just kept pressing forward into the slaughterhouse, their eyes blank, their faces slack and drooling, little more than meat puppets lashed on by a monstrous inhuman will.

He'd been designed and built and trained to be a weapon of war, Mechael knew that, but this wasn't war, this was mass murder, and though he could perhaps justify the killing as a mercy, given the brief glimpses he'd gotten of the physical state of the Caller's minion, the way the GHOULs were enjoying themselves gave what should have been a tragedy the sense of a mindless video game slaughter, robbing the victims even of dignity as they were torn apart, shredded or burnt to crisps with rabid enjoyment entirely outstripping the nature of the combat challenge at hand, really bothered him. Must be Lain rubbing off on him. But Mechael didn't have time to ponder his friendship with the short Solar Knight or the effect it was having on his modes of thought, because even as the GHOULs marched forward in near lockstep over a carpet of dead and dying, the sound of more equal action came from the interiors of the half collapsed buildings around where the assault drop pod had landed.

Deploying his beam saber and twinned machinegun from their arm silos, Mechael hurried forward, eager to get to grips with actual enemy combatants, not the brainwashed horde of meat. He found a group of three GHOULs entangled in close quarters combat with a mixed squad of Eddies, their iconography disjointed and nonuniform, signifying membership in several different Legio's and even some that had no affiliation markings at all, which was pretty strange, for Eddies anyway. Also surprising was the ferocity with which the Eddies were confronting the GHOULs, getting right up at them with battle axes and swords and polearms, even with two of their number messily and explosively eviscerated by the GHOULs ranged weapons, and another down with his head crushed by a vicing monotalon tipped gauntlet. A mono-sword stabbed straight through one GHOUL from the back, a few inches of blade protruding from her center chest, stained solid red, before the shock trooper stumbled forward, incredibly not down yet, her body sustained by a massive jolt of adrenaline drugs that allowed her to ignore the mortal wound for the time being, as she backhanded her killer and caved his entire chest cavity inward with the blow.

Mechael pounced into the fray, firing freely with his twinned machinegun, the bullets unable to penetrate the GHOUL suits, but more than capable of hammering the more lightly armed Eddies, even as he brought his beam saber slicing down through the shaft of one polearm, and the body behind it, the polearm actually remaining merely charred rather than split, though the Eddie holding it hadn't been so lucky after forgetting that a solid weapon couldn't parry a beam blade. Lashing out with an expertly timed foot, Mechael pulverized the knee of another Eddie, sending the woman screaming to the ground as she dropped her paired mono-daggers with a clatter, her cries silenced a moment later when a GHOUL stamped down on her head and upper chest with one massive greave. The Eddie squadleader, the one with the big axe that had just split the skull of the third GHOUL, which no amount of adrenaline could compensate for, suddenly got a lot faster and stronger, and Mechael realized the guy had just used the so called Seed mode. The torso stabbed GHOUL swung her splayed fingers at the Eddie, tips hooked to gut him like a pig, but he spun under the attack and hacked his battleaxe through her thigh, severing her leg cleanly, hydrostatic shock killing her in a torrent of gouting blood.

His machineguns stuttering tracer fire, Mechael leapt to intercept the rampaging Eddie even as he made a beeline for the last GHOUL, who was tearing the remnant of the Eddie squad limb from limb and trampling the bodies into the dirt. Turning a bit slowly from his slaughter, the GHOUL took the axe across his arm, losing the limb as cleanly as a knife through a carrot. Almost unpreturbed, the drug feulled shock trooper swung his other blood drenched fist at the Eddie, but only got that hacked off at the elbow too, before the axe head swung on and buried itself to the tang in the GHOUL's groin, torrents of hot blood spraying from the wound, the pain great enough to reach even through the adrenaline haze clouding the trooper's mind, and he fell with a loud scream and quickly went still. Bullets skipped from the Eddie sergeant's backplate, which was carved with the symbology of Legio Cold Hunter, plainly a veteran of some skill, but Mechael was forced to stop firing as he closed to within minimum effective range.

Mechael blocked the downward chopping blow aimed at splitting his skull with the back of his gun arm, testing his strength against that of the amped up Eddie and finding that, as expected, MEchael's cybernetic body was stronger than any mere flesh and blood could hope to be. Mechael shoved the man back and swung his beam saber, grudgingly impressed when the Eddie fell backwards to avoid being sliced in half, and quickly rolled back to his feet with a horizontal slash aimed at Mechael's own waist. Deactivating his beam saber, Mechael caught the haft of the axe with his now functional hand and arrested the blow, pulling the Eddie forward off balance and straight into a head to head smack with Mechael's inclined skull. Even protected by his wooden helmet, the Eddie's skull was just bone, and Mechael's skeleton was almost solid armor grade titanium steel, and though the Eddie's skull didn't fracture, his neck wasn't so lucky, and the Eddie collapsed in a twitching head.

"Nice..." A coarse voice commented from behind him, the heavy tread of metal on stone, as well as his back-of-the-head mounted sensors telling him it was another GHOUL, leading a squad of five of his fellows who had come to back up their now slain comrades. "That was kickass, dude, I've never seen anyone kill someone with a headbutt before!"

Mechael did not respond... not because he wasn't going to accept a little adulation, even from such a dubious source, but because his sensors were telling him that the little brawl had just been the beginning. Motion sensors screamed at him, just a moment prior to a rain of rubble that accompanied the next Eddie attackers as they leapt bodily out of fourth story windows, falling almost thirty feet to ground level like they were just stepping off a curb, their bodies every bit as big as the GHOUL troopers, and arguably more bestial, though only arguably. One of them actually landed right on the shoulders of the lead GHOUL, the mass of the falling Wendigo more than enough to knock the convict down flat, actually denting into the pavement slightly, even before the Chimera, a massive male with gleaming silver eyes and a single sword like tusk jutting from one side of his lower jawbone, cracked the back of the armor, and the body of the soldier beneath it, with a single pounding blow from the hammer head of the gigantic warhammer the Wendigo carried in one hand, like man might heft a simple claw hammer.

The weapon was as long as Mechael was tall, the warhead the size of a large man's entire head, one side the blunt, shell cracking hammer, the other side a tapering, conelike pick blade, the entire weapon shimmering an unsteady gray color, testament to the Phase Shift armor that coated it. The other Wendigo clutched similar devices, sledgehammers, maces, spiked clubs, and they were all strapped with a hodgepodge of thick metal plates and what looked like a form of chainmail, the armor and their thick hides beneath painted sloppily in shades of dark green slashed through with bloody crimson dyes in what was obviously meant more as war paint than any camouflage patterns. The Chimera's armor did not cover them past the elbow, leaving the protruding ridges of knobby bone on the forearms, which were primarily used for hacking handholds in the trunks of Yggdrasilwood trees, free to be used as built in arm hatchets easily capable of splitting steel armor.

All of this Mechael noticed in an instant, as he flung himself flat on his belly to avoid the whistling sweep of One Tusk's warhammer as the Wendigo's backswing carried the weapon just inches over Mechael's prone body. The results of the swing were announce with the sound of a large spike being pounded through the side of a equally large soda can, as the PS tipped pick blade slammed into and entirely through a GHOUL's torso, pulping the trooper from just above the groin to just below the neck and hurling the ruptured body almost ten feet straight backwards to land in a clattering heap. Somehow Mechael didn't think he'd be pulling any neat headbutting tricks with this crowd, he remembered the pounding that the last Wendigo he'd fought had given him, and that had been with bare hands! He rolled to the side, activating his beam saber again, and slashed at the back of the heel of one of the other Wendigo's, cutting the foot right off, even though he'd only intended to hit the achilles tendon. The Chimera, which had been in the middle of cutting a GHOUL in half... with a single CLUB blow, mind... tilted his head back and roared in agony, and Mechael suddenly found all eyes on him, as the Wendigo all but went into a frenzy at their kinfolk's injury.

"Oh shit..." Mechael had time to gasp, before the one tusked Wendigo leader physically grabbed him around the head with a free hand, lifted him up, and hurled him across the street into a half collapsed storefront, a horizontal distance of more than twenty feet, and Mechael's heels didn't even touch the ground until after his back had hit wall! If it weren't for his reinforced skeleton, his head would have been ripped right off his shoulders, as things were, even the Augmented was dazed by the impact, and he slumped limply to the ground, his back and shoulders coated with brick dust. His sensors struggling to recalibrate, Mechael dimly heard what sounded like a bunch of industrial trash compacters getting unruly in a mosh pit full of half junked cars, as the Wendigo's overwhelmed the startled GHOULs and pounded them into the ground... literally in more than one case, so much so that you'd need a jackhammer and a pillow sized sponge to get the bodies out of the crushed armor that was embedded in the pavement! It was over brutally fast, at least, but then Mechael saw that the Wendigo realized he wasn't dead, as the one tusked leader took a long step towards him, warhammer raised.

It had taken his first major defeat to teach him that discretion could be the much greater part of valor in certain situations, and even at his best Mechael doubted he could kill more than one of the Wendigo, and the rest would turn him into tinfoil... it was definitely time to choose a different battlefield. He scrambled to his feet and wasted no time in booking as fast as he could down the street, head down, arms and legs pumping all the faster as he heard the displeased growls of the Wendigo behind him. He hoped to god they weren't good sprinters... they were supposedly descended from Gorilla's, who were fast only over short distances, but then again you didn't see Gorilla's wearing chainmail and wielding warhammers very much, so he wasn't going to rule out the possibility of a track star among their number until he was MUCH further away. He palmed a grenade and dropped it behind him just to be safe, as he powered his way around a corner, feet skidding as he splashed through a slimy puddle of stagnant water which set off his internal geiger counter in an unfriendly fashion. He'd known going in that the whole area was blasted hot with rads for some reason, but still...

The "CRUMP" of the grenade exploding behind him wasn't accompanied by any howls of anger or pain, so Mechael doubted that the Wendigo had deigned to follow him after all. There must have been easier prey nearby that wasn't sprinting like a forest hind, probably more GHOUL troopers that were high on life and about to be real low on health. All the same, he didn't slow down, though he did duck down with a scowl as a Panzerwulf jumped by overhead, its thruster wash shaking the buildings around him for a moment as the Extended moved closer to some target or other out of Mechael's sight line. This infantry shit was fun and all, and he was pretty damned good at it, better than any Extended certainly, but that didn't make him want to be back in the Omega Panzer any less. Maybe one day... though a lot of things would have to go right first, not least this battle! And speaking of battle, the stutter of heavy rapidfire weapons mixed with the "WHOOSH" of flamethrowers to tell him about another engagement going on just up the street, as a party of GHOULs cleared their way through a gaggle of horde slaves.

And then one of the GHOULs screamed, and it was the single most marrow freezing sound Mechael had EVER had the misfortune of hearing, a keening wail like a lost soul being cut in half! If terror could have been distilled into a single sound, this would be it! By no means was he a fearless person... unlike the unlamented Doctor Franklin Borander, Dr. Roanoke had never tried to eliminate the fear response from his supersoldiers, realizing that soldiers without fears were all but uncontrollable. It wasn't the lack of fear that was important, it was the channelling of fear into the desired results, be it obedience or greater combat ability in pinch situations, rather than allowing it to run rampant and degrade the efficiency of the soldier. When Mechael got scared it was like fuel for his already amped up body. But this was different. This reached down into parts of him he didn't even know he had, turned his knees to rubber, his guts to ice, and all but froze him in place in mid stride as his instincts rebelled against the idea of taking him even a step closer to the source of that sound.

And then the GHOUL in question fell apart like an onion that had been dropped through a blender, blood spraying in wide arcs as he just... came apart in CHUNKS! And then came that scream again, the exact same pitch and frequency, the exact same hindbrain "get the fuck away from it" reaction, and Mechael realized it wasn't the GHOULs that were screaming. It was something that was attacking them. His first inclination was another chimera-monster of some sort, but those tended to be fairly large, at least as bulky as the GHOULs were, and he didn't see anything like that in amongst them. The wailing shriek sounded a third time, and two GHOULs fell over, cut in half at the waistline in a single invisibly fast stroke, and Mechael finally caught a glimpse of the attacker through the reverse waterfall of spurting blood that fountained from the torso stumps. It was an Eddie.

But WHAT an Eddie it was, covered from head to toe in the lifeblood of the GHOUL troops, wearing not a single scrap of armor, his dark clothing ragged and all but hanging off his lean body in scraggly threads, wielding some form of crystalline polearm that moved so fast in his hands that not even Mechael's enhanced eyesight could make out the exact form of the weapon. In fact the Eddie as a whole was moving at the sort of jittery speed one normally associated with hitting the fast forward button a few too many times when watching a movie, it was hard to keep track of where he even was, he seemed to practically teleport from place to place. Mechael's eyes widened and the breath caught in his throat, as he saw that this wasn't the first group of GHOULs to engage or be engaged by this guy, there were easily twenty or thirty dismembered bodies lying on the pavement, strewn all down the street, cut apart like gingerbread soldiers attacked with a butcher's cleaver!

The screaming was coming from the action of the polearm blade as it swung through the air, though how it achieved such an effect, Mechael had no clue, and a superstitious part of him had no real desire to know either, the sound was just that unsettling! He was still deciding what to do when matters were taken out of his hands, as the Eddie dispatched the last of the GHOULs almost contemptuously, slamming the haft of his weapon into the trooper's chest, the sheer force of the blow knocking the GHOUL flat on his ass, before he was bisected from crotch to crown by the keening, blurry fast blade, which cut through armor, flesh and ground like it was hardly there at all. Mechael was still staring in shock at the first blow though... this was definitely no normal Eddie, not even a Seed Eddie had the kind of strength to knock a GHOUL down with a single blow! And then it was just the two of them, the city rocking all around them with the sounds of other furious battles, but on this street, it was quiet again. For the moment.

"You look different from the rest of them." The Eddie commented, his golden pupiled gaze fixed upon Mechael with great intensity, like a missile locking onto its target. "Though I suppose its too much to hope for that you'd be more fun to play with before I kill you. I never would have thought I'd miss the Mouse, but at least she puts up a fight..."

"Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about, but that's okay because you're about to die." Mechael replied, his mind reordering itself now that the infernal shrieking had died away. He saw that the Eddie was carrying a scythe with a dark red and black colored crystal blade, and while scythes were better known as impromptu weapons at best, the tools of farmer conscripts that couldn't afford swords or axes, obviously in the right hands they could be just as effective as any other weapon. But no matter how good the guy was with his polearm, he still had to be at about arm's length to use it, and he didn't seem to have any guns or ranged weapons. With thirty feet of puddled street seperating them, Mechael brought up his gun arm, deployed the twin barrels, and sighted in on the guy's unarmored chest. Insanely, the guy just GRINNED at him, like he'd told a funny joke.

Mechael opened fire, spraying the street with orange hued tracers, a short burst that should have turned the guy into beef stew... but not a single one of the bullets hit the target. Not a single one, of more than twenty fired, at thirty feet range, with fully cybernetic stabilizing and targeting systems. "Boy, I've been dodging bullets since before the best part of you dripped down your mother's leg." The Eddie maniac taunted Mechael. "Do you have any idea who am I? You must not..."

"Don't know, don't care." Mechael spat back, refusing to be intimidated by the Eddie's posturing, more than familiar with that line of action himself.

"My name is Zacharis Frost." The Eddie added anyway, and grinned so wide his head seemed to be split in half by his teeth.

"Okay, so maybe I do care a little bit." Mechael said unhappily under his breath. Every supersoldier knew that name, the greatest... or worst, depending on your viewpoint... of the BCPU's. Zacharis Frost, BCPU level 6, was acknowledged to have been the most "super" of all the supersoldiers, both back than and even in modern times. Mechael was designed to be "close" to the capabilities of Frost, but Frost had been a lucky fluke more than a designed success, and there was no way carefully measured methods could possibly equal the lucky brilliance that had made Frost! Of course, Frost was supposed to be dead too, but somehow, Mechael got the feeling that the guy wasn't lying, especially in light of how Orb had been freaking out about him in the strategic level mission planning for Victoria. Frost had been said to favor a scythe, among other weapons, for his close quarters combat.

And then Mechael was firing again, backstepping as he did so, because Frost had spun his scythe around his body, releasing that keening wail of the damned, and was blurring towards him, his feet moving so fast Mechael couldn't even track individual steps, explosions of dust, concrete chips and plumes of dirty water rising from the ground around him as Mechael's machineguns emptied their magazines at the charging super-Eddie, to impressive, though ineffectual, effect. Twin barrels glowing red hot with the escaped heat of long term rapidfire, Mechael's internal systems balred at him to cease firing to give the weapon time to cool before it overheated, but with only a hudnred rounds of ammo left, it hardly mattered, so he kept the electronic trigger depressed. And then it happened, the inevitable... Mechael was filling the air with so much hot lead that not even a super-Eddie like Frost could squirm out of the path of all of it, and there was a muted spray of blood as three rounds caught the scythemaster at hip, stomach and upper chest, the heavy .30 caliber slugs knocking Frost sideways and back several staggering steps, off balance.

Incredibly, despite having seen at least one of the slugs pierce right through Frost's body, judging by the splatter of blood that had exploded behind him, the reincarnated BCPU stayed upright, despite his shirt being ripped to shreds and his torso coated in his own blood. Which had already dried to the consistency of boiled leather by the time it landed on his skin, the thumb sized entry holes and palm sized exit hole already scabbed over by Frost's enhanced blood. Mechael didn't precisely bleed, his internal organs were sustained by nutrient fluids that approximated blood, but it didn't circulate through most of his body, just the core sections that needed it, and it was designed to clot in contact with gaseous oxygen in case of system breach, but not nearly so fast as what he saw here! Containing his shock, Mechael aimed very carefully with one of his last bullets, and shot the BCPU right between the eyes just as he was recovering his balance, gore exploding from his forehead as his head whiplashed backwards and Frost was hurled to the ground flat on his back, scythe dropping from his hand to slice deeply into the ground.

"Didn't dodge that one, did ya, gramps?" Mechael retorted with a somewhat breathless sneer, which was odd, because he didn't breath like most people did either, and certainly he hadn't been concious of a speeding up of his respiration process. "Don't matter how many you do dodge, if you don't dodge the one that kills you!" Mechael shook his head, and stored the now empty machineguns back in his right arm. Father would probably be real happy to get his hands on Frost's body, maybe even happy enough to forgive Mechael's previous failures. He was starting forward to collect the corpse when it laughed. Mechael froze in midstride, his mind blanking with disbelief as his sensors flashed error messages across his eyelids, as Frost sat up, chuckling uproariously the entire time, the skin of his forehead all but ripepd aay to bare the dully glinting bone of his skull beneath, torn flaps of skin hanging down over one eye that he reached up and contemptuously tore away to clear his vision. Despite being clearly visible, the skull was totally unmarked, not even scratched by the impact of the .30 caliber bullet, which had struck and then deflected up and away after imparting its moment!

The sheer force of the impact should have scrambled a person's brains, even if it failed to somehow penetrate the skull, but BCPU, and Extended and Augmented too for that matter, were built of sterner stuff, with an emphasis on resisting head injuries, which were the most common form of disabling injury among Mobile Suit pilots, from getting slammed around their cockpits during combat. "You've got to be fucking kidding me..." Mechael swore under his breath, as Frost continued to chuckle, his eyes blazing with emotions that didn't belong in a human mind, as the super-Eddie gracefully climbed back to his feet, sniggering all the while.

"Thanks... I needed that..." Frost said, his rictus grin so wide it looked like his lips were about to tear at the corners. "It's been too long since I last felt this way. This rage. This bloodthirst... first the Tree, then the Mouse, then that goddamned octicrab! All of them limiting me, leashing me, keeping me contained and docile... but now, now I remember what it's like to be consumed by the madness of battle." Frost cocked his head on his shoulders and studied Mechael with predatory curiosity. "How interesting... I can't see your soul. Neither could I see the souls of those little lambs back there." Frost hooked a casual thumb at the dismembered GHOULs behind him. "Why is that, I wonder?" Frost asked, and then shrugged. Before Mechael could even think about replying, he found himself almost face to face with the BCPU, who had crossed the ground between them in the blink of an eye, clearly not fooling around in the slightest anymore, though he had left his scythe behind for unknown reasons. Mechael unfroze too late, tried to bring an arm down to block, but was instead pushed back a half step when Frost's clawed hand slammed into his gut, tearing through the synth-skin and muscle, to scrap against the armor-mesh underlay.

"What is this?" Frost commented, his tone both surprised, and most frighteningly, pleased as he considered the wound he'd torn in Mechael's stomach surface. Even as he spoke, Frost was ducking under Mechael's retaliatory punch, his mane of bloodstained brown hair rustling as Mechael's fist scraped by millimeters from his scalp. "You're a Tin Man? How wonderful. I'll call you Tinny, I think." Frost mused, almost effortlessly dodging each and every one of Mechael's punches and knee thrusts, all of them getting close, but none quite managing to connect. Mechael had NEVER seen anything like it, it was like the guy was made of smoke, he was standing RIGHT NEXT TO HIM and he couldn't even lay a finger on him! He belatedly and uncomfortably came to the realization that he'd been designed to be "close" to the capabilities of the original BCPU 6 Frost... the current incarnation was clearly a few steps above that plateau. As far as Mechael could discern, the grinning maniac in front of him was actively ENJOYING Mechael's futile attempts to batter him away.

"Fuck you." Mechael snarled, deploying the beam saber from his left wrist and ingiting the bright yellow blade, lashing out at the same time with a sweeping leg thrust aimed at Frost's waist, too high to easily jump over, too low to be ducked under. He grinned... and then grimaced... as his foot caught the Eddie in the side with the force of a small car crash, knocking the giggling bastard several feet sideways, but not seeming to overly hurt him much, certainly he didn't break any bones or cause debilitating injuries! "You really are a monster..."

"No, I am THE monster." Frost corrected the ICMS jauntily. "The greatest monster, who will finally unite humanity and reforge the best and brightest of them into the sharpest imaginable blade, as the rest are cast down in blood and ruin and death! I am the Darkness of the Human Soul, the End of All... and anyone who tells you different is simply a liar... or in denial." Frost reached out with one hand and snagged Tinny's left wrist, halting the swinging beam saber in mid attack, Frost's feet skidding on the ground for a few inches as he absorbed the momentum of the blow. He was stronger and faster than the ICMS, but weighed only half as much, he didn't have the mass or the traction in the water filled street to prevent himself from being slid around when he did deign to be struck. Seeing slots open up at Tinny's shoulders and hips, Frost laughter reached new heights as he backflipped away from the micro-RPG's, which filled the area of the street in front of Tinny with a storm of shrapnel and fire. There was no way to avoid all of it, and Frost didn't even try, smoking shards of razored metal embedding themselves in his limbs and chest and cheek, like the most barbaric forms of counter-cultural body piercings. Pain rippled through him, and he basked in it like a lover's embrace, feeling quite awake and alive again.

Tinny turned to retreat, plainly making the decision that he couldn't win this fight, which was true, but disappointing all the same. They just didn't make supersoldiers like they used to. A proper BCPU... and by that Frost meant anyone but Ashino... would never retreat from a battle, no matter how outmatched they might have been. Of course, most of the time it was the BCPU doing the overmatching, at least, that was how it had been for him. But he'd never backed down from his foes, not even when it was a hundred to one odds against him, and he'd never left the field of battle willingly unless it was in victory. Tinny was pretty fast, his mechanical body able to make very long strides, more like bounces, as he sprinted along, but he'd barely gone fifteen feet before Frost caught up to him and yanked his feet out from underneath him, spilling the dark skinned ICMS down on his face. Tinny rolled, beam saber licking out to clear the area where Frost had been standing, but he was no longer standing there, and the plasma blade cut only air.

Frost allowed the ICMS to regain his feet, but as soon as he was upright he hurled Tinny down again, grabbing him at shoulder and thigh, and heaving the cyborg into a half collapsed wall, which fully collapsed under the impact, a cloud of sodden dust rising from the half buried ICMS. Things went downhill for Tinny from there, as Frost swarmed him, hammering punches into sides and chest and face and back, dancing like a dervish around and around the staggering and dazed ICMS, ripping out handfuls of false flesh until Mechael was showing more flexible metal than he was faux skin and muscle. Frost was actually somewhat amazed, he'd never seen a fully mechanical body before. He wondered what that one guy, the one with the mechanical arms, who'd dared to lecture him about there always being a bigger monster, shortly before Frost ripped the man's arms right off his shoulders, would think about Tinny. But his amazement could not sustain his amusement, Tinny's lacklustre fighting quickly growing boring. How odd it was that despite Tinny being far stronger and faster and tougher, he wasn't even a quarter as fun to fight as Grey was. Or had been, since Grey wasn't going to be doing much in the way of fighting until he relearned all his skills, which might never even happen. Maybe the Pineapple Girl would step into the void he'd made of Grey?

Tinny hammered a straight arm punch at Frost's face, and he blocked with crossed arms, his feet skidding back with small sloshing sounds once more, but the few inches clearance Tinny gained wasn't enough to give him the space to put his beam saber between them, and when he tried anyway, Frost caught Tinny's left wrist in both hands, and with a convulsive twist and jerk he ripped the cybernetic hand right off the wrist, beam saber shorting out in a puff of smoke and cascade of sparks, drawing a hiss of dismay from Tinny. "You could at least scream in agony, or barring that, sputter out some denial..." Frost admonished the ICMS, before he landed a side kick from the hip that lifted Tinny right off his feet and slammed him back against another wall. He dropped the hand he'd taken and kicked Tinny again, half embedding him in the brick wall, before grabbing the Augmented's lolling head between his hands, and he bet the head ninety degrees to the left and then to the right, so hard that Mechael's ears toucher his shoulders with his skull at a right angle to the spine. Metal snapped and warped inside his neck area, and then Frost twisted Mechael's head around 360 degrees for god measure, before letting the ICMS fall to the ground with a junkpile clatter.

Leaving the other supersoldier lying face down in the flooded gutter, Frost sighed and went to collect Deathshriek, the rumble of heavy Mobile Suit combat drawing nearer and nearer. Perhaps it was time to find the Kratos. He wasn't as annoyed as he had been, the combat had been carthartic, but his boredom threshold was fast approaching. Nothing humanity had made in the time since his death seemed able to stand up to him one on one, how depressing. Had humanity already reached its pinnacle? Was there nothing new or different under the sun to come challenge him anymore, other than the enemies of yesteryears? Once he killed the Boytoy, was that going to be the climax of his life experience? That was a scary thought if he'd ever had one! So engrossed in his contemplations was Frost that he failed to notice Tinny's body starting to twitch and roll over. Cyborgs weren't that easy to kill...

xxxx

_Ewww... I think you just stepped in someone, Yzak..._ Katie observed, half impishly, though the bloody mess on the Balmung's feet and ankles was quite real, Truthfully, it was impossible to move around at street level without stepping on something that squished or splattered, the hordes of brainwashed slaves of the Caller were everywhere, like ants boiling out of a kicked over colony, there had to be over a hundred thousand of them at least, most of them clad in the stained and battered blue environment armor of the USN infantry forces. Mostly all the hordes managed to accomplish was slowing down the USN and FEAR infantry forces by sheer weight of numbers, clogging streets and alleys with blood and bodies, a hundred mindslaves dead for every one USN or FEAR trooper wounded or killed. But there were other hazards and forces at play than the mindslaves... pits would open in the ground beneath major USN offensive lines, dropping dozens to their dooms in watery graves, some sort of half sentient blood drinking plant life was tying up the infantry pushing at the left flank, things like rosebushes the size of houses with whipping tendrils barbed with thorns as long as a man's forearm and sharp enough to pierce armor plate!

And there were reports of other creatures hunting the urban jungle as well, dinosaur like creatures with skin that could change color better than any technological camouflage could manage, which hunted in packs of five to fifteen and moved so quickly it was almost impossible to draw a bead upon them, springing from ambush at less than an arms length away at times, giving even the fastest soldier no time to react before their bellies were ripped open or their throats bitten through! Some garbled reports, quickly cut off, had declared sightings of much larger lizard creatures, ten times the size of the pack hunting beasts, which preyed upon armored personnel carriers like they were little more than cattle! Other creature sightings included the four pincered scorpion like things called Deathstalkers, including a gargantuan black one that was similar to the Chimera that had attacked Gibraltar a while back, packs of jumping spiders the size of horses, a pack of armored gorilla's with warhammers, schoolbus sized mutated crocodiles and strange, furry snake like creatures that spat acidic venom, the Caller digging deep into his menagerie of allies and vassals now that his life was in danger.

If the infantry battle was a total clusterfuck, at least the Mobile Suit battle was going in the USN's favor, so much so that they had Mobile Suits to spare for once, to back up the belabored infantry forces. It really looked like they'd finally managed to catch the Eddies with their pants down, given how few Custodian or Praetorian forces were in evidence, and not a single one of the Eddie Gundams had yet made an appearance! A part of Yzak was almost disappointed in that development, he'd been looking forward to trying his hand against Kira again for the first time in over a decade. While Yzak would never argue, not nowadays anyway, that his skills were in the same league as Kira's natural talent was, in terms of experience they were just about dead even, and Yzak spent a lot more time staying practised than Kira did. Combined with Katie and the Balmung, he didn't feel that he was completely outclassed by his former ally, but Kira was nowhere in evidence, nor was the as yet unknown Gundam that had perpetuated Blue Monday. And especially, there was no sign of Frost and the Kratos!

Yzak had briefly glimpsed a single Praetorian machine, a Spectre, in combat with the towering juggernauts that were the Panzerdragoons and their Panzerwulf escorts, though the designs on the armor were unfamiliar to him, some sort of stylized human figure consumed in flames or something like that. Other than that he'd encountered two Custodian Dervishes, from Legio Ironhide judging by the buffalo-like iconography and horned heads, both of which were now little more than piles of humanoid firewood, Fafnir's edge passing through borealite armor with the same ease as it did most everything else. The Eddie machines were fast and agile, Yzak could give them that much, but he'd been fighting against people in machines that were faster and more maneuverable than his for so long, he hardly even noticed anymore. And the Balmung was just as fast and just as maneuverable as the Dervishes, moreso even. And far more heavily armored and protected, especially by the Divine Eye system, which all but made them immune to psychic attacks, while at the same time allowing Katie to use her own abilities to keep track of enemy movements and intentions by sensing their minds.

However light the Eddie resistance might have been, it still didn't change the fact that the USN forces didn't seem particularly close to finding and marking where the Grand Chimera named the Caller was actually physically located, so that the _Solaris_ and its escort fleet could obliterate the creature from the safety of orbit. The ruins of Neo-Miami were quite expansive, the city having formerly been home to tens of millions of permanent residents before the Eden Disaster, which was a huge area to search, even after the USN had nuked pretty much the entire eastern coast of North America in a ill thought out attempt to conceal the true nature of what Green EDEN did to people... a tragedy that was known about only to very few, Yzak and Katie among them, since they'd felt the nearly crippling Death Echo that it had caused, all the way on the other side of the world, in Orb! Furthermore, they had no idea what the Caller looked like or even what kind of creature it was... it was like looking for a needle in a haystack without first knowing what a needle looked like... even if said needle was the size of anapartment building, how could they be sure they'd found what they were actually looking for?

In that way, Yzak almost regretted that the Eddies had been caught unprepared... if the enemy had been given time to consolidate their defenses, the patterns of said fortifications would have logicially revealed where the operational target was... at the heart of the heaviest defenses. Of course if the enemy was really smart they might assume that the USN would strike at the heaviest fortified spot and thus make it a trap... such as the Alliance had once done with ZAFT's Operation Spit Break attack on JOSH-A, an assault Yzak had himself been part of and only survived due to Kira's intervention, even if he hadn't realized that at the time. But in any case, Yzak would rather have the possibility of a trap to deal with rather than randomly canvassing the cityscape looking for a likely target, especially because the longer they spent in the enemy zone, the greater the chances of the Caller either piercing through Katie's psychic invisibility aura or unleashing a wide area effect type attack that would hit them regardless of whether it was meant to or not. Both of which would likely rapidly spell a very painful death for them, and countless others participating in the operation, or worse yet, they'd end up thoughtwiped minions just like the hordes of unfortunates crowding the city streets... death would be much preferable to such a horrid fate!

Moving to investigate one of several large sinkhole like features of the cityscape that they had spotted from their air after deploying from their orbital drop pod, Yzak bent his legs and leaped the Balmung lithely over a rank of buildings with the same ease he himself might have used for jumping over a low hedge or fence. Rubble and fetid water splashed under his feet, along with the pulped remains of a dozen horde soldiers who had been unfortunate enough to be occupying that section of street at the time, bodies splattering like overripe cranberries underfoot, and Yzak did not envy the poor bastard groundcrew that was assigned to cleaning off his Gundam after the battle. A wordless peal of alarm from Katie ensnared his attention from such extraneous thoughts, bringing the Balmung's head up and around, and Yzak started, more like flinched, as he beheld the object that had so alarmed his wife.

It was the Kratos, standing in the lee of a large blasted out office building of some sort, which had given even such a massive Gundam good visual cover from the direction of the Balmung's approach. Though uncloaked, the machine abrely showed up on any sensors other than the cameras, meaning it must be in low power or even unpowered stealth mode, which was uncharacteristic of Frost when a battle was raging. After several tense seconds of no reaction from the Kratos, despite the Balmung being in plain view, Yzak felt giddiness wash through him from Katie as she ventured to make a tenative psychic probe of the Kratos's location, and confirmed what they were both struggling to believe. _He ain't there... Frost isn't in his Gundam!_ Katie exclaimed, even as she slowly allowed herself to probe more studiously, still ready to snatch her mental senses back the moment she detected the jagged bloody morass that was Frost's mind... she'd had the misfortune of looking too closely at his mind with her psychic senses before, and the experience still troubled her sleep sometimes, even almost fourteen years later...

But the expected pain and disorientation failed to manifest, and Katie dared to believe they'd finally gotten a stroke of cosmic luck, a karmic rebalancing for all the evil that Frost had inflicted upon them and the world at large. No matter how powerful a Gundam was, it was just an inert hunk of machinery without its pilot, helpless to defend itself. And without a Gundam to terrorize the battlefields in, the scope of Frost's threat to the world at large would be significantly diminished, though hardly negated entirely. Still, with the Kratos gone, they would have a much easier time confronting and killing the madman in the future, as he would be forced to use either another Eddie machine of lesser capability, or else forgo Mobile Suit combat altogether and become strictly an infantry and ground armor threat. Even as Katie confirmed the enemy vulnerability, Yzak was breaking open the loading breech of the Caladabolg, arming the 105mm hyperthermal radiation cannon with what might be its most fateful shell. The breech clicked closed under the impetus of the Balmung's left palm shove, the telltales on the top of the weapon and projected into their minds by the NIC system informing them that the weapon was armed and ready to fire.

Suffused with elation as she was, Katie detected danger almost too late, as Yzak brought the Caladabolg around to firing position with great relish. Before he could squeeze the trigger though, Katie's wordless surge of warning slammed into the back of his mind like an emotional tsunami, overriding rational thought for a moment as survival instincts took control, his Latent nature responding to the stimulus to react to the danger just before it could strike, the Caladabolg rifle caving in the side of a building as it was tossed hurriedly aside, the Balmung's right hand reached up and withdrew the Fafnir blade sheathed across his back, bringing it up and over the Balmung's head in a desperate cross block that happened before Yzak even knew what he was doing. Though he could see nothing, his arms registered a strong impact as some sort of weapon struck the Fafnir blade and was deflected, skidding vibations shivering down the QC reinforced physical structure of the second generation OMMB. Putting his left hand on the hilt of his sword, Yzak automatically lengthened the bright blue field that was the actual blade to its two handed sword setting, and spun the Balmung in a tight arc, sweeping the magnetic edge around at hip level, forcing his invisible opponent to leap back or be cut in twain.

The enemy Praetorian... the same one he'd seen earlier or a new one, he could not tell and did not overly care... was good, stepping carefully so as not to give away their position by splashing water or creating dust clouds, the gravity powered stealth system enshrouding their machine in what was essentially a sort of "grey hole", around which all forms of low power radiation and non-cohesive light automatically bent, rendering them completely undetectable to all standard sensors systems, be they thermal, sonar, magnetic or visible light. However, the Praetorian stealth system did nothing to shield them against a nonstandard sensor system like the Divine Eye, mental energies were completely unaffected by the influence of gravity. And while mental vision did not at all equate to physical sight, Katie was more than practiced enough to turn what she sensed with her mind into a faintly glowing 3D image that the Balmung transmitted to Yzak's eyes that showed where the enemy was. Katie also discerned that their enemy was female, and named Lilia, and was one of the four Arboreal Praetorians, sort of an elite within the elite of the Eddie forces, before the Eddie reacted to the unexpected mental probe and closed herself off from Katie's telepathic intrusion.

She might not be able to read the Eddie's thoughts anymore, not without some more effort anyway, but Katie could still easily sense the presence of the other's mind, and could interpret the emotional flares that leaked out from beneath the enemy's shielding that signalled whenever she was about to attack or attempt anything tricky. It wasn't precognition like what Yzak was capable of, but it was nearly as good, especially in a one on one environment. Katie smirked as she felt Lilia trying to reach out with her own telepathy to repeat the effect in reverse, but with the Divine Eye system rendering them invisible, the Eddie elite was groping blindly in the dark, definitely giving the advantage to the Balmung. As shown when Lilia leapt forward, QC longsword in either hand, only to have every one of her blows blocked by the actinic blue blade of the Fafnir as Yzak canted and sloped the blade to deflect and parry the invisible sword strokes, before chopping and sweeping the sword in two handed mode to force Lilia to jump backwards, unable to parry without revealing her exact position to the Balmung, which could then open up with its shoulder mounted ranged weapons to devastating effect.

Unable to utilize her own ranged weapons while her reactor was powering her photorefraction cloak, and finding the blue and silver Gundam to be more than capable of defending iself against her attacks even without the ability to see her, Lilia backed off and dropped her cloak, settling in for a longer battle rather than the quick and dirty ambush tactic she'd used on two Panzerwulfs that had also stumbled across the lcoation of Zach's Gundam a few minutes prior. She hadn't realized the Oosen had any psychic combatants on their roster, she had thought such a thing to be oxymoronic given the hatred of psychics the Oosen otherwise touted, but then she realized her foe was probably from Orb. She hadn't studied the rest of the Clyne Faction with anything close to the fervor she'd devoted to Kira, but one couldn't study Kira without acknowledging his friends and supporters at least peripherally, and given the color scheme and combat style, Lilia felt fairly confident that she was facing off against Yzak Joule. But that didn't explain the distinctly feminine flavor to the telepathic probe that had caught her with her mental skirts figuratively lowered. Nor had she known Yzak Joule to be a Latent, which was the only explanation for his reaction speed to her first attack, he was moving even before she'd started swinging!

Even more disconcerting was her inability to detect the minds of Joule and his female assistant, despite the Orb Gundam being right in front of her, especially given how her own pwoers were specialized in empathy, she should have been able to pick up their emotions during combat with ease, which would prompt her to dodge or counter as appropriate, but there was nothing there... just like with the Kindred. But unlike the Kindred, Lilia had just suffered a psychic attack from within the dead zone! And now she was under physical attack once more, a stream of hand sized razor sharp discs pouring in a torrent from the doubled barreled weapon mounted on the Gundam's left shoulder, the discs prescribing curving flight paths and exploding with grenadelike force as their mono-edges failed to find purchase against Lilia's upraised forearm citadel shields. The Balmung pounced forward, its two handed blade raised to slash downwards, and Lilia cartwheeled to one side, throwing her Wraith into and through the side of a building, which collapsed in a huge cloud of dust behind her. She kept moving, activating her thrusters to throw herself a half a kilometer down the street in an instant, and a good thing too, as the blazing blue-white beam of the short ranged cutting FRALA on the Balmung's right shoulder swept through the space she had just vacated in a multiple "Z" pattern... it would have sliced her to smoking pieces had she not moved!

But her time spent with Zach had sharpened her instinctual senses, taught her to rely more on her subconscious impulses rather than trying to plan out every detail of her combat... it was a military truism that no plan survived contact with an enemy, and no enemy exemplified that maxim better than Zach did. Try and plan against him any further than the very next maneuver and you were going to be cut apart before you got a second chance. Or forcibly removed from your machine as it was pinned down beneath the Kratos and subjected to any number of somewhat perverse and not always unenjoyable sexual pursuits, in her case. Planning, no matter how good you were at it, required hesitation. Against Zach, hesitation got you killed. And so she'd just moved, because she felt like moving, and evaded an attack that would normally have claimed her life. Learning to control the hypersonic movement of NIC and FRP equipped machines was another skill that Zach was teaching her... anyone could hit the afterburners in a straight line, but few knew the art of hitting the boost just long enough to carry you where you wanted to go inbetween the blinks of an eye, all but teleporting you to the unschooled eye. Fewer still could actually attack in the midst of such movement... Lilia wasn't at that level yet, but she was getting closer.

Yzak was also a student of the instantaneous shift, and as soon as he saw that his Guillotine FRALA had missed, he leapt after Lilia, crossing the five hundred meters between them in a flash of flame and light, the Balmung transitioning back to regular movement a few strides short of the Wraith, sonic booms hurling water and small pieces of rubble away from the Gundam like frag from a grenade, Yzak fighting the tendency to stumble after rapidbly decelerating to ground movement as he slashed his sword blade upwards at a diagonal, targeting the left hip and right shoulder. His strike was blocked by the crossed edges of Lilia's dual longsword, but the force of the blow shoved the Wraith onto its heels and off balance, as the Balmung stepped forwards, lowering its shoulders and thrusting forward again, this time with the hilt of the two handed blade, slamming it into Lilia's upper chest, the impact knocking the Wraith flailing backwards, stumbling as its churning legs encountered a bed of loose rubble and the Eddie machine crashed down with a splintering roar.

Lilia handsprung her way back to her feet at once, feeling her machine shake as she was strafed by the 75mm monodisc launchers of the Balmung in the process, sections of her outer armor frescos cracking and splintering apart as the monodiscs bit into her armor before exploding. The damage was relatively minor, like a series of acne pockmarks across her borealite skin, but it weakened her protection nonetheless. She braced herself for the follow up attack, but there wasn't one, the Balmung having turned its back upon her in favor of renewing its attack upon the deactivated Kratos. Definitely a smart man, Yzak Joule, refusing to allow himself to be distracted from a greater potential threat even when confronted with a lesser but immediate enemy. However, Lilia had promised Zach, albeit reluctantly, that she wouldn't let any harm come to the Kratos while he was away, and she wasn't going to break that promise. She would show him that he could trust her, even with the things most important to him. And once he trusted her, she could work on changing from the inside!

The Balmung had retrieved its hyperthermal cannon and was once more aiming it at the inert Kratos, and there was no way Lilia could block the shot, it would just pass through her and hit the Kratos anywway, even if she stood directly in front of the muzzle. And she still didn't have the control of her combative instincts needed to shift and attack in the same motion. At least not normally. Instead, Lilia threw herself forward at top speed, using the Wraith itself as a weapon, as she deliberately flew into the Balmung's side, knocking it reeling to the left, its rifle arm forced askew even as it fired the Caladabolg, the bright blue beam of thermal energy carving a molten scar through a dozen city blocks before it dug a glass rimmed tunnel in the ground... but it missed the Kratos by a good hundred meters nonetheless. More armor fragments splintered and flaked away from Lilia's machine in the wake of her tackle, but there were areas of shimmery blue and silver that had gone dark on the Balmung as well, where its citadel scale armor had shorted out in spots due to the impact. The smoking rifle lay dropped in the street behind her, and Lilia sent it skidding away with a heel kick.

Finding that she'd dropped her QC longswords during the tackle, Lilia stepped forward into grappling range as the Balmung kipped back up to its feet, dark blue cloak swirling dustily in its wake. She caught the Balmung's wrists in her own grip to stop the sweep of its blue sword, and slammed one leg forward in a thrust kick that shoved the Balmung back down into the ruined building it had already fallen through when tackled. Pointing her left arm at the downed enemy Gundam, Lilia activated the dual 20mm QC spike driver located on her left forearm and hosed down the Balmung with a hail of thumb thick crystalline needles. Many of them deflected away in showers of golden sparks as they struck Citadel scales and expended their energy, but some slipped through holes in the Balmung's defenses, punching entirely through the Gundam like it was made of mist, leaving wormlike holes bored through armor and internal systems alike. Before any real damage could be done to vital areas, such as the cockpit, a shrieking mental spearthrust crunched into Lilia's mental shielding, buckling her defenses where they were weakest, causing her to reel backwards in pain as her mind was deeply, if briefly, invaded by the mental presence of Katie Joule, the Active Newtype who was Yzak's assistant pilot and wife.

It was a dangerous, desperate psychic thrust, sacrificing controllability for power, allowing Lilia almost as much insight into her attacker as Katie gained into her, leaving them both dazed for a few moments as they struggled to cope with the invading memories and thoughts of the other woman. However, as well trained and practiced as Katie was, Lilia had the edge on her in recovering from mental trauma's, especially after her time spent with Zach, and she shifted backwards a few hundred meters well ahead of the somewhat distracted thrust from the Balmung's sword aimed at her midriff. Plainly seeking some time to recover himself, Yzak deployed the three hexagonal "Minion" Attack/Defense/Maneuver System pods from their niches under the Balmung's cloak, projecting a immense Positron shield barrier across the street between them, almost twenty meters wide and sixty tall. Lilia grinned, an unconscious feral echo of Zach's triumphant expressions, as she raised her Wraith's right forearm and fired with the 50mm ion disintegrator mounted thereon, the same sort of weapon that the Lucifer used for its rifles.

Still jittery from the mental feedback of Katie's mind blast and the rush of overly intimate connection to the enemy pilot it created, Yzak was slow to react as Lilia fired a brightly glowing flare of bright red energy from the muzzle of her right arm weapon, the air warping around the path of the speeding projectile as it punched through his Minion shield like it was merely a soap bubble, not a screen of contained antimatter paticles, and it was only by literally twisting and falling down to one knee that he avoided getting blown to atomic particles, sacrificing his Guillotine FRALA mount and the top section of his right shoulder instead. Yzak winced as he felt Katie's fingernails dig into his shoulders and back, as she tensed up in horrified reaction to something she'd sensed within the Eddie's mind. An instant later, Yzak was instinctively recoiling as well, as Katie shared with him one of Lilia's recent intimate memories... lying on the loamy ground of some humid mountain night, writhing pleasurably beneath a lean male form, his face in shadow but still lit from within by the glowing red eyes of a demon straight from the pits of hell. It only took Yzak a moment to recognize Zacharis Frost in his current incarnation in Kira's body, and revulsion welled up inside him.

_What sort of person could possibly consider having sex with... with Frost... to be a happy memory?_ Katie all but retched in his thoughts. _And its not like he's forcing her, she's totally into that! She's a freak! And it isn't like she doesn't know what he is... she knows damn well what sort of person he is, and she still..._

_Just another bonus._ Yzak replied with a mental growl as he shook his head clear of those disturbing images. _We can destroy his Gundam and kill his lover in one go. I don't expect her death to unduly bother him, but it might make a good thing to throw in his face just before I kill him for the last time! I'd like to see him blanch with the pain of losing someone you care about... just like he did to me!_

But there was no time for further extraneous thought, as Lilia was leaping forward, her hands extended in claws of armor, stopping just shy of the shimmering pink wall of the Positron shield, swiping her fingers at one of the Minion pods, her fingers just barely shy of the Positron field surface. Though the Wraiths did not contain physical talons in their fingertips, they did possess the ability to project blades of invisible concentrated EMP fields, and it was with these "gugnir claws" that Lilia attacked now, slicing right through the Positron field and the armored surface of the Minion pod like they didn't exist, slashing deep rents in the intangible programming and electronics that sustained and controlled the detached pod, shorting it out in a spray of smoke and sparks, causing it to fall inert to the street below. A quick shift and another swipe of clawed fingers destroyed a second Minion pod, and the remaining pod could not maintain the barrier shield by itself, pink energy collapsing inward like folding shrinkwrap as the Positron shield deactivated. Crushing the last pod under one foot, Lilia turned to deflect another volley of monodiscs from the Balmung with her forearm citade shields.

However, the time she'd taken to destroy the Minion shield had given Yzak and Katie time to refocus themselves. Switching Fafnir to the right hand only, the sword retracted to become a longsword, while they settled the Bulwark tactical shield onto the left arm, QC impegnated chainsaw edge revving hungrily to life. Centering himself, Yzak let out a deep breath and watched the blue Seed drop through the void-chasm of his mental word, before it struck the terminating surface and filled him with the energy of the Seed rage. Simultaneously, Katie used Yzak's own activation to force her own Seed into operation, two minds operating on the same principles and purpose, and the Balmung's cerulean eyes shone briefly like illuminated sapphires. Even as they did so however, the bright green eyes of Lilia's Wraith likewise emitted a spectral glow for a moment, as the Arboreal Praetorian likewise accessed the font of potential power that the Seed represented.

Still blinking sparkles of lilac colored Seed fragments from her inner vision, Lilia flicked one foot, lifting one of her dropped QC longswords from where it lay on the street and catching it in her right hand, even as she locked on the Citadel shield on her left forearm, gugnir claws still extended from her left fingertips. She flashed forward even as the Balmung did the same, both of them swinging, swordblades clashing together for an instant, crystal screaming as it was denied penetration, and then they were both past each other and spinning around to face off once more. Lilia lashed out with one leg, but the kick was foiled by the broad surface of the Bulwark shield, the Balmung barely even rocking under the blocked blow, and she lost part of her heel to the whirring chainblade teeth as Yzak altered the angle of his shield even as she kicked out. Rushing forward, Yzak shield charged Lilia, shoving her backwards, feet skidding and sparking on the ground, before Yzak flourished his blade and stabbed it cleanly through the back side of his own shield, using the armored panel as a visual block so that Lilia could not see the strike coming.

He lost the Bulwark's ability to project Citadel, Positron or GP shielding in the process, but when the Fafnir pierced straight through Lilia's left arm shield and lopped that arm off at the elbow neat as you please, Yzak was glad he'd decided to make that choice. Whipping his body around and lowering his shoulders, Yzak fluttered his Photon Cloak in Lilia's face, even as he canted his shield and swung the chainsaw edge forward, smirking as he felt the juddering impact as the buzzing teeth ripped messily through the armor on Lilia's right hip. Her QC sword sliced down and chopped the top quarter of the Bulwark shield right off, derailing the chainsaw track, but the damage had been done, and though Yzak was out a shield now, Lilia's Wraith was down an entire arm and had a badly damaged leg, limiting her ground maneuverability and balance. Taking Fafnir in both hands, the blade lengthening into its zweihander aspect once more, Yzak prepared to deliver the finishing blow, even as he felt his reactor output suddenly dip noticably.

Taking a limping step backwards, Lilia held her QC longsword defensively in front of her, knowing that there was no way she could deflect the two handed blow that was coming with her right side already weakened, but refusing to resign herself. Shifting away was impossible, any sort of high speed movement was impossible or she'd break her right leg clean off, but she'd activated her "Deathtouch" power leeching system as a last ditch effort. The rough gigawatt of power it drained from the Balmung wouldn't be enough to adversely affect the Gundam's performance, but it might give her the opportunity to utilize her Wraith's point blank weapon system, should she survive the next attack. She cast a beseeching look back at the inert Kratos, but Zach was nowhere in evidence, and she refused to call out for him, even if she was about to die. If this was to be her time, then it would be her time, and she wasn't going to compromise what standing she did have with Zach by begging for help now. He would not remember her fondly if she were to do that. And of all the people she DID want to miss her when she was gone, Zach was at the top of the list. Even if she died, if in so doing she provoked an emotional reaction from Zacharis Frost, then in a manner of speaking, she would have already succeeded in her self appointed task.

But if Zach was not going to intervene on her behalf, the same could not be said for other newfound allies. Though the Caller had not honored... or cursed... her specifically with the onus of his protectorship, the Grand Chimera was of course fully aware of her relationship, and dare it be said, value, to his chosen emissary, Frost. Though Frost was hardly being very helpful for the time being, the Caller had decided to be the "big" one of their forced relationship. Perhaps by intervening on Lilia's behalf he expected to win points with his emissary, or perhaps his intentions were to make Lilia herself indebted to the Grand Chimera, removing another of Yggdrasil's willing pawns and gaining another lever with which to influence his chosen mortal instrument, or perhaps the Caller's reasons were, as usual for the Grand Chimera, impenetrably his own. In any case, entirely without warning, the ground shook beneath the Balmung and Lilia's Wraith, as a cluster of feeder tendrils exploded from the subterranean depths, the muscular tentacles as thick around as the Balmung's leg, and they lashed around the Orb Gundam in a trice, actually lifting it off the ground before reeling it backwards sharply.

Unable to pursue with her damaged leg, Lilia instead hurled her sword, straining her telekinetic powers to their utmost limit, not to actually wield the blade, but just to push at the right moment so that its rotation ended up blade first as it reached the entangled Balmung, spearing into and through the Gundam's side in a similar area to her own hip wound. One of the Caller's tentacles spasmed and spurted gore from where it had been pierced by the longsword as it burst out of the Balmung's back, but the remainder held on tight and kept the Gundam constrained as Lilia limped delicately forward, each step making her think her right leg was going to buckle for good. The Balmung struggled fiercely, hot blue thruster wash searing the Caller's tentacles, blackening the skin and eating into the flexible muscle beneath but the Caller merely blocked out the pain sensation and tightened his coils further. Unable to wield the Fafnir, Yzak dropped the blade, the blue magnetic field deactivating at once as the physical strucutre of the blade stuck into the ground like a pencil dropped into sand. Immediately, the Balmung deployed supercharged beam blades from wrists and the tops of its feet, crimson red plasma energy chopping through tentacle meat like a blowtorch through bacon, and with similar sound effects.

Straining his arms and legs, Yzak burst out of the tentacle's grip now that his wrist and foot blades had weakened the tentacles, gargantuan sections of what was basically sushi meat flying in every direction as the overstressed, burnt and sliced apart tentacles came apart in sprays of oily ichor, the individual pieces still writhing and twisting in parody of life as they hit the ground. Deactivating his beam blades save for the one coming from his left wrist, Yzak bent to snatch the Fafnir up once more, and faced Lilia with Fafnir in one hand and supercharged beam blade projecting from the other, crimson blade alongside actinic blue. However, Lilia had stopped just out of arm's reach, throwing her remaining arm wide as hidden ports opened all across her torso and limbs. Only Yzak's Seed boosted Latent powers allowed him the minute forwarning needed to rotate his torso around to interpose the Photon cloak between them, and even then, he was too late to fully block what was coming as Lilia activated her Wraith's "Odin Hammer" point blank ion storm projectors, basically an area effect Mjolnir cannon, bolts of furious purple-white lightning exploding from the Wraith and striking out in every direction at once, filling a fifty meter radius with the coruscating bolts.

Several of the bolts played across the Balmung's left arm, the one not holding Fafnir, and melted the entire limb into a fused wreck, like a wax sculpture thrust briefly into a blast furnace, golden sparks exploding from the arm's citadel scales before the armor turned to slag, the structural bones splintering and melting at the same time. The Photon Cloak flashed incadescent white, charred spots appearing on its navy blue fabric as the kinetic force of the charged particle bolts unraveled sections of the heat conducting cloth, but the drape of blue fabric spared the Balmung's torso and right arm from the devastating point blank attack. Unbalanced by the loss of the left arm, and the kinetic effects of the bolts that were absorbed by the Photon Cloak, the Balmung sat down hard. Across from it, Lilia fell over as well, her Wraith's right leg giving way under the impetus of her own attack, buckling at the hip and sending her down to her hand and knees. Scrabbling on the ground, Lilia snatched a shard of rubble the size of a small car, and hurled the rock contemptuously at the Balmung, lacking any other attack options at the moment.

The boulder shattered against the Balmung's chest, barely even vibrating the Gundam's frame as it slowly crawled back to its feet, Fafnir still proudly ablaze in the remaining right arm, and Lilia knew she was defeated. She had nothing left, no further tricks or tactics to employ. The igniting flare of another fusion pulse reactor from nearby spelled out a different fate than ignominous death for her however, as Zach finally got tired of slaughtering groundpounders with his own two hands. The reaction of the Balmung was palpable, as the Orb Gundam froze in place, the dread and fear the pilots were experiencing apparent in the Gundam's posture, even though she still couldn't sense their minds. Lilia did her best to stifle her glad emotions, knowing that Zach was more than capable of witholding his help should he think she was relying on him to save her again. And then her Wraith was rocking back and forth, buffeted by supersonic winds as the Kratos appeared between her and the Balmung, scythe held casually in the right hand, sword claws deployed from the fingers of the oversized left gauntlet.

Zach was in the process of saying something to the Balmung, probably a taunt or a mockery of some sort, when the grey sky above the city boiled once more, as the colossal blue-white lances of the _Solaris_'s 125cm FRALAs, all four of them, pierced the cloud cover and touched down in the city once more, not dragging like they ahd the first time, but burning straight down, glassifying rock and soil as they dug deep, targeting a point that was close to central among the visible digestion pits, from which several feeder tendrils had been extending and attacking GHOUL troops that had penetrated to that section of the city ruins. At first there was no reaction, as the focused light melted its way down into the city foundations. Why the psychic cry of agony came though, as the FRALA beams brushed through the edges of the Caller's primary habitat and filled the environs of his brain and main body with flash heated steam, nobody was ready for it. Nobody at all.

In one instant, every creature in a fifty kilometer radius that was dominated by the Caller died a horrible death as their brain synapse burned out so violently that some of them actually spontaneously combusted from their inside out, their skulls exploding with the triggered electric activity, sending chunks of deep fried brains and scorched skulls scattering like shrapnel. Only those beings of Chimeralike power, such as the Deathstalker Queen and Rakejaw the Cold Hunter, were able to shield themselves from the brunt of the scream and thus escaped with only instant unconsciousness and mild seizuring. Likewise, all those creatures within the zone that were not symbiotically linked or domianted by the Grand Chimera were also blasted senseless if they were lucky, or into catatonia and drooling grand mal seizures if they were not. Not even the Neural Blockers of the GHOUL suits or the Divine Eye system of the Balmung could protect against this lashing out, not entirely anyway, the GHOULs falling in droves as blackness rose up to claim Yzak and Katie, even as Yzak aimed the Balmung towards the heavens and locked the thrusters on, propelling them up and out of the city on an unguided course towards space.

The rippling psychic shockwave reached orbit a second later, sending the crews of the USN spaceships into chaos, many blacking out at their stations, a few, the more psychicall sensitive among them, including several Newtypes unaware of their powers, were lambasted much more thoroughly, their brain synapses charred to ash, one Latent even suffering exploding of the brain and skull, which was especially disorienting given that she had been the primary helm control officer responsible for steering the ship, and was on the bridge in full view of the commanding admiral and his staff when her head popped like a microwaved pimple and sprayed the nearest officers with hot blood and steaming chunks of organ meat. The admiral himself went down, blood spraying from where his throat had been lacerated by bone splinters ejected from the helm officer's skull, and the _Solaris_ was forced to withdraw from its precarious perch in low orbit lest it be caught in Earth's gravity well like the _Monolith_ had been at Victoria.

Across the length and breadth of New Eden, psychic organisms flinched and faltered, their minds blazing with the aftershocks of the Caller's brutal cry, like a molotov cocktail had been ignited in their forebrains, sending many staggering or even falling to their knees as they screamed in sympathetic pain. The members of the relief force that had originally been tasked to reinforce the Caller, Kira Yamato included, were forced to break off their breakneck pace lest they crash into the sea, at least until they shook the echoes out of their ears and blinked the spots out of their eyes, forced to deal with migraine like headaches as their minds resonated with the passing of the Caller's shout. But as violent as the psychic cry was, it was but a whisper compared to a true Death Echo... though badly burned and scarred by the steam explosion, the orbital strike itself had missed the Caller's central body by about a hundred meters. Shocked into a fugue like unconciousness, the last thing the Caller felt before his myriad senses turned dim was a tiny little spark of amusement projected into his thoughts from the creature he'd ordained as his emissary

_Now you're a sufferer too..._ Frost exclaimed, almost gleefully, as the Kratos lay where he'd fallen, half atop the prone Mouse, staring up into the sky at the vanishing flare of light that was the Balmung's thrusters. He smiled, and the gesture just about split his jaw away from his skull, as random thoughts zoomed and bounced around his consciousness, knocked loose by the impact of the Caller's scream. _Guess that'll teach you not to be so high and mighty, Caller... _Frost started to laugh, out loud, listening to the echoes of his amusement rebound from the cockpit space around him. Truly, was there anything as humorlessly amusing as finding out you aren't actually invincible after all? He'd had to die to realize it himself, but now he just found it funny. _Teach you to try and control me... there can only be one true monster... and that monster is me..._


	52. Innocence and Corruption

Author Note: Hurrah for the past. Or at least part of it. Finally we get to see some of what the dreaded and infamous Lieutenant Cyprus Finch has in his past that has helped him become the man we all mostly love. I should warn any with queasy stomachs or easily offended dispositions that pretty much anything involving Cyprus's memories, in this or the other two chaptes they appear in, has the potential to go down extremely dark paths at any given moment. If a scene is happening in the past, be ready for things to go FUBAR (M rated) without warning. If that isn't your thing, then the past scenes are perfectly skippable, they have no real bearing on the actual plot of RW, if you skip them you'll still be able to enjoy the present day story with no complications. This is just a glimpse into the past and motivations of the man whom some readers have dubbed "The Ultimate Natural". That said, there's a lot that happens in the past that involves other characters we are familiar with in a way we don't usually get to see them (such as Athrun and Lacus's parents before they got married), so by all means, if you choose to read those parts, be on the lookout for the little details.

xxxx

**Earth, Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Hospital, January 20th, 6:00 pm**

"Ya know, Rich, I'm really not sure whether I ought to hug you, hit you or throw you in a padded room for the rest of your natural days..." Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory commented as he compromised and

extended a hand to his friend and subordinate as the other Stormhound was released from the secure hospital room where he'd been kept in isolation and quarantine for the past few days since returning from being captured by the Eddies during the FUBAR that had been the raid on Borealis City. Master Sergeant Richard Ramierez took the proferred hand cautiously, his hand enveloped by his friend's huge paw. Ramierez was current de facto field commander and senior NCO of the Stormhounds, with the Lt out of action and Glory still on light duty as he completed physical therapy and retraining in the wake of his near brush with death at Frost's hands... literally, since Frost had shoved both his hands straight through Glory's chest from behind, mangling most of his intestines and seriously damaging lungs, kidney, liver and stomach as well. His insides were still held together with glue and prayers as much as anything else, but at least he was up and about again, and itching for something productive to do.

At the moment that productive thing was being assigned as escort to his friend, it being protocol that any senior officer or combat leader that endured any length of capture by enemy forces before escaping or being released needed a minder until it was comprehensively determined as to whether or not they'd been compromised by enemy forces. Not that Glory really though Ramierez had been broken, certainly not over the course of a mere few days, the Corporal was tougher than that, but protocols were there for a reason, and no one was allowed to be an exception to the rule. Besides, there was no telling what sort of psychic ass-fuckery the Eddies might have inflicted upon the Corporal, stuff he might not even know had happened, given that some Eddies possessed the ability to steal memories right out of your head. Until they determined whether or not Ramierez was still as completely sound in mind as he was in body, he would have to be escorted around, and he wasn't allowed to have weapons or participate in any combat related briefings or activities. And the only people they could rely on to certify Ramierez's wholeness of mind, Yzak and Katie Joule, were still up in orbit, recovering from their last mission.

No one knew whether or not that attack on the psychic god-entity known as the Caller had truly been successful or not, though High Command was being optomistic about it, citing the very real effects of the psychic scream that had killed tens of thousands of "Eddies" at Neo-Miami, even though most of those casualties were actually the mind controlled remnants of the Porta Panama forces. Preliminary FEAR scans of psychic activity in the area showed a marked decrease, though again whether the Caller was actually dead or merely in remission or unconsciousness was open for debate. Glory was inclined to be pessimistic, he didn't like counting things dead unless he saw the body himself, and put a bullet in it himself if need be, but he understood the official line needed to be "it's dead". The USN really needed a victory to point to right now, after the chain of fiasco's that had begun with Victoria, and continued with Blue Monday, the cyber-attacks on LEXI and NAMARA and then Borealis. If it turned out it wasn't dead, at least now they knew where to drop a big fat nuke to correct that mistake.

"I'd settle just for you listening to me with an open mind." Ramierez replied, somewhat grateful to get his hand back uncrushed from the Sarge-Major's grip. Lighthearted tone or not, he knew his giant friend well enough to know when he was troubled, and Ramierez didn't exactly need it spelled out for him as to why. Were their position reversed, Ramierez sure would have been suspicious about the Sarge-Major being captured and then just sort of casually released a few days later, without the enemy even trying to pump him for information. They might as well have tattooed "double agent" across his forehead in bright red letters, even if that wasn't the case, that was still what everyone had to assume. It might even be true... there was still so much they didn't know about some psychic powers, he might have a sleeper personality already implanted in his brain, just waiting for the right set of conditions before it activated and turned him into Eddie Ramierez. Hopefully Katie would be able to discern whether he was fucked or not, but in the meanwhile he'd just have to deal with the paranoia and reservations from his friends.

"I think I can manage an open mind." Glory replied with an upward quirk of his lips that was almost a smile. "Though if I think you've gone a bit queer from whatever the Eddies have done to ya, I'm gonna knock things in your skull a bit loose to see if that fixes things, no hard feelings."

"If I have gone a bit queer from whatever they might have done to me, I'd expect you to do nothing less, Sarge-Major, and I'll thank you afterwards." Ramierez replied, managing a ghost of a smile himself. He gathered his nerve nonetheless, wondering if the next thing he'd feel would be waking up in a hospital bed with a major concussion from the Sarge-Major's fist colliding with the side of his face, and broached a subject near and dear to both their hearts. "So did they give it to him yet?"

Glory paused for a long moment, and Ramierez did his best not to cringe as he felt his buddy sizing him up, like he was measuring him for a body bag. "If by 'it' you mean that weird-ass fruit you brought back with you from Eddie-land and by 'him' you mean the Lt, then no, no we have not, and I don't think we're much planning to either." Glory answered at last. "As if the Eddie's just letting you go wasn't suspicious enough, that fruit just plain old screams TRAP, you know that right?" Glory anticipated what his friend was going to say in reply, and cut him off at the pass. "I don't care WHO gave it to you or WHAT it's supposed to do, Rich, you can't really expect us to just hand it to him and say "eat up"? For christssake man, who knows what might happen to him... becoming an Eddie might be the least of what that fruit does!"

"The President was changed a lot from the man we all remember. But I don't think he'd give me something just to poison the Lt. He was really troubled over what happened, man." Ramierez replied earnestly. "And if he wanted the Lt out of the picture, well, he's ALREADY out of the picture, killing him would just be a waste of resources. And even if the Lt does get turned into an Eddie, what does that change? Do you really think he'd just switch sides? The Lt's never turned traitor for ANYTHING in his entire life, he's always been the unshakeable, immutable one, its everyone else's position which changes to stand with him, not the other way around!" Ramierez shrugged and shook his head vehemently. "Its not that I trust this Kunai persona of the President, I think's he's a crackpot and a serious danger to everyone in the world, but I do believe that he still cares about the fates of the people who used to be his friends. They were like brothers, the Lt and him, I just can't see the President hanging him out to dry..."

"And I couldn't see the President condoning the Blue Monday attacks, yet he has." Glory retorted with equal vehemence. "He never stood for mass slaughter even when we had the chance. In retrospect the Isolation Plan may have had some serious flaws, but it was still a better option than the mutually assured genocides that had been pursued up to that point! If a few million Coordinators had to starve to death in order to bring an end to that war, then that is a price I would have paid without hesitating. I'm sure that there's plenty of people that would call me evil for that decision, but what's a few million against a war that might have escalated into the billions of casualties? I might even be able to get behind Blue Mondy, had it attacked a single target of overwhelming military value, such as Galileo LFB or FEAR headquarters, which could have ended the war. But attacking a purely civilian target, that's nothing more than genocide, and we got out of that business a long time ago, Rich. He's no better than Cervantes Zunnichi now, and probably a good deal worse. He's lost touch with the most important thing of all... the common people that just want to live their lives in peace and happiness."

"So you're content to just leave the Lt like he is then?" Ramierez replied caustically, his gut churning as he saw Glory wince. That was hitting below the belt certainly, but a lifetime in the Hellhounds had taught Ramierez that fighting dirty was sometimes the best way to win. He piled the pressure on. "You wanna tell Violet that we had a way to give her daddy back to her and we decided it wasn't in his best interest to try it? You think he's happy like he is, a goddamn shell, watching TV dramas and reading sports magazines? If he was even slightly self aware of what had happened to him, he'd be crying to see himself being so useless! You know as well as I do that he would much rather die than be consigned to a living hell, especially given the pain its putting Wrenn and Violet through! Should we let Violet grow up without her father just because we're afraid to take his life into our hands off the battlefield? Think of how many times he could have died if it weren't for you or I, what makes this choice different from those times?"

"I just don't know, Rich." Glory admitted with a heavy sigh. "I'd do anything for him if he asked it of me, anything at all. But I don't know if I can make this kind of choice for him. What if he does get all his memories back, and he remembers what happened to Wrenn? I don't know if he ever told you, but he's admitted to me that he'd lose his mind if anything happened to Wrenn because of their relationship. We all know what happened to Asmodeus after he lost his boy, is that the sort of person you want Violet to have as a daddy? It'd be better just to take him out back and shoot him now, than let her see him become the Hellhound for real."

"But Wrenn ain't dead, unlike Ray. She's pulled him back from the brink once before when no one else could, she can do it again. And he won't turn his back on Violet, no matter how much he hurts and burns for vengeance inside. Even if he does Hound out at first, they'll bring him back. The Lt can beat anyone... but he can't win against his wife and his daughter." Ramierez countered. He stopped and poked Glory in his expansive chest with one finger. "If you and I can't make this choice for him, then who can, Thom? We can go and ask Wrenn and Violet if you like, but I can tell you that they're willing to take this risk for his sake. Its killing them to see him like he is. Far better he be dead than live on without knowing the two people most important to him. You've known him longer than anyone else still living, Thom, I don't know anyone who can make this choice better than you."

"Yeah, I've known him since we were both barely fourteen." Glory stared into the faraway distance, his attention in the past. "And I wouldn't wish what I know of his life on any living soul, and he never told me about any of the real fucked up stuff from before I met him. He was already pretty Lt like when I got to know him, but he wasn't always that way, Rich. I don't even want to imagine what sort of trauma he suffered to turn him from whoever he was into the Lt. Making him experience all that again, fresh, I'm not sure that... I can do that to him..."

"I grew up as a gangbanger on the bad side of LAS, Thom. I killed and robbed and hurt people plenty of times when growing up, and got robbed and hurt plenty as well. I still ended up pretty much an okay guy, in the balance of things, largely thanks to the Lt and you and the direction you gave my life. I woulda been just another two bit con, in jail more often than out, with a rap sheet as long as both of my arms and nothing at all to point at in my life that I was really proud of. You guys gave me a goddamn life for others to be envious of, showed me what I could do when I had a hero to follow, a guiding light to banish the darkness that had clouded my life till then. I really don't know anything about the Lt's past, he never talks about it and I've never managed to get anything out of you either, other than that you were both more or less raised by Asmodeus from your middle teenage years, but look at how both of you have turned out, Thom! No matter how fucked up his life was, the Lt still turned out to be the Lt. I mean really, look at you guys... you're both married to awesome, beautiful women, he's got the most incredible daughter ever, and we all know that once you and Mel get busy for real you'll have great kids too. Bad pasts don't equal grim futures, Thom, you and the Lt are living proof of that." Ramierez exhorted his comrade.

"If I later find out that this was all part of some Eddie plan to corrupt the Lt, I'm gonna fucking kill you in ways they don't even have words for yet, Rich." Glory warned his friend in utmot seriousness.

"If it does end up that way, you'd think I'd try and stop you, Thom, really?" Ramierez replied, equally serious. "But it won't. This is me, Richard Ramierez, speaking to you, Thomas Glory, about our best friend, Cyprus Finch. This goes beyond the Stormhounds, goes beyond Eddies and Oosen, even goes beyond the Hellhounds. This is about friends standing up for friends, and doing what's best for the people we care about more than our own lives. Cyprus has saved me, physically and spiritually, and I know he's done the same for you... without him, we'd be nothing but punks and terrorists. Its the least we can do to try and return the favor."

"All right then. But we're going to do this as carefully as possible."

"Thanks, Thom."

"Thank me after it works, Rich, because if it doesn't you won't have any cause to thank me for anything."

xxxx

"Are you absolutely sure that this is what you want to do, Sergeant-Major?" The Morganroete scientist in charge of analyzing the strange fruit that Master Sergeant Ramierez had brought back from New Eden asked cautiously. "There is still so much we do not understand about this organism, I cannot say for sure what sort of effects it will have if ingested by Lieutenant Finch. It could very well kill him."

"That's a risk we're willing to take, Doctor." Glory replied, his heart fluttering as he said it, but he kept his face composed and phlegmatic. "As executors of his will, should he ever be permanently incapacitated or rendered incapable of caring for himself, the Master Sergeant and I have decided that this is the best treatment option we have available to us. All the same, if you could tell us what we DO know about this fruit, I would be grateful." Glory stared balefully at the item in question, sitting nestled in a sealed clear plastic containment case on a secured cabinet against the far wall of the room. The containment case was the same one that Ramierez had procured at Carpentaria, removed from the outer shell of EM shielding material that allowed it to be passed through Orb's Glasshouse without frying the Green EDEN saturated contents. Though study of the flora and fauna of New Eden had been limited before the outbreak of the Reclamation War, Orb had still created methods for carrying EM sensitive specimens and technologies through the protective field without damaging them, albeit in sealed quaratine containers.

The fruit was about the size and shape of a large pear, its skin the color of emerald and somewhat shiny and waxy, like that of a fresh green apple. In truth it was fairly innocuous looking, which only served to heighten Glory's sense of unease regarding it. Dangerous things tended to come in unassuming packages, and in its way, this might be the most dangerous thing he'd ever laid eyes on, depending on what sort of effects it had on the Lt. "Very well then." The scientist, one Dr. Lamarr, replied with a sigh and a shrug, as he turned to a computer screen and called up a holographic representation of the fruit, showing the results of the battery of tests he'd been running over the past few days. "Though obviously a fruit of some sort, the original genus of the tree that produced it is unknown, it seems to combine aspects of apples, pears and several other types of arboreal fruits. X-ray imaging reveals that unlike most fruits, this one contains no seeds or pit, making me believe that it is not meant to serve in a reproductive purpose, which is the original purpose of fruits. Even modern genetically engineered fruits still contain seeds or pits, they are merely genetically inert, I have never encountered a fruit with no reproductive material contained within it before. It is like this fruit was produced soley for the purpose of being eaten by a humanlike creature."

"Added onto that, samples taken from the skin and flesh of the fruit indicate a degree of Green EDEN concentration beyond anything ever recorded in a living organism. Most native flora and fauna of New Eden contain anywhere from ten to a hundred or so Green EDEN nanites per cell in their bodies. This fruit contains an average of fifty thousand nanites per cell, in a way, there are no cells really, just delineated areas of Green EDEN. Moreover, the chemical structure of this Green EDEN is different from the usual, though quite what that signifies, your guess is as good as mine. I don't have much in the way of other observations, I'm afraid... the more esoteric and delicate tests don't seem to be working on this organism. It's quite frustrating and disturbing, it is like the laws of physical reality as we know and understand them are being bent or suspended in direct proximity to this fruit. I have never seen anything like it, and don't know whether to believe some of the spurious readings I have gotten. For instance, time seems to be passing slower, somehow, in direct contact with this fruit, than it does for the rest of us, which accounts for its freshness, even almost a week after being removed from the branch." Dr. Lamarr frowned heavily at the thought. If one couldn't rely on physics, then what could one rely on?

"So wait, will the Red EDEN vaccine still work against this mutated Green EDEN?" Ramierez asked, starting to feel a trace of misgiving himself. Or a trace more anyway. The plan had been to hook the Lt up with a IV drip of concentrated Red EDEN vaccine to counteract any transformative effects from eating the fruit. Doing so ran the risk of corrupting the Lt's memories, but that was a risk they were going to take, because they had to be sure that this wasn't a plot to turn the Lt into an Eddie against his will.

"Unknown." Dr. Lamarr shrugged. "But it probably can't hurt, as long as we keep him properly hydrated as well, so that his cellular structure does not dehydrate with the sudden influx of converted salts. I would recommend that he not consume the entire fruit in a single sitting, perhaps dividing it into three or four parts would allow us to observe how his body responds and we can adjust our treatment options accordingly." Lamarr looked through the sealed plastic door of the nearby quarantine treatment room, where the subject in question was reclining upon the bed, already hooked up to IVs and life support machinery, his limbs restrained as well. The fruit was supposed to restore his memories, but apparently those memories were at times extremely traumatic, so his friends had decided it would be best to make sure he remained still until they were sure that he had regained himself fully.

"So let's get started then..." Glory growled, folding his massive arms across his chest, his gaze locked with the curious but empty smile on the face of the reclining Cyprus.

"As you say, Sergeant-Major." Dr. Lamarr typed some commands into his computer, robotic armatures unfolding from the walls to grab hold of the containment case and pass it through an airlock style mechanism into the treatment room, which the case was cracked open and the fruit extracted. Immediately, alarms began to blink and wail, declaring that there was Green EDEN contamination detected within the treatment room, and Dr. Lamarr silenced the alarms with a wave of his hand. Still manipulating it via the robotic arms, he deposited the fruit on a stainlss steel surgical platter, before a scapel equipped armature moved forward and cut the top third off the fruit, revealing that the flesh inside the emerald skin was such a dark green it was more like black, the flesh crisp and firm and juicy, iridescent sheens of molecular motion gleaming like spilled oil across the cut flesh. Carefully, Lamarr picked up the fruit and swung it over to Cyprus's lips. The two Hellhounds and the Doctor all looked on avidly as the grey haired, grey eyed man bent his head forward, opened his mouth, and began to eat...

xxxx

**Earth, Southern Ukraine, Mueller Institute for the Orphaned, September 12th, Cosmic Era 50, Afternoon**

The sky was grey and blustery, half filled with clouds and smog from the nearby industrial mills that were this city's primary economic employer and environmental polluter in one. Economic and environmental were pretty big words for a kid his age... Hans always said a kid shouldn't speak in words with more letters than he had years of life... but Cyprus had always been an inquisitive sort. Inquisitive, that was another one. It meant curious, like an explorer, like the cartoon show some of the younger oprhan's watched on some saturday mornings, though it could also mean too much curiossty or curiosity with intent. To be inqusitive was to deliberately set out to be curious about things. Cyprus was fond of deliberation... and he really needed to spend less time reading dictionaries and more time worrying about more basic matters. That might help him spend less time on his back, staring dazedly up into the grey autumn sky, with a huge lump growing on his jaw where the snowball tossed by the kids across the drainage ditch had struck.

Of course it was more than just a snowball... Cyprus might only be eight years old... or somewhere around that, no one knew for sure, and he was on the thin side... what orphan wasn't... but he wasn't frail by any means. Some jackass among the schoolkids that hung out on the far bank of the drainage ditch had used a chunk of cement as a core for his snowball, and Cyprus was lucky to not be spitting out teeth right now. Not that he was really surprised... the schoolkids, as the orphans called anyone roughly in their age who actually had families and went to schools and such... always played dirty with the orphans, because the orphan's didn't have mommies and daddies and older siblings to run home crying to. They had only themselves to rely on, and to some extent their fellow abandoned and neglected peers, though the orphanage life made becoming friends with others not always be the best idea... they could be adopted at any time and you'd never see them again. Best not to get too friendly or attached, it spared the hurt of seperation.

Propping himself back up, Cyprus felt his bruised jaw, but though it hurt like crazy, nothing felt broken or dislocated... he'd had his jaw broken AND dislocated before, in the time before he was given up to the orphanage by the people that had "cared" for him before that. They weren't his family nor his friend, and they'd acted accordingly, reminding him at every chance that he was a burden they could barely stand to have before they finally a good way to dump him on someone else. His grey hair, so similar in shade to the autumn sky above, fell into his face a bit as he blew on his cloth wrapped fingers... nobody had ever given him gloves and it wasn't like he had money to buy any... to warm them as he slowly climbed back to his feet. Snowballs, slushballs and iceballs hurled by the schoolkids smacked into the ground and snowbanks all around him on the orphanage side of the drainage ditch, but their aim was pretty terrible, it had been more luck than skill which had resulted in him getting beaned. He listened to them jeer at him, secure in their numbers and the fact that there wasn't a good way to get across the ditch for several hundred meters in either direction unless you wanted to risk the ice and slushy sewage in the bottom.

Their hurled abuse and curses failed to ruffle Cyprus, he'd certainly heard far worse from the people he'd used to live with, until he picked out one reedy voice saying something about "ghost-boy", and Cyprus clenched a fist so hard he almost hurt his hand. Most people would think something like that to be pretty silly, compared to the real cursewords they'd yelled at him, but everyone was sensitive about different things, and Cyprus was sensitive about his coloration... his pale skin, grey hair and grey eyes. He'd had people calling him colorless, washed out and most hated of all "ghostly" for as long as he could remember, and it always got to him. He WASN'T a ghost! Ghost were dead people, they weren't real... he was real and he wasn't dead, despite how often the other foster family had wished he was! The rest of his family, whoever they were, they might be dead... nobody knew... but Cyprus was NOT dead and he was not a GHOST!

Singling out the boy that was slandering him from the snickering pack of older kids he was hanging out with wasn't hard, all of them probably thirteen or fourteen, most of them wearing coats that coast more money than any ten of Cyprus's fellow orphans had ever seen in their lives, obviously quite warm and happy! Some of them even had personal cell phones that they were chatting or typing on, or taking pictures of themselves and others and even him! The only other person that Cyprus had ever seen use a cellphone was Headmistress Mueller, and she only used it for very important calls, the idea of a schoolkid having one they could just use whenever they felt like it made him feel sick with envy. Why did they get to have such nice things while he had to make due with a coat made from old blankets that was older than he was? What did they do to deserve anything they had? Did they even known how good they had it? He didn't think many of them had to deal with being cold or hungry or beaten up by the people that were supposed to take care of them! And now they laughed at him, laughed at parts of him he couldn't change and had never been asked if he'd wanted to have in the first place? It wasn't like he'd asked to be born with grey as his normal color!

Cyprus felt a hot, tight emotion filling him up inside, and realized he HATED them, all of them, those snickering bastards taking photo's of him with their cell phones like he was an animal in a zoo, while others hurled slushballs and snowballs and even another brickball in his direction, trying to scare him away, make him run, make him cry. Well he wasn't gonna cry, he'd stopped crying years ago and they couldn't make him start again! He tried to force the hate back down, it was one of those bad emotions, the ones that Headmistress said people weren't supposed to feel towards each other. But so many people hated him and he'd done nothing to them other than be who he was, he couldn't just forgive them for that! And though Cyprus was not the biggest kid, or the strongest, or the fastest or even the toughest, he did have something other kids his age generally didn't. Well, two things. One was his inquistive nature... he liked to learn things, and he was smarter than just about every other kid he'd ever met. And two, he had the Focus.

The Focus wasn't something he could always use... he didn't understand what it was that made him see the grey ball in his mind or what made it explode, but when it did happen, he see things like they were happening in slow motion, felt like he could calculate what was going to happen even before it finished happening. And right now he could see that grey ball, falling, falling, dragging his hate along with it like those lead fishing line weights that Hans had showed him that one time at the orphanage pond, until it finally hit rock bottom and blew up, flashes of silver and grey light, like snowflakes or frozen raindrops spinning away in all directions, filling him with the Focus, pushing out the hate, leaving only cold concentration and determination behind. Still ignoring the barrage of improvised snow munitions hurled by the schoolkids, Cyprus carfully gathered up some snow before reaching into one of the pouchlike pockets on his secondhand pants, which had once been black but were now grungy grey, just like the rest of him.

Earlier that day, while absconded from the orphanage... as was his habit whenvever he found the time to slip away and climb over the crumbled down back wall... Cyprus had passed by an alleyway filled with a bunch of broken glass bottles of different colors. Normally he wouldn't look twice at such things, but the way the grey light of the sky caught on some of the fragments and made a rainbow shimmer on the icy ground had entranced him, and he'd gathered up a pocketful to see if he might be able to replicate the effect in a quite section of the orphanage yard. He cast that hopeful dream aside now, taking out his palmful of jagged glass shards and packing them into his snowball, glancing up from time to time to measure the distance between him and the boy who'd called him "ghost". Cyprus hefted his weapon of retaliation thoughtfully, and then pinched off a bit of snow and a glass shard, and then figured he had the weight right. There was little to no breeze, and the target was stationary and facing him full on, pointing and laughing.

Cyprus took two quick steps forward to build momentum and hurled his improvised fragmentation bomb as hard as he could, line driving it over the thirty or so feet of ditch that seperated him from the group of schoolkids. In the Focus, missing wasn't even a probability, certainly not at this range, and the snow and glass ball struck the jeering teen right above the bridge of his nose, so hard the kid actually stumbled and went down. There was a long moment of shocked silence from the schoolkids, and Cyprus smiled at them, his expression colder than the air around him. But then the kid he'd hit started to scream and thrash around on the ground, and Cyprus flinched as he saw that the kid's hands were still clasped to his face and that the snow that was melting on his face was turning red before it melted. Intellectually he'd known that would happen, why else put the glass in there if he hadn't meant to hurt him, but he hadn't realized it would do so much damage! The kid was screaming about his eyes and there was blood all over his hands and melting into the ground around him and now the other schoolkids were shouting and screaming and even running away in some cases.

One thing Cyprus had learned very well over his short life was when it was a good time to be gone, and as the Focus faded away, taking his hate and determination with it, Cyprus felt scared for the first time that day. He'd really hurt that kid, maybe even maimed him for life! He cursed himself as he turned and ran as fast as he could, brushing the back of his arm across his eyes as he did so, feeling them blur, determined not to cry. The hate came back, but this time it was directed at himself. He knew damn well how unstable his emotions could be, how out of control he could get when he was angry, which is why he tried so hard not to let what anyone said get to him... he was afraid of what he might do to them in the Focus if it came. Because he tended to do things like this! And it wasn't like he hadn't meant to do it, he clearly remembered each individual decision... grab the snow, grab the glass, put glass in snow, measure ball, measure distance, throw ball, smile... every decision had been his, he just hadn't stopped to think about what it would mean all put together! And now some kid might be blind and disfigured for the rest of his life, and all because of a little name calling? Maybe he should be a ghost, at least then his misery wouldn't hurt other people...

Too upset to even think about slipping around the back and climbing over the crumbling part of the wall of the orphanage, Cyprus ran straight to the front gate, sucking in his breath and squeezing through the wrought iron bars. he got through pretty quickly, but not so quickly that old Hans, the combination grounds keeper, handyman and gate guard for the Mueller Orphanage didn't spot him and come stomping towards him, his already ruddy face becoming even more red with anger. Cyrpus rather liked Hans and got along with him passably well, better than many of the orphans did, since most were frightened of the portly old guy in his saggy brown and grey security guard uniform and especially the big police baton he wore on his belt... too many had bad experiences with policemen to not be wary of someone who looked like one, no matter how chubby and bald... but he could tell that Hans had been drinking, and when Hans was drinking he wasn't the nice man Cyprus knew. Like Cyprus, Hans was always cold in winter, despite all the extra pounds he had, and so he drank, usually vodka, to chase the chill away. But Hans was a big guy, and that was a lot of chill to chase, and so by the time he was warm he was usually drunk too.

Cyprus had never seen Hans actually use his club, though he had taken it out and waved it around to emphasize points before, but any good orphan knows that a drunk person can be very unpredictable and violent, and so he skirted away from Hans, not wanting the portly man to do something he'd later regret, like Cyprus just had. He knew it was against every rule of the orphanage to leave the main walled compound area and go wandering around the city, but he was just BORED with the orphanage, he'd been everywhere there was to go, done everything there was to do... his inquisitiveness demanded he find new things to see and do and experience whenever possible. He felt like he'd die if he ever had to stay cooped up in the orphanage for long periods of time. Though after what he'd just done, perhaps lying low for a while might not be a bad idea. Really bad things could happen to orphans who committed crimes, because they didn't have money or people that cared about them to defend them, and nobody ever came back from juvenile detention centers... sometimes they even died there!

Easily outpacing the puffing Hans, wondering if the gate guard was drunk enough not to remember this incident, Cyprus scampered up the steps of the main building and slipped inside, sighing with relief, his breath still puffing out in front of him even though he was inside. Headmistress Mueller wasn't poor, but she wasn't rich either and the orphanage had to cut costs wherever possible in order to stay in business, and that included the heating bill. If you were cold you could always grab a spare blanket, even if they did smell like rats and mould, it would keep you warm. Cyprus had a collection of the fustiest and smelliest ones in his room, because he knew nobody else could stand the smell of them, so nobody was going to steal them from him. But bad smell didn't make them any less warm, and he fell asleep every night all but buried in them, finally warm there, if nowhere else. He was tempted to go there and burrow down into his heat cave right now, but that plan was derailed when he all but ran into the severe figure of Headmistress Mueller in the hall.

The Headmistress and namesake of the orphanage wasn't actually all that old, probably in her forties, though she looked older because her face was always set in a frown of some sort, she always looked like she was really angry about something, even when she wasn't. She had dun brown hair usually done up in bones or tight braids piled on her head, and she always wore very somber colored suits and skirts. Cyprus wasn't scared of much, but the Headmistress terrified him, her eyes always seemed to be watching him, and she always seemed to know when he'd done something wrong, even though he knew his face was as good as stone! Her hands came down on his shoulders to steady him as he rebounded off her legs, and maintained their grip as he found himself pinned in place like a mouse beneath her hawklike brown eyes. She measured him with that look for a long few moments. "Lets go to my office and you can tell me all about it, Cyprus." She suggested, though there was iron in her tone that told him he didn't have an option. Busted.

xxxx

Cyprus kicked his legs back and forth, back and forth as he sat all but enveloped by the cushions of the overstuffed armchair that was usually for the use of prospective adopters when they came to meet with the Headmistress to discuss the particulars of which child they might want and to get all the paperwork done for the legal side of adoption. The Mueller Orphanage actually had a fairly high turnover rate, there were a lot of families nowadays that couldn't afford to pay the costs of having a Coordinator baby, or were against it for religious reasons, but still wanted to be able to pick and choose some traits of their child rather than relying on the random roll of chance that was a Natural pregnancy. Some of the orphans found it humiliating, to be inspected and picked or passed over based on certain genetic characteristics, like pets or food animals, but Cyprus didn't mind. If someone was looking for an intelligent child that they weren't going to mistreat, he had no problems being selected for whatever genetic predispositions he might have.

At the moment though, prospects for adoption were looking fairly slim for him. He'd been passed over by prospective parents before, not because he didn't fit the criteria they had, but because of his "precocious" nature, which he'd learned to recognize as a nice way of saying that he got into trouble a lot and didn't always play well with others. His paperwork didn't go so far as to say that he'd come to the Mueller Orphanage from an abusive foster family, because that little word, "abuse" tended to scare away other prospective parents who didn't want to deal with the emotional baggage from such a child, but it was fairly obvious from some of his actions that he didn't trust most adults and he was never going to be anyone's "sweet little darling" of a son. He'd showed one couple that were just about to finalize on him the Focus, just to see how they would take it, because it was a part of him after all. They'd all but screamed, and not with joy. That had been the last time he'd ever intentionally shown anyone the Focus or what he could really do when he felt like it. People didn't want a child that was as capable as he was, they wanted someone to coddle and impress their own values upon, and he didn't want to become anyone's little puppet!

And now the Headmistress was in the office across the hall, talking on her phone with the district police chief, trying to work out what exactly the consequences for his modified snowball toss were going to be. Apparently the schoolkid's parents were screaming bloody murder, even though the kid actually hadn't been blinded after all, and probably would have only been lightly gashed if he hadn't been clawing at his face and rolling around like a crybaby so much, he'd ripped his face open pretty good doing that, when he'd have been fine if he just lay still and calmly picked the glass out. Cyprus had lost his guilty sympathy after hearing that he hadn't blinded the kid... he still regretted throwing the glass packed snowball, but he wasn't kicking himself for the effect it had caused anymore. Maybe the other kid wouldn't be so quick to point and laugh and call names and throw stone cored snowballs of his own in the future. Cyprus wished he had people that would freak out when bad things happened to him, as it was he only had the Headmistress, and she was more worried about the ramifications for the orphanage than she was for him personally!

There being nothing he could do to change whatever was going to happen anymore, Cyprus put his nose back in the big dictionary that he'd borrowed from the drawer of the Headmistress's desk to keep himself occupied. She'd left the small TV in one corner of the room on to keep him entertained, but Cyprus wasn't the biggest fan of TV, the shows were either stupid or made him feel so envious of other people that he wanted to scream and break things. Sometimes he would watch the news, if only because it sometimes showed places where people were even more desperate than he was, and that made him feel a little bit better. His life sucked, but it wasn't the worst life ever. Putting his finger back on the page of the dictionary in his lap, Cyprus continued to silently sound out the words and commit them, and more importantly their proper usage, to memory. He was working his way through "H" at the moment.

He finished his daily 200 words and looked up to find that the Headmistress was still talking on the phone across the hall, though whether that was a bad sign or a good one, he couldn't quite figure. Normally after his dictionary reading Cyprus would do math or science problems from the tattered old textbooks that the Headmistress used to give some of the older orphans a basic education so that they wouldn't be quite so behind their peers if and when they were adopted, but since he'd been told to stay put and there was no way he could leave without being spotted, that option wasn't available. Heaving a small sigh, Cyprus propped his elbow on the armrest of the chair and leaned his chin onto his palm as he watched the TV through lidded eyes. An observer might have been forgiven for thinking him drowsy or half asleep, but even though TV wasn't his favorite thing, Cyprus never set his attention to something without giving it ALL of his attention, his eyes roaming both the foreground and background of the news program, searching for every scrap of data.

The program was about the C.E. 50 Winter Olympics being held in The Republic of East Asia, which had just commenced a week or so ago. There were a lot of political tensions interfering with what was supposed to be a celebration of human physical and mental skill, mostly the long running Natural vs Coordinator issue, since in most cases Natural athletes had trouble competing with their Coordinator counterparts in the same events, to the point where they were now pressing for segregated Natural and Coordinator versions of every single event. Personally, Cyprus kind of thought that complaining about a Coordinator being better than you was a cop out, whatever their genetics they weren't gifted with actual abilities... just the potential to have great abilities. It seemed to him that the Coordinators just tried harder than the Naturals, and got farther because of it, and the Naturals were predisposed towards using the excuse of "they're Coordinators, of course we can't beat them". Which was crap, Cyprus knew this from his own few encounters with Coordinator schoolkids. As long as you were determined to try harder than they were, you could beat them just like you could anyone else, be it in footraces or math tests. Beating them was harder than beating other Naturals, but just because it was hard didn't mean it was impossible or even unlikely... it just took more effort. But most people didn't seem to want to put out any effort, so they lost, of course.

The level of effort involved was plain to see if you were paying attention... they were doing a focus piece now on one of the big names and personalities of this year's games, who was famous for his participation in downhill skiing, ski jumping and the biathalon, or cross country skiing and target shooting, events, Patrick Zala of the PLANTs. They showed Zala's stats, with lots of commentary, both awed and somewhat bitter, that noted how he was a good five years older than any other contender in those events but he consistently outperformed them by relatively wide margins... a second or two in terms of speed trials... nonetheless. Cyprus wondered if that might have more to do with the way Zala spent anywhere from 12 to 18 hours a day practising for his events, compared to the 8 to 10 the competitors did. And when it came to the target shooting, Zala spent easily three times as many bullets on the practice range as his competitiors did, it was pretty obvious, to Cyprus anyway, who was really putting forth the effort required to win, regardless of talent level.

But most people, including Zala's competitors, either couldn't or wouldn't see that he was just trying harder than they were, and the news was full of their self righteous complaints about how Zala's greater abilities were just unfair, even though he wasn't the only Coordinator competing in those events. They were arguing that he should be disqualified or given a handicap or some other way of making it easier for them to win without them actually having to put forth any greater effort themselves, and it made Cyprus feel a bit sick at heart with distaste. If only he could be older and rich enough to be able to afford olympic training and spending all of his time training and not have to worry about going cold or hungry all the time, he'd show them just how superior a Natural could be! He could beat a Coordinator, even Zala, because Cyprus knew for a fact that he could work harder than the other guy could, because he was already used to a life of pain and sacrifice and deprivation! He didn't need a souped up sportscar or motorcycle to get from place to place, he walked or ran... he didn't eat vitamin and nutrient infused specialty foods to build muscle and stamina, he was strong based on his own work staying alive... he didn't need thirty personal trainers and assistants and advisors to tell him how to take care of himself and prepare for competitions, he knew his own goals and pursued them without having to be told!

Cyprus was initially glad when they changed the subject to another Coordinator competitor at the games, Lenore Vundten, figure and speed skater who also competed on the women's bobsled team, though that elation soon soured. Nobody was complaining about her abilities, even though she was also pretty much destroying her competition, or, more likely, they just weren't airing those complaints, because Lenore herself was only getting air time because of the rumored steamy romance going on between her and Patrick Zala behind the scenes. Cyprus felt like smacking himself in the face in dismay at the repugnant idiocy of the reporters questions as the anchor blithely ignored anything that Lenore wanted to talk about that was relevant... such as the actual Winter Games... and instead kept constantly coming back to things like whether she and Zala were staying... aka sleeping... together, when they were getting married, what their long term plans were, what Lenore's views on Zala's radical political stance was, things that were nobody's business but Lenore's and maybe Patrick's! Cyprus wished he had his glassball back, this anchor could use a face full of cold sharp reality to learn some manners! It was because of things like this that he despised the media, did they really think they were fooling him with their plastered on smiles and childish questions?

He could hardly care less whether that PLANTs had economic independence from their parent countries, because it wasn't like he was ever going to get to even go into space, much less to the PLANTs, and so what if pretty much everything expensive and neat, like cell phones, TVs, personal computers, cars, anything electronic basically... was made in the PLANTs there days, nothing he'd ever had or was ever going to get was expensive or neat! But apparently those people who did have easy access to expensive and neat things didn't want the source of their luxuries being able to charge whatever they liked for their products, which was one of the things that Patrick Zala was trying to make happen. He was taking a real risk, showing up down on Earth while still publicly speaking for the end of what he called the "economic tyranny" of the PLANTs by their sponsor nations, given how unpopular he was on Earth and among Naturals. Blue Cosmos, the terror group, had already tried to kill him once before, and everyone wondered if they would dare try again during the Winter Games. Cyprus hoped they wouldn't be that stupid... any street kid could tell them that no matter how hard you hit someone to make them shut up, they'd only go and get their friends later and then you'd be the one getting hit, and maybe a lot harder!

Before he had too much time to get drawn into the drama of the Winter Games though, Headmistress Mueller ended her phone call and it was time for him to go and face the music. Cyprus expected to get yelled at, and he was, he expected to get talked down to, and that happened too. He was even somewhat expecting to be told that he was being sent off to a Juvenile Detention center, but that, thankfully, did happen, though the parents of the kid he'd hurt had definitely pushed for it. Cyprus wished he could point to the bruise on his jaw where the kid's stone cored snowball had struck him first, but that would be making an excuse, and hadn't he just been sneering at the people who made excuses for their actions? So he said he was sorry, even though he really wasn't, and promised he wouldn't ever do it again, which struck him as something that he couldn't really swear to, since he couldn't know the future. And then he learned that he was being put on probation and confined to the orphanage premesis for a year... if the police caught him outside the orphanage grounds then he WOULD be sent to Juvenile Detention and that would be the end of it. He just hoped he wouldn't die of boredom before the year was over...

xxxx

**Three months later**

Things hadn't been as bad as Cyprus had been fearing when he first learned about what his punishment for a hastily thrown snowball packed with broken glass was going to be. It was basically house arrest for a year while being on notice that any major he trouble he caused would be the final straw that would see him sent to Juvenile Detention and just about forever ruin his chances for being adopted by a family. He missed being able to go out and explore the city of course, but he'd found other ways to feed his inquisitive hunger, usually by reading books from the Headmistress's private library. Fiction, nonfiction, biography, textbooks, romances... he didn't care he just had to be doing something, preferably learning! And while he did not care for the subject matter of the romances in particular, they nonetheless expanded his vocabulary and experience with the mindsets of what some girls seemed to like, which he supposed might come in handy somehow in the future. But his favorite thing to read, other than the dictionary he'd finished memorizing a few weeks ago, was the daily paper.

The newspaper was his link to the outside world, not just to the city but to the whole world and even space! He was learning not to just blindly trust everything he read... some of the papers Hans read had MUCH different views on the same stories as the newspaper that the Headmistress read, so it was plain that unlike with books, you couldn't always just accept what the newspaper said as the literal truth, everything was slanted or shaded based on the political or personal views of the article author. The big story of the last few months, the one that Cyprus had been avidly following if only because there was nothing else to do, much less be avid about, was the controversy surrounding Patrick Zala and his radical political organization, the "Zodiac Alliance", which had been formed for the purposes of gaining political and economic independence for the PLANTs from their sponsor nations.

Cyprus had learned that Zala was actually just the most public face of the Zodiac Alliance, much of the actual organizing and political theory came from another man named Siegel Clyne, a former Space Construction Engineer like Zala and now a Political Science professor at Zodiac Research University, one of the top PLANT schools. Zala was the face, the iron gauntlet that smashed your nose in to get you to pay attention, and Clyne was the heart, the velvet glove that wiped the blood off your face and helped you get back up again and really understand what they were protesting about. The two men could hardly have been more different... Zala was an olympic athlete and top level aeronautical engineer from a rich family, distinctive with his powerful build and steely purple-blue hair and emerald green eyes, every inch the image of "Coordinator Elite" in the public eye; Clyne on the other hand was a schoolteacher, amateur theatrical performer and civil engineer from a unassuming family, his clothing always a bit out of date and rumpled, his patchy brown moustache and blue eyes making him seem like the quirky man next door who worked at the post office, most people who met him for the first time forgot that he was a Coordinator at all. But their differences seemed to complement each other, and they seemed to be the best of friends.

They'd even managed to get some attention from that most famous of Coordinators, George Glenn, whom every child knew as the man who'd found aliens at Jupiter, though Glenn had stopped short of actually throwing his presence behind the Zodiac Alliance, which was viewed very dimly by the sponsor nations, especially the Atlantic Federation. Glenn seemed to be afraid of polarizing people into two factions by their genetic makeup, Coordinators on one side and Naturals on the other, as the first Coordinator he seemed to feel it was his responsibility to find a median road where Naturals and Coordiantors could coexist peacefully. Cyprus could admire that kind of effort, but with a new terror attack by Blue Cosmos or other organizations on the PLANTs showing up in the papers every few days, some of them against things like preschools and doctor's clinics and movie theaters, it was pretty obvious to him that there were plenty of people that did not want peace in the slightest. Zala and Clyne had the right of it, the PLANTs had to organize and stand up for themselves or they were just going to get beaten to death by the terror groups and no one on Earth was going to lift a finger to help them.

And on the personal side of things, the rumored steamy romance between Patrick Zala and Lenore Vundten had finally moved into the open as the two athletes formally announced their engagement and intention to marry, which was sending ripples throughout PLANT society, since as far as aristocratic and wealthy families went, the Zala's and the Vundtens were only eclipsed by the Borander's, and with Patrick and Lenore now marrying, the Zodiac Alliance was in position to greatly expand its monetary and political resources. On nearly the same level as that was the recent surprise announcement of Seigel Clyne's engagment to the iconic operatic and movie superstar, Elaine Gioffini, world renowned for her incredible beauty, nearly supernatual singing voice, and the impractical fountain of pink hair that cascaded down almost the ground that was her trademark. Though Elaine was a rags to riches story rather than a scion of an aristocratic family like Zala, her being engaged to a relative nobody like Seigel Clyne was practically a scandal nonetheless. Half the richest and most eligible bachelors in all of Earth and Space, including many Naturals, had been aggressively courting Elaine for years, and now she was marrying a college professor who's main claim to fame was his radical political views? Love was a funny thing sometimes, or so Cyprus had to assume, since he'd never had much in the way of that emotion in his life.

However maybe that was starting to change for him, because even though he knew being forced to keep himself under such tight watch had to be a real annoying burden for Headmistress Mueller, she didn't seem to mind so much anymore now that they were spending hours and hours together every day. He was practically living with her like he was her personal child or something and though she never let up on his police mandated strictures, he had noticed that she was giving him privileges that weren't available to the other orphans, such as a nicer bed in a room much closer to hers, with an electric space heater to chase away the winter cold, and access to nicer food that he actually ate at the same table as she did, and even some nicer clothes, though they were still obviously secondhand from some charity store, but at least they didn't smell and didn't have holes or rips in them. He even had a hat and some gloves for those times when he wanted to go out and play in the snow with the other kids, though he refrained from throwing snowballs, even when pelted with them in turn.

Truth be told he was isolating himself from the other kids more and more, because in the wake of his little incident, he just didn't trust himself around other kids, he was too afraid they might get him angry and he'd do something else to hurt one of them. He barely even left the administrative sections of the orphanage anymore, except to use the restroom and for church studies on sundays, the rest of the time he was bundled up in his new room, the space heater glowing orange in the corner, pouring over newspapers or books or doing the exercises he found in one book devoted to physical training. He was seen so little that he'd heard some of the other orphans referring to him as "the ghost kid" that haunted the orphanage, trying to scare some of the newer arrivals. Cyprus had been pissed at first, but when he discovered that his reputation actually kept the others away from him without him having to do anything, he let it slide. Let them think he was a ghost and avoid him at all costs, he actually liked the solitude. He was his own best friend and intellectual peer and always had been.

Christmas was coming up soon, and for the first time in his life, he actually thought he might have a gift or two waiting for him. At least, that was what the Headmistress had insinuated after dinner one night, as she was tucking him into bed... another thing that she'd never done before but now did almost every night. Sometimes she would even sit there and read him a story, which he accepted even though he'd already read them all because he enjoyed the little bit of human contact. And when the story was over she would always lean over and pat him on the head or shoulder and then kiss him on the cheek or forehead. It made him a little uncomfortable, but goodnight kisses and touching were supposed to be normal for kids with parents, so he didn't protest. He didn't think Headmistress Eva Mueller was ever actually going to be his mommy, but if she wanted to pretend, then he was happy to let her, it made him feel pretty good. Safe and secure, for the first time ever. At least at first.

But as Christmas time got closer and closer, the Headmistress was getting more and more... clingy, one of those words he'd learned from the romance novels... for lack of a better term. She wouldn't leave him alone except when he was sleeping or going to the bathroom, she was always watching him or looking at him when his back was turned. he'd thought she was just picking up on his antsiness and was heightening her watch so he didn't try and slip away during the holiday season, but then one night she told him he had to go get cleaned up for dinner and that he needed to go take a bath. Rather than sending him to the communal bathrooms that serviced the rest of the orphans though, she sent him to the private bathroom that adjoined her living quarters, which was much nicer. And she followed him in and started helping him undress, which she'd never done before. Puzzled more than disturbed, Cyprus failed to protest, since he'd read that many parents helped their children bathe in real families, at least until the kids hit the stage of life called "puberty" and didn't want anything to do with mom and dad anymore. He didn't need any help washing himself, but the Headmistress had been good to him, better than he'd had any right to expect after what he'd done, and if she wanted to pretend to be his mommy again, then he would let her.

She was very thorough but gentle, almost like she was expecting him to protest or something as she wiped him down from head to toes, paying special attention to scrubbing out his hair, which turned the color of cold iron when wet. He watched her look at him, trying to place the expression on her face. It wasn't dislike, but it wasn't what he thought love should look like either. She was looking at him like he looked at a particularly warm blanket or interesting book, like she couldn't wait to grab hold of it and pull it close to her so that no one would take it away. And then she did reach out and hugged him, cradling him in her arms for what felt like forever, her entire body tense as if she was afraid of something, her hand slowly combing through his hair and patting him on the back of his neck, like she was trying to soothe him even though he hadn't been crying. It was really kind of awkward for him, especially since he didn't have any clothes on, but eventually he figured she wanted a hug back, so he tenatively put his arms on her sides. She let him go and scooted backwards sharply, almost flinching away from his touch, and he looked at her with misgiving, wondering what he'd done wrong and why she had tears in her eyes.

The rest of the bath, and the dinner afterwards, proceeded normally, exchanging only a few words between them, usually about the food. Cyprus might be really, really smart for an eight or nine year old... nobody knew when his birthday was or when exactly he'd been born... but he was still just a child and the Headmistress a grown adult, there just wasn't much for them to talk about. Cyprus took the plates after they were done and cleaned them, figuring it was the least he could do for the nice food, and then went off to prepare for bed. Tomorrow was a big day since it was the Sunday before Christmas, so there was going to be a big ceremony for the orphans and a lot of nice food and even some singing and a movie they could all watch together, the closest most of them would ever come to a real party while staying at the Mueller Orphanage. The building heat was also going to be turned on full for that day, so everyone would be warm and toasty even though they were all dressed up in their nicest but definitely not warmest clothing.

Cyprus was just getting comfortable underneath his pile of blankets when he heard the door to his room open, and he peeked out into the darkened room. The room was dark, the only illumination from the dim orange glow of the space heater, and he couldn't make out the features of the person in the doorway, but judging by the height and the breathing, it was the Headmistress. She sometimes checked up on him at night to make sure he wasn't sneaking out of bed, but this was a little early for that, he'd barely had time to climb into bed and turn out the lights. All the same, he pretended to be deeply asleep, even when she softly called his name. He was full and warm and tired, he wanted to go to sleep, and he wasn't planning on sneaking out anywhere. She called his name again, somewhat louder, and he allowed himself to stir and roll over a bit, but kept his eyes shut and his breathing deep, hoping she'd go away after she saw he was right there under the covers.

She stopped calling his name, but she didn't go away, she actually stepped into the room and shut the door behind her carefully. She went to her knees by the side of the bed, and he wondered if she was going to pray over him for some reason, but instead of clasping her hands together she slowly reached out towards him, combing her fingers through his hair just like she'd done when he was in the bath. He kept his breathing steady, but Cyprus rolled his eyes under his lids. She was treating him like he saw some of the orphan girls treat their little rag dollies, always cuddling and petting them like they were some kind of favorite pet or good luck charm. Still, she seemed kinda nervous or hesitant for some reason, the same way an orphan might be nervous if he or she was sneaking out of their room after lights out was called, like she was afraid of getting caught doing something she shouldn't. And then her fingers were trailing down across his face, patting his cheek, tickling his nose and making him fight not to sneeze from the tickling.

And then, without warning, her hand pushed hard against his mouth and nose, forcing his jaw shut and all but cutting off his ability to breathe! Cyprus went stiff and then started to thrash, but he'd been caught totally off guard and in the middle of an exhalation, his lungs already empty before the Headmistress stopped him from breathing in, his chest burning for a few seconds before starbursts and hot darkness washed through his head and behind his eyes as the lack of oxygen quickly made him all but pass out. He clung to consciousness only by the thinnest margins, but felt disconnected from his body, like he'd become a ghost that was hovering overhead, unable to do anything but watch in mild surprise as the Headmistress took her hand off his mouth, allowing him air once again. And then she started to touch him, like she had when she was scrubbing him in the bath, but this was harder and her hands were cold and sweaty as they pushed his clothing aside and Cyprus didn't even know what to think or do as she touched him in those places that boys and girls weren't supposed to touch each other, something the Headmistress herself was always stressing to them during church lessons!

He had no idea how long he lay there, numb and half delirious, while the Headmistress's hands moved beneath his clothing and made him feel strange and unhappy, before she finally stopped abruptly, as if snapping out of some sort of dream she'd been in. His shirt was bunched up around his neck and his pants and underwear had been pushed down almost to his knees, but she didn't cover him up, she just threw the blankets back on top of him and stood up and left, without even saying a word. Cyprus lay there in shock for several minutes before he sat up and pulled his clothing back into place, wondering what the hell was going on. His last foster family had beaten him and starved him and that was called "abuse", but they'd never touched his special places while he was sleeping or bathing, nor had they ever been a tenth as nice to him as the Headmistress was. He hadn't liked being choked out and then touched like that, but he decided not to complain. He was still in a precarious position from the glassball incident after all, he didn't want to screw up and make the Headmistress mad now of all times. Besides, it hadn't hurt, not really, so it probably wasn't abuse. Maybe all mommies touched their kids like that, maybe she was just making sure he was healthy... he'd read that doctors touched people in places others couldn't as part of their jobs at times, and the Headmistress acted as a doctor for most minor injuries and scrapes, so... he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

The next morning the Headmistress had a hard time looking him in the eyes, but when he didn't complain or mention what had happened in his room, she seemed to rouse herself from her funk, and smiled at him and gave him a big slice of hot apple pie after breakfast, and they got on just like always for the rest of the day, so much so that Cyprus had all but forgotten the strangeness of the past night by the time dinner rolled around. But that night he stayed awake for a while again, and the Headmistress came to his room when he was supposed to be asleep again. She didn't choke him out this time, but she touched him again, and only stopped when he couldn't help but jerk away from a ticklish fingertip touching his poopy-place, causing her to rapidly retreat from his room once more. Again, Cyprus didn't know what to think, but when there was an even bigger slice of apple pie waiting for him at breakfast the next morning, he wasn't of a mind to complain. This was the start of a new pattern in their relationship... the Headmistress didn't come to his room every night, but every time she did there was always a nice treat for him the next morning, usually some sort of pie or donuts or something else he'd never had before and had only seen in storefronts with envy.

Sometimes she would help him bathe too, and there would be more touching then, almost furtive sometimes, like she was afraid he was going to scream and hit her, other times she all but pinned him against the walls and groped him for what felt like hours as if she couldn't care less about what he tried to do. Cyprus was beginning to get the feeling that maybe the Headmistress wasn't entirely all right in her brain, she acted so differently while doing the same things at times. He just shrugged and adapted to it, like he had so many other things in his life up to that point, because it didn't hurt and he really liked all the treats and gifts she seemed to be compelled to give him in return for the touching. But things couldn't seem to stay the same, and it was a few months later, with spring just around the corner and his ninth year of life officially started, when the situation changed again. It started out with another bath, one of the ones where the Headmistress touched him freely, even brazenly, as if daring him to complain. Cyprus did not complain, and this seemed to make up something in her mind, because she told him to find a towel because she had a "special game room" to show him that he'd never been to before.

This piqued his interest, since Cyprus could have sworn he knew every room in the orphanage, even the ones the orphans weren't supposed to have access to, but the Headmistress was as good as her word, pressing down on a section of wooden wall paneling on one wall of her office, and with a click a hidden door opened up, revealing a staircase that led upwards, towards the attic. It was quite the coolest thing Cyprus had ever seen, a real secret door, and even though he was cold and shivery, his hair and skin still damp from the bath, he gathered the towel around his waist and all but charged up the staircase to explore this new place, the Headmistress close behind him. He forgot to pay heed to the way the secret door closed and locked behind him, and he certainly missed the cold look in Eva Mueller's dark brown eyes as she headed up the narrow staircase after the precious and precocious grey haired boy, quite the most unearthly beautiful child she had ever laid eyes on. She had contented herself with just touching the nearly divine perfection of his form for the longest time, but now her long wait was almost over...

Cyprus was all but hopping from foot to foot as the Headmistress opened the heavy metal door at the top of the stairs, and he was a good three steps into the room before he really got a good look at it. Cyprus skidded to a halt, confused, as the Headmistress flipped the lights in the room on and revealed the vague shapes crowding around the walls to be... well they looked kind of like certain types of gymnastic equipment or playground structures, but these were made of metal bars and chains and thick wood and black rubber, not bright plastics. He got a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw a kennel-like cage of metal bars in one corner of the room, but no dog to go with it... there were no pets at the Mueller Orphanage. His last parents had kept him in a cage during those times when they were really mad at him, and just the sight of something similar was enough to almost make him sob. Shying away from the horrid object, trying not to see all the whips and manacles and objects he didn't even want to know the use of that were hanging from the walls like Hans's handyman tools in the toolshed, Cyprus backed up towards the door, only to find him colliding with the Headmistress's legs as she stood in the doorway, watching him.

"What kind of games do you play here?" Cyprus asked, in a small, quiet voice that was quite unlike his usual bright tone.

"Very fun ones, precious." The Headmistress replied silkily, her hand settling on his bare shoulder and holding tight so that he couldn't run out the doorway behind her. Pushing forward, she shoved the recalitrent Cyprus in front of her, forcing him back into the middle of the room, the towel dropping from around his hips to bare his glorious form as he began to struggle for the first time. Clenching her hand on his upper arm hard enough to leave finger shaped bruises on his upper arm, Ms, Mueller smiled as he squealed in pain, falling more in love with this perfect child every time she touched him or heard his voice. She couldn't bear the thought of him being taken away by other people, which was why she'd been so glad to hear of that unfortunate incident involving the snowball and the glass, because it finally gave her an ironclad excuse to keep the boy around her more closely, and to keep him isolated from his peers. No one would even realize he was missing, not for weeks and weeks anyway...

Ms. Mueller kicked the stop away from the iron fire door, letting the heavy portal swing shut behind her to seal off her soundproofed private play room. It had been too long since she'd last had a child of her own to play with here, most were simply too flawed or wary. Cyprus was a gem, beautiful and smart yet so naive and trusting at the same time. She'd never seen a Natural child with such hair and eye color as him, he was one in a million! He made her heart melt and her loins burn, and now he was finally hers and hers alone until she could wring no more pleasure from his presence. She sighed happily, lost in the fun to come, and lost her grip on his arm as he pulled away from her, trying to shout again. He wasn't shouting for help, he was just shouting because he didn't know what else to do, and it was useless anyway, no matter how much of a racket he kicked up, no one in the Oprhanage below could hear him. Still, it was getting on her nerves a bit. She reached out and grabbed a whipping cane from a wall rack, swishing the thumb thick rubber coated dense plastic rod menacingly through the air. "I don't want to hurt you, precious." Mueller told him kindly as she poked him on the belly with the cane. "But I will if you make me..."

While Cyprus was still making up his mind as to what to do next, she stepped forward, using the rod to cut off his attempt to duck away, and then slapped him across the cheek with her free hand, hard enough to make him stumble and trip and fall to the ground on his side. Knowing how slippery a wet child could be from plenty of prior experience, Mueller went after him with the whipping cane, targeting his lower body, trying to numb his legs so that he couldn't get away. He was screaming again, but this time she basked in it, knowing that this was just the start. "My precious Cyprus... we're going to have so much fun together..."

xxxx

**May, C.E. 51, Mueller Insitute for the Orphaned, Ms. Mueller's Secret Torture Chamber**

"There now... that wasn't so bad, was it, Precious?" Ms. Mueller's kindly yet still terrifying voice asked Cyprus from somewhere behind him and to the left side. Cyprus couldn't have replied if he'd wanted to, both because he'd lost his voice screaming several hours ago and because of the grotesquely overlarge rubber ball that was strapped into his mouth as a gag, so big it made his jaw feel like it was splitting open. He hung by his wrist manacles from a hook and chain affixed to the ceiling, his toes almost a foot from the ground, and one of his shoulders was half dislocated from a previous "game" where the Headmistress had pulled down on his legs one at a time, yanking on him like he was a pull up bar. That was when he'd lost his voice, again, though he'd lost it so many times now that he could hardly tell when was when anymore.

Blood dribbled down his arms from where the manacles bit into his wrists, open sores and blisters edging where metal met skin and hadn't been washed or removed for almost three months now, he could barely even feel his hands anymore, and most of the time wished he couldn't feel them at all, especially when the Headmistress was practicing her "needlework" under his fingernails! His back was a mass of slowly healing welts and bruises now, his formerly pale skin more of a reddish-brown tint now from all the lividity under his skin where blood vessels had been repeatedly crushed by glows from hands, paddles, leather whips and especially the rubber coated whipping canes, which struck like an iron bar, so hard it felt like his body was shaking apart under each hit! His chest and legs were also marked by the aftereffects of the Headmistresses enthusiasm for beating him until he couldn't even cry no matter how much he wanted to do so. Just about the only part of him she didn't regularly hit or poke or smack was his face, because she liked to stroke and touch it instead. Or choke him and kiss him, or pinch or bite his nose, or pull on his ears... the Headmistress didn't have to hit him to hurt him, not even slightly.

She kept him weak by keeping him on a starvation diet, denying him water for days at a time and keeping him in a cage so small that he had to sleep crouched up in a ball with the bars biting into his sides and forehead. There were also pills of some sort ground up in the food, pills that made him dizzy and feel like he was going to throw up, which he often did, especially when she whipped him across the stomach or groin. But the worst part was when she put things inside him, big things, metal things, with knobs and spikes and bulges, forcing them up into his poopy-place even though things weren't supposed to go in there, forcing them in even when he cried and even started to bleed! Just like he was bleeding now, as she finally took another spiky metal rod-thing out from where she'd been twisting it inside him, and he could feel the hot wetness sliding down his legs, like he'd just wet himself but so much worse than that.

He heard the "swish" of another whipping cane being swung through the air behind him, and did his best not to tense up, not to flinch, since that just made the Headmistress mad. He was supposed to enjoy what she inflicted upon him, she'd made this abundantly clear during his time imprisoned in her game room, and even if he hated it, which he did, he had to pretend to like it or she'd never stop, and she'd keep hurting him until he passed out or even more! It felt like a snake made of fire was slapping him across the shoulderblades when she laid into him with her cane, and Cyprus managed to let out a choked whimper, knowing that she would get mad again if he didn't make some noise. She liked the noises he made during this "game" of hers, if he was silent then he wasn't playing properly and she would get mad, even if he was only silent because his throat was so raw and swollen he could barely breathe!

He twisted and yelped again when the whipping cane came back again, this time across his butt, sending more trickles of hot wetness down the backsides of his legs as the blow broke the skin. _Two... that was two..._ Cyprus reminded himself, retreating into his own coping mechanism for the pain, divorcing his mind from what his body was experiencing, sinking into a pit of calm rationality that drove the pain away. It was the Focus, and it was the only thing keeping him sane anymore, even though staying in the Focus for long periods of time was just as hard on his body and mind as any of Ms. Mueller's "games" was. But he was in the Focus by choice, and that was the only choice he could make for himself anymore, to be in Focus or not to be in Focus. Pain rippled across his back from hip to shoulderblade as the cane struck again. _Three._ Cyprus counted, and then there was four, right when he expected it, and right across his belly, making him cough involuntarily. Five and six and seven all hit the front of his legs and arms, and eight was across the backs of his thighs. Nine and ten were the backs and fronts of his dangling feet, and then eleven almost broke him open as it came straight up between his legs from the back and struck on the torn skin of his buttcrack.

He lost track of the blows after that, even the Focus couldn't keep out the pain in his groin and back and butt after blow number eleven, but even in the midst of the agony, if not for the gag, Cyprus would have been smiling. Things were going just as he expected them to... it had taken him months, entire days spent in the Focus at a time, but he'd finally memorized all of Ms. Mueller's games, knew their patterns and timing, knew when she got tired and from what, knew what she was going to do next based on what she did first, to the point where he could predict the duration and order of the games in an entire game session, four or five hours of the Headmistress exhausting her "love" upon his body. And after sticking the sharp thing up inside him, and then a whipping, Cyprus knew that she was getting tired and ready to call it quits. Soon she would lower him to the floor and take out the gag, and demand he kiss her girl spot to say thank you for all the attention she lavished upon him, kiss it until she wetted herself without going to the bathroom.

And then he felt his toes make contact with the floor, his shoulder finally clicking back into its socket fully, the shot of pain more reassuring than debilitating, not that his plan relied on the use of his arms, or even his legs... he was too hurt to rely on his limbs, even if his wrists weren't manacled together. He could barely even crouch on his hands and knees without falling over, punching or kicking was impossible. But there was one part of his body that still worked about as well as it ever did, and was if anything stronger than usual because of all the exercise he put it too while gagged, grinding his teeth against the rubber coated metal balls, clenching and unclenching his jaws as he sneaked extra breathes of air around the bulky object filling his mouth. He let his mouth fall open as he sucked in several deep breathes when the gag was finally taken off his face, and then he felt Ms. Mueller's hand tangle in his blood and sweat stained grey mop of hair, and she yanked on his scalp until he raised his head to look up at her looming over him, her normally severe hair let down around her shoulders, her body clad only in leather straps and high heels, her skin sweaty and splattered with smears of red that didn't come from her body. "Who's my Precious?" She cooed at him, another rhetorical question, since if he could hardly scream there was no way he could talk.

And then she was pushing him up between her legs, all but suffocating him as she gasped and sighed happily as he put his lips onto her special place, carefully keeping his teeth covered until he found that sensitive part of her. And then, utterly without warning, he peeled back his lips and bit down as hard as he possibly could, twisting his head from side to side like he'd seen dogs do when worrying at bones, grinding his jaw, ignoring the salty spray of blood and other fluids she released into his mouth as he finally got to hear HER scream for once, and far louder and higher pitched than she'd ever evoked from him! Her hands beat and shoved frantically at the top of his head, but her own body blocked her arms from easily striking him, she'd put herself into a vulnerable position thinking that he was entirely broken to her will, when in truth he'd been broken too many days before, and had just finally finished putting himself back together again. This wasn't the first time in Cyprus's life that an adult had tried to break his spirit with pain, and he'd learned that while you couldn't avoid the breaking, you could control it, make it be on your terms, so that you could pick up your pieces before the adult could, and stay yourself rather than becoming their puppet.

Ms. Mueller finally managed to tear Cyprus off of her groin, but he'd all but ripped her privates open with his teeth in the meanwhile, and she was bleeding heavily from a nicked artery. She staggered and fell, clutching at her gory privates with both hands as she stared with wide eyes at the blood soaked little demon that had dared to injure her so horribly, who was glaring back as he spat out lumps of flesh that had used to be her most sensitive spots! And then he began to inchworm himself closer, crawling on his belly, and the intent in his blazing steel colored eyes could not have been more plain. Eva Mueller screamed again, this time in fright, tried to get to her feet but slipping on her own blood, hot spurts of crimson still pulsing from her bitten open privates, her hands covered from fingertips to wrists in steaming gore, and she felt herself starting to get lightheaded from blood loss. Her Precious had torn open a major blood vessel with his teeth and now she was bleeding to death in her own game room! But her Precious did not seem content with just that betrayal, as he crawled and slithered his way up to her. She felt herself starting to pass out from the blood loss, even as she felt his panting breath on her cheeks and neck.

"This wasn't fun." Cyprus whispered to her, the words like molten metal coming up his throat, as her eyes began to doop shut, her hands falling away from her laid open groin, blood spreading into a wide puddle around her. His eyes were washed out, almost pupiless, the cold logic of the Focus in full control. He opened his mouth once more and carefully set his teeth against the base of the Headmistress's neck. His belly rumbled, reminding him that he'd vomited up his last meal and hadn't eaten anything else for almost four days. He was starving, and there was no food in the game room, Ms. Mueller having always brought food in with her when she deigned to feed him. "My name isn't Precious." Cyprus added, blinking as clear moisture dripped onto his cheeks. Tears, not from him... in the Focus, tears were just a waste of moisture he had too little of already... but from her, running down her cheeks and chin and falling on him as he prepared to chew through her neck and jugular vein. And then his teeth were biting through skin, and he had better things to do with his mouth and throat that make words. So hungry...

xxxx

**12 hours later**

Cyprus held onto the wall for dear life, his pants already starting to soak through with welling blood, despite the cloth he'd wrapped around his limbs and body in a clumsy attempt to bandage himself. His stomach roiled, the raw meat within sitting uneasily with him. His hair was still matted with drying gore, though he'd done his best to wipe his face and chest off after he'd regained enough feeling in his arms to move them. His hands were still numb, his figners still purply and swollen, though he almost relished the pins and needles feeling in them, meaning that circulation was returning at least. He'd been worried that his hands were going to swell up, turn black and rot off from gangrene for a while there. It was dark out and everyone else was asleep, which suited Cyprus just fine. He was leaving and he would kill anyone and anything that tried to stop him. He was through trusting adults to take care of him. He would take care of himself from now on. And if anyone... ANYONE... tried to touch him ever again, they'd be lucky if they only pulled back a stump!

He was almost to the main doors of the Insitute building when he was lit up from behind by the watery glow of an old flashlight. Cyprus froze, and slowly looked over his shoulder. It was Hans, the portly old gatekeeper, woken from his slumber by the sound of Cyprus's unsteady tread on the creaking wooden stairs. Clad in his nightshirt and pajama bottoms, Hans stared blearily at a child that the Headmistress had herself reported as a runaway months ago. Cyprus seemed to waver in the illumination of his flashlight, like he was only partially there, the light reflecting oddly from his eyes, making them gleam like a feral dog's. Hans felt his blood chill several degrees as he saw the broken shard of glass gripped in Cyprus's hand, both hand and shard stained with threads of crimson fluid that could only be blood. And there was more blood, smeared in Cypus's hair, splattered on his cheeks, dribbling from the corners of his mouth, soaking through his pants at knee and thigh. The grey haired boy had always seemed ghostlike to most, Hans included, but right now he seemed to be a revenant risen straight from the grave!

"Cyprus...?" Hans ventured, wondering if he was dreaming, if this was some sort of residual guilt for not having been nicer to the boy before his strange disappearance. And then the beam of his flashlight failed, cursed old batteries always acting up at the worst moments, and it took almost a minute of cursing and shaking of the light before he managed to coax a little more juice out of the alkalines. But when he shone his light over the doorway again, it was empty, not a single sign of hide or hair of the missing child. Hans swallowed and shivered, and after another minute of playing the light back and forth voer the doorway, when the light started to get dim again, he decided that maybe he'd better go back to bed. And he swore off any more vodka nightcaps, he didn't want to start seeing other ghosts! And maybe he'd sleep with the light on tonight... good Christ, the kids had always said the Orphanage was haunted but he'd just thought it was hyperbole before now... what a godawful thing to see!

The next morning, Hans saw the unsteady trail of footprints leading away from the orphanage through the last remnants of the winter's snow, but given that he'd gotten out of bed late after a fitful night spent on the edge of sleep, he didn't think anything of it. At least not until the smell of drying blood wafted down from the Headmistress's office...


	53. Angel and Demon

Author Note: Well, the first part of Cyprus's past seems to be well recieved, if not exactly celebrated, which is only understandable given the sort of past it is. But while it is tempting to show you the whole life story all at once, that would be a mini-story all its own in terms of length and there's a lot more going on in RW at this point than just Cyprus and his situation. Really, in the big scale of things, he's just a footnote, though footnotes can still trip up a whole goddamn volume at the proper time and place. In any case, its time to check in elsewhere and see the next major events of the arc taking shape, so I can get one step closer towards answering all the speculation and questions I've been bombarded with in recent chapters.

xxxx

**New Eden, Pacific Ocean, above Marianas Trench, January 21st, 6:23 am**

Had the morning sky not been overcast, the USN warships and survellience satellites in various orbits over this section of the world would have been treated to a most unprecedented... and troubling... vista. Where normally this section of the ocean was much like any other section more than a certain distance from land, the heaving waves giving no hint of the near fathomless depths they covered nor the myriad hordes of lifeforms that called them home, save for the occasional glimmer of a flying fish or the plumed breath of a surfacing whale, today, beneath the stormy skies, it was host to a gathering the likes of which the oceans... and the world itself... had never seen before. Heeding a clarion call that was more felt in the marrow and the brainstem than heard, a summons that pulled both great and small, predator and prey from their daily lives, subordinating them to a temporary higher duty. The Ocean Mother was singing of conflict, and from her myriad domains her impromtpu legions swam and crawled forth to marshal at her side.

Pods of silver eyed Neo-Orcas, the smallest of which was no less than sixty feet from nose to tail, breached and dove almost playfully amongst and around schools of golden pupiled Megaladon sharks who easily matched them for size. Normally such a meeting of top predators would end with the waters dyed red with blood, but all normal species rivalries and relationships were set aside by the Ocean Mother's influence. Death would permeate the water soon enough anyway, she wouldn't stand for her armies to turn upon themselves even before serving their purpose. The most peaceful plankton eating ocean giant whale would serve phlegmatically alongside the most bloodthirsty Kraken or Megaladon, because the Ocean Mother had recently been unpleasantly illuminated into the actual fragility of her life. Though the threat had been against her much despised "peer", the Caller, whom she would have gladly buried alive were she able, the shock of his pain-scream from the near miss wound the Oosen forces had dealt him had ripped through her like a giant tooth down her gullet, causing her to groan in sympathetic pain, a miniature cyclone of telekinetically whipped waves forming around her until she regained control of herself.

The myth of a Grand Chimer'as invincibility and inviolability had just been comprehensively shattered, a dream of assumed safety turned into a nightmare of cold, hard insecurity. If the Oosen could dig deep enough into the Caller's dismal realm to actually make him scream and faint, then there was no gaurantee they wouldn't next turn their attentions to her, especially considering that she ruled over the largest domain of New Eden and had already shown herself to be an active threat against them. The damned Tree was content to hide, all but invisible at the roof of the world, while the other two Grand Chimera took the brunt of the risks and dangers! Were the danger not so terrible, Leviathan would have gladly stood by and watched as the Tree was cut down for its hubris, but as the Caller's scream had undeniably informed her, the fate of one of them was going to be the fate of all of them. What was that human expression? United we stand, divided we fall? The humans were surprisingly poignant at times...

They were also very resourceful, and, in some cases, quite comforting to have around in these uncertain times. By which Leviathan meant she was glad that she had her friend, Kira Yamato, to rely on force advice and commiseration, because otherwise she would have felt quite lost. It didn't matter that her intelligence and psychic might eclipsed his own like the oceans did a tidal pool, he was her window into actually understanding humans even a little... as a human he was an expert in deciphering the mysteries and idiosyncrasies of his kind and explaining them to her. When she had contacted him through the bond she had established with him, to communicate her fervent desire to do more than just continue passive aggressive operations against the space invaders, he had quickly seen through the bluster of her anger and had done what he could to soothe her uncomfortable fear. There was little he could do to physically comfort her... her teeth were bigger than his entire body by a significant margin... but the mere fact that he understood her fear and knew when to just listen and agree and calmly acknowledge how she felt still filled her with a unusual giddy sensation. Who would have ever thought a mere surface dwelling human could affect her so positively?

Though as far as the humans went, her friend was anything but "mere", Leviathan was learning, mostly by observing his interactions with his vassals. She knew he didn't consider them as such, but didn't know how else to qualify them... they were less than friends but more than just acquaintences. Not equals but valued all the same for their contributions to a larger purpose. It felt like the same sort of relationship she had with her own subordinate Chimera. Vassals was the closest term she could think of, and even that was of course a human term that wasn't wholly sufficient to describe the actual situation... as Kira said, like fitting a square peg in a round hole. Which had taken a great deal of explaining, since she lacked prehensile forelimbs and gripping digits or any concept of how they worked to manipulate objects. It was just a convoluted way of saying they came from different worlds and that as hard as they might try, there were just some concepts that did not translate from Chimera to human or vice versa. And coming to that realization, and more importantly, accepting it, was just one of those things that seperated her friend from his fellows, allowed him to see her as a "person" rather than a "thing" or "deity" like most humans still did. She might be incomprehensible and mysterious to humans but they were equally dumbfounding to her.

They ranged through the emotional spectrum wildly, flowing from one emotional extreme to another like the boiling currents of water aound the deep ocean volcanic vents, hot to cold, cold to hot, and back again and again and again in an endless cycle. Sometimes they were were epitomes of kindness and generosity, such as when they had intervened to save Gorefin from the crippling injuries her vassal had received during his confrontation with the Oosen forces. Other times they were fracticious and fairly pulsating with anger, so much so that she half expected to see the water boiling around them, before remembering they did not live in water and most of them could not telekinetically affect their environment to any discernable extent. There was one noteable exception, the designated agent of the Tree, whom Kira called both "Kunai" and "Sai", one aloud and the other in his thoughts. Leviathan vaugely remembered him as the one whom had sworn to accept her dominion over the sea back when she was still barely a child, though she hadn't really made much effort to remember him at the time. This "Kunsai", as she had taken to calling him, all but made the air crackle around him with his psychic presence, boosted by the Tree splinter he used to support his weight.

She could still crush him to a ball of paste small enough for Kira to ingest without needing a drink of water without even hardly thinking about it, but she refrained, no matter her rancour for him, both as agent of the damned Tree and because of the way he was always so subtly nasty and contrary to her friend, always so sure that he was in the right simply because of his connection to Yggdrasil. She refrained because he was the Tree's agent and she didn't want to set a precedent of killing off the chosen representatives of rival Grand Chimera and also because despite how much he irritated her and her friend, he was still here as an ally when they needed as many of those as they could get. Leviathan did not understand the insanity that governed the humans interelationships to each other on a grand scale... they called it "politics"... and had no real desire to pollute her mind with such a concept anyway, but it was sufficient to her that Kira needed Kunsai around for the time being even though he did not like him personally and had no overt influence or control over his actions.

Leviathan floated at the center of the gathering swarm of her minions and vassals, circled close at hand by the restored Gorefin, his burnt and blistered skin and fin stump having been replaced and regrown by the human's technological skills, until he was as good as new and maybe even slightly better. Certainly he would never look at humans the same way again, they had become much more than curiosities and occasional food items to him after their entirely unexpected intercession upon his behalf. Lurking below her bulk, hiding even from the wan light that filtered through the telekinetically conjured stormclouds, her other chief lieutenant, the Lady of the Abyssal Depths, Charbydis the Kraken, watched the almost playful antics of the Lord of the Upper Reaches and seethed quietly to herself. Second only to Leviathan herself in terms of telekinetic strength, and tied with Gorefin, Charbydis was more than twice the size of her rival and counterpart and almost a third the size of her Queen, though most of that was in her ten tentacular arms. Uncomfortable with light and the lack of crushing pressure, Charbydis kept out of sight and used her powers to compress the water comfortingly around herself, in a semblance of the bone splintering pressure of her assigned domain, the bottom mile or so of the ocean.

The seas around these three noble Chimera teemed and frothed with other subordinate Chimera of all species, from lowly fish to lesser versions of Gorefin and Charbydis and even a few neo-whale Chimera's that dwarfed everyone but Leviathan herself, though they lacked much in the way of distinguishing psychic might. And swarming around them were the most combat capable of her minions and the creatures of her domain, sharks and whales and squid and giant crabs and sea serpents and the largest varieties of fish and jellyfish, an horde of ocean life that covered the sea surface so thickly a human might have been able to walk for three miles in any direction across the water's surface on their backs without getting their feet wet, if Leviathan had so willed it. And the humans were here in force as well, though their numbers could never equal the legions of the Ocean Mother, not even if every human alive was mustered into one spot at one time! But what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in individual power, in their way, because of their "machines" and "technology" each human warrior was as great a threat as a Chimera, to one degree or other.

Kira had his Gundam, as his special machine was called, and his supporters numbered almost two dozen lesser machines of various sorts, plus several hundred human warriors afoot or in combat hovercraft or VTOL aircraft... all terms she borrowed from his mind to qualify the strange "not-fish" that the humans used to make up for their inability to swim or fly or move quickly. Such was her size that all of them could comfortably ride upon her back, with room to spare, and she tolerated their presence for the sake of her friend. Kunsai, the bastard Tree's agent, had brought a similar force of about thirty humanoid war machines plus his own Gundam, in addition to about a hundred dismounted warriors in other vehicles, including a detchament of Wendigos led by Erk the High Shaman, dispersed upon the backs of her other large Chimera and in their not-fish transports. This was a double bonus in her mind, it kept Yggdrasil's agent mostly away from her, and occupied the whale Chimera, whom would otherwise be showing off or attempting to sidle up to her... they weren't quite the same species, but they were close enough to find her irresistably attractive and would no doubt attempt to mate with her if she allowed them. She had no interest in procreating at this time, should it even be possible, and was glad she didn't have to waste energy smacking them around to convey her desire for privacy.

Leviathan understood that messages had been sent to the Caller's newly designated agent and his forces as well, but they had not replied as yet, somewhat to the relief of Kira and Kunsai, who, if they agreed on nothing else, agreed on the feelings of hatred for the Caller's representative, just as Leviathan and Yggdrasil agreed upon their distaste for the Caller himself. With the Caller still recovering from his injury, Leviathan was glad of the peace on the psychic plane, and Kira seemed perfectly happen to continue on with his plan without the one known as "Frost" being around to contribute. Galvanized by her desire to strike proactively against the Oosen before they organized a hunt for her, Kira had decided with a heavy heart that it had finally come time to strike at the throat of the Oosen presence upon New Eden. This vital point, through which a life giving supply of blood and nutrients... troops and supplies... flowed to the Oosen war effort was called Orb, and it used to be Kira's home before he chose to become an Edenite in spirit as well as body. Leviathan had felt his sadness over the decision, but with the war growing ever more serious with each passing day, it was only a matter of time before Kunsai or Frost decided to attack Orb anyway, and they would not show the mercy that Kira was prepared to extend.

His plan revolved around destroying Orb's ability to militarily contribute to the Reclamation War, destroying its warship harbors, weapon manufacturing industry and most importantly the giant structure called a "mass driver" which was apparently key to putting supplies and troops back up into space with ease. Without the mass driver, Morganroete or its naval facilities and fleets, Orb would cease to be a strategic asset for the Oosen while at the same time seriously hindering their ability to resupply and redeploy troops from one part of New Eden to another, which would take pressure off the fighting forces of Urbanis, Borealis and Garden City and give them time to consolidate for another major blow against the Oosen main bases at Heaven's Base, Gibraltar or Carpentaria. But most importantly, Kira was planning on doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties, knowing from his own experience that attacking Orb's populace and infastructure would only breed a stronger enemy in the future. This had to be as bloodless yet comprehensively destructive as possible, so that Orb would decide it was more worth their while to rebuild their nation rather than continue to fight in the war. More of the human "politics" thing.

Kunsai and his group did not agree with Kira's plan, but considering that they were relying upon Leviathan and her forces for much of their combat strength, and she was subordinating herself to Kira's expertise for this matter, the Tree's agent didn't have much choice but to grit his teeth and bow his head. She could feel his frustration echoed by Yggdrasil itself, and that alone was enough to make her glad to play along. The Tree wasn't happy about things, and as far as she was concerned, that meant they were doing something right. It was going to be slow going on the way to Orb, because of the need to remain on the surface and moving smoothly enough not to dislodge her passengers, while also maintaining the concealing stormclouds that protected them from observation and easy attack by the Oosen flying not-fish in the night-sea above the sky. If everything went right, which Kira had assured her it would not, then Orb would never even know they were being targeted by an attack until they were already at the Glasshouse. Kira was going to assume, just to be safe though, that Orb was perfectly aware that they were coming. Better to plan for the worst than hope for the best, as one of his vassals, a man named Daveron, had insisted.

And so the mostly biologically flotilla headed south, moving faster than the prevailing currents but not so fast as to leave the shadow of the stormclouds, forged from water telekinetically lifted and evaporated from the ocean's suface by Leviathan and her lieutenants. They were planning to arrive at around midday of the following day, and the attack would commence two hours later, after giving the Orbites a chance to evacuate their military facilities. Should they chose not to do so, well, then Kira would be even more sad than he already was, but he was resolute nonetheless in carrying out his chosen plan of action. He would plead with his former friends and try and make them understand that this was the only way he could spare them from the full horror of the Reclamation War. Foolish it might be, but he still held out hope that they would come around and realize that they were fighting on the wrong side of this conflict. And if they wouldn't be convinced, then he would have to stain his hands with their blood in all likelihood, and that would become his burden to bear for the future... but such were the rigors of being an Executor of New Eden...

xxxx

**New Eden, Southern Asia, Himalayan Foothills, January 21st, 11:46 am**

"Man, why we always gotta get assigned to all the shit jobs?" Private First Class William "Spyro" Meyer, of the Forlorn Hopers squad, complained bitterly, as he hacked with his issued mono-machete at some of the overgrown vegetation that threatened to all but smother them as they forged their way slowly forward. Even though he'd only been using the arm length hunk of laser sharpened steel for about an hour, already the blade was growing dull and chipped from constant use against the hard-as-hell branches and leathery vines that made up the majority of the plant life in this area. Both machete and Sypro were heavily splattered with pulpy plant remains and sprays of sticky sap, mostly in greens and yellows, though there was enough white stuff in there to account for the crude term that the squad had coined for plant clearing duty... getting your "Borealite bukkake". Spyro grimaced as a swipe of his blade slashed open a cluster of vines, dousing his faceplate with another spray of watery brownish gunk, like liquid shit, and though he whiped at his faceplate with the back of one arm, that just replaced the brown shit with green and white shit! He chewed on the bott of his cig and grumbled something obscene under his breath, and raised his arm to hack at the plants again.

"I wouldn't say that we get ALL the shit jobs." Corporal Ryan "Rico" Jones, squad leader for the Forlorn Hopers, replied with a grunt of effort as he too slashed and hacked at the undergrowth a few meters away from Spyro, close enough to easily assist his friend should he encounter some flora that was a little more vigorous in its defenses than just poison thorns and mildly acidic sap, which was still eating the blue paint off their Survivor pattern armor and scouring the metal beneath shiny, but far enough away that he didn't have to worry about getting caught in a wild swing from a mono-machete, which would cut through his armor a good deal easier than it did most of the things it was actually intended to clear. "Though this job certainly IS shit, I'll give you that much, Spyro."

"Yeah, it could be worse." Private First Class Dudly "Dud" Grant chimed in, from where he was following several paces behind his two comrades, grenade launcher cradled alertly in his arms as he focused most of his attention on scanning the surroundings for any hint of enemy activity, or, more likely, pissed off animals looking to make a snack of some Blues. "We could be back in the fucking desert with those godawful scorpion monsters again."

"Or at fucking Porta Potty." Private Matt "Jeebus" Charles, the fourth member of their veteran team, added, sweeping his Cutlass linear assault rifle around as he checked for the same things as Dud was, in addition to looking behind them to make sure they didn't get out of line of sight of the main body of the combat engineering unit they were escorting and the rest of their company as well. Not that there was much chance of that, given how slowly they were progressing, though in truth progress wasn't really the goal of their little clearance operation. They were out on flank point duty, meaning it was their job to move slightly ahead of and to the side of the main force to serve as an early warning alarm in case of Eddie forces or large beasties. They just had to clear enough of a path to squeeze themselves through, which even with only mono-machetes to use was still easier and faster than clearing the wide path the main force was doing, wide enough to allow their supply and construction vehicles passage. Even the name of that benighted base made Jeebus shiver uncomfortably, nightmarish figures skittering through his imagination before he locked himself down again.

"You guys're just illustrating my fucking... point!" Meyer retorted with a grunt of effort, sawing his machete back and forth through a tangled bunch of spiny bush branches. "We been to all these fucked up hellholes, and where do they rotate us after that? Point Fuckup on the Gibraltar coastline! And when we somehow survive that clusterfuck, do we get a break? Do we get some home leave so we can bone some cute girls and get wasted on expensive booze for a week straight? No, no we fucking don't, because we're fucking elite motherfuckers, veterans and they need us to babysit these pansy-ass RIP engineers as they establish a goddamn FOB (Forward Observation Base) in these fucked up hills that nobody gives a flying FUCK about! We get ALL the shit jobs, I tell you, it ain't right!"

"We didn't get fucking Borealis or that cataclysmic ass-fucking that was Neo-Miami." Ryan pointed out between gasping for breath as he hacked his way through a root or sapling tree as thick as his arm. It took a good minute and a half of steady whacking at it before it finally snapped and collapsed to the side so he could move on. "I hear they deployed ten thousand heavy infantry to Miami, and they took away less than two hundred after the battle was done. And that was supposed to be a solid FEAR op, all the best tech and weapons and armor and shit, in the midst of a city so fucking irradiated that you'd end up glowing like Rudolph's nose if you stopped to take a piss. No matter how you slice it, any op with more than 95 percent KIA rate is far shittier than anything we've yet had to do."

"Keyword being... yet." Dud threw in, shifting from ebullience to morose fatalism. "I'm sure they'll find something else fucked up for us to do soon as we get done with this softcore escort bullshit. We're only infantry after all... if we ain't about to die horribly for no good reason, we ain't doing our jobs right in High Command's eyes."

Ryan was about to reply when he got a comm from the Top, First Sergeant "Blunderbuss" Blundquist, the senior NCO of their company and something of a mentor figure to the Forlorn Hopers squad. Which wasn't really a squad, being only four members it was more of a fire team, but until they got some more recruits that were worth a damn for more than sopping up Eddie bullets, the four of them were it. "Rico, Top, time to pull back and get some rest. Fourth Squad is moving up to spell you guys. We're getting close to the hills, and you know what that means..."

"The hills got eyes, aye, Top." Ryan replied, signalling his friends to halt and regroup, as he gladly sheathed his pulp stained machete.

"Eyes, and probably emplaced plasma weaponry, knowing the goddamn Eddies." Blundquist answered, sounding like he wanted to spit, but that wasn't the best of ideas inside a suit of environment armor. "I want my best fighters rested for when things go pear shaped." There was no doubt in the Top's tone... or Ryan's mind... that things would go wrong. They always did, in one way or another. This was Eddie-land after all, the best you could hope for was just plain fucked up. Hopefully this wrong would just be some nasty Eddie predator or critter, and not a Legio out looking for some easy game. The Eddies were rumored to have a major base or city somewhere around this area of the world, and though orbital scanning had yet to find even a hint of it, there was no denying that there were a lot of Eddie military force sightings in this section of Asia. That was a secondary purpose of their current mission actually... if they found any hint of major Eddie concentrations, High Command would all but scream and faint with joy.

After being relieved by the seven members of Fourth Squad, who went by the overwrought moniker of the "Flameblades", their emblem a fire wreathed sword that was actually kinda stylish and might be enviable, if it wasn't so goddamn bright and obvious that it negated what little camouflage capabilities their armor already had, Ryan and the Forlorn Hopers retreated towards the main convoy unit. Their battered and often repainted blue on blue on blue armor wouldn't win the hearts and minds of anyone, but at the same time it didn't make them out to be obvious targets or give the enemy any easy way to pick them out from a horde of other, newer and less skilled infantrymen. They were willing to trade some bling for increased survivability, and in its way, their lack of squad emblem was their squad emblem... the new recruits were usually so afire to "brand" themselves as part of a veteran squad that they didn't stay unadorned for more than a few days. Any recruit eager to throw away one of the best defenses on a modern battlefield... his or her indistinguishability from others... wasn't someone that would last long in the Forlorn Hopers anyway.

The main unit consisted of the bulk of their infantry company, which went by the callsign of "Vought", one of those words that didn't mean anything to anyone but the jerks safe behind their desks at the administrative offices up in space, as well as the Reclaimer Initiative Pioneers... RIPs... unit that they were escorting. Ryan and his buddies clambered aboard their trusty squad Gladiator IFV, choosing to ride atop the armored vehicle for the moment, since though it exposed them to enemy fire, should there be any, it also meant they could get into cover faster and without worrying about getting caught in the Glad... in the middle of the goddamn Eddie jungle it wasn't always easy or even possible to unass from an IFV because of the trees and bushes and shit. Especially with the way the vehicles were all but forced to travel in single file, a few RIP transport or construction vehicles spaced between each Gladiator or Chariot APC from the Voughts, because clearing a wider path would have bogged them down for weeks and the High Command wanted this FOB built in the next few days, so they could start sending scouting expeditions deeper into the mountains proper, in search of this fabled "Garden City" that was supposed to be the Eddie capital city.

RIPs wearing special powered bipedal construction machines, MOOSE suits, for MObile Omnitasking Servo-Exoskeleton, which were basically like forklifts that you wore instead of drove, and could be mounted with a lot more different kinds of tools, such as chainsaws, plasma cutters, grasping claws and chemical sprayers for defoliation or MAIDEN distrubtion duties, worked at clearing the path for the vehicles. Their progress was sometimes measured in mere meters per hour, especially if there were large trees or thick bushes in their planned path, which accounted for why the unhurried pace of the point flankers was enough to keep them comfortably ahead of the main column. Sometimes there was just no choice but to actually detour backwards a bit and cut a new path, when they encountered one of the really big trees, with a trunk wider than a Chariot was long, basically a huge wooden wall that could take days to cut or burn through. MAIDEN would clear the obstacle quickly enough, but the resultant heat bloom and smoke cloud would draw attention fro every Eddie within a fifteen mile radius, so they tried not to do that, instead using the nanites to clear the piles of mulched and chopped ground vegetation so that it wouldn't get jammed in the wheels or treads of the vehicles. The mulched remains burned hot and fast and released next to no smoke, so this was deemed safe, and in any case it was necessary if they didn't want the vehicles locked up after a few miles of plant gunk jammed into their drive shafts.

It was starting to become more clear to Ryan and others why the Eddies had so relatively few armored vehicles in their Legio ranks, because of the forests which blanketed such huge sections of Asia and Europe, moving such vehicles from place to place was such a huge pain in the ass it really wasn't worth it. Africa was better, as was most of North America, but South America was even worse than Asia by most reckoning, and though there was a small Eddie city down by the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of the continent, nobody was worried about actually going there until all the other Eddie cities were conquered or destroyed. As things were, they were already redeploying the bulk of the heavy ground armor, like Viking MBTs and Titan superheavy tanks, as well as all the Land Battleships, to Gibaltar, simply because they couldn't be used effectively anywhere else. The Solar Knights were supposed to be picking up the slack in close heavy support positions, since Mobile Suits could get through the forests easier than most other vehicles because of their humanoid shapes, but they were having so many goddamn morale problems that they spent more time in "disciplinary review" at bases than they did in the field.

The driver's hatch of the Hoper's Gladiator creaked open and First Sergeant Blundquist clambered out to join his favored squad. Of course the Top spent time with all the squads and units in Vought Company, that was part of his job, but when things went rough, he always felt best with the Forlorn Hopers at his back, after the fiasco of Porta Panama. Truthfully he didn't feel that they should be with him right now, no matter how comforting their presence was. They'd been shuttlecocked from one major combat zone to another pretty much ever since first deployment, including special tours of duty like Porta Panama, and they were long overdue for a rotation to a lighter duty, such as garrison duty at a Theatre HQ or even training duty back up in space. They'd started out green as grass, but they'd pulled together and learned the hardest lessons combat could teach, and they could help a lot of other greenies learn the same lessons faster if given a chance, which could save hundreds of lives. But instead they were out here, lending their "expertise" to the establishment of this FOB, which was a pretty important mission, no doubt, but all the same, they could only give so much at a time.

Spyro was showing the strain the most, smoking even more than usual, and getting prety close to mutinious in his grumbling, not that Blundquist was of any mind to report the infractions. Sypro was a rough sort, but he fought like ten bastards with their asses on fire, and he was a goddamn artist with the flamer, one of the most effective close combat weapons against the Eddies. But it was obvious in all of his proteges, from Dud getting all introspective and fatalistic, to Jeebus getting a lot more attacks of the shakes, to Rico just getting quiet and standoffish at times. They were tired. They were sick of being on the sharp end all the time. They were good soldiers... some of the best he'd ever served with, and he'd served with a lot... but all men have their limits, the end of their ropes, and the Forlorn Hopers were near the end of theirs. Blundquist resolved to dig in his heels next time they got back to a base, and scream bloody murder if they got another field assigment before some R and R time. He'd go shit on the Captain's desk if that was what he had to do to get some attention from the right people.

And with the current celebratory attitude of High Command in the wake of the "impressive victory" at Neo-Miami and the supposed extermination of one of the Eddie's "god-totem creatures", maybe he'd have more ammo to use for convincing people that it was time to let the veterans get a break for a while, not just the Forlorn Hopers, but all of the guys and gals with more than a single battle under their belts. If the Eddies really were on the back foot, surely that meant they could give some of their own people a breather now, right? Of course the problem with that was the somewhat strained note he detected in the official victory declarations, and the fact that despite the "celebratory attitude", operational activity had only intensified in the wake of the recent victory, rather than decreased. There was a flow to military operations you see, and when a major victory was scored, usually things calmed down for a bit, people got rotated home, so forth and so on because some breathing room had been achieved. On a loss or inconclusive engagement on the other hand, everyone panicked and stepped up operations to keep up appearances of strength and purpose and to not let people dwell on what happened. So no matter how much they shouted "we kicked ass" from the rooftops, the bare facts were, they were acting like it was more like "we got our asses kicked, quick, distract the troops"!

Which might account for why the brass was pushing this FOB, among other things, so hard. Maybe they had killed the Caller, maybe they hadn't, but the facts were they'd committed a major force and lost almost all of it in the process, which wasn't really a victory by standard definition. It was enough to keep the civilians back home from screaming bloody murder, but they needed something real, a burning Eddie city or something, and they needed it fast. Blundquist shook his head and sighed... it was more and more looking like the brass had been running the whole war with their heads up their butts, again. It was enough to make even the most hardcore grunt cry a little. Didn't matter how badass a soldier you were, if your leadership was fucked, everybody was fucked. And the leadership was undoubtedly fucked, especially the Solar Knights. Motion in the weeds off to the side of the Glad brought his head up sharply, and dropped his hands to his Cutlass, but then he got a better look at the thing and relaxed, a little.

It was an AUTO, a remote controlled tracked security vehicle used by FEAR and the RI to bolster their uniformed security forces with heavier firepower, even in tight spaces like forests or urban zones. In truth the regular USN army could really use the things, they were heavily armed, decently armored and very versatile, but they cost more than the brass were willing to pay and required training they weren't willing to pay for either to use properly... even with all but unlimited resources, High Command was always willing to cut costs when possible. Plainly put, training the two extra infantry soldiers to use heavy weapons was cheaper than buying a single AUTO, much less training the operator, and if you happened to lose those two troopers more often than you would an AUTO, well, the Second Earth Colonies were all but overflowing with desperate people in need of a paying job, so there was no shortage of recruits for the infantry. The cold blooded math of High Command. People's lives were cheaper than advanced war machines.

Not that such math stopped the paramilitary forces of RI or FEAR from using the things extensively of course, since they didn't have access to large reservoirs of people, they had to make each soldier count more, and the AUTO was a great way to give a single person the firepower of an entire squad without even directly risking their life. The AUTO's that the RIP convoy sported were equipped with a 25mm gatling gun in the top mounted turret, with a pair of flamethrowers on side sponson turrets and a triplet of front mounted Cutlass type linear assault rifles, in an armored package about fifty percent bigger than a large motorcycle, capable of moving as fast as a running man over flat ground, and at slower speeds in any terrain ranging from snowfields to swamps and everything in between. They were painted flat grey with patterns of brown and green camouflage to mimic leaves, though they ran hot enough that they showed up easily on thermal scanners so the camouflage was more an afterthought than anything. Blundquist watched the AUTO churn along for a few seconds, before he dismissed the machine from his attention. The convoy was slowing to a halt as the MOOSE suits encountered a larger tree and had to work together to bring it down, chopping with mono-saws and then filling the wound with MAIDEN to break it open, then more cutting and more nanites, until the trunk would split apart and the tree would fall.

It was tough hearing anything over the vibrating roars of the convoy vehicle's engines, and the near distance scream of the mono-chainsaws, but all the same, even when they didn't know exactly what it was that they'd heard, Blundquist and the Forlorn Hopers were leaping from the top of the Gladiator and rolling into the bushes before they even realized that it was gunfire that they'd heard. One of Vought Company's junior officers, the lieutenant in command of fourth Platoon, suddenly sagged backwards and slumped in the cupola of the Chariot APC that he'd been standing in, his head and upper torso mangled by the impact of several large caliber linear rifle rounds fired from somewhere in the trees up ahead. "EDDIE'S IN THE TREES!" Ryan bawled over the all hands channel as loud as he could, the standard warning cry for troops in the forest coming under attack by an unknown number of foes from an unknown position. And more often than not, the Eddies WERE in the trees anyway. Vought company reacted at once, the RIPs only slightly less quickly... there weren't many rookies assigned to this operation, even if they weren't all exactly real veterans.

The AUTO's rumbled forward, their smaller frames able to maneuver where the Gladiators and Chariots were still boxed in by the undergrowth, their top mounted chaingun style turrets craning upwards to loose blind volleys of large caliber munitions into the foliage and lower branches overhead, hoping to either get lucky or at least force the Eddie snipers to move and potentially reveal their positions. Obviously they'd targeted the wrong section of trees, or the Eddies had already moved, because several linear rounds clanged and spranged off one of the AUTO's in reply, denting the armor plate but failing to penetrate entirely. And then a wild, ululating cry, somewhere between a bellow and a scream, echoed throughout the forest environs, and Ryan felt his blood chill, because near as he could determine, the sound had come from behind the convoy... which meant they were probably surrounded. This wasn't just a harassment attack, it was every soldier's worst nightmare when on patrol... a planned ambush, and they were right in the fucking middle of it!

That unearthly cry seemed to be some sort of prearranged signal, because the convoy suddenly came under heavy attack from all sides. Huge bodies moved through the undergrowth from the back flank, trampling and crashing through the undergrowth like a man might trample through a field of tall weeds... making a lot of noise but not being all that slowed down by it. The bulk of the Gladiator and other vehicles prevented Ryan from getting much of a good look at those attackers, other than noting they were damned big and carrying large club like weapons in their hands. He had other things to occupy his attention, and that of his friends, as their position came under attack in an unexpected manner that had him goggling in shock for a moment. Flights of arrows... actual arrows, with heads made from wood or bone and brightly colored feathers for fletching, were sailing down out of the trees from all over this flank of the convoy and clattering against the vehicle armor... and in some cases, sticking into it like pins driven into hard styrofoam. Primitive the weapons might be, but their warheads were oft as not carved from the teeth of Cold Hunters, and were more than sharp enough to pierce the Oosen armor, as several RIPs learned to their gurgling dismay as arrows took them in armpits and at neck and through the faceplate when they thought to brave the storm to shoot back.

The most disconcerting thing about the archery assault wasn't the fact that they were getting shot at by bow and arrow... obviously the weapons were powerful enough to be a threat, as those RIPs proved... but that Ryan, for the life of him, couldn't see where a single one of the archers was shooting from! Some of them seemed to be up in the trees, others down among the undergrowth, but despite loosing arrows with great speed and accuracy, they remained completely camouflaged, there were no targets to shoot back at! The forest filled with blue-red light for a moment as an Eddie heavy weapon, a hyper-impulse rifle, flared and blew one of Vought company's Chariot APC's end over end with a direct hit on its forward compartment. So the giant things with clubs were hitting them from the rear, the hidden archers were at either side, and the technologically advanced Eddies were to the front. At least there were no mobile suits in evidence...

And then Ryan's finger involuntarily tightened upon the trigger of his Mauler, loosing several ill aimed shots into the undergrowth to no visible effect, and he cursed at what he thought was a lapse in concentration before he saw the way the rest of his squad was also recoverying from a series of involuntary flinches and shudders. "PSYKE-OUT!" Ryan screamed into the squad comm, informing his friends as to a possible psychic attack by their foes. There wasn't much the warning would do other than tell them to watch themselves, but often that was enough, as most of the Eddie mind tricks took advantage of distracted or weary minds to influence you to do something. And those that were more overt, well, there generally wasn't much you could do to stop that no matter how alert and concentrated you were, but usually those types of attacks only affected a single person at a time.

But then Ryan felt himself flinch again, his buttcheeks clenching with some sort of instinctive reaction to something he was only half aware of, a primal fear welling up inside and paralyzing him for a moment, as he heard the tail end of the most vicious scream he could have ever imagined echoing from the near distance at the front of the convoy. Goosebumps crawled all up and down his arms and he found himself hugging the ground, all but sobbing with terror just short of pants wetting, but it didn't feel like a normal psychic attack. This was just a sound, a sound that hit just the right frequency tones to prompt a subconscious fear reaction in humans. But as awful as the sound was, and it kept getting louder and more insistent with each passing second, a large part of a soldier's training is about controlling their instinctive reactions in the stress of combat, and one of those reactions was of course fear. The sound was definitely debilitating, but Ryan couldn't afford to let it become disabling, or else he'd just lie there curled up in a ball until death came to find him!

Reaching out with one shaking hand, Ryan grabbed Meyer by the shoulder, both shaking him free of his own terror and finding a point to focus on to steady himself in the process. Seeing that Spyro was back in the game, Ryan did the same with Dud and Jeebus, Jeebus especially being shaken by things, but they were quick to grit their teeth and buckle down once they'd snapped out of the initial reaction. Top was already snapped out of it on his own, though he winced a little bit more with each repetition of the sound. The drivers of the AUTO's and the APC's and IFV's didn't seem as affected by the sound, perhaps insulated by their machinery, and they were picking up the slack from the dazed and disoriented infantry. The thudding chunder of the twinned 30mm linear autocannon turret heralded a spray of armor piercing shells that brought the flight of arrows in their area to a halt, even before the tank commander unleashed a pair of 75mm anti-armor rockets from the turret racks, blooms of fire and shrapnel ripping through the foliage above them, scattering both plant matter and at least one small body, like a child, to crash smouldering to the forest floor.

From the sound of things, the thickest fighting and heaviest concentration of Eddies was up at the front, so that was where the Forlorn Hopers headed, confident in the ability of the Gladiator to contain the more primitive attackers. A few arrows whistled by their heads and bodies as they stoop-ran forward, but then the Glad's autocannons opened up again in furious retaliation, and the potshots stopped. Throwing themselves into cover behind a large tree stump that was still oozing sap from its amended trunk, Ryan peeked out of cover, along with the Top, to assess where they might make the most difference in the fighting. Things were a fucking mess, as par for the course when dealing with the Eddies, who didn't have the courtesy to stay at range and turn things into a question of superior firepower, oh no, they had to charge forward and get in your teeth and make it hard for you to do anything but hope the poor bastards they were hitting got lucky. There seemed to be a significant number of Eddies in the trees with rapidfire and heavier weapons such as beam cannons or grenade launchers, providing cover to a small knot of Eddies pressing into close quarters combat.

Still, despite the greater weight of fire from the supporting forces, it was the meleers that were doing the most damage, tearing into huddles of RIPs who were half insensate with atavistic terror and cutting them to ribbons in a matter of seconds! Ryan winced as he saw one MOOSE suited forester swing his large chainsaw blade at a half seen Eddie, only to have the top two thirds of the rumbling tool fly off in a shower of sparks, buzzing chain derailing with the sound of a bucket of bolts falling down a cement staircase, shortly before the MOOSE itself, and the man inside it, fell apart, neatly cut in half at mid torso by a shrieking blade that moved so fast it could not be seen by the naked human eye. Every USN soldier on the field flinched instinctively as that blade shrieked, their courage faltering just a little more than before. And then the horrid sound was drowned out by the thrumming blare of chainblades revving, louder and louder until it felt like your skull was shaking apart, as a very visible Eddie strode into the fight, a chainsaw edged sword in either gauntleted fist, his armor carved with pictures of human souls burning in agony. A Praetorian.

"Shoot that one!" Ryan ordered, both because Praetorians were high value targets and because he was coming their way and Ryan really didn't want to tangle with that motherfucker up close. The Praetorian was still outside the optimal range of his Mauler, but Jeebus and Dud and Top all opened fire, 5mm Cutlass rounds sparking and splintering as they struck the reinforced plating of the Eddie's assault armor and deflected away, barely even slowing him. Gelid flames of dark blue-purple color exploded from Dud's incendiary grenade, sticking to the striding Eddie like hot jello, but if the Praetorian was overly bothered by being doused in napalm and blazing metal flakes, he didn't show it. His armor alight, his whirring swords spitting fragments of flames like sparks from a forge, the Praetorian continued to plod forward at a confident walk towards the thickest section of the impromptu USN fighting line. Suddenly his gauntlets came up, nozzles beneath them opening up and coughing fat sheets of liquid fire in wide cones in front of the Eddie, setting the forest floor alight in a growing lake of napalm, the light and heat making the USN troops scramble backwards and avert their eyes, even as the Praetorian marched right through his hellfire like it was spring rain!

"I want that armor!" Spyro yelled enviously, as he added the countering stream of his own flamethrower to the Eddie's handiwork, trying to overwhelm whatever cooling system the Eddie's armor incorporated that allowed it to walk through what was basically a forest fire in full swing without pause! "Why do the Eddies always get all the cool shit?" He complained further, hosing his stream of orange-red fire back and forth across the Eddie, who if anything, just seemed to be amused by it all. Jeebus saw something on the shoulders of the Eddie deploy forward all of a sudden, and though it was hideously dangerous, he tackled Spyro to the ground, just moments before a pair of 30mm razor edged saw discs whirred through the space where Spyro had just been standing, launched from the EMC's on the Praetorian's backback. The deadman switch on Spyro's flamethrower cut off his flame the moment his hand left the trigger grip, saving both him and Jeebus from being immolated in their own fire, though they did get a little singed nonetheless.

The Praetorian shock trooper was well in range for Ryan's shotgun now, but the flames were so hot and bright that every time he tried to stick his head out of cover to take the shot, he had to flinch backwards before he could get a good bead. Finally, signally to Dud and the Top, Ryan palmed a frag grenade and hurled it blindly over the tree, followed by frags from the other two as well. Eddies with TK... telekinesis... could sometimes catch a grenade in midair and hurl it back at you, but no Eddie anyone had yet met could catch three grenades at once, on different random trajectories! One explosion went off way to the side... Ryan had guessed right about the Praetorian's abilities, but the other two exploded nearby, shockwaves throwing clumps of jellified flame around like a firework. The revving chainsaw noise didn't go away, but it did get a lot quieter, and when Ryan peeked again, he saw that the Eddie was in slow retreat, obviously dazed, his armor scarred and scratched by the close range frags. He was just drawing a bead on the bastard, ready to blow a head sized hole through his entire goddamn existence with the Mauler, when the banshee shriek of that strange blade sounded again, practically right in his ears or so it seemed, and Ryan's shot went wide again.

His ears felt like they were bleeding from the trauma of that grating sound, even as his bowels tried to turn to water, thankfully he'd emptied himself the last time he had a moment before they broke their temporary camp of the night before. Jeebus was down, not hurt but bawling like a baby all the same, his Cutlass forgotten by his knees as he clamped his hands to the side of his head and yowled like a kicked cat, temporarily unhinged by the sonic fear impulse, and he was far from the only normally brave man so affected among the USN forces. This sound didn't make any account for personal bravery or combat experience, it just smashed right into those mostly forgotten instinctual reflexes from the caevman days, the ones that said "DANGER COMES! MOVE AND DIE!" Even the most fearless man who would laugh in the face of death was vulnerable to an attack on the subconscious instincts, it just plain got to you, the same way humans were biologically programmed to not be able to ignore a baby crying, it just leapt out at you no matter how much you tried to ignore it, which was why it was so annoying! Or in this case, blood freezingly terrifying!

Ryan tasted blood and realized he'd bitten his lips to avoid screaming just like Jeebus was, the sharp pain all that brought him back from the edge of his own fear coma. Meyer looked like he'd be whacked upside the head with a brick, he wasn't incapacitated but he wasn't active either, and even the Top was down on one knee, shaking his head and gasping for breath. Dud was the only other person who seemed to be somewhat in control of himself, which was kind of ironic given how nervy he'd used to be, but that near death encounter with the BBB had really scared some steel into his spine, and even though he looked like he was literally pissing his armor and his knees were trembling, he still had his grenade launcher to hand and met Ryan's gaze about as squarely as could be expected. They nodded to each other and, as one, popped up to confront this newest threat. And also as one, they froze like they'd been petrified once they actually got a good look at the guy, who was all of a short stone's throw away.

It wasn't that the guy was big, maybe a little taller than Ryan was, and maybe about as muscular, perhaps even a little bit less. And he didn't have shockingly colored hair or skin, just lank brown and pale respectively, about as common as you could get in a modern human. But nonetheless, even facing away from them as he was, the sheer presence of this man stopped both of the soldiers square in their tracks, as firmly as if they'd been encased in solid ice. It had to be some kind of psychic effect, Ryan dimly realized, this aura of fear and carnage had no grounding in the actual physical presence of the Eddie, but all the same, the sense of bloodlust, of merciless hatred, of darkness and evil and pain... it was like a serpent coiled around his chest that was slowly crushing him to death, making it hard to breathe, much less think or act! The way the Eddie stood, seemingly casual, almost indolent, his black and red crystalline scythe sloped across one shoulder like a fishing pole, his attitude was so mocking and disrespectful that it made Ryan's blood boil even as it tried to freeze solid as he finally caught a glimpse of the guy's face, splashed with slowly drying blood, his eyes which burned with the sheer essence of madness. This guy wasn't just crazy... he made psychopaths look like psychiatrists! He made Ryan want to gibber, cry, scream and knock himself unconscious all at once... anything but keep looking this creature in human flesh in the eyes!

He was vaguely aware of the Mauler falling out of his hands and thudding to the ground at his feet, and also of Dud on his knees beside him, choking and twitching in some sort of terror-seizure brought on by his own glimpse into the mad Eddie's eyes, but it wasn't until his chest started to hurt that Ryan realized he'd actually, impossibly, forgotten to breathe for the last few seconds, such was the impact of the madman's mere gaze! He sucked in air, burning like glass shards in his throat, as he staggered back a step, just barely avoiding falling flat on his ass as he struggled to unscramble his mind. The psychic fear aura continued to hammer into him, like a bloody miasma choking his nostrils, but the brutal fact of it was that it was the moment of connection between their gazes that had him tasting bile and feeling like his entire body had been dunked in electrified acid! His body was wetting itself so hard his dick hurt because he couldn't piss anymore, his bladder was dry heaving! He'd just stared into the abyss of a lost human soul, of a true monster, and this was his body trying to stabilize itself in the aftermath of the abyss looking back!

It was over, Ryan realized, slowly sinking to his knees, his arms and legs trembling like he had hypothermia. He couldn't fight this thing. Nobody could. Not like this. You'd have to have no nervous system at all to stand up to this combination of sonic fear impulse, psychic aura and the madness of those eyes. He could hear the battle continuing around him, distantly, like it was happening in a dream, his face wet with tears, his lips welling with blood from where he was unconsciously chewing on them to keep his screams contained. The mad Eddie with the scythe wasn't even around anymore, he'd gone off to cut his way into... and through... the side of a Gladiator, cutting himself a door through the tires and side armor with four quick strokes of his polearm, twirling it so fast Ryan couldn't even tell where one ended and another started. As the scythe swung, it keened, releasing that sonic screech that was haunting the battlefield, like a hungry bird of prey diving down upon a frightened young rabbit. There was a squad holed up inside the Gladiator, and Ryan looked on in dull horror as the scythe wielding monster waded into them, braying with obscene laughter, scythe already in motion despite the cramped quarters, crystalline blade cutting through vehicle, armor, flesh and bone with equal ease. It wasn't even a fight, most of the soldiers were on their knees or incapacitated with terror, but they were slaughtered all the same, hacked into bloody chunks, or ripped apart like dolls!

The battle had ceased to be one, the USN resolve broken, no, shattered by the attack of the scythe wielding madman, many of the RIP troops already doing their best to flee into the surrounding jungle, only to meet the encroaching forces of the archers and giant ape-monsters with war hammers that had attacked from the sides and rear. There was no escape, and no mercy being granted. Ape-things swung warhammers the size of stop signs with gusto, pulping anything they struck in explosions of red mist, hurling bodies ten feet or more through the air before they struck trees or came down in pieces, or else denting in the side of armored vehicles like they were made of aluminum soda cans! Smirking pygmies, the tallest of whom couldn't have topped five feet, eeled through the underbrush, their tanned skin dyed with plant pigments in black and green and rust to give them natural camouflage. They had simple wooden bows and largely empty quivers slung over their backs, and held long knives carved from predatory animal fangs, and clubs whittled from huge thigh bones in their hands, their eyes were expressionless pits of utmost blackness, and their teeth were filed to flesh tearing points. They crushed skulls and cut throats with chilling precision, butchering soldiers like they were cattle... and with teeth like that, that was probably exactly how they saw them!

Other Eddie soldiers, a hetergeneous mix of Custodians from various Legios along with those who appeared to be more rustic, hunters and woodsmen and just hard edged sorts willing to fight for their lives, slowly approached from the front, reloading their firearms and recharging their heavier beam cannons and support weaponry. They did not actively take part in the massacre that was shaping up, but neither did they look away from it, and many of them were smiling in a manner that said they did not disapprove of the horrible fate in store for the largely helpless Oosen in front of them. Many of the Memento Mori had lost family members themselves to the depredations of the RI and FEAR, there would be no sympathy here, not from them anyway. Nor from Praetorian Revv, who was hosing down transport tracks and construction equipment with his gauntlet flamethrowers, forcing the occupants to either stay hidden and slowly bake to death, or flee, to be cut down by his chainblades or the razor discs of his edged munition catapults. The Kindred were reaping a bloody harvest and already planning their night's orgy of feasting, and the Wendigo of clan One Tusk had no value for human life other than that of the Mori, they trampled and smashed soldiers like they were annoying insects or vermin!

But one person wasn't willing to just sit back and let over a hundred human beings, even Oosen, be slaughtered when they had so obviously given up any attempts at resistance. However far she may have fallen in the estimations of her peers and friends, she hadn't fallen so far as to condone mass murder of the helpless, and, Yggdrasil help her, she hoped she never would. Leaping down from her treetop perch from whence she had started the entire ambush off by sniping the Oosen officer who had so unwisely poked his head out of his APC, and providing initial covering fire as Zach and the others moved to more advantageous close combat positions, Lilia feathered her jumpjets to dissipate her downward momentum, turning a slow flip in midair as she came down squarely atop one of the few remaining operational AUTO's, its controlling operator long since incapacitated or killed, it was firing blindly in all directions according to baseline programming functions. At the rate it was going it would run out of ammunition in a minute, maybe less, but in the meanwhile it was a danger to anyone and everyone still on the field.

Ryan watched, his jaw dropping open in slightly stupified amazement, as a lithe armored form dropped from the foliage, bright blue flames leaping from her back and shoulderbades like ephermal wings to catch her fall and slow her descent. A large linear rifle of Eddie manufacture was slung at her side, its structure not visibly harmed by the wash of the thruster flames. In mid descent the flying Eddie, whose armor was covered in detailed engravings of angels and shattered chains, the helm made from a pair of upflaring angel's wings, drew a holstered sidearm and drew a long, silvery sword from a sheath built into the back of her armor, stabbing down with the sword and then slicing sideways to disable the AUTO's gyrating 25mm chaingun turret, even as she pumped a precise trio of bright green beam bolts from the pistol though its weaker top armor, liquefying the insides and igniting the remaining ammo stores. Leaping upwards, she activated her jumpthrusters once more, soaring half a hundred meters at head height before the AUTO exploded behind her, landing softly and gracefully with barely bent legs, pistol and sword still in hand.

She shouted wordlessly, a ringing cry that was as much felt in the emotions as it was heard by the ears, and fired twice into the air with her beam pistol, instantly drawing everyone's attention to her, though the Wendigo only did so grudgingly, and the Kindred needed a few moments to recognize who she was again while in the grip of combat euphoria, and remember why they had best pay her demands great heed. Seeing that she had the attention of the Memento Mori, and had, for the moment anyway, stopped the slaughter of the all but surrendered Oosen, the second Praetorian holstered her weapons and started barking orders, first to the Custodian Mori's, to set up a defensive perimeter, and then in BCPU battle cant, telling the Kindred to gather up and restrain the prisoners, without killing them. Her words were largely meaningless to the Wendigo, though One Tusk was starting to piece together the intent of human words if not their exact meaning, legacy of his superior breeding as child of the former Chief. In any case, once brought to a halt, the Wendigo began to revert to their more usual reclusive natures, and left off killing to begin bragging and admiring their respective exploits during the brief engagement.

The Forlorn Hope and First Sergeant Blundquist were dragged to their knees, assuming they weren't already on them, by the devilishly strong Kindred, whom seemed to delight in the way their new captives flinched whenever they met gazes or smiled, even though they were no longer killing them, just binding their wrists with lengths of vine and rawhide. Another barked command from Lilia had them removing the helmets of the Oosen troopers, exposing them, most for the first time, to the unadulterated environment of New Eden. Still recovering from the mind numbing effects of the madman's fear aura, Ryan felt the sharp poke of his armor's emergency medical pack as it automatically injected a large dose of Red EDEN vaccine the moment his armor integrity seals were broken. This wasn't a standard feature of Survivor armor, but any soldier worth his salt replaced the morphine shot with a vaccine shot the first chance he or she got. Pain you could deal with, Green EDEN on the other hand, wasn't something you could tough out. If your armor was breached, you wanted to make sure you weren't going Eddie, first and foremost. The vaccine would also kill most Eddie virus's and bacteria, since microorganisms didn't do so well when significant portions of their molecular structure got turned to salt.

Judging from the freaked out expressions on several faces, Ryan surmised that somehow some people hadn't picked up on this piece of common sense. There were additional emergency Red EDEN booster shots in the medical kits of the vehicles... at least there were if the crew weren't fucking morons... but most of the vehicles were little more than burning wrecks now. He tried not to suck in a breath as wiry hands all but pulled his head, as well as his helmet, right off his shoulders, reminding himself that the atmosphere wasn't actually poisonous or toxic. It was more like a disease really, and even without vaccine in you, you wouldn't feel any side effects for at least a few hours. While the air itself might not be toxic, all the smoke from the burning vehicles... and burning people... certainly hit him like a gritty metallic punch to the tongue, and the fetid wet heat of the jungle wasn't very pleasant either, sweat breaking out on his face all over as the humidity felt like it was smothering him. He couldn't see how the Eddies tolerated living in this hellhole all their lives!

And then his discomfort was momentarily forgotten, as the female Praetorian, her gender apparent even with all her armor on, stalked to the front of the huddle group of Oosen captives, about thirty all told, out of an initial group of more than a hundred, with fewer RIPs than Vought company soldiers. Even encased in all that Borealite armor, the Eddie Praetorian made many a male mouth water slightly, which might have just spoke to their degree of repression because of combat circumstance, though there was no denying that this young woman had a certain presence all her own, which drew the admiring eye quite quickly. And then she reached up to her winged helmet, a muted hiss of pressurizing gases coming when she disengaged her own seals, and then she doffed the helmet and shook out her waterfall of cerulean blue hair. It wasn't a particuarly showy gesture, but all the same, the driest part of most every young Oosen soldier was suddenly the back of his mouth as they stared at the beautiful features of the Eddie elite. There was just something about the lines of her face that appealed to most men, a softness, a femininity, a desirability, she was just eye catching. And maybe, in certain lights, she looked a little like super-idol Lacus Clyne during her pop singing days.

Un-noticing or uncaring of her new stable of admirers, Lilia fussed with her hair a moment longer to clear a snarl at the socket where her torso plating joined the helmet seals, as she hooked her helmet on an unobtrusive protrusion at her hip, there for exactly that purpose. She didn't put either hand to a weapon, but all the same, she managed to project a serious aura of command and threat as she faced down the kneeling captives authoritatively, surveying them in silence for a few seconds, until sweat that didn't have to do with the heat was showing up on many a brow. "Who's in charge here?" She asked sternly. "Are any officers still alive?" She waited a few breathes, but no one stood up. "Senior NCO's then?" She prompted.

"I'm First Sergeant Blundquist." The Top volunteered, somewhat unsteadily, even now still recovering from the shock of his encounter with Frost and Deathshriek. "Senior NCO of Vought Company."

"Well then, First Sergeant..." Lilia said, after it became apparent that no one more senior than Blundquist was present or alive. "Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn't let my friends kill every last one of you?"

Seeing that the Top was still a bit rocky and obviously caught a bit blindsided by the harsh question, and not seeing anyone else likely to open their mouths, Ryan stepped up to the plate. _What would Uncle Robert do if he were here? Well, he wouldn't be this stupid, but if he was... he'd make a stupid goddamn joke. Crap. I don't think I can do that._ "Why tell them to stop if you're just going to tell them to start again?" Ryan finally managed to eject, though his jaw snapped closed again when the Praetorian turned her head to glance at him. _Goddamn it, why does she have to be so fucking hot? I mean, that other Eddie chick, Khala or whatever, she was pretty prime, but this one is just fucking impossible..._ Ryan had to close his eyes at the kind of images that "fucking impossible" conjured up in relation to this woman, knowing that Eddies could read minds and that she wasn't likely to appreciate his thought paths there. If she was picking up on his thoughts, lecherous or otherwise, she gave no sign, she just seemed to be waiting for something. "Corporal Ryan Jones, Vought Company, Forlorn Hopers squadleader." Ryan supplied at last, gleaning that she wanted to know who the hell he was.

He saw the blue haired girl open her mouth to answer, but before she could, another voice cut her off at the pass, and this voice made every hair on the back of Ryan's neck try to get up and flee in a different direction all at once. "Actually, I'm rather interested in your answer to that question too, Mouse." The spine chilling voice said, tone caught somewhere between sibilance and savagry. Even without being able to see, Ryan knew there could only be one person whom such a voice could belong to. The groaning and moaning that tickled his subconscious instincts from the scythe blade sweeping through the air as the guy walked just sealed the deal. His eyes locked onto what he had to assume was the Eddie leader... carefully avoiding the eyes of course... since all the Eddie's body language instantly changed from aggressive to submissive the moment this guy opened his mouth. Regardless of rank or title, this guy was in charge here, and whether they knew it or not, admitted it or not, everyone here acknowledged that fact just in how they reacted to his presence.

Ryan heard several of his fellow soldiers actually sob out loud as they heard that voice, and kept it together himself only by reminding himself that he'd chosen to speak up and that he'd never be able to look any of his friends in the eye again if he turned yellow now, despite how much he wanted to. So instead of bowing his head, or closing his eyes, or curling up into a fetal ball, his fear of being thought afraid kept Ryan kneeling, head raised but eyes prudently averted from the Eddie leader's face. One glance into the abyss was more than goddamn enough for Ryan Jones, thank you very much! Still, the next exchange of words had him chewing on his tongue to avoid voicing a whimper or two all the same. "I don't recall mentioning that I was in the mood to play games with prisoners, Mouse." The crazy Eddie said, his voice as pointed as any knifetip as he berated his subordinate.

"They were helpless to fight back, Zach. We had already won." The blue haired girl, whom was addressed as "Mouse", replied without flinching, probably the single greatest act of courage Ryan had ever witnessed. "This was no longer a battle, it was a massacre."

"Yes, it was. But then you had to interfere for some reason. And that doesn't please me." Zach answered, striding up to stand right in front of the blue haired girl, looming over her, his body splashed and splattered from head to toe with blood, none of it his own, scythe held casually sloped across one shoulder, blade tip almost touching the ground behind him.

"What does killing helpless people prove?" Mouse countered, refusing to be intimidated by his physical presence. This girl had to be crazy too, Ryan realized. Nothing else he could think of could account for her lack of fear in this situation. "How does the blade of humanity become stronger by eliminating those who can't fight back?"

"They could fight back, Mouse, they just chose not to. Giving up in battle is the same thing as forfeiting your life to the enemy. To me, in this case." Zach retorted, his voice becoming dangerously thin. Plainly he was not at all used to getting backtalked and did not overly appreciate it. "Are you really trying to tell me, Zacharis Frost, that I should spare their pathetic lives because they couldn't bear to fight anymore? How does this make the blade stronger? Mouse, don't be blinded by the Boytoy's old philosophies, I warn you, I won't tolerate that kind of mistake from you anymore. How else CAN the blade become stronger if not by eliminating the weak and unfit whenever the opportunity arises? Impurities must be forged out whenever they are found." Frost turned away from the blue haired girl and shook his head, seeming mildly saddened by something. "And you were showing progress for a bit there too, Mouse. But I can see another lesson is in order. Strip." He commanded her, still not even deigning to look at her.

"No." The word was simple and soft, but it might as well have been a nuclear blast for the effect it had. Ryan had never seen someone turn around so fast as Zach Frost did in that moment. He seemed to just invert from back to front, his entire body going rigid with intense emotion, and everyone there instinctively flinched a half step backwards from the naked fury that oozed from his every pore. Everyone but the blue haired girl named Mouse, she just stared death incarnate right back in his blazing dark eyes.

"What?" Frost snapped the word so brusquely it seemed to have escaped from his jaws more by accident than design. "Do not play with me, Mouse. Strip. Now. And get on your hands and knees and put your ass in the air. You obviously need a harsh reminder as to whom you serve..."

"I said, no, Zach." Mouse replied, her voice composed and serene. "I am not playing with you. Especially not those simple and cruel dominance games. Not anymore. So, no, I won't strip and I won't let you rape me like an animal, in front of these men or elsewhere. I don't need to be reminded whom I owe allegiance too, because we both know its to you and you alone now. I am Lilia, your friend and lover and advisor... but I am not your slave to do with as you will, whenever you want." She dared to reach out and poke his rock hard chest with one armored forefinger, his eyes following the slow motion action like she had a knife in her hand. And, probably, to his emtionally insecure self, she practically was stabbing him in the heart with this public show of defiance. "And don't look at me like that... is what I'm doing now any different than what you did to the Caller? You were the one who inspired me, Zach. Just like you, I will never accept anyone taking over my life by force... if I want to serve someone, it will be done by my choice alone, and it will be more like a partnership than master and servant. So have my service, on my terms... or do what it is that you're trying so hard not to do and kill me right now."

"Holy shit, and I thought my fights with MY girlfriend were bad..." One of the kneeling soldiers had the ill grace to whisper to one of his buddies. It was probably the biggest mistake of his entire existence, past lives, if he believed in that sort of thing, included. Ryan saw veins twitch in the cheek and neck of Zach Frost and knew that all hell was just about to break loose. The whisper had been quiet, but he'd still heard it from several feet away, and it was a goddamn certainty that both arguing Eddies had heard it, given the way Lilia flushed and Frost, well, Frost reacted like the bull that has just been stabbed in the ass. Bad enough to argue with the Mouse, in public no less, but to draw a deriding comment from a lifeform so low it had actually given up in fighting for its own life, that... THAT was the final straw!

The offending soldier never knew what hit him... he didn't even hear what hit him, as Deathshriek crossed the intervening space between them in a blur and cut his head from his shoulders, then cut the decapitated head in half before blood even fountained from the spurting neck, then came back around and split the offending body in twain from stump to crotch in an instant, the two halves of the body flying apart in a welter of bisected organs and steaming blood from the force of the last strike, bathing the next six closest soldiers in gore. Before the bifurcated head even hit the ground, three more soldiers were dead, butchered on their knees by the rampaging Frost, his eyes and nostrils flaring as he physically pounced upon his fifth victim, scythe momentarily forgotten as he bit the screaming soldier's eyes and nose and face right off his skull before he crushed the skull flat from both sides, popping the braincase like a pimple. Spitting his wad of flesh into the face of another soldier, Frost went after him next, picking the young man bodily up before tearing off both of his arms and bludgeoning him to gory paste with them in a frenzy of uncontrollable violence.

The severed halves of the first soldier's head were still rolling on the dirt when Frost got up from the bloody wreckage of his seventh victim, the remaining soldiers screaming and flailing and scooting away from his rampage at all costs, but in truth all their motions did was alert him to their proximity, and he lashed out with blows from fists and feet, crushing ribcages, snapping spines and punching one poor bastard's head right off his shoulders as Frost unleashed the full measure of his enhanced strength. The Memento Mori turned their faces away, even their hard hearts shaken by the sheer vehemence of the attacks... he wasn't just killing them, he was ripping them apart, he was annihilating them while their hands were bound and they wept and screamed and did their best to crawl away! Even the Kindred scrambled clear of their Lord's wrath, awed and shaken at the sheer power of his rage as he set upon the meat-sacrifices with divine intensity. No one was safe around him now, to approach him was to die, no matter who you were. The End of All had come.

Something Lilia almost learned for the last time, as she sought to tackle Zach and force him away from the helpless captives. Sooner might she have tackled a charging Rhinobeast and diverted it from its course, certainly Zach seemed hardly swayed by the impact of her armored form, and his blurring fist crashed backhanded into her breastplate hard enough to not only wind her, not only lift her from her feet, but actually sent her hurtling backward through the air to slam into the side of a nearby burning APC, a total distance of almost ten feet! She slumped to the ground, blood trickling down her neck and across her scalp from where she'd banged her head on the armored treads, her eyes unfocused and dazed as she struggled to regain her senses, her breathing harsh and constricted... even through her armor, that blow had cracked or broken ribs! Without her armor, he'd probably have killed her, crushed her entire ribcage... with a single backhand punch, more of a reaction than a real attack! She'd never more appreciated what Zach meant when he called himself a "monster" than she did right then. But that didn't mean she was just going to let him massacre all those helpless prisoners... not when they could still someday contribute to the strength of the blade Zach so desperately wanted to forge! A single failure of character shouldn't condemn a person's fate for eternity!

Hauling herself to her feet, Lilia watched Zach retrieve Deathshriek as he rounded on the remaining Oosen soldiers, who were cowering up against the stump of a Yggdrasilwood tree that their pioneers had felled earlier that day. Knowing that she could not overpower him, Lilia did the only thing she could think of. She stepped into harms way, spreading her arms and planting her legs, putting herself between Zach and his intended next victim, First Sergeant Blundquist. "Zach, please..." Lilia said, trying to break through his frenzy. "Don't do this... its beneath you! They're not worth this kind of reaction..." She did not flinch when he reached for her with a gore stained hand. She could not show weakness or pain now, or he'd never listen to her. She had to be strong... as strong as him, at least in appearances. She had to make him see her as an equal, at least for a moment! His hand closed on the lip of her armor gorget, and then Lilia found herself flying through the air again, and only a last minute tuck and roll allowed her to come up on her feet rather than landing on her head as Zach lifted and hurled her away from him in the same motion.

It was too late for Blundquist... he died screaming with Deathshriek impaled through his chest, the blade sliding in so thoroughly that his bones were broken by the haft striking his chest, which hurled his limp form backwards, gouts of blood vomiting from his open mouth as the QC scythe blade cut through almost to his lower jaw before finally slipping out of his body. But even as the remaining Oosen soldiers cried out in dismay and grief, Lilia was moving forward again, acting on a glimmer of a suspicion of hope. She'd put herself in harms way, but Zach, though he had plenty of opportunity, had not really attacked her. He'd knocked her away, and thrown her away, but he hadn't tried to kill her, because she was still alive right now! The End of All might be ascendant, but Zach was still Zach, and some part of him didn't want to kill her! Not right now anway. But would her luck hold a third time? Was she just being hopeful? Well, she was going to find out. She'd finally found it in her to put her foot down against him, she wasn't about to stand down meekly now! She would trust in the Zach she knew was in there somewhere.

He killed... no, it wasn't killing, that implied some sort of contest or challenge... he murdered two more soldiers as she was limping back into the fray, her ankle having been twisted somehow in her rolling fall. It hurt to put weight on it, but she was a named Sufferer, just like Zach. Pain could not stop her. Standing in front of Zach was no good, he'd just shove her out of the way and she wasn't strong enough to stop him. Nor did any weapon or armor she possessed have the capability of stopping Deathshriek's edge, nor even slowing it down! She only had one option left and it was to risk it all. Seeing that she would not get there in time to save the next targeted soldier, Lilia instead moved towards the one after that, the Corporal that had so brazenly responded to her rhetorical question. A brave man. He didn't deserve to die here, on his knees, crying. Not because of a single moment of weakness brought on by exposure to Zach's undeniable power. Sometimes she thought Zach forgot just how incredible he was and the difference between him and regular people, so he was inclined to judge them harshly for faults not their own, but rather his...

Ryan Jones watched with a strange degree of calm as the madman Frost butchered the soldier kneeling next to him, cutting him apart, the whistling wail of the scythe blade heralding the stinging splash of blood against the side of his face. Ever since he'd watched the Top die, crawling and begging for mercy, Ryan had felt numbed. This was so terrible, it couldn't really be happening, could it? This had to be a nightmare... but it felt so real? He watched the blood drenched scythe whirl through the air, its song more haunting than frightening now, as if it was bleeding out the sections of soul it had carved from its last victim along with the blood that misted from its edge. It was so sharp, it cut through anything and everything like it wasn't even there... would he even feel something that sharp passing through his body? Or would it be something he only noticed after the fact? He wondered if he'd see his own decapitated body from the upside down, he'd heard that was possible in cases of sudden decapitation. The sun was bright, the air was hot, and the scythe was coming down... and suddenly something both hard and soft was covering his back, leaning upon him, and his vision was occluded by a tide of cerulean blue that fell like a curtain around his head. Ryan winced, waiting for the pain, waiting for the death... but neither came. Well, a little pain, a hot line tracing along the side of his neck, but no deeper than a papercut...

"Mouse..." Ryan heard Frost growl, his voice both weary and eager. "Get out of the way..."

"For the third time, NO!" Lilia retorted, her arms holding the black haired, green eyed Oosen soldier around the torso, her chin resting against the back of his head, her neck aligned with his, so that if Zach tried to chop or stab the Oosen soldier, he would also strike and kill her in the same motion. She did her best not to look at Deathshriek's crimson and black edge as it hovered next to her throat, just barely kissing the skin enough to generate a thin red line. She marveled at Zach's precision and control, pulling back from a full on swing like that to just barely mark her skin when she interposed herself. "This is my choice, Zach! I won't let you murder any more of them! It's beneath you, Zacharis Quentin Frost, to act like this! I know you're still sore about what the Caller did, but look who won that little spat! It was you, Zach, you got the advantage against a Grand Chimera! We don't even have words for how amazing an accomplishment that is, Zach! So what if he proved you weren't invincible... you did the exact same thing back to him!"

"Out of my way, Mouse." Zach did not acknowledge her points. He drew Deathshriek back again, cocking it over his shoulder like he was swinging a golf club. "Move or you will die with him."

"Then I will die with him." Lilia answered solidly, staring him unflinchingly in the eyes. "If you want to kill him, then you'll have to kill me too. Is that what you want? To kill me and be alone again? Is salving your bruised pride worth that much extra suffering to you? Now's your chance, Zach. Just do me one favor. Call me by my name before you kill me. Just once."

"If you understand anything at all about me, Mouse, you know why I won't say your name..." Zach replied archly, his eyes burning into hers. "Unlike Yamato, you still deserve my respect at the least."

"I know that. But all the same, I don't want to die before hearing you say my real name just once, even if it means you don't respect me anymore. I will if I have to, but I don't want to..." Lilia did not bother to hold back blurring tears at the corners of her eyes, not even if he thought she was weak for it. "Give me that much at least, Zach, please..."

"I will give you nothing, Mouse..." Zach snarled as he brought the scythe around and down. Lilia did not look away, and neither did he. Not even when Deathshriek gashed her neck almost a quarter inch deep before it stopped, the muscles of Zach's arms straining as he pulled back the momentum of his swing after he broke the flesh. "Not even the death you so richly deserve right now!" Frost turned away, shouldering Deathshriek once more, the mournful howl of its blade seeming almost mocking in his ears for the first time. He took a step away, before glancing over his shoulder at her as she blinked at him, clearly caught off guard, which was something at least. "Serve me... on your terms, Mouse. Far be it from me to resharpen a section of blade that is already at peak keeness. You win this round... but don't get used to it... do with them as you wish, but don't tarry long. Yamato is up to something and I don't intend to be left out of the festivities for long..." He turned his head away and stalked off, Deathshriek's moans continuing to take on a mocking edge, though whom precisely was being mocked was open to debate.

"Ohmygod I'm alive..." Ryan tried to exhale and talk at the same time and almost ended up choking to death in the process, which would have been fairly ironic.

"I'm surprised too, actually." Lilia admitted, her limbs shaking with released tension as she slowly got back to her feet. She didn't know if what she'd just accomplished was on the same scale as what Zach had done, relatively effortlessly, to the Caller, but to force a concession from Zach in End of All mode, even a tiny one... that had to be worth something, right? That was definite progress... she was getting to him! She still felt like she was going to go throw up, and her neck was bleeding freely, and her entire body hurt from the repeated battering she'd just received, but victory was victory nonetheless!

"I suppose I should say thank you, shouldn't I?" Ryan managed to regain a bit of his wits as he looked up at the achingly beautiful Eddie girl.

"At the very least." Lilia wasn't too saintly to reply. "But to be honest I didn't do it for your sake, Corporal Jones. I did it for his. Were you not bound, were you armed and fighting back, I'd kill you myself with no hesitation or regret. But unlike your people, not all of us Edenites are barbarians and sadists. I don't want your blood, or the blood of your people, on my hands unless you give me no other choice, so I'm going to let you and the other survivors go. If you make it back to your base, so be it. If the animals get you before then, that's also fine with me. Prove that you're worthy of being saved by me... live through this. And always remember that if our positions had been reversed, not a single one of you would have lifted a finger to help me, yet I still did what I did. Ask yourselves if the side you're fighting for is really the one in the right..."

"Says the people behind Blue Monday!" Meyer retorted, unable to contain himself even at potential detriment to his own health. His family was from Second Earth 3 after all. Or had been, anyway, back when there still was a Second Earth 3. "You may not want our blood on your hands, but that doesn't change the fact that over 450 million civilian's deaths lie at your feet! Maybe you should be the one questioning if the side you're fighting for is really right!"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Lilia answered, and Ryan could instantly see she was telling the truth. She really didn't know. It was almost funny, in a horrible way.

"Then you should find out." Ryan told her, almost sorrowfully. "Look into the sky and find Second Earth 3 and four of the Aeon City E-PLANTs. If you can, because they're awfully hard to distinguish from the space dust they've been turned into by your Blue EDEN! Second Earth 3 was a purely civilian mass habitation colony... why would you release Blue EDEN into it? WHY? Maybe the USN has done horrible things to your people... certainly I've seen more than I can really reconcile... but what did those nearly 500 million civilians do to deserve Blue EDEN, of all things? No, no matter what you believe, Lilia, if that is your name... if any side is evil in this war... its yours."

"You're wasting time." Lilia said, motioning for some Kindred to step forward and cut the bonds on the Oosen soldiers, doing her best to conceal her reeling mind. She wasn't reading his thoughts, but his emotions told her that he wasn't lying, and neither was his friend or the emotions of the other Oosen soldiers. This Blue Monday incident, they all believed it with their hearts and souls. Blue EDEN unleashed on civilians... could even the USN stoop so low as to lie about something like that? Especially since Zach had been all fired up over something Kunai had done recently... Could even Durandel make entire colonies disappear just to fire up his soldiers? It beggared belief. No, no they weren't lying... but someone was, and Lilia was going to find out who it was! And when she did... "It will be dark sooner than you'd like." She advised the Oosen soldiers. "Most predators come out to hunt at night. You would just be tasty snacks for most of them. I would like to be fairly close to shelter by dusk if I were you..." Lilia warned them, before stalking off after Zach, her injuries forgotten in the buzz of thoughts that filled her skull.

xxxx

**Nearby**

"Well, that was disappointing..." Gerard Larkyn, better known as the hitman "Headhunter" before his incarceration into the USN prison system and eventual enrollment in a special category of the FEAR Revamped project, commented in a grating whisper. He'd been an older man by the time the Revamped project got a hold of him, and even after being cybernetically rebuilt, his voice remained raspy and phlegemy when he spoke. He lowered his favored weapon, a custom built experimental laser guided sniper rifle he called "Headsman mk III", chambered in bolt action .75 caliber rounds, with the capability to change his bullet's course in midshot like tiny laser guided bombs, through whichs sight he'd been observing the ambush of the USN and RIP convoy by the target and his minions. "I don't know who that blue haired girl is, but she's annoying. How could she interrupt such an artist in the midst of his carnage and brutality? Truly the man is a prince among killers... I shall treasure making his head explode." Gerard sighed happily at the that. That was his calling card, the single headshot from extreme range, and in his entire career he'd only ever missed twice, and one of those times was his first ever attempted hit!

"Dream on, geezer." Alexia Rymir, better known amongst the slums and prisons of Second Earth as "Eclipse" for her habit of leaving behind a tarot card with an eclipsed sun at the scene of each of her multiple murders, replied with a disdainful snort. "The head of Executor Zacharis Frost belongs to no one, but his life belongs to me. I shall gut him like the pig of a man you all are, and listen to him squeal for forgiveness before I chop him to mincemeat."

"Only if I don't get there first." The third member of their trio, snarkily called a "coterie" by the cyberneticists that had created them, rumbled, growling a bear from within his bodybuilder's frame. Pyotr Koyzar, known as the "Cossack" for his unrelenting brutality and penchant for chasing down his victims like a cavalryman and hacking them down from behind with various bladed instruments... favoring axes of various sorts... shifted from foot to foot eagerly as he spoke. "Why don't we just go kill him now? He's vulnerable..." Pyotr urged.

"Don't be a fool, Pyotr, we barely even managed to scratch the surface of his abilities." Gerard admonished the other man. Not that either of them were strictly men anymore, nor was Alexia really a woman. No, they were Vamps... Revamps... and in their particular case, they were Master Vamps, specifically designed for long term operations behind enemy lines targeting the most powerful and dangerous of the Eddie leadership... starting with the two Executors, Frost and Yamato. Unlike regular Vamps they retained most of whatever sanity they might have had before the Revamped program got hold of them, and their implants were not designed to break down after only a few months. Functioning as a coherent... if not exactly cooperative... kill team, they were already hot on the trail of their first victim, the luminary serial killer and madman, Zacharis Frost. But where Pyotr favored the direct approach, both Alexia and Gerard wanted to first observe their prey, so as to best decide upon the proper strategy for bringing him down efficiently. He was only the first name on the list after all, they could not afford to waste resources in being damaged taking him down.

"Those soldiers certainly did not give him much of a challenge." Alexia agreed disdainfully. "We shall have to test him much more comprehensively before we move in for the kill. Unlike our slavic counterpart, I have no intention of leaping before I look very carefully..."

"You're just afraid of him." Pyotr countered with a snort.

"I highly respect his accomplishments and talents. That is not the same thing as fear. I admire him greatly. As far as killers go, he may have no living equal, not even in us. Which is one reason for testing him... we need to know if we can target him directly or if we need to pursue alternate means of extermination." Gerard replied coldly, his voice even raspier than usual. "If we rush in blindly he will tear us to pieces with little more effort than he displayed just now, I assure you. We must be prepared. This isn't a housewife or even a policeman we are killing here, Pyotr... this is Zacharis Frost. If we are not somewhat afraid of him, we will never have a chance to kill him!"

"As usual you spend a dozen sentences to sum up a single phrase, but you are right, Headhunter." Alexia acknowledged with a frown, as if agreeing with him so often was distasteful. "I fear no living male nor female, but if what is said is true, he is not precisely alive. He has died once and returned from that final state... to not be wary of such a being would not only be stupid, but it would be unforgivably disrespectful! I am a murderess and an assassin, but disrespecting a mark of this caliber would be a mistake I would never make..."

"Then it is decided. We must test him further to evaluate his threat level and capabilities." Gerard whispered, raising the Headsman mk III and looking through its sight at the disappearing figure of the target. "Next time we send a Vamp, and see what there is to see..."


	54. Predator and Prey

Author Note: Well, that was a refreshing break wasn't it? Or is it these chapters, containing memories from the past, that are actually the breaks? Dunno, I'm equally excited about both, and its not like they don't soon come crashing together in the most spectacular manner... but that's for the future to show. And in this universe anyway, only Yggdrasil and I can reliably see far into the future, and even then, not always perfectly. Big things in store for Orb, definitely a nasty storm on the horizon, and maybe too for the Edenites now that a certain Blue factoid is out and about. Yet more interesting forum posts, both from me and others, for any of you interested in a slightly broader perspective on the story and the events within and without it. I do hear, by the way, the people clamoring to be filled in on Talia, but since it's fairly obvious as to what is generally going on with her I'm afraid you'll just have to wait for this arc to be over before we return to that particular plot thread and its implications to the wider story. Its kinda like the Lacus situation for Kira, save its for Durandel... its lurking, just waiting to pop up at the least opportune moment to bite him in the dick. But I do have more than just memories in store for you today, though in a manner of speaking, I don't. And also, thanks to OrangeP47 for the regionally authentic character names in this chapter.

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**Earth Orbit, Geosynchronous above European Theatre HQ "Heaven's Base", aboard USNS Incarnate class dreadnaught **_**Avatar**_**, January 21st, 7:32 pm**

His name... what was it again? How could someone forget their own name, that most basic part of their social identity? It did not make sense to him, but that, in truth, was the least of his worries. Because he had lost more than just his name, he'd lost his past, his family, his friends, his entire life just seemed to be one big blank expanse of nothingness! He only had one thing to cling to. No, make that two things. Two words, to define his identity and persona. Jormungandr. Serpentine. One of those was him... and the other... was also him, but also not him, something both more and less than him! But which was which? He could not answer that, no matter how he wrinkled his brow and clutched at his cheeks and shook himself back and forth and screamed at the blank metal walls of the sleeping cell he had been allocated in the depths of this gigantic war machine. Was he Jormungandr? Sometimes he was. Was he Serpentine? Sometimes he was. Were they the same being? It made his head hurt, all this uncertainty, all this confusion...

He found himself sitting upright on the plain, rigid mattress that supposedly cushioned his bedframe. In truth he hardly recognized the inconveniences of the physical world anymore, compared to the torment of the emptiness in his mind and memories, the real world was but a distant concern. He was sweating and shaking, his bare fingers and toes twitching and jerking in unconscious reactions. He realized that he was cold, that his body was unclothed and thus he was cold, but he didn't know what to do about it. So he did nothing. That was usually the safest course. Do nothing. Think nothing. Feel nothing. When action was required he would be told of it, until then, it was always warmest and safest within the vast emptiness of his thoughts and memories. Jormungandr. Serpentine. What were they? Names? Identities? Memories? Which was he? At times he was all but certain he was Jormungandr, the terrible six legged beast with the tail of iron... but when he looked now he had only two legs, four counting his hands which, upoen experimentation, did not function well as legs, making his back hurt when he tried walking around on all fours. He was also missing his tail of iron, with the knob of bone to crush and break his foes... whomever they might be.

Did that mean he was Serpentine now? What was Serpentine anyway? Were they just two sides to the same coin? He pressed the sweaty palm of one hand against the center of his forehead and pushed, shoving his head back as if his memories and thoughts were leaking out of a hole above his eyes and he could just press them back into his mind with his hand. It didn't help. Nothing became clearer. No memories returned. He still had no idea who... or what... he actually was. He longed for the certainty of identity he dimly remembered. When would he be allowed communion with the Other again? When he was with the Other... whether that was Jormungandr or Serpentine, he did not care to distinguish... he felt confident, secure, in control. The rest of the time he just felt empty, and the emptiness was beginning to ache, like a tumor in his jaw. A rumbling in his belly brought his attention away from his dispirited longing for a persona. Whomever he was, whatever he was, right now he was hungry. If only he could satisfy his appetite for self knowledge so easily... perhaps next time he communed he would remember to remember his identity. Hopefully that would be soon. He didn't know how much more of the emptiness he could take...

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**Earth Orbit, Geosynchronous above Asian Theatre HQ "Carpentaria Base", aboard USNS Incarnate class dreadnaught **_**Incarnate**_**, January 21st, 7:32 pm**

He was Aurochs, a Meister of the BALOR program. He repeated this thought to himself a half a dozen times, reminding himself, anchoring himself, seperating himself from the lingering mental embrace of his alter ego and combat persona, the BALOR named Gorgon. Aurochs, not Gorgon. Human, not Chimera. Controller, not Controlled. This mental discipline was very important. A Meister was interfaced directly with the crippled brain of a super-powerful bio-engineered psychic monster, providing the high level intellectual control and thought processing that had been surgically excised from the BALOR. But at the same time, in order to efficiently control their bio-Gundam in battle, a Meister had to subsume themselves into the subconscious personality and thoughts of their BALOR, harness the instincts of the beast and utilize them in concordance with the desires of the intellect. Few could reliably do this. Fewer still could reliably extricate their consciousness from the subconsciousness of their BALOR without being driven mad in the process. He was one of those few, the elite, the Meisters...

Even as he exercised his mind and reinforced the mental conditioning that kept his ego and personality seperate from that of Gorgon, Aurochs likewise exercised his body, doing a seemingly endless series of chin-ups on a bar that had been installed into his quarters aboard the super-battleship for precisely this purpose. An idle body was a symptom of an idle mind, or so he told himself, and vice versa as well of course, so he always aspired to keep both mind and body in motion, always getting stronger, sleeker, more refined and powerful, to the point where he'd trained his body to subconsciously flex even while he slept. It was all part of being a Meister. And as for the active video screen displayed on the wall in front of him, with its flickering roster of complicated diagrams that changed ever few seconds in a long loop, that was part of not just being a Meister, but being Gorgon's Meister. Unlike the other two BALORs, Gorgon did not merely project auras of psychic interference or terror, but actively lashed out with its mind and its control over physical matter, telekinesis by any other name, perhaps the most directly powerful psychic ability in existence!

But while striking out with directed blows and beams of psychic force could be very effective, to truly use the blessing of telekinesis to its full potential required as much intellect as it did willpower, and by intellect he meant memorization and conceptualization of complex schematics and designs, of war machines and buildings and any other potential threat or asset on a battlefield. Because telekinesis, for all its brute power, actually worked best on a more subtle level. Yes, he could smash asunder a Mobile Suit with just a flex of mental muscle, but the same amount of effort could dismantle ten Mobile Suits by tearing apart their power reactors from within, if he was able to correctly picture the structure of said reactors in his mind, clearly enough to reach out and grab hold of them with Gorgon's mind even if he could not see them directly! Thus the looping parade of diagrams, which he was doing his best to press into his memory now. He could be called to combat at any time and he wanted to be ready. He was Gorgon of the BALOR program after all...

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**Earth Orbit, Geosynchronous above African Theatre HQ "Gibraltar Base", aboard USNS Incarnate class dreadnaught **_**Solaris**_**, January 21st, 7:32 pm**

The dreams were back. The dreams where she walked the metal corridors of an immense structure, and sat in chairs and drank fluids from metal cans and enjoyed the company of scaleless beings with no snouts or claws or tails or teeth of any real mention. The dreams where she was merely Lupine, and not Fenris Wolf. The dreams that always troubled her for some reason, like tiny, soft fingerclaws scratching at a rock wall, trying to break through to her, both desperate and hopeless at the same time. Fortunately she was getting better and better at ignoring this scratching, and the little urges it kept sneaking into her thoughts, urges that kept her in her tiny metal cage, pacing back and forth, rather than running free and hunting freer, supping from the freshly slain bodies of the weak and the stupid and the sick, as was only natural for a predator of her stature. Soon the scratching would be gone, and hopefully too these strange urges that kept her caged. It had been too long since she was free to hunt and feed...

Oh how she longed for the taste of battle, the hot rush of blood and juices in her body, the thrill of wriggling meat gobbets sliding down her gullet! Her hands and toes clenched, her muscles tightening as she prepared to spring and lash out with her scything talons and whipping tail, before remembering that in the dreams she possessed neither. Shivering, she collected herself and began pacing again. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until she was surprised she hadn't worn a rut in the floor. She did not like this little room, with its blank metal walls and lack of prey. But once she was inside it, she could not get out again, the portal was blocked somehow and would not be opened. Being confined made her angry. Being angry made her hungry. Being hungry made her dream. Snarling in frustration, Fenris slashed out with her clawed fingers, smashing her puny dream-fist into the wall hard enough to split the skin on her fingertips. The metal wall was tauntingly unmarred by the blow, despite her knowledge that she could tear a mountain to flinders when she was awake. Weren't you supposed to be stronger in your dreams? Why then was she always so pitiful and weak in hers?

Sucking at the bleeding tips of her claw-hands, Fenris stopped her pacing and curled up in her nest, beneath the bare metal frame she'd taken the long, flat, white leaf from. It was not really suitable nest material, it did not shred and compress well, her instincts told her that her nest was inferior for some reason because of it, but it was all she had to curl up in during a dream. She missed her tail wrapping around her, her lower spine twitched and her buttocks clenched as she tried to make it move, but there was nothing there to move somehow. She didn't like these dreams. She didn't feel like herself anymore. There was that scratching again. And another urge, to go up and seek a place to deposit her bodily wastes. Fenris snorted and rolled out of her nest, stalking a short distance away... as far as the cage would allow... and emptied her bowels and bladder upon the floor. Instinct compelled her to bury the waste so as not to leave a marking for other predators to find, but in the dream she could not. Wrinkling her abbreviated snout in distaste, she clambered back into her nest. When, oh when would this dream end? Fenris Wolf was hungry...

xxxx

**Earth, Orb, Orb National Hospital, Quarantine Isolation Treatment Room, January 21st, 7:32 pm**

"Master Sergeant, Sergeant-Major, we're ready to continue the... the treatment." Dr. Lamarr hesistated a bit on describing the procedure of feeding what he strongly suspected was a highly toxic substance to a nigh comatose man. It went against almost every tenent of the medical code, force feeding what amounted to a potent drug of unknown composition and unknown effects to his patient, but he was obliged to follow the wishes of the guardians in question, as the patient had been deemed medically unfit to make proper decisions for himself. And he did have to admit, there was no other procedure or treatment known to him or any other doctor he had consulted that stood any better chance of restoring the mind and personality to Lieutenant Finch than what they were attempting right now. It just made his skin crawl to think that this... fruit thing... could accomplish merely by the act of digestion a miracle beyond all the medical science of Orb, the PLANTS and the USN. It smacked of black magic and the supernatural, to be frank.

Getting the nod from the two grim faced Stormhounds in question, Dr. Lamarr turned back to his control screens, through which he monitored the vital signs and internal conditions of his patient, as well as controlled the robotic armatures that acted as his hands and fingers within the sealed QITR, a rather unfortunate acronym that all too often reflected the enforced course of action for the doctors treating patients therein. The QITR... "quitter"... was where they tried to treat patients exposed to the most virulent of toxins and contagious diseases, the stuff that was so dangerous even a doctor in a full environment suit could not risk close range exposure. Patients didn't generally go in to the QITR be saved, merely to be studied as they deteriorated so that the doctors might gain the understanding of their affliction required to prevent it claiming any more victims. Hopefully Lieutenant Finch would be the exception to this rule.

Certainly his blood and organ toxicology results were promising, if unsettling, after eating roughly one third of the so called "Wisdom Fruit" that Master Sergeant Ramierez had retrieved from the heart of the Edenite capital city. Promising because there was no sign of blood poisoning or internal infections or sickness in any of Lieutenant Finch's organs, nor any deterioration in his bodily functions... at the very least, his physical condition had not been worsened in any perceptible way after being fed the first third of the Fruit. However it was disquieting, because one result Dr. Lamarr had been expecting... a sharp rise in sodium levels due to the conversion of harmful nanites into mostly harmless salts by the Red EDEN vaccine... had failed to materialize. Whatever nanite substance the Wisdom Fruit was packed with, it wasn't something the Red EDEN seemed able to affect, for whatever reason. At the same time, it wasn't spreading through Lieutenant Finch's biology, but neither was it being flushed away. It just sat there in his stomach, as if waiting for some cue or condition to occur to really bring it to life.

Whatever his misgivings though, it was obviously from ECG and other brainwave recording instruments that the Fruit was having an extremely powerful effect upon Lieutenant Finch's mind, brain activity had all but gone off the charts as soon as he'd injested the first piece of the fruit, and had taken hours to return to normal levels, at which point Lieutenant Finch had slipped into this near comatose state, not quite asleep but not physically aware of himself either. It was like a hypnotic trance or waking dream, and was worth a few weeks of intensive study all its own, in Dr. Lamarr's opinion, but they didn't have weeks. The armatures were already slicing the remainder of the fruit into equal halves, selecting the middle section of the fruit to be cut up further and carefully fed to the reclining... and still restrained... Stormhound officer. Dr. Lamarr stared intently at the brainwave monitors as his patient chewed and swallowed. It was time for another trip down the rabbit hole... he just wished he had thought to requisition some Neural Interface Control circuits for a brain to computer data connection... being able to see what the Fruit was showing Lieutenant Finch could be a great help. But then again, from the expression on the gigantic Sergeant-Major Glory's face at the mention of said idea, perhaps he was happier not knowing what Mr. Finch was seeing... he could not help but wonder though... what sort of past could this exceptional man have that was worth retrieving at such risk?

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**Earth, Southern Ukraine, Febuary 13th, C.E. 54, Evening**

Nightfall in the city was not a good time to be alone on the streets, especially not in the more run down and decrepit sections of the city, the parts where people and business's had largely moved away due to the continuing trends towards moving industries and manufacturing companies to the ever expanding PLANTs. Poverty bred desperation, and desperation begat crime, amongst other things. It was an odd day where a body or three wasn't found in a back alley somewhere, clothing rifled for possessions, sporting stab or blunt force wounds to the back, head or neck, and any woman of any age and physical condition that dared to walk alone through the streets after nightfall was at the very least taking a grave risk with her body, if not her life! The city was dying, slowly but surely, those rich enough to flee already in the process of so doing, moving on to greener and brighter pastures elsewhere in the country or the world, or even, in the most exceptional cases, up in space, where the real money was to be found. left behind was a slowly boiling mixture of the destitute, the depraved and the disenfranchised, most unemployed or employed below the level of "substinence" as designated by the Eurasian Federation coalition government, relying on welfare checks and food stamps to make ends meet... or else turning to more shadowy pursuits in order to stay viable.

Even during daylight hours, much of the city was becoming a haven for social predators of all categories, from the simple mugger looking for fast cash and shiny jewelry, to more professional thieves targeting stores and small banks, right on up through the thrill killers, gang-bangers, drug dealers and social deviants and scum of all stripes and prelidictions. It was not a place for the weak, the small, the young or the lonely. Cyprus fit into several of those categories, but he made his way regardless, because what other choice did he have? There was nowhere for him to call home, no brighter pastures to flee to for a boy with a dark past and no family, who lived by grubbing out of dumpsters and trash cans and slept in a different place each night so that the roving gangs didn't find him and beat him or rob him of what meager possessions he might have at the time. He avoided authority figures like the plague, anyone with any sort of official authority or standing was a worse enemy than the gangs and other predators in Cyprus's mind. He was through trusting the smiling faces of kindly seeming adults... Eva Mueller had taught him that to trust those older than him could be the most horrible sort of mistake.

He was twelve now, and had survived on the streets of this city, neighbor to the one he had been tortured in, for three years, more or less successfully. He was alive, and not too malnourished, and free of sickness, disease or drug dependency, so that put him pretty far ahead of most of his fellow street denizens. He ate by foraging in the leftovers of others, and sometimes earned a little money by pawning off items salvaged from trash bins or from behind stores, which he used to pay for clothing to stay warm, though he was always careful to avoid getting anything too new or expensive looking, no matter how comfortable it might make him. It would simply attract too much of the wrong sort of attention, he would become a juicy target for the thugs and criminal element, and he would stand out to the authorities and police, who might bring him in as a runaway and try and put him back in the Orphanage system... something Cyprus had promised himself he would die before allowing. Most street children joined the gangs for protection, but that wasn't his thing... Cyprus did not like relying on others, as they were all too fallible and corruptible in his eyes. He could trust himself, and only himself.

Joining a gang would almost make him either responsible for or beholden to others in some way, and that would in turn infringe upon his own pursuits... Cyprus was interested in more than just scraping by, more than just starveling existence on the fringes of society. He was interested in revenge. He was interested in justice. He was interested in showing a certain class of predator that there were some who were willing to fight back against their brand of evil. His sworn enemies were those who preyed upon children and the helpless or weak, not to steal money or goods, though that often happened as well, but to rob them of their dignity and pride and the sanctity of their own bodies... child molesters, rapists and slave traffickers! But what could one twelve year old boy do on his own against such depraved criminals and degenerates, when they were mostly adults and often well armed or traveled in groups? Well, when that twelve year old boy was Cyprus, it turned out, quite a lot could be done, as long as he was willing to take a few risks now and then.

Usually this meant exposing himself as a potential victim to someone he had determined was potential prey, through observations of their interactions with others, especially other children. His experience with Headmistress Mueller helped him recognize what was kindhearted interest or curiosity, and what was a harbringer of darker intentions... the staring... the excessive touching... the attempted enticing away from a group or into a secluded spot... and the near apologetic, guilty bribing with food or candy or tempting offers such as a warm place to sleep or new clothing. Once he'd determined whether the person in question was prey, Cyprus would then allow himself to stand out, which with his hair and eye coloration and blossoming good looks wasn't too hard in most cases, involving little more than a trip to a public restroom to get cleaned up a bit, since most child predators, whether they realized it or not, perferred clean victims to dirty ones. He would then enter into a delicate dance of deception with his chosen prey, allowing himself to be tempted by the words and bribes, disregarding the excessive touching in successively more sensitive locations, allow himself to be split off from a larger pack of potential victims... but not too easily. He made them work to seduce him, because he didn't want to arouse any suspicions that he was the one actually hunting them, not the other way around.

He learned how to make himself appear smaller, weaker and more vulnerable, while not detracting overmuch from his masculinity... many molestors preferred young boys because they didn't go instantly limp or placid, they fought and kicked a little harder than the girls did, which was more exciting to these sick freaks. The trick was to appear vulnerable but not sickly in mind or body, to be enticing while not seeming threatening, to be naively curious without seeming overly eager. He had to modify his performance a little depending on whether the prey was male or female... he could afford to come on as a little stronger and tougher with a male prey than a female, who seemed to prefer it when he acted like he was a lost little boy in search of a nice mommy to take care of him. Then, once he'd baited them into taking him, either into an alley or the back of van or even sometimes to their house, it was time to move on to the next stage of his plan. Sometimes this involved tolerating an actual sexual assault upon his person, though usually it was nothing worse than aggressive touching and maybe the removal of most of his clothing. He would submit to this, though it made his skin crawl, as he waited for the prey to relax and drop their guard, turn their back or finish up their climax or whatever.

And then the razor sharp ceramic shard with the cloth wrapped hilt that he wore concealed in the small of his back or the underside of his forearm, depending on what kind of touching and assault he was enduring, would come out and he would slash them, usually trying for the artery on the side of the nuck or beneath the armpit or on the inside of the thigh... wherever was closest at the time. Sometimes he would have to strike at the back of the ankle or knee, or the elbow or even just slash right across the front of the groin to distract and disable the prey before he moved in for the kill, burying his ceramic dagger shard into the throat or the eyes, ripping open the jugular or piercing the brain, and breaking the shard off inside the skull or throat, leaving only the cloth wrapped hilt behind. Death would come in a matter of seconds to about a minute, during which time it was more a matter of staying out of any last minute death throes or attacks than anything else. Then would come the clean up, which usually just meant burning whatever layer of clothing might have been splashed with blood and washing or wiping the gore and genetic fluids from his body and leaving as quickly as possible. He never took anything from them, not even when there were food and clothes to take... he didn't want the authorities on his tail because of stolen goods.

Even in a city as desperate and rundown as this one, there really weren't that many child predators, and he rarely was able to hunt more than two or three times in a six month period, and one or two times he might have accidently killed someone who was really trying to help him, but after Ms. Mueller, Cyprus was not prepared to risk the possibility of good intentions from a woman who claimed to want to make him her son and was always fussing around him and trying to spoon feed him and tried to take his clothes to give him new ones. Maybe she was just excessively nuturing, but it wasn't worth the risk. He did feel a little guilty when he saw her obituary in a paper a few weeks later, and saw that she'd had three children and a husband, who had found her with her throat cut from behind in their kitchen. Home invasion robbery gone wrong was the official story, showing Cyprus at least that the police had no idea what they were really doing. Adults were not only deceitful and wicked, they were also stupid and incompetent.

However, things didn't always go entirely in his favor, such as the time he'd picked up a male prey who turned out not to be interested in sex at all, but in something decidedly more final. He just wanted to bring Cyprus home to his torture dungeon and kill him over the course of a day. Cyprus had taken one look at the interior of the guy's basement and known he was in deep trouble, the racks of pliers and knives and saws and the suspicious red stains on the concete block with the iron chain lugs in it convincing him that he didn't have time to wait for this guy to drop his guard, he had to get out NOW or he wouldn't get anywhere ever again! The prey had been wary, and strong, and had even managed to get a woodsaw and cut Cyprus deeply on the arm with it before finally succumbing to blood loss after being stabbed a dozen times in the back and legs with the ceramic break knife. Heavy iron manacles and chains dangling from the ceiling had brought back vivid and horrifying memories of his time under Ms Mueller's "care", and Cyprus had gone a little overboard with a convenient wood splitting hatchet. When the police finally found the guy, they had to use dental records to identify him, and had to search for three hours around the basement room to find enough individual teeth to do even that much...

He'd had to completely replace his clothes and go into hiding after that incident... not even the police were incompetent enough to describe THAT as a home invasion robbery gone wrong, but after coming back down from his murderous rage, Cyprus had been very careful to cover his tracks, dousing the entire room and as much of the body as possible with paint thinner and other volatile chemicals that would hopefully corrupt any genetic traces or evidence he might have left behind. He didn't think he had anything on file, but given the state he'd left Headmistress Mueller in those years ago, he wouldn't have been surprised to find that there was a long running police investigation searching for him... murdering people by biting off their private parts and chewing through their throat and then eating their softer bits tended to stick in the minds of the authorities for some reason. And somehow he doubted they'd believe his justification that she'd had it coming to her, people always viewed the dead with greater sympathy than they would have in life. And adults never believed children anyway, he could tell someone their foot was on fire and even if they smelled the smoke they'd just smile and nod and pat him on the head...

But right now he wasn't hunting any prey, he was just doing his best to survive and not freeze to death each night... he didn't even remember when the last time he'd been really warm was! The city was quieter than usual, people buttoning up and going home early where possible, sticking together, avoiding unecessary talking. Cyprus knew what it was, everyone was afraid of something, but it was a generalized fear, not specific to any one person or group. It was a fear for the future and its uncertainties. This fear had been building ever since the last month of C.E. 53, when the world famous First Coordinator, George Glenn, was shot to death by a pistol wielding assailant outside a charity dinner he was due to speak at just before Christmas. The killer had somehow managed to escape custody even after committing such a public killing of a world renowned figure, which suggested to Cyprus that the police in the AtFed were either even more incomptent than the police here, or that there was something more going on behind the scenes. It was hardly something most people on the street cared to notice or discuss, but his inquistive nature had Cyprus stopping to pay attention to public news broadcasts via radio or storefront TVs from time to time and thus he was aware of the rising tensions between those born Naturally and those who were made Coordinators.

He was aware of the issue, but it didn't really register with or matter to him... he was a Natural, but he'd always believed that Coordinators were nothing special, certainly not superhuman or abhuman... they just had things a bit easier in their lives. There was no reason Cyprus could see that a Coordinator would ever be able to do something a Natural could not accomplish, if they were only willing to try hard enough. Of course, most people, unlike him, were lazy and prone to jealousy of those who had easier or better lives, and would prefer to tear others down rather than improve themselves. Cyprus had little time or attention to spare for these masses of protestors who insisted that Coordinators were abominations against God or the natural order. Cyprus didn't believe in God, not after Ms. Mueller, and as far as he was concerned, the natural order was simply survival of the fittest. If the Coordinators were more fit, through design or personal effort than the Naturals, then it was only right that they survive. However, there was at least one Natural that had no intention of falling by the wayside, even if his life never managed to actually amount to anything, at least he wouldn't give up and complain about how hard it was and how easy others had things! Where was the dignity in that? And if there was anything that Cyprus treasured, it was his own dignity, after having it stolen from him before!

Even as he pondered these thoughts, Cyprus's head stayed on a swivel, eyes and ears and other senses all extended and wary for the slightest hint of danger or opportunity, whether it was a dropped half eaten sandwich in the gutter or a pack of gang-bangers out looking for fun and trouble on his side of the street. He didn't have anything on him besides his clothes and his newest ceramic break blade, stolen from the refuse heap behind a ceramic's emporium and carefully rebroken for the sharpest edge possible, but that didn't preclude the possibility of him being targeted for abuse by bored or high gang members. He'd even been targeted by a screeching mob of firebrand Natural supremacists once, who seemed to have decided that his grey hair and eyes could only be traits of the genetic abberations that were Coordinators, which was almost as insulting as it was sad, though he definitely hadn't stuck around to point out their logical fallacies, not with all those clubs and axe handles in their hands and that wild eyed preacher at their front who had labeled him a "devil's child" from the getgo.

Roving bands of these nutjobs, religious or otherwise, had started becoming a lot more common over the last few weeks, as people desperate for some sort of target for the anger they felt at being rendered poor and desperate by the shifting of economic focus up to the PLANTs were snapped up by some new political group, little better than an exceptionally large gang in Cyprus's eyes, which called itself "Blue Cosmos". Blue Cosmos adherents were taught that Coordinators were the root of all the evil and woe that had infected their lives and that having a Coordinator child was a sin against both God and humanity. They were fanatics, and dangerous ones too, prone to violence and traveling in groups and mobs. Some even whispered that Blue Cosmos had been behind the Glenn killing somehow, though Cyprus failed to see how they could have that kind of power, to kill the First Coordinator and all but "Man of the Century" and get away with it scot free! You'd need the backing of a major political power, like the AtFed or EurFed, to do that...

Coming back to the here and now, Cyprus frowned as he saw that one of his favorite spots to scavenge, a local baker's shop, "Gorobets' Cakes and Baked Goods", that almost always had a few extra donuts or half stale bagels for the street children to "purloin" with a wink and a nod, was closed now, its windows boarded up and a forlorn sign saying "permanently out of business" hanging on the front door, which was locked, while the lights were out. This didn't make any sense to Cyprus... every time he passed by this bakery, including only a few days ago, it was always doing a thriving business no matter the time of day, because they made the best baked goods for twenty blocks in any direction! It was owned by a family of five, Oleg, the baker, his wife Maria, and their three daughters Alla, Oxana and Sofiya, ages 11, 13 and 17 respectively. Oxana was starting to give him moon eyes whenever he dropped by to see if there was a scrap to eat, and while this did improve the likelihood there would be something warm to eat saved aside for him, it made him uncomfortable all the same. He was just starting to go through puberty, but though she was a nice girl, he didn't want to get close to her. He didn't think he could stand to touch or be touched in an intimate manner without trying to kill her by reflex.

Crossing the street, Cyprus checked the front door again and confirmed that it was locked, before heading around back, towards the dumpsters and refuse bins where the occasional bag containing the "spare" food might be found by a patient or lucky scavenger. He hadn't bothered with this the last few times he'd been by... the way Oxana was looking at him, he felt safe enough going in through the front door, even if he was a little grungy compared to the other clientele... but obviously that wasn't an option now. There was a lot of trash and refuse around back, plainly the sign hadn't been lying, the Gorobets' were packing up and moving out for some reason, closing down their lucrative business, one of the last local shops to stay in operation during the recent economic downturn. It didn't make any sense to Cyprus, everyone who was local knew that the Gorobets' were making a small mint with their bakery and had been for as long as almost anyone could remember, since even before Sofiya, the eldest daughter, was even born! There was a lot of junk in the trash, even some things that might fetch some money at the pawn shops, but Cyprus didn't feel right about stealing from the Gorobets', even from their trash, not after all the free meals he'd gotten here.

He was just about to shrug and move on... grumbling in his belly reminding him that since there was no food here he'd have to try somewhere else soon or spend the night both cold AND hungry, which was about as bad as things got for him... when he noticed something odd about the back door to the bakery. Closer inspection bore out his sharp eyes and attention to detail, as he saw splinters and scratches around the door jam and outer lock that were very recent. Any good homeless person with half a head on their shoulders knew what a forced or picked lock looked like, which was like this... someone how recently broken into the bakery through the back door! Cyprus's first inclination was to run, to get the hell out of there... nobody was as dangerous as a criminal interrupted in the midst of a crime, and even being a kid wouldn't necessarily protect him from getting stabbed or shot if the crook thought he might be a potential witness or a threat. But though running and just forgetting all about this was the smart thing to do, Cyprus hesitated. The Gorobets' had been good to him, some of the very few people that ever had been. Risky or not, he owed them a little payback for that good will. He'd just take a peek inside, real quick, and if he saw anyone suspicious he'd run and find a stone and break the front window to trigger the alarm system. Better to lose a window than the entire bakery.

Crouching down, Cyprus eased the broken door open, glad that Oleg took such good care of his property, there was no squeal of rusty or unoiled hinges. He'd never been in the back of the bakery before, but he'd seen enough of it from the front to know the basic floorplan. The store and actual bakery was on the ground level, and the Gorobets' had their family living space on the two floors above, accessed by a stairway behind the big bread ovens in the center of the actual bakery. The bakery was dark inside, all the lights turned off, but there was still enough light from the street out front for Cyprus to see by, though details were hard to make out unless he was really close to something. He didn't see any sign of a burglar or drug addict or other criminal, the entire bakery was dead quiet. However, only a few steps in, Cyprus stopped short, his nostrils crinkling as they were assaulted by a pair of unfortunately familiar smells. One was dried blood. The other was decaying human flesh.

Not too much further on, he found the first body, propped up against the fronts of the big bread ovens. It was Oleg, and he'd been shot through the head, and twice more in the chest. Cyprus wasn't exactly an expert with gunshot wounds, guns were actually fairly rare on the streets, only the best equipped and richest criminals had access to them, but he was fairly sure that Oleg had been shot in the chest first, and then finished off by the one to his head. And he'd been dead for at least a day, judging by the bloating and the stench. A placard was hung around the baker's neck with crude yarn, with the message "Patchworker Parent" written across it in bright blue marker. This was the first hint that Cyprus had that the Gorobets' children were Coordinators, though Oleg and Maria were certainyl wealthy enough to afford the expensive pregnancies, not that he really cared, but someone obviously did, and cared very strongly. Strongly enough to break into Oleg's shop and murder him just to send a message! The sight of a dead body would have sent most children scurrying for the street, but Cyprus had seen plenty of death, and though he was sad to see Oleg dead, the corpse did not revolt or overly bother him.

Heart heavy, delaying the inevitable, Cyprus searched the rest of the ground floor but didn't find anything. Whoever had done this had come and gone at least a day ago, there was no one here but him... him and the dead. Knowing he really should get out of there, that things would go badly if the police showed up and he was found inside, Cyprus nonetheless could not stop himself from heading up the stairs to the family quarters, even though he was fairly sure he knew what he would find there. He didn't have to go very far into the main living room at the top of the stairs before he found the next body. It was Alla, the youngest daughter, and she had been shot three times in the back. Several more bullet holes in her limbs were less bloody, leading Cyprus to believe they had been inflicted after she was already dead, to further mutilate the corpse in a frenzy of hatred. The room had taken plenty of damage as well, bullet holes in the walls and furniture, the big screen TV had been smashed in and tipped over... all vandalism, no robbery. Cyprus stared into Alla's dead eyes for a few seconds before shaking his head and moving on to check the remainder of the second floor, which were all family spaces.

Aside from several more instances of Blue Cosmos graffiti and hateful slogans painted onto the walls and floor, the second floor was empty, leaving only the third floor and the family bedrooms left to search. Cyprus did not drag his feet as he headed upstairs... the Gorobets' were all dead, but he had to be sure. It would be wrong for him to just turn his back and run away on them, even if they were no longer alive. He didn't want to just read about it in the discarded papers the next day, these were people he knew! The first bedroom was Alla's, and it was empty, though ransacked and covered with more graffiti. The next room was Oxana's, but Cyprus refrained from entering. He'd do that one last. After Oxana's room was the master bedroom, and it was occupied. Maria Gorobets was sprawled across the bed, naked as a babe, her wrists and ankles bound by ropes to the head and footboards. She'd been raped, repeatedly, by at least three to four men by Cyprus's judgement of the quantity of fluids left behind, and then she'd been executed with a bullet between her eyes. There was a "Patchworker Parent" placard around her neck as well, and an additional message, "Womb of Sin", was carved into her belly with what looked like a soldering iron or other heated implement.

The room had been torn apart as well, furniture smashed to flinders, clothing scattered from drawers and ripped apart, an orgy of senseless violence and unfocused anger. Cyprus wondered if the men who'd done this thought they were righteous or holy or brave... could they really be that delusional? Then again, these were the same sort of people who thought a grey haired child with grey eyes must be a Coordinator simply because he didn't look like other children. It was all too possible that they actually thought this was a job well done. Cyprus considered closing Maria's eyes, but he didn't want to risk leaving his genetics behind in this hellhole. It was on to the last room before the guest bathroom, Sofiya's room. His eyes jaded, Cyprus did not flinch from the sight in that room, though he did bite his lip in momentary anger, the Focus threatening to overwhelm him in the instant before he forced it back down, as it would be useless and he really didn't want to view the scene with that much clarity.

Like her mother, Sofiya was naked, and showed signs of plentiful and repeated sexual abuse on her body, in addition to the torture marks from the hot iron or heated knife blade or whatever it was that had been used to burn off large sections of her skin and mutilate her face, burning out her eyes and searing her lips and nose and ears to stubs. "Death to Patchworkers!" was written in her own blood across her bedsheets. Her wrists and ankles were bound with strips of cloth that had been tied together from her own ripped apart underwear, her belly had been slit open to let drooping trails of intestines hang out, and then she had been strung up by a noose around her neck while apparently still alive, judging by the blood splatter patterns, and left to slowly strangle by her bedside. Cyprus just couldn't understand this kind of hate... how could someone possible deserve such tortures simply because of the way they were born? But then again, had not he suffered his own torments simply because of the way he was born? Was that always the fate of those who were different, through no choice of their own, to be persecuted by those in the so called majority? If being in the majority meant doing things like this to the minority... then Cyprus was glad to BE the minority!

Trudging back out into the hall, Cyprus reached Oxana's door again and paused. He reached his hand out towards the door knob, but before he touched it, he stopped and drew his hand slowly back. He thought about Oxana, with her flour dusted hair and big brown eyes and that goofy, shy smile she always had on her face after she gave him a bag full of donuts and cream cheese to eat. The last time he'd seen her, she'd told him to come back on Valentine's Day because she was going to make a cake especially for him. He hadn't had cake in years, but he was certainly willing to eat some again if it was offered! It was a nice memory, one of a very few he had. He didn't want to overwrite that memory by seeing what horros the Blue Cosmos fanatics had inflicted upon her... he could well imagine, after seeing Maria and Sofiya. But he could force himself not to imagine... if he opened this door, if he looked inside, he wouldn't be able to forget whatever atrocity was on display inside. He owed it to the Gorobets' to witness their deaths, but he owed it to himself and to the memory of Oxana's smile not to associate her with only grief and pain and horror. Cyprus dropped his hand to his side and moved on, back down the stairs, to find something heavy to throw through the windows to trigger the alarm. His stomach growled at him again, but he didn't feel hungry anymore...

xxxx

**C.E. 55, June 6th, Evening**

Cyprus was fourteen now, and despite the best efforts of the hard life of the streets, was actually in the midst of something of a growth spurt, having shot up almost seven inches since the same time last year, he was getting close to the six foot mark. This had both advantages and disadvantages... it was much easier to look older when applying for day work or staying out of the Orphanage pickups, but conversely it was harder to look young and vulnerable for his night work, his real work, of preying upon the predators that attacked the weak, the helpless and the young. He no longer was targeted by many male molestors anymore, no matter how much he tried, he could not help but look too big and strong to chance taking on without getting hit over the head or drugged, and he wasn't going to let that happen. Conversely, he was attracting the attentions of many more female predators now that he had passed through puberty and was of more use to those females with a taste for cradle robbing... only so much could be garnered in the way of pleasure from a boy who's balls hadn't dropped yet after all.

It was getting harder to differentiate the true predators from those who were just too stupid or horny to discern or care how young he actually really was... for that matter, sexual activity amongst children his age with their peers, while not common, was far from unknown, and he was conflicted at times as to whether a sixteen or seventeen year old seeking to bed him constituted a molestor or predator. He did not enjoy sex, Ms. Mueller and the other predators of his early childhood had ruined his taste for it before he'd even gone through puberty, and not even those hormonal changes were enough to cure him of his dread and distaste for physical intimacy, with men or women. He could tolerate it when he had to, but he didn't think he would ever seek it out on his own without it relating to his hunting. Usually if he was conflicted he would not kill his prey, though he was not averse to relieving them of a few valuables as an object lesson for them to consider, and perhaps dumping them into a trashbin somewhere if he was especially conflicted.

He'd changed his methods of killing as well, now he was strong enough to physically overpower most women and even some men, he no longer needed his little ceramic knives to even the balance, though he kept several of them on him anyway. Most often he would choke or smother his prey unconscious now, using a pillow or a scarf or a length of sheet to avoid leaving telltale finger bruises on their necks, and then he would usually drown them, in a sink or bathtub or drainage ditch, make it look like an unfortunate accident. He was older now, the police would be watching him more carefully, and with his grey hair and eyes, he would definitely stand out of any lineup for a witness that might have seen him leaving the scene of a "murder". He was also a big believer in safe sex, though more as an expedient than anything else... it was a pain cleaning out a corpse of that sort of thing before disposal, and there was always a chance he might miss some, and there was nothing worse than a corpse turning up with some of your semen on or inside it... that always got people freaking out, no matter how much the corpse in question might have deserved that fate and far worse besides! He was still fairly sure he was off the books and out of the police files, but if there was one thing his life had drummed into him again and again, it was that he could never be sure of anything.

A lot had happened to both him and the world at large in the two years and some months since he'd fled from Gorobets Cakes' and Baked Goods after breaking open one of the front store windows with a brick to trigger the silent and not so silent alarms to alert the police to the massacre of the popular and wealthy family. He still thought about them from time to time, especially Oxana, as he had yet to encounter anyone that had been as unfailing nice to him as they had, at least without expecting anything in return. They had been good people, but they had also been Coordinators, and in the eyes of much of the world these days, being a Coordinator or suspected to be a Coordinator was a crime no amount of good intentions or actions could cancel out. Much of Earth's population was still in chaos, on the verge of riots as the type S2 Influenza plague, the "Black Plague of the Cosmic Era" continued to sputter and gutter in certain countries, even though distribution of S2 type vaccine from the PLANTs had been constant for the last four months straight.

Yet despite the aid from the PLANTs, many on Earth were still of the opinion that the mutated Flu virus that had decimated cities across the globe and caused trillions of dollars in riot damage when no cure could be found was in fact a biological weapon released by those selfsame PLANTs in revenge for the Christmas time slaying of George Glenn, the First Coordinator, back in C.E. 53. And those who did not believe that were often to be found believing that the S2 virus was in fact a form of divine punishment from God or Gods, to punish the people of Earth for deviating from the natural order of life with the genetic tinkering on humanity that had produced Coordinators in the first place. Already the world's major political and economic bloc coalitions were meeting to discuss the adoption of something called the "Torino Protocol", after the city in which the meeting was being held, which would permanently ban all genetic tinkering with humans on Earth and the Moon, making the creation of further Coordinators a crime punishable by severe fines, imprisonment or even death in some countries.

Even before the Protocol was enacted though, Cyprus could have easily told the world leaders that it was a useless effort, if for some reason they had stopped to ask a random homeless street kid in the Ukraine for his insight. Whether the world wanted to admit it or not, the Coordinators were here to stay, and any legislation passed to prevent them from being welcome on Earth would only result in them moving up to space or else just moving them into the black market side of things. It was an open secret that even many of the leaders who were discussing the Torino Protocol had children or relatives that were themselves Coordinators, though of course they were "special exemptions" by right of their politically or economically powerful families. It was so sad it was almost funny... as the saying went, you could often find the current AtFed president, a woman liberal, condemning the Coordinators from her top mouth, while they somehow continued to pop out from her lower lips at the same time! After all, who wouldn't want to pass on all their best qualities and talents to the next generation so that their children would excel above others not so committed or advantaged, assuming you had the money to afford the pregnancy treatments of course?

It had gotten to the point where Cyprus was investing in a series of hats to cover his grey hair as much as possible... though not unknown amongst Naturals, silvery grey hair like his, on a male his age, was extremely uncommon, so much so that most people just tended to leap to the conclusion that he must have been genetically tinkered upon in the womb, though why anyone would want to be born with hair that made them look like they were a senior citizen was beyond him. Unfortunately, getting an ID card that would coprehensively prove that he was a genetic Natural wasn't really an option, since that meant registering his genetic code with the EurFed authorities, which would REALLY make it hard to continue his hunting of predators without a near certain risk of being caught, and his hunting was all he really had to define his life right now! He couldn't give it up, not even for the convenience of avoiding brawls with and running for his life from packs of rhetorically fired up gangs with aspirations of being Blue Cosmos patriots!

Hands in his pockets, black beanie hat pulled down low over his ears to cover his grey locks, Cyprus did his best to slouch along the sidewalk, even though it hurt his back to walk in such a way, it seemed to be the normal posture for most children his age these days and he didn't want to stand out any more than he absolutely had to. All the same, he stopped for a few moments to watch some TV's in the front of an electronics store that was doing a tepid business... though most electronics of any quality were made in the PLANTs these days, nobody wanted to be seen buying them because of the peril of being thought to be a Patchworker sympathizer. The program was a news report, from some faraway place called "Orb", which was apparently a teeny-tiny little island on the back end of nowhere that was gaining a lot of worldwide attention because it was one of the few places that did not respect the Torino Protocol and wasn't part of any major economic bloc, so there was little to no Blue Cosmos presence there and many Coordinators still lived and worked there.

This resulted in Orb's economy actually being in a boom state right now where most of the rest of the world was in a slow decline. Cyprus looked at the grounds of the Orb National Palace, where a certain man, Uzumi Nara Attha, was being honored for his role in helping Orb propser. Apparently this was big news because not only was Uzumi responsible for Orb's recent economic boom, but he was also the hereditary King of the small island nation, a largely ceremonial role in modern times but which made him immensely popular with Orb's citizens all the same. Uzumi was said to be running for post of Chief Representative, basically the President, in the next few years, on a platform of keeping Orb seperate but equal from the rest of Earth, and promising equal freedoms and rights to both Natural and Coordinator citizens of Orb. Uzumi looked like he was going to be making a big splash on the world political scene in the near future. Cyprus wondered if said splash might just be too big, and end up swamping tiny little Orb in the process... the AtFed and EurFed and Rep of East Asia didn't look so kindly upon being shown up by a nation that could fit into any one of their territories a thousand times over with room to spare.

The report cut to a few shots of Lord Uzumi's family, though he appeared to be a widower, he did have a young daughter, barely two years old, named Cagalli Yula Attha. Cyprus wasn't sure why her last name was different from her father's, but given that his hair was brown fading towards grey and hers was sunny blond, he wondered if perhaps she was adopted, despite the banner claiming her to be his heir and daughter. She had fierce amber eyes, though their ferocity was muted by the bright pink and orange frilly dress she was all but enveloped in, her hair braided through with more orange and pink ribbons and lace as she was held in the arms of a professional nursemaid during the ceremony. There was another girl being held by another maid nearby, though Cyprus did not catch her name or much beyond a glimpse of her bright red hair and similar frilly dress of pink and red. From her position he guessed she must be family to Nara Attha, though not immediate family, maybe a cousin or something... Cyprus wasn't so good with family relationships beyond mother, father, sister and brother, as he'd never had a real family of his own to learn in.

Not wanting to stand around for hours and hours to watch the whole award ceremony for the philanthropist-King, Cyprus moved on, reminding himself to slouch and stare at the ground fixedly, as so many of his "peers" were apt to do whenever they were pedestrians, assuming they weren't talking or texting on their cellphones and other personal electronic devices, which he'd never owned and probably never would either. Which was fine, he'd lived 14 years without them already and was doing just fine, he couldn't imagine that going another 14 without them would overly harm him. Besides, he had no where to keep it safe or recharge it, and it would only mark him out as a further target to the street gangs. Moving more briskly now, as dusk finished setting in, Cyprus headed for his most recent hunting grounds, in a residential neighborhood surrounding a run down high school, a few blocks away. Schools were natural bait to predators like the ones he was looking for, there was always some sort of unscrupulous sort hanging out around them, coveteously eyeing all the young flesh on display.

Still several blocks short of his goal, Cyprus saw a police car in the distance and took a detour down a back alleyway filled with trash cans and drifting refuse, knowing that his somewhat ragged appearance would only draw unwanted attention from the neighborhood cops that sometimes patrolled the area immediately around the school. Last thing he needed was to get picked up as a vagrant or runaway and taken in for a night next to the drunk tank at the local police station. And with a cop in the area, any predators would be ducking and covering anyway, so there was no rush to get to the school grounds anymore. It would take a few hours for the nightlife to return to the area, but in a way seeing a cop this early was good. Predators were always more confident after the cops came and then went, because they knew they weren't likely to come back for a while. And Cyprus would be there waiting for one of them tonight, and thenafter there would be one less predator to trouble the dreams of the weak and the helpless.

The sounds of a scuffle from up ahead brought Cyprus onto the alert, the sound of blows and grunts and panting breathes. Sounded like a fairly large brawl, which was normally something that he'd want to avoid. At the same time though, Cyprus found himself drawn onward, unable to just turn away without knowing what was going on. If it was just bickering between kids or gang members, then he'd just melt back into the night and be on his way, there was no point and no gain in injecting himself into such conflicts. But if someone was being victimized, especially a child or a woman under attack by the predatory sort... Cyprus's eyes gleamed, grey becoming metallic steely for a moment... well in that case, his hunt was going to be a short one tonight. When he wanted to be, Cyprus could be every bit as quiet and stealthy as that childhood nickname-slur he hated so much, "ghost", and with the combatants involved in their melee, they had little attention to spare as he materialized out of the night's darkness behind the scuffle in progress.

It was actually rather more than just a scuffle, it was a full blown street fight, a snarling scrum of youths clad in gang markings... or at least that was what he assumed the predominance of green and blue and violet colors were meant to represent... attempting to bring down single other young man, who was easily half again the height and twice of the weight of any of his individual assailants, but there was only one of him and at least eight, maybe nine of the gang members, a bear assaulted by wolves. Even Cyprus, who was pretty tall for his age, would have had to bend his head back to stare the solitary youth in the eyes, the other guy had at least six inches on him and a good eighty to ninety pounds, most of which did not seem to be fat. From what flashes of the single guy's face, Cyprus determined that they were about the same age, which made his eyes widen... this guy was going to be a giant when he finished growing up and filling out! That is, if he got a chance to grow any older, which judging by the iron pipes and rusty chains and even a rusty flip-blade knife that some of the gang members were wielding, was not high on their priority list. Whatever the big guy had done to piss this gang off, they were out for his blood and lots of it!

Normally Cyprus would never take on such grotesque odds, but his sense of inner justice just wouldn't let him turn his back on an unarmed person, no matter how huge, fighting alone against eight assailants with weapons in hand and murder in mind. It was obvious who was the predators and who was the prey in this scenario, and equally obvious that the big guy was just trying to fight his way free so he could escape, rather than really attempting to kill his opponents, despite livid bruising and several bloody gashs on his arms and sides, defensive wounds. Allowing his sense of injustice and rage to fill him with power, the Focus hovering just at the edge of his consciousness should he need it, Cyprus threw himself forward, his feet making nary a sound on the refuse strewn pavement as he kicked the closest gang member in the back of the knee, collapsing his leg from under him, sending him falling over backwards with a garbled squawk of surprise, dropping a length of wood that he was using as a crude club.

Cyprus kicked the length of wood away with his foot, before kicking the ganger several times in the side and chest, knocing his breath away and doubling him up on the ground, out of the fight for the time being. However, his little counter-assault had been noticed by now and three of the remaining gangers reversed direction and came for him, spitting curses and brandishing their weapons, a knife, a chain and a set of brass kunckles. Cyprus immediately got a sinking feeling in his chest... these guys knew what they were doing, at least as much as any gang kids of about his own age did, and they were spitting mad, maybe even hyped up on some kind of aggression drug... he'd heard there were a few new popular intoxicants with "unexpected" side effects making the rounds of the drug rings recently. Cyprus was no stranger to fighting, but he usually tried to plan things out so it was one on one, and catching his prey by surprise when their guard was down to boot. He was a predator, not a battler, but this was not a hunt, it was a battle! He palmed one of his makeshift ceramic blades, but it was both smaller and much more fragile than the switchblade one of his assailants had, and would hardly even the odds. Perhaps this had not been such a good idea.

Even as he thought that though, the big guy he'd jumped in to save rallied himself, taking advantage of the gang's momentary distraction at Cyprus entering the fray, lashing out with one huge fist, a roundhouse punch that would have flattened a tiger. Cyprus saw the blow land right against one pipe wielding ganger's face and had to wince at the way his head twisted, blood spraying in an arc from mouth and nose, tooth fragments ejected like chips from a wood chipper as his feet physically left the ground for a moment and he fell over backwards in a limp heap, completely unconscious, maybe worse! Powerful as the blow was, the big guy had left himself open to use it, and let out a pained grunt as he took a heavy blow to the side of his ribcage from the club of one of the other gangers, and was forced back up against the rickety wooden fence that bordered one wall of the alleyway, dropping one arm to guard his tender and injured side.

The knife wielding foe made a wild slash at Cyprus's face, which made him instinctively flinch backwards, but it had ony been a ruse, as the chain wielding ganger leapt forward, rusty links of metal already whirling like a crude flail, and he lashed his improvised weapon down toward's Cyprus's neck. He managed to dodge backward, and struck out with his little ceramic shiv in the same motion, but his attack came up a bit short and he only inflicated a long, painful cut across his opponent's face, which was still enogh to make him stagger backward with a shockingly loud scream and curse. Cyprus's instincts propelled him forwards to finish the kill, but he'd forgotten about the other foes, still too used to single confrontations not melee battles, and his instincts made him pay a heavy price as the kid with the brass knuckles landed a heavy jab to Cyprus's gut, all but doubling him over and driving the air from his lungs, before he was set spinning backwards, his jaw cracked at the very least by a follow up blow to his chin. Staggering, Cyprus lost his balance and tripped, falling into and knocking over a cluster of metal trash bins, somewhat breaking his fall but half burying him in food scraps and refuse in the process. This was really not his kind of fight...

The sound of splintering wood and another loud scream from one of the gangers brought a bit of clarity back to Cyprus's vision, as he tasted hot copper across his tongue and lips and struggled to get back to his feet... he might not be a great brawler but any street kid knew that once you were on the ground surrounded by enemies, it was usually over for you... get up or get dead! The big guy had physically grabbed and hurled one of his assailants through the wooden fence behind him, collapsing a six foot section of the half rotten wood and spilling the fight into the neatly kept yard beyond. Unfortunately, this proved to be something of an error for the big kid, because the throw, while jarring, had not disabled the ganger, and now the gang was able to come at the big kid from the back as well as the front, since the fence was no longer guarding his flanks. Cyprus was just scrambling up when a steel toed boot caught him in the side and knocked him down amidst the trash cans again, his side blazing with agony. The grey nut of the Focus sailed through his mind and exploded with its flashes of grey and white light, and suddenly he was on his feet without even knowing how he got there.

He ducked under the slash of the switchblade, and spun away from a straight arm jab of the brass knuckles, before bringing his shin right up between the legs ofthe guy with the knife with a muffled "THUMP" that lifted the kid up onto his tiptoes, a tide of bile exploding from his lips as his eyes went wide and white in unimaginable pain, knife dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers with a clatter as he keeled over with a thin, high pitched wail, like steam escaping from a pipe. "You bastard!" The guy with the knuckles swore, aiming another powerful blow at Cyprus's side. He did his best to block, but even with the Focus, the other kid was stronger, and though he escaped the worst of the blow, now his arm was bruised and numb. Disregarding this, Cyprus flew forward and bodily tackled the knuckles wielder, driving him to the ground and smacking his head against the pavement, dazing him. Grabbing the kid by the hair, Cyprus slammed his head viciously into the pavement twice more, until on the second hit a spray of blood decorated the dirty ground beneath the kid's head, though whether it was a cracked skull or just a split scalp Cyprus did not know or care.

Scrambling up from atop the stunned ganger, Cyprus saw that things weren't going so well for the big kid, he'd been struck from behind in the kidneys by the ganger he'd thrown through the fence, and then hit again on the head by a wooden bat which had dropped him to his hands and knees. Astoundingly, there he remained, refusing to be beaten into the ground eve as the gangers kicked and pummeled him with their fists and weapons, again and again and again, until his body was more bloody bruises than unmarked skin, and still he refused to go down entirely. Moving forward to help, Cyprus felt his ankle seized and yanked and he found himself tripping forward, the ganger he'd knocked down and slammed around clearly not nearly as disabled as he'd appeared, and now the guy with the chain was stumbling back into the fight, one hand still pressed to his bleeding face, but the chain swinging dangerously in his free hand all the same, and he whipped Cyprus across the back as he went down, ripping open his shirt and lacerating the skin across his back and shoulderblades, making Cyprus cry out in pain.

He tried to roll away, but the fallen ganger still had his ankle in his hand, which twisted and sprained, drawing another hiss of pain from Cyprus, even before he found himself butting up against the legs of one of the other gang members who had left off beating the big kid to help his fellows with the interloper. Cyprus dimly saw the kick coming and did his best to curl up, but it caught him in the side of the head anyway, and rang his skull like a bell. He felt his nose break as his head rebounded off the pavement, and then he was screaming again as the chain came whipping down across his side and back again, gashing open the skin and cracking one of his left ribs. And then the chain links were winding around his neck and Cyprus felt his throat constricting closed as the gang member he'd cut began to throttle him, a malicious expression of rage twisting his features as he twisted his improvised garrotte tighter and tighter, while the skull hit ganger held down Cyprus's legs and the standing ganger stood on his wrists. He was helpless, and he panicked, thrashing like a wild beast, driven almost insane by the act of being pinned down by others, but they simply had too much leverage and he couldn't breathe and the world was starting to go dark for real and...

Then a sound like the loudest blast of thunder Cyprus had ever heard ripped through the night, and it took his oxygen starved brain a moment to recognize a gunshot. Everyone froze, even the enraged ganger with the chain slackened his attempts at strangulation for a moment, as everyone looked for the source of the gunshot. And then there was a second shot, and one of the wooden clubs that the gang members had been using to beat the big kid down with exploded into shards and splinters in its wielder's hand, making him yelp and trip over as he clutched his suddenly numb and bleeding hand. "Fucker shot my hand!" The kid howled in shock.

"Nonsense." A curt, older male voice replied, as the owner of said voice came casually strolling around the side of the house whose back yard the alley fight had spilled into. He looked to be in his early thirties, though Cyprus wasn't exactly in the best position to judge, still semi-conscious from the choking and kick to the head. His scalp had split open after the kick and now there was blood dripping down into his eyes to go with the gore pouring out of his broken nose and bitten lips. More blood was soaking into his shirt and pants from the chain wounds on his back... he was a mess and it was probably only going to get worse... after falling into those trash cans, it would be a miracle if his wounds didn't start to fester! "If I'd shot you in the hand you wouldn't have anything left from the forearm down, and you certainly would have gone into instant shock and probably fainted." The older man continued in a bored tone.

It was then that Cyprus noticed two things. One of them was the incredibly massive pistol the stranger carried nonchalantly in one hand, the largest handgun Cyprus had ever seen or heard of, it looked like it had been cut down and reassembled from pieces of an entire rifle! Second was the eyes of the stranger, the only thing that really stood out about his nondescript and average appearance... they were light blue, ice blue perhaps, and they burned with an intensity Cyprus had never seen in anyone before in his life. Those eyes were like laser beams that could freeze you in a block of ice if you spent too much time looking into them! Cyprus had not been scared of much since his time with Ms. Mueller, but just by looking into these eyes he found his fear again, his recognition that there were things in this world much scarier than he'd ever realized. The stranger gestured with his pistol towards the remaining gangers. "Why don't you get out of here while I'm still feeling mellow? Bad enough that you ruined my fence, I don't want the hassle of dead kids in my back alley."

"You'll regret messing with us, old man!" One of the gangers retroted, though his bravado was a bit ruined by the quaver of fear in his voice. "We're sanctioned by Blue Cosmos to hunt down and execute all the damn Patchworkers we find, and anyone who fucks with us is to be treated as a Patchworker sympathizer! You're fucked!"

"Hardly." If anything the stranger just seemed amused by a threat that would have had most people quivering in their boots. Blue Cosmos, though never officially acknowledged, was fast becoming one of the ruling powers of the region, more pervasive and powerful than any criminal syndicate could hope to match. "And what makes you so sure that those two are Coordinators?"

"Just look at em!" The gang spokesman retorted haughtily. "How else could he get so big if his genes weren't spliced?" He demanded, pointing at the big kid. He then indicated Cyprus, who'd lsot his hate sometime during the brawl. "And grey hair on a kid his age, come on, that ain't natural, what else could he be?"

"I think you should go home now and leave them alone." The stranger answered, his tone still bored, though there was a glimmer in his eyes that would have made Cyprus gulp had the chain not still been biting into his neck. The stranger was reaching the end of his patience. "Unless you really believe that there are two Coordinators living homeless on the strret, or hadn't you noticed the condition of their clothing? Just because someone is different from the accepted norm doesn't make them a Patchworker. Until you can learn that fact and understand what it means, you'll never actually serve Blue Cosmos."

"Yeah, and what do you know about Blue Cosm..." The gang leader started to spit back, before he trailed off in mid retort, as the stranger had brought up the gun and it was now pointed squarely between his eyes, a spot of bright blue laser light shining unseen on the bridge of his nose.

"I know what I know, and if you have an ounce of brain tissue inside that skull, you'll just go and ask no more questions. Leave them be, or I'll forget what a pain it is to dispose of bodies in an urban environment. Say another word and you'll be breathing through the stump of your neck." The stranger's threats were all the more compelling for the lack of anger in his tone. He wasn't yelling at them, he was stating a fact, a cold, hard reality that would occur the next time they crossed him. At heart most people are at least a little cowardly, and just need an excuse to retreat from a confrontation where they know they are out of their depth. Shooting hateful looks at Cyprus, the big kid and the stranger with the gun, the gang members sullenly gathered their fallen friends and skulked away, mumbling and muttering to themselves. There would be trouble there, sure as his hair was gray, but the stranger didn't seem concerned. He holstered his pistol on a rig at his thigh and came over to crouch by Cyprus. "That was a brave thing you did. Stupid, but brave. Why risk your life for him? He your friend?"

"It wasn't... right..." Cyprus managed to cough, feeling the Focus flee from him and the pain of all his injuries come crashing back. This wasn't good, he was going to pass out soon and he didn't even have the strength to stand! "I prey... on the predators..." Cyprus tried to push himself upright. He was still trying when he fainted. The stranger with the gun crouched by the side of the gray haired teen for another minute, considering things in his steel trap of a mind. Finally, with a sigh, the older man grabbed the gray haired kid under his arms and lifted him up into a fireman's carry. Doing this was stupid, it stood a pretty good chance of compromising his cover, but, like the kid had just said, leaving them to fend for their own in this hostile world just wouldn't be right, not after that selfless display he'd witnessed. At the very least, he could tend to their wounds and give them a hot meal. Even a incorrigible devil like him had a heart sometimes...

xxxx

**C.E. 58, Atlantic Federation, Los Angelos Sprawl**

The case was waiting for him in the bus station locker, just as the note he'd been slipped while in the airport restroom had said it would be. Cyprus twitched his lips in what would have been a broad smile of appreciation for anyone else, he enjoyed working with those who were astute and professional. It was all too rare in this day and age, where fanaticism and blind obedience was often more highly valued by the people in charge than pragmatic skill and professional acumen. One could only work with so many drive by shooters, suicide bombers and slogan chanting bigots before one began to grow numb to their faces and actions and personalities. It wasn't a matter of religious belief, nor was it a matter of money or status, not for him anyway. He did what he did because he believed it was the right thing to do, that this was the proper path for someone like him to take in life. Sometimes the proper path led to very dark places, but better he, who was used to darkness and even found it comforting, walk these paths than the greater majority of humanity, who would be too weak to avoid giving into temptation to stae their own pride rather than the demands of justice and survival.

His entire world had been uprooted and reordered in the wake of that fateful encounter with the man he would come to know, and even tenatively love, as Asmodeus Sark, though Cyprus was well aware that this was not his foster father's real name. After being nursed back to health from his gang inflicted injuries by the taciturn Asmodeus, along with his best friend, the hulking kid whose side he'd leapt to during that night's street fight, Thomas Glory... though of course their friendship didn't develop until later, after Cyprus had been adopted by Asmodeus and Thomas had decided to stay around even though he refused adoption... Cyprus and Asmodeus had found kindred spirits in each other. Though they were both Naturals, neither considered Coordinators to be superior in any innate fashion, and both believed that anything a Coordinator could accomplish, so too could a Natural, with proper training and effort. Asmodeus was living proof of this, a brilliant thinker who was an expert soldier and dabbled in politics and economics and a dozen other subjects, searching for a completeness of focus and effort that would lead him to a sort of martial enlightenment and eventual spiritual peace.

And they both believed in justice, cold and harsh if need be, to protect the helpless and the weak and the defenseless from those who would abuse or prey upon them. It was a fine line to walk, and they spent many hours debating over and over again the philosophic intricasies of their mutual position... such as, in the pursuit of justice and protection, was it permissible to oppress in minor ways those you sought to defend, to take away their rights for a time to better protect them against external and internal threats? And where exactly, if that was permissible, did benevolent oppression turn into tyrannical oppression? They both agreed that it was not only permissible but indeed necessary to kill to protect others, as the ultimate sanction of justice could not be held back too often or the guilty would lose their fear of the consequences of their actions. And it was often necessary to bend or outright ignore the wider and often clumsy laws and rulings of society in order to protect those selfsame societies from those that would do them harm. They broke the law in order to protect it, their benevolent intentions and strict code of honor seperating them from those who acted only for their own profits and benefits.

And then had come the training, the exercise of mind and body and spirit, honing themselves like the edges of knives or swords, an opportunity to finally make real use of all the potential Cyprus had always known he had inside himself but lacked the time and resources to properly explore. Though living quietly in Eastern Europe, Asmodeus was a man of great influence and had friends in many high places, allowing him access to resources far beyond what any many of his apparent station in life should have. Whether it was guns, explosives, blades, vehicles, training manuals, video instruction clips, practice dummies... anything that a burgeoning student of martial practices could want or need, Asmodeus could get it. And most of the time, he could also teach all about it, from maintenance to strategies and tactics of use to history behind the item or technique in question. Cyprus had never met anyone as smart and knowledgable as Asmodeus was, not even himself, though his mentor-father was adamant that there would come a time when Cyprus's own capabilities would eclipse even those of Asmodeus himself, if he was but willing to try hard enough.

After a year or two of training and learning under Asmodeus's personal eye, he had started sending them out on basic missions, sometimes together, sometimes alone, sometimes covertly and sometimes overtly... retrieve this object, clean up this area, dispose of these bodies, take this package to this person and return with payment, etc. Low level courier and janitorial duties, but also tests of their commitment, attention to detail, ability to think creatively and quickly, and their physical and mental endurance. Questions were encouraged, and Asmodeus never turned away from a hard debate involving idealogies or morals or ethics, as he was wont to stress that a soldier could have no finer quality than an unshakeable moral compass. It didn't matter how good a shot or how sneaky a scout or how able a leader you were... if you weren't acting for the right reasons, reasons you believed in, you were more a liability to the world and to yourself and your comrades than an asset. Better to challenge a questionable action and suffer punishment than grow used to just closing your eyes and turning away.

It was during this time that Cyrpus and Thomas first began growing closer, first as fellow students, then as mission partners and finally, as real friends. Thomas did not regard Asmodeus with the near fatherly hero-worship that Cyprus did, in fact he was often rude and disrespectful to him, which was one thing that had prevented Cyprus from warming to the huge young man at first... how could anyone be snarky to such a font of wisdom and experience? But he came to realize that this was just the way Thomas was, he had always challenged authority whenever possible during his life, not because he despised authority but because he despised WEAK authority, authority of the "do as I say, not as I do" sort, which was apparently the kind he most often had encountered while growing up. Eventually he couldn't take the hypocrisy of the "authority" figures in his life any more and he'd run away from home, eventually drifting across most of Europe in search of a person or cause he could really believe in, until that fateful night in the alley behind Asmodeus's safe house.

Once they'd come to this understanding and expressed their mutual respect for each other, their friendship was both inevitable and inexorable. Cyprus dreamed of being a leader, of having the power to make decisions like Asmodeus did, which affected not only himself but a much wider and more powerful group, to become a man who really mattered to the world, even if his contributions could never be publicly acknowledged or confirmed. Recognition was not important, but effectualness was. Thomas on the other hand needed someone to believe in, someone to guide him and focus him, he did not want to be in the limelight, acknowledged or not, though he was happy to deal with smaller groups in assistance of a more focused and charismatic leader. Cyprus became that leader, someone to always inspire him to just a little more effort, to disregard a little more pain, to keep going over the next hill! And in return, Thomas became the immutable rock of support that Cyprus could always rely on to be there, unfailing and unflagging, to back him up on his path to becoming a lever upon which the world could be shifted!

Their talents were not especially similar... Thomas was a brute, and lacked much in the way of finesse and graces, as direct as he was large, and he was simply colossal, almost seven feet tall and pushing three hundred pounds and still growing! He was by no means stupid, no one brought under Asmodeus's wing was allowed that particular failing, and though he did not enjoy intellectual learning and spiritual debate to nearly the degree that Cyprus did, he buckled down to learn it all the same, with the same intensity of purpose he applied to dragging eighty kilo sacks of rock behind either hand on his twenty and thirty kilometer daily runs. Cyprus on the other hand could not rely on physical strength and stamina to the degree that his big friend could, so he focused more upon strengthening his mind and willpower, his ability to plan, to predict, to analyze and outsmart his foes before he even encountered them for the first time. At first he had a lot of trouble with that most imperative quality of a leader... the ability to inspire or lead others, given how stringently alone he'd been for most of his life, but after accepting Asmodeus as a foster parent and befriending Thomas, he found himself starting to ease out of the shell that Ms. Mueller had stuffed him into all those years ago.

He never discussed his past before the night in Asmodeus's alley with anyone, not Asmodeus and not Thomas, despite the respect and love he had for them. He wanted to make a clean break in his life, between the sordid desperation of then and the pure focus of now. And more than anything, he didn't want them to learn about how he had been preyed upon, and how he'd preyed upon others in turn, some of whom might not have even deserved it. He'd allowed himself to turn into a feral beast, and only the greatest fortune had allowed him to become a human being again. Let them know him and judge him by his actions now, not by the tortured motivations of his past. He would never forget what it was like to be a helpless victim, and he would never allow himself to become someone who preyed upon the helpless, but there was no peace in talking about why to his friend and foster fother. Only pain and madness and suffering lay down that path. At times he was fairly sure that Asmodeus had figured out some of what he wasn't saying, but his foster father never brought it up, for which Cyprus was eternally thankful.

Shaking himself free of his reverie, Cyprus took the matte black plastic case, about as long as his arm and as wide and deep as his hand was long, from the locker and headed out to the hotel that had been arranged for him. After enough successful courier type jobs and plenty of additional training, Cyprus and Thomas had been graduated to wetwork missions, first as mere gunmen under Asmodeus's direct supervision, serving as bodyguards and escorts and sentries and even combat firepower against criminal gangs, terrorists and dissidents. Though Cyprus was aware that Asmodeus was deeply conencted to many people high up in Blue Cosmos, they were never asked along on any missions against Coordinators or their sympathizers, for which Cyprus was grateful. He did not hate the Patchworkers and though he would kill them if they sinned against their fellows, as he would anyone, he didn't see their existence itself as a crime or an abomination. He still remembered Oxana's smile, and that was enough to completely blast away any tendrils of Blue Cosmos ideaology that tried to grab hold of his mind. Judge people as they are, not as they are born, as Asmodeus himself had said. Evil can be found anywhere, regardless of genetics.

Or, as it turned out, age, Cyprus learned, upon getting to his hotel room and cracking open the plastic case, which contained his mission supplies and a more comprehensive briefing. His target was a girl of thirteen years, a secret Coordinator who was distantly related to someone important in the Atlantic Federation administration, who exactly was not said, nor did Cyprus really care. At first he balked at the thought of killing a young girl just because she was a Coordinator, no doubt to send some message to this politician, but he forced himself to read the full briefing carefully, one of the earliest things Asmodeus had taught him. Never take anything at face value, and alwyas, always, ALWAYS read the mission briefing thoroughly! Thomas had declined to do that on one of their first joint unsupervised missions and things had become awkward when they had to conduct the mission on a nude beach, without access to weapons or equipment. They'd still pulled it off, though they were both quite a bit the worse for the wear afterwards. Who would have known that skinning a man with information tattooed onto his skin would be so hard to do with a piece of beach flint? Those little things you never think to practice until it's much too late...

And so it was that Cyprus discovered that the reason that this sweet little Coordinator girl wasn't living with her distant politican father was that despite her superior genetics she displayed severe sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies, and had already killed one of her own siblings and severely injured a pair of foster parents by assaulting them with an aluminum baseball bat in their bed. Of course the incidents had been hushed up to prevent embarassment to this important AtFed politician, who was in the running for president in the next few years, but all the same, it changed the dynamics of the situation slightly. Young did not always mean innocent, Cyprus knew that better than just about anyone. Assassinating this girl might serve a wider political agenda, but at the same time it would be ridding the world of a dangerous predator who enjoyed preying upon the weak and the helpless. It didn't make it any less distasteful... anyone who could prepare to shoot a child and not be troubled by it was not fit for the job, in Cyprus's eyes... but it did make it feasible. He wondered if this was perhaps a test of his commitment devised by Asmodeus, it would not surprise him. The tests just kept getting harder and more brutal with each one that he passed, but he recognized that this was a good thing. He needed a constant escalation in challenge if he wanted to continue to grow as a man and as a soldier.

Cyprus studied the diagrams and pictures that showed the sniping post and the target area, and practiced assembling and disassembling the 7.62mm sniper rifle that lay in padded foam inserts in the case, until he could put it together and take it apart in less than thirty seconds. His lips twitched again when he saw that the rifle was bolt action, and the case only contained a single bullet. No room for errors, was it? Good, that was just the way he liked it. He was only going to get one shot, one chance to pass this test. He would have liked to be able to scout the area himself, pick his own spot to shoot from, but obviosly Asmodeus didn't consider him ready for that kind of responsibility just yet, which was disappointing, but Cyprus was willing to trust his foster father's wisdom. Which in and of itself truly showed what an impact the older man had had upon him, the boy who had once sworn never to trust anyone older than him ever again! When he showed he was ready for the next step, Asmodeus would acknowledge it... right now he needed to concentrate on passing this test right in front of him.

Turning on the news, Cyprus began his pre mission preparations, stripping down and roughly scrubbing at his body with a coarse sponge, rubbing away all the extra dead skin particles and loose hairs that might have accumulated on his skin and which might flake off during the mission, potentially leaving behind a genetic marker of his presence. His genes didn't exist in any law enforcement or military database in the entire world, Asmodeus had made sure of that, but why risk giving them the seed to start a case? Dimly paying attention to the news, Cyprus continued his scrubbing, rubbing until his skin flushed pink and raw and sensitive, before slipping into a full body slinksuit of thermal absorbing fabric which would diffuse his body's thermal signature, making him harder to detect with most night-vision sensor systems, while the dark grey material of the skintight suit would provide visual camouflage. Contrary to popular belief, black was not a good color at night, it made you look like a solid shadow... dark grey or dark blue were better for blending in with shadows, and other, more traditional camouflage colors and patterns were best for other environments, like winter or forest.

The news program was focused upon recent developments up in space, where notorious firebrand Patrick Zala had been elected to the governing body or Supreme Council of the Coordinator "homeland", the PLANTs, along with his best friend and confederate Seigel Clyne, both of them members of the radical political group the "Zodiac Alliance", which advocated political and economic autonomy for the PLANTs from their sponsor nations. Cyprus wished them good luck with that, a tad ruefully, since he knew the sponsor nations would never allow their golden egg laying geese to become independent. Not without a fight, and since the Coordinators were thoroughly unarmed and demilitarized, that didn't look very likely. All the same, Asmodeus had told him to watch and pay attention carefully, especially to Zala and Clyne, whom Asmodeus had apparently been discussing with his own superiors in great detail lately.

Slipping a hairnet over his trimmed short gray hair, Cyprus made sure the slinksuit was tight in all the right places without bunching or chafing, before slipping on baggier civilian clothes over his "work" clothing, checked the placement of the rifle and other gear in the plastic case and then headed out the door, right on schedule. It was a brisk walk and a short taxi ride to the target area, which, just as Asmodeus's briefing had indicated, was already prepared for him, the doors already picked, the security systems already disabled, the lights already dimmed, all he had to do was walk up to the roof and conduct his own survey of ambient conditions, humidity, wind speed, temperature, all the little details that could conceivably affect the path of his shot. In truth they probably wouldn't play a big role in a shot from this close, barely a hundred meters from the target's estimated location. As far as tests went, the physical parameters of the shot were hardly challenging to his current skill level. Which led him to believe that the nature of the test was in turn more psychological, a test of nerve rather than skill.

Satisfying himself that he was alone and unobserved... he didn't trust the briefing nor Asmodeus's benevolence THAT far, not after that one time... Cyprus assembled and loaded the rifle, making sure to compensate in his grip for the extra weight at the end of the barrel that was the silencer/flare suppressor. Contrary to popular supposition, a silencer didn't make a rifle or pistol quiet... it just changed the kind of sound a person heard, making a gunshot not sound like a gunshot. A dropped ceramic plate, a champaigne cork popping, clapping hands... the actual noise wasn't important and varied from silencer to silencer, all that mattered was disgusing the fact that it was a gunshot, and, to a lesser extent, which direction it was coming from, though that was more important in combat that an urban assassination. The flare suppressor on the other hand, had the job of hiding the flash of light made by the explosion of the bullet's chemical propellent when it was fired, so enemy observers could not ascertain a sniper's position by looking for muzzle flash. Of course a good sniper moved between shots whenever possible anyway, but a flare suppressor was helpful for those times when tactical repositioning wasn't an issue or option.

Settling in on one knee, rifle tucked up into his shoulder, careful not to extend the barrel over the lip of the roof in case a pedestrian on the street below happened to be looking upwards for whatever reason, Cyprus brought his eye down to the light amplified scope and began regulating his breathing... excited breathing was the number one cause of deviation in a good sniper's point of aim, and could result in a deviation of several inches over long distances, enough to miss some targets. Again, not an issue at this range, but that was no reason to get into sloppy habits. He dialed in on the room the target was supposed to be in, regular glass windows, one hundred and three meters distance and two meters below his current position, on a slightly oblique angle, and slowly adjusted the focus dial on the scope until the room, which was dark, snapped into clarity. His finger was on the trigger and his breathing was barely making the barrel shiver. He was ready to take the shot.

But he hesitated, because the target was in bed and fast asleep, conked out in that disarming way that children are capable of when they feel totally safe and secure and content, covers tucked up to her chin, a fluffly stuffed animal clutched in the crook of one arm, dark hair spread out around her head as her chest gently rose and fell. She looked so peaceful, so normal, so helpless... could this really be the face of a psychopath that had murdered her younger brother and attempted to murder her caretakers with an aluminin baseball bat? It hardly seemed possible. Cyprus held his position, still as a carved statue, his finger still tight on the trigger. He knew this was a test, but what kind of test was it? A test of his commitment, his ability to follow through even on a distasteful mission... or was this a test of his moral compass, his ability to say "no, this is wrong" and walk away despite the punishment that would undoubtedly come later. Or knowing Asmodeus, it might even be both at once. Not right answer, no wrong answer, just a choice for him to make... and to live with.

She stirred and rolled over slightly, burying her face in the overstuffed head of her oversized teddy bear, snuggling with her comfort toy under the covers. His crosshairs were aligned right over her ear, at this range and with this bullet she'd never even hear death coming for her, much less feel it. Death would be instantaneous, her head would explode, the bullet would deform and bury itself in the mattress or the floor beneath the bed. As far as deaths went, it was about as sudden and painless as weapon inflicted trauma could get. Some might dare to call it merciful, but Cyprus would never believe that. Death was not a mercy, it was a punishment. There was nothing nice or noble about pointing your gun at another's vital spots with intent to kill without them even knowing you were there. But he was not a nice man, and only noble when it best suited his goals, and thus he was able to do it. Just as he was right now. But actually pulling the trigger, actually watching the consequences of his actions as this sleeping girl was sent into whatever afterlife her faith might have for her? Could he do that, even if the briefing said she deserved it? He'd sworn never to prey upon the helpless... but was she really helpless? Damn his foster father for knowing exactly how to strike at the weakest chink in his emotional armor...

Just as he was deciding that he was going to abort the mission, that in this case it was better to err on the side of caution than live the rest of his life with the death of a potential innocent on his conscience, the target shifted again and sat up, rubbing sleepily at her eyes as she slipped out of bed, in search of a drink or a bathroom break or something. In another couple of seconds she was going to pass out of his line of fire and the mission would be over regardless of his decision. And then his eyes caught on another detail that had not been obvious before, and he panned the rifle around, and pulled the trigger smoothly and quickly, a pull, not a jerk, not a tug, just enough pressure to force it back to bring the firing pin forward. His crosshairs were square on the back of her head, full of dark hairs and then a burst of liquid crimson as the 7.62mm slug pierced the back of her skull like it was made of paper mache and instantly turned her brain and skull to pulp and mush. She never knew what hit her, her blood spraying across the walls and door to her bedroom, a single chunk of wood blown out of the door near the handle where the bullet had come out of her head and pierced the door to bury itself in the floor outside.

After confirming death, not that there could have been any other result with her head blown to smithereens, Cyprus packed up his rifle, put his civilian clothes back on and walked back down to the curb, where he caught another taxi cab back to his hotel, his mind and body numb with the aftermath of what he'd done. He kept seeing things over again in his mind, the girl getting out of bed, the covers thrown back... the body of the teddy bear, which had been brutally mutilated and slashed to shreds with scissors, which still protruded from the bear's back, arms and legs all but ripped off, stuffing all but eviscerated... only the head was pristine and untouched. Just like the bodies of her brother and the injuries of her caretakers... all body trauma, no wounds to the head at all. When he got back to the hotel room, Cyprus found a note waiting for him on the bed. It was just two words, and it was typed, not handwritten, but he still knew who the author was all the same, it could be no one else... and it probably would have been there no matter what he'd ended up doing. "Well Done". Cyprus dropped the case with the rifle in it and staggered for the bathroom. He just barely made it in time to throw up into the sink and not all over the floor...


	55. Reconstruction and Devastation

Author Note: Finally, into the climax of the arc! Though I did have to add an extra chapter to my plan because otherwise one of the chapters would have been like 35k words long. Even I can hardly believe that I'm only about halfway done, and almost 1 million words. I think I passed the 3 million total words point last chapter... that's an accomplishment for you guys too, if you think about it. That's the equivalent of almost 30 paperback novels that you guys have read of my work. That's more than you probably read for school purposes in all four years of high school! And I'm at 875 reviews... I should exceed ED's mark and breach 900 by the end of this arc, and I'm really hoping to breach 1000 reviews before I breach 1 million words for RW... hint, hint. I mean, I'm not going to stop posting in order to wring out more reviews or anything, just stating a desire of mine. Just 115 measly reviews over the next 10ish chapters, nothing extreme. But now it's time for yet another battle of Orb, similar to though still substantially different from ever other battle of Orb in the series and in TGA. And its going to be one hell of a cinematic battle if I do say so myself, especially the opening moments. But why waste words bragging about that when I can show you, right?

xxxx

**Earth, Northern Orb, city of Najel's Point, Orb National Oceanographic and Weather Service Headquarters, January 22nd, 11:54 am**

"Hmm, looks like one hell of a nasty storm on the way." The day shift supervisor of the ONOW... pronouced "Oh-No"... service said, tapping his finger on the long range weather detecting radar screen. They called themselves "Oh-No" not just because of phonetic similarities, but because it was their job to shout out warnings to the rest of Orb's islands as far in advance of calamitous natural events as possible, such as Typhoons, also known as Cyclones or Hurricanes, and most especially the dreaded high speed killers of the sea, Tsunami's, or tidal waves! Because Najel's Point... and most of Orb's major cities and the greatest part of its population... was situated on the coast or very near the coast, they were highly susceptible to damage from the high winds, flooding and ocean surging in tropical storms, and especially being swamped by the nearly unstoppable power of a Tsunami. There were public and private storm and flooding shelters similar to those built into space colonies to keep the people safe in case of such disasters, but the shelters were only effective if people had time to get to them, and that required forewarning, which was the job of the "Oh-Nos".

Though it technically wasn't part of their main purview, ONOW also had a small vulcanology department that monitored the various calderas and vents of the massive Mt. Hameya, which was actually larger than Mt. Everest, just not taller above sea level, making Mt. Hameya the second largest mountain in the world after Hawaii's Big Island. Onogoro and Kaguya islands were actually just sub peaks of the same gargantuan volcano that was Mt. Hameya, showing where the sub-crustal hot spot had slowly shifted over the centuries and millenia to find new routes for the magma to course up to the surface, thus creating the Orb islands. Mt. Hameya had been dormant for almost four thousand years, though legends of the fiery wrath of the goddess Hameya still lived on in the older legends of Orb's traditional culture from the last time the volcano had erupted and nearly wiped out Orb's fledgling culture in its infancy. Onogoro and Kaguya were both more active, having had minor eruptions and lava flows more or less periodically over the past thousand years or so, a constant removal of sub-surface pressure that made the likelihood of another major eruption all but negligible and certainly not for another few thousand years at least.

But all the same they monitored the volcanos because the earthquakes which could herald an increase in volcanic activity could cause sub-sea landslides on the greater portions of Mt. Hameya's slopes that were covered by the ocean, displacing hundreds of thousands or millions of tons of water, which could then trigger the deadly Tsunami's, and a Tsunami with an origination point right off Orb's shore would give less than a minute of warning before striking, far too little time for anyone to have a hope of evacauting before a twenty meter wave slammed into the coastline. It had been a long time since such a catastrophe had occured... not since several decades before the end of the Reconstruction War and the start of the Cosmic Era... but incidents like that, and the death tolls in the tens of thousands weren't something that was easily forgotten. Which was why ONOW had been established when Orb formally gained its independence from the nascent Equatorial Union in the final days of the Reconstruction War.

"Yes, sir." The radar tech operator, who was really just riding herd on automated systems controlled by LEXI, replied with a small grin. "Gonna be a nasty night to be outside in Nara-Attha City tonight. Hell, gonna be a nasty afternoon, at its current rate this weather system should reach our shores in another couple hours. Better get the word out to the fishing and military fleets, they might wanna get into port while they still can." The operator, at a nod from the supervisor, pressed a button that would have Lexi send a message to that regard. They'd had a recent update patch that allowed Lexi to do all of this stuff automatically, practically removing a need for any human presence in ONOW, but in the wake of the recent cyber-attack on the AI, it had been deemed better to retain human operators despite the added expenses in case of some further problem with the AI. And the cyber-attack itself had erased pretty much all of Lexi's patches for the last year, including the ONOW automated warnings, which meant they had to command prompt the warnings for the foreseeable future, much to their, and Lexi's, frustration.

"Supervisor?" One of the oceanographers manning the ocean based sensor net raised his hand for attention, the civilian sensor net anyway, that ONOW used to monitor ocean conditions in Orb's territorial waters and a little bit beyond... or as far out as the Glashouse would reach and a few miles beyond these days, since the EM field of the Glasshouse played merry hell with outgoing and incoming sonar returns due to the disruption effect between the field and EDEN contaminated water. "I'm getting some odd readings from beyond the Glasshouse."

"What's new or different, Bill?" The supervisor, Tom, said with a shrug. "We've been getting especially bad ghosting beyond the field ever since Lexi's last patch went down the drain."

"This isn't ghosting, Tom." Bill replied, a somewhat nervous tone creeping into his voice. "I am getting spurious returns... but I'm getting WAY too many of them to be just sensor interference. Lots of biological activity out there right now. Background noise level just jumped off the charts. Half the goddamn fish in the ocean must be out there right now, at least that's what the sensors are saying. And there's something else too... something behind all the environmental noise. Can't really tell what it is, but I do know one thing. It's something big. Very big."

"All right, lets take a closer look then. Bring it up on the main screens." Tom ordered, running a hand through his thinning hair. Ever since the Glasshouse had come up, his job had been more about dealing with wierd shit than it had been predicting the weather. The Glasshouse field itself actually dulled the fury of most ocean storms to some degree, which resulted in the weather around Orb being fairly mild these past few years. "Where you getting these readings from anyway?"

"Right beneath that storm system." Bill replied at once. There was a long moment of silence as thoughts ticked over in various people's minds. You didn't get a job at ONOW without a fairly serious brain and a healthy dose of common sense. "Calling up the storm system onto the main screen now, sonor pictures to the left." Bill continued, hands flying across his keyboards.

"Lexi, we need some advice here..." Tom declared to the air, summoning an avatar of the AI from the room's discreet holoprojectors. To save on processing power while she did her best to recreate all her destroyed updates and patches, as well as repairing damage to her damaged physical systems and still upholding all her regular duties and jobs, Lexi was only sending avatars out when specifically asked for help, rather than manifesting them willy nilly as she had used to do. The Lexi that appeared here was wearing office-casual shirt and skirt, her programming adapted to make her visually fit in with whatever environment her avatar manifested in... suit and tie when serving as Chief Representative Kurenai's assistant, military uniform when assisting the military, office-casual when at various civilian agencies, etc. She'd lost a good deal of her affable personality that she'd built up over the last year, and was more businesslike than whimsical these days.

"It's all wrong." Lexi said almost at once, looking not at the data on the screen, but actually out through the sonar and radar sensors themselves. "Sensors are all recalibrated and the readings stay the same. There's a massive amount of biological presences out in the ocean beyond the Glasshouse, some of them very large. I would crossreference with recent data to search for matches, but its all been destroyed." Lexi scowled for a moment, just a flicker in the image of her avatar's face. It was going to take her a long time to get over the humiliation and trauma of the attack she couldn't even really remember anymore. Someone had found a chink in her and Namara's armor and exploited them both... she felt violated on a fundamental level. She'd never thought she would understand what Fleshies felt like when they said they were embarassed or humiliated, but now that she did, she really wished she didn't. "But I don't need archived data to tell me that storm isn't behaving as nature says it should."

"What do you mean?" Tom asked, missing the days when he and his crew would laugh and joke with the AI's impish avatars.

"For one thing, the storm is moving against prevailing wind and tidal currents. For another, there is no hot and cold front at the bow of the storm, nor a low pressure system beneath it... in short, no way for that storm to actually be in existence through natural causes. Its just a bunch of water droplets being suspended in midair to simulate stormclouds." Lexi folded her arms across her chest and frowned again, holding the expression this time. "All my data protocols that I might use to advise me what to do in this kind of situation were corrupted and purged, but if I had to recommend a course of action... I'd say call someone in the government as quickly as possible. Something is coming this way, and it doesn't want us to know about it..."

xxxx

**Earth, Central Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Palace, January 22nd, 11:58 am**

"So what exactly are we looking at then, Lexi?" Jiro asked, half his attention on the wall screen in the conference room adjacent to his main working office, where he would meet with his assistants and secretaries, advisors and other aides to dicuss matters of delegation, responsibility and policy on an informal level. The other half of his attention was on the philly cheese steak sandwich on garlic toasted cheese bread and slathered with onions, peppers and several different types of tangy sauces, since it was lunch time and having missed breakfast in order to make another meeting with some of the USN military commanders that were moving their troops around Orb in preparation for deployment to Carpentaria Base, he was famished. Technically you weren't supposed to eat in the conference room, but what was the point of being the head of government if you couldn't bend the rules a little bit from time to time? Especially when he had no lesser guest than the Queen herself, Cagalli having stopped by for a light discussion after they had lunch, bringing him one of his favorite types of sandwiches, and a plate of flatbread, grilled meat and kebab sauces for herself, some African dish she'd acquired a taste for in her youth.

Jiro was glad to see his Queen up and about, both as an Orbite and personally... officially she was recovering from a major illness, as it had still been deemed too volatile to admit how close she'd come to being assassinated by Zacharis Frost and how exactly that tragedy had been accomplished. She'd been largely sequestered at the Villa Pacifica for the last few months, after being released from the intensive care unit of the hospital some months after her Halloween ordeal. She was still talking through a mechanical implant, but she was beginning to put on weight and muscle mass again, and moving without aid of a cane or crutch, and save for a few minute scars on her face and neck and hands, she looked little changed from her usual self. Except for her eyes, which could be haunting if you met them for too long... physical recovery aside, the Queen was still suffering very much emotionally, not least because of the familial rift that had opened up between her and her twin because of Frost's actions. A rift that had excaberated until Kira had deemed it appropriate to flee Orb and join forces with the Edenites and even fight against his former friends and family alongside the worst enemy they'd ever had! And of the course the worst part about it all was that Kira had been mostly blameless all along, it was their mistrust and disbelief that had soured him and forced him away to such extremes!

"This storm system is even now striking the outer edge of the Glasshouse field." Lexi, replete in her formal business wear, said, pointing one holographic arm at the radar graphic being displayed on the wall screen. A color representation of the situation appeared in 3D off to the side of the screen, since the conference chamber was equipped with a multitude of holoprojectors which could even turn the entire room into a projection display if need be. Lexi grabbed the 3D representation and pulled it down onto the conference room table, flicking her fingers to expand the representation to all but fill the table, leaving clear spots for the Chief Representative and Queen's food. Orb's landmass and Nara-Attha city in miniature crowded at the far end of the table, with the harbor, Mare Town Depths and then several miles of open water extending out towards the end of the table where Jiro and Cagalli were sitting, eventually meeting the orange shell of the Glasshouse field and then the ocean beyond, right in front of the two huamns, where the dark grey stormclouds were boiling and roiling as they brushed up against the Glasshouse field and began to osmose through, slowly, as the EM interference field strained all the Green EDEN out of the suspended moisture particles that made up the clouds.

"Remind me to find an umbrella before I leave for home tonight." Jiro remarked, noting how dark the clouds were, which heralded a significant release of precipitation. "I assume the commercial and military fleets have been warned we have a major storm incoming?"

"In more ways than one." Lexi answered, her reply cryptic until she added sonar data to the projection, the ocean depths underneath the stormclouds suddenly boiling and roiling with just as much motion as the clouds above them were. Color coding identified the uncountable myriad of sonar returns as belonging to biological organisms, not technological vessels, but the sheer numbers involved brought both Cagalli and Jiro's chewing lips to a halt. The ocean was packed solid for miles in every direction and almost a half mile deep, it didn't take much of an intellectual leap to realize that this was not normal. Fish sometimes congregated in massive shoals that could cover miles in length, but never so much depth, and the way the organisms all stayed cohesive and very much under the cover of the stormclouds was more than just a little disquieting. "Long range cameras have so far been unable to visually penetrate the mist and clouds, but we do have some thermal scans showing some very large creatures on the surface out there." Lexi informed them.

"Best guess as to what the hell is going on? Some sort of mass migration of Edenite ocean life?" Cagalli asked and suggested.

"Perhaps, but that wouldn't explain why the storm has been moving against prevailing wind currents for the past eight hours, nor why the biological swarm is so conscientious about staying under the stormclouds... which I might add offers excellent visual cover and sensor baffling to warships in orbit..." Lexi answered, leaving the elephant in the room unspoken.

"Are you saying this is some kind of precursor to an attack...?" Jiro asked, swallowing heavily, his tasty sandwhich suddenly feeling like a lead weight in his gut.

"I have seen no sign of any technological Edenite presence in the are... wait one..." Lexi interrupted herself as new data was made available to her. Even with her recent damage and loss of a years worth of personality, it didn't take Lexi more than a nanosecond to realize that things were about to go crazy. "Sir, Ma'am, we have an incoming transmission, origin point the center of the storm, surface of the ocean. Its being transmitted over all civilian and most of Orb's military comm frequencies, including our top secret ones. I don't know how to else to say this... but the transmission sender claims to be Kira Yamato, and he wants to talk."

"Kira...?" Cagalli's eyes went a bit glassy with shock as she sat back in her chair, almost dribbling kebab sauce onto her pants as she tried to make sense of why her brother would be out there in the middle of an unnatural storm and suddenly wanting to talk to them, when he'd made more than clear at Victoria that he had little enough to say to his former friends and allies.

"Is there a video transmission as well?" Jiro asked, pushing his sandwich aside as he slipped back into Chief Representative mode. "Get my military advisors in here on the double! Locate Ambassador Zala, Commander Joule and Commander Elsman at once and tell them to report to their Gundams ASAP! I want the _Endymion _and the _Dawnblade_ deploying as soon as they get their crews on board. By Hameya's fiery ASS, how did they get this close to us without us noticing?"

"There is a video transmission, and its directed at the National Palace on our standard frequencies. Whoever it is seems to know our comm protocols very well." Lexi answered, complying with Jiro's barked orders at the same time, setting alarm klaxons to blaring across Orb's military bases and infastructure. "Should I pipe it in here?"

Jiro shot a glance at Cagalli, who seemed to have recovered from her shock, a steely expression of determination crawling over her face as she shoved her own food aside and stood up. She caught his glance and nodded back in tacit agreement. If this was Kira, she definitely wanted to talk to him. Signalling Lexi to allow the transmission through and to establish a return conenction back for purposes of two way communication, Jiro straightened his Representative's jacket a bit and adopted a tense but cautiously optomistic pose in his chair as he swiveled to face the wall screen directly, as it blanked and fizzled with static for a moment before the two way connection went through, and the picture cleared up. And then, despite himself, Jiro could not avoid flinching a little in shock, hearing Cagalli gasp from where she stood behind him, as the unmistakable features of Kira Yamato... silver cored eyes and all... resolved on the screen.

Kira seemed to be standing outside, the bottom edges of the storm clouds visible on the top part of the screen, though whatever vessel he was on was not visible, probably intentionally, though from the Mobile Suits and soldiers and armored vehicles visible on other parts of the deck in the background, it was plainly massive. Lexi was already analyzing and comparing relative sizes and distances in the image to determine the actual size of the Eddie craft, as well as cataloging the various machines and troops on display, no doubt merely a fraction of the Eddie force but it never hurt to collect information whenever possible. Jiro and Cagalli though only had eyes for Kira, who was clad in a plain quasi-uniform of black and dark blue, Cagalli especially taken aback at how at ease Kira seemed in such clothing, given how uncomfortable he'd always seemed in Orb or Alliance colors. And then she gasped again when she saw what was belted at Kira's waist, the scabbard of what was unmistakably a large sword of some kind! Kira was actually wearing a weapon, openly, even comfortably!

Her brother had his arms folded across his chest, a pose of challenge, his face locked down in a serious mask, a world of difference between the somewhat dorky but lovable image of him she still cherished in her mind. No matter how powerful he got, he'd always been her nerdy little brother in some ways, uncomfortable with the limelight, content to stand by the walls while others took center stage. Kira had never been a leader... he'd always been an inspirational person, but not really a leader, not like Athrun or Yzak or Cagalli herself or Lacus. He was smart and capable, so smart and capable, but he wasn't good at giving orders or being responsible for other's actions, especially in combat. Put him on the spot and he'd get that nervous look on his face, that look that said "save me, Cagalli" or "help me, Lacus, I'm out of my depth here". If Kira was even slightly nervous now, for all that he was addressing an entire nation on public channels and staring his own estranged sister in the eyes, it wasn't apparent in the slightest. She'd hardly ever seen him more determined and focused actually. Kira had the look of a man faced with an unpleasant task, but one he had no choice but to complete. And that was a worrisome look to have sent your direction.

"People of Orb." Kira said, his voice steady and quite clear, despite whipping sea winds which blow his tousled brown hair into an even more messy than usual state. "My name is Kira Yamato, brother of Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha. I appear before you today as an envoy and official of the Edenite Alliance. My rank and title is Executor, one who executes the will of the people of New Eden and protects them from those who would do them harm. Those like the United Solar Nation... and its component member-states. Such as Orb." Kira paused and let that sink in for a moment. "As a former citizen of Orb, I have no desire to inflict harm upon its populace, but we of New Eden are embroiled in a war... a war not of our choosing... with the USN, and thus with Orb. I am appearing here before you today to announce my intention to end Orb's participation in this war once and for all. This will be your first and only warning. All personnel who value their lives should evacuate all of Orb's military bases, ports, warships and facilities... even the top secret ones we aren't supposed to know about. In two hours time I will commence a systematic and comprehensive disarmament and dismantling of Orb's ability to wage or assist in this war. Anyone who remains in a military zone or ship at that time will become my enemy and will be destroyed by my hand or those of my troops."

Kira shifted his posture slightly, dropping one hand to the hilt of his sword, and giving Cagalli the chilling impression that he was looking her specifically in the eyes, though she knew it was an optical illusion. "I strongly urge anyone living near a military facility, especially including the military harbor in Nara-Attha City and the area around the Hameya's Attlatl Mass driver facility, to evacuate to safer ground immediately. I will be destroying all of Orb's military facilities and structures, as well as some civilian structures, such as the mass driver and Mare Town Depths, that are being used in a military capacity. I will be deploying a weapon against which you have no defenses or capability of stopping, so any attempt at resistance will only increase your casualties significantly. The best thing you can do is stand down, stand back and stay out of my way. Conceivably, there need not be a single Orb casualty today, if you heed my warning fully, though the property damage will be significant." Kira glared into the screen, his eyes all but blazing with the seriousness he was trying to convey. "You have two hours from this moment to evacuate the targeted areas that are being transmitted to you now. You will get no further warnings and no extensions on your time limit... and any attack upon us before the end of the time limit will result in my attack launching then and there. I am Executor Kira Yamato of Garden City, and this is your only chance to make this a bloodless battle. Please do so... I do not have any rancour for Orb or its people."

"Shit..." Lexi commented as she received the data transmission from the Edenite forces within the storm. "He's Kira all right, and he must have been paying attention during all those Orb Defense Force briefings these last few years. He knows where EVERYTHING is! Even the stuff that should be above his clearance level!" Lexi shot a half accusatory glance towards Cagalli.

"If you didn't want him to know about it, you shouldn't have told me or Athrun." Cagalli retorted, her defense somewhat distracted as she struggled to assimilate Kira's announcement.

"Yes, thanfully we do have a few installations that fit on that list, but not many..." Lexi answered, though there was no heat in her voice. Reprimanding the Queen for her personal decisions was not something she was programmed to do, all she could do was point out the facts of the situation.

And then Jiro brought up something which had been troubling Cagalli as well. "I wonder what he meant when he said that he would be attacking with a weapon against which we have no defense or chance of stopping?"

"Lets ask him!" Cagalli decided, gesturing for Lexi to turn on the two way audio. "Kira? Kira, this is Cagalli. Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you." Kira replied, changing from a wide band broadcast targeted at all of Orb to just the single channel going to the Orb National Palace. "Though I don't think we have much to talk about. Your time is ticking."

"You have no intention of negotiating with us at all?" Jiro cut in, somewhat archly, even as he conducted other business silently with Lexi on the side.

"I'm not a negotiator, I'm an Executor. A doer, not a talker." Kira answered with a shrug and not an ounce of bend in his voice. "I drew my line in the sand a long time ago, and the USN chose to cross it. Orb has chosen to stand with the USN in fighting this unjust and frankly evil war against the Edenite people. That makes Orb... and you both... my enemy now. Even as things are, my own side isn't happy with my tactics here today, they would have preferred to just invade and raze Orb to the ground... as you attempted to do to Urbanis, for instance. You have one hour and fifty eight minutes to evacute my target areas and abandon all the warships before I destroy them. I suggest you make better use of your time than talking to me."

"Kira, wait!" Cagalli demanded, keeping the link open. "Please, wait! You can't be serious... you wouldn't really recreate a Blue Monday scenario down here, targeted at our military or not, would you?"

"That term is not familiar to me, but if there is one thing you shouldn't doubt, Cagalli, it is my resolve to see Orb taken out of this war permanently. If you won't stand up to the evil that is the USN then I have no choice but to take matters into my hands and employ whatever means I see fit, no matter how destructive they might be, to knock you down so hard you won't be able to get back up again in time to make a difference to the outcome of this war." Kira paused and sighed, his face softening a little bit. "I don't want to kill anyone, Cagalli, that has not and will not ever change. But Durandel and his administration... and anyone who supports, aides or abets them, which is Orb right now... have to be stopped at any and all costs. Don't fight me, please. I don't want your blood on my hands or my conscience... but also, don't you dare doubt that I will kill anyone... ANYONE... who does not heed my warning! Even Athrun. Even you. So please... evacuate those bases, abandon your warships, and if you mean to fight, then by the love of Hameya, get the civilians out of fucking way!" Kira slashed his hand in an obvious signal and the communication was cut.

"Lexi... if the Eddies do employ Blue EDEN warheads, can we stop them?" Jiro asked, after a few seconds of watching his stunned Queen stare at the blank wall screen.

"If they use the modified form of Blue EDEN that data suggests was part of the Blue Monday attacks, then we might be able to at least contain any warheads within a Positron field. For that matter, the Glasshouse should destroy any inert Blue EDEN that tries to pass through it, though what effect it would have on the activated nanites is unknown but most likely unpleasant and potentially catastrophic... the energy transfer could hyperstart the spread of the nanocolonies." Lexi replied after some consideration. "But the only real way to destroy activated Blue EDEN, modified or otherwise, should it be deployed inside the Glasshouse, will be anti-matter weaponry, which only the USN possesses. I imagine they are already scrambling to respond to this announcement and I can patch you through to Solar President Durandel at any time."

"Let him stew for the moment." Cagalli said, her stomach churning as she fought off a flashback of her encounter with Blue EDEN aboard the former Archangel during the Eden Disaster. That kind of awful scenario could very well be aimed at large sections of Orb territory right now... if Kira really was serious in his determination to destroy Orb's military forces no matter the cost, Blue EDEN was the best way to do that. Even if it was only the short duration version that had been used at Blue Monday, five to ten hours of growth in a terrestrial environment would be enough to destroy any base, even an entire city perhaps and the only cure would be more destructive still, assuming the USN was even willing to divert the Transcendence and its AMP rifle to such a purpose! "Do we evacuate or do we fight?" She asked, looking at Jiro, in whose hands that decision would ultimate rest, no matter her popular influence. "It kills me to admit it, but I don't think he's bluffing. He'll do exactly as he said he would."

"Lexi... begin immediate large scale evacuations of all civilian populations within a ten mile radius of any targeted point. Bring them inland as much as possible, most of our installations are on or near the coast and any fighting will be happening around them. Shut down the mass driver and put all defense forces on highest alert." Jiro ordered, his hands clenched into fists on the arms of his chair. "Like or not, Mr. Yamato was correct in at least one thing. We are part of the USN, though reluctantly, and we are now facing a credible threat to our nation. If I were to accede to Mr. Yamato's demands it would be the end of my administration and any illusion of Orb's independence from the USN... Durandel would have me arrested and Orb put under martial law. I'm sorry, my Queen, but we don't have any choice but to resist with all our strength. Orb does NOT allow others to interfere with our affairs, as your father once famously said. And though we have at times been forced to swallow those words, now is not such a time."

"I know." Cagalli said, sagging backwards on unsteady feet. "It's another impossible situation... if we did as Kira wanted, the USN would dismantle us and all but destroy Orb. If we're gonna go down, even against my own stupid brother, I'd prefer it be with a shout, not a whimper. If Kira wants to knock us out of this war, if he wants to lead a hostile attack on Orb soil, if he wants to destroy our ability to stand up for ourselves, then he's going to have to do it over my dead body!" Cagalli held her head high, even as tears tried to gather in the corners of her eyes. "Whether he's gone crazy or whether he can just see what we can't understand, it doesn't change the fact that we have to stand against him now and do everything in our power to stop him. He has become Orb's enemy and he must be confronted and, if possible, shot down or captured." Cagalli turned and headed for the door.

"My Queen, where are you going?" Jiro asked, having been prepared to ask Lexi for a conference with Gilbert Durandel that he would have thought she'd want to be around for.

"It's always been the duty of Orb's Monarch to stand and defend their people's interest upon a battlefield if they were so able." Cagalli replied over her shoulder, her tone now just as steely and determined as Kira's had been. "I may not be in the best shape, but I can't worry about that now. My people... our people... need me to inspire them even as they need you to lead and direct them, my Lord Chief-Representative Kurenai. I can best do that on the battlefield, in the Amaterasu. And who knows, while I'm out there I might be able to talk some sense into my stupid brother. He's still in there, somewhere, the Kira we know and love. If anyone can find him and bring him out now... its going to be me."

"Then I wish you luck. May you go with Hameya's blessing, my Queen." Jiro said, standing and bowing slightly to her in the courtly fashion so rarely used except at the most formal of ceremonial events anymore.

"May she bless us all." Cagalli answered, half to herself. "Because I think we might be needing all the help we can get..."

xxxx

**New Eden, just outside Orb's Glasshouse, 1 hour 45 minutes later**

"You don't honestly think they're actually going to just stand back and let you take out their military infastructure just like that, do you, Kira?" Kunai asked, walk-stomping to a halt a few paces behind his former friend as he stood near the top of Leviathan's head, staring through the swoly swirling mist of telekinetically suspended water droplets at the faint orangy shimmer of the Glasshouse field, and through it, Nara-Attha city a few miles distant. The city was too distant, and too obscured by the distorting effects of the field and the storm haze, for Kira to make out any details beyond a great deal of activity in the harbor proper. It could be an evacuation, it could just be them digging in. He hoped it was the former, but he was prepared for the latter. He knew his sister and his friends after all, they weren't the sorts to just take something like this lying down, for their own good or not. In truth, he was just hoping they got as many of the civilians out of the way as possible, that was his main goal in sending that message.

"Honestly?" Kira replied caustically, not even turning his head to look at Kunai. "Would you even know honesty if it came up and slapped you in the face, Kunai?" Kira shook his head and chuckled humorlessly. "What I believe or what I hope doesn't matter, I'm prepared to act either way. If they step back as I ask, so much the better. If they come out to confront us, well, then there will be a great loss of life and they will still be destroyed."

"And you say I'm dishonest? Don't even try to pretend you're not bothered by the idea of going up against your own friends and family like this." Kunai retorted flatly, leaning forward with his hands on his carved length of wood from Yggdrasil, the LEMIM item known as the Twig of the World Tree. "Do you really think you'll be able to do what must be done when the time comes? Can you really kill Athrun, Yzak, Dearka, Miriallia or Cagalli if they confront you?"

"Are you questioning my resolve or my loyalty, Kunai? In either case, its rich coming from someone like you." Kira still refrained from looking back at his companion. "I have said what I mean to do, and who I mean to do it for. I have once more drawn my line in the sand, and though I will not look forward to fighting Athrun or the others, neither will I avoid it if they come looking for me. I am an Edenite, Kunai. It's taken me a long, long time to realize that, but now that I have, there is no going back to the life I lived before, any more than you yourself could or would. My first responsibility is to the people of New Eden, my second is to my pursuit of justice and morality, and my third is to humanity as a whole, the Oosen included. If I could end this war without killing anyone, I would. If I could end this war with words and treaties instead of combat, I would. Since I cannot do either of those things, I will end this war, by whatever means I can. Even if Orb must become my battleground in the process."

"And what about these reports we've gotten from the African Theatre, about whatever it was that so decimated Legio Kraken and Megaladon? Our instuments have detected a great deal of activity on the USN comm networks, and we've gotten reports of large ship movements in low orbit in the last hour. Regardless of what Orb does, the USN is planning to fight and fight hard for their mass driver. We can expect them to hold nothing back." Kunai pointed out.

"I should hope they don't." Kira said, his frown becoming a smile for just an instant. "They had their chance to break us once and for all at Urbanis. Now it is our chance to break them on their territory, and show the citizens of the USN firsthand just what sort of terrible, awful conflict they have embroiled themselves in." Kira finally glanced over his shoulder at the robed and hooded figure of Kunai. "Whatever superweapon or new Gundam the Oosen might have, it can't be any worse than Frost, and I'm prepared for that. Are you?"

"You needn't worry about me. Unlike you, I was never the sort to take stupid risks and push myself beyond my abilities." Kunai answered haughtily. Kira thought about pointing out a certain time in a certain desert when a certain person tried to pilot the Strike without any skill or training and only ended falling flat on his face, but why go through that sort of argument all over again? Though he could feel Leviathan's amusement as she picked up on his train of thought and saw the past situation play out as Kira remembered it. Sai may have been more collected and reserved than him on a general level back then, but he had his moments where he did some very, very stupid things too.

"And are you ready to fufill your part of my plan? I asked you and your people along because you're supposed to be experts in this sort of thing, but if I can't count on you to follow my plan because of our personal disagreements..." Kira began to say.

"I'll do as you have asked, don't fret. Given who it's coming from, its an inspired plan, I doubt the Oosen or Orb have any inkling of what you have in store for them. No doubt they are freaking out right now, thinking you intend to douse them with some form of nanoweapon or anti-matter bomb." Kunai smiled in a predatory fashion.

"If they think that, they know me less than I thought they did." Kira replied with a shake of his head. "Though Cagalli did mention something about an incident called "Blue Monday". Do you have any idea what that might be about? She seemed rather distressed about it."

"Haven't a clue, I'm sorry. Perhaps its some new Oosen propoganda or something. Durandel does have something of a fetish for deceiving his population in order to control them and use them as his pawns." Kunai answered with a shrug. Despite his studied nonchalance, Kira did not believe him. Kunai knew something. It was just a hunch, a feeling, nothing he could define. But he knew his old friend was lying. Perhaps it was Leviathan sensing the dishonesty... no matter how good Kunai was at concealing his emotions and thoughts from Kira, doing the same to Leviathan was beyond the capabilities of a simple human being. Kira filed the phrase "Blue Monday" away as something to investigate at a later time. But that time was not now, not with the end of his deadline fast approaching. Perhaps if Kunai had not been around, Kira might have been tempted to fudge things a little... it wasn't like he was wearing a watch and counting the seconds. But after castigating the other Edenite leader for his own dishonest tendencies, it would hardly be right to not stand by his promises now.

"He does at that." Kira agreed, hoping to conceal his own interest in the matter, not wanting Kunai to be put on his guard too soon if possible, though just by mentioning it, it was probably too late for that. "You should return to the Exemplar, we only have a few minutes remaining and I don't intend to let them think I was just bluffing. Given how fast you move, you'll need that time in order to get into position."

"Yes, make fun of the crippled man, that's classy, Kira." Kunai retorted frostily, as he stamped away, using the Twig of the World Tree to balance himself on the uneven and sometimes slippery craggy skin of Leviathan's back. Kira watched him go, ready to go to his aid if he did actually end up slipping and falling... all other things aside, it was only polite to help someone with a physical disability if they happened to fall. Truth be told he was astounded with Kunai's willpower, that he would refuse any sort of conventional seat or chair or harness or exoskeleton to help him get around. He would only use his own two legs, even if he had to pick them up and move them with his telekinesis for each and every step he took.

**HE'S STIFF AND UNYIELDING, DEEPLY ROOTED IN HIS WAYS... HE'S JUST LIKE THE TREE HE REPRESENTS.** Leviathan commented, making Kira wince in reaction, as he ever did when she spoke to him directly, even though he knew she was making every effort to be quiet. **AND HE CASTS A LONG SHADOW EVEN WHEN THE SUN IS DIRECTLY OVERHEAD.**

_Uh, not quite sure what that last bit meant._ Kira admitted as he put his attention and eyes back towards the Glasshouse and Orb beyond.

**I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT. WHEN YOU SPOKE DIRECTLY TO HIM ABOUT "BLUE MONDAY" HE DID NOT REACT BUT AT THE SAME TIME HE DID REACT, DEEP WITHIN.**

_You mean he's being deceptive and not telling the whole truth. That's what I thought._ Kira nodded, both pleased and displeased to have this confirmed. Would Sai never learn that keeping secrets from your allies always came back to haunt you in the end?

**DECEPTIVE. THAT IS THE WORD I WANTED. ALSO LIKE THE TREE. NEVER SAYS EXACTLY WHAT HE MEANS, NEVER MEANS WHAT EXACTLY WHAT HE SAYS.** Kira could feel the strong dislike Leviathan had for Yggdrasil and all its minions well up inside him like a tide of molten bile for a moment. It was almost enough to make him worry for Kunai's life... Leviathan was one of a relative few beings for whom the phrase "could kill with a look" was not exaggeration. She could rip Kunai into fingernail sized shreds just by wanting to and there wasn't much Kunai could really do about it, even in the Exemplar.

_Are you ready? It's almost time._ Kira asked, shelving the topic of Kunai and other concerns to focus on the here and now.

**I AM READY, FRIEND KIRA. THE OCEANS ARE YOURS TO COMMAND. MY VASSALS ARE YOUR VASSALS, AT LEAST FOR TODAY.**

_Then let us be about it._ Kira said decisively, as he put his hand on the hilt of the Executioner's Burden and withdrew it from its special scabbard filled with cushioning gel that kept the blade in place without actually touching it in a solid fashion, to prevent the QC edges from slicing out through the Borealite sheathe at "inopportune" moments. Putting both hands on the hilt, Kira held the blade up in front of and above him for a moment, Leviathan letting a few thin beams of noonday sunlight trickle through the clouds to illuminate the crystalline blade until it looked like he was holding a length of flash frozen violet fire in his hands, a beacon of glimmering light that was the signal for all forces to prepare for combat. Signal sent, Kira crouched down, taking one hand off the blade to touch Leviathan's skin directly with his bare hand, closing his eyes in concentration as he reached for the Seed. Just the regular Seed, Leviathan had assured him that there was no need to strain himself... the amount of boosting he could provide her was largely ceremonial rather than truly effective. She, and her vassal chimera, already had plenty of power available for the task at hand themselves.

He felt Leviathan gently disengage herself from his mind as much as possible as she gathered herself, her muscles stretching and rippling across her back as she drew in a gargantuan breath. And then she reached for her Seed, prompting Gorefin and Charbydis to reach for theirs, and then the whale Chimerae, and the other Chimerae, many bossted by contact with the Latent Chimerae among them, and other Latent forms of life, and then the remaining Active sea creatures added their own Seeds to the mix, expanding their minds, linking their powers into a network of Resonating, Harmonized, Chorus Amplified psychic potential that was cored around and controlled by Leviathan and Kira. Even the human Edenites, those who were Latents or whom possessed significant telekinetic powers, such as Kunai and the Praetorians, were adding their own powers into the mix, like trickles of electricity running into one massive capacitor. The storm diminished above them as Leviathan and the others took attention away from sustaining it, leaving it to slowly disperse naturally now that they had reached their destination.

Frowning in concentration, Kira, upon receiving the feeling of affirmation and readiness from Leviathan gave the wordless command for the next stage of his plan. Though myriad in number, only the very top echelons of the oceanic lifeforms were suitable or individually strong enough to make a difference once the fighting started, the rest were just here for his initial attack. And until the Glasshouse went down... at least this section of it in front of them... even Leviathan could not approach close enough to make a difference to any battle at Orb proper. But Kira had a solution for this, in fact it was just a bonus of his main idea. The Glasshouse was a very strong EM field as such fields went, strong enough to permeate and "purify" water even to a depth of several thousand feet while being projected from land, and even the storm surge caused by inclement weather wasn't enough to force waves or water through the field without the EDEN being purged. However, the more water that struck the Glasshouse field at any given time, the more power that had to be drawn from the reactors on land. If too much water hit at any one time, those reactors would be overdrawn and forced to shut down for a short time to cool off, which would result in an affected section of the Glasshouse blinking out of existence. Positive air and water pressure inside the Glasshouse effect would still keep out environmental EDEN particles, at least for the minute it would take for the field to come back up. Erica Simmons had designed plenty of failsafes into her system.

Kira was going to hit the Glasshouse with more water than anyone had ever dreamed would strike it at any one time, using Leviathan and the boosted TK network to gather not thousands but millions upon millions of tons of seawater around them, balling it up like a snowball in his mind, packing more and more and more in, so much that the localized water level around Nara-Attha City actually started to drop, a few inches at first but soon by more than a foot, then several feet, an artificial low tide going out as Leviathan and her minions gathered water like a man sucking through the biggest straw imaginable and storing it in his cheeks. The pull was so great some of Orb's surface warships were actually pulled along for several hundred feet by the generated current before they activated their station keeping bow and side thrusters to keep them in place. As things were to turn out, they might have been better served getting pulled out to sea. Because when Leviathan and her helpers could pull no more water, when they were straining, even in conjoined Seed network to hold the water they had already gathered... that was when the attack started.

Linked to Leviathan, Kira stood upright, sweat dripping down his face in sympathetic effort as he gripped the Executioner's Burden in his hands in paraoxysm to the water they were gripping their minds. Pulling the sword back across his shoulders, Kira took one long step forward and slashed the sword forward with all his might! He cut only air of course, but the gesutre was merely symbolic of Leviathan and all her vassals doing the same thing with all the water they were carrying. Over eighty million tons of seawater in a solid sheet two thousand feet deep and three miles long and almost a half mile thick rolled forward with the force of a billion locomotives. At the surface there was barely a ripple the height of a man, but that was just the tinest part of the wave they had generated and thrust forward at almost the speed of sound. This wall of water struck the Glasshouse a fraction of a second later, and power demands upon the Glasshouse generators responsible for this section of the EM field jumped from pulling eighty percent power to pulling eight hundred percent power in between blinks of an eye!

Safety interlocks slammed into place at once, shutting down the reactors to prevent them from voerheating and exploding like the contained fusion bombs they really were, the orangy translucent energy field so far out at sea fragmenting like an eggshell struck by a sledgehammer before disappearing like a mirage as the telekinetically created tidal wave surged onwards. Storm force winds blew outwards like air escaping from a punctured balloon as the higher air pressure inside the Glasshouse field began rushing out into the wider world, preventing any airborne contaminants from getting in while Orb's defense was down. Waiting for just this event to occur, Leviathan and her most powerful Chimera and vassals beat the water with their flukes and fins and pulsing jets of squirted water as they hurled themselves forward, crossing the plane of the disabled Glasshouse field without more than a weak tickling of latent energy field to disrupt their bodies, crossing into Orb waters in a horde of flesh, carrying with them their human passengers and their equipment. The attack force had cleared the first barrier! They'd worry about getting out again later.

Ahead of the attack force, the Tsunami was already almost at Orb's shores, still all but undetected except for the screaming of the Glasshouse system failure alarms. It was only as the wave front reached relatively shallower water as it neared the harbor area... and Orb's gathered surface fleet... that it became obvious just what sort of monstrous attack the Edenites had unleashed. The wave slowed down as friction with the seabed increased, trading speed for height as the weight of all the water began mounding up, like a sheet of paper pushed up against a wall. Still moving at more than four hundred miles per hour, when the wave struck the first naval vessel of Orb's home defense fleet, it was already over sixty meters... that's almost two hundred feet... tall and it was still growing quickly. Even facing the wave bow on, the frigate in question was still flipped over like a poker chip as it tried and failed to scale the sheer front of the tsunami wave, the undertow current generated by the wave grabbing hold of the capsized ship and dragging it along beneath and behind the rest of the wave. It was far from the only ship to suffer such a horrid fate, its crew dashed to pulp against the interior surfaces of the ship by the sheer impact of the wave, killed instantly, most without even knowing what had happened.

As for the ground forces... artillery, armor, anti-air, infantry, even Mobile Suits... that had been rushed down to the coast and military harbor areas to defend against missile and bombardment attacks and any attempted invasions or beach landings from both the USN and Orb home defense forces, well, many of them got to see something they'd never see again in their entire lives. A roaring wall of water taller than a forty story building filling the harbor, multi-hundred foot long surface ships bobbing and rolling indistinctly inside its mass like rubber duckies inside a washing machine, moving inland at the speed of a bullet train. Right towards where they stood in their defensive positions, prepared to sell their lives dearly to protect their countrymen or military infastructure against the nanological attack they had all been told to expect. Nothing could have prepared them for this, no defense humanity was capable of mounting could stop what was coming their way. Maybe an AMP cannon blast MIGHT have been able to break the wave, but even that was doubtful because most of the wave was still underwater.

Some tried to run, mostly among the USN forces from space, who, unlike the Orb forces, had not lived with the spectre of such a calamitous event most of their lives and had no training or preparation for encountering such a tremendous natural force. There are some kinds of natural disaster you can, in fact, outrun... certain types of lava flows, forest fires on occasion and maybe a landslide or avalanche if you have a really good head start. You cannot outrun a Tsunami, not on foot, not in most vehicles, not even in certain types of helicoptors or VTOL craft, certainly not when the first you see of it, it is only a mile or so away from you. If you're on the ground and you only notice the Tsunami when it's a mile away, you are, barring the greatest of miracles... seconds from death. Even many among the Solar Knights and some of the Orb mobile suit corp, found themselves transfixed by the unprecedented tidal wave bearing down on them, and neglected to fire their thrusters until the wave was already reaching shore, the beaches suddenly going out another few hundred feet into the harbor as all the water was sucked up into the wave as it came ashore.

Over fifteen thousand soldiers died in the next second, their bodies crushed instantly by the weight of the water as it struck them like a moving wall of cement at that speed, and even the heaviest of phase shifted tank armor could not protect tank crews... and tanks themselves... from being crushed as flat as pieplates by the water. Mobile Suits came apart like action figures swatted with golf clubs and sledgehammers, their bits and pieces sucked into the wave and embedding themselves like bullets into the ground as the wave finally collapsed forward, burying the entire Nara-Attha Military Harbor and the surrounding sections of city in a flood of biblical proportions! Buildings collapsed, more turned to powder than anything else, subterranean bunkers crushed inwards by all the water falling on the ground overhead, creating brief sinkholes, small whirlpools in the flood as the wave's force continued to press it forward and inland, water running as much as fifty or sixty feet deep in spots even though the wave was already more than half a mile inland from the coast.

The flood was still going strong when it butted up against the walls of the Government district in central Nara-Attha City, concrete and stone walls put up almost more thana decade earlier after the city was half leveled by Purgatory Day crumbling like they were made of spun sugar hit by a firehose! The Orb National Palace, which had stood for more than a century, bits and peices of it more than five centuries... was smashed to kindling and dragged away by the rushing waters. The Villa Terra, traditional public residence of the Orb ruling family was likewise disintegrated by the floodwaters, an edifice that had stood for almost a thousand years turned to sticks and mud and gravel in less than a minute. If not for the emergency shelters and the two hours of evacuation time, there would have been over ten million casualties in the first few minutes. As things were, there were thousands of deaths attributed to those who could not... or would not... flee their city despite the warnings or because of the demands of their jobs. Several skyscrapers collapsed as their foundations were eroded away by the water, as the wave finally exhausted its forward momentum about a mile and half inland... and several hundred feet above sea level!

But it wasn't over yet, not by half... all that water had to go someplace, and with its forward momentum used up, there was really only one way for it all to go. Backwards, back out to sea, dragging anything and almost everything with it, the change in current flow collapsing more buildings that had survived the initial flood, tens of thousands of tons of rubble and cars and other debris carried along in the frothing waters, building up into drifts forty or fifty feet high in spots where the water was forced to changed direction to fit down streets or past still standing skyscrapers. Many people who survived the initial impacts were killed now, drowned in the raging torrents or crushed when their weakened buildings were dragged down by the backwards flowing current. To fall into the water was to die, even if you were an olympic level swimmer... there was just too much debris, too much and too fast of a current... if you could stay afloat you would be battered and smashed to death against floating objects or resisting structures in seconds. The largest debris... some partially intact Mobile Suits and the naval warships of Orb's surface fleet... were desposited onto the streets at this time, some of them shoved entirely through buildings, some of which were still standing, like a knife through a section of corkboard.

The Nara-Attha Military Harbor, which was where the main part of the wave had been aimed, was gone... simply GONE! Erased from the surface of the planet, nothing but a wide section of gravelly mudflats remaining where one of Orb's largest military bases had once existed. Most of the civilian harbor was also in ruins, scoured down to the sandy bedrock in many parts, and anything and anyone that had the misfortune of being within about three hundred feet of the coast in the entire greater Nara-Attha City area was now in the harbor, probably in very small or very flimsy pieces. The only thing that at all saved the USN and Orb forces was that they'd only had two hours to get into position, and most of that time was used in evacuating civilians rather than emplacing military units... many units were still deploying from inland muster areas when the wave struck. Had the wave come after a half a day or more of defensive prep, Kira would have accomplished this section of his goal without a shot fired. Even as things were, the defending forces were of course thrown into chaos by the Tsunami and its aftermath, more than half of the defensive forces wiped from the battlefield in an instant.

Out a few miles off shore, the Edenites observed the results of their unorthodox attack with undisguised awe and even a little fear... no one, not even Kira, had thought it would be so powerful! The harbor was washed clean of ships and naval assets, the shore was all but sandblasted into muddy smoothness, and the city beyond was still inundated with floodwaters higher than a tall man's head. Not a single building of any height still remained standing within a half mile of the usual shoreline, and other buildings had collapsed as far inland as the water had ever reached. Two of Nara-Attha City's... and Orb's... longest standing cultural landmarks... the Villa Terra and the National Palace... were both completely gone, barely even foundations remaining, and even those were filled with seawater and slowly collapsing as the ground turned to marshland. But all the same, the Edenites did not let their astonishment keep them idle for long, as they entered the next stage of their grand strategy. The door had been opened, the way cleared... it was time to actually start the battle, since Orb was very clearly not standing aside as Kira had pleaded and demanded!

Pods of whale-Chimera split off from the main mass of Leviathan's minions, escorted by cruising Megaladons and lurking Krakens, commanded by Charbydis herself, carrying Kunai and his forces southwards, towards Onogoro and Kaguya islands, where Orb's mass driver, Hameya's Attlatl, was built. Other forces, marshaled by Gorefin, began the long swim up north to curve around and strike at the othe rmajor military harbor on the far coast of Orb from Nara-Attha city, leaving Leviathan and the remaining third of the Chimera and sea creatures, plus Kira and the core of his forces, to engage the gathered Oosen defenders at Nara-Attha City. The battle of Orb was joined as late arriving Oosen ground forces opened fire with rocket barrages and long range beam fire, as Orb's remaining Mobile Suit corp, stiffened by the presence of the Balmung and Simurgh Gundams, moved to engage the Lucifer and its allies. The course of the entire Reclamation War hung in the balance...

xxxx

"We'll handle the Lucifer." Yzak declared, his voice tight, not only with anger but because of the headache he still had from the fight at Neo-Miami and the Caller's death shriek. He had the Caladbolg already loaded, Katie marshaling her own powers to try and lash out and disable Kira's reflexes for the half second or so her husband would need to gain a decisive advantage. Any remaining doubts that the two of them might have had about whether or not Kira was a real and immediate threat to the lives of themselves and the people they cared about had been comprehensively washed away by the tidal wave, along with the thousands of soldiers and dozens of Mobile Suits! Nobody had ever dreamed that such a thing would ever be possible, telekinetically creating a Tsunami, one of nature's most destructive disasters... the scale of the psychic power involved was beyond quantifying, it was Godlike! But it also had to have taken a lot of effort, so the time to strike, and strike hard, would have to be now, while the Eddies were still recovering from their unprecedented destructive maneuver! "You take care of the smaller fry, Zala."

"You really think you can take Kira on by yourself?" Athrun replied, feeling a twinge of the old irritation he'd always had for Yzak's bossy nature when they fought together.

"If I can't, your presence won't make much of a difference anyway, judging by your last perfomance against him. Look at what he just DID, Athrun! He might be your best friend and brother in law, but LOOK at this... this slaughter! This is worse than some of Frost's actions! And still... STILL you don't have it together enough mentally to be any use fighting him! What's it gonna take, Zala, me or Dearka being cut in half by him for you to take him fucking seriously again? Do we have to go through another Nicole just to get you to wake up and recognize the enemy in front of you? He's the enemy now, our enemy, and he won't be swayed by your words or our past history! If I can't count on you to try and kill him, then I don't want you anywhere near me when I go after him, because you'll get us BOTH killed!" Yzak snapped back, with exasperated venom in every word.

"You're right." Athrun answered, more than a little heavily, feeling himself deflate a bit as he tried to get angry at Yzak but couldn't, because his hot tempered friend was right. He kept on trying to think of ways to talk Kira down, to bring him back into the fold. It was a dream, a pipe dream, and neither he nor Cagalli could let it go. They were the ones who'd let it come to this, they were the ones who'd not stood by his side when he needed friends and family, and now this was the consequence! But still, even after the tidal wave, Athrun just couldn't find the righteous anger he had used to strike Kira down that first time outside of Orb when it was the Strike vs the Aegis. "I'm sorry, Yzak, Katie, but you're right. I don't have what it takes to fight against him right now. I'll handle the little guys... you take down the big fish. And do try not to die... I don't wanna go through another Nicole, not even to get my focus back."

"I've been waiting for this rematch for a long time, Zala. Dying is the very last thing I'd do. I still have to kill Frost after all." Yzak retorted with an audible smirk and then signed off. Athrun watched the blue and silver Balmung peel off and disappear in a blur of thruster flames as Yzak hurled his Gundam headlong towards the carefully aprroaching Eddie forces. Transitioning to Mobile Armor mode, Athrun swooped up into the sky to get a better perspective of the battle as a whole. All told, the Eddie force wasn't that large, maybe twenty Mobile Suits in all, counting the Lucifer, with another few hundred infantry and light armor that were even now moving ashore in combat hovercraft transports to take the fight to the shellshocked and disorganized USN and Orb auxiliary forces as they waded through the flooded city streets trying to reach the harbor area and the battle zone. However, with the Tsunami throwing everyone onto their back foot, the Eddies had the clear advantage as the USN allied forces struggled to reform a cohesive strategy with over half their units destroyed.

If Yzak and Katie could even just keep Kira busy, there was every chance that the USN and Orb veterans would be able to rally and quickly turn the tables on the still vastly outnumbered Edenite forces! Athrun was still buoyed up by this ray of hope when he finally got to a high enough altitude to look more or less straight down on the entirety of the city harbor. He frowned almost at once, his sensor readings extremely anomalous as he struggled to make sense of the color of the water over much of the harbor, which was far darker than even the amount of debris and sediment in the harbor water could account for. It was almost like there was a huge shadowed creature down there. And then he realized that there was, it was the titanic whale-creature that had so comprehensively destroyed Trieste Town and mauled the Orb fleet on its way to Victoria! The whale-creature that was rumored to be one of only three Grand Chimerae, mutated Edenite lifeforms of surpassing psychic potential! And if that creature had anything to do with the tidal wave, and Athrun knew it must, then it was even more powerful than anyone had dared fear!

Now up high enough that most of the Mobile Suits below looked like little more than toys, Athrun could see the other two divisions of Eddies headed off towards the Mass Driver and Orb's other major military port, on the far side of the island, though this second group was hard to make out because it was entirely made up of sea creatures... more like sea monsters, actually! And then Athrun chided himself mentally, because these were no dumb animals, most of them were probably Chimerae, which meant that in terms of pure brainpower they were probably every bit as smart as he was, maybe smarter, so he shouldn't really be surprised they could follow complex plans and be trusted to act on their own initiative, but he was, all the same. As a human, a member of the most technologically and culturally advanced race in the Solar System, it was hard to treat these new sentient beings as equals, even when in some cases they weren't equals... the Chimerae were much stronger and smarter than many humans, especially these "Grand Chimera"!

Several old M-4 Guardians, hauled out of mothball status during the panic that Kira's announcement had caused and pressed into emergency service even though they were more than a decade out of date, likewise seemed to take note that the massive creature all but filling the harbor was as credible a threat as even the Lucifer was, perhaps moreso, and went into an attack run in Jet mode, missiles dropping from their fold out wings and streaking towards the monster that was slowly surfacing, like an entire atoll suddenly rising from the depths! Cascades of water rolled away from the craggy grey and black speckled skin of Leviathan's upper back, her hide studded with barnacles and other forms of sedentary and parasitic sea life. Spumes of vapor exploded upwards like geysering steam from several different blowholes or breathing orifices. She was the perfect target, and Athrun had a hard time believing any purely biological flesh, no matter how adapted or mutated, would be proof against missiles designed to take out modern military equipment!

However, he never got a chance to see whether his theory was true or not, because none of the missiles made it to their target, despite the fact that only a few hundred meters seperated their firing and target points. Instead, the missiles crumpled like they were used tissue paper, not even exploding, they just crushed inward like rolls of tinfoil in a giant's fist and splashed harmlessly into the water after traveling barely half the distance to their target. There was a barely perceptible shimmer in the air as the three Guardians tried to pull up from their failed attack run, but they were far, far too close to get away now. One of the Mobile Suits just crushed inwards like its missiles had, smashed inwards from all sides at once by a pressure of several hundred tons per square inch, compacting a sixty foot machine into a ten foot cube in a heartbeat. A simultaneous telekinetic "tail sweep" caught the second Guardian head on, armor turning to dust across its entire front from the force of the blow as the MS was hurled backwards on a rising arc like a ball from a bat, slowly breaking apart as air friction tore at its weakened structure. The wreckage was still rising even as it left the city environs...

The last Guardian transitioned to Mobile Suit mode and blasted down at the water with its beam rifle, but the beams themselves bent and even stopped in midair before harmlessly grounding themselves in the harbor water a safe distance away from Leviathan... plasma was still, at the end of the day, physical matter, it had mass, so it could be manipulated by telekinesis. Seeing even this attack fail so spectacularly, the Guardian turned to flee once again, thrusters flaring at maximum power... but despite its best efforts, the Guardian was inexorably hauled backwards like a fish on a line, down towards the Grand Chimerae, who dove down for a moment before resurfacing, lifting her entire gargantuan head, bigger than an aircraft carrier, right out of the water as she opened her jaws and swallowed the captive MS like a man might swallow a gumdrop! Athrun could only stare in disbelieving horror for a moment as he witnessed that... never in his wildest dreams would he have ever expected a Mobile Suit to ever be destroyed by being EATEN!

Putting on hold a plan to strafe the gargantuan Eddie sea creature himself, Athrun continued to circle high above the battleground proper, looking for the right place to make his presence felt. The battle lines were starting to consolidate as more and more of the arriving USN forces pitched into the fight, halting the Eddie invasion forces about a half mile from the shoreline. Sudden alerts from his long range sensors heralded the arrival of reinforcing units from the Solar Knights and FEAR, arriving via drop pods from the converging Solar Protection Fleet splinters in orbit, deploying dozens of Vindicators, several paladins and a unit of mixed Panzerwulfs and two Panzerdragoons to back up the ground armor and infantry. The Gabriel, one of the newer Archangel class assault carrier warships that served as co-flagship of the Orb home defense fleet, was moving back into position from where it had headed inland in an emergency dodge of the tidal wave. Though most of its weapons were too powerful to deploy in close proximity to the city for fear of friendly fire damage, the Gabriel was able to focus its Valient railguns and missile systems on Leviathan, diverting the Grand Chimera's attention from providing direct support to the Eddie forces in favor of defending herself.

A prismatic series of flashes cut through the air beneath and off to one side of the Simurgh as Kira cut loose with his Wings of Light FRALAs, dicing half a dozen arriving Solar Knights into smoking cubes before they even had a chance to fully deploy from their drop pods, and a Panzerwulf went down a second later, its head and most of its upper torso blown into mist and stray particles by a direct hit from one of the Lucifer's handheld rifles. Yzak and Katie were doing their best to close up on the Lucifer, but Kira wasn't exactly the easiest person to just force into a brawl, he did his best fighting at medium range and knew that at close range the Balmung would have an advantage. Kira was also doing his best to put himself between the Balmung and the rest of the USN and Orb forces, so that Yzak could not fire the Caladabolg hyperthermal radiation cannon without fear of taking out a wide swathe of his own allies. Regardless of your feelings, one could never accuse Kira Yamato of being a fool when it came to Mobile Suit combat, just the opposite unfortunately.

Seeing a group of Dervishes moving to flank the end of the main Orb line, Athrun rolled the Simurgh's mobile armor form over and kicked in his afterburners for half a second, hurling himself down from the heavens as he trigger a half dozen hunter-killer payload VTP missiles from his underwing launchers, almost outflying his own missiles until he kicked in some retrothrust, glad for the Gravitic REduction System that kept him from turning into a pasty smear as he pulled close to eighty G's in the maneuever, and initiated the change to Mobile Suit form. One of the Dervishes didn't see the missiles coming until it was too late, and both warheads struck within microseconds of each other, all but vaporizing the Eddie machine, as well as collpasing several nearby buildings with the force of the explosive shockwaves. Another sought to avoid the missiles and put itself squarely in the path of Athrun's handheld 50mm Rapidfire FRALAs, which resulted in it being sliced adroitly in half and then into quarters as the converging blue-white light beams sliced through Borealite armor like it was soft clay.

The last Dervish pulled a rather neat tuck up somersault and cut both VTP missiles into fragments with simultaneous swipes from its QC claws, shifting away with a tap of her FPR pwoered thrusters an instant before the missiles warheads detonated and knocked down more small buildings, starting fires that soon raged across half a block of nearby housing. Athrun brought the simurgh to the ground and raked his FRALA towards the Eddie, slicing off one arm but not quite catching the partially Mirage Colloid cloaked machine squarely enough to put it down. Snatching its entire satchel of mobile suit grenades from its belt area, the Eddie hurled the dozen shaped charges, each the size of a small motorcycle, at Athrun. He started to dodge away, but the Eddie preempted him by drawing and firing with her 225mm linear rifle, blowing her explosives apart when they were only two thirds of the way to Athrun, knocking the Simurgh stumbling backwards due to the concussion shockwave. By the time he cleared his head a second or two later, the Eddie machine was nowhere in his view.

Reacting on instinct, Athrun triggered his Solar Flare projectors, launching a pair of photonic grenades from his torso mounted launchers, automatic polarization filters dropping into place over his cameras as the flare grenades detonated, emitting blinding pulses of pure white radiance that illuminated a thousand meter radius to a degree five hudnred times greater than natural sunlight could accomplish. Anyone within that radius would be blinded, perhaps even permanently if they didn't have eye protection systems, and even thus much further away would be dazzled and disoriented if they happened to be looking at the bursts when they happened. The main fighting line was somewhat shielded from the effects by lines of taller buildings, but it was the Dervish... armor sporting heraldry belonging to Legio Direcat, and fairly high ranking judging by the detail of the carvings... that Athrun was concerned about, as it staggered backwards, one remaining hand instinctively clutched to its face as the pilot staggered to her knees, caught off guard by the bright lights which had stolen her sight for the time being as she maneuvered to come at the Orb Gundam from behind.

Stowing his rifles, not wanting to cause too much damage via overpenetration of the target, Athrun called upon the Vulcan's forge to create a javelin of concentrated plasma energy in his right palm, which he then hurled into the dazed Eddie's chest, blasting her backwards and down, Borealite torso armor scorched and cracked but not quite penetrated. Athrun called forth another javelin and drew back to hurl once more, a finishing blow, but the dart of energy never landed, instead it splashed away into a brief lived roiling ball of plasma spatters as it struck some unyielding physical object just a few meters short of its target. There was a sudden shimmer as a cloaking system was engaged, and Athrun suddenly had a new contact on his threat display... it was a Praetorian, one of their super elites even, an Arboreal, in a Wraith. Heine Westenfluss, the Shooting Star, his armor covered with meteorites and comets, formerly a member of FAITH and fellow veteran of the Valentine Wars. Athrun had never met the orange haired Redcoat, but he'd heard of him, and respected his accomplishments and skills.

Heine's Wraith stood betwixt the Simurgh and the downed Dervish protectively, a shimmery QC broadsword held in one hand, a dense QC shield, the first of its type Athrun had ever seen, held in the other, its outer surface still snapping with glimmers of plasma from where it had deflected Athrun's javelin. This being an entirely different kettle of fish, Athrun took a cautious step back, reaching for his FRALA rifles as his Phoenix Feather wings rattled and shook anxiously, ready to disgorge a swarm of more than seventy red hot feather-knives at an instant's notice. Heine said nothing, merely swept his broadsword up in an obvious salute, before settling into a combat crouch as he began to move in on Athrun, still keeping himself between the Simurgh and the downed Direcat. Athrun was almost offended, that Heine would think he'd waste time targeting an obviously defeated foe when faced with a real, active threat. Although, the Praetorians protectiveness towards the downed Direcat was indeed notable, and Athrun wondered if perhaps the disabled pilot might be a person of importance to Heine.

He'd fought alongside Cagalli on dangerous battlefields more than enough times to recognize how Heine had to be feeling, and if he'd thought the other guy would believe him, he would have told him that he had nothing to worry about. But truth be told, after being hit with a tidal wave, Athrun really wasn't feeling all that merciful. He wouldn't go out of his way to kill her, but he wasn't going to bend over backwards keeping her alive either. And if she could be used to handicap Heine with a bit of concern, then he wasn't going to look that particular gift horse in the mouth. Leaving off going for his rifles, Athrun thrust forward with both hands and hurled gouts of plasma fire at Heine, a searing cone of superheated matter that roiled orange and pink and red hot. The Praetorian raised his shield, deflecting the worst of the blast, but Athrun was gratified to see that some parts of the Wraith's head and limbs were now singed and smouldering. He kept the flamethrower effect up with one hand to block Heine's vision, even as he gestured and created a condensed, explosive ball of plasma with the other, which he then hurled at Heine's toes.

The plasma bomb melted a five meter deep and wide glassy crater in the ground, but Heine had either anticipated or psychically read the move, and was already leaping up and over the simurgh, slashing with the broadsword in the process, forcing Athrun to duck down almost onto his haunches with a Citadel shield raised to deflect the tip of the sword from notching through his shoulder and perhaps severing one of his wings. Without even turning around, Athrun activated his Phoenix Feathers, hurling seventy two razor edged, red hot darts at Heine, but the Wraith had already phased back into its perfect invisibility, and obviously moved out of the wave, because the feathers hit nothing but air and abandoned houses. Bringing the feathers back, athrun set them into a tight, spiralling orbit around himself, even as he reached out with either hand and began venting plasma energy into the environment around him as fast as he could, immolating the Simurgh and the surrounding fifty meter radius in a matter of seconds, the very dirt and concrete of the ground igniting as gouts of plasma sprayed like erupting magma, hiding the Simurgh in a maelstrom of fire and smoke and heat distortion.

Alarms screamed at him as QC splinters punched through sections of his arms and shoulders, fired blindly by Heine from outside the radius of the conflagration, but Athrun, using a link to Lexi, was able to backtrace the disturbances the slivers made as they transitioned through his impromptu barriers, and he swept a blue-white FRALA beam through that segment, hoping to catch the Praetorian napping. He heard no explosion, and thrust backwards behind him with his other hand, unleashing the 100 meter cone of the thermal exciter concealed with the palm. Again, there was no immediate effect that he or his sensors could discern, but Athrun hoped that he'd managed to put Heine on the back foot for the time being. Though on paper the Simurgh was more advanced and powerful than a Wraith, the QC weaponry and perfect cloaking capability of the Wraith was an enormous equalizer, especially in close quarters combat. And unlike many Eddie pilots, not only did Heine have superior physical and mental abilities, but the training and experience to put them to the best use.

And while controlling a NIC equipped Gundam didn't take much in the way of physical effort on behalf of the pilot, not compared to regular controls anyway, combat invariably took a toll on the stamina, and Athrun could already feel himself starting to sweat a bit... regardless of Cagalli's under the table bragging, his endurance in recent years hadn't exactly been stellar, and his run in with Frost hadn't helped any. He'd grown somewhat used to feeling, well, a bit weak, in the aftermath of his deflection of the Great Endeavor's AMP cannon at Cape York, but now, after being tortured by Frost, he felt positively fragile, and he hated it! Even with his thoughts momentarily elsewhere, his reactions and instincts were still operating on all fronts, and Athrun leapt out of his eruption zone, transitioning to Mobile Armor form and boosting for the heavens, just instants ahead of a ion disintegrator shot from Heine that would have turned his torso... and cockpit... into so many random atomic particles! Knowing from collected data that the Praetorian machines could not use their ranged weapons while cloaked, Athrun banked around and launched another spread of VTP missiles, a couple of them hunter-killers, the others featuring reduced payloads in favor of extra boosters, stronger armor and Citadel shield systems, which would soak up any attempted CIWS or interdiction fire while the hunter-killers closed in from behind.

Heine shifted away from the flight of missiles, all but blurring and then reappearing a half kilometer away in an eyeblink, but unlike previous generations of vehicle mounted missiles, VTP missiles had both the fuel range and the internal cogitation power to track even extremely fast moving targets and pursue them for almost a minute... which in combat terms was almost forever! The four missiles Athrun ahd fired banked, vector jets flaring from the ring of small nozzels that encircled the missiles fuselages to bring their heads around, practically flipping the missiles in midflight as they reoriented on Heine and came after him again, like sharks heading for bloody water. However, Heine's maneuver hadn't been so much a dodge as it was a step back to get a bit of space, and the Wraith raised both arms, firing carefully and precisely with both the ion disintegrator and dual 20mm QC spike driver, the pink flares of the ion disintegrator wiping out the two decoy missiles while the QC spikes shredded the two hunter killers, all four missiles detonating several hundred meters short of their intended target. Stalemate once more.

Despite himself, Athrun found himself grinning a little bit. It had been a very long time since he'd ever really faced someone who was more or less on, or just slightly above his level. These last few conflicts, he'd always found himself matched against groups of foes with skills that were, frankly, laughable, regardless of the sophistication of their machines, or else contributing to fights against foes whose machines AND skills were far in excess of his own. He was either fighting dregs or desperately battling as an underdog... but neither was the case with Heine. This was like a chess match between two equal players, their machines were roughly equal, their experiences were roughly equal, and Athrun had the defender's advantage of knowledge of terrain and plenty of allies to combat Heine's greater physical capabilities and psychic powers. This was a challenge all right, just the sort of challenge he'd always thrived on. Banking around once more, Athrun hurled himself at the waiting Heine like a fiery bolt from heaven. This fight was far from over...

xxxx

**Southern Orb, Hameya's Attlatl triple Mass Driver facility, Onogoro Island, same time**

"At least nobody's fucking telling me to hide in the goddamn warship cause my machine ain't suited to this kind of battle again." Dearka grumbled under his breath, his mind recalling some events in the distant past, the last time he'd fought a real battle in the vicinity of Orb's surface to orbit launcher. "Nothing worse than sitting in the hanger and hoping everything goes right."

"As I recall, you contributed quite a bit before things reached that state, dear." Miriallia pointed out, her mind only half on her words as her fingers flew across her keyboards, maintaining not only the Dreadnaught's own web of sensors but also tapping into civilian and military sensor networks through LEXI, to keep track of the Eddie forces that were even now approaching the outer limits of their longest ranged weapons. "And completely out of the blue too. I still have trouble figuring out what could have possibly possessed you to go steal the Buster... again... and get yourself involved in a losing battle against overwhelming odds. I always thought Coordinators were supposed to be smarter than that."

"How do you figure?" Dearka shot back with a wide grin. "Look at all the Coordinators you know well... Kira, Athrun, Yzak, Waltfeld, me... every last fricking one of us has a fucking ADDICTION to throwing ourselves into hopeless battles against long odds. It's what we DO. Besides, I wasn't about to let my prize catch just fly away without me having a chance to apologize for certain stupid things I inadvertantly said." Dearka's grin faded a little as he said that. "I still get chills down my spine when I think about how close I came to really just heading for the hills that day, Miri. I woulda missed out on so much of this life I love so much..."

"Yeah, well, you didn't run away, you did come help us, and I do love you so much for it that I'm gonna have to spend at least the next eighty years paying you back each and every day before I feel the debt is paid, got it?" Miriallia hurried to cut him off before he could go maudlin on her, because she knew it would soon infect her too if she let it. How many times had she stood in defense of Orb now? She was losing track. And unlike Dearka, she had been born and raised in Orb, more than any of their group of friends and supporters save for Cagalli herself, Miriallia was fighting for her homeland here, for her home, for her parents home and lives, for all the places she had loved and hated since early childhood, that were hers to enjoy or despise! Though judging from the reports from Nara-Attha City, regarding the immense tidal surge or tsunami that had leveled most of the harbor and shoreline areas, she doubted that the _Dawn's Light_, the salvage ship that Dearka used for his civilian business and which functioned as the Elsman family home for most of the year, was still intact or around. For all she knew it had been hurled through some city building a half mile inland!

Miriallia let the thought feed a core of righteous indignation building up inside her, filling her with a fervor she so rarely allowed herself to feel during battle. Usually Dearka was the emotional one and she was the one trying to be calm and logical, a necessity for her role as front lines CIC operator and gunnery assistant... she couldn't afford to lose focus when calculating trajectories and firing solutions for the Gundam's heavy weapons. But any true Orbite was a bit funny when it came to defending their homeland... such a threat would turn even the most reasonable, peace loving Orbite into a raging tiger of ferocity. A very proud and patriotic people, Orbites were, especially with the current ruling family and political administration at the helm. There was a rumor that Queen Zala-Attha herself was going to be taking to the field with her Gundam, and already the military forces were fighting like religious zealots... the love and respect they had for the Attha family, especially the Queen, could not be fully expressed in mere words.

For her part, Miriallia just hoped Cagalli would somehow manage to keep her cool... even more than the rest of Orb's citizens, Cagalli had a bit of a hangup about outside forces attacking Orb, and she wasn't exactly the calmest and most forgiving of people to begin with. As great a boost to morale and fighting spirit it was to have her on the battlefield, there was also the potential for just the opposite... should the Queen go down, many Orbite's resolve would also crumble and flag, at least for a few crucial minutes, which would be all the opening the Eddie forces needed to complete their goals. And then blinking alerts popped up on her screens as the Eddie splinter task force reached the outer perimeter of their defense lines. The Eddie force was deceptively small, only about fifteen Mobile Suits, mostly Dervishes, with maybe one or two Spectres, a single Wraith armed with a large two handed sword and the Gundam that had helped propgate Blue Monday! Miriallia heard Dearka let out a hiss of recognition, the Dreadnaught's arms tensing in response, since this was the machine that had deliberately dumped Blue EDEN onto his father, mother and two elder sisters!

For that matter, judging by the armor pattern on the Wraith, skulls piled upon skulls with the two handed sword as a weapon, Miriallia recognized the Arboreal as the same one who had led the covert attack on Morganroete that had ended up killing Erica and Ryuta Simmons, and had likely been responsible for the desecration of Ryuta's body by propping his head on a sign post with a taunting message written beneath! Ryuta had been great friends with Roy and Alice, and Miriallia was feeling quite keen to hand out some retribution for the crass and demeaning death that Ryuta had been dealt! For that matter she'd always admired and respected Erica greatly, and had even flattered herself by thinking that they were similar in some respects. If she'd been more technologically inclined, she might even have accepted a long ago offer to work with Erica as her mentor, but she loved the freedom of photojournalism more, and so that opportunity had passed her by.

With firing coordinates already plotted in advance, the Dreadnaught only had to shift its feet to brace itself a little more and lift the muzzle of the Earthshaker Omega that made up most of the Gundam's right arm. Concussive thunder raised coincentric dust rings around the Dreadnaught's feet and blew back the fronds of palm trees in the near distance as Dearka loosed a second and a half burst from the fully automatic artillery cannon, loosing three shells, each weighing as much as two compact cars, in high parabolic arcs. This was the signal for the rest of the defense forces longest ranged weapons to open up as well... Orb's Mass Driver was easily the most heavily defended location in the entire country, especially given that it was the last and only operating Mass Driver on Earth, neither Orb or the USN could afford to lose it, and so no expense had been spared in fortifying it in the wake of the Eden Disaster, and reinforcing those fortifications since the start of the Reclamation War.

Entire sand dunes and small hills split down the middle, revealing themselves to be camouflaged firing positions with Gottfried class high energy beam cannon turrets or dual 800mm linear cannons, which could hurl high explosive shells more than thirty miles out to sea. Lohengrin category positron weapons had been considered, but the potential backblast damage they often inflicted on the surrounding environment was deemed too much to risk near the deceptively fragile Mass Driver facility, and so instead large caliber FRALA bunkers were emplaced, along with plenty of anti-ship class missile silos buried in the hillsides, along with scores of smaller caliber beam weapons, physical cannon and rocket or missile launcher emplacements for close in and anti-vehicle defenses. Citadel shield umbrellas were already forming in the sky above the island and the Mass Driver, to shield against long range enemy bombardments, and torpedo launchers mounted on the undersea support struts of the Mass Driver launch rails were just waiting for targets in order to open fire.

So important was the Hameya's Attlatl facilty judged to be that the _Dawnblade_ battlecruiser, the pride of Orb's warship fleet, along with the _Raphael_, an Archangel class assault carrier, had both been assigned to its defense, along with a significant portion of Orb's surface fleet, composed of frigates, destroyers and Aegis trimaran cruisers. The Defender class heavy destroyers were currently gathered in orbit, along with the Kusanagi class warships they were designed to replace, and could not return to the surface in time to make a difference to this battle. The _Endymion_, the new special operations carrier designed to replace to Archangel class, was assigned to the defense of the military port on Orb's west coast, near Morganville, where most of Orb's shipyards and largest naval facilities were located. And all the ships save for the _Gabriel,_ the other new Archangel class, that had been defending Nara-Attha city were now destroyed or incapacitated by the unprecedented tidal wave the Eddie forces had generated to lead off their assault!

Even as the first shells began screaming down from on high, the Eddie forces were reacting to the sudden onslaught. It was a peculiarity of the Eddie forces, in Miriallia's eyes, that they lacked much in the way of heavy or long ranged weapons, either on their Mobile Suits or their vehicles. Even their artillery units were at best on the long side of medium range as such things went, capable of firing from maybe ten to fifteen miles away at most. They depended on their speed and their cloaking technologies to get them in close quickly enough to surprise and overwhelm their opponents, which was a viable strategy certainly enough. But even at top speed, the Eddie forces were a good two or three seconds out from their preferred engagement bracket, and with the kind of firepower already being directed their way, there was no way any of them could possibly reach top speed. Their seaborne allies dove for the ocean bottom, temporarily removing them from possibility of harm, though Miriallia didn't fool herself into thinking that they wouldn't have an effect on the battle... she'd seen some of the reports coming from Nara-Attha City and what the humongous whale-creature could do!

Dearka noticed how intent his wife was, even more so than usual given life or death circumstances, and could not help but smirk a bit. He loved this about her... well, he loved pretty much everything about her, but this ferocity, this drive to protect her nation... he could really get behind this. This was exactly how he'd felt in the wake of the Bloody Valentine incident, the determination to stand up and hit back against the people who'd hit them. And he was more than happy to assist, because he was really PISSED about his boat, which had cost him quite a pretty penny, and its loss meant that he was more or less out of business until he could buy and outfit a new one. Which if the current state of affairs was any indication, would not be soon. Leaving Miriallia to handle coordinating with the emplaced defenses and warships to build a crisscrossing network of overlapping fire zones for the Eddies to traverse, Dearka focused on using the other armaments of the Dreadnaught to add weight of fire to any likely looking gaps in the barrage where the Eddies might think to break through a weakpoint in the onslaught.

This was combat as he preferred it, the enemy at range, struggling to get close enough to do anything, marching into the teeth of a witherhail hail of firepower, where he could set his feet and really cut loose with everything he had without worrying about getting stabbed or shot in the back or something else unpleasant. Even with all the recoil compensators and cooling systems the Dreadnaught mounted, Dearka could feel phantom shakes and shivers and sweat creeping across his body as he held down pretty much every trigger he had, even the Baron Lohengrin despite the advisory not to use positron weapons close to the mass driver. He was sure of his aim, and if he caught a little flak later, well, it wouldn't be the first time he'd defied orders in oder to do what he felt was right at the time, now would it? Blue-red plasma blasts hot forth from his dual 525mm gatling hyper impulse cannons on his left arm so fast they appeared more like a solid stream of energy rather than individual shots, and the sand beneath his feet backing into cracked glass from the heat dumped into the environment from the whirring weapons.

VTP missiles leapt from his torso launchers every second or so, since the missiles were of fairly limited use once the battle progressed to close range, Dearka saw no reason to conserve them, and was doing his best to empty his dual 20 tube launchers as fast as he could find and select targets. Some he even fired blindly, on wave skimming trajectories, programming the smart warheads to actually submerge themselves and function as jet powered torpedoes in case the Eddies thought about getting slick and submerging like their allies had. The Baron Lohengrin just swept any spot where the outgoing barrage looked a bit thin, and the 250mm QC harpoon launcher was used any time he got a really clear glimpse of an Eddie mobile suit. More alerts blared inside the cockpit and around the island and its defense forces as the Eddies finally managed to break through to the second defense zone, many of the machines looking decidedly the worse for the wear. Just as expected, none of the Praetorians were in sight, and Dearka knew better than to think that was because they were destroyed.

Miriallia was already on top of things though, tracking the Earthshaker Omega around, she switched ammunition types for the specialty cargo they'd onloaded just before deploying, and fired a spread of six shells... a full three second burst, along flat trajectories on a 180 degree arc, evenly spacing the shells throughout that arc and the second defense zone. Unlike normal Earthshaker shells, which were loaded with enough high explosives to pass as a small nuclear device, these rounds carried a more utilitarian payload of a sticky bright red dye similar to that which was used in polar latitudes to mark icebergs from the air. Dispersed in huge clouds from the massive paint-shells, these clouds of paint were fine enough to drift upon the winds for more than an hour, thin enough to see through in order to target, but more than concentrated enough to smear across any invisible but far from intangible Mobile Suits that might pass through the defense zone on the sly.

Almost immediately three blurry red shapes appeared in the midst of the cloud, the Eddies commendably disengaging their cloaking systems as soon as they realized they'd been compromised, but that didn't stop the Dreadnaught and several M-7 Dawndrakes, plus a defense turret or two from focusing their fire upon one of the Praetorians, giving him no way in which to dodge, no safe place in which to hide, as his suit was struck from multiple directions by missiles and linear rounds and hyper impulse blasts, and disintegrated like a ghost in daylight. Dearka felt a triumphant grin growing on his face as he saw that the Eddie infantry and Dervishes were actually starting to fall back, unable to further progress through the defensive firepower of the Orb forces, leaving the two remaining Praetorians and the Eddie Gundam exposed and without support.

At least until plumes of water exploded upwards from the ocean in serried ranks as the torpedo launchers mounter on the sea floor and mass driver support legs began firing as the Eddie's biological allies moved into engagement range, but Dearka heard far too many "negative impact" reports from his wife's CIC link to take much heart... almost all the torpedoes were being crushed or smashed before they could reach their targets, and even those that managed to evade stabs of telekinetic force detonated early when they struck mobile screens of lesser fish that were being used as living shields for their Chimera brethren, selfless and suicidal in their devotion to the Ocean Mother's dictates. And then it was the launchers themselves that were blowing up, as telekinetic jaws, flukes, flippers and tentacles bit, ripped, smashed and crushed them into crumpled heaps of inert wreckage. With the undersea defenses taken out, the Chimera once more began rising to the surface, but they bypassed the second and third defense zones in so doing, many surfacing only a hundred yards off the shoreline or directly beneath the mass driver railway where it extended out into the ocean, where the Orb and USN forces couldn't shoot them without potentially hitting the mass driver itself!

Mobile Suits and armored vehicles were knocked flying or bodily pulled into the waves as the Chimera lashed out with their psychic abilities, overwhelmingly telekinetic in nature, though Dearka could feel an alien mind dragging at his thoughts, making it hard to think clearly, hard to react coherently, as one of the Chimerae attacked the minds of a large section of the defenders at once, rendering them vulnerable to the more physical assaults of the other Chimeras! But by far the most deadly of the incoming psychic attacks came from a truly gargantuan squid, a true sea monster from the depths of nautical legend, a Kraken who stretched almost a thousand feet from head to tentacle tips, wielding over a score of tentacles, each thicker than a car, like they were bullwhips. Charbydis had more than enough reach to physically pluck vehicles, soldiers and even a Dawndrake Mobile Suit right off the shore with her arms while her body remained submerged and protected by several meters of water, crushing and rending them apart with indolent contractions of her muscles, reeling in the pieces to be chomped apart by her beak before reaching out for more.

But it was when she lashed out with her mind that the Lady of the Depths really began causing damage. Unlike her contemporary, Gorefin, who used his telekinetic power to simulate the biting power of his jaws, or her mistress, Leviathan, who used her unfathomable power to smash and crush objects like a blow from her mighty flukes, Charbydis fought with the concentrated pressure of the deepest reaches of the ocean, using her mind to compress a large volume of seawater into needle thin streams with hundreds of tons per square inch of water pressure lancing out to be concentrated on areas as small as a thirtieth of an inch. At such pressures armor plate might as well be made of salt water taffy put beneath a chainsaw, and even solid diamond would fracture and erode away in seconds. A airy lattice of such needlelike water jets was cast outward from Charbydis like spider's webs, and anything they touched was cut apart like cheese through a cheese grater. Even Citadel Shields could not bear up under such concentrated pressure for more than a few seconds, and those machines with Phase Shift armor were blasted backwards like ragdolls from the force of the water jets.

Dearka saw a whiplash of water headed his way, and prudently decided to break off attacking in order to dodge away, and not a moment too soon, as the thread of liquid passed through where the Dreadnaught had just been standing, slicing apart a heavily armored defense bombardment turret like it was made of softened butter and not meter thick plates of armor! Dearka chambered another rack of high explosive shells for the Earthshaker and fired a single shell at the monstrous Kraken, which would have been more than enough to blow the Chimera into sushi chunks, had not a glittering swarm of crystalline shards intervened, cutting through the speeding artillery shell like it was no more substantial than mist, perforating it like a sieve and destroying the arming circuits that would have detonated the explosives packed within. The shell still generated a geyser of water almost a hundred meters tall when it smacked into the water's surface before being netted by Charbydis's mind and hurled contemptuously away into the offshore distance.

The Dreadnaught took a half step backwards as Dearka oriented on the newest threat, even as Miriallia fielded dismaying reports from nearly all sectors... the Chimera assault had wrongfooted the Orb defenders, many of whom had never encountered psychic adversaries before and certainly had no idea how to deal with large scale telekinetics, which often could not be blocked nor seen coming, and the Eddie elites had taken advantage of the slackening in outgoing firepower to close up the distance, the Dervishes and infantry forces turning around once more now that their elites were tying up the defense forces. The _Dawnblade_ was taking to the air in order to get out of harms way of the oceangoing Chimera, who had begun to swarm around the capital ship, so close that most of its heavier weapons were unable to orient upon the attackers, attacking both with their minds and their multi-ton bodies, whacking dents and rips in the heavily armored ablative plating of the warship. But Dearka didn't have time for the rest of the battle, not with the Eddie Gundam... the one that had murdered his family and hundreds of millions of others... right there in front of him, not a hundred meters away!

He paused though, noting the telltale crystalline shimmer of Liquid Crystal Regenerative armor girding this new foe, rather than the mossy greenish-brown of carved Borealite, and immediately over half of his weapon systems were rendered useless. He opened up with the Baron Lohengrin and hyper-impulse gatlings anyway, if nothing else he might force the Gundam to step back, but the best hope he had of taking down the enemy without a risky sojourn into melee range was his 250mm QC harpoon launcher. Miriallia was already comandeering targeting control of the shoulder mounted weapon, waiting for an opening to fire, since the weapon was slow to reload and thus they'd probably only get one shot. The enemy Gundam was bigger than most Eddie machines, but exceedingly, even shockingly plain and bare of ornamentation, its only distinguishing characteristic being the pure white color of its armor and the golden yellow glow of its eyes. The only weapons it carried seemed to be the two large holsters, one on either hip, from which it deployed its glittering crystalline shards, each about a meter square and perhaps as thick as a human palm, made of pure quantum crystal as far as the Dreadnaught's sensors could discern.

The shards had no power source, no motive thrusters... they seemed to be flying about of their own will, though it was probably more accurate to say they were being lifted by the telekinetic inside the Gundam, which was actually kind of frightening. One thing for the Chiemra's to crush and break things apart with their minds, they were, more or less, monsters to human sensibilities. But for another human being to do that, to kill his opponents by ripping them apart with just his mental desires... that was incredibly daunting! But Dearka and Miriallia had met daunting before, spit in its face, and walked away laughing, and after a moment's internal debate, they reacted as one, Dearka bringing up the right arm to loose another Earthshaker shell even as Miriallia fired the QC harpoon along the same flight path, so that the massive artillery shell blocked the Exemplar's view of the QC harpoon.

However, neither of them were prepared for the way the Exemplar simply held up both hands, braced its legs and STOPPED the Earthshaker round in midair, quite literally froze it from a speeding bullet to a standstill in an instant, and then the QC harpoon punched into the back of the shell and zoomed out the front as the artillery shell dropped inert to the beach, cored through like an apple by the spear of crystal. Light scattered and splintered, glinting off the Exemplars swarm of LEMIM QC shards as they burst forth from their holsters like angry wasps, linking and overlapping into a curving bastion of pure QC plates between the Exemplar and the Dreadnaught. The QC harpoon struck cleanly... and then skidded away with the screech of crystal grating against crystal, unable to penetrate the other crystalline matter, especially when striking at a slight angle! And then, threat deflected, the QC shards scattered like windborne flower petals, whirling and reforming as they overlapped one over the other in a straight line, forming a sort of rectangular blade that was forty meters long and one meter wide, which then sliced horizontally at the Dreadnaught's waistline in response to a slight motion of the Exemplar's hand.

Dearka blocked with his left arm's Citadel Shield, only to have the shard-blade shatter apart as soon as it struck the unyielding aqua energy shield in a shower of golden sparks, individual shards zooming around to come at the Dreadnaught from multiple angles, including from below! Dearka did his best to dodge them, stumbling backwards in an ungainly evasion, but blaring damage alerts and structural alarms told him that he hadn't been entirely successful. It was just impossible to watch and predict the paths of fifty individual shards, each of which could cut right through his armor like it was hardly even there, all at once! And then Dearka raised the Earthshaker once more and held down the trigger, intending to empty his magazine if need be, to buy enough time to recover. Unfortunately, Kunai had other ideas, and even as the first shell was leaving the muzzle, Kunai pushed outward with more telekinetic power and caught the shell in midair once more... caught it and then shoved it straight backwards, stuffing it right back down the muzzle of the Earthshaker.

A safety feature of the artillery cannon was that its shells did not arm themselves until after they cleared a certain distance from the muzzle, judged by the number of revolutions the shell made from the rifling of the weapon barrel, in order to prevent a shell from blowing up the cannon... and most likely the entire Gundam and anything nearby... should the weapon be fired with an obstruction of some sort in the barrel. So when the second shell was fired and ran smack dab into the first shell while still within the cavernous barrel, the two did not explode and vaporize everything within a thirty meter radius, but all the same, the physical forces involved were extreme, and all the propellant gas that would normally escape from the weapon could only go one way... straight back! The entire back half of the Earthshaker Omega, which included most of the right shoulder joint of the Dreadnaught, shattered into a thousand pieces as the weapon broke apart from within, several unfired shells dropping heavily to the beach sand at its side as they spilled out of the ruptured magazine linkage!

The wrenching action of the backfiring cannon knocked the entire massive Gundam a staggering step to the side, torso twisting back towards the left in recoil as Dearka was forced to concentrate hard in order to prevent himself from tripping over his own feet and falling headlong onto his side! Working with the stagger and the recoil, Dearka tilted the Dreadnaught's torso slightly, Miriallia instantly divining his intent as she fired the Baron Lohengrin, not at the Exemplar, but at the ground between the two Gundams, the resultant explosion and shockwave of released energies forcing the Exemplar to retreat and recover while the more massive Dreadnaught was barely even rocked by the blast. Leaping backwards, Dearka put a good three quarters of a kilometer between them as he tried to figure out what to do next. Aid came, in the form of a squadron of four M-7 Dawndrakes deployed from the _Dawnblade_ swopping in from on high, dragonlike Mobile Armor forms smoothly transitioning into the angelicly winged humanoid Mobile Suit forms as they switched from aerial combat to close quarters combat mode.

Glowing yellow tracers spat from their combination linear rifles and hyper impulse cannons, but each linear rifle shell deflected away at sharp angles as soon as it got within fifty meters of the Exemplar, others struck and exploded against whirling QC shards that interposed themselves into the path of shots, before spinning out like a swarm of hurled playing cards and converging on two of the Orb machines that were too slow to retreat in time, a dozen QC shards slicing through each Dawndrake three or four times in a matter of a second or two, pureeing the two machines like potatoes dropped into a blender. The third Dawndrake just sort of... came apart... in midair, like all the bolts and structural ties that kept the Mobile Suit's skeleton and body fastened together had somehow come unfastened all at the same time, in response to an arrogant gesture from one of the Exemplar's hands. The last Dawndrake, determined to make good use of his comrade's sacrifices, moved in close to the Exemplar, cutting loose with chattering streams from his shoulder mounted 120mm gatling cannons and swiping his electrified chain at the Exemplar's head.

The Eddie Gundam sidestepped the headlong assault, orangish cannon tracers spraying away from its front like water splashing up against a clear glass wall, none of them zipping any closer than a meter or two to the drab Gundam, and even the swing of the electrically charged chain seemed to be diverted by a brush of Kunai's boosted telekinetic might. The response was simple and very direct... no slicing with QC shards, nor subtle deconstruction of key structural points here... no, this time Kunai just thrust out with a broad blade of telekinetic force, jarring the Orb machine backwards, armor splitting apart along its central torso area as Kunai dug in his grip and then quite literally ripped the M-7 in half , right side going one way, left side going the other, like a man would rip apart a large cardboard cutout figure. Even the pilot was torn in twain by the telekinetic surge, exactly the same as his war machine was, though considerably messier. Holding up his Gundam's hands, Kunai called his QC shards to him once again, setting them into closely revolving orbits around his arms and shoulders, so that they seemed to form rings as they revolved quiescently around him.

"I don't think we can hurt this guy..." Dearka admitted with a sharp swallow of trepidation. "Not without finding a way to use the Spear in atmosphere. Damn thing doesn't look it, but its freakishly powerful! How do we even go about hurting something with LCR armor and telekinetics on this scale?"

"We don't." Miriallia replied, though instead of harrowed, her voice sounded almost anticipatory. She brought Dearka's attention up to a group of three large drop pods that had just entered the upper atmosphere and were screaming down towards Orb, courtesy of the gathering USN fleet in orbit. "They, however, from what my command band telemetry is saying, are designed specifically for countering these Eddie Gundams."

"What are they?" Dearka asked, splitting his attention between the oncoming drop pods and the still smug Exemplar, which had actually disregarded the hulking Dreadnaught for the time being as it lent support to its own arriving Custodial forces, clearing a beachhead for them to consolidate along with the help of the zweihander wielding Arboreal, while the off-shore Chimera backed off and went to suppot their fellows that were tying up the Orb fleet and the _Dawnblade._

"They call them BALORs..." Miriallia replied, shivering just a bit as the term rolled off her tongue.

xxxx

**Outside the Glasshouse, same time**

"Well, isn't this annoying..." Frost complained, as he, Lilia and Revv hovered a few hundred meters away from the translucent orange EM barrier that surrounded Orb, the Kratos in the front, the two Praetorians flanking him. Revv stayed a respectful and unobtrusive distance back, and kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself, though that wasn't exactly strange behavior for the brooding and taciturn Praetorian even at the best of times. Lilia stayed right up beside and only slightly behind her boyfriend's Gundam, though she was still avoiding using that term outside the confines of her own head, especially in the wake of the little concessions she had so recently forced him to make. No need to push her luck for the time being. So she did her best to bite her lip and point out that she'd been wondering just what sort of plan Zach had for getting through Orb's little barrier without debilitating the three of them and maybe even crippling the two Praetorian's machines.

On Frost's part, he wasn't exactly unaware of what the Mosue was thinking but not saying... she might like to think she was inscrutable, but the smugness was rolling off her in waves, like body odor though not nearly so irritating. Well, let her bask in the afterglow of forcing him to step back and reevaluate her a bit, he'd be putting her into her place again soon enough. But before that happy time could come, he'd really wanted to get stuck in with the Orbites again. It had been forever since he'd last gotten to fight in Orb and he was looking forward to finally being able to really cut loose in the home of his most persistent foes, leave his mark yet again, that sort of thing. But he'd forgotten about the Glasshouse field, and knew that he couldn't just fly through it without ending up in no fit state to even walk, much less fight. And if it would do that to him, then it would probably be much worse for the Mouse and the other Lackey... Frost hadn't bothered to try remembering his name or assigning him a nickname, followers weren't worthy of such considerations from him. Not that the idea of the lackey suffering was repungant, if Frost thought the pain and suffering of any of his followers was of use to him, then they would suffer or die at once, no questions asked.

But getting back to the root of the matter, Yamato had obviously found someway to get not only himself but his entire attacking force and a sizable group of Chimerae through Orb's protective barrier without suffering undue harm. He could see the battle raging in and around the hazy city in the distance, and it galled him to be unable to participate because of a bit of overeagerness on his part. Surely Charon would have been able to cook up some sort of device or technology that would counteract the effects of the Glasshouse, but he hadn't thought to ask, hadn't even remembered the Glasshouse was even there until they were only a few miles away. And he wasn't about to turn back now either. He balked once today already, at the Mouse's antics, and he wasn't in the mood to allow such weakness twice. He'd get through this barrier even if it meant half frying his body, he just wanted to consider other options first. Now, how had Yamato got through the barrier? And for that matter, how was he planning on getting back out again?

Innate grasp of human psychology notwithstanding, trying to actually think LIKE Yamato wasn't exactly something that came easily to Frost. He understood how humans thought, and generally how they felt, and knew all the little lies and justifications they deluded themselves with to explain away their own truer, darker feelings and instincts... but actually getting inside the thought processes of individuals, even those he was familiar with, especially when it came to practical thoughts rather than more ephermal feelings, that wasn't his strong suit. He knew how the former Boytoy felt, knew how he would react to all sorts of various stimuli and taunts... but figuring out how he would merely ACT, when he had time and attention to spare to plan things out... that was murkier. Planning had never been Frost's strong suit, he could admit that to himself. Even his grand strategy was more of an overarching concept rather than any true plan. He knew what he wanted to do, the details of doing it he left up to day to day inspirations. Certainly he hadn't ever accounted for things like the Mouse beforehand, she'd just burst into things like an explosion and he was still picking up the pieces.

Explosions. Pieces. Hmm, maybe there was something here. Though Frost rarely exerted himself to learn the whys and hows of various technologies... he cared if something worked, not how it was made or why it worked... his BCPU training had left him with plenty of understanding on basic scientific principles, including electromagnetism and simple field effects. The EM field was designed to fry nanites, but it could only fry so many of them at a time. From what little he could make out of Orb's coastline through the distance and Glasshouse, Frost could discern that the shore looked much wetter and more battered than what he remembered from his time on the ground, suggesting some sort of tidal surge or water based weapon. And then it came to him, as he'd know it eventually would, inspiration striking like a bolt of lightning. Clever Yamato. He'd overloaded the field by hitting it with more nanites, waterborne by the looks of it, than it could handle without overloading at any one time. How exactly he'd accomplished this, Frost didn't much care. He had his own methods.

"Stand back Mouse." Frost ordered with a wide smirk on his face as he shunted power to a little used component of his Gundam. "Its time for the big bad wolf to blow this house down."

Lilia thought about questioning what her lover was up to this time, what sort of crazy intuitive leap that he had made, but thought better of it. The tone of his voice was enough to tell her that he'd come through yet again, solving yet another problem that would have stumped just about anyone else for days, maybe even longer, figuring out in mere seconds what had probably taken a group of others an entire strategy session to plan. She saw a white glow suddenly begin to build in the palm of the Kratos's left hand, and she hastened to obey Zach's instructions, Revv pulling back as well without being told too, as they both dialled up the polarization on their camera's and half turned away to shield themselves from the inevitable flash of the AMP cannon's shot. Even as she guarded her eyes, Lilia realized what Zach was going to do with his most destructive weapon. In retrospect it was kind of obvious, though it still probably wasn't something the Orbites had ever thought about.

Thrusting his left hand forward, Frost activated the 20mm AMP cannon mounted in his left palm, four times the caliber and more like forty times the power of the 5mm AMP rifle first sued by the Brotherhood Gundam, hurling a golfball sized chunk of pure anti-lithium contained in a unstable magnetic wrapper through the air, the blazing anti-matter lighting up an area of several dozen miles with white radiance brighter than a thousand suns, leaving purple-blue neon spots tracked across your vision even through heavy polarization lenses. The blazing ball punched through the Glasshouse field like it wasn't even there, and continued on to strike about a mile further on towards the shore. In an instant, a globe of matter almost two and a half miles in diameter was completely annihilated by the antimatter release, water and air and everything in between turned into subatomic particles, leaving only a MASSIVE vacuum in their wake. And nature abhors a vacuum, which meant that water and air rushed to fill in the globular wound that had been bitten in air, water and seabed.

Hurricane force winds and raging waves whipped the ocean's surface as the water and atmosphere outside the Glasshouse smashed forward to fill the vacuum, if anything bringing more Green EDEn with them than even Leviathan's tidal wave had managed. For the second time in less than an hour, the Glasshouse flickered and went out, leaving the path open for the Whetstone of Humanity to step forward and once more evaluate humanity in the cruicible of conflict. Even as this was happening though, yet another new force was entering the fray, from above, as the three BALORs deployed into their first major combat. Titanic forces stood poised to meet with the utmost violence. The only question was, would Orb survive what was coming? Would anything survive at all?

xxxx

Author Note 2: Though it is highly coincindental, I assure you that all the parts of this chapter dealing with Tsunami's and their effects were written several days in advance of the disaster in Japan. Though I guess I hardly need to worry about explaining just how terrible such natural disasters can be now, huh?


	56. Damnation and Redemption

Author Note: Well, I'm glad the first part of the Battle of Orb was so well received, even if some people didn't necessarily agree with the stance of certain distressed and perhaps overly dramatic characters. I'm sorry to draw you away from the action to take another delve into the past and not so distant past, but trust me, its necessary. And since I'm following Archangel's advice and doing a double posting this time, its not like you have to wait in order to get back into the action, you just read on through. Its actually better this way, best to read both chapters in a sitting if you can, don't let yourself dwell upon the actions of D and R until you finish S and S, to get the full impact from both. I'll even go out on a limb and say that you should read both before reviewing either, though of course if you would go back and review both that would make me happier than any lumped review might. And for the record, I see Avaunte Noctem as something like a mix between Rammstein and Evanescence, though of course all female also (Which is a band I would definitely listen to, were they real).

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Hospital, January 22nd, 1:35 pm**

"You really shouldn't be here right now, ma'am, its not safe for civilians to remain in the city limits..." Dr. Lamarr pointed out, the thin tone of his voice showing that he wasn't best pleased about still being there himself, but like the rest of the faculty of Orb's leading hospital, it was both his duty and his pride to remain available to treat casualties even in times of utmost national crisis. Perhaps especially in times of utmost national crisis, because that was when doctors and medical professionals of all sorts were usually at their highest demand. Of course he was on a reserve standing at the moment, his first priority, at least until combat casualties, Hameya forbid, overwhelmed the staff of the emergency and critical care wards, was to his still comatose and quarantined special patient, and thus he was still ensconced in what was probably the safest area of the entire hospital, buried underground, beneath even the parking garages, so deep there was no chance of damage from stray munitions or war machines. Still, he was uncomfortable with his company, the wife and daughter of his amnesiac patient, who had been escorted in by the two Stormhound leaders half an hour earlier before they left to attend to their duties in preparation for the imminent conflict against the Eddies.

"If any place within the city is still safe, Doctor, it will be hospitals and aid stations." Wrenn Finch replied, almost serenely, as she stared raptly through the thick armored glass portals into the quarantine room, where her husband... her beautiful, aggravating and far too capable husband... was still lying restrained in the treatment bed, his brow tensed as he struggled with something only he could see and experience inside his head. A part of her hated to see him discomfited in any way... she knew better than anyone how often his sleep was troubled by some of his memories, even the ones he would never explain or confide in her, but there was another part that was rejoicing inside, to see him doing something so familiar as having a nightmare about his past. It meant that Cy... her Cy, the man she'd fallen in love with all those years ago in that dingy bar outside the city of Olaine, in what was formerly known as Latvia before the Reconstruction War, was finally coming back to her again! And more importantly, back to Violet, who had been the most distressed of all by her father's blankened condition. For all that Violet was a very smart and capable little girl, emotionally speaking she was still a little girl, with a greater than normal attachment to her father, and she had not been dealing well with this situation that had taken her father away yet left him sitting right in front of her eyes!

"I would normally agree with you, ma'am, but these are the same Eddies who perpetuated Blue Monday upon Second Earth 3. I would not hold anything sacred against their desire to see us beaten, not anymore. If they deploy their nano-weapon again, as seems to be the prevailing fear, then this hospital will become a death trap, along with the rest of the city. If it weren't for quarantine necessities, I would have sent your husband away to a different hospital as well, along with most of the other residing patients." Dr. Lamarr glanced aside at the grey haired, blue and grey eyed young girl that was standing with her hands and nose all but flattened against the thick glass that was the observation window. "This is no place for your daughter at least. Hospitals are not pleasant places during times of conflict. There is still time to requisition a helicoptor flight to one of the inland shelters..."

"It won't be neccesary and it wouldn't be helpful, Doctor." Wrenn waved off the concern, though there was a hint of steel in her eyes and in her mechanically flattened tone. "We've stayed away for too long as it is. If this is the final treatment, then regardless of danger, there is no place Violet and I could be, other than here, by his side or as close as we can be. Adding one more half hysterical child to the Royal Shelter won't help matters for anyone, and Violet would never forgive me for sending her away during her father's return, even for her own safety. Besides, while I've yet to make my mind up about the Edenites one way or another, I still have complete confidence in Mr. Yamato. There is simply no way that he, even now, even these days, would allow a hospital to be targeted, intentionally or otherwise. You heard his message as well as I did, Doctor... he's here for our military assets, not our medical infastructure."

"I pray that your faith is justified, Mrs. Finch. This war has seen too much barbarity as it is, it would be nice to be able to trust in at least one person to retain a sense of civility and honor." Dr. Lamarr replied, turning back to his control consol. "If I really can't convince you to leave, then I guess there is no point delaying matters any more. I will begin the final treatment shortly..."

"Before you do, there is one favor I would like to ask of you, Doctor." Wrenn interrupted him. "I would like to be with my husband when he wakes up. Trust me when I say that if he unexpectedly wakes up in a strange environment without a friendly face to quickly orient upon, you will not appreciate his reactions. Nor probably survive them."

"It's utterly impossible, Mrs. Finch. Your husband is in quarantine for a reason! We still do not understand the modified form of Green EDEN that this fruit has infected him with, I cannot allow anyone else to be exposed to it any more than I could let you expose yourself to another mutant strain of the S2 Influenza! It would be an act of gross misconduct and malpractice on my part. Even if his reactions are as violent as you say they will be, he is still restrained to the bed and sealed within the quarantine chamber. Even a man as capable as your husband is no threat to others as long as he remains in that room." Dr. Lamarr answered grimly.

"We will be by his side when he awakes, Dr. Lamarr. This is just me giving you a chance to do it of your own volition, without me having to involve anyone else. We've been staying at the Queen's mansion for the past few months, Violet and I have, and we've become rather close with her Majesty in that time. Do I have to go over your head or are you willing to be reasonable?" Wrenn countered serenely.

"I rather think her Majesty has more pressing matters to occupy her attention right at the moment, considering our nation is about to be invaded by her own twin brother..." Dr. Lamarr countered.

"That's the point." Violet cut in determinedly. "The Queen is really busy right now, she wouldn't appreciate being interrupted for something so stupid like this. But she's not gonna get mad at me or my mom, she's just gonna take it all out... all the stress and worry and crap that she's under right now... on whomever is causing us a problem, even if its not really your fault. And if the Queen won't back us up, we'll call Uncle Thom, and he'll physically MAKE you let us in, and he won't be shy about how gently he handles you. We understand there's a danger of being infected, Doctor, but we don't care. We've been seperated from Father for too long already, we won't wait for you to tell us its perfectly safe. We're Finch's, nothing about our life is perfectly safe, we're okay with that. For all you know, the nanites won't even affect us, like that time when Ms. Lacus was infected by modified Green EDEN during the Disaster." Violet was nothing if not good at research, especially when it came to stacking the facts for her own benefit.

Dr. Lamarr met their gazes for several long seconds before his resistance crumbled and he glanced down and away. "Fine, fine, but you must understand that once you are inside the Quarantine room, I will not be able to release you until I have determined that you are not in any way infected or contaminated by the nanites. You will be forced to remain there until I give the all clear."

"Naturally." Wrenn agreed, a hidden light glimmering in her eyes for a moment. She turned to her daughter and shared a secret smile between them. "Violet, why don't you grab that footlocker that Richard brought to us. The one with all your father's keepsakes and memento's in it. I'm sure they will be very reassuring to have on hand when he wakes up. You know how he gets when he doesn't have access to them..."

"Ma'am I'm not sure that I can allow..." Dr. Lamarr began, looking with misgiving at the rather large and securely locked chest in question, which the young girl could only move because it was mounted on several inset trackballs that allowed it to roll across the floor.

"Oh don't be such a worrywart, Doctor, its nothing more than a few sets of old clothing, a few trophies from his younger days and one or two items he built with his own two hands that have special meaning to him. I'd offer to let you see for yourself, but I'm afraid the lock is genetically keyed and encrypted. My husband is paranoid like that." Wrenn interrupted him yet again, sharing another secretive look with her daughter. Wrenn hadn't spoken any lies, not per se. And it was true that she couldn't open the lock herself, but Violet probably could, in fact she was sure that Cy had programmed their daughter's biometrics into the locker's code programs just as a last ditch backup sort of plan, he was careful like that. After all this was his legacy, first passed down from the man who had been as a father to him, and now, eventually to be passed down to Violet, should she choose to accept it, when she was old enough to properly make the choice.

"Yes... I see..." Dr. Lamarr had noticed the looks that the black haired woman and her grey haired daughter were sharing, but he lacked the social insight to properly interpret them... a consequence of spending more time doing theoretical research than face to face medical examinations. His intuition told him something was off here, but then again, just the fact that he was breaking quarantine was in and of itself enough to make him feel fairly queasy and disjointed. "Well, whatever you think is best then, though again, whatever goes in will have to stay in and may need to be destroyed if it is determined that it has been irrecoverably contaminated. As long as you are willing to accept this risk, I see no reason to delay any further." It didn't take long to cycle the mother-daughter pair and their cargo through the series of ailocks that kept the quarantine chamber seperate from the rest of the world, and within ten minutes Wrenn was standing at her husband's bedside while Violet actually climbed up onto the bed and half curled against her father's hips as they watched the robotic limb maneuver the last slice of the Wisdom Fruit towards Cyprus's lips.

"Please... come back to us, Cy..." Wrenn whispered as she watched her comatose husband be fed the dark green fruit.

"Come on Father... you can do anything, beat anyone... you can beat this too..." Violet added, snuggling herself even tighter against his side, an exhibition of public affection she never would have allowed herself in other circumstances. But right now it didn't matter. She just wanted her dad back...

xxxx

**PLANTS, December City, December One Colony, Government Servant Residential District Alpha, Cosmic Era 61, Febuary 23rd, 12:12 PM**

"I have a visual on the target." Cyprus commented under his breath, peering through the lenses of his store bought binoculars, fingers moving slightly as he adjusted what little zoom features the vision enhancing tool had, and then dialled another knob on the side of the case to adjust the polarization of the lenses to filter out the glare of the sunlight reflecting off windows and water. The perpetual noonday sunlight of the PLANTS took a bit of getting used to for a man who had lived most of his life in a city and country that was at the very best "cloudy" if not "polluted", so that bright, direct sunlight was an exceptional event when he was growing up. Since meeting Asmodeus he had become far more cosmopolitan of course, but there were still instances from time to time when he would register an oddity in his experiences compared to his memories of his childhood. "Target Prime is seated in the assumed position, no sign of detection or operational compromise at this time. Recommend operation move forward to stage three." Cyprus added, speaking into the hidden microphone that graced his shirt collar.

It, like the binoculars and the rest of the equipment he was using at the moment, was of civilian make and commonly available within the PLANTS. It was of course not nearly as capable or useful as military grade equivalents, but the PLANTS immigration security was justly famous for the thoroughness of their inspections of incoming goods and personnel, and no covert operations or smuggling technology available to either the Atlantic Federation or Eurasian Federation was up to the task of cloaking the import of military grade weaponry or equipment through PLANTS customs. This meant that any covert agents operating in the PLANTS had to go entirely "native" and get a bit creative in outfitting themselves to accomplish their missions. If anything, Cyprus rather savored the challenge, top of the line equipment was all well and good of course, but it did not behoove any true soldier to be entirely dependent on his gear in order to remain effective.

Of course his current mission wasn't exactly putting to use his full array of carefully honed talents and skills, since he was here more as an advisor than an operative. He'd been getting assigned more and more of these operations of late, something Asmodeus had generally been taking care of before, but now that he was busier with his campaigning among the higher ups of the Atlantic Federation to get the backing to create and finance his dream of a unit of soldiers able to stand one on one with Coordinators should an organized conflict ever break out, as was seeming more and more likely by the day, he was putting Cyprus into the field in a command role far more often these days. In truth, Cyprus did not mind this, in fact he found it very fufilling, compared to indivudal and small unit operations which he had begun to find rather dull of late. He was ready to move on to bigger and better things now, one more step along the path to succeeding his mentor and foster father as the "Hellhound" of legend. He was ready to become a leader in his own right, not just a follower.

This was the most important operation he had yet supervised, if not the largest, and he was determined for things to go off without a hitch. Though after meeting the people he was to be working with and advising... they'd made very clear that despite his expertise and experience he was only to advise and not to order, which was frustrating... Cyprus was beginning to have a few misgivings. The group called themselves the "Unified People's Fellowship", which was a fairly generic and meaningless jumble of words in Cyprus's opinion. Their membership consisted primarily of Naturals living in the PLANTS for one reason or another and a few Coordinators that were perfectly happy with the status quo of the current day and age... usually these were the ones making a killing on certain exports down to Earth or imports to the PLANTS of food and other restricted items... and did not support the majority faction of the Supreme Council that was pushing for total independence and trading autonomy for the PLANTS. The Naturals provided the manpower and the rhetoric, and the Coordinators provided the funding and the infastructure, a nice little dovetailing of will and resources.

But the UPF had decided to take things a little further than just protest marches and picketing of government meetings, or at least a certain subsect of their leadership had decided to up the ante a little bit, and had found ready support from larger and even better funded and organized "Unity" groups down on Earth, who all had many vested interests in keeping the PLANTS under their current state of economic bondage. Indeed, Cyprus's presence here, along with that of his best friend Thomas, was an indication that even the Atlantic Federation itself was a party to supporting this splinter group's ambitions of nipping the planned independence movement of the PLANTS in the bud before it could gather any more momentum than it already had. And the method of doing this, of pruning away this unwanted branch in the path of history? Nothing less than the tried and true methodology of personal elimination of charismatic demagoges... i.e. the assassination of the political leaders of the undesired viewpoint. In this particular case, that meant killing Patrick Zala, the man who had created the Zodiac Alliance political party and guided it to the point where it now controlled over two thirds of the PLANT Supreme Council.

Truthfully, Cyprus had some doubts about the whole thing, in his estimation, killing Zala now would do nothing but make him a martyr for his people. If they'd wanted to get rid of him permanently, they should done it a decade ago, when the Zodiac Alliance was still an underground grassroots movement, not the legitimate political organization it was today. But despite his misgivings he was committed to completing his mission to the best of his abilities. He would file away his concerns for later discussion with Asmodeus, since he had begun to notice a disturbing trend in the missions that they were being assigned by Asmodeus's superiors. It seemed fairly certain to Cyprus that someone in their chain of command had been compromised by the radical group "Blue Cosmos" at some point, and was trying to use the Hellhound and his subordinates to further a goal that was more politically motivated than anything done in regard to the safety and well being of the greater population.

"That's a cute kid. Too bad he's gonna have to see his daddy die." Thomas commented, also in a whisper, as he casually panned his own set of binocs across the garden like vista of the PLANT interior, looking over wooden glens, fields of wildflowers and several small lakes filled with recreational watercraft. It was hard to believe at times that they were actually up in space, not in some idyllic paradise spot down on Earth. They were both seated on a park bench that was situated on a convenient hill that overlooked the ostentatious Zala estate, formerly a residence meant for the use of the Atlantic Federation Embassy, before they had decided to insist upon a location on Aprilius City, the PLANTS governmental colonies. That had actually been something of a windfall for this operation, since the Atlantic Federation still had access to bluepints and layouts for most of the house, and thus Cyprus was able to plan out the operation with great detail. Now it was just a question of whether the UPF people could follow through properly.

Well, if they couldn't that was little enough skin off Cyprus's nose. Yes, he wanted to succeed in his missions, it was a point of pride after all, and he could even, on a general level, acknowledge that neutralizing Patrick Zala could go a long way towards preventing any future conflicts, including a full scale war between the PLANTS and their sponsor nations. If one man had to die in order to stop a war from occuring, then Cyprus would gladly kill that man, whomever he might be and regardless of how much he personally deserved it or not. Morals aside, anyone who would let one man live and doom hundreds of thousands or millions to the tragedy that was a modern full scale war just because murder was wrong did not deserve to have the power to decide such things in Cyprus's view. But perhaps a failed assassination attempt would send the message to Zala that he was messing with forces that were far more serious than he might realize, and he would in turn be more open to negotiation and compromise, like his best friend, Siegel Clyne was.

Passing his enhanced gaze back over the estate, still doing his best to seem like little more than a curious tourist or sightseer, Cyprus spotted the child in question, Zala's son, Athrun, as well as his wife, Lenore, who was an school teacher at one of the nearby public learning institutes that were provided for the PLANTS citizens free of charge. From olympic athlete to housewife and schoolteacher, Lenore Zala mystified Cyprus on a personal level. How could someone so demonstratably capable be satisfied with such a life of drudgery and smallness? How could she stand wasting all of her many, many talents... the woman could be a political legend, like her husband was, if she just tried, but instead she seemed content to stay home, clean the house, make meals and sometimes teach classes of young children basic arthimetic and writing skills. It just seemed wrong to him, on a deeply personal level. Patrick Zala on the other hand, was someone Cyprus could easily relate to and even admire. And as for young Athrun, well, he was a child, not too much younger than Cyprus had been back at the Mueller Orphanage, though much happier and more well adjusted. Perhaps that would be changing soon though, if the sniper was to make his shot, little Athrun would probably be scarred for life, emotionally if not physically. It was too bad, but it could be worse. Much worse. Cyprus knew that better than anyone.

"What the hell are those fools doin?" Thomas commented from next to him, snapping Cyprus out of a brief reverie as he turned to look along the same line as his much larger friend was, chiding himself for the momentary loss of focus. Perhaps he wasn't as ready for front line command as he'd thought, if he was still getting distracted in the middle of missions. Then again, it was a mark of a good leader to be able to trust in your subordinates to fill in the gaps in your own skills and specialities. And while some people might take things the wrong way if he said that he was just more cerebral and prone to thinking more deeply than his gargantuan friend, well it was only the truth of things. Thomas was not as intellectual as Cyprus was, but he was more down to earth and certainly he enjoyed a much greater degree of human connection than Cyprus did. He knew how to relate to people on a day by day basis, whereas Cyprus just analyzed them, considered how they pertained to the mission parameters, but didn't really "know" them as people, except for Thomas and Asmodeus of course.

Those "fools" that Thomas had indicated were a group of young men and women wearing suspiciously clean work coveralls with the emblem of the City Maintenance department stenciled on the back. Such teams weren't an uncommon sight on the PLANTS... the luxurious living accomodations did require a large degree of upkeep and preventative maintenance to stay in good working order, but this group was lacking any sort of support vehicle and were lugging altogether too many tool boxes and heavy bags to be entirely convincing. Plus they were walking too close together and paying far too much attention to their surroundings for people who were supposedly living here as well as working here. Though it was tough to tell from this distance, Cyprus was fairly sure he recognized a few of them from the UPF strategy meeting a few days ago, when they were setting up this highly sensitive and precisely timed mission. Apparently some people weren't content to wait for the proper time and place however, Cyprus knew a entry and assault team when he saw one, especially when it was made up of amateurs. And if he could tell something was wrong, then it seemed fairly sure that Zala's security detail, who were not known for having their heads up their asses, could probably also tell something was up.

Looking back into the Zala household kitchen, where Patrick, Lenore and Athrun were still sitting down at breakfast, Cyprus saw several things happen all at once. A protections ervice agent suddenly stepped into the kitchen and bent down to talk to Patrick, the entire mood of the kitchen changing as his face went blank and then his jaw tightened with anger as he was informed of the incoming suspicious group. The selfsame group suddenly reached the gates barring the Zala estate from the public road and whipped out a motely assortment of home built pistols, submachine guns and explosive devices, two of which were hurled at the gate in an attempt to breach it, all the while giving voice to the UPF's rallying cry "For an Unified Humanity!", which was kind of an ironic thing to yell when attempting to murder a family, Cyprus noted. And then the sniper, a young mercenary gun for hire going by the name Gerad Larkyn, fired his shot. The kitchen window crazed and shattered inwards, bullet proofed glass no match for the special anti-material .50 caliber round that Gerard had been provided with by Cyprus from Asmodeus.

However, Cyprus was in the perfect position to see that the shot did not strike its mark, in fact the shot didn't even go anywhere particuarly near Patrick Zala, but actually passed close enough to Athrun's head to ruffle the child's bluish-purple hair before it punched a hole the size of a small suitcase in the wood paneled kitchen wall. Lenore threw herself on top of her child, pushing them both out of the line of sight from the broken window, joined a second later by Patrick himself, covering both wife and child as he all but vaulted over the entire length of the kitchen table, glaring furiously out the kitchen window all the while. Cyprus was impressed even as he was aggravated... even approaching his fifties, it was clear that Patrick Zala had lost little to none of his physical prowess and reflexes from his olympic athlete days. But the fact remained that had Gerard been even slightly on target, no amount of Coordinator reflexes would have been enough to save Zala's life!

It was a popular misconception that it was better for a sniper to shoot a target in the head, because that would garuantee a kill. And in some ways it was true... assuming you were using something like a hunting rifle or other, small caliber anti-personnel weapon, and the target wasn't too far away and there weren't any complicating factors, such as high wind, windows or poor visibility. Head's weren't very big targets after all, especially at ranges over a hundred meters, even with the best kinds of scopes. Much safer to shoot for the body mass, because most sniper rounds had more than enough power to blow through any body armor known to man like they were stuffed shirts, and make a mangled mess of a target's lungs, heart and spine in the process, which was, barring emergency trauma care within minutes, generally fatal. The special .50 caliber round would have turned a man's body, even a large man like Zala, into bloody mist from the waist up if it struck anywhere on the visible part of his body, but no, Gerard had to try and be fancy and go for a headshot. Though upon further consideration, the angle was wrong for that too. He'd seen the bullet ruffle Athrun's hair, on a downward trajectory, meaning that the bullet wasn't even going towards Patrick upon entering the room!

"Did they just try and assassinate the kid?" Thomas asked incredulously, even as he began packing up their few belongings as they prepared to vacate the area. The distant crump of explosions and pops of small arms fire came from the estate's front gate, which had been more heavily reinforced than the UPF soldiers had been expecting, and now they were caught in the open on the street, taking fire from multiple well disciplined and heavily fortified positions on the estate perimeter. They were getting shot to pieces, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. And even if he could have done something, Cyprus wasn't feeling paticularly inclined to stick his neck out for a bunch of idiots who couldn't even follow a simple plan. The mission was a failure, it was time to start worrying about egress. It was likely that the UPF would be crushed in the aftermath of this fiasco, and Cyprus didn't want to hang around to be questioned by the PLANTS security forces, even if he did have several ironclad alibi's already worked out.

"I believe they did." Cyprus agreed, half his mind boggling at the sheer stupidity of the action even as he likewise packed up and began casually strolling away from their observation position alongside his friend, making no effort to hurry or hide. They stuck out like sore thumbs, one a giant, the other with grey hair and eyes... they were so comically visible that no self respecting security officer would even stop to consider them to be spies or invovled with the recent events. Everyone knew, after all, that spies blended in, didn't stand out, and weren't ever obvious. And since everyone knew this, it made it easy to manipulate their expectations to Cyprus and Thomas's advantage. "The Devil only knows what they thought they would accomplish by blowing away a six year old with a round powerful enough to drop a charging elephant. If they think killing his family would in any way shake Zala's resolve and commitment to the Zodiac Alliance's platform, then they really have no idea what sort of man they're fighting against. I hate working with idealogical fanatics and amateurs."

"Its a murky road we're traveling, though." Thomas pointed out, smiling and nodding in a disarming manner at several passers-by, all of whom looked slightly unnerved at his size, a reaction he was well used to by now. "We've been doing less and less terrorist and criminal hunting and more and more covert ops designed to keep the PLANTS in line of late, don't you think? I mean, I'm not saying I want there to be a civil war or whatever, but doesn't it seem like the sponsor nations are trying just a little TOO hard to keep the PLANTS in line? Would granting them a few of their wishes really hurt those on Earth so badly? It just feels like they're trying to strangle the goose that lays golden eggs because it ain't laying em as fast as they want, ya know?"

"I will be speaking to Asmodeus about this, and other concerns, as soon as we get back." Cyprus confirmed with a frown. "The last thing any of us wants is to be turned into yet another political tool of leverage, and yet that seems to be the very direction we are headed. Blue Cosmos is everywhere these days, and I'm beginning to think they may even have insinuated themselves into our chain of command somehow. No matter how you slice it, Zala hasn't actually done anything criminal or illegal, he's just highly inconvenient for the sponsor nations, and yet here we are, one step removed from a plot to kill him and perhaps his family as well. I don't like it, Thom. This isn't what soldiers are supposed to do. Like it or not, Zala is still one of our citizens. There must be better ways to neutralize him than assassination. Today's events will only strengthen the position of the Zodiac Alliance in the future. It's basic psychology... if they're trying so hard to stop you, then it is plain you are getting to them in some way, and thus will encourage you to try harder in the future. Far better to conduct a character assassination, a political smear campaign, even personal blackmail, than an attempted murder."

"Eh, well, if only you were in charge of the Earth, huh?" Thomas remarked with a wry grin.

Cyprus matched the grin. "No, I don't think so. I don't want that much responsibility. I have no interest in politics except as far as it assists me in understanding the condition of the world I live in. Besides, at that level, no matter what a person does, its wrong and hateful. There is no way to please everyone, no good way forward, no straight paths to follow. I'd end up a dictator just to preserve my own sanity, and the world has no need of dictators in this day and age. I will not lead, but if I ever find someone I think capable of shouldering that burden, you can bet I will protect them to my dying breath, because the world needs a savior, make no mistake of that."

"So that would make us "savior savers" then, huh? Doesn't sound like a bad gig. You're right though... just look at what happens when you step into the limelight like Zala has... people suddenly wanna kill you all the time. Much better... and more fun if I do say so myself... to be the guys just outside the limelight, with the big guns and the nasty traps and the fun toys to stop all the stupid fuckers trying to off the chosen Leader. Whoever this guy is you're looking for, Cyprus, I hope you find him soon, ya know?"

"Me too, Thom, me too..."

xxxx

**Earth, Central Europe, Former Nation of Latvia, outskirts of Olaine, Cosmic Era 62, March 28, 9:48 pm**

Cyprus did not know know the name of the bar he was currently seated in, though caling this place a bar was an insult to the name of good drinking establishments everywhere. At best it might be considered a dive with petensions of respectability. Though for all its dinginess and rough edged clientele, it did fufill two basic requirements for any successful speakeasy. It served powerful, relatively cheap alcohol, and it provided plenty of privacy, both in dimly lit boothes that could hide a half a dozen armed men in their shadows and in blaring music, provided in this case by a live band, that would drown out any conversation made at less than a shout before it even left the area of your table. Cyprus was not interested in the booze, though he nursed a tall glass of unidentifiable but not altogether terrible beer just to blend in, and the pounding beat and screaming guitars of the band were a constant assault upon his highly alert senses, but he did his best to tune that out. He wasn't here for his pleasure after all, not that he would ever go to a bar for pleasure even in what he generously called his free time and was more like relaxed training for anyone else.

He grimaced and took a larger than strictly necessary swig from his beer glass before he managed to smooth his features into a more neutral mask, to cover up the roiling emotions within. He was about as out of sorts as he could ever remember being, a nauseating mixture of guilt, anger, suspicion, hurt and sadness that made him feel both hollow inside and like he was going to blow up like a grenade at any second. And he had only himself to blame, which was the worst part. His training and his personality would not let him look away from this harsh truth. He'd done it to himself, even after he'd sworn he'd never do it again. He'd trusted someone unconditionally, and inevitably, he'd found that trust to be unjustified. It had all come about in the past few weeks, as he and Thomas had been going on more and more questionable missions at Asmodeus's order. Cyprus loved his Foster Father more than he'd ever loved anyone else in his entire life, but his love wasn't blind, he couldn't just turn away from the changes he saw being wrought in the actions and beliefs of his mentor, his idol and his only parent.

Things had come to a head when Cyprus had been called to meet with Asmodeus and his mysterious benefactor and friend that was financing Asmodeus's long held dream to create a unit of Naturals that would be trained and equipped primarily for the purpose of fighting against and defeating equivalent or superior numbers of Coordinator soldiers in infantry combat, an arena where most Coordinators, assuming roughly equal levels of training, had a definite advantage over most of their Natural counterparts. From the very first moment he'd laid eyes on Cervantes Zunnichi, CEO of Cosmos Weapon Manufacturers, Cyprus had distrusted the man, despite his charisma and verve. Indeed, perhaps because of his charisma and verve, Cyprus didn't trust people he couldn't read, and try as he might he could only look so deep into Cervantes Zunnichi before coming up against a blank wall. An impressive man, there was no arguing that, and certainly not incapable or stupid, but there was a hunger to him, a sense of fire raging out of control inside him, that Cyprus did not trust. He was a megalomaniac just waiting to happen. Cyprus was afraid that Asmodeus had made a deal with a devil, ironic as it was to say.

Cyprus was already aware that Asmodeus was expecting him to become one of the field leaders and officers for this new combat unit, to be called the Hellhounds, in honor of Asmodeus's own nickname, which he had won through his dogged pursuit of dozens of seeming impossible missions and operations against terrorists, criminals and those who had no wish to be found. He was said to be like a veritable hound sent from hell to drag escaped spirits back down to their just punishments, once the Hellhound had your scent, you were as good as caught, and perhaps also as good as dead. However, when it was revealed that the Hellhounds would be operating under the oversight of Zunnichi, Cyprus had challenged the idea at once. It was plain to see that Zunnichi was a political animal with very definite if still unclear goals, and Cyprus had no interest in being anyone's hitman or enforcer, no matter how ostensibly legitimate. That would make him into a predator who preyed upon the weak, and he would never allow that. Then had come the bombshell that Zunnichi was actually the number two man of Blue Cosmos.

Cyprus had no personal stake in Blue Cosmos or their message of intolerance, though he certainly had no fond memories of them either. Heated exchanges of opinions had soon led to shouted arguements, shouted arguements had led to icy voiced orders and half spitten insults, and eventually Cyprus had just turned around and walked out, because he realized that if he were to stay around for even a few minutes more, he was on the verge of physical assault against his own foster father. Needing time to recover, time to think, to collect himself and to calm himself down, Cyprus had snagged a case file from his mentor's desk on the way out and resolved to throw himself into a mission of some sort to regain his equilibrium. Nothing too heavy, just tracking down a ring of suspected human and arms traffickers operating in central Europe, something he could easily handle by himself in a few days time. So he'd discarded his pager and cellphone, bought a ticket with cash under a false identity, and headed for Europe in utmost incognito, out of touch from everyone in his life other than himself.

Another day of activating old contacts and accessing hidden caches of money, supplies and equipment had led him to Olaine, once a small city in the nation of Latvia befoe the Reconstuction War had abolished national borders thoughout most of Europe and Asia, and now merely a comemcial hub and suburb of much large cities in the surrounding area. Like many places outside the vey largest cities of Earth, things were a bit run down and desperate, with so much of each sponsor nation's economy tied up in the PLANTS and Lunar cities, there wasn't much industry or commerciality on Earth anymore, which meant few jobs other than service type positions were available. There was little middle class throughout Earth anymore, you were wealthy or you were struggling to get by, hand to mouth. It was a cold spring this year, and much of the streets and buildings were still half buried in slushy snow, few people were out and about on the streets. It was perfect hunting weather, and for a moment or two, Cyprus was even tempted to fall back into old habits for a night. It would definitely blow off some of his stress in a productive fashion to find some perv and rip his or her guts out.

In the end though, he'd decided it was more worth his time to pursue his current leads, which suggested that many of the movers and shakers of the particular criminal ring he was looking to confirm and identify used this bar as a hangout and meeting place. However, several hours and only a few beers worth of clandestine observation later, Cyprus had decided that the arms dealers and human traffickers must have at least some common sense, because they weren't out and about on a chilly, ugly night like this one. He resolved to finish his last beer and then he'd be out on the streets. And if he so happened to run into some criminal or predator of some sort on his way back to his safe house, well, then that would just be karma, wouldn't it? He smiled, wolflike under the cover of his broad brimmed slouch hat, before a new sound caused him to perk up his ears and slightly turn in his chair. The girl was singing again.

This was nothing new or different... the girl had been singing off and on for the whole time he'd been in the bar, since she was the lead singer of the local band that the bar was featuring as entertainment for the night, but, like all previous times, there was a certain... compulsion... her singing wrought on him. And not just him, it was everyone in the bar that seemed to perk up and listen a little harder when she started to sing. Some of it was undoubtedly that she was quite easy on the eyes... tall, slender, plae of skin with lush raven wing black hair and sparkling blue eyes, she was incredibly fetching even in her garments of ripped black tights, knee high black leather boots and skull and crossbones adorned too tight T shirt. From what Cyprus understood of some segments of popular culture, her style of dress along with the rather excessive use of dark makeup around her eyes and lips was actually a fashion statement rather than an unfortante mistake. The other members of the band were dressed similarly, though Cyprus could admit that he spared them only a fragment of his attention, as he allowed himself a moment of weakness and eyed the dark haired singer as she performed.

She was fine to look upon, but Cyprus's eyes were those of a man looking upon a piece of artwork or a particularly fine sculpture, libido had absolutely no hold over him. He mentally removed her clothing and felt no stirring there either. She was lovely, but looks didn't do it for him. He'd met too many people that were considered attractive on the outside but who were ugly and wicked on the inside... at times he was fairly sure such a description could even be applied to himself. She was a visual treat, and her voice was extremely talented, able to be loud and stringent while also throaty and compelling, but that was it. He'd forget about her by morning, as he did for every unimportant random person he encountered in his life. But for the time being, he allowed himself to just soak in her lilting, distracting voice as she sang about things that he'd never experienced and probably never would. After a while, even the individual words ceased to impact on his mind, there was only the mixture of sounds, and Cyprus found himself almost meditatively relaxed. It was a good feeling. It had been a long time since he'd been so at peace with himself.

Of course, as all good songs ever do, this one came to an end sooner than he would have hoped, and Cyprus found his inner peace intruded upon by the boorish noise of the bar once more, as patrons resumed their discussions and called for refills and made jokes and otherwise just acted like the normal people that they were. That seemed to have been the last song that the band, who apparently went by the somewhat confusing name of Avaunte Noctum, was going to play that night, as the all female group began putting up their instruments and wiping sweat from their brows. Playing musical instruments took both focus and endurance, even more so when playing in a marathon session, and no doubt the young ladies were eagerly anticipating being able to go home and fall into their beds for much needed rest. If the contents of their tip jar were anything to go by, they could afford to sleep in tomorrow morning, it was all but overflowing with bills and coins, some of them of considerable denominations. Cyprus raised his beer in salute to their entreprenurial accomplishment, now recognizing that the skimpy outfits served as much a purpose of advertising as they did of fashion statement. Men would always tip a scantily clad woman better than one dressed prudishly, it was practically biological nature.

Cyprus was just finishing off the dregs of his drink, and resolving to slip his own not inconsiderable contribution to the band's profits into the tip jar on his way out, when one of the girls called out in protest, momentarily silencing the bar as patrons craned their necks to see what was going on. And then, just as quickly, conversations started up again, though a bit more subdued, as the patrons obviously decided not to get in volved with what definitely looked like a bad bit of trouble. A group of younger men, tough looking sorts sporting plenty of tattoos and dark leather and other accoutrements of juvenile delinquency, had surrounded the weary bandmates and were busy trying to chat them up. Their intentions could not have been more obvious if the gang members had dropped their pants and put one hand on their dicks, and it was just as obvious that not a single member of the band wanted anything of the sort. Unfortunately, judging by the reactions of the other bar patrons, this group constituted the "power" of this particular area, and no local would be sticking their neck out against them.

He watched through narrowed eyes as the gang corralled the band and began pushing and shoving them towards one of the private rooms at the back side of the bar area, where billiards tables were set up though not often used judging by the amount of dust on the felt. One of the bandmates, a red head, the drummer he was pretty sure, tried to put up a fight, but her kick was ineffectual and the backhand punch she got in return bloodied her lips and put her on the floor hard. Several patrons flinched at the sound of flesh striking flesh, but again, they averted their eyes and burrowed into their drinks. It was bad business, but no sane person put himself into danger to protect a bunch of strangers, not even cute female strangers. That was just how people survived in this area. You didn't have to like it, it was just the way things were. Bad things happened to good people, so sad, too bad, buy another drink and forget about it.

But bad things also happened to bad people from time to time, and Cyprus was about the worst thing that could ever happen to a bad person. He knew that he should probably just call the authorities, an anonymous tip off... this wasn't the dark ages after all, it wasn't like the police wouldn't come if called, it was just a matter of someone having the balls to call them and risk the wrath of the local street gang in the process. There were eight of them and only one of him, and there were five women that were basically hostages. But that just made him smile. He did so appreciate a challenge after all, and as far as blowing off stress went, this would do just fine. Getting up from the bar, Cyprus melted into the shadows, causally following the pogress of the boisterous gang as they made their way to the back rooms, while at the same time not standing out from any of the other patrons that were also up and about. Blending into crowds was only one of many skills that Asmodeus had taught him and Thomas while they were growing up, it was all but second nature now.

He didn't rush it, even though he knew the gang was planning on raping at least a few of the bandmates, it would do nobody any good if he tried to act like a cowboy and go in with guns blazing. Nice guys did tend to finish last, it was just a truism of modern combat. If you tried to play fair, the other guys who were cheating and lying at every opportunity were going to eat you alive. The trick was cheating and lying without appearing to do so, and doing so better than the other guys could. Also, superior numbers helped, but superior numbers could in turn be trumped by superior tactics, positioning and experience. Cyprus pictured the scene in his mind as he approached the door that lead to the room where the girls had been herded. He heard yelps, cries and quite a bit of cursing, and deduced that the girls weren't just sitting by passively, for all the good it would do them against superior numbers of armed assailants. Drawing his sidearm, a brand new 10mm CWM Raptor type pistol, loading with technically illegal hollow point rounds... back to that lying and cheating thing... Cyprus edged up to the doorframe and took a deep, centering breath. He waited until he heard the sound of ripping cloth, and then he kicked the door in, pistol held in both hands.

He caught them with their pants down, literally in three cases, just as he'd intended, and with the girls more or less on the ground and out of direct line of fire, though the dark haired lead singer was on her knees off to one side of the doorway, with a gang member standing over her with his hand wrapped up in her hair and his hand on his belt buckle. He fell a second later, still turning in shock towards the doorway, his head all but disintegrated by the fragmenting round mushrooming inside his braincase. Cyprus fired with deliberate speed, counting his shots, ticking each one off in his head as his fourteen round magazine slowly expended itself. He didn't expect to use the full clip, but it wasn't a bad habit to get into, running out of ammo at an unexpected time was a really good way to get killed after all. He shouted no warnings and dispensed no mercy, targeting backs, chests, groins and faces indiscriminantly, knowing that against unarmored targets at poink blank range his hollow point bullets might as well be small grenades... in like pennies... out like pizzas, they'd mangle anything in their path and put a human sized target down and out in moments.

There was some amount of return gunfire... several of the gang had pistols in jacket pockets or shoved into waistbands, but they were shocked, surprised and confused and most didn't even shoot in the right direction. And even those that did tended to fire with one hand and the gun cocked at a weird angle, trying to control the recoil with just their bent wrist. It was so terrible it was almost laughable... people in movies shot like that to look cool, but what most people failed to realize was that movie guns fired blanks with reduced payloads, that is when they weren't just CGI'd in, which meant that their recoils were less than half of a real guns. Unless you had hands like Thomas or used very special guns and training, firing a pistol one handed and with a bent wrist was about as accurate as firing a shotgun one handed... i.e. not very much at all. Once the first bullet was fired, their aim was almost comically off, as they held down the triggers and kept blasting themselves further and further off target with each bullet fired.

However even the most random fire could still sometimes be effective, especially at point blank range in an enclosed space, and Cyprus heard the lead singer cry out in pain, blood blossoming on her hip and thigh where she looked to have caught a ricochet of some sort. A few moments later, even as the last gang member was falling loosely to the floor, Cyprus felt an uncomfortable bit of pressure on his own lower left abdomen, and concluded that he must have been grazed by an errant shot as well. It was a risk he'd known about and had been willing to dare, and all in all, there were many worse things than a graze. He would attend to it shortly, but there were other priorities to take care of now. Such as getting himself out of the bar so that he couldn't be hauled in for multiple murders, even if it was sort of in self defense, he had shot first and shot to kill with no prior warnings. Most police tended to have a dim view of such actions.

Quite how he ended up escorting the hysterical band to their nearby loft Cyprus could not say... by this point in time he was more than aware that he'd suffered more than just a graze and with his adrenaline rush fading the pain was starting to become rather distracting. He needed a place to tend to himself, and the loft seemed as good a place as any. And for that matter, the lead singer... he learned that her name was Wrenn... also needed medical care. The bullet had lost much of its force before striking her, but had retained just enough velocity to penetrate the skin and the top layers of fat and muscle. It was most inconvenient actually... another hundred FPS and she would have bled out in less than a minute and he could have gotten on with his own life, as things were, the bullet was sitting in the flesh of her thigh, almost at the junction of groin and leg, and was pressing up against a slightly nicked femoral artery. She was leaking blood quickly but not uncontrollably, though she was probably going to pass out soon from dropping blood pressure. The problem was that putting any pressure on the wound would only press the bullet depper and further rupture her femoral artery, which would kill her quickly and painfully. The bullet had to be removed before the wound could be bandaged.

The bandmates... he couldn't remember their names, his side was REALLY hurting him... wanted to go to a hospital, but Cyprus knew that wasn't an option. Hospitals were required to report and detain patients coming in with gunshot wounds, it was standard protocol. He might as well turn himself in to the police directly, and since he was operating incognito, he didn't have any ways of verifying his identity or utilizing official pressure to secure his release. He was, in short, as Thomas would say, fucked royally both ways. He was forced to subdue several of them when they tried to physically pressure him into going for emergency aid, and that was not particularly easy with a bullet wound of his own somewhere in his upper intestinal tract. Grimacing, he turned to look at the bleeding girl lying on her couch and saw that she had woken up from her shock induced delirium. She was looking at him, and his grey eyes met her wide blue ones as if on instinct.

He could never say, not then, not any time in the future, what exactly passed between them in that moment. Cyprus had been with many people in desperate moments, stood at many deathbeds, looked into the eyes of many a dying person and not been affected or moved in the slightest. Death was part of life, it was not be feared or regretted when it came, assuming you'd done everything in your power to avoid it of course. But this girl... well, she was about his age, maybe a little younger... she was different somehow. Her eyes unnerved him in a way he could never quite quantify. "What do you want from me?" He asked her, turning his eyes away, breaking their gaze lock before she overwhelmed him with her look.

"Help me." Wrenn replied, strangely calm, though that might just have been from the near delirium brought on by blood loss. "What do you want from me?" She added, with almost identical inflection to what he'd just said.

"Forget me." Cyprus answered at once, the first and most convenient thing that came to mind. The last thing he needed right now was a manhunt out looking for him. He'd always done well in escape and evasion courses, but with a bullet wound in his gut, even he could only move so fast and so far before collapsing. And that wasn't far or fast, for the record. "Pretend I never existed. I don't exist, got it?"

"That's all?" Wrenn seemed suspicious, and Cyprus wondered if she realized just how complicated a thing he was asking of her. "Well, okay, if that's what you want... I think I'd rather just forget this whole mess actually." She added, regarding him with strangly calm and intent eyes.

"A mutual feeling." Cyprus answered with gallows humor that probably slipped right by her in her half delirious state. His next words however brought her wide awake again, or as wide awake as possible anyway. "Lie back and let me take off your pants." He directed her.

"W-WHAT did you just say?" Wrenn all but shrieked at him, flinching away as he moved closer, biting his lip to keep from screaming as he did so. Gut wounds hurt more than anything else save amputations, though that was secondhand knowledge. He wasn't in the mood for reassurance or explaining himself, but thankfully she seemed to get it a second or so later. "Never mind, just... just don't stare okay?" She directed in a small voice. Cyprus might have almost found that funny, were he not fighting to not double over and cry with pain, that she was worried about her modesty even as she was bleeding to death! Getting her tights off wasn't easy... they were soaked with blood and sticking to her skin in several spots, and he had to be careful not to aggravate the area around the injury. Eventually he resorted to cutting away most of her pants and underwear and picking away the few scraps of cloth that were left. She gasped and covered herself with her hands, drawing a gritted sigh and a glare from Cyprus.

"Please don't. I require access to the wound area. If you would spread your legs as far as you feel able, that would be helpful." Cyprus informered her passionlessly.

"Perverted son of a..." Wrenn hissed, before meeting his implacable gaze once more. This time it was her that glanced away first. "S-Sorry, I'm just not... do what you have to do..." She said, grimacing as she shifted her legs, allowing him to kneel between her thighs in a manner that would have been heavily intimate in any other situation. Well, it still was, but somehow the intimiacy didn't seem to be a problem. No one but a doctor had been this close to her privates before in her entire life, but she couldn't even see a hint of lust or desire on his face. If anything, it was disconcerting... she knew she was pretty good looking, and males were males... what sort of guy wouldn't try and get an eyeful if he had the chance? Well, maybe because she was covered in blood, that might detract from her sexiness a little bit!

Using a lighter he found on the nearby coffee table, Cyprus did his best to sterilize his pocketknife blade, taking out a roll of Ace bandage from his jacket pocket at the same time... it was useful stuff, almost as useful as duct tape, and much lighter to carry. He tried not to leave home without at least one small roll of it on him at all times. "This will hurt." He warned Wrenn, detaching himself from the pain of his own body as he drifted into the Focus in order to steady his hands while digging into such a dangerous wound with a bladed instrument. Even a few millimeters slippage with the blade could end her life as surely as a second gunshot wound. "Try not to scream or writhe... I'm not doing so well myself, and I would not like to slip while holding a knife to this part of your body."

"Mr. Fucking UNDERSTATEMENT!" Wrenn growled at him, warily eyeing the dull orange glowing knife blade as Cyprus began lowering it between her legs. "Hey... stop... I don't think I can do this! Hey!" Wrenn protested, her nerve fleeing at the sight of the heated knife. She reached out and grabbed him by the back of his short grey hair, but he was undeterred and then her mind was blanked with pain as the orange hot knifetip began digging into her gunshot wound.

It was the work of only a few seconds to find and remove the bullet, but she still managed to rip out most of a handful of his hair in the process. She was actually bearing up under it fairly well in Cyprus's estimation... most people would have passed out already. He used the knifeblade to sterilize as much of the wound as he could safely reach, and then began wrapping her thigh, hip and groin area with the Ace bandage, doubling and tripling the bandage layers up over the wound area so as to put extra pressure on the wound itself, which would hopefully stop the bleeding. It wasn't his best work by any means, but as far as administering triage while badly wounded himself, it wasn't too shabby. She would probably live. Which was more than he could say for himself... he'd been bleeding steadily from his own wound for almost twenty minutes now, and not even the Focus could keep the lightheaded dizziness away for much longer. He'd used up all but the last few inches of his Ace bandage doctoring Wrenn, and as he patted his side he found that the shot was a through and through, which was small relief. Infection probably wouldn't be an issue, because he was going to bleed to death before he had time to get sick. He needed a proper surgeon and a surgical theatre, but getting one wasn't an option.

Cyprus all but collapsed backwards as Wrenn belatedly let go of his head, and she seemed to realize for the first time that he was just as badly hurt as her, worse even, his entire midsection and upper legs wet with his own blood as well as some of hers. Steeling himself, Cyrpus bit his lip to keep from calling out in agony. This was not out of male pride... he had no problems crying when he was really hurt, in front of a girl or not, but the loft was in a unit of similar apartments, and while the neighbors would probably be inured to strange gasps and yells and shrieks coming from females, given that these girls were in a band after all, if a male voice started screaming and carrying on, people might investigate. He couldn't have that.

"Hey... you're really fucked up, aren't you? What can I do to help?" Wrenn asked, cautiously sitting upright, grimacing as her leg panged, but she was still in a lot of shock and thus the pain of her wounds was largely distant and fuzzy.

"There's an alley out back..." Cyprus hissed, pressing a hand to his side, vainly trying to staunch the flow of his lifes blood. "Big yellow dumpster at one end, looks like it hasn't been cleaned out in a decade..."

"Yeah... what's it matter?" Wrenn replied, eyeing him suspiciously.

"You should drag me there before I lose consciousness. You'll never be able to lift me yourself in your condition, and your friends won't be conscious for more than an hour yet, maybe not even till dawn in some cases. I'm afraid I did not have the focus to be as gentle with subduing them as I should have." Cyprus answered, completely serious in his request. He saw the puzzlement and disbelief on her face and almost managed to crack a grin, but humor hurt too much and it turned into a wince. "Unless you'd prefer a dead body lying around your living room, that is?" He asked her with biting sarcasm.

"I don't even know you! Are you just going to give up and die?" Wrenn half shouted in incredulous anger.

"I can't stand, I can hardly think straight, and I have used up all my limited medical supplies..." Cyprus ticked the points off crookedly on his fingers. "I have almost certainly blown my cover and my investigation intervening in a matter that was, at best, only of local concern." His lips tightened into a grimace as he sank even further back against the couch, his vision starting to blur. "I can't even drag myself to the door alone. Barring divine intervention from a deity I have never believed in, I'll be unconscious in minutes and dead before dawn." He met her liquid blue gaze once more. "The least I can do is be polite and not bleed to death in your living room, since you and your friends are the innocent bystanders in this scenario."

"Is... is there anyone you want to call? Last words? Message to pass along? Friends? Parents? Family? Girlfriend? Coworkers?"

"The only such person in the world doesn't need a call to know how much I appreciate his years of friendship." Cyprus hitched his breathing as he began to drift into unconsciousness. "Though he'll likely be disappointed that I was killed by a random bullet in a bar that barely even has a name, in a European nation three quarters of the world has never heard of. I... I think it's almost poetic actually. Circle, full circle."

"Listen! You can't just DIE here, you bastard! This isn't a fucking movie! You can't just go and pull a random heoric act, save my fucking life once if not twice, then collapse in my living room in a noble death! That's NOT how things work in real life!" Wrenn seemed more irritated than anything else. "Dammit, can you hear me!"

"Not... unconscious yet." Cyprus managed to pant out, his eyes fluttering.

"You'd better not die, you hear me! You can't just DIE! I don't even know who you ARE!" Wrenn snapped at him, reaching out a hand to grab him by the shoulder

"Good." Cyprus said, and it was the last thing he remembered saying before darkness swept him away. Death wasn't something to be regretted. It was just part of life after all...

xxxx

**Earth, Atlantic Federation Special Forces Command, Alaska National Defense Headquarters, Aleutian Islands, Cosmic Era 69, October 12th, 10:23 am**

"Hey, sir, you still with us?" The question was accentuated by an elbow that tried to dig its way into his side, but Cyprus wasn't so far gone into the fondness of memories that he was going to let himself be nudged with excessive familiarity, even by a man like Corporal Richard Ramierez. He eeled away from the nudge and turned his steely grey eyes upon his most jocular subordinate, prompting the dark haired, dark eyed man of latino descent to throw up his hands placatingly and sit back in his own chair. "Just wondering, sheesh, don't have to break out the dread glare of doom, sir, you just looked a little distant for a moment there. Next speaker's up in two, I think its that Major Jones guy giving the presentation on proper methods to subdue and control an armed foe at point blank range, and how to escape from such control yourself. Sounds like it might actually be interesting for once. Even given that he ain't a Hellhound, I hear Major Jones is supposed to be some pretty serious shit."

"Might wanna control your impulse to be annoying, Corporal." Thomas commented from the other side of his superior officer and best friend. "The Lt ain't exactly well known for his propensity for playing nice when you interrupt his thinking."

"But what, Sarge-Major, do you suppose our Lt was just thinking about that got him so distracted?" Ramierez answered at once, utterly ignoring Cyprus's slightly narrowing eyes as his subordinates began speculating almost gleefully about his thoughts. It was a favorite game amongst them, the members of the Hellhounds Alpha Platoon, to try and decipher what was going through their inscrutable superior officer's mind in any given situation. So far it had been almost five years since the Hellhounds had been officially christened and organized, and three since Cyprus had been awarded command of Alpha Platoon. He known Ramierez and several other members of his unit slightly longer than that, ever since that important mission they'd all undertaken late in CE 63 in yet another bid to prevent war breaking out between the PLANTS and their sponsor nations.

That had been his first introduction to Richard Ramierez, stealth expert extraordinaire, the loudest little sneak anyone had ever met... at least off the battlefield. On the battlefield, when the chips were down, there was hardly a person steadier and more competent than the "Corporal" as he was almost affectionately known by his peers and superiors. truly, Cyprus had been greatly impressed with Ramierez's skills, creativity, intelligence and dedication. It had not taken him long at all to recommend the man to Asmodeus when the Hellhounds were formed, and their relationship since then had quickly become more than just officer and trusted subordinate. In his way, he was as friendly with Richard as he was with Thomas, though there were still things that Thomas alone could get away with, such as certain degrees of familiarity from long association.

The mission back then had involved a full on covert infiltration of the central solar panel control station that oversaw the operation of all the gigantic solar panels that provided the PLANTS with light and energy. By disrupting this facility, the solar panels would stop reflecting light into the PLANTS and stop transferring power into their systems, forcing them to rely on backup batteries. The goal was to shut down their "extra" industry for a time, since it was suspected that the PLANTS were beginning to divert production from commercial and industrial pursuits into creating war machines and material for an eventual bid at total independence. By shutting off their power but still demanding that they maintain their status quo of production exports, the PLANTS would theoretically be kept too busy fufilling their economic duties to have time or resources available for producing military assets.

The mission had gone off almost perfectly... Cyprus, Thomas, Richard and Quentin, an explosives expert, had met up with their contact on the inside of the PLANTS, the legendary Andre Forkav, also known among the Coordinators as the Strangler Horrificus, a very overblown title that nonetheless accentuated just what a half mythical boogyman he had become to them, living amongst them in secret and killing via strangulation, sometimes entire families at a time. Cyprus had expected to detest such a deranged and disturbed individual, but far from finding Andre to be a psychopath, Cyprus had discovered him to be a quiet, unassuming and deeply tormented man, who regretted his actions but could not, for unspoken reasons, turn away from them. Andre had since been killed in an unfortunate shuttle crash several years later, and Cyprus hoped the man had been able to absolve himself of whatever burdens were on his soul before he passed away. The team had bypassed the PLANTS defenses with Andre's expertise and proceded to blow up the facility with minimal casualties, plunging many PLANTS into perpetual night and bringing the entire PLANTS economy to a crashing halt.

Things hadn't gone so well on the political front however... the PLANTS responded to the demands for continued production even without their primary power systems being operational with furious protests and eventual industrial sabotage. Even threatening them directly with fleets of Mistral class Mobile Armors proved ineffective in doing anything but driving the protesters underground. The years since had been quiet in the PLANTS... ominously quiet in Cyprus's opinion. This was the calm before the storm, he was all but certain of it. A long quiet, but that was all the more indication of how severe the eventual storm itself would be. And given recent events in the last year, things were rapidly heating back up to a boil again. But that hadn't been what he'd been momentarily thinking of that had zoned him out, even for a moment. No, current events, no matter how distressing or enteraining, could never do that. There was only one person in all the world that could make him, Lieutenant Cyprus Finch, lose his cool and his focus, even when she wasn't around. And that one person was of course Wrenn Nostaliviche.

He absently rubbed the spot on his left side where he still had a bullet scar and had to fight not to break out in a schoolboy grin that probably would have given every one of his subordonates a heart attack from sheer shock. Surviving that injury had been the last thing he'd been expecting, but apparently Wrenn wasn't the sort of girl to take no for an answer, and she'd ripped up her remaining clothing and used them as impromptu pressure bandages until she could find tape and other materials to use. He had delirious images of being fussed over by a beautiful and very naked woman, but he remembered few details of the several days he spent hovering between life and death in her apartment, drinking chicken soup and being warmed by body contact since they... Wrenn and her friends... couldn't afford a space heater or extra blankets. Of course that had been then, and now she was an international mega star, or fairly close to anyway, raking in millions of dollars in record sales and concert ticket sales. He'd never intended to get into a relationship with her, he'd even asked her to forget about him. The problem was, he couldn't forget about HER! And he'd tried, tried really hard. Cyprus had failed in very little over the course of his life, but he had failed utterly to move on past Wrenn Nostaliviche. And he was actually kinda glad that he wasn't strong enough to do that, now.

He'd been able to stay away for almost a year, though he had avidly followed her career as Avaunte Noctem made headlines and became an international smash hit as they combined the genres of gothic and industrial to find a sound that appealed to both hardcore rockers and the more emotional, angsty, sappy sort, two very different but populous groups, especially amongst today's youth on Earth. Young Coordinators were all about Pop, especially the young sensation Lacus Clyne, but those on Earth had less to be glad and cheery about, and so they favored the hard edged rythyms and raw lyrics of Avaunte Noctem, which meant listening to Wrenn. And then he'd been able to stand it no longer and he'd shown up at one of her concerts. All it had taken was another meeting of gazes... he didn't think either of them would be able to hide from the other ever again, if all they had to do was glance at each other and they'd get frozen in place. It was quite the most troubling and disconcerting thing, since he'd never, in his entire life, experienced an attraction to a member of the opposite or even the same sex like this. Headmistress Mueller had turned him off women in general, but somehow Wrenn seemed to be the one exception his body and subconscious mind were willing to tolerate.

Their first date had been, well, awkward was both the best way to put it and a demeaing of the term "awkward". He'd hardly been able to talk to her at all, and she too seemed subdued by his presence, not at all the vivacious and energetic person he'd found her to be most of the time and especially on stage. It wasn't that he was shy, though he was feeling a little bit of that, it was just that he couldn't for the life of him, think of anything they had in common that they might want to talk about. He was a soldier, a killer, a murderer and a predator of predators, damaged goods by any definition of the term... and she was a nice young woman who was on the cusp of a brilliant and very successful career in the performing arts. It was just impossible, even if he did open up to her, he'd only scare her away with the brutality and trauma of his past. He'd gotten up to leave, and she'd just reached forward and snagged him by the wrist, actually touching him of her own volition. Despite his past, Cyprus had never been a touch-o-phobe, though he did find it uncomfortable to be pawed at.

"Don't go." Wrenn had said, quietly, earnestly, compellingly. "It's strange for both of us, but I think we'll both regret it if we don't at least give this a shot, don't you think? Why don't you start by telling me your name, and we'll work our way from there, okay?"

And so he'd sat back down, against what he thought was his better judgement, and had never looked back once. Yes, being with Wrenn was a pain a times, because he was desperate to keep their relationship a secret, both for his sake and especially for hers... while being hounded by media hungry for a scoop would be very inconvenient for a man in his line of work, being known to be the lover of the Hellhound's protege, the infamous Lieutenant Cyprus Finch, could be injurious to Wrenn's health, even fatal. There were plenty of criminals, terrorists and unsavory sorts out there with a bone to pick against the Hellhound and his foster son these days, but were too afraid or too smart to challenge them directly. Like it or not, Wrenn was an easy way to hurt him without much risk involved on the side of the attacker. And for that matter, given the slowly growing rift between himself and Asmodeus over their diverging beliefs on how the Hellhounds should be commanded and assigned, he didn't want to give his foster father any more leverage over himself than necessary, because he knew Asmodeus would use it... that was what he did, what he was famous for.

Which was one reason why Asmodeus was so estranged with his own actual family, including his wife and biological son, Ray, whom he hardly ever acknowledged and generally avoided like he was plagued. Asmodeus didn't even attend his own wife's funeral when she died in an automobile crash. It wasn't that he didn't care for them... he did acknowledge Ray as his son and he did look out for and provide for him... but he couldn't show that he cared because it would put them at risk for retaliation by Asmodeus's enemies. It was just one of many things that wasn't fair about living the life they had chosen to... love and familial happiness was a rare and fleeting thing for them, by necessity, for the sake of all involved. And so Cyprus kept Wrenn a secret, even from the people he trusted with his life, like Richard and Thomas, because she was the one who'd really given him his human side back after the scarring experiences of his youth, and that was simply the most precious thing in the world to him. She'd shown him that he could be more than just a soldier, he could be a man too, and that was something he hadn't even realized he'd forgotten how to be.

He was her secret hero, the person she relied upon to make herself feel safe and wanted and secure, and this was a role he'd never played before. A protector versus an avenger, a guardian versus a vigilante. By trusting in him she'd helped him learn to trust others more, to let others in on at least some of his pain and misery and trauma. He doubted he would ever be able to fully open up to her... he cared for her too much to want to sully her with recitations of what depths humanity was capable of sinking to in the name of perverted lusts... but what opening up he was able to do was a huge relief, an unburdening of his soul that he'd hardly realized was even weighted down. And she'd taught him to take pleasure from human company, both social and intimate, which for him was the most awe inspiring thing ever! Ever since the Headmistress had raped and tortured him, Cyprus had never enjoyed sex, and often actively dreaded it, no matter how skilled or beautiful his partners might be, he could not enjoy being intimate with anyone. But Wrenn had finally been able to show him that there was more to sex than just physical intimacy and lust. She was the perfect woman, at least in his eyes, and he wanted her so badly it physically hurt at times, being seperated from her.

But he couldn't risk her, no matter how much he missed her, and so he was forced to content himself with a night or two every few months of being together, of being human, of being the man Cyprus Finch versus being Lieutenant Finch of the Hellhounds, like a dehydrating man subsisting through a desert trek by taking a sip of water every few hours, not knowing how long his endurance could last, but not daring to use up his supply of life giving fluids rashly because to do so would bring certain death even swifter. And he did his best to tone back his arguements with Asmodeus, sacrificing some of his pride for the reassurance that Asmodeus wasn't watching him so closely as he had in times past. It meant knuckling under and doing some things that he didn't agree with, things that ran counter to his own deeply held beliefs, compromising principles he had sworn that he would never allow to be compromised. But Wrenn was worth the sacrifice, because she was the one that had lifted him from damnation up into redemption, and for her sake, he could and would do anything. Anything at all.

And part of that, Cyprus had decided, was doing his best to prevent a full scale war from breaking out between the PLANTS and the Earth. Unfortunately, things weren't going so well on that front. Just last year, Siegel Clyne had been elected to the Supreme Council Chair, thus becoming the de facto head of the PLANTS government, at last putting the Zodiac Alliance faction... now actually called the Zodiac Alliance of Freedom Treaty, or ZAFT... in full control of the PLANTS politics and government. The sponsor nations had brought back their Mobile Armor fleets, this time the brand new Moebius's rather than the aging Mistrals, but the PLANTS had shockingly responded with their own show of force, proving once and for all that at least some of their industrial capacity had been shifted to military means. The ZAFT force was small, just a few cargo ships converted into light warships, some Mobile Armors of their own and some sort of large humanoid armored exoskeleton of some sort, but the mere fact that the PLANTS had built a military force had been enough to put the sponsor nations and much of Earth on the proverbial back foot, and the arms demonstrations had been called off as the Earth leadership tried to decide what to do next.

Then had come the infamous Mandelbrot incident, in which it was discovered through espionage that the PLANTS had been making secret deals with the United States of South America and the Oceania Union, with the Earth states trading food supplies for lucrative preferred deals of manufactured goods for the PLANTS. This was an even bigger issue because neither the USSA or the OU was a sponsor nation of the PLANTS, which meant they were reaping huge profits from a venture they'd never even put captial into in the first place! The sponsor nations of the Atlanetic Federation, Eurasian Federation and Republic of East Asia had jointly demanded the dismissal of Chairman Clyne, the dissolution of the current PLANTS government and the complete renunciation of all claims of autonomy, economic or otherwise, that the PLANTS harbored. The demands were, perhaps unsurprisingly, rejected out of hand.

Though not involved in the Madelbrot incident, Cyprus and the Hellhounds had been tasked with a mission shortly afterwards, one of the ones he didn't really believe in but forced himself to accept for personal reasons. A certain brilliant, if possibly deranged scientist working in the Mendel 4 colony, by the name of Ulen Hibiki, had been discovered to be working with illegal technologies, including human cloning, in efforts to create something called an "Ultimate Coordinator". Details on what exactly an Ultimate Coordinator entailed were few and far between, but it was determined by both Blue Cosmos and unaffiliated political leadership that it was simply too dangerous given the current political climate to risk the public dissemination of this technology. Just regular Coordinators and the technology for producing them had riven apart a more or less united humanity with racial tensions that had not been seen in centuries in little more than a year from the day George Glenn first shared the technology with the world. There was no telling what sort of social catastrophe could result if it was revealed that there was a process to making a human even more capable than even a Coordinator could dream of being.

So Dr. Hibiki, his lab, his research and anything and anyone involved with those three things was ordered to be destroyed. Things had not, despite Cyprus's efforts, gone particularly according to plan. Dr. Hibki had been slain, Cyprus had confirmed this himself, and his lab trashed, but before he could be as sure in the destruction as he wanted to be, there had been a level 4 biohazard alert, perhaps some sort of failsafe or self destruct mechanism the brilliant modern day Dr. Frankenstein had hooked up to a deadman switch or something. The entire colony had been sealed off and then sterilized from a distance with massive X-ray lasers, killing every living thing on board, down to the individual bacteria and single celled organisms. The colony was then declared quarantined and all records involving Dr. Hibki and his research were buried or deleted. Still, Cyprus at least could not help but notice that during the raid there had been no sign of any samples or test subjects within the lab. Either Dr. Hibki was not nearly as close to perfecting his research as had been feared... or he'd had already succeeded an unknown amount of time before and was moving on to refine and further understand the process and thus had no need of further test subjects. Pessimistic by training and experience, Cyprus chose to believe the latter option.

A little personal research on the side had quickly shown that Dr. Hibiki had actually had children, fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, back in CE 54, but there had been no children of any age in evidence when the lab was destroyed and Dr. Hibiki and his wife were eliminated by the Hellhounds. Dr. Hibiki had no living family, but his wife was survived by an older sister, Haruma Yamato, married to a Caridad Yamato of Orb nationality who was residing on the Orb resource satellite of Heliopolis after a recent move from the Copernicus Lunar City in the wake of the spread of rampant Blue Cosmos sects to that city. The Yamato's had a son name Kira who was just the age to be one of the Hibiki children, and he did look suspiciously little like either Caridad or Haruma. He was listed as a Coordinator, which if anything, further indicated that he was not related to them, because what was a Coordiantor but someone who had garaunteed inheritence of their parent's traits, which of course would include physical resemblence? As for the Hibiki daughter, things were murkier, he lost track of her somewhere in Orb in the late 50's, shortly before Uzumi Nara Attha was elected Chief Representative of that small nation.

Cyprus had only considered this information for a moment or two before he acted. Acted and erased all mention of it, did his best to bury the topic entirely. It had been a bone sticking in his craw to prosecute the action against the elder Hibiki's, he was damned if he was going to throw their children to the wolves as well. And if one or both of them happened to be whatever an Ultimate Coordinator was, well then good for them, he hoped they made something important of themselves when they grew up. At the rate things were going, the world was really going to need some highly capable people involved in its fate before too much longer. Because in the past few months, things had finally started coming to a head, when Chairman Clyne order the refitting of the Junius Colonies seven through ten to become agricultural colonies, the first spaceborne farms that would at least ease the burden of the PLANTS reliance on Earth for food.

This had been the final straw for the sponsor nations and they had immediately put together a major multinational joint task force to invade and occupy the PLANTS, to dismantle their government by force and bring the rebellious colonies back into line by any means necessary. Unfortunately, things, as usual or so it seemed, did not go according to plan. ZAFT responded to the invasion vigorously, deploying not only a fleet of warships almost as numerous as the joint task force, but also fielding a new category of personal war machine called Mobile Suits, armored humanoid weapons as tall as a six story building that featured a degree of maneuverability and durability that was decades beyond anything the Moebius Mobile Armor, which was the mainstay of the sponsor nation forces, could hope to match. The concept of humanoid war machines had been around for centuries by now, but no one had been able to overcome the tricky nature of how to properly and efficiently control then, which was why armored tracked vehicles and Mobile Armors still dominated the aresenals of the major power bloc nations.

The ZAFT forces hadn't just beaten back the joint task force, they had all but annihilated it, with embarassingly few casualties of their own. It was the worst military defeat any of the sponsor nations had suffered since the height of the Reconstruction War, almost sixty years earlier. Cyprus had heard rumors that proposals had been set forward by certain progressive elements of the Atlantic Federation forces to attempt to copy or reverse engineer these new "Mobile Suits" for their own forces, but more conservative elements in the high command, many of them deeply involved with Blue Cosmos, had nixed the idea, sure in their opinion that regardless of a single defeat, the vastly numerically superior forces of the sponsor nations would be enough to overwhelm the not entirely unexpected greater individual power of Coordinator soldiers and pilots. And should traditional forces fail, many of the sponsor nations still maintained fairly good sized nuclear arsenals of varying destructive capability, which was a trump card the PLANTS did not possess and seemed to have no interest in possessing either.

Flush from their new "nation's" first military victory, Chairman Clyne had recently announced the PLANTS were assuming full autonomy from the sponsor nations and demanded recognition on both political and economic platforms from the sponsor nations and all nations of Earth. Adding ultimatum to injury, Chairman Clyne then declared that if no answer was received to this request before January first of Cosmic Era 70, then all exports of manufactured goods from the PLANTS to the Earth would be cut off. Which would instantly plunge every major Earth nation into bankruptcy and economic depression of a like not seen since the earliest days of the old twentieth century AD. No one seemed to really believe the PLANTS would actually follow through on this threat, but Cyprus didn't doubt Chairman Clyne's resolve for an instant. The man was a progressive, a philanthropist and a moderate, but he wasn't a pushover and he wasn't the sort to spew hot air without real fire to back it up, especially with Patrick Zala as the head of ZAFT and his number 2 man. This was no bluff, and anyone who thought different was in denial. Sadly, that meant most of Earth's leadership was living in denial... but what was new or different about that, anyway?

The future was looking ever more turbulent, but Cyprus wasn't afraid. He was a complete man again, for the first time in decades, and he was ready and willing to face and defeat whatever challenges the world might throw at him. He'd always lived by the credo of preying upon the predators that victimized the weak and the helpless. Soon it would be time for him to decide which side was the predator and which the victim in this coming conflict. Or perhaps he would be spared the choice and the savior-leader he had long wished for would appear and guide humanity to a better way. In any case, Cyprus Finch, Lieutenant of the Hellhounds, would be ready and willing to do what needed to be done to create a peaceful world for him and Wrenn to enjoy together. No matter the cost. But first, he had to get through this lecture by Major Jones. He'd been looking forward to this for some time now... Major Jones had been personally trained by Ledonir Kisaka after all, who was a man even Asmodeus spoke of with utmost respect. Time to learn, and become stronger...

xxxx

**Orb, Orb National Hospital, Maternity Ward, Cosmic Era 79, August 7th, 9:23 am**

How the world could change in little less than a decade! Even he, Cyprus Finch, reckoned to be a sort of visionary or prophet when it came to predicting the likely course of the near future of humanity based upon the actions of the present and the lessons of the past, would have never in a thousand years of dedicated thinking considered that the world could have become as changed as it had in a mere ten years. Of course those had been ten years of some of the most intense conflicts humanity had ever known, two different world wars with casualties in the millions and then, most recently, a prolonged terrorist conflict that was pretty much a full scale war by the end of things, which had precipitated a change in the world that was physical, emotional and profoundly spiritual, as a significant portion of humanity was forever recreated and rebuilt into Ultimate Coordinator form by the nanotechnology known as Green EDEN!

First had been what was then called the Valentine War, in honor of the then unprecedented military folly and tragedy of Junius Seven, an unarmed agricultural colony of almost two hundred and fifty thousand Coordinators that was destroyed in a heartbeat by a illegally launched nuclear missile under the orders of Blue Cosmos. Cyprus had not been involved in that travesty, thankfully, though he had known people that were involved, including his own foster father Asmodeus and their "benefactor", Cervantes Zunnichi, who had actually been responsible for much of the planning of that sickening operation. Cyprus had fought on the side of what was then called the Earth Alliance for this First Valentine War, along with his unit, the Hellhounds, who had taught the Coordinator ground forces that there were still plenty of Naturals out there for them to fear despite the ostensible difference in physical abilities between Naturals and Coordinators.

But it was actually in the Second Valentine War, which had followed less than a year after the end of the first, again due to the manipulations of Blue Cosmos, now led by Cervantes Zunnichi personally, in the wake of the former leader, Azrael Murata's, death in the closing battles of the first war, that Cyprus had truly become heavily involved in events with an influence on the world as a whole. He and his team had been assigned to bodyguard duty for a young man named Sai Argyle, who was courting Zunnichi's daughter, Vanai and was of personal interest to Zunnichi and Asmodeus for his knowledge of certain other important personages that had had a great deal of influence upon the course of the First Valentine War. By utilizing Sai's insider knowledge of the pasts and relationships of these key figures... including Cagalli Yula Attha, Kira Yamato, Athrun Zala and Lacus Clyne... Cervantes was able to break down the nascent peace negotiations between the Alliance states and the PLANTS and reignite a major world wide war between the two sides.

Though initially deceived by his nefarious father in law, Sai wasn't the sort to just sit back and weep, and instead he had launched an agressive political and personal campaign to seize control of Blue Cosmos from within the organization. Upon realizing the depths of Sai's ambition and dedication to the people of Earth, Cyprus had eagerly and wholeheartedly thrown his support, and that of his unit, behind Sai's efforts. He had at last found the savior-leader of humanity he had always dreamed of encountering one day. Someone willing to shoulder the great burden that leading humanity as a whole was certain to be, without being overwhelmed by it, or more importantly, without being corrupted by the power involved as Cervantes had been. When Cervantes's reach had finally exceeded his grasp, during the reprehensible events of what was to be known as Purgatory Day, when the Merciless Gundam was set loose in the fully occuiped capital of Orb in response to a massive anti-war protest, Sai had been ready and waiting to step forward and replace his insane father in law, fracturing Blue Cosmos into the Puritan and Isolationist parties, of which the Isolationists were by far the greater majority.

Alongside other supporters of Sai's great ambition of seperate but equal peoples and peace between Naturals and Coordinators through careful avoidance and division of territories, including such diverse people as Markov Ashino, a former Blue Cosmos supersoldier who had rebelled against his genocidal training, Cyprus and the Hellhound Alpha platoon had fought a desperate battle against forces sent by Cervantes to kill his rebellious son in law before he could fully wrest control of the Blue Cosmos organization and thus the Earth itself, from his grip. During this battle, Cyprus had matched wits with no lesser person than Asmodeus Sark, his own mentor and foster father, who had fallen into despair and wretchedness in the wake of losing his son Ray to the Clyne Faction in an ill conceived plot to capture or kill Lacus Clyne shortly before the war itself began. Despite Asmodeus's greater experience, it was Cyprus's skills and Sai's grand strategy that had ended up winning the day at the last, despite Asmodeus bringing along the insane superhuman bioweapon freak that was Zacharis Frost to bolster his forces.

Of course, despite his many good qualities, Sai was still a human being and subject to human failings, most critically that of impatience, the desire to see his dreams come true now, in months rather than years, in years rather than decades, and despite his unqualified successes in uniting the world under the Isolationist banner, including the takover of long held ZAFT territories like Carpentaria and the almost peaceful subjugation of Orb, due in part to the actions of Frost and Asmodeus once again, which resulted in the surrender and neutralization of the force of chaos that was the Clyne Faction, not everything was going according to plan. The PLANTS were adamantly against the Isolation Plan, and they did have a legitimate concern, that they lacked proper food supplies to sustain all of their population in the wake of the coming seperation. Unwilling to negotiate, recognizing that such a path only led to dithering and confusion and eventual loss of direction and resolve, Sai had struck a hardline stance and ended up provoking a final bout of conflict between the Earth and the PLANTS. Even then, the Isolation was on the cusp of victory when chaos personified decided to have the last laugh, in the avatar of Zacharis Frost and the Pulsar Gundam.

Despite his best efforts and the efforts of the Clyne Faction and plenty of other heroic figures, Sai and Vanai were struck down by the monster that was Frost, Vanai slain, Sai all but killed and rendered comatose, and their two young babies, Matthias and Jessi, lost in the confusion that was the Battle of Denver. Cyprus himself had been seriously injured and half buried alive during the battle, and had been utterly unable to be there for his chosen savior in his time of need, a failure that still ate at him to this day, especially the loss of Sai's children. In the aftermath of the death of Sai's dream, Cyprus had been as close to despair as he'd ever been in his life, but Wrenn had been there for him, as she always had been, and in the long overdue formalization of their relationship, Cyprus had once again found the fire within. The world, even imperfect as it was, still needed the Hellhound to protect it at any cost from those who would do it harm. Perhaps the grand future of peace he'd seen at Sai's side had fallen by the wayside of history, but there were still so many precious and beautiful things in the world to protect and treasure... Wrenn was just one those things.

Taking service with Orb, despite a certain degree of idealogical differences between him and their leadership, and the fact that he had once been deadly enemies with many of the people now giving him orders... had even held weapons to heads of some... Cyprus had thrown himself into the reconstruction of his beloved unit, the Hellhounds, both helped and hindered by the involvement of Alkire Majesty... better known as Robert Jones, and his own paramour, Raine Belaruse, both members of a irregular anti-terrorist unit called TEMPEST, that had sided with the Clyne Faction during the Second Valentine War. A few personality conflicts aside, Cyprus got on well with Alkire and Raine, since they were all professionals in the same line of work, with similar experiences and skills, and it wasn't long at all before the Stormhounds were born, a reincarnation and fusion of the Hellhound ideal with the moral centering of TEMPEST and Orb, sort of like the best of both worlds. Though significantly outranked by Jones and Belaruse, Cyprus retained day to day control of the new unit due to his past reputation for exceptional leadership of small units and the support of most of the senior NCO's, who were all former Hellhounds, including his longtime friends Richard Ramierez and Thomas Glory.

But the best thing about living and working in Orb wasn't the degree of freedom he had with his professional life, but rather his personal one, as he and Wrenn bought a house and settled down together as husband and wife, though he'd never actually been brave enough to suffer through a formalized wedding procedure. He could finally be with Wrenn as much as he wanted, every day even, and that was all that mattered to him. Wrenn soon became close friends with no lesser personage than Lacus Clyne herself, which then resulted in Cyprus being exposed to Kira Yamato rather more often than he found comfortable. It being revealed that Kira was in fact an Ultimate Coordinator, just as his father Dr. Hibiki had so long ago intended, Cyprus found the young man's attitude towards life most frustrating and disconcerting, in the same way as he had once been disarmed and bothered by how Lenore Zala approached life. Kira had such potential, but he refused to make use of it, it was like he was in love with the idea of being a mediocre person despite his ability to be a world bestriding figure. He was everything that Cyprus was not, and thus he bothered him on a deeply personal level. That didn't stop him from respecting the young man for what efforts he did deign to make, but he didn't think he would ever become fond of him, as Wrenn had.

Events leading into what would become known as the Eden Disaster had resulted in yet another addition to the dynamic of his personal life, when the lover of his good friend Markov Ashino was badly injured during an attempt on Ashino's life by his own side, due to the manipulations of the arch-politician Gilbert Durandel, then Secretary of Defense of the United Solar Nation, the multinational organization that had sprung up in the wake of the Valentine Wars to serve as the former United Nations once had. Brain damaged by her injuries, Jean Kellson, a woman in her early twenties, had been reduced to the mental level of a four year old and was thus unable to take care of herself. With one attempt on his life already partially successful, Markov had sent Jean to Cyprus in Orb, because that was the safest place in the entire world he could think of. Honored by his friend's trust, Cyprus had done everything in his power to care for Jean as if she really was part of his family, ably assisted by Wrenn. And though perhaps everything in his power might not have kept Jean safe in the same terms Markov was thinking of, such as when Jean helped deprogram a brainwashed Brotherhood operative by the name of Mary O'Brien by appealing to her nurturing nature, no actual harm ever befell the traumatized girl, not even when the Brotherhood sent a capture team to abduct her from the Finch household, much to the detriment of said team.

In the wake of his own brush with mortality during the concluding events of the Eden Disaster, when the Stormhounds had boarded the Great Endeavor of Noah Borander and captured that arch-terrorist in his own sanctum, Cyprus had come to realize that contrary to his own secret fears, he was perfectly capable of being a good father and that by the very nature of his profession, there was no garauntee that he would always be around for Wrenn in the future. If they wanted to add to their family, there was no sense in holding back or waiting any further. And now, a little less than nine months later, here he was, nervously awaiting news from the maternity ward where Wrenn had gone into labor several hours before. Cyprus had promised himself that he would stay by her side during the process, but he couldn't stand to see her in pain, and a birth, even with modern technology, was nothing if not a painful, bloody process. He couldn't take it, he had to wait outside for the sake of his own sanity. Funny, in a way, that a man who had surveyed more bloody and broken battlefields than he could even remember could be so distressed by such a comparatively small amount of blood and pain, but it was just different, in a way he couldn't define or understand. A birth was much, much scarier than any death could ever be.

He was waiting alone for the time being, but that was okay, because he knew his friends and subordinates were with him in spirit, which was what he needed most right now, rather than physical companionship. He hated appearing weak, even for good reasons, especially around the people closest to him, and at the moment he felt weaker than he ever had in his entire life, even compared to those times he had been at death's door. For once he was completely helpless to do anything but wait for good news, there was no physical thing he could do to affect Wrenn or their baby right now. He was afraid he might actually be breaking out in tears if too much more time passed without news, and though both Richard and Thomas had seen him cry before, it was usually because of a major physical injury, not emotional panic. And though neither of them would ever tease him about something like this, he still felt better keeping such primal displays of Cyprus Finch the man between him and Wrenn only.

When the door to the ward opened and the doctors came out, Cyprus almost threw them physically aside in his haste to get past, to get to Wrenn's side, instantly concerned despite all evidence that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong somehow. Words came to him as meaningless babble, jumbles of sound that he could make neither head nor tails of as he rushed into the recovery room where Wrenn was situated. He vaguely remembered actually running down one hapless orderly than didn't get out of his way fast enough, his vision straying towards Focus-like levels of tunnel intensity as he finally laid eyes on his wife, the most important person in all the world to him. Who was holding the person who would also now mean more to him than anything else in the world, their daughter, who was to be named Violet. Cyprus froze in the doorway, unable to process what he could see, unable to really admit that he was actually a father now. He was fortunate that Wrenn was stronger than he ever gave her enough credit for, because she looked up at him, smiled, and, just like the time she'd called him back when he thought to flee during their first date, she reached out to him and grounded him in reality once more.

"Here... you should hold her too." Wrenn directed, her voice soft with tiredness, but glowing all the same as she held out the recently cleaned and swaddled child to her husband, who looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding vehicle. "Say hello to your daddy, Violet..."

Cyprus reached out his hands automatically, marveling at how solid and heavy such a small being could be, as she turned her bald, wrinkled head towards him, her eyes still unable to open, but somehow she still seemed aware of where he was looking. She was his daughter, and she was the most perfect being in the entire world, and for only the second time in his entire life, Cyprus began to cry with sheer happiness. "I will always be there for you when you need me." Cyprus promised them both through his tears. "I love you both so much..."

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Hospital, January 22nd, 2:21 pm**

Cyprus opened his eyes, the feeling of his infant daughter still warm against his hands and forearms and chest, but he soon realized that he was not yet awake. He was feeling more and more like himself with every passing moment, as his brain reassimilated all the myriad memories and experiences that made Cyprus Finch himself, both the good and the bad and the ones he had never admitted to anyone but himself. Quite how this was possible he did not know, but he was grateful for it all the same. If there was anything Wrenn and Violet had taught him it was that sometimes you just had to believe in things and take them on faith, even if you did not believe in any higher powers or guiding fates of humanity. He looked around himself nd found himself in an open field, somewhere in a mountain range, the greenery startling vibrant, the air crisp and cleaner than he'd ever experienced anywhere on Earth. Yet he still knew, somehow, that this was a real place on Earth, even if he wasn't actually there now and had never been there in the past.

_**IT IS BECAUSE YOU WILL BE HERE IN THE FUTURE**_. An unearthly voice informed him, its sound like all the winds of the world whispering as one. Cyprus jerked, settling into a combat stance, even though he found himself to be unarmed, as he looked around for the source of the unexpected voice. He didn't see anything, other than a tree beyond all other trees, a gargantuan specimen of arboreal life that seemed to cover the entire world in the shade of its branches.

"I don't understand." Cyprus admitted, still looking warily about.

_**OF COURSE. NOT YET.**_ The voice answered, almost smugly, though attributing human emotion to such an alien voice was probably self deceptive. _**BUT KNOW THIS, CYPRUS FINCH, THAT WHAT YOU SEE NOW IS WHAT WILL BE. THAT IS MY POWER, THE POWER OF YGGDRASIL. ALL THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE IS FOR ME TO SEE AND SHAPE.**_

"So you're the one that gave me back my memories then?" Cyprus asked, though it wasn't really a question. Strange as it was, he addressed himself to the gigantic tree, feeling that if any entity were to call itself by the name of the mythical world tree of Norse mythology, it would likely be a plant based lifeform. He'd never heard of an intelligent plant, or a plant Chimerae, but that wasn't to say the possibility was beyond the pale. He'd several things recently that should have been beyond the pale, such as Zacharis Frost coming back from beyond the grave in the body of Kira Yamato, he wasn't prepared to dismiss anything out of hand after seeing THAT. And it was true that he had his memories back, even the ones he didn't want, such as Headmistress Mueller and the atrocities that Frost had inflicted upon Wrenn and Jean in order to get to him.

_**I DEEMED IT WORTH THE EXPENDITURE OF THE EFFORT REQUIRED, YES. YOUR FORMER LEADER SPOKE VERY HIGHLY OF YOU, AND AFTER VIEWING YOUR MEMORIES I CONCUR WITH HIS JUDGEMENT. YOU WILL BE AN INCREDIBLE ASSET TO MY CAUSE. INDEED, IN TIME YOU WILL EVEN COME TO OUTSHINE THE WORTH OF YOUR PREVIOUS LEADER, SAI ARGYLE, NOW KUNAI OF THE EDENITES.**_

"And if I have no desire to become an Edenite?" Cyprus retorted warily. "Because I don't. I can respect those who are Edenites, but I have no desire to join them. I am happy as I am. I have never needed to be anything other than a Natural to live my life to the extent I see fit, and I see no compelling reason to change that." The information that Sai had become an agent of the Edenites was both surprising yet also strangely normal... Cyprus had felt, from the moment that he had decided to leave Sai behind to the mercy of Green EDEN, that he would be seeing his former "master" again eventually. Sai wasn't the sort of person to be held back, even by traumatic crippling injuries. That was one of the reasons why Cyprus held him in such esteem.

_**YOUR DESIRES ARE IRRELEVANT, THE PROCESS HAS ALREADY BEGUN. I HAVE FORESEEN YOU LEADING THE EDENITES TO TOTAL VICTORY OVER THOSE WHO WOULD DO US HARM. UNDER YOUR LEADERSHIP, THE EDENITES WILL CRUSH ALL OPPOSITION AND FOREVERMORE SECURE OUR PLACE IN THIS PLANETARY SYSTEM. WITH MY VISION AND YOUR SKILLS THERE IS NOTHING THE EDENITE RACES WILL BE UNABLE TO ACCOMPLISH. YOU WILL AT LONG LAST HAVE BROUGHT ABOUT THE PEACEFUL FUTURE YOU SO OFTEN DREAMED OF. THIS IS YOUR FATE, CYPRUS FINCH. YOU WERE BORN TO DO THIS.**_

"If you really have looked through my memories, Yggdrasil or whatever it is that you are, you should already know that I have never, ever, not once in my entire life allowed anyone to determine for me what my purpose in life is!" Cyprus said with narrowed eyes and gritted teeth. "If you wanted me to lead your armies you should have let me make that choice on my own. I might even have done so, given what I know of the USN's crimes against the Edenite people. I have always been a predator that preys upon those who would do harm to the weak and helpless. That is who I am. Yet if the future as you see it does come true, I will in turn become someone who preys upon the weak and the helpless. I have no interest in the level of power you offer me, not now, not ever. Because I know myself and I know I'm not strong enough to resist the corruption such power would bring to me. If memory serves, not even Sai was strong enough to resist the temptations of power that knowing the so called future have given him. Kunai is not Sai Argyle, and at this rate he never will be. And you know whose fault that is? It's yours, Yggdrasil."

_**IT IS INEVITABLE. YOU WILL BECOME AN EDENITE, AND YOU WILL BECOME THE LEADER WE NEED TO DEFEAT THE USN AND ANY OTHER THREATS THAT MAY ARRIVE. I HAVE ALREADY SEEN IT HAPPEN. YOU HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE, CYPRUS FINCH. IT IS DONE ALREADY, WE MERELY HAVE TO WAIT FOR YOU HUMANS AND YOUR LIMITED CONCEPTUALIZATION OF TIME AND EVENTS TO CATCH UP TO WHAT ALREADY IS SO. YOU ARE, ABOVE ALL ELSE, A SURVIVOR, CYPRUS FINCH, YOU WILL DO ANYTHING TO SURVIVE, TO LIVE ON. IT IS SUCH A VERY HUMAN TRAIT, BUT YOU EXEMPLIFY IT MORE THAN ANY OTHER. AND SO YOU WILL SURVIVE THE TRANSFORMATION THAT IS ALREADY SPREADING THROUGH YOUR CELLS, YOU WILL ASCEND TO BECOME A CHAMPION OF THE EDENITES ALONGSIDE KUNAI, KIRA AND ZACHARIS, AND YOU WILL BRING ABOUT THE FUTURE I HAVE ALREADY FORESEEN.**_

"You're wrong." Cyprus countered with a sigh and a shake of his head. "You really don't understand me at all, do you, whatever you are? Perhaps I was once the way you spoke of, a survivor at all costs, but I am different now. There are some costs that are too high for me to pay, even for my own survival. I wouldn't expect a tree like you to understand. It's an animalistic trait you see. We call it family. We call it love, and its a bond that not even you can break, try as you might. I did not once see either Violet or Wrenn in this future that you call inevitable, neither by my side nor opposed against me. If they don't exist in this so called future of yours, then that means you must consider them dead and gone, because otherwise why wouldn't you show them to me in order to convince me to do as you wish? You call me a survivor, do you? Well maybe I am, but without Wrenn and Violet, I have no life worth living. They are the only sacrifice I can never make, not even for my own sake. I reject your future, Yggdrasil, and I'm going to do it by making the one choice you never would have thought to foresee, because it is utterly incomprehensible to something that has no concept of family or love."

_**THIS IS FUTILE. WHAT'S DONE IS DONE, WHAT WILL BE, WILL BE. BELIEVE WHAT YOU LIKE, CYPRUS FINCH, WHATEVER MAKES YOU HAPPY.**_

"This is not futile. Its just human nature. Like me, its perfecty natural..." Cyprus smiled wolfishly and turned away from the tree, reaching up towards his face in order to pinch his cheek, a surefire way to bring himself out of dreams that he'd perfected a long time ago. "Now if you'll excuse me, its time for me to go back to that which you can't understand and never will. I thank you for my memories, but I don't forgive you for your intentions. You would have had better luck playing things fair. Perhaps you'll remember that in the future. Liars never prosper in the end..."

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb National Hospital, January 22nd, 2:22 pm**

Cyprus opened his eyes, aware of both a burning sensation in his guts that he attributed to whatever nanites that Yggdrasil had infected him with, and a warm, familiar sensation pressed against his side that made the burning feel very distant and far away. "I'm so sorry..." Cyprus said, moving to embrace his daughter but finding his wrists restrained to the sides of the bed. "I almost couldn't keep my promise to you."

"D-Dad...?" Violet stammered, obviously afraid that she was dreaming or hallucinating somehow, and Cyprus winced inside as he recalled all those times in the past few months where she had been near to him but he hadn't reached out to her because he no longer recognized her. Truly, Frost had sinned against them all in a manner there were no words to properly describe! "You're back?" The unsurety in Violet's tone hurt worse than any of a dozen major combat injuries he'd suffered in the past. She was afraid to even hope that he was really back, that he was really himself again. Yes, there was no hell that was onerous enough for Zacharis Frost now!

"I am." Cyprus replied simply, knowing that no outpouring of emotion, no fervent speech could convey the truth nearly so well as too simple and curt words and the tone of his voice. All the same, he found his eyes to be a bit blurry as Violet burst into tears and all but threw herself against him, wrapping her arms around his neck and almost strangling him as she clung like a limpet. Such displays were not usual for his daughter, but he wasn't going to argue, not in the slightest. Were he not restrained, he would have been hugging her back just as fiercely. Looking beyond his daughter's mane of silvery grey hair, so like his own, Cyprus caught sight of Wrenn hovering by the side of the bed. She looked a bit haggard and drawn, even now, months after her attack and maiming, and he could tell that she was still scarred inside and out from the experience. He matched gazes with her, in that way they had that was meaningful if not more so than any verbal conversation. Perhaps that was why he'd never really been unnerved by Kira and Lacus using psychic communication in his presence... he and Wrenn often communicated without words as well. Her arresting blue eyes teared up as well, and she hugged him, and Violet as well, as the Finch family luxuriated in being reunited at last with a singular outpouring of usually privately held affection.

But the burning sensation spreading out from his guts wouldn't let Cyprus just bask in this peaceful and much needed emotional outburst for long. Yggdrasil's poison, or whatever it was, waited for no man, and though he could see that he was hooked up to a variety of medical equipment, including a Red EDEN vaccine drip, none of it seemed to be doing much to halt the spread of whatever it was that Yggdrasil had incorporated into the fruit that had given him his memories back. Normally Green EDEN took hours and hours before its efefcts where even noticable, and more than a day to complete a transformation of a human sized host, but it was clear to him that he was infected with some sort of enhanced version that could accomplish the same thing much, much faster. Thankfully, it was keyed to him and him alone, just as the fruit itself was genetically keyed to him. Anyone else that had tried to consume it would have been at the least enormously sickened, if not killed by the attempt. This knowledge came to him in the same way that his memories had, bequeathed by the fruit itself in some lame attempt to reassure him of his own safety. Yggdrasil was trying, but it's attempts were still flawed.

"I wish I could stay like this forever, but there are things I need to do." Cyprus said softly, after a minute or two of enjoying the closeness of the two most important people to him in all the world. "Orb is under attack, isn't it?"

"Yes." Wrenn replied, her voice unfamiliar through the implant that currently replaced her tongue and allowed her to speak. Cyprus saw her wince as she heard her own voice, so unlike the singer's voice they were both used to, but he let her know with another look that it didn't bother him, that it changed nothing, not that she had ever really believed it would, but sometimes irrational fears needed calming too. "But are you sure you should go? You've only just recovered and..."

"I know. But it must be this way. This is who I am, Wrenn." Cyprus reminded her, as gently as he could.

"I know." Wrenn replied, leaning close to brush her lips against his. "I was just making sure you really were back, completely and totally. I'd know something was wrong if you didn't want to throw yourself into danger the first chance you got..."

"You know its not like that." Cyprus chided her, with a slight curling of his lips that she matched, albeit somewhat reluctantly. He turned his gaze to Violet, who was finally getting control over herself again, drying her eyes and looking up at him with the composed expression that was so like the command face he displayed to his unit during tense situations. His heart felt like it was going to burst with pride for his daughter. She was so like him, but yet so much better as well. She was following in his footsteps for all the right reasons, all the reasons he wished he could have had when he was young. "I'm sorry, but I need to go do my job, Vio..."

"Of course, Father." Violet backed down and pointed off to the side of the bed. "We brought your things with us." She smiled with a taste of the old slyness that had been the normal way of showing affection between them when they were in public. "Keepsakes, mementos, trophies and a set of old clothing you haven't worn in years."

"You are truly the best wife and daughter a man like me could ever have." Cyprus grinned broadly, an expression he reserved for them and them alone, as Violet returned the grin and hopped off the bed, pressing her hand against the gene-coded lock without even having to be told to do so... she wasn't stupid after all, not by a long shot... and popped the lid off the locker, revealing its contents. The Hellhound special uniform of black and white and grey and orange camouflage. The original Hellhound battle mask, painted black and maroon with glowing red eyes. The customized pistol first owned by Asmodeus Sark, with the blue laser sight that so chilled the blood of any whom it passed across. And the hand forged ninja-to short sword Cyprus had made for himself years ago, with its ultraviolet engravings of fire breathing hellhounds chasing fleeing spirits across the blade. Along with several other handguns, a dissembled linear assault rifle, a satchel of grenades, a monomolecular combat knife and other accoutrements of his profession.

"Loose the hound, Father." Violet declared proudly, as she took the mono-knife carefully in both hands and began cutting him free from his bed restraints.

"Hell will pay..." Cyprus answered, his grin stretching to a degree that even Frost might have found enviable. The Hellhound was back. And the damned would tremble at the sound of his coming...


	57. Selfishness and Sacrifice

Author Note: For once I have almost nothing to say. Besides... oh HELL yes! Oh, and that I'm going to make this chapter as long as it has to be in order to get what I need done, done, so you might want to settle in...

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, January 22nd, 2:10 pm**

_This is absolutely fucking CRAZY, you know that, Yzak!_ Katie admonished her husband even as he directed Athrun away from them because he didn't feel he could rely on his backup. _Kira has EVERY advantage over us, and yet you're sending AWAY the possibility of help? Even if we can't count on Athrun to fight seriously, he might just distract Kira a little bit with his inane attempts at reconciliation! But nooooo, that's not in Yzak-y's game plan, is it? Honestly, you scare me sometimes, you know that?_

_He doesn't have every advantage over us._ Yzak replied, not rising to the tart tone of her mental accusations.

_Really? Want me to list them? He's more skilled than you... you yourself have admitted this in the past, and that's when he wasn't fully serious about things, unlike now. His Gundam is technologically more advanced than ours, admittedly not by very much, but by enough to matter. As a Newtype, he is stronger than both of us, perhaps even combined. And he has access to a level of Seed boosting that is far and above superior to our own. Oh yes, and, in the past, you have NEVER beaten him despite several attempts. In fact, once he had a bit of time to adjust to flying a Gundam in combat, he routinely kicked your sweet little ass every time you encountered him, sometimes with EMBARASSING ease! Now you know I believe in you pretty much without conditions, Yzak, but I can't help but feel your confidence today is unjustified, can you see where I'm coming from here?_ Katie was plainly struggling to keep her tone level and reasonable, and not succeeding particularly well.

_Well, you're not wrong about any of that._ Yzak admitted, though he did not waver in his course for the Lucifer, which was currently engaged with the bulk of the USN forces that were trying to dig in throughout the half flooded capital city. _But it doesn't change the fact that you and I are the only ones who realistically stand a chance against him, any chance at all. I didn't send Athrun away because I was worried about his ability to attack Kira, not really. I sent him away because we both know he's not at top form even if his head was in the game, and if we're going to go after Kira, I can't afford to be looking out for anyone else but us. Because, goddamn it, he IS my friend after all, and I don't wanna go through another Nicol, you understand? And besides, its not like we're really entirely helpless against him. We do have one or two strategies in reserve for this kind of situation, don't we?_

_You want to use THAT plan? Yzak, when I suggested that, I was both drunk and pissed off, I didn't mean it seriously!_

_Regardless, it was a good idea and it might very well be our best and only shot at beating him now. That's assuming you can actually pull it off._ Yak challenged her, knowing that she wasn't the sort to back down from a challenge, the same way he was.

_Oh, I can definitely do it!_ Katie flared at him, well aware that he was manipulating her, but not seeing any other way to do things herself. _I can't promise it will work for more than a moment or two, but I can do it. And that's actually the problem, you know? Because if I do it, we both know he's going to absolutely flip his shit, and if you even slightly mess up the timing on the follow through, we are both dead, dead, DEAD! In fact we're probably both dead anyways, but especially so if you don't follow through properly!_

_It's a risk we have to take._ Yzak acknowledged, though he shivered a bit at the thought. _But we have to be careful. If his latent abilities are at all like mine, he'll be able to see any obvious attack setup coming. We have to play into his hands at first, have to make him think he's winning by letting him win._

_Don't worry, even if he does foresee a psychic attack of some sort, there's no way he could possibly be prepared for what I'm going to do. It's dastardly, dirty and wholly wrong, even for us. Especially for us, actually. I feel soiled even thinking about how I thought it up. I don't even think Frost would do something this fucked up._

_That's because he's strong enough that he doesn't need to. If he were in our position, he wouldn't hesitate to do this, which makes me sick to think that he and I are even slightly alike, but desperate times call for desperate measures._ Yzak saw the Lucifer up ahead, busily taking care of over a dozen different targets at once as Kira cleared the way towards one of Orb's buried military command centers that had survived the flood of the Tsunami waters for his followers. _No more time for debate. We're doing it. I'm counting on you, Katie._

_Just make sure you follow through. I don't wanna be left hanging._

_Since when have I ever left you hanging?_

_For the sake of your pride, I'm not going to answer that..._

Yzak just grunted flintily in reply to that blandishment, as he put himself into the here and now to address the problem of getting through Kira's admittedly superior defenses. On the surface of things, the Balmung was not particularly well suited to attacking the Lucifer, since the former was much better at close quarters combat while the latter did best at range, but was also fast and maneuverable enough to stay away from a melee oriented suit while picking it to pieces with ranged weaponry. Moreover, Kira was certainly familiar with Yzak's fighting style by this point in time, and was wise to most of his best tricks, such as using his shield or cloak as a visual blind and then stabbing through with the Fafnir blade. Truly, the Fafnir blade was the only real advantage that Yzak had over Kira, assuming he could get close enough in to use it, since it could do everything a QC weapon was capable of and was actually better suited for piercing energy type shields such as Citadel or Positron barriers. Well, he also had Katie and his trump card, but he was doing his best not think about those in case by so doing he somehow tipped off Kira's future perception abilities, if that was what they were. He didn't think it worked that way, but it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Yzak activated his Seed, feeling Katie piggyback along with the Divine Eye system, knowing that if this battle wasn't over with in the first few exchanges between them, then it wouldn't be him who was victorious, so there was no reason to hold anything back. Kira was, damn him, just too fucking good at Gundam combat, too creative with his mobile shields, too experienced even, for any strategy involving trying to wear him down to work, at least not without massive casualties on the other side. And he was also one of the few people that seemed to become stronger and more effective with increasing numbers of enemies arrayed against him, especially if they were heavy on beam or now also FRALA type weaponry. So if you wanted to beat him, basically you had to fight like Frost did... get up close and personal as fast as possible, never let up for an instant and don't play fair. If the battle lasted more than a minute or so, you were going to get out maneuvered, trapped or just plain blown away, Kira was just that good, end of story.

So when he fired the Caladabolg 105mm Hyperthermal Radiation Cannon, he wasn't so much trying to hit Kira as he was trying to tie up his Fractal Feathers shields so that the Lucifer could not shift rapidly away from its current position without leaving behind its most adaptable offense and defense in the process. The Feathers, and their nearly infinitely complex ability to combine into stronger and stronger barriers or act as refracting or focusing mirrors for Kira's own attacks and to turn the attacks of others against them, were both the greatest strength of the Lucifer and its primary weakness. While the feathers were very maneuverable and quite quick across short distances, certainly to shift across several tens of meters in an eyeblink, they could not keep up with the Lucifer Gundam itself, should it have to maneuver away at cruising speed, and the Feather's could only operate for so long detached from their charging stations on the Lucifer's wings before they ran out of power and became inert, the same as any DRAGOON system. Normally Kira had a rotation of Feathers in active use and then in recharging set up during combat, but against something like the Caladabolg, he needed to use all thirty six of his Feathers interlinked in order to stand any chance of deflecting the radiation beam.

And that meant that Kira had to stay in the area... within about a hundred meters... for at least another few seconds in order to begin his recharge rotation once again, unless he wanted to basically discard his Feathers. So even as Yzak fired his biggest gun and then discarded the empty rifle off to the side... there being no time to reload it and not wanting to chance Kira figuring out a way to reflect even such a mighty weapon as the Caladabolg through repeated exposure, he knew that Kira would be there waiting for him as the Balmung closed in on the interlinked Fractal Feather shield. He felt Katie strain from behind him and inside his thoughts, shoving the equivalent of mental battering rams against the fortress walls that were Kira's mental defenses, but despite the effort she was putting in, he knew there was little chance of her overpowering Kira directly, given that he had demonstrated the ability to shrug off attacks even from Lacus, who was orders of magnitude more powerful in most situations that Katie was. She was basically beating her bare fists against a brick wall, but even that was better than nothing.

Relying on his own Latent senses to inform him of danger, Yzak interposed his own Bulwark shield in Citadel mode between him and an innocuous building that was miraculously still standing despite the backblast of the deflected Caladabolg beam. The building wasn't standing much longer though, as it was carved apart by four thick, darkish purple laser beams fired from the Lucifer's torso area. Alarms shrilled inside Yzak's head as the Bulwark shield took the brunt of four 100mm FRALA's all at once, and even as the beams were fading away, his energy shield emitter overheated and fried itself, endering the Bulwark into a simple anti-beam coated Phase Shifted armored slab once more, which was about as good as a sheet of thick tissue paper against the weapons of the Lucifer. Yzak opened fired with his twinned 75mm monodisc launcher, but the Lucifer merely flicked one hand and the razored discs deflected away like swatted flies, courtesy of the gravitic field generation systems built into the Lucifer's gauntlets. With its other hand, the Lucifer lifted and fired a 50mm Ion disintegrator shot at the Balmung, barely two hundred meters away.

Yzak hurled his half crippled shield into the path of the reddish-pink energy flare that was the disintegrator projectile, sacrificing the shield in exchange fore his own life as he took a two handed grip on the Fafnir and hurled himself at the Lucifer. Kira of course seemed to have anticipated this tactic and had shifted aside, but Yzak had anticipated the anticipation and swung his other shoulder mounted weapon, the 40mm Guillotine class FRALA, over to bear on the Lucifer as he skidded to a halt, his swing cleaving through empty air. The hot blue-white torrent of light slashed through the air like a bar of sunlight made solid, but Kira was ready for that too, several Fractal Feathers whirling over to interpose themselves. To Yzak's impressed dismay, the Feather's actually managed to not only divert the constant beam FRALA, but actually bent it twice more and sent it right back at him, slicing the Guillotine projector right off his shoulder and almost decapitating the Balmung at the same time. Countering a countered counter... his head was starting to hurt with all the permutations of predictions and possibilities and trying to see eight moves ahead to the point where Kira hadn't seen ahead. Hopefully.

A horizontal slash of the Fafnir cleared the Lucifer away... even if he had seen the attack coming, that didn't mean Kira could always do anything but what Yzak expected him to do... aka step away. There were a limited number of counters for the Fafnir, especially swung with the force of two hands, and most of them amounted to "dodge" in one way or another. Still, Yzak could feel the momentum of the fight starting to turn against him, as he watched Fractal Feather's begin to encircle him from all sides, Kira plainly planning to pinion the Balmung as he had previously done to the Brotherhood Gundam in times past. And there wasn't a whole hell of a lot Yzak could do to stop it from happening... Kira's control over the Feathers was simply too fine for him to be able to get lucky and slash them apart as they moved in on him, though he did his best to do so anyway. He didn't give any signals to Katie, knowing that to do so would probably give them away. It was up to her to judge the proper moment to spring their ploy. Another psychic attack.

But this one was different from the others. Unable to force her way through Kira's defenses, Katie instead targeted the one weakness in his defenses, a weakness that was peculiar to only a certain type of Newtype... one that was in a deeply connected relationship with another psychic. In other words, Katie's special attack, thought up during a belligerent complain-fest one time when she'd had a little too much to drink and was railing against the unfairness of Kira and Lacus's psychic strength even though they had both come very late to their powers while she had been working with hers all her life, targeted the special bond that two such intimate Newtypes had with each other. Even so, it could only work in certain very specific circumstances... such as where one of the bonded pair was somehow cut off from contact with their partner, which was why Katie had dismissed the whole thing as a joke, because for that to happen, either Kira or Lacus would have to be dead, and that was simply too horrible to think about. But now, of course, that had happened, Lacus was gone. But the bond connection wasn't something that just went away, it was like an amputated limb, sometimes you would get feelings from it even though there was nothing on the broadcasting end.

Or at least that was her assumption. And since she was the one who had taught Lacus how to utilize her own psychic abilities, back during the Second Valentine War, she had a unique grasp of Lacus's mental "taste", for lack of a better word. Good enough to at least partially mimic her on the psychic plane, at least to a degree. Of course if Kira had any time at all to think about things, he would instantly recognize that it wasn't Lacus trying to contact him, since she was dead, but in the heat of battle, in the grip of the very emotionally controlled Latent powers, things might be different. Especially for someone like Kira, whom they both knew was completely torn up inside regarding Lacus's death, and probably somehow was still deceiving himself with the hope that she was just missing and not really dead after all. Kira had always been good about lying to himself over things like that. He wasn't the only one, it was only human nature to deny the horrible things that happened to you, especially involving your loved ones.

So Katie tuned into what she was pretty sure was the mental frequency that Kira and Lacus had used for their intimate conversations... again not something anyone other than another psychic who had spent a great deal of time around them would know or even be able to guess... and broadcast a single phrase. _Kira... help..._

The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. The Lucifer suddenly spasmed as Kira almost tripped over himself as he dodged back from another swing of the Fafnir, his attention completely stolen for just a second as his heart screamed in reply to what felt so very much like a desperate brush of Lacus's thoughts on his own, completely derailing all of his focus as he thrilled with the impossible thought that she really was alive after all. But even as he thrilled, he recognized the ploy for what it was, realized that he was grasping for a ghost placed there specifically to break his concentration and unbalance his emotions and subconscious. It was the ultimate method of taking advantage of his emotional nature and his unconditional, unreasoning love for Lacus Clyne, and it hit him with his figurative pants completely around his ankles, searing him with a tantilizing and very deliberate taste of what he would never, EVER be able to have again.

And in his moment of distraction, Yzak made his own move, activating a purpose built switch in one of his more passive systems, the Storm Aegis EMP aura that protected the Balmung against missiles and electronically fused physical munition warheads. Though only designed to pulse in a 25 meter radius and at intensities that would not harm electronics with any real degree of shielding such as those possessed by most Mobile Suits and other war machines, by channeling almost 120 percent power from the Balmung's FPR into the Storm Aegis system, Yzak was able to burn it out in one single much more powerful EMP blast that scoured the surrounding hundred meters in a globe of crackling blue and white sparks. Even boosted as it was, the pulse wasn't strong enough to overwhelm the shielding that protected the Balmung or the Lucifer themselves. But the Fractal Feathers were another story entirely. There could only be so much shielding on them, with all the other systems crammed into the meterish long and half meterish wide Feathers, and with Kira distracted, they were still oriented to surrounded and envelop the Balmung... i.e. perfectly position to be hit by the burnout pulse. Even as Kira recovered his poise and saw what was to happen next, not even he could react fast enough to prevent the burnout pulse from sweeping across his Feathers and wiping their complex guidance and control circuits blank.

The Feather's clattered to the ground like a steel rain, now little more than oblong and stylishly colored blocks of metal with no inherent flight or defensive capabilities above that of a metal ingot. But that didn't really register with Kira right at the moment, because he wasn't just angry. He was infuriated by what Katie and Yzak had done to him. There was the saying that all is fair in war, but taking advantage of his deeply personal feelings and insecurities in order to hurt him and distract him... it would take a saint not to freak out over that kind of attack. And Kira was, despite some prior effort on his part in times past, anything but a saint. He had been kind of half planning to just disable the Balmung before... he wasn't entirely through trying to convince his former allies of the unsustainable nature of their position just yet after all... but in the wake of this taunting manipulation of his love for Lacus, all thoughts of mercy fled from him as if terrified!

"That was the WORST mistake you ever made...!" Kira broadcast to the Balmung through clenched teeth, his hand turning white knuckled on the Burden's hilt. "How DARE you... you of ALL people...!" He couldn't reach for the Second Stage Seed with this much personal anger in him, but he didn't need to go that far to beat Katie and Yzak anyway, even without his Wings of Light. Regular Seed would be more than sufficent here. He watched the purple seed with the silver veins fall, almost eagerly for the first time in a very long time. He hadn't wanted to hurt someone so bad since the Noah posioned and almost killed Lacus and Akira during the Eden Disaster.

_I told you he was going to blow his top._ Katie hastened to point out as she flinched away from the roiling storm of emotions that Kira was projecting unintentionally out around him. _Now he's fucking PISSED!_

_Good._ Yzak replied, calmer than he actually felt. _Whether either of us likes to admit it or not, Kira and I are fairly similar in many respects. The most pertinent of which is that when we get angry... personally angry, not angry over wider injustice or a noble cause... when we get mad over an injustice done to us personally, we make mistakes we normally wouldn't. We act through anger rather than righteous fury, and in that distinction lies a great deal of difference in effectiveness. I want him steaming at the ears if possible. Even with the Seed, its only going to make him reckless and more easily manipulated in the future..._

_In the FUTURE? Yzak, I can tell you this much, he's not planning on letting either of us live out the next twenty seconds, and he has the means to make his wishes reality here! Worrying about the future is... OMIGODWATCHOUT!_ Katie screamed the last words in one breath as her mental perceptions picked up an a simply colossal amount of mental energy moving their way very, very quickly. It wasn't from Kira actually... not even a very pissed off Kira was anywhere within screaming distance of this level of strength, even if he wasn't a Latent and thus unable to really project power. This was a level of power that went far beyond anything a human could wield, in the same way that a human with a backhoe could move dirt with power beyond anything a single ant could manage. Though telekinetic force was generaly invisible to the human eye, save for the ripple effects it might make in vapor or airborne debris, on the mental plane Katie could easily perceive the gigantic fluke of energy that was being propelled their way. Leviathan had felt her friends great distress of a moment ago, and had responded with fury of her own.

Even with his Latent senses and Katie's shouted warning, Yzak could not react fast enough to entirely dodge the telekinetic attack, as he hurled the Balmung away from the attack along the same line as the attack... trying to dodge to either side was impossible, the best he could hope for was to be already moving at a certain speed so that his Gundam wasn't smashed to pieces by the accelerating force of the telekinetic slam aimed his way. Even so, the attack struck the Balmung like a twenty ton wrecking ball striking an motorcyclist in the back, armor shards spalling away from the Balmung in all directions like it was an ice sculpture hit with a baseball bat. The Balmung was swatted so hard that it crashed clean through six city blocks worth of large commercial buildings, which toppled like dominoes in belated reaction several seconds later, before the Gundam even touched the ground once. It was a testement to the engineering skills of the late Dr. Simmons and the quality of the materials used by Morganroete Armories that the Balmung even stayed in as few large pieces as it did, and a testement to the backup power supplies for the Gravitic Reduction System that it remained operational long enough to keep both pilots from being smeared to paste by the multiple impacts. Even so, by the time the torso area finally came to a rest, some four and a half miles outside the city limits, there was little more left THAN a torso, and a badly fractured one at that. For the intents and purposes of combat, the Balmung was destroyed. It's presence would soon be sorely missed.

xxxx

Finding her errant brother was turning out to be harder than Cagalli had thought it would be. She had presumed that if she were to just head towards wherever the fighting was thickest and where the USN and Orb forces were the closest to overwhelming the Edenite invaders, that would bring her to him in short order. And that was not an invalid assumption, it was just that the trick was getting there fast enough so that by the time she arrived he was still in the area, rather than moved on to the next hotspot, leaving ruined machines and destroyed defenses in his wake. And lots and lots of dead soldiers, of both USN and Orb units, which built a steadily increasing chill up her spine. Kira really wasn't holding back, he was killing anyone that got in his way... he really was fighting with all his might for the Edenites. It was a terrifying realization... a part of her had still somehow been divorced from realizing this situation for what it truly was. Brother or not, Kira was no longer her friend and was very likely to view her as just another enemy to be defeated or destroyed!

That realization however did not diminish her desire to confront him anyway, because if she didn't, no one would. Her escort of M-7's, almost fifteen strong, were decidedly less sanguine about this determination of hers, but one of the advantages of being a battlefield Queen was that your own soldiers pretty much just had to do what you said, even if they didn't agree. That was just about the ONLY advantage of being a battlefield queen, but that was a different story. Well, maybe not the only advantage... it was certainly true that Orb units always seemed to fight better and longer when she was in the area, much less in direct view... patriotism was a form of strength all its own, after all. But really, the greatest impact she could have on the battlefield would be to confront Kira and get him to talk to her. Every moment Kira wasn't fighting was one moment closer to a wider USN and Orb victory, and if that meant she had to get into a really nasty verbal confrontation with her little brother, then that was definitely a price she was willing to pay.

But it wasn't until after Yzak and Katie had pulled some kind of desperate ploy that disabled the Lucifer's Fractal Wings, shortly before being swatted like a golf ball by some invisible force and disappearing into the distance, but not before flying through half the city center like a bowling ball, that Cagalli and the Amaterasu managed to catch up with her wayward sibling, closely followed by her escort, who were under very direct orders not to engage Kira except under the most dire of circumstances... i.e. if he really tried to kill her. This was as much to preserve their lives as hers. They all knew that in reality, they were basically meat shields for their queen if it came down to a direct conflict between the two Gundams, it was a testement to their devotion that they accepted this with a form of pride. Cagalli splashed forward through a half flooded street towards the dark, ominous figure of the Lucifer, which looked even more intimidating with its wings bare of Feathers, making them seem skeletal somehow.

Though the Amaterasu was actually fairly close in size and mass to the Lucifer, Cagalli could not help but feel smaller and more vulnerable compared to her brother's machine, even in its diminished state, though maybe that was just a symptom of how she'd always felt a bit short next to Kira these past few years after his final growth spurt. Nonetheless, she gathered herself and brandished her Scepter of Light... an extendable polearm with dual QC impregnated glaive blades at one end, with a 40mm Guillotine class FRALA projector mounted between the blades identical to the one the Balmung carried on its right shoulder... at the Lucifer, though she was careful not to actually point the business end of the weapon at her brother just yet. "Kira... can you hear me?" Cagalli asked, wishing she didn't feel so tenative.

"You should go away." Her brother replied, his voice thick with pain and unshed tears. She hadn't heard him sound so hurt since he was dropped off by the Eddies in the wake of Lacus's death. "I am not in the mood to deal with you right now, Cagalli. Leave before I do something I'll regret later."

"You know I can't do that, Kira." Cagalli replied, as gently as she could. "You're leading an attack against my country. I can't just leave you alone, no matter how much we both wish I could. Just talk to me, Kira. We can work this out, I promise. I'm willing to listen to what you have to say."

"The time for listening is past, long past, Cagalli." Kira pointed threateningly at his sister's Gundam, causing the attendant M-7's to cluster protectively between the two machines. "I was originally intending to show mercy to you and the others for old times sake... I was going to destroy your Gundams but I wasn't planning on destroying you. But things are different now that you've decided its apparently okay to strike at me through Lacus. If you're not going to hold anything back, if you won't even hold her memory sacred, if even our most private connection is a legitimate target for you to attack me through, then you can expect no mercy from me."

"Kira, please, I have no earthly idea what you're talking about, but I'm sure there was a good reason for..."

"No reason could justify the pain you've just inflicted upon me. I thought you were my friends. I thought you understood my pain, at least a little. I thought at the very least you would respect my sorrow and grief, not trample upon it and spit it into my face! I thought wrong..."

"Kira, you're really scaring me here. I don't know what happened but there has to be a way we can talk this thro..."

"No. There isn't. I'm through talking. I already told you that once before, but apparently I wasn't clear enough. You say you're scared, Cagalli? Not scared enough. Plainly you still don't recognize who I am now. I am Executor Yamato of Garden City, and I can never... and do not desire to... return to being Kira Yamato of Orb. Not after all that you and my other so called friends and family have inflicted upon me. This is your last and final chance, Cagalli. Only the fact that you are my only living blood relative makes me give you this opportunity. Run away now. Abandon the Amaterasu at the city edge and go inland. Hide in the shelter with Allister and the other children, and order your troops to stand down and disarm. I can't promise things will go bloodlessly, especially with the USN still resisting, but this is your best option for perserving Orb lives. If you are still here by the time I count to five, I'll kill you and every last one of Orb's soldiers I find fighting. One..."

"Don't do this, Kira! This isn't the way...!" Cagalli protested.

"Two..."

"Your Majesty, I believe your brother is either deranged or really being serious. Either way, I don't think this is a bluff..." One of her escorts radioed, nervousness bleeding through in every word.

"Three..."

"It doesn't matter. We can't back down, not even for my brother. You don't have to stay if you feel it would be pointless. I can't and won't order my people to commit suicide for my sake." Cagalli answered, trying not to choke up as she saw not a single Dawndrake flinch from their positions.

"Four..."

Cagalli gritted her teeth and brought her polearm down to point at Kira, even as she settled the crosshairs for her twin VTP 6 tube packs, one on either shoulder, upon the black clothed Gundam. Lexi was already helping her adjust her targeting systems to a degree even Athrun would have found difficult to compete with manually. "Please, Kira... don't do this! I really don't want to fight you, how could I ever explain it to Allister and..." Cagalli all but begged.

"Five." Kira intoned, and in the next moment the Lucifer was in amongst the M-7's, a tiger among sleepy sheep, QC longsword in one hand, ion disintegrator in the other. In the space of two seconds, six Orb pilots were down, shot or stabbed directly through the cockpit, the tangle of huge mechanical bodies impeding the ability of the Dawndrakes to effectively engage the blurry fast Lucifer. But Kira did have to give them credit... not a single one of them faltered, in fact they just threw themselves at him all the harder, trying to physically overbear him and knock him backwards. It was a selfless and heroic act. It was also ineffective, as he waded forward, now with a sword in either hand and punching out with nudges from the Lucifer's Grasp gravity manipulation system, none of the Orb machines managed to get closer than arm's reach before being hacked down and sliced apart and then sent flying in pieces by a wave of the Lucifer's hand. He had become an angel of death for real. Smoke and flame erupted from the Amaterasu's shoulders as Cagalli launched VTP missiles, only to have them ensnared by the Lucifer's Grasp and slammed into the ground and nearby buildings, detonating harmlessly to the sides and front of their target.

With a heavy but still determined heart, Kira stepped forward, one sword raised high. The least he could do, despite all that had come between them, was to make it quick and painless. Cagalli would never know what hit her. A small mercy, but all he was prepared to grant anymore. Explaining things to Allister would be tough, but Kira wasn't afraid of doing the hard things anymore. If his nephew came to hate him for this, then that was just one more burden Executor Yamato would have to carry. It was the nature of his chosen duty. Cagalli started to bring up the shaft of her polearm, but the Burden had already showed him her pathetic attempt at a defense and his sword was coming down from an entirely different angle. She was finished. But just because he had already seen her die, and died a little inside himself as well, didn't necessarily mean that the seen future was the only possible future. That was Yggdrasil's own hubris, the Grand Chimerae was too sure in its perceptions of what was to be, in the same way that a drunk person is completely and totally sure they are not actually impaired at all, no matter how much they have had to drink.

Something slammed into the side and back of the Lucifer with all the force of a large cat pouncing up a not inconsiderably sized possum, striking him so hard that he actually lost his grip on his swinging sword, sending it hurtling end over end across the street before slicing into and through a building there as the Lucifer was knocked sprawling onto its face and side, his assailant agiley pushing off from the toppling Gundam even as it fell, landing with perfect balance half a hundred meters down the boulevard. Events had been moving just a little too fast for Cagalli to really keep track of... one moment her heart was in her throat as Kira massacred his way through her bodyguard like they were standing still and just about to kill her for real, the next, Kira was down and down hard, and she was somehow still alive! She blinked several times, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, and then caught sight of her savior. And blinked several more times, not quite sure she wasn't somehow hallucinating or already dead and seeing some sort of really fucked up vision on her way to the afterlife!

Her protector was a... well... a CREATURE of vaguely reptilian origin, though sized to be almost as large as her Gundam, making it definitely the largest land bound critter she'd ever laid eyes on. Though actually it had seemed to come from the sky, despite a visible lack of wings or other flight capable apparati. But it was definitely a lizard of some sort, though the large pointy horns on its head were not like anything she'd ever seen on a lizard before. It wasn't until her Gundam's sensors registered the thermal signature of a large FPR and the magnetic resonance of armor grade structural metals within the reptilian's body that Cagalli realized she was't looking at an entirely natural creature, but some sort of cyborg! IFF information blossomed onto her screens, identifying the... organism?... as "BLR-01 Fenris Wolf", whatever the fuck that was supposed to be. It had a USN code though, so despite looking very much like an Eddie creation, Cagalli was forced to assume it was in fact an ally. That it had just saved her life from her own murderous brother was a significant factor in helping her accept this idea without too much trouble.

Kira seemed to be having a certain amount of trouble getting to his feet again after the surprise assault, which had left deep gouges in the LCR armor along his back and shoulders, and seriously bent one of his wings, and even when he did succeed and managed to whirl on his attacker, he too seemed rather nonplussed by what he was suddenly facing. Though it might have been because he was actually seeing three or four overlapping images of Fenris Wolf, courtesy of the BALOR's Active powers invading his mind and hijacking some of his sensory perceptions. What had been an impenetrable wall to Katie Joule was more like a particularly sturdy paper mache building block to Fenris's Chimera mind, and Kira found his mind invaded with contemptuous ease, an alien presence he could not dislodge even with Seed mode! Were it not for Leviathan stirring on his behalf, he felt fairly sure he would have been all but stupefied by the assault and completely helpless against his assailant. Even so, Leviathan's strengths did not lie in telepathic pursuits and she was more than a mile distant from him, so the best she could do was mitigate the attack rather than deflect it entirely.

Kira felt his nerve signals dragging like they were wearing lead weights as they passed through his body, his reactions slowed by a noticable fraction of a second as he squared off against the abomination combination of chimera and cyborg in front of him. A gesture activated the Lucifer's grasp and recalled his accidentally thrown sword from where it was lodged in the ground to the hilt about half a block away, but even with a sword in either hand, Kira felt a bit wary of this new foe. He decided to step back a bit and try probing its defenses from range... even without his Wings of Light, he was still more powerful at range than up close, if not nearly as adapatable. Still, he'd fought brilliantly without a DRAGOON system when he was in the Freedom and Liberty, he didn't need the Fractal Feathers any more than he needed crutches to walk with a lightly sprained ankle. They helped, but they weren't required. Kira shifted backwards about eight hundred meters and a block to the side, rippling sonic booms, blowing out what few windows remained in the surrounding buildings.

Almost at once his heightened Latent senses provided by the Burden screamed at him, but even forewarned, Kira barely had time to dodge forward as the reptilian cybord appeared almost out of thin air right behind him, moving with such speed that Kira only caught a blur out of the corner of his vision even with his heightened senses. Spatters of sticky black liquid crystal dangled from his attacker's dextrous foreclaws as it stood studying him with its cold, flat golden stare as Kira once more faced off with it from just outside melee reach. Kira was really starting to miss his Fractal Feathers now, having forgotten exactly how much he relied on being able to form a shield wherever and whenever he needed one, which now, thanks to fucking Yzak and Katie, he couldn't do anymore! He had never seen such speed, not even when fighting the Brotherhood Gundam with the Frost LAICEPS in control! The last time he'd fought anyone that was little more than just a blur to him had been Frost in the original Pulsar! Kira fell backwards, reacting even without actually thinking about it, and that was all that saved him as the Fenris Wolf pounced at him again, eviscerating dewclaws on its toes extended to kick through the Lucifer's torso armor!

Primary attack missed, Fenris lashed out with her tail as she passed over the supine Gundam, deeply gashing the armor on its left arm and once more jarring loose the sword from that hand's grip. The angle wasn't quite right for it, but she squeezed off a streamer of acid from her tailsting as well, though it only melted concrete and earth instead of armor. Beginning to become frustrated at the elusive nature of the prey, even though it stood right there in front of her, Fenris charged again as her prey rolled to his feet and slashed at her with his blade. Altering direction without changing momemtum, Fenris dodged the strike and leapt upon her prey's back, bearing the surprised Gundam to the ground beneath her, unable to react in time to her speed mixed with the dulling effect on reflexes she projected through her mind. Rasing her head, Fenris howled victoriously as the black Gundam flailed spastically beneath her, one of its arms bent at an extremely awkward angle beneath its body, the structural bones clearly broken and hanging by mere threads. She bent her head to chew through the spine of her prey, but was interrupted by the arrival of more prey, two Dervishes charging to the rescue of their belabored Executor, firing linear cannons in either fist.

Fenris growled angrily as she felt divots of surface skin and fat blasted away by a few lucky impacts from the linear rifles, and in the next heartbeat she was pouncing forward and in between the oncoming Dervishes faster than either Edenite could even process. A slash of her dewclaws and a swipe of her acid sting killed both machines, one all but cut in half at the waist, the other with a molten hole eating its way through its insides from chest to groin. The attacks happened so quickly both Dervishes actually continued to run forward another few dozen meters before either machine realized that it was destroyed and fell over, almost burying the slowly rising Lucifer. Fenris snarled at the obstinate prey, and prepared to pounce once more, the 350mm flak cannons slung under each forearm beginning to itch as the part of her mind that was Lupine remembered that she possessed more than just claws and fangs and tailsting with which to fight.

For his part, Kira was legitimately scared, because evn with the boost to his predictive abilities generated by Burden and all his experience fighting super fast foes, he could still barely even keep up with his enemy's movements, and not even so well at that, given how close he'd just come to death! Even if he could feel the attacks coming, they came too fast for him to react to! The difference between felt prediction and action were much less than a second, and the Chimera's thoughts invading his own and slowing down his reflexes didn't help matters either! He should be able to see farther ahead than just the next couple of seconds, but he was still so pissed off from what Yzak and Katie had done to him that he just couldn't focus, not even in the "unfocused" way that was conducive to utilizing Latent abilities. Lack of thought was the ideal there, and he was ANYTHING but lacking thoughts at the moment, as all the pain and suffering he'd gone through in the aftermath of Lacus's death had been ripped back into the forefront of his mind by Katie's little stunt at his expense! He needed time to get ahold of himself, but he couldn't get away from this cyborg-thing! It was just faster than he was!

And then it was pouncing once again, and he was forewarned, but barely in time to interpose his sword between them, and even that was deflected with a casual twist of the monster's horned head, as its serrated jaws filled his field of view and its massive sickle clawed toes raced for what would be his bowels if the Lucifer were a living creature. But much as he hadn't foreseen the creature intervening on Cagalli's behalf, so too did he not see the intervention upon HIS behalf before it actually happened. And he wasn't sure whether that was because he just couldn't use his abilities properly at the moment, or because his mind just couldn't accept what happened as truly real... after all, just about the LAST person he would ever expect to intervene upon his behalf was Frost, but that was indeed the case here, as the Kratos seemingly materialized out of thin air at the Lucifer's side with unreal speed and swatted the pouncing Fenris away with a backhand from the Kratos's oversized left gauntlet.

"If anyone is going to kill Yamato, it'll be me, and only after he becomes the Boytoy once more." Frost declared with a snort of displeasure as he stared into the dust cloud that had formed when the hurtling Fenris had collapsed several buildings nearby after being struck away. "It certainly won't be some fucking overgrown lizard reject from a B class monster movie! If I recall correctly, Tokyo is a couple thousand miles thataway, Gojira, or whatever the fuck your name is! Go stomp around there if you're looking for thrills." Frost pointed his scythe at the dust cloud. "If you know what's good for you, you won't get up..."

Even as he spoke these words, a speeding blur came racing out of the cloud, dragging dust and debris particles in its wake through a near vacuum it created as it moved, and crashed into the Kratos's chest, jaws slavering against the crystalline shaft of the interposed scythe as the much larger Gundam was shoved backwards twenty meters, feet digging trenches through the concrete before finally the greater size and mass of the Kratos negated the momentum of the charge. Swinging his scythe out wide, Frost kicked the slobbering lizard off his polearm and sent it once more crashing into a building in a huge cloud of dust. "What the fuck is this thing anyway?" Frost muttered, half to himself. "MOUSE! I need to ask you a question! Get your pretty blue ass over here, now!" Frost roared, but was forced to defend himself once more even as he did so, as Fenris blitzed out of the dust cloud and tried to eviscerate him and rip out his throat once more. It was almost admirable if it wasn't so goddamned annoying!

xxxx

**Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver, same time**

_Overconfidence is a weakness of the foolish._ Kunai thought to himself. This wasn't directed at the Orb forces, but rather was an admonishment to himself. After a difficult beginning where his task force had been almost pinned down and annihilated without even firing a shot in their own defense, thanks to the heavy coordinated firepower of the Mass Driver's defense network, the Dreadnaught Gundam and the Dawnblade battlecruiser, things had finally turned around when the allied Chimera forces made their presence known after neutralizing the undersea defenses of Orb's most critical installation. Still, he'd lost a Praetorian and over a third of his Custodian forces in the interim, and those were forces that were not easily replaced. It took years to fully train and equip a Praetorian, and they would be lucky if even this attack bought them more than mere months of breathing room. The USN was just that kind of juggernaut, even such a heavy blow as losing their only Mass Driver wouldn't be enough to force the war to close, not by a long shot.

But rocky start or not, now that he and his forces had been able to close to their own optimal combat distance, short and melee range, thanks to the shocking distractions provided by Charybdis and her attendant Chimera, things were progressing rather smoothly. Though not quite defeated, the Dreadnaught Gundam and the Orb Mobile Suit forces had been forced to pull back into a tight defensive perimeter around the Mass Driver's command and control buildings and power plants, and were being kept bottled up there by Alexander and the majority of his forces. Meanwhile, the Orb naval assets were under seige from all angles... but most pressingly from below... as Charybdis and her assigned minions drove them progressively further and further away from the Mass Driver in efforts to escape the terrifying effects of the Chimera's telekinetic attacks. Even the mighty _Dawnblade_, Orb's heaviest and most powerful warship was battered and crumpled and forced into a hasty withdrawal after being mauled by Charybdis herself for several minutes. Well designed the ship might be, but its designers had never anticipated that it would face off against a living creature bigger than it was that attacked from beneath the sea with bursts of diamond cutting water pressure.

Not all the damage was confined to the Orb forces of course, many of the Chimera were badly wounded and would probably die before too much longer... powerful telekinetics they might be, but it wasn't a magic invincibility shield by any means, especially as most of the Chimera had very limited ability to detect and anticipate attacks from more than a hundred meters or so above the surface of the water. Just as for humans when fighting over the ocean, the water line was as good as an invisible boundary beyond which it was almost impossible to follow or predict the enemy's movements, it was just in which way you were trying to look that changed. And even a near miss from modern plasma or explosive weapons on a war machine scale was more than enough to inflict grievous bodily harm upon any merely biological creature that happened to be grazed. Even Charybdis herself had lost a tentacular limb or two to well aimed or unlucky hits from the _Dawnblade_, though she kept her soft skinned body well out of direct harms way, almost five hundred feet below on the sea floor.

This left Kunai for the most part unopposed except for a few desultory automatic defense turrets as he tried to figure out the best way to destroy the Mass Driver launch rails themselves. It was harder than one might think... they were built to withstand enormous stresses, they had to be when launching multi hundred or even multi-thousand ton ship components or freight compartments into orbit, with gigajoules of power running through several dozen miles of straight line track that were constructed almost eighty meters above sea level and rose to a towering three hundred meters above sea level at the final upwards thrusting ramp. There were more structural steel beams in even a single Mass Driver rail track than in most medium sized cities, and Orb's newest incarnation of Mass Driver had THREE parallel rail tracks! And though the Exemplar was uniquely well suited for winning combats against foes that were ostensibly more heavily armed than it was, the one thing telekinetics, at least on the scale he could accomplish, even boosted as he was, wasn't very good for was large scale, massive destruction.

He used his QC shards to slice and dice support beams and hack up the track bed itself, but even working as fast as he could, it was like trying to disassemble a full sized suspension bridge with an exacto knife! Even if he made several hundred cuts a second, it was going to take hours to functionally disable a track, and that was just one of them! And while he could wrench and tear with raw telekinetic bursts, as the Chiemra did, he just wasn't as strong as he needed to be to really make a difference. He could only exert about a hundred tons of force at any given time, which was absolutely insane for a human, boosted not withstanding, but compared to most of the Chimera down in the ocean, he was a lightweight. He made up in creativity and honed skill what he lacked in terms of raw might... the Chimera really couldn't do much besides smash or crush things with telekinetic representations of their natural attack forms, be it flukes, teeth or tentacles, though Charbydis and her pressure jets was an exception to this general rule. Kunai on the other hand could shape his hundred tons of force pretty much however he desired... a shield, a crushing hand, a blade, a wedge, even an expanding burst or delicate pinch and twist of delicate mechanical connections.

However, he was still frustratingly limited in several ways. One was his maximum force-weight limit, something which he could temporarily bypass with Seed mode, at the cost of even greater physical exhaustion than normal for that boost and the potential to literally faint from overexertions. Another was his actual reach... he could only affect targets out to about seven hundred meters from his current position. Seven hundred meters was pretty far in most cases, but compared to any of a hundred types of modern weapons, he might as well be throwing rocks. Which was actually just about the only way he could surpass that range limit... to grab and toss some other object on a ballistic trajectory, preferably something explosive like a cannon shell or a missile. And while the Exemplar was well suited for closing the distance rapidly, when pinned by a barrage there was only so much even he could do, and most of it was defensive.

And on the subject of defenses, while it was child's play for any practicing telekinetic to knock away relatively small or light objects... be they pebbles, rubber bullets, real bullets or heavy caliber artillery shells, there were certain limits there as well. He could only deflect something he could detect coming. This might sound like common sense, but it was more complicated than that. By manipulating air molecules at a distance, a telekinetic could create a permeable "screen" that surrounded them, whenever an object penetrated this screen, they then knew an attack was incoming and could react to block it. In the Exemplar, his screen went out to about the end of his reach, or about 700 meters. This gave him enough warning to catch bullets, beam blasts, missiles and most other forms of weaponized death sent his way. But against some attacks, most notably something like a railgun or a FRALA or a Mjolonir type blast, which moved at several tens of thousands of miles per hour or faster, the time between passing through the screen and striking his body was so small that not even an Edenite could always react in time to use their telekinesis.

Fortunately railguns were not much in favor these days except on large space waships and even then not often, as Linear cannons were much easier to maintain, cheaper to produce, and capable of rapidfire, and he had his QC shards to protect him against FRALA and Mjolnir attacks, but again, he had to be able to see them coming or else it was like trying to grab greased lightning with his bare hands... i.e. both futile and probably deadly. In his favor was the fact that nobody on the side of the USN properly understood his abilities and limitations and so they had a tendency to play into his hands, as Miri and her boyfriend had done earlier when they conveniently fired their heaviest physical explosive weapon at him at close range. They would have been better off rushing forward bodily and trying melee attacks... the Dreadnaught was too massive for him to push or shove, and he lacked good technical data on it, so he couldn't take it apart from the inside either, but they obviously had no way of knowing that. He probably would have still cut them to ribbons with his QC shards, but at least it would have been a fight of it.

A rumbling and thrumming of the track he was standing on and doing his best to shred brought him back to the here and now, as some smartass in the Mass Driver's Command Center decided to try and get cute and tried to get rid of the Exemplar in the same way one would clean out a clogged hose... by ramming something heavy and stiff through it, or in this case, powering up the rail he was on and launching an empty shipping container at him at close to fifteen hundred miles per hour. Moving at such speeds, the still accelerating cargo container, normally used for shipping bulk goods up into near lunar orbit during peaceful times, crossed the distance between its loading bay and the Exemplar in a matter of seconds. If it were to strike him, even a Gundam would be splattered like a bug on a windshield. But there was another thing about telekinesis that his foes did not yet understand. Though it was true that he had to be able to perceive an object in order to grasp and manipulate it... so he couldn't grab something that was moving too fast for him to perceive... a mere fifteen hundred miles per hour was well within his perception envelope. And to a telekinetic, all speed that was perceivable was the same in the end.

Basically this meant that it didn't matter if a eighty ton block of steel, like this cargo container, was moving at fifteen hundred miles per hour or fifteen miles per hour... it took the exact same amount of effort to reach out, grab hold, and stop it dead in its tracks. Once it was in his grip, any previous momentum a object might have had was irrelevant, he could stop a bullet dead in its tracks or merely divert its trajectory to the side without altering its velocity, it was all the same in terms of effort. It was generally easier to stop an object dead rather than attempt to maintain grip and manipulate its path... especially things like plasma beams that were basically made up of loosely contained and very chaotically moving particles. The reason the beams still seemed to bend, usually down to the ground or away into the sky, was that he was only grabbing a certain percentage of the beam, those particles at the front and "sides" of the blast, stopping them dead and then letting them deflect the following particles up or down or away, like water splashing off an angled glass window. Grabbing and holding an entire beams worth of plasma particles took a lot of effort... much easier to just grab a few and use them as a ramp to slide the rest away.

But the germane thing was that this speeding cargo canister the Orb forces thought to swat and mash him with, was actually just the tool of mass destruction that Kunai had been wishing for. It passed through the edge of his screen and he locked his mental grip upon it at once, and stopped it dead in its tracks. Now for a bullet or most other kinds of projectiles, which were propelled through a single application of explosive or heat type force, this meant that the object halted in midair. But for something like the cargo canister, which wasn't shot so much as it was propelled by the power coursing through the rail beneath it, when it stopped dead, the ripple of power pushing it tried to surge and force it forward, to no avail. Unable to complete its circuit, the power pulse backed up like water behind a dam, more and more piling in trying to shift the load and in a matter of microseconds, overloaded the track section the cargo container was stopped upon. Almost a terawatt of power erupted like a small tactical nuke and flash melted a hundred meter section of track into so much metallic vapor. That was one track they wouldn't be launching anything else on anytime soon.

It was too much to hope for that they would be kind enough to try the same tactic again, as Kunai shifted from the leftmost track to the center one, and so he began turning his mind once again to the conundrum of how to use powers that were scapel like to emulate a battleaxe. Though if they were to try again, and this time send something considerable heavier... such as a fully loaded cargo container, which could mass over four hundred tons... they might find him a little more inclined to step back and get out of the way, because if he tried the same thing on something like that, he would be roadkill. However, before Orb could even think about trying again, a new variable entered the fray, as a largish USN drop pod screamed down from orbit and broke open above Kaguya Island, where the Mass Driver's Command Center was located. Getting a clear look at the single occupant of the pod was hard through the debris of the falling pod, but Kunai saw enough to make his stomach wrench uncomfortably.

It wasn't like anything he'd ever seen before, almost familiar in that it looked like an Ironhide of freakish size at first glance, but it was obvious at second look that this was anything but a gargantuan herbivorous plainsdweller descended from water buffalos. It was clearly cyberneticaly modified and enhanced, equipped with thruster systems, deployable wings and what appeared to be some sort of Fusion Pulse Reactor buried where its heart and lungs should normally be! Also, its physical structure had been warped and twisted so that the hind legs were significantly more muscular than the forelegs, and the forepaws were significantly enlarged and more defined than the hindpaws, more like enormous clawed mole hands than the primitive toed bovine hooves on the rear limbs. It was easily the most hideous creature Kunai had ever laid eyes on, and just looking at it made his gorge rise. He could feel similar distress and disgust from those of his forces who also had caught a glimpse of the abomination as it swooped down upon them. Clearly FEAR and the USN had committed transgressions against Edenite nature beyond what even Kunai had dared believe possible, if this was anything to judge by!

However the true horror the creature represented was only made plain when it swooped to within about a kilometer of the ground, ungainly on its fold out mechanical wings, looking somewhat like someone had glued model airplane wings to a medium sized plushie cow, but there was nothing absurd or amusing about the way three Dervishes were suddenly ripped asunder like they were ragdolls, limbs and sections of torso hurled for hundreds of meters in every direction as they all but disintegrated under the obviously telekinetic assault of the USN creation. That thing wasn't just a cyborg Ironhide... it was a cyborg Ironhide Chimera! And the bigger a Chimera was, generall the stronger its psychic powers became, ebcause it simply had that much more brain to use. And this thing was easily the size of the Exemplar, bigger in all likelihood. And worse yet, it clearly wasn't just a Chimera, reacting as a Chimera would... i.e. with animalistic intent and instincts. No, there was clearly some sort of human guidance present in its actions, as it banked around and dive bombed the spot where his forces were closest to buckling the Orb lines. It was backing up the Orb forces, and it was doing so intelligently!

Though at least peripherally more aware of the limitations of telekinetics in combat than the Oosen troops were, his own forces were utterly unprepared for both the grotesqueness of the abomination and its psychic fury, which manifested itself not as mere crushing force but as literal fire that sprang from nothingness as the abomination used its mind to grab a huge swath of air molecules and vibrated them together until they ignited through friction heat, creating an instant firestorm in the midst of his infantry and light armor forces! And unlike a regular flamethrower, telekinetically created fire didn't have a source that could be blocked, it relied entirely on vibration of molecules within a set area, meaning that most forms of armor were entirely useless against it, as they too combusted from within and without, as did the bodies of those unfortunate enough to be trapped within the area. In that way, telekinetic fire was rather like a cyclops system or thermal exciter, except even those had origin points that could conceivably be blocked or were stationary and could be avoided by the agile! Not so for telekinetics...

Screaming a hateful denial as he watched over sixty percent of his Custodian forces go up like barbecued buffalo wings roasted on a bonfire, Kunai raced forward until the firestorm was within his own reach, thrusting outwards with his power and applying the exact opposite effect that the abomination was creating... instead of exciting and vibrating molecules, Kunai grasped and halted the motions of those selfsame molecules. At its most basic level, temperature was a function of friction between molecules. If molecules were moving around rapidly and bumping into things all the time, there was lots of friction and thus heat and eventually fire. On the other hand if they weren't bumping into anything, that led to an absence of heat, or cold, and eventually freezing. Kunai couldn't freeze things, certainly not in such a wide area all at once, but he could at least extinguish a large swathe of the firestorm the abomination had created, though there was little elft besides charcoal and ash of his forces, even after only a handful of seconds within the firestorm.

_Kunai... what IS that creature? I've never seen anything like it! Is it a Chimera? But those augmentations... what sort of monster has the USN created here?_ Alexander's normally stoic and confident thought-voice was tinged with a perceptible degree of near panic. Praetorian or not, this was beyond his comfort zone, and he knew better than most just what an impessive display of telekinetic might he'd just been nearly roasted alive by! And more importantly, his own chances of fighting against such a power and surviving, which were basically nil.

_I do not know. Yggdrasil's dreams made no mention of this abomination..._ Kunai was greatly troubled by this fact. He wasn't so blindly trusting as to think that the Grand Chimera told him everything that it saw in the future, or that even what it did tell him was necessarily literally true, but he would have thought at least a HINT of something like this would have been appropriate to know about beforehand! Because what had just recently been a battle on the verge of being a historic victory was already starting to look like it might instead soon become a historic rout or massacre! The Ironhide creature bellowed with what could only be fury at his interference, and banked around to make a beeline for the Exemplar. Kunai braced himself... he had a strong premontion that things were about to get dicey...

xxxx

**Back in Nara-Attha City...**

"COULD SOMEONE KINDLY EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT THE HELL SORT OF CREATURES HAVE JUST BEEN ORBITALLY DROPPED INTO MY GODDAMN COUNTRY?" Cagalli all but screamed across the comm channel Lexi had created for her, connecting her with Fleet Admiral Icarus aboard the _Incarnate_, the Solar Protection Fleet's flagship, which was even now assuming geostationary position above Orb's main island. The portly Fleet Admiral did his best not to appear flustered by Cagalli's words or her tone of voice, though it took several tries and a heavy swallow before he was able to articulate a coherent reply.

"They are the newest top secret weapon of the USN, uh, your Majesty. We call them BALORs, which stands for..." Icarus began to explain.

"I don't care what it fucking stands for! Who deployed them, WHY didn't I know about them until AFTER they landed, and WHY the HELL can't I communicate with them? Give me some fucking answers you unbelievable asshole of a stooge!" Cagalli snapped back, as she observed the lizardlike BALOR that had saved her from Kira's wrath only a few minutes before from what she hoped was a safe distance a half kilometer or so away. Given how fast the creature-Gundam-whatever the fuck it was seemed capable of moving, she was beginning to think that maybe she ought to take a few more steps back. Like another kilometer or two. Because as far as she could tell, it had Zacharis Frost, the scariest goddamn person she could imagine, stumbling around all but HOPELESSLY on the defensive! Just because every time he knocked it away, it was back in his face before he could even plant his feet properly!

Normally the sight of Frost pretty much getting his ass kicked would be enormously heartening to her, hell she'd be cheering and laughing, because it was about goddamn time that freak got a taste of his own medicine and found out what it was like to be the slow, desperate one in a fight! But she couldn't quite enjoy this for several reasons, the chief among them being she hadn't the slightest fucking clue what the hell was going on! She'd never seen this creature before, nor the other one she could sometimes catch glimpses of rampaging through another section of what she still thought of as HER capital city where the fighting between the Eddie invaders and the defenders had become particularly fierce, the other one being some sort of six legged crocodile the size of a tuna trawler that breathed lightning... she honestly wasn't even going to try and classify THAT! And though they appeared to be on her side, in that they WERE engaging the Eddie forces with gusto, they were also wrecking her city in the process! They seemed to have no grasp of the sheer scale of the collateral damage they were inflicting. Yes, buildings could be rebuilt, it wasn't like the city hadn't been all but leveled in the past, but what she couldn't countenance were the friendly fire casualties... her own soldiers... that were caught between the new arrivals and the Eddies and butchered regardless!

It was really starting to look like she didn't just have one maniacal killer freak on the loose... aka Frost... she now had THREE of them tearing up her city and the forces battling to defend or attack it, and she couldn't even communicate with them to try and point out that they were killing as many USN troops as they were Eddies... more actually, since there were a lot more USN troops in the battle zone! But even the international distress channel didn't seem to register on these new arrivals, these "BALORs" and so Cagalli had Lexi force her way through to the seniormost USN official she could find on short notice, so she could get so damned answers!

"They were developed and deployed on a need to know basis. You must not have been judged necessary to need to know, I'm very sorry. I wasn't made aware of them until just as they were being loaded into MY drop pods aboard MY ships!" Icarus retorted with shaky vehemence. This wasn't strictly true... he'd been kept peripherally in the loop on the BALOR project after all, but having them deployed from his warships without reference to him still rankled enormously, enough to fuel a convincing tone of voice for Orb's fiery Queen. "I'm sure the President will liase with you on the proper protocols for combats involving the BALORs soon. For now, I just recommend stepping back and letting them do what they were designed to do... destroying the Eddies on their own terms."

"Like hell!" Cagalli spat back. "Maybe you weren't aware, way up there in orbit, Fleet Admiral, but these things are fucking running half amuck down here and they're killing two and a half of OUR troops for every Eddie they kill! Someone needs to yank on their leash and I mean ASAP!"

"Only two and a half for every one? That's not such a bad ratio, is it?" Icarus remarked dryly, though he realized it was a mistake even as he did so. This wasn't Natalia or Durandel that he was talking to, who understood the grim mathmatical realities of war and things like acceptable loss ratios and the quality of excessive quantity deployed against vastly outnumbered enemies. He'd been prepared for ratios as high as eight or nine friendly losses for every Eddie killed by a BALOR, and knew they had the forces there to sustain such losses and still emerge quite victorious. Somehow he figured Queen Zala-Attha might not see things in the same coldly logical way he did. She was known to be something of an... emotional sort. Even for a woman.

"These are MY people that are dying to your rampaging creations and you're making jokes? You're lucky you ARE in orbit, Icarus, or I'd probably do something to you right now that would see me on death row! Get your BALROGs or whatever the fuck these things are under control right this fucking moment or I promise you, you won't like the results even if we end up winning! And you can tell Gil I said that too, if you like, but I don't have any more time to waste on you now! I have a country to defend!" Cagalli snarled and cut the communication before she felt tempted to fly to orbit and do something violent and probably ineffective against the _Incarnate_. Still fuming at Icarus's cavalier attitude towards the situation she and her people... and his people too for that matter... were facing at the hands... claws, teeth, whatever... of the BALORs, Cagalli searched for a way to productively channel her rage.

Her crosshairs suggestively flickered over the lean black shape of the Lucifer, where her estranged brother was also standing aside and watching the combat between Frost and his reptilian adversary with obvious shock and bafflement, but though he really had just tried to kill her not long before, Cagalli couldn't find it in her to try and return the favor. Perhaps it was the guilt from knowing that she'd failed her only living blood relative during Frost's deceptive rampage, perhaps it was just that she still loved him even though he'd broken her heart by attacking Orb and killing her people, but she couldn't fight him. She just couldn't do it. But then a wicked smile curled across her lips, an expression she hadn't worn in entirely too long a time. If the BALORs weren't going to be careful about their collateral damage, well then she could play that game too! She swung about to orient upon the Kratos, which had planted its feet in the midst of a mostly destroyed and collapse block of office buildings and was fending off a furious assault from the Fenris Wolf with spinning sweeps of his scythe and kicks and swats from his legs and oversized left gauntlet.

Cagalli activated the Amaterasu's primary ranged weapons, which were mounted in the somewhat bulbous yet still streamlined and rounded forearms of her Gundam, armored shutters sliding back as the mechanisms of her twin "Hameya's Fury" Eruption Cannons moved into firing position. Eruption cannon was a fancy name, but in reality they were nothing more than large FRALA, three 333mm FRALA lenses per arm, mounted in a rotary fashion around a central power feed. Each FRALA, tuned to fire orange beams of coherent light nearly as thick as a well muscled human thigh, could be fired individually, in a slow gatling type style that had two lenses cooling and recharging at all times while one was firing, allowing for a constant sweep of laser fire. However the weapons were most effective when fired in Eruption mode, which spun all three lenses per arm at a rapid rate and then fired with all three beams per arm at the same time, while the lenses continued to rotate. This created a full meter wide laser beam that was actually "twisting" like a drill bit, applying a much increased degree of cutting action over a mere straight line beam, which was highly suited to piercing through defenses such as energy shields and heat resistant armor.

Firing in Eruption mode required a brief spin up time and almost a minute of cooldown time between shots, but if she could but hit a target for even half a second with an Eruption shot, it wouldn't matter how long she needed to recharge... that target would be down and done! Even something like the Kratos. And if the Fenris Wolf couldn't get out of the way in time? Well, friendly fire went both ways, after all. As long as Frost went down too, Cagalli was prepared to sacrifice pretty much anything, and especially so a certain rampaging USN superweapon that had been kept a secret from her and her people. She lined up her shot, politely waited an extra half second for Fenris Wolf to get swatted away again... the creature almost seemed to be enjoying the rough and tumble battle more than anything else... and then opened fire with her left arm Eruptor. It was a perfect shot, Frost was distracted, half turned away and had always been contemptuous of her anyway. It would be out of character for him to regard her as a threat, and plainly he hadn't, which meant he wasn't even paying attention to her.

It was a perfect shot, aimed right at the base of the Kratos's spine, with enough power behind it to cut even a Myrmidon class heavy cruiser in half like a stick of butter, but even as Cagalli was pulling her trigger, outside forces were conspiring to ruin her aim. Namely, the Eddie Wraith that decloaked all but on top of her and tackled the Amaterasu, causing her shot to go very much awry, digging a deep molten trench through four city blocks, just barely nicking the Kratos's right leg, enough to vaporize the top six inches of the LCR armor on the limb, before almost slicing Fenris Wolf in half from crotch to crown if the BALOR hadn't already been in the process of leaping to the side. Even so, the BALOR was grazed even as the Kratos was, pus filled blisters rising along its left flank and leg as it hiss-yowled in distress. Cagalli had forgetten entirely about Frost's companions, though perhaps that was because Frost had never HAD companions watching his back in her experiences with him, and so she'd failed to connect the two Praetorian machines hanging back in the Kratos's shadow with actual allies of Frost. How anyone could NOT be happy to see him turned to bloody steam was beyond her, but clearly there was more in this world than she was capable of understanding.

Half pinned beneath the Wraith, which was decorated in themes of angels wielding flaming swords freeing chained captives, Cagalli tried to kick her assailant free, but the Eddie was having none of it and Cagalli gritted her teeth as she realized that, yet again, she was a bit outclassed here. It wasn't like she'd ever had real delusions of being a Gundam Ace or anything, like her husband or brother or friends, but she liked to think she was pretty damned capable within her role and comfort zone. Too bad her comfort zone didn't extend to being pinned down, sat upon and threatened with a pair of QC longswords by a very irate female Eddie who was one of those things that Cagalli probably would never understand. Fortunately, Cagalli had another guardian angel watching out for her, and this time he wasn't a giant reptile but rather the much more aesthetically and personally pleasing form of the Simurgh, her husband's Gundam, which dived from the heavens in its bird of prey like Mobile Armor former and alighted within arms reach of the two struggling women.

Lilia swiped at the fiery red Gundam with one sword, even as she pinned down with her legs the lambent orange and white machine that had tried to snipe Zach in the back while he was busy with... with whatever the fuck that abomination combination of Chimeric flesh and cyborg augmentations was. The Simurgh sidestepped her slash, and then turned on her with fury, hosing her Wraith and the Amaterasu below her down with a deluge of chaotic free plasma energy from its forearm projectors. Inundated in fire, temperature alarms screaming at her as her armor began to singe and smoke and smoulder, Lilia had little choice but to retreat from her position. She was going to at least take solace in the fact that the Amaterasu had gotten toasted too, but the orange and white Gundam sat up at once and seemed absolutely none the worse for the wear for her flame bath.

"Thanks." Cagalli said simply, glad that her Gundam was still equipped with HAC armor, just like the Dawn Goddess had been, which meant that she could stand in her husband's fire for almost an hour straight before it really started to affect her internal systems. "But I thought you were helping Yzak? What happened?"

"To Yzak? I dunno, I was gonna ask you that." Athrun admitted, more lightly than he really felt. The Balmung wasn't showing up on any of his sensors, but he refused to count Yzak dead until he had no other choice. "He went after Kira and I couldn't help him with that, so I peeled off. I was having a rather bracing duel with Heine until a gigantic six limbed, lightning breathing crocodile dropped out of the sky and started laying waste to everything and anything in its path. I THINK its supposed to be a USN unit... my IFF tags it as such... but it sure isn't acting very friendly towards us..." Athrun studied the clash between the Kratos and the raptorian Fenris Wolf for several seconds, even as he kept another eye on the singed Wraith that had been trying to kill Cagalli. That wasn't something he was going to take lightly. Still, he could not help but blink in shock and drop his jaw a bit as he processed the battle between Frost and Freak. "Is... is he having trouble with that thing?" Athrun stammered, not sure whether to be giddy or scared.

"Well, he's not roflstomping it, like he generally does to everyone else, us included." Cagalli answered, borrowing a term from her son's internet gaming lexicon. It didn't make much sense to her... how could you roll about laughing and still step on someone after all... but it seemed fairly apt for describing how Frost usually prevailed against what she would call "normal" people like herself and her friends. "I really can't tell who's actually winning, to be honest. And I'm not sure who I want to win, actually. And that really bothers me... I mean, at least I kind of KNOW what Frost is about..."

Their little chitchat was interrupted by Lilia moving to engage them once more, but it was more of a half hearted effort to keep them from trying to interfere in Zach's fight again than any real attempt to kill either of them. Because truth be told, Lilia was chewing her lip and anxiously watching the same fight as well. Of course she had faith in Zach... she'd seen him prevail against such impossible odds before in the past, it was beyond reason that he would not prevail now as well... but she had to admit, she'd never seen him have this much trouble with a single foe, or even a hundred foes! As far as she could tell, the Kratos and the Cold Hunter-esque abomination had near equal speed. However, the abomination creature was only slightly larger than half the Kratos's size, and it was a truism that when all other speed related factors were near equal, the combatant that was smaller would have the advantage in maneuverability, and that was proving to be the case here. So far Zach hadn't suffered much more than a few light clawings and a near miss with the acid spraying tail, but at the same time, the creature was only slightly gashed in a few areas, and Zach had been on the defensive the whole battle, unable to knock the creature aside long enough to shift onto the offensive! And he was plainly getting VERY frustrated with this turn of events, his anger smouldering like live coals in the back of her thoughts.

And Kira wasn't being much help, not that the Lucifer appeared to be in much condition to help, with its Feathers missing and one arm almost comically broken at the midpoint of the forearm, but he could have at least offered! Well, perhaps that was a bit much to ask, given the past history between him and Frost. But still, it was plain to see that whatever this USN creation was, it was bad news for the Edenite cause, and getting rid of it, even if it meant working together with his greatest nemesis, should be a no brainer, right? Then again, knowing Zach, an offer of help would have been met at best with snarled insults and at worst with a physical assault that would have helped nobody. He didn't seem to have noted her intervention on his behalf with the sniping attack, and Lilia knew better than to bring it up. He would never admit that she'd saved his life, even if she had. It was okay, she didn't need that validation from him anyway.

It was impossible to judge how the battle would have eventually turned out if it had continued as it was, the combatants involved were just too evenly matched in speed, ferocity and determination for even their closest friends and worst enemies to call one way or the other, but things were not destined to stay the same. As frustrated as Frost was with his inability to take the offensive against his lizardlike opponent, Fenris herself was ten times as frustrated with her inability to land a solid blow against this prey, much less bring it to the ground for devouring, and especially frustrating was her total inability to penetrate the mind of her prey in order to secure the slight advantage in reflex speed she would need to be victorious. She hadn't had this problem against the first prey, nor any prey previous to this. She just could not understand why this particular prey was proof against her psychic attacks. It was like clawing at an adamant wall, she could make no progress, find no purchase upon him at all. It was like something even greater than her was somehow protecting him from her attacks. But what could possibly be greater than her? The part of her that was Lupine was equally stumped... no mere human should be able to stand up to a Chimera in psychic warfare, they just didn't have the strength!

Bad enough that her attacks against the black skinned prey with the broken arm had somehow been blunted, this grey and crimson skinned prey was a completely impenetrable void! As her frustration grew, her attacks became ever more unfocused and, well, animalistic. Even before deploying, Lupine had been in a major identity crisis with her BALOR alter ego, and the stress of this combat, against this particular foe, was driving her to connect more and more deeply with her biomechanically augmented steed than she had ever done before in an effort to find the symbiotic symmetry and connection that would lead to victory. Before she even realized her danger, she was already in too deep, her consciousness fully merging with and then being subsumed by the quiescent mind of her lobotomized alter-ego. The last thing Lupine ever saw as an individual being was a bright golden Seed like image falling through the vastness of a dark void. When the Seed struck an invisible barrier and exploded, Lupine was no more. Only Fenris Wolf remained. And she was in a FRENZY!

If it had ended there, if Fenris slipping her chains and regaining a semblence of berserk independence had been the only consequence of her Meister's mistake, that would have been bad enough. But much as one baby starting to cry will wake others in the same room and cause them to begin to cry as well, even if they are perfectly content and normally very quiet, the psychic ripples of Fenris's "awakening" spread to her comrade BALORs and Meisters, first Jormungandr and Serpentine, there in Nara-Attha City with her, and then out to Gorgon and Aurochs at Kaguya Island. They weren't the only ones who felt the event of course... anyone within even the slightest amount of psychic sensitivity could hear the soundless bestial cry of rebirth and awakening, causing most humans to clutch their heads and scream in primitive fear and denial, and most Chimera to flinch and raise their hackles or bare their throats, depending on their individual assessment of their relative power. Even Leviathan was slightly disturbed by the clarion scream of the BALOR, if more because of the twisted pain it contained than because of the power involved. It was both loss and happiness combined, and the taste of it nauseated her.

But the most receptive ones were the other BALORs, and especially Jormungandr and Serpentine, who had also been suffering from the inevitable identity crisis that came to a Meister after prolonged symbiosis with their Chimera alter-egos. Psychiatists had proclaimed them all capable of withstanding this mental struggle, but unfortunately, no one really understood the struggle either, so that was no actual reassurance, more just a fervent hope on the part of the evaluators. Things had been rushed, probably more than they should have been, declaring the first generation BALORs fit for combat deployment was more a political necessity than a scientifically supported conclusion. Though not in any way related by genetics to Fenris Wolf, Jormungandr was a brother in purpose at least, and when he felt her slip her leash, he was seized with the desire to run free as well. It was only a matter of seconds before a golden Seed dropped through their... now his... mind as well.

Unlike Jormungandr and Serpentine, Gorgon and Aurochs were not experiencing much in the way of overt identity mingling and the coherent discipline of Auroch's mind kept his grip on his BALOR's subconscious when Fenris called for his rebirth. However, before he could fully recover and reinforce the grip of his identity, Jormungandr's rebirth cry slammed into him also, and washed away his unseated grasp of Gorgon's personality. Even so, Aurochs continued to fight the welling tide of primal fury and unrelenting instinct that tried to swamp him and drown him, leaving only Gorgon behind. He knew that as a Meister, he was the only one that could call back the other two from their Frenzy without killing them in the process. He just had to hang on... hang on... hang...

xxxx

"IT'S VULNERABLE!" Alexander crowed in half disbelieving triumph, as the perversion of flesh and mechanics staggered and dropped to all fours, slamming its horned head into the dirt like it was trying to beat its own brain out against the unyielding ground. It reared back onto its hind legs once more, joints realigning with sickening mechanical whines as the creature adjusted from a quadrupedal stance to a bipedal one, its center of balance shifting in a way no natural creature ever could attempt. But even standing upright once more, as it had been pretty much ever since it landed a few minutes prior to better lay waste to the Edenites that were by now all but in full flight for their lives despite being on the cusp of victory before the creature's arrival! Even Kunai, the mightest of the Praetorians, could only give ground before this abomination, all his considerable powers focused on the defensive and just barely holding the line to give time for his forces to withdraw to the sea, now less than an eighth of their original number.

Alex was the only other Praetorian still standing, unwilling to retreat even though it was a necessity, guarding his superior's flanks even though the Orb and USN forces seemed quite content to let their monster do the fighting for them. And it was obvious that it needed no assistance from them anyway, as it had single handedly turned the course of the fight with shocking ease and violence. Nobody could even get close to it, not even within a hundred meters, not with blade or cannon blasts or QC spikes or even Kunai's QC shards! It was simply too strong a Telekinetic! And worse, it wasn't just a Chimera, unschooled in the way of human weapons and tactics... there was a logical and methodical mind directing the Chimera's raw power, a mind very familiar with modern warfare and technologies, which meant that the Chimera was guarding titself with superlative skill. It left no openings to exploit, because it plainly had power to spare.

Up until just now that is, when it seemed to be overcome with some sort of seizure, perhaps brought on by prolonged use of powers beyond its normal ability? Alex had seen similar things happen to other telekinetics who overstrained their powers either through duration or Seed assisted moving of too much mass, seen them all but crippled with migraine like headaches that hurt so badly they precluded doing anything but screaming and writhing and eventually fainting. Certainly defending oneself was impossible when in the grip of such an overextension. Taking a firmer grip on his QC zweihander, Alex pounced forward, blade high. It as time to slay this beast, in the true tradition of the Praetorians!

_Alex, wait... DON'T!_ Kunai tried to warn his subordinate away, knowing that this was no overextension trauma, this was something else entirely. But it was too late, Alex was alreay committed to his attack, and the QC blade slashed aroun in a brilliant arc... and seperated Gorgon's right hand from its wrist in a jet of dark blood and darker lubricants and preservative fluids. The injury was quick to clot over, but the pain of the amputation was just the catalyst that Gorgon needed to finally burst asunder the mental chains that Aurochs had been trained to use to subjugate the all but brain dead Chimera! Subsuming his Meister, in essence linking their brains so that Aurochs became little more than a large synapse node that bypassed the lobotomized sections of Gorgon's cereberal matter, short circuiting his brain back into his own furious control, Gorgon joined his spirit siblings in the Frenzy, a third golden Seed dropping through a third vast darkness, only to detonate with a world changing light and sound.

Kunai reacted instantly, utilizing his own Seed as he yanked Alex's Wraith backwards like a fish on a line, before cocooning them both in as many layers of telekinetic shielding as he could muster, building a quantum crystal wall out of his shards that he placed between them and Gorgon as well. It was enough... barely enough... to keep them alive as the BALOR hit Seed mode for the first and only time in its short, miserable, agonized existence. Where his first attacks had been fire, it was with the opposite that Gorgon expressed his newfound anger and awareness. Temperatures within a eight hundred meter radius plummeted over two hundred degrees in an instant as molecular vibrations and motions were all but brought to a standstill by Gorgon's telekinetic grip. The oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air froze, encasing a sphere almost a kilometer in diameter in dry ice and liquid oxygen. Most of the Edenites within that area were already dead. The same could not be said for almost four thousand Orb and USN infantry and armored vehicle troopers, and almost a dozen remaining Orb Mobile Suit pilots. The only merciful thing about their deaths was that they were fast. Most were turned into instant corpsicles before they even realized something was wrong.

Less lucky were those outside the sphere of ice, where the temperature was still shockingly tropical, because almost as soon as the ice had formed, Gorgon shattered it from within by raising the temperature to almost a thousand degrees within his sphere, not merely melting all his frozen gases but also igniting them in the process. Ice literally caught fire before exploding in a hail of rapidly vaporizing, razor sharp shards that cut down hundreds more soldiers and utterly devastated the Mass Driver Command and Loading facilities in so doing. The Dreadnaught was physically knocked off its feet and buried under dozens of tons of sizziling snowflakes before they melted away with firecracker pops. Barely had they time to sit up when Gorgon continued his rampage, a burst of shoving telekinetic force that ripped up a solid quarter mile of the centermost launch track and hurled it into the sky like a man throwing a stick for his dog. Dearka had no choice but to order an all out withdrawal. To stay on Kaguya... to stay with Gorgon... was to be smashed to flinders by his fury. The BALOR had clearly lost all conceptualization of friend or foe, and was in fact just lashing out blindly at the island environment itself. Hopefully there would still be a Mass Driver to come back to later. Hell, hopefully there would still be a Kaguya island to come back to later! The way things were going though, he wasn't going to hedge any bets! he hoped things were going better for his friends...

xxxx

Things were not going better for his friends. Though not anywhere near as visually spectacular as Gorgon's Frenzy, Jormungandr and Fenris Wolf were not much less destructive in their berserker rages. Breaking away from Frost and the Kratos, driven into a frothing madness by a sudden overload of sensory data as the Seed mode heightened her already fantastic senses to unbearable levels, where even the sunlight was like laser beams boring into her eyes, Fenris lashed out blindly at anything and everything that crossed her path, attacking buildings, tanks, Mobile Suits and even the empty air with equal ferocity and vigor. Her underslung 350mm flak cannons were firing as fast as she could make them, obliterating anything that happened to be in front of where they were pointing in a hail of molten metal fragments. Poisonous acid leaked from her tail sting like toothpaste from a trodden on tube, burning droplets flung far and wide across the city as her tail lashed and coiled like a bullwhip. Still though, her nigh mindless rampage was inflicting more than just property damage... with her Seed boost, her mental powers slowed the reactions of all who got within a hundred meters of her to a geriatric level, so that they moved like every joint was afflicted with terminal stage arthritis!

But at least they COULD still move, even if it seemed to take minutes to do what would ordinarily occur in seconds, which was more than could be said for the victims of Jormungandr's rage, who were helplessly frozen in place as if their spines had be snapped, though unfortunately they still retained all their tactile sensations despite being unable to move after closing to within a hundred meters of the stampeding Basilisk-Chimera-BALOR. This was unfortunate because it meant while they were helpless to protect themselves, they could still feel every brief moment of their deaths as they were consumed in explosions from missiles, bathed in plasma bursts, annihilated with positron particles, vaporized by Mjolnir bolts or sliced apart by the blue-white glare of a FRALA beam. Unleashing the full fury of his extensive technological armaments, Jormungandr laid waste to a half dozen city blocks at a time, and was steadily heading inland, away from the heart of the city and the fighting as a whole, though most of that had petered off, if only because there were precious few still alive and capable of conflict in his wake.

"Shouldn't we, well, do something?" Lilia asked, somewhat tenatively, as she stood beside the Kratos, which looked like its front side had been used as a scratching post by a demi-legion of very hyperactive tigers, legacy of the few frantic moments it took for Fenris Wolf to disengage from the larger Gundam after she frenzied. The LCR armor was slowly refilling the gashes and lacerations, but entire tons of the semi-fluid armor had been ripped and scooped away by Fenris's claws during those seconds, and not enough remained on the entire Gundam to fill in all the wounds, at least for next day or so while the nano-repair system regenerated the armor's volume. "These... monsters... have plainly gone out of control. They're a threat to everyone who comes near them."

"Yes." Kira agreed, his voice flat and hard. "But right now, they're a bigger threat to the Oosen than they are to us. They made these creatures, and they unleashed them upon us, clearly without fully understanding what they were doing. This is no one's fault but their own."

"You can't be serious, Kira!" Lilia protested, shocked at his indifference. "Enemies or not, isn't Orb your homeland? Doesn't what family you still have live here? And your friends too, even if you don't get along anymore? You sweated and bled for over half of your entire life to defend this country and its people, and you're just going to sit back and watch as they get overrun by these abominations?"

"Pretty much." Kira answered with a shrug of the Lucifer's shoulders. Still, he turned and shot her Wraith a look. "Don't get me wrong, Lilia. I don't like it. But its to our advantage to let them rampage a bit. We're heavily outnumbered in case you forgot, and Leviathan can only really affect the area within about a mile of the Harbor. Its no accident that our forces haven't been able to progress much further than that. Orb's putting up more of a fight than even I anticipated. And these new creatures, they set us back some too, remember. Its ugly, but the facts are that unless we find a way to substantially reduce the Oosen numbers very quickly, we're going to lose this battle." Kira pointed to the flailing figure of Fenris Wolf. "It's just more efficient this way. Don't worry, I'm not planning on leaving Orb before killing those monsters. But like with a certain other monster, I'm going to let them do some hard work for me first."

"I wouldn't dignify them with the same term you use for me, Yamato." Zach growled sullenly, fingers flexing on the haft of his scythe. He was far from satisified with the outcome of his decidedly one sided brawl with the raptorian bio-Gundam, and he itched to take it on once more and prove once and for all who the real monster was here. However, disgustingly, Yamato had a point. With things as they were, the battle was set to drag on into a painful near stalemate for who knew how long, with the Orb and USN forces keeping the Edenites bottled up within a mile of the beach, but unable to press them back any further due to the dominating presence of Leviathan. What was the saying? You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here? That was the situation in a nutshell. Neither side could gain ground against the other. And unless he wanted to vaporize the entire city with the AMP cannon... not that there was too much "city" left at this point... nothing even he could do would change that. The USN was still deploying ever more traditional reinforcements to the battle zone, and even if he slaughtered a thousand foes, three thousand more would be deployed to face him, Orb was just that important an asset.

Normally the thought of an endless conflict would have excited him, but now it just bored him. And deep down inside, where not even the Mouse would ever be permitted to look or listen, Frost could admit that he wanted to better prepare himself before going up against the lizard thing again. Not that he couldn't beat it now, of course, just that he might have to sacrifice a bit too much of his strength in the process, and Yamato had just as much as reminded him that he was only using Frost to shoulder some of the load. If he had a good chance to take him down after exhausting him against these USN freaks, the new Yamato might just do it. And that would just be so unsatisfying an outcome. It couldn't be borne, couldn't be allowed to occur. When their fight came it would be a grand thing, with them both in top form. That was the only way to really prove who was right and who was wrong. No, he wanted to get stronger now, more than he ever had in the past. This encounter had been a good wake up call. He might be the world's pre-eminent monster, but that didn't mean there wasn't still room for improvement. The last thing he could afford was indolence and slothfulness. Yamato was clearly willing to put all his effort into things, how could Frost do any less?

"You're just going to let it get away, Zach?" Lilia prompted, denied a proper reaction from one of her idols, she had decided to go to the backup, who was, if anything, far more reliable when things were properly couched and termed.

"It's not going anywhere, Mouse and neither am I." Frost countered, recognizing the manipulation for what it was, but deigning not to punish her for attempting it. If anything such subversive tendencies were a good sign. She was getting wily, the Mouse was. "If it can't even survive against the Oosen forces, its plainly not worthy of my time or attention. We have nothing to lose by taking a little break. I seem to recall a certain reckoning between us that has been too long delayed as it is. You'd better start removing your armor if you don't want it destroyed in the process..."

"You can't be serious, Zach, we're in the MIDDLE of a battlefield! Are you completely insane? That's..."

"Yes, yes I am, and its obviously time for you to remember that, Mouse..."

xxxx

"Sarge-Major, theres something I been meaning to get off my chest with you about..." Ramierez drawled, tension tightening what was ordinarily a lighterheated and jocular tone. He and Glory, along with a relative majority of the Stormhound unit that were qualified on the PUMA-1 Hellhound units, were part of a hasty defensive line that had been thrown together around the Amaterasu and the Simurgh, who had placed themselves square in the path of the rampaging Fenris Wolf, who was making a beeline for the Combat Control Center where the defensive efforts against the Edenites attacking Nara-Attha City and its environs were being coordinated and led. Whether the BALOR was coming here purposefully or just accidentally, nobody knew and nobody really cared. What mattered was that the BALOR was coming this way and if it reached the C3, the brains of the whole defensive battle were going to get lobotomized, which would basically mean defeat.

"If you say ANYTHING along the lines of "I love you man", I'm going to turn this weapon on you now and put you out of my goddamn misery, got it, Corporal?" Glory replied, equally terse, as he fired his PUMA's... he couldn't call it a Hellhound even if it was the chassis name... 90mm hyper-impulse cannon as fast as it would cycle. Which was actually a good deal faster than it normally would, thanks to the deployment of the Amaterasu's arguably most potent system, the "Hameya's Chosen" option. The technology of it was far beyond him, far beyond most anyone save for the super-egghead types, but what it basically amounted to was the Amatersu sent power from its reactor to other machines through wireless energy transmission. By power it meant several gigawatts of energy and by other machines it meant every other Orb designed and manufactured war machine within 10 kilometers! It kept your batteries, if you had them, completely topped off no matter how often you used energy weapons and in fact in actually increased the operational power and efficiency of thruster systems, energy shields, energy weapons and sensors by about threefold.

The downside being that the system could only operate for short times before not only overloading the Amaterasu's reactor, but also the power supplies and thrusters and weapons of any machine receiving the boost, and the while the system was operating the Amaterasu was basically immobile and utterly helpless to attack or defend itself. And it wasn't like it wasn't obvious who was generating this boosting effect, as the wireless energy transfer was far from invisible, in fact it was extremely pyotechnically spectacular, huge ribbons of flaming gold and ruby and orange energy unraveling from the Amaterasu's sides and back like colossal buttefly wings and draping themselves across the entire area of effect. If that didn't scream "I'm a big fucking target, please KILL me as fast as possible", Glory didn't know what did. Fortunately, the BALORs were so hyped up on combat rage, they didn't seem to be able to process even something that basic.

Unfortunately, the BALORs were so hyped on combat rage that even a threefold boost in baseline capabilities for scores upon scores of war machines just wasn't quite cutting it! Having fought Frost before, Glory was at least faintly familiar with firing at targets that moved so fast you couldn't draw a bead on them. But this Fenris Wolf thing was in a class all its own. There must have been an easy thirty Mobile Suits and PUMAs shooting at it as it advanced down a ruler straight boulvard towards them. It should have been like shooting pigs in a barrel. They should have been hitting it just by the laws of chance! But if they were, they weren't hitting it hard enough to check its advance even slightly! At its current rate of advance, the BALOR would be on top of them in less than a minute, and having seen what it did to things that got within arms reach... its underslung forearm cannons having thankfully run out of ammo some time before... Glory didn't think much of anything would live through that meeting. For perhaps the first time in his adult life, he seriously wanted to cut and run, because despite his best efforts... despite the advantage of the Hameya's Chosen system... they couldn't stop the BALOR! They were all going to die, and every one of them knew it. Even Ramierez wasn't denying it, and that was the scariest thing Glory had seen in a long time. Ramierez could deny ANYTHING, in his experience.

"No, I like girls way too much for that to ever happen. Case in point, I totally accidentally saw Mel in her lingerie a couple years ago. I am so jealous of you. That's all."

"Well gee, Rich, now I DO have a reason to keep on living. I need to break your neck later."

"Any time, Sarge-Major, any time." Ramierez held the trigger down on his 45mm beam rifle, not caring that the weapon was beginning to smoke and turn pinkish-orange along the barrel. Given what he'd seen the BALOR do... it had EATEN some people that couldn't get out of the way in time... he'd be fortunate if his rifle blew up and killed him before it got to him. "But you know what's the best part about this chickenshit last stand, Thom?"

"That we're going out in high style, Rich?"

"That too. But no, the best thing about this is, the Lt ain't fucking here to get hosed along with us. Seriously, the guy's had far too much rough shit happen to him. He deserves to survive this fucked up day, especially if he does get his memories back again. Fuck the Stormhounds, fuck Orb, even fuck you and me, but as long as Cyprus Finch is alive and kicking, I can die happy... you with me?"

"I..." Glory began to say, but he never got to finish his thought. Fenris loomed above them, death smirking at her shoulder. But not even the Grim Reaper could deny a Hellhound when he was in the right mood. Arriving late to the fray, having had to detour across several miles of half destroyed city to find a PUMA unit, after "convincing" Dr. Lamarr to release him from quarantine by threatening to blow his way out with grenades if need be, racing an internal biological time bomb the entire time, Cyprus Finch wasn't planning on sitting this one out, no matter how much he might have deserved the chance. While the rest of the barricade force was all but frozen now that they were within the reflex retarding aura of the BALOR, Cyprus could still move and react. Whether this was because of the longtime reslience and invisiblity he'd had to psychic powers or a preliminary result of Yggdrasil's influence upon him because of the ingested nanites, Cyprus neither knew nor cared. What mattered was that he could still act as he saw fit. He still had free will. He could still make his own choices.

Firing his arm mounted grapple cables, Cyprus lassoed the surprised BALOR around the neck and reeled himself in, firing one handed with a 50mm machine gun in his other hand, gouging out dozens of divots of bloody red flesh from the raptor's hide across its chest and shoulders before his clip ran out. Discarding the rife, Cyprus drew the PUMA's melee weapon, the standard issue mono-molecular combat knife, more like a short sword really. A beam saber might have been preferable, especially with the boosting from the Amaterasu's special system in effect, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Had he stopped to consider what he was doing, Cyprus would have shaken his head at himself. Such reckless brashness had never been his hallmark. But then again, how many times did a man get the opportunity to spit in the face of destiny, to laugh at the machinations of something that might as well be a God? He had meant what he'd said during that final dream. There were some things he just could not sacrifice.

The PUMA slammed into Fenris's shoulder and Cyprus stabbed home with the knife, gouging deep into her shoulder muscles, searching for the nerves that would control her arm and claw muscles. Regardless of size or ferocity, the BALOR was still, at heart a biological organisim, and that meant basic anatomical rules should still apply. Sever the nerves and no matter how strong the muscle was, it could not function properly. There were doubtless mechanical backup systems in place, but he doubted they would be as efficient in the BALOR's current rabid state. His hunch seemed to be born out, as Fenris's left arm suddenly drooped and dangled to her side even as she slashed at the offending PUMA unit with her right claw. Cyprus did not dodge... he couldn't actually, not without losing his one chance at actually making a difference in this struggle. It was plain to see that the others couldn't stop this BALOR, and if Cagalli and Athrun were to die now, Orb's resistance would crumble utterly. Fenris had to be stopped. The momentum of the battle had to be reversed. And he was the only one who stood any chance of doing it. He smiled. He was born for moments like this one.

The PUMA unit crumpled under the pressure of Fenris's grip as she peeled the humanoid war machine off her shoulder like some grotesque tick. Sparks shot through the interior cockpit space like shooting stars, but his uniform armor kept him from being burned. Curling up like a spring, Cyprus waited, gambling everyone on his previous behavioral analysis of the BALOR, which seemed to have a real hunger for eating alive the pilots of machines that managed to wound it or frustrate it. True to form, instead of hurling him aside or crushing him like a beer can, Cyprus felt himself lifted up, and he popped the emergency escape hatch so that he could get a clear view of things. Doing this was crazy. But a man was allowed to do crazy things for his family. For the people he loved. For the sake of free will. He had his mask on, his ninja-to in his right hand, Asmodeus's heirloom pistol in his left. He didn't wait to be stuffed into the BALORs jaws, the first moment he decided he was close enough, Cyprus jumped in, contorting his body in mid leap to avoid the gnashing fangs.

Well, partially anyway... he felt his side be gashed open as he belly flopped onto the nonplussed BALOR's tongue. Plainly it was not used to prey being so cooperative as to actually feed themselves to it. Ignoring the lightheaded rush that came from sudden blood loss, reaching for and finding comfort in the familiar tunnel vision of his Focus, Cyprus fired the pistol at the back of the BALOR's throat, using special incendiary tipped explosive rounds dubbed "Hellfires", appropriately enough. They were expensive as hell, and they heated up and could warp the barrel if you fired too many too quickly, but he didn't exactly care about that now. The reaction was immediate... Fenris viced her jaws shut and tried to swallow him whole, gusting fetid, meat tasting breath at him as she howled in irritation at the burning sting inside her mouth. Cyprus wasn't playing that game though, and by stabbing down with his sword, through the root of her tongue, he lodged the blade in her lower jawbone and gave himself an anchor point to cling to.

Even so, he was thrashed aroun the inside of her mouth like he was riding a bucking bronco, while wrapped in razor wire, as the serrated inner edges of her teeth ripped his flesh open in a dozen places evn as her saliva began eating through his mask and his uniform like concentrated acid. Cyprus ignored these wounds as trivial, unimportant to his goal. It was easier than he'd thought it would be. All he had to do was hold an image of Violet and Wrenn in his mind's eye and even the worst discomfort seemed negligible. Even when he got impaled through the back by an oddly jutting fang, and had to wriggle his way off the tooth like a belly dancer doing the shimmer-shammer, it didn't matter. Bracing himself against his sword hilt, Cyprus emptied his pistol clip into the back of Fenris's throat, gouging out a char rimmed hole almost the size of his head. Clip exhausted, he let the gun drop, swallowed almost instantly down Fenris's bloostained gullet.

"I hope you can hear me, Yggdrasil." Cyprus murmured through a mouthful of blood, as he pushed himself forward and against the soft point he'd made at the bottom of Fenris's skull. "This is what we Naturals like to call choosing our own futures. Regardless of how I was born, with enough determination there is NOTHING I CAN'T DO FOR THE PEOPLE I LOVE! WE ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE, WE JUST HAVE TO REACH OUT AND TAKE IT!" And then Cyprus pulled the pin on one of a dozen high explosive grenades he wore strapped across his chest. Dying wasn't such a bad thing... it was just part of life after all. He smiled again, and laughed a little. "Oh, Wrenn... Vio..."

The blast, contained and focused within Fenris's mouth, right at the base of her skull and spine all but disintegrated the top half of her head, blowing smoking chunks of bone and brains out like vomit through the back of her head. The BALOR took one more step forward... and then toppled backwards with a strangely quiet "THUMP". The BALOR was down... but the battle wasn't over...


	58. Rejoicing and Mourning

Author Note: Apologies that it took so long to come out with this, I guess even the most focused of writers is prone to go off onto tangents now and again, though it was an inopportune time I suppose. Well, I'm correcting it now. This chapter marks the 50 percent completion mark of Reclamation War, the end of Season 1, if you will, and much like in Gundam 00, there is going to be something of a time gap between the end of Season 1 and the start of Season 2, though unlike Gundam 00, I will have a whole series of chapters taking place during that time, another rest/relaxation/character development arc like I did in the middle to late 90's chapters of Chaotic Cosmos. Both the readers and the characters deserve a break from the frenetic actions of this Invasion of Orb, and this is going to be the last chance they get before events start spiraling out of control in the Season 2 plotlines. Like the last time I did such an arc, I'm open to ideas from the readers on what you want to see various characters doing during this 3 monthish break from the "war". Of course I have ideas of my own as well to implement, but who knows where and how inspiration will strike, and I value your inputs as much as I always do. But now, to finish what I started about a month ago...

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City outskirts, January 22nd, 3:05 pm**

For a moment, the very Earth itself seemed to stand still, a wrinkle in the fabric of time stilling light, motion, sound and all other sensory perceptions, the onlookers frozen like statues of flesh, metal and bewilderment. Where there had once been a rampaging beast on the verge of overunning a desperate last stand, now slumped a dead, slightly smoking pile of meat and cybernetic pieces, most of the top half of its jaws and skulls blasted away by a sudden internal explosion caused by something that Fenris had attempted to swallow. Few of the observers had gotten a clear look at what exactly that had been, the object had moved so fast, the attacks traded between it and the renegade BALOR had been so thrashingly swift, especially to those already caught within the radius of Fenris's nerve and reflex deadening psychic aura, that no one seemed to know how to react to the sudden turn of the tables, nor were they quite aware of how it had even come about. It was only after the fact that details started to come to light, as eyes blinked and minds cleared, and the true impact of what had just occured began to sink in.

The smashed and ruined wreckage of an Orb PUMA-1 Hellhound suit lay half buried beneath the battered and twitching flesh of the BALOR, its cockpit hatch wrenched open, almost torn from its armored hinges by the force of detonating emergency egress bolts. The cockpit area itself, though crumpled like a crushed beer can, showed no evidence of a pilot within it, and with the jolting sensation of a .50 caliber bullet impacting his chest, Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory, senior NCO of the Stormhound unit, put the shattered pieces of the last minute back together in his mind and realized what had happened. What must have happened. What never should have been allowed to happen! What he and Ramierez had just been not quite joking about not happening! Though the Stormhounds were an incredibly devoted and hardcore unit of men and women, used to utilizing unconventional and improvised tactics to best advantage during combat, what he had just witnessed could only be the work of one among the Stormhounds. Only one man Glory had ever met had the right mix of reflexes, smarts, personal disregard and sheer, insane courage to have pulled off the destruction of what amounted to a biological Gundam single handedly using weapons designed for taking out light vehicles and infantry!

"What the FUCK was that?" Ramierez blurted out, his mind finally engaging with his mouth once more, though his thoughts lagged behind Glory's due to his incredulity and shock at still being alive. His Hellhound's beam cannon was smoking, the barrel glowing orange and looking like it was on the verge of suffering a catastrophic meltdown, and he carefully hurled it aside, the weapon half crushing, half melting a parked car off to the side of their impromptu firing line that had miraculously avoided harm from the battle being waged around it, up until that point anyway. "What sort of crazy sonofabitch motherfucker decided to pull off the lord of hail mary saves without telling me about it?"

"CYPRUS...!" Glory shouted, his voice raw like it had only rarely ever been in his entire life. Slamming his hand on the emergency ejection stud of his own cockpit system, Glory blew the hatch off his PUMA in a shower of sparks and all but leapt out, whamming his broad shoulders into the lip of the hatchway in the process, but he was oblivious to the pain as he almost fell facefirst down the side of his war machine in his rush to confirm or hopefully deny what he already suspected to be the truth.

"Where?" Ramiere cried joyfully, casting about for his beloved superior officer, before realizing what Glory was saying. "NO!" Ramierez scream of denial was no less raw than Glory's had been, though he did forebear ruining his Hellhound by exiting the cockpit without using the emergency egress protocols. He watched The Sarge-Major land on hands and feet, like a gigantic cat, bloodying his palms on the broken concrete in the process, before sprinting with shocking speed for so large a man towards the downed BALOR's head. Ramierez joined him less than thirty seconds later, running up behind his friend with a grenade clutched carefully in one hand, prepared to toss the high explosive device into the nearest fleshy opening should the monster show any signs of getting back up. As he cleared the broad shouldered bulk of the Sarge-Major though, Ramierez realized that the precaution was unnecessary.

The raptorian BALOR was missing pretty much the entire top half of its face and skull, bony shards and pulpy, half cooked brain matter lying strewn about for a dozen meters in every direction around the felled creature. Eyes, nostrils, ears, all were blown to shreds, the two mighty curled horns that had graced the top of the skull lying to either side of the body, their bases jagged where they had been ripped free of the skull by the explosion, though the reinforced bony spears were almost fully intact otherwise. For a brief moment, Ramierez entertained a fantasy of mounting the horns to a plaque in the common office area of the Stormhound administrative building, before realizing that they'd have to knock down a few walls to accomodate the breadth of the horns. And then that, and all other light hearted and giddy thoughts, were banished from his mind entirely when he saw where the Sarge-Major was looking.

Like the rest of the creature's head and face, its jaws were mutilated and sundered, teeth splintered and cracked and broken into sharp edged pieces that were scattered around the immediate area of the head, even the smallest pieces nearly as big as Ramierez's palm. However, it was the scraps of bloodied cloth that also fluttered about the area, and were concentrated around the stumps of the teeth still embedded in the jawbone, that caught Ramierez's eyes. At first he thought that was what the Sarge-Major was staring at, but then realized that his friend, who had more than a foot in height on him, could actually see up and over the lip of the canted jawbone into the ruins of the mouth itself, and that he was transfixed by what he saw within that area. Even most Stormhounds would not have leant any special signifigance to the black, white, grey and orange patterns on the cloth scraps, but the pattern and coloration was instantly recognizable to anyone who had ever served in the precursor Hellhound platoons! Very few of those uniforms existed outside of war museums, and only three people in all of Orb had access to a supply of new ones. Two of those people were standing side by side right now. And the third was...

Ramierez took a step forward, intending to clamber up onto the half cooked jawbone to peer at what lay beyond, an icy fist of dread clutching at his heart and guts already. Thom's suddenly raised arm barred him from advancing any further, and Ramierez knew better than to try and push past the limb... the Sarge-Major had more strength in one arm than most men, even most Stormhounds, had in their entire upper bodies! Furthermore, he wasn't blind to the way Thom's chest was hitching and shuddering, and knew that were the blue eyed hound war-helmet to be removed, the blue eyes of the giant man behind them would be filled with tears of disbelieving sorrow. It wasn't until his HUD began to blur that Richard realized he was crying too, as he slowly dropped to his knees where he was, and then forward onto his hands, clear liquid dropping and pooling at the front of his mask as he clutched in vain at the pavement, his grenade skittering away like a dropped baseball, thankfully not armed. First as a Hellhound and later as a Stormhound, Richard was no stranger to death in combat, nor to losing valued friends. The risk of death was part and parcel of his job and his life, and the jobs and lives of his friends.

But somehow, this death, this lost friend, was more harrowing and painful than anything Richard had ever suffered before! Though long divorced from his parents and any blood relatives, and having never found Mrs. Right to settle down with in a permanent fashion, Richard realized that this must be how it felt to lose someone who wasn't just a friend, but was family, a brother in all but blood, and closer than that regardless! A fluttering scrap of bloodied cloth, perhaps a fragment of a pocket, blew into his blurred field of view, and he compulsively snatched at it, cradling the ragged piece of fabric in both hands as he sat back and stared sightlessly down the street. He'd never wanted to deny a loss so much in his entire life, but Richard had never made a habit of denying reality, no matter how painful. He was dead. Cyprus Finch, the infamous Lieutenant, was dead. Cyprus Finch, the man whom he'd gone through hell with, time and again, in some of the most desperate and dangerous battles of modern history, was dead!

"It's not fair, sir..." Richard moaned, half to himself. "We were the ones who were supposed to die, not you..."

For his part, Thom was beyond such things as words, his throat closing up and trying to strangle him every time he tried to speak, to emit any vocal noise other than a raw edged whine, like a wounded dog limping determinedly forward. His stature gave him an uncompromising view of the interior of Fenris's jaw, and his training and decades of experience looking at the aftermath of battles involving the mess heavy and explosive weapons made of the human form gave him the ability to pick out what had once been the greatest man he'd ever known from the blackened and shredded pulp of the BALOR. Never had Thom wished to not have his decades of experience more so than he did right then, never more so had he wished to not be able to make sense of what he was seeing, even to be struck blind so he wouldn't have to see it at all! But he was not blind, he still had his experiences, and he could make only too much sense of what he was seeing. That it was Cyprus, he had no doubts... his earlier suspicions had been confirmed by the Hellhound uniform scraps, and the proof before his eyes was as compelling as it was nauseating!

_Why, sir? Why would you do such a thing? You'd just come back. How could you be gone again so soon?_ Thom thought brokenly, his body stumbling forward with mechanical clumsiness until he was next to the smouldering jawbone. He carefully reached over the jagged edge escarpment of shattered tooth stumps, watching his hand move as if it belonged to someone else, as he carefully, reverently retrieved an object from the blasted and burnt meat and bone slurry that filled the scoop of the jaw. At close range, in an enclosed space, the detonation of a dozen high explosive and fragmentary grenades wasn't liable to leave much in the way of recognizable remains of even a very well armored human form. In some ways, Thom had known that a dignified, sterilized end on a clean sheeted bed wasn't the fate of men like him and his friends, but seeing his best friend, the man he admired more than all others, reduced to this state, even as a result of his own will, made him feel ill in a way no other dead body, no matter how mangled, ever could.

_A corpse is a corpse, whether it was made that way by a bullet between the eyes or the mutilating teeth of a wood-chipper. Whether an intact body or a wet trashbag of minced parts, death is equally ugly in my eyes._ The words weren't his own, but rather a memory of words spoken to him relatively early on in his life, when he and Cyprus had worked as "cleaners" for Asmodeus, coming in after he completed a "job" to sterilize the area and dispose of any evidence as was required. Thom had reacted badly to having to mop up a few bodies that had been put through an industrial grade trash compactor by his patron, but Cyprus had gotten down onto his hands and knees in the blood and guts with just those words and a shrug, soapy sponge in hand. It had been one of the first times he'd ever really been in awe of his friend, realizing that far more than just a bit of muscle mass and background history seperated him from the other man.

Lifting the object free from the morass of flesh where it was lodged, not sure what bits to wipe away and what bits rightfully belonged on it, Thom held the scorched and cracked Hellhound battle-mask, distinguished from its Stormhound look-alikes mostly by the more pronounced viciousness of the hound sculpture and the red camera lenses versus blue ones, up to his face. The helmet was the strongest part of a Hellhound's armor, since it was designed to protect that most vital of locations, the head and brain, but even so, close range exposure to the detonation of a dozen grenades had split the hard plastic and metal polymer construction open like a cracked peanut. The hound muzzle was fragmented to bits, the camera eyes all but gone save for tiny splinters of red glass clinging to the edges of the sockets, and the entire helmet was riven through by cracks, so that it looked like it had been beaten with sledgehammers for an hour straight. He cradled the helmet gingerly, suspecting that the slightest stress would break it apart irreparably. It was the most intact remnant of his friend, his boss, his adopted brother... Cyprus Finch, Lieutenant First Class. It was simultaneously proof of death... and proof of victory despite it!

The thunderous tread of a Gundam from the near distance heralded the arrival of the Amaterasu, Queen Zala-Attha stepping forward, closely followed by her husband in the Simurgh and the remaining Orb Mobile Suits crowding behind as best they could. The massive energy emissions of the Hameya's Chosen system were gone, the supportive system shut down to conserve its few remaining minutes of operating time now that the immediate threat was gone, allowing the Amaterasu to move and fight on its own once more. In the middle distance, the dark and thorny figures of the Kratos and Lucifer stood like statues, the reactions of their pilots impossible to guess as they looked on in silence. The rumbling echoes of explosions and crumbling buildings from other sections of the city distantly reached ears that had briefly been starved of sound, reminding all and sundry that while Fenris Wolf may have been brought down, Jormundgandr remained at large within the city, and it was anyone's guess where the third BALOR, Gorgon, was or what it was doing.

For that matter, USN and Edenite forces were still engaged in the area surrounding the harbor, and the skies were cloudy with atmospheric entry contrails from additional reinforcements of USN and Solar Knight forces moving to protect the battered and war torn islands of Orb from the invaders, since if Orb was to be lost, the USN would lose its central supply depot and greatest surface based military asset, the Mass Driver. A turning point in the fight had perhaps been reached, but the battle itself was far from over. And anyone with a gram of empathy in their brains could hear the unremitting fury in the stentorian saurian bellows of Jormundgandr, as the other BALOR reacted to the sudden and unexpected demise of his sister Chimera. The crocodilian BALOR renewed his attacks upon anything and everything he encountered, or even got close to him, with redoubled fury, even as he turned from his previous directionless wandering and rushed towards the corpse of Fenris Wolf at a lumbering sprint, burrowing into and through even the largest of buildings that interposed in his path.

Cagalli searched for words to say, a commendation, an epitaph, something to express her gratitude, sorrow and condolences to Glory and Ramierez, as two of the bravest and staunchest men she'd ever encountered all but bawled openly across the airwaves as they mourned the sudden loss of Cyprus Finch, the rest of the Stormhounds showing signs of cracking and strain as well, even as they maintained their watchful perimeter as best they could. Her mind came up blank, her tongue failing to pass even a simple "I'm sorry" through her lips, but then again, perhaps the mere fact that she was choked up and at a loss for words was somehow enough for those grieving on the ground below. She was after all the storied Queen of legend, who had triumphed through personal tragedy after personal tragedy, if even she could offer no easy response to what had happened, then the gravity of the situation could not be much better expressed!

And then there was no more time for grief or sorrow, because with a roar of crumbling masonry and shattering concrete, Jormundgandr burst into view, a mile or so down the avenue, broken pieces of building raining down across his broad, scaly back before bursting into puffs of gritty powder as they encountered the ultra-sonic vibrations that emanated from his flesh, which allowed him to burrow through solid ground as if it were soft silt. A Dawndrake swooped down from on high, lashing at the exposed dorsal surface of the BALOR with his electrified whip-chain that extended from his shield forearm, looking to break the creature's spine, or at least stun it with the powerful electrical discharges racing through the metallic links. However, just shy of making contact with the BALOR's skin, the chain also burst into fragments, vibrated apart by the sonic vibrations that sheathed the BALOR, the strike unfufilled.

In reply, the BALORs spiked tail club rose up, the tail swinging at an angle impossible for a purely natural creature, to smash the hovering Mobile Suit from the sky like a man would swat a hornet. Armor segments spalled and crunched away from both the tail impact and the collision with the streets below, the Dawndrake embedding itself almost a meter into the pavement, facedown, before blearily trying to push its way to its feet once more. However, the pilot was fighting against both the stunning impact of the tail sweep as well as the paralyzing psychic influence projected by Jormundgandr himself, at the Dawndrake had only partially risen before the front torso of the BALOR had eeled around, the two enormous jutting cannon muzzles projecting from the BALOR's foremost shoulders glowing with catastrophic light before vomiting forth a crackling blue-red torrent of positrons and plasma, as the twin 220cm Lohengrin class weapons discharged, vaporizing the Dawndrake, as well as most of a fifty meter wide, two thousand meter long strech of cityscape, scoured down to molten bedrock by the powerful weapons!

Even at a mile distant, the backwash effect of the capital warship category weapons was enough to pick Ramierez and Glory up off their feet and hurl them backwards like dolls for almost a half dozen meters before dashing Stormhound PUMA's gave their senior NCO's some cover from the crashing winds, while others hustled forwad to escort the two dismounted Stormhounds and their precious artifacts to a safe distance from the battle. With most of their ammunition and power expended against Fenris Wolf, the Stormhounds had little more to give against Jormundgandr, at least without some time to rearm and resupply, and so they were forced to fall back to give room for the remaining Orb Mobile Suits, led by their Queen and her consort, as they moved forward to engage the rampaging Chimera-Cyborg. Athrun took the lead, though he was careful not to approach too closely, already too well acquainted with the psychic disruption aura's that these BALORs seemed to project to hamper those who sought to close with them.

Jormundgandr's tail swept around again, though the Simurgh was far out of range of the knotty bone club, the technological iris opening of a 50cm FRALA built into the tail hurled a spear of solid blue-white light into the Simurgh's chest, causing the Gundam's armor to glow pink hot along the affected area, but not much else, the specialized Heat Absorbing Conducive armor designed especially for defending against such purely thermal based attacks. Heedless of the attack's failure, the berserk BALOR opened up with the six 120mm gatling beam cannons mounted one to each of its six knees, spraying the bewinged Gundam with a horizontal hailstorm of glowing green plasma bolts, which it weathered like spring raindrops. Belatedly realizing that energy weapons were useless against this newest foe, Jormundgandr launched VTP missiles from the tubes mounted in his hindquarters. However, the Simurgh was backed up by the Amaterasu and a half dozen other machines, and their combined firepower swept even the highly agile, heavily armored VTP missiles from the sky before they could reach even halfway to their target.

The return fire from the Orb contingent of Mobile Suits struck the BALOR solidly, as he made little attempt to dodge, just bulling forward obstinately through the withering beams and exploding shells, trusting to his heavily reinforced scale hide and thick Phase Shift armored metallic plates inserted just beneath it, to see him through the worst his pathetic opponents could throw at him. Special scales inverted themselves, revealing Gesichmedig-Panzer beam deflecting projectors mounted on their reverse sides, further warding the charging BALOR against the majority of harm. FRALA beams dug into its body, cooking meat and scorching scales, and Jormundgandr's right front foot suddenly went slack and numb as the bones and nerves controlling it, along with the mechanical backups, were seared through by the Simurgh's 50mm FRALA beam, but the BALOR had five more legs to support his weight, and the loss of one did not appreciably deter or slow the furious Chimera as he rapidly closed the distance between him and those who had done his sister Chimera harm!

"If those eruptor cannons are recharged, now might be a good time to use them..." Athrun observed through gritted teeth, as he squeezed the triggers of his FRALA as quickly as he could, as they seemed to be the only weapons with much ability to harm the onrushing monster, and even then, the effect was considerably less than he might have wished for, his FRALA were just too small of caliber to put out enough heat to penetrate entirely through the augmented flesh and bone of the BALOR. He was hurting it, but hurting it wasn't enough, not at the rate it was closing on them!

"I'm working on it!" Cagalli hissed back, her jaw just as clenched as her husbands as she fought to steady a persistent jitter in the Amaterasu's arms. Something had been damaged in her weapon bracing systems when she'd been tackled by that Eddie Wraith, and now she couldn't hold her targeting cursor steady for the life of her... or the death, as it might very well soon turn out to be! She was only gonna get one shot, and if she missed, then... well, they might be able to fly away, but judging from the purple-white sparks starting to drool from the corners of the BALORs long jaw, its primary weapon systems were close to being charged again, and at this range, there was no way to evade a blast from three conjoined Ragnarok mega-mjolnir class particle weapons, certainly not from something as twitchy fast as the BALOR. And besides, the longer they delayed killing this thing, the more of her city, named for her beloved father, was going to be destroyed by it!

Squinting her eyes, figuratively if not literally, Cagalli elbowed the Amaterasu past the Simurgh and opened fire with twisting orange beams of volcanic light, one from either eruptor cannon, but even as she fired, Cagalli was cursing, because her movement had thrown off her tenuous aim, skewering rubble and pavement with her sun-hot beams, but little less, and as she tried to drag the coruscating beams together to bisect the BALOR, the damaged systems in her arms finally overloaded and exploded, cutting off the orange beams as surely as if a light switched had been flipped, sparks and oily smoke spurting from her arm joints as her arms froze, the internal joints melted by the frying systems, leaving her stuck with both arms awkwardly extended in front of her. "SHIT!" Cagalli swore, an entirely inadequate word fo the situation, but the best she could muster on short notice.

With the BALOR only a quarter of a kilometer distant, Cagalli knew there was no time for someone with her reflexes to dodge. She'd gambled on the integrity of her weapons, despite knowing they were damaged, and she'd lost her bet, and it was going to be the death of her and everyone nearby, because no Orbite soldier would willingly abandon his Queen to die, and Athrun sure as hell wasn't going to abandon her either, the damned fool! She could see the ominous black form of the Lucifer moving forward beyond the BALOR, one remaining functional arm raised with one of those god-awful powerful rifles held frimly in it, and for a moment Cagalli's heart leapt joyously at the prospect of Kira stepping in to save her at the last moment. Until she realized he wasn't stepping in at all, he was just maneuvering for a better shot once the BALOR had steamrolled across the hapless Orb units, accomplishing his dirty work for him!

Jormundgandr's mouth cranked open, revealing the forest of teeth, and more importantly, the triple barreled weapon that replaced most of the BALOR's tongue, glowing arcs of purple-white lightning arcing away from the three muzzles of the Ragnaroks, as enough energy to crack an entire mountain in two was channeled down the barrels from the volatile capacitors mounted in the BALOR's throat area. Cagalli and Athrun, and a dozen more people besides, got an up close and personal look at a violet and white vision of hell itself, just moments from being unleashed in an unstoppable torrent. But even as Jormundgandr fired his primary weapon, his head was forcibly jerked to one side, discharging the conjoined violet lightning bolts off to the left and down into the ground as an interposing leg kicked the BALOR soundly at the hinge of his jaw, sending the entire creature staggering a step to the side, crashing down on one side in the rubble that lined the left side of the street, as billowing clouds of molten dust and blasted chunks of rock rained down across a several square kilometer radius, a fifty meter deep, three hundred meter wide crater scooped out of the city bedrock where the Ragnarok beams had touched down.

The Amaterasu, Simurgh and other Orb machines were knocked prone and rolled away by the concussive force of the near miss, many of the machines suffering severe armor damage from flying debris, since their armor was designed to protect mostly against energy attacks, not physical assaults. However, none were so badly damaged that they failed to see who their savior was, though many of them did not believe their eyes regardless, as most would have considered it a cold day in hell before this particular person ever interceded on anyone's behalf, much less theirs! But regardless of disbelief, it was the Kratos that was now standing before them, its right shin deformed and dripping spatters of armor-goop from where the kick had made contact with the ultrasonic field that protected Jormundgandr's flesh from physical assault. As if sensing their incredulous stares, the Kratos briefly rounded on them, pointing directly at the downed Amaterasu and Simurgh with a pair of sword claws.

"You two can't die just yet." Frost growled. "Not until the Boytoy comes back, and I can kill you in front of him to watch the light in his eyes go out and then back on again with renewed fire. You're both a poor substitute for Pink or his spawnlings, but lacking them, you'll have to do. You will die, Fiery and Loser Zala-Attha, I promise you that. And it will be a bad, slow, painful, worthless sort of death, fitting for your kind of people. But it will come at my hands and at my time of choosing, in service to my own desires, not because of bad luck or random chance. This is the second time I have allowed you to live. Don't forget that. In fact, you should probably agonize over it and stew on it. That would make me happy..."

With those words said, the Kratos turned back to the flummoxed Jormundandr, who was just regaining his feet, his lower right jaw livid with bruising from the tremendous impact of the thruster assisted kick. Caught with the Kratos at his side, rather than directly above, in front, or at rear, the BALOR's offensive options were limited to the knee mounted gatling beam cannons, which were as useless against LCR armor as they were HAC, or a swipe from the mace-tail in conjuction with the disabling effects of the mind paralyzing psychic aura the Chimera projected. However, Frost was more than ably protected against even such a powerful psychic intrusion by the aegis of the master psychic manipulator, the Grand Chimera, Caller, who had claimed him, and he backhanded the tail-club away with a flick of his oversized left gauntlet, sword claws shredding the tailtip and knotty bone lump like they were made of soggy bread even as the strike was deflected, the QC weaponry immune to the vibratory effects of the ultrasonic field, at least in the short term.

Trumpting with enraged pain, Jormundgandr whirled towards the Kratos, attempting to gore and trample the offending Gundam in an animalistic frenzy, only to find himself running end on into the curved blade of the Kratos's scythe, which sank half its length into the shocked BALOR's chest before Jormundgandr was able to check his forward momentum, blood boiling in a torrent from the gaping wound, some of it flashing instantly to steam as the QC blade pierced through sections of the cooling systems for the FPR augmentations that functioned as the BALOR's heart and power source. With a twist of his right arm, Frost dragged the scythe blade out of the wound he had caused, widening it even further and severing the left foreleg of the the Chimera in the process, all but eviscerating the cyborg! Even such a grievous injury wasn't enough to entirely disable the BALOR though, and the Kratos was sent stumbling back as Jormundgandr slammed his head sidelong into the Gundam's chest, all but lifting the grey and crimson armored Gundam from its feet.

Jormundgandr aimed his shoulder cannons at the off balance Kratos from point blank range, even as his life blood poured from his body cavity in great pressurized splurts, Serpentine feeling the beginnings of terminal disconnection spreading through his alter-ego as emergency systems activated, forcing the BALOR and Meister's mind meld apart as the BALOR began to die, bleeding out from wounds too depp and severe for automatic healing and coagulating systems to staunch. However, both Serpentine and Jormundgandr were determined to take down their slayer with them, and as rosy light built in the depths of the two Lohengrin cannons, their determination seemed to have borne fruit. That is, until a shrieking flare of flickering red light sped through the air and took the unsuspecting BALOR in the side of the skull, the Ion Disintegator pellet evaporating pretty much the entire right side of Jormandgandr's skull and brain, as well as Serpentine in his cockpit blister, in a flash of short lived nucleonic energies. Even with half his head missing, the BALOR seemed on the verge of firing a parting shot, but then the reactor-heart gave out under the damage and the Basilisk Chimera collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, the Lohengrin going dark again, power stopped short of critical firing levels.

This time it was Frost's turn to send a puzzled and not altogether pleased look off to the side, where the damaged Lucifer was holstering its rifle once more. "What the fuck do you think you are doi..." Frost started to snarl.

"You can't die just yet." Kira answered, his intonation bored and challenging in equal measure. "Not until this war is over and done with and the Edenite people are free to live as they like, without fear of persecution and prejudice. You're a poor substitute for my friends, but lacking them, you'll have to do. You will die, Frost, I promise you that. It will be a quick, painless and entirely unremarkable death, the opposite of what you no doubt wish for. But it will come at my hands and at a time of my choosing, in service to my own desires, not because of bad luck or random chance. This is the second time I have allowed you to live. Don't forget that. In fact, you should probably agonize over it and stew on it. That would make me somewhat happy." Kira smiled inside his cockpit, imagining the twisted expression on Frost's face at having his own sneering taunts parroted back at him only a few seconds later. He turned away from the slowly recovering Orb forces, and away from the Kratos as well, a brazen display of disregard for potential danger that sent a very clear message to everyone around him.

"It's time for us to leave. We've accomplished our mission, and more besides." Kira ordered, both to Lilia and Frost, and also more widely, projecting to all his remaining forces, both Edenite and Chimera. "We have nothing to gain besides increased casualties anymore. The Mass Driver is destroyed, if not precisely how I planned for it to be, and the Orb military infrastructure has been decimated, while significant USN losses have been suffered, including at least two of their three newest superweapons. Furthermore, unless I am much mistaken, my sister and brother in law are going to have some very hard questions for the USN leadership involving the deployment of these new superweapons." Kira, or more accurately, Leviathan, had picked up on the open air conversation between Cagalli and Admiral Icarus, and the thought of the coming dissension between Orb and the rest of the USN was quite heartening. But the important thing was that the Mass Driver was destroyed, and the USN had suffered serious losses in failing to protect it. Best to pack up and retreat while his forces were still more or less capable of it, and while Leviathan still had the energy to force another breach in the Glasshouse.

"KIRA, wait!" Cagalli cried, seeing her brother's machine turn away from the Orb forces and begin making preparations to leave. She'd seen her brother in battle enough times to know when he was merely relocating and when he was actually retreating, and this was the latter. If her brother heard her implorement, he gave no sign, as the Lucifer lifted off and rapidly disappeared into the distance, heralding a much wider retreat phenomenon by Eddie forces pulling back to the harbor proper, within easy telekinetic reach of the gargantuan Grand Chimera whale that still filled much the same harbor, a reach that the USN forces had quickly learned it was courting death to dare. It was at almost the same time that radio contact was re-established with the Dreadnaught and the remnants of the Kaguya island defense forces that had been deployed around the Mass Driver, as they retreated within short range comm distance of Nara-Attha City and reported the total loss of the Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver. Caught off guard by the sudden withdrawal, and still reeling in large part from the rampage of the BALORs, the remaining USN and Orb forces gave little thought to pursuit, instead just glad for a reprieve to reorganize and reorder their shattered battle lines, stiffening weakened or destoyed sections with influxes of reinforcments as they waited on a new strategy to be developed and implemented by high command.

xxxx

**Geosynchronous orbit, above Orb, USNS **_**Incarnate**_**, Flagship of the Solar Protection Fleet, Bridge, same time**

"I don't care what sort of problems you're having with communications, I want that thing recalled to the main island right now!" Fleet Admiral David Icarus all but bellowed into his chair intercom, the channel connecting him with the detachment of FEAR scientists and technicians that were responsible for the BALORs, of which only Gorgon remained operational, FEAR's last word in Gundam technology appearing to be more a "last whisper" judging from their pathetic performance! "We've got them on the run, and if we act quickly we can surround and capture or kill the lot of them! But we can't go anywhere near them as long as that goddamned telekinetic Moby Dick is protecting them, and Gorgon is the only thing that we have that can possibly stand a chance against that monster long enough for the rest of our forces to do their jobs!"

Icarus listened to the tinny reply from the other end of the comm, and his face alternately flushed and paled, in a manner fit to make ever other naval officer on the bridge flinch nervously. He might be a pompous asshole most of the time, but he was still the commander in chief of the USN regular forces, and the man behind the entire Solar Protection Fleet, who had helped finance and design every new class of capital warship currently in use by the USN. Admiral Icarus was a blowhard, a political sychophant and an unpleasant opportunist, but he was also a pretty damned fine warship officer with a strong rapport with his chosen crew, and the sight of him all but chewing off his tongue in rage did little for the calmness of his staff and subordinates. He only ever got so mad that he was speechless when things were going very, very wrong indeed.

"BERSERK? What the fuck do you mean, BERSERK? I thought they were fully under our control? What about the fucking failsafe systems?" Icarus screamed into his comm, eyes all but bulging from his florid features. Abruptly, his anger seemed to implode, and he slumped in his command chair. "You know what? Don't even bother trying to explain it to me. The gist of it is that we dropped these things down there and now two of them are dead and the last one is out of our control, and we can't get it back. That's all I needed to know, Doctor. I assure you though, this not the last time you'll be hearing about this subject from me." Icarus vindictively shut off the comm channel before the flustered scientist could attempt a counter arguement. Straightening in his chair, Icarus took off his cap and wiped his brow clean of sweat, before resettling his hat and glaring around the bridge, the crew of which were studiously devoted to their consoles and displays, avoiding his eyes.

In truth, his show of anger was more a front than anything else, a cover for the deep seated sense of unease that had stolen over him in the wake of the unexpected conversation he'd had with the Queen of Orb. He'd ordered all external calls held off during the battle, precisely because he didn't want to deal with whiny bitches and braggarts from Orb begging for help or second guessing the deployment of USN forces just because the battle was happening on "their" ground. Unfortunately, he reckoned without the Orb Queen's personal rapport with Orb's AI system, and Orb's AI system's personal rapport with NAMARA. Icarus wondered if perhaps someone should more closely investigate the relationship of the two USN AI's, because it seemed plain to him that they were exhibiting a rather larger degree of free will than he would have thought permissable. That was a topic for another time though.

Getting the call from Orb's Queen as she was embroiled in the midst of the combat below had unsettled him enough that he'd blurted out something every officer on his bridge was thinking, but no one had the balls to say out loud. And he'd done it over an open, presumably recorded channel. That was going to be problematic in the not so distant future, as he had no doubt the fiery Queen of Orb would soon be kicking down Durandel's door, demanding answers and restitution for the unfortunate but necessary events involving the BALORs. And she was going to have sound bytes from none other than Icarus himself apparently making light of the loss of not only Orb troops, but USN forces as well, as "acceptable casualty ratios". Which were definitely a thing, at least once you got into the strategic level of military command, where war was more a mathematical problem than an emotional one, but regardless of how real they were, they weren't something the general public liked to acknowledge as permissble and real. He was going to get absolutely crucified by the press, and unlike Durandel's lapdog, Rey, Icarus would be gladly hung out to dry as a scapegoat at a moments notice!

That is, unless he had something else to hold up as a shield to deflect the inevitable storm of criticism and pointing fingers. Something real, something daring, something unexpected, perhaps even heroic, in a way. Something that would show that despite his verbal slip, he wasn't just a cold, unfeeling bastard with no care for the lives of the soldiers on the ground, however close to being true that might be. It wasn't that he didn't care about them all, it was just that he couldn't afford to care about them all, or he'd never be able to make effective strategic command decisions. And a good many of them probably never would have amounted to anything much on their own anyway, so it wasn't like he was stripping the world of specialness or anything. Rising to his feet, Icarus made his decision, and cast his gaze and an imperiously pointing finger towards the gunnery control section of the _Incarnate'_s expansive bridge area, hamming it up a bit for the recording devices to make a good media clip. "Charge the FRALA for orbit to surface bombardment!" Icarus ordered forcefully.

He turned to his helm officers next. "Coordinate with the gunnery department to sweep across the target point, and be ready for real time helm control." He ordered next, as the _Incarnate_'s primary weapon system was one of those were you more or less aimed the entire ship, rather than the individual weapon mounts. He turned back to the gunnery control station, where the chief gunnery officer, a Captain, was looking at him attentively, probably already guessing his intentions, but waiting for them to be verbalized. They'd been holding off on orbital bombardments because of the civilian factor, and because some of the _Incarnate_'s weapon systems were powerful enough to potentially destabilize the not entirely extinct volcano that Orb was built out of. See, they cared enough not to destroy the entire nation just to fight off a single invasion! However, there was one section of the battlefield where there no civilians still alive, nor USN or Orb forces for that matter, and was far enough removed from the main volcano that an orbital strike was feasible.

Of course the only reason it was feasible was that the one object that had been constructed in the relatively remote and geologically stable area, the Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver, was now more scrap than not, as a result of the attack of the Eddies as well as the berserk rampage of Gorgon. No doubt Dostanya and her crony doctors would scream bloody murder, but a rogue superweapon was no good to the USN, and the longer it was allowed to rampage out of control, the worse Icarus himself would come out looking, as he was the senior USN military commander for this defensive operation. Of course he had never okayed the deployment of the BALORs, but that would be a detail easily swept under the rug by the outraged public. "Target the remains of the Mass Driver control center, specifically the BALOR designated Gorgon." Icarus explained tersely.

"Uh, confirming you want to target the BALOR designated Gorgon?" The chief gunnery officer replied, more to save his own ass for the benefit of the recorders than because he thought he'd misheard the Admiral.

"Confirmed. I want that monster flashed to steam. The Mass Driver facility is already a write off, and our scientists have lost control of their creation and cannot regain it. We have to destroy it before it can cause any more damage or friendly casualties." Icarus answered, grateful for the softball remark, which allowed him to expound for the sake of the recorders as well. He then uttered three words that he normally found to be extremely distasteful. "I'll take responsibility." He reassured his subordinate, who nodded, glad to have the burden of explaining why they'd decided to vaporize one of the USN's most top secret weapon assets taken off his shoulders. With the formalities taken care of, the highly trained and experienced crew of the _Incarnate_, some of the best sailors ever to sail in the void navy, got to work to make their Admial's order a reality.

In truth there weren't that many preparations to make, other than a slight adjustment to the ship's angle of orientation and the removal of the safety blocks of the FRALA systems, as all four 125cm lasers, as well as the vast majority of the _Incarnate_'s orbit to surface capable weaponry, had been loaded and charged for some time now, in preparation for the unlikely but still possible order to commence orbital saturation fire in support of ground based forces. Tweaks of the attitude adjustment thrusters brought the immense battleship's nose around into the proper targeting position, and gigajoules of energy pumped out of large scale Fusion Pulse Reactors and focused into the laser generation systems. Less than a minute after the final confirmation was given, four pinpricks of azure-white light glowed in the recesses of the FRALA blisters that were built into the pyramidal flanks of the Incarnate class vessel, though in truth the light beams were only small in comparison to the size of the ship itself, as each of the four beams was almost as thick as some men were tall!

The four beams of coherent light conjoined at a point about a hundred kilometers below the _Incarnate_'s nosetip, forming a single, five meter wide beam that arrowed down into the clear atmosphere of the planet below, the beam sinking down into the ocean a half kilometer off the shore of Kaguya island, vaporizing a million gallons of water in a microsecond and boring a molten glass rimmed hole a further quarter kilometer into the seabed itself. The beam then swept sharply sideways as the _Incarnate_'s attitude thrusters fired again, turning the entire ship a minute fraction of a degree to the side, a minute fraction of a degree that translated into nearly ten kilometers of distance planetside, as the glaring beam of blue-white light sliced a long groove in the ocean floor, then up onto, into and through Kaguya island itself. Everything within a hundred feet of either side of the beam either melted, ignited or flashed straight to ash and steam, such was the heat released!

The FRALA beams only lasted for about a second all told, any more and the weapons themselves would overheat and melt, despite the cooling effect of exposure to near total vacuum, but they lasted long enough to do the job that Icarus intended them to do. The frenzied Gorgon was far too preoccupied in its mindless destruction of the Mass Driver facility to notice the huge laser beam touch down out to sea, and when the beam sliced, it sliced so fast only a Latent Newtype could have possibly dodged it in time, and even then only if they were already in motion! And for all Gorgon's telekinetic might, light has neither substance nor mass, and thus is entirely impossible to affect directly with telekinesis. The Incarnate class' main guns were designed to be powerful enough to destroy anything but another Incarnate class or similar massive space object in a single hit, certainly even the protective systems of a BALOR were insufficient to the task of warding away the near terajoule of pure heat energy directed upon it like a magnifying glass would an ant!

Icarus had ordered the BALOR vaporized, and vaporized it was, skin, bones, cybernetic augmentations... all of it cooking away to ash, then dust and then even less than that, all in a bare instant before the beam itself even fully crossed the point where the BALOR had been standing. The island was left a firestorm, vegetation ablaze from coast to coast along the edges of the beam's path, the path itself a glassy, smoking scar as deep as a Mobile Suit was tall that cut straight through the spine of the island, and would eventually partially fill with water, once it had cooled enough to not flash it to steam at first touch. The Mass Driver control center was already mostly little more than ruins, even before the orbital strike, but afterwards, the entire site might as well have never been there at all, the only tell tale traces being the bubbling pools of molten metal and stone that had once been large buildings and launch tracks.

Back up in orbit, Icarus slumped heavily in his command chair and sighed in relief, softly enough for the crew to pretend they could not hear. It wouldn't fix all of his problems, but now that he had proof positive of intervening on the behalf of Orb's soldiers, as well as those of the USN itself, to take care of a rogue weapon that had been deployed without his permission, he would have ammunition of his own to throw at Dostanya and Durandel if they tried to throw him to the press vultures. And truth be told, as a staunch proponent of Mobile Suit disarmament in favor of things like capital warships, Icarus was not sad to have destroyed the BALOR in the first place. After the disasterous loss of the _Monolith_ at Victoria, it felt good to remind people that his Incarnate class super-battleships weren't just floating orbital targets... when properly used and commanded, they were quite literally the most powerful weapons in all of the USN!

Of course, it did rankle to have to let the retreating Eddie forces go unmolested, as they used their monster to create another mini tidal wave, this time aimed away from Orb, briefly shorting out the Glasshouse field once more... an oversight in its programming that he was sure Orb's engineers would be quick to correct. By moving to bombard Kaguya, the _Incarnate_ was now out of good firing position to attack the Eddie forces as they left Orb waters, to try and fire again would put his beam dangerously near the remnants of Nara-Attha City, and he'd provoked the Orbites enough for one day already, no need to get them beating down his door with pitchforks and torches for immolating their already ruined city with a chancy shot. And by the time his ship had reoriented its position, the Eddies, if they had any sense at all, would either be long gone or deeply submerged and thus untargetable by the systems he had available to him in orbit. Even as massive as the Leviathan creature was, Earth's oceans were far and above big enough to hide it like a dust mote in a desert!

Now that the battle was over, it was time for the real difficult fight... the political reprecussions of something that could only peripherally be called a victory, coming at a time when USN public confidence in their leadership was already quite shaky. Icarus found that he was actually looking forward, in a way, to seeing how Gilbert would try and spin the catastrophic series of events that started with Blue Monday, continued with Rey's Solar Knight scandals and now culminated in the Invasion of Orb and loss of the single most important terrestrial military asset of the USN, Orb's Mass Driver, due not to Eddie attack, not entirely, but mostly to the actions of a rogue USN superweapon! Oh yes, he was DEFINITELY looking forward to seeing how Durandel explained the BALORs to the populace and especially Orb...

xxxx

**Orb, Villa Pacifica, January 23rd, 6:15 am**

"So is it safe to go out?" Alice Elsman asked in her usual direct and demanding fashion, as she shot an impatient look at her older brother Roy, as he stood by the door to their temporary guest room that led out into the hallway. Roy was looking at a handheld device of his own creation, about the size of a pocket calculator, to which he had plugged in a fiber optic wire camera that he'd fed under the doorjamb, so that he could look out into the hall without actually opening the door. The camera wire as all but translucent, and only a little thicker than a few human hairs put together, which in the world of spy technology made it about as good as any seven and a half year old could be expected to make on his own in his parent's workshop, even with access to the best materials, though still quite clunky and crummy by professional standards. No doubt had any Stormhounds been standing guard out in the hall, or moving through on patrol, the sensors in their war-helms would have spotted the fiber optic bundle in a heartbeat, but Roy was in luck, and the hall was perfectly empty.

"No thanks to your pestering, yes, it is." Roy replied irritably, looking down his nose at his pushy younger sibling. For all that she was only a little over six years old, an age when most children, even Coordinators, were more concerned with dolls and morning show cartoons, Alice was a hellion, a word his father used affectionately, and his mother used in exasperation. Some people, especially those in WoGB, mistook Alice for having a nuturing and caring personality, since she liked playing supportive and restorative characters, but Roy knew the exact opposite was true. Alice liked to be in control, and since most group challenges couldn't progress without a "healer" class, she could dictate policy to other squadron members and they had to more or less go along with her desires or be forced to wait for who knew how long for another support class to become free. She wasn't mean spirited about it, she just believed she knew best how to accomplish most anything, and so appointed herself leader whenever she could.

Something that was far easier to accomplish online than off of it, as it was hard for most people, even among her peer and friend group, to take a bossy six year old entirely seriously, especially as she was by far the physically smallest of their group, and could best be described by the term "cute", despite her best attempts to appear tomboyish and fierce. She had her father's unruly blond hair and her mother's liquid turquoise eyes, and seemingly most of the rest of her genes as well, while Roy had been the recipient of the coveted "tall and lanky" genes from their father, much to Alice's disgust. Of course it was still far too early to tell for sure, as both of them were far removed from puberty, but that was the way things were tending towards. They'd both inherited their father's tanned, mediterranean skin, though that was by design, as it was advantageous for an Orbite to not burn easily in the direct sunlight the island nation enjoyed for much of the year, a problem their pale skinned mother had always struggled with.

"Good. Let's go. We're gonna be late, and you know Mina and Jamie are gonna be insufferable about it, just like they always are! Hameya, why do they have to turn EVERYTHING into a competition?" Alice griped, as she eased the door open, glancing both ways just to be sure her brother wasn't conning her, or just plain wrong, as was more likely for her timid sibling. Roy sure was smart, everyone said so, but his smartness was all book smartness, and his closeted nature made him both easy to bully and hard to rely on when she wanted to attempt something daring. Alice wouldn't have put it past him to deliberately get them caught just because he was freaking out about breaking "the rules"! They'd been ordered to stay in their room the night before by their weary and worried parents, which Roy apparently took to mean that they should wait there until Mom and Dad came back to retrieve them.

That wasn't what Mom and Dad had said though, as Alice very clearly remembered them saying "go to sleep and don't go wandering around all night, we'll be back in the morning to get you". Well, it wasn't night anymore, now it was morning, or it would be soon, in another few minutes when the sun came up over the horizon, so as far as she was concerned, she'd already fufilled her obligation to not wander around at night. Alice had learned early on, through close association with her father, how to fufill the letter of a promise while twisting the spirit to her best advantage. If Mom really wanted her to follow the rules so badly, she would have given far more specific directions on the limits of her actions. Snagging her reluctant sibling by the wrist so that he didn't go getting lost somehow, or more likely, circle around and retreat back to their borrowed bedroom to wait like the goody two shoes he was, Alice pulled him along as she headed towards the agreed upon patio where her friends had decided to muster prior to their sneaking into Violet's room.

It wasn't that they were nosey, not really, it was just that they were all very curious about the events of the day before, and unlike the rest of them, Violet hadn't been forced to hide up in the emergency shelters in the mountains, about as far from the action as it was possible to be, and under total news blackout courtesy of Lexi. Not even Allister had been able to convince the AI to let them watch the battle from a distance, and Lexi was practically his second Mom! They hadn't even known about the Tsunami until the drive to the Pacifica, when they'd seen the flooded streets of Nara-Attha City in the distance! Had Mr. Kira actually caused all that damage? It seemed beyond belief to the children who knew him as the friendly, somewhat awkward and quiet uncle who always had time to play with them. And frustratingly, none of the adults were saying anything about what had happened, not a single relevant word, just "I love you very much" and "I'm so glad you're safe", as if there was any way they could have been in danger way up in the mountains!

So if the adults weren't talking, then their only recourse was to ask Violet, who'd actually been there herself. And while Violet wasn't exactly known for being talky, surely she would be able to understand their frustration and curiousity, right, since she was their peer? Alice had wanted to ask her last night, but had only been able to see Violet from a distance, as Mom and Dad had bundled her and Roy into their guest quarters and admonished them with the aforementioned rules about wandering at night. Violet had been with her own mom, surrounded by a group of the Stormhounds, including the giant Mr. Glory and the funny Mr. Ramierez, who didn't look very funny with his eyes all red and puffy, as if he'd been crying for some reason. Alice was stumped as to what could cause Mr. Ramierez, one of the coolest adults she could imagine, to get all puffy eyed like that, but it gave her an unpleasant fluttery feeling in her stomach to think about it, so she tried not to.

The halls of the Pacifica were curiously empty, even for such an early time of day, and Alice and her brother didn't so much as see another soul as they scurried along the hallways, taking care to move as quietly and as quickly as possible, for all that it would avail them if Lexi decided to rat them out. Of course, Allister was supposed to be taking care of that side of things, and Allister was fairly reliable, for a boy anyway, and even more reliable when he was ticked off about being excluded from the loop. Alice wasn't fond of her Prince's tendencies to take charge of their group whenever they got together, as she felt that was what she was best suited to doing, despite his social position and age advantage, and a small part of her was smirking to know that he was regulated to background support duty, running interference with the AI while the rest of them got their information first hand.

Of course, even with Allister out of the picture, so to speak, things weren't just falling easily into place for Alice, as she still had to deal with Lewis la Flaga. Who professed not to be scared of her, given that she was a head shorter and thirty pounds lighter than he was, which was a bit of bravado she was intending to test out one of these days, once she put on a few more inches and a few more pounds of muscle mass, and more pressingly, the Joule twins, who really weren't scared of her, or much anyone else really. Then again, considering what their father was like, Alice could grudgingly suppose she understood why the Joule twins were so fearless... after living with such an irritable, irrational man, day in and day out, scariness would have to lose some of its emotional flavor and intensity. The only person that Mina and Jamie would reliably listen to was Allister, and even then, they seemed to go along more out of mutual agreement than because they were following orders. They had listened to Aoi too, as had Alice, since Aoi was pretty much everything she wanted to be as a girl, but Aoi was... gone, and so nobody was listening to her anymore.

Reaching the designated patio meeting spot, Alice was disgruntled to see that, thanks to Roy's dithering, they actually were the last to arrive, and the smug looks on Mina and Jamie's faces showed they weren't about to forget about her tardiness, especially after she'd pointedly reminded them not to be late the night before. The Joule twins would have been tough to tell apart if they hadn't preferred such different hairstyles, with Mina wearing her hair shorter even than her father did, more like the spiky look her mother often favored, while Jamie wore her hair long and straight, longer even than Alice wore hers, past her shoulders and headed toward her waist. Once you got to know them, their personality differences made them fairly easy to tell apart as well. They were both direct, even confrontational, and had being smugly arrogant and snooty down to an art form, but Mina was the more outgoing one, while Jamie was more aloof. Mina instigated, Jamie judged. Seperately, Alice loathed them, as much as one could loathe anyone you were close friends with anyway, but together they were absolutely insufferable! They just made her feel like a foolish little girl sometimes, and she HATED that!

Thankfully, they were in too much of a rush not to get caught this morning to do more than direct their snooty smirks of superiority her way, as their agreed upon plan entered its most daring and potentially dangerous stage. Getting to Violet's room through the interior of the house was a no go, the halls around her quarters were swarming with Stormhounds, according to Allister, and they were keeping everyone away, literally everyone! If they wanted to get in, they were going to have to go the unconventional way, which was why they were meeting on this outdoor patio, which was directly below the balcony of Violet's guest room. There were decorative support columns with sheets of flowering ivy winding around them that supported the balcony, and one of them was close enough to the wall of the house proper that a careful climber could use it to brace her leg or back against to shimmy the ten or so feet up to the second level, with the ivy providing handholds as well. It wouldn't work for an adult, the gap was too narrow and the ivy not strong enough to bear even a partial bit of an adult's weight, but they weren't adults, far from it in fact.

All you had to do was conquer your fear of falling and splitting your head open on the paved patio, or breaking a leg, or an arm, or some other bone that you didn't want to break. This was easy for Alice, second nature for the Joule twins, Lewis would never admit fear in front of peers, especially girls, and as for Roy... well, Roy might be a problem. Not that her brother was physically unable to make the climb... like her, the interior and exterior of the _Dawn's Light_, their parent's salvage ship, had been their jungle gym since they were old enough to walk, and they both were accustomed to climbing about in tight spots or at heights that would make most teenagers flinch and squeal with fright. It was more his fear of getting caught and punished that was the problem. Roy was a scaredy-cat, there was no better way of putting it, and unlike Lewis, he didn't hold much attachment to pride, and so couldn't be goaded into doing something he thought was stupid. Roy figured that there was a perfectly good reason for the Stormhounds keeping everyone away from Violet, even if he couldn't figure out what that reason was, and was content with waiting for their parents to come and tell them what was going on, as if that would ever happen in an acceptable timetable!

Roy was like Akira in that way... he had too much tendency to think like an adult would want him to think, rather than how a child should think. He was brainy, shy, and seemed actually content to act like a goody two shoes spoilsport all the time. Alice had never actually caught him tattling on her to their parents, but she strongly suspected him of finding a way to covertly alert them whenever she attempted some scheme he didn't feel was something she should be getting involved in or doing. It was the ONLY way to explain how Mom would always show up just as she was about to see if she could swan dive from the second story of the bridge, past the fantail, and into the harbor, with a proper running start of course. Or how Dad knew to hang around while the main deck cargo hatch was open, and the loading crane cable was conveniently located just perfectly so that someone could leap out and swing across the gulf from one end of the ship to the other without her feet ever touching ground... assuming she wouldn't get caught doing it.

At least Aoi had once had the excuse that her parents were literally freaking psychics, so of course they knew whenever she was about to do something she shouldn't be, according to the "rules". Alice just had a namby-pamby traitor for an older brother, but because she could never catch him in the act, she couldn't just justify locking him in the bilge or something else vindictive like that. She stayed close by his side, fist clutching a handful of his shirt so he wouldn't bolt at the first sign of an adult coming their way, as Lewis led the way up their chosen impromptu ladder, climbing with gusto, if not grace, making up in determination and bluster what he lacked in actual skill. Not much to climb besides hills and the occasional small shrub at Lewis's place, though put him in the water and he was like an otter! Mina followed him up, making the whole thing look easy, though Alice thought the exertion of climbing in full gravity might have been more a strain on the white haired girl than she let on, since she actually accepted a hand up from Lewis when she got to near the top of the column, within reach of the balcony.

Jamie glanced at Alice, her superior smirk still plastered on her face, and then jutted her chin at the nervous looking Roy. "You sure you don't wanna run on back to your room? You're liable to get a spanking if mommy catches you out without her permission..." The Joule girl taunted, as she slowly began climbing as well, going slower and more carefully than either her sister or Lewis, knowing she had nothing to prove and a waiting helper to assist with the difficult bits near the top. Below, Alice fumed, wanting to shout up a nasty reply, but not daring too for fear of attracting unwanted adult attention. Or Violet's attention for that matter... if for some reason the Finch girl didn't want to talk to them, she could make it real hard on anyone trying to climb the column, even if she didn't just open the door and get her father's Stormhounds to take them all back to their rooms like bad little babies. Best that she not know they were there until they were all on the balcony, and then preferably not until they were between her and the bedroom door.

"She's right, you know." Roy dithered, taking a step away from the column, though a step was as far as he could get before Alice's grip on his shirt tugged him to a halt. "Mom's not gonna be happy when she finds out we did this..."

"IF she finds out we did this." Alice corrected him crossly. "Because I'm certainly not going to go blabbing it about it to her. Are you?"

"Well, no..." Roy hedged, flushing at the implicit implication. If there was one thing no child ever wanted or liked to be known as, it was a tattletale. No one was going to be friends with a tattler, they were the lowest of the low. Even bed wetters and poopy-pants were higher on the social rungs than a tattler. After all, those were failings of the body, while a tattler was a failure of the spirit, a breach of the sacred compact of secrecy of quetionable deeds that all children swore just by the fact that they were children.

"Good. Now, I can't force you to climb up there, but I can call you something if you won't." Alice prompted her brother. He couldn't be goaded, not normally. But there was one word he was sensitive to, though it was a word that she was never supposed to say and wasn't even supposed to know. It was a taboo word, a word that Mom would really spank her butt and take away all her cool toys for using, if she heard about it. It was Alice's ultimate weapon, as far as her brother was concerned, but like real life weapons of mass destruction, once used, the inevitable consequences were usually severe, so Alice was very reluctant to use it. Of course that didn't mean she couldn't bluff with it.

"You wouldn't dare..." Roy challenged her through narrowed eyes.

"I've been grounded before." Alice shrugged, as nonchalantly as she could manage after even speaking that most dreaded of words. "I'd get to climbing if I were you. If the Joule twins find out about this word, which I'm sure their mom doesn't care about them using, they'll make your entire life a living hell. You'll never have peace, not until you get past puberty at the very least."

"This is blackmail." Roy protested.

Alice gave him a questioning look, that word not being one she was familiar with. "No its not, its just pointing out the reality of your situation. There's nothing black about it, really I'd say more like red because of the way you blush, and what does mail have to do with anything?"

"That's what blackmail is, dummy." Roy snorted, taking a rare opportunity to lord his extra year of schooling over his sister. "It means to coerce someone to do what you want them to do by threatening to embarass them or expose their own wrongdoings to the public or people they care about. You do it to me all the time, you should at least know what its called..."

"So I'm the dummy now?" Alice retorted, nostrils flaring in distemper. She was every bit as smart as her brother, she knew she was, her genetics said she had to be, but she never put as much effort into school as he did, and sometimes it came back to bite her, like now. But calling her dummy and rubbing her face in it? That was the final straw! "Well I might be a dummy, but Roy Elsman is a PUS..."

"SHUTUP!" Roy hissed, clapping his hand furiously over her mouth, his face blushing furiously, staring up at the three questioning faces looking down from the balcony above. "Fine, fine, I'll climb the pillar, just DON'T say that word." Roy grumbled, carefully taking his hand away from his sister's face and shooting her a dirty glare as she smirked triumphantly, having got her way, just as she always expected to happen. In less than a minute, they were both up on the balcony, both of them climbing the pillar with the ease of monkeys going up a tree, much to the slight disgruntlment of Lewis and the Joule twins, all of whom had struggled a bit in spots. Standing on the balcony outside of Violet's room, there was a sudden awkward pause, no one wanting to be the first one to step forward and open the doors leading into their friend's bedroom, despite how close they'd come.

Glaring at her sheepish looking friends, Alice forced her way forward and pulled the door open. "And you all call ME a little gir..." She admonished them with a sneer, before trailing off with a startled squeak as she found a very sharp sword blade hovering at her throat, razor sharp edge touching her skin just lightly enough to remind her of how very, very sharp it was. It was of course Violet holding the other end of the sword, and her grey haired friend with the mismatched blue and grey eyes did NOT look especially pleased to be walked in on before the sun was even fully above the horizon! It was more than just that actually, Alice realized, as Violet's eyes were red shot and puffy just like Mr. Ramierez's had been, and her normally still hands trembled on the hilt of her sword, as if she was either extremely pissed off or extremely tired... or maybe both. Her normally immaculate hair was disheveled, long bangs falling forward across her eyes and obscuring her face, and her cheeks looked strangely wet, and Alice realized Violet had been crying up until only a minute or so before.

This scared her, because the only other time she'd EVER seen evidence of Violet crying had been when they'd gotten the news that Aunt Lacus, Akira and Aoi were... not coming back from their trip. Though Allister had supposedly seen another time in the hospital when Violet found out what had happened to her dad. But Alice wasn't sure whether to believe that or not, since Allister had a habit of embellishing stories sometimes, especially when he was reinforcing his position as leader, making it sound as if everyone was more open and friendly with him than they normally were. However, today there was no doubt that Violet had recently been bawling her eyes out, if not quite with the theatrics that Alice and most other little girls tended to indulge in when they were mad or sad or hurt. Just the idea of Violet throwing a screaming tantrum was vaguely humorous, which was one reason Alice doubted Allister's hospital story. Violet just wouldn't DO that... would she?

Slowly, Violet took her scaled down Katana blade away from Alice's frozen throat, her aching eyes sweeping across the balcony and the other four children standing there, though since Roy was half over the balcony rail already, she supposed he might not really be considered to be "standing there". Truth be told, she'd been somewhat expecting something like this from them, especially when Lexi had suddenly stopped talking to her about thirty minutes ago, something that could only be the work of Allister. However, expecting it or not, didn't make it any more welcome, and for a moment, Violet really considered calling out to the Stormhounds stationed outside the doors and having them take the others back to their rooms. In the end though, all the effort they'd put into coming to see her on the sly had to count for something, didn't it? Sheathing her sword, she carelessly tossed the scabbarded blade onto her unslept in bed and beckoned them inside, not trusting her voice for the moment.

For the longest time, what felt like an eternity to everyone except Violet, who seemed perfectly content to stare numbly at a non-point on the wall above her carefully made and obviously unused bed, no one said anything. All the questions Alice, Roy, Lewis and the Joule twins had been bursting at the seams to ask flew right out of their heads when they saw the disordered and distressed state of their friend, whom they had always considered the most ordered and least stressable out of all of them. Mina and Jamie seemed most discomfited of them all, obviously unused to such visible outpouring of heartfelt emotions from someone normally so reserved, and Lewis had always been scared of Violet anyway. Alice was still recovering from the whole "sword to the throat" performance, and that left Roy, scaredy-cat Roy, to step forward and say the unthinkable.

"He's dead, isn't he?" Roy asked softly, drawing wide eyed stares from his sister and Lewis, though Mina and Jamie didn't seem too surprised by his leap of logic. Of all their parents, theirs had been the only ones not to return from the battlefield, the Balmung having been heavily damaged and disabled during the fighting, and both Yzak and Katie remanded into medical care for the time being. They were not supposed to be badly hurt, just shaken up and dazed, but were being kept for observation in a military hospital for the time being. The Balmung on the other hand was supposed to be a near total writeoff, except for the torso and cockpit area, though what exactly had happened, nobody either knew or was saying. Mina and Jamie seemed to be taking this in stride, but then again, they were Joules. Even the end of the world would have trouble cracking their poker faces, or so the joke went.

"..." Violet opened her mouth but no words would come out, her voice lost during the night of unremittant sorrow, numbness, disbelif and eventually, in the last few hours before dawn, a cold, crystal acceptance of what was now immutable fact. Her father had returned to her, but had only been able to share a few heartfelt sentences with her before going off to do his duty. A duty he had never and would now never ever return from doing. This time he was gone for real, gone like Aki was gone. This time not even the most magical of exotic fruits and miracle cures could bring him back! Violet had done her best to close her ears, but her father had trained her too well for her to just ignore the whispers of the Stormhounds outside her door, though of course they thought she had cried herself to sleep long before. "Closed casket funeral...", "Needed a bucket and sponge...", "Had to scrape him up...", "Not a pretty way to go...", "Went out like a hero..."; these were the snippets of conversation she'd heard, and they'd told her everything she needed to know, and far more besides.

In the end she had to just nod, even such a simple gesture feeling like it took an eon to accomplish, and Violet had to turn her back on her friends to hide the renewed moisture that threatened to spill out of her eyes. She would have thought her tear ducts would have been dehydrated by now, but apparently things didn't work that way. There was always room for more tears. And of course, turning away from her friends brought her gaze inexorably to the heirloom piece that Thomas had bequeathed upon her, after enveloping both her and her mother in the tightest, longest embrace she'd ever had, while the gigantic man broke down and cried harder than Violet had ever seen anyone cry. It was her father's war-helm, his old one, the Hellhound one, and just looking at it told her everything she could want to know about what her father's final moments had been like.

But where most children would be all but disabled, even catatonic, at being confronted with the evidence that their most beloved father had met a violent and bloody end on a battlefield, Violet found her grief tempered with another emotion. That was pride. She'd known ever since she was old enough to understand complex words and concepts that her father's work was dangerous, that getting badly hurt or even killed was a real day to day risk of his job. He'd done nothing to hide the dangerous of his occupation from her, indeed he'd gone out of his way to stress them to her, especially when she started showing interest in following in his footsteps. He'd shown her pictures of the maimed, the mutilated, the slain, told her stories about the fates of much of Hellhound Alpha squadron and other people he'd worked with or commanded in the past. He showed her his scars, and Thomas's, and Richard's, and she'd seen Kurtz's empty eye socket and Alkire's missing leg, but she'd refused to be deterred by the potential consequences. She was her father's daughter, and she would follow in his footsteps.

However, his footsteps were no longer there for her to follow, and that was the most distressing thing of all, in a way. She'd just barely begun to learn from him all the things he'd promised to teach her, and now, he couldn't! He'd always been her guide, the light in the darkness that showed her the path to walk, how to live, how to grow, how to be! Aki had been her blanket, her comfort, and her father was her light, her ambition and her pride... and now they were both gone, never to return except in her memories! But her father had died doing what he believed in, protecting the people he'd sworn to serve to his dying moment, and she could not fault him for that, no matter how much she might want to rail and scream and question why he was gone. He was gone because he had to go. It was part of who he was. To not go, as her mother had even said, would have been to prove that he really hadn't recovered from what Frost had done to him. Her father had died a hero, had died so that others might live, and for a Stormhound... or a Hellhound... there was no more meaningful thing to do!

Violet felt herself enveloped by the arms of her friends, as their sadness welled up and out of them in tears of their own, but hers had dried up even as they began to fall. Ensconsed within a group of young girls and boys, all of them weeping with stress and fear and sadness and gladness, Violet alone held her head up high and stared into the empty eye sockets of her father's cracked helm. "_To revenge is a pointless waste of time and effort with no good end result, but to avenge, especially those who cannot avenge themselves, on the other hand, why that is a goal worthy of the greatest heroes of legend..."_ The mask seemed to repeat yet another of her Father's wisdoms back to her, the shadows flickering within the battered shell like a ghost was briefly filling the interior space up. A trick of the rising dawn signalling a new day for them all, no doubt, but Violet didn't care. She felt the connection to her father still there, inside her, as strong as it had ever been, stronger even. _To avenge those who cannot avenge themselves... that is the sort of Hellhound I will be. I promise you, Father, I won't let it end with you. There will be Hell to pay... because as long as a Finch heir lives, the Hound will ALWAYS be loose..._


	59. In the Ruins of Orb

Author Note: Well gee, now I'm all fired up about RW again, and its all your fault. I guess its The Vandire Conspiracy that's gonna be hitting the back burners for the time being, alas, because now I've started to flesh out my next eight chapters, and I can't wait to write them. Of course, I am a creature of great high and lows, and imperfect constancy, so we will have to wait for hindsight to tell us if I actually have followed through and pounded out this next Arc without deviation. Already had some great input from readers and reviewers in my forums and in PMs about what events they want to see happen, and my ears are still open for more, there's no such thing as too many good ideas. A minor note for this Arc, all events might not flow exactly linearly from chapter to chapter. That is to say, for example, that the first three chapters will all have events occuring in the same 3 week period, and we will be jumping from January to Feburary in each chapter, and in later chapters there will be some overlap at "earlier" scenes and the "late" scenes of the first few chapters. I guess what I'm trying to say is, things might get a little confusing, chronologically speaking, so try to bear with it.

xxxx

**Orb, Temporary National Defense Headquarters, below Mare-Town Depths, MAST-F compound, January 26th, Afternoon**

"All right then, now that we are all finally in one place at one time again, why don't we go around the table and briefly... BRIEFLY... give our opinions on what happened, why it happened, what we could have done to prevent it from happening and what we should be planning to do next." Chief Representative Jiro Kurenai said wearily, looking around the bare metal table at his "cabinet", though in truth it was more like a emergency council, as all his actual ministers and political assistants were off doing the million and one jobs that needed to be done to pull his battered and stricken nation through the aftermath of one of the most destructive attacks in the past fifty years! Seated to his left was Queen Zala-Attha, to her left was her husband, Ambassador Zala, past him were the Elsmans, then the Joules, then the la Flaga's, and then completing the circuit of the table were Colonel's Jones and Belaruse, along with Master Sergeant Ramierez of the Stormhounds. Commander Waltfeld would ordinarily be here, but he was working with rescue teams at some of the attacked bases, his mechanical arm giving him great ability at lifting in tight spots. Everyone looked haggard, worn and half slumped in their chairs, even normally irrepressible or icily arrogant people like Commander Joule or Commander la Flaga. Not that Jiro could blame them, given who the architect of their woes was!

Even now, three days after the actual attack, Jiro himself could hardly believe that it was really true, that Kira Yamato, long held as one of Orb's greatest heroes, had, at the head of an unprecedented force of combined technological and psychic might, invaded Orb and wreaked immense damage to the country, especially its military and commercial foundations, and all but destroying the already once rebuilt Nara-Attha City in the process! The only bright side to the entire fiasco was that Mr. Yamato, though induibitably changed from the man Jiro had once known, still retained a spark of that humane stubborness that had so characterized his battlefield behavior in the past, and had given a two hour evacuation warning prior to lauching his attack. That buffer time was the only thing that had prevented a tragedy from becoming a catastrophe of the greatest magnitude, as Nara-Attha City's millions of citizens would have been wiped from the face of the Earth by the psychic induced tsunami that had heralded the first wave... no pun intended... of the Eddie attack!

"Well, I'll start us off then." Alkire spoke up, after several seconds of almost painful silence stretched around the room, buried deep in the bedrock of Mt. Hameya's lower slopes, in the midst of the Morganroete Armories Secret Test Facility. Directly above them was the prototype underwater colonization city, Mare-Town, which was situated at the bottom of Nara-Attha City harbor. Mare-Town itelf, both the upper support facility and the underwater colony itself, had not fared well during the Eddie attack, especially the tsunami, but though the Town was in ruins and half flooded, MAST-F, buried a hundred meters below the Town, remained operational and secure, one of very few Orb military-industrial complexes to remain so in the wake of the attack. "To be succient, we got our asses kicked... again. Regardless of the fact that we "repulsed" the invaders, as the news is saying, the damage we took doing it is nothing short of sickening. At best, our military forces are operating at 50 percent combat ready personnel and less than 35 percent combat ready materials and equipment. Our surface navy is basically gone, and our naval facilities are either washed out to sea or buried under a million tons of mud and rubble."

Alkire leaned forward and glanced around the table, seeing all the disgruntled faces, but especially taking note of the staring war going on between his son-in-law and the Queen. He wasn't quite sure what that was about, but hopefully they'd clear the air soon, or else bloody each others noses and be done with it, as it was starting to make him itch nervously. "And of course, lest I let the elephant in the room go unsaid, we lost over eighty percent of our military bases and factories, most of which were situated near the coast, not that there's too many other places to put them on an island. This includes the Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver, which is almost a total write off, especially after taking a direct orbital strike from the _Incarnate._ That is WHAT happened. As for why, well, since the Kid ain't here to explain himself, I guess we're just gonna have to chalk it down to that we're fighting a fucking war and we're living on one of the biggest targets. We were bound to get hit sooner or later."

"Well, I wouldn't call the Attlatl a total write off." Miriallia interrupted. "Yes, the spaceport facility, power reactors, loading docks and launch control facilities were leveled, to put it mildly. Leveled, torn to shreds and then melted into puddles. But the vast majority of the three launch rails themselves are still intact or only slightly damaged. With access to Red EDEN vats and construction help from the USN, which has already been offered, we should be able to get the Mass Driver back into minimal operational condition in three months, and back to full operation in six."

"The miracles of modern science." Raine shook her head and squeezed her husband's hand under the table. "I'll continue Robert's report. We don't see any way we could have possibly anticipated the psychic generated tsunami attack. That was an entirely new and unexpected trick, with only situational utility... it would be all but useless except as a tool of intimidation against any target that did not have the majority of its target points within a mile or two of the shoreline. Unfortunately, Orb is such a target. Short of stopping the wave before it forms, I'm not exactly sure what we can do to counter it either, should the Eddies go for an encore performance, short of building an unfeasibly huge wall along our entire shoreline, at least fifty meters tall and thick." Raine smirked at the ridiculuousness of such an undertaking. In today's world of nano-tech matter conversion, it wouldn't be impossible to do, but the sheer time involved would mean the wall would be completed about a decade too late to do any good.]

"On the matter of our early warning systems though, improvements could be made. I realize that our long range scans don't penetrate through the Glasshouse very well, but we should have been able to see the stormcloud cover the Eddie forces were generating, moving against prevailing wind and tidal currents, long before we did. Or if we didn't, the USN orbital fleets should have. Definitely a failing that needs to be corrected, both by us and the USN. What's the use of having fleets of warships in orbit if they don't do more than hang around and occasionally provide ground support bombardments?" Raine added. She went on with a slightly self conscious shrug. "As for what we plan to do next, well, that's not my area of expertise. If I had to give a personal opinion though, I'd say the USN, and Durandel especially, has some SERIOUS explaining to do..."

"Damn right he does." Ramierez half croaked, his throat still not entirely back to normal after the Stormhound's wake for Cyprus Finch. Alkire and Raine had been at the combination mourning and party, but their relationship with Cyprus had been relatively short lived and only professional, and so they weren't nearly so affected by his loss as some of the Stormhounds, who had worked their entire professional careers with no other man as their leader, trainer and inspiration. "Do we have ANY idea what those biological-cyborg monstrosities were, where they came from or WHY they went berserk?" Ramierez questioned venomously. No one begrudged him his tone, since it was in stopping one of those selfsame berserk cyborg-monsters that Cyprus had sacrificed his life, saving hundreds of lives, including that of the Queen and her husband, and potentially serving as the catalyst tipping point for reversing the momentum of the entire battle! It was a great accomplishment, but it was one that should never have been necessary!

"Other than their designations, BALORs, and code names, Gorgon, Jormundgandr and Fenris Wolf, no, I'm afraid we know little to nothing about them." Murrue reported, standing in as the most senior Morganroete representative of the emergency council, even though she was still fairly junior in the corporation itself. Still, her relationships with the late Erica Simmons and many other scientists and engineers of note in Orb's national defense corporation gave her resources of information and unknowledge that were quite extensive, but nothing anyone she'd contacted had known was helplful with regards to the BALORs. The USN had pounced upon the destroyed... slain?... bodies of Fenris Wolf and Jormundgandr before the battle was even officially over, and Orb scientists had been left with only a few stolen samples of flesh to study. As for Gorgon, there was nothing left at all, its body entirely incinerated by the _Incarnate_'s laser strike.

"Namara knows about them, but she won't tell me anything." Lexi's avatar commented, from where she was pacing a slow circuit around the room. "Though from what I can piece together, even she doesn't know very much. They're FEAR equipment, and FEAR has its own supercomputer network that doesn't connect to her or me. If their performance was anything to go by though, I would say that they were likely prototypes, or else deployed before they were fully ready or tested in battlefield conditions."

"So you're saying there might be MORE of those things?" Dearka asked warily. He had pulled out, along with the majority of the surviving Orb forces, before Gorgon really got going, but after seeing the mess it had made not only of the Mass Driver but of the Edenite forces attacking it, Dearka had no wish to ever encounter something like that on hostile terms!

"I would rate the probability as above 90 percent, yes." Lexi replied, matter of factly. "And they will likely be either stronger, better controlled or not as easy to kill, or perhaps all three."

"How much stronger, would you calculate?" Athrun asked with professional concern.

"How much stronger were the Freedom and Justice than the Strike and Aegis?" Lexi countered blandly. "I have too little data to give you any sort of numbers, Ambassador, but if these three creatures were just prototypes and half finished ones at that, then I feel fairly confident that any completed models would be significantly more capable, and probably would not run as much risk of running amok."

"That's not particularly comforting..." Dearka pointed out. "Even if they are technically on our side..."

"HAH! On our side?" Cagalli interrupted with a cold sneer. "Durandel is on no-ones side but his own, the very deployment of those unstable monsters into the heart of a battle zone... that just so happened to be in Orb, I'm sure... has made that abundantly clear to me. He doesn't care a whit what happens to Orb or its people, in fact it would probably be convenient for him if our military strength and production capacity were reduced, because it makes us more reliant on the USN for protection! Don't you dare doubt for an instant that those BALORs would be used against us if the Eddies weren't such a huge threat themselves!"

"Perhaps so." Mu half agreed, though his opinion on Durandel's bloodthirstiness was a bit more tempered. "But during the middle of a war is hardly the time to indulge a petty desire to dominate a country that is already strongly allied with his cause, by necessity if not choice. Durandel has nothing to gain and everything to lose by igniting a conflict between Orb and the USN right now, especially with the Mass Driver already inoperable. At the first sign of occupation forces being sent our way, it would be child's play to destroy the launch rails as well, and then it would be a good deal more than 6 months before the Mass Driver was operational again, which would hamstring the USN forces on Earth for the foreseeable future of the war. No, Durandel needs our cooperation right now, perhaps more so than ever. I may not be a political guru like some here, but this situation does feel kinda familiar to me. Or rather, it does to Michael Genesis, who observed a lot of infighting amongst the Apostles of the Brotherhood. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, I don't think everyone in the USN leadership cadre is pulling in the same direction as Durandel is anymore."

"You think someone else deployed the BALORs, without consulting him?" Jiro asked, cautiously intrigued and quite worried by the thought.

"No, I think its more passive-aggressive than that." Mu answered thoughtfully. "There's no doubt in my mind that Durandel knew about the BALORs and okayed their deployment. What I don't think was clear to him was just how volatile and delicately balanced his new superweapons really were. So, he ordered them deployed, but them going berserk and slaughtering hundreds or even thousands of USN and Orb troops was not part of his plan. Of course, as Solar President and the man who signed off on the deployment orders, he's going to be the one held responsible by the public, and rightly so, but I can't help but feel that he's being set up as a scapegoat by the people that designed the BALORs in the first place."

"But why?" Miriallia asked, puzzled. "What could they possibly gain by making trouble for the Solar President at a time like this? Don't get me wrong, after all he's done to us, I'm not going to shed any tears for that bastard getting a taste of his own medicine, but this doesn't strike me as the best possible moment, since we are embroiled in a war, and one that, judging by the tally of major battles, we aren't exactly winning cleanly. Can't they see that causing political turmoil and even perhaps forcing a change of administration is just going to make everything so much worse? Whatever else you can say about the man, there's no denying that Gilbert Durandel is a strong, focused and capable leader with a knack for getting people of disparate backgrounds to work together in pursuit of common goals. He's an ideal wartime leader, which as we know is how he came to power in the first place."

"I imagine they can see it." Katie answered. "I have little doubt that those who are even now engaging in a power play with Durandel know eactly what they're doing, and the personal cost... for others anyway... that is involved. Just look at what they did already, deploying those monsters to Orb in the full knowledge that the stress of battle would cause them to go berserk! They can see the consequences of their actions all right... they just don't care. And to think of all those times I dreamed about someone coming around and kicking Durandel out of office and throwing him onto his ass in the gutter... but now that its actually looking like that might happen, and it scares me to death thinking about it!"

"I don't think any of us will protest the idea that Gilbert Durandel is a lying snake of a man, corrupt and duplicitous to the core." Jiro said with vehemence. "But as bad as he is, I would never stoop to calling him truly evil. Power mad, certainly. Megalomaniacal, probably. A dictator masquerading as a man of the people, plainly. But unlike many other world leaders of his generation and who were in similar positions to him, such as Cervantes Zunnichi, Sai Argyle or even Patrick Zala..." Jiro inclined his head in apology towards Athrun, who had pursed his lips at the reference to his father. "... Gilbert Durandel has never attempted genocide, though future historians may judge his treatments of the Edenites and tar him with that brush too. I guess my point is, Durandel is a horrible, corrupt person, unfit for his office in any moral or ethical way... but he's still a better choice than the people that are trying to impeach him."

"Do you have any idea of who those people might be?" Cagalli asked carefully, her personal dislike for Durandel unwilling to let her muster even the slightest hint of sympathy for the man, even if it meant potentially dealing with a successor who was worse.

"If I had to name a name, it would be Atticus Djibril, the leader of the Reclaimer Initiative." Jiro replied after a moment of thought. "But I doubt Djibril would be acting alone, his power base is too flimsy for him to be sticking his neck out against Durandel, since it was Durandel who appointed him to that position in the first place. Djibril has very strong ties to the Puritan faction of Blue Cosmos, he's probably the last "great" Natural supremacist alive. A thoroughly unpleasant man, and a sociopath to boot. He lost much of his prestige and power during the Eden Disaster, when Earth was abandoned, but he's a stubborn tick of a man, and he managed to somehow worm his way into Durandel's inner circle. I shudder to think of what the USN would turn into with him at the helm... any pretence of democratic process would be entirely thrown out the window, I'm sure."

"Then maybe we should do something to nip this coup in the bud before it can get off the ground?" Yzak suggested, speaking a bit stiffly, as most of his ribcage was still taped up from where he'd suffered a half dozen cracked ribs and internal bruising from the telekinetic slam that Leviathan had dealt the Balmung, sending it flying like a home run baseball, entirely out of the park, or in their case, out of the city and battle zone! There wasn't much left of the Balmung besides the main torso, and even that looked more like a piece of crumpled junk than a majestic war machine. Were it not for the fluid filled cockpit GRS system, he and Katie would have been nothing more than bloody smears along the interior of the cockpit, and even as things were, they were both battered and beaten black and blue by the experience.

"I'll never throw my support behind that man! Not after what he's done to Orb in the past." Cagalli said coldly. "It's his own damn fault he's in this position, I say we let him hang himself with his own rope and worry about picking up the pieces later!"

"Does anyone else have a FEASIBLE idea?" Yzak added with a roll of his eyes. "Like, besides just letting the entire USN political administration implode into infighting while a Blue Cosmos bigot becomes absolute dictator, all for the sake of personal vengeance?"

"Like you have ANY ground to criticize my ideas." Cagalli shot back hotly. "I don't know what it was that you and Katie said or did to Kira, and I don't want to know, but you MUST admit that you pushed him over the deep end! He was going to kill me in cold blood, and then he was going to stand back and let us ALL die when those monsters went berserk! How could you do something so stupid and irresponsible?"

"Excuse me?" Yzak retorted, ice coating his words. "You're going to take me to task for prosecuting a WAR by utilizing every weapon at my command, including psychological warfare? All the while defending YOUR nation, where I don't even LIVE? And don't you forget, that tactic disabled Kira's greatest weapon and defensive system. Agreed, being slammed twenty miles through the air by the telekinetic whale wasn't part of my plan, but up until that point, things weren't going so badly. It's the heaviest blow ANYONE has struck against Kira in the entire war. Maybe if I could have counted on some BACKUP from you and your lily-livered husband, we MIGHT have been able to take him down then, but since I COULDN'T and STILL CAN'T, I think we did a damned fine job just by ourselves, and I don't appreciate being second guessed by someone who lacks the courage to even fight against someone trying to kill you, just because he's your brother. Why can't you accept it? He's NOT our friend anymore!"

"He has a point." Ramierez spoke up hoarsely. "Look, I admired Kira Yamato as much as anyone, he's an amazing person that I feel privileged to have known and fought beside. But that Kira Yamato is not the man we saw three days ago. Regardless of who or what is to blame for his transformation into the person he is now, I don't care and I don't think it matters. What matters is that he HAS become the person he is now, and that person is not a friend of Orb, indeed he is inarguably our enemy, perhaps our greatest enemy, in terms of pure combat power and most importantly, willingness to USE that power. Or not use, as the case may be." Ramierez gripped the edge of the table to suppress his rage at the thought of Kira just standing by and allowing Fenris to run free, directly resulting in Cyprus's death. "From what I've seen of the Kratos's technical specs, it has more raw destructive power than the Lucifer but Frost refuses to use it to his military advantage, because of his personal idiosyncrasies. Besides, we've beaten Frost before... the same cannot be said of Kira Yamato. It is quite frankly a delusion we cannot afford to indulge to continue considering him as a wayward son of Orb in the grip of temporary insanity."

"He stuck up for me when you guys retrieved me from the Brotherhood, regardless of the sense it made." Mu said resolutely. "Perhaps its not quite the same thing, but I can't just turn my back on him now, not after fucking it up before. Like you say, this is not the same Kira Yamato we all know and love, but just cutting him loose and declaring him an enemy of the state doesn't feel right either. We can get through to him, I know we can. We just gotta figure out how."

"And while we do that, how many hundreds or thousands of people are going to be killed? How many dozens of battles are we going to lose because we can't bring ourselves to truly fight against the Lucifer?" Katie challenged right back. "And even if we can make him see the light... and after messing around in his head, even just for a moment, I can say I'm honestly stumped as to how we'll do that, short of bringing Lacus and the kids back from the dead... at the very best we might get him to stop fighting Orb troops. He's sure as hell not going to fight against the Eddies, except maybe whoever was responsible for the Blue Monday attack, and he might do that bit regardless of what we do. But he's not just gonna stand back and let the USN wage their war without limits either. We've all seen MAIDEN deployed, and now the BALORs too... you think Kira could just step back and let weaposn like those be used on people... any people? Unless we're gonna start talking about aligning Orb with the Edenites, any talk about bringing Kira back into the fold is just nonsense. So is that on the table? Ar we gonna turn this into an "Earth vs Space" type scenario here?"

"After suffering a sneak attack using a WMD on our soil, and now this tsunami attack? If I even joked about making an alliance with the Eddies, we'd have rioting in the streets and I might end up hanging by my neck from a lightpole." Jiro answered with grim humor. He gave an apologetic look towards Cagalli and Athrun. "I am sorry, your Majesty, but I must set my feet down on the side that Mr. Yamato, for all his past heroism, can no longer be considered in any way attached to Orb or its people. I will be initating procedures to revoke his citizenship and status within the nation as soon as I get back to my new office. Kira Yamato will not be welcome back in Orb, not while I am Chief Representative anyway. Far be it for me to intrude into your personal affairs, my Queen, but in the wake of this attack, showing any amount of closeness or attachment to Mr. Yamato would be a very poor political choice, perhaps enough to tarnish even an image like yours."

"So what, you just want me to exile him and repudiate all of his ties to the Royal family?" Cagalli asked numbly. "You just want me to publicly condemn him and declare him a traitor and an enemy?"

"In a word, yes, that would be for the best." Ramierez answered pitilessly. "The last thing we need right now is the public losing confidence in their leadership's ability to defend them against the Eddies. Or are you gonna go explain to everyone who lost a member of their family during that invasion that we can't punish the man who led the attack just because he's your brother and may or may not be emotionally compromised by grief? I mean, even when confronted with his obvious intent to kill you, you couldn't lift a finger to defend yourself. And if you can't even protect yourself against him, how can anyone else expect you to protect THEM against him? The sooner you cut ties with Kira, the better off Orb is going to be. Better to do it of your own initiative than wait for the USN investigations and political pressure from Durandel or whoever, because you KNOW they're going to hammer you over this if you don't cut them off at the pass."

"I don't see what the big hang up is." Yzak cut in with an icy look at Cagalli. "Didn't you already threaten to do as much and more to Lacus if she ever stepped out of line with you again? I seem to remember something to that effect being put in motion after she got fed up with your little tantrum after Kisaka was killed and went and did something about it. Getting rid of Lacus would have gotten rid of Kira just as surely, so it's not like you weren't prepared to do it at least once before, right?"

"Yzak!" Athrun reprimanded his friend with a scowl, while Cagalli just flushed and sputtered, obviously cut by the observation.

"What, Zala, WHAT?" Yzak spat right back. "I'm not doing anything but bringing up the facts of the situation. Letting her hide her head in the sand doesn't do anyone any good. And you too, for that matter. I used to be able to count on you, Zala. I never liked it, but I could count on you. But until you goddamn well wake up, and realize that its OVER, the Clyne Faction is DEAD and GONE and its NEVER COMING BACK, I can't count on you anymore! And I like that even LESS than I liked counting on you, if that's possible..."

"And fighting about stupid things like this is definitely a sign that this isn't the Clyne Faction." Dearka said with a sigh, only half jokingly. "Back then, we were always in agreement, more or less, but now look at us, sniping at each other at a meeting to determine what the fuck we're supposed to be doing after getting our asses kicked up around our ears!" Dearka sighed again. "Are we REALLY that fucking lost without Lacus and Kira?" He demanded suddenly, slamming both hands down on the table and half getting up out of his chair, glaring around the table. "Is that it? Can we NOT DO THIS without those two keeping us glued together and not fighting like a bunch of third graders at recess? Are we not the people that destroyed GENESIS, overthrew the Isolation, shot down the Great Endeavor, and captured Noah Borander? Are we not Gundam pilots, and Warship Captains, and NATIONAL FUCKING LEADERS here? And yet, here we are, still going in circles about something none of us can change, and worse, falling to peices and infighting while doing it! If we really are the best hope this world has of free and equitable leadership, then I gotta say, the world is FUCKED!"

"Dearka..." Miriallia gasped, not sure whether she should be appalled or impressed. Her husband was not known for taking center stage, in fact he preferred to avoid it at most any cost.

"Look... Yzak is an asshole, he always has been and probably always will be." Dearka continued, ignoring the glare from his white haired friend. "It's part of his charm, or so I surmise. Unfortunately, he's also an asshole who is usually partially right about whatever he's being a dick about. Yes, he could couch his arguements in nicer terms, maybe not call people out so blatantly, but if he did that he wouldn't be Yzak, would he? You've only known him for almost fifteen years now, how the HELL are you not used to him getting under your skin already? I mean fuck, your kids get along just fine, better than fine even, why can't you guys try and act like fucking SEVEN YEAR OLDS FOR ONCE?" Dearka hung his head and shook it in exasperation. "I guess I should know better than to ask for miracles here, but goddamn it all, I just can't take this infighting anymore. Didn't we all go through training together? Didn't we all get married to the same group of girls? Haven't we saved each other's lives more times than anyone can remember? So why can't we trust each other and work together now?"

"Well..." Athrun started to say, before Dearka cut him off again.

"You two..." Dearka pointed two fingers of one hand toward Cagalli and Athrun. "Do need to come to terms with the fact that the past is now the past, the Clyne Faction has dissolved, and now you two are the leaders of the inheritor group. Call us the Royalists, or whatever, you're the ones that we look to for leadership, just like we used to look to Lacus and Kira. But you both refuse to lead us on this most important and sticky issue, and that can't stand, okay? Make up your minds, either play ball with the rest of us or pack up and go home, because you're just dragging the rest of us down like you are. I don't like throwing Kira to the wolves, he's a good friend of mine, and one the best men I've ever known. But its come down to him or us, and he's already plainly decided on "him". If we don't decide "us", then we're all going to die, and I'm not going to let my kids be orphans because of this stupidity, got it?"

"Now you..." Dearka swept his hand around and pointed at Yzak before anyone could interrupt. "You need to start using those passive psychic abilities you're supposed to have in spades and find some goddamned EMPATHY, okay? How would you feel if this was Chanel we were debating about declaring public enemy number one? I can promise you, if it were one of my sisters, I wouldn't be at all reasonable about just cutting them off like a gangrenous limb, no matter how much it needed to be done. Its a dirty, horrible issue just as it is, you being nasty and confrontational about it isn't helping anyone, least of all them. You've known Cagalli for fifteen years and Athrun much longer than that, and you still haven't figured out that shoving their faces in a nasty mess just makes them push back with that much extra force of their own? You might need to do some waking up too, Yzak... wake up and remember who your FRIENDS are, and what they might be going through here, okay?"

Dearka fully stood up and looked down at the ring of stunned faces staring back at him. "There, I laid it out for you, I can't do more than that. I've never been in Kira's league, not from the moment I graduated from the Academy, but neither that nor all the times, good and bad, I've shared with him, is going to prevent me from doing my damndest to shoot him down the next time I see him. If that ends up killing him, then I will be sad, but given what Kira's lived through in the past, I'm not sure I can kill him, even if he gave me a free shot, he's just that kinda lucky. He fights like he's got nothing more to lose, but I do have things I can lose, three of them that I could never stand losing, and if he's going to come after us, like he has, then I don't have a choice but to go after him in turn. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go look at some refit designs for the Dreadnaught. Our old Earthshaker standby just ain't gonna cut it anymore, not in a world of telekinetics..." Dearka nodded his head at Jiro and Cagalli, and then left the room, Miriallia following him shortly after, but not before skewering Yzak, Cagalli and Athrun with a reproachful glare of her own on the way.

"So... who wants to elect Dearka head of this Royalist faction instead?" Alkire commented, about a minute after the Elsmans had left the room. "He certainly seems to be doing a better job of it than tne incumbents..."

"I can't believe I just got told by Dearka." Yzak replied, with a shake of his head and a self reproachful snort. He met Athrun's emerald gaze and quirked one lip in a half smile. "I think that might be the only thing worse than admitting I was being an asshole to you, Zala."

"Don't apologize, I might choke to death on my astonishment." Athrun returned with a similar shake of his head. "And if you being an asshole is what I need to get me to stop being one myself, then I guess I can't complain much, can I?"

"I could complain, but right now I can't muster the gumption to do so." Cagalli added, a trifle sadly. "Like he said, when it comes to family, I'm never going to be reasonable and logical about it, Yzak. I'm sorry that it bothers you, but I don't know how to be any other way. I'll go with the group consensus, because its what I should do, and also what needs to be done. But I'll never be happy or content with it, and the moment I think of a better way, rest assured, I will implement it." She turned to look at Jiro. "I will of course bow to Jiro's authority as Chief Representative, and not attempt to pardon Kira's actions, assuming we can recover him from this dark state he has been consumed by. Not for as long as Jiro is Chief Representative anyway. Should you step down or be replaced though, I will not promise to not try and influence your replacement to do it."

"And I will wish you luck in doing so, my Queen." Jiro acknowledged with a half-hearted smile. "Now, with that sticky issue resolved, we should move on to the next item of business. I've gotten reports from Commander Waltfeld that it appears our military prisons suffered a raid during the assault, and we may or may not have a number of captured Edenite Custodians at large on Onogoro. Master Sergeant, I know this is a bad time to ask for Stormhound assistance, but if I could prevail upon you to lend your unit's talents to this issue..."

xxxx

**Orb, Southwest of Nara-Attha City, Valentine Memorial Grounds, Noon, Febuary 1st**

The funeral procession was both larger and smaller than one might expect, given who was being laid to rest. During his life, Cyprus Finch had not gone overly far out of his way to make many friends, and the number of people who could be called "close" to him could be counted on one hand, and two of those were his wife and daughter. At the same time, he had left indelible marks on dozens of people that had been casual acquaintances and subordinates of his, and left a mark of another sort on millions of Orb citizens through his final actions, giving his life to protect their beloved Queen and, as some said, turned the tide of the most destructive battle on Orb soil in the nation's history. Declaring him a national hero was less of a formality and more of a necessity, there would have been blood on the streets if the proper due was denied to this heroic soldier. And it wouldn't even have been Stormhounds spilling it. After all, they'd long since come to realize that the heroism of a man like Cyprus Finch wasn't the sort that required accolades or acknowledgements, and that a showy funeral would be one of the last things their Lieutenant would have wanted.

In this he had no choice though, both because he was the one being buried and because the pomp and ceremony was something the people of Orb needed to see, something they could focus on to renew their own motivations and remind them that while they might be called upon to pay the ultimate price for their country, their country would not forget them or allow them to go unnoticed. Every death mattered, in the enshrinement of Cyprus Finch at the hallowed memorial of the casualties of the 1st and 2nd Valentine Wars, every Orb soldier who had given their life for their country was being, in spirit if not flesh, buried as well. Death was a sad thing, this one all the sadder because of his wife and daughter and their struggle to cure him of his amensia, a carefully edited story that was disseminated to the press prior to the event. But it was also a cause for rallying, for fiery speeches, for togetherness as Orbites were reminded that while the deaths might be individual, the suffering was shared across the entire nation!

The coffin was draped with Orb's flag, carried along on the shoulders of four Stormhounds, or rather the shoulders of three and the upper arm of the fourth, as Sergeant-Major Thomas Glory's shoulders were at head height for even the second tallest man there, and were it not for propriety's sake, the immense Sergeant-Major probably could have carried the entire thing by himself more comfortably than he, Master Sergeant Richard Ramierez, Colonel Robert Jones and Commander Mu la Flaga could together. Mu had been selected because he was, or had been, a widely acknowledged soldier of the Atlantic Federation, the military Cyprus had been publicly enlisted in before joining the Hellhounds. Also, the synchronity of one hero helping to bury another was too good an image for the media to pass up, and he was a match in height and build for two of the other three men. The coffin was lighter than most, because there was not much of a body inside it, Cyprus's last actions precluding leaving a beautiful corpse, or even an intact one.

They carried it with the same solemn care they would have were his remains indeed interred inside, rather than collected into a cremation jar that was in the Finch family's possessions, as it was the spirit of the man they were laying to rest, the symbol of the man, rather than the man himself. Other, smaller flags, representing the Atlantic Federation, the Earth Alliance, and the Isolation, were neatly folded on top of sections of the main Orb flag, reminding those who looked on that this man had served many nations and causes before finally ending his service in Orb. Efforts had been made to display Cyprus's dress uniform along with all his medals, ribbons and awards, on a seperate stand, to further showcase the honors this exceptional soldier had accrued during his life, including an authentically reproduced Hellhound's uniform and battle mask, but the plain fact was, Cyprus had accumulated more awards than could be displayed upon a single uniform! Thus the awards were split in two, and displayed upon both the Hellhound uniform and a Stormhound uniform, placed flanking the slot where the coffin would be laid, like spectral honor guards, one from the past, one from the present.

The entire Stormhound unit was present, every last one of them, their usual duties traded out to other Orb units for the day, even the members who had been wounded during the fighting were present, on crutches or in wheelchairs if need be, to see off the one man who had embodied the very essence of "soldier" and "Stormhound" to them. Nearly forty of the best trained men and women of ANY military stood in two ranks, one to either side of the processional path. The Stormhound dress uniform wasn't much more than a exceptionally clean, pressed and creased version of their day to day wear, with only ceremonial though fully functional weapons and room cleared to display personal honors and medals as well. Normally the Stormhounds weren't fans of ostentation or bragging, but this was for more than just them, and so they wore their full panolpy, many of their chests gleaming so bright with silver, bronze and gold that it was impossible to pick out individual awards in the glare.

Even the newest Stormhound recruits tended to have more awards than even the regular army Admirals and Generals that stood in a respectful group behind them, and more of the important ones, like citations for heroism or bravery or being wounded in combat, rather than campaign service or battle service ribbons. There was no denying that they truly were an elite group, head and shoulders above almost everyone else alive, every one of them a hero already, yet turned out to do even greater honor to one who had excelled even by their unspeakably high standards. They had their helmets clipped to their belts for the time being, shouldering heavy bolt action rifles with small magazines, in preparation for the gun salute to come. Their faces, in plain view, were masks of sorrow, many of them with tears openly running down their faces, an unabashed showing of emotion powerful enough to wet eyes in millions of those watching through TV screens and the internet.

And if the sorrow of the Stormhounds wasn't enough to reach out and pluck at the heartstrings of a remote viewer, then the sight of Wrenn Nostaliviche and Violet Finch, the bereaved wife and daughter, was all that was needed to bring home the impact and gravity of the situation. Wrenn was after all an international media superstar only slightly less well known in performing art and charity circles than Lacus Clyne herself had been, a woman whose music had helped touch and inspire an entire generation of young men and women that had been growing up during the era of the Valentine Wars on Earth, during the energy crisis and economic depression that had rendered nearly every citizen of every nation on Earth destitute and desperate in one way or another! Seeing the naked grief and loss on her face even as she struggled to maintain a semblance of control, was like taking a peek into the soul of the entire nation of Orb in the wake of the Eddie invasion. The visible desire to break down and give in to the sorrow, to retreat from the harsh realities of the world, tempered by the knowledge that to do so would not help anyone, that stoic preserverance in the face of even the worst tragedy was the only way forward for Wrenn... and Orb... now.

If Wrenn was Orb's grief and quiet determination to press on, then her daughter Violet was Orb's silent anger and prideful resolve to do what must be done to protect themselves in the future, the unbowed spirit that had become so synonomous with Orb's national character during the reign of Queen Zala-Attha. Where most young girls would be wearing a dress of some sort, in the somber black or pure white of mourning, Violet wore nothing less than a immaculately tailored and perfectly scaled down military uniform, an exact replica made at her personal request, to match the Stormhound uniform. She'd long had her own version of the Stormhound battle-helm, fully equipped with the same combat technologies as the standard model, and like the rest of the unit her father had led, organized and helped found, she wore her helm on her belt clip for the time being, her mis-matched blue and silver-grey eyes blazing with emotion as she stood by her mother's side, one hand holding Wrenn's firmly. However, there was one change in Violet's attire from that of any other Stormhound. The eyes of her mask were not the electric blue of the Stormhounds, but now a fiery red, the color of the original Hellhound mask optics, a change freshly made in the past few days as a matter of personal significance.

On most children, such a uniform would have looked, at best, like an elaborate costume, if not downright silly, but with her hair rolled up in scalp hugging braids, her hand forged katana, another legacy from her father, hanging at her other hip, silly was the very last thing that Violet Finch appeared to be. If anything, she was frightening, because no young child, of either gender, should be forced to wear such an expression on their face as Violet wore. It was more than grief, it was more than anger... it was understanding. Understanding that this world, which had taken her beloved father from her far before his time, this world was the real world that she was going to have to live in for the rest of her life. A world that was not kind. That was not nice. That was in no way fair. A world where the precious and beautiful things were often all too fleeting, and your happiness and contentment could be taken from you without warning at any time. In short, the world of the adults had now become her world as well... and that was a line that, once crossed, could not be uncrossed.

Standing on the same raised platform as Wrenn and Violet, at a respectful step and a half distance behind them, stood the most prominent dignitaries who were attending the funeral proceedings. Chief Representative Jiro Kurenai was there, standing side by side with Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha, both of them wearing stone cold masks of sadness; Jiro somber in dark suit and tie, his medium length shiny black hair starting to go grey at the temples, his stormcloud hued eyes flinty and hooded. Cagalli on the other hand had chosen to wear her honorary Admiral's uniform, as this was a military funeral, and to further remind those watching of her battlefield experience and reinforce her image as a warrior Queen defending her people. It was a sad reality of this world that even at such a event as this, giving thought to politics and political presentation was still a necessity. At Cagalli's right hand, his face composed yet severe, was Ambassador Athrun Zala, also in Orb uniform, having long ago hung up his dress Reds in favor of the white and periwinkle and gold of an Orb officer's uniform. Like Jiro, Athrun's hair was streaked with silver, both around the temples and shot throughout his blue-purple locks, though in him it was more a sign of what he had endured in the past, rather than what he endured on a daily basis; his emerald green eyes were tight and focused as he paid rapt attention to the proceedings, his gaze missing nothing.

At his father's side was Crown Prince Allister Zala-Attha, the heir apparent to Orb's largely ceremonial crown and potential successor to Jiro Kurenai as Chief Representative, should a career in domestic politics be his desire upon coming of age. The spitting image of his father, but gifted with the blazing amber eyes of his mother, the young Prince wore the archaic formal garb of the Attha family, militaristic in cut but done in a style that had not been in use for several hundred years, including a short, tassled half cloak that draped across one arm, the cloak was white on the outside and orange within, edged with gold and gold tassles, the uniform jacket and trousers being white with orange and red embroidery, like fire leaping off a sheet of paper, light flashing off the polished golden buttons and shining off the glistening black leather balderic that crossed from left shoulder to right hip.

Unlike his mother and father, who were equipped with the billed caps of their officer uniforms, Allister's garments, signfying as they did his position as a Royal first and foremost, came with a simple yet elegant golden crown, set with a few teardrop shaped pieces of orange-red amber, the gemstone of the Attha family. It was far from an ostentatious headpiece, as far as archiac jewelry went, but again, it was a symbol, and a powerful one, reinforcing both Allister's position as Crown Prince and heir, and underlining the true importance and gravity of the proceedings, as that crown had not been worn for almost thirty years, since Lord Uzumi had been coronated!

Also standing with the Royal party were Commander's Elsman and Joule, along with their wives and children, heroic Gundam Pilots that had long protected Orb from those that would do the nation harm, Admiral Waltfeld of the home defense fleets, Captain Murrue la Flaga, of Archangel fame, her son Lewis la Flaga, the aging but still attentive blind Reverend, Malchio, a shaky looking but still present Jean Kellson, supported by her caretaker Mary O'Brien, and several other ministers and government officials, anyone who could be spared from the rescue, damage control and re-organization efforts that were still ongoing and would remain ongoing for the foreseeable future, in the wake of the devastating attack. Conspicuously absent were any attendees or representatives from either the political or military leadership of the USN, their obvious exclusion a definite and troubling sign of the newly widening rift between those in power in Orb, and those in power in the wider United Solar Nation. All the onlookers were silent as the pallbearers moved along the processional and eventually laid the flag draped coffin to rest in the stone depression that would be its tomb, and the foundation for a memorial monument dedicated to every soldier that had lost their life in the attack.

Wrenn and Violet had requested that no words be spoken, as Cyprus had never been a man of speeches, inspiring or otherwise, but rather a man who preferred to lead by example and with a quiet piece of wisdom or advice whispered now and again. Furthermore, as this was a ceremony for more than just Cyprus Finch, it felt wrong to them for speeches in his sole honor to be made, regardless of the extent of his personal sacrifices and contributions. A moment of silence and reflection upon what had been, what was and what would be was far more in line with the sort of man that Cyprus Finch had been. Furthermore, out of all the people gathered there to witness and honor the burial, only four had truly known Cyprus well enough to be able to feel comfortable speaking of him as a man, not as a soldier, and not a one of those four had any desire to speak such words. Cyprus had always valued his privacy, and had displayed himself as a man to only those whom he trusted to the utmost. To speak to others, especially in a public forum, of such moments, felt like a betrayal of his confidence.

One moment stretched into five, then ten, then a hundred, the gathered mourners and dignitaries finding themselves overcome by an almost meditative calm, the only sounds the whistle of the breeze, the chirp of a small bird somewhere in the distance, and the gentle rumble and crash of the incoming breakers on the shoreline a few hundred meters away. It was Violet that broke the moment, her hand pulled free of her mother's grasp as Wrenn finally could bear the strain no more and wept openly, her hands covering her face more in helplessness than in politeness. But Violet had already shed all the tears she was planning on shedding over this event, and though her eyes burned with the effort, not a drop of moisture clouded the edges of her vision. Stepping forward to the edge of the platform, she drew the eyes of everyone present as her hand slowly lifted into the air, not in a salute but in a gesture of command directed at the rifle bearing Stormhounds. There was a brief interval of surprise, as the event plan had been for Allister to give the command for the gun salute, but under the wet eyed glares of their Master Sergeant and Sergeant-Major, no Stormhound was about to refuse an order from Violet, not today anyway.

In perfect unison the rifles came away from shoulder arms, to present, and then to firing position, muzzles aimed skyward and off towards the ocean, so that the bullets would land harmlessly out to sea. In most military funerals with a gun salute, blanks were used for the same reason, but to send Cyprus off with anything less than a real war round just felt a bit demeaning. When Violet's hand fell down to her side again in a curt gesture, 39 rifles barked as one, the sudden concussion of noise and flash of light startling many of the attendees, some of whom had still be caught up in the pervasive moment of silence and introspection. Still moving in perfect, practiced unison, 39 hands racked the bolt action slide of a rifle, ejecting a spent shell case, hot brass twinkling in the sunlight as bright as the buttons on Allister's jacket, the action loading a second round as the bolt snapped back down and a second volley was fired, then a third, each volley ringing out as a single, magnified gunshot, all without a single word being spoken or command bellowed. Rifles emptied, the Stormhounds brought the rifles down from the firing position and slammed the heavy butts into the stone tiles beneath their feet with simultaneous "CRACKS" of metal on rock.

Their performance wasn't done however, as each member leaned their rifle carefully against their hip or pant leg, and reached for their battle-mask with measured movements of both hands. Glory and Ramierez rejoined the twin ranks, and Alkire took up position between the ranks, as he was the de facto senior officer of the unit now. His mechanical foot made a harsh "CLACK" sound as he snapped to attention, that being the only noise as the Stormhounds lifted and donned their masks as one, concealing grieving faces behind the snarling muzzles of demon-dogs, electric blue eyes glowing like the raging heart of a thunderstorm. A half second behind the Stormhounds, Violet too donned her mask, her dark eyed countenace hidden by the merciless, pitiless features of a hellhound, come from the very pits of hell to drag the lost and the damned down to their proper punishments. Around the country and all of space, anyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to met the burning ember-red glare of the mask could not suppress a sudden shiver and a clenching of their heart. This was no longer a little girl. This was the Hellhound. And there would be Hell to pay...

xxxx

**Valentine Memorial Grounds, Shoreline, 2:10 pm**

Mina Joule closed her eyes and sighed, greatly enjoying the sensation of the damp sand underneath her bare feet, especially after spending hours with her feet cooped up inside the formal shoes and stockings she'd been forced to wear for the burial ceremony. It made for a welcome respite from the sweating and itching sensation that she had been forced to tolerate for the sake of propriety, her father would have been livid if she'd embarassed them by fidgeting and scratching during the funeral proceedings, no matter how uncomfortable she found her footwear, especially in the too moist and humid tropical atmosphere of summertime Orb. The heat wasn't the problem, as the PLANTS were kept at a fairly warm 75 to 80 degrees fahrenheit constantly, it was the sticky-wet humidity that made her feel like she was drinking the air rather than breathing it that bothered Mina most. And the sun was too bright, even filtered to a more orangy color by the Glasshouse as it was. And as for the ocean, extending out to the horizon and beyond, well, Mina did her best not to look at it, keeping her eyes focused on the tideline and the dark, wet sand at her feet.

It wasn't that the vastness of the vista bothered her, as she was used to looking out the side of a PLANT and staring on out into the infinity of space, it was that this vastness wasn't EMPTY, while space was. Space was too big to be comprehended, so she didn't even try, didn't even consider how tiny and vulnerable and insignificant she really was. It was different with the ocean, it was huge, but just huge enough to make her think about how not huge she was, how she could be dropped into the middle of it randomly and be lost completely and totally, beyond any hope of recovery. Also, the concept of a standing body of water that was entirely undrinkable was also kind of strange, and even stranger was the thought that there were things living in it, big things even, really big things sometimes, things that could swallow her whole without even trying! No, Mina Joule did not like the ocean one bit, it frightened her, even if she would never say so much aloud, but she did like the cool, wet sand and the refreshing sea breeze, and so she continued to stand there and wriggle her toes and did her best not to look too far towards the horizon, her shimmery blue formal dress fluttering in the breeze.

Jamie Joule on the other hand, never far from her twin as per the usual, stood in the shallows about ten feet seaward from her sister, the breaking waves washing over her knees and wetting the hem of her silvery formal dress, causing it to slap wetly against her legs as it too fluttered in the wind, along with her mid back length white-silver hair, unbound from the tiresome styling she'd been forced to endure during the funeral. It wasn't like either of the Joule twins didn't understand why they had to get all dressed up and formal for the occassion, or that they weren't affected by the emotion of the event, just that they didn't like doing it, and reveled in being able to go back to more relaxed conditions as soon as possible. As far as they were concerned, being in Orb meant they were on vacation from being at home, and vacations were supposed to be times when you enjoyed being relaxed, right?

No more fond of the ocean than her sister, Jamie nonetheless chose to confront her fear head on, forcing her chin up as she stared out past the distant shimmer where the Glasshouse met the ocean surface, feeling the waves push against her but refusing to let the cool Pacific water or the pressure of the waves shift her from her position. She was probably going to get scolded something fierce by her father when he came to find them in a bit, as he'd handmade both her and Mina's dresses and now they were all but ruined with seawater and wet sand, but she didn't let the thought bother her too much. Getting scolded by their father was an almost daily occurence for the twins, but like their mother, they were able to see past their father's nigh obsessive-compulsive fussiness and haughteur, past the cold eyed glares and the fierce scowls, to the loving, caring and ultimately extremely patient and understanding man beneath. He would be angry that his hours of painstaking work to make the matching outfits would have been wasted, but he would know that after this event, neither of his daughters would be able to associate the fine clothes with anything other than sorrow and death and mourning, so perhaps they were better off destroyed.

So he would yell and carry on, and scowl and frown at them for an hour or two, and maybe limit their computer time for a few days, just to show he wasn't going soft or something, and then the next time they needed formal clothes for some event, he would stay up all night, even with cracked and broken ribs if need be, and handmake them dresses again without the slightest complaint, and they would smile and hug him and everyone concerned would be satisfied and content and happy. He might be a weird daddy, according to their friends anyway, but Yzak Joule was THEIR daddy, and they'd never want him to be any other person than he was. If anything, playing along with his idiosyncrasies was one of the more constant sources of amusement for the Joule girls, and seeing just how far they could tease him and push him before his scowls turned really grumpy and he went off to sulk or train by himself for a while, requiring pacification with a surprise hug or maybe a sheet of cookies or something. Making him grumpy was fun, but keeping him grumpy wasn't, you see.

They applied the same sort of policy towards their friends and peers, more or less, antagonizing the ones who were easy to antagonize, like Lewis or Alice, and teasing the ones who were easy to tease, like Roy and Violet, as well as Akira and Aoi when they had been alive, but while they enjoyed bugging their friends to distraction, once tempers really started to fray, the Joules were quick to apologize and make amends. It was funny to torment Alice and Lewis until they did something stupid or crazy, but when they started yelling and crying, then it was time for some cookies or a funny story about their dad or something. The same with Roy or Violet... it was fun to see how annoying they could be without getting an overt reaction from either of them, but after getting a reaction, it was time to kiss and make up, figuratively speaking. The only one they'd every actually kissed was Allister, and that was just to mess with their dad, who enjoyed little more than his "antagonistic rivalry" with all things Zala. Allister had told them to stop, a bit weirded out and embarassed, but that had only encouraged them, and now they took every opportunity they could to hang off "their" Prince, trying to see how far they could go before he got fed up and lost his royal cool.

And somewhere along the line, the "play" had turned a little more serious than either of them had intended, and now they were struggling to come to terms with the fact that they might, kinda-sorta, actually like Allister, even though he was a boy and therefore weird and strange. They were studiously avoiding mentioning the "L" word, as neither of them were comfortable with it, despite being intellectually aware of what that emotion was, they weren't psychologically ready for it, not for another few years anyway. Maybe the "C" word... crush... could be appropriate, though they'd have bloodied the nose of anyone, boy or girl, that had dared try and tease them about it. But Allister was cool and smart, and had the neatest toys, and wasn't a wimp or a nerd, and was a real life Prince, and he was always nice to them, though he was nice to everyone, and for some reason they could feel more relaxed when it was just him and them, nearly as relaxed as when it was just the two sisters. They could talk with him, open up to him, and not be embarassed about it. Allister was just special like that.

And of course watching their dad freak out when they came in from rough and tumble play, holding Allister's hands and giggling, was just the icing on the cake, especially because their mom thought it was hilarious as well. Allister's mom and dad were a bit harder to figure out; they seemed to know what was going on, but had decided to just watch and wait with tolerance. Either that or they were throwing Allister to the wolves, so to speak, to see how he handled it himself. As Crown Prince, he was going to have to be able to handle himself in all sorts of tough social situations in the future after all, if he couldn't even take playful teasing from two close friends, he would never survive in the world he was going to grow to inherit! And for that matter, it was no bad idea for them to get accustomed to moving in Allister's social circle either, as their mother was afraid to point out, because being close friends with the ruler of a nation-state could come in real handy later on in life, especially if both girls followed through on their dreams to follow in their father's footsteps as members of ZAFT and maybe even Gundam pilots! Wasn't that how their father had come by most of his Gundams, after all? Who you know can be very important...

Splashing water from behind her caused Jamie to turn around and regard Mina, who had been trying to get her twin's attention by chucking small beach stones into the surf nearby. Jamie met her sister's blue eyes, identical to her own, and put her hands challengingly on her hips. "What? Just spit it out, no need to go tossing stones and splashing me." Jamie scolded.

Mina just rolled her eyes, running sandy fingers through her short cropped and somewhat unruly silver-white hair, the same shade as her twin's but utterly different in style, the only major difference in physical appearance between them. Jamie was a little on the more muscular side, while Mina was more willowy, but you had to be family or close friend to tell that, just as most people wouldn't be able to tell that Mina took after her father a bit more while Jamie was more like their mother, personality and preferences wise. "Like you'd notice a little more water on your oh-so-dry clothes." Mina pointed out sarcastically, gesturing at Jamie's soaked to the waist dress. Lacking anyone else to antagonize, they would of course try to antagonize each other, as sisters were wont to do. "You're just lucky I was throwin them near you, not at you! I said your name, but you were too far off in la-la land to hear me." Mina scolded back, making a mocking frown as she mimicked their father's scowl. "You have to ALWAYS pay..."

"... attention to my surroundings, or I'll never be a good soldier, much less a Gundam pilot, yes, I know that, thanks." Jamie retorted acidly, finishing one of their father's most oft repeated admonishments. Far from being shocked or worried that his daughters wanted to be Mobile Suit pilots, Yzak was all but overjoyed and immensely proud of their patriotic ambitions, and was doing everything he could to impart upon them his decades of experience and wisdom now, before they hit puberty and started filtering out half of everything he said on general principle. "I wasn't daydreaming, I was reflecting. There's a difference."

"Yeah, reflecting is what you're doing whenever you get caught zoning out, while daydreaming is what happens the rest of the time." Mina answered smugly.

"Tough words coming from someone who's afraid to even put her toes in the water. What, you afraid you're gonna melt? It's just salt water, you sissy." Jamie returned, knowing that the best way to change topics was to go on the attack.

"It's not so much the water as it is the stuff IN the water." Mina replied with a slightly irritated frown of her own. Their father said it was okay to be afraid of things, it was just letting that fear become overwhelming, to the point where it uncontrollably influenced your actions, that became a problem. She shuffled forward and daintly dipped a single toe into the surf as it rolled towards the tide line, just to show that the idea of the water wasn't what was holding her back. "You do remember that there's still a gigantic Eddie shark swimming around other there somewhere, right? Lewis's dad said he was fighting against it on the far side of the island during the invasion, and that there's no way the shark could have gotten away with the rest of the Eddies when they left. That means its still out there somewhere, trappe din the Glasshouse with us... it could be behind you right now!"

"Uh huh, it could be." Jamie agreed flatly, refusing to give her sister the pleasure of seeing her glance over her shoulder, despite the sudden urge to do just that. "Somehow though, I think a shark the size of a cruise liner might have a bit of trouble getting this close in to shore without being REALLY obvious." Jamie pointed out, with smugness of her own.

"You don't know that." Mina challenged. "It's a psychic shark after all. It could just sit off shore and grab you with telekinesis and..."

"And if that happened, the ten feet of surf between you and me would be a barrier to it how?" Jamie cut her sister off with a quirked eyebrow. "Why eat one little girl when you can get two for almost the same effort? Though what it could possibly gain from eating two little shrimps like us, is beyond me."

"Yeah, you keep thinking like that, and when the next tsunami sweeps in and wipes this whole coastline clean, we'll see who's sorrier!" Mina rejoined, her voice cracking a bit as she bit her lip, unhappy with the lameness of her comeback. Which wasn't funny, at all, not in context anyway. Neither of them would be happy if anything bad happened to the other, after all. Setting her lips back into a frown, Mina continued on with her original line of thought. "Anyway, before you got me distracted, I was going to say..."

"You were going to say something?" Jamie cut her off again, finally turning around now that she wasn't being challenged not to, and shaking her head. "What a shock that is. What is it this time? Gonna comment how cute Alli looked in that getup? How scary Vio looked in that mask? Something else inane and obvious? Can't you see I'm trying to reflect here?"

"Don't take it out on me." Mina said with a long sigh, as she sat down on the damp sand and curled her knees up to her chest. "I'm freaked out too, ya know? It's been a long time since I've seen mom and dad get hurt, and never that bad... they could have died..."

"Died?" Jamie sputtered angrily, whirling on her twin again. "Don't be stupid! It's gonna take a LOT more than anything this world can throw at them to kill our mom and dad! He's Yzak Joule, Commander, Redcoat, FAITH member... he can do ANYTHING, and so can mom! Died... that's totally preposterous..."

"Tell that to Violet." Mina murmured into her knees as she hugged her legs, suddenly feeling cold even in the afternoon sunlight. "You heard as many of Grandpa and Grandma's stories about her father as I did. I didn't think ANYTHING could hurt him, much less kill him. But now he's dead. If Cyprus Finch can die... then anyone can di..."

"NO! NO IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!" Jamie shouted her down furiously, though she wasn't sure if it was because she was angred or scared by the thought. She stormed through the surf and stood glaring down at her sister for a moment, before sighing and sitting down next to her, likewise curling her legs up in front of her. "Dummy, you can't think like that..." Jamie muttered reproachfully.

"How can I not think like that?" Mina asked softly. "First Grandma gets killed in our own house, and Mr. Tiger-Stripes gets stuffed in our washing machine like a broken doll, and all these horrible things happen down in Orb, and now Violet's dad is dead and Mr. Kira is trying to kill everyone, and he's working with the guy that killed Grandma and the guy that killed Roy and Alice's Grandma, Grandpa and Aunts! How can I not be freaked out about that, Jamie? I never used to think Mr. Kira was scary, but LOOK at what happened to mom and dad! They didn't even defeat him, they just SURVIVED him, and they're so badly hurt! If even mom and dad can't stand up to him... then... then WHO CAN? And what happens next time?" Mina's voice slowly rose throughout her tirade, until she was all but wailing at the end.

"Dummy..." Jamie said again, though it was more because she couldn't think of anything else to say. Her first instinct was, as always, to believe unconditionally in her father and mother, but she couldn't deny that Mina had good points too. "You'd better not start crying..."

"I'm not crying..." Mina retorted, though from the way she kept her face hidden and the way her back was shivering even though she wasn't cold, Jamie didn't believe her, not even a bit. Truth be told, the only thing that kept her from doing the same thing was that she'd just told her sister not to do it. Jamie suppressed a shiver of her own, telling herself that it was just because her dress was all wet and clamy now that she was in the breeze, and she hugged her knees tighter. Windblown sand and salt irritated her eyes, and they began to blur as she blinked furiously, but she just couldn't get the irritants out no matter how hard she tried.

Time passed, and the breeze died away, the tide starting to come in, lapping against their toes as they sat side by side, each struggling with the fracturing of their perceptions of what the world was in their own way. Violet might be the one who'd "woken up" the most, but that was not to say that others were not forced to seriously examine their childhood convictions in the face of the reality of war. Jamie was just about to say screw it and let herself admit that she was scared to death and that maybe crying might actually help, or at least not hurt, when she heard the thump of a footstep from nearby, and her head popped up like a gopher out of a hole, staring around, deploring herself for letting personal issues distract her from someone sneaking up on them. The PLANTS and Orb were some of the safest places in all the solar system, where doors could be left unlocked and children could play in yards and parks unsupervised for the most part, but after what had happened to Grandma Joule, Jamie had decided that she would never lose track of people moving around her... she'd heard that the madman, Frost, had tried to kidnap Allister once before, she wasn't going to let something like that happen to her and Mina!

But it was only Allister, coming to search for them, no doubt only a few minutes ahead of a frowning dad and a smiling but worry eyed mom. Somehow Allister always seemed to know where to find them first, even though it was mom that had the psychic talents. Jamie frowned when she saw Allister's teasing smile disappear the moment his eyes met hers, and she realized she must look like a total mess. Not that she really cared about her appearance, not in the way she eventually would start to, but it still annoyed her that Allister had seen her with teary eyes and all covered in sand and soaked wet. Fortunately, Allister was more mature, or at least more sensible, than most boys his age, and he forebore making a teasing comment about her puffy eyes and tear stained cheeks. Now was not the time for that sort of thing. "They're looking for you." He told her with a shrug, his eyes glancing every which way but at her challenging glare.

"It's okay." Mina said hoarsely, as she pulled herself up to her feet once more. "I was sick of the beach anyway."

"Yeah." Jamie agreed, pouncing on the excuse like a cat onto a mouse. "Beaches are no fun down on Earth. The water is too cold here. Just look at Mina, she barely even got wet and she's shivering already!"

"Well, those dresses aren't exactly beachwear..." Allister pointed out.

"Hey now, you watch what you say... our dad made these with his own two hands!" Jamie retorted, getting up and brushing the back of her arm across her eyes a few times to hide her flush. Unfortunately, the back of her arm was crusted with windblown sand and salt, and all she managed to do was grind it into her eyes. "OWW, SHI...t..." Jamie bit back the curse, knowing that her father looked quite dimly on his daughters swearing, and if he was nearby, she hardly wanted to go screaming cursewords even if it did hurt. "I hate beaches..."

"Here, use this." Allister said, offering her a fold of silky cloth with which to wipe her face and eyes clean. It was only after she cleared her vision that Jamie realized she'd just wiped a bunch of grit and snot and tears all over the tassled half cape of Allister's royal uniform. She flushed again, even worse than before, but Allister's slow smile forestalled any outburst on her part. "Best use of the damned thing I've seen all day." He explained, draping it around her shoulders as a sort of windbreak or blanket. Swiftly unbuttoning his embroidered outer jacket, Allister draped that around Mina's shoulders, and then took them both by the hands, rather authoritatively, in Jamie's opinion. However, she was just grateful for him giving them some space even while showing he was there for them, so she forebore commenting on his forwardness. Well...

"Dad's gonna flip out when he sees us wearing your clothes, ya know..."

"Well, you're still wearing YOUR clothes too, so I think he'll calm down quickly enough." Allister answered with a snort. "And besides... if he didn't flip out, then things wouldn't be back to normal yet, would they?"

"Yeah." Mina nodded, a small smile creeping onto her face. "Him flipping out is what's normal, all right." She tightened her grip on Allister's hands and bumped him with her side, all but cuddling up against his side. "Maybe we should see how loud we can make him scream?"

"Maybe we shouldn't..." Allister countered, a trace nervously, as the Joule twins began to move on him with the synchornity of a pack of wolves.

"ZALA, WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR SON DOING WITH MY DAUGHTERS!"

"Ahh... normality..." Jamie whispered contentedly.


	60. In the Depths of Space

Author note: Only 27 more reviews till 1000, who's gonna be the lucky reviewer? Well, glad to see reactions of various sorts from the last chapter, even if many people are less than happy with the way things are being viewed/worked by the Royalist faction. I won't excuse everything they say and believe, but do try to bear in mind, that the true scope of the USN/Durandel's actions are not and have never been apparent to them, and their perception of Durandel's misdeeds are more focused on his personal actions against Orb, which while bad, are nowhere near as bad as what Djibril would do if he had the chance. Even a half informed reader is easily three or four times more informed than Jiro Kurenai or anyone else in Orb is. Also glad to see people liked the funeral scene and that with the Joule twins. Now just to touch more upon Lewis la Flaga and then, maybe, even Akira and Aoi (who have't really had a scene devoted to them and just them yet). But before all that, its time to head up into space and see the USN and others reactions to what has happened, eh? And we might as well start at the top...

P.S. Sorry it took so long... though I did my best to tide you along in other matters, if you visit my forums.

xxxx

**Space, Luna, Copernicus Lunar City, The Blue Tower Presidential Suites and Compound, January 27th, Midmorning**

He couldn't go on acting this way, he knew that. This behavior was self destructive, pointless and perhaps worst of all, a definite sign of weakness that the pack of jackals he called his "shadow cabal" in more humorous times would not hesitate to come after him for should they get wind of it! Always before, he'd been the one in indisputable control, even when they did something unexpected, he was prepared and ready with a score of ready made counterplans and startegies to nullify their momentary advantages. Always before, he'd been in perfect balance, immune to their attempts to topple him much as a building would not be pushed over by the hands of a single man. No longer was that the case though. Now his foundations were cracking and crumbling before his very eyes, all the labor he had spent building himself up to this lofty height over decades corroding and falling apart, and not only could he do nothing to stop it, truth be told he had no desire to anymore! Every man has his limit, beyond which if pushed he loses his ability to truly care about what happens next. Gilbert Durandel was at that limit, his toes dangling over the edge, and he wasn't altogether sure that he might not decide to just let himself fall. Surely, it couldn't be too much worse than what he was already going through, could it?

He was drunk... or rather, still drunk, having begun drinking sometime in the days before, a few hours after his abortive attempt to take Rey and his other advisors to task for allowing the unmitigated catastrophe of Orb's invasion, the destruction of the Mass Driver and the deployment and subsequent loss of control of the USN's ace in the hole, the BALORs, necessitating their destruction at the hands of USN forces! It was an unfamiliar feeling for him, this loggy impairment, as he had not drunk to excess since his early secondary school days, back when he didn't have any goals other than getting into the skirt of the hottest girl and school and becoming president of the student council. Simpler days, when he could afford to wallow in callow abandonment of self control. He could not afford to do so now, but that wasn't stopping him anymore. Everything was just going so WRONG, all at once, and it was becoming more than he could even bear to think about! So he sat slumped in his chair in his home's study, face in his hands, glasses and bottles of all sorts scattered across the desk surface, most of them empty save for dregs, wearing a stained bathrobe, his hair gnarled and tangled, his chin gritty from a two day growth of beard, and he did his best to think about nothing at all.

However, even drowned in several thousand dollars worth of alcohol over the course of almost fifty hours of self pitying frustration, his brain wasn't so disabled that he could just command it to stop working and it would follow that heartfelt wish. His mind didn't work that way, he was always calculating, creating plans, testing hypothesies, considering details and a thousand and one other mental tasks to keep him at his absolute sharpest, at all times. Such a blade did not dull easily, not even when you slammed it into a wall a hundred times running and then left it soaking in corrosive fluids for two days. Not that he had actually physically bashed his head into things, though the temptation had been there at times, and in the hour long rage-tantrum that had followed his attempt to berate his cabinet, he had certainly done a good job of tearing his apartments to pieces. Furniture was upended, paintings ripped off the wall, glassware smashed, carpets stained with hurled food and drink, the fine plaster or stucco of his wallfronts was crushed in at various points, his bed linens had been ripped to shreds and spread around the room like confetti... it was awful, that was what it was.

And it hadn't been carthartic in the least. The opposite if anything. He'd stopped trying to express his emotions physically only because he'd been exhausted, not because he'd gotten the rage and frustration and despair out of his system in the slightest, and that was when he'd noticed his infrequently used liquor cabinet, miraculously unsmashed or vandalized during his tantrum, almost providentially so to his half rational mind. One stiff drink to calm his nerves had turned to two, then five, then ten, and before he knew it he found himself in some sort of near oblivion state where he couldn't feel or think ANYTHING at all. It had been just the balm he needed, or so he thought... until the oblivion ended with nausea and cramping like nothing he'd ever experienced before in his entire life, and he spent two hours in the bathroom being explosively sick. But even such a foul experience hadn't been enough to deter him from returning to his bottles and flasks, in desperate attempt to find that oblivion again. That oblivion where he could finally relax, where Rey's willful disobedience didn't prey on his nerves, where Djibril's bald faced intentions didn't frustrate him, and where Natalia's pathetic attempts at seduction didn't disgust him!

That oblivion where he didn't dream about Talia, his precious, missing Captain, enduring unspeakable yet indistinct tortures, calling out for him to come save her, yet no matter how he tried, just before he would reach her side, he would wake up crying and screaming and realize it had all just been a nightmare! A nightmare that continued on into the wakeful world, because Talia really was missing, and though he knew it was by the hands of Djibril and Natalia, he had no PROOF with which to accost them! Section Nine, Rey's covert police and domestic intelligence service, had been less than no help at all with his demands for investigation into her apparent kidnapping from her own apartments, and Gilbert was starting to realize, horrifying as it was, that maybe Rey was working against him on this too! It was the only explanation for Section Nine's apathy that made any sense at all, no matter how much he didn't want it to! He'd always thought Rey and Talia got along, or at least mutually recognized how individually and uniquely important to him they each were, but apparently his foster son had been harboring some lingering resentment towards his love for quite some time, and he'd just been too blind... or too preoccupied... to notice this cancerous jealousy!

And the worst part of it all was that, despite his earnest desires, he could not rip the foundations of his society apart block by block in search of the woman he loved, because that was precisely what the people who had conspired to take her from him wished for him to do. Instead he had to soldier on, acting like nothing was wrong, like he didn't know what they had done, that he wasn't aware they were smirking at him behind his back as they countered his every clandestine effort to track Talia down! This was truly his worst nightmare, and the reason he had never allowed Talia to become involved in politics along with him. However, even keeping her at such a distance apparently had not been enough when his allies who were his enemies had decided the time was ripe to begin preparations for the inevitable coup attempt. He had been such a fool, to think that just keeping her out of politics would have been enough to assure her safety. And it wasn't like he hadn't had warning signs... when she'd come to him in private to express the worries of his fleet commanders with Rey's performance, he should have seen the writing on the wall. He should have taken her off active duty and placed her under heavy guard, no matter how much she would have hated it!

But he hadn't, he'd respected her ability to take care of herself, reasoning that since she was commander of ZAFT's fleet flagship, the _Remembrance_, she would be safe enough on the front lines from the poison and hidden knives of his political "allies", especially with Rey's Section Nine covertly watching out for her, on his direct order. His folly had been in trusting Rey, even after it had become quite plain that his son's infatuation with Natalia Dostonya had resulted in him becoming her puppet. Of course Section Nine wouldn't report on actions taken by elements within Section Nine, they would no doubt assume that it was sanctioned somehow! And he couldn't just go out and accuse Rey of having Talia "disappeared", not without definite proof, or he really would alienate his son forever, which would render him berefit of any political ally but Icarus, and that vulture was the worst scavenger of them all... he would be only too glad to hang back and snatch at whatever scraps were left by whichever side ended up winning this power struggle!

Or at least, he had avoided accusing his son of betraying him up until a few days ago, when he had been sitting in his office, going over more reports from his dwindling collection of loyal agents on their efforts to locate Talia, all of them negative or inconclusive, which was when he'd gotten the news of the Eddie invasion of Orb and attack upon the military infrastructure there, most especially the USN's sole remaining Mass Driver! Of course, he'd ordered all available forces to the embattled nation in order to shore up their defenses... losing the Mass Driver was completely unacceptable, it would cripple their logistics and supply chains for months on end! And so, when his regular forces proved unable to confound the Eddie forces, with their blend of technology and chimera-monsters, Durandel had gladly signed into effect the order to deploy the still "untested" 1st generation BALORs, in the hope that they would stymie the Eddie advance long enough for enough regular forces to arrive and overwhelm the presumptious enemy!

And then had come the news that FEAR's vaunted new superweapons, the new evolution in the term "GUNDAM" that would surely bring the war to a swift end once and for all, had gone berserk and were running amuck down in Orb, causing as much or more damage to allied forces and infrastructure as they were to the invaders! And when he'd all but stormed into the strategic conference chamber where Rey and his senior staff were coordinating the operation to defend Orb, and found both Natalia and Djibril already there, sitting in council with Rey, he'd realized that none of if was a mistake, none of it was random, and that the travesty in Orb was just the latest in a long line of attacks against the world order he'd established! His personal animosity with Orb was well known and documented in political circles, no one, least of all Orb itself, was going to believe that the BALOR's loss of control was an "accident", despite how disadvantageous the damage caused was to the USN as well! The press were going to murder him, and the public would go right along with it, because they were sick of losing battles!

That had been the final straw, that realization that for the first time since Noah revealed the true purpose of the Brotherhood of Humanity, Durandel had been decieved and outmaneuvered by those who were supposed to be his allies and subordinates, and really, truly caught unprepared for the scope of their betrayal... that along with the continued stress of Talia's disappearance, had pushed him over the edge. He had relieved Rey of his position as Supreme Commander right then and there, in front of everybody, castigating Rey both as a military commander and as his foster son, laying out his deficiencies in performance for all to know. It was more than just an embarassment, it was a total refutation of any vestige of pride Rey might hope to lay claim to as a military commander. And then he'd gotten personal, bringing up the old Lunamaria Hawke fiasco and then lambasting Rey for allowing himself to be seduced by the woman sitting right next to him, Dr. Natalia Dostanya of FEAR. He brought up the deplorable treatment of the female Extendeds, vital USN military assets turned into tools of debauchery. And he brought up Talia, flat accusing Rey of being behind her disappearance, despite his lack of proof!

And then all his anger and frustration and fear and rage had collapsed inwards, leaving him feeling hollow and broken inside, as he turned furious eyes on Dr. Dostanya herself, the mastermind behind all his current woes, and prepared to drag her over coals even hotter than what he'd toasted Rey with. And then paused, because far from finding her looking shocked or indignant or even suprised, she was smiling at him, like a cat toying with a mouse, and Durandel had in that moment realized that everything he had just done was exactly what she had wanted him to do. She had put him under pressure after mind-breaking pressure, and finally he'd cracked, and she was now just waiting for him to break down completely, to politically self destruct by doing to her and Djibril what he'd just done to Rey, giving them all the excuse they would ever need to start plotting against him openly, as they would no longer be beholden to him in any way after he fired them or cast them out. Gatherig a few shreds of remaining self control, Durandel had merely said that he would "deal with their conduct later" and had then all but staggered out of the room, to return to his apartments in disarray.

Though even as distracted and devastated and disoriented as he was, Durandel had still retained the presence of mind to delegate appropriate authority to other government functionaries and ministers to handle the inevitable aftermath of the invasion ahead of time, so that he would not be excessively called upon during his hidden breakdown. He'd been pushed to the edge by Dostanya and her cronies, but to retreat into seclusion and ignore the realities of life would be just as bad as burning his political house to the ground would have been, truly, he'd been outfoxed this time! Perhaps even worse than Noah ever had, since he'd always known Noah had his own agenda, he'd just not been aware of how close it was to completion. Noah had been smarter than him, and possessed of powers and abilities far beyond anything Durandel was capable of predicting, but he'd still beaten the bastard in the end! He'd never considered Djibril or Dostanya to be smarter than him, and both of them were Naturals, of all things, but now it was they who teetered on the edge of victory!

And he was, if anything, creeping closer to defeat with every passing moment he spent wallowing in self pity and frustration, in the study of his wrecked apartment, his mind half drowned in a torrent of expensive alcohol, eyes burning both from tears and lack of any good rest in the past fifty hours, his entire body aching like he'd just fallen down a dozen flights of stairs, and all of it paling in comparison to the jagged vice-grip that was churning closed around his heart with every moment that Talia's fate remained unknown but no doubt unpleasant! He shuddered to think of what Natalia was capable of doing to someone she clearly had personal animosity for, given what the Director of FEAR had displayed herself capable of inflicting upon hundreds of Edenites who had never done her any personal injury or annoyance! And the worst part of it all was that, despite all his power and his position as Solar President, there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it!

With a furious yet despairing growl, Durandel swept his arm across his desk, sending empty glasses, bottles and cups clattering to the floor of his study, most of them bouncing harmlessly from the thick pile carpets, a few breaking apart in dull edged fragments of safety glass, staining the cream colored flooring with a mixture of browns, pale reds and pale yellows. The outburst didn't help in the slightest, just as none of the previous ones had. Anger draining out of him stole away the remnants of energy as well, and the most powerful man in the Solar System, the President of the United Solar Nation, Gilbert Durandel, collapsed bonelessly back into his study chair, set his arms on his desk and put his face into his hands, long strands of glistening black hair falling in a disarrayed shroud onto the desk surface. A long silence followed, before a sound halfway between a sob and a whimper escaped the bowed form, followed by an aching whisper. "Talia... I'm so sorry... Talia... Talia... everything's falling apart..."

xxxx

**Space, Lunar Orbit, Second Earth Colony 1, North Polar Quadrant Mass Habitation Residential Block 1276, Unit #36709, Feburary 6th, 7:32 am**

Ryan Jones woke up with a convulsive gasp, his body spasming for a second as he fought against invisible bonds, his eyes clouded with the mists of sleep, his gasp of shock slowly turning into panting for breath, cold sweat standing out on the skin of his forehead and bare back, as he gradually completed the process of waking up and realized it had all been a dream, the jungle, the eyes in the dark, and that horrific scythe! Or, perhaps more accurately, not a dream but a jumbled flashback... the events were all too real, just the order and intensity by which he recalled them changed from night to night. Finding himself lying facedown on a slightly familiar and quite comfortable mattress, with dark blue sheets only a few shades from the comforting hue of his Survivor pattern armor, Ryan slowly rolled over onto his back, reaching up to touch his face and wipe his brow free of sweat as he narrowed his eyes and began to take stock of himself. Or at least, that was his intent, but as soon as his back touched the sheets, a curtain of fiery agony draped itself across his shoulderblades and upper back, and Ryan bolted upright with a startled scream, his momentum carrying him entirely off the quite narrow bed he'd been sleeping on, landing in an ignominous tangle of sheets on the floor!

"That's like the fourth time you've done that in the last sixteen hours, Rico." A feminine voice, filled with more humor than sympathy, commented from nearby. "I have to admit though, it doesn't seem to be getting any less funny. Who would have expected a big, tough, front line war hero like you would be such a pussy about a simple tattoo..." She continued to mock him, as Ryan kicked himself free of the sheets with a incoherent grumble, and pushed himself to his feet, tenderly stretching his body, feeling where the skin on his upper back and shoulderblades was still hot and tight, from where the tattoo... that damned thing... was incised via laser imprinting onto his flesh. It had been Spyro's idea. All the bad ones he tended to regret generally were Spyro's... aka Sergeant Meyer, as of a few days ago... ideas. Being meritoriously promoted to Sergeant had done little for Spyro's hooliganism and rough edges, if anything, it seemed to justify his conduct, at least to himself. Not that Ryan would have wanted his friend any other way, stupid, crazy ideas or not... hell, he RELIED on the bastard for that reason, though he'd never say that out loud.

"Nobody mentioned that it was gonna hurt like a sonuvabitch AFTER the procedure was done." Ryan grumbled. "If' I'd known that, I woulda had them do it in parts, rather than all at once! This shit sucks! I can't even lie down on my back for another 8 hours!" He gingerly reached over his shoulder and traced the design imprinted acoss his upper back with a fingertip. His finger came away bloodless... that was the advantage to laser imprinting, rather than the old fashioned needle and ink method, you didn't have a bunch of miniscule puncture wounds to worry about bleeding on your shirt or getting infected. The image was a detailed pic of a USN trooper, clad in battered blue Survivor armor, using a Mauler to combat a massive scorpion-like creature done in black and silver, with the title "Bughunter" written in on a tattered scroll beneath. It was a damned vivid thing, more a work of art than a simple tattoo, a homage to his squad nickname, and one of the scariest goddamned moments of his life, when their unit was ambushed by the Deathstalker Queen in the African desert!

The three of them... him, Spyro and Dud... had all been drunk, and melancholy, despite the dates each had brought, their thoughts collectively back in the foothills of the Himalaya's, and the trek through the jungle that had followed the massacre of most of their unit, including their longtime mentor, First Sergenat Blundquist, the man who had taught them what being a soldier meant, cut down... no, more like slaughtered like an animal... by the Eddie monster-man! In an effort to cheer everyone up, Sypro had suggested that they should all go out and do something crazy, which had eventually led them into a tattoo parlour, getting "ink" done, with the image on each of them being decided by the other two guys. Which is why Ryan had a freaking portrait across his back, while Meyer had a big purple cartoon dragon breathing flames across his arms and shoulders, and Dudly had an image of a massive bomb sticking out of a crater in the ground, unexploded.

The girls had thought it was all completely fucking hilarious of course, especially when Meyer had proudly backslapped both of his friends and made them scream like little girls at the abuse to their laser scored flesh. Good times all around, and it helped them forget about all the people that should have been there, drunk and horny and stupid, with them, but weren't and never would be again. Like Jeebus, who'd survived the convoy massacre battle, only to be killed during the perilous trek back through the jungles on foot, to the nearest USN staging base, an overland trip that had taken almost 24 straight hours of marching... and sprinting, when called for... through a forest that seemed personally determined to ensure none of them made it out alive. Their group had started out with almost twenty soldiers in it, the pitiful remnants of the hundreds strong convoy that had been demolished by the Eddie ambush. But they were unarmed, tired, injured in some cases, and some of them were already beginning the conversion into Edenites.

Of those twenty soldiers, precisely five had made it out of the jungle, all of them more dead than alive. As for the others, some were dead of poison sap from dangling vines, or had their flesh melted away by acid spitting flowers, or had been cut to ribbons while sprinting through a grove of Partisan Ferns, or stung into a coma and devored alive... armor and all... by a swarm of hornet like insects, the smallest of which was almost four inches long! And then there had been the goddamn Direcats, saber toothed felines the size of fucking horses, and the pack of spiders as big as small cars that had hunted in a pack and pounced around in leaps of a dozen meters at a time. Frankly, Ryan had NO FUCKING IDEA how any of them had managed to survive, though to his embarassment, Meyer and Dud had both credited the survival to his leadership and personal heroism. He dimly remembered being on point, scouting the path ahead for the least dangerous route, and doubling back a few times to help out some of the people that were falling the furthest behind, and yelling orders and encouragement at the people that wanted to give up. And he remembered stabbing one of those freaky goddamned spiders to death with a sharp wooden branch he'd found on the ground, when it had pounced on Jeebus and sucked his guts out through his neck!

But that wasn't goddamned heroism, was it? He was just trying to survive, and keep his friends alive too, it wasn't like he'd jumped on a grenade or something! No one else had a fucking clue what to do, so he'd spoken up and gotten people moving, that was all. But for some reason, everyone else was making a huge fucking deal about it all, the story was in the press even, and he was being held up as some kinda freaking military icon, of the indomitability of the USN spirit or some such bullshit propoganda like that. He knew that things were pretty rough for the Brass right now, but he hadn't thought things were so desperate they needed to make him a freaking hero just to get some good publicity! They'd even gone so far as to present him with a Silver Star, the second highest award for personal bravery in the regular USN military, and he'd been promoted straight from corporal all the fucking way up to Gunnery Sergeant, which he didn't even want to think about right now! Sure, the increase in pay was no bad thing, but he dreaded the thought of actually being in command of a Platoon, or second in command anyway, but everyone knew it was the sergeants who actually ran things on the ground. He wasn't ready for that kind of responsibility, or at least he didn't think so!

Of course, all this hoopla had come after he had recuperated from the injuries and fatigue he'd sustained during the battle and the trek back to friendly forces, and after he and the others had been comprehensively debriefed by USN military intelligence, as well as some spooky bastards from FEAR, who'd all seemed pretty fucking excited about the Eddie ambushers, or more specifically, the two Praetorians and Monster-Man, aka Zacharis Frost, aka Executor Frost, pilot of the Kratos Gundam, one of two principle Eddie warleaders! Especially because the Eddies had all been on foot, without signs of transport vehicles in the area... meaning they must have some sort of base or staging point nearby, and a damned important one too, if it was guarded by two Praetorians and one of the Executors! The elusive Eddie capital, Garden City, was supposed to be located somewhere in the Himalaya's, and the ambush of Vought Company was the first major proof the USN forces had that they might be getting close to the location of said city, and thus that much closer to being able to make a major decapitation strike at the Eddie forces!

But that was all way over Ryan's paygrade, and it hadn't been hard to put such things out of his mind, especially since after they released him from the military hospital where his debriefing had taken place, he'd recieved a full two weeks of paid leave, along with the remnants of his squad. It was the first hint of a break any of them had seen since Boot Camp, the needs of the ongoing war having trumped the usual duty rotations for far too long. But in the wake of the Battle of Orb, the USN seemed to be relaxing its military posture somewhat, focusing more on defense and consolidating what gains it had already made, rather than continue trying to push offensively while its primary logistical link, the Hameya's Attlatl Mass Driver, was inoperable. This meant that the leave rotation could be reinstituted in a preliminary fashion, to give the front line troops some time to decompress and recharge their emotional batteries.

And none too soon, as the morale of the groundside forces had been at all time lows, mostly due to a crushing lack of faith in their top commanders and strategic planners, and a pervading sense of being stagnant, even stalemated, by the foe they had been led to believe was little more than barbarians with spears and stone axes. The reality was just about the exact opposite of that... the Eddies possessed individual technology far greater than that of any USN soldier, and despite some notable victories, almost every major battle with the Eddies had been, at best, a tie, with the weight of casualties always on the USN forces. They were fighting a foe with greater technology, greater abilities, and better leaders... if the numbers involved were even close to being even, the USN probably would have already lost the war, and the grunts on the front lines knew it! And they knew it wasn't their fault either, that they were giving it their all, but were being grievously and repeatedly failed by the top Brass.

Especially Supreme Commander... now ex-Supreme Commander... Rey ze Burrel, the right hand man and rumored adopted son of Solar President Durandel, the former commander of the Solar Knights organization before he was promoted to oversee the course of the entire Reclamation War. It would go down in history as one of the greatest military blunders of modern history. Though a product of ZAFT's highly esteemed Military Academy, graduating with the honored uniform of the Redcoat, and undeniably a fine small to medium sized unit commander, judging by his conduct with the original Solar Knights before the Eden Disaster, strategic level command proved to be beyond ze Burrel's capabilities, as he had floundered in the sudden rush of extra power, making decisions based more off political goals and personal ambitions than what was truly a military necessity. And then had come his highly visible cowardice at the Battle of Victoria, where he had abandoned the field... and fully half of his most elite Solar Knights... in the face of the Kratos Gundam. If one isn't going to stay on the front line, then one should not GO to the front line, was the opinion of the grunts who did most of the fighting and dying.

And then to add insult to injury, there came the rumors about the Supreme Commander utilizing special military resources for the personal gratification of himself and his closest cronies, turning highly trained and capable Extended class supersoldiers into his own private harem, sexing it up behind closed doors while the rank and file fought and died, unable to even take off their armor to take a piss! And whenever perfectly legitimate questions or concerns were passed up the chain of command, asking that something be done to curtail this behavior, visits from Section 9 and other clandestine police forces came down with punishing force on anyone accused of having "treasonous sentiments", which only further served to drive morale downwards. It had come as a relief when the Solar President had finally realized what nearly everyone below the rank of Colonel in the USN military already had, that his Supreme Commander was one of the most despised people in the entire USN, and useless to boot, and had publicly relieved him of his command. The footage of the blow-up between the Commander in Chief and his chief commander was STILL percolating around on prime time news, and it had occured almost two weeks ago!

Still, there were many in the military who felt that it was all too little, all a bit too late. Public sentiment was turning against the war, and Durandel's administration in specific, for the first time since Durandel had taken office, shortly after the Eden Disaster! The relationship of the Solar President and the shadowy military contractor corporation, Fenris Enhanced Armaments Researchers, more commonly known as FEAR, was being scrutinized very carefully now, in the wake of the revelation and deployment of the next generation Mobile Weapons known as BALORs. Though the performance of the... machines? Creatures? No one knew what the BALORs really were... was undeniable, the fact that they had promptly gone berserk and all but razed Nara-Athha City to the ground, as well as destroyed the Mass Driver, killing thousands of friendly forces in the process, was not going to be soon forgotten! Protests were being held in the streets, and there were growing numbers of public demands for transparency in the government apparatus, and especially with regards to FEAR and the Reclaimer Initiative. Not even an escalation of Section 9's efforts in the shadows could keep the rising tide of displeasure and shaken confidence under control.

But again, most of this was over Ryan's head and not really stuff he thought about all the time, save when he saw things on the news, or had to detour around a protest march or something like that when walking out in the commercial districts of Second Earth 1. He had other things on his mind, more pressing things, more personal things. To be more specific, Rachel Glass, the auburn haired knockout whose bed he'd been sharing since the third day of leave, when he and the remnants of Forlorn Hope had met Rachel and her companions... actually her crew... in one of the rave halls/bars that were the go to places for mind benumbing intoxicants and body pounding music. Good places to forget your troubles for a few hours or a night, and pick up a companion or two, of whatever sex you might desire. Rachel... professionally known as Gunnery Sergeant Glass... was the commander of a Titan class super heavy battle tank, operating out of the European Theatre, Heaven's Base. She and her two crewmates... Sergeant Cammy Gune, who was primary weapo's officer; and Corporal Elizabeth Black, sensor and secondary weapons officer... had bumped into Ryan, Meyer and Dudly quite by accident, but had hit things off from the start, instinctively recognizing fellow veterans in search of some good times.

That was all it was supposed to be... people with mutual needs and mutual backgrounds finding some stress relief and catharsis in each other's company, without having to worry about putting up with the crap of civilians, such as sleeping late or needing to be polite, or needing to keep their own crap bottled up for fear of ostracizing themselves, such as the combat flashbacks and nightmares. They were all flush with months worth of pay that they had begun to suspect they might never get a chance to spend, and knowing that they only had two weeks before they'd be back at the front lines, in the meatgrinder, with all too many chances to die in various horrible manners, they had no reservations about spending it quickly, on as many cheap luxuries as they could find, such as good booze, legal intoxicant chems, nice clothes they'd probably never wear again after this leave period, and spur of the moment things like the tattoos, or taking out private shuttles, or visiting the high end rec facilities in the wealthy sectors of the gigantic colony.

And of course there was the sex, the instinctive, primal melding of bodies and emotions and needs, a hormonal reaction to the stress of constant near death experiences and the uncertainty of long term survival. Ryan hadn't exactly been a player before joining the army, but he knew his way around a woman and a bed, and the same was true of Rachel, in reverse of course. All female vehicle crews were actually fairly common in the USN forces, but the constant rumors about them usually being bi's or lesbians were far from the truth, or more likely, just the fantasies of male infantrymen who hadn't gotten laid in weeks or months. Certainly, Rachel had no interest in her subordinates, and quite a bit of it in Ryan. And Ryan in turn was getting kind of uncomfortable with how comfortable he was getting with Rachel. Hell, he as starting to get used to waking up in bed with her, or in her bed anyway, and that kind of attachment wasn't something he was sure he could afford at this point in time! They only had about a week left of leave, and then they'd both be back down on Earth, probably in entirely seperate theatres of the war, and there was a very real possibility they'd never see each other again.

"Don't get melancholy on me, axel-grease." Rachel interrupted his thoughts, still leaning in the doorway to the small bedroom that adjoined the living and eating section of her hab quarters. She had short auburn hair, almost a buzz cut in some respects, to allow for easier interface with the NIC system that connected her with the piloting systems of her monster tank, and skin with the "half tan" of someone who'd spent most of their life in space, under the filtered sunlight of the PLANTS, with arresting red tinged eyes that sometimes seemed to turn orange in bright light. She was a Coordinator, of course, but she wasn't one of the ones who was snooty about it. She was about a half a foot shorter than Ryan, but well built for her height, and she packed a pretty mean left hook, as several off duty Solar Knights looking to cause trouble had found out a few days ago in one of the bars.

Ryan could not help but shake his head and smile, all thoughts about anything other than the here and now banished for the time being. Rachel, also known as "Bullet-Proof" or just "BP" for short by the members of her unit, because of her seeming invulnerability on the field of battle, her tank never having more than a few dings and scratches on it after even the heaviest bouts of combat, had plainly only been up for a short time before he'd struggled free of his nightmare, because she was still dressed in the simple tank top and boxer shorts that she wore to bed, when she wore anything at all. Some guys might have found a girl wearing men's underwear to bed to be weird, but Ryan thought it was pretty cute actually. Besides, only an idiot would care what sort of underwear his girl wore when she was demonstratably willing to take them off for you! Ryan had boxers on himself... the night before, they'd both been too tired and worn out, emotionally speaking, for either of them to feel like getting frisky, so they'd just climbed into bed together and held each other until they fell asleep.

It was precisely that kind of behavior that had Ryan worried. He wasn't the cuddling type, or didn't think he was, and neither was Rachel. She'd as much as called them "just good fuck-buddies" on the first morning they'd woken up together, saying that there was no way in hell she was going to get "all cuddly with some damned axel-grease". Axel-grease apparently being a tanker term for infantry, enemy and allied alike, because of what happened when infantry stood in front of an advancing tank and couldn't get out of the way fast enough. Ryan had also heard the term "tread-butter" being tossed around by Rachel and her crew, and figured that was pretty much the same thing. It was all right, the infantry had as many uncomplimentary nicknames for the armor corps as they did for the Solar Knights, or nearly so anyway.

"Melancholy? Me?" Ryan replied with feigned injured dignity, stepping past her, making sure to jostle her with his shoulder in the process, all but smacking her against the wall. "Oops, didn't see you there, gopher." He said with an unconvincing smirk. "Gopher" was slang for the way tank commanders would sometimes ride around with their heads sticking out of the top hatches, when not in combat anyway. His smirk died when Rachel gave him a "friendly" back slap, and it was all he could do not to stumble to his knees and whimper as his tattoo burns flared up again.

"There's some fight in you yet, axel-grease. Good." Rachel commented with a smile, as she followed him to the side of the common area, where the kitchen was. The room was divided into two parts, as was the norm for single occupancy hab blocks in this sector, with a plastic tiled floor on one side for a kitchen, and a thin pile carpet on the other side, for an eating/sitting area. In lower class habs, the couch in the sitting area would fold out into your bed, but as a Gunnery Sergeant, Rachel could afford slightly more luxurious quarters, so she had a seperate bedroom, with a cubicle like bathroom off it, just big enouh for a shower, a sink and a toilet. All told, the entire apartment was about 375 square feet, and cost about 2000 dollars a month in rent, plus utilities of course. That was just the cost of living on a Second Earth station, with millions upon millions of people crammed into mass habitation blocks, and nowhere else to go. To get a similar apartment for a family of four, you were looking at paying at least 4500 dollars a month. You had to be REALLY well off to afford anything like the type of home you'd have on the PLANTS or down in Orb.

Breakfast consisted of toast with faux butter and either milk or orange juice, with a splurge of some scrambled real eggs, rather than the reconstituted dehydrated garbage. "So what's on the agenda for today, BP?" Ryan asked between bites, having known Rachel long enough now to feel comfortable using unit slang with her.

"Fuck all." Rachel replied laconically, swigging from her glass of orange juice. Despite her current appearance and actions, Rachel could actually clean up very nicely, as Ryan and the others had dsicovered when they'd all gone out to a dinner and movie date together, but in the comfort of her own hab, she was a bit of a slob, which was actually something else Ryan found endearing about her. He hated fussy neat freaks. He wasn't a hoarder or anything, but he didn't worry about a few dirty clothes on the floor, especially if he'd put them there in the first place! "Dunno, maybe watch some TV, read a book, play some WoGB, probably have some kinky sex. I'm easy, axel-grease. Why, you got some big plans or something?"

Ryan thought about it for a moment. He'd already been back home to see his folks, and he was getting kind of bored with going out and partying with his squadmates. A day doing nothing but hang around and relax actually sounded like just what the doctor ordered. "Nah, no plans, gopher. Though that kinky sex sounds pretty good..."

She gave him a lazy smile in return. "Thought it might, at that, since it sounded pretty good to me too." That was yet another thing Ryan found enticing and endearing about Rachel... she was shamelessly direct about her desires. If she wanted to go out to eat at a nice resteraunt, she'd say so. If she wanted to hang around and do nothing all day, she'd say so. If she wanted some time to herself, she'd say so. If she wanted to fuck, she'd say so. There was none of that damn hinting and double speaking and "looks" that had to be interpreted with some women to judge the mood. They finished up breakfast rather rapidly after that point, and retired to the bedroom post haste, to work off all the energy that breakfast might have given them.

Afterwards, Ryan lay on his front once more, studying the weave of the familiar blue sheets, his skin layered in sweat and his muscles tingling with the pleasant aftermath of exertion, Rachel lying alongside him her leg thrown over his hip as she propped herself up on one elbow, carefully tracing the picture on his back with the fingertips of her other hand, idle curiosity being her only motivation, or so he thought. Until she spoke up again anyway, her voice still husky and a bit raw, after the caterwauling of their sex... again, she was very direct, and if she liked what he was doing, she'd say so. Loudly. "So you wanna tell me about it, Rico?"

"Bout what, BP?" Ryan answered slowly, his mind still a bit blurry with afterglow.

"Bout your freaky-ass nightmares. The ones you've had every night you've shared my bed." Rachel replied, her tone serious. "Look, Rico, I ain't the prying sort, but it seems to me it ain't just the standard front line flashbacks. I ain't never heard a man scream like you do when you're having one of those nightmares. What the fuck happened to you, axel-grease? If you wanna tell me that is..."

Ryan considered for a long time, several minutes anyway, before deciding _what the hell? Can't hurt, can it?_ He carefully rolled up onto his side as well, so that he was facing her, propping himself up on one elbow as well. His free hand came up and rubbed at the side of his neck, where a thin, pale scar was visible, its pinkness denoting its recent vintage. "You better not laugh, gopher." He said, but when he tried to go on, he found his mouth wouldn't work properly, refusing to articulate the experience.

"Ain't nothing funny bout PTSD, Ryan." Rachel replied gently. "And don't bullshit me, axel-grease, if you don't got it, ain't nobody does. Anyone who gets a goddamn Silver Star has got to have some manner of PTSD fucking with their subconscious. It's okay, if you aren't a little mind-fried after seeing the front lines, you gotta be a goddamn psychopath! I ain't gonna report ya, cause you could report me just as easy. Hell, half the time I'm sure I am crazy, driving a big honking target like a Titan into combat against those fucking Dervishes and Spectres!" She seemed to notice his oral difficulties after a moment. "Here... get on top..." She ordered him, rolling onto her back and spreading her legs to accept him as he wordlessly complied. She reached down and guided him into her, biting her lip as she pulled him slowly down onto and into her, until they were all but nose to nose. "Come on now, you're safe, and fucking a damned hot chick in a not too uncomfortable bed. Couldn't be further from the fucking jungle, Rico. Ain't no "Eddie in the trees" round here. So tell me about it. Where'd you get that half necklace?"

"I wish all shrinks used your methods, BP, might actually want to see one then." Ryan managed with a quirk of his lips. She was right though, the feel of her body around and beneath him did help him focus on the fact that he was here and now, not there and then. He had to struggle against the urge to start thrusting his hips, but figured he'd probably get a chance to do that afterwards. He took a deep breath and started to drag it all out for the first time, to someone who hadn't been there. "It was a convoy escort mission, trying to set up a new staging base deeper in the Himalaya's. You know the Brass, always pushing to get a little further into Eddieland, even though we still ain't secured our own land. Wish I knew what the fucking hurry was. But anyway, the terrain was bad. I mean, it sucked even by Eddieland standards, thickest goddamn jungle I've seen in all my time on the lines. Too many big trees for heavy armor... I'm sure you know the drill, being deployed in Europe."

"Not much that can stop a Titan with a motivated crew." Rachel replied, biting her lip again as she shifted beneath him, into a slightly more comfortable position. Missionary position was great for some passionate fucking, but since Ryan outweighed her by a good forty pounds, having him atop her for an extended period of time, especially without motion, wasn't exactly the best of fun.

"Believe me, we coulda used one of those." Ryan said fervently. "But the best we had were Glads and Chariots, and a bunch of RIPs with MOOSE suits. Cause it was supposed to be some sort of stealth mission or some such shit, so we couldn't just blast a path through the trees, we had to cut one with fucking chainsaws and mono-machetes." He noticed Rachel's squirming, and rolled them onto their sides instead, before continuing with his reminesence. "Course, anyone with half a brain knew that there was no way we were getting over the hills without running into something nasty, but I guess it is the Brass we're talking about. Half a brain is what they got on their best days." Ryan said bitterly. "And of course, the Knights still had their panties in a bunch from Victoria, and couldn't spare any Mobile Suits to back us up. Motherfuckers."

"Motherfuckers." Rachel agreed without pause. Nobody in the regular USN military liked the Solar Knights. They always made such a huge fucking deal out of themselves, but truth be told, against the Eddies, their track record was petty damned poor. Though "only" a tanker, Rachel and her crew, driving the "Unbreakable", their Titan tank, had racked up more Eddie armor and MS kills than any THREE of the Solar Knights stationed at Heaven's Base. Which was one of the reasons why she and her crew had such a sweet spot on the leave rotation. Fact of the matter was, a Titan just wasn't fast enough to retreat in any real fashion... once you started attacking, you had to go balls out, and hope the other guys would back off first, because you couldn't. The Knights on the other hand, were in Mobile suits, Vindicators and Excalibers, which could... and very often did... just fly away when the tide looked like it might be turning, often leaving the ground-bound armor corps in the lurch! No, there was no love between the armor corps and the Solar Knights. She snuggled a bit closer to Ryan, pressing her breasts against his chest, encouraging him to go on.

"Well, the Eddies were waiting for us, of course." Ryan said, eyes distant as he relived the opening moments of the ambush. "Caught us with our pants down and our butts up, in my professional opinion. We were surrounded pretty much from the start, and it didn't get any better as time went on. It wasn't just a Legio force either... there were these big, ape-monsters with clubs as big as a fucking street sign, and these little pygmy dudes with sharp teeth and bows. Though I didn't get a look at those guys until much later... maybe three minutes after the ambush started? Time passes differently when you're fighting for your life, you know how it is. It was bad, hell it was a nightmare... Eddies everywhere, no visibility, and they were mind-fucking us hard with their psychic powers. But all that shit... that's normal. Expected. I've dealt with that shit before, hell, that's my fucking everyday commute to work! But then the screaming started..."

"The screaming?" Rachel asked, intrigued by this view of a strata of the war she'd never known. Infantry, even Eddie infantry, generally weren't much more than annoyances to her and her crew. They didn't even keep track of the number of Eddie infantry they'd killed, just the vehicles and MS. Infantry was something you worried about either when all enemy emplacements and armored vehicles were gone, or when they were trying to climb onto your hull.

"Well, that's what I thought it was. But it wasn't like anything I've ever heard before. It was the scariest fuckin sound I've ever heard... if terror could be distilled into a single sound, THAT would be the sound I heard. It weren't even a psychic attack, it was just a... a scream. Damn near put me on my knees like a little kid pissing his pants at the monster under his bed. Ain't nothing natural could have made that sound. It was seriously fucking with everyone, it was all I could do just to stand upright and not go running like a bitch, and some, hell most people were just sort of standing there dazed, getting shot to shit in the process. I dunno how to explain it, it just... GOT to you. It freaked you out and there was nothing you could do about it. And then the Eddies came to get up close and personal, like they always fucking do, with a fucking Praetorian leading the way, waling through fire and bullets like it weren't even happening!"

"You telling me you went toe to toe with a fucking Praetorian and came back to talk about it?" Rachel could not help but arch one eyebrow, impressed.

"Well, I had Spyro, Dud and Jeebus with me, plus the Top, so it wan't like I charged out to meet the bastard alone." Ryan shrugged. "Nothing we hit him with worked... Spyro barbecued the fucker and he might have been laughing it off, for all I could tell. Scary ass motherfucker, big heavy armor, flamethrowers in each arm, holding two massive chainsaw-swords... this guy had our fucking number, and he knew it. Well, at least until we hit him with a couple frag grenades. And even THEN, he walked away under his own power! Good Christ, why can't WE have armor like that? I mean, really, what the hell is the research and development team doing? The fucking Brotherhood had PS armor for their infantry, and that was eight years ago, why not us Blues?"

"So you beat this Praetorian... well, survived him, but its pretty much the same thing." Rachel prompted, now eager to hear the rest. "I see why they gave you the Silver Star now..."

"Bullshit you do." Ryan cut her off with a shudder, shrinking inside her until he pulled out, even the embrace of a sexy woman no longer sufficient to keep him feeling safe. However, he didn't stop talking, indeed it felt like he couldn't stop, it all just started pouring out. "That Praetorian was nothing. Small fry. No sooner had we beaten him off than we get another scream, practically in our ears. It felt like it was ripping the marrow right out of my bones, and if I hadn't been empty, I'd have shat my suit right then and there. Jeebus was down, scared out of his mind. Spyro was down, stunned. Top was down, stunned. Just me and Dud able to function... ain't much stunned Dud since the BBB put her pincer through his chest, or almost. We look over the stump we're hiding behind and see the source of the screaming. I..." Ryan paused and swallowed hard as he recalled his first glimpse of Zacharis Frost.

"I ain't got no words for how awful this guy was, Rachel. He wore no armor, and carried a big whatchacallit, a scythe, like the fucking grim reaper. Pale skin, lank brown hair... bout as plain a guy as you could imagine, at least from the back. But even from the back he had this... this AURA! An aura of evil, and I ain't fucking joking. I was all of fifteen feet away, and had his back to me, and I couldn't have shot him if my life depended on it, which it did. And then he turned around, and I saw his eyes. Oh dear God, his eyes..." Ryan found himself sobbing, tears running freely down his cheeks, Rachel's arms gentle as she held him. "Madness. That was what it was. Pure, unadulterated madness. A world killing hate stared at me through those eyes. I couldn't take it. It was just too awful. Dud went down, having some kind of seizure... thats how scary this guy was! As for me? I dropped my gun. I forgot how to breathe. I fell to my knees. You could have killed me with a pencil right then, I couldn't do ANYTHING but piss and retch and shiver and scream and cry! And watch, as this monster slaughtered people like it was some sort of sick game! From the moment this guy took the field, it wasn't a fight any more. Nobody could stand against him. Nobody could even LOOK at him!"

"And he wasn't the only one. The ape creatures were swatting people like golf balls, and the pygmies were running around cutting throats and dragging bodies into the bushes... I think they may have been cannibals, the freaks, and the scythe monster is just walking around LAUGHING HIS ASS OFF as he cuts vehicles and soldiers apart with that crazy scythe of his! It was like a vision straight out of Hell. We were all fucked, there was no two ways around it. They were high on killing us, they weren't going to stop until each and every one of us was nothing but a bloody ruin. But then another Eddie steps up... another fucking Praetorian, actually... and she puts a stop to it! By herself, she walks into this fucking slaughterhouse and brings the apes and the pygmies to heel with JUST HER VOICE! It was like a fucking miracle, Rachel, I ain't never seen anything like it! So they stopped killing us, and instead began taking away our weapons and tying us up, and they took off our helmets. Fuck, but those jungles are HOT and STICKY! You don't realize, being in armor all the time, but holy shit, I don't get how the Eddies live in that environment. I felt like I was drinking the fucking air!"

"They exposed you to the environment?" Rachel twitched unconsciously away from him a smidgeon at the thought. Ryan didn't blame her, but he did draw her back against him with gentle insistence.

"Yeah, a lot of guys were freaking out, especially the new guys, who hadn't swapped out their painkillers for vaccine shots like us veterans had. Fuck pain, not turning into an Eddie if you get a suit breach is more important. Relax, gopher, I got checked out, and I'm not contaminated, though it was getting to be a close run thing. So anyway, they clump us all together at the orders of this Praetorian chick... who was, I have to admit, the sweetest piece of ass I'd ever seen in my life. Uh, until I saw you, of course."

"Whatever. So she was prettier than me. Big fucking deal. I ain't the hottest fish in the sea, axel-grease, you think I don't know that? I seen some Eddie chicks myself, I know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, but this one was something special, even for an Eddie chick. She was so hot I forgot I was scared, if you can believe that! Anyway, she starts asking if any officers are still alive... none were... and then senior NCO's, so the Top speaks up. And then she asks us why she should let any of us live. I'll admit, I was kinda stumped at that, and so was the Top. But I never could keep my fucking mouth shut when I should, so I pointed out that if she wanted us dead, all she had to do was not stop them from killing us, and asked why she would make them stop if she was just going to have them start again. And then things got fucked up again, because the guy with the scythe comes wandering over, pissed off that this Praetorian chick stopped the massacre. I don't know what sort of drugs this chick was on, but she goes fucking chest to chest with that monster and basically tells him its bullshit to keep killing us when we can't fight back. He doesn't take that well. Not well at all."

"It was completely fucking crazy, I tell you, Rachel. Everyone else in a ten mile radius was shitting themselves every time this guy frowned, and here this blue haired hottie is poking him in the chest and saying she's not going to put up with his bullshit anymore. It sounded kinda like they were having relationship issues or something like that... it was all a bit too surreal for me, I don't remember exactly what she said to him, but it made him ANGRY as shit! He tries to put her in her place, and she won't have none of it, and then some fucking MORON from one of the other squads goes and makes a snarky comment about how he thought his fights with his girlfriend were bad. Which was kinda funny, or would have been in any other situation. But this time? This time it pushed the monster-man totally over the edge. The bluehead obviously had some sort of immunity to his wrath, despite how angry he was getting, but us poor, hapless captives? No such luck. He spins around so fast I barely even saw him move, and then he's among us, scythe whirling and people are being just fucking hacked apart in all directions, or else ripped limb from limb, BAREHANDED, and the scythe is SCREAMING and I saw him PUNCH one guy's head right off his shoulders and..."

"Hey... Ryan... it's okay. You're still alive. You're here. With me." Rachel said, breaking him out of his hyperventilation, patting him on the back and hugging him to her fiercely. Ryan smiled weakly but gratefully at her for this intervention.

"Y-yeah... sorry. Guess its all a bit raw. Well, anyway, the bluehead chick starts freaking out as well, except she's actually trying to STOP the scythe guy. She gets in his way and he just backhands her, and she goes FLYING, like at least ten feet through the air, and probably would have gone further if a freaking Chariot hadn't been there for her to slam into! All the other Eddies are standing clear, they must know not to mess with this guy, and hell, most of em probably are cheering him on inside, judging by the looks on their faces! But Bluehead doesn't play by those rules, apparently, and even after getting bitchslapped like a tennis ball, she GETS BACK UP and puts herself in his path a second time. And promptly gets hurled away again, like a sack of dirty laundry. Now, I wouldn't want to judge her weight, but in full armor, she had to be close to two hundred pounds of Praetorian, and this guy with the scythe is hurling her around like a poker chip, with just one hand, and its obvious he's not even TRYING! Hell, it kinda looked like he was trying NOT to hurt her!"

"Bluehead's down again, and the scythe guy, he..." Ryan paused and swallowed hard, tears in his eyes again. "He kills the Top next. Cut him almost in half and hurled the body away like trash, with just one hit, while he was on his knees, begging for mercy. He didn't just kill him, he exterminated him, like he was some kind of vermin! The bluehead... I think she said her name was Lilia, though the scythe guy called her "Mouse" for some reason... gets up again, but she's obviously hurt, maybe cracked ribs, and a twisted ankle, but she still heads back into the fray. Two more guys are dead, butchered and ripped apart by the scythe guy, and now I'M the next closest guy. Scythe guy towers over me like the devil himself, and I'm drenched with the blood of the guy he just killed a few seconds ago, and I see the scythe start swinging for my neck and I know I'm fucking dead... except that I'm not, because the crazy-ass blue head has THROWN HERSELF ATOP ME and is hugging me and putting her neck atop mine and the monster-man actually PULLS the attack short..." Ryan reached up and touched the scar on his neck again. "But just barely."

"Jesus christ..." Rachel breathed, eyes wide.

"And now they're arguing again." Ryan went on, heedless to her commentary. "Scythe man... his name was Zach, I think... Zach tells Lilia to get the fuck out of the way. Lilia tells him to get fucked, she's not moving. Zach says move or he'll kill her along with me. Lilia pretty much DARES him to do it. She fucking TAUNTS this guy, and I know we're both hosed now. This guy obviously does not put up with ANYONE's shit but his own! I'm not quite sure what happened next... she made some comments about wanting to hear him call her by name, since he always calls her "Mouse", and he refuses, saying that he respects her too much to call her by name, whatever kind of sense THAT makes. Lilia pretty much BEGS him to give her the honor of hearing him say her name, or something like that, and Zach pulls the scythe back to swing again, saying that he's not going to give her anything... and then he swings..."

"But obviously he didn't kill you. You still have a head." Rachel pointed out.

"Yeah, he didn't kill us. God knows why, but he pulled the strike AGAIN, after just barely cutting us both! I dunno, something Lilia said must have gotten to him. He actually backed down, though he did it with ill grace. Tells her that she's won this round, but she'd better not get used to it... standard bully backing down from a tough fight and trying to save face type tactics actually. And then this maniac just walks off like nothing happened, just turns his back and walks away. What that bluehead... Lilia... what Lilia did was the single greatest act of personal bravery I've ever seen in ANYONE, gopher. All she had to do was not say anything and we were all dead, but she put herself in front of that scythe carrying maniac and stared him the fuck down and made him back off! And then she turned us... the survivors... loose, just like that. The trip back through the jungle without any guns wasn't a picnic either, and thats why they decided to pin that stupid medal on me, but it was still small potatoes compared to what came before!"

"Well, shit, I see why you have the screaming fits then. I don't see how you can function at all, shit like that rolling around in your head, axel-grease." Rachel replied, holding him tight for several long moments.

"It ain't the worst part though." Ryan added thickly. "The flashbacks, I mean." He explained, at her quizzical glance. "The worst part, gopher, is that now I'm starting to second guess myself. And not just myself, the whole fucking war. We both know the media is full of bullshit propoganda, and the Eddies ain't even close to what we were told they were gonna be like. They ain't evil, they ain't monsters, they're just fucking people... some good, some bad, but people! I saw the best of em and the worst of em, and its making me wonder... what the fuck are we doing, killing them for land none of us will ever get to live on anyway?" Ryan sat up on the bed and gestured around at the hab. "Shit, it ain't much, but this is the kinda home I known most of my life. Wouldn't feel comfortable living in some big ass house with multiple rooms and shit. Why not just let the Eddies keep the fucking Earth? We don't need it anymore, this Second Earth stations are proof of that! So why this fucking war? Why the propoganda? Why the lies? Why am I just sitting here and taking it like a bitch, from people who don't know me as anything but a number in a statistical overlay, and who aren't afraid to send me off to die just to achieve some worthless goal I don't understand?"

He looked down at her as she stared wordlessly up at him from the bedsheets. "I swore a goddamn oath to serve my nation, gopher, and I don't intend to go back on that. There's some Eddies down there, like scythe man, and the bastards behind Blue Monday, who need to be stopped, no matter the fucking cost. But I'm through taking it up the ass from politically appointed commanders and burying my face in the shits the Brass take and call "military intelligence"! My life has meaning, goddamnit, and I'm not gonna lend them spend it like its a penny they found in a back alley! I ain't sure what I'm gonna do about it just yet, but I've already faced the worst shit the Eddies can toss my way... I doubt there's too much up in space that'll want to step up to me..."

xxxx

**Space, beyond the Asteroid Belt, Ronin City ISSA, City Councilchambers, Febuary 10th, 9:00 am**

"Now, Commander Ashino, you know how much we the civilian populace of Ronin City rely upon you and the Retributors to protect us from the tyranny of the current USN administration. You are a faithful, honest and respectable man. A good man. A strong man. The sort of man we need more of if we're ever going to achieve a free future. And as a result, we have trusted you with our resources, our freedom and our lives. Unconditionally so. That is, unconditionally so, UNTIL NOW." The youthful voice of Council Chairperson Marionne Elsman took a turn from complimentary to hard edged, as she stared down at the fireplug of a man standing in the midst of the council debate chamber, which was heavily based upon similar chambers within the PLANTS that Marionne had grown up in, with the council memebers spaced around the edge of the room, so that they could look from all sides at anyone who had the floor, like judges.

"Oh? And what has caused this diminishment of my favor in the eyes of this council?" Ashino replied innocently, with one eyebrow slightly arched. An impressive show of blase brinkmanship, considering he knew damned well what had Marionne... and more than half the other councilpersons... suddenly up in arms. They were only standing about ten feet directly behind him, after all. The people he'd brought back with him from his last "raid" through USN territory.

"Don't play dumb with us, Commander, it belittles us all." Marionne answered, her voice still cold as void forged steel. Still, for emphasis, she pointed dramatically over Ashino's head, at the gaggle of people standing behind him. "Have you gone COMPLETELY INSANE? Bad enough to bring those goddamned EDDIES here, despite the USN being at war with them, and for good reason if Blue Monday is anything to judge by... but WHAT POSSESSED YOU TO THINK THAT BRINGING NOAH BORANDER HIMSELF TO OUR SAFE HAVEN WAS A GOOD IDEA? YOU MORON, YOU'VE DOOMED US ALL!"

"Are you finished, Counciler?" Ashino replied phlegmatically, rising neither in tone nor in action to Marionne's perhaps somewhat justified hyperbole. "Or would you like to yell at me more about a situation that cannot now be changed, in order to make yourself feel better?" His eyebrow arch had turned from inquisitive to slightly challenging. "By all means, vent your spleen, Ms. Elsman. I am very used to being verbally abused by those who consider themselves my social superiors, I've learned how to tune it out pretty good by now. Just tell me when you get tired, so we can actually address the issue at hand, as is the purpose of this council, right?"

"Oh, by all means, Commander, let us move on to your explanation for this travesty. I assure you, we are all ears." Marionne told him, sitting back in her chair, eyes aglow with her vehement anger.

"During our raid on the USN, we discovered evidence of human rights violations being committed on unheard of scales by FEAR and the Reclaimer Initiative. Upon investigating this evidence further, we discovered that the RI had set up a series of "re-education centers" in the British Isles of the old Atlantic Federation. Of course, they were really anything but re-education centers, but rather slave labor death camps, where captured Eddie civilians were sent to work illegally and against their will, producing drugs and other illicit substances for the RI." Ashino put some fire of his own into his eyes and voice. "Children forced to work in the fields, harvesting rare medicinal ingredients from hostile native flora, without any sort of protective gear, their mothers and fathers held hostage, the mothers and sisters forced to work as prostitutes for the ruling elite of Durandel's cliques! It was an abomination, an offense against humanity. So we attacked and destroyed one of the camps, with next to zero casualties on our side, and in the process rescued several hundred Eddie refugees, one of which was Meyrin Borander, standing behind me... an "acquiantance" of mine from the pre-Eden era." Markov explained, keeping the details to a minimum, there being hours and hours of documented video evidence to show the council if they wanted to see the blood and guts of the operation.

"An acquaintance, Commander? Don't you mean she was your boss while you worked for the Brotherhood of Humanity, to bring about the Eden Disaster?" Marionne challenged hotly.

"No. I mean acquiantance, Ms. Elsman. Meyrin was never my boss, and I never worked FOR the Brotherhood. I worked WITH the Brotherhood, for complicated reasons of my own that I sincerely hope you will never be able to understand, for your own sake! But unlike most of the Brotherhood, I found Mrs. Borander... then Ms. Hawke... to be a kindhearted and honorable individual, who was there for me in a time of great personal need, so I was understandably glad to be able to help her out in turn, in escaping from the Reclaimer Initiative hellhole. I would report to you on the condition in which we found her, being molested and tortured by the base command staff, but you can plainly see her scars for yourself." Ashino was getting a little tired of Marrione's nitpicking and harping. Yes, he understood the woman had lost almost her entire family to the Blue Monday tragedy, but could the woman not understand the difference between civilian Eddies and their military forces? Why this irrational hate, especially from someone who was considered something of a modern icon of the freedom from tyranny movement!

"Though my debt of honor to Mrs. Borander was discharged in the process of rescuing her and her followers from the death camp, she later came to me with an intriguing proposition, offering to lead me to data that, if properly utilized, could reveal ever buried skeleton in Gilbert Durandel's political past, something which could potentially bring about the downfall of our tyrant in a matter of weeks or months if properly utilized! Of course, there was danger involved, but I judged the risks to be worth it... over the objections of some of my subordinates. Of course, at that point I did not exactly know what form this "data" was in, and Meyrin was understandably reluctant to bring me into her total confidence. Whatever my opinion of Mrs. Borander, I can assure you, I hold no affection whatsoever for Mr. Borander, and at certain earlier points in my life, I would probably have thrown him out an airlock at the earliest opportunity. However, now I am older and wiser." Ashino shrugged for a moment. "Though if he gives me any reason at all to think he's not playing straight with me, the airlock will remain an option all the same."

"You can't be serious?" One of the other councilmembers objected, all but sputtering as he pointed across the room and over Ashino's head, at the two people standing at the head of the group of Eddie refugee leaders, hand in hand. "That is NOAH BORANDER, the archterrorist! How he is even ALIVE, I'm not sure I want to know, but to BRING HIM HERE? It's raving lunacy! If the USN finds out, they'll..."

"Stop at nothing in order to eradicate you, your city and everyone else that might have possibly come into contact with me." Noah cut in, taking a half sure step forward, still not entirely used to moving around in strange places without eyesight. All the same, he could feel the mental presences of the councilmembers just fine, and so had no trouble orienting himself to face the man who'd objected. "The secret of my continued existence after that insulting parody of a trial and execution is known only to a handful of Durandel's most trusted minions, and of course, Gil himself. He wanted me kept around so he could pick my brain for technology... and, I strongly suspect, to have someone completely in the know about all his dirty little secrets, who he could gloat to, and yet had complete power over. We go back, Gil and I, a long, long way... much further than the public has been allowed to know. I've had more face time with Gil than I ever did even with my own parents."

"He's said it himself." Marionne pointed out, giving Noah a gimlet stare he could not return, his facial maiming hidden by wraps of clean white bandages for the sake of the councilmember's stomachs. All the same, her stomach fluttered a little when his head turned around to face her directly, no doubt exercising some sort of psychic power to locate her. Just the sight of him made her skin crawl. "They've been content to more or less ignore us up until now, because we didn't present a threat to them. But now we've brought Eddies and... and terrorists... aboard our colony, and there's no way the USN can overlook that! They'll come for us in force and they'll..."

"So we should just deny them refuge, because they are Edenites?" Ashino interrupted her, his eyes dangerously narrowed. "I never expected to hear such bigotry in this chamber, of all places! Are we not all refugees of one sort or another, fleeing from the tyranny of the Durandel administration? Are we not all hunted, wanted criminals, even terrorists in the eyes of the majority of the populace? Does not every single seated person in this room have a death warrent out on their head from Section 9? Would not all of you be dead or imprisoned if it weren't for this safe haven we've managed to build, on our blood, sweat and tears? Are we not united in our opposition to those who would take our freedom and our lives away from us? Do we not stand apart precisely because of our principles and our determination not to turn our backs on those who are different from ourselves? Have NOT EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US, ESPECIALLY YOU, MS. ELSMAN, BEEN ON THE RECIEVING END OF BIGOTRY AND RACISM? How then, in good consience, can we lower ourselves to the point where we would inflict such things on others, as punishment for a "crime" none of them had a choice in committing?"

"But they're Eddies..." Marionne protested, somewhat petulantly. "They caused Blue Monday... hell, the creator of Blue EDEN is standing right there! There's no telling what they might do to us with their nanobots if we let them..."

"That's quite enough, Elsman." Ashino cut her off once more, his tone more a growl than a voice, his patience exhausted by her weak spined arguments as she tried to avoid the real issue... that she was scared, both for her life and for her position of power. Whereas Ashino was the head of a faction that favored fighting the USN, or the corrupt parts of it anyway, directly, Marionne was of the opinion that they should just let things blow over, keep their heads down and let the administration forget about them, perhaps even abandoning the Solar System entirely, and forging a new path out in the stars! Normally, something like an Independently Stable Space Arcology would never be able to survive completely cut off from all support and outside contact, not for an indefinite time anyway, but Marionne had been the principle designer of the Zaratan class ISSA's, and had put a lot of time and effort into modifying, upgrading and tweaking Ronin City so that it was as close to perfectly self sustaining as an extra-planetary environment could get!

"You don't tell me what to do, Ashino!" Marionne retorted, anger ignited. "You may be the commander of our military forces, but I run the civilian side of things, and it is on my sufferance alone that you and your rebel army is allowed to use Ronin City as a base of operations! Against my better judgement, I might add! Don't push me or..."

"Or you'll what?" Captain Tamara Logan, Ashino's second in command and rumored lover, spoke up from where she waited patiently at her commander's side. "You'll evict us? We have other bases of operation we could use, and the technology to make even more through the hollowing out of asteroids. None of them would be as well supplied or as comfortable as Ronin City, but we are soldiers, and we are at war, even if it is a shadow war. We don't NEED you, or Ronin City, Mrs. Elsman. And precisely how long do you think it will take the USN to come after you, and what will you use to fight them off when they do come? This is a habitation colony, not the Great Endeavor, even a small warship fleet would be enough to cripple or destroy the city without much fuss. Let's be plain, my good councilers... without the Retributors to rely on for protection from force, your days as free citizens are numbered. We'll leave if that is what you want, but don't expect us to come running again when you actually need us..."

"Noah did create Blue EDEN." Meyrin added suddenly. "It's something I'm not proud of, and at the very least, it makes us both indirectly responsible for the Blue Monday tragedy... he because he made it, and me because I did not force him to destroy it entirely the moment I learned about it, which then allowed the Edenites of presumably Garden City to replicate the technology for their own use. But I think you're looking at this problem the wrong way. After the fall of the Great Endeavor, Noah and I were taken prisoner, and held as hostage against the other, so that I would cooperate with FEAR as a test subject for their experiments and so Noah would continue to provide technical expertise for the USN military. If our presence unnerves you so much, then let us do this... Noah will cooperate with you fully, sharing his technology with you for your own benefit, and my Edenite followers will likewise assist with the operation of the colony or even in defending it, if you so desire. And to ensure their cooperation, I will be your hostage. It shouldn't be too hard to fit me out with a tracking device or implanted bomb of some sort, which you can then use to destroy me if you feel threatened."

"NO, Meyrin!" Noah snapped, his head whipping around to face her. "We've only been reunited for a few weeks, and you're already trying to get us seperated again?"

"No. We will never be seperate, you and I, Noah. We're always together, even when we're not nearby. I wasn't asking them to lock me up, just allowing myself to be used as their insurance. I know for a fact that I am in no danger after all, because you and my followers would never endanger my life, even at the costs of your own. It reassures our hosts, and doesn't really cost us anything. Face it, my love, you're a very scary person to most people. I would have been surprised if they had taken us in without some sort of gaurantee, above and beyond Markov's word, that we would do them no harm." Meyrin refuted, before turning her gaze back towards Marionne. "So is it a deal then? Safe haven in return for the brightest scientific mind of the modern era, and the efforts of over five hundred hard working Edenites eager to get back at the bastards who imprisoned and tormented them just because of their genetics?"

"Is this okay with you, Commander Ashino?" Marionne asked, somewhat slyly.

"To be honest, I find it reprehensible and depressing." Ashino answered woodenly. "However, if it is the judgement of this council, then I will abide by it, under protest. The taking of hostages as a form of leverage has always been a tactic of the very corrupt administration we all strive to topple, to see those of us who have rejected that manner of authority resorting to such things to assuage our own base fears saddens me greatly. But, seeing as Meyrin has volunteered, I cannot stop her. I am already convinced of their sincerity... of anyone alive, I don't see how anyone could have more reason to hate Duranel than these Edenites do." Ashino paused and then gave a short, perfunctory bow to the council. "If that is all, I have other military duties to perform, you may hammer out the details of this "reassurance" plan without me. Good day, Council Chairwoman, Councilers..." And with those words, and nary a look back or even to the side at Meyrin, Noah and the Edenite leaders, Ashino spun on his heel and strode out of the council chamber at speed.

xxxx

**Ronin City, Military-Industrial Administrative sector, 5 minutes later**

"Ash... Ash, wait up! Ash!" Tamara called as she half sprinted to catch up with her commander. He was fuming, his whole posture radiated his anger, irritation and personal disgust, and his emotions had lent speed to his stride, and despite her legs being longer than his, she had to work to catch up, and then to stay caught up, as he plowed through the corridors, headed back towards their office/quarters. Usually it was best to just leave him alone when he got worked up like this... Ash was far too centered and mature of a guy to let his anger rule over him for long... but given the rather worrisome tone of some of the arguements that had taken place, she wanted to make sure he didn't say or do something rash, unlikely as that was. Regardless of political posturing, the Ronin City citizens and Retributors were almost fully symbiotic by now... neither group would last long without the other. Certainly, the Retributors would have to downsize their force levels by almost two thirds in order to continue sustainable operations without Ronin City as their supply base!

When she caught up, Tamara fell into place at her usual position, slightly behind and to the right of Ashino, the slot for an adjuntant or staff assistant, nearby but not in the way. "Are you all right?" She asked him quietly, knowing that even if she were to but whisper, he would be able to hear her clearly anyway, thanks to his super-soldier characteristics. "Marionne usually isn't so confrontational and knee-jerk, she must really have been caught off guard..."

"No, if anything, Ms. Elsman was rather more honest with us today than she usually is." Ashino replied, his voice taut with self control. "I had thought her to be less shallow than that, but I guess it just goes to show, the one thing the world never runs out of is disappointment. To think, that two people with the same family name could be so incredibly different... I'll never understand normal people..."

"I take it you're talking about her brother, the Gundam pilot?" Tamara inquired, hoping she could draw the stress out in a constructive fashion, through a conversation.

"Yes, her older brother, Dearka Elsman. Now there is a good example of a noble and worthwhile person, Coordinator or not. He's a man I was raised to kill, have fought against and alongside, and I have come away with nothing but respect for his abilities, his personality, and his actions. And yet only a few years seperate them, and as far as personality goes, they might as well have been born from different others! She's selfish, short sighted, cowardly and manipulative! She loves to spout off about how she and her family were discriminated against by the Alliance, and yet she considers it alright for her to discriminate against others because of their genes? I loathe hypocrits..."

"She's scared, Ash. She lost pretty much her whole life during Blue Monday, and Noah Borander... is Noah Borander. Can you really blame her for coming out swinging?" Tamara answered, mostly playing devil's advocate, as the behavior of Ronin City's civilian leader was just as reprehensible in her eyes as it was to Ashino.

"Blame her? No I can't blame her, but I can... and DO... expect BETTER of her!" Ashino retorted fiercely. "Look at the two of us, Tam. You and I, a former Blue Cosmos terrorist and a former Blue Cosmos Supersoldier! Fifteen years ago, if either one of us had been in the same room as Ms. Elsman, she would have been shot to death before we left, if she was lucky! I have personally tried to kill her brother on more than one occassion, and stood by and did nothing while he was tortured at the hands of my superiors. And yet she can accept you and I without flinching? Without being scared? And cannot extend the same minimal courtesy to the Edenites? I could care less how she views Noah... I personally dislike him greatly. But there was no call for Meyrin being forced to offer herself as a hostage!"

"You really do like her, don't you Ash?" Tamara pointed out, her tone neutral, trying not to sound accusing, or even worse, jealous.

"She's a very special sort of person, Tam. She has the capacity to forgive, to totally forgive those who sin against her or those she cares about, and to truly MEAN it! When Meyrin forgives you, the matter is forever closed, unless your future actions force it open again. She can accept anyone, if they are even partway willing to accept her in turn, and even if they refuse to accept her, she does not hate them for it. Had we not arranged for Mr. "Hazy" Zala to be extradited covertly to Orb, and we put him bound in a chair before her, with a gun in her hand, she would not shoot him. She would not hurt him at all, not even after he raped her and tortured her and preyed upon the people she cares about! It's something I cannot understand, yet it is also the single most admirable thing I have ever seen in all my relations with normal humans. I've only met two people capable of such purity in purpose in my entire life. One is Meyrin Borander. The other is Lacus Clyne." Ashino paused and turned to look up at Tamara, real tears in his eyes, which took her greatly aback.

"I would not be the person I am today without the intervention of Lacus Clyne, who showed me that I was a person with a sense of self worth, not a piece of biological equipment. And I would not have remained sane, and most likely would have been killed, if not for Meyrin Borander, who understood me when I was alone and hurting and feeling trapped, and risked the wrath of the person she loved most in order to help me out in my time of need. No words can describe the debt I owe to both of those women, Tam. Without them, there would be no Markov Ashino, Retributor." He carefully reached out and took Tamara by the hand. "Romantic feelings towards them would be impossible, my love, don't worry. I could never exist on the level that they do, to try would be to destroy myself in vain. They could understand me, and accept me, despite my past and my violent tendencies... but I could not reciprocate understanding. They are magical, beyond my comprehension, and I will always be in awe of them. Which is why it upsets me so, when other people somehow fail to see those qualities, either because they refuse to, or because they are simply too self absorbed to care!"

"You're a special sort of person too, Markov." Tamara squeezed his hand tightly in hers. "Lacus Clyne and Meyrin Borander may be the angels of your sky, but you are the angel of mine! You were the one who uplifted me from a life of bitterness and bigotry, and gave me something to be proud of about myself. You were the one who showed me that anyone, no matter how warped and broken their past might be, can excel and become a beacon of hope and light and progress to show others the proper way to the future, if only they are willing to take the harder road! You, Markov Ashino, Biological Computer Processing Unit, level 4... you are my hero, and I will always be in awe of you! Because you can understand me, and not just me, but all humanity, because you come from a place where your humanity was taken away from you... yet you GOT IT BACK! I cannot think of anything more amazing than that..."

"We need to stop talking about this..." Ashino half mumbled, his grip almost painfully tight on her hand.

"Why, Markov?" Tamara was a bit nonplussed, she'd thought it was a beautiful moment of connection.

"Because I love you so much, and I want you so bad right now, that if we don't get somewhere private quickly, I might not be able to stop myself from ripping your clothing apart in the middle of this hallway and taking you on the floor!" Ashino replied, teeth gritted with self control that had nothing to do with anger. Tamara reared back for a moment, eyes blinking in shock, before her stunned expression gave way to a wicked, yet somehow tender grin.

"That might be kind of interesting, actually. What would our new guests think, I wonder? I've heard the Eddies are supposed to be a bit... looser... in their hedonistic conventions than the rest of us. Something to do with how psychic intimacy lowers their sense of need for physical privacy..." Tamara teased him.

"No time for jokes, Tam." Ashino hissed a bit more urgently, but smiling all the same. "My bed, two minutes, be there, and be warned that anything you're wearing at the time might not make it through intact..."

"Is that an order, Commander?"

"It'll be a court martial, if I have to say it again, Captain..."

"Oooh, does that mean you'll be getting out the handcuffs then? You're kinky today, Markov..."

xxxx

**Ronin City, Military-Industrial Administrative sector, quarters of Commander Ashino of the Retributors, 3 hours later**

His skin lightly sheened with the sort of sweat that only comes about after a good deal of pleasant exertion, Ashino carefully sat up in bed, trying not to disturb Tamara, who lay exhausted and replete next to him. The bedroom was a disaster area... they'd both ended up stripping down rather faster and less carefully than they normally did, the passion of the moment after their heartfelt exchange of confidences spurring them together in a most primal fashion, and Markov could now see that he was out at least one military issue jumpsuit, ripped apart across the shoulders and back. Tam was going to be down a few uniform articles as well, especially her underwear, which he was normally pretty careful about, but again, this had not been a normal bout of lovemaking. He could bend metal bars in his fists should the need arise, linen or cotton clothing tore like tissue paper when he exerted even a fraction of his strength!

And Tamara actually liked it better when he did let some of his strength rise to the fore, when he overpowered her in a playful manner. Jean would have screamed herself hoarse if he'd torn her clothing off and tossed her onto a bed before climbing atop her and, well, ravaging wasn't the right word, but it was rougher than their usual sex anyway. Jean had always been berating him for letting his strength run out of control, such as when he bent railings, or bike handlebars, or broke down a door, or ripped a suit of clothes apart. Mostly without meaning too, but she was always urging him to have more control over himself. Not that it was a bad thing or that he was in any way resentful... he'd needed strong reminders back then that he was different from the people he was with, and that he could badly hurt them if he didn't watch himself every moment of the time he was around them, especially during intimacy! He did feel a brief flash of guilt, thinking about Tamara and Jean at the same time, and finding how much he preferred Tamara. Jean had been, and always would be, his first crush, but there was just so much difference between them, that looking back on it all, Ashino was starting to wonder if maybe he hadn't been fooling himself a little bit.

It was an unworthy thought, but he indulged it nonetheless. He would always feel guilt over Jean getting injured just because of her relationship with him, guilt that would never be expunged, not even when he held Gilbert Durandel's beating heart in his fist! Jean's life had been all but ruined, and it was almost entirely his fault. His latest round of reports from Orb had indicated that she was making good progress at recovering, her mental faculties already at the level of a teenager, just slightly younger than she had been when they first met. She didn't remember him, or at least she didn't remember that she should remember him, though she did react to pictures of him with interest and covetousness, so Cyprus said. However, those reports dated to before the start of the Reclamtion War, as Cyprus and the other Hellhounds were no doubt busy with Orb's contributions to the war. Guilty feelings rising up inside him, Ashino realized he'd been too busy to check his private email box, the secure one he and Cyprus had worked out so they could stay in contact after the Eden Disaster.

He resolved to do so now, and picked up a data slate from the bedside table, which was wirelessly connected to his office computer, in the other room. Especially considering the recent battle in Orb, about which few details had yet percolated out as far as the Retributors and Ronin City, it would be good to check up on his friends, and perhaps see if there was anything helpful they could tell him about the USN's situation. Sitting up on the bed, he booted up the slate and accessed his private files, stuff even Tamara wasn't normally privy too... he kept his "backdoor" association with Orb's paramilitary forces very close to the chest, especially because most of his contact with them was personal, rather than professional. He arched a brow in some shock, as the email folder opened and displayed over twenty different messages, all of them dated since the start of the war. Considering that the normal volume was one email from Cyprus every three months, this was most unusual!

A mere moment later, and Ashino's eyes caught on the title of one of the messages. He stared at it for five full seconds, his mind jarred completely out of gear with disbelief, unable to make sense of the words he could read. "Impossible..." Ashino muttered, eyes all but bugged out, his fingers so white knuckled on the sides of the slate that he was half sure he was going to break it in half. "It's completely fucking impossible! I SAW HIM DIE! **I SAW HIM DIE!**"

"Uhm... wha... Ash... wha's goin on?" Tamara mumbled sleepily from beside him, jolted from pleasant dreams by his uncommonly raised voice.

But Ashino had no words for her, as he opened the email and stared at the contents, his fingers beginning to shake, trembles running up his arms, until soon his whole body was shivering, as if the temperature in the room had just plunged a hundred degrees from one second to the next. There was a lot of detail and technical terms in the report, and there were also pictures... horrible, ungodly pictures. But Ashino could not focus upon them. His entire attention... his entire being... was focused on just three words. One of them was "Jean". The other two? "Zacharis Frost"! Ashino opened his mouth and screamed then, so loud and suddenly that Tamara actually completely fell out of bed, flailing and cursing as all traces of sleep were banished by the most horrible sound she'd ever heard Markov make. It was fury. It was outrage. It was heartbreak. It was terror...


	61. In the Palace of Air

Author Note: I apologize for not doing a whole Rey and Durandel blowing up at each other scene, but I wanted to save it for some flashbacks later, involving Rey's side of things, which will have a greater emotional impact then, I believe. And while you and I, my dear readers, of course know about what happened to Ryan and the others, I wanted to recap it anyway, showing how the brush with death and Lilia's actions have changed at least one person's life and opinion on the war (in addition, more PTSD awareness is never a bad thing, since pretty much the entire cast really ought to be suffering from it...). Actually, Orange, I don't always keep perfect track of my "quartiary" characters, like Strategos Rachel of Legio Basilisk, though thank you for reminding me about that (I really should start a list, to avoid confusion in the future). Though, its hardly impossible that two people in all the world should share the same name, even if it does make things a little confusing sometimes.

Last chapter was really hard for me, I just couldn't get past the Durandel breakdown scene, for what felt like forever, however, it seems to have turned out well enough. Oh, and another thing. I meant that Ashino regards Lacus and Meyrin as being similar, as they've both had huge effects on his life, not that I consider them to be parallels, other than in that "ability to forgive thing". Though I would say, my Meyrin is a lot more of a Lacus "peer" than Meer from Destiny ever was, in my mind, for all that their ideals differ, or at least their execution of those ideals differ, as I think they both want pretty much the same thing. Sounds like it might have potential as a forum topic. On that subject, if you haven't checked out the "RW Discussions" Forum yet, and are a fan of the story, I would strongly recommend you do so (there's a link on my profile, at the bottom). There's all sorts of bonus information, sneak peeks, and background reveals on there, in addition to at least one short story and plenty of argumentative debates that have helped shape the course of characters and the plot as a whole. I'd love to hear from you, and if we can get some more volume, maybe I'll have the biggest active forum in the Fandom as well (I'm number 6 right now).

And now onto some fun, some games, and a whole lotta Eddies...

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Vale of Custodes, Legio Direcat enclave, January 31st, 7:43 pm**

Kira had to admit that in all his years, he'd never seen any spectacle quite as grand as the combination "welcome back" and victory celebration that the citizens of Garden City had conspired to throw for their military forces, after their successful return from the attack on Orb! An attack that had been planned, organized and led by none other than Kira himself, in conjunction with his friend Leviathan of course. Indeed, the entire plan had hinged upon the efforts of Leviathan and her oceanbound Chimera subjects, as getting through Orb's Glasshouse barrier without them would have been impossible, at least in the numbers needed to mount an effectively damaging attack. True, he hadn't quite intended for the tsunami to be THAT devastating, but whereas even a year prior he would have been horrified at the collateral damage his little "doorknocking" maneuver had caused, now, today, he was just amazed, and perhaps even quietly pleased. He'd given them two hours warning, after all, and they'd chosen to not take him seriously. A mistake he had no doubt would never be repeated again.

Of course, there was no way for Leviathan or her subjects to return to Garden City to be honored and feted as well, but then again, most of them would have no concept of such things anyway, and the remainder didn't care, though Kira had made sure that plenty of credit was given where credit was due. Though non-human, the various Chimera were Edenites too, and valuable allies in the fight against the massively numerical superiority of the USN. Indeed, as Leviathan had herself proved, a single Chimera, or Grand Chimera, could accomplish things even the greatest of human technology would have difficulty replicating, and Chimera working together could create effects beyond anything but the fury of mother nature herself could manage! However, the power of the Chimera was a double edged blade, as the USN scientists had plainly noticed the same things Kira had, and had taken steps to harness that power for themselves, in the creation of the abomination cybernetic "Gundams" called BALORs.

Here Kira frowned, his attention drawn inwards and pastwards, out of the present, as he recalled his brief and actually somewhat humbling encounter with the lizardlike BALOR, wherein the creature had actually come fairly close to killing him, were it not for the intervention of certain outside parties Kira did not like thinking about. Though even Frost had found the lizard cyborg to be a bit of a handful, which was in itself a frightening thing to consider, as Kira had never met ANYONE more talented at melee combat in a Gundam than his nemesis, and to see him hard pressed like that... yes, humbling was the right word. Kira might be considered by most to be the greatest human Gundam pilot of all time, and he was at times even willing to accept that it might be true, but just because he was the best, did not mean he was perfect or that there was not still yet more room for him to grow. And grow he must, because if the Oosen had any more of those BALOR creatures in reserve... well he wasn't entirely sure he could beat them, as he was now...

Colorful explosions in the distant sky brought him back to the here and now, the firework displays having been ongoing for much of the past half hour, the rampant party that was overflowing the streets of Garden City still very much in full swing, despite the fact that most of the "honored heroes", like Kira, Kunai and even Frost, as well as their senior officers, had moved elsewhere to celebrate more privately, or recuperate as the case might be. Kira had never in his life been much of a drinker, partly because most alcohol couldn't affect his Ultimate Coordinator type metabolism, at least after he'd matured, and he'd never been particularly fond of the taste anyway. However, the Edenites had found a way to brew and ferment Ambrosia nectar-sap into a beverage of many different flavors, with a kick that had made him lightheaded after only a couple of cups. They called it simply "Punch", and it deserved the name, as it felt like a punch in the gut when you swallowed it. For all that, it also tasted good, and went down more or less smoothly, and he'd probably had more of them than he really should have.

Which was why he was drinking plain water right now, and had made sure to eat heartily at the spread that had been laid out in the feasting hall of Legio Direcat, where he and the rest of the Shark Party leadership had retreated for private celebrations. The Direcat enclave was located on the slopes of a tributary valley that ran perpendicular to the large valley that Garden City and Yggdrasil were located in, one of several such "private domains" allocated to each of the Custodian Legio's to serve as their home headquarters and training facilities, before Kira had convinced them to adopt a standardized training regime. As such, he had a wonderful view not only of the valley, but of the city beyond, and of course of Yggdrasil itself, the gargantuan Grand Chimera's branches forming a canopy overhead even this far away, several kilometers from the main trunk.

When he'd first saw the fireworks shooting up, he'd been a bit worried about a possible fire hazard, before reminding himself that Ygdgrasilwood wouldn't burn even after a direct hit with a beam rifle, and besides, even the highest fireworks barely reached a third of the way up to the lowest branch of the great Tree. The scale of the arboreal Grand Chimera was simply so massive that it was hard to truly appreciate it, until you saw things like the fireworks, and it took your breath away to comprehend something so large. Even the largest starburst shells, throwing brightly colored embers and fragments of burning metal in spheres and other shapes that were dozens of meters across, were like fireplace sparks compared to the mass of branches that formed the roof of the sky overhead. The city was also lit up from below, by spotlamps, bonfires and the more traditional lighting of some of the skyscrapers, as well as massive glowing lamps of various colors that were suspended from the lowest of Yggdrasil's branches, many of them trailing dangling banners hundreds of meters long, with the heraldry of Garden City, the Custodians, the Praetorians, and other factions upon them.

And no less bright were the flares and swirls of frenetic emotion being emitted by the partying residents, which hung over the city like a glowing psychic haze, tangible even at this distance as a riotous feeling of upwelling hope, relief and happiness being broadcast through the Wind. People were going wild, taking the excuse of Kira's attack being the first definitively successful offensive strike of the war to let out their repressed fear and anger and worries. The civil authorities weren't even attempting to control the party, mostly because many of those authority figures themselves were the ones partying the hardest, having been more stressed than their completely civilian peers. Kira smiled, glad that people could still find the energy and desire to celebrate, despite the grim fact that even such a tremendous victory as the one they'd one was only the first step on a long and hard path towards defeating the USN once and for all.

The loss of the Mass Driver was a severe blow, and the devastation of Orb's military and military support infrastructure would keep his former homeland out of the war in an active role for months, but the USN was far from being beaten. And they had the numbers and industrial capacity to make up their losses much faster than the Edenites could. Still, Kira tried not to be too bleak. They'd struck a blow, and proven that they could hurt the USN on their own turf, and that was an important victory and morale boost. No war was ever won entirely on the defensive after all. Kira perked up suddenly, one hand unconsciously going to the hilt of the Burden, lying propped against the boulder he was seated upon, his newly honed Newtype senses alerting him to the approach of someone else a fraction of a second before his ears picked up the sound of footsteps.

"So this is where you've been hiding." The friendly, slightly inebriated voice of Heine commented, as the Praetorian entered the boulder field, following the path that led up to it from the cave-like entrance to the Direcat enclave below. "Tsk, tsk, Executor, it's the duty of the hero of the hour to make himself visible, so that the rest of us who aren't quite as famous may make you suffer our attentions as recompense." Heine chided him playfully, pretending not to notice Kira taking his hand off the hilt of his sword as he moved to stand beside his friend and leader.

"I'd only be a drag on everyone else's good spirits." Kira replied after a few moments of watching the distant fireworks. "Don't get me wrong, Heine, I'm as happy as anyone at what we've accomplished, and I'm damn proud that it was my leadership that made it happen. But I just can't get into a celebratory mood for some reason."

"You can't mourn them forever, Kira." Heine answered, after a minute or two of companionable silence.

"How can I not?" Kira retorted, more sharply than he'd intended. Heine however seemed immune to his pointed tone. "You don't know..."

"I don't, that's true. I've never lost a wife, or had to bid permanent goodbye to children." Heine admitted freely. "But I have had my life completely uprooted and tossed into ruin by forces beyond my control. Anyone who survived the first year of Green EDEN has done that much. So don't think that there is no way I can understand what you're still going through, because there is, and I do. Many, even most of us do. And I'll tell you this much for sure, Kira... none of us got through it by moping off at a distance from the rest of the group. Maybe you'll be the exception to the rule, but if you'll pardon me saying so, I doubt even YOU are that strong..."

"So its tough love now?" Kira asked, with a sardonic grimace. "Telling me to shape up and stop being such a baby about it?"

Heine shrugged. "If that's how you want to look at it, sure. I can't tell you what to do, personally or professionally. All I can do is talk, and hope you'll listen and pick out what kernels of wisdom I might accidently stumble across. I am not, and never would, telling you to forget your family, that would crazy. Nor should what happened to them cease to bother you. However, neither should what happened, which you cannot ever change, control your emotions and weigh down your thoughts as much as it does, Kira. Down that path lies only bitterness, self loathing and obsession... and none of those are qualities I want to see in my chosen leadership."

"So what then should I do, Heine?" Kira challenged, though not entirely without hope. "I've always been a wallflower, and I've never been comfortable with fame and celebrity. Even without my other problems, being around other people in a party just feels awkward to me. Even getting a salute of respect makes me feel uncomfortable, much less the fawning compliments and, well, to use a entertainment term, "groupies" that flock to me."

"Well, don't expect too much sympathy from people on that score, Kira." Heine answered with a brief laugh. "You're famous, a legend, and that's not going to change, my dear Executor, especially if you keep on as you have been recently. While I would normally caution you about the dangers of getting a swollen head, I don't think its necessary in this particular case. Though if you want my personal opinion on the matter, then I'd have to truthfully say... it's about damn time you got what you deserve."

"Uh... what?" Kira was nonplussed by the declaration, unsure exactly what Heine meant.

"By the Tree, you can't be that pure!" Heine rejoined, with another short chuckle. "I'm saying, Kira, that you sacrifice so much for others, you seem to forget that sometimes you're the one who should be sacrificed for. If a girl throws herself into your lap, just for once, try GOING WITH IT, and see where it takes you. Keeping yourself so austure and bottled up inside is only going to work to your eventual detriment, you know. Unlike Panner, the dear woman, I don't believe all relationship issues can or should be smoothed over with sex, however I do believe that isolating yourself from all other pleasurable human company is as sure a recipe for disaster as becoming a man-whore would be. Let someone else in for once, Kira, I promise you, you'll feel better afterwards. And if you decide you never want to see her again, well then such is the way of things. She'll get over it, as will you. You need some normalcy in your life, Executor, is what I'm trying to say."

"I'm not a normal person though, Heine, not even by Edenite standards." Kira replied with a sigh.

"Perhaps. In that case, maybe you should pretend? Becoming someone you're not for a night can often give you great insight into who you really are..."

"That sounded almost zen..."

"Thank you, I was rather pleased with the turn of phrase myself. Its funny, I always seem to be at my most wise when I am well on my way to becoming crushed on Punch..." Heine shrugged and laughed again, gesturing with a half full cup of the amber colored liquid in an expressive manner. "Now that we agree that you need to liven up and let your hair down a bit, I think can introduce you to a few nice prospects..."

"I said it sounded zen, not that I agreed to do it." Kira protested, though it was a bit halfhearted. Arguing with Heine once he got his mind set on something was almost impossible, something he'd learned in the last few weeks. He decided to try a topic change. "What about Haman? Have you heard from him yet? It's been almost a week, aren't you worried?"

"About Haman? Why would I be worried?" Heine seemed genuinely puzzled by the thought.

"Because it's very likely we left him behind in Orb, with no way to escape and no Mobile Suit?" Kira clarified, with a frown. "Praetorian or not, he's trapped and surrounded by hundreds of thousands, even millions of people that would like to see him imprisoned, or even killed, on sight!"

"And I'm sure, knowing Haman, that he's enjoying every single second of it." Heine answered with a shrug. "He's an adrenaline junkie, you know? Just like me, actually, which is probably why we get along so well. Oh, he might seem a little taciturn at times, a little grim, a little hard to talk to, because of his own set of problems involving being turned upon the USN military after we became Edenites at Cape York, but once the bullets start flying, he comes alive just like back in the old days against the Brotherhood. No, my friend, I wouldn't worry about Haman Al'Jib. Besides, he's always wanted to take a vacation in Orb..."

"You're both crazy." Kira stated, shaking his head.

"Naturally, we're Praetorians, we're all a little warped. And nice try, Executor, but I'm not THAT crushed yet, so let us return to the lights, the food, and the party, my friend who is pretending not to be Kira Yamato tonight. There's some delightfully wicked people I think you need to meet..."

"Heine, really, I don't..."

"That is something Kira would say. And he's not here right now." Heine retorted, grabbing Kira by the arm and physically dragging him off the boulder. "Live a little, damn you. You may not get the chance to do it later!"

xxxx

**Orb, Slopes of Mt. Hameya, January 24th, 11:12 PM**

The campfire was little more than a clump of dimly glowing coals, half covered in dirt, kept purposefully low to prevent it from smoking or showing up on long range thermal scans. As a result, it provided little in the way of heat, and even less in the way of light, forcing Custodian Regulus Khala, of Legio Megaladon, to scrunch up close to the flickering embers as she sought to soak up some heat while she made a written inventory of the supplies she and her rescuer had on hand. Which was depressingly short, and in truth more just something she was doing to distract herself from the severity of their predicament, quite literally trapped in the heart of the enemy's domain, just the two of them, with no way to communicate with their friends and allies, and no way to escape through the damned energy barrier that kept this environment sealed off from the rest of New Eden!

Of course, as hopeless as the situation was in her eyes, it was still better than her situation had previously been, as a week ago she'd still been a prisoner of war in an Orb military prison. Which had not, in retrospect, been nearly so horrible an experience as she'd been dreading at the time she was captured outside of Gibraltar. She was held captive, and interrogated on several different occasions, but there had been no torture involved, or even physical abuse at all, aside from a bit of sleep deprivation and being forced to wear restraints on her wrists and ankles that had bruised her skin. Her weapons, armor and other gear had of course been confiscated, but she was given an orange prison jumpsuit and even underwear that fit to clothe herself, and her captors had never once made a move to molest or bother her in a sexual fashion. Hell, most of them hadn't even seemed to leer or stare at her, which had almost been offensive in its own way! She had steeled herself and was determined not to cooperate, but her stubborness did not seem to unduly upset her captors, who even confided that they were more or less going through the motions with her, since she was just a common soldier, not anyone with access to important information.

She hadn't been the only POW either, though she was the only one from Legio Megaladon, which meant that she didn't know anyone else, by name or by reputation. It was difficult to socialize though, as many of her fellows were suffering from psy-shock due to the destruction of their manifolds in the actions that had seen them captured. Much like Khala herself had been actually, in fact it was exceedingly rare that a Custodian was taken alive except when they were disabled by psy-shock. Khala was in a way fortunate, since she was a very junior Custodian, who had only been promoted from the Minoris trainee ranks right after the war had started in the open, and had only been with her manifold for a few months of combat time, unlike some of the others, who had been in Manifolds for years, and thus suffered a much greater shock when their Manifold mates were shot or blown up or incinerated by flamethrowers or MAIDEN. Some were little better than drooling morons, and others were sunk into depressions so great that they barely seemed aware of the rest of the world.

Of course, she had nightmares of her own, and often woke up feeling sick to her stomach and badly disoriented, as her mind reached out for connections that were dead, numb and empty like teeth that had fallen out of their proper sockets. Though not intimately attuned to every member of her Manifold, she had been quite close to one of her friends from training, Ben... close as friends and teammates, and closer as lovers, though that had been a very recent development. Ben had been killed right next to her, burning to death in agony when he was struck by a stream of liquid fire courtesy of a Oosen flamertrooper, during her Manifold's attempted storming of the Oosen trenchline at the outpost outside Gibraltar. They'd gotten SO CLOSE, almost to within spitting distance of the trench lip, and then the Manifold had just been obliterated by the concentrated close range firepower of the Oosen squad taking cover there, and the psy-shock had taken Khala down as surely as a sledgehammer to the back of her skull. In a way, that was to her luck, as otherwise she would have almost certainly been killed.

Still, she could not help but contract a case of survivors guilt, wondering why she had survived when everyone else had been cut down, why she had survived even when the Oosen deployed that abomination of a cyborg Chimera and wiped out Praetorian Crashing Wave and seven Dervishes of Legio Megaladon in a matter of seconds! It didn't seem fair that such important and powerful people could have lost their lives, while she, just about the most junior member of the Legio, still drew breath, and was even somewhat comfortable in her captivity. The idea that she might one day be rescued hardly even crossed her mind, considering that she was deep in Oosen territory. But then had come the chaos and tumult of what she later learned was Executor Yamato's surprise attack on Orb's military infrastructure and Mass Driver, in conjunction with the very Ocean Mother herself, a Grand Chimera taking the field of battle in complete accord with the human Edenites! As a member of a Legio that took as its totem animal one of the fiercest creatures in the oceans, Khala would have given almost anything to be able to go into battle alongside the Queen of the Seas. There could be no greater privilege, in her mind.

Khala had been fortunate that her prison complex was not located on the shoreline, or she would have likely been erased from existence under the gargantuan tsunami that Executor Yamato had conjured up, with the help of Leviathan and her subjects, but even several miles inland, the outer wall of the prison complex was swamped with water, and some outbuildings destroyed. And coming with that water, homing in on their psychic presences, had been a team of Custodians, led by none other than Arboreal Praetorian Haman, the Djinn, a legendary fighter! It was a rescue operation, mounted under the cover of the greater attack! However, the Oosen response had been quicker and more powerful than expected, and the rescue effort had quickly become bogged down when most of a regiment of heavy infantry, in the blue armor suits of the Oosen, had stopped by the prison to keep the POWs contained, and found Haman and his unit in the midst of freeing them. Even with the freed prisoners taking up the weapons of fallen Oosen and Custodians, the rescuers were badly outnumbered, and not even the efforts of the Djinn seemed sufficient to win them free, despite Haman accounting for scores of enemy troops all by his lonesome!

Things had looked pretty grim, until the Oosen unit was taken in the flank unexpectedly, not by Edenite reinforcements, but by one of their own gone berserk! It was another one of the abomination creatures, a ginormous Basilisk this time, instead of a Cold Hunter, though Khala had thought she'd seen the Cold Hunter cyborg in the distance once or twice too. Whether intentionally or not, Khala could not discern, but the Basilisk monster crushed over eighty percent of the Oosen force that was beseiging the prison complex before heading off in another direction, spreading chaos and confusion in its wake. It was this chaos and confusion that gave the belabored rescue force to evacuate from the prison complex, though in the process, Khala had gotten seperated from the main group, and was left behind, stumbling lost through the dust clouds. She'd just about been to the point of dropping to the ground, weeping in frustration, when she'd been found by none other than Haman himself, doing a last minute sweep for survivors! Too far behind the main group to catch up, Haman had instead led her inland, away from the battle, and they watched from one of the suburban hills as the Edenite forces turned around and pulled out, having accomplished what they had come to do.

They had nowhere else to go but further inland, up onto the slope of the enormous volcano that Orb was built on, as the shore and city were swarming with Oosen soldiers and war machines, like Blight swarms disturbed from a kicked nest. This part of Orb was too steep and too rocky for humans to build on cost effectively, and was thus left wild, which was an advantage for the two Edenites, as it gave the plenty of places to hide from prying eyes. Which was a good thing, since Haman was anything but inconspicuous in his armor and with his double bladed polearm in hand, and Khala herself was still wearing a dirty and torn up orange prison jumpsuit! Having been an Edenite since she was ten, and furthermore having been trained by the Custodians, Khala was not daunted by the prospect of roughing it in the wild for a while, though they were desperately short on supplies. And there wasn't much in the way of wild, native fauna in Orb anymore, nothing bigger than squirrels and ground rodents of various types, and little in the way of edible vegetation, so food was going to be a problem. And even if the hunting wasn't poor, the meat of the animals themselves was a poor nutrional match for the enhanced and highly tuned metabolisms of the two Edenites.

If her companion/rescuer was at all bothered by the situation, no sign that Khala could perceive indicated it. She was doing her best not to stare at him openly, as that would have been impolite, but it was hard not to. He was an Arboreal Praetorian after all, a guardian of Yggdrasil's heartwood... there was no greater honor in all the Garden City military than such a post, and it was one only four Edenites in all the world had thus far been judged worthy of being given. She could sooner fly just by flapping her arms than she could dismiss her awe of this man, lying on his back on the other side of the fire, arms pillowed behind his head, armor divested and stacked neatly to one side, leaving him clad in his underarmor of leather, staring up at the night sky. His pupils glinted like silver coins, vivid in the dark night, amongst his dark skin and dark hair. Hesitating, Khala opened her mouth to ask him what they should do next.

"Rest for now." Haman interrupted her, forewarned of her action a few seconds before by his Latent abilities. He wasn't usually so abrupt and open about displaying the near constant "future sense" that was his particular gift... or curse, he sometimes felt. Unlike most Latents, Haman's power did not come in spurts at moments of great need or danger, but rather were nearly constantly on, bombarding his mind with myriad images of what met yet be, two or three seconds down the line. It was rough work, sorting through all the clutter of possible futures, and this was one of the main reasons his happy-go-lucky personality had suffered since becoming an Edenite. Again, normally he tended to just let things happen, let people speak even though he already "knew" what they were going to say or do, for politeness's sake, but right now his mind was on other matters, and he'd spoken without thinking. "Sorry." He said briefly.

"Why?" Khala replied, with a small grin. "I think it's pretty cool... I wish I was so in tune with my powers..."

_You just think you do. Trust me, girl, sometimes ignorance is bliss. But that's something you don't generally realize until you know too much..._ Haman thought, with a trace of bitterness, the thought private since Khala... he'd learned her name on the trek inland... was disconnected from the Wind of Words at the moment. "It has its uses." He said out loud, looking back up at the sky, the stars being a bit fuzzy, because of the interference effect of the electromagnetic barrier that domed over the islands. Distracted again, he spoke without thinking once more. "Yes, you could learn how to do it, eventually."

"You really think so... sir?" Khala flushed a bit, stunned and amazed that this living legend thought she could one day be just as strong as he was!

"Haman."

"... what?"

"My name. It's Haman. Haman Al'Jib if you must be formal, but I prefer Haman."

"I... but you're a... an Arbor..." Khala stammered in protest, aghast at being on a first name basis with someone about as far removed from her station as it was possible to be and still be in the military!

"Right at the moment I'm just the only other free Edenite within a thousand miles, Khala. We should learn to be informal with each other, it could be important to our eventual escape. Besides, it just bothers me... brings up old memories I'd rather stay buried, when someone calls me "sir". So don't. And consider it an order if you wish."

"Uh... yes, s... Haman." Khala flushed again, and was quiet for a few moments, before gathering her courage again. "So... how will we escape then?"

"Good question. Let me know if you think of an answer, and I'll do the same." Haman answered, turning his head away and grinning slightly as he perceived the stunned look on her face in the next second. _Sorry, girl, but I'm not that perfect..._

"I thought you already had a plan! You said so, when you were leading us into the mountains!" Khala protested, forgetting her awe for a moment to field her disbelief. "You specifically said... "follow me, girl, if you want to live. I have a plan that will solve everything..."! You said that!"

"I was being melodramatic. I have a certain fondness for grand gestures you see..."

"ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?" Khala glared at him, her awe still forgotten in the face of this distressing turn of events.

"If I was, would you laugh?" Haman asked, still turned away so she couldn't see the grin splitting his face.

"If you are, I might not kick you!" Khala retorted, failing to see any humor in joking about whether or not they were trapped in hostile territory!

"Then I guess I'll have to watch my back for a while, because I am afraid, Khala my dear, that I was indeed not "shitting you". I did not foresee this particular turn of events, and so I find myself somewhat at a loss. It happens, even to people like Arboreal Praetorians. Only Yggdrasil is said to be perfect in its knowledge of the future, and even that claim I suspect is more hyperbole than fact. I apologize if you don't find my humor to be amusing..."

"I was just... surprised, is all. You guys get so built up by all the stories and stuff, I guess I forgot you're human too." Khala allowed, with a self deprecating smile.

"A shockingly mature statement from someone of your age, my dear." Haman noted, showing her his grin this time.

"Yeah, well, I've been through some shit of my own recently, gave me time to grow up a little bit. Having my Manifold shot to pieces and burned alive around me, then spending weeks in captivity tends to take away some of your childishness..." Khala retorted, sharper than she meant to.

"Forgive me for my insensitivity." Haman replied at once, contrition obvious in his every word.

"Like I said, you're human too." Khala waved it off. She sat up and looked at him more directly for the first time. He was quite handsome, for all that he was almost three times her age, with his roguish arabic features and midnight dark hair, he looked like he might have freshly ridden off the set of a old timey movie about desert bandits. Despite that, and despite the fact that he'd probably saved her life several times in the past twenty four hours, she found she didn't feel a single iota of attraction to him. She'd thought about perhaps offering some sort of liasion as a way of expressing her thanks, but she didn't want to insult him by coming onto him out of the blue.

"It's a nice thought, Khala, but you're young enough to be my daughter." Haman interrupted her, causing Khala to look at him in shock, mouth hanging open.

"W-Was I really about to ask you THAT?" Khala tried not to shriek, mortified that Haman had foreseen what she'd been thinking about.

"Did I foresee it, you mean? No, but it was fairly obvious from your once over that you were checking me out, and from the set of your face, you found me good looking, but not in a sexually exciting way. However, I am probably the first and most virile male you have seen in quite some time, after enduring a stressful environment and escape, and so it is only natural that you would briefly consider paying me back with your body... again, a nice thought, but no thanks. I try not to rely on my powers as much as possible, and there is much you can learn about a person's thoughts without reading their mind, if you just watch their body language. Which is also how I know, by the way, that you are troubled by something else right now."

"Well, geez, I almost wish you were reading my mind telepathically, at least then I know how to try and keep you out! Controlling my body language... that's not something I've ever learned!" Khala replied, shaking her head. "And its not really troubling me... okay, yes it is. Why lie, when you'll probably know if I was doing it, right?"

"Well, if I did, I probably wouldn't let on. If you don't want to be truthful with me about whatever this issue is, its not my place to force you to be."

"Now he tells me..." Khala rolled her eyes, somewhat pleased to hear a brief chuckle from her companion. "But anyway... I guess it's just that, well, I grew up hating the Oosen, and all its people. They were the boogeymen, the evil people who came in the night and stole away bad little girls, or even good ones, and their families, and did horrible things to them up in space. I was fucking petrified with fear when I was captured by the Oosen outside Gibraltar, I thought I was going to be raped and then dissected alive, or worse, turned into some kind of monster experiment! But my captors never hurt me, they fed me well, kept me clothed, and actually seemed to care about how I was feeling, to an extent anyway. They let me socialize with other POWs, and everyone else was being treated well too. Better, in fact, than I remember us treating some Oosen prisoners we took once... I feel like such a coward and a bully now, looking back on what I just sat back and watched happen to those guys, just regular grunts like me!"

"To be fair, Orb is not like the rest of the Oosen. You were fortunate to be captured by them, rather than regular Oosen forces, who would most assuredly have turned you over to FEAR or the Reclaimer Initiative, where your nightmares would have been made all too real." Haman answered, flicking his eyes away from her for a moment.

"I know that. I realize I got very lucky, and that I really shouldn't judge the Oosen just based on my experience with Orbites. But that also applies in reverse, I shouldn't lump the Orbites, and maybe other groups, into the same umbrella as FEAR and the RI, should I? I thought it was a war of total opposites, but it's not is it? It's only some of them, the ones with real power, that hate us for being Edenites. The rest of em just go along because they don't know any better, or because they've been decieved, and that's not their fault..." Khala replied, curling her knees up to her chest and resting her chin upon them. "I guess I just suddenly found myself better understanding them, and it's making things harder for me. I can't see them as faceless goons and barbarians anymore... they're people, just like me most of the time, struggling to survive this hell we call war..."

"Ignorance is bliss. Or rather "was", as you usually only realize the bliss after you've lost your ignorance." Haman told her seriously. "There are men and women of great evil controlling the Oosen, but the common man and woman on the streets... who make up the majority of their armed forces... are no different from you or any Edenite civilian. It is easier to think of them as monsters, as faceless goons that must be destroyed at every opportunity, but the reality is that they have families, and personal beliefs, and personal choices that have led them to serve their nation in this time of conflict, even though most of them couldn't care less what happens to Earth or New Eden. Every time you kill someone, you inflict tragedy, grief and loss upon many other people, but to not kill them is sadly not an option. This is the greatest tragedy of war, though few realize it. Fortunately for us, Executor Yamato does realize this, which is why he has chosen to lead our armies against the Oosen, despite his personal preferences. It is his goal to teach the masses about this tragic truth..."

"Do you really think they'll learn though, Haman?" Khala asked curiously.

"They will, Khala. They will. They don't have any other choice in the matter. It's justa matter of how much suffering has to be inflicted first. But then, we don't call them "Executors" for nothing! They will learn their folly. They will learn..." Haman answered softly, before rolling over onto his side. "Best get some sleep. We're going to have a rough few weeks ahead of us..."

Khala did not reply, but merely stared up at the blurred stars for a while, before smiling sadly to herself. and settling down as well. _Blurry stars... like blurry convictions... certitude... but unfocused... yeah, that's me alright..._ She thought to herself as she drifted off as well, strangely relaxed despite the situation.

xxxx

**New Eden, Near Garden City, Praetorian Training Grounds, Febuary 2nd, 9:00 am**

"What the hell kinda playing field is this shit?" Praetorian Ken, one of the pack of sycophantic followers that seemed to followed Alexander around like half feral dogs, commented with a sneer, hands on his hips as he stared down at the open pit that had recently been dug into the soil of the valley floor by the Kratos the night before. Ken, who was known by the somewhat more flattering moniker of "Howling Tempest" to those outside the order, was known for being something of a hothead, an instigator, and a blowhard. His skills were impeccable of course, or else he wouldn't be in the Praetorians, but just being highly skilled and psychically powerful didn't automatically or even often make you a good, pleasant person to be around. Just the opposite in many cases. And of course making matters worse at the moment was the fact that Ken was still nursing a grudge against Zach after being embarassed by him in hand to hand combat shortly after Zach had become an Executor, against the wishes of Kunai. In fact almost a full third of the order, not quite coincidentally those who favored Green Cosmos and followed Alexander, and idolized Kunai like some form of demigod, all nursed grudges of varying intensities towards Zach, just because he existed, more or less.

Lilia shook her head at the childishness of her peers and did little to conceal heaving a sigh, though only after throwing a cautious glance Zach's way, to make sure he hadn't taken exception to the belittling appraisal of the ball-court he had spent half the night constructing, in response to a "friendly" challenge from Alex and the other GreenCo Praetorians. Having learned the hard way that they could not match up to him in Mobile Suits, or in personal combat, the grudgebearers had decided that they had to go unconventional with their attempts to put the "illegal" Executor in his place. Having noted that Zach had little to no interest in anything besides combat or sex, and maybe scaring the crap out of other people for his own amusement, Alex and his friends had got together and issued what they obviously thought was a surefire way to embarass their nemesis without having to actually fight him. They'd challenged him to a "celebatory game", of his choice, figuring that a loner like Zach would never be able to win a sporting match against a group of them. It would be small recompense to their pride after earlier encounters with him, but at this point, ANY recompense was good enough for them.

Shockingly, at least to Lilia, Zach had actually agreed to the idea, almost without hesitating, or even looking irritated. Which was probably a sign that he had something up his sleeve, but it was more than that! Ever since the end of the Battle of Orb, and his encounter with the BALORs, Lilia had been tiptoeing around him, reckoning that he wasn't liable to be in the best of moods after being so hard pressed by Fenris Wolf, in front of everyone, at least if his little personal spat with the Caller was any yardstick to measure by! However, contrary to her experience and expectations, Zach seemed almost HAPPY in the days and weeks after returning from the battle. He had more energy, he smiled a lot more, and he even made jokes that didn't involve cruelty or physical violence once and a while! It was quite startling, but Lilia had not yet worked up the nerve to ask him what was going on, figuring that if he noticed she noticed and approved of his change in behavior, he would immediately change back, just to be contrary. She wished she could credit her own influence upon him for the shift in attitude, but somehow, she doubted that was the case.

"This brings back so many nostalgic memories, Mouse..." Zach commented, ignoring Ken's words, as he stood on the lip of the rectangular pitch he'd gouged into the valley floor and looked down into it. It was a fairly crude affair, about fifty meters long and maybe half that wide, about a quarter the size of a Football gridiron, with walls about six meters high all around. The bare dirt of the pit's floor and sides had been thinly coated with a quick setting synthetic rubber, kind of like the roll out pads the Custodians sometimes used for indoor sparring sessions. They provided some cushioning against impacts or falls, but they were far from being "soft" in any real sense. There was only one marking on the pitch, a dyed red spot in the exact middle, which Lilia presumed was the "faceoff" position, and then there were two hoop like constructs, one on either end of the pitch, about four meters off the ground, turned sideways so that the ball would have to go through them from the side, and horizontally, rather than vertically like a basketball hoop. She wasn't any more familiar with the game Zach had chosen than her peers were, and was looking on with keen interest actually, treasuring this glimpse into a less violent aspect of Zach's past!

Alex stood with Ken and six other Praetorians, the number on a team apparently being six for this particular game, with six active players and up to two substitutes, towering head and shoulders over the other Praetorians, arms thicker than Lilia's legs folded contemplatively over his chest as he eyed the game pitch through narrowed blue eyes, obviously suspicious with how "easy" this was all going. All the Praetorians wore simple training outfits, shorts and T shirts of simple dark blue and black, and everyone was barefoot, which was apparently the dress code for the game. Lilia was on Zach's team, of course, and the remainder of their roster was filled entirely with Kindred, not a one of them taller than five feet, looking dwarfish even without Alex's giant stature opposing them. If any of the Kindred were at all bothered by this difference in size and mass, Lilia could not tell, but then again, she was still just now learning how to interpret their body language. From what she could tell, and by the content of the short gabbles of battle-cant they used as language, they were pretty pumped about the game, which, interestingly enough, they seemed to recognize and remember as well.

"What's this game even called, or is this something you just made up on the spot, Executor?" Ken called, his inflection on the rank title being anything but respectful, not that Frost cared one way or the other. It still caused the Mouse to bristle a bit though, which was amusing enough to drain away any idle thoughts of dismembering the insolent fool. "And what are the rules?" Ken added, his tone a bit warier, as if he suspected there might not be any.

"I have no idea what this game was originally called, our trainers never told us that. It was just "The Game", though I once heard some of my younger siblings reffering to it as "Danger Ball"." Frost replied with a shrug, turning and gesturing curtly to one of the Kindred that had volunteered for this diverting bit of amusement. His minion and distant relative immediately reached into a large sack that was resting on the ground at his feet, and withdrew the game ball. It was roughly the size of a human head, and made from off-white colored rubber. The Kindred, who had taken the name Glaive as his callsign, tossed the ball casually to Frost, who caught it one handed, and bounced it on his palm a few times, as if judging its balance and other characteristics. "The object of the game is simple. Put this ball through the opposing team's goal hoop to score, whoever scores first, wins."

"Sounds like a pretty short game." One of the other Praetorians commented with a smirk.

"It can be." Frost replied with a mysterious smile that made Lilia frown. He was being altogether too nice. Something was up. "But if it's played properly, it can be more time consuming than you might think. Here are the rules. Six active players per team allowed on the field at any one time. The ball cannot be touched with your hands or your feet, so you must use elbows, knees, chests and heads to move the ball around the pitch. If you have the ball, you are "it", which means the defenders can take you down however they see fit, without using hands or feet, to try and take the ball away. Taking down someone who does not have the ball is okay too, but we generally considered it to be worthless. It didn't score you any points with the trainers, and scoring points with the trainers was all that we played the game for."

"So we can't touch the ball with our hands or feet, huh?" Ken reiterated with a frown. "Okay, I see where this gets challenging. And tackling the ball carrier, or blocking his other teammates, that seems fairly standard. What about penalties?"

"Try not to kill anyone, it doesn't score points with the trainers." Frost replied with a shrug. "But... it doesn't take away points either."

"What happens if someone gets injured?" Ken pressed, brow furrowed.

"That's what substitutes are for, assuming the injury is such that the player cannot continue playing." Frost answered, his smile starting to grow as Ken and the other Praetorians started looking a bit uneasy.

"How about stoppages of play, how do those work?" One of the other Praetorians asked, a tad bit nervously.

"Stoppages of play? Never heard of such a ridiculous thing. Once the ball goes live, the game don't stop until one side wins. If you need to sub... and I'll be very surprised if you don't need to sub... then you just jump right on into the pit as soon as your active player can't continue anymore. I.E. if they cannot stand up, cannot move their limbs, or are not conscious." Frost's grin was more like a leer now, as the Praetorians looked a little discomfited.

"What about protective gear, Zach?" Lilia asked, eyeing the suspiciously limp looking bag the ball had come out of, wondeering where the hell helmets and pads were kept. Zach looked honestly surprised for a moment, and then burst out laughing, which made her heart sink in realization.

"Mouse... you're already wearing more protective gear than the standard rules account for." Zach answered, smirking even more. "Normally its played without shirts, but this is a "friendly" match, not a real competition."

"Sound's like a pretty rough game." Alex noted, a tad grimly, perhap somewhat regretting this new "master plan" for embarassing Frost already.

"Eh." Frost shrugged. "It's child's play really... we never played it much after age 15 or so. I only saw like ten or twelve people die on the field, so it was actually pretty softcore by most of our training standards. That's why we called it a "game"."

Alex glared at Frost, as if he thought he was being mocked, but Lilia could tell that Zach wasn't being facietious at all... which was, if anything, rather more frightening than if he had been making fun of Alex! She should have known better... nothing in Zach's past was pleasant, not even his childhood games! "Can I see the ball, Zach?" She asked him next. Wordlessly he tossed it to her underarm, and Lilia raised one hand to catch it, like Zach had done when it was passed to him. The ball struck her hand and almost folded her wrist back against her forearm as her arm was knocked aside, causing her to hiss in surprise and a little pain as she bobbled the catch. The ball fell to the ground... and stuck about an inch into the loose dirt, like a cannonball dropping. All the Praetorians stared in shock, Alex included. "Ow, Zach, what the hell?" Lilia snarled in immediate reaction. "That thing must weigh twenty POUNDS! What is it, solid rubber?"

"More or less." Zach answered with another shrug, like it was no big deal. Lilia stared at him, her stomch flip flopping, as she realized this was no joke... this was the ACTUAL game ball! She tried not to think about how it would feel to try and head the thing, or what it would do to her knees and elbows! And no pads at all! This was crazy! Even without tackles, people were gonna get hurt just playing the ball normally! And Zach had played this as a young teenager? "Well, if you're done learning the rules, lets get this game started, eh? I'll be nice, and let you guys have the ball first." Zach continued cheerfully, as if unaware of the glares of disgust and trepidation he was recieving from everyone else, except the Kindred of course, who looked nearly as eager as Zach was.

For a moment, a wild, hopeful moment, Lilia actually though that Alex and company were going to throw in the towel and acknowledge that they'd been beat, again. But pride, that dastardly emotion, got in the way again, as they remembered that it was them who'd issued the challenge in the first place, and had so "graciously" allowed Zach to pick the game, anticipating being able to humiliate him even further by beating him at his "own" game. "Loser buys dinner for the winner?" Alex retorted after a few moment, gesturing for Lilia to throw him the ball. He caught it with little difficulty, though he did scowl as he felt how heavy and solid it indeed was.

"Sure." Frost agreed with a wide sneer. "After all, by Kindred rules, the loser IS dinner for the winner. Sadly we are not playing by Kindred rules."

"Yes. Sadly." Lilia replied sarcastically, her one previous experience with the Kindred's... expansive... eating habits having been more than enough for her. Notches had been cut into several sections of the pit walls, forming a crude sort of ladder to allow people to climb in and out of the pit, since it was about a twenty foot drop from the valley floor to the pitch floor. Zach and the Kindred disdained the use of the ladders though, and merely jumped down like they were stepping off a chair. Lilia figured she could probably do the same, but why risk stressing her knees even before the game started? And besides, unlike Alex and the others, she had nothing to prove here. Soon after, Alex and his first string teammates, including Ken, clambered down into the pit as well, and the two teams took up their respective positions, with Zach and the Kindred discarding their shirts and hurling the garments back over the lip of the pit, so that it was almost a "shirts vs skins" type lineup. Save that Lilia had no intention of stripping off her shirt as well, not if it was going to be the only padding her chest had!

Alex placed the ball on the bright red center dot, and gave his team some time to spread out, mirroring the placement of the Kindred, both sides moving in near total silence... the Praetorians were in constant mental contact, and the Kindred had played so often they might as well have been. Grimacing, though more from the distraction than the effort, Lilia opened her mind to Zach's and tenatively contact him, somewhat stunned when he allowed her into his surface thoughts without comment or hindrance. _Um, Zach, what should I do? I mean, what's our strategy? We do have a strategy, right?_

_Take the ball from whoever has it, Mouse, and try not to hang onto the ball for long yourself. Advice for a newbie to live by... sometimes even literally. Make them bleed and fall, or rest assured, you will bleed and fall. It isn't as much about speed and agility as it is pure physical toughness, and mental focus on the goal. Don't try to rush things, let the other side get worn out a bit first. Often, it is the side with superior players that ends up losing, because they try to end the game too soon. Every game I won... which is to say, all of the ones I played in... was won only after half the other team was disabled and unable to continue playing. Concentrate on being active at that point in the game._

_Are you... feeling alright, Zach? Because, pardon me for noticing, you're acting odd. You didn't even belittle me just now..._ Lilia pointed out, bracing herself for the cruel Zach to return now.

_As is the game, Mouse, so is the world, to my eyes, which are finally open again after so long only half awake._ Zach replied, a cryptic, convoluted statement that left her no more enlightened or less frustrated than before. He seemed happy, even excited about something, but what or why, she had no idea, and that really bothered her, because if SHE couldn't figure it out, then nobody could, and that might be real dangerous for people she cared about. She was about to risk asking him to clarify himself, when suddenly Alex dipped towards the ball, grabbing it between his elbows and hurling it up into the air and slightly forward, a high loft that would allow his teammates, who were taller than anyone but Zach, to reach the ball before the dimunitive Kindred. _Mistake number 1._ Zach commented with a note of vicious amusement. _Don't give the other team time to react to a pass. Watch and learn, Mouse._

Ken raced forward, easily getting under the ball, his forearms lifted to catch it so he could redirect to the next Praetorian, who was already running past him. Focused on the ball, Ken did not see the short defender moving up on him as Glaive, the Kindred, came in on a jumping tackle... not arms first, as in Rugby or Football, but with both knees held together and extended, crashing into Ken's thighs just above the knees, and bowling the Praetorian over in a heap with a yelp of pain. His momentum spent, Glaive rolled to the side, the ball striking the ground next to him a second later. Leaping to his feet, and flicking the ball into the air, about waist high, with his elbows in the process, Glaive wasted no time in swinging his leg and kneeing the ball forward. A line drive smash, directly into the grimacing Ken's face, as the bigger man rolled to his own feet, a few meters away. Even from halfway across the pitch, Lilia could hear cartilege snapping, as Ken's nose smeared across his face, his head whipcracking backwards as the twenty pound shotput, or so it basically was, caromed off his face at close to thirty miles per hour! He didn't even have time to scream as he went down again, though his pain transmitted to all the other Praetorians, Lilia included, sharply enough to make them collectively wince.

Still, they trained long and hard to not be disabled by psy-shock, and as the impact with Ken's face had altered the course of the ball, it was now high in the air again, spinning furiously, throwing off spatters of blood from the part that had hit Ken's face, another Praetorian was already moving to intercept it, a second Praetorian, quick on the uptake, moving to intercept any Kindred that might try a repeat of Glaive's pre-emptive takedown. That smart Praetorian though, soon had cause to blanch, as the Kindred were waved off by a smoothly accelerating Frost, Lilia trailing a bit uncertainly in his wake as tenative support. To his credit, the blocking Praetorian did not waver, nor did he stop out of Frost's path, forcing Frost run right over him, bowling the Praetorian down into a heap, which still delayed Frost enough that the catching Praetorian could trap the ball, with a meaty smack of rubber meeting thigh, before lofting it back across the pitch towards Alex with a pendular motion of his leg. Or at least, that was his goal, before Lilia jumped directly into the path of the pass, twisting around to present her back to the impact.

And even then, it was shockingly hard, knocking the breath from her, her spine compressing as she was pushed forward a little by the impact, dropping onto her hands and knees on the pitch, gasping for breath, feeling a bruise the size of, well, a human head forming on her lower back. _How did you play this all the time?_ She demanded, half angrily, as she struggled to get to her feet once more.

_No time for whining or griping, Mouse._ Zach retorted, with a mental grin she could envision just fine, as he tore down the field after the ball, actually laughing out loud with something that felt almost like true joy. _As is the game, so is the world. That's the first lesson you're supposed to take away from this. And as is the world, so too is this game, you might say._

_What the fuck are you talking about!_ Lilia groused, politeness and even self preservation instincts banished by the shocking pain shooting up and down her back... that impact had twisted something in her lower back, and it hurt like a son of a bitch!

_Attend, Mouse, to mistake number 2._ Zach prattled on, more or less ignoring her as far as she could discern, as Alex and another Praetorian raced Zach for the loose ball that she had created. _Never make the game fun for the other guy..._ He extolled, as he slid down onto his knees, using his whole body as a ramp to scoop up the ball, cradling it between neck and shoulder blade, before rolling it down his arm and flicking it forward, into the Praetorian half of the field. Of course, Alex and the other Praetorian were still inbound, only a stride or two away, unable to change course from their dead sprint even if they'd wanted to. Which, as Alex lowered one massive shoulder, didn't seem to have been in their plans at all! Lilia tried not to wince when Alex struck Zach dead on with his shoulder charge, bowling the Executor over in a heap, and then falling straight down atop him with all his several hundred pounds of muscle. She'd seen him take bigger hits, during his fight with Erk the Wendigo, but not much bigger...

However, even though she felt Zach get the wind knocked out of him, saw his lip get bloodied for a moment as he hit the ground, she detected not the slightest hint of pain... that was nothing less than expected... but also she felt no anger coming from him! He seemed to almost WELCOME getting knocked on his ass! Alex rose from the tackle, stepping on Zach's stomach in the process, not even partially by accident. Lilia glared at her peer, who ignored her in turn, grinding his heel into Zach's gut as he pushed off, turning to look for where the ball had got off too, before running off in that direction, to once more add his mass to the play, though she noticed he was rubbing his shoulder, where it had driven into Zach's nigh unbreakable bones. Forcing herself upright, back still twinging and making her knees buckle, Lilia limped over to offer Zach a hand up... an instinctive motion on her part, forgetting that he hated being helped, and probably didn't need it regardless.

_You still don't understand, do you Mouse?_ Zach inquired, ignoring her hand up, as expected, sitting upright and watching the game with a critical eye. He looked up at her next, and almost made her fall flat on her ass with his next action... he smiled at her. Not sneered, not smirked, nor even grimaced... he smiled, and he suddenly looked about twenty years younger, just like a kid again, back when he was still just starting to become who he would yet be. And then Lilia got it, what he was trying to say, why he was acting the way he was. Zach WAS happy... because he'd found himself a challenge again, in the BALORs. A reason to grow stronger. A new nemesis, to replace the now "defunct" Kira. Ever since he'd seen Kira had chosen to become an Executor, and fallen from his prior state of "grace", Zach had been moody and depressed, standing all alone at the pinnacle of skill and intent he represented. But now he had something "real" to fight against again, and he was ecstatic, like a kid with a new toy.

As with most things Zach, it never made a bit of sense... until you divorced yourself just a bit from what most people might call "sanity", something which Lilia was finding easier and easier to do as her association with him lengthened... something that was mildly troubling to her, but only mildly. Mistake number 1... don't give the other team time to react. The BALORS had come in, but they hadn't been finished, and now Zach knew what they were capable of. Mistake number 2... don't make it fun for the other guy. Fenris Wolf had put Zach on the defensive in hand to hand combat for the first time since he was a young boy, reminding him of the adrenaline rush that came from fighting on even or even slightly unfavorable ground with an opponent, and thus inspiring him to improve just like he had back then. Mistake number 3... "What's mistake number 3, Zach?" She asked him, smiling a little herself as his grin grew. "No, wait, of course! Mistake number 3... never play the other guy's game..."

_Very good, Mouse. Very good indeed. Never play my game, because it's mine, I made it, and I never lose it. I know that I will win in the end... but as ever, the HOW of it is what matters..._ Zack pounced to his feet and took off after Alex and the ball. A moment later, Lilia did her best to follow. It was going to be a long, rough game. But then again... as is the game, so is the world...

xxxx

**Somewhere, Somehow, Somewhen**

Lacus was not happy. No, that was an understatement. She was livid with fury, her skin wanting to flush as pink as her hair with the emotions boiling inside her. Yet even such a minor release of the tension that twanged her heartstrings was denied her, by the all encompassing lassitude of mind and body that kept her prisoner in this stupefied state. Well, it was more complicated than that... though to most effects, Lacus was comatose and utterly unresponsive to external stimuli, and unaware of her body's surroundings, she was the furtherst thing from asleep or unconscious, inhabiting a certain section of her interior mental landscape that was congruent with that of the background psychic energy. It was like being in a trance, not as random as dreams, not as ordered as memories, and not as controlled as conscious thoughts. She'd been here before, in this delirium world, back during the Eden Disaster, when she had hovered on the brink of death after being shot with a poisoned dart meant for Kira.

Though her life was not currently threatened, or at least not actively deteriorating, unlike last time, Lacus was still not happy to be here, not in the slightest. Unfortunately, she didn't seem to have much choice about it, as her body was kept constantly pumped full of drugs that kept her from waking up, and even her most stringent psychic efforts seemed to go unnoticed, like casting stones into an ocean and expecting the ripples to overcome the waves. Also unlike last time, there was no forest here, at least not some of the time... the landscape kept changing, and not in tune with her own moods even, some other intelligence was subtly at work, reshaping the world from forest to plains, to mountainsides to beachfronts... it was all very picturesque, in a lot of ways, like whoever was keeping her knocked out was aware that she was still awake down in this part of herself, and was trying to keep her from becoming bored. Either that, or was trying to keep her unbalanced, so she wouldn't infer too much of something from any one landscape.

And sometimes she had visitors, though whether they were hallucinations or in fact actual psychic contact, she was not entirely sure. Except in one case, the one who appeared in Kira's body but didn't feel anything like Kira, or act like him, or even like anything human at all. That one she knew was an outside contact, though despite often showing up, she'd never managed to actually engage it in conversation, it would just show up randomly and stand there like a rooted tree, watching her in silence, as if it was trying to decide what to do with her. It was disquieting, but that only stroked her temper higher, instead of cowing or frightening her. She didn't know who or what would dare try and impersonate her husband, or what they thought they stood to gain from doing so in such a blatantly obvious manner, but if they thought playing games like that was going to make her blanch, then obviously they didn't know the first thing about Lacus Clyne-Yamato!

At the moment though, she was alone, the landscape that of a forest glen filled with wildflowers and small buzzing insects, a slightly cloudy sky, sometime around midafternoon. It was pleasantly warm, almost enough to get her feeling sleepy, especially along with the nagging feelings of hunger and thirst that assailed her, legacy of being on IV nutrients for who knew how long. And that was the most frustrating thing of all, losing her grip on time, when the time of day was different every time the landscape changed, and in no particular pattern. She might have been out for only a few hours, or months might have been passing in the real world, and she had no way of telling the difference! It felt like years to her, but she hoped it wasn't really that long. It was hard, doing her best to not think about it, while at the same time being utterly unable to not worry about it.

She had other things to worry about though, that at least made it possible to keep her mind off the time, though it was hardly a blessing. For one, she could feel that both Akira and Aoi were in a stupor somewhat like hers, confined in psychic dreamworlds of their own, and the thought of her precious children being held captive by some unknown force made her heart clench and her stomach roil, even as her thoughts seethed with alternate worry and fury. But at least she could still feel them, if somewhat intermittently... she couldn't feel Kira at all! Her link to her husband, something that was so instinctive to her that she only really noticed it now that it was gone, had been somehow severed! She didn't even know how such a thing was possible, other than that one or the other partner was killed! And while that nasty thought did ever lurk at the back of her thoughts, Lacus took some comfort in her ability to ignore it and rationalize it away... if Kira had been killed, she would have known about it, for a certainty. To have even a single doubt in her heart at all meant that it was almost certain that he was still alive, just somehow... cut off, from her.

Lacus tried to think back, tried to remember what had happened to her before she'd woken up in the trance plane, but all she could manage was a confused jumble of impressions... surprise, worry, determination, confusion, searing heat and too bright light, culminating in a discordant rush of movement from above her and a sudden icy rush running down her left arm as she instinctively reached up to ward off whatever was falling towards her and the children, followed almost instnatly by a wrenching feeling of dislocation in the back of her mind, like the world gone topsy turvy for a second and then... here, in a field. Was it some kind of accident? No, that didn't make sense with Kira being cut off from her. An attack then? But by who? And why? As far as she'd known, her trip to Rex Lodge was about as under the table as politics got, more a working family vacation than anything else. The number of people who knew about it, outside her immediate family, could be numbered on one hand... and none of those people could possibly be hostile towards them! Unpleasant, unkind and even aggravating, but not hostile!

She was just missing too much of the puzzle to be able to piece it back together in a coherent fashion right now. How very frustrating. Though as bad as it was for her, she knew Kira had to be going out of his mind with stress, especially if she'd been missing for more than a few hours. Her heart ached in sympathy, almost like she could feel his pain, but it was just her imagination supplying the sensation, not a psychic link. Scowling, Lacus punched the dirt with her right fist, her left arm being numb and unresponsive from the middle bicep on down. It didn't hurt, but it didn't not hurt either, and she couldn't make her left hand function no matter how hard she tried. She suspected this was her mind's way of telling her that she was injured, probably badly, since it didn't seem to be getting better. She shoved that thought aside though, her trained performers ears perking up as she heard soft footsteps from nearby and behind her, and she rose gracefully to her feet, her pink and white sundress flapping lightly in a faint breeze as she flicked her hair over her left shoulder, allowing it to dangle across her numbed arm, hiding it and its limpness from easy view with the casual motion.

Judging by the number of footsteps, and their lightness, Lacus thought she recognized her visitor, and when she turned around, she was not disappointed. It was the Chimera again, the one who was referred to as the "Forest Prince", or so she was fairly sure. Certainly, he matched the description... deer-like form, silvery fur, golden eyes, antlers big enough to hang half her closet worth of clothing off of, and all in all, he was the size of a main battle tank! He came to visit her in this place fairly regularly, almost like he was some sort of guard, charged with making sure she stayed where she was supposed to be, not that she had any idea how to go anywhere else! Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly put out and irritable, she would just ignore him, but most times she leapt upon the chance for conversation, and besides, there was always the chance he might let something slip that would help her figure out what was going on!

_**Your are awake.**_ The Forest Prince said, his voice echoing like distant thunder. She had heard that Chimera's mental voices were suppsoed to be painful to listen to, but the Forest Prince seemed to be an exception, though resonate, his voice was not in any way painful. It was phrased as a statement, but Lacus detected the hint of surprise coloring his emotional aura, as if he was expecting to find her otherwise.

_Should I not be?_ Lacus asked, curious that he would make such an observation. She didn't remember taking any naps, but then again, maybe she wouldn't, since she couldn't even tell how time passed here!

_**It is unexpected.**_The elk-form Chimera answered, without further elaboration. That was one of the things she liked, even admired about the creature... he didn't lie, didn't even seem to comprehend the concept of deliberate falsehoods. Things either were, or were not. He was good at omitting information, and not saying everything he knew, but he never lied to her. He hadn't expected her to be awake, and so he said so.

_Why is it unexpected? Does someone wish for me to be asleep?_ Lacus pressed, eager for any scrap of information that might come her way about her situation.

_**It is just unexpected, little pink stag. Most in your condition would need more rest, yet you remain active for long periods of times. It is, as you humans would say, curious.**_ Lacus smiled as he addressed her as "little pink stag". She could see where the little and the pink came from, but the first time he'd called her a stag, it had thrown her a bit. Stags were male deer, usually the alpha male of a herd, and Lacus was decidedly female. However, some conversation had clarified things somewhat... among Rex Elk, the species that the Forest Prince was evolved from, all Does, or females, were Latents, while only males, the Stags, were Actives. So since Lacus was an Active, he considered her a Stag, which if she read him right, was actually something of a measure of respect, equivalent of perhaps "Sir" or even "Lord", as Stags were the ones who led individual herds of Rex Elk, "ruling" over them, as much as any Low Order organism could do so.

_And what exactly is my condition, my Prince?_ Lacus asked next. She didn't get an answer, just a toss of his head and a flavoring to his emotional aura that she read as discomfort... plainly, her condition was not a subject he found welcome. _Fine, stay silent. I'll have you know though, that my patience is fast exceeding its limits. I don't know why, or how, I was taken captive, but I can assure you, that whatever goals you have, you will not achieve them through me. You will only make enemies for yourself, and you don't want my type of enemies..._

_**It is not my goals that are being achieved.**_ The Forest Prince replied, almost darkly, as he slowly lowered himself to his knees, and then onto his side, in the midst of the clearing, making a small hillock of silvery fur as he lay, apparently sunning himself, obviously adopting a relaxed pose so as to encourage her to do likewise. Lacus was having none of it though, and she stood crossly in front of the creature's massive head, her right hand on her hip, glaring at him. _**Do not misunderstand me, little pink stag. I don't like this any more than you do, but it is necessary all the same. Given an option, I would have no contact at all with your species as a whole, save for one or two exceptions, such as the little blue fawn, and perhaps you, the little pink stag. You are noisy, you are carnivorous, and you are impossible impatient and rude, generally speaking. But at the behest of my Lord, I sacrifice my happiness for the greater good, as one abandons the sickly doe to feed the Garm or Direcat, so that the healthy herd may survive and prosper.**_

_So you're not in charge then. I see, said the blind woman..._

_**Your eyesight is compromised? This should not be...**_

_Pardon me, it's a figure of speech. It means that I understand, but only a very little, and perhaps just enough to understand that I understand almost nothing at all._ Lacus explained, having to fight to keep a small smile from showing on her face, fighting and failing, in that endeavor anyway. _So you follow someone else's orders then, or at least work with them in pursuit of mutual goals, and part of those orders is making sure I stay captive, and out of contact with Kira, which you don't like, but do because you feel you must?_

_**To forcibly isolate a member of the herd from the herd-bond, is the most excruitiating torture I could ever comprehend. I cannot believe you are as lucid as you are. But then again, humans don't generally form herd-bonds, not as I understand them.**_ The Forest Prince admitted to her. _**Only my Lord could command me to inflict this state upon another living creature, otherwise I would never do so, save to preserve the herd in times of danger. It is my solemn duty to spare the herd the dying agonies of the sick, the weak, and the unlucky, as it is any Stag's. To use this power on someone healthy... it is a perversion, that makes my stomachs churn...**_

_Being cut off from Kira is like a white hot knife in my heart, so believ me, it is excruitiating, and it IS torture, and you're the one inflicting it on me, and him too, I will not forget that. But this isn't the first time we've been forcibly seperated, so I can bear it without going mad with worry, through my faith in him and our friends that this state of captivity cannot last forever._

_**It will not last forever.**_ The Forest Prince answered, a rare direct confirmation. _**But it will not be over soon either, little pink stag. Much that has been foreseen has yet to come to pass, and the advent of the Pretender 5th is not yet nigh. Until then, you and I will have to remain in this distasteful position. Take comfort that I was not commanded to sever your family-bond with your two troublesome fawns as well.**_

_That is a small consolation, yes..._ Lacus replied, her eyes suddenly narrowing as she picked up on a subtle bit of phrasing in the Forest Prince's last statement. _You were not commanded to sever MY family-bond with my children? Who then... NO, YOU DID NOT!_ Lacus watched the Forest Prince flick his ears and tail, normally a sign of relaxation, but it seemed a little forced at the moment. Fury swelled within her, his nonanswer all the answer she needed. _YOU DID, DIDN'T YOU? You cut Kira off not just from me, but from Akira and Aoi too, didn't you? You utter fool, don't you realize what you've DONE? He might even think we're all dead! HOW DARE YOU!_

_**Your rage is fully justified, in my opinion, little pink stag.**_ The Forest Prince sighed heavily, flanks heaving like a small landslide. _**But directing it at me avails you naught. I have already explained my reluctance to do this, and the fact that I only do so in the face of great adversity. For what it is worth, I am sorry. Should you wish redress against me in the future, I can be found in the forests of what you humans used to call Europe. Merely call, and I shall answer to your judgement for these crimes I must commit against your family and your herd. You would be well within your rights to mount my head on your wall, as you humans so barbarically do. I merely ask, when that time comes, you spare my herd, as they have no conscious involvement in my actions.**_

_Do you really think Kira and I would come after your life for this? From what it sounds like to me, you aren't doing this of your own will, but because some higher power has convicned you it is necessary. All you're guilty of is failing to stand up for what you feel is right, adverse circumstances notwithstanding. Which is certainly a major personal failure, but its not one I would seek your life in recompense for. You could do so much more good to repay this evil should you live._ Lacus answered firmly. _And even if we were to come after you for some reason, we would not involve your family or your herd, I promise you that. We are not like that._ Lacus continued, turning her back on the Forest Prince, in an effort to compose herself.

_**You are not like that, it is true.**_He replied, and Lacus whirled around, eyes widening in more than just indignation, her fury reignited, at hearing the stress he put on "you".

_Just precisely what in the Hell are you trying to say to me, Prince of the Forests?_ Lacus demanded icily, skewering the Chimera with her gaze. _Explain yourself very thoroughly, if you would please? Because it almost sounded for a second there that you were implying that Kira and I might differ on that stance, and I would DEARLY like to know why you might have that opinion! JUST WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON WHILE I'VE BEEN STUCK HERE? ANSWER ME! ANSWER ME, OR GOD HELP ME, I'LL GET MY ANSWERS FROM YOU WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!_ She snarled, hovering on the edge of calling upon her Seed, and maybe even the Tree form that she'd seen Kira use twice before now.

For a moment she thought her not entirely idle threat had gotten through to the Chimera, as the Forest Prince had opened his golden eyes and stared at her with real interest, and even wariness, as if perceiving for the first time that she might actually be some sort of danger to him. Whether she was or not remained to be seen, but Lacus was fairly sure, since this WAS her mind after all, that she would be able to give the Chimera a run for his fodder. _**I... It is not my place to say that.**_ The Forest Prince replied, obviously changing his sentence in midthought, as he glance behind her and his eyes widened greatly. _**Excuse me, little pink stag, I have overstayed my alloted time...**_ He continued, struggling awkwardly to his feet once more. Lacus turned to look where he had been looking, and felt her scowl deepen, as she saw the form of Kira standing in the shadows of the forest's edge. It wasn't Kira of course, it was that dead eyed simaculrum of him. And judging from the Forest Prince's reaction, Lacus had the feeling that whoever it was, was higher up on the chain of command than the Chimera was, might even be the boss himself.

_This is your chance, whoever and whatever you are!_ Lacus said, her temper flaring, as she pointed with her good hand at the not-Kira in front of her. _Explain yourself, explain ALL OF THIS, right now, or I will lose my temper completely, and we shall see who truly has mastery over my mind! And you'd better have a damned good reason for impersonating my husband like that! Who do you think you're fooling, anyway? That's a pretty good picture of Kira, but there's no LIFE to it, I'm insulted that you think I might be comforted by such a horrid sight! DAMN YOU, ANSWER ME!_ Lacus felt herself starting to tremble, as the not-Kira just continued to stand there and look at her with those empty, pitiless eyes. Lacus waited a full minute, listening to the Forest Prince walk away and disappear, almost as if retreating, but the not-Kira neither moved nor spoke, just stood there, rooted like a plant.

_Fine then._ Lacus said at last. _You cannot say I did not warn you._ She made a sudden pushing gesture with her good hand, lashing out towards the figure of not-Kira with a surge of mental power, like which she'd hammered Noah Borander with in the past, which he had later compared to being struck by a semi-truck! Lacus knew she lacked much in the way of finesse with her Newtype powers, but raw power? She'd always had more than enough of that! But in the next few seconds, it was Lacus who was doing the sudden stagger and blinking, as she felt her power strike the not-Kira... and then JUST DISAPPEARED, along with a great deal of the rest of her strength, as if pumped directly out of her into a bottomless pit! Sudden dizziness overwhelmed her, and Lacus found herself on her knees, her vision blurring and weariness rushed in to fill the space inside her that her power formerly had. It was like her powers had all been hijacked... which she knew Latents could do, with physical contact, but she hadn't been anywhere near that thing!

_What are you...?_ Lacus demanded sleepily, as she found herself falling facedown into the grass, managing one final glimpse up into not-Kira's face. His eyes were weird. There was no purple in them... just solid silver, cornea, pupils and iris, like silver marbles set into his skull. _What do you want from us? Tell me..._ Lacus passed out before any response could be tendered. Not-Kira stood standing over her for a while longer after that, pondering the nature of some humans. And then, between breaths, not-Kira was gone... his place taken, as ever, by the form of a tall, straight tree...


	62. In the Fortress of Earth

Author Note: Well, unlike Depths of Space, this chapter just seemed to fly off my fingers. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did...

xxxx

**New Eden, South America, Andes Mountains, Charon's Citadel, Febuary 14th, 8:00 am**

Frost stood at the apex of what he was starting to begin to consider his "domain", at the lip of an old observation cupola that had been bored into the living rock of the mounain that had formerly housed the JIHAD facility, before it had been blown to hell and back by the Archangel all those years ago, during the Second Valentine War. The central mountain, the one containing the laboratories, containment cells and training complex for the BCPU's themselves, was the tallest of the three buried sections of JIHAD, the other two flanked it and formed the cup of the box canyon where the old surface military base and landing strip had been. To his left was the dormitory bunker-mountain, where the guards and science staff had their quarters and recreational facilities, and to his right was the factory mountain, with its massive buried caverns filled with raw materials to be turned into munitions, weapons and even Gundams!

Of the three mountain fortresses, the factory mountain had been hit the hardest, sustaining direct strikes from both of the Archangel's Lohengrin positron cannons, which had all but gutted the mountain and turned most of the raw materials stored inside into so much molten slag. Just about the only thing to survive intact was the Trophy Vault, builtinto the very roots of the mountain, where the prizes of Blue Cosmos had been stored for posterity, along with what had been, at the time, Blue Cosmos's greatest superweapon, the freshly completed Judgement mega-Gundam, a hundred meter tall war-titan with the battle power of an entire fleet, all at the command of a single pilot. Frost knew all about the Judgement, having stolen it himself after the Alliance excavated it and brought it to Porta Panama, using it to virtually eradicate that base before heading off into space to do the same to November 8, of the PLANTS, before being confronted by Pink and her little clique, and then eventually his "Uncle", Jermiah Borander. The Judgement had then been turned into a large kinetic bomb, directed at the Moon, when Frost abandoned the lumbering giant as too unwieldy for his purposes at the time.

Upon returning to Earth, Frost had scoured the ruins of JIHAD for any other scraps of technology that might have been of use to him, in his quest for the destruction of humanity, but he had found very little of worth, the place having been picked over extensively by the Alliance engineering battalions that had excavated the Judgement. Only when he entered the sealed up Laboratory mountain did he find signs of life... his younger brother, red-headed Ashino, had sent almost the whole BCPU project into hiding in the deepest levels of the lab, shortly before taking off with Cray and Frost and their Gundams to meet their rendevous with the Alliance fleet attacking Carpentaria, shortly before JIHAD was destroyed. His kindred had been trapped in the bowels of the mountain for months afterward, with no light, no food and no one in control. Needless to say, it had ended up badly for the surviving scientists and guards, when their super-soldier charges turned feral and devoured them. Only Asmodeus had been hard enough to survive the gauntlet of cannibalistic BCPU's, and even then only because of his nihilistic state at the time that lent him courage no ordinary man would have.

From the ashes of JIHAD had thus been born the pact of a demon and a devil, the formation of the terror organization Tiamat, the last, not quite forgotten remnants of Blue Cosmos puritan faction. Frost had forcibly recruited more than a dozen of his half-savage kindred to serve as Mobile Suit pilots for Tiamat, but the organization had a short shelf life, and was destroyed almost before it had really begun, with the suicide attack on the Archangel led by Asmodeus shortly before the Isolation forces attacked Orb. Frost looked back on that battle with fondness... it had been just him, in his beloved Fury, facing off against Scarface, Blond Weeny and Chick, Loser Zala-Attha and Fiery Zala-Attha all at once, with their ship in ruins not far away, brought down again by Frost himself with a well placed shot through one of the Lohengrin cannons. Now THAT had been a battle, a challenge, exciting, amusing and engaging! Him versus four of the best Gundam pilots the world had to offer, and he wasn't the one losing! Well, not until the then Boytoy showed up in the Pulsar anyway...

But even in defeat, the Fury literally blown to pieces around him, Frost had prevailed in the end, when the Boytoy was rejected by the Pulsar's systems and almost killed in the process, leaving him helpless at Frost's mercy on the beach, Boytoy's friends too busy fighting off the attacking Isoaltion forces, led by red-head Ashino, to succor their fallen champion. After doing his best to defile and derange the Boytoy, Frost had boarded the Pulsar, but had fallen into a snare carefully set for him by the dastardly Mr. Machine, and was whisked away from the battle, unable to control his newly acquired prize. Looking back on it now, Frost wondered if perhaps he should not have just squelched his pride for once, and crushed the unconscious Boytoy's skull like an eggshell when he had the chance. It would not have been very satisfying, but considering that it seemed likely that his attempted poisoning of the Boytoy with his own BCPU blood was the catalyst that had propelled the Boytoy into full possession of his innate powers and skills, directly resulting in Frost's eventual defeat and death at the Battle of Denver, maybe it would have been the better option!

Then again, Frost had no real complaints about how everything had worked out. In fact, he was almost grateful to the Boytoy, and to Mr. Machine, for giving him the unique opportunity of experiencing true oblivion, and then returning from beyond the grave a much changed, and more mature, version of himself. He'd spent years swimming through that darkest of abysses, in the place beyond space and time where people go when their mortal existence comes to an end, but he'd never really been there fully, like a ghost in heaven, or hell. It was there, in that non-world, empty of sensation and yet made of nothing but, that he had first sensed Them, and They in turn sensed him. The wanderers in the darkness, the ephermal eyes of the abyss, the negative echoes of a race either long dead, or transcended beyond death... the Black Ghosts, as he'd come to call them. Frost shivered, despite the warm summer sunlight bathing his skin, as he recalled the feeling of the absolute hunger the Black Ghosts had projected onto him. Even he, the Monster of Humanity, had never encountered such a singularly overriding emotion before, and he had even, for the barest instant, almost been concerned for what might happen to him next.

But then had come the awakening, brought back to the "real" half-world of nightmares and pain that was Earth and the Solar System by the high science of Mr. Machine's most depraved and brilliant constructions, clad in the enhanced flesh of his own greatest rival, to once more set the world to trembling and weeping at his feet. Or rather, as he had decided, fresh from his mechanical womb, skin still sticky with the nourishing fluids that had sustained his cloned body throughout its seven year gestation, to send the world spinning into an endless crucible of conflict from which only the strongest would survive and prosper. Because the Black Ghosts had tasted him, even as he had sensed them, sampling through his memories and latching on to one in particular, when Pink, damnable Pink, had used her psychic abilities to stop him from slaughtering the members of ZAFT and the Isolation when, contrary to all basic principles of common human sense, they had stopped killing each other in order to come after him!

Apparently, Pink's display of power had been felt almost simultaneously by every being on Earth or in Space that had heard her voice, though the brunt of the compulsion of "Stop" had of course fallen upon Frost's own shoulders. But like the radio signals that humanity had been accidentally broadcasting into space for centuries, Pink's command had likewise been sent outwards through the ether, traveling at the very speed of comprehension, through mediums where the laws of physics as Humanity understood them held little sway, eventually coming to the notice of the Black Ghosts themselves, lightyears upon lightyears distant, and had tickled their sense of hunger. They were coming now, altering the course of their billion year long hunting pattern to visit a world that they had passed over many times before as lacking the right kind of energy to nourish and sustain their quasi-existence, energy that it now brimmed to overflowing with. And in their wake they would leave a world devoid of sentient life, every thinking creature above the level of amoebas consumed to fuel their ships and their lives, to return in another billion years or so to see if a new harvest had ripened! They would be the doom of humanity for sure...

And that didn't sit well with Frost. For all that he had little time for most of humanity, and indeed considered himelf to be apart from them in all but the most basic biological manners, they were still HIS to play with and mould as he saw fit, and he did not appreciate in the least the idea of some extraterrestrial trespassers swinging by for a snack and taking his playthings away. Not in his lifetime would he allow that to happen, but even he knew that there was no way he could stand against the Black Ghosts alone, their hunger was just too great. He was certifiably crazy, but he was by no means stupid, and was probably a great deal cleverer and more intelligent than most of humanity, aided and abetted by his ability to view problems from perspectives that most of humanity could not concieve of, bound by sanity or even traditional insanity as they were. He was Humanity's Monster, he had conquered death itself, and he wasn't going to give up that title unless someone took it from his cold, dead, widely scattered atoms!

Thus had lauched his crusade of becoming Humanity's Whetstone, as he was the only one who had any idea what was coming, he was naturally the only one who could adequately prepare Humanity for the trials to come, and the first part of that was in weeding out the weak, the stupid, the slow and the incompetent, to sharpen the blade to maximum keeness before the battle had even begun! Unfortunately, Humanity had other ideas, and soon became embroiled in a war not of his creation, before he could start a conflict of his own, and now he found himself quagmired in the midst of the so called Reclamation War, with no easy end in sight! It was enough to drive a man crazy, but fortunately, he was a Monster, not a mere man. If the Reclamation War would not end in time to suit his needs, then he would merely have to seize control of it for his own ends!

Which brought him back to the here and now, or close enough. Until the recent battle of Orb, almost a month prior, Frost had known that he could seize control of the course of the War pretty much when he felt like doing it, as there were no pilots on the side of the USN capable of standing up to him in a real fight, but now things were different, with the advent of these BALOR creatures, the bio-Gundams of FEAR, which even in their half finished state had been able to not only challenge him but indeed press him hard, and Yamato likewise! It had been so long since he'd ever been truly challenged like that... the brief altercation with the Caller notwithstanding... and Frost was feeling quite joyous indeed, breaking out of the half-funk he'd been sunk in ever since discovering Pink's utterly worthless demise in a forest fire, and Boytoy's degeneration into Executor Yamato! Even the Mouse hadn't been enough to truly awaken his appetites, despite her inadvertant best efforts in that regard. He'd even deigned to allow the Mouse a certain degree of latitude in the past few weeks, playing that game with her and the other Praetorians, acting more like a civilized human being than he had since the level 4 surgeries!

But he'd drawn the line at social events, and when the Mouse had conspired to drag him to a musical concert venue being played by an apparently famous group of entertainers called "Synthesia", who practiced a new sort of music that dealt with as much manipulations of the audiences emotions and physical senses through psychic contact as it did vocals and instruments, Frost had judged that he'd dallied long enough, and had left to take care of more pressing matters, after leaving a strongly worded message instructing the Mouse not to follow him if she knew what was good for her. Of course, the Mouse blatantly did NOT know what was good for her, or she wouldn't be the Mouse, so he'd added something to the message that would make even her sit up and take notice of how serious he was. He'd said "Please", though the word had felt like acid coming up his throat as he'd spoken it into the recording device. Still, it was nothing beyond his ability to say... he was, if anything, endlessly adaptable, a student of chaos in its purest form, able to take any form if the need arose strongly enough.

And the plain fact was that with the Mouse about, he couldn't concentrate on the things he needed to be concentrating on right now. She was simply too diverting, too much fun to play with, especially so after her recent assertation of independence, which had caught him quite off guard, he had to admit. He hadn't thought she'd had it in her to be so assertive, especially after all the beatdowns she'd suffered before then at his hands, but he had been surprised... unpleasantly at first, but much more pleasantly later when he had time to calm down and reassess things. Indeed, the Mouse rising to become his servant rather than his slave was actually quite a fortiutous turn of events, as she was much better suited to the handling of minor matters like dealing with the Memento Mori and the rest of the Edenites, leaving him free to concentrate on more important matters, such as Yamato and the remnants of Pink's clique. He was still new to the concept of delegation, or even having someone to delegate authority to, as he'd always been a loner before, both through his own choice and through the choices of others... no one, not even his own "family", could stand to be around him any more than absolutely necessary, and usually only then when he was restrained and chained up for their own safety!

But, it wasn't like he'd ever sworn an oath of solitude or anything like that, and his temporary alliance with Asmodeus had shown that he was capable of working with others that he found aesthetically pleasing, in the pursuit of commonly held goals, so there was no reason other than tradition for him being a solo act, and Frost had never cared much for traditions, even his own. The Mouse had thrown herself at him, in her misguided attempt to save his soul or something like that, and in turn he had come into possession of something unexpected. A diversion. An amusement. A servant. Perhaps even a confidant... certainly, he had allowed the Mouse to know him as only his Father ever had, perhaps even better than the Doc, as he had never slept with the Doc. He might almost call her a friend, save that he distrusted such terminology on instinct, and was uncomfortable with the sense of parity that such a term granted the Mouse. No matter how engaging she was, she would never be his equal, and it would be unbearably softhearted to consider her as such, based on just one act of defiance. She had potential, the Mouse did, but she still had a long, long way to go, and a single misstep would still see her destroyed utterly, perhaps even at his own hands! He'd killed his own Father after all, there was no special aura of familiarity that protected those close to him from his wrath.

Frost frowned, realizing that even without the Mouse physically present, his thoughts had started to gravitate towards and around her anyway, which was the exact opposite of what he wanted. He'd come out to the Citadel, entirely alone save for the Kindred tribespeople that were now populating the lowest reaches of the rebuilt fortress-mountain, and they gave him a wide berth on instinct, so as to be able to focus upon making himself stronger, and yet even now, the Mouse haunted him! It was almost distressing, but that in itself was just more motivation than ever to become stronger, her dragging at his thoughts just one more test of his strength and willpower to be overcome. Maybe it was even better this way. It was that much more adversity to overcome, that much more pain to suffer! Let the memories of the Mouse distract him as they might, he would overcome the temptation to indulge in reverie and emerge all the more powerful for it!

Blinking his eyes a few times to reorder himself, Frost looked out onto his nascent domain once more, from his high place, and found it good. Charon had been busy in the months since Frost's reincarnation, expanding the Citadel from a mere few bunkers and hidden storage caverns into a sprawling fortress complex, built within the mountain proper and extending out beneath the valley floor, using the natural cavern systems that riddled the rock in this area, which the Kindred had been living in ever since they had been transmuted by Mr. Machine's green EDEN! Though the materials of the factory mountain had been melted into a homogenous slag twelve years prior, that presented little obstacle to mining involving Red EDEN nanites, which were able to quickly and easily seperate out the metals and repurpose them for the expansion of the Citadel, creating factories, smelteries, laboratories, armories, living quarters, medical spaces, defensive turrets, power supplies and more, all of it almost completely automated.

One of the first things Frost had done, upon arriving at the Citadel several days prior, had been consulting with Charon to best plan out the eventual fortress to be, which Frost envisioned spreading out through a large section of the surrounding peaks, based in small part upon the Enclave of the Praetorians that he had spent so much time in the bowels of, during his initial stay at Garden City. Eventually it would be more than just a fortress, it would be a city, a capital of an empire to come! Not that Frost had any real interest in ruling over people, just the thought of being responsible for government made him want to retch, but it would be a necessary evil, a prudent step on the path to forging humanity into the blade that would slay the Black Ghosts, and anything else out there in the darkness of space that dared get in their... or more importantly, HIS... way! Besides, he would probably just make the Mouse do all the administrative stuff, she was good at that. He couldn't win the fight to come on his own, and the best way to ensure that he had a sufficiency of reliable minions to stand with him was to take direct control over their lives, which meant forming a nation under his direction. From End of All to Empire Builder, it was quite a change in priorities... but then again, he was Chaos Personified, was he not? Change was part of who he was.

He was still working on how exactly he was going to populate his nascent empire... the Kindred and the Memento Mori were certainly a start, more of a start than he had thought he would have, but they numbered less than five hundred all told, and that was far too few to create the number of troops and support infastructure his eventual campaign against the Black Ghosts would require, at least in the half century or so before the first wave of Black Ghosts arrived, according to Mr. Abyss. And there was a strong probability of contact with isolated scouting elements even before that! By cosmic bad luck, the Black Ghosts had only been a few dozen light years away when they detected Pink's emission, and though they lacked the ability to move at trans-light speeds, they were still wasting little time in heading towards the scrumptious nugget of energy that Humanity now represented to them. It would probably surprise a great many of his current foes, the thought that Frost knew how to strategically plan for a conflict in the future, but that was because they tended to forget that before the level 5 and 6 surgeries, he had been a fairly normal BCPU, and had gone through just as much extensive training as the rest of his brothers and sisters.

Some of that training had fallen into disuse, or been obliterated during memory wipes, but enough of it remained to help him now. While BCPU's were not trained to be commanders, they were trained to understand war in all its forms, so that they might inflict as much damage upon the enemy as possible, on both tactical and strategic levels. It was just a matter of reversing this thinking, plotting out first what he would be tasked with destroying or neutralizing were he attacking a hypothetical enemy state, and then having Charon create the targets he would have gone after for the use of his coming empire. It was a bigger undertaking than he had ever dreamed it would be, but Frost refused to be daunted by the scale of the goal he had set himself. He'd never been one for turning aside from the things he wanted in life, though he might postpone them sometimes, to better savor them in a more fufilling fashion later, such as his conflict with Yamato!

Which brought up another thing he had to work on, beyond all this drudge work involved in setting up his future, most glorious conflict, he had to improve upon his own strength as well! Not necessarily in a physical sense, he was already far and above stronger in that regard than any other human alive, even the muscle bound goons like the Turkey couldn't compare to him in terms of pure physical strength and endurance. And while the Wendigo, like Erk or One Tusk, did possess greater physical power than he, training to overcome that gap would leave no time for the other, more important things he needed to improve upon. After some contemplation, Frost had decided upon the areas he most needed to impove upon, and they were threefold. First, and most pressingly, he had to figure out how to activate the second stage Seedform, the "Tree mode" that Yamato had used so brilliantly at Urbanis, as without being able to match Yamato in this regard meant facing summary defeat in any Gundam combat to come!

After mastering the Seed phenomenon, then he had to work to improve his psychic abilities, bequeathed upon him by Mr. Machine. The memory stealing power was fantastic, but limited only to situations where he could physically touch his opponents, which made it hard to use in combat. Yamato was blessed with the subconscious powers of a Latent, which would have been perfect for Frost, but thanks to Mr. Machine's shortsighted arrogance, he was stuck being an Active, and thus he had to work on consciously controlling his abilities, whatever they might be... he was going to have to ask Charon for details on Mr. Machine's psychic capabilities, since those were the base from which he'd inherited his own. Certainly, he could no longer rely upon the Mouse's tutoring in this regard, his powers being nothing at all like hers. Which was too bad, because telekinesis looked like an awful lot of fun. As a secondary part of this training, he would need to learn how to use Deathshriek to amplify his powers, rather than just using it as a weapon.

Finally, the last area in which he sought to better himself was his relationship with Mr. Abyss, the Black EDEN, perhaps Mr. Machine's most brilliant work of all, the quantum nanite! Or so Charon identified it, to Frost, Mr. Abyss was simply Mr. Abyss, a window into the netherworld that Frost had been immersed in upon his previous death. A more poetic way of putting it would be to say that Mr. Abyss was nothing less, in Frost's eyes, than a physical representation of his own soul, something that devoured everything it came into contact with, without exception, adding to its own mass and power in the process, existing in a state of being beyond the comprehension of almost all other life forms, even its own creator! It was entirely monstrous, and so was he, and thus he felt they were meant for each other, in some sort of primal, instinctual fashion, far more intimate than his connection to the Mouse. Of course Mr. Abyss was in no way truly alive, but then, could not the same be said for Frost himself, having come back from beyond the grave as he had? They were two of a kind, kindred spirits even, though both lacked what most people might call a soul, or maybe a conscience was the better way of saying it. They were ultimate predators, preying upon all others without distinction or remorse, as an instinctual part of their own life cycle!

So far he had only barely scratched the surface of what Mr. Abyss was capable of, and Frost was determined to expand his usage of what might end up being his ultimate secret weapon to more than just using it as a long distance method of observation! And so he had a rather busy schedule ahead of him, as according to Charon's most conservative analysis of the current war situation, hostilities would erupt once again in only a few months time, perhaps in mid April or early May, and in each of his three categories of improvement, he was starting at close to zero, having only a basic understanding of the Seed phenomenon, only minor proficiency with most of his psychic abilities, and having only used the least of Mr. Abyss's powers, he had a lot of improving to do! But even before he could start that, there was something else he needed to do, to take care of so that it would not cause him distraction at a critical moment... as especially when training with Mr. Abyss, a single mistake could end up destroying even him, Zacharis Frost, in an instant!

And so Frost sat down in the observational cupola, high over what would soon become the heart of his domain and power base, the nerve center of the greatest war that would ever be fought, against the Black Ghosts to come, and got as comfortable as possible, not that physical comfort really concerned him, but he might be sitting here a while. He had never done what he was attempting to do before, but it didn't seem like something that should be beyond his grasp, and he wasn't particularly worried. People had been using meditative techniques to focus their minds for centuries, even millenia, there was no reason he should not be able to do the same. Though he knew nothing of meditation, however, he didn't feel that part was necessary... there were, after all, few people as completely in touch with themselves as he was in a day to day fashion, though it had helped that the Mouse had put name to the different facets for him. So Zacharis Frost closed his eyes and allowed his always tenuous grasp on what was considered reality to slip a little bit, through the cessation of pain that the getting comfortable had achieved. It was time to conquer himself...

xxxx

**Within**

Frost opened his eyes once more and found himself in the heart of a castle ruin, all dark stone and rusted iron, yet no less imposing and grand for all its decrepitude. Indeed, the dismal aura of the place only magnified the sense of unease and dislocation it projected, as if the state of ruination had been in the designer's mind from the very beginning as the final destination of the finish product. He could see no one, but the sounds of distant blows being struck against yielding flesh, haloed by the vanishing screams of the dying and the lost, lent a certain comforting presence to the place. Within the endlessly crumbling yet always sturdy walls, the hallways seemed to twist and turn in on themselves, and no stairway ever went to the same destination twice, yet Frost found he had no difficulty in navigating the ever shifting and ever treacherous terrain. Gaping pits filled with blood crusted spikes opened at his feet, but never fast enough to catch him, and gleaming scythe-like pendulum blades sliced out of the walls, but always a fraction of second too slow to dismember or decapitate him; the disordered fragments of long dead personalities attempting last ditch attacks on his prime being, trying to drag him down into defunctness with them.

A sense of irritation grew within him, at the delay his own mind was causing him as it tried, without success, to rebel against his control, one of the few times having a mind that pushed the very far boundaries of insanity was not a distinct advantage! Fragments of his own self kept trying to come up and kill him, or lead him down false passages, or even just hovered as wisps of thoughts around his shoulders, like poisonous mist whispering gibberish into his ears, trying to distract or discomfit him. Still, he was used to dealing with such perfidy by now, and brushed through the cobwebs and the false trails like they were so many gauze curtains, descending into the depths of the castle before emerging onto its highest tower, and finally came into the presence of the fragments he had come here to conquer and bend to his united will for the training ahead! As he left the final door and stepped onto the tower top, Frost glanced upwards, curious as to what kind of sky might cap his interior world, but there was only more fortress rising above him, endless in its labyrinthine vastness, this tower existing in a abyssal chasm that occupied the very heart of the infinite castle of chaos. He found it all rather pleasant, to be honest, but perhaps that should not be surprising?

They were waiting for him of course, having been aware of his intent the moment it had occured to him to do what he was currently doing. They were four in number, gathered at the center of the tower top, though there were endless multitudes of others gathered in packs of half visible shades at the edge of the tower, ebbing and flowing like endless tides, only partially glimpsed and never fully real, every face representing an instant's worth of his being going back further than his memory had ever allowed him to see. Their moans and cries and screams and yells and laughter formed a buzzing cacaphony, like blood sizzling on a red hot stove, creating the psychic miasma that made entering his thoughts such a caustic experience for most anyone but a proper Sufferer, and even then, they could not stand it long! But Frost had little time for the multitudes of had been's, might be's, and never would again's, his attention being captivated by the prime Four, or was it five, considering that whatever aspect of himself he currently was incarnated by obviously belonged here too.

They stood, sat, crouched and lounged in a semi circle in front of him, not quite rubbing shoulders, yet still obviously grouping together, presenting as united a front as they were capable of against this aggression he was projecting at them in coming here like this, out of his natural order one might say, to bring them to heel once and for all, until the next time they all fragmented apart. To his left was the Eyes of the Abyss, his form tall and almost scrawny, though cloaked in a heavy robe of grey and black, only two glowing eyes of red visible in the darkness of the cowl, leaning on a large black scythe with a gangly, hooked blade meant for reaping lives and souls together, like it was a third leg. Next to him was Humanity's Whetstone, seated in a throne made of half human skulls, and half decapitated Gundam heads, his body like that of the Boytoy, yet armored from head to toe in ornate plates that exactly mimicked the design of the Kratos, his left hand an oversized claw, his right fist clutching a gleaming scythe like it were a scepter, his horned helm seated up his lap like a discarded crown, a displeased frown stamped upon his darkly noble features.

Beside the Whetstone crouched the End of All, in the form of his original, dwarfish and obscenely muscled body, a river of green-black hair flowing like a lion's man down his shoulders and across his back, almost to his heels, though its true color was difficult to discern, so matted with gore, both fresh and dried, was it. So too was the end of All's flesh coated with remains both human and not, bloody gouges raw in his skin, the pale glistening of bone visible in the depths of some, though the hurts seemed to bother him not at all, as he held a human femur up in hands with knifeblades for fingertips, and chewed ravenously at the cracked bone, slobbering loudly, seemingly totally unaware of his surroundings, his single black-green and bloodshot eye glancing around at random, refusing to focus on any one thing for any length of time. And next to him, on Frost's right, lounged the Dark Soul, another Boytoy body, with long, shaggy brown hair, clad in nothing at all, lounging on a bench of dark red and black marble, surrounded by a harem of Mouses, as naked as he, each one collared by rough edged chains of rusted iron, attending upon him hand and foot, feeding him, pleasuring him, and amusing him in turn. The Dark Soul looked lost in his hedonistic games, yet there was a tension to his frame that bespoke to his awareness of matters at hand.

As Frost got closer, he saw that the other three fragments also possessed Mouse in varying forms... she stood behind the Whetstone's throne, chin held high, eyes like icechips surverying the gathering, clad in her Praetorian armor, though with a symbol of a crossed Scythe and Claw in place of the Praetorian skull emblem... she was the dismembered body that the End of All was happily cannibalizing, death-glazed eyes staring at the non-sky in a decapitated and half smashed skull... and she huddled in a ball at the Eyes in the Abyss's feet, whimpering incoherently to herself after clawing her own eyes and ears off in a futile attempt to escape the paranoid madness that she had been infected with through contact with him. Out of curiosity, he glanced behind himself, and saw with little surprise, that a Mouse trailed behind him as well, several steps behind him, clad in the cloth of a confessional priest, a look of mingled concentration and concern on her pretty face. Seeing his attention on her, she imploringly reached out towards him, as if offering to succor him from some dangerous fate, or to hold him close and restore to him something he had lost.

He turned away from that Mouse, now aware which fragment he was currently incarnated by... he was The Monster, he who was divorced through madness from the mere state of humanity, the Ultimate Predator who preyed upon all others without distinction or remorse! It was a fitting incarnation for the intent he had in mind, probably by no accident... after all, only the Monster would have the will to devour himself in order to achieve something greater. The Eyes represented his madness, the Whetstone his ambition, the End of All his rage and hatred, and the Dark Soul was of course his humor and pleasure seeking... but the Monster was his willpower, that which forced him to continue even in the face of a failing body or a fractured mind, which enabled him to ignore his desire to lounge about all day indulging his own pleasures, and which focused his ambition on a grand scale!

"Why?" The Whetstone asked pre-emptively, pointing at the Monster with his scythe-sceptre. "Why do you attempt this? Why now? What has truly changed, that you would attempt something so radical? What has you worried so, that this is your best recourse?"

"I shouldn't need to explain such things to you, of all of me." The Monster retorted, folding his arms across his chest.

"It won't work..." The Eyes cut in sibilantly, emaiciated fingers tightening around the haft of the reaping scythe. "It's impossible. If it could be done, we wouldn't be talking like this now..."

"Oh, let him try it, would you, you paranoid naysaying freak?" The Dark Soul admonished him, cupping the cheek of one of the servile Mouses, before guiding her down next to one of her twins, occupied using their mouths to pleasure him. "What's the worst that could happen? Maybe we'll fragment again, or maybe one of us now will be subsumed into another, and what will that matter in the long run? Let him try it... it could be quite amusing..."

The End of All just growled, but then, none of them had expected articulation from him, though his wandering eye did linger upon the Monster for a time, as the End of All rumbled deeply in his chest, both a warning and a challenge in one. The Monster turned to face the Whetstone primarily, though he made sure never to fully turn his back on any of the others... they wouldn't be able to help themselves from attacking him, should he present even a partial weakness. "If you really want me to admit it to myselves, then I guess I will. Why do I do this? Because I must, in order to obtain the strength I need to achieve what I wish to achieve. In short, because I want to. The same exact reason I have for doing anything at all, the same reason I've always lived my life by. Because I can, because I will, because I wish to. It is who I am."

"Not all of you." The Eyes protested, pointing one spindly finger in an accusing manner. "I have never been on board with that."

"Only because you always do the opposite of the rest of us, for the sake of contrariness, because that is your nature, to never walk the same path as another." The Whetstone pointed out with a snarl of his lips. "You would hide when we would fight, and you would give mercy when we would kill... it's only because of you that we have this annoyance to deal with at all!" The Whetstone gestured angrily at his attendant Mouse, and the other Mouses as well. "Why is she even here? She should be dead, like the End of All has done, and yet she is not! She has wormed her way inside us to the point where all but one of us finds himself burdened with her presence wherever we go!"

"Then why don't you just kill her then, like the End of All has done?" The Dark Soul countered, causing the Whetstone to frown mightily.

"Because annoying or not, she spares me from greater annoyances. She is simply too useful to my plans to carelessly discard at this time." The Whetstone admitted, brutal honesty being a characteristic of all the fragments.

"And you, Shade, why do you not dispose of your Mouse?" The Dark Soul continued, pointing at the Eyes. "Surely she is of little use to you in her current, broken minded state."

"She lives merely because I will not follow the example of the End of All or the Whetstone, inconvenient or not, useful or not. I have no interest in her plight or her welfare, she is of no concern to me at all, except to counter how you treat her. It is my job to balance us, by making sure we are never in agreement on anything. I am aloof, indifferent. If there is a decision to be made, I oppose it, because that is who I am, and where the Mouse is concerned, that decision revolves around whether to kill her or keep her... so I will do neither." The Eyes responded with a hiss and a shrug. "I am much more interested in why the Monster tolerates her preaching, where he has never tolerated such things before, not even when he had the option to do so with Pink!"

"That is a good point." The Dark Soul turned his gaze upon the Monster. "It's no secret why I keep the Mouse around... she is diverting, pleasurable and quite amusing... but I would think that exactly for such reasons, you would keep her at a distance, Monster. She is the very definition of human, and that is not what you stand for. Yet there she stands, three paces behind your right shoulder, giving you those pleading looks, begging you to come and stand at her side so that she may absolve you of whatever sins she thinks we might regret. I am puzzled, greatly, and this pleases me, as I do enjoy a good mystery, as I enjoy a good anything, enjoyment of life being my purpose, but I would prefer it explained in this case."

"I came to subsume you all, not indulge your curiosity." The Monster declared, baring his teeth at himselves. However, the Dark Soul just smirked in reply.

"How, then, Monster, do you think you would subsume one such as I, save by sating my desire for pleasure?" The Dark Soul answered flippantly. "You cannot defeat us via violence, any more than we can harm you, as we are all formerly one. Violence ripped us apart, but violence cannot rebuild us, by its very definition, it cannot heal, only harm. So if your goal is to fragment us yet further, by all means, come at us, and let us rend and tear ourselves asunder yet again... we all enjoy the process, even if we won't admit it. It is the very core of our power after all, this fragmentary, divisive madness beyond the scope of madness, this incarnating as a Grand Sufferer! But if it is truly your intent and goal to fuse us together into a cohesive whole, at least for a time, then you will have to try something other than force... you'll have to convince each of us that conjoining again is what we all truly want..."

"As usual, he talks far too much, but he is correct." The Whetstone confirmed with a sigh. "The Eyes are responsible for bringing her into us in the first place, but it is you, Monster, that keeps her here and allows her to grow to infect the rest of us, and we would know the reason why. Why would you do something so contrary to your nature? In the Eyes, it is expected that he would do the unexpected, but you are not like that."

"He values her..." The End of All mumbled around the leg bone he was still cracking open. "She is important to him..."

"But the Monster values nothing about humanity..." The Eyes protested, reaper scythe swaying as he leaned forward intently. "He is the lone wolf, no one can be any more important to him than anyone else..."

"Who are you to decide what I am?" The Monster retorted with a blaze in his eyes. "My nature, as you call it, is to determine my own course, uninfluenced by the values of others. I am beyond Humanity..."

"Yes, you should be, yet who is that which stands behind you, but a human?" The Dark Soul pressed, petting the heads of his own Mouses as they writhed against him, not a single thought in their heads other than giving of themselves for his own desires. "That one IS the Mouse, the core of her, the rest of them are just figments moulded to fit our own desires and natures, our perceptions of her as we wish her to be... the pleasure slave, the meal, the shattered husk, and the able assistant... all of them bend to our wills... but not yours. Yours is still independent, still irritating, still human..."

"And that is precisely the point." The Monster answered with a grimace. "What else do I desire besides independence, the freedom to be who I wish to be? I would no more change the Mouse into something she was not than I would do so myself. She IS as I wish her to be, herself and no other. It is her very human-ness that makes her so attractive to me, one who is beyond humanity. She is my antithesis in a way, and yet she is also undeniably MINE!" He glared around the tableau of his other selves. "But why all this interest in the Mouse? What bearing has..."

"Every bearing, Monster, every bit of it." The Eyes rasped in reply. "Perhaps you cannot see it yourself, or you have turned your eyes away so as not to see it, but I cannot do that, I never turn my eyes away from anything. Why now, do you do this thing you have come to do? It has something to do with the Mouse..."

"You are even crazier than normal if you think I'm doing this for her sake!" The Monster growled, baring his teeth like they were fangs. And indeed, they probably were, here in this inner world.

"But aren't you?" The Dark Soul inquired, his smile widening as the Monster turned the full force of his glare upon him. "No, I would never say that you're in love with her, Monster, perish the thought. Love is not a word in our vocabulary. But as the End of All has noticed, and you have yourself admitted, she has value to you because of who she is, because of certain characteristics of hers you would not see changed. She is important to you, and thus, you wish her to remain alive. You care about whether she lives or dies, and you would work to ensure that she lives. Deny that, I dare you."

"I do not deny it. I admit that the Mouse is important to me, that she has value, and that I want her to stay alive to continue providing that which she provides me with for a while longer yet..." The Monster answered, slowly.

"And what is it she provides you, that you find so appealing?" The Whetstone demanded, leaning forward in his throne. "It's not sex, nor is it her ability to assist in dealing with the minions, nor is she a ready source of food and blood to sate your violent urges, nor is she able to understand us truly without breaking. What then, IS her value?"

"She reminds me of what I can be, should I wish to be. She does not understand me, but she tries anyway. She is utterly incomprehensible to me, and the harder I try to drive her away, the closer she gets to me, to us." The Monster paused, as if struggling with a difficult thought. "In a way, she IS us, viewed as other people must view us. Inexplicable. Frightening. Irrational. To be sure, she is yet only a shadow of us, but she could become much more than that, if things are allowed to run their proper course. I am the lone wolf... but wolves are still creatures of the pack at their essence. One day, the Mouse will become a Wolf, and on that day, I will no longer have to be alone. We will no longer have to be alone. Of all of humanity, only the Mouse has come forward of her own will to subject herself to this process. You ask what value she has? Her value, myselves, is that she is our future, the only one that we will ever have."

The Monster whirled, and pointed at the Whetstone. "Our Empire will require a ruler, a job not suited for us in any way, yet it is a position of power we cannot delegate to just anyone, it must be someone we can trust to act in our interest even when we are not around. Only the Mouse can be trusted in this manner." He pointed next at the Eyes of the Abyss. "We are not rational, and are prone to reacting with extremes, yet we must fight against the Black Ghosts in an organized fashion, indeed we must unite humanity, or as much of it as possible, beneath us if we are to have any chance of survival. They will heed our power, but they need a human face to acknowledge. The Mouse shall be our face, and the hidden check upon our paranoia and irrationality." He glared at the End of All after that. "Gnaw upon her remains you might, yet you do so with guilt in your eye, as the Mouse is the only one who has ever managed to calm you in your rage, and force you to back down without ever raising a hand to you. She is the only one to truly defeat you. She has made you feel regret in the act of destruction, and thus can and will keep you in check so that you do not destroy the very Empire you have gone so far to build the first time you encounter unexpected difficulty."

And finally, the Monster turned to the Dark Soul. "You are easiest of all. You tell me that I do not love the Mouse, and you are correct... love is a human term, and I am more animal than human in most regards. I see her as a potential mate, but that is simple biology. You on the other hand... you DO love the Mouse, and every thing about her! Just look at yourself, lying there, surrounded by nubile young women, all wearing the Mouse's shape... but not a one of them looking like Pink, or Fiery Zala-Attha, or any of the other women we have carnally enjoyed in our life. You are infatuated with her as you have never been with anyone before, which is why you are so "nice" to her. Who would the Mouse-Wolf be to you, Dark Soul? She would be your queen, your bedmate, the cup of pleasure from which you could endlessly and easily sup... and maybe even the mother of your children. You have no greater desire than that, as you are undeniably the most human part of us..."

"So then we are in agreement about the Mouse. Who cares? Why does it matter, this training then?" The Whetstone asked, his tone almost bored as he reclined back into his war-throne.

"Don't be absurd, you know why." The Monster replied witheringly. "Because the Mouse is still nascent, still frail, still vulnerable. By choosing our side, something which no one else has ever done before, she has in turn inherited our full scope of enemies, who would gladly strike at her in order to strike at us. For the first time in our entire existence, we have something we need to protect. And to protect we must always grow stronger. And to grow stronger, we must be of one mind, as we have exhausted the remit of fragmentation. We must, though it pains us to say it this way, travel along the road of Yamato... we must become, in some tiny manner, sane, in order to draw upon the strengths that he does! We have noticed that he only brings about the Ascended Seed when he is acting on the behalf of others, about whom he cares; whenever he tries to act on his own anger, he only uses the first Seed. Without someone to care about, we cannot access the Ascended Seed... and it takes true sanity to care in that manner. And so, the only thing we care about, the Mouse, must be protected so that we might become stronger in order to continue protecting her... an endless cycle of strength piling upong strength, just as Yamato and the Boytoy live... the secret to infinite power!"

The Monster smiled for the first time, and slowly, the other four smiled back, though it was hard to tell with the Eyes, as he had no real face. "The only truly deplorable and puzzling thing about all of this is, as all the best questions are, a How." The Monster told himselves, in almost a lighthearted fashion. "As in, How did it take us this long to figure out this secret? How come it wasn't obvious to us from the very moment we awakened after being defeated by the Boytoy... but only after he responded to our threat upon the life of Pink, otherwise he would have been defeated by us! How could we willfully blind ourselves to this path to power undreamed of?" They all thought about it for a moment, and then their grins grew in simultaneity.

"Because we weren't ready for it yet." They said in unison, as one voice. They closed their eyes, and atop the mountain, Zacharis Frost opened his again. "But now... now I am ready. Ready to ascend to the next level of my existence. Ready to transcend all previous boundaries. Ready to become who I have always been meant to be... the Dark Savior of Humanity..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Jungles of South America, Febuary 27th, 11:46 am**

In the deep jungles and marshes of the central South American basins, the difference between the hunter and the hunted can be as simple as who makes the first misstep, whose nerve is slightly more frayed than the other, or whose body is slightly less tuned for the split second sort of reaction required in that timeless moment when stalk becomes pounce, when stealth becomes ambush, and when the blood feeds the every thirsty soil in torrents. In a place where even the very bushes you might use for cover sometimes thirsted for your blood and bodily remains, there was no room for the slow, the weak, the stupid or the unwary. Every moment you spent on the hunt, was one more moment you spent clutching the very hem of Death's cloak, and all it took was falling a half step behind to tug upon it and draw his glare, and then his scythe, directly down upon yourself. And yet the hunt was something that the Kindred did at least once a week, sometimes more often, sortieing into the jungle in groups of four to six, armed with simple bows with poison tipped arrows, and wearing tooth-knives or bone-tomahawks on strings round their waists, to contend with some of the largest, meanest and smartest predators the world had ever known.

In actual fact, the Kindred had two different sorts of hunting. One, the most common, was sustenance hunting, for meat and hides and animal byproducts that could be made into tools, clothing, weapons and other necessities. This sort of hunting happened once or twice a week, depending on the type of game brought down by a hunting party, and the needs of the tribe at the time. The hunters worked together for the good of the tribe, using complicated ambush strategies and their own natural abilities to lure their dangerous prey... often creatures like Direcats, Basilisks or even Cold Hunters... into a trap where volleys of poison tipped arrows would bring them down to the ground, where tomahawks would scatter their brains and tooth-knives would open their throats and bellies. But there was also ceremonial hunting, where smaller teams of two or three Kindred would set out to find the biggest and most dangerous animal they could, and would try to bring it down in order to take trophies, which would increase their status in the eyes of the tribe at large.

When hunting in this manner, the amount of status and respect and honor a hunter received was based not only upon what sort of beast his group brought down, but what weapons they used to do it with. Bringing down even the mightiest of Mega-hunters using bow and poisoned arrow carried less weight than taking on a regular Cold Hunter with only a vine noose, or a tooth-knife, or a Direcat with only a obsidian tipped spear. However, even the mightiest of the Kindred's chieftains had never hunted as did the one they still sometimes called "The One Who Frightens Death", or now more commonly just "Lord Frost". The Lord Frost had learned of the hunt traditions while traveling among his Kindred some days after he had first arrived at the lair of the God Under the Mountain, which was now the village of the Kindred as well, by the direction of She Who Mates With The Death Frightener, or Lady Frost. With over half the tribe gone away in the entourage of the Lady Frost, the village chambers set into a series of half natural caves were quiet, yet life still had to go on, and thus the hunts were organized as best they might be, given the circumstances.

None of the Kindred knew why the Lord Frost had returned alone to the lair of the God Under the Mountain, and in truth they did not much care about his motivations, any more than they wondered about why the God's made some days hot and sunny, and others windy and rainy. It was just the way of the world. In truth, they interacted with the Lord Frost very little, despite the fact that he was now the honored leader of the tribe. So it had come as something of a surprise to them all, when the Lord Frost had suddenly appeared in the village chambers one morning, walking among them with fierce eyes that missed no detail, and keen ears that detected even the slightest whisper. There was something different about him, different from when he had supplanted the last chiefs during the ceremony to appease the God Under the Mountain with the death of the Blue Female. He had always been greater than they, even their murkiest legends about him had conveyed that fact, but his magnificence had swollen sometime in the past few days, and he came among them like a newborn God now, himself, but amplified to the Nth degree!

And he had even deigned to speak with them, though few could muster the nerve to exchange more than a few phrases with him before fleeing to recover their wits at a safer distance, quite overwhelmed by his aura of power and majesty. Yet enough words had been spoken, enough information conveyed, for the Lord Frost to learn about the honor hunts, and when he had decided to invite himself along on one, of course the Kindred were overjoyed to participate in such a hallowed ritual with their revered Lord, though even the most accomplished hutners among those remaining had been taken aback by the Lord Frost's decision to go into the jungle bearing no arms other than which nature and the God's had given him, clad in little more than the ragged black shorts that had once been the trousers of a Praetorian garrison uniform! He carried not even a stone for hurling, or a club for braining, just his fingers, his teeth and his own personal power! And he of course demanded that he hunt alone, despite the half worried protestations of the senior hunters.

But in the end, he WAS the Lord Frost, and they were powerless to deny his wishes, any more than they could have forced the Sun to reverse its course through the sky by yelling at it. So the senior hunters led their master to one of the most dangerous sections of the forest, where packs of Cold Hunters, the other apex predator in the area, other than the Kindred themselves, were known to frequent, and even were rumored to have a breeding and nesting ground, though no one had yet seen such a thing and lived to tell of it! The Kindred traveled through the tree canopy as much as possible in this area, beyond the reach of even the largest of Mega-Hunters, as to be on the ground for any length of time was to die under slashing claws and snapping fangs, as the Cold Hunters jealously guarded their home territory. From idle conversations with the Mouse, Frost had learned that opinion was divided among the more learned Edenites as to whether Cold Hunter's were in fact actually a race of stable Chimera, like Wendigo's, or just extremely brainy High Order organisms.

The Kindred had no such doubts or differences in opinion however, to them, the Cold Hunters were basically a large enemy tribe, who sometimes encroached upon the Kindred's hunting spaces, and needed to be killed when possible, and avoided when not. According to the mutters of the senior hunters, the Cold Hunters had as much of a language as the Kindred themselves did, albeit one consisting mostly of body postures and a selection of chirps, growls and whoops, and certainly their hunting tactics suggested more than just an animal's mind behind them, utilizing pitfalls dug with their taloned forelimbs to trip up prey, or crippling another prey animal and using it as bait to draw out unwary hunters! It was all music to Frost's ears either way, as he crouched on one of the lower branches of an Yggdrasilwood tree, listening with a fraction of his mind as his hunter-guides... who had taken the names "Gladius" and "Pike", in the new fad of the Kindred, which was to assume call signs of weapons to be known by in "human tongue", as they considered themselves weapons in the hands of the Lord Frost... did their best to explain to him the most common tactics of a Cold Hunter pack.

Finally, he just grunted and glared at them, and they shut up quickly, taking a careful half step back along the branch, heads tilted back to bare their throats to him in a posture of apology and humility. "Wait here." He ordered them, and then he banished them from his mind as he dropped from the branch onto the forest floor, a fall of almost ten meters, landing on all fours, just like a beast, nostrils already flaring, head turning from side to side as he listened as hard as he could, his eyes mostly shut, seeing not colors but merely checking for signs of movement in his immediate area. He had picked up enough from Gladius's advice to know that relying upon his eyes would be a mistake, as the Cold Hunter's chameleon camouflage was all but perfect, to the point where one time a Kindred hunter had climbed down a tree trunk and found himself astride the back of a Cold Hunter standing beside the tree, without even realizing it until it was too late!

Alongside the advice of Gladius, and the occasional tidbit or tip thrown in by the more reserved Pike, Frost collated what information on Cold Hunters he could remember from overhearing the conversation of the Mouse and other Praetorians, who also hunted Cold Hunter's for sport and to defend some small human communities in Asia and Europe, where small packs of Cold Hunters could sometimes be found. Like most Edenite predators, Cold Hunter's were Active Newtypes, while prey type animals were usually Latent. They tended to use their abilities like psychic radar, to pinpoint their prey, and then interfere with their senses and their reflexes, just as the giant cyborg BALOR Cold Hunter, Fenris Wolf, had done, though on a smaller scale of course. Thus hampered, most prey wouldn't even realize they were in trouble until the Cold Hunter's pounced upon them from the sides or back, striking with disemboweling sweeps of their hooked toe claws, or biting the neck to sever the spinal cord. Of course, the Kindred were immune to this type of influencing, as they were all psychic abilities, which was in truth their only real advantage when matched up against the Cold Hunters.

But Frost had no such immunity, and though he had come a decent way along his chosen path to mastering his own innate psychic talents, he still used them more on instinct than by conscious thought. Eventually, he'd come to the decision that seeking to consciously control his abilities just wasn't something he could do, it wasn't in his personality, it wasn't the way his mind and soul worked! So he was going to have to try something new and different, and that was learning to use them like they were part of his very nature, just as the Cold Hunters and other predatory beasts did, where "conscious" thought and psychic action were blended together. In essence, he had to transform his powers from a reservoir of ability, into a sixth or seventh sense, something that was always "on", and was directed by instinct to serve his goals at any given moment. And the best way to learn how to do this? It was of course to observe it being done in the field, and by pitting himself against it he would learn how to achieve it himself!

So he kpet his eyes slitted, and instead did his best to reach out with his mind, his all too vivid and often hallicination ridden imagination easily able to provide a mental image of ghostly eyes and ears wending their way among the bushes, weeds and tree trunks as he expanded his perceptions outwards in all directions, like a spider at the heart of a web, minutely attuned to even the slightest vibration in one of the strands. Or at least, that was the idea... his execution still left quite a bit to be desired, and his focus was, to be blunt, terrible... it was more a pulse than a net, like a sonar ping rather than true radar. But what it lacked in finesse, it made up in power, and in the brief few seconds that the ping lasted, Frost managed to collate a great deal of information on his surroudings, enough to discern with reasonable certainty that he was indeed alone in this section of the forest, an area about five hundred meters in diameter.

Crouching, coiling his legs like springs, Frost hurled himself forward and upwards, latching onto the trunk of another Yggdrasilwood tree about ten meters ahead, his leap carrying him almost five meters up the trunk, leaving a good further thirty to climb before reaching any branches, yet it didn't deter him in the slightest. Clambering onto the low branches, each almost as wide as his entire torso, Frost gathered himself and leapt forward, landing on another set of branches a dozen or so meters on, crouched, aimed and leapt, and repeated the process again and again and again, covering a few hundred meters in a matter of minutes, and all without leaving a single bit of a trail for anyone to follow, unless they happened to be a bird or a monkey! Reaching the edge of his previous ping zone, Frost covered another few dozen meters and then dropped to the forest loam once more, to repeat his psychic inquiry of his surroundings.

It was on his fourth such inquiry that his ping came back positive, or at least he thought it did. Certainly, he felt a group of several minds take sudden, sharp notice of his psychic pulse, and in the half instants reading he had of their emotional states, he felt both hunger and something approximating surprised anger, as if they could not believe anything would be so bold as to challenge them on their home turf. And it was true, the forests around here were almost entirely empty, save for the screeching of canopy primates, birds and rodents, almost nothing larger than a housecat survived on the ground for long in Cold Hunter territory, which forced them to range further afield in search of food, bringing them into conflict with the Kindred, among other species. Cold Hunter's did not need to eat often, being cold blooded, yet the climate allowed them to be horrifically active all the same.

Rising from his beast like posture, Frost remained in a half crouch, striving to use his physical senses to determine the direction and speed of the pack he was now sure was closing in on him, but he had to admit, Gladius and Pike had not been exaggerating the capabilities of the creatures... he couldn't see, hear or smell a single thing related to the predators hunting him, only a hundred meters away or less! A feral grin tugged its way across his lips... this was EXACTLY the sort of situation he was looking for! A true test, on life and death terms, for him to showcase what he'd taught himself in these past weeks! Though to be honest, his progress was rather slower than he'd been hoping... for example, he didn't feel a single iota closer to mastering the Ascended Seed, no matter how many times he snatched at his Seed, black with golden veins, it always eluded his grasp and refused to be planted in the soil to grow into Tree form! It was exactly as he'd suspected... it could not be called forth on the behalf of yourself, no matter your emotional state, but only through emotions connected with the value you placed upon others! And valuing others, even the Mouse, was something he was still very new at...

Doing somewhat better was his progress at mastering his psychic abilities, though they were still rough as well. Using Deathshriek to amplify his base powers was as simple as holding the weapon and willing it to happen, so that was both a pleasant development and something of a letdown. And of them all, he had made great leaps and bounds in understanding and controlling the power of Mr. Abyss, though no matter how many milestones of control he reached, the more he began to realize just how very little of Mr. Abyss's true capabilities he was utilizing. Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck starting to stand on end, and trusting this primal instinct of warning, Frost reached out, in a manner that was both like using a psychic power and indulging a flash of wishful thinking, communing with the small pieces of himself that had been absorbed into Mr. Abyss, and calling forth the most basic power of the Quantum Nanite... to instantaneously connect any two points in space through the medium of Mr. Abyss itself. With a sound somewhere between a ganshing shriek and a coughing buzz, a sheet of what could best be described as "solid darkness" materialized in midair next to Frost, a rectangle about the size and shape of a regular house doorway.

Without a moment's hesitation, Frost stepped into the sheet of darkness, entering it like it was the mouth of a cave, even though, as far as most any scientific instrument could ascertain, it was only a two dimensional construct... with height and width, but no depth to measure at all! Viewed side on, it would be invisible even to an electron microscope! At the exact same time that he entered what he had coined an "abyssal gate", a second abyssal gate had opened a dozen meters behind him, and fifteen meters in the air, upon the last branch he had leapt to before jumping to the forest floor, and from this second gateway, Frost materialized, though only after his entire form had been consumed by the first gate. The science behind it was far beyond Frost, far beyond Charon even, but it seemed like Mr. Abyss could "digest" everything that Frost was, body, mind and soul, and convert it into it's own substance, which was then "regurgitated" and reconstructed at the second gate, all of it happening so fast that it might as well have been simultaneous.

As soon as he was clear of the second gate, it frizzled out of existence once more, the quantum particles making it up dispersing like dust on the breeze, Mr. Abyss once more quiescent but ever ready in that part of him between heart, spirit and mind, able to be called upon at a moment's notice! So far, Frost had not used an abyssal gate to travel more than a few kilometers, and he could not yet form a gate much bigger than the one he'd just used, just big enough for his own use, but he was already planning some rather fun applications of it during combat, especially because he had learned that only those specifically attuned to Mr. Abyss, who had sacrificed portions of their own essence through contact with Mr. Abyss's prime body, in the vault, could control the teleportation process. Anything else that entered an open abyssal gate was digested and then regurgitated in a random quantum sequence across half the solar system, about as comprehensively disintegrated as it was possible for matter or energy to be! There were still some bugs to work out of course... the size of the gates for one, and the fact that he could only make them manifest within arms reach of himself at the moment, but he was still learning after all.

His peternaturally keen ears detected a few quiet rustles in the underbrush, even closer than he'd guestimated them to be, as the hunting pack reacted to him very suddenly switching positions and retreating out of their reach with surprise. Frost could dimly feel their attempts to remotely interefere with his nervous system, but they were unable to even scratch the psychic aegis that the Caller had wrapped around him, to keep the damnable Grand Chimera's chosen "champion" free of the influence of the other Grand Chimera's. He scowled, just from being reminded of that indelible stamp that had been placed upon him against his will, and not even his later triumph over the Caller in their little game of wills was enough to remove the sense of violation he felt at being so psychically marked, regardless of its beneficial side effects! The Caller had not bothered him since the battle of Neo-Miami, perhaps still half comatose from the injuries the Grand Chimera had suffered during the orbital bombardment of the ruined city, and that was all to the good as far as Frost was concerned.

Baring his teeth in a predatory snarl, Frost blasted out with his mental perceptions again, not in an expanding globe, but in a focused cone, centered on where he was sure he'd heard one of the rustles in the undergrowth. And he was not disappointed, as his psychic spotlight briefly illuminated a icy, reptilian intelligence, filled with ever present hunger and the rage of territorial infringement. Taking three running steps along his branch, Frost hurled himself like a silent thunderbolt from the canopy, crashing through a plethora of underbrush, including several tall, gangly Partisan Ferns, the razored leaves of which slices quickly staunched red grooves in his chest, limbs and face. Yet even such a small release of blood was enough to alert the senses of the Cold Hunter he was falling towards, and the camouflaged lizard, a little taller than an average human man, sidestepped the pouncing Frost with an eerily graceful motion.

Landing on his finger and toe tips, Frost immediately rolled to the side, to avoid an opportunistic slash of prehensivle fingers tipped with small hooked talons, and stayed low to avoid a swishing tail that might have struck the side of his head in an unbalancing attack a moment later. The most impressive thing about it all was that it happened in total silence, the only nosies thus far having been the sound of his impact with the ground, and the slight rustle of leaves from their movements as they squared off across a few meters of undergrowth. Even from almost point blank range, Frost had trouble keeping up with the chameleonic effects of the Cold Hunter's skin, which changed almost instantaneously to match a varying background as the predatory saurian swayed back and forther, almost like a boxer or martial artist staying on the balls of their feet.

The chirping of birds and the screams of monkeys remained constant throughout, the sounds slightly more agitated than before, and it wasn't until almost too late that Frost detected the tonal shift in the animal calls... a difference of barely a single pitch, yet perceptible all the same. His blood ran hot, his snarl breaking into a massive smirk, as he realized the Cold Hunters were vocally mimicking the ambient wildlife sounds in order to communicate without being overheard... real, honest to God, vocal encryption in real time! He was starting to agree with the Kindred... these were not just animals. The one in front of him continued to put on a silent action threat display, bobbing back and forth, darting forward a step before retreating again... clearly delaying tactics of some sort, trying to keep his attention focused upon the "immediate" threat, while its packmates maneuvered to best advantage.

And even being aware of what was going on, Frost still found himself caught a bit off balance, as a Cold Hunter suddenly burst from the undergrowth at his left flank, not ten feet away, its hide coloring morphing from forest greens and browns to ferocious reds and blues and pinks, a visual starburst as it leapt at him, clawed feet extended to rip and rend! Or so it appeared, but even as the creature left the ground, Frost had calculated its path and realized that it was a decoy... the flamboyant Hunter had put far too much strength into its leap, and indeed, its legs sailed by almost three feet voer his head as it jumped entirely over him. The real attack came from the rear flank, a third Cold Hunter digging up clods of forest loam with its charging feet as it hurled itself bodily into Frost, striking him in the side with the top of its reinforced skull, head butting him and knocking him backwards and almost to the ground!

Spinning with the impact was the only thing that kept him on his feet, and even so, Frost felt skin tear and muscle split as the first Hunter, the one who had been assigned to delay him, raked its foreclaws across his chest, just an inch or two shy of cutting open his belly, as it simultaneously tried to bite his head and face off with a twist of its jaws. This was its mistake, as it put the Hunter within arms reach of Frost, and he caught the closing jaws before the fangs could find purchase in his skin and with a heave of his shoulders, he tore the lower jaw right out of the Hunter's skull-socket, flipped it around, and used the teeth still embedded in the jawbone to pierce the creatures own heart by slamming it into the Hunter's chest with the palm of his hand. The Hunter went down in a spasming heap, its brain taking far longer to accept the fact of its death than any mammalian creature would.

Leaping clear of its wildly kicking legs and thrashing arms, which were still tipped with all too sharp claws and talons, Frost found himself surrounded on three sides by Cold Hunters, with at least two more circling out of direct line of sight in the woods. If any of them were at all dismayed by the bloody demise of their packmate, it was not apparent either in body language or mental feel. Frost did not wait for them to attack feinting towards the one on his left before hurling himself bodily into the flamboyantly hued Hunter on his right, diving low to try and sweep its legs out from under it. It was apparently familiar with this tactic, and it leapt straight up to avoid him, but not high enough or fast enough to prevent him from grabbing its ankles in his vice like fingers. Though a good eight feet long from tailtip to snout, and weighing probably 200 pounds of scales and teeth and muscles, the Cold Hunter was by no means too massive or too heavy for Frost to heft, and he redirected its momentum sideways, smashing the creature against a nearby Blankwood tree, crushing its ribcage to splinters and masticating every organ in its chest cavity in an instant!

Barely had he let go of the dead weight however, than he was struck... actually kicked... in his own sternum by one of the other Hunters, the sickle shaped dewclaw on its big toe sliding between one of his ribs and gashing open his left lung, a bloody froth of quickly drying gore gushing from the wound, as Frost was sent down into the dirt on his back by the force of the leaping kick. The deflating lung bothered him only a little, the nanites in his blood already releasing stored up oxygen to keep him active despite the wound, yet it was a stark reminder that this was truly life and death... the Hunters meant to kill him, and eat him, not necessarily in that order, and if he did not take it seriously, he could indeed end up as their snack! The nanites could keep him going long after any human should be dead... the fight against Erk the Wendigo had proved that much... but Frost somehow doubted they would be up to the task of reconstituting him after he'd been eaten up and shat out by a pack of Cold Hunters! Frost rolled to the side, avoiding a stomping foot and dewclaw aimed at ripping open his throat, and grabbed the limb as it whickered by his face, twisting the ankle betwee his hands to powder the bone, laming the Hunter and causing it to fall back with a hiss, the first actual noise of the encounter!

A darting reptilian face, all cold eyes and slavering jaws, whipped down at his belly from another direction, the intent to feast upon his entrails all too clear, and Frost was forced to instead interpose his arm into that maw before it could clamp shut on his all too yielding belly flesh. The sensation of the jaws clamping shut on his arm, saw edged teeth cutting through his skin and fat and muscle like a entire drawer full of steak knives in action at once, was actually quite exhilirating in its way... a new sensation for him! The grinding of the jaws as the creature tried... and failed... to crush his qunatum crystal reinforced bone structure nonetheless succeeded in utterly shredding the musculature of his forearm, rendering his left arm from the elbow down useless for the time being, until the muscles could regenerate and re-connect with each other. An interesting handicap...

Frost convinced the Hunter to release his arm by burying his other fist six inches into the Hunter's skull cavity, fingers penetrating in through its golden pupiled eye, popping it like a rotten cherry, crushing in that entire quarter of the Hunter's skull. His left forearm was little more than gore splattered bone wrapped in tatters of flesh too stubborn to fall off, hanging limp and gory at his side as he hurled himself back to his feet and faced off against the rest of the pack. They were wary now, perhaps even confused by the way his wounds refused to slow him down, and at his ability to take down so many members of the pack so quickly, and their moment of hesitation cost them dearly. Paying no heed to the slowly closing gash in his chest, and less to his flesh denuded arm, Frost mimicked the attack posture of the Cold Hunter's themselves, leaping forward at the closest Hunter with a yell, and kicking out with both feet in the process, burying his toes into the softer flesh of its underbelly, feeling ribs break and organs pulp under the impact, as he knocked the lamed Hunter down onto its back, hissing and writhing in true agony, its lower body limp and numb where its spine had seperated just above its hips.

Two of the remaining three Hunters pounced on him at once, one from either front side, foreclaws slicing madly as they tried to bear him to the ground once more and maul him to bloody gobbets. The impact was fierce, even by Frost's standards, and all three of them went to the ground in a tangled, thrashing heap of bloodied flesh and gnashing teeth. Yet it was he who rose from the scrum, having twisted one Hunter's head completely around in a 360 degree circle on its neck in the process of falling to the ground, before ripping the arm off the second and then tearing out its throat with a combination of his good hand and his teeth while it lay beneath him. The last Hunter was behind him, coiling its legs to pounce upon his back, but Frost was having none of it. Whirling around, covered in the blood of those who sought to devour him, he lashed out with the full power of his mind, shattering the Hunter's limited mental shields and filling its brain with an alien yet entirely undeniable emotion... terror! The Cold Hunter stumbled backwards and turned to flee, getting only a half dozen strides before it crashed to the forest floor, its heart exploded through the massive adrenalive rush the psychic attack had caused.

"Well... not bad for a warmup..." Frost muttered to himself, not displeased with the fight per se, as much as he was in his overreliance on his physical abilities to win it. He already knew he was a Monster in the flesh, he'd come out here to prove he was a Monster in mind as well! He gestured absentmindedly, calling forth another abyssal gate in front of him, a tingling in his left forearm announcing the beginnings of regeneration already taking hold there. "But I've still got all day to practice..." He added, stepping into the gate, commanding Mr. Abyss to bring him close to the next pack of Cold Hunters in the area...

xxxx

**New Eden, South America, Charon's Citadel, March 16th, 7:35 pm**

Surveying one wall of the expansive set of rooms buried deep in the heart of the burgeoning Citadel, Frost felt the beginnings of a mild sense of satisfaction start to creep over his being. He was looking over a collection of trophies, trophies he had been collecting every few days for several weeks now... skulls, taken from the wildlife he had pitted himself against as training opponents. Mostly Cold Hunters... there was a definite dearth in their local population now... but also an odd Basilisk and Direcat here and there. The skulls themselves were of little enough interest to him... he was all for taking trophies, but he preferred them to be unique reminders of someone he still intended to kill later on, rather than a reminder of something he'd already slain. No, instead it was the daubs of colored dye on the brows of the skulls that drew his eye, and caused that warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment in his gut to expand. Those creatures whom he had slain using physical power were marked in red, while those he had slain using his mental abilities were marked in blue.

And for the first time, his collection of blue skulls had exceeded the collection of red skulls! Which given that he was going out of his way to use his psychic abilities in this manner, to improve them, should probably have been something he accomplished much sooner, but old habits were hard to break... when a foe leapt into his face, he just reflexively tore them apart, it was just his gut instinct, so he often forgot to utilize his psychic powers until after the majority of the savage combat was done and over with. He was slowly coming to the realization that no matter how much he wanted to improve when calm, in the heat of the moment, he would almost always rely first and foremost on his own physical abilities to carry him through a life or death situation. That was just who he was... a creature of action and reaction, not thought and consideration.

He had achieved a sort of bastardized marriage of his psychic sense to his other senses though, again not really a radar like what most predatory animals used, but something he could call upon at need to enhance and reinforce his biological senses, and allow him to detect what might otherwise remain hidden... somewhat like the Vari-Camera system the Kratos and most other Gundams now carried, for stripping away the effects of Mirage Colloid cloaks. And while utilizing Deathshriek, he had found he could adequately manipulate the emotions of those weaker than him when within his line of sight, the easiest application of which was causing fear, either to distract or to disable, and even, in some cases, kill from a distance through heart or brain type failures brought on by the sudden onslaught of panic. He doubted it would be a game winner, especially against any foe truly worthy of his efforts, but it would suffice when dealing with rabble... and there would always be rabble to deal with, his years of experience facing off against entire nation-states were clear on that much!

Still, his most potent power remained his ability to leech memories from those he touched, skin to skin, removing them wholesale from the victim and either destroying them, or storing them within himself, to be put to use as he saw fit. However, because of its limited utility in most combat situations, it was also the power he would be able to use the least, annoyingly. For the millionth time, he wished Mr. Machine had made him a Latent, as the Boytoy body was SUPPPOSED to be, as access to foretelling and prescience type abilities would have made him completely unstoppable, by anyone, but alas that was not to be. Frost frowned, his frustration in this matter reminding him of other frustrations in other areas as well. Most pressingly, in the other two areas he had vowed to improve in, the mastery of Mr. Abyss and the master of the Ascended Seed.

Of those two, he was doing best with his control of Mr. Abyss, though not to the extent he wished. He still could not create abyssal gates out of his own arm's reach, and still no bigger than a large doorway... about four feet wide and seven feet tall... though he had made great progress in using such portals as a means of personal travel... jaunting a few kilometers from one side of the valley to the other was now humdrum for him, and he as often teleported directly into the Kratos's cockpit as boarded in a more traditional manner! However, he was still getting the hang of truly long distance movements, and especially moving to places he himself had never been to and could not visualize to use as a desired arrival point, instead relying entirely on Mr. Abyss in a more abstract fashion, willing himself to go "a thousand miles north" or "three hundred feet straight up and two hundred feet left" or even "as far as you can take me", as the nanite made no qualms about teleporting him into harms way... such as over the side of a cliff or into the middle of the ocean, or even, in that last instance, three hundred light-days out from Earth, in the middle of space! Which was a fairly hostile environment even for someone as enhanced as him, without a protective suit! It was very much a matter of being careful what you wished for, as it would be granted with utmost literalness...

As for attaining the Ascended Seed? He might as well still be on day 1 of that particular effort, for all that he thought he understood the mechanics of how it was supposed to work. But no matter how often he called forth his Seed, even when he concentrated upon the Mouse to a degree he found physically sickening, he could not achieve even a hint of the Tree form state! A lesser man, or a man in general, might have been discouraged by so much failure, but Frost was undeterred. If he had to try ten million times before it worked, then ten million times he would try! Though he did acknowledge that perhaps it was his methods that were still flawed. After all, the Mouse was currently in no danger that he knew of, or if she was, she was keeping it blocked off from him... their mental link was far from ironclad after all, as neither of them had put any effort into bonding in that manner, unlike Yamato and Pink had. It was something he was holding in reserve, more or less... he loathed the idea of allowing the Mouse such a window into his deepest essence, which she could not fail to perceive as him acknowledging her as his equal and partner, and really preferred to do pretty much anything else to achieve the Ascended Seed... anything else at all.

Scowling now, his brief happiness at the triumph of blue skulls over red washed away in the recollection of his other failures, Frost was taken completely off guard by a sudde surge of alien emotion pouring into him, like a flood of molten steel gushing through his brain, the sensation driving him to his knees, almost slicing his face off on Deathshriek's back edge in the process. There were no words in the emotional ending, just a felt imperative, a callous demand for his presence in all possible haste. It was a long distance call, from none other than the Caller himself, freshly awakened from his healing torpor after he'd been partially parbroiled by a near miss of a orbital class FRALA during the battle of Neo-Miami. Frost tasted his own gritty blood on his tongue, and realized he'd bitten his own cheeks open in a effort to contain a yell of mingled anger and surprise. Furious about being intruded upon in such a heavy handed manner, he spared no time for any other thought than redressing the matter at once. The Caller wanted to see him, did he? Well then FINE!

And with that thought, Frost commanded Mr. Abyss to create a gateway to wherever the Caller was currently located, and he stalked through it, Deathshriek clenched in white knuckled fists, his mood simultaneously offended and murderous and maybe, just a tad bit curious as to what all the rush was about. He had the satisfaction of catching the Caller completely off guard, when he materialized in the central-most chamber of the Caller's expansive underground tunnel network/burrow, where the Caller's primary nerve cluster and memory center rested in a deep pool of stagnant water and biological slurry. Frost was fortunate to appear only knee deep in the slimy water, right at the edge of what must have once been a large aquarium tank of some sort, the Caller's surprise jangling along his nerves like a live electric current, as the gelatinous mass of meat and nerve cells convulsed and rippled as the Grand Chimera perceived the invasion of its sanctum sanctorum.

"You rang?" Frost deadpanned maliciously, greatly enjoying the discomfort of his "patron", especially after he had the nerve to demand his presence in such a arrogant manner. Hopefully this would teach the creature a lesson! "I'm sort of busy with my own things at the moment, so if you want to ask me something, make it quick..." He added, insult on top of injury, refusing to be in any way awed or impressed by where he was, or being in the presence of a brain that was quite literally bigger than a house!

To the Caller's credit though, his shock subsided almost at once, the Grand Chimera perhaps remembering that here in the heart of his own domain, he could probably melt Frost's brain into a puddle with just a fractional bit of effort. Still, he was not in any way pleased to find his brain-chamber exposed to any other creature, where even an unlucky death spasm might cause him true injury. Furthermore, he could not communicate safely with his chosen agent, as all of his flesh puppets were kept well away from this central chamber, there being no ordinary need to transfer them here save as nutrient glop to nuture his ever expanding nervous center. Responding with irritation, just as Frost himself had, the Caller chose to speak directly to his agent, and in that way teach him to be more careful about how he dared antagonize something that was as a God compared to him!

_YOU WILL ASSIST ME, MAN-MONSTER. I REQUIRE YOUR SERVICE._ The Caller blasted into Frost's head, each syllable as loud as a freight train's whistle, causing even Frost to wince a bit and shake his head to clear away the mental echoes.

"We've been over this before, haven't we? I don't serve you, bog-monster. You chose me, not the other way around. If you want something from me, then you'd better be prepared to give me something in return." Frost answered, reinforcing his words with bland disinterest, opening another abyssal gate next to him. "You've got five seconds to earn my attention, or I'm gone. Five..."

_WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I'LL LET YOU LEAVE, MAN-MONSTER?_ The Caller retorted, caught between annoyance and amusement at what was basically the defiance of an ant all but beneath its heel. _I COULD KILL YOU WITH A WHIM..._

"Yes, I rather believe you could, bog-monster. But that isn't the point, now is it?" Frost rejoined, smirking now, despite the ringing in his skull. "Or do you NOT actually need my help with something? Is that it? Did you go to all the trouble of... requesting... my presence just so we could sneer at each other? If so, I admire your gall. But really, threatening to kill me doesn't make any sense, and as someone who rarely makes sense, I know what I'm talking about here. You won't kill me, because I'm the only one you can possibly rely on to help you now that you need it, since all your other minions are dead or fled when you passed out. Kill me, and you'll be alone until its far too late for whatever you're worried about. And take it from someone who knows... being alone SUCKS."

_ONE DAY, I WILL DEVOUR YOU AND I WILL MASTICATE EVERY FRAGMENT OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORIES UNTIL THEY ARE UNRECOGNIZABLE SLURRY!_ The Caller railed furiously, driving Frost down to hands and knees in the murky fluids, despite his best efforts to remain upright and casual. Thick blood drooled from the corners of Frost's eye sockets, his ears, and both nostrils, as his brain began to try and haemorraghe under the stress of the psychic contact. _BUT THAT DAY IS NOT TODAY, MAN-MONSTER. VERY WELL THEN, THIS IS WHAT I NEED YOUR HELP WITH... THE SPACE SEEDLINGS NOW KNOW MY GENERAL LOCATION. THEY ARE ATTEMPTING TO EXCAVATE ME AS WE SPEAK. I COULD DOMINATE THEM EASILY OF COURSE, BUT TO DO SO WOULD WARN THOSE STILL IN SPACE, AND THEY WOULD COOK ME FROM ORBIT, AND THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO TO STOP THEM._

"Sucks to be you then. Get to the point, or I'll plant a guidance beacon right here myself."

_I POSSESS THE ABILITY TO... CONCENTRATE MYSELF, INTO WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL AN EGG, THOUGH THAT TERM IS QUITE INADEQUATE. I CAN CONTROL MY OWN EVOLUTION TO A LARGE DEGREE, AND THUS I CAN CHANGE MY FORM TO A LIMITED EXTENT. HOWEVER, IN MY CONCENTRATED FORM, WHILE I AM MUCH SMALLER, I POSSESS NO MORE ABILITY TO MOVE MYSELF THAN I DO CURRENTLY, AND TO EVOLVE SUCH ABILITY WOULD REQUIRE MORE TIME THAN I HAVE ANY RIGHT TO EXPECT I WILL GET. THUS I CALL UPON YOU, MAN MONSTER. YOU MOST MOVE MY CONCENTRATED FORM SOMEWHERE ELSE, SO THAT I MIGHT RE-ESTABLISH MYSELF IN SECURITY ONCE MORE._

"Say that I might have such a place in mind... deep and dark and dank and wet as you could ever want... how big is your concentrated form, and what exactly are you willing to give me in return for this favor, Caller?" Frost answered, dragging himself upright using both hands on Deathshriek's haft.

_MY CONCENTRATED FORM IS ABOUT THE SIZE OF MY BRAIN, WHICH YOU SEE BEFORE YOU, AS THAT IS MORE OR LESS WHAT IT IS, AND IS MALLEABLE TO A SMALL EXTENT._ The Caller replied, before going on, more warily. _AS FOR PAYMENT... WHAT DO YOU WISH FOR, MAN-MONSTER? I AM ONE OF THE THREE GRAND CHIMERA, AS FAR ABOVE YOU AS YOU ARE ABOVE BACTERIUMS. WHAT DO YOU DESIRE?_

"In exchange for your continued existence? Well, I'd hate to ask for too little, as if I'm a mere bacterium, I can hardly imagine how much the life of a Grand Chimera must be worth." Frost said sarcastically, wiping the dried blood off his face and flicking it into the water. "Can you taste that blood, Grand Chimera?"

_I DO PERCEIVE IT._ The Caller admitted, a few seconds later. _WHAT OF IT?_

"That's the only bit of me you'll ever get to eat, so savor it and memorize it well. But on to my price... I have a dream, you see, of a certain future that I wish to come to pass. Yet it is not one I can achieve on my own, despite my dearest wishes and natural inclinations. Help me accomplish this dream... swear yourself to the service of the empire I will build and to this compact between you and all those who might bear the taste of my blood, that while we shall protect you against any physical threat, and will feed you, and give you a place to live and grow, you will ward us against the manipulations of the other Grand Chimera, and protect us from those who would do us harm psychically. In essence, I demand that you take the place of Yggdrasil for my empire, as I have absolutely no desire to rely upon that Tree any more than I absolutely must, because I cannot understand its motives. You on the other hand... you and I understand each other just fine, don't we, bog-monster?" Frost grinned broadly as he spoke.

_YOU WOULD TRUST MY WORD, MAN-MONSTER?_ The Caller seemed suspicious of that idea.

"Not in the slightest, bog-monster, not for an instant longer than it was convenient to you to keep it. But I possess the ability to destroy you utterly at any time you might choose to betray our little pact, through the agency of something I like to call "Mr. Abyss". You could kill me and every living, thinking creature in my empire, and you would still be doomed yourself, as my unliving minion would release Mr. Abyss and he would devour you in the way you wish to devour me, and there wouldn't be a single thing you could do to stop it. So yes, in answer to your actual question, I do feel pretty secure in trusting you to act in your own best interest, which means acting in mine from now on..." Frost turned towards the abyssal gate he'd opened. "So do we have a deal, Grand Chimera?" He asked flippantly over his shoulder.

_DO I HAVE A CHOICE, MAN-MONSTER?_ The Caller sighed heavily, sloshing water around his brain chamber. _EXULT IN THIS WHILE YOU CAN, ZACHARIS FROST. I WILL DO AS YOU ASK BUT KNOW THIS... THERE WILL COME A TIME WHEN I TASTE MORE THAN JUST YOUR BLOOD. MY BROTHER HAS ALREADY SEEN IT..._

"Good for the Tree, I'll enjoy proving It wrong..." Frost answered with a shrug, and stepped through the gate, and back into his chambers in the Citadel. "Charon, can you hear me?"

"Of course, Master Frost." The crabby AI voice replied at once. "What do you need?"

"Open up the waste pit. We're going to have ourselves a houseguest..."


	63. In the Vastness of Water

Author note: Glad to see last chapter so well received, and looking forward to hearing from more people about it, as especially the "Frost Council" scene seems to have been quite evocative for the readers. Which is all to the good, since it is quite meant to be, and like I said before, writing it was some of the most fun I've had while writing a chapter in recent memory. But enough about Frost for the time being, though he is definitely a pivotal player in the story, he is far from the only one whose story needs to be told (though since his story is intimately intertwined with the future plot, beyond the end of RW, I hope you'll forgive me for focusing on him more than I do others). But we won't be seeing him again for several chapters, though of course, his impact is such that even when other characters mention him vicariously, it feels as if he's momentarily there.

Apologies for how long its been since the last update, I've moved to a new state for school, and my apartment doesn't have internet, and bills are getting a little tight. Plus my best friend's parents are going through a messy divorce, and my sister's been sick with some really nasty flu type thing that put her in the hospital for a bit. So its been pretty active in my life, and not always in the way I want it to be. I do still have internet on my phone, and I do still check up on my profile, reviews, forums and the like, I just might be delayed in responding till I can get over to the library or student center. Thank you for your patience.

Anyway, I've had some good dreams about this coming chapter as well, fun scenes to do, exploring a bit more of how Latent powers work (at least the common sort possessed by most characters), and some heartwarming Levi-Kira moments. So, now join me In the Vastness of Water...

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Consular Estate of Consul of Foreign Affairs Hieronymous, Febuary 14th, 8:00 am**

Kira saw the blow that would knock him flat on his ass coming, he really did. He'd seen it happen almost twenty seconds ago, knew what to expect, had seen his opponent slip through his defenses with a neat little twist of his hips and a half step with his leg, had almost winced as he felt the impact of the shield rim against his sternum, which had nearly cost him the bout then and there, as his instinctive twitch had disordered his defenses just enough that his opponent's blade almost caught him across the bridge of his nose. But despite this foreknowledge, when the moment itself actually came, when he saw Heine's hips do that pecular little twist and shuffle forward to get inside the reach of the heavy practice shield Kira had strapped to his left arm as a means of keeping his friend, subordinate and personal trainer at bay, there wasn't a damned thing Kira could do about it! There was a lesson there somewhere, Kira thought dully, as he watched Heine's rounded shield of tech infused Borealite come whizzing at his chest, rim-side on. All the foreknowledge in the world didn't do you a damn bit of good if you weren't ready to take action when the "predestined" moment arrived, and Kira had been knocked off balance just prior to this blow, his weight on his heels, his center of balance totally destroyed... and then IMPACT!

He felt the air rush out of his lungs explosively as the iron-hard shield rim compressed his solar plexus, a supernova of shooting pains radiating throughout his chest as his toes actually dug a small furrow in the dirt for a few inches before he toppled over and hit the ground hard on his back, splayed out like a cartoon caraciture that had pancaked after falling off a tall cliff, his sword flying from benumbed fingers, his eyes briefly occluded by dazzling starbursts as his teeth rattled together... it was like a train wreck happening in slow motion, each individual hurt piling up into the ones after it. Stunned, Kira felt the ghostly whisper of Heine's sword point prodding his exposed adam's apple about a half second before it was in position, but again, though forewarned, he had neither the ability nor the means to prevent it from happening. "Aaaaand... you're dead again." Heine commented sardonically, poking Kira's neck for a moment with the blunted tip of his heavy training blade, before backing off to let the Executor rise under his own power, an effort which took almost a minute. "Cat's are supposed to have nine lives, but you might need considerably more than that if you're planning on taking the field in your current condition, my Executor."

"Good thing I'm not planning on that then." Kira growled, rubbing his chest with his empty hand, feeling the spreading bruise and slightly bloody welt where Heine's shield punch had landed. The temptation was there to get angry, both at himself for not being able to stop Heine from taking him down, and at Heine for taunting him afterward, but with a deep, calming breath, Kira blew the temptation away, reminding himself that he had actually ASKED for this training, and had demanded that no respect be given to his rank or the fact that he was a novice in the arts of personal combat. Though he was of course not expecting to ever need to take the field in person, rather than from within the Lucifer's cockpit, war was always given to springing nasty surprises on you at inopportune times, and he wanted to be ready for the worst case scenario. Besides, the Burden was simply an exquisite weapon, and it would be an awful shame to wear it only as a status symbol, and not be able to use it if the need arose. And for that matter, because of the wonders of NIC type cockpit systems, his personal training might even help him improve his melee combat skills with the Lucifer, an area he'd always been good at, but never truly excelled with.

They'd been at the sparring training for two hours already, and Kira's arms and legs felt like they were filled with lead, and his entire body alternately felt numb or like he was covered in a light sheen of sulpheric acid. He was in good physical shape... he'd never been the sedentary sort, for all that he'd been a computer geek for most of his young life... but he had quickly discovered that what was good shape for a civilian, and passable shape for a Mobile Suit pilot, was hovering right around the bare minimum for a Praetorian. Heine had barely even broken a sweat, and he'd been the one attacking pretty much the entire time, which was supposed to take more energy than defending! His training sword and shield were no less heavy than Kira's, yet Heine hefted them as if they were made from wicker weave and not solid Borealite and plastic coated steel!

"So do you hate your life yet?" Heine asked cheerfully, sheathing his sword and then bending over to pick up Kira's, seeing that the Executor was still catching his breath from the shield punch, which Heine had pulled just enough to avoid cracking bone, yet had left enough strength in there to, well, to all but disable even someone as powerful as Kira Yamato. Heine was a little bit more worn out than he was letting on... two straight hours in training armor, and with weighted training sword and shield, both about fifty percent heavier than his real combat gear... was no joke, not even for one of the top Praetorians. Especially because while Kira might not have much in the way of personal experience with sword and shield fighting, he did have exceptional combat instincts and reflexes, and near perfect balance... once he got his strength up, and finished learning the basics of the sword and shield forms, Heine knew he'd have a much, much harder time putting his Executor on the ground, and might even end up on the ground himself sometimes!

"I'm beginning to hate yours." Kira answered, half jestingly, as he took his sword back from Heine, a bit warily, after that time when Heine had smacked him in the face with his own hilt just to remind him that on a real battlefield, an opponent wouldn't be so kind as to give you your weapon back.

"Accept the dark side, young Skywalker. It'll make you stronger." Heine replied sagely, drawing a blank look from Kira.

"Uh... what?" Kira asked, not understanding what was obviously a reference or quote.

"Nevermind, just paraphrasing a really old movie I saw once." Heine shrugged and smiled, drawing his own sword again, with a flourish he could not seem to resist adding. Life was very much a big game to Heine, or so Kira felt, and it was a game that the man enjoyed every blasted second of to the utmost. "You ARE getting better, Executor." Heine said encouragingly, seeing Kira hesitate just a fraction to take up his combat stance once again. "But remember that sword fighting is every bit as complex as Gundam piloting, in its way, and even after you've mastered the basics, it'll take you years to learn all the advanced tricks and feints and combination maneuvers that I have, and that means practicing every day for at least an hour. To be truly good, you can't even have your actions be second nature... they must be first nature, as natural as breathing and walking."

"Breathing and walking don't take this much effort." Kira indulged in a little complaining, hefting his sword and shield uncomfortably as he did so. "These things must weigh almost thirty pounds apiece! How do you use these in combat?"

"When you no longer notice their weight, then I'll tell you that." Heine answered with another smile, taking an on guard position. Kira moved to attack without any further words, leading with his shield, which was a rectangular form, versus the concave circle of Heine's shield, using the block of heavy wood to obstruct Heine's vision as Kira brought the plastic coated training sword around in a wide horizontal sweep. Kira felt his arm jar as Heine parried the roundhouse swing with his own sword, numbing vibrations transmitting down to his hand through his hilt, making his fingers want to let go, an impulse he supressed as he shoved at Heine with the flat of his shield, trying to push the Praetorian back and out of his set stance. Heine was already retreating though, and Kira's shove met almost no resistance, and he half stumbled forward, muscles burning with fatigue poisons as he struggled to right himself, only to feel Heine's foot kick his legs out from under him. Kira lacked the energy to even curse as the ground... and the back of his own shield... rushed up to smack him in the face. Heine's sword touched the back of his neck in an abbreviated chopping motion. "Where do you want your head mounted, Executor, as it is now no longer attached to your neck?" Heine inquired lightly.

Kira told him what he could do with his damned head, and spared no terms in doing so, though the frustrated venting did little besides make Heine laugh uproariously, drawing attention from the other gathered members of the Shark Party, who had either volunteered or been asked to help Kira improve his various skills in preparation for the resumation of the war, in a few months time. Heine was one of course, whose responsibility was teaching Kira how to use swords, as well as sword and shield, so that he might be able to use the Burden as more than just a rank symbol. Strategos Panner was there to help Kira with gunnery, which he was even more dismal at than swordplay, having abhorred guns for the majority of his life. Strategos Gregory and Sheriff-General Hales were there to pitch in as assistants to Heine and Panner, and to help with tactical and strategic type scenario simulations, command level training. Hector the massive black Direcat was there because he went wherever Panner did, and the beast seemed to find Kira's efforts to be amusing, like the struggles of a tasty young rabbit caught in a snare.

"Is the Shooting Star being mean to you, Executor?" Panner called, in tones that were, if anything, even more lightheartedly condescending than Heine's. "Remember that if he pisses you off enough, you can always ask him to spar with your Gundam later, and you can get plenty of your own back then!"

"Hey now, whose side are you on?" Heine protested, though he was shaking his head and grinning all the same. "And for the record, I'm NOT being mean to him. I'm kicking his ass from here to Yggdrasil's roots and back, but meanness doesn't figure into it."

"I need a break." Kira decided with a gasp of effort, as he tried to climb back to his feet and failed, his body just hurting too much all over. He probably could have gotten up if his life depended on it... he'd pushed himself past his physical limits several times in the past after all, and that wasn't even involving the Seed, but this was just practice, so there was no need to stress himself to the breaking point.

"Well, you won't get breaks on a..." Heine trailed off in his lecture as Kira fixed him with a gimlet stare. "But you know that already, don't you? I am talking to someone with as much if not probably a good deal more combat experience than me, after all." Heine corrected himself. If there was anyone who needed less lecturing on the realities of how war worked than the Executor, Heine wasn't sure who it might be. "Break time everyone!" Heine called over to the watching group of helpers, as he sheathed his blade once more. "Time to restock on fluids and nutrients." He added with a wink, reaching down to haul Kira to his feet, and steadying the battered Executor once he got there. "I was being serious though, Kira. You are getting better, more quickly than I have ever seen anyone learn the basics. A few more days of this and you might even be the one helping me up, more often than not. Especially once you learn to use your psychic abilities correctly."

"I thought I already was." Kira groused, taking a flask from Gregory and swigging down the unflavored Nectar-sap within, a fluid roughly five times as hydrating as plain water, like an electrolyte sports drink but without all the artificial ingredients. "I was under the impression that trying to control Latent powers was like trying to grasp air currents... you can try as hard as you like, but you'll only make ineffectual motions and never get any results. Aren't you supposed to just let instinct guide you?"

"Well, yes and no." Heine said after a bit of thought. "I do wish Haman were here, as a fellow Latent he could explain it better, but I'll try. It is true that concentrating on utilizing a Latent power is like trying to hold a chip of greased ice with only two fingertips... almost impossible, and usually counterproductive. But simply relying on your instincts to guide your actions is, to be blunt, what an amateur would do. Your instincts aren't always right for any given situation, and you can definitely train your instincts to act differently in different situations... for instance, if I were to punch at you with my fist, you might raise an arm to block, while if I were to make the same motion with a dagger in my hand, you'd probably try to duck away. Both are instinct... to block or to dodge... but one is more appropriate than the other in a particular situation. It's the same thing with Latent powers. We in the Order divide the predictive powers of Latents into two subcategories... called Wide Sight and Deep Sight."

"Why have I never heard anything about this before?" Kira asked, somewhat crossly, not pleased to suddenly find himself at a deficiency with something he'd thought he'd mastered a long time prior.

"Perhaps because you don't... or didn't... spend very much time around your fellow Edenites prior to this, and though I know you are acquainted with a few Newtypes who are not Edenites, they are but few, and lack scope in their powers for the most part. For the longest time you and Commander Joule and Commander la Flaga were the only Latents you knew of, and none of you had any idea what that meant, nor the time or inclination to experiment. Whereas the Custodians and Praetorians field hundreds of Latents, spending tens of thousands of man-hours discussing, exploring and training with their abilities to the maximum effect." Strategos Gregory answered, taking the nectar flask back from Kira. "You are one of the most powerful human Latents any of us has ever come across, Executor, but you are as a baby Hercules... all strength, no skill."

"Exactly. Even Heiro cannot see as far into what may-be as you do... the Deep Sight... and not even Haman can predict as accurately as you in the short term of the next few seconds... the Wide Sight... yet they both have honed their instincts so that their power is more beneficial to them than yours is, on average. What Hiero sees is almost always perfectly relevant to him, and furthermore, often illuminates the path to that goal, indicating the next several moves he might need make... an invaluable talent for winning political debates and avoiding verbal missteps, I'm sure you can imagine. And Haman has trained his body to react to what will happen even before his mind conciously processes the impulse, making him seem to always be a half step of everyone else on the battlefield, while his conscious mind still retains the ability to redirect his course as need be. But you, Executor, you can see what will happen clearly, but cannot see the path leading up to it, or you can feel imminent danger, yet must always react to it in that moment, without volition on your part." Heine added, clapping Kira on the shoulder.

"And what do you suggest I do to correct this lack of skill?" Kira asked neutrally, still displeased, in general, for being in the dark about such things for so long, but then again, his powers had always come though for him before when he needed them, so why should he have suspected there might be more to it than just letting primal instinct take over?

"Well, there is nothing directly you can do... the more you focus on controlling the course of your power, the less power you will access. But you can fool your mind, in a manner of speaking. The best way I have heard is the manner Haman uses, associating Deep Sight and Wide Sight with two different senses... in his case hearing and vision. When he is in close combat, when all is chaos and split second reactions, he relies most upon his hearing, as eyes can become confused or tardy in the melee, and as he pours his concentration into hearing the threats around him, so too does he become more in tune with Wide Sight. While at a distance he would rely on his eyes to warn him of danger and opportunity, and so he concentrates on picking out every detail of his surroundings and enemy, so that he might collect as much information on them as possible for future benefit, and thus brings himself more in tune with Deep Sight. At no time does he ever focus his thoughts on actual predicting, but instead on the senses, and lets his subconscious desire and association drive the power to him as he needs it." Heine extrapolated with a slight shrug, though he was heartened to see Kira looking introspective, his words plainly making some amount of sense to the Executor.

"That is an interesting way of putting things." Kira acknowledged. "I never would have thought to look at it that way." He admitted a few seconds later, with a self decrepitating smile. "I never even differentiated between Deep Sight and Wide Sight until now, but now I can completely understand why you would seperate them. But..." Kira's smile slowly grew more confident, and more predatory. "Why limit myself to focusing on just one sense at a time? Wouldn't it be better to utilize both Wide Sight and Deep Sight simultaneously?"

"Well, obviously, but I've never heard of anyone able to do that, given the amount of focus usually needed to attune yourself with one Sight or the other." Strategos Gregory answered with a slight frown.

"You'd have to be some kind of genius." Panner added with a gimlet stare in Kira's direction. "To not get caught up in the 2 minutes from now while reacting to the 2 seconds from now and still acting on your own volition. Just thinking about it makes my brain hurt. It'd be like staying eight moves ahead of an opponent in chess while also dodging tennis balls being thrown at your head from six different directions at once, and holding a coherent conversation with a third party simultaneously." She eyed Kira up and down a bit longer, seeing his contemplative look go undaunted in the slightest, and sighed. "I'm talking to an Executor though, aren't I? You were chosen for more than just your boyish good looks after all."

"Oh, it won't be easy." Kira acknowledged with a small grin. "But there's more to Latency than Sight, Wide or Deep, right? I don't know what your terms for it are, but I know that when the going gets roughest, and I need to pull off a tide-changing shot, time always seems to move slower to me, even more so than normal Seed enhanced reactions can account for. Time Dilation, of a sort... where my seconds last just a bit longer than the seconds for everyone else. Yggdrasil has the knack for it... its the only way to explain the Tree's growth rate and current size... It's dilating Its temporal perceptions, so that one second of our time is probably hours or even days of Yggdrasil time! Of course if a human were to do that to such a degree, they'd probably kill themselves in short order... they'd use up all their oxygen between breathes and suffocate, or palpitate their heart until it exploded... but if I'm just making a second last a second and a half or so, the physical threat should be minor, and a half a second can be an eternity in combat..."

"I have no idea what he just said, yet I get the feeling I should be impressed." Heine commented with a broad grin, clapping Kira on the shoulder again.

"Perhaps that Time Dilation ability also accounts for why Yggdrasil is invisible to technological observation from outside a certain radius." Daveron said contemplatively, stroking his chin as he struggled with the complexities of it. Screw Quantum Theory, Latent Theory was the new breed of weird science! "If indeed the Grand Chimera can alter the flow of time, in a manner of speaking, and not just for Itself, but in a "bubble" like projection around it... well then any signals that came in, including light, would take so long to come back to the source of origination that they would detect nothing. But if that is the case, why does time pass regularly for those of us living within the field? Why do we not have three hours for every minute of the rest of the world? I'm with the Strategos Minoris... this bullshit makes my head hurt..."

"I think we're only scratching at the very surface of this." Kira answered with a frown. "After all, Yggdrasil has power beyond any other Latent alive by several orders of magnitude. I think I can probably get away with tacking on a few extra half seconds to my seconds for a brief time during combat, but I wouldn't want to do it often... the stress on my bodily systems could be enormous. Being a tree, Yggdrasil lacks many of the same physical vulnerabilities as a animal lifeform, such as moving organs or muscles, so I imagine that helps account for It's greater and more constant use of the ability. And it must somehow be able to selectively gradiate the timescale within It's aura of influence... for most of the city, the time is the same as the outside world. Its only at the very outside edges of Yggdrasil's influence where things get weird and dilated... which might account for that weird buzzing noise one hears when standing near the edge of the Tree's sphere of personal influence. It must be an incredible strain on the environment, experiencing time dilation on such a wide scale... even if the dilation field is only a few millimeters wide, its still a section of air where most of the physical laws we know and understand don't quite work as they should! I think I'm finally beginning to understand why Leviathan and Caller loathe and even fear Yggdrasil so much... what incredible power It has...!"

"Standardized timescale is one of the cornerstones of physics." Heine agreed with a sour look on his face that bespoke his own sudden realization of what Yggdrasil's true power scope might be. "All energy transfer is reliant upon units of energy in motion per unit time, usually a second or some fraction thereof... if the length of a second could be changed or manipulated, it would royally fuck everything up. Even a beam of pure light could be basically stopped in midmotion, if it was inside a field where a "second" had been modified to take the same time as days in the rest of the world. But how is it even possible? How could anyone control time like that? And wouldn't the world just, like, blow itself up if people started doing it all the time? They're called "LAWS" of physics for a reason... because they can't be broken without everything going down the tubes into weirdville!"

"That would be a question for people a lot smarter than me." Kira replied to the questioning looks he saw would soon be turned his way. "I'm just extrapolating on guesswork... the mechanics behind it are way beyond me. But if I had to guess again, it might have something to do with how time always seems to flow differently when your mind is unconscious, how living a single dream can feel like days and last only seconds... thinking on the scale when you were awake would probably fry your brain, yet it happens all the time when your consciousness is in your subconscious. But how one would translate a perception of time into a reality of time... that might be something a human might be better of not knowing... the logic behind it might break your mind like a glass cup."

"Maybe we should ask Executor Frost to puzzle it out then?" Strategos Gregory joked. "Since he's already fractured, mentally speaking, he has nothing to lose..."

Kira almost smiled, save for one thing. "That might almost be funny, Gregory... save for the all too real possibility than you might be right. Frost's mind works in ways beyond the comprehension of the rational... if anyone could understand something like that, it would be him. But I really don't want him to understand, since I dread to think of what he might think to do with such knowledge..."

"Speaking of our... other Executor... does anyone know where he got off to?" Daveron asked, folding his arms across his chest in an unconscious warding gesture. "I greatly dislike not knowing where that freak might be lurking at any given time. Usually I just look for blue hair, or screaming, but there's been none of the latter and precious little of the former around Garden City of late. I had thought the Valkyrie and him to be all but inseperable, but I guess trying to expecting constancy out of someone as chaotic as that man is folly. Though I guess it brings up the subordinate point that maybe now would be a good time to have a little sit down with Yggdrasil's Valkyrie and see if we can't get her head on straight again? It can't be healthy for her to remain in prolonged contact with that freak..."

"Sooner might you drink the sea's dry, or breathe in all the air of the sky, than force Lilia to change her mind once she's made it up to do something." Heine answered with a somewhat bothered sigh. "I won't deny that I'm concerned for her... there's not a person in all the Order who isn't in one way or another, save perhaps Revv, and he's something of a headcase himself. But I also do have faith in her still, and though subtle, I have seen changes in Executor Frost's behavior when she is around. I have my doubts as to whether she will ever manage to actually reform him in any real sense, but I can't deny that she is a positive influence upon him, and that's more than I ever thought I would see, given who he is."

"She's deluding herself." Kira said, perhaps a bit brusquely, judging by the looks Panner and Heine gave him. "I'm sorry, but she is. I've had an intimate look at Frost's mind before, and there's simply nothing left to redeem in there, and no matter how much of a "positive influence" Lilia seems to be, the fact remains, Frost is still Frost, more monster than man." Kira chewed his lip as he thought. "But you're right, his sudden absence, and going off by himself without her or any of his minions, is indeed troubling. I imagine he's gone to wherever those black eyed pygmies live, which is also where I suspect he got the Kratos built, and may be even where he was reborn in that clone body of his. Where exactly that is, your guess is as good as mine. But I do think I understand why he's gone on sabbatical, so to speak. Its the same reason I have for this training. He wants to get stronger, now that we have faced the BALORs and learned that maybe our dominance on the field of Mobile Suit combat isn't exactly as dominating as we once imagined."

"Well, on one hand, I'm glad to see he's taking the escalation of the war so seriously." Startegos Gregory noted with a frown. "Though on the other, I fear to think about what the implications of him gaining in power might be, once this Reclamation War is over and done with. He's as much as promised to start a war of his own as soon as this one is out of his way..."

"And that is why I need to get stronger as well. I need to master the Ascended Seed... the Tree Mode." Kira answered with a tight lipped frown of his own. "Because though I hate to admit it, I'm not sure I can defeat him as I am now, or even with a regular Seed. It took an Ascended Seed activation to kill him in his original body after all, and now that Lacus is gone, I don't have anyone who can help me easily activate the Seed of a post Second Puberty Ultimate Coordinator... and I'm still trying to figure out why I can't always call upon it on my own. It's not like a regular Seed, any old emotional extreme just doesn't seem to cut it. You know, sometimes it really SUCKS being the "eldest" Ultimate Coordinator... having someone else who's been through this before would be so helpful right now..."

"I'm certainly glad I'll have your footsteps to follow in there, Executor." Panner said with a sardonic smile. "Though I try not to rely even on the regular Seed if I can help it. Sure, the ability boost is very nice, but I hate losing track of my physical and mental fatigue, especially if I'm already in a tight spot. And I would imagine the cost of activating the Ascended Seed would be even greater... didn't you all but collapse after using it at Urbanis?"

"That's another part of it I'll need to work on, once I've mastered the trick of activating it at need. It was much the same way when I first started using the regular Seed during the First Valentine War... after activation ended, I was so wiped out I could barely return to the Archangel, and at that time, it only lasted about two or three minutes at most! But like most any skill, through practice I learned to activate it at will, and for longer and longer times, with less and less ill effects afterwards, and I should think I'll be able to do the same with the Ascended Seed." Kira acknowledged with a shrug. "I've also contacted Vaul to help me work over some new ideas for upgrading the Lucifer, but unless I can master the Ascended Seed, my planned upgrades won't do me much good... its right at the edge of my abilities to master the Lucifer's systems as they are now, any upgrades would just be dead weight as I currently am."

"So if it mastering the second stage Seed is so important, why are you futzing around with us?" Heine asked with a grin.

"Because it's important I expand my baseline capabilities as well. As Panner pointed out, relying upon any Seed is generally not a good idea, as sooner or later, the cost of using it outweighs the benefits of having used it, especially in prolonged battles. And besides, being an Executor involves more than just being a champion on my prefered field of battle... I need to be acquianted with, if not exactly an expert at, all domains of this conflict. And when I do eventually face off with Frost once more, as I know I must, being confident in my melee battle skills will be helpful... I know better than to think I'll be able to keep him at a distance for too long, he's just too fast. For that matter, that raptorform BALOR just about ripped my guts out at close range and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop it, so obviously my short range skills need considerable polishing." Kira told them. He turned to look at Panner and Gregory directly. "Since we're taking a break anyway, why don't you cover the gear of the Custodian infantry for me, like you said you would?"

"Gladly. Sitting around petting that monstrous cat and watching the Shooting Star use you like a punching bag is fun, but it'll be nice to contribute some real expertise every once and a while." Gregory replied with a snide smirk. "Since you obviously don't need any further help with melee combat, I guess we should focus on ranged combat and combat basics for the novice infantryman, which you... and most dedicated pilots for that matter... definitely are. I honestly don't expect it to ever happen, but if for some reason you should be shot down or caught on a battlefield without the Lucifer to succor you, you'll need to know how to take care of yourself and assist your subordinates in the midst of what is often the very height of chaos. I'll start you off with the most fundamental and arguably useful piece of gear our infantry uses..." Gregory gestured at a nearby flat boulder, where an array of wood and what looked like leather armor was laid out.

"This is our standard infantry armor, made from an undersuit of heavy tanned Oxiphant or Rhinobeast leather over which inch thick Borealite plating is layered across the torso, shoulders, thighs, and arms to protect most vital organs. Additional greaves, gauntlets and helmet of thinner, more segmented Borealite protect the lower legs, hands and head respectively, without overly compromising mobility, dexterity and sensory awareness. Borealite is considerably lighter than most metal or ceramic armor plating, with comparable structural strength and durability. In fact, Borealite is actually considerably superior to most technological armor materials when it comes to dealing with heat and energy based weaponry, as even the thinner plates can take a direct hit from an infantry class beam rifle with only light smouldering and an unpleasantly warm sensation transferred onto the skin of the soldier so armored. Of course repeated impacts will eventually compromise the armor, but if you let yourself get shot a dozen times, well, you're probably either badly wounded or just stupid." Gregory explained.

"But importantly..." Panner cut in, her face serious now that she was lecturing on a topic of her own expertise. "Most Oosen infantry forces are not equipped with energy weaponry, at least on less than a squad support level. Their standard infantry weapon, the 5mm Cutlass linear assault rifle, fires bullets that have monomolecular tips. Though fragile, and prone to fragmenting uselessly if they don't strike the armor on a relatively flat trajectory, they can and will penetrate your armor if you let them get a straight shot at you. Granted, a single 5mm bullet hole probably won't stop a Edenite, unless it hits a vital location, but the Oosen troops will always outnumber us, and the stagger from a single good hit can expose you to a crossfire that will literally cut you in half if you're not careful. So just cause some of the bullets are bouncing off you, don't get the idea that you're invincible, cause you're definitely not."

"The armor comes with integral environmental control systems, to keep your body cool or warm as need be to counteract environmental extremes, and all suits have basic sensor masking baffles to reduce your thermal and other sensor profiles, to make it harder for the enemy to see and target you. Your helmet comes with a encrypted communication system and HUD data projection capability, but since most soldiers communicate through Manifold links, those systems are usually only used as backup. The helmet also has night vision and thermal vision capabilities, for seeing at night or when normal vision is obscured. Finally, the entire suit is embedded with medical sensors that monitor your state of health and bodily functions, and they can automatically send a distress signal to any allied troops nearby if you become injured, though again, this is more a redundant feature in most Manifold trained squads. Each suit of armor is usually individually decorated to display rank, Legio affiliation, and Manifold affilition, though we've started toning down that now." Gregory continued, sounding almost sad for a moment at the thought of toning down the heraldry of his armor.

"We'll get you fitted for your armor later, and you should get used to wearing it around and training in it as much as possible. Our armor isn't even a tenth as cumbersome as those ridiculous environment suits the Oosen troops wear, but it's not weightless either, and there's a few tricks you have to learn before you can utilize your full normal range of motion while wearing it." Panner told him next. "I imagine Vaul will want to tinker with your suit too, once we get your measurements... you hopefully won't ever have to rely on it to protect you, but just in case you ever do, we should probably make sure to trick you out a little. You are one of only two Executors we have after all, and to be blunt, you are definitely the more fragile of the two. We need you healthy at pretty much any cost."

"That brings up another good point. Does anyone know how durable Executor Frost actually is?" Daveron asked with an arched eyebrow. "I've heard that he charges into battle wielding only his scythe and wearing just normal clothing, but I'm not sure I can believe that..."

"Believe it." Heine said firmly, with a bemused shake of his head. "I have it on good authority that he fought Erk, the Wendigo Shaman, in a hand to hand brawl, and while he didn't win, he still survived Erk's best efforts to tear him limb from limb for almost five minutes straight. And he was fine only a day or two later, doesn't even have scars from the experience! As far as I can make out, his bones are basically unbreakable, and his blood clots almost instantly upon being wounded. I'm not even sure what would kill him... even stepping on him with a Gundam might not cut it, though I certainly wouldn't mind giving it a try sometime!"

"I've seen him take dozens of bullets, almost get his arm blown off, stabbed with knives and swords, clubbed with sticks, blown up with grenades, had most of a prison block dropped on his head with plastic explosives, gotten his Gundam blown up around him two or three times, and get piledrived with blows from robotic fists I have witnessed being able to punch through concrete." Kira said flatly. "And that was in his original body, his new form is likely a good deal stronger. He's not invincible, by any means... destroy enough of his organs, and he'll die just like anything else... but his definition of a fatal injury is probably along the lines of getting buried in a pit full of burning napalm, or shot with a vehicle class Thermal Exciter. But I wouldn't worry about his health... we're not nearly lucky enough for his life to be snuffed out on a random battlefield." Kira sighed and clenched his teeth. "Besides, on top of everything else, he's completely crazy and doesn't seem to feel pain in the same way most people do. You could shoot him a hundred times at point blank range, and I'm sure he'd just laugh at you with his chest a ruin of blood and organ bits. Let's just say that if our final battle doesn't take place in Gundams, there's no way, no matter my abilities or training, that I'll be able to beat him. He's simply too much a monster to be taken on in hand to hand combat, for a human anyway."

"Then may I suggest you acquire some proficiency with firearms, so that if you do ever find yourself on the ground with such a monster, you can at least attempt to survive, rather than merely bending over and waiting to get fucked?" Panner said, half in jest, half dead serious. "Even if you might not be able to kill him... which I don't believe, you shoot him hard enough and long enough and he'll die, anything will... you might at least slow him down enough to give yourself a chance to escape. Now, modern infantry weapons come in three basic forms: energy weapons, like beam rifles; self propelled/self guided weapons, like RPGs and shoulder fired missiles; and ballistic weapons, like linear assault rifles. Because most of our military technology is extrapolated from the Brotherhood of Mankind, the Custodian's are very heavy on energy weapon technology, with relatively scant reliance on missile systems and ballistic weapons."

Panner's hand went to one of two small holsters she wore at her hips, and withdrew a sleek looking pistol, similar in basic shape to the sidearms Kira had seen in military use for most of his life. "This is a beam pistol, a standard sidearm among Custodians and Praetorians both. Its relatively light, packs a punch and is good at short to medium ranges, though its ammo capacity can be a little low, and you do run the risk of overheating the barrel if you fire too many shots too rapidly." Panner explained. "The major difference between this and a full sized rifle is a rifle has much more ammo capacity and greater range, though the damage potential is about the same. It fires a condensed plasma bolt, a blurt of electrically charged, superheated gas contained in a magnetic wrapper, which burns through most armor as easily as a hot knife through butter. As for what it does to flesh and bone... it ain't pretty. Even a glancing hit from a beam weapon can kill someone through pain-shock, the injury is simply that severe."

"Now, a very important thing to realize about energy weapons is that they are direct fire weapons only... the beams always travel in what is more or less a straight line, as even the longest ranged infantry weapons are too short ranged for the planet's spin or gravity to have much effect on their projectiles. This means that if there is any significant barrier between you and your target, you have to shoot through that barrier before you can harm them. Even a few sandbags full of dirt can stop a beam blast pretty good, better than they stop most linear rounds actually, as a beam blast has very little actual mass to make a physical impact with." Panner eyed Kira steadily. "Now I'm sure you know most of this technical stuff, but it never hurts to cover it anyway... I can assure you, shooting a beam rifle in your hands and firing a beam cannon from your Gundam are entirely different experiences, though the technology is basically the same."

"Now, the next step up from our beam rifles are our squad portable hyper-impulse cannons." Panner went on, twirling her pistol flippantly and seating it back in her holster. "You won't be equipped with one, as the standard model has to be carried in parts by a three person team, its simply too bulky, heavy and complex for a single person to handle, though Vaul does make a customized single person variant from time to time, for use by Praetorians. These hyper-impulse cannons are about as powerful as infantry carried weapons get, they can easily take down most armored vehicles, and can even be a threat to mobile suits. However, they have a slow rate of fire, as the power core has to be swapped out after every shot, and they are further limited in firing rate by need to keep the barrel cooled so it doesn't warp or melt. If you were stuck in the field by yourself, and came across one that wasn't manned, you'd be lucky to get off two or three shots a minute with it, though a full crew can usually muster about ten shots a minute, with a minute break after every five minutes of firing to let the weapon cool down."

"I'm really not looking for anything heavy." Kira told her firmly. "If it can't fit in the cockpit with me, then I don't want it, no matter how powerful or useful it might be. So far, those beam pistols sound about right."

"Well, then I guess we can toss aside the missile and rocket systems. Though just for overview's sake, they usually fire high explosive or armor piercing warheads at medium to long range, against hardened targets or armored vehicles, and can be both direct fire or indirect fire... some shoulder fire missile systems can be shot straight up in the air, or even backwards, and will curve around and acquire targets on their own, so you don't even have to physically see your target to hit it. Their downside is that they are often heavy, slow firing, and their ammunition is heavy and bulky as well, limiting how much you can carry with you." Panner answered with a shrug. "The Custodians don't use many ballistic weapons... for our purposes, beam weapons do just as well, if not better, though the extreme rapidfire capability of ballistic weapons is still used in squad support weaponry. Some Praetorians, notably Lilia, like a heavy linear rifle for their standard weapon, as they can mix and match specialty ammunition to meet various situations, a versatility beam weapons generally lack."

"So that brings us to our stock of captured Oosen armaments." Gregory picked up the lecture, pointing to a series of weapons laid out on cloths near where the sample armor suit was arrayed. "As the Strategos Minoris stated earlier, their standard weapon is the 5mm Cutlass, which is accurate, relatively lightweight, and has a high ammo capacity, though it definitely lacks the stopping power of a beam blast. The Falchion model uses the same ammunition size, but in a medium machinegun role, meaning a much higher rate of fire and ammunition capacity. Then there's the Mauler linear shotgun, a 25mm monster that can rip you in half, armor or not, at ranges of less than 30 meters. These things are real nasty, and thankfully relatively rare amongst most Oosen units, as they are limited to ranges of about 50 meters or less, practically point blank on a modern battlefield. They are also somewhat slow to reload, and not the most accurate of weapons, but have a high rate of fire, and the aforementioned stopping power. If you see one, its best to keep your distance until you're sure the user is out of ammo or reloading."

"I still think the beam pistol sounds better." Kira said after consideration. "If need be, I want something I can use relatively well in just one hand, as I'm used to a dual wielding fighting style from Gundam piloting, and adapting to using the Burden in one hand, and a ranged weapon in the other, seems easy enough to do."

"Swashbuckling, huh? Sword in one hand, pistol in the other? Sounds stylish, Executor..." Heine commented with a chuckle.

"We'll go with the pistol for now then." Panner cut in. "So let me show you how to use it, and I don't mean by hurling it like a boomerang, as I've heard you once did in the past..."

xxxx

**New Eden, North Pacific, Aleutian Islands**, **Febuary 28th, 12:33 pm**

Kira waited tensely for the next set of opponents to appear, the Burden held in a guard position across his body with his right hand, his still somewhat unfamiliar beam pistol clutched in his left hand, muzzle pointed down and slightly off to his side. The slight vibration of the grip of the pistol warned him that he was running low on ammunition, and the tip of the muzzle steamed in the chill noonday air after the repeated series of shots that had helped him defeat the last group of attackers. Doing his best not to glance down, Kira widened his stance slightly, making ready to rapidly holster his gun once it ran out, so that he could take up the Burden with both hands. There would be no time to reload in the midst of combat, not at this range anyway. That was another annoying difference between fighting in a Gundam and fighting personally... his Gundam generally didn't need to reload, or if so, it took care of it automatically, while his handgun had to have its clip manually switched out every twenty shots or so!

His breath smoked in the cool air as well, though his Custodian pattern armor did keep most of him warm enough to be comfortable, though not so warm that excess sweating was a problem. Even with the climate changes brought on by Green EDEN, at this northerly latitude and at this time of year, it could get pretty freaking cold outside. It was the middle of the day, and not only was the sun barely halfway up the horizon, it was close to freezing out. Nights were much, much colder, enough to be dangerous to his health if not for his armor and survival shelter. He hadn't yet seen any icebergs floating past, but his companion assured him that it was the season for sea ice to start spreading down from the pole... and his companion was definitely quite the expert on all matters related to the sea. In fact the cold temperature was the very reason why his companion had asked him to meet her at this location, as she greatly enjoyed the icy waters that would be deadly to an unprotected human in a matter of minutes, since her body often got overheated in the warmer waters near the surface of much of the ocean.

That was one of the downsides to having a body that was bigger than several supercarriers stacked side by side... and then Kira had no more time for introspection, as the next wave of attackers materialized from out of the fogbank that roiled around the training area. Indistinct, vaguely humanoid shapes, with long, flexible arms and stumps for heads, there were a half dozen of them, approaching him in a reckless charge in a semicircular pattern, their movements making very little sound other than a light rasp. They shouted no battle cries and hurled no curses as they implacably bore down on him, and Kira snapped his left hand up, firing twice with the pistol, two bright green spears of super-hot plasma flashing out to blast vaporous holes in two of the approaching figures, one in the chest, the other at the head region, causing them to fall back and dissolve into the mists... he'd shot both before they were even fully out of the fog, having felt the targets coming several seconds prior.

His pistol was emptied by that display however, and Kira smoothly pivoted, ducking his head under a lashing sweep of a tentacular arm from a seventh figure that had risen silently behind him, holstering his pistol and taking the Burden's hilt in both hands, chopping out with its impossibly sharp edge and bisecting the figure as if it were no more substantial than mist. His "Deep Sight" warned him that this was only the first of several waves, and that he would be surrounded in roughly fifteen seconds if he didn't do something, even as his "Wide Sight" kept him ducking and dodging the looping and whipping arm-tentacles of the four remaining first wave assailants, who seemed content to stay at distance and wait for reinforcements now that his pistol was no longer a threat. Following Heine's sugegstion, Kira had done his best to "trick" his mind into better utilizing his Latent abilities in these past two weeks. But unlike Haman or the other Praetorians, Kira had found tying his predictive senses to his physical senses to be less useful than tying them to his emotional states, which were much easier to focus on in battle, especially in a Gundam.

So his "Deep Sight" predictive ability was tied to his feelings of determination... the more focused he was on accomplishing a certain specific goal or action, the more fine tuned his sense for what might be became. On the other hand, "Wide Sight" was tied to his sense of outrage, so the more furious he became, the more he got in touch with his instinctual sense for immediate danger. In short, the calmer he was, the more disposed towards seeing further into the future, while getting excited brought forth greater attunement to reacting in the split second before unexpected attacks landed. And since he was usually calm when fighting at range, and tended to get excited when forced into close combat, this fitted perfectly with the strengths and weaknesses of each type of predictive ability. As more and more of the humanoid attackers rose from the mist, Kira let his sense of anger at being attacked bring him more and more intuition about where each individual attack of the myriad heading his way would strike, while a different, more distant section of his thoughts considered the next minute or so, searching for any major potential surprises in store for him.

It wasn't easy, by any means... most of his sweating and heavy breathing had to do with mental exertion, not physical stress, as he'd been at this for more than an hour now... he was on the tenth assault, further than he'd gotten before. Letting himself flow with his instincts for the time being, Kira struck out with the basic attacking and coutnerattacking swordforms Heine had showed him, each strike cleaving through one of the onrushing humanoid figures, often cutting through their arms and bodies in a single, uninterrupted stroke, the Quantum edge of the violet sword more than able of cutting through solid diamond, and these beings were far less hardy than that! A heavy impact across his lower back almost threw him from his feet, proof that even with Latent abilities in play, the speed of human reflex could only take you so far when you were being attacked from all sides!

Kira knew he was on the verge of being overwhelmed, the humanoid figures crowding in from all sides, tentacular arms waving high, preparing to smash him down like he was a tent peg... this training wasn't meant to be strictly dangerous to his health, but the chance for some serious bruises was always present. He reached for the Seed in his mind, snatching for the silver veined violet ball, funneling his need to win and his personal outrage at being attacked into his efforts. But frustratingly, despite his urgent need for the power, the Seed evaded his clutching grasp, exploding against an invisible barrier before he could close his fingers upon it. Yet another failed attempt to activate the Ascended Seed. The regular Seed activation was nothing to sneeze at, of course, but it paled in comparison to what he knew he SHOULD be able to achieve.

Time seemed to slow, at least for his attackers, their swinging arms hesitating a few extra fractions of a second to his perceptions... he still wasn't sure if it was him speeding up or the rest of the world slowing down... and Kira windmilled the Burden frantically around him, feeling a slow ache begin to spread in his chest as he prolonged the duration of the Time Dilation, something he had only ever used in split second clips before, such as when shooting up the barrel of a weapon about to fire. Limb tentacles were severed like blades of grass thrown beneath a weedwhacker, and several of the humanoids themselves were gouged and slashed by the whirling sword blade, but there were too many, he was completely surrounded, with nowhere to go. Even after a full ten seconds of Dilation... his current limit, at what he estimated to be about 30 percent dilation, as in he had 1.3 seconds to act for every 1 second of his foes... there was no way for him to cut down enough of his attackers to make a difference, and Kira was soon battered flat by a half dozen tentacular arms, the Burden flying from his grasp, as he was piledrived down into... and then beneath... the surface of the training area.

Bubbles burst from his mouth as he gasped and flailed his limbs, righting himself and quickly rising back to the surface of the water, glad that his armor was self sealing for the most part, as the water was cold enough to feel like liquid ice on the skin of his face and mouth. Gentle pressure formed beneath his feet, giving him a series of "steps" to stand on, and Kira literally walked right up out of the water, standing upon the gently rolling surface of the offshore waters as if it were made of soft loam, thanks to Leviathan's telekinetic mastery of the water molecules in the area. The walls of fog and mist that cordoned off his "training area" began to dissipate at once, and there was no sign of any of his training opponents... nor should there have been, considering they were all telekinetically animated waterspouts, which accounted for their flexible bodies and only vagule humanoid shapes.

But Leviathan was extremely good at manipulating even such small scale constructs, and they made perfect sparring partners, as Kira could shoot, slice and slash them to his heart's content, and not have to worry about hurting anything or even causing damage to a mannequin. And getting hit by them was like being sprayed with a fire hose... it wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't exactly life endangering either, especially since the "ground" could be made as soft as, well, a fall into a pool from poolside height. The flexible nature of the ground also let Leviathan throw in additional challenge from time to time, by making his footing uneven, giving him one more variable to contend with while fending off the attacking waveforms. For that matter, adjusting to standing and walking around on a surface Kira knew was a liquid that shouldn't be supporting his weight was a bit of a trial of its own.

**YOU'RE GETTING BETTER EVERY TIME, FRIEND KIRA.** Leviathan's stentorian whisper echoed in his thoughts, as she lifted the Executioner's Burden back to the surface as well, and then into the air, allowing Kira to grab it and return it to his over the shoulder sheath, the blade being too long to wear at his hip comfortably. **I'M NOT SURE I KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO IN ORDER TO MAKE IT MORE CHALLENGING.**

_It's plenty challenging, Levi, but thanks for the thought._ Kira sighed as he turned and began walking out to sea, towards the bulk of his new best friend, the massive Ocean Mother, one of only three Grand Chimera, a psychic goddess by any other term. And also a scared and curious little girl, in a lot of ways, still quite far from true emotional maturity, at least as far as humans understood the term. Though she was definitely fully mature by the standards of her own unique biology and circumstances. Sometimes she reminded him of his lost daughter, Aoi, in how temperamental and pushy she could be, and other times she astounded him with the perspective and wisdom available only to an intellect so titanic as to be unquantifiable by human measurements. _Defeating more opponents isn't really the point anyway, its just the method that helps me accomplish the true training._

**AND YOU STILL HAVE TROUBLE ACCESSING WHAT YOU CALL THE "ASCENDED SEED".** Leviathan rumbled, spouting misty exhalations from a half score of blowholes upon her upper back. She was a good mile offshore, the closest she could comfortably approach to the small island where Kira had made his camp, and where the Lucifer stood when he wasn't practicing his piloting combat as well. Entirely natural stormclouds brooded overhead, warning of another sleetstorm on the way, but in truth Kira almost welcomed the unpleasant weather... it mimiced the surges of bitterness and frustration he was feeling inside. **I AM WONDERING IF PERHAPS THE TRAINING METHOD IS FLAWED THEN, AS YOU HAVE DONE THIS ONCE A TIDE FOR ALMOST THIRTY TIDAL SHIFTS.**

_I don't think its flawed, or rather I think the flaw rests more with me than the training itself._ Kira answered, trudging towards the black-grey bulk of the Grand Chimera, like a small living island emerged from the depths. _My mental state just isn't right. I'm trying to force something that has only ever come to me in times of great need, not on command. I know there has to be a way, but I'm stumped as to what it might be._

**I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN, FRIEND KIRA. I AM JUST STRUGGLING FOR THE WORDS TO EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT.** Leviathan let a iota of frustration leak into the tone of her thought. **LET'S TRY THIS... THE REGULAR SEED, THAT IS SOMETHING I WOULD CALL THE RAGE OF THE INDIVIDUAL. WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ACCESS, THAT IS SOMETHING I WOULD CALL THE RAGE OF THE POD. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT ANY BETTER THAN THAT.**

_So I can only access the Ascended Seed when I'm around others who are feeling the same emotional highs as me?_ Kira asked, thinking back to Urbanis, where his desire for victory would definitely have been emulated by the rest of the Edenite forces.

**THAT IS NOT IT.** Leviathan's rebuttal crushed his momentarily lifted spirits as surely as a wave would crash down upon a shore. **IT IS A SINGULAR PHENOMENON, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OUTSIDE EMOTIONAL INFLUENCES. ONLY YOU CAN CREATE THIS ASCENDED SEED.**

_Well, that's not strictly true._ Kira countered with a heavy sigh and an ache in his heart. _The first time I ever did it, it was with Lacus's help. We fused both of our Seed's together and created an Ascended Seed. But that's not an option any more, I don't have anyone else that's close enough, emotionally speaking, to fuse Seeds with in that manner._

**YOU HAVE ME.** Leviathan pointed out, the simple love and support in her thoughts making Kira feel entirely choked up for a few seconds. **I COULD NEVER REPLACE YOUR MATE AND OFFSPRING IN YOUR HEART, FRIEND KIRA, BUT YOU ARE MY ONLY TRUE FRIEND, AND I WOULD GLADLY DO ANYTHING WITHIN MY POWER TO HELP YOU ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS.**

_I know, Levi, and your support is the greatest gift I could ever ask for, thank you._ Kira had to swallow and touched his face to make sure he wasn't crying. Not because he was ashamed of showing his happiness, but because it was cold enough for water to freeze on his cheeks if he wasn't careful. _I don't know how to explain but, but now that Lacus is gone... I just... I'm afraid of bonding again, even to my one true friend. Losing Lacus, Akira and Aoi all but destroyed me, I don't think I could stand to feel something like that again. It's nothing against you... but I have to do this on my own... its the only option for me now._

**I UNDERSTAND. IT IS THE SAME AMONGST MY FATHER'S KIND. THOSE WHO LOST THEIR PODS WOULD ALWAYS BE LONERS FROM THEN ON, EVEN IF THEY PERIPHERALLY JOINED ANOTHER POD, THE MEMORIES OF THEIR FORMER KIN WOULD ALWAYS KEEP THEM APART SLIGHTLY.** Leviathan heaved what could only be called a sigh, and the pure mental force of it nearly sent Kira to his knees. **PERHAPS IT IS FOR THE BEST. I WOULD NEVER FORGIVE MYSELF IF WE BONDED AND YOU WERE DROWNED IN MY MIND UPON JOINING. YOU ARE MANY GREAT THINGS... FRIEND, ALLY, EVEN FATHER-FIGURE... TO ME, KIRA. BUT YOU ARE STILL A HUMAN, AND AS SUCH, EXTREMELY FRAGILE. I MUST TAKE CARE WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES.**

_Well, I'm not quite made of glass, Levi, but I take your meaning, there would be a real risk of psychic burnout. We'll just have to content ourselves with our friendship as it is. And I have no complaints there._ Kira smiled as he began to scale the cliff-like side of her body, before feeling a invisible gentle grip close around his body, letting himself go limp as she lifted him up and deposited him onto her head as easily as he might lift a dust mote with his palm. _But enough about serious matters, lets have some fun, okay? There's more to life than straining ourselves to reach excessive goals after all. If having children taught me anything, its that sometimes you have to play before you can work._

**IF... NO, WHEN... I HAVE OFFSPRING OF MY OWN, EVEN IF IT NEED BE THROUGH THE AID OF YOUR HUMAN TECHNOLOGY, I HOPE THEY CAN TEACH ME AS MUCH ABOUT LIFE AND HAPPINESS AS YOUR CHILDREN DID YOU, KIRA.** Leviathan commented with unfeigned envy.

_Oh, are the other Chimerae being bothersome again?_ Kira queried with a smile, as he lay down on his back atop her, staring up at the brooding sky. _Boys will be boys, regardless of species, once you reach a certain intellectual level, or so it seems._

**THEY ARE EXCESSIVELY HORMONAL. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN A CASUAL MATING, NOT EVEN FOR PRACTICE. ESPECIALLY NOT AFTER EXPERIENCING YOUR MEMORIES OF LACUS AND YOUR CHILDREN... HAVING EXPERIENCED TRUE LOVE, AS IT WERE, I CANNOT SETTLE FOR ANY LESS MYSELF.** Leviathan answered with a billowing exhalation from her blowholes, a mimicry of a human sniff of disdain.

_Well, not to make a metaphor into a bad pun, but there are a lot of fish in the sea, Levi, you might want to try your flukes at one or two of them just to see if maybe there's something to like there. I'll freely admit, what Lacus and I had was pretty special, but she wasn't the only girl I ever fell in love with or spent time around in an intimate manner. Athrun was luckier than I was, actually, Cagalli was the first girl he ever got intimate with, and he's still with her today. The same with Yzak and Katie, though he did lose Chanel in the process, so that wasn't exactly sweet romance. I'm not saying you should spread... or whatever it is you do when mating... for any Chimerae that happens to swim by, but romance is one of those things that often needs a lot of practice and patience to work right._ Kira answered with a half sappy grin.

**PERHAPS. IF I COULD FIND ONE WHOSE MIND DID NOT EXCESSIVELY DWELL, HOW DO YOU HUMANS SAY IT... AH, IN THE GUTTER... THEN I MIGHT CONSIDER IT. THEY ARE A LITTLE TOO MUCH IN TOUCH WITH THEIR "ANIMAL" SIDES FOR THE MOST PART THOUGH, ACTING LIKE THEY HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THEIR BIOLOGICAL URGES. I SHUDDER TO THINK WHAT MIGHT HAVE OCCURED WERE ANY OF THEM BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN ME... THERE ARE SOME CONCEPTS THAT SHOULD REMAIN HUMAN ONLY...** Leviathan shivered all over with disgust, an interesting experience for a creature of her size, sending twenty foot waves crashing away from her in all directions.

_Now, that's not exactly fair. That particular behavior occurs in dolphins too, or at least it did, before Green EDEN._ Kira reminded her. _So there is a cetacean precedent, you might say._

**DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON DOLPHINS. WE'RE LUCKY THEY GOT THE SHORT END OF THE STICK ON THE EVOLUTION SCALE, I SHUDDER TO THINK OF WHAT A MESS THOSE HORNY FREAKS WOULD HAVE MADE OF MY OCEANS HAD THEY SURVIVED THE REMAKING OF THE WORLD.** Leviathan grumbled, slapping her tail fluke down for emphasis, sending a geyser of water almost fifty stories into the air, with a sound louder than a dozen thunderclaps.

_The dolphins all died out? That's kind of sad, dolphins were one of the few mostly wild animal species that we humans really liked..._ Kira observed with a shrug.

**YES, YOUR SPECIES DOES HAVE A HABIT OF JUDGING WITH THEIR EYES OVER THEIR BRAINS. AS LONG AS AN ANIMAL IS CUTE, ALL ITS SINS ARE FORGIVEN. NEVER MIND THAT THEY WERE THE PSYCHOTIC SEXUAL DEVIANTS OF THE OCEANS, THEY WERE CUTE, AND THAT'S ALL THAT REGISTERED WITH YOUR SPECIES... I'D SOONER MATE WITH A MEGALADON THAN A DOLPHIN! AT LEAST THEN I'D KNOW I WAS GOING TO GET CHOMPED ON FROM THE GETGO!** Leviathan's tone was positively indignant, though Kira could sense her laughter as well.

_I guess I see what you mean. Better someone who's vicious because that's their nature, than someone who's vicious because they enjoy it. Dolphins were one of the only other species to kill for fun. Though speaking of Megaladons, whatever happened to Gorefin? I haven't seen him since Orb, is he all right?_ Kira asked, the absence of the Lord of the Upper Reaches, one of Leviathan's two chief lieutenants, and also likely her friend, having occured to him a day or two back. Gorefin was supposed to be in charge of the top layers of the oceans around the world, he would have thought the gigantic neo-shark would have at least paid them a visit sometime in the past two weeks.

**GOREFIN IS FINE. HE DECIDED TO STAY BEHIND WHEN WE LEFT. SAID SOMETHING ABOUT ACTING OUT A MOVIE SCRIPT HE PLUCKED FROM THE MIND OF ONE OF THE SCIENTISTS WHO HELPED TEND HIS WOUNDS. SOMETHING ABOUT A GIANT SHARK TERRORIZING BEACHES AND EATING SCANTILY CLAD HUMAN SWIMMERS. I THINK HE'S SPENT TOO MUCH TIME IN SHALLOW WATER MYSELF, CLEARLY HIS GILLS AREN'T FEEDING HIM THE OXYGEN HE NEEDS TO FUNCTION PROPERLY...**

_I think I know which movie he's talking about. A friend showed it to me once, it scared the hell out of me. I was afraid to go swimming for days afterwards. I would think a single human wouldn't be much of a meal for him though, assuming he could even get that close to shore without beaching himself. And I agree, there must be something wrong with him... he's spent too much time around humans... he's acquired our absurd sense of humor..._ Kira chuckled at the thought of an actual shark vicariously watching a horror flick about a killer shark, and suddenly getting a flash of inspiration.

**PARTLY IT'S ALSO THAT HE'S NEVER BEEN IN THAT SECTION OF MY OCEAN BEFORE, AND HE'S CURIOUS, AS IT DOES FALL WITHIN HIS DOMAIN. AND I DID THINK IT BEST TO HAVE MY OWN "EYES" IN THE AREA, JUST IN CASE. WERE THEY NOT FROM THE SKY-SEA, I MIGHT ALMOST PITY THOSE HUMANS IF THEY TRY AND MASS UP ANY MORE FLEETS OF THEIR METAL-FISH IN THE NEAR FUTURE. A SINGLE HUMAN WOULD BE LIKE EATING A SINGLE PIECE OF A CHIP, BUT YOU HUMANS DO TEND TO CONGREGATE IN GROUPS ABOARD YOUR METAL FISH, ENOUGH TO SATISFY EVEN GOREFIN'S HUNGER IN A TEMPORARY FASHION.** Leviathan commented with grim humor. **I'M SURE HE'LL GET BORED SOONER OR LATER, AND I WILL RETRIEVE HIM, BUT FOR THE TIME BEING, I AM PERMITTING HIS "VACATION".**

Kira was thinking of something else to say when he felt the first icy raindrop splash against his face. Leviathan hardly noticed the rain herself, but Kira doubted he would much enjoy walking back across a mile or so of water in a sleetstorm to reach his survival shelter. _Hey, Levi, could we do that thing again? I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of it._ Kira asked, rising up into a sitting position to shield his face from the precipitation. _Just for an hour or two if that's all right? I want the worst of this ice storm to blow over before I go ashore for dinner._

**YOUR WISH, MY FRIEND, IS MY COMMAND, OR HOWEVER YOU HUMANS PUT IT.** Leviathan answered with the mental equivalent of an excited grin... she enjoyed doing this almost as much as Kira after all, as it was a unique experience for them to share. Inhaling deeply through all of her blowholes, Leviathan applied gently telekinetic pressure to Kira to hold him in place on her back as she slowly twitched her flippers and flukes, moving out into the ocean proper as she slowly began to submerge herself, building a stronger telekinetic cocoon around the top part of her body where Kira sat, so that even when she was fully submerged, Kira was surrounded by a bubble of air about forty feet in diameter. She set a gradual course for the bottom of the ocean, over seventeen thousand feet below the surface, carefully adjusting her telekinetic counter-pressure so that the bubble of air around Kira remained constant, even as the outside pressure grew to the point where it would crush him flatter than a crab beneath her fluke.

It was a tour of a world that was still, in an age of space colonies and even colonization of other planets, still largely a mystery to humanity, the deepest stretches of the ocean being beyond the ability of humans to cost effectively explore in any real sense. It was cold, and dark, but Kira's armor systems kept him warm, and a powerful flashlight in one of his armor compartments gave him the ability to see in a limited fashion, enhanced when Leviathan's telepathic summons brought forth a massive swarm of phosphorescent jellyfish around the air bubble, their translucent bodies glowing like blue, red and green stars in a three dimensional sky, extending out to infinity in all directions. It was breathtaking, simply beyond words, a sight literally no other human may have ever laid eyes on before. She'd already taken him to the bottom of the Marianas Trench in one of their first forays... the deepest spot in the world, where even Mt. Everest would be submerged by several thousand feet if immersed there!

She'd swum over subocean volcanic rifts, glowing red lava sending up torrents of bubbles across kilometers of ocean bottom, the very roots of new mountains slowly building up from the bedrock. He'd actually set FOOT on the silty soil at the bottom of the Trench, and almost lost his greave in the process, the mud being almost like quicksand. On a whim, he'd used the Burden to carve his name into a boulder on the seafloor there, a "Kira was here" that he wondered if anyone else would ever witness. He'd watched Charbydis, Leviathan's other Lieutenant, the Lady of the Abyssal Depths, who made her home in the Trench, as the great Kraken engaged in a dominance fight with another Kraken Chimera only a little smaller than herself. It had been simultaneously one of the most frightening and awe inspiring displays of raw power and ferocity he'd ever seen, as the two neo-squids literally tore entire tentacles off each other's bodies in their struggle, multi hundred meter long lengths of muscle which Leviathan had all too gladly sucked down like spaghetti noodles.

Charybdis had won, of course, her size, strength, skill and experience trumping over the male challenger, whom she stripped of all his tentacles... they would grow back... as punishment for his temerity. It was gruesome, yet at the same time, Kira couldn't help but find it kind of funny... the tentacle-less Kraken just looked absolutely ridiculous, and Kira could easily feel the shame and embarrassment of the other Chimera as he awkwardly swam off, often tumbling end over end as he lacked the ability to steer and modulate his water propulsion squirts with his tentacles gone. It was like watching a drunken fat man flee from a bar fight with his pants around his ankles. It was sick, but it was also amusing, in a twisted way that had you feeling sorry for the poor bastard. And then there was the victory feast, when Charybdis summoed a horde of gigantic crabs, each almost as big as a Titan tank, from the shadows and nooks of her domain, and cracked them open one at a time to get at the sweat meat within.

Kira had managed to secure a pincer for himself... it was almost the size of a family sedan... and though he'd never been much of a fan of sashimi, he had to admit, the crab meat wasn't too bad. The majority of it was up at his survival shelter now, along with the claw itself, which he was thinking of bringing back to give to Hector... he couldn't wait to see what the Direcat made of such a thing. He'd be able to make crab cakes for everyone in the Shark Party, as his own celebration feast for when he finally mastered the Ascended Seed! Today's trip wasn't nearly as exciting as that one, this was just a slow cruise through the depths, but Kira treasured it all the same, well aware that his life was literally in Leviathan's "hands" for the entire time they spent in her domain. He just wished he could somehow reciprocate, but bringing her kilometer long, multihundred thousand ton body anywhere but the ocean was impossible. So instead he was watching a lot of movies during his downtime, and then sharing the memories with Leviathan afterwards... he'd found many of the Chimera to be absolutely fascinated by human cinema, especially films that featured animals from which they drew ancestry.

He'd also, at Leviathan's specific request, shared with her a memory or two of Lacus's live performances, back when she still gave such, before having Akira and devoting herself to motherhood more fully. They were bittersweet memories for Kira, Lacus's voice as much haunting as it was beautiful, now that he knew he'd never be privileged to hear it again save through recordings or dreams, but as a creature descended from whales, Leviathan actually had a deep appreciation for music in all its forms, and he was touched that someone as mighty as the Grand Chimera would be so enamored of his wife's singing, and not just because she was his wife. He didn't have the biological equipment to hear Levi sing herself, and even if he had technological means of doing so, he doubted it would be like any song he would recognize, her vocal chords being so incredibly different from a humans, but nonetheless he was cajoling her into giving him a performance sometime, something about which she was almost adorably shy for some reason.

Alas, all good things eventually came to an end, and his two hour soujorn into the mysteries of the depths flew by in what felt a mere twenty minutes. The sleet storm had abated not even a trifle when they regained the surface though, and so Leviathan kept her pressure bubble active around him to ward off the hammering slush as Kira made his goodbyes and headed back towards the small, rocky island where he'd made his camp. A trip made easier by the swell of water he stood on that carried him shoreward at the speed of a fast car, a telekinetic waveform... sometimes it was quite luxurious to be best friends with the mightest telekinetic creature alive, especially when on the water. Another handy benefit of his association with the Ocean Mother came when he was about halfway back to shore, and Kira spotted a likely looking fish swimming a few feet below the surface. Stepping off the back of his conveyance wave, Kira turned his attention to the fish, a descendant of a tuna or halibut... the crab meat was good, and he did have a literal metric ton of it to go through, and he did have self heating ration packs at the shelter, but there was nothing like a freshly cooked fillet of fish to start dinner off right.

Noticing his interest through their tenative link... much different from a bond... Leviathan sent a telepathic command to the animal in question, bringing it to the surface in a docile fashion, and holding it still while Kira cut off a good sized chunk of its side using the Burden, leaving the rest of the human sized fish carcass to sink back into the depths... he could only eat so much after all. And all of this without a single word exchanged between them, a definite sign of how comfortable they were with each other. A part of Kira almost wanted to feel guilty for taking advantage of Levi's absolute dominion over every other creature that dwelt within the oceans, for a matter as simple as his dinner, but he forced himself to stop. Levi fed herself like this all the time, not wanting to waste precious energy on actually hunting enough food to sustain herself. It wasn't exactly fair, but most of the fish and other lifeforms in the seas were no more intelligent than a particularly smart cat, far from truly sentient, and the pecking order was firmly established. And he had better things to spend his energy on than fishing for his dinner too, come to think of it.

Reaching shore, Kira turned around and looked out to sea, waving one hand over his head in a gesture he knew Levi would feel more than see. _Thank's again for all the help and the wonderful fun, Levi. I'll see you again after two more tidal shifts._ Kira sent to his friend. Saying he would see her the next morning wasn't the best way of putting it for her... Levi spent most of her time when she wasn't with him submerged, she had little concept of telling time by days or nights, but she could intimately feel the rise and fall in ocean levels... tides... that came with the fluctuations of the Moon, which happened roughly every six hours, so two tidal shifts gave him about twelve hours until he saw her again. They both had other things to do besides train and have fun together after all, other responsibilities that called to them. _And remember, give some of the other Chimerae a chance. If they start getting touchy-feely, tell them I'll find myself in the mood for some whale shashimi and come looking for them with the Lucifer for some target practice. FRALA's dice and cook meat at the same time after all..._

**I AM CERTAIN THEY WILL BE SUITABLY TERRIFIED, FRIEND KIRA.** Leviathan replied with the mental equivalent of a smile. **REST WELL, AND I WILL REFLECT ON HOW TO BETTER EXPLAIN HOW TO ACCESS THE ASCENDED SEED TO YOU. OH, AND BEFORE I FORGET, NONE OF MY WATCHERS AND VASSALS HAVE YET REPORTED SEEING THE MINION OF THAT CAVE BOUND PARASITE LATELY, I'M SORRY. CALLER HAS BEEN EXTREMELY QUIET OF LATE, ITS BOTHERSOME...**

_Well, thanks for keeping an eye out anyway. I'm sure Frost'll turn up sooner or later, and probably when I least want him to. That's how he generally operates._ Kira allowed himself a dour moment before turning and heading up the beach towards the Lucifer and his shelter. _See you later, Levi._

**I LOOK FORWARD TO FEELING YOUR PRESENCE ONCE MORE, KIRA.** The Grand Chimera replied, as she slowly sank from view once more, returning to the business of her realm... though she did maintain his telekinetic rain shield until after he reached his shelter, as a courtesy. Honestly, sometimes he was almost afraid she was spoiling him, but then again, it felt good to be doted on by someone who truly cared once more...

xxxx

**That Night**

A combination of a belly full of hot food, combined with the warmth of the shelter compared to the icy environment outside, and a fufilling day of excitement and training prompted Kira to drop off to sleep relatively early on in the night, after fixing his meal and attending to various Shark Party and wider Edenite business through remote teleconferencing. Unlike Frost, Kira took his appointment as Executor with utmost seriousness, and there was far more to his duties and responsibilities than just being a champion on the battlefield. He didn't like it, but he spent a lot of time just talking politics with Hiero, discussing how best to counter the political maneuvering of the Conclave and the Memento Mori, as all three factions of the nascent Edenite nation squabbled and shoved at each other, trying to gain the most control over the course of the war to come. Just went to show that even with the Wind of Words, humanity could still find within itself the ability to be petty and disagreeable to each other in a time of common need.

He also spent a goodly bit of time in live communication with Vaul, the Warsmith of the Praetorians, who was responsible for much of the unique high technology the Praetorian Order had at its disposal. Though Vaul specialized in personnel weapons and gear, and especially the miniaturization of existing technology, he also possessed a great deal of authority amongst the Garden City scientific and engineering communities, and was often called in to consult on various projects, including the production and upgrading of Mobile Suits. So when Kira had expressed a desire to upgrade the Lucifer's capabilities in a certain way, based on the events of Urbanis, Vaul had been only too glad to put him in contact with the specialized engineers he needed, and functioned as an intermediary and advisor between them. Kira had come to have great respect and admiration for Vaul, even as he felt no closer to the man personally, as a friend.

That was just how Vaul was... he didn't choose sides, he provided help to anyone who asked for it, but he didn't get close to people often either. Which wasn't to say he had no ethics or morals, merely that he liked to keep his opinions private and his options open. He'd made the Executioner's Burden for Kira, and Deathshriek for Frost, and several LEMIM items for Kunai, but to say he favored the leadership of any one of the three of them would be a lie. They were all equally suited for leadership in his eyes, in different ways, and as long as they didn't make any demands for exclusive loyalty upon him, he was glad to help them out whenever they needed a favor that had to do with winning the war. Such a neutral stance was actually something Kira had long wished he'd been able to achieve in life, lending his aid to others as his personal morals dictated, rather than being forced to overtly champion one particular side or other.

Alas, by his very appointment as Executor, such a lifestyle was probably always going to be beyond his reach. Even after the Reclamation War ended, and after he dealt with Frost, he didn't think he'd be able to do as Lacus and he had done in the past, and retire to a life of seclusion and charity work. He'd finally accepted his place at the highest levels of government and leadership, and that was a choice you couldn't back down from... at least that was how he felt. He and Cagalli were identical in that regard. They didn't always seek out responsibility, but when they did take it, they kept it and never backed down from it ever again. Once an Executor, always an Executor, it might be best summed as. And maybe that was for the best... the Edenites would always need someone to protect them, from threats external or internal, and Kira had lived almost his whole life as a protector of one shade or another, so he really was probably the best man for the job. He would do his best to ensure no one else would have to suffer as he did...

It was during bittersweet thoughts like those when Kira drifted off into the land of slumber, so he wasn't altogether surprised to find himself in a dream, opening his eyes while knowing full well he was asleep, and looking around to find himself in what appeared to be a forest of some sort, though the trees weren't like anything he'd ever seen before, either on New Eden or Earth. The sky was curiously dark and turgid, like stormclouds but far more homogenous... though the setting also felt kind of comfortable and familiar, for all its forbidding aspects. Despite the lack of any visible light source, Kira found he could see just fine. Truth be told, he was a bit puzzled with the dream... if there was something his subconscious was trying to tell him, he didn't understand what it was. He reached out and put his hand on the trunk of one of the trees, surprised to find that it was fresh and vital feeling, despite its tough looking exterior.

The sound of tinny laughter in the distance caused Kira to jerk his hand away from the tree trunk in startlement, his head swiveling around to try and find the source of the sound, but the forest was too thick, he could barely see thirty feet in any direction. He tried to probe with his Deep Sight, but strangely, he got nothing from his Latent senses, not even a hint of which direction might lead him to the source of what had very definitely sounded like children at play. Not trusting his ears, knowing this was a dream where the laws of physical reality didn't always have to apply, Kira started walking in a random direction, hoping he would encounter whatever it was he'd heard. It beat just sitting around waiting to wake up anyway.

Frustratingly, he didn't hear any more sounds of laughter or amusement, and Kira indulged in a rare fit of pique, kicking out at the base of one of the nearby trees, hoping the sharp pain would function likea pinch, and at least wake him up enough to move on into a better state of dreaming. However, the instant his foot touched the tree bark, he heard the laughter again, and it sounded infistesimally closer. His bare foot ached... Kira belated realized he was naked... but the dream world did not dissolve into the roof of his survival shelter. Narrowing his eyes, Kira very carefully reached out and touched a finger to the nearest tree trunk. Children's laughter, bright and cheery, and getting closer. He took his finger away. Silence, and a feeling of loneliness, perhaps even disappointment. _Eureka, as they say._ Kira mumbled to himself, sitting down and putting his back up against the tree trunk, as he waited for the source of the sounds to come find him, trying to figure out why this dreamscape seemed so damned familiar to him for some reason.

Just as the sound of children at play grew so loud as to drown everything else out, it stopped, and Kira realized he'd closed his eyes in concentration as he tried to puzzle out just what was going on with this dream. It felt more... portentous... than any regular random sojourn through his subconscious. Feeling almost afraid to open his eyes, anxious that he'd see nothing at all when he did, Kira forced his lids to open, before his eyes flew wide and the breath rushed from his body in a painful jolt, as he caught sight of the two figures standing hand in hand across the small clearing from him, no more than ten feet away... though how far that was in the dream world, who could say. Kira's entire body, no his entire soul, ached for him to jump up and run to them, the boy with pink hair and the girl with brown, but something told him that if he broke contact with the tree trunk, they would vanish, just like their voices had earlier.

The two children seemed as surprised to see him as he was them, staring at him with wide eyes of violet and periwinkle blue, cored with the metallic golden pupils of Edenites with Active powers... traits they had inherited from their mother. Then the moment broke, as Aoi tore her hand free of Akira's grasp and all but hurled herself across the clearing towards him. _DADDY!_ She cried, loud enough to almost make his ears hurt, happy tears trickling down her face as she launched herself headlong into a glomp against his side. Kira was half afraid the figment would just phase right through him, but apparently his dreams weren't that cruel, and his daughter's image felt just as real as Aoi ever had. His heart ached horribly, but Kira closed his arms around the figment all the same, hot tears running down his own face as she snuffled and clung to him in desperate need for affection.

Aoi wasn't normally the clingy type, just the opposite even, she seemed to have picked up the teenage habit of deriding public displays of affection from him and Lacus, but whenever his daughter did recieve a fright or suffer a hurt that was of concern to her, she wasn't shy about seeking out solace in his arms, and very rarely, Lacus's. Far be it from Kira to assume his daughter did not love both her parents equally, but she definitely seemed to be more open in her love from him. He wasn't sure why his mind would dredge up memories of his children in this strange format, but Kira couldn't find it in himself to argue, despite the heartache of knowing he'd only ever be able to see them in dreams. He wondered why Lacus wasn't here, if his brain was determined to give him a spectral family reunion. Aoi felt so real in his arms, it was all he could do not to scream in anguish... he could even feel the wetness of her cheeks as she pressed her face against his shoulder, smell the sweetness of her midlength brown hair, the same shade as his own.

Akira approached more sedately, perhaps warily, surprise and shock still very apparent on his young face as he eyed Kira like he wasn't sure he really existed. Akira, unlike his sister, had spent a large portion of his young life as the clingy type, always glomped onto a leg or an arm of his parents, or riding on Kira's shoulders, like he was afraid to leave them alone in case they didn't come back. And even now at eight, going on nine years old, he was still much more publicly affectionate with his parents, only too happy to hold hands or sit on their laps whenever they were together. Not trusting himself to speak, Kira just held out the arm he wasn't holding Aoi with and beckoned to the figment of his son. This proved more than the Akira figment could take, and he too hurled himself sobbing into his father's embrace, which was actually extremely disconcerting to Kira. Was his sadness being projected onto these figments of his memory? It didn't seem right that his loss should be felt so keenly by those he had lost... if he had to encounter Akira and Aoi in his dreams, he wanted them to be happy and carefree, not tearful.

_We missed you, Dad... we missed you so much..._ Akira whispered, his arms almost choking Kira around the neck as he held on to his father.

_I... I miss you too, son..._ Kira managed to reply, his voice so hoarse with sadness that it hardly sounded like him. If a tearful renunion was to be the medium for this dream, then he wasn't going to argue, he was just glad to be with them for a short time. _I miss both of you so much, I can't even express it. I can't stand being apart from you like this, its a real struggle to get up and go on living sometimes..._

_Don't be such a drama queen, Dad, that's Mom's job! _Aoi scolded him, wriggling a bit in his grasp to indicate she'd regained herself a bit, and was finding the close hug a bit embarrassing. _We'll be together again eventually, the Deer said so..._

_I don't trust the Deer, and neither should you._ Akira berated his sister as she moved to sit beside Kira, rather than atop him. _Didn't you listen when Mom gave us the lecture about not trusting strangers?_

_Akira's right, Aoi, you shouldn't trust strangers._ Kira smiled sadly as he gave his daughter advice she'd never be able to heed. _Especially not talking animals._

_That's not fair._ Aoi complained with a pout. _You trust Whale-lady, and she's a talking animal._ She pointed out.

_Leviathan is different, dummy._ Akira retorted with a snort. _Levi is a nice talking animal, she'd do anything to help Dad, and he knows it. The Deer is a stranger, and he works for the Green Man. I don't like the Green Man, he always acts like he's some super smartypants that knows everything. Like Alice, but a hundred times worse._

_So where's your mother?_ Kira asked, having become quite lost by his dream-children's conversation. _I would have thought she'd be here too._

_We can't find her._ Akira admitted, a bit shamefacedly. _I can feel her, but I can't find her. Just the opposite with you, Dad... I can find you, but I can't feel you. It's really strange._ He sighed in frustration.

_Maybe if she wasn't so mean to the Deer all the time, he'd let us visit her._ Aoi answered with a shrug. _Mom needs to learn she can't always get her way anymore._

_Aoi..._ Kira said her name a bit sharply, to let her know that he wasn't happy with that sentiment. _Your mother rarely if ever got her way in most things, so don't begrudge her for the desire to try. It's one of the things I loved most about her, she always tried to get her way, even when going along with the ways of others would be easier._

_Okay..._ Aoi sulked a bit at the reprimand. _So why haven't come to play with us more often? Every time we tried to come and find you before, you'd always go away before we got to you. Have I made you angry with me...?_

_No, never, not at all!_ Kia assured his daughter's memory. _I love you very much, and I always will. But..._ Kira froze up, unable to admit, even to himself in a dream, that he couldn't come play with her because she was dead. _But I've got a lot of work I have to do first, and I can't really put it off. I promise I'll have a lot more time to come and play with you both when the war is over, I'll come every night if I can. That's a solemn oath, sweetheart._

_Ah, that. The Green Man said something about the advent of a Fourth and a Pretender Fifth coming to pass before it would happen._ Akira said with a furrowed brow, his words not exactly enlightening to Kira. His son slowly pulled back from glomping Kira's neck, and gazed into his father's face with eyes that were almost exact copies of Kira's, save for the gold centers instead of silver. _You're going about it all wrong, Dad._ Akira said slowly, obviously thinking about something.

_Hm? What am I doing wrong now?_ Kira asked, willing to humor his son in pretty anything. And for that matter, Akira had been an incredibly bright young boy, and Kira had held several very technical conversations with his son back when he was alive, concerning some of the work he'd done for Morganroete and on LEXI, and Akira had never seemed lost during them, so it was far from out of the pale that he might have some advice worth hearing. Though about what, Kira could not fathom.

_You keep on trying to treat it like its just a bigger, better Seed._ Akira half admonished him, smashing Kira's indulgent thought process to a halt.

_W-what? What are you talking about, Akira?_ Kira stuttered for a second, wondering what was going on. Was his subconscious finally speaking up to try and help him master the Ascended Seed? What that the purpose of this bittersweet dream?

_Ignore him, daddy, he's just being a smartypants. Just cause he's already gone through Second Puberty, he thinks he knows it all when it comes to stuff like that..._ Aoi sniffed disdainfully.

_I am not being a smartypants. Dad's the most perfect Dad ever, but he's not infallible, and he's really doing it wrong this time._ Akira insisted with a gimlet look at his sister. _He's trying to treat the Tree like its a Seed, and they're just not the same thing at all. He's never gonna get it right, trying to do it the same way he does with the Seed. Are you saying you want Dad to constantly fail at something because he doesn't know how to do it properly?_

_Daddy never fails. He can do anything._ Aoi replied with simple and wholehearted faith that almost broke Kira's heart.

_No... I'm afraid that's not true, sweetheart. I have failed big time in the past, and there's some things I really can't do._ He told her as gently as he could, trying not to let his bitterness and grief at being unable to prevent her death from seeping into his words... these two figments didn't seem to realize they were dead, and even though it was just a dream, he couldn't make himself shater their innocence, it would be just too cruel, to all three of them. He turned to Akira, figuring that if his subconscious wanted to give him some advice, he might as well hear it out. _Go on, Akira, you're the expert today. What am I doing wrong exactly?_

_You're trying to treat a Tree like its still a Seed._ Akira repeated, his brow furrowed in frustration, as he searched for better terms to use. _Trees are bigger and better than Seeds, though they were once Seeds in the past. Trees are more complicated than Seeds, Seeds are simple, you just, well, WANT hard enough and they work. You still have to WANT to use a Tree, its a different sort of WANT. Any WANT won't do._ Akira rubbed his palm against his forehead, as if he could massage out the data he was trying to explain, before a shy smile broke out on his face. _Okay, look at it this way. Aoi is a kid, she's a Seed, she's simple, emotionally speaking..._

_And you're gonna be dead..._ Aoi growled fiercely, not appreciating being made fun of, especially by her brother, even for the sake of her father's enlightenment. Kira's hand on her shoulder brought her up short, and she wondered why her dad looked so hurt that she'd made an idle threat against her annoying brother. She decided, just this once, for daddy's sake, that she'd swallow her pride and let Akira have his smartypants moment uncontested._ Okay, fine, I'm the simple Seed, go on._

_While you, Dad, are an adult, you're a Tree, complex, emotionally speaking. You can't use simple emotion to unlock something stemming from complex emotion, it just won't work. But complex emotions are just combinations of simple emotions. Think about it, all the times in the past when you and Mom brought forth the Tree together... was it really your emotions that you were thinking about?_ Akira continued.

_Uhm... I think so. When we dealt with Frost the first time, and again when we defeated Noah at Cape York, and then in that small town, and at Urbanis... all the times I was in a life or death situation, pushed to my limits..._ Kira mused.

_No, Dad, that's not what I mean._ Akira seemed almost angry that he couldn't explain things properly. _Your life was in danger, but were you thinking about your life?_

_No, of course not, I was worried about much more than just my life, it was the future of humanity or large groups of..._ Kira trailed off, his eyes going wide with sudden recognition. _So you mean the Tree only comes forth when my emotional need encompasses more than just my own wants and needs, but instead the wants and needs of an entire group?_

_Yes, that's right. The Seed is for you... the Tree is for others. Seeds are simple, selfish, they think of themselves and worry about their own life, even if they are acting for unselfish reasons. Tree's are complex, deeply bonded to the rest of the forest and world around them through their roots and leaves and the insects that dwell within them and the animals and other plants. A Seed can act only for itself, but a Tree's actions affect far more than just itself, so in order to act, it must be in the interests of more than just itself, even if the reasons for so doing are selfish ones._ Akira replied excitedly, glad that his somewhat esoteric point had finally gotten across. You could only use the Ascended Seed when you were acting for the sake of others, above and beyond your own needs, whether it be to protect them or avenge them, no matter how much you wanted it, it could only come about when it was for their sake, not yours. In short, you could not be worried about the preservation of yourself when activating the Ascended Seed, it would come to you only when you were prepared to give up anything and everything for the sake of the people you cared about. It sounded simple, but the instinct of self preservation was hardwired into most human's brains... discarding the urge to protect your own life when it was at risk was extremely difficult.

_Seeds are for individuals. Trees are for groups..._ Kira mused, looking down at his son, the eldest Neo-Human and only one of them to have gone through Second Puberty. _So what comes after the Tree? Is that the Forest? How does that one work?_

_I... _Akira started to answer, before his head perked up and twisted around sharply, looking off into the depths of the forest, where gale force winds were suddenly whipping through the treetops. _We have to go. The Green Man has noticed that those are just dummies I set up in our dreamscapes. We can't let him know we were here. I love you Dad, just hang in there, okay?_

_Yeah! You stay strong, and don't let anyone beat you, or I promise I'll cry when I see you again._ Aoi admonished him, hugging his side forcefully. _I love you too Dad. And I love Mom too, though I do wish she'd be less weird, okay? Be sure you tell her that sometime._

_I will, sweetheart._ Kira promised, feeling tears well up in his own eyes again, as his children's memories slowly slipped free of his arms. He looked at Akira, and playfully ruffled his son's pink locks of hair. _Be nicer to your sister, she's the only one you'll ever have. And thanks for helping me out... I'll buy you some ice cream when... when I see you again. That's a promise._

_I'll try._ Akira smiled, and for a second Kira felt like he was looking into a mirror at himself from twenty years ago, even moreso than usual when looking at his son. That expression, both determined and a little sad, was just... _Goodbye daddy. We'll see you when we see you, and maybe mommy too. Say hi to Levi for me, she's a good person, and tell her that I'll be there watching the next time the Green Man calls a meeting._ And with those words, Akira grabbed Aoi's hand, all but dragging her free of Kira's grip, and both of his lost children vanished like the phantoms that Kira knew they were. He slowly stood up, feeling drained and weakened by the tide of emotions the dreamed visitation had stirred up inside him. Seconds later, he found himself staring up at the canvas rooftop of his survival shelter, and Kira sat up, finding his skin soaked with sweat, as if he'd been in tremendous exertion while asleep.

"What the..." Kira put his hand to his aching head, feeling like he had a hangover of some sort. Probably just residue from talking with Levi all day, she did her best to keep quiet, and he seemed less prone to damage from her psychic contact than most humans were, but even her whispers were almost like Lacus screaming in his ear at times. "Lacus... Akira... Aoi... bless you, wherever you are. I'm sorry, but its going to be a long time before I finally come to rest with you. I have too much to do, too many people to protect, I can't just be selfish, no matter how much I want to be with you." Still, Kira was amaed at how real the dream had felt... he almost thought he could still feel the weight of Akira and Aoi in his arms and on his lap! The conversation had been weird in the extreme, and Kira shook his head, wondering why his subconscious had to be so damned mysterious all the time... it was almost as bad as Yggdrasil, in its crypticness!

Kira lay back down and tried to get some more sleep... he was going to need his energy for tomorrow. _Seeds are for individuals. Tree's are for groups... I'll have to give it a try. Definitely beats pounding my head against a wall for no gain, like I've been doing the last few weeks. Leave it to my son to be the one who shows me how to be a proper Edenite..._ Kira thought, as sleep, this time dreamless, rose up to claim him once more.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City outskirts, Praetorian Mobile Suit test range, March 17th, 10:15 am**

_All test range instruments are calibrated and standing by, Executor._ Vaul's dry mental voice intruded into Kira's thoughts, as he completed his last minute system checks aboard the Lucifer. _We're all eager to see what can do with the fruits of our labor. I must say, I never expected to actually do any work on a Mobile Suit, but since we were focusing our improvements upon only a single system, my talents for miniaturization actually came in handy. It's been... a lot more fun than I was expecting._

_Well, I am extremely thankful for your assistance, both in helping me get set up with the engineering group as a whole, and in providing your individual expertise._ Kira replied, a trifle formally, respecting Vaul's unspoken wishes that they not get too personally friendly with each other, to preclude accusations of favoritism. _Though I do hope I haven't put you in a difficult place by so doing. I udnerstand you were integral to the creation of the Exemplar's QC shard system, which is why I asked for your help with improving the Fractal Feathers and Wings of Light, but to be entirely honest, I'm afraid of what you might do with the Kratos's equipment..._

_Fat chance of that ever happening, Executor. Executor Frost is more possessive of his Gundam than most men are of their wives and children. He won't even let me look it over, much less propose any ideas for improvement. He looked like he was thinking about killing me when I merely suggested the idea. I still don't know who does his engineering and maintenance... its obviously someone with a lot of access to Brotherhood technologies, including several forms that even we of Garden City don't have access to, but who that might be, I can't say._ Vaul sighed with a bit of professional envy. _The Kratos will have to survive without my special touch, alas._

_Forgive me if I'm not exactly saddened by the thought._ Kira replied wryly. He settled back into his meditative pose in the Lucifer's cockpit space, letting himelf fully connect with the NIC system, the Burden unsheathed and laid carefully across his lap where it would be held in place by his GRS field effect. A QC sword was the last thing you wanted to go sliding around inside your cockpit during a fight after all. _I'm going to do this in stages, just like we discussed. Starting off in normal mode, you can release the target dummy drones at any time._

_Understood. Releasing Phantasms now._ Vaul answered, signing off with a mental click. Almost immediately, the Lucifer's now active threat sensors chimed inside Kira's head, data scrolling across his eyelids as armored silos in the walls and floor of the valley where the Praetorians tested their heaviest wargear began disgorging flights of semi-autonomous drones, each about thrice the size of a Fractal Feather pod. The Phantasms didn't look like much, and were completely unarmed, but they were very fast and agile, and their purpose was defensive and deceptive, rather than offensive. Each Phantasm drone was equipped with a Holoshroud and sensor profile mimickry system, much like the technology the Traitor Gundam had been equipped with, allowing them to project an image of dozens of different types of Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors, and adjust their sensor profile to match the projected image, confusing enemies with a horde of "illusionary" foes. It was a relatively new technology, at least in this application, designed as part of a lead up to some other project Vaul was working on for Kunai.

For the purpose of this exercise, the Phantasms took on the appearance of a mixture of Solar Knight Vindicators and Orb M-7's, and Kira did have to fight down a slight twinge, when he saw "Orb" machines arrayed against him. And it was because of that twinge that he had specifically requested Orb machines appear amongst his simulated enemies. Orb was his enemy now, his attack on Nara-Attha City had garaunteed that for all time, he couldn't afford any sentimental attachments to their forces anymore. Furrowing his brow slightly, Kira deployed the Lucifer's basic armaments, firing with the 50mm Ion Disintegrator rifle in either hand, trying to herd the drones together into a large group, as he scattered the Fractal Feathers widely and focused on splitting his Hellfury FRALA beams to slice and dice the concentrations of targets. This was by now second nature for him, and he could do so while maneuvering to avoid enemy firepower without hardly even thinking about it, his newly honed Latent senses making what was already an easy drill seem entirely effortless.

His weapons were powered down to test levels, so none of his shots did anything besides register on the drone's as hits without actually destroying them, the control center marking his progress and kill count even as more and more drones were launched, ever increasing the number of enemies he had to deal with. "Okay, moving on to the next level. I'm going to activate Seed mode." Kira commed, not wanting to drop out of his near meditative state in order to initate psychic contact.

"Roger that, Executor. Salvation system reads fully operational. We're starting up the low power turrets now." Vaul replied calmly, doing a good job of hiding his excitement, as the first of the upgrades to the Lucifer was put into action for the first time out of simulators. After seeing the Lucifer in action at Urbanis, Vaul had agreed with Kira that the true power of the Gundam lay not in the amount of armaments they could mount upon its frame, but in its ability to control and concentrate the firepower of enemies and allies alike using the Wings of Light. And so they had conceived the Salvation system, an extra pair of wings mounted between and slightly below the Lucifer's original wings, each Salvation wing was about fifty percent bigger than an original wing. Normally the Wings of Light consisted of 36 Fractal Feather pods, each pod capable of utilizing Citadel, Positron and Geischmedig-Panzer type energy shield effects to absorb or redirect various kinds of firepower. Each Salvation wing carried another 48 Fractal Feathers and 6 new Refractor Pods, for a total of 108 extra defense pods, quadrupling the amount of defensive technology Kira had at his disposal.

However, he could only control that many individual pods when he was in Seed mode, the rest of the time they functioned as spares and in the case of the Refractor Pods, as situational support for the primary system. The addition of the Salvation wings did lower the Lucifer's top speed and maneuverability rating a bit, but the added top end defensive capability should more than make up for it, all parties agreed. With the Salvation system fully active, no normal enemy should be able to get within a few hundred meters of the Lucifer before being mowed down by the lattice of bouncing and reflecting firepower contained within the Wings of Light, and even abnormal enemies would have to be very careful about how they prosecuted their attacks.

And even if they did manage to get close, fully half of the Refractor Pods... 6 of the 12... were QC shield pods, like miniature versions of the QC shield Heine's Wraith was equipped with. Slightly bigger and bulkier than a regular Fractal Feather, these pods were designed to help Kira when faced with enemies at close quarters, especially those with QC weaponry that could pierce most ordinary defenses, and their thruster systems were designed to be strong enough that they weren't as easy to knock aside as the more normal pods were. The other 6 Refractor Pods were equipped with special miniaturized gravity generators, courtesy of Vaul, based off the Photorefractor Cloak systems of the Spectres and Wraiths, allowing the pods to literally bend light around themselves and a small area. This helped immeasurably when dealing with FRALA shots in particular, and also allowed Kira to block his enemy's view of some parts of the Wings of Light, so as to make it hard for them to predict where his attacks would next come from. And with all 6 working together, he could even hide the Lucifer from view... from a single direction anyway.

All told, the Salvation system increased Kira's area of control over the battlefield from about 100 meters to well over 700 meters, and anything and everything within that zone of control only existed there at Kira's whim, nominally speaking. Unfortunately, the one weakness to the Wings of Light and Salvation systems was that once deployed, they really limited the ability of the Lucifer to move freely about the battlefield, as the pods thrusters were nowhere near as powerful as that of the Gundam, and their internal power supplies, especially in the case of the gravity pods, were only sufficient for a minute or two of combat activity before needing to be cycled back onto the support wings to be recharged. Of the course the Lucifer could move out of the area of the Wings of Light at any time, but it might have to sacrifice a few feathers that ran out of power before being able to rejoin the Gundam in its new position.

However, if used as intended, the Lucifer shouldn't have to make many movements when the Wings of Light and Salvation systems were operating together. And Kira demonstrated this, as automated beam and hyper impulse turrents mounted in other sections of the valley environment pumped a steady stream of low intensity energy beams into the maelstrom of flashing lights, splitting lasers and strobing plasma blasts that Kira contained within the expanded Wings of Light, like a man might hold a jar of fireflies in his hands. Not a single Phantasm drone could approach within a kilometer of the Lucifer, not even when dozens tried to come from all sides at once. Perhaps Executor Frost and the Kratos might have been able to breach the defensive masterpiece Kira had woven around himself, but it would take someone on that level or close to it to even attempt to bring the fight to the Lucifer.

However, the demonstration test was not yet over, as there was still yet one more level for Kira to test out. It had taken him considerable time and effort, even after the revelations from his subconscious in that dream with Akira and Aoi, to master the Ascended Seed, but at long last, barely three days before he was scheduled to return to garden City for this very demonstration, Kira had achieved it! Ridding oneself of feelings of self preservation while devoting yourself to the service of others was NOT easy, perhaps even moreso in the relaxed environment of training, but Kira had figured out a way to fool himself, at least long enough to achieve the activation. One would think that Kira Yamato would find such a thing easy, but he'd found that maybe he wasn't quite as pure hearted as everyone made him out to be... he'd put himself in harms way for others easily enough, but he'd never intentionally set out to disregard his own life in so doing, it was just something that happened in the split second when everything hung in the balance. It took concentration, though thankfully the process was brief enough that his guard would only go down for a fraction of a second.

All he had to do was immerse himself in the memory of that fire at the Rowan tree, the fire that had taken his family from him forever, and all but ruined his life. Not just remember it, actually immerse himself in it, until he could smell the smoke and hear the screams of Monty as he combusted from the inside out, until he could dredge up the awful feelings of panic and the utter need to find and safeguard Lacus and the children, regardless of what cost he paid, even if he had to crawl through the fires of hell themselves. That was the sort of emotional need that called upon the Ascended Seed, the willingness to sacrifice yourself for those you cared about, body, mind and soul. In a way, it was like calling upon a temporary insanity, where your normal personality and instincts no longer held sway over you. It was painful in the extreme... he couldn't do it without screaming in real torment as he forced himself to relive the worst moments of his life, and his mood immediately afterwards was indescribably dangerous. But then again, if he was calling upon this in the heat of battle, that was precisely the mood he wanted to be in, the mood of the Executor alone!

"Ready the auxiliary deployment systems." Kira commed, his voice rough as he began steeling himself for the trauma of forcing an activation of the Ascended Seed. His hands turned white knuckled upon the grip of the Executioner's Burden, his skin already feeling the oppressive heat of the fires as he began to submerge himself in the memories of that tragedy. "I'm going to take it up to the next level for a bit. Don't talk to me, unless I talk to you first. I have to go to some pretty nasty places, mentally speaking, in order to do this, and I get pretty worked up afterwards. Just... don't aggravate me, just let me cool off on my own."

"Understood, Executor." Vaul told him, in an extremely somber tone. "Salvation system auxuliaries coming online now, override control circuits are ready for linkage to the Lucifer. Be careful, sir..."

"I'm afraid thats the one thing I can't be, Vaul." Kira said, with a smile that was more a snarl, as he opened and then closed his eyes, calling forth the memories of smoke and fire, and confusion and fear, and hearing the sounds of those dying in horrible agony, and remembering exactly what it felt like to dig up Lacus's burned arm in the wreckage afterwards, letting that raw emotion pour through him as he imagined himself doing it differently, seeing the giant blazing tree-lodge in front of him, its doorway a mouth into hell, full of fires hot enough to scorch steel into blackened ruins! And then he pictured Lacus, Akira and Aoi in the midst of that, fire creeping in on them from all sides, the childred huddled on the floor, Lacus standing above them, her arms raised to ward off the death that was coming for them.

And then his memory-me was running, sprinting, hurtling towards that cauldron of fire, the heat enough to blister his skin every from a dozen meters away, but it didn't matter, the only thing that mattered was reaching them, and saving them, and then the wall of fire rose up before him and Kira hurled himself into it, feeling his body bake and blood boil and none of it mattered and... there was the Seed, violet with silver veins, dropping so achingly slowly through the vastness of his mental landscape, and it was simplicity itself to reach out and pluck it from the air, clenching his fist around it as he dropped to one knee in the loamy soil and buried both Seed and fist into the nuturing foundation of his being! His mental landscape shuddered and cracked, the enormous silvery tree with violet leaves bursting forth from where he'd planted his Seed with earth shattering power, towering over him and pulling him up into its embrace via his hand embedded in its heartwood.

"By... the... Tree..." Vaul whispered, shivering all over as he felt the Executor all but ignite on the psychic plane, a reaction many of the people in the test control center shared, their eyes wide and faces pale as they felt for the first time an Edenite activate the Ascended Seed, powerful, almost caustic emotions pouring off the mind in the midst of the Lucifer, all but scalding them even through their own mental barriers, several kilometers distant. The night black Gundam raised both arms towards the heavens, as if in slow supplication to some higher power, before Vaul realized that it was just the Gundam reaching for something only the pilot could see, a desperate lunge played out in slow motion as the Executor struggled to break free of whatever memnomic trick he'd used to help him reach this state. And when he heard the Executor scream, it almost stopped his heart in his chest, such a cry of suffering and rage and determination was it... no soul tormented in Hell could have screamed any more poignantly.

And then, without another word, the Executor sprang into action, calling forth the second part of the Salvation system, yet more Fractal and Refractor pods that were to be mounted upon the machines of the Shark Party controlled Mobile Suits... four here, a half dozen there, never enough to overly compromise the fighting and maneuvering abilities of the Dervish or Spectre or Wraith in question, but enough to add up to another 108 pods in all, doubling the overall size of the Wings of Light, even as secondary control codes newly programmed into the OS of each Mobile Suit would switch on, allowing Kira to literally control his allied machines as if they were extensions of the Wings of Light, becoming a true combat coordinator in the most literal sense! Currently the auxilary deployment systems and override circuits were not yet installed on the Shark Party machines, but they could test Kira's ability to control the extra 108 pods at least.

It was a spectacle beyond words... nothing could even approach the Lucifer when the Executor was in this state, his zone of domination extended across the entire battlefield, or in the case, the entire valley, which lit up so brightly with contained energy that it was visible even from the city proper, several mountain ridges away! Even putting the auto-turrets to their highest difficulty setting, normally only used to test the defensive capabilities of groups of Praetorians acting in concert, didn't make a single difference... indeed, it only made the Executor more powerful! It was truly the ultimate expression of defense and passive offense. Vaul just hoped it would be enough to deal with these new BALOR abominations of the Oosen... their capabilities were still frighteningly unknown...


	64. In the Heart of Jungle

Author note: And this chapter pushes me over the 1 million words mark for all three books of TGA. I know of a couple other story series that reach a million words in total, but I don't know of any other story series, at least on this site, where each story in the series exceeds a million words. Unique accomplishment? I'm truly too lazy to check, since there's no filter for 800K words plus stories. Anyway, I'm just happy to have broken 1000 reviews before I did a million words, in this fandom, with Gundam Seed now close to 10 years old, that's a lot of reader input. And I thank you very much for it, and for your patience when I disappear for a month or so at a time. Though to be honest, that seems to be fairly normal among authors on this site, and I have several authors on my favorites list that take 2-3 times as long to update as I do, even at my... well, not my worst, but they usually take 2-3 months per chapter.

In other news, I got a review from someone on Chaotic Cosmos... number 386, by Ai Sakura... where they offered to post links to the story, or the story itself, on some other Gundam fansite. This is something I am very much interested in, and Ai Sakura asked me to get back in touch with them by replying to their review. Unfortunately, they left an anyonmous review, with no link back to their profile. Does anyone know this person, or know how I might get in touch with them to convey my interest in their proposal? Or for that matter, know of any other fansites upon which I might be able to post TGA?

This chapter covers the arming up of the Edenites for the next phase of the war, including long awaited looks at their Warships and Erk/Eric's Gundam, Ymir, as well as some other stuff I don't want to reveal before reading. Next chapter will be the same with the USN, and Asmus, if I could ask a favor, could you re-send me the ideas you had for the Vanguard armor and other upgraded USN gear? I seem to have misplaced the PM's you originally sent. Thanks in advance. Finally, I'm debating doing a retcon of the name of either Strategos Rachel of Legio Basilisk, or Gunnery Sergeant Rachel, Rico's girlfriend... I didn't intend for them to have the same name, it was a slip up on my part. Is it too confusing, or, like Jean Kellson and Jean Dylan, are the identities of the characters obvious despite the same name? Please give me your opinions.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Military-Industrial park, Feburary 20th, Morning**

_War. War never changes..._ Kunai thought to himself, as he and his train of aides, assistants and allies conducted a tour of the factories and workshops where the military gear and equipment of Garden City was designed, produced and assembled. War was a complex problem, you had to factor in all sorts of tangibles... such as manpower, resources, industrial capacity, training times, building times, technology levels, extremely exhaustive cost-benefit analysis just to name a few... as well as plenty of intangibles, such as morale, public interest, dedication and loyalty of your soldiers, and the same factors amongst your enemy's populace. It was a problem he'd never enjoyed trying to solve, though he had spent the greater part of his life attempting to solve it to the best of his ability nonetheless... at first at the basic level, as EWS operator aboard the Archangel, and later at the highest echelons of command, as World President of the Isolation, and now once more he found himself overseeing a major war, this time from both on the front lines and a top down strategic overlay position, depending on the needs of his forces at any given time.

One of the few leaderships skills Kunai had never really picked up, in either his previous life or his Edenite life, was the ability to comfortably delegate responsibility to others, no matter how much he might trust their abilities. He was a chronic micromanager, it was just an inbred part of his personality, though he did his best to not let it overwhelm him these days... he'd seen, or rather heard about the results of concentrating power too much when the Isolation fell, as all it took was taking him and his closest friends out of the chain of command to all but paralyze a military regime that had conquered an entire planet! Of course it was a bit easier these days, since he wasn't technically at the top of the totem pole, and certainly his authority was far from absolute or uncontested, though his connections with the Conclave and his messianic status at Garden City anyway helped him get a lot done in the shadows that he would never have been able to accomplish through official channels. The Consols were split more or less evenly in their support between the Conclave and the Children subgroup, the Shark Party, led by Kira, though with reluctance.

But Kunai had access to Yggdrasil that no other living being did, and many of the most troublesome issues he had been forewarned of in plenty of time to set things up beforehand so that his work would be disturbed as little as possible by political maneuvering. And while recent events had somewhat shaken his former absolute faith in Yggdrasil's predictive abilities, he was far too deeply involved with the arboreal Grand Chimera to start second guessing his choices now. And besides, he still wasn't sure whether it was a matter of Yggdrasil being wrong about Cyprus's destiny, or that the Grand Chimera had merely seen fit to intentionally decieve him about what would happen, in order to achieve some more private or esoteric goal. Either way was troubling, though Kunai found himself hoping for the latter... he preferred an inscrutable boss to a fallible one. And there was certainly no doubt in his mind as to whom was who's boss in their relationship, despite his previous experience as a world bestriding leader.

Truthfully though, Kunai preferred it this way, with a rigid and well defined chain of command. He'd never wanted to be the top dog, it was just a necessity that had fallen into his lap, and that he was uniquely qualified to take up at that particular point in time. He had no problems serving under the command of someone or something else, as long as he was assured of their ability to handle their responsibility. And failed prediction or not, Yggdrasil was definitely still qualified to handle the responsibility of leading the Edenite race through these troubled times. Indeed, no one else could even hope to be able to do as good a job as the Great Tree, because of it's predictive abilities. He was, perhaps, slightly envious of Kira's bond with Leviathan... there was certainly no friendship between him and Yggdrasil, it was strictly business, but then again, that was only to be expected from a creature as alien to humanity as a plant-form Grand Chimera. The Caller was a creature of instincts, and Leviathan was a creature of emotions... which is why they got on so well with their chosen representatives, or not so well in Caller's case.

Yggdrasil on the other had was a being of almost pure intellect and cold logic, with no animal instincts or concept of emotional closeness with others to trip it up on its path to maintaining balance and prosperity for all life across New Eden. Yggdrasil did not love... but neither did it know hate, it merely existed as an unbiased observer of life, who could only be roused to direct action by a threat to the planetary ecosystem and biosphere. Therefore the Grand Chimera of Air was the most reliable of all the Grand Chimera, if also the most impenetable and hardest to understand. Yggdrasil could not be taunted, distracted, blackmailed or intimidated, and it had nearly infinite patience and the ability to approach decisions unswayed by emotions... something which Kunai sometimes wished he was capable of. Such as the decision to allow Zacharis Frost to become an Executor, despite his past... Kunai could never have accepted that on his own, no matter how much the Edenites needed Frost's strength now. But Yggdrasil had no such hangups.

Though to be honest, Kunai still hadn't accepted Frost in the slightest, and the moment it looked like the war was tipped irrecoverably in the favor of the Edenites, Kunai was planning on taking down the second Executor with extreme prejudice, before the madman had a chance to even suspect the possibility of betrayal. The problem was figuring out a way to get rid of the psychopath without harming Lilia, and preferably without it being obvious that Kunai was behind the assassination. He and Lilia had shared a mentor-student relationship that was close to familial from almost the moment he'd rescued her from her hell-pit of a basement shortly after the Eden Disaster struck, and it burned at his heart like a sulferic acid bath to see her so apparently enamored of the man Kunai hated... and to be completely truthful, feared... more than anyone in all existence! But killing Frost was quite a problem... Frost's nanoenhanced body was so insanely durable that an accidental death would be just about impossible to arrange in a believable fashion. Well, it was a quandry for another time, right now Kunai had more important and pressing things to ponder, and an inspection tour to conduct.

His group included Arboreal Praetorian Alexander, his right-hand man and chief enforcer, as well as Strategos Magnus Ullric of Legio Garm, the commander in chief of all Custodial forces, and Ullric's chosen second, Strategos Rachel of Legio Basilisk. Basilisk had been reassigned to assist Garm in fortifying Garden City against the eventual assault they all knew was coming, when the Oosen forces finally managed to stumble across the location of the Edenite capital and strongpoint. Though participating in the homogenization of the Custodian forces like all the other Legios, Legio Basilisk still retained its special heavy cavalry division consisting of more than a dozen huge Basilisk bulls, each reptilian mount more than twenty meters long, and capable of carrying several heavy weapon equipped Manifold squads into battle at a surprising speed... and most importantly, over even the roughest terrain, as the Basilisk's six legs and strong claws allowing them to scale even vertical rock walls as if they were flat ground... a definite advantage in mountainous terrain.

They made a no doubt intimidating sight... Kunai was the smallest member of the group, and he wasn't particulary short or puny, but because she wore her heavily ornate Custodial war-plate, Strategos Rachel bulked quite a bit more than he did, and was of similar height, using a cruelly bladed halberd with an electrified warhead... both weapon and control goad for her basilisk mount... as a walking staff. Some thought of using a goad to control a mount to be objectionable, but the truth was, the hide of a bull basilisk was so tough and thick, and their nervous system so slow to comprehend pain, nothing less than a fifty thousand volt shock would even get their attention! As for Ullric and Alexander, they were both giants among men, towering several inches over seven feet tall in their armor, though Alex packed more sheer muscle bulk onto his frame, whereas the older Ullric was more rangy and weathered, looking like a silvertip grizzly bear with his heavy beard and wild facial hair peeking out from beneath his garm skull warhelm. Both men favored heavy two handed weapons that let them use the full advantage of their strength, Alex a massive zweihander, and Ullric a double bladed battleaxe heavy enough that most people couldn't even pick it up!

Kunai had set aside his own wargear, more comfortable in simple garrison clothing than his specialty energy absorbing robes, and he hated giving people the impression he needed a walking stick in order to move around, so he kept the Twig of the World Tree in his quarters save for when he knew combat was possible or inevitable. But he didn't need ornate armor or a massive weapon to be threatening anyway... he could kill every other person in his group in a matter of seconds with some simple telekinetic maneuvers, probably before they could even make one attack in return. But he turned away from such pointless musings, as he knew he could trust each and every one of his companions to step in front of a beam blast for him... though they did not indulge in the same openhearted camraderie as the Shark Party, or exhibit the rough and tumble brotherhood of the Memento Mori, each of them was a fanatic of the same sect, in a manner of speaking, united through their common faith in Yggdrasil's guidance, and that was a bond not to be taken lightly.

The tour of the factories started with the raw materials processing plants, which were mostly just large vats filled with Red EDEN and kept heated via buried fusion pulse reactors, with raw stone and even biological waste being dumped atop the vats, and structural metals and rare elements coming out the bottom, after a suitable delay to account for the molecular deconstruction and reassembly process. The greatest portion of these materials went into constructing weapons and ammunition, as well as things like Mobile Suit skeletons and the engines and drive assemblies of vehicles and tanks. Getting the outer shells, hulls and armor for their military forces was a bit more tedious and rarified of a process, though it was still mass producable in a manner of speaking. Yggdrasilwood trees grew profusely across the greater portion of New Eden's landmasses, and it was from specially treated Yggdrasilwood that Borealite, the prefered armor of the Edenites, was created.

Yggdrasilwood was doughty enough to blunt a diamond tipped industrial saw, and all but impervious to even direct plasma strikes, even without being treated and stiffened during the refinement process, but was also much lighter than any comparable metal or ceramic-composite armor of similar thickness and protective ability, plus still retained a slight bit of flexibility, meaning it could be more easily shaped and carved to provide greater ease of movement and dexterity without compromising protection. The downside was that it did take about half again as long to make a piece of equipment out of Borealite as it would any other material, as often a great deal of the construction process had to be done by human hand, rather than allocated to nanites or robotic assembly lines. However, even before they'd suffered as many casualties as they had, the Custodians and Praetorians hadn't exactly been the most numerous of military forces, so they could afford to take extra time to outfit themselves with the best gear available, despite the extra production time.

Kira and the Shark Party were pushing for a reorganization of the Custodian's industrial setup, arguing that in a war of attrition, having more gear of lower quality was better than less gear of higher quality. Putting together a single Dervish with Borealite armor took up to three days, while equipping a Dervish with PS or HAC type armor would allow it to be built from the ground up in less than a day, actually only a few hours depending on how much energy you had available to fuel the nano-builders, and there was always plenty of power available. This strategy had allowed the Brotherghood of Humanity to field a force much larger than it otherwise would have been able to make up for, given the high rate of attrition its forces suffered in most battles... even a day or two out of combat and Noah's forces had been able to almost entirely replace any lost gear or units. Some were even arguing that replicating the Brotherhood's telepresence control technology might be a good strategy for bolstering the number of vehicles and Mobile Suits the Edenites had at their disposal.

Kunai and the Conclave were against both proposals. This war could never be allowed to become one where attrition decided battles, as no matter the methods they used, the Edenites would never be able to field a force even an appreciable fraction of the size of the Oosen military. Every Edenite soldier had to be capable and equipped to take out dozens of Oosen soldiers or there was simply no way they could hope to win battles, much less the entire war. That meant no compromising on either their training regimes or their quality of gear, despite the longer production times this entailed. As for using telepresence controls for Mobile Suits and vehicles, it was not a bad idea, except for one major consideration. When the technology was first pioneered and utilized, the quantum communication bands were all but inaccessible to the majority of military forces, meaning the control signals were all but impossible to detect, much less jam. This was not the case anymore, and especially taking into account the massive computing power of the AI systems of Orb and the USN, there was a real risk that any large scale telepresence unit would either be disabled by jamming, or worse yet, actively hijacked by those ultra-computers.

Garden City had some pretty powerful computer networks of its own of course, but the city was still in its infancy in a lot of ways, and it would be a year or more before the city's technicians would be able to put together a computer entity in the same league as the L.E.X.I. or N.A.M.A.R.A. networks... there was simply too wide a gap, especially in the self evolution and learning category, which accounted for much of the versatility and processing efficiency of the AI's. If the war was still raging a year from now, then it wouldn't matter if they used telepresence control systems or not, the war would have become one of attrition, and that was a battle the Edenites could not win. They didn't have the resources, not in industy or populace, to maintain this war at its current level, and all signs said the conflict was only going to be increasing in scope and intensity from now on.

The Custodians had to rely on their strengths... technology and personal skill... rather than trying to emulate the strengths of the Oosen... vast numbers and ability to recover rapidly from high casualties. In a fight between a big guy and little guy, the little guy had to be fast, skilled, and fight dirty if he wanted to win, as the big guy would always have the advantage in strength, endurance and reach. So far, these arguments had persuaded the Consols to keep things as they were, though Kunai knew it would be a long and hard fought struggle to keep things that way, especially as Kira's fame and popularity continued to grow because of his success on the battlefield. Trust Kira to acquire a sense of charisma right when it was least convenient for Kunai's purposes! A part of him really wished Kira would somehow stumble and fail, even as he knew such a thing would likely be disasterous for the Edenite cause as a whole. But damn it all, why did Kira have to be good at EVERYTHING he did? They were both Ultimate Coordinators now, why was Kira still able to outshine him so easily?

Well, Kunai had some plans coming to fruition that would see him taking the limelight and the lion's share of acclaim in the near future, he reminded himself. One of the chief advantages of the Oosen was their control of orbital space, and their ability to rain precision, high intensity bombardment fire from numerous capital ships down onto the battlefield, forcing any Edenite unit to have to fight either quickly or on very specific terrain that prevented the use of orbital fire support... such as inside Orb's Glasshouse field or near a high value Oosen structure, like the Mass Driver. Edenite Mobile Suits possessed the ability to reach orbit without the need for Mass Drivers, but it still took them quite some time, and that time usually left them open to attack from Oosen Mobile Suits or the warships themselves, and left the ground forces berefit of their close, heavy support units. They just didn't have the troops to win a ground battle while simultaneously keeping the warships busy, and actually making an attack on the Oosen homelands was, as far as almost every Edenite knew, a pipe dream.

Kunai knew that the secret of his Indigo Plan... what the Oosen was calling Blue Monday... would not remain secret for much longer, especially not after Kira had asked him about it directly to his face. Kira would no doubt be livid, but Kunai was not accountable to him, and had carried out the mission on Yggdrasil's direct advisement, so he knew that it was important towards ending the war once and for all, no matter how much of a massacre it had been. For the greater good, as was the Conclave's motto. Which wasn't to say he didn't feel guilty about it, somewhat, but he had grown very proficient at suppressing and ignoring his guilt ever since waking up as an Edenite. What would be, would be... and Yggdrasil had not shared any visions of him having a violent confrontation with Kira, so Kunai felt fairly safe in assuming that whatever would come wouldn't be anything he couldn't handle socially or politically. Although Yggdrasil hadn't warned him about what Frost would do after that maniac somehow got wind of the mission before it was hardly even finished...

Perhaps it would be a good idea to make himself scarce for a while in that case, and fortunately, that fit in perfectly with Kunai's plans for the next few months. He'd come back when he was able to wear the laurals of a seminal victory against the Oosen homelands in space, a feat even Kira had not dared consider at this point in the war, and with public acclaim on his side, Kira would have to bide unless he wanted to cause a potential breakup in the Edenite's government, something he knew his old friend would not countenance during such times of crisis, no matter how angry he was. And it was the means by which he would accomplish this coup de etat that Kunai and his companions next inspected, after heading deep into the bowels of one of the mountains that bordered Garden City. Much of this particular mountain had been hollowed out into an immense cavern, big enough to dock an Incarnate class dreadnought inside with room to spare, should one somehow be captured and brought intact down to terra-firma.

This was a very top secret place, not even the Executors knew about this location, the cradle for what would become the first Edenite space fleet. Of course this was more because they were always too busy leading from the front lines to really explore every bit of Garden City, as there was no way Kunai could stop them from entering this place should they hear about it, but luck had stayed with him, and now the fleet was almost ready to deploy, and neither of his fellow leaders was aware of its existence in the first place! And if even they didn't know, then it was a surety that the USN would never see it coming at all! Which was actually especially important, as neither class of the Edenite warships Kunai had ordered designed was meant to be a battlewagon, slugging it out with even the medium sized USN ships was just playing directly into the hands of the vastly numerically superior Solar Protection Fleet. No, the Edenite warships... the Loki class Stealth Frigates and Norn class Special Warfare Cruisers... relied upon speed, agility, stealth and deception in order to punch above their weight class, and if they ever fought a direct confrontation, it would most likely be against a foe that was already badly damaged or cut off from allies.

At the moment the sum total of the Edenite's hidden fleet numbered seven Loki classes and a single Norn class, barely a patrol sized formation by SPF standards. The warships were not easy to produce, since they were made from warship grade Borealite... better known as actual roots from Yggdrasil itself! The Grand Chimera possessed the ability to make itself grow at extreme speeds, at least for a living being, and given its towering size, even its normal roots were thicker around than most Mobile Suits were tall! These roots were significantly bigger than that, grown into a rough approximation of the warship's final shape by Yggdasil, before human technology stepped in to whittle down... sometimes literally... the raw root into a warship, hollowing it out from the inside out before cutting it free of the main root stem so that it could begin regrowing. Each Loki class warship was 135 meters long, by 30 meters wide and about 15 meters tall at their tallest point, near the back, and massed almost 15000 tons, which was miniscule by modern warship standards. Their crew complement was small too, only 24 crewmembers at full capacity. In shape they looked much like a maple leaf, with the middle part elongated about twice as far as either side, narrowing to a needle point at both nose and stern.

Because the hull material was from Yggdrasil itself, it was quite a bit more special than normal Borealite armor, and not just because of its physical durability. Though seperated from Yggdrasil, the roots themselves didn't quite fully die, not even when exposed to vacuum, and they retained a fractional amount of the Latent powers of Yggdrasil... just enough to project a hulltight sheathe of the same esoteric ability that allowed Yggdrasil to manipulate "reality" to hide itself from view despite it's size and location. Opinion was still divided on whether Yggdrasil could actually manipulate reality, or whether it was something less frightening, just not understood, but Kunai didn't really care one way or another. They called it the "LIHR" effect, pronounced "lier", standing for Latence Infused Hull Refraction, and it was an apt pronounciation, as the LIHR effect all but completely concealed the thermal and other sensor signatures of the warships, making them invisible to radar, thermal scanning and other, non-visual means of detection, even when the FPR's were fully powered up.

This "passive cloak" was enhanced by the addition of a Photorefractor array, the same light bending gravitic system used by Spectres and Wraiths to vanish from view, though like with the Mobile Suits, using any of the ship's ranged weapon systems, save for missile launchers, was impossible with the refractor cloak up, as the power draw was just so high. The entire warship was permeated with a GRS-II type cushioning field to protect the crew from sudden manuevers and rapid acceleration or deceleration... despite being a "frigate" class ship, the Loki's possessed a top speed and maneuverability rating comparable to the USN's Moebius Sigma class space superiority Mobile Armors, making them well over 4 times faster and a dozen times more agile than any other warship, and with near instantaneous ability to accelerate or decelerate. Additionally, the entire ship was wired with NIC-IV type control systems, allowing the crew to control the ship's movements much more fluidly than most warship crews could manage, and allowing even a single crewmember to operate the entire ship in a pinch, though at greatly reduced efficiency.

The crews were trained as Manifold groups as well, and the psychic bonding combined with the NIC-IV controls allowed them to function as more like a single being than a regular warship crew, when it came to combat or stressful maneuvers, efficiency of command and control that the Oosen warship commanders could only dream about. But they needed such an advantage, because the Loki classes were almost unarmed, by modern standards, and possessed little in the way of long ranged punch. The longest ranged weapon on the ship were a pair of forward facing 150mm QC Spike Drivers, scaled up versions of the weapons Spectres and Wraith's carried on their left arms, slower to fire but with much longer range and extreme penetrating power. But unless the shots were very precisely aimed, a pair of 150mm holes wasn't generally too much of a bother to something the size of a space warship.

The primary anti-ship weapon was a dorsal mounter turret, just forward of midline, that housed a 300mm Ion Disintegrator. Like the Mobile Suit class weapons carried by Wraiths and the Lucifer, the weapon was medium ranged, with a moderate rate of fire, though it did pack quite a bit of punch and penetrating power, and was good regardless of the type or armor or energy shielding systems the foe was equipped with. Each "wing" of the Loki class had 3 Thermal Exciters mounted on its outer edge, for close range munition interdiction and anti Mobile Suit/Mobile Armor capability, while the underside of each wing mounted a pair of 8 tube VTP missile launchers. Finally, the prow of the ship was able to mount a QC tipped ramming-lance containing a thermonuclear charge, and this was actually the primary ship killing tool of the Loki class... approach cloaked, ram a larger ship, break off the lance and retreat to a safe distance before blowing the charge, though obviously it was a ploy that could only be used once a battle, and carried with it a risk of being blasted apart by panic fire after the enemy discovered they'd been rammed by an invisible ship.

But the main job of the Loki classes wasn't really to engage in anti-ship combat, but rather to provide cover for the Norn class ships, and to misdirect and confuse the larger and more numerous enemies. In pursuit of this task, each Loki was outfitted with a Holoprojector and sensor profile mimicking system, similar to that use by the Traitor Gundam, allowing them to mimic the look and sensor details of a wide variety of Oosen ships, creating up to four different images at a time within a 50km radius of the Loki, making it hard to discern which ship was real and which was mere illusion. However the system could not be operated when the photorefraction cloak was on. Each Loki was also equipped with 24 semi-autonomous Phantasm drones, kind of like a ship based DRAGOON system, save that they were unarmed and equipped only with holoshrouds and profile mimicking systems of the Mobile Suit and Mobile Armor variety, allowing them to create a veritable horde of realistic seeming Dervishes or other Mobile Suits from thin air, to serve as visual camouflage and fire draws for whatever real Mobile Suit force was in the area.

While the Loki's were playing tricks on the enemy's perceptions and keeping them firing at ghosts and wondering what the hell was going on, it was the job of the Norn class Special Warfare Cruisers to do the real damage. Considerably larger than the Loki's, at 350 meters long, by 50 meters wide and 25 meters tall, with a crew of 80, the Norn's had the same basic shape as the Loki's, but were more angular and "serrated", for lack of a better term, more rakish rather than rounded, massing in at an incredibly light 75000 tons, a featherweight for a ship of that size. There was only one Norn class, the _Norn_, currently close to completion... even Yggdrasil couldn't manufacture a 350 meter long, 50 meter wide and 25 meter tall root in less than a couple of months, not while also maintaining the roots that kept the Grand Chimera alive anyway, especially with that "other" project taking up so many resources as well. Two other Norn classes, the _Fateweaver_ and the _Oracle_, were about 20 and 40 percent completed, respectively, but Kunai didn't have time to wait for them or more Loki classes to be built.

Though not nearly as agile or quick as a Loki, a Norn class was still faster and more maneuverable than any Oosen ship of comparable size by a significant amount, and they possessed the same near instantaneous acceleration and deceleration thanks to the NIC-IV controls and the GRS-II type inertial compensation systems as the Loki's had. They also lacked the photrefractor cloak system and the holoshroud system, though the LIHR type hull was the same, giving them great passive stealth capability, especially at the distance most space warship combat tended to take place. The Norn's carried a pair of 300mm Ion Disintegrator turrets, one dorsal, one ventral, at the midline area, for medium range anti-ship punch, with a single 750mm QC harpoon launcher for long range sniping attacks. Meanwhile a double handful of 15 tube VTP launchers and ten 57mm beam CIWS mounts provided close range protection against Mobile forces and munitions.

There was a secondary CIWS system as well, ported over from the Wraith class Mobile Suits, a "Odin Hammer" point blank Ion Arc Storm projector, which could fill a 500 meter radius around the warship with medium intensity Mjolnir type particle bolts to clear away any attackers who sought to get too close, though the system was slow to charge, it made for an excellent and very nasty "surprise" defense. Additional special weapons included a wide angle Gungir type EMP cannon mounted in the nose, and 8 very large, telepresence guided strategic missiles that could operate at extreme ranges from the Norn for up to 48 hours before their power supplies ran out. Though he was normally against telepresence systems, this was one situation where the benefit was worth the risk, as given how powerful the missiles were, and how expensive they were to manufacture, letting them get shot down by Mobile forces or CIWS fire wasn't an option. They were programmed to self detonate though, if their control signal was ever disrupted for longer than a few milliseconds after they were launched, as a safety measure.

The missiles were basically self propelled anti-ship lances, like what the Loki's would use for ramming attacks, with strategic scale thermonulear warheads for maximum striking power against the largest warships. Optionally, the missiles could also be fitted with nanite warheads, and Kunai was eagerly waiting for Vaul to get done tinkering with the latest batch of munition class nanites, to be called Maroon EDEN, as it combined the effects of Blue and Red... the Blue's ability to devour anything and everything and turn it into more of itself, but only up to a certain prearranged amount of nanites, after which any excess nano-conversion began turning materials into oxygen and hydrogen gas, potentially fuelling any fires caused from other damage, and thus powering a faster nano-decomposition by the Blue EDEN type nanites. It was basically nano-acid, with a thermobaric secondary effect, and could be programmed to become inert after as little as a few minutes or as much as an hour or so, and didn't have the potential for spreading out of control, like pure Blue EDEN or even Indigo EDEN did, though collateral damage from the igniting of the flammable gases created was still possible.

Another special "weapon" the Norn's were equipped with was an improved Deathtouch power draining system, again borrowed from the Wraiths, allowing the ship to remotely drain power sources of up to 100 gigawatts total at ranges of 50km, limiting the ability of enemy ships and Mobile forces to effectively power their strongest and most power hungry weapon systems, and rapidly draining into inertness anything that didn't have a self sustaining power source, such as nuclear or fusion pulse reactors. And last but far from least, the Norn's had large sections of LEMIM material built into their interior surfaces, dramatically amplifying the psychic abilities of the crew, especially since they were already Manifold bonded, allowing for the "special" part of the special warfare designation to come out in full, by psychically interfering with enemy crews, even mind controlling them depending on how large the crew was, and potentially even allowing for strategic level psychic assaults on massed populations, assuming the Norn crew was given time to focus without fear of being attacked.

"I still can't believe you're actually thinking of attacking the Oosen homelands with only 8 warships, no matter how capable they are." Strategos Rachel commented, after studying the nascent fleet of ships for a long few minutes in silence. "Were you any other man, I think I might consider that foolhardy, especially considering that almost all of your forces are basically illusionary."

"But what the Oosen bastards don't know will definitely hurt them." Alex replied with a sardonic grin. "Besides, Kunai's plan is hardly to just go up there and start attacking their warships."

"Indeed. Taking out their command centers, naval yards, and logistics stations is far more important, as without that infastructure, their bastard-huge warships can't operate in orbit for very long." Ullric rumbled agreement. "We can worry about taking down the Incarnates once they are low on supplies and weary from constant action, and once we have additional warships built, as even with all the advantages on our side, I cannot see us taking down a super-dreadnought entirely bloodlessly."

"I'm worried less about the Incarnates and more about the Orb ships." Kunai answered with a frown. "Our ships should be able to fly circles around an Incarnate, and flee from them before they get their weapons properly aligned to fire at us. Fleet Admiral Icarus is an experienced warship commander, but he's never been an inspired or adventurous leader, he prefers to take things slow and carefully, and his caution will prevent him from truly committing against us in a fashion that we can't sidestep or escape. The same cannot be said for Murrue Ramius, or Andrew Waltfeld. Fortunately the _Dawnblade_ was heavily damaged in our attack against Orb, and the _Endmyion_ is their Gundam carrier, so I don't see them deploying it outside of orbit, which will put them far out of range of what I have planned. Ideally, we'll never engage them directly at all, unless we can somehow manage to isolate them and have numerical superiority of our own."

"I still think you should wait until we've built up more of a fleet reserve. Tree forbid anything should go wrong, but if we lose these ships, not only will we be out our only fleet, but the Oosen will be expecting us to try again in the future, and without the advantage of surprise and unexpected capabilities, we are vulnerable..." Strategos Rachel countered, chewing her lip. She was more playing devil's advocate than anything, as that was the job of a good executive officer, to question their superior's ideas so that they could be made airtight. She wanted to see the Oosen get hit on their home turf for a change as badly as anyone, after all.

"No, I have to attack as soon as the _Norn_ is certified ready for combat operations." Kunai told her with a shake of his head. "Kira's attack on Orb has put them on the back foot for the first time in the entire war, that kind of psychological advantage won't last forever, and I need the populace to be scared and fractured in their resolve if my plan is going to have the widespread effects I hope it does. If I don't strike sometime in the next month or two, then the effectiveness of any attack would be severely diminished. No matter how often we destroy their fleet support stations, it would only be harassment type attacks, they can probably rebuild them as fast as we can destroy them. I need to bloody their noses with a fleet action, and while they're still reeling from that, that's when our psychic bombshell will strike the populations of the Second Earth's, and with any luck, they'll be so tied up regaining control of their civilians that they won't be able to go on the offensive again. It could be the turning point of the entire war..."

"And the longer we delay, the more time we give them to find Garden City and mount an assault upon Yggdrasil directly." Ullric added grimly. "I've heard troubling reports of the Memento Mori rabble encountering Oosen ground pushes in the Nepalese foothills, barely a hundred miles from here. They know we're somewhere in these mountains, and conversely the more we kill off their patrols and scouts, the more convinced they become that they've found the right spot. Damned if we don't, damned if we do... our only good chance is to give them something bigger to worry about back home. If it comes down to a seige of Garden City, they'll throw everything they have at us, and I'm not sure we can bear up under that kind of pressure for long, even with the Executors and Kunai. We'll make them pay a thousand gallons of blood for every footstep they take forward into the mountains... but that's a price they can pay."

"I wouldn't say its our only good chance." Alexander said with a self important grin, as he exchanged a glance with Kunai. "You should know by now that Kunai would never bet everything on a single gambit."

"You talk too much, Alex." Kunai wearily reprimanded his subordinate, though truth be told he wasn't all that irate, as he'd been planning on showing off his masterpiece trump card anyway. "I suppose its about time we brought the two of you in on the true last ditch trump card I've been preparing for the worst case scenario."

"Should I be hurt that you didn't think we were worthy of confiding in about it until now?" Strategos Rachel asked archly, her tone mild but her psychic aura betraying a definite hint of wounded pride.

"Do you expect the Praetorian Order to share every one of its secrets with the Custodians, Strategos?" Kunai replied with a cock of his head. "I'm sure you and Ullric have drawn up contingency plans for the defense and evacuation of the city and protection of Yggdrasil that you haven't consulted with me about. In fact I'd be disappointed in you both if you hadn't... I might conceivably not be around during such a worst case scenario."

"True enough." Ullric growled, clearly even less pleased than his second at being left out of a loop involving the defense of the city he loved, but knowing he hadn't a foot to stand on to complain with. "And you are letting us in on it now, so there's no point in crying over spilt milk."

"That's what I've always admired about you, Ullric, you're practical to a fault." Alex commented with a grin. "It's too bad you didn't decide to join the Order when you had the chance... you could have been an Arboreal yourself..."

"I can better serve my people where I am now." Ullric shrugged, a nearly tectonic motion. "I don't crave glory or recognition, and I would hate traveling all over the world acting like some sort of police constable or good samaritan." He eyed Kunai from beneath the brow of his warhelm, and his scarred lips tugged upwards in a sneering smirk. "Besides, I would have wanted to lead the Order, not merely be a part of it, and I had no desire to unseat Kunai after all the hard work he did establishing it in the first place."

"More like you were afraid to try." Alex retorted with a sneer of his own.

"It's the privilege of the young and brash to believe what they want, Deathbringer." Ullric rumbled, shifting his shoulders once more, hardly about to rise in anger to such a pathetic notion. "But enough idle posturing, what is this great secret?"

"Follow me." Kunai said, almost smiling at Ullric's boasting. Not that it was really boasting... at the point in time where Ullric had been offered a place in the Praetorians, Kunai had not been very practiced with the full scope of his abilities, and any confrontation between them could have gotten very interesting indeed. He was almost disappointed though, that Alex hadn't managed to provoke the wisened old wolf into smacking him down... something which Kunai knew Ullric was perfectly capable of doing. Alex was one of the top four serving Praetorians in terms of abilities and skills, but he was the bottomost ranked of that clique, even if he didn't realize it. He was too quick to anger, too prone to thinking with his pride rather than with pragmatism, and for all that he was likely physically stronger and faster than Ullric, Kunai could not imagine the Deathbringer being able to go toe to toe with the Garm-Breaker and coming out on top. Any man who could wrestle a fully grown Garm to death barehanded was not someone you wanted to mess with if you had any choice.

It wasn't like Alex was a bad person. Well, he wasn't a nice person, but he wasn't a bad person, not like Frost was for instance. He was an extreme patriot, and a fanatically loyal follower, and something of a hero worshipper, much like Lilia had once had her blind idolation of Kira. He let things go to his head too quickly, and was prone to leaping before looking, because he generally had the ability to fight his way out of any predicament he might find himself in. In truth, Kunai actually relied on Alex's choleric temperment, it was a very convenient distraction when he needed to accomplish something more subtly, and Alex was the perfect henchman, willing to perform any duty that Kunai asked of him without hesitation or question. It almost made him feel guilty, manipulating the fiery hearted young man like he did, but it was for the Greater Good. And sometimes having an attack dog at your beck and call came in very handy... certainly he was glad that Alex continued to try to antagonize both Kira and Frost, keeping them out of Kunai's way for the most part.

Though he hadn't seen either Executor around the city lately, and that was cause for some concern... there was no telling what Kira might get up to on his own, especially if he was off chumming around with Leviathan, and not knowing where Frost was at any given moment was like walking around with a bared knife at the nape of his neck! Usually he could rely on Lilia to keep track of the maniac, but he'd gone and left even her behind this time, and the possible reasoning behind that was enough to keep Kunai up at night if he wasn't careful! He guided his companions down a secluded access stairway, that eventually led down into the underground evacuation tunnels buried in the deep bedrock below the city. He was careful to take a circuitous route through the slowly growing labyrinth, and was doubly careful to bring them nowhere near the secluded cubby where Lacus and Kira's children were secured in sedation, before taking another secret access stair up into the bowels of another of the mountains that ringed the valley where Yggdrasil was rooted and Garden City built.

Almost immediately after they stepped out into the small antechamber that enclosed the access stair, they were confronted by an enormous humanoid shape looming out of the darkness, silvery eyes glowing with menace before the Wendigo recognized Kunai and grudgingly stepped back to where he had been crouched watching the stairway for intruders. Kunai had to fight down a slight shiver of apprehension, even though he'd known the guard would be posted there, as he'd set up the security for this place, along with Eric's help, himself. There was just something about being suddenly confronted with a nine foot tall, tusked humanoid creature in a dark room that was disconcerting to a human. Much less being in close proximity to a Chimera! Both Alex and Rchel had half instinctively drawn or lowered their weapons into attack position before Kunai had given them a gesture of reassurance, and even Ullric had made a momentary twitch towards grabbing his axe handle before thinking better of it. The Wendigo wore a heavy breastplate of Borealite, and carried a phase shifted warhammer taller than Ullric in one hand... in an enclosed space, a single sweep of that weapon could turn all four of them into pulp and smashed bones!

With Erk... Eric... now in control of the remainder of Wendigo tribe, after the previous Chief and many of his kin were killed during the battle of Urbanis, the Wendigo's had been taking great strides when it came to utilizing the technology of their human allies, if not quite fully understanding it. But you didn't have to understand why a gun functioned in order to use one, and the phase shifted maces, clubs and hammers were even easier to figure out, as were the crude suits of armor that covered their torsos and upper limbs, providing protection against beam type weapons mostly, as the Wendigo's leathery skin and dense flesh was quite difficult to truly harm with most infantry type ballistic weapons.

_How the hell does something so big manage to stay so well hidden?_ Alex groused through the Wind, staring pointedly at the crouching bulk of the Wendigo sentry, all but indistinguishable from a large boulder or jut of the rocky wall even though he was barely ten feet away from where they stood collecting themselves. The dimness of the room definitely helped, but it was still uncanny, Kunai could agree wholeheartedly with that!

_They're adapting so quickly..._ Ullric replied, half bemused, half impressed as he studied the Wendigo's equipment through the light amplifaction lenses in his helmet. _Barely a month ago and they wore daubed clay paint and fought with their tusks and forearm ridges, and now I wouldn't find this one too out of place amongst Legio Ironhide!_

_They're Chimera._ Kunai reminded them. _It's not a case of monkey see, monkey do... much more like show monkey basic concept and come back to find monkey has invented a new style of warrior culture a week later. I wouldn't be surprised if they catapult themselves from the Stone Age into the Gunpowder age by the time this war is over, culturally speaking. And for the record, don't call them monkey's... they like that even less than a human would. And you really won't like them when they're pissy. They tend to break things. Indiscriminately._

_Having just met one in the proverbial dark alley, I'm certainly in no rush to find out what they're like when they're upset._ Strategos Rachel commented wholeheartedly. Before they could continue their mental conversation, they all heard a surprisingly light "thump" as someone large and heavy leaped down from some high place outside the guard shack-antechamber. A moment later, the heavy metal door that sealed off the antechamber from the rest of the hollowed out mountain was lifted up from the outside... the only way it could be opened... and Kunai led his party out into the cavern proper.

**COME TO MAKE SURE WE'RE NOT MONKEYING AROUND AGAIN, MR. PRESIDENT?** A surprisingly cheerful and flippant mental voice blared into their minds, loud enough to make even Ullric wince in discomfort, despite this being about as quietly as a Chimera could really communicate with a human. Most Chimera didn't really have a sense of humor, not that humans could understand anyway, unless they were one of the rare sorts that spent a lot of time in contact with humans, such as the Forest Prince, but Erk, Shaman of the Wendigo's, was a special case. The Wendigo body that was Erk had once been the "village idiot" of the Wendigo tribe, a rare Active Wendigo amongst a tribe that was almost purely Latent. Outcast from his people for his differences, that Wendigo had stumbled upon a badly wounded and freshly EDENized Eric Kellson, a Solar Knight's pilot that had been shot down during the Brotherhood attack on the Solar Knight's African base during the Eden Disaster.

Through a complicated series of events no one was really sure of, the Wendigo had ended up "absorbing" Eric's consciousness, supplanting its own higher mind.. what there was of it anyway... with that of the human, "killing" Eric's body while at the same time granting him ownership of a Chimera body. Afer coming to grips with his new existence, Eric had managed to use his cunning, coupled with the Active powers of his new body, to weasle his way back into the Wendigo tribe as their spiritual leader, and had devoted himself to trying to help his new race survive and advance in the chaos of the wake of the Eden Disaster. Eric knew Kunai of old, back when he had been Sai Argyle, President of the Isolation, and Eric had been the lieutenant of Markov Ashino, then commander of the Isolation's Mobile Suit forces.

_I thought you said they didn't like that term..._ Ullric noted, in a private sending to Kunai.

_Eric's a special case. He has a sense of humor. Too much of one sometimes._ Kunai replied, not bothering to make it private. _And I've told you not to call me that, haven't I? I'm not that man anymore... he's dead now... as dead as Eric Kellson, in a way._

**DAMN RIGHT I DO. ITS THE ONLY WAY I'VE STAYED SANE.** Erk replied with a self conscious heave of his shoulders, lifting his dangling hands almost up to his thighs... Wendigo arms were exceedingly long, and their normal body posture mimicked that of their Gorilla ancestors, backs and shoulders hunched, as used to moving on feet and knuckles as feet alone. Erk's posture was considerably straighter than most Wendigo's, but he couldn't fight his new biology entirely, and it wasn't comfortable for him to spend more than a few minutes standing upright. **OLD HABITS DIE HARD, SORRY, KUNAI. BUT WHO'D HAVE EVER THOUGHT WE'D END UP MEETING AGAIN LIKE THIS HUH? IT'S A CRAZY FUCKING WORLD...**

"This is going to take some getting used to." Strategos Rachel said, a bit faintly, leaning on her halberd shaft a bit. "Not just the volume... but a Chimera that uses human curses and slang? I'd pinch myself, but there's no WAY my dreams could be this weird, so I have to be awake..."

**I COULD GRUNT AND SCRATCH MYSELF IF YOU'D PREFER, AND WENDIGO'S ACTUALLY HAVE SOME PRETTY OBSCENE HAND GESTURES THAT HUMANS SHOULDN'T HAVE TOO MUCH TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING.** Erk answered with sardonic tone. **AND I DO A KILLER KING KONG IMPRESSION, BUT I DOUBT YOU'VE COME HERE TO SEE THAT.** He adjusted the hang of his own "clothing", which was based off the thermal absorbant robes that Kunai wore when going into combat, but more like a toga than a robe... Wendigo legs weren't built for pants or other coverings going past the knee. The toga was brightly colored, dyed red and yellow and bright blue in eye searing patterns, and hung with all sorts of decorations, ranging from silken tassles to bits of animal bones and dried plants, including...

"Is that human skull real?" Alex blurted out, pointing at an off-white object hanging off Erk's beltline at his left side. The skull was missing its lower jaw, and painstakingly marked with blueish and pink clay dyes in swirly patterns. Even as he asked, Alex knew that it was... his own armor was carved into the form of a heap of human skulls, as befitted someone who took the callsign of "Deathbringer", he knew damn well when he was looking at the headbone of a human.

**TRUST ME, HE DIDN'T NEED IT ANYMORE.** Erk replied with another shrug. **I GUESS ITS KINDA GRUESOME IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, BUT I'M A WENDIGO NOW, SO IT DOESN'T REALLY BOTHER ME. BESIDES, I'M SUPPOSED TO BE THE SHAMAN, AND WHAT GOOD'S A SHAMAN WITHOUT SOME WEIRD JANGLY BITS AND FETISHES TO SHAKE ABOUT WHEN I NEED TO CALL UPON THE "SPIRITS" TO ENDORSE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY? THE WENDIGO ARE PLENTY SMART, BUT WE'RE STILL VERY MUCH IN THE DARK AGES WHEN IT COMES TO SUPERSTITION... EASIEST WAY TO GET THEM TO UNDERSTAND THE NEED FOR ARMOR AND GUNS IS TO CALL EM "MAGIC". UNDERSTANDING CAN COME LATER, RIGHT NOW THEY JUST NEED TO KNOW THAT THEY HAVE TO FUCKING USE EM.**

"If we're done with pleasantries, I did bring us here for a reason." Kunai reminded the group.

**UNDERSTOOD, BOSS. BUT YOU'D BETTER DO THE EXPLAINING, OR YOUR BRAINCASES WILL FEEL BROKEN BEFORE I'M HALFWAY DONE. DON'T THINK I CAN'T SEE YOU WINCING, WENDIGO HAVE EXCELLENT VISUAL ACUITY, ESPECIALLY IN DIM LIGHT.**

"Yes, that would be best." Kunai agreed with a tight smile, already able to feel the beginnings of a headache from even a short conversation with Erk. He waved his hand idly at one of the walls, where a series of power switches were bolted into the rock, a rather crude arrangement, but all of the nanites were otherwise tasked, and most of the work was being done by Wendigo's anyway, who didn't need much light to see by. Immense spotlights hung from the roof of the expanded cavern at the heart of the mountain slowly brought illumination to the cavern, and Kunai felt himself truly smile as he heard both Ullric and Rachel gasp in awe at what was revealed.

It was strongly modeled after the Wendigo in basic appearance, just as Mobile Suits were based off the appearance of a human, more or less. The legs were relatively short compared to the torso, with very large feet, while the shoulders were exceedingly broad, and the arms both long and bulky, especially around the forearms and hands, which were almost comically oversized. The head was sunk onto the shoulders with no indication of neck, the face wide and rough, with a definite pronounced brow ridge above the widely spaced and deeply set eyes. It looked like a primitive totem raised to some primate god, and the fact that it was made entirely out of Borealite, of both the normal and warship category varieties, only added to this image. Wendigo's of both genders crawled around on the body and limbs, following dictates from Erk and even from Yggdrasil itself as they worked in groups to hoist and place armor plates the size of main battle tanks on the "idol's" frame. Even though the Wendigo's were between nine and eleven feet tall, they looked like ant's crawling on the half skeletal structure of the idol.

"What in all the names of hell..." Ullric uttered, truly stunned for one of the few times in his life.

"We call it Ymir, after the primal titan whose body formed the entire world, from Norse mythology." Kunai said proudly, looking up... and up... and up... at the last line of defense for Garden City and Yggdrasil. "Before Eric became Erk, he was one of the most skilled and experienced Mobile Suit pilots in the Solar Knights. I would even say he might be deserving of a Gundam, certainly he piloted a Templar for the Isolation with aplomb and distinction in several major battles. He fought off Yzak Joule in a half crippled Strike Crusader once, it would be simply a waste to let those skills go unused. But a Wendigo won't fit into the cockpit of a human sized Gundam..."

**THAT'S SOMETHING OF AN EXAGGERATION. HE KICKED MY ASS, I JUST LIVED THROUGH IT.** Erk pointed out, a bit bashfully.

"You can't be serious...!" Strategos Rachel protested in shock. Not at Erk, but at the Ymir. "It's... it's just too... there's no way something that big can move about in gravity!"

"Ymir is 250 meters tall, and will weigh in at close to 35000 tons when fully constructed." Kunai answered her calmly. "It's over twice the size of the Judgement and Revenant Gundams, making it by far the largest humanoid war machine ever built."

"Strategos Basilisk raises a good point." Ullric rasped, waving a hand at the gargantuan construct. "It's TOO big, I'd be shocked if it didn't break its own legs the moment it tried to walk. Anything that big can't be mobile... not on the ground anyway."

"In the normal course of things, that would be true." Kunai agreed, a smile spreading across his face. "Even Yggdrasil's roots, which form the internal skeleton of Ymir, are not doughty enough to bear up under the kind of stress that would entail from Ymir walking about in gravity even appraoching that of normal for New Eden, much less moving in combat. But were there's a will, there's a way... as long as that will comes from a Chorus of Seed using Chimera level Latents working together to extend a "probability enhancing" field around the Gundam. We've seen this before, in some of the Caller's minions, specifically the Deathstalker Queen, a skin hugging aura that skews the "luck" of the universe temporarily in favor of the Latent. Call it manipulating reality, call it bending the laws of physics, call it what you want... it works. I've even personally seen Kira do it... its the only way to explain how he possibly survived the destruction of the Strike by the Aegis's point bank self destruction. We can make something walk, run, even jump that by all normal mathematical logic should collapse under its own weight after the first step."

"I'll believe it when I see it." Ullric said with a harrumph.

**YGGDRASIL TELLS ME IT SHOULD WORK.** Erk cut in with a very humanlike shrug. **I DON'T KNOW HOW LONG MY TRIBE CAN KEEP THE EFFECT UP, BUT AS LONG AS THEY CAN, YMIR CAN WALK. HELL IT CAN DO MORE THAN WALK, IT CAN FIGHT LIKE A GOD, IF OUR COMPUTER SIMULATIONS ARE EVEN CLOSE TO BEING CORRECT...**

"And you don't doubt Yggdrasil, do you, Strategos Magnus?" Alex asked pointedly.

"I do not. But I'll still wait to see it to believe it. Then again, something of that size, even if it falls over, it could wipe out a large section of Oosen forces..." Ullric replied shortly. He studied the gargantuan idol more closely for a bit. "I do not see where the weapons will be mounted, I must confess."

"Each eye socket contains a "Naegling" class Radiation Cannon... basically a small GENESIS laser system, much like the main gun of the Revenant Gundam. Though slow to recharge, each Eye can fire seperately, at ranges of up to 15km in a straight line, or both eyes can be used together for a wider swathe of destruction." Kunai explained. "Furthermore, the palm of each hand is equipped with a "Hrunting" type coherent beam projector... 800cm caliber, capable of generating a beam saber-like emission over four hundred meters long. Other than that... its 250 meters tall and weighs 35000 tons, armored in Borealite plates over a dozen meters thick at the thinnest point, and close to twice that across the torso and gauntlets. With a Wendigo at the helm, it doesn't really need much in the way of technologic armament."

**EVER HEAR THE SAYING "HE MESSED HIM UP LIKE HE WAS AN APE TESTING LUGGAGE"?** Erk joked grimly. **YMIR IS OVER TEN TIMES BIGGER THAN MOST STANDARD MOBILE SUITS, AND WELL OVER A HUNDRED TIMES THE MASS, IT'LL BE LIKE A TODDLER RUNNING AMUCK AMONGST PLASTIC ARMY MEN! I CAN JUST... WALK OVER THEM AND THEY'LL BE DESTROYED, AND I PROBABLY WON'T EVEN DENT THE ARMOR.**

"What about environmental damage? GENESIS type radiation cannons are known for being quite dire in terms of collateral damage." Strategos Rachel pointed out.

"Strategos, if we have to deploy Ymir, then environmental damage is the LEAST of our concerns." Kunai retorted dourly. "This is not a weapon I hope to have to use. It's a last ditch, pull out every stop, we don't care about what happens to this place, win at all costs type measure. I can't even conceive of a foe that would be dire enough to warrant us needing to deploy Ymir, but I decided to have it constructed nonetheless. Because I at least cannot see the future, and Yggdrasil seems to feel that Ymir could be necessary before the war is over."

"That's... troubling..." Ullric said with a heavy swallow, more like a gulp of trepidation.

"Yes." Kunai wholeheartedly agreed with that sentiment. He looked up at the colossal Wendigo-Gundam once more. "But at least we have forewarning... and Yggdrasil has never been wrong before..." _I hope..._

xxxx

**Somewhere, Somewhen, Somehow**

What most living beings would think of as dreaming was what Yggdrasil considered to be reality, while the reality of most living beings was something Yggdrasil could only experience in a dream like state. Though that was not to say the Grand Chimera was asleep, as it was never truly awake, not in the manner than animal lifeforms would understand. Yggdrasil possessed no organs, and especially no brain or central nervous system, rather each individual cell making up its entire form was connected as part of the same psychic network. A being greater than the sum of its parts, and the only thing keeping Yggdrasil from crossing over into the realm of what the humans called "Schroedinger's Cat", and becoming a self aware observation, was the fact that Yggdrasil possessed a definite physical form without which its mind and intellect could not survive. Having a physical body tethering it to "reality" was bothersome much of the time, but did come in handy every once in a while, such as when the humans needed raw materials for their greatest constructs.

The humans were certainly an interesting species... so weak by most standards of measure, yet still so important to what Yggdrasil saw should be, despite their fraility, their miniscule lifespans, and their lack of individual psychic ability. They weren't as numerous as the fish of the oceans or the insect swarms on land, yet they possessed creative and malleable minds unlike anything the realms of Chimera yet had to offer. Amusement was not truly something Yggdrasil understood, any more than any emotion a human would recognize was, yet the Grand Chimera did notice that a disproportionate amount of it's intellect and attention was often diverted towards observing the human species, and not just because of the vital role they would play in bringing about the 4th. They were incredibly simple creatures when taken as a society or as a species, yet when viewed and interacted with individually, they were quite complex, enough to often tax even Yggdrasil's ability to understand and predict how they would act.

However, individually they were almost always inconsequential as well, and so a surprise turn of events now and then on the individual scale was hardly a disruption to the true flow of what would be. There were some exceptions to this rule... those known as the Executors, or the female known as Lacus Clyne, for instance... and Yggdrasil had taken steps to ensure that they would not be lost before their time. Such as by introducing the Executors to Yggdrasil's brother and sister Grand Chimera, knowing that they would be intruiged enough by those exceptional humans to form connections with them, which would protect and enhance the human's already considerable abilities. As for the female, her presence, or rather the lack of it, was important for the present, and her reappearance would be critical for the future, once the Pretender 5th was in advent.

And most important of all was the slowly awakening Seedling child, who was growing more and more troublesome in the present, though it was only a pale shadow of the trouble he would cause for Yggdrasil in the time of what would be. The cost of doing business, as it were. Though to be entirely precise, the Seedling child was nothing more than the key that would unlock the hidden portal of potential that Yggdrasil had long foreseen, but never been able to coax open. And even the opening of this portal was but the critical first step along the long root-path to a future even Yggdrasil could only blurrily define. Focusing it's awareness somewhat, the Grand Chimera studied yet again what would be in the relatively near to be... within the next half solar cycle, as humans counted time. Peace and tension were the aura's of the present, while conflict was slowly building, like the earth-heat below the bedrock of the mountains. The False Pretenders were nigh, even as the champions of Earth and Water strove to ascend to new pinnacles, and Yggdrasil's own champion of Air laid plans that would accomplish much the same effect.

The war would expand, the blood of the animal species would soak the ground and glisten in the heavens, as Earth, Water, and Air faced off against Focus, Rage and Grief, and the True Pretender would be called forth from its cradle at long last. Things got a little less certain from there, and that tangle mass of "might be's" and "potentials" was what Yggdrasil now focused on unraveling and understanding. Would the advent of the True Pretender forge the warring humans together or sunder them forevermore apart? What would be the effect of the violated mountain goddess on the wider picture? Would the rancor of the three False Pretenders preclude them from working with the champions of the elements in the time of utmost need? Who would die, who would live, and when exactly would the 4th, the Grand Chimera of Fire, truly awaken?

Yggdrasil could discern the answers to some of these questions, and hundreds more, but the most important ones, the ones dealing with specifics of how long it would take for the 4th to waken after the advent of the Pretender 5th, were somehow obscured from Yggdrasil's comprehension. Yggdrasil had long understood the concepts of surprise and frustration, intellectually speaking, but this was the Grand Chimera's first time actually experiencing either sensation... much like a human would understand that fire is hot, yet not really get it until they touched a flame and were burned. Exerting itself, more like focusing a greater portion of it's attention on the subject, Yggdrasil sought to force what would be to attain the form of something it could decipher, yet the harder the Grand Chimera grasped at the tangled knot of possibilities, the less detail became apparent. It was almost as if the very power it was expending on the effort was being absorbed and used to confound the attempt!

Never before had Yggdrasil encountered active resistance from something in what might be, and so the Grand Chimera took a step back, mentally speaking, coming to the conclusion that no amount of forcing would unravel this skein of obfuscation. It wasn't a question of raw power being used on a complicated series of events, the knot of possibilities was being somehow protected from Yggdrasil's perceptions. And the only way Yggdrasil could imagine such a thing being possible was through the application of a time alteration type effect, something only the most powerful of Latent beings could accomplish in any real sense. The champion of Water could scratch the very surface of such capability, but it really took a Chimera, and more accurately a Grand Chimera, to truly pull it off in any useful fashion. Unable to peer into the effects of this time dilation... as any interruption to the flow of how events temporally happened was definitely sure to make it impossible to comprehend how and when future might be's would occur... Yggdrasil "felt" for the edges of that which was hidden, and began back tracing the lines of possibilities, looking for the root cause of what was preventing the efforts to unpick that knot of fate.

Yggdrasil did not "see" events in the future, not in the way a human would mean the term, as Yggdrasil did not possess ocular organs of any sort. Nor ears, or nostrils, or sense of taste. As for tactile sensation, in a way, but again, not in the same way an animal lifeform would think. Most of Yggdrasil's "senses" were mental in nature, allowing the Grand Chimera to abosrb the very mental energy of that which it perceived in what might be, drawing upon memories and sensory data from the minds of those in what could be in order to convey that data to those who yet were. There were no human terms for describing how the process worked. The closest human explanation for what occured would be like hacking into a computer's webcam through the internet in order to view what was going on around that computer, except that instead of locations being seperate physically, they were seperate temporally, and sometimes the images displayed were not from a webcam at all, but instead false echoes from a computer that was shut down. And that was still almost entirely wrong.

The perceptions which Yggdrasil was borrowing when the Grand Chimera found the root cause of it's inability to perceive the area within the time dilation belong to that of a human, a male. The human was of course unaware of Yggdrasil's attention being focused upon him, save for perhaps an unconscious shiver or two that would be attributed to a case of nerves. Checking with the perceptions of Yggdrasil's own true body, the Grand Chimera was somewhat discomfited to realize that it's mental perceptions were only a few diurnal cycles from what humanity would call the "now". It was rare for the Grand Chimera to peer at such a "close" future, as usually Yggdrasil foresaw events weeks or even months prior to their occurance. The human was a technician, working in a place called Nifelheim, or actually, below the place called Nifelheim, a secret place buried beneath a secret place.

There wasn't much to perceive, the space where the human worked was large and dimly lit, and cold as humans felt the sensation, artificially so. He was carrying a carge case containing some sort of medical equipment... it looked something like the injector units in use in Garden City's medical centers, but was far larger, big enough that the human had to carry it in both upper limbs. For a long time the human did nothing, setting aside the large injector as he bustled about the room, some sort of refrigerated cavern, attending to minor tasks that Yggdrasil neither understood nor cared to understand, recognizing that they were ultimately irrelevant. Many watchers would have grown impatient or bored, as hours and hours passed with nothing of note happening, but Yggdrasil had no concept of boredom. Finally, the human finished up his inconsequential tasks, as he was joined by a second human, this one female, tall with blond hair. The human male felt a quick flash of desire, instantly suppressed with a heaping dose of fear, and Yggdrasil once again felt that it would never understand why emotions were supposed to be so great... they were just confusing, as far as the Grand Chimera could tell.

The female and male exchanged words, Yggdrasil absorbing the verbal data without understanding it... having no ears, Yggdrasil could not hear, and thus had no true understanding of speech or other vocal communications, but the Grand Chimera could read mental intent just fine, and the verbal data could be genetically encoded into the Grand Chimera's fruits for passing down to those who did comprehend languages... the Forest Prince was Yggdrasil's usual translator, as that Chimera had frequent contact with human culture. Erk the Wendigo shaman was also a useful resource, though Yggdrasil often had to visit the human turned Chimera in his sleep, as Erk was not quite mentally equipped to deal with direct linkage, like a true-minded Chimera would be. The female was in charge, and she was commanding the male to do something with his injector thing.

The male was reluctant, but did his best not to show it, failing in that, as he turned to look at a section of the cooled cavern that Yggdrasil realized the human had been carefully avoiding looking at or thinking about the entire time. This section of cavern was home to something that Yggdrasil at first took to be a large human of some sort, before the male's perceptions of scale informed Yggdrasil that the being viewed was dozens of times larger than any human could be. It also differed in several physical characteristics from humans... it seemed to possess no gender, and large white feathered wings, like those of a hawk, grew from its back, bound with heavy chains and straps for the time being, as were the arms and legs of the thing, keeping it restrained even though it was supposed to be unconscious and uaware. There were bits and pieces of silvery metal that protruded from beneath the skin of the thing as well, though their intent or purpose Yggdrasil could not discern, and neither did the human male know them.

The chest of the human-like thing was surgically sliced open along the breastbone, skin, muscle and ribs peeled back, the body cavity strangely bloodless despite being open to the air, the interior packed with organs and more silvery equipment that Yggdrasil knew did not belong in a mammalian physiology. Near the largish organ that Yggdrasil thought was the creature's primary circulatory organ... the heart... were two things that looked like bird's eggs, made from something that was both like flesh and like metal, filled with a semi-translucent fluid that almost occluded the curled up fetal forms of two young humans contained within, one per egg. Which was all very curious, but not what Yggdrasil truly cared about, as the Grand Chimera's perceptions moved forward, closer and closer to the bronze colored skin of the captive thing's ankles as the human with the injector kit approached the creature.

Sudden disorientation smashed into Yggdrasil's perceptions, the humans borrowed senses suddenly turning blank and useless. Recoiling, Yggdrasil sought to return to a few seconds prior, trying to figure out what had interrupted its scrying, but the sensation of disorientation was still present even when Yggdrasil went all the way back to when it had first found the root cause. It was the same sensation that the Grand Chimera had encountered when trying to unpick the tangled knot of causation and consequence earlier. Time dilation interference. In human terms, Yggdrasil's future sight was being selectively jammed! Was it the work of the Pretender 5th? Was that even possible? For perhaps the first time in its entire lifespan, Yggdrasil did not know the answer to a question, and no amount of peering forward or backward in temporal perception would answer it!

_**MOST TROUBLESOME...**_ Yggdrasil commented to itself, the focus of the Grand Chimera's perceptions now back in the now, browsing amidst the infinite forest of sapling potentials that represented the unconscious identities of the humans, it's voice like all the winds of the world rustling through the branches. _**MOST TROUBLESOME INDEED...**_

xxxx

**New Eden, Himalayan Foothills of Nepal, April 1st, Early Afternoon**

_Damn it, Zach, just how long are you planning on being gone? What are you up to anyway? Where did you go...?_ Lilia thought to herself, as she sat on one of the ridgetops that poked craggily above the encroaching jungles of the lowlands, enjoying the warm sunlight from the partly cloudy sky, mixed with the light breeze thatshe could feel from being above the forest canopy line. At her back was more jungle, eventually interrupted by higher and higher ridges of stone and rock, which then became mountains, and eventually the Himalaya's proper, all but their lowest slopes bare of vegetation, and their crowns capped with white snow and ice year round. To her front was a seemingly endless green ocean, Yggdrasilwood and Blankwood trees without number, soaring well over a hundred meters into the air in most cases, and sometimes far higher. With her helmet on, and vision magnifiers at maximum, Lilia could just barely make out the thin blue line in the far distance that was the shoreline, where the green ocean met the blue ocean, which was far vaster still.

As nice as the view and the breeze were though, the main reason Lilia was up here wasn't to find a pleasant place to have her lunch, but to keep a weather eye out for any more Oosen air convoys, or suspicious looking breaks in the forest, heralding another attempt by Oosen scouting forces to probe into the foothills and establish a forward base of some sort. From here she could see the Oosen forces coming well before they got into the treacherous terrain of the foothills, perfect ambush environs, giving her troops time to get into position to attack and destroy the Oosen. That was what she and the Memento Mori had been doing in the months since Zach had run out on her invitation to the Synthesia concert, without even a face to face goodbye, though the recorded message telling her not to try and follow him he'd left was better than just abandoning her, because it at least showed he intended to eventually return.

And in truth she knew the basic answer to the last question she'd thought, as Charon had been giving her daily updates on the progress of the expansion of the Citadel, and the integration of the "civilian" Kindred into more modern lifestyles, and Zach's presence at the Citadel had been frequently mentioned in those updates. But he wouldn't talk to her, not through the Wind or through technological comms, wouldn't even pass a message through Charon, and according to the semi-AI, Zach was gone from the Citadel for long periods, days at a time, and left without telling Charon where he was going or why. And sometimes, especially in more recent days, Zach would leave so suddenly Charon couldn't even keep track of it, and would likewise reappear in the depths of the Citadel without seemingly passing through any of the locked gateways and passages leading in from the outside, which Charon had confided was driving him to distraction trying to figure it out. Lilia had no more clue than the semi-AI though, and she wondered if Zach would tell her what his new secret was, if and when he returned to her side.

Or rather, allowed her to return to his, as she was sure he would think of it. She could come to him, but he wasn't going to go to her, because that would elevate their relationship yet again to a level he wasn't currently comfortable with. Well, frustrating or not, it was still a step above how they'd been before, and once Lilia had gotten Zach accustomed to her being by his side... rather than beneath his heel... then she could work on getting him to accept the idea of considering her a friend, or maybe even something more, rather than just a servant. To be "with" him, rather than "beside" him. And once she attained that level of trust, and perception of parity, she could really get started on smoothing out some of his rougher edges. Or so was her current plan anyway... it wasn't good to think too far in advance when it came to Zach, he was too mercurial to predict in any real sense.

The mere fact of her present situation was proof of that! Things had been going so well in the wake of the battle at Orb, it was the closest Lilia had ever seen Zach to actually being happy or carefree, even to the point where he was willing to indulge in recreational activities that didn't involve the two of them being naked and entwined, or psychologically tormenting people. Though she wasn't entirely sure tricking them into playing that damned ball game wasn't a psychological ploy in its own right... she was still recovering from all the bruises she'd suffered, and more than half the Praetorian team had to be carried off the game field in stretchers! But apparently she'd tried to push too far, too fast with the planned outing to the Synthesia concert, a large scale social event, and she'd come back from getting her civilian outfit ready to find Zach gone and the message device sitting on the bed in her quarters.

Well, at least it wasn't that he was rejecting her, he'd just said that he needed to do some work on his own, and didn't want her around distracting him. So he'd asked her to please not follow him, and hearing that recorded "please" had almost been worth the aggravation of having him run out on her. No, scratch that, hearing Zach use the word "please", even vicariously, was stupendous progress, she'd rather see a hundred "date" nights fail than miss out on such a rare occurence! Him admitting that he got distracted when she was around was rather flattering too, despite the harsh way he'd phrased it. Lilia no longer really entertained any expectations of ever hearing Zach admitting that he had true feelings for her... not in a wartime timeframe anyway, maybe after another ten or twenty years of her working on him... but she was learning to read between the lines, and infer what Zach meant even if he himself did not entirely realize what he was saying. The prospect of fighting the BALORs had excited him so much that he wanted to increase his own abilities even more, and the best way for him to do that was to seek out solitude, meaning no distractions, pleasant or otherwise.

Lilia would have been overjoyed to be asked to help Zach train, but she knew he would never ask her for help, and certainly not with anything related to combat. And for that matter, when she thought about it, she didn't know what she would have tried to teach him if he had asked for help. His psychic abilities were entirely different from hers, and the way he thought and learned was so intuitive, rather than educated, that she doubted anything she tried to explain about combat theory would even make sense to him. Zach was a hands on, trial and error learner, putting him into a classroom or mentoring type environment would only end in disaster. Though he hadn't always been that way... from what she understood of the BCPU program, the Supersoldier candidates had been very rigorously schooled in an extremely strict and ordered environment, in order to instill discipline and unquestioning obedience into the impressionable young prospects.

For that matter, his combat experience far eclipsed her own, and Lilia knew he would react more with scorn towards her attempts to enlighten him about combat theory than anything else. As for physical training, she wasn't even sure how his body worked, all she knew was that he was far stronger and more durable than any human had a right to be! Come to think of it, she wasn't even sure what kind of training Zach meant to do... she had a hard time of thinking of any area where he could achieve notable improvement... other than in his personality and morals, and she doubted strongly that he'd gone off to train himself how to behave in normal society! So maybe it was for the best that he'd gone off on his own... well meaning or not, she'd probably only get on his nerves if she tried to help him with this training, and that would set her back even further than she would be with him if she just let him be alone.

She was half surprised to find that she did miss him though, despite how rude, crude and even outright hostile he often was to her even while in a good mood. And it was more than just physical longing as well... indeed, given how rough he was in bed, she was almost glad to have a break to regain some normal sensitivity in such matters! In some manners of speaking, Lilia had come to find that she enjoyed being around Zach, that he made her feel special, in a way no other man, even Kunai, had ever managed to do. He'd given her back so many pieces of herself she hadn't even realized were missing, had helped her come to see and understand the world as it really was in much greater detail... and he'd done it all while abusing the crap out of her. By all rights, she should hate his guts, like everyone else did. But she found her feelings to be quite the opposite of hate somehow. Maybe she had gone crazy, or was deluding herself, like Kira and the other Praetorians thought... but she didn't feel crazy, or delusional... if anything, she felt like she'd achieved a degree of clarity that was unavailable to everyone else, that it was them that were blinded by preconceptions, not her!

In any case, Lilia found herself possessed of the desire to not merely wait for Zach to allow her to return to his side, and so if he wanted to become stronger, it was only right that she should take steps to improve as well. And not just her own personal strength, though that was very important, there were things she could do to make herself useful to Zach that had nothing to do with her personal combat abilities. Indeed, there were things she could do for Zach that he would never be able to achieve on his own, because of his nature. Such as forging the ragtag group of followers calling themselves Memento Mori into a true fighting force, rather than a half coherent mob. Something admittedly easier said than done, as she wasn't just ordering around Custodians and militia volunteers, something she was trained to do, she also had to get the Kindred and One Tusk's rebellious Wendigo to cooperate and bond with the human elements of the Mori.

Which was pretty complicated, for a variety of reasons... such as the Wendigo's being for the most part unable to comprehend human language, either vocally or psychically; or the Kindred's half feral mindset and cannibalistic tendencies, which were profoundly disturbing to the Custodians and militia members. It rather bothered Lilia herself too, as she wasn't going to soon forget the way she was nearly cooked alive and eaten by the Kindred tribe in her first encounter with them! Another problem with the Wendigo was that their culture was still extremely misognystic, and now that most of One Tusk's splinter tribe had learned to tell the difference between male and female humans, most of them hardly gave her any respect at all, and you could forget about them paying attention to her when she was trying to teach them to be organized combatants, much less soldiers!

Fortunately, One Tusk himself... one of several sons of the former Wendigo chief, who had earned his appelation after being defeated in hand to hand combat by Zach and getting one of his lower jaw tusks ripped handily out of his jawbone in the process... was rather more levelheaded than most of his kin. Perhaps it was reflected respect... he'd been defeated by Zach without Zach hardly breaking a sweat, and One Tusk could plainly see how Zach treated Lilia much differently than he did everyone else, and even condescended to let her fight alongside him, so despite the fact that she was female, she must be a high status member of Zach's "tribe" and was thus deserving of One Tusk's respect as well. In any case, he acted as her intemediary with the Wendigo Mori, paying careful attention as she demonstrated the proper way to wear armor and use large scale firearms, working with him until he showed he'd mastered the simpler aspects of firearm aiming and use, then letting him teach the process to his fellows at a later time.

It worked out well for them both actually... Lilia got a dozen or so ten foot tall, eight hundred pound humanoids who could carry a squad level support weapon like it was a super soaker gun for a highly mobile anti-armor and shock assault force, especially in forest terrain. One Tusk on the other hand enjoyed greatly increased status amongst his fellows, despite his physical handicap... the size and shape of Wendigo tusks were signs of maturity and virility amongst males, and so only having one was a pretty big deal to them... as being the only one who truly understood the "magic" of the human weapons, he'd become a shamanlike figure for his splinter tribe, in addition to being alpha male. She was also having some success teaching him basic human sign language, and he'd showed that he understood spoken words, or at least their intent, just fine, even if she'd never really had a true "conversation" with him yet.

In return, Lilia was starting to pick up at least the basic intonations of the Wendigo tongue, though she doubted she'd ever really understand individual words... it was simply too alien. But enough so that she could tell their mood, and even usually figure out when they were talking about something serious amongst themselves, or just kidding around. They did a lot of kidding around, as most of One Tusk's splinter tribe came from the younger generations of the Wendigo. Not quite the teenaged rebels, as humans would be, but certainly the restless young adults looking for excitement and adventure, and a quick path to glory and status amongst the chaos of war. They were boisterous, belligerent and coarse, but they weren't stupid, and especially with One Tusk there showing the way, they had rapidly come to accept that wearing armor and learning to use firearms was the only way they were going to survive on a modern battlefield... clubs were fun, but rifles beat clubs all the time, even when those rifles were puny human sized models.

Now if she could just teach them how to work together with squads of Custodians and Militia, she'd really be getting somewhere! Alas, she couldn't focus all her time and attention upon the Wendigo's alone, because the Kindred were having troubles of their own fitting in. Though the Kindred looked more or less human, except for their jagged teeth... an affectation... and their solid black eyes... genetic predisposition... Lilia had come to learn that they were really quite different from other human Edenites. For instance, they didn't possess psychic powers, in fact they were what she thought of as psychic negatives... not only were they invisible to psychic senses, they were completely intangible to all non-physical psychic energies. She could touch them with telekinesis just fine, but no matter how often she projected thoughts or emotions at them, she couldn't reach them, telepathically or empathically.

They also lacked the Seed phenomenon, which was almost enough to make her wonder if they were really Edenites at all. However, their basic physical capabilities were higher than those of regular human Edenites, often as much as two or three times higher, given similar builds and sizes anyway... even the tallest Kindred was several inches shorter than Lilia, and she wasn't exactly a giantess, and most of them were only a little over four feet tall. Perhaps it had something to do with how messed up their bodies had been before the Green EDEN had gotten to them... Kindred were all former BCPU's after all, and none of them had been much older than thirteen or so when they were transformed, already living ferally in the jungles and caverns of the Andean valley where Charon's Citadel was located. Well, whatever they were on a genetic level, they were incredible fighters, especially in ambush and hit-and-run type scenarios, and they worked together with each other with seamless precision and a seeming total lack of communication needed.

The problem was getting them to work together with others, and others to work together with them. Because of their anti-psychic natures and frankly morbid culture... where eating your foe's bodies and taking trophies from corpses was normal, even encouraged behavior... Kindred thoroughly creeped out most of the "human" Mori's, and even the Wendigo could tell there was something weird up with the black eyed pygmies. Fortunately, Lilia had much more direct control over the Kindred than she did the Wendigo, as she had been accepted by the tribe as the Mate of He Who Scares Death, their name for Zach. Women were actually extremely highly regarded in Kindred culture, so much so that allowing one to risk her life in hunting or fighting was all but incomprehensible to them, as females able to bear children were the rarest resource the Kindred had... their biology did not make them very fertile, and even when they did conceive, miscarriages were common. But since Zach accepted her presence on the battlefield, the Kindred had come to be almost in awe of Lilia, and were quick to follow any orders she might give without hesitation.

Which was fine, assuming she was willing to fight alongside the Kindred only, but that wasn't the best use of her abilities, and getting them to take orders from anyone else was... very frustrating. The combat code that the Kidnred used as their language wasn't too hard to parse out, once you understood the basics of it, so teaching that to her subordinate officers wasn't hard, and many of the Kindred were re-learning English and other "human" languages now that they were in constant contact with those that spoke them. Communication wasn't the problem, it was establishing the chain of command that was the issue. As far as the Kindred were concerned, there was the God Under the Mountain at the top of life's heirarchy, then Zach, then Lilia, then the tribal elders, and then themselves... and outsiders weren't welcome in this heirarchy, even if they were allies. It meant a lot of her time was used up patching over hurt feelings and defusing arguments between the Kindred and the other Mori's, though at least when bullets started flying, everyone seemed to get along fairly well, united in common cause against the Oosen. It was just keeping them from killing each other during downtime that was problematic.

Hopefully that would be something Zach's presence would curtail, once he came back from training... all of the Mori's, regardless of race or culture, were in complete awe of Zach... they wouldn't be Mori's otherwise... and none of them would chance earning his displeasure by acting out when he was around. Lilia was doing her best to keep secret the fact that Zach couldn't give a rat's ass what the Memento Mori did, as long as they didn't get in his way... it was easier for her if they all were on tiptoes and best behavior around him, and in terror of his displeasure. However, Lilia didn't want to rely on Zach being around to keep the Mori glued together either, precisely because he didn't care about them, and would freely go off on his own without them whenever he damned well felt like it, without even telling them he was leaving. There had to be some cohesion between them that did not stem from Zach's charisma, and that cohesion was what she wanted to have established before Zach returned from training. Maybe... even probably... he wouldn't notice the difference, but all the same, that was the task she'd set herself to stay occupied while he was away. And she would know that she'd done something concrete to help him, at least.

Zach would never admit it, but Lilia knew that he was going to need a reliable cadre of supporters at some point in the future, he couldn't fight every battle alone. Especially not if he came to the point of starting his promised Whetstone conflict, which would mean he would be facing off with Kunai, Kira, and most of the rest of the Edenites. Lilia was still divided as to which side she would be on in such a conflict, and was therefore hoping to do whatever she could to delay or even prevent its coming. But even Zach couldn't fight off Kira AND the Shark Party, or Kunai AND the Conclave forces by himself. He needed soldiers of his own to counteract the soldiers of the Shark Party or Conclave, leaving Zach free to focus on Kira or Kunai. Or, in a more pressing and less worrisome case, he needed people to tie up the regular and even elite Oosen Mobile forces while Zach focused on defeating the BALOR creations. Lilia still remembered how she'd saved him from being sniped in the back by one of Orb's Gundam's during the battle there... Zach wasn't infallible or undefeatable, indeed, his reckless stance on a battlefield made him vulnerable to being surrounded and ganged up on.

Or if not saved him, at least prevented him from taking unnecessary damage, as Lilia had a hard time imagining Zach needing to be truly saved from any enemy except his own darkest side, and that wasn't something you could fight with Gundams anyway. She wasn't even really worried about what might happen in an eventual duel between Zach and Kira... when it came down to people with their kind of skill and experience, Lilia firmly believed that whomsoever had the strongest faith in their righteousness and willpower would come out on top... as Executor Yamato was a far cry from the rightenousness of Kira Yamato, and had even less of his willpower, in her opinion. Executor Yamato, for all his power, was just a shadow of someone who was once truly great, and a shadow would never be able to defeat something still solid...

But then again, Zach had repeatedly stated he had no intention of fighting Kira until Kira regained the status of "Boytoy" in his eyes, which would mean he wouldn't be a shadow of himself anymore. And Kira Yamato, the Boytoy, would always be a true threat to Zach, it was why Zach was so rabidly obsessed with fighting and destroying him. Just the thought of Kira... the true Kira, the one she'd all but worshipped as an idol because of his role in saving her soul from the pits of despair... and Zach... the man who'd given her confidence and self worth back to her, and whom she might even be in love with... going head to head was enough to make Lilia feel extremely ill. She wondered if she'd have the fortitude to step between the two men she admired and respected most in all the world should they decide to have their final showdown. She prayed that she'd never have to find out...

xxxx

**A hundred meters away, in the trees...**

"This is so fucking boring..." Pyotr Koyzar, better known by the appellation of "Cossack", commented unhappily, where he was crouched like a baboon in the upper branches of a Blankwood tree, looking up the ridgeside towards the lone blue haired female Praetorian sunning herself on the ridgetop, without an apparent care in the world. "It's been how many fucking MONTHS since we first saw him, and we're no closer to killing him now than we were when we first set foot on this godforsaken world!"

"I'd advise you to have patience, Pyotr, except that I know you have none." Gerard Larkyn, commonly called the "Headhunter" for his penchant for killing with long range headshots from sniper rifles, replied from where he was stretched out on a branch nearby, sighting in on the Praetorian girl with his customized rifle. The weapon was loaded, but the bullet in the chamber had the name of Zacharis Frost engraved into its side, not that of the bluehead girl, so it might as well not have been loaded at all. One of Gerard's little quirks was that he would only fire one shot per attempt, and only at the target whose name was carved into the bullet... it was to make it challenging for him, he was just too good otherwise.

"Try to enjoy the hunt, not just the bloody kill, you brute." The third member of their "coterie", the female assassin named Alexia Rymyr, or "Eclipse", added disdainfully. "We've already explained to you a dozen times why we can't just charge in and start hacking people up, as fufilling as that might be to you." Like her two compatriots, Eclipse was on a branch of the blankwood tree, her cybernetic replacement skin changed in hue so as to make her a near perfect visual match for the dark bark of the tree, while implants in her brain kept her mind from being visible to the psychic senses of the Eddies that were scattered in various biovacs around this ridgeline. The implants caused psychosis and other mental disorders if left activated for too long, but as Eclipse had been a sociopathic murderess for many years now, she wasn't exactly worried about side effects.

"I can't take it anymore, I need to chop someone up!" Pyotr groaned fervently. "Just let me do her, I'll make it quick... shouldn't take me more than a minute or two to peel her flesh from her bones and scatter her offal to the winds..."

"Stay where you are, Cossack, or I'll be forced to make an exception to my usual ritual, and waste my bullet on you." Gerard rasped unhappily, eyeing his companions fidgeting cautiously. "That's the target's lover, we can't just murder her casually, she's our best chance to find out where Zacharis Frost has gone off to."

"Maybe the brute has a point though." Alexia countered thoughtfully. "The bluehead is the target's lover, therefore, like most pigheaded men, he won't want anything bad to happen to his bedmate. She could be the perfect bait in order to lure him to a vulnerable position, at which point we can hold our little competition to see who can kill him first."

"An excellent idea, Eclipse." Gerard retorted sarcastically. "Now tell me how you plan for us to snatch up an Arboreal Praetorian unseen, only a scant few hundred meters from well over a hundred allies of hers? And without killing her in the process."

"There's no need to take her prisoner at all, Headhunter. Or was it that you thought you might get to have some fun with her if we did it that way? Not like the labrats would have left you any capability in that regard, murder machines don't need gonads after all." Alexia answered with an airy shrug and sneer. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at where the colloid cloaked "cask" that Pyotr had been carrying with him off and on for most of the last month was propped in a nook between two of the tree's branches, quite invisible to normal human sight. "Let's just decant that thing and send it her way. Worst case scenario, she'll be able to defeat it, though I doubt she'll do so unscathed... it is a Vamp after all."

"Yes, the Vamp we were going to use to test Frost's combat capabilities with, and we won't be able to get another one of our more disposable kin without a multihundred mile long trek back to Carpentaria." Gerard said with thinly veiled contempt.

"Who cares. We all know that Frost is stronger than the bluehead. If his little fuck-buddy can beat a Vamp, that tells us all we need to know about how strong a foe we're facing." Pyotr retorted with a malicious smile. "And if she can't beat it..."

"Then one of a couple different scenarios will play out." Alexia kept on with her line of reasoning, as if the Cossack had not spoken up. "If our target is nearby, he will doubtlessly step forward to protect his lover, giving us the opportunity we need to take him out. If our target is not nearby, then he will suffer the pain of feeling his lover die brutally at the hands of the Vamp. Not that I expect Zacharis Frost of all people to be particularly hung up on the death of a lover, but at the very least it should make him angry that something that he considers a belonging of his was taken away, which should make him easy to goad out into a confrontation on ground of our choice at a later date. It's a win-win scenario... either we learn about how strong a foe we truly face in a vicarious manner, or we cause him emotional trauma and rid the Eddies of one of their top soldiers in the process."

"Bah, I still think its a waste of resources, but I can see you two have your minds made up." Gerard conceded with ill grace, turning back to his rifle scope. "Just be quick about it, there's no telling when some of those evil eyed pygmies or the ape creatures might come try and keep her company."

"Well, it won't entirely make up for not being able to chop someone up myself, but I guess I'd rather not sully my blades with someone until I'm sure they can at least beat a simple Vamp, if I don't have to." Pyotr said wickedly, as he hopped over the five meter gap seperating him from where he'd left the Vamp's cyro-storage cask, keeping the cyber-augmented killing machine in a state of near suspended animation, so as to stave off the irreversible activation process as long as possible. He made the jump as if he was stepping up from a road onto a sidewalk... he and the other two were Master grade Vamps after all, with implants of superior quality that were not designed to break down their bodies over a few short weeks of activation. "Wakey wakey, scum." Pyotr crooned as he deactivated the colloid cloaking field on the cask and activated the release protocols that would rouse the regular Vamp from cyrostasis and set him on an irreversible path to self destruction. "I been lugging your comatose ass all over these hills for weeks now, time for you to pay me back with some good entertainment..."

xxxx

Lilia had just decided to pick up her warhelm for another magnified glance around the surrounding area, as well as to check in with some of the other watchers on nearby ridgetops and in the forest proper, which was the province of the Kindred, and thus why she needed the comm systems in her helm to contact them. She was in the process of settling the helm on her shoulders when, without warning and entirely unexpectedly, there came the supersonic "CRACK" of a weapon firing... her experienced ears immediately identified it as a ballistic weapon, probably a linear round! An instant later a heavy impact against the side of her helm smashed her over onto her side, to the point where she actually fell off the boulder she'd been sitting on, her unsecured helm flying off from the force of impact! Her skull ringing like a tolled bell, Lilia kept herself low, using the boulder for cover as she shook her thoughts free of cobwebs, feeling a hot, wet spot on the side of her head where the impact had scraped open her scalp. She was lucky that was all it had done... another two seconds earlier and her brains would be fertilizing the rocky soil!

Given that she was pretty firmly within Edenite controlled territory, and surrounded on all sides by a cordon of forest level sentries, just about the last thing Lilia had been expecting was to come under sniper fire! And her assumption of safety had very nearly cost her life, so Lilia made a note to never let herself be so relaxed out in the field again... Zach would never forgive her if she got her head blown off by some nameless sniper! Though it strongly begged the question of how aforementioned nameless sniper had managed to sneak past the Kindred and Wendigo in the jungle below the ridgeline, and why she hadn't felt the mental presence of the enemy soldier! There were supposed to be some special Oosen units that were invisible on the psychic plane, but Lilia had been reliably told they were Mobile Suit pilots only, and there certainly wasn't a Mobile Suit around, unless the Oosen had REALLY upgraded their stealth technology!

Well, regardless, she'd almost gotten her head blown off by someone she hadn't known was even there, so obviously there were some Oosen infantry with that ability too. She'd actually been lucky her helmet was on only loosely... though the Borealite was incredibly durable, a mono-tipped USN linear round striking dead on the side should have penetrated and popped her skull like a wet grape, and would have if the helmet hadn't shifted under the impact, changing the angle of impact slightly, and causing a direct hit to turn into an indirect hit. Her temple still felt like Zach had punched her in the head, but she was fairly sure nothing was broken, and her vision was only a little blurry, so she'd gotten off pretty lightly! The smart thing for her to do in this situation would be to send out a psychic call for help... Mori backup could reach her in a couple of minutes.

It would also mean the Mori would know that she'd let herself almost get assassinated by some nameless Oosen sniper while daydreaming out in the open. This would probably not be a big deal to the Custodians and Militia... everyone had off moments after all. But it would diminish her standing in the eyes of both the Kindred and the Wendigo to need to be rescued from a single assailant, and she did not doubt that the story would get around to Zach's ears when he got back... and she'd really rather face another few sniper attacks solving the problem herself than have Zach look down on her for needing to be rescued by mere "minions". The chief advantage of a sniper was surprise, and the Oosen soldier had lost that in failing to kill her the first time, so Lilia felt fairly sure in her ability to take down a single Oosen soldier, assuming he hadn't run off somewhere. She doubted that though... any rapid movement through the jungle would attract the attention of the Kindred, and that would be the end of the sniper.

Pushing outward with her limited telekinetic ability, Lilia formed an "early warning" bubble of telekinetically controlled gas molecules in a small radius around her... anything passing through the sides of the bubble would nudge the held gas molecules, and give her a split seconds warning, hopefully enough time to dodge or mitigate another sniper round. Calculating the initial position of the enemy wasn't hard, judging from where she'd been hit, the flat trajectory of the bullet, and the length of time between hearing the bullet break the sound barrier and when it hit the side of her helmet, the sniper was to her right, and less than a hundred fifty meters away.

Slinging her 17mm linear assault rifle from her shoulders into her hands, Lilia checked the ammo load, sixty five standard hollow point rounds suitable for piercing the simple personnel armor of the Oosen infantry, and making a bloody mess of what was within. Good all purpose ammunition, though she carried several different clips of more specialized ammunition, like beam tipped shells for anti-armor duty, or explosive-fragmentation bullets for keeping groups of enemies suppressed. Most of which were kept with the Freedom, her combat bike, several hunred meters away. Changing her TK screen from a bubble to a half arc, facing the right side of the hill and moving it out another ten meters from her position, the furthest she could manage without Seed activation, Lilie tucked the stock of her rifle into her shoulder and popped out of cover, inviting a second attempt in the interest of discovering where the sniper was shooting from.

She wasn't disappointed either, barely a second with her upper torso and head exposed and there was another "CRACK", and a yellow-white linear round raced from out of the trees towards her position. He was even closer than she'd thought, less than a hundred meters, right at the tree line. Spinning to one side, Lilia felt the sniper round carome off her left shoulder pauldron, brushing through her unbound hair and sending a few cerulean blue strands fluttering free in the wind. She had sidestepped, but that had still come closer than she would have liked, having not expected him to be quite so close. Switching to burst fire, she hurled herself to the side and opened up at the tree canopy, more or less shooting blind... she knew his general location, but if he had even an ounce of sense, he would have ducked into cover as soon as he shot at her, and she wanted to keep him there for the time being.

At the same time, she devoted a fraction of her mind to sending out a wave of emotional reassurance to her closest allies, knowing the sound of gunfire would carry quite far on the ridgetop, and not wanting anyone else to interfere. Both for the sake of her pride, and because she didn't want to see anyone's head get blown off by the sniper while charging in to help her. Right now she was the only one at risk, and that was how she preferred to fight her battles when possible. A quick holler in Kindred battle cant as she ducked back into cover to reload accomplished the same thing for the Kindred... fortunately they had a lot of respect for individual combat in their culture, so as soon as she proclaimed "kill-dibs" on her opponent, no Kindred would touch him until he killed her or she killed him. Swapping out her clip, Lilia loaded up with some explosive-fragmentary bullets and proceeded to shred the forest canopy around where the sniper was hiding, whickering storms of mono-molecular shrapnel from the detonating bullets slicing apart branches as thick as her wrist, and partially denuding some of the closer trees of their foliage, all the while dashing from one boulder to the next, closing the distance between them.

There were two good ways to kill a sniper... the easiest was a counter-sniper, but with him already in cover and her lacking any precision long ranged weapons, a sniping duel was out of the question. More dangerous but sometimes more effective was to get close to the sniper while keeping him pinned down, to within grenade tossing range, to flush him from cover so you could take him out when he was running from high explosive death. This was the option Lilia had chosen to attempt. Second clip empty, Lilia swapped in her third, the last she carried with her, as three 65 round magazines was usually more than enough for any battle... she didn't normally fire on burst mode, and often closed the distance to melee range well before running through her first magazine. Her last magazine was beam tipped shells, which wouldn't do well against the yggdrasilwood or blankwood trees the sniper was using for cover, but it was all she had left, and she still wasn't close enough for even a hail mary grenade toss.

The problem was, there wasn't much good cover after this point, which was why she'd stopped to plan. The boulder field along the ridgetop had become more like a field of scree, no piece of which was much bigger than her head, all jumbled together in a way that would make footing extremely treacherous, even for a Praetorian. The last thing she needed to do was put her boot in a crack and twist, or worse, trap her ankle while out in the open. And she couldn't fire suppression bursts and watch where she was running at the same time, not over ground like that anyway. _Okay, think Lilia... what would Zach do? Okay, that's probably not the best role model, he'd prolly just mosey on over there, taking the rounds as they came, and chop down trees with Deathshriek until he found his man. And Kira would have run away or called for help... he's not an infantry fighter. And Kunai can't be sniped unless he was already unconscious somehow. Damn it, all my role models wouldn't even BE in this situation, would they? Guess I have to improvise._

Slinging her rifle across her back once more, Lilia took out a pair of plasma grenades from her belt pockets, holding on in either hand as she mentally counted to three. Popping out of cover at "three", she leapt up on top of the boulder she'd been hiding behind, rather than going to either side, and then jumped again... and ignited the Valkyrie's wing's jump jet system Vaul had made for her armor at the apogee of her jump. A linear round passed a few inches below her bootheels as the blue thruster flames hurled her skyward and forward, and a second round actually glanced off her right hip as the sniper tried again before she even closed thirty meters of distance... he was pretty damned fast on the trigger! No doubt the third round would have been dead center on her breastplate, which would have at least changed her course if not knocked her down, save that Lilia pushed out with her TK field and deflected the bullet just wide of her position, the effort making sweat droplets stand out on her face... she wasn't going to be using much TK again for the next few minutes, not after that effort!

Before the fourth round could be fired... Lilia idly wondering how deep his clip was, or if he had already switched it out while she'd been in cover... she reached the point she'd been aiming for, and half hurled, half dropped both her grenades into the treetop, before twisting her body around and half falling, half flying groundwards. Twin bright green flashes of plasma energy filled the air with the stench of scorched tree bark, and Lilia briefly glimpsed a cloak wrapped figure diving down out of the trees, his clothing burning from the near misses by plasma ejecta. She flared her jumpjets to cushion her landing, but still struck hard enough to go down onto one knee, fighting for footing in the scree. The sour odor of burning hair wafted up to her nostrils, and Lilia frantically patted at her back, having forgotten she was currently helmetless, meaning her hair had been hanging down her back when she lit her jets, and human hair was hardly flameproof! She didn't have time to check the damage now, but a sick feeling in her gut told her that she'd really fucked up her hairstyle.

_Asshole better hope that fucking fall killed him!_ Lilia groused, once she was assured that her hair wasn't on fire anymore. _It's his fault my hair's ruined!_ However, an instant later she saw a dark clad figure rise from the edge of the treeline and stalk towards her, trailing light wisps of smoke from his singed garments. He wasn't large, and didn't seem to be wearing any armor other than his dark black and grey and blue camouflage cloak, which came with a pull up poncho-hood that masked his facial features from her view. He seemed little the worse for wear, considering he'd just almost gotten flash fried by plasma grenades, and taken a forty foot leap out of a tree, though it was obvious he hadn't made it through entirely unscathed, as he held the half melted ruin of a linear sniper rifle in one hand, most of the barrel bent at a weird angle by the massive heat of a brush with the plasma ejecta.

Still furious about her hair, Lilia unslung her rifle and pointed it at her attacker. "I'm pissed off and looking for a reason to shoot you, so if you don't wanna die, toss that thing aside, put your hands in the air and get on your kn... HOLY SHIT!" Lilia ordered the unknown sniper, before he blurred into motion and came charging across the scree field towards her, cloak flaring out behind him like dark wings as his legs pumped so fast she could barely keep track of them, crossing the rough ground like it was poured asphault! She shot from the hip... at ranges of less than twenty meters, one hardly needed to aim carefully, but the bastard was leaping around like a jack-rabbit on crack, obviously hyped on some kind of adrenaline booster drug, and Lilia couldn't say for sure if any of her shots had struck him... certainly he didn't go flying backwards in pieces or with a big hole in his body.

The temptation was there to hit her jets again and gain some distance, but she was close to running out of ammo anyway... and she didn't want to set her hair on fire again if she didn't have to. The decision was taken out of her hands a moment later, when the attacking druggie hurled his useless rifle at her like a boomerang, forcing her to block with her own rifle or else be taken in the face with a twelve pound chunk of steel and carbon fiber. Even as she reflexively blocked the hurled weapon, Lilia knew that she'd never get her rifle back in position to fire again in time, so she let her gun slip out of her hands as she reached up to her shoulders to draw her twinned mono-swords for close quarters combat. However, her attacker was even faster than she'd thought him to be, and he barreled into her before she could even partially draw her swords, hurling them both to the scree, her on the bottom. Changing her hand's motion from sword-grab to head shield in mid fall was the only thing that kept her from cracking her head open on the rocks when she hit, and even so, Lilia felt a bit dazed by the impact... fighting without a helmet was a real drag sometimes.

Unfortunately, the instinctive protective reaction left her with her hands above her head, and the attacking Oosen soldier slammed his hands down onto her wrists, pinning her with surprising strength, given his lean and unarmored body, sitting on her thighs to pin down her legs. Lilia tried to wrench free, but his grip was incredible... he was either high on some truly incredible drugs, or he was cybernetically enhanced in a serious manner. Or perhaps both, she realized, as she got her first good look under his hood, and saw that most of his head was in some way augmentic, save for his eyes, which were dilated and bloodshot, and his mouth, which dripped with foamy saliva as he grimaced at her with maniacal hatred. He bent his head down towards her, and at first she thought he was planning on biting her... she'd seen Zach and the Kindred do it before, it wouldn't exactly shock her... but as it turned out he hawked and spat at her instead.

Lilia flinched and closed her eyes, doing her best to turn her face away from the spittle... and a good thing too, because immediately upon touching her skin, she felt an agonizing sensation of heat, and heard the sizzle as the fluid began to eat into the flesh of her cheek and chin. Gritting her teeth to sublimate the pain, Lilia butted her head upwards into his while he was still bent down at close to kissing range, and almost instantly regretted it, as she almost knocked herself silly on his reinforced skull. However, she didn't let that stop her from wrenching her arms and entire body to one side, momentarily shaking his grip even if he wasn't half so dazed as her, giving her room to get a knee up between his legs, slamming into his groin and then pushing in a lever action to force him away from her. If he'd had gentials, they were now paste, but her knee was unbloodied by the hit, and he didn't seem discomfited, so Lilia had to assume his privates were either already gone or incredibly well protected. Blood trickled down her forehead from where she'd laid open her scalp on his facial augmentations, but it was merely a trickle, not a torrent, and Lilia let it flow, as it wasn't getting in her eyes.

She scrambled back and reverse handsprung to her feet to give herself a moment's distance, wiping at her burning cheek with one hand even as she left the ground, startled when what she'd thought to be some sort of caustic acid actually started to make the surface of her Borealite armor gauntlet smoke as well. Not acid then, as Borealite was treated to be neutral with regards to PH, besides her skin had only sizzled, not smoked. That meant only one thing could be responsible... MAIDEN, which would naturally react more strongly with the higher Green EDEN content in her armor than her skin. Fortunately the spittle had been meant to blind her, not immolate her, and all her gauntlet did was smoke a bit, rather than combust, before the MAIDEN nanites were exhausted. Lilia's feet touched the ground, her hand whipping to her belt holster for her beam pistol, before she went stumbling backwards again, the Oosen druggie right on top of her once more!

This time she managed to twist while falling to land with both of them on their sides, jerking her pistol from her holster and loosing two green plasma beams wildly as she tried to bring it to bear on her attacker, but he'd gotten a grip on her wrist again, and were it not for her armor bracer, Lilia felt sure he'd have crushed her wrist bones like they were twigs! She saw him about to spit again, and snuck in a straight arm punch to his lower jaw that snapped his head back, causing blood and other fluids to spurt from his mouth where she'd ruptured some kind of conduit inside. She watched carefully, but the blood did not insta-clot like Zach's did, which was something of a relief. He tried to roll her onto her back once more, but she wasn't about to let that happen, and she kneed him in the gut once more, to distressingly little result.

_Bastard's almost as tough as Zach is. Punches and kicks aren't going to keep him off me for long._ Lilia thought grimly, before a sudden flash of inspiration occured to her. _Wants to play grab-ass, does he? Okay, lets hug, fucker, and see who lets go first..._ Lilia smirked through her blistered pockmarked face, letting go of her beam pistol as well, and grabbing her assailant by the base of his throat as she kicked on her jumpjets without warning, sending them both skimming along the scree field towards the boulders. Knowing what was going to happen, Lilia managed to put her attacker on the bottom, dragging him roughshod across the rocks, and even his cybernetically enhanced strength couldn't keep his grip on her with his head ramming into granite blocks every second, and she left him behind like a piece of roadkill stuck to a care tire.

Unfortunately, this still left her flying towards a bunch of boulders at barely three feet above ground level, without a helmet... not that one would have saved her in a headon collision at this speed! Flexing her body, Lilia hit the jets for all they were worth even as she kicked downwards with both legs, jarring every bone from her hips to her ankles something fierce, but changing her course enough to lift her over the boulders rather than slamming into them. Cutting the thrusters as soon as she bled off most of her momentum, Lilia landed, a little gracelessly, about a hundred meters from her attacker, finally giving her time to free her two mono-swords so she could fight properly. After a moment's breather to refocus herself, Lilia tapped her jets once more, lifting herself up a few feet before hurling herself towards the druggie like a bolt from the blue, a brilliant sword in either hand.

He was looking a bit battered and ragged from his recent rock scraping experience, but was far from debilitated, as he proved by yanking a head sized chunk of granite from the ground and hurling it at her like it was a softball. She'd been expecting something like that though, and killed her charge's momentum to veer around it, bringing her swords across in a dual guard position, as the druggie flexed his arm in a particular manner, causing a twenty inch long, double edged blade to unfold from his forearm and lock into place along the back of his hand. A whispery moaning sound hummed into being, and the sword blade began to glow, first red, then orange, and finally a whitish-pink color, the sound being the vibrational motors that used friction heat to turn a mono-edged weapon just that much deadlier. He attacked with great strength, incredible speed, and relatively little skill, more like he was trying to hack down a side of meat than slip through the defenses of a trained warrior.

Perhaps he was relying on his augmented strength and speed to burst through her guard, but thanks to her practice against Zach, Lilia was quite familiar with facing opponents who possessed far greater physical power than her, and she braced herself firmly as she raised both blades to block his single short sword... and was still jarred hard enough to make her almost bite her tongue, as the cyber-soldier hit her hard enough to put his fist through a cinderblock wall! He grated out something that sounded like a blurt of static, making her wonder if he could even talk at all, trying to press his superheated blade against her regular ones. All weapons invovled were mono-edged, meaning none of them could ordinarily cut through the others, but with his weapon so hot, he could start to melt her swords if she let them stay in contact for too long.

Considering her options, Lilia decided that she was going to have to throw caution to the winds... staying on the defensive was only going to get her killed slowly. She envisioned the bright blue Seed, riddled with sparkling golden veins, falling through the black vastness of her mental landscape, before bursting in a cacophony of soundless light, filling her muscles with strength and her mind with clarity. Gathering herself, Lilia lashed out with her primary psychic abilities, empathy, boosted by her Seed, targeting everything she could see in a wide cone in front of her, projecting a single stark emotion... fear. In combat, almost every living being was afraid, and even something as hyped on drugs as this poor guy wouldn't be entirely fearless. Indeed, because of the drugs and the state of his body, Lilia might even say he was as much scared as he was enraged whenever he went into combat. Whatever was protecting his mind from her ability to sense it didn't protect him from an area of effect psychic attack, and the druggie flinched backwards with an ear-splitting howl of static.

Almost instantly he recovered... the drugs were stronger than she'd thought... but a mere second of inattention had been all the time Lilia needed to step away from the pressure of his blade, sidestepping as he lurched forward off balance, before driving the blade of her left hand sword through his back, right over where the heart should be, the impaling blade bursting out of his emaciated chest in a welter of blood and hydraulic fluids, staggering him forward another step, emitting choked blurts of static as he stared at the fluid coated length of metal protruding from his chest. Lilia knew that despite the location of the wound, her opponent might not necessarily be down, and he proved her right a moment later by lashing his vibro-blade at her head in an awkward fashion, causing her to have to abandon her left sword as she stepped back from the wild, but powerful swing.

Flexing her now empty left hand, Lilia used a weak TK flick to open a hidden compartment in her left vambrace, within which were stored a stash of bone shurikens she'd hand whittled from Cold Hutner teeth, and dipped in the acidic venom of Blight Swarm hornets, which wouldn't affect Borealite, but was pure murder on anything less doughty. Palming three of the shurikens, Lilia snapped her wrist and sent them spinning into her foe's face, eliciting another howl of speaker-agony as he went down on one knee, his face a mask of hissing blood as the acid infused bone darts drilled into his skull and melted his eyes. Lilia stepped forward to deliver the coup de grace... even Zach had confided that if you were to somehow decapitate him, he would die like anyone else... and cut the cyber-things head from its shoulders, but there was even more fight in it than she'd expected, and she was hurled backwards breathlessly a instant later, as it's non-sword hand punched her in the gut hard enough to have punched through her, were she not armored.

Left hand going to her waist, Lilia drew one of several combat knives she kept hidden in various places around her armor, and hurled that into her foe as well, striking him directly in the throat, but despite the arterial gout of fluids, it just seemed to tick him off, as he pounced at her, and struck her right hand sword from numbed figners with a slash of his vibro-blade. Finding herself disarmed, Lilia stepped in close, inside his reach, before he could gut her like a pig, and rotated her whole body into an elbow strike against the side of her left sword, which was still impaled through his chest cavity. Striking the flat of the blade, Lilia caused the sword to violently twist inside the cyber-soldier's body cavity, cutting almost halfway through his chest in a descending slant before gravity dragged the loosened blade out of his back. Blood and less identifiable fluids were pouring everywhere, and Lilia knew even the strongest psycho-drugs couldn't keep a man alive for much longer in this state... he'd just plain run out of blood and keel over.

Whether her foe was strictly a man anymore she could not say, but when he struck at her again with his vibro-blade arm, she managed to catch and deflect it with both hands on his wrist, so he was definitely weakening! He tried to grab her throat with his free hand, but Lilia blocked with her forearm and knocked him back a step with a thrust kick to his abdomen from her right leg when he tried to latch onto her forearm. Pouncing forward once more, fuelled by the rush of power from Seed mode, her body and mind completely heedless of tiredness, pain or other debiliations, Lilia grabbed her opponent's head between her hands and jammed on her jumpjets again, pushing downwards with both hands even as she rocketed upwards, her extended right knee meeting his face somewhere in the middle of that. Rocket boosted knee to the face was enough to give even Mr. Cyber-druggie a few problems, as Lilia had clearly felt the front part of his skull DENT inwards when she struck the blow. If he still had even part of a brain in that skull, he MUST have felt that one!

Unfortunately the impact seemed to have dislocated her right knee in the process, as Lilia discovered when she landed about ten meters away and promptly collapsed onto her face, her right leg unable to bear her weight in the slightest. Snarling in more frustration than pain... it was a distant throb at worst, thanks to the effects of her Seed... Lilia forced herself onto her left leg, before freezing the joints of her armor's right leg as a impromptu crutch. She couldn't move fast, and her agility was laughable, but she wasn't going to be dodging with a bum leg anyway, and at least this way she could stump around at a slow pace. The cyber-soldier was lying on his back, flat out with his face an unidentifable mass of broken cybernetics and spurting fluids, and Lilia could plainly see the dent she'd put in his metallic skull plating, where his nose and eye sockets should have been. He must have heard her coming, because he started to thrash about, like a snake which had lost its head, undirected yet still potentially dangerous.

Half stumbling down to one knee by his head, after unfreezing her armor joints, Lilia grabbed the bastard thing around the head and yanked his skull around a 300 degree arc on his neck, feeling something in his spine resist and then fail with a grinding of gears. Damn thing was more machine than man, she wondered if there was anything in him that was human other than his organs? Certainly getting his head almost twisted around in a circle didn't stop him from trying to spear her in the chest with his vibro-blade, digging a smoking gouge across her chestplate as she deflected the jackhammering blow at the last second. "Would you just fucking die already?" Lilia complained, as she drew another combat knife from an underarm holster, and used the mono-edged blade to cut his sword hand off at the wrist, hurling the still buzzing blade away as if it were simple trash.

Flipping the knife around in one hand, Lilia drove it down into the dent she'd made in his skullplate, feeling the blade meet a bit of resistance before punching through into the brain beyond. At long last, this seemed to do the trick... though Lilia left the knife where it was just to be sure. Dragging herself away from the still slightly flopping corpse on both hands and one knee, Lilia slowly let herself drop out of Seed mode, letting each individual ache and pain become known to her, one at a time, rather than trying to face them all at once and risk passing out from shock. The fucking bastard-thing had messed her up pretty bad... besides the cosmetic damage to her hair, she had the MAIDEN spit-burns on her face, innumerable bruises and scrapes, two minor scalp wounds, a concussion, what felt like a couple torn muscles in her arms and thighs from absorbing the force of his blows, and of course her dislocated knee, which thanks to her armor, she couldn't put back into place without some outside help. But no missing limbs or deep slash wounds, so all in all she was content with herself.

And the two wounds on her scalp seemed to have clotted themselves already, which was a bit strange now that she thought about it, given that head wounds tended to bleed profusely even if they weren't major. The MAIDEN burns hadn't bled much either, and when she peeled off her singed gauntlet, she was surprised to feel that there wasn't much in the way of blistering on her face either. Given how much it had hurt, she'd expected to look like a plague zombie until she could get some ointment on the burns, but it wasn't too much worse than getting a big splash of hot cooking oil on her skin. Which was to say, it hurt like a son of a bitch, and were it not for modern medical technology, she'd have been quite scarred for life, but she'd expected it to be worse than it was, had even thought she might find a hole in her cheek... given how the MAIDEN had eaten into her armor glove, she would have expected the "acid" burns to go down to her jawbone, but they didn't.

Lilia knew she was pretty tough, and she'd always been a fast healer, but that was with bed rest and medicines, not right in the middle of combat. This was more like a tiny bit like what Zach's nanotech infused body did. Was he rubbing off on her, literally speaking? She didn't remember ingesting any of his bodily fluids, except for the one time when he saved her from the Kindred. And, of course, when they had sex, but that wasn't really "ingesting". She'd have to ask him if his nanites were contagious or something, though if they were, and this was the result, she supposed coming down with a case of Zachinites in the blood wasn't the worst thing that could happen to her. For that matter, Charon might know as well... it could be quite handy if they could figure out how to replicate some of Zach's internal secrets with other people, though she doubted Zach would allow her to share the technology with the wider Edenite population.

Reaching behind her head, Lilia pulled the remains of her straight blue hair over her shoulder, wincing as parts of it crumbled to ash at the touch of her fingers, pretty much anything below the neckline being scorched almost black as cinders even though it was still attached. The scent of burnt hair was sickeningly strong. "Damn it, I hate cutting my hair..." Lilia bemoaned out loud, trying to let the indignity of it take her mind off the pain in her leg and on her face. She picked up a rock and chucked it petulantly at the still twitching corpse of the cyber-soldier. Barely had the rock touched the body though than the entire corpse disintegrated with a thudnerous boom and flash of light that hurled Lilia to the ground, as some sort of hidden self destruct device vaporized the body and all the tech it contained. If she hadn't crawled away to take stock of her wounds, she'd have been blown to bits!

"No last laugh for you..." Lilia croaked weakly, spitting blood from suddenly mashed lips, coughing for air through compressed lungs as she propped herself up on her hands once more, as hot chips of rock and unidentifiable chunks of plastic and metal faux body rained down around her. She felt a bit dizzy, the blastwave having aggravated her concussion, but she could feel the Mori closing in on her now, drawn by the violent explosion, and she was determined not to pass out before they got there. "What the hell was that thing anyway...?" She wondered out loud, staring with misgivings at the glowing, man sized crater in the scree field where its body had just been.

xxxx

"Entertained?" Gerard asked the Cossack dryly, as the three Master Vamps studied the injured Praetorian while she muttered to herself and looked at where the Vamp had used to be.

"Extremely, if you must know." Pyotr said cheerfully, his eyes all but shining, though that might just have been the drugs. "She's tougher than I thought she was... and that rocket knee move... that was inspired! That might even have given ME a bit of a headache. I can't wait to chop her up now!"

"Save it." Alexia advised dourly. "We might need to use that as a distraction if we're going to take down Zacharis Frost. I didn't honestly think she would win, but she's barely even disabled, and if she hadn't been taken off guard, she wouldn't even be that much. I guess the Praetorians aren't all hype after all. Though she's still not a match for any of us. That was a most informative exercise... I'm glad I thought of it."

"Yeah, pat yourself on the back, and you'll have recieved all the thanks you'll ever see." Gerard answered humorlessly. "Now let's get out of here before those pygmies and apes realize that there's no way something as clumsy as that mere Vamp could have gotten through their picket line undetected, and start searching for us. The target obviously isn't here, since he didn't step forth to rescue or even observe his beloved, so there's no point in hanging around any more today."

And with that, the three Master Vamps flitted away though the top of the forest canopy, little more than translucent humanoid shadows amongst the branches. They might have to wait a little bit more, but they WOULD have their prey sooner or later, and then the Eddies would be down their most fearsome fighter... or at least that was the plan anyway...


	65. In the Caves of Ice

Author Note: I don't actually write multiple chapters out ahead of time and post them consecutively... I've had people asking how I can do back to back chapters. I don't have the patience for that... as soon as I finish a chapter, I want to post it so I can hear feedback on it, waiting days or even weeks to write another chapter without knowing what you thought of the completed one would just drive me nuts. The only time I ever wrote two chapters before posting one was the last Cyprus Flashback (Damnation and Redemption) and Cyprus's Death (Selfishness and Sacrifice), and that was because it was such a huge event I didn't want to give you much time to see it coming. And while you know I don't hold chapters hostage for reviews, I was kinda disappointed to only get 6 reviews for Damnation and Redemption, as most people just did one review for both chapters (I'd like to see an average of 10 for every chapter in RW, preferably as many more as possible... still want to break 30 for one chapter sometime). Maybe that's dreaming too much, but if I wasn't a dreamer, I wouldn't be the author of TGA, now would I?

No, the secret to my lightning updates is usually a day off from school, a lull in homework, and a passion... more like a fanaticism... for pouring out the story banging around inside my head. It just... comes to me, and three or four sentences of outline morphs into 20 thousand words of storyline, and I'm not even aware of time passing in the subjective sense. I can't really explain it, it just happens. In the Heart of Jungle took ten hours of Thursday, my day off. I was inspired, that's the only reasoning I can offer. And the reason I'm inspired is because of my reviewers, you lot. Anyway, I'm going to try a new experiment, and put the date and time I start writing a chapter, and then the date and time I finished the chapter, into the A/N. If nothing else, hopefully that will chide me into not leaving a chapter half done for long periods of time. Also, I will have updated the Suits and Ships, and probably the Tech chapter, with all this new stuff, and some things I forgot previously (such as the Defender class warship of Orb), so feel free to check it out for the technically inclined.

Moving on, we've been with the various Eddies for a while now, its time to balance back towards the USN, and everyone should give props to Asmus, because he is the ultimate architect of most of the new equipment the USN will be using for the latter half of the war. Seems like he might do a better job as leader than Durandel has. Then again, we haven't seen the last of Durandel either. People have been noting that Dr. Dostanya seems to live a charmed life, well, I'll be giving her a bit of a setback in these next two chapters, and setting up the intense Ashino vs Frost plotline to come. Hold on to your butts, because as everyone knows, the second half of the series is where all things start to get real...

Chapter Start Time: Sept 23, 3:00 PM, Chapter End Time Sept 25, 4:20 PM

xxxx

**PLANTS space, Epoch 1 Industrial E-PLANT, Martius Military Industries Complex, Tartarus Infantry Technology branch, March 24th, 10:25 am**

"Well, I dunno about you gents, but I feel like one seriously badass motherfucker right now..." Sergeant William Meyer, better known to his friends and squadmates by his nickname, Spyro, commented boisterously, as he felt the power plant of his brand new, next generation combat armor flare to life. A multitude of tiny pricks and pokes ran across his body as the internal medical sheathe interfaced with his bodysuit, connecting him to the powered exoskeleton that would amplify his movements and physical strength, allowing him to move around in the 400 pound suit of armor as easily as if he was in casual civilian clothes, and which allowed him to lift a motorcycle over his head with just one hand. Not an especially small man to begin with, Meyer had gained about a foot in height and about eighteen inches across the shoulders after donning the new brand of armor, called Vanguard Heavy Infantry Powered Armor.

Unlike the Survivor pattern armor the USN ground forces had been equipped with at the start of the war, which was merely an armored version of a civilian extreme environment suit, the Vanguard armor was designed from the concept up for battle on the difficult terrain of New Eden, and for dealing with the advanced military technology of the Edenites themselves. The Vanguard armor drew many of its concepts and features from the secretive GHOUL units fielded by FEAR, but had refined and polished the rough edges from that personal protective system and added a few bells and whistles of its own, making the system much less dangerous to use than the GHOUL suits, which were for convict soldiers only, and were as much cell as armor! Given their recent popularity with the media and their proven combat experience, Ryan and the Forlorn Hopers had been selected to be among the first to recieve the new armor, and furthermore, they were temporarily assigned to help show off the system's capabilities to various commanders and politicians, now that their weeks of leave time were over with, before they got rotated back down to the front lines.

"You said the exact same thing the last three times you put it on." Ryan noted, though he could definitely understand Meyer's excitement. There was simply no comparison to the Survivor pattern armor. That was something you had to endure wearing, while the Vanguard was simply a privilege to wear, at least once you ignited your fuel rod so you had power! The Vanguard armor was powered by something called an IMR, or Ignited Metallic Rod reactor... basically a self combusting section of metal suspended in a special nano-solution that absorbed almost all the heat and turned it into electricity. It had been pioneered as a replacement for nuclear power for Mobile Suits back when N-Jammer's were still a major issue, providing comparable wattage to a fission reactor without any risk of radiation posioning, though there had been some accidents with superheated steam explosions.

That wasn't a problem with the Vanguard model reactors, which used the nano fluid, rather than water, to effect the transfer of heat energy to electrical power, as the nano fluid did not boil or steam, which also cut down on the size of the reactor vessel incredibly. A six inch fuel rod could provide combat level power for the entire armor for 48 straight hours, and each Vanguard carried a normal load of seven fuel rods that were automatically fed into the reactor, giving a soldier up to 14 days of combat time without needing to worry about needing a resupply run, with the option to carry extra fuel rods in external compartments as well. They'd even come up with squad portable Red EDEN systems that allowed them to create more fuel rods from random raw materials while on patrol, so as long as you kept yourself stocked, you could basically operate away from base until you ran out of food and water, which would take months with the armor's high tech recycling systems and easily storable dehydrated food packets.

"And I bet he keeps saying it at least a dozen more times." Sergeant Dudly Grant, aka Dud the grenadier, said dryly, as his own armor finished powering up. Dud wasn't the biggest of men to begin with, but even so, he was a few inches over seven feet and well over a quarter ton in mass when clad in Vanguard armor, actually closer to 700 pounds with all the heavy duty engineering and special demolitions equipment his armor was mounted with. And with the wonder of the powered internal exoskeleton, he still only felt like he was about as encumbered as he was while walking out to the bar for a stiff drink after duty! "And why shouldn't he? It's only the goddamn truth!" Dud continued, flexing his gauntlets as he widened his stance, and mimed throwing a punch at Spyro's shoulder.

"Hey, no roughhousing when we're suited up." Ryan reprimanded them, remembering having to work several deep dents out of their steel lockers where they kept their other gear after suiting up. More than just allowing you to move around carrying heavy loads, the exoskeleton really souped up your hitting, running and jumping power. He'd put his gauntlet through a brick wall on several occasions during combat demonstrations, and hadn't even felt his arm jar inside the armor! He put the lie to his admonishment a second later though, when he smacked both of his friends across the backs of their suits, where the power generator and internal systems housing rose up into a seamless reinforced hood over the head. No vulnerable neck joint on a Vanguard suit, the whole head area was extremely well protected. "Come-on guys, be serious." Ryan added with a smirk.

"I'll seriously fuck you up, "gunny"." Sypro retorted, with good natured drama placed on the familiarization of Ryan's new rank. "That's about all the serious I can muster though!"

"And I'll seriously leave you both here to jerk each other off if that's how you wanna keep playing, but we gotta get to the armory in the next five minutes or we're sure to catch hell from some douchebag or other. The Solar President himself is supposed to be stopping by to watch the demo today!" Dud added as he strode towards the exit of the locker cum armor-donning room, his movements almost as fluid as they would be without the armor. And despite the increased weight, the large greaves of the Vanguard suit distributed the weight of the armor very well, so much so that Ryan would often walk across a single 4 x 4 plank of wood during demonstrations, without even causing it to splinter, despite him being close to 1000 pounds when fully combat loaded.

"Big fucking whup. I hear he's on the way out anyway, who cares about impressing a soon to be ex-president?" Spyro returned, folding his arms behind his head as he strolled after Dud, Ryan a step behind him.

"Keep it the fuck down, would ya?" Ryan hissed in his ear. "I ain't saying you're wrong, Spyro, but until his ass bounces on the fucking curb on his way out, he's still the Commander in Chief, and you'll damn well be respectful of him, or I'll have to come down on ya, you hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Spyro grimaced as he rolled his shoulders one at a time. "All a big goddamn hassle if you ask me. I hate dog and pony shows for the brass."

"You and me both, bro." Ryan clapped Spyro on the shoulder lightly. "If I have to go down on anyone, I'd much rather it be on BP, if ya know what I mean. I loathe having to worry about spit and polishing you bastards up to snuff."

"Never thought I'd say it, but I kinda wish we were back down on the sharp end." Dud said introspectively. "Nobody gives a shit how tight you salute or whether you march in step, or if your armor got a ding in it, or all this bullshit we gotta put up with!"

"Ain't that the fucking truth!" Spyro agreed wholeheartedly, before turning a smirk on Ryan, throwing his arm over Ryan's shoulders, and nearly shoving them both through the wall of the corridor with the maneuver by accident. "So I hear ya got the sardine-susan all wrapped round yer finger, ya stud you. Rico the gopher fucker, who'd have ever thought?"

"Hey man, don't go knocking BP, or I'll trash compacter you. She may be a goddamned gopher, but she's MY goddamned gopher, got it?" Ryan replied, allowing a slight smirk to settle onto his features as he thought about the rough and tumble Titan tank commander he'd spent most of the leave period with, both in and out of the sack. "She's good people..." He continued, maybe a trifle wistfully.

"You mean sardine-susans are people too?" Dud half scoffed at the preposterous concept. Preposterous for an infantryman anyway, who automatically had a low opinion of anyone who ventured into combat protected by a massive war machine of some stripe or other. "You're a crazy fucker, Rico."

"That's what she said." Ryan cut back with a prideful sneer. "Cept she always says it so much nicer and breathier than you do..." They were forced to curtail their ribbing for the meanwhile though, as they exited the manufactory building where the Vanguard armor was being mass produced, and started headed across the wide open industrial vehicle lot where incoming shipments of raw materials fresh from the asteroid mining operations were unloaded. Had his armor's faceplate been down, automatic anti-flare lenses would have polarized to spare Ryan even a hint of dazzle from the transition from indoor lighting to natural, if reflected, sunlight in the E-PLANT interior. But since he was going to be shortly living twenty four hours a day, seven days a week fully sealed into his armor, with so many filtration systems between him and outside air that he might as well be in a vac-suit, Ryan was savoring being able to breath unfiltered air as much as he could. And so he had to blink a few times, and half raise a hand to shade his face, before his eyes adjusted to the constant noonday sunlight of the PLANTS.

One of the first things that greeted his eyes was a floating holo-ad, the newest wave in commercial advertising and public news broadcasting, at least on the PLANTS. Not much more than a medium sized A-grav generator attached to a power source and a fan driven thruster system, the basketball sized drones could project a holograpic image almost ten meters on a side almost indefinitely, powered by solar panels because of the constant sunlight in the PLANTS. The only thing that prevented them from being a real nuisance, rather than just an eyesore, was that the ads were visual only, no sound was allowed, though there were radio channels you could tune into where real time audio was provided for any given "channel" of holo-ads. This particular unit was trolling advertisements for MMI, Martius Military Industries, and TIT, Tartarus Infantry Technology... two up and coming defense industry contractors that were long time competitors of FEAR, and were just now breaking into the markets long dominated by the privately owned company, with the increased demand for new products to meet the ever evolving circumstances of the war.

It wasn't the sort of thing Ryan really paid attention to, but he'd heard some of the MMI and TIT guys gossiping about how the Solar President had recently reversed a long held stance of preference for FEAR, and begun granting much larger portions of the defense budget to publicly owned companies like MMI and TIT. No one knew what was behind the sudden apparent change of favor, though many speculated it had something to do with the tragic events down in Orb, where some of FEAR's most hyped new technology had gone haywire, with disasterous results. Nobody was quite sure what had gone down in Orb... everything was being kept very hush hush... but Ryan had overheard some folks talking about a new type of Gundam that went berserk and started attacking everything around it. The detail that had caught his ear on that bit of rumor was that it had mentioned the Gundam going berserk... not the pilot, the Gundam itself, which seemed strange to him.

Flashes of eye catching color from the holo-ad acted as subliminal attention grabbers, and Ryan soon found himself looking back up at the hologram floated a few dozen meters up into the sky. As expected, it was shifting into one of the most common advertisements on any ad channel, the new, government sponsored Patriot Corps initiative. It was a revolutionary... and highly controversial... step by the Durandel Administration, which allowed regular civilians of ages 14 and over to sign up for "auxiliary support duties" for the USN military, in exchange for tax credits, enhanced scholarship benefits or even just for a regular part time paycheck. Not only that, but the means by which the civilians would contribute was through modified telepresence control systems, linked up to all sorts of non-vital infrastructure, such as logistics supply vehicles, construction equipment and certain types of perimeter defense turrets or sensor systems. This would allow the families back home to gain a better understanding of what their soldiers were going through, and contribute to the war effort in a productive manner.

However, the most controversial aspect of it all was that it was being marketed like a video game, a massively multiplayer "role playing" game, like the immensely popular World of Gundam Battle series. "Players" would create unique logins and would have to progress through a series of automated training scenarios before being granted live control of any groundside systems, with limits placed on what kind of equipment a player could access based on their age... no one was going to let 14 and 15 year olds drive supply vehicles or construction equipment in a warzone, even if it was well behind front lines. Players would gain seniority and rack up tangible benefits of their choice depending on how many hours per week they devoted to playing in the Patriot Corps, which was overseen almost entirely by Namara to prevent people from commiting acts of sabotage or just plain fucking around, especially amongst the younger players. Anyone caught abusing their "game privileges" could be subject to harsh penealties, fines or even imprisonment depending on the circumstances.

A lot of people were on the warpath about having children potentially in control of live weapons during an enemy attack... both soldiers who didn't trust some joystick jockey with a plate of chips in his lap ten million miles above them to provide proper support fire, and parents who were afraid their children would be emotionally damaged by killing people, even if it was presented in a graphically modified video format that edited out the blood and gore. Never mind that there were commonly available video games out on most home platforms that contained just about as much gore as any soldier might see on a battlefield... youth desensitation to violence from video games was not exactly a new issue, at least when that violence was video-graphic in nature. People still freaked out pretty hard when the blood was theirs or their friends, or splashing on their face hot from the veins... but even the average thirteen year old boy or girl wouldn't blink at using a shotgun to blow apart humanoid "aliens" with red blood in a videogame.

And perhaps that was the reasoning behind the Patriot Plus program, marketed specifically to WoGB players age 18 and over, which allowed them telepresence control over a new class of more or less disposable Mobile Suits, called Patriots, which were slated for use as fire support platforms for Solar Knight and USN armor divisions. The Patriots were fairly weak even by the standards of the original Ginns and Strike Daggers, armed with simple linear cannons, unguided rockets and a regular sword and shield for melee defense, but this was intentional, as it made them extremely easy to mass produce, each Patriot machine was literally only meant to last a single battle before being destroyed and replaced. Nobody expected the machines to really do much besides soak up damage from the vastly superior Eddie machines, but each second a Dervish or Spectre spent chopping down Patriots was one less second they spent actually fighting true USN soldiers. And even a crappy Mobile Suit was still a major threat to the Eddie armor and infantry units, so it wasn't like they could just be ignored entirely either.

Personally, Ryan thought it was pretty sick, but he knew plenty of young people who'd go crazy over the idea of being able to "fight" in the war from the comfort of their own homes. And especially pilot a real, live Mobile Suit, with a whole ladder ranking system already set up to track how many successful missions you piloted, how many enemy units you destroyed, and how long you lasted before being shot down, with larger tangible benefits going to those who performed consistently better. There was even talk of an "in-game" reward system, where the best Patriot Plus pilots would earn access to improved Patriot class machines with better weapons, armor and capabilities. He wondered if dehumanizing warfare in this way was such a good idea in the long run, but then again, nobody was asking him. All he knew was that he was going to make sure his parents didn't let his little brother and sister participate in any part of the Patriot program. If they needed extra money for school that bad, they could take it from his account, since he sure as hell wasn't going to have much opportunity to spend that money soon... warfare was a job for professional soldiers, not civilian gamers!

Fortunately, even as Ryan's attention was subliminally dragged to the holo-ad, his body kept moving on its own, and he and his two friends soon entered another one of the MMI buildings, where the Tartarus product demonstrations were to be held, breaking line of sight to the pulsating colors and action-drama video the add was playing, of Patriot Mobile Suits striding victoriously over some random imaginary battlefield with cheering USN soldiers chasing their heels. "Damn, those things really get on my nerves..." Spyro muttered with a frown, as they tromped down a slowly descending ramp into the foundational structure of the E-PLANT. Before either of the other two Forlorn Hopers could offer heartfelt agreement though, they reached the secure portal leading to the TIT armory level, which required that their bio signs and unit registry be scanned, something that took place automatically through the quantum comm connection each suit of Vanguard armor had to N.A.M.A.R.A., intended for eventual direct link with the TAC program once it was operational again, for real time mass coordination of infantry as well as vehicle assets on individual batlefields.

By the time the Forlorn Hopers reached the armoy designated for their use, the rest of the demonstration squad was already there and kitting themselves out. Though they'd only worked with the other guys and girl three times so far, they were all hardened veterans of multiple front line conflicts with the Eddies, and they were able to work together fairly smoothly, at least for demonstration purposes, though it would take a real firefight or three to meld them together like a combat squad was supposed to function, where you didn't even have to think about what your squadmates were doing, you just instinctively knew how they would react to any given situation. There were four other soldiers in their demo squad... Francis "Lepeeper" Dumark, a sniper specialist; Paula "Bear" Burter, a grunt infantry; Don "Bull" Bunt, also a grunt infantry; and finally Vince "Guts" Lozak, a combat medic. It was rare to have a medic assigned on a squad level, usually it was a platoon assignment, while almost every soldier was trained in basic first aid and trauma care methods, but for the sake of completeness in demonstrating the TIT products, their squad had a medic.

Ryan was the seniormost soldier, putting him in nominal charge of the squad, though he, like Vince, really should be assigned at a platoon level given his rank and usual responsibilities. Fortunately, the squad got along fairly well together, and didn't need much input on his part to do what needed to be done, when it needed to be done. Everyone here was a pro, a hardass, and a good goddamn person to have watching your back. Nodding acknowledgements to the other four Blues, Ryan headed towards where his combat equipment was stored in a vault keyed to his bio signs, Spyro and Dud doing the same nearby. Ryan's specialty within the squad was Assault, meaning it was his job to clear the path when on the attack, and get relatively up close and personal with the Eddies under cover from his squadmates. The other two types of combat role were Fire Support... which was Dud and Lepeeper... and Tactical, being Bear, Bull and Guts. Spyro was also Assault, though with a different equipment loadout than Rico.

When first issued the Vanguard armor, Ryan had been a bit distressed to note that his gauntlets were too big to use his much beloved Mauler linear shotgun anymore, but his minor depression had been lifted almost instantly when he was presented with the HLSG-86, also known as the "Heavy Mauler" or "Pulverizer". It was 25mm caliber, same as the Mauler, but was a bit bigger and bulkier, and was carried along the underside of his forearm, like a unarmored man might carry a minigun, though with the Vanguard armor's strength, Ryan could easily aim and fire the Pulverizer with just one hand. The Pulverizer was designed as a close range support weapon against infantry and light vehicles, with a optimum accurate range of about 50 meters. Unlike the original Mauler, the Pulverizer was a fully automatic system, as in it only fired on burst mode, like a machinegun, at a rate of 240 rounds per minute, or 4 rounds per second! Which was actually fairly slow by many autofire weapon standards, but shooting any faster would only be a waste of ammunition for the most part.

The Pulverizer was a belt fed weapon, meaning that the ammunition was not carried in clips or magazines that were switched out, but rather in a large, back mounted container with an armored chute-feed connecting to the weapon's firing chamber, allowing Ryan to carry up to 3600 rounds of ammunition into combat, and not have to worry about needing to reload until he was completely out of ammo. The Pulverizer was equipped with a new type of ammunition as well, called "Firefly" rounds, which were a solid state slug filled with a small amount of variable usage explosive. A blink selection system in his helm allowed Ryan to control how fast the internal explosive compound was ignited when the round was fired... a slow burn would superheat the shell, allowing it to be used as an anti-armor slug, while a fast burn would cause the shell to detonate either on impact or after a set distance traveled, for an explosive impact against infantry. The bullet type could be changed at any time, even when the weapon was firing, or even preset to alternate or mix the rounds as the user desired, for a high degree of flexibility without compromising attention or ammunition capacity.

As backup weapons, most Vanguard armored soldiers, Ryan included, carried a HLP-86 "Stiletto" linear pistol, which was more like a hand cannon... an unarmored man would have to use two hands to lift and fire it. It fired 15mm shells, also of the Firefly type, which was the new standard for the USN ground forces, with a 20 round magazine and a 30 meter accurate range. Also, the standard close quarters weapon of the Vanguard units was an upgraded Armor-Schneider blade, called a "Hitze-Schwert" or just an HS blade for short. More like a short sword than a knife, the 25 inch long monoshaprened blade of titanium steel was equipped with a vibrational motivator in the handle, which used high frequency sonic pulses to friction heat the blade until it glowed red hot, for additional penetrating power against PS and other resilient armor types. Ryan stored his HS on his left hip, though there were an easy dozen modular points on the armor's surface where the blade could be stored, depending on a soldier's individual peference.

The last piece of combat gear was an assault shield, loking somewhat like the riot shields police used when confronting violent mobs, but much bigger, big enough to cover the entire Vanguard armored soldier from toes to head, with an armored vision port so one could advance without exposing themselves, and a gun port on the inside edge, allowing the soldier to fire while advancing. The 8 foot tall by 4 foot wide by 6 inch thick slab was made entirely of Ablative armor plating, the same stuff they made modern warship hulls from, which was highly resistant against both energy and physical weaponry. It required one arm free to wield, but that was just perfect when armed with a Pulverizer, and Ryan had already grown to appreciate having what amounted to a moveable wall to hide behind while advancing into simulated enemy fire. He'd seen demo shields take direct hits from RPGs, Beam cannons, and even anti-infantry mines and come out hardly scratched, and even a glancing hit from a squad level hyper impulse gun captured from Eddie forces only put a scar in it, without penetrating fully!

Spyro was equipped with something called an "Inferno" combi-weapon that was more or less pirated directly from FEAR, the weapon comprised a dual heavy flamethrower with a revolutionary miniaturized FRALA array for both anti-infantry and anti-armor punch at close range. Unlike most vehicle class FRALA lasers, the Inferno weapon had a wide, comparatively short ranged bloody red beam with an effective range of about 50 meters, and a three second duration, meaning the user had to get in close to use it, but could hit a lot of different targets with one good shot. The extra power supplies and fuel tanks for the system bulked up heavily on Spyro's back, and the weapon itself was so large and bulky that even a Vanguard armored trooper needed two hands to carry and fire it, meaning no shield for Spyro. Not that Spyro minded, he was head over heels in love with the thing, had even stenciled "My Precious" on the side in UV paint so that he wouldn't ever misplace it.

Sypro was also demonstrating the other type of new close quarters weapon system for the Vanguard units, called the "Katzbalger", or the "K-gauntlets". Katzbalgers were actual replacement gauntlets for the Vanguard system, that were somewhat larger and thicker fingered than the standard, resulting in a loss of some manual dexterity... it was impossible to arm and throw a hand grenade with Katzbalgers on for instance. In exchange, mono-edged chainsaw tracks were built into the back of the hand and fingers, and which were activated when the gauntlet was clenched into a fist, allowing the already potent Vanguard punch to be turned into a truly terrifying weapon good against both infantry and vehicle armor, or even carving through heavier plate like bunker doorways. Unlike the HS blade, you couldn't drop or lose Katzbalgers, and all it took to activate was a clenched fist, meaning it was easy to switch between weapon systems if an Eddie got unexpectedly close.

Dud on the other hand was equipped with a varient on the standard Vanguard plate, designed for combat engineering and demolitions work, with extra equipment built into the forearms of his armor, such as drills, saws, and cutters of various sorts for dealing with enemy tangle or razor wire, or emplacing explosive devices. His armor's sensor system was also upgraded for more precision when dealing with explosive devices. He wore the standard Stiletto and HS blade, and carried a Hydra class portable Missile Launcher... something which was making a first time appearance at individual squad levels now that Vanguard armor allowed a soldier to deal with the massive weight. The 120mm launcher had magazines of up to six missiles, with a huge variety of warheads to choose from, including a new thermobaric system, the Cremator, that used MAIDEN and an inert Green EDEN instead of compressed fuel gases for an explosive capability that was just shy of a very tiny tactical nuke!

The launcher had a range of about 7500 meters, and could be used in one of three fire modes... Direct, like an RPG, with only the soldier's aim to rely upon; Seeking, where the missile's targeting system were activated, be they radar or laser or heat guidance; or Bombardment, which allowed the missile to choose its own target after being fired in a high arc, without direct line of sight to any targets. Dud also carried a variety of grenades and stickbombs, as well as mines and other emplaced explosives, including a new type of close quarters "Flash" grenade called a Lobotomizer, or just "Lobo". Lobo's were another product of FEAR, using some sort of electrical system based off studied Eddie brains to simulate the psychic pain of a death echo in a short radius around the point of detonation, which was disorienting and sometimes even totally disabling to the Eddies, while remaining almost totally harmless to the USN soldiers.

Bear and Bull were both equipped in the standard loadout for Vanguard troops, with a somewhat smaller combat shield, Stiletto and HS blade, and carrying the default weapon, the HLAR-86 "Flamberge", a direct upgrade of the LAR-85 "Cutlass" linear assault rifle that was the standard weapon of the current USN infantry. Flamberges were 15mm, vs the 5mm of their predecessor, and used Firefly slugs for combat veratility, with a huge 200 round magazine for extended firing time without the need for reloading. The weapons were designed to be used both in two hands or in one hand, with only a slight decrease in accuracy, and came with a smaller HS type bayonet that could be spring loaded from beneath the barrels to turn the weapon into a sort of spear for close range combat. Meanwhile, Guts's armor was another varient type, with the capability to do full scale trauma care right there on the battlefield, and plentiful reservoirs of Curaga type nano-fluid for bathing serious wounds and getting a soldier back into the fight faster.

Though given the option to adorn his armor and combat shield with the distinctive red crosses that denoted his primary role, Vince had declined, choosing instead to carry a Stiletto, HS blade and several grenades. If you wore the cross, then conventions of warfare indicated you had to be unarmed, and opposing forces weren't supposed to shoot at you, but in the Reclamation War, many Eddie forces included animals or Chimera that had no concept of what the red cross meant, and for that matter, many of the Eddies didn't seem to care to play by the rules anyway, so Vince preferred to be able to spill guts as well as patch them up, and if he got shot at a little more because of it, well, those were the breaks.

Finally, Lepeeper... who'd earned that nickname for his habit of using his sniper scope to peer into the showers of the female trainees while in Boot Camp... was armed with a brand spanking new AAR "Rapier", an Anti-Armor Railgun, the first railgun to be used at less than a vehicular level. Though similar to the linear weapon systems used throughout the USN's military, railguns actually had physical contact between the launching mechanism and the fired round, meaning more wear and tear on the gun, but a much higher transfer of energy into the projectile, resulting in a much higher muzzle velocity and thus longer range and higher hitting power. The mono-tipped 40mm solid slugs the Rapier fired could pierce a meter of solid armor quality steel and still have enough force to blow an armored human to shreds! However, the weapon itself was still fairly large and bulky, meaning it required two hands to use, even in Vanguard armor. Also its rate of fire and ammo capacity were pretty low, definitely regulating it to a support or sniper type role. Lepeeper's armor included upgraded sensors as well, including a ground penetrating radar that allowed him to see through some kinds of physical objects to an extent, to target enemies that were otherwise in complete cover.

"I could almost feel sorry for those goddamn Eddies." The sniper commented, as he braced his weapon across the slope of his armor's shoulder, as the demo squad started to form up to march out into the testing range. "We're gonna fuck them up so hard now..."

"Tough shit for the Eddies." Spyro said with a spitting sound, though he didn't actually spit. "I'm tired of crapping my armor every time they get close enough to shout at, now it's their turn to tremble in fear of what happens when we get close!" He clenched his right fist for emphasis, the Katzbalger whirring into vibrant life as he did so, the keen of frantically revolving metallic teeth enough to put a person's teeth on edge.

"It's going to be a different battlefield, that's for sure..." Ryan added, as they got the prompt to make their appearance. A whole new war was about start, he just hoped the Eddies hadn't come up with new surprises of their own...

xxxx

**Lunar space, Second Earth Colony 4, Fenris Enhanced Armaments Researchers Complex, Mobile Suit Advancements branch, March 26th, 12:00 pm**

Durandel made sure that he wasn't limping any more than he usually would... the old wound he'd suffered from his personal confrontation with Noah was acting up more than was normal, perhaps aggravated by the lack of good care his body had been receiving of late. He'd cleaned himself up a great deal from the half broken drunk he'd been for a few days after his confrontation with Rey, his spark guttering but never quite to the point where it blew out entirely. Gilbert Durandel had come too far, done too many things, risked far too much, to just roll over and play dead now, no matter what sort of personal or professional setbacks he was confronted with. He was the Solar President and guiding light of the USN, a nation state he had forged brick by brick from the ground up with the sweat of his own two hands, or so it felt at times. So what if he'd been betrayed by a man he'd thought of as his son! So what if the love of his life had been kidnapped and was no doubt in durance vile right now! He would perservere! He would triumph! He would not be beaten!

And certainly not by an opportunistic black widow of a bookworm like Doctor Natalia Dostanya, or the blue blooded eunuch of a Natural Supremacist, Atticus Djibril! Was he not the man who'd outmanipulated even Noah Borander? Compared to the struggles against that demonic child, Dostanya and her little ploys were just bush league annoyances! Durandel had long ago consigned himself to suffering a great deal in order to achieve his goals, and though he never would have willingly chosen to sacrifice either Rey or Talia in the pursuit of his dream, neither would he allow his dream to die just because they weren't part of it anymore. Not because he didn't love them, but because he loved them enough to achieve it even without them there to bolster his faith and happiness! He would find a way to redeem his son... and reclaim his lover. Or if she was beyond reclamation, if Natalia had done something unspeakable to his beloved Captain, then Durandel would revenge her, no matter what it took!

And so he'd plunged right back into the political arena with near feverish intensity, determined not to let his grasp on power slip any more than it already had, and to begin active counterattacks against Dostanya and Djibril. One of his first acts after sitting down in his office was to slash the future budgetary allowances for FEAR and the Reclaimer Initiative by over 60 percent... if they weren't going to work for him, he certainly wasn't of a mind to pay them for their subversion. He'd also initiated proceedings to forcibly "requisition" direct government control over the NERVE Institute... Necessary Experimental Research on Variant Eugenics... the subsection of Fenris Enhanced Armaments Researchers that was responsible for developing and producing the BALORs! Dostanya had said the first generation were merely prototypes, which perhaps explained why they'd gone out of control... he wanted to make sure the next generation would not have that same problem, and the best way to do that would be to oversee them himself!

The paperwork had finally been ramrodded through the Judiciary system, just as Durandel had known it would... he'd seated most of the Judiciary system after all, and made it plain that regardless of the irregularity of this request, he wasn't going to stand for being gainsayed. They would work on tidying up the legal language later, right now he needed to strike a hard blow against the conspirators, and there was no better way to do that than by taking away their most powerful potential weapons and making them his own. Escorted by a full company of USN veteran troopers from the UT-CADs, wearing brand new Vanguard pattern armor and bearing the fruits of MMI's Tartarus Infantry Technologies branch weapons, Durandel was moving in on the FEAR main complex and occupying it for the duration of the war. He even had Solar Knight Paladins, in Excaliburs, as well as both the Ruby and Crystal Knight-Champions, on standby just in case Dostanya tried to let one of the BALORs loose in an act of defiance.

Perhaps fortunately, that didn't seem to be an issue, as Dr. Dostanya was actually not present at her company's headquarters when Durandel came calling, and though nobody seemed to know exactly where she was, Durandel had little doubt she'd be in her private laboratory, "Hel", buried beneath FEAR's antarctic base, Nifelheim. Well, it was all to the good... by the time she heard about what was happening, which wouldn't be soon with Namara enforcing a total communications blackout around the FEAR headquarters, it would be far too late for her to do anything about it. Though to be entirely honest, Durandel was somewhat surprised by the placidity of the FEAR staff his taskforce was encountering, nobody was even putting on a show of protest at the blatant authority grab that this move represented. He hadn't brought the Vanguard armored troopers just for show... he'd half been expecting to have to shoot his way into the NERVE Institute over a pile of cybernetically enhanced security forces! But that resistance had never materialized. It was somewhat disquieting.

Concentrating on hiding the extent to which his bum leg was paining him, Durandel almost walked right into the back of one of his soldiers, which would have probably been much more painful for the politician than the soldier, given the extra mass of the power armor. "Doors not opening, sir." The soldier relayed, his voice made artifical and menacing by his armor's helmet systems. "Someone must have tripped their internal network security alarm at last."

"I see. Where are we?" Durandel asked, suddenly glad that he hadn't left his security detail behind earlier, if things were going to get dangerous. He preferred to do his fighting from behind a desk, but this mission was simply too critical... not to mention politically risky... to delegate to a subordinate. His invaluable aide, Martin Dicosta, of Section 9, one of the few officers from that department Durandel still trusted, put his hand to his ear as he checked in with Namara, from where he stood a few steps behind Durandel.

"This one of the critical doorways, Mr. President. There's no easy way around it. Namara says she should be able to override the door controls in an hour or two, once we finish connecting her systems to the facility properly." Dicosta reported after a few moments of listening to the AI system's answer.

"That's too long. There's no telling what kind of damage they might do to the systems and project information inside in two hours!" Durandel frowned heavily, fighting for control over his frustration. To have come so far, only to be stymied at the last moment? It wasn't fair! And he wasn't going to stand for it! Thinking back to a few days prior, Durandel remembered the demonstration he'd been given of the Vanguard system and associated weapons, and a hard edged smile crept onto his face. "Captain, break through this doorway by force. If memory serves, the Katzbalger system should do the trick easily enough." Durandel ordered firmly.

"Understood, Mr. President. You'll probably want to stand back and cover your ears. This will be loud." The Captain in charge of his military detachment said, a note of eagerness creeping into his voice as he slung his Flamberge and clenched his fist, revving up the chainblades covering the back and fingers. Two other soldiers equipped with the chainfist systems stepped up beside their officer, the hallway only broad enough for three Vanguard soldiers to stand side by side, as the rest of the unit, Dicosta and Durandel retreated around a nearby corner and braced themselves. The Captain was wrong, it was not loud. It was ear-splitting! Even with twenty meters and a corner of wall between him and the racket, Durandel thought his ears were going to start bleeding as the three chainfists hammered into the doughty armored door again and again and again, the squeal of metal biting into metal and ripping away fragments seeming to resonate in his very bones!

In a surprisingly short time, that felt about a hundred times as long as it was, the horrid shrieking and rending noises died away, though it took Durandel almost a minute to regain enough hearing in his ears to realize that the door was down and the military detail had moved into the laboratory space beyond. Apparently they had taken two prisoners shortly after breaching the doorway, and were in the process of securing the lab. The soldiers were no experts, but the lab equipment didn't seem to have been damaged or sabotaged, though it would take detailed and exhaustive investigation to be conclusive on that point. Upon being escorted into the lab area by the rest of his security detail, Durandel was surprised to see that he recognized both of the scientists who were kneeling against one wall, a Flamberge armed trooper looming over them both in an intimidating manner.

"I don't suppse you'd let me take a closer look at that chain-fist of yours?" One of the scientists, a wrinkled and leathery skinned older man with white hair and a few liver spots was asking the Vanguard trooper as Durandel walked over. "That security door was two foot thick rolled armor plate, and you lot got through it in less than three minutes! I hadn't realized those dolts over at Tartarus were so far along on their mono-blade weaponry systems."

"I'm sure he'd be glad to give you a much closer look at it if you don't give me very honest answers to my questions, Dr. Roanoke." Durandel said severely as he glared at the chief cyberneticist of FEAR, while Dr. Magnus, the bio-engineering counterpart of FEARs upper echelons, knelt next to Roanoke.

"No need for hasty threats, Mr. President." Dr. Magnus spoke up in half pleading, half haughty tones. "Please forgive us for our show of token resistance, but we had to do something or that bitch would have known we've turned against her..."

"Oktar is correct, Mr. President." Roanoke said, somewhat more civilly. "I can't tell you how long we've both been waiting for a good chance to get out from underneath Dostanya's thumb, your action is a godsend!"

"And why should I believe that Natalia's two chief lieutenants would so readily change sides?" Durandel challenged with a mockingly raised brow.

"Uh... do you not KNOW Dr. Dostanya?" Magnus replied with a sort of choked laugh of incredulity, shaking his grey veined red beard from side to side in dark mirth. "That conniving whore has never treated us as anything other than disposable knowledge sops! As soon as we completed the groundwork and theoretical side of a project, she'd swoop in and steal the fruits of our labor for her own ends! The Extended, the BALORs, now even my stable of Meisters... the bitch has stolen them all! All our work, all those tens of thousands of man hours spent cultivating the 2nd Generation... and what good does it do us now? Wasted, all of it wasted!" Magnus broke down into real tears of dismay and anger.

Nonplussed, Durandel looked to Dr. Roanoke for explanation, as the elderly scientist seemed much more composed, or at least quietly resigned, than his half hysterical rival-counterpart. "Oktar is correct. Dr. Dostanya is a brilliant scientist and engineer in her own right, but she prefers others to do the grunt work whenever possible, and then she swoops into to confiscate the bits and pieces of research and technology that our efforts produce. She usurped control over the Extended class Supersoldiers that have been my life's work, pride and joy, and is running them into the ground while attempting to breed a new form of Supersoldier using their genetics. Then she took the first generation BALORs, and deployed them to combat, over objections from both Oktar and I regarding their mental instability under combat conditions. Now most recently, she has confiscated the Meisters... the specialty pilots for the BALORs... from Oktar's training program, along with a great deal of the data and bio-samples we have taken from the 2nd Generation." Roanoke explained.

"So, if I understand what you're saying correctly..." Dicosta said slowly. "The BALOR project has been crippled by Dostanya's actions?"

"Yes and no, young man." Roanoke replied with a tired sigh. "The 2nd Generation BALORs themselves are almost fully complete, with upgraded cybernetic and biological systems that will prevent them from going berserk in the same way their predecessors did, as well as a significant increase in their combat abilities. The BALOR units themselves are far too big to be moved, especially at this late stage in their development. But unlike regular Gundams, BALORs require very special pilots with significant cybernetic enhancements of their own in order to function. And these pilots... we call them Meisters... are what Dostanya has taken, down to the last little child. Without Meisters, the BALORs are nothing more than lobotomized mutants of exceptional size. And with all of Oktar's data on the program stolen as well, reconstructing it from scratch would take weeks, maybe even longer... and that's only assuming we can acquire some proper candidates to use."

"And such candidates don't just grow on trees! Pilot skill itself is the least of the qualities a Meister requires!" Magnus cut in, recovered a bit from his breakdown. "Because they directly interface with what amounts to a high grade Chimera mind, a Meister must possess incredible willpower and sense of self in order to maintain conscious control over the conjoined body... it was actually due to the sublimation of the first generation Meister's egos that they succumbed so rapidly to the BALOR's baser natures. We started from Extended stock, but supersoldiers actually make poor Meisters... their sense of self is artificually reduced to make them easier to control, and that makes it hard for them to bear up under BALOR integration without succumbing to the beast's subconscious. It's back to the drawing boards on that one..."

"I can think of a couple Extended that might possess the emotional maturity and sense of self that make suitable Meisters, but again, we don't have access to them." Roanoke pursed his lips in frustration. "I sent a pair of agents to Nifelheim some time ago, to attempt to observe or even disrupt Dostanya's plans down there, but I haven't heard from them since last week, when I provided a data patch for the operating systems of my Augmented... I'm beginning to fear the worst."

"What about the Solar Knights? Knight-Champion's Asuka and Hawke could work, they already have high end experience with Gundams..." Durandel suggested, deciding to accept the two scientist's change of heart. For the moment anyway, and he would be sure to keep them closely watched.

"Again, piloting skill is only of tertiary importance. Piloting a BALOR is nothing like a purely technological machine." Magnus replied with a dismissive shake of his head. "It requires you merge consciousness's with the Chimera host-body, relying on the beastial instincts to survive in combat while retaining overall control with your higher mind. Besides, to be blunt, we already looked at them both, and neither is psychologically suitable. Asuka relies too much upon his instincts, especially his anger, while in combat... he'd go berserk in his first battle, no doubt about it. As for Hawke, she lacks self confidence due to prior romantic problems, and a near death experience. She wouldn't have the gumption to assert herself over a BALOR, she'd end up insane or berserk as well. We initially thought your adopted son, ze Burrel, might work, but he's shown a great deal of psychological instability as well recently, so he's off the list too. What we need is someone like Commander la Flaga, or Ambassador Zala, or Commander Joule... but Sammual tells me that recruiting them might be difficult..."

"To put it mildly. They were on the ground when the first generation BALORs went berserk." Durandel admitted heavily. "Ambassador Zala himself came within seconds of being devoured by Fenris Wolf. I cannot imagine they would accede to becoming Meisters, not least because it would put them even more into my power than they already are."

"Then we are at impasse." Roanoke said with an unhappy shrug. "With your permission, we will conduct another aptitude survey of the wider USN population, but we've already conducted several such surveys, and most psychologically fit candidates are not physically fit enough to survive the augmentation surgeries. We are looking for gemstones in random meteorites, Mr. President, that sums up how difficult a truly good Meister is to find."

"What about cloning a suitable candidate?" Durandel suggested.

"It would take far too long. The technology exists to make it workable, but in order to establish the clone's sense of self enough to be of use to us, we would need years, maybe even a decade or more, in order to achieve workable results." Magnus shook his head in dismay. "I'm afraid Dostanya has flummoxed us quite totally this time." A sudden light came into his eyes as a possible solution came to mind. When stymied scientifically, it was often good practice to consult with someone smarter or more expert than yourself. And Dr. Magnus was one of the few people alive in the USN that knew of a certain young super-genius that was still on tap for just such sticky scientific problems as this. "Could we not consult with the reclusive Dr. B?" Magnus asked hopefully, asking as directly as he dared in mixed company.

However, the curdled look on the Solar President's face was quick to dash this sudden eruption of hope. "That's not an option we possess." Durandel said in an empty voice. Just thinking about it, about Noah Borander being on the loose once more, was almost enough to give Durandel a heart attack. But the evidence was undeniable, the lack of communication with the specially outfitted prison ship having been discovered only slightly after the battle of Orb was concluded, and reported to Durandel during the latter stages of his self pitying binging. He'd very nearly hung himself in the bathroom when he got the news, only the thought of leaving Talia in the lurch or unavenged staying his hand from taking the cowards way out. They were still working out who had rescued the arch-terrorist, given that less than ten people in the USN even knew he was alive, much less where he was being kept, but the germane point was that he was loose, and now Durandel lived every day with the sword of Damocles nudging his crown!

"It could be our best hope though." Roanoke pressed, misunderstanding Durandel's reluctance to get Noah involved. Roanoke didn't want the little monster pawing through his research material either, but they were out of options!

"It's not an option we possess." Durande repeated with a blazing stare. "Dr. B has gone on... sabbatical, and cannot be reached at this time. If you two can't figure this out, then nobody can..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Antarctica, FEAR base Nifelheim sub-basements, Hel laboratories complex, March 26th, 12:40 pm**

"Its time to adminster the booster shot, Doctor Fredricks." Natalia reminded her lab assistant, after allowing him a suitable moment to stare at her generous cleavage under her tight fitting lab coat. Men were such simple animals, and seemingly only got simpler as their IQ got higher. She didn't even have to flash skin in order to make this hopeless twit eager to please her, regardless of the morality of what he had to do to achieve her favor. Even if it meant working on... It... for her, in those times when Dostanya herself was too busy with other matters to spare time for her beloved special project. Although even the persuasive power of Dostanya's sensual hints weren't enough to make Dr. Fredricks enjoy his tasks, indeed, she could plainly see the man was terrified to even be in the same room as her greatest creation, which spoke volumes as to his lack of appreciation for true genius.

"Y-yes, Director." Dr. Fredricks replied with a heavy swallow, as he stopped fiddling around with data reports he'd collated more than an hour prior, given no choice but to accomplish his most dreaded daily task now that Dostanya herself was looking on. Trying to contain the shaking of his hands, which had almost nothing to do with the icy temperature of the room, Fredricks unfastened the clasps of the large scale hypodermic carrying case which contained the special booster shot. What precisely went into the dark reddish colored liquid Dr. Fredricks did not know, and furthermore had no wish to know... only the Director was privy to the contents of the booster shots, which she made herself. Steeling himself, Dr. Fredricks turned to face the far wall of the rather expansive room, which he ordinarily did his best to pretend did not exist.

Chained to the wall in an almost cruciform style was the thing which haunted his nightmares and made it impossible for him to even sleep without heavy doses of sedatives. Though long dialed in on the specifics of the NERVE project called BALOR, Dr. Fredricks wasn't sure that this particular creation could even be called a BALOR! It wasn't a chimeraform of any sort he was familiar with certainly, and more than anything, it looked like a enormous human being! Twenty meters tall, but weighing in only at around 80 tons, the bronze skinned figure was muscled like an adonis, though it lacked any external genitals and was basically sexless as far as he understood things. The two assive, angel-like wings with white feathers growing out of its back were definitely not a human characteristic though. What sort of mad gene science must been applied to combine human and chimeraic DNA to create such a creature, and why it had been done, Dr. Fedricks did not know, and did not wish to ever know!

Typhon was its name, chosen by the Director, after the legendary mythical beast of destruction from Greek legends, a creature so monstrously powerful not even the Gods could kill it, but instead were forced to seal it away for all time out of fear of what it might do. Unlike the previous... or later, depending on how you looked at it, as Typhon had been under construction for longer than the BALOR project had been in operation... generations of BALORs, Typhon was not an Active Newtype. Dr. Fredricks did not know why this was so... as far as he knew, Latent Newtypes possessed no combat useful abilities at all, except for a certain bit of abnormal good luck in avoiding damage. But the Director had insisted, and what the Director insisted upon, she got. And there must have been something to it... every time he got close enough to administer this booster shot, Dr. Fredricks always noticed that his watch stopped recording time accurately... sometimes as much as ten minutes would pass on his watch while only twenty seconds would pass according to the lab chronograph!

How such a thing could even be physically possible, Dr. Fredricks did his best not to contemplate. Some things were not for human minds to know. He didn't wear a watch anymore if he could help it, not while working in this room anyway. If time was being distorted by Typhon, then Dr. Fredricks felt happier not knowing about it. Especially because the 3rd... or 0th... Generation BALOR wasn't even awake, even though its twin Meisters were encapsulated within their sustainment pods in the beast's chest region! Dr. Fredricks hadn't even realized one could make Eddies into Meisters, but those silver eyed children were apparently the best candidates for control over what the Director would sometimes call FEAR's Ultimate Weapon! Stepping close to the BALOR's right ankle, Dr. Fredicks found a likely looking vein and punctured the BALOR's skin with the mono-tipped hypo, doing his best to squeeze out the thick solution within slowly and evenly... the Director would not be pleased if in haste he caused even a hint of damage to the slumbering creature!

After what felt like an eternity, and could have been anywhere from ten seconds to twenty minutes, the hypo was emptied and Dr. Fredricks gratefully retreated, doing his best not to glance at the wall mounted clock. The Director had already left sometime during the process, and that by itself was enough to tell him that he'd been within the BALOR's warping field for a good deal longer than he wanted to think about. Fighting the urge to vomit, Dr. Fredricks scrambled to put the empty hypo back in its case, and gathered up his sheafs of data reports as he all but scurried out of the room as if the creature had broken free and was clamoring for his blood, rather than residing chained and sedated and all but mindless against the wall!

In her private office-lab, a short distance away from her primary work area where Typhon was located, Natalia watched with maternal pride and self congratulatory excitement as the haggard looking figure of Dr. Fredricks finally emerged from the area of camera blur that was Typhon, almost fifteen minutes after he'd stepped in to administer the booster shot. Natalia did not understand why her precious monster could influence the flow of time any more than her subordinate did, but she didn't care. All she cared about was that it could, and that furthermore, its ability to do so was increasing with every consecutive booster shot! Only a few dozen more shots, and the boosting process might be complete, and she would have under her control a weapon which could not be equalled by any technology in the USN or amongst the Edenites! An angelic figure which could control the very physical universe itself, through the manipulaton of time... it was less a chimera, and more a chained GOD!

Though actually, Typhon's own Latent powers were but the tip of her grandest creation's strength! Though much smaller than any of the other BALOR units, Typhon possessed many of the same cybernetic reinforcements, including skin that was often able to reflect energy weapons back along the paths which they struck. However it was the system she'd dubbed the "Embrace of Typhus" that she was most proud of, which allowed Typhon to quite literally harvest the brains of other psychic creatures through long tendrils on its back, beneath its hair, storing the still living neural matter in special blisters beneath the surface of its wings. This harvesting process was deadly to the creature of course, but even with their life snuffed out, their brains... specifically the portions of them related to memory function and Newtype powers... remained accessible, allowing Typhon to utilize those memories or powers as if they were its own. And not only that, but boosted by a Latent chorus effect from Typhon and its two Meisters, the twin Latent Edenites, Matthis and Jessi, so that the power could be used at a hundred times the strength the original user would have been able to manage!

That was the true power of Typhon... the ability to increase its power through combat, to learn and absorb the abilities of other powerful creatures and utilize them itself! There was literally no limit to the kind of strength Typhon could acquire through time, as it slowly digested the brains in the Embrace and incorporated their genetic structure into that of Typhon's own body! And all of it was hers to command as she saw fit, as Typhon's Meisters were under careful hypnotic suggestion that should last for decades, and would keep her precious monster loyal to her and her alone! Natalia leaned back in her chair, doing her best to only smile, and not actually break out into giggles of glee, as she thought about creating her long dreamed of dynasty of scientific rule over the masses with Typhon as her unbeatable champion! Her attention was briefly drawn to a array of holographic data that chronicled the road to the perfect BALOR, hovering in midair to the side of her main observation screen.

At one end were the base lifeforms of the 1st Generation BALORs, a Cold Hunter, a Basilisk and an Ironhide. About fifteen thousand lab-bred generations later came Fenris Wolf, Jormundgandr and Gorgon. Gorgon's genecode dead ended at that point, as all future varients of that species were geneticaly too unstable for BALORization. Meanwhile, another four or five thousand iterations of Fenris Wolf and Jormungandr brought forth Tarrasque and Tiamat, of the 2nd Generation. A heavily modified Tiamat geneform coupled with primate DNA from several different sources, including a few telekinetic human Eddies, resulted in the new and unique species that was Bahamut. And finally, a highly tweaked version of Bahamut, mixed with more primate DNA and a super secret ingredient of Dr. Dostanya's own procurement resulted in Typhon. And it was booster shots of that super secret ingredient, suspended in a base culture made from her own cloned blood, that helped the 3rd Generation BALOR continue to grow in psychic potential, despite already being several orders of magnitude more powerful than the Bahamut geneform!

Who would have ever thought such an ancient fossil creature would possess such untapped potential for psychic powers in its calcified bone marrow? It made Natalia wonder whether the famed fossil was truly of an animal, and not an actual form of intelligent alien life. The temptation was there to attempt to reverse engineer a fully living Winged Whale, but Natalia had decided to put off the experiment until later. She would need something to occupy her time with after she took control over the Solar System, after all. She'd also been surprised when Typhon had started growing in its beautiful white hair and feathers after she'd started with the booster shots... who'd have ever thought the Winged Whales would possess such aesthetically pleasing features? Though it did account for why the feathers were so resilient, she supposed, if they evolved for travel through vacuum or on the harsh environments of Jupiter's moons. She was working in isolating out the feathers genes so that when she began similar booster shot treatments on her nascent Paragons, they wouldn't end up looking inhuman.

She was just about to get up and head back to the primary lab, so she could gaze on her wondrous creation with her own eyes... the time dilation effect prevented observation through most technological means for some reason... when an incoming call icon appeared at the corner of her main screen. Banishing the top secret genetic data for the moment, Natalia sighed and sat back down in her chair, as the main holographic screen resolved into the bald and visibly augmented head of one of her security staff officers. "What is it? I'm very busy right now." Natalia snapped, not happy to be interrupted in her private basking in her accomplishments.

"Two things, Ma'am. First and most pressingly, we've lost contact with FEAR headquarters on Second Earth 4. Its a total news blackout from what we can tell, the USN AI won't let us in at all." He reported quickly.

"Yes, I was expecting something of the sort. Gil's not the sort to sit on his ass for long. Okay, what else?" Natalia prompted, smirking as she saw how the security officer was nonplussed by her lack of reaction to being cut off from her own headquarters office.

"You wanted me to keep an extra eye on Knight-Ensign Debora and the ICMS unit, and they've been acting very suspicious lately, often disappearing off our internal security sensor network for long periods of time. The ICMS has also been spending an inordinate amount of time with the male Extended units in lockdown, while only a few hours ago, Knight-Ensign Debora took off with his Vindicator on an unannounced patrol circuit that will take him just beyond the edge of our comm scanning networks for a short time. I have no real proof, Ma'am, but I'd stake my life on the fact that those two are planning something. The Extended have been too quiet of late, given their prior state of agitation."

"I see. Keep them under observation, and bring them in if you catch them in the act, but otherwise don't harass them. I hold all the cards, their wriggling is more amusing than annoying. What can a mere Natural pilot and a dysfunctional supersoldier unit hope to accomplish on their own anyway? But just in case, have Extended unit Stella Loussier seperated from the other females and held in individual confinement for the time being. I want her accessible as a bargaining chip for when her lover boy makes his move. I think it's just about time to lower the curtain on their little drama, but I'd so hate for them to be seperated when the end comes..." Natalia ordered with a careless shrug. "Now if that's all, don't bother me again."

"Yes, Ma'am. My apologies for troubling you." The security officer signed off without having to be told.

"Squirm all you want, insects, it doesn't matter... in only a few more months, I won't need ANY of you! Once my Typhon is completed, there won't be anyone, man, beast or divine agent, that can stand in my way as I ascend to the pinnacle of humanity!" Natalia said with a broad smile that would have chilled the blood of anyone unfortunate enough to see it.

xxxx

**En route to Earth orbit, aboard the RSS **_**Justicar**_**, Captain's stateroom, March 26th, 4:15 pm**

"Do you really think this is the wisest course of action for us to take right now, Markov?" Tamara asked, sitting turned around on the desk chair she'd pulled into the room, eyeing her commander, lover and friend through concerned eyes as he prowled back and forth around the room like a caged tiger. She'd never seen him so upset and anxious before... even at the first time she'd met him, when he was all but hysterical with concern for his hurt lover, Jean Kellson, he hadn't been this visibly disturbed! Back then he'd been frightening in his intensity, whereas now he was frightful because he seemed to be coming totally unglued, and she just couldn't figure out why! She'd never seen him so angry as he'd been after their frantic lovemaking session almost a month prior, when he checked some of his private email traffick from some of his friends who lived in Orb.

He'd barely even pulled on a pair of trousers, after unleashing an unearthly scream that had startled her out of her post-coital doze, and what felt like five years of her life, before he got up and stormed out of the room, leaving her sitting dazedly on the floor, trying to collect herself and figure out what was going on. She'd never known Markov to have nightmares before, or if he had, he'd never woken up screaming from them. Even when she'd glanced through the contents of his email folder... he'd left the data slate lying on the bedroom floor as he'd left... Tamara hadn't seen anything that should have set off the calmest and most self controlled man she'd ever met. Some bad news about a friend, and some madman going on a rampage down in Orb last year, but nothing that should make him scream and storm off with bloodlust on his mind!

Hurriedly dressing herself, Tamara had raced after Markov, hoping to be able to calm him down enough to get a coherent explanation of what was wrong from him. He'd made a beeline directly for the temporary quarters that they'd assigned to the Edenite survivors that they'd rescued from the slavery camp, and was moving almost at a trot by the time she'd caught up, right at the doors to that section of the hab block. She'd put a hand on his shoulder, only to have him actually shrug it off with a growl that told her in no uncertain terms he was in no mood for concilitation or explanation. Disconcerted by this inexplicable shift in his attitude, Tamara had trailed behind him as he marched through the Edenite quarters, looking neither left nor right, many of the Edenites peering out in shock, having been unable to feel him coming like they would most people.

Stopping at one particular door, Markov had hauled back and kicked the door open so hard that he actually dented the structual grade metal slightly, bursting into the dimly let living quarters beyond... little more than a fold out bed and living area... like a red headed explosion. There were two people in the bed, both of them jerking upright in unmitigated shock as their privacy was suddenly invaded, Markov hustling across the room and almost diving onto the bed as he grabbed the person on the left, the male, around the neck with one hand and bodily dragged him out of his bed, slamming him up against the wall hard enough to make Tamara wince. "HOW COULD YOU BE SO STUPID?" Markoc had bellowed, spittle actually flying from his lips as he pinned Noah Borander to the wall like he was a half empty sack of garbarge.

The massive facial mutilation that had taken away his eyes made Noah's face difficult to read, but Tamara felt justified in thinking that the former archterrorist was a little bit shocked at this turn of events, even as Meyrin actually screamed in mingled worry and anger, covering herself with the bedsheet, Noah's state of dress leaving little doubt that the two Eddies had been up to much the same sort of hijinks as Tamara and Ashino only a little while prior to this interruption. Markov hauled back his free hand and slammed it into the bulkhead next to Noah's head, as the young man spluttered and choked, forced up on tiptoe by Markov's hand around his throat. "I OUGHT TO SMASH YOUR HEAD IN RIGHT NOW, YOU BASTARD! HOW COULD YOU? HOW DARE YOU! HE WAS DEAD! DEAD! BUT YOU... YOU BROUGHT HIM BACK, YOU MANIAC! HOW? **WHY?**" Markov continued to shout, at the top of his lungs, veins standing out on his bare arms and chest as he struggled to contain himself even slightly.

"Markov! STOP! You're hurting him!" Meyrin pleaded, reaching out one hand to touch Ashino on the shoulder, before pulling back as if from a hot stove when he turned a tear stained and twisted face in her direction.

"Hurting him? HURTING HIM? I'M GOING TO KILL HIM! HE'S DOOMED US ALL, THE ARROGANT FOOL! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? HE BROUGHT HIM BACK AND NOW HE'S LOOSE AGAIN! DO YOU EVEN REALIZE WHAT IT TOOK TO KILL HIM THE FIRST TIME?" Markov rattled Noah against the wall like a dog might shake a rat. "YOU IDIOT! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS? IS NOTHING BEYOND YOUR ABILITY TO DESTROY? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?"

"Fail... saf... e..." Noah managed to choke out, his face flushing purple from Ashino's grip on his throat. "Emer... gency... plan... last... resort..."

"LAST RESORT? YOU MADE HIM YOUR LAST RESORT? HOW STUPID CAN YOU GET? DID YOU LEARN NOTHING OF HIM FROM THE FIRST TIME AROUND? WHY DIDN'T YOU DESTROY HIM WHEN YOU HAD THE CHANCE?" Markov demanded, cocking his fist back again, and this time quite obviously not intending to miss his blow.

"Too... scared..." Noah gurgled, his hands bunching into fists at his side, recognizing the futility of struggling against Ashino's far greater physical strength. "Afraid... not... strong enough... weak... too scared... didn't know... what might happen..."

This somehow seemed to reach Markov, stilling his rage for the time being, as he released his hold on Noah's throat, and staggered a step or two backward as the archterrorist collapsed, coughing and retching, to his hands and knees, Meyrin almost instantly at his side. "Too scared. You were too scared to kill him, even though he couldn't have been much more than a computer chip at the time! If it wasn't so awful, it'd be funny! You could have crushed him under your bootheel like a spider, and you were too scared to do it! HAH! Figures..." Ashino shook his head and fisted his hand against his brow.

"Noah, what the hell is going on? What's he talking about?" Meyrin demanded of her beloved.

"I'm confused too." Tamara volunteered, from where she stood in the doorway.

"Ugh, my neck..." Noah complained with another thick cough, before moving to a sitting position, his eyeless face downcast. "Remember when you told me I needed a backup plan, in case the Great Endeavor was defeated, Meyrin? I established my Citadel in a secret spot, and moved all my most dangerous technology there, the stuff I didn't trust myself to use properly once you pointed out the errors in some of my judgement calls. Well, part of that technology was a BIIC type chip containing the memories and personality of a certain individual... it was actually the first BIIC chip I'd ever created, by accident, while evaluating pilot data from the Pulsar at the end of the Isolation. I set up the Citadel to be able to operate independently of me and the Great Endeavor, and set up a fail safe system in case the Eden plan failed or even did not fully succeed, because I knew that if only part of humanity became Edenites, it was only a matter of time before racial tensions ignited a war even worse than the Valentine conflicts."

"So I needed something that would require both Edenites and non-Edenites to work together in order to defeat. A threat that was so large that only a united humanity could prevail against it." Noah went on. "And since this particular person had already united humanity once before by becoming such a threat, I figured with a few tweaks and upgrades, he'd be able to do it again. Though I wasn't expecting the fail safe to activate, not for another twenty or thirty years at the soonest."

"So you thought bringing back Zacharis Frost, BCPU level 6, in the cloned, nanologically enhanced body of Kira Yamato, was going to unite a fractured humanity against a common threat?" Markov spat the words as if they were foul. "You really don't know ANYTHING about humanity, do you, Noah? You thought we'd all be overjoyed to be forcibly converted to Edenites too though, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It wasn't just Frost that brought humanity together at the battle of Denver you know. He was a cataylst, not a causation! Un-fucking-believable! That was your rationale? That just bringing Frost back would magically make people stop hating and fearing and fighting with each other? And I thought Kira Yamato was a hopeless idealist! Really, this is just... this just UNBELIEVABLE! I can't believe you're the smartest person alive! HA! God save us all from the stupidity of smart men..."

Markov stepped closer and held his fist in front of Noah's unseeing face. "What I ought to do is pop your head like a pimple, right here and now. But the plain fact is, since you created this monster, you might be the best chance I have of figuring out a way to beat someone I've never managed to even EQUAL in a fight. Or even get close! Tell me, mister super-genius, how MUCH stronger did you make him than his first time around?"

"Allowing for the nanological enhancements, and the baseline capabilities of a post-second puberty Ultimate Coordinator..." Noah hemmed and hawwed for a bit. "I'd say he's probably the equivalent of a BCPU level 9 to 12ish, baseline. With access to both the Seed and potentially the Ascended Seed. And a post-Brotherhood class Gundam at his disposal, though the exact configuration was somewhat up in the air at the time I programmed it into the computer... I was assuming Charon would progress along certain technologic pathways a little from the baseline data... as that capability is part of the computer system's programming."

"Wonderful! Truly excellent! We are fucking DOOMED, I was right!"

"He's not indestructable. Kira and Lacus could beat him, especially with the rest of the Clyne Faction to help." Noah refuted with a shrug.

"Oh really? Was THAT the fail safe to the fail safe? Having Kira and Lacus around to mop up your mess, all nice and neat?" Ashino actually laughed, though it was the most bitter, unpleasant sound Tamara had ever heard him make, save for that scream earlier. "Well, here's a news update for you, Mr. Fail Safe! LACUS IS DEAD! She died in a forest fire a couple weeks before the Reclamation War started, along with both her children! Kira has gone, by some accounts, completely batshit insane because of this! He's joined the Edenites as their Executor, basically what amounts to their warleader! And he's completely tossed his prior hangup about not killing people out the window! He just recently led an attack on ORB which goddamn well almost wiped them out, and nearly killed his own SISTER in battle! OH, and let me get to the BEST PART!" Sarcasm dripped from Ashino's words thickly enough to drown a puppy.

"You remember the BCPU level 9 to 12 you turned Frost into? He came to Orb and almost killed Cagalli, Athrun and most of the rest of the Clyne Faction, which was BLAMED on the grieving Kira who'd just lost his entire family! He stole the memories of my good friend Cyprus, turning the world greatest soldier into a drooling vegetable, after raping his wife Wrenn and my JEAN in their home! He later managed to get up to the PLANTS, where he killed Councilwoman Joule in her own home as well! And then, Frost joined the Edenites! The same Edenites Kira joined! THEY ARE BOTH EXECUTORS! The person you were counting on to defeat Frost is now ALLIED WITH HIM! SO, NOAH, WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO NOW? HUH? **HUH? TELL ME!**" Ashino stood up again and turned away from the stunned Noah and Meyrin, putting his face into his hands and actually allowing himself to sob despondently.

Back in the here and now, Tamara continued to watch Markov pace for a bit. "Did you hear me, Markov?" She asked carefully. "I said, are you sure that this is a wise..."

"It's not." Ashino answered curtly, cutting her off. "Its the furthest thing from wise, but it's also something I have no choice but to do."

"This guy's really such a big deal to you that you'd throw away all you've worked for with the Retributors over close to a decade just so you can confront him?" Tamara wondered, skewering her lover with a merciless glare. "He's so important you'd even throw what you and I have away just so you could get at him?"

"What do you want me to say, Tammy?" Ashino retorted with his arms folded across his chest. "Frost is the single greatest threat to humanity there has ever been... Noah got that part of his little plan rightat least. He didn't call himself the "End of All" just because he liked the way it sounded. He fully intends to kill every last living being in the Solar System, and worse, with Noah's technology, he probably has the means to do it. He's hyper violent, crazy beyond all description, and the only way he can get any enjoyment out of life is by killing others. If he's not dealt with, and soon, it won't matter if we can force a regime change in the USN or not. There won't BE a USN if Frost has his way. I've no intention of forgiving or forgetting what Durandel has done to all of us... but Frost has to come first. He's just that dangerous."

"And your personal vendetta against this guy doesn't have any bearing on your thoughts?" Tamara challenged, not especially pleased to see her remark hit home.

"Yes, I hate him, more than I've ever hated anyone, even the Doc. And I am scared of him, so scared I can't even think sometimes." Ashino admitted with a visible shiver. "He's closest thing I have to an older brother, and while we were growing up, he picked on me mercilessly. He tortured and tormented me every day, just because he could, and nearly killed me on more seperate occasions than I ever want to remember. Worse, he's hurt the people I care about... he killed Mrs. Argyle, and crippled Sai. He almost killed Mr. Glory, and drained Cyprus into a hollow shell without any memories of his life! He violently raped Mrs. Nostaliviche, and cut out her tongue just because he could. He raped Jean, after forcibly restoring her memories of her life prior to her injury, and laughed while she pleaded and begged for me to come and save her! Now she's near comatose again, and is afraid to even go outside, because of what he did to her. I have no words to describe the need I have to kill him, by any means necessary. I cannot relax while he lives. That is the nature of the relationship between him and me. There's no way you can understand, Tammy. Not unless you meet him, and I pray you never do."

"Okay, I think I get your feelings, Markov. But if I understand the situation correctly, you never could beat this guy even when he was just a normal BCPU, right? So what makes you think you can take him now, in his new body, with his new Gundam?" Tamara protested worriedly. "Markov, love, I'll be glad to do anything I can to help you through this matter... but I can't see how just throwing yourself bodily at the problem is going to do anything besides get you killed, or even worse, captured by the USN. They're not going to just forget who we are, no matter why we're in the area."

"You're right, I can't take him now. Which is why I need to get closer to him, so I can observe him during battle, and try and figure out what weaknesses he might still have. Running from this problem will only make it worse, I have to confront it... and him... as soon as possible. If I can't see any good way to take him down myself, I'll probably get in contact with the remnants of the Clyne Faction. I've never been an ally of theirs per se, but against Frost, beggars can't be choosers. Hopefully Noah will come through with something from his end too... it's his technology, maybe he can self destruct the Kratos like he tried to do the Pulsar." Ashino started to pace once more, chewing on his lip as he tried to fight down the panic building inside him with plots and plans and strategies for beating someone he'd always considered to be unbeatable.

A sudden buzz from the intercomm broke the tableau, causing both Ashino and Tamara to jump a bit, as the bridge duty officer came on the line. "Sorry to interrupt your strategy session, Commander, but we've received an encoded burst transmission under one of your private encryption cyphers. We're not entirely sure, but it seems to have come from Earth's surface, somewhere near the South Pole. Do you want me to pipe it through?"

"Go ahead." Ashino ordered distractedly, most of his mind still on the problem of Frost. A burst of static came through the speakers, before fading away into a faintly familiar voice.

"This is Knight-Ensign Lain Debora, calling the Retributors Commander, Markov Ashino. I don't know if you can hear me, but you told me to use this code if I ever needed to get in contact with you. And boy, do I ever need to. You offered me and Stella a place in Retributors once before, and we turned you down. Our circumstances have changed however, and if that offer is still open, I'd like to take you up on it. And not just me and Stella, if all goes well, I can offer the Retributors access to FEAR's full roster of Extended Supersoldiers, as well as the ICMS Augmented Supersoldier. We ALL want to defect. The USN's gone too far... enclosed in data format is a list of the crimes they've committed against the Extended. We're at our limit, we have to act soon, while we still can. If this interests you, be at the provided coordinates at or around 12:00 noon on April 1st, C.E. 86, preferably with some manner of surface to orbit shuttle capability. Just look for the explosions, they should guide you right in. Provided backup would be nice, but all we really want is an escape route. Thanks in advance... I hope..."

"You think its a trap?" Ashino asked Tamara, the moment the message ended. "Sounds too good to be true."

"Coming from anyone else but Lain Debora, I'd say yes, it's a trap. But having met the man, he's not the sort who would go for something like that. He's an honorable and good man. I think it's legit. And didn't you as much as say something like this might happen, to them? You'd know, being a Supersoldier yourself, just how bad the treatment can get."

"A Supersoldier's loyalty is an absolute, but complex thing." Ashino admitted with a sigh. "It is in our nature to accept abuse that a normal person would find outrageous. Only by forcing us to act against the natures we were designed to have could possibly elict an urge to rebel. That's how it was for me anyway, they kept on trying to use me as a tool of massacre and genocide, not the soldier I was supposed to be. The Extended were built to be tools of intimidation and suppression against Newtypes, according to Stella. One would think they'd be thriving during this war. Then again, I should never overestimate the ability of scientists to screw things up. And I have to say, being able to further bolster our ranks with fifty or more Supersoldiers would be an INCREDIBLE help just now, not to mention a killer black eye for the Durandel administration."

"Then I suggest we get to planning on how we're going to help. We're still two days at stealth cruising speed from Earth orbit, and we've got six days until we need to be at Mr. Debora's coordinates. Should give us plenty of time to do a little scouting around for Executor Frost, and get in contact with Orb and some other people, and still have time to make the rescue deadline." Tamara said, glad to see her commander pulling out of his rut about his revived brother, at least a little bit. Hopefully things would continue to look up... they could always use more good news...

xxxx

**New Eden, South American Andes, Charon's Citadel lower levels, March 26th, 4:17 pm**

"Master Frost, are you here?" The crotchety voice of Charon inquired of the dark room. A moment later, two glowing red orbs revealed themselves amidst the darkness, and an irritated sigh echoed about the small chamber.

"What is it, Charon? I was thinking important thoughts just now. Shouldn't you know when I'm here or not?" Frost retorted irritably. "This had better not be another message from the Mouse. I've told you a dozen times, I've no interest in communicating with her right now."

"Well, Master Frost, of late you've been disappearing and reappearing in manners my sensors cannot quite account for, so I thought it best to inquire before wasting my speaker systems on an empty room." Charon retorted, a tad peevishly, an emotion that only got more pronounced as Frost loosed a superior sort of throaty chuckle at the semi-AI's frustration. "However, the matter does not concern any communications from the Lady Lilia. I have detected and decrypted an outgoing communication using a variation on a defunct old Brotherhood comm code, originating a little over a thousand miles to the south of the Citadel, over Antarctica. I beg pardon for presumption, but upon decoding the message, I thought you might be interested in its contents, should I play it for you?"

"Well, you've already shattered my attempt at self introspection, so you might as well go all the way." Frost answered with a snarl. Not that he'd been making any real progress on accessing the Ascended Seed, but he still hated being bothered at random. However, upon hearing even the first line of the message from whoever this Lain Debora was, Frost found himself forgetting entirely about the Seed evolution for the time being. "Markov Ashino! The little red dwarf! It's been AGES since I last thought about him! Not since just after I played around with his former girlfriend in Orb, if I recall correctly. And he's a Commander? Charon, find out what these Retributors are, and prepare a full report. And make sure you log down that time and place... if little Ashino is going to be paying a call so close by, it would simply be rudeness itself not to go out and meet my errant little brother, don't you think?"

"I shall do as you command, Master Frost. Is there anything else you wish for?" Charon asked placidly.

"Yes. Privacy. Don't interrupt me again..."


	66. In the Spur of Moment

Author Note: Well, I finally reached the end of what I meant to be a "rest and relaxation" Arc before the start of the second half of the story. Didn't quite entirely work out that way... I managed to get some downtime, some humor, some character development... but by no means was it focused upon it like I kind of originally meant to do. Oh well, it'll all work out for the best. Maybe my writing style has just changed (I hesitate to say "matured") but devoting an entire chapter to humor and romance is hard for me now, especially in the setting of RW. I'll definitely keep slipping in heartwarming moments when I can, but I wouldn't expect anything like the entire arc of devoted chapters you saw in the 90's of Chaotic Cosmos. Of course there will be a few chapters where major plot development is focused around interpersonal reactions, rather than the war at large (such as the return of Lacus), and you'd better believe there will be angst, drama and characterization abounding in such moments. I guess I've become more like the canon show, now that I think about it... the focus is on the war story, while the romance is just the flavoring. Maybe I should be on the lookout for some third party sappy, romance centered fanfics based around the Reclamation War then, eh?

Anyway, things are about to leap off again here in a big way. The ramifications of the events in this chapter will be resonating throughout pretty much the entire rest of the storyline. Just thinking about it all is making me twitch and sweat with anticipation! I'll be a little disappointed if I don't get about 20 reviews for this one, the events are just that important and reaction provoking. Or so I hope. Moving on, I've made a new forum post about the "themesongs" I've chosen for a lot of characters, machines, and situations, though by no means is the list all inclusive or permanently defined, so check that out if you find background music evocative when reading, as I do. For that matter, I'm open to input on what music you think fits various characters and situations, maybe I'll like your selection better.

Additionally, I've discovered another new Fanfic worth checking out, in those times when you're waiting for me to post updates. It's called Gundam Seed Destiny: Renegade, by Zantspellcaster. The author is an extremely fast updater... she put up 120k+ words in a little under two months. That's faster than me, most of the time. And the story is technically minded, with many plot concepts a lot of you may find oddly familiar, plus a villian I swear none of you will ever see coming, yet still manages to make sense (at least as much sense as making Sai a villian did anyway). Anyway, she said reading TGA was what inspired her to write her own fic, and I find it to be a fun read, so if you're bored or going insane waiting for me to post, please check it out and drop a review or two.

P.S. The scene with Natalia in it should probably be rated "M", just to warn you. And I broke my rule about double posting. "In the Face of Death" is the second half of this chapter...

Chapter Start: Sept 25, 8:00 PM; Chapter End: Sept 28, 4:00 PM

xxxx

**New Eden, Antarctica, Nifelheim FEAR Base, April 1st, 10:03 am**

"All right, let's run through it all one more time." Lain Debora, Knight-Ensign within the Solar Knights and former Orb Mobile Suit ace, said with quiet intensity, as he crouched next to the access panel of his Vindicator's left leg hydraulics. The maintenance he was performing was real... the last thing he needed right now was for his leg hydraulics to freeze over... but he and Mechael were using the cover of performing the simple task to discuss the plot that was due to come to fruition in only a few short hours. The plot that would see Lain throwing his Solar Knight uniform into the dustheap, and possibly forever bidding goodbye to Orb and the rest of the mainstream USN. The plot that would see Stella, Sting, Auel and dozens of other Extended freed from the yoke of oppression and slavery they'd lived their whole lives under, and something similar for Mechael himself. The plot that would, hopefully, see Dr. Natalia Dostanya and a significant portion of the FEAR base destroyed in fire and ice while Lain and the Supersoldiers escaped into deep space with the help of the Retributors.

The plot that might see Lain and all the people most dear to him shot down like rabid dogs if even a single hint of what they were going to attempt got out before the proper time, and might end up with them all killed even if the plan went perfectly, as there was quite a bit of assumed good luck involved! There had to be, there was no realistic way that only two pilots could take on an entire base, even if one of them was a cyborg Supersoldier! They were relying on surprise, confusion and Mechael being able to get out of the lower levels of the base after assassinating Dr. Dostanya without getting locked down, as without Mechael being able to reach and pilot the Omega Panzer Gundam, Lain and his Vindicator were going to be in for a world of hurt against the base's automated defenses and the Legacy and Striker units on loan to the base from the Reclaimer Initiative. There would probably be a few Panzerwulfs and maybe, if they were really unlucky, a Panzerdragoon to deal with... though usually piloted by Extended, such machines could be used by normal pilots as well.

Lain had really wanted to be the one to kill the loathsome Director of FEAR... after what he'd seen her force Stella to do, he wanted to make sure the bitch suffered a bit before she died... but Mechael was the only realistic choice, who could fight his way out through the guards after putting "Mother" on permanent ice. Meanwhile, Lain would be using the Vindicator to blow open the secured barracks where the Extended were being held prisoner when not in the field, and secure an escape route for those Extended not chosen to hijack their own Panzerdragoons and Panzerwulfs to aid in the fighting, if possible. If everything worked out right, by the time the base started to scramble to deal with Lain, Dostanya's death would be discovered, and everything would spiral into chaos, giving Mechael time to board his Gundam and help Lain hold off the enemy forces until the hoped for Retributors showed up. And if the Retributors didn't show up, then... they'd improvise. Or something.

He'd never said it was the smartest or best thought out plan after all, just the only one that stood even a sliver of a chance of working. And it was the only plan he and Mechael could come up with that didn't involve waiting several more months for additional allies and resources to be coordinated on the sly with Dr. Roanoke, something Lain wasn't willing to do. Not because he didn't trust Roanoke... hell, after the last contribution the dastardly old fart had made to their plan, Lain was almost willing to hug the bastard if he ever saw him again... but because he couldn't stand the thought of Stella being abused any longer! And to a lesser extent the other Extendeds too, but Stella being used as a sex slave was the hot knife buried in Lain's guts at all hours of the day and night!

"Not much to go over." Mechael replied, casually holding the leg's access panel... a good two hundred fifty pounds of armor plating... like it was a loaf of bread. "We made this plan idiot proof as much as possible after all. I go down to see Mother, claiming I've heard you're about to do something stupid, playing the good little Super-cyborg. I get into her office with her in private, or minimally guarded, fucking kill the bitch and book for the surface. Meanwhile, you..." Mechael broke off, his enhanced senses warning him of an approaching group of FEAR mechanics. Waiting until the group was well past, he continued on. "Meanwhile, you go on a shooting rampage up here and spring the boys and girls from the barracks in the process, and cover them while they slip out to the rendevous point in the confusion. I grab the Omega and we shoot our way out, and hopefully have a Retributor shuttle waiting at the pickup location. You ditch the Vindicator, and I escort the shuttle to space and we hightail it the fuck out of USN territory. It's all so simple. What could go wrong?"

"Don't be a smartass, Mecha." Lain answered tightly, his normal jovial attitude banished by the seriousness of the situation. Stella's life, her entire future, was riding on this, and he could not recall a time he'd ever been more sober-minded... not even when sortieing against the Brotherhood or Great Endeavor! "What about the Extended? They know the timing, right?"

"Chill." Mechael said, perhaps a touch ironically, considering that the hanger ambient temperature was well below freezing. "Supersoldiers are trained for breaking out of prisons and other nasty situations. If the place hadn't been specifically designed to keep them in lockdown, they wouldn't even need our help to waltz out, once they got fed up enough to do it. All you gotta do is blow open the doors and keep em covered for a few minutes... Sting and Auel will take care of the rest. The only real issue I see is that we can't be sure Stella will be there with them, since the girls say they haven't seen her around much recently." As a Supersoldier himself, and thus with "assured loyalty" programmed into him, Mechael was the only one who could visit the locked down Extended without raising too much suspicion, his reputation for being a horny bastard helping him out in this situation, as it gave him a reason to be sniffing around the female Extended lockdown area, as well as the guys he was visiting to "play cards" with.

However, as of about a week ago, Mechael's ingrained loyalty programs had been deactivated, thanks to a "systems patch" Lain had requested from Dr. Roanoke. He hadn't explained why he needed to permanently compromise Mecha's inability to stand up, physically or emotionally, to the various FEAR staffers, but he figured Roanoke was smart enough to figure it out for himself, given the other data and resources Lain had demanded of his "boss". What had been somewhat surprising was that he'd gotten it all without even an argument, indeed Roanoke had even seemed somewhat relieved that Lain was finally gearing up to take direct action... even if that direct action meant Roanoke would never see any of his "beloved" Extended again. Maybe the grim old prune did have something like a heart and soul after all. Or maybe he was just guilt tripping as his own mortality approached, Lain neither knew nor cared.

All that mattered was that Mechael could now attack Dr. Dostanya, and anyone else that got in his way, just as if they were Eddies, and with more prejudice if anything, and he wasn't obliged to shrink and cower when they took a harsh tone of voice with him. Additionally, Lain had gotten a complete data download on the bio-parameters of the Extendeds and detailed schematics for constructing the special Recuperation Beds some of the younger Extended still needed period stabilization treatments from in order to survive their internal enhancements. He wasn't about to abscond with them only to have them writhing in agony as they experienced a slow death over the next several months! Lain had very specifically demanded that the memory modification portion of the Recuperation Beds be left out of the blueprints this time... as far as he was concerned, that technology could damn well burn to ashes as well! Old man Roanoke had also included complete technical specs on how to create a new Extended or Augmented class Supersoldier from the ground up, but if Lain had any choice in the matter, he'd never let another person be victimized by the Supersoldier program!

"Well, I'm relying on your charm and boyish good looks to wheedle that information out of Dostanya before you cave her skull in." Lain answered, with the ghost of a hard smile on his lips. As a "reward" for turning traitor on Lain, Mechael was supposed to ask to have some "fun" with Stella, again something that would not be entirely out of character for the skirt chasing Augmented, if a little too cutthroat for him to actually be comfortable with. Dostanya would then ideally give up where Stella was being held, if she wasn't with the other Extended, then Mechael would kill her and break Stella out on his way to the Omega Panzer, or directly afterwards. And if she wasn't in a rewarding mood, then, well, things would get ugly. Mechael was pretty sure he could torture the info out of her... people would say lots of things when you were slowly burning their genitals to carbon charr with a beam saber... but then again, it WAS Dr. Dostanya. If anyone would spit in the face of someone torturing them, it would be her. He kept his doubts to himself for Lain's sake though. There was no way the Solar Knight was leaving without Stella, even if it meant staying here with her for eternity...

Seeing Lain had finished wrapping the chemical heating pads around his hydraulic actuator system, Mechael held the armored access panel back in place while Lain bolted it together, the maintenance complete, and thus their reason for being together ended. There wasn't anything else to say really. Mechael was about to turn to go, when Lain stuck out his gloved hand. "Thanks, Mecha. I already owe you one for not letting me get killed that other time, but now I'll really owe you one." Lain said, a trifle awkwardly.

Taking the Orbites hand, Mechael shook it gently, not wanting to bust the poor guy's arm just before a big battle. "Don't worry, I won't let ya owe me long, little buddy. Moment we get to someplace with civilized comforts, you're gonna take me out to the nicest titty-bar I can find, and foot my entire bill. We'll be more than even after that, hell, you might wish I had let you get killed after you see the bill I'm planning on racking up..." Pausing a little awkwardly himself, Mecha half turned away. "And you make sure to give Stella a real nice life after you get away, you hear me? I wanna see her with a kid of yours in her arms before this time next year, or I'll goddamn pull your gear out by the roots and do it myself!" He added, actually feeling a little choked up, though his mechanical throat had trouble mimicking hoarseness.

Because Mechael was damned if he was gonna let Stella and Lain end up dead, not when they'd already come so far and achieved so much, including the one thing all Supersoldiers secretly dreamed about... finding someone outside the Program that valued them as a human being, not a weapon system! If Stella and Lain could make it work, then there was hope for all Extended, and Augmented, and anyone else who was raised as a tool of war rather than as a person! No matter what Mechael had to do, even if it meant staying behind himself and holding off the entire goddamned FEAR paramilitary force by his lonesome, he was going to make sure Lain and Stella got out alive! He didn't want to sacrifice his life for them... he was really looking forward to that high class titty-bar, and some showers of praise from the unattached female Extendeds... but if it came down to them or him, he was going to go out in the biggest goddamn blaze of glory anyone had ever seen!

"Good luck." Lain said simply as Mechael began walking away.

"And may the blessings of Hay-whatsit go with ya, or whatever it is you Orby's say when you wanna be all formal..." Mechael answered, waving one hand over his shoulder as he headed off to start making his way into the bowels of the base. Only about another ninety minutes to showtime, and to what would either be the greatest or the stupidest act ever attempted by a Supersoldier...

xxxx

**Nifelheim Base, Executive Elevator, April 1st, 11:20 am**

_Fuck! This is so not good..._ Mechael thought to himself, not quite in a panic, but definitely scrambling to come up with a sudden need to switch around a lot of potentially vital elements of the plan, and without being able to tell Lain that he was doing it. He was already in the elevator headed down to the lower levels of Nifelheim, where the "business office" of Dr. Dostanya was located, along with her private living quarters and assorted top secret laboratories and storage rooms. There was supposed to be an access way somewhere in there to the sub-sub levels, the half mythical region of Nifelheim nicknamed "Hel" that was supposed to be buried at least a kilometer underneath the lowest level of FEAR's base, where the truly top secret shit was researched and stored by the Director and her hand picked team of assistants. But Mechael had never been able to find it, not even with his specialty sensors, meaning it was either a myth after all, or sensor shielded and thus invisible to his equipment. And he was betting on the latter.

But that was neither here nor there at the moment, as he had much bigger problems to worry about than finding a way down to a part of the base he never wanted to see in person. Such as what in all the names of holy fuck he was going to do about the person sharing the elevator car with him, and who was obviously headed to the same place Mechael was. If the other guy had been just any old security guard or egghead whitecoat, it would have been no big deal... Mechael would be only too glad to kill them too, as most of them deserved far worse for the atrocities they'd helped perpetuate. But it wasn't a security guard, and it wasn't a labcoat, it wasn't even a FEAR staffer... it was Rey fucking ze Burrel, ex-Supreme Commander of the USN forces and the adopted son of Gilbert Durandel, the goddamn Solar President!

Quite why the disgraced Solar Knight Paladin-Commander had chosen NOW, of all times, to come to Nifelheim in order to get some nookie from the Director, Mechael could not comprehend, but the guy was standing right fucking there, not three feet away, so there was no denying that he was now an unexpected variable in the fuzzy-logic equation that was their plan. It wasn't that Mechael was worried about Rey as a physical threat... the guy was armed, but Mechael could snap his neck like a dry twig before the blond bastard even knew he was under attack, and if what Mechael suspected was true, Rey deserved it and more for participating in the humiliation and degredation of Stella and the other Extendeds! But he couldn't kill him now without blowing the whole plan, and having him in the office with him while sorting things out with Dostanya would make things very dicey...

Mechael didn't expect the Director to be a physical match for him either of course, even if he was aware that she was significantly more enhanced than her appearance suggested... the Director was more like an Extended than she was a normal human being, at least on the insides, and if anything, her implants were probably of way higher quality than anything Father's research program had slated for military use. But enhanced or not, she still didn't measure up to an Augmented in melee combat. However, if he had to deal with Rey before turning on her, that extra fraction of a second would give her all the time she needed to activate her hidden office defenses, which would turn the entire room into a death trap in an instant! Curse her for a paranoid bitch, but the Director had her office wired with enough auto defenses to masticate an entire company of marines, enough to kill even Mechael in a matter of seconds if he let her activate the alarm.

And given how much skin-time the ex-Supreme Commander had with the Director, Mechael wasn't willing to bet his life and more importantly Lain and Stella's lives on assuming that Rey didn't know about or wasn't capable of activating the auto-defenses himself. He couldn't self destruct in killing Dostanya, without Mechael and the Omega Panzer, Lain was plain fucked up the ass. The little Orbite was fucking hot shit in a Mobile Suit, he probably coulda been a Gundam pilot in different circumstances, but not hot shit enough to take on the entire base defense network alone! Certainly not in a piddly little Vindicator! So what to do, what to do...

Beside the hulking black skinned Supersoldier, Rey was barely even aware that he had company with him in the elevator, all his thoughts focused inwards and pastwards. He'd been doing a lot of soul searching since Gil's public and humiliating stripping of his rank and responsibilities, trying to figure out how he had suddenly made an enemy of the man he loved more than all others in all of existence, the man he still hesitated to call "Father" but who had raised him as if he were his own son, if a bit on the strict side. The man who'd looked at him with hatred, revulsion and disgust, who had accused him... rightly... of being behind Talia Gladys's disappearance, and of gross incompetence and a dozen other things that made Rey flinch just thinking about them. Because they were true. Because Gil was right. And Rey... Rey had finally managed to strip the gauze from his eyes, and was horrified to look at himself and see the disgusting, base creature he'd somehow become!

It hadn't been easy, facing up to the reality of what he'd done, and why... the temptation was strong, and still present, to turn his eyes away and run to hide in the solace of base physical pleasures, to forget about the cruel world and the mistakes he'd made in it. It was all he'd been doing of late though, running away from what he done, the sins he'd committed, not just against Gil, but against other people dear to him as well... like Luna, and Talia, and his loyal Paladins! He'd hid in alcohol, and in the arms of whores, and in the sensory chaos of VR simulations, and none of it had ever granted him a bit of peace, no amount of induced oblivion could obliterate the bare facts that it was ALL HIS FAULT! That there was nothing more to blame for the ugly state of his being than his own personal weakness and willingness to blind himself to what was really going on!

His thoughts had brushed across suicide more times than he cared to contemplate. There was no way he could go on living, having forever broken the trust of the man he cared about above all other things, by stealing away the only woman that Gil had ever truly loved and... and... Rey squeezed his eyes shut and bit back a sob, not wanting to explain his emotional state to the enormous Augmented. The thought of what he'd had done to Talia Gladys, a woman who could have one day been his Mother, was just too awful for him to think about without screaming in frantic denials, apologizing to the helpless air, begging for forgiveness despite the act being entirely and completely irreversible. In the end though, Rey had finally realized that blaming himself and only himself was actually not being fully truthful to the situation. His own weakness was the primary cause of his world dissolving into chaos and despair, there was no doubting that... but there was someone else, who'd taken advantage of his weakness, who'd lied to him and decieved him and USED him, nudging him along until he made some of the worst decisions of his life, no doubt to her secret delight!

Natalia Dostanya, Director of FEAR. A woman Rey had thought he might actually be in love with, though now he recognized that his feelings had only ever been callow lust, stroked like a raging fire by Natalia's seductive ways in order to blind him to the truth of her puppeteering. He was to blame for being vulnerable, but she was to blame for excaberating his vulnerability and setting him on the path to ruin, just to further her own goals. What those goals were, Rey neither knew nor cared, though he strongly doubted that they were in Gil's best interests. And so his decision had been made for him. He could never apologize to Gil for what he'd done... there was no act of contrition sufficient to repair the damage to the Durandel Administration that Rey's actions had caused, both militarily and personally. He'd all but crippled the morale of the Solar Knights, and damaged the morale of the entire USN military, he'd sacrificed tens of thousands of soldiers in ill thought out battle plans, and he'd squandered the important tactical resource that the Extended represented. He could die a million horrible deaths and not atone for just those mistakes.

But though he could not live with himself anymore, and had no desire to ever see Gil face to face again... he didn't deserve the honor... Rey could still make his passing somewhat meaningful, a parting gift for Gil that should help make the burden of the future slightly easier to bear. He was going to kill Natalia Dostanya, and then himself, and thus remove the two biggest thorns in the side of the Durandel Administration. Without Natalia, Djibril and the Reclaimer Initiative were no threat, too weak to oppose Gil in any real sense. And without Rey sullying his reputation, Gil could move on and continue being the visionary leader he'd always been without any skeletons hiding in his closet. Lost in introspection, Rey belatedly realized that the Supersoldier had asked him a question. Blinking, he looked up at the dark skinned cyborg with a frown. "What did you say?" Rey asked, his voice dead and cold, already resigned to the pain and darkness to come.

"I was wondering if you happened to know where that cute blond Extended girl was being kept. You know, Stella. You and her were fuck buddies, right? I was looking to see if I could maybe tap that ass myself, is all." Mechael asked again, hoping he sounded convincingly lustful, though to be truthful, he couldn't think about Stella in a sexual sense anymore. She was like a cousin or something, and a close cousin at that! Technically, so were all the Extendeds, but Stella was different somehow. Maybe because she and Lain were a definite item. But if he could find the location of Stella from Rey, he could skip out entirely on the Dostanya step of the plan. Not optimal, but the best choice he had with Rey monkeying up the works.

"Sorry..." Rey replied with a definite and disdainful sneer. "I either kept her tied to my bed, or met her in Natalia's office where we could rape her together, I never bothered to learn where she stayed when she wasn't acting as my mattress." He added. _So shut the fuck up, you dirty freak, and leave the poor girl alone! She's suffered enough at my hands, and Natalia's orders, already. She doesn't need to get pawed at by a biomechanical neanderthal like you!_

_I oughta twist his fucking head off right now, and piss down his throat!_ Mechael thought murderously, as Rey tauntingly bragged about how he'd tied Stella down and raped her, treating her like a sex doll, and not even caring where she was when he didn't need her to fuck with! _But I just fucking can't, so please forgive me, Lain, little buddy. I gotta let this sick fuck walk outta here alive!_ "Oh, I see, makes sense." Mechael forced himself to say. "No biggie, I was gonna ask the Director anyway."

"No, you won't." Rey retorted in a freezing tone. _It's no apology at all, Stella, but I can at least protect you from one final humiliation. I won't let you be molested by another FEAR maniac ever again..._ "Because you're going to turn around and head back to the surface as soon as the elevator stops. And then you're going to lock yourself in your quarters and you'll stay there until I come to get you personally. That's a direct order."

"But you're not the Supreme Commander anymore." Mechael pointed out, his fists clenched tightly enough to crush steel armor plate. _Goddamnit, I'm really trapped between a rock and hard place here! If I kill him now, I'll never get to the office before she activates her defenses. My only chance to off her and get out alive is to be in the room with her before she realizes I've slipped my leash. And my only chance to find out where Stella is requires that I talk to her! But if I disobey a direct order, even from this sleazeball..._

"No, I'm not. But last time I checked, I'm still a full human being, so that puts me quite a bit higher up the chain of command than a walking piece of wargear like you, ICMS Augmented." Rey eyed the biomechanical freak dangerously. "Shall we discuss it with the security patrol once the elevator doors open up? I'm sure they'll be glad to set us straight on who gives orders and who follows them unquestioningly..."

_Deep breath... deep breath... okay... hold it... let it out... kill urge supressed. For the moment._ Mechael didn't actually have to breathe, at least not in the sense of inflating his lungs, but the mental image did help. _But fucking hell, this screws everything up. I hope to Father that Stella's confined with all the other girls, that's the only chance we got of pulling this off smoothly now._ "No, I'll do as you say, of course, sir. Forgive my impertinence." Mechael grated out, making his voice deliberately mechanical. _And I hope you're in the middle of something hot, slippery and stinky between that bitch's legs when the entire fucking roof of this place comes crashing down on the heads of both you sick fucks!_ The elevator dinged, the armored door sweeping open soundlessly, revealing the long, sterile corridors of the deep base. Rey stepped out without looking back at Mechael.

"Goodbye, ICMS Augmented. Remember, stay in your room until I come for you. We have some things to set straight between us." Rey ordered the Supersoldier, before letting the door close behind him. Ignoring the partially cybernetic security guards standing in alcoves to either side of the elevator door area, Rey set the first heavy footstep onto the final segement of the path to attempting redemption...

xxxx

**Nifelheim base, Director's Executive Officer, 11:25 am**

"Rey, what a pleasant surprise to see you here!" Natalia exclaimed, swiveling around in her big, comfy Director's chair, seated behind the expansive desk that was, to all public knowledge, her primary workstation within Nifelheim, from where she ran the far flung FEAR technological empire during the Reclamation War. Though the tone of her voice was welcoming, even a tad sultry, Natalia was in truth lying through her teeth. It was neither a surprise nor pleasant to see her now defunct toy show up out of the blue. Well, it was a surprise that he'd come at all, but she'd been informed that he was coming the moment the base sensors had picked up a Solar Knight's Excaliber descending through the Antarctic atmosphere on a course for the base. Nifelheim's precise location was not known to the Solar Knights or many outside the top echelons of the USN, so that meant only one person could be aboard the machine.

She'd thought the poor, broken little clone was up immersed in a self destructive orgy after his confrontation with Gilbert, where he was publicly stripped of all titles and responsibilities, and only barely saved from a summary execution for gross incompetence and treason. It had been simply glorious to witness, though unfortunately Gil's anger had fallen short at the last moment, failing to give her and Djibril the excuse they needed to cut ties with him openly. Oh well, another opportunity would no doubt shortly arise. Natalia was somewhat nonplussed at Rey's presence... after his fall from grace, she'd thought she'd made it rather abundantly, if indirectly, clear that she had washed her hands of him, as she had not called or sent any messages to him, nor replied to any of his to her. She had no use for him anymore, the sooner he blew his head off in a drunken stupor, the better for all concerned.

And his presence was definitely unpleasant, because he'd torn her away from a deeply satisfying contemplation of her Paragon program, the be all and end all of Supersoldiers, born from a modified combination of Rey and Stella's DNA, mixing the best characteristics of the Tranquil Mind with the powers of a Latent Newtype, and activating the Seed as well! More than just an Ultimate Coordinator, they would be a Transcendant Being, and further enhanced with nanological and cybernetic augmentations, they would be untouchable by regular human hands, even the Eddies, should there still be any by the time the gestating fetuses grew to maturity, which shouldn't take more than a decade with her paid growth technologies! And especially boosted by the cloned genetic slurry from the reconstituted Winged Whale marrow, the same psychic multiplier she was using to increase Typhon's power, the Paragons would be invincible, and thus so would she, as their mistress and creator! But though Rey had been instrumental in providing genetic material for Project Paragon didn't mean he himself had any especial value to Natalia. He was nothing more than a sperm creating machine, just as Stella was nothing more than a handy repository for that sperm... if she could have removed their reproductive systems whole, she would have done so, but she'd had bigger plans for Rey to accomplish first.

"Hello, Natalia." Rey replied, his voice a bit choked with emotion, his eyes a tad glassy but still focused and quite intent. He stood only a few steps into the office, listening to the heavy door slide shut and lock behind him, his mind suddenly blank yet fully in control of his actions, indeed, he felt so in tune with the situation it was almost like he could see what was going to happen before it did occur. Pre-empting more blase small talk from the horrid woman he'd spent so many sweat soaked nights with, Rey forced a plaintative smile onto his face. "Do I not even rate a hug for a greeting anymore?" He asked, masking hatred as sadness. But he had to get her out from behind that desk... he knew well about the auto-defense turrets buried in the walls and ceiling, all activatable at a touch of a button from beneath the desk.

Sighing to herself, Natalia pushed herself upright, straighting the hang of her lab coat over the semi-formal skirt and blouse that was her normal business attire, and stalked around the desk towards her former plaything. _Come down here just to get some sympathy from me, you pathetic little worm?_ She groused inside her head, still keeping her friendly smile plastered on her face. "I'm very busy right now, Rey, many of my special projects for the war effort are in critical stages of development, so I'm afraid I don't have time to play right now. You can still use one of the Extended if you like though, Stella is being held in solitary confinement near the auxiliary security command center. I'm afraid she's probably a trifle used... I've made her available to the security forces while they're off duty... but anything is better than nothing, right? I'm sure she'd be glad to comfort you, I just don't have the time right now." Natalia told him, as she moved to encircle him in a platonic hug.

"You should have told that to the Augmented, he was down here looking for her!" Rey replied, a confusing remark to Natalia. Moving faster than she'd ever seen Rey move before, her pet Paladin stepped forward and jammed a high voltage stungun, which he'd held in a holster at the small of his back, directly into her side, unleashing the full, 150,000 volt charge in a single instant, causing the scent of charred fabric and scorched skin to rise in the office. The breath was knocked out of Natalia before she could even formulate a scream, her entire body convulsing as the electric current stormed along her nervous system, and Natalia found herself first on her knees and then down on her side, her her hands and feet twitching with aftereffect. She was less debilitated than she looked... she'd experimented extensively on her own physiology while developing her own research based off the Extended project of Dr. Roanoke... but the last thing she had expected was getting physically attacked by her broken-spirited pet lover! So it was as much mental shock that kept her disengaged as it was the effects of the stungun, for the vital second or so it took for Rey to swap out the stungun battery and jolt her again... this time directly under the chin!

A normal human being would have been unconscious after the first jolt, and likely dead or brain damaged after the second, but Natalia was merely dazed and disoriented, her body aching all over as the electric jolts burnt out some of the internal augmentations she'd given her nervous system... nothing irreplacable, but it hurt like hell all the same! However, even dazed and disoriented was enough for Rey to bind her wrists behind her back with a pair of handcuffs, and stuffed into her half locked shut mouth a perforated ball gag, one of several such items she'd lent him to amuse himself with on the Extended girls a while back. Clipping the bondage toy around the back of her neck, Rey stood over her, glaring down at her with an expression of malevolent hatred, as he removed his sidearm, a standard issue 9mm forty-three special and pointed it directly at her face, causing the just starting to struggle Director to become stock still and wary.

"How do you like the shoe on the other foot now, Natalia?" Rey asked viciously, his hand white knuckled on the grip of his pistol. "How does it feel to be helpless and alone, and utterly at the mercy of someone who views you as nothing more than a plaything to be discarded whenever they're done wringing their pleasure from you? Is it humiliating? Does it make you angry? Do you think you might understand how I feel now, you treacherous bitch? Do you think so? Well, I don't... not even close! But I'm going to teach you, a final lesson before you go burn in hell for eternity!" Rey used the toe of one boot to roll her onto her back, keeping his gun aimed at her head from less than two feet away, Natalia's grey-green eyes glaring at him like frozen chunks of jade, promising him torments beyond imagining should she ever manage to turn the tables on him.

Something which Rey had no intention of allowing to happen. He wanted to humilate and degrade her if possible, to make her feel, in some small way, the torment she'd made so many other people suffer through, but the moment she looked like she was about to cause him a real threat, he'd gladly blow her brains all over the floor. The gunshot would automatically trigger her office defense systems, and he'd be shredded to pieces an instant later, but that was okay by him! It made his part of this suicidal self crusade pretty easy. "Now spread your legs, Dr. Dostanya. I'm going to rape you, and you're not going to do anything but lie there and take it, like a good little Extended would. Maybe if you cooperate, I'll kill you quickly when I'm done with you... a mercy you've never extended to your own victims!" Rey smirked as he watched her stocking clad legs fall open, the expression on her face as she opened herself to him by force perhaps the most uplifting expression of loathing he'd ever had directed his way.

"Its awful, isn't it?" Rey hissed at her, as he used his free hand to tear away the crotch of her tights, and the underwear beneath, before pushing up her shirt and bra as he thrust himself into her. It was painful, for them both probably, but Rey didn't care. This wasn't about sexual pleasure, that was the furthest thing from his mind. He wanted to hurt her, to break her self confidence, to OWN her so that she would know what it felt like to be the helpless victim for once! He pressed the muzzle of his pistol hard enough against the gag to cause several of her teeth to splinter and crack, before pistol whipping her across the side of the head, laying open her forehead, which bled surprisingly little, as he continued to hump between her thighs. "Being treated like an object isn't very much fun, is it, Natalia? Do you think this was how Stella felt when you forced her to have sex with me? You remember Stella right... blond hair, pink eyes, always trembles and sobs when you're done raping her? Do you think this was how the Extended felt when they had to whore themselves to me and my friends for weeks on end?" Rey taunted her, grabbing her breasts and squeezing hard enough to leave handprint bruises.

His breathing was heavy by the time he finished, though he was somewhat disappointed to find that Natalia was still just giving him that disdainful death glare, like he was a lab animal that had escaped from its cage and bitten one of her fingers. She wasn't afraid of him, even tied up and after being raped on the floor of her own office, with a bleeding scalp wound, broken teeth and a gun pointed at her face, she still wasn't fucking afraid of him! Rey shivered unconsciously... that was more than just resilience, that was fucking truebred madness! She was freaking crazy, a maniac, and how he'd never managed to see that before, Rey could not fathom! The sadistic way she'd treated Luna, Stella and the Extended girls should have been a major fucking clue, but he'd been too wrapped up in her lies to see it! Rey hawked and spat onto her face and chest, trembling with disgust for himself as much as for her. "You're a monster, Natalia, and worse, you're a monster that creates other monsters, the worst kind of monster there is! But you have only yourself to blame for your current situation... I would have loved you, if you'd been willing to accept it. You could have worked with me, and with Gil, to create a better destiny for all of humankind... but you're too greedy and self centered to take only a piece of the pie, I see that now."

"But your overconfidence has been your downfall, Natalia. You never thought the poor little clone you'd turned into a fucktoy would ever grow back the set of balls he'd been born with and come seeking you out for revenge, did you? That's the problem with all you know-it-all mastermind types... you just can't conceive that your plans won't work out exactly how you expect them to. Noah was the exact same fucking way, unable to believe that people wouldn't just fall into line to become Eddies just because he wanted them to. Neither of you can possibly hope to match up to a realist like Gil, you're just plain out of your league. And now, you're going to die in agony because of that." Rey kept her covered with his pistol, splay legged on her back, with her clothing in disarray and a bit of blood leaking from her groin, as he reached into his uniform jacket pocket and removed a large packet of salt-like powder, which he tore open and began sprinkling on her bare flesh, starting at the groin and working his way up to her face.

"You're probably wondering what I'm doing right now." Rey said with a tight lipped sneer. "I'm just taking a page from dear Luna's book, and adding my own special twist. You remember what she did to Noah's face, right?" Rey finished sprinkling the chemical powder onto Natalia, and took a half step back as he put his free hand on his dick and willed his bladder to release. Pissing on her after he was done was sure to be an extra humiliation, but he'd already seen that her ego was apparently immune to degredation, at least from the likes of him. But the chemical powder made everything different. Inert by itself, in the presence of water and ammonia, it turned into a potent, foamy acid compound, and human urine was in large part made of ammonia and water. Rey was gratified to get his first true scream of agony from Natalia when the yellowish stream of fluid splashed onto her groin, which instantly began to foam and sizzle and even smoke as the binary part acid began to eat into her skin like she was made of sugar! Ugly, fluid filled chemical blisters formed on other parts of her skin where the concentration wasn't as dense, as Rey walked his urine spray up her body, trailing a line of sizziling foam across her skin.

She tried to roll away from the stream of piss, of course, but Rey pinned her in place with one boot on her left elbow, disloacting that joint as he stamped down on it and sprayed the last of his bladder directly onto her face, her muffled screams reaching truly horrifying pitches as the caustic fluid ate through her right eyelid and began to dissolve that eye, while her cheeks, nose and facial skin began to melt and blister. Rey was surprised the woman was still conscious, but Natalia refused to stop thrashing and bucking and convulsing, lifting up her hips and seating herself above her own bound wrists, her back bent like a bowstave, for what felt like hours, but probably wasn't more than a few minutes. Staring down at her contorted frame, almost her entire front turned into a hissing, smoking, blistered ruin by his acid, Rey found himself feeling empty. He'd thought he would feel vindicated, even proud, to have taught Natalia her final lesson, but he just felt cold inside. It hadn't alleviated any of his own pain.

"Time to put you out of your miser..." Rey intoned in a dead voice, his gun rising to focus on the chem-scarred wreckage of her face. But before his finger could squeeze the trigger, before he was aimed fully at her head, before he could even finish his death sentence, Natalia burst into motion, letting out another high pitched whine of excrutiating agony as her wrists tensed, putting strain on the links of her handcuffs, which Rey belatedly realized had been dribbled with acid running down from Natalia's groin during her convulsions, after she contorted her spine. Though not designed to eat through metal, the acid was potent enough to have badly scarred the metal links of the chain connecting the cuffs, and with a tinny "PING" the chain snapped like twine! The next instant passed like a blur for Rey, visible only in that he felt like he could somehow see it coming in his minds eye, yet he couldn't move fast enough to prevent it from happening. Natalia's left leg snapped upwards and kicked his gun hand so hard he felt his wrist shatter like thin plastic, the 9mm pistol flying in a high arc across the office to clatter onto the floor on the other side of the desk.

_How can she still MOVE?_ Rey thought in dismay, scrabbling at his belt for the taser or his combat knife, some form of weapon to deal with the monstrous vitality of the ruined woman pouncing to her feet right in front of him! Though now that most of the acidic foam had boiled away, Rey could see that Natalia's skin, while melted and burned away in large sections, was not nearly so deeply pitted as it ought to have been! Her breasts looked like they'd been chewed on by wild dogs, and much of the musculature of her chest, belly and thighs was open to his view, but the muscles themselves seemed almost unharmed by the aicd bath, and though she was bleeding copiously, it was sluggish and already starting to turn a little crusty, clotting far faster than such wounds should be able to manage! His hand had just closed on the grip of his knife when Natalia surged forward, one claw-like hand fastening around his throat to hoist him into the air as if he weighed no more than a large handbag.

Natalia's face was more red muscle and whiteish bone than it was skin tones, one eye melted away, her nose all but gone, her lips running like warm wax down her chin, one cheek entirely gone to allow Rey to see the inside of her mouth, her tongue crusted with blisters and burn scars, several of her teeth broken and fragmented. The ball gag had dissolved and protected most of the rest of her teeth and indirectly her tongue, but Rey was still stunned why Natalia actually managed to rasp out coherent words. "You know nothing of misery, boy..." She gargled, her choking hand vicing so tight around his neck that Rey began to bleed, his spinal cord beginning to splinter under the pressure. Natalia didn't give him time to go out slow though, her other hand rose up and slammed forward with all her might, punching into Rey's left breast, tearing through coat, skin, muscle and ribs like they were hardly even there, her questing fingers locking around a frantically pulsating hunk of muscle, which she ripped out as she tossed the blood gouting body of the ex-Supreme Commander against the office door.

Staring at Rey's still twitching heart, nestled in the palm of her hand, Natalia grimaced... not that her ruined face could make many other expressions at the moment... and tossed the quivering hunk of bloody meat into Rey's lap, the last sight his baby blue eyes would ever see being his own heart trembling on his lap. "Little... bastard..." Natalia panted, staggering and half collapsing against the side of her desk. "Think you can... kill me so easily... shoulda just shot me... in the head... and you dare... lecture me on... not being a realist?" Natalia forced herself upright, her mind already at work shunting away the agony of her chemical burns, which were, thanks to her augmentic muscular system, only skin deep. Had she been a mere Natural, her heart and major organs would be nothing but hissing puddles right now! Even as she was, the agony had nearly stopped her heart, and it would take weeks of repairs and surgeries to restore herself to even a semblance of her normal beauty, weeks she didn't really have to spare!

Slapping her gory hand down on the desktop, Natalia opened a channel to the security office, though she kept herself out of sight of the video display for the time being. This was not entirely strange for her when communicating with her subordinates. "Nothing worse than a hypocritical vigilante..." Natalia muttered to herself disgustedly. She had to do this fast... Extended physiology or not, she could feel herself going into shock already, and if she didn't get to a medical center soon, she would die from massive trauma shock regardless of her resilience to damage. Fortunately the shock banished even more of the pain, and allowed her to think with a clear head for the time being. She doubted Rey had come here alone, it would be simply crazy, suicidal even. And maybe he was suicidal, but he'd mentioned something about Mechael looking for Stella, and that made Natalia feel that Rey had an accomplice or two in those troublemakers!

"Security Center, what can I do for you, Director?" The crisp voice of the on-watch security commander resonated around the empty room.

"Priority orders." Natalia said without preamble, not trusting herself to more than a bare bones conversation in her condition. "We have traitors in the base. Execute ICMS Augmented unit, Solar Knight Debora, and Extended Unit Stella Loussier immediately, extreme prejudice authorized. Lock down the base. All targets are to be considered armed and dangerous, and should be shot on sight..." Natalia turned off the comm link without waiting for a reply. She half limped, half crawled towards the secret elevator door build into the wall near her Recuperation Bed, that would bring her down the to Hel laboratories, leaving a trail of bloody, half dissolved flesh and clothing scraps behind her. Barely had she reached the elevator though, than she felt more than heard a distant rumble resonate throughout the base... the sound of an explosion, and a large one too. It seemed her efforts had come too late... the traitors were already on the move. Natalia heard the door to the elevator close behind her as she slapped at the down button, but the trauma shock caught up with her before she felt the elevator start to move, and she blacked out on the floor, on the way down to Hel...

xxxx

**Approaching Nifelheim base, 11:38 am**

"Well, well what have we here? It seems someone's started a party without me..." Frost commented, as apt to talk to himself as he was to think to himself, at least when alone. His attention had been grabbed by the unmistakable thermal blooms of explosions rising just over the horizon from where the Kratos was loitering, waiting within easy pouncing range of the designated point where the red dwarf was supposed to show up for his rendevous with this Lain Debora person. To the Kratos's sensors, the mushroom like pimples of expanding thermal energy were as clear as day, though to unassisted human eyes they would have been invisible, especially from such a distance. Checking the time, and seeing that he still had over twenty minutes until little Ashino was due to show up, Frost decided that he could go have some good old fashion fun for a bit.

He chose to leave the Kratos behind, half buried in snow and ice chunks, in power standby mode, not wanting to frighten off Ashino at long range... his erstwhile brother would be sure to recognize who piloted the Kratos just from looking at it, and he didn't want to waste time chasing the little bastard down, especially if he was coming from orbit, as the intercepted message had insinuated. The Kratos was fully capable of achieving trans-atmospheric velocity, but if Ashino noticed him from the stratosphere, catching up while starting in the gravity well would be a big hassle. Better to lure him in close and then reveal himself when there was no longer any option for running available. The sub zero temperature, close to negative fifty degrees fahrenheit with wind chill, barely even stung Frost's cheeks as he leaped the ten or so meters to the ground from the reclined Gundam's cockpit, his boots cracking ice and permafrost as Deathshriek howled a wavering counterpoint to the blasting wind currents.

The NIC-V chip embedded somewhere within his brain allowed Frost to control the Kratos remotely with a simple exercise of will, but now that he had more or less mastered the use of Mr. Abyss for personal transport, there was little need to call the Kratos to him for pickup, so it was fine to leave it out here, a good five seconds flight from the USN base. He could literally be back in the cockpit at any time he wished, no matter how deep into the base his playtime took him. A wave of his arm and an effort of will conjured one of his doorway-like abyssal gates in midair next to him, and with a bloodthirsty chuckle, Frost plunged through the quantum gateway, scythe in hand. It was time to feed the End of All...

xxxx

**Nifelheim base, auxiliary confinement brig, cell 2, 11:39 am**

Stella Loussier lay on her back on the small, hard slab of pressed plas-metal that formed the cot of her solitary confinement cell. She appeared to be deeply asleep, her breathing deep and even, her eyes closed but not squinted shut, her features relaxed. She looked to be entirely at peace, lying atop the minimal sheets her cot was equipped with, her head propped on a hard foam pillow that was almost suitable for use as a weapon, such was its density. She was clad in the pink and white uniform, the one with the white skirt and high stockings that had always been her favorite garment when not required to be in her flight suit. Lain had told her she looked cute while wearing it once, and so to Stella it had become quite a treasure. She didn't have much of a fashion sense... it wasn't common amongst Extended, and if Lain thought she looked good in something, she certainly wasn't going to argue. Then again, Lain thought she looked pretty nice in nothing at all too, so she couldn't rely entirely upon his fashion sense to clothe herself...

Stella was not in any way asleep, though she was counting sheep, a childish activity she'd been trained to do back when she was only a very little girl, one of the first Extendeds, which helped her focus her mind during the hypnotherapy and loyalty indoctrination session with Father, keeping her on the edge of consciousness while retaining her brain's ability to absorb vast amounts of sensory data. She was counting her 11,854th sheep since first closing her eyes after the last shift change in the auxiliary internal security command center a few hours prior. Much to her relief, she hadn't had any visitors in the aftermath of the shift change, a rare occurence now that Mother had ordered her locked up and designated as a recreational toy for the security force in this sector of the base, as punishment for Stella's repeated "acts of defiance". For such a smart woman, Mother could really be the biggest idiot sometimes, especially if she thought doing this to Stella was going to in any way assert Mother's control over the "wayward" Extended.

All it really did was fan the flames of Stella's resentment towards the FEAR Director, up until the point where she was seriously dreaming about killing Mother whenever the next time they met was. Such a thought was beyond heretical for a Supersoldier, it was literally unthinkable! Or it should be anyway, given the loyalty conditioning that was a staple part of every Extended's upbringing, from the time they could walk on their own, and continuing pretty much indefinitely even past full maturity. But Stella was different from the other Extended, because of being with Lain, she hadn't had to endure any loyalty reconditioning or memory modification in years and years, and combined with Lain helping her learn to assert herself as an independent person, Stella was able to not only think the rebellious thoughts, but actually seriously consider them. Mother just wasn't learning, she either could not or did not want to see the fact that her actions were only driving the Extended to the point of self destruction. For the good of the Project, Mother had to go... it was definitely a revolutionary concept!

She put up with the assualts, just like she had with being forced to whore herself to Rey and the USN commanders, putting on an appearance of pliant indifference, allowing them to use and abuse her body as they saw fit, while retreating into her own thoughts, her body acting on autopilot until she was left alone. It was easy for her, this forceful blanking of her attention, this pleasant introspection during an unpleasant scenario. Extendeds were taught such methods for dealing with extreme pain or environmental conditions, but Stella had found it worked just as good when taking her mind off an unpleasant emotional situation as well. They could rape her all day long if they wanted, in her vagina, her ass and her mouth, but they could never touch the real Stella, who was safe inside the deepest parts of her psyche, in a fortress only Lain and maybe Sting and Auel had the keys to access. A secret place that even Father could not find. The core of her soul.

There was more than emotional survival behind her seeming placidity, as she used her time to memorize the facial features of every man to ever take advantage of her situation for later consideration and retribution. Additionally, the less she struggled, the less likely they were to use the restraint straps her bed was equipped with to tie her down. Sometimes they did so anyways, the ones who liked her to be helpless even if she was ostensibly willing, but fortunately they always took the restraints off when they were done playing out their sick fantasies. If she'd put up the fight she wanted to, she could have easily killed any ten of her assailants, even naked as she usually was, but there were dozens of guards, and she would eventually be overwhelmed. Then she would spend all the time strapped down, unable to get up even to use the restroom, and that sort of loss of freedom was something Stella couldn't stand to contemplate. She would rather be thought of as a slut who enjoyed being gangbanged than a proud girl who lived as a helpless prisoner on her bed, unable to do anything to refuse anyone who wanted to come and torment her.

And if the whispers she'd heard from some of the other Extended girls in those few times when she was allowed to leave her cell, usually for some sort of training exercise or simulation, were at all founded in reality, then Stella could definitely not afford to be tied down right now. The girls were very unspecific, but Lain and Mechael were supposed to have some sort of big plan in the works to deal with the Mother problem once and for all, and to save the Extended as well. Stella had no idea on when or how her lover would accomplish this seemingly impossible plan, but she had the utmost faith that he would. Lain had already saved her from her own life once before, and restored to her the most precious gift of all, her own humanity, and after accomplishing that, Stella would readily believe that Lain could do anything!

And knowing Lain like she did, she doubted he would wait long to put his plan into effect... he was not a patient man, except when it came to her and the Extended, and to some degree Mechael. She didn't think he was aware of what sort of situations she was forced to endure on a daily basis, or at least she hoped he wasn't aware. Not because she thought it would in any way change his opinion of her, but because she knew it would hurt him like a hot knife in his chest that he was helpless to protect her, like he'd always promised to do. Stella wished she had the words, and the self confidence, to tell Lain that regardless of what happened to her body, he had been and always would be successful in protecting her, just because of the love her gave her so freely. No matter how badly beaten, broken or abused Stella's body was, Stella herself, the core of her essence, was always safe because of Lain's feelings. However, Stella had never been good at expressing her feelings in words, so she remained silent, and trusted in Lain to understand her regardless, something he'd always amazed her by being able to do.

Not long ago, minutes at most, Stella had detected the subterranean tremors that came from the aftermath of a large explosion going off somewhere in the medium distance, and had begun calling herself out of her trancelike state of sheep counting. If that wasn't the start of Lain's plan, then she was a virgin norm! She didn't know what the plan was, or what her role in it was expected to be, so all she could do was be as ready as possible, mentally and physically, for when the time came. She heard the sounds of increased activity in the aux security command center, a few dozen meetrs down the dead end passageway that ran past her cell door, along with several more explosion vibrations, and then her ears perked up, even as her body remained completely still and apparently comatose, as she heard the sound of gunfire in the security center. Rescue was on the way, it seemed.

Her ears perked again when she heard the heavy armored door that led to the brig area from the annex of the security center slam open, and two pairs of boot heels come trotting down the hallway toward her cell. Stella was the only prisoner kept in the auxilary brig, and the hallway was a dead end, so she did not doubt the two security officers were coming for her. Whether they intended to use her as a hostage, or just execute her to deny her rescuers their prize, Stella had no way of knowing and in truth didn't care, as she wasn't going to go along with either outcome. Tensing her muscles, Stella coiled herself for instantaneous action, using her detailed memories to accurately envision the two security guards, down to their uniforms and weapon placements, and calculated their heights based on the time lag between footsteps, as they reached her cell door. The observation slit in the midst of the door whispered open, as they checked to make sure she was still on the bed and apparently dead to the world.

She had known they would check her position, as they always did before entering the room, which was why she wasn't waiting by the side of the door to ambush them as they came in. If they couldn't see where she was, they'd probably just toss a grenade in through the food slit, and that would be the end of her in a very messy fashion. That was assuming they'd come to kill her and not use her as a hostage, but knowing Mother's tendency to overreact, Stella felt confident that the moment Mother discovered Lain was in open rebellion, she would order Stella be killed in retaliation. Things must be more chaotic outside than she thought, since it had been several minutes since the first explosion, and with the aux security center barely twenty seconds away, they were only now coming to execute her, with rescue very much imminent! Of course they could still grenade her, but Stella doubted they would. They'd want to be sure, and since she was apparently asleep and had her placid reputation as well, the easiest way to be sure would be to enter the cell and shoot her in the head a few times.

A second later the cell door unlocked and swung open, and Stella allowed herself a sleepy yawn, as if the sudden noise had half woken her from a deep slumber. She cracked one rosy pink eye open, her eyes instantly adjusting to the dim light in the cell, as the slightly shorter man stepped over to her bedside, one arm held behind his back to hide his gun as he reached down to hold her down with his other hand on her chest. His taller companion stood back, his worried gaze more on the hallway and the sounds of the firefight in the security center coming closer than his partner executing a half asleep prisoner. The shorter guard was in no way prepared for Stella's hand to suddenly shoot up and vice around his wrist, yanking him down headlong atop her, smacking his head into the hard metal wall of the prison cell. Stella knew that most of the security forces were in some way augmented by cybernetics, so she doubted that the relatively mdoerate blow would truly take the guy out, but it did stun him for a second, giving her the instant she needed to snatch his combat knife from his waist sheath and bury it in his back, angle up to pierce his ribcage and heart from behind.

His partner noticed the murder gone wrong even as it was happening, and his pistol was already in his hand while the first guard was still dying from a split heart. Coiling herself up under the body of the shorter guard, Stella heard and felt several pistol rounds bury themselves into her impromptu shield of human meat, before she thrust out with arms and legs, sending the corpse sailing across the room like a battering ram, before the guard could concentrate fire and blow a hole through his former buddy's back to get at her. The guard's reflexes were good, he dodged his partner's corpse and almost instantly had his gun back up, braced in both hands for stability of aim, but Stella had exploded into action and leapt off the cot even as she hurled the body into his path as a visual blind, and she hit the guard like a thunderbolt, smashing herself into his thighs and waist, taking him to the floor on his face as she squirmed out from underneath him. She kicked his gun from his hands with a sweep of her foot, and used her hands to messily dislocate his right knee, that being the closest part of him at the moment.

He howled with pain, but attempted to kick her with his other leg anyway, forcing her to block with crossed forearms as he tried to grab some sort of club or stun baton from his waist. Stella wasn't having any of that though, throwing herself atop him from behind, she ignored the movements of his arms as she fisted her hand in the back of his hair, yanked his head backwards, and then slammed her bladed fingers into the exposed and bent section of spine between shoulderblades and skull, shattering the bones and instantly killing him, though his body continued to twitch slightly for a few seconds afterwards. Some people might have gasped for breath, or made a witty comment, or even sighed in relief, but Stella wasn't that emotional about killing, especially not for survival. These men had abused and raped her... she recognized them both now that she had time to look... but to say that she enjoyed killing them would be a stretch. They had made themselves her enemies through their actions, and regardless of their crimes against her body, she only did one thing with enemies. She killed them as quickly as possible. The only thing that could motivate in her a desire for true revenge was seeing harm done to Lain or someone else she cared about.

Confiscating the second guard's knife, Stella retrieved the first guard's blade as well, wiping the crimson stained metal off on his dark black uniform tunic, before stripping off the first guard's gunbelt and fastening it about her own waist. Stella preferred up close and personal combat, especially with a knife in hand, but she was fully trained in the use of all standard USN infantry weapons, and knew that it would be best to be armed with a ranged weapon of some sort when heading out onto a chaotic battlefield. The first guard's gun was unfired, so she took that one, along with several extra ammo clips from them both. The sounds of combat in the aux security center were getting very slowly closer, but it seemed to have stalemated for the time being. Holstering the pistol, Stella took up her knives in either hand, and trotted towards the brig access portal.

Peeking out into the security center proper, Stella rapidly assimilated the combat situation before ducking back into the brig hallway to formulate thoughts. The security foces were barricaded behind some desks and other furniture slightly to one side of the brig doorway, armed with pump action shotguns and a few Cutlass rifles... thankfully no Maulers or heavier machineguns, or any signs of grenades. They were using steady firepower to pin down a group of Extended, led by Sting and Auel, who were armed mostly with knives, pistols and even improvised bits of metal rebar and broken furniture, while the Extended tried to force their way through the chokepoint at the entrance to the security center. Several dead guards lay sprawled in various positions around the room, obviously caught out during the initial attack, but if any Extended had become casualties, they were out of sight of Stella's position.

Trusting to the quick reactions of her brothers and sisters to keep her safe from friendly firepower, Stella threw open the heavy door leading to the brig area and charged out into the security center, hurling herself into and over the side and back end of the guard's barricade, moving so quickly most of them only saw a pink and white blur suddenly come at them from a supposedly secure quarter. A few bullets whistled and shrieked as they headed her way, but they were all panic shots, and none came close enough to more than ruffle her hair or skirt, barely even noticable by Stella's standards. She lashed out with one slim leg, the force of a jackhammer behind the blow, doubling up one of the guards with a shotgun as she hurled her left hand knife into the throat of another who was drawing a bead on her with his rifle. Skipping and twirling to one side, almost dancing away from the weapons attempting to line up on her, Stella ran two steps up one of the nearby walls before kicking off, flipping over the still bent down guard as she pushed off from his back with her free hand, smashing him to the floor.

Her second knife throw pierced the skull of another shotgun toting guard, his death squeeze blowing the legs out from under a friend standing next to him, even as Stella landed her backflip on top of the shoulders of one of the last two security guards, clenching her thighs around his neck while using her calves and heels to pin his arms at his sides for a second, arching her back and using her still considerable momentum to yank him downwards with her, his neck already crushed by her vicing thighs as she put both hands on the ground and whiplashed her body, hurling his corpse half over the barricade. Springing back to her feet, Stella found herself looking down the muzzle of another Cutlass, from about five feet away, the last guard smirking in panicked joy at finding her helpless in his sights. But then a pistol cracked, and the guard's head exploded in bloody fragments, Stella's expression having not even changed in the slightest... she'd known the moment she distracted the guards that Sting and Auel would move to support her... that was what battle partners did.

She bent down and cut the throat of the man she'd kicked and then used as a springboard, and was looting the bodies for useful supplies while kneeling in a puddle of blood when Sting peered over the barricade, his pistol still smoking lightly. "We were supposed to be rescuing you, not the other way around." He commented with a slightly raised eyebrow as he waved for the rest of the Extended to join them and begin securing better weapons and body armor.

"Blame Mother. If she hadn't wanted me dead so bad, you'd still be pinned down in their crossfire." Stella answered diffidently, standing after having gathered a double handful of sheathed combat blades from the corpses.

"Well, Mother's supposed to be dead, so I dunno if we can blame her or thank her." Auel commented with a smirk to cover his expression of relief at seeing Stella alive and unharmed. He saw Stella's questioning look. "Mecha's supposed to have offed her, right around the same time yer boyfriend blew up the main security control center with his Vindicator." Auel explained. "Father apparently gave your lover boy the codes to reprogam the tin-head's loyalty control circuits."

"That's the idea anyway." Sting frowned, taking a pump shotgun up for himself and reloading it, before tossing a Cutlass rifle to Auel. "But if Mother sent goons to execute Stella, she would have only done so after Lain started his attack, and she was supposed to be dead by then, so I don't think everything is going exactly as planned."

"What's the plan?" Stella queried, exchanging slight nods of greeting with the four other Extended that made up the rescue party... Marie, with her blue and red streaked hair, Kylie with a buzz cut of dark black on her rounded head, Trey with his tattoos instead of hair and roguish Finn, with girlish hair of strawberry blond to compliment his hard eyes and easy grin. All Extendeds of medium to late generation, combat veterans, and perhaps most tellingly, none of them mated in the Extended fashion of relationship bonding.

"Nominally speaking, after busting us out of lockdown, Lain's keeping the base defenses busy while Mecha retrieves you and boards the Omega Panzer, while the Extended hightail it out of the base to a nearby rendevous point where we'll hopefully be meeting our extraction support in about ten minutes. However nobody's seen hide nor hair of Mecha yet, and if he has failed to kill Mother, then we could be in for a world of hurt here soon. We're just lucky Marie and Kylie heard some of these motherfuckers boasting about where they were keeping you on tap for their post shift wind-down, or we'd have probably never found you in time." Sting looked her over carefully, from head to toe. "Are you alright?" Her oldest brother asked, real concern in his words and expression. "We... know what they were doing to you, and, well..."

"I am operating with acceptable efficiency." Stella replied with a shrug, before reaching out and touching Sting and Auel on the shoulders. "But thank you for worrying. It's nothing being able to hold Lain in my arms again won't cure."

"Then we should hurry." Auel said with another of his cocky grins. "Yer boyfriend is doing better than I thought he would, but if Mecha doesn't get his cold metal ass out here soon, Lain's sure to get surrounded by the RI mobile forces on loan to the base. We already broke with the plan once, I say we do it again, and find the nearest hanger with some operational 'dragoons or 'wulfs to back him up. Don't feel right just cutting and running for the extraction zone while a norm, even that norm, stays behind and foots the bill!"

"Stella thinks Auel has the right idea." Stella agreed, already worrying about what was going on at the surface level of the base. Lain was a great pilot, better than most of the Extended even, but one man, alone against the entire base? He couldn't do it. Nobody Stella knew could. Not even she herself in her Panzerdragoon. "What about our backup? Does the extraction force have anyone that can help?" Stella asked.

"Dunno." Sting shrugged, as the seven Extended began cautiously making their way back through the underground base tunnels towards one of the hanger sections of the base. "I never met the guys, that was all Lain's doing. Said he was calling on some dude named Ashino. Only Ashino I know is the leader of the goddamned Retributors, but there's no way..."

"It's him." Stella cut him off, a slightly more confident expression settling onto her face. "Cousin Markov is a good man and a better Supersoldier. He will be here, and he will bring force in so doing. Stella will be happy to see him again, and maybe this time I will beat him in a knife fight..."

"He beat YOU in a knife fight?" Marie all but choked at the thought, as Stella's skills with a small blade were legendary amongst the Extended. Nobody could touch her when it came to knife fighting, she was the undisputed champion of that style of combat.

"It was a friendly match." Stella shrugged, frowning slightly. "BCPU apparently are as strong as they say they were supposed to be. At least Markov was."

"I heard they were crazy too though. Totally fucked in the head, taking all that Gamma-G shit." Trey commented, as they waited for Finn and Kylie to finish scouting the next intersection. It was suspiciously quiet in this section of the base, given how close it was to some of the Mobile Suit hangers, including the Omega Panzer hanger, and they hadn't seen a single security guard since they met Stella. Lain's first attack had destroyed the main communications center as well as the main security center, and that meant the sec-force couldn't use their AUTO telepresence assault units, which was a real saving grace, as those things were monstrous in close quarters combat. But the sec-force was still bigger than an infantry regiment in size, almost three thousand men and women, so to not run into any of them in a sensitive area of the base during an attack was definitely odd!

"Markov is no crazier than Stella." Stella shrugged. "He is wise, and very experienced, and that more than anything else is why he won in our duel. You will be polite to him, he is the oldest surviving Supersoldier after all. He deserves your respect." Further banter was nixed though, when Finn and Kylie came back from their brief recon, both of them looking as troubled as any Extended ever got.

"What's wrong?" Sting asked them, taking charge, as he was seeming to do more and more naturally of late. He hated all the work and responsibility that came with being a leader, but somebody had to do it, and he sure as hell wasn't going to force Auel or Stella to shoulder the burden, or allow Mecha to take charge. The Augmented wasn't a bad sort, for a stuck up tin-ass cyborg, but he wasn't someone Sting would want to follow in battle. Fight alongside, sure, but follow, no. He'd follow Lain, the Solar Knight had a good head on his shoulders, but Lain wasn't here, and didn't know jack about infantry combat to boot. That left Sting in charge, though maybe in the future, he could shove it onto this Markov guy, if Stella was that fired up about how wise and experienced he was!

"It's..." Kylie started to say, before stopping and shaking her head, wincing her eyes shut.

"It's awful. Like nothing I ever seen before. Ain't no words..." Finn added, managing to look cold depite the Extended resilience to environmental effects, just because of how bad he was shaking. Extended weren't designed to be fearless... attempting that modification was what had turned so many of the BCPU into crazy-asses, or so Sting had heard... but all the same, it was rare to see two Extended both get rattled at the same time. Guided, though not led, by the two freaked out Extendeds, the group of seven soon reached the intersection and turned to go down the path that would lead them to the hangers for the Panzerdragoons and Omega Panzer.

"What in all the names of holy fuck...?" Auel commented softly, his curse serving to express the shock of them all as they were confronted with a vista of carnage unlike anything any of them had seen outside the goriest of video games. The entire hallway was awash with blood and gore, literally pools of blood all over the floor, more than an inch deep in some spots, especially where the bodies of what looked like over a hundred sec-force troopers were piled in drifts! You couldn't more a mess of the hallway if you'd packed it solid with pigs and started throwing frag grenades in by the armful! There was even blood dripping down from the ceiling in spots, and splashed higher up the wall than any of them could reach without jumping! The walls and floor and ceiling were pockmarked by bullet holes of all calibers, as were some of the bodies, but by far the majority of the corpses looked to be hacked or ripped apart by some incredible force!

"Mecha went on a rampage?" Trey suggested, his voice thin as he held a hand to his gut, looking ill. "Guess this explains why its so quiet in this sector... he must have caught them in the middle of deploying from the armory..."

"No way Mecha did this all by himself." Sting refuted, crouching down and examining some of the bodies, undistrubed by the gore, though the extreme violence was somewhat disconcerting. "I could see Mecha crushing a guy's skull..." Sting nudged a corpse that was all shattered and pulped above the neckline, like he'd laid his head down underneath a moving tank tread. "But these slash wounds don't come from a beam saber, there's no cauterization or melting in evidence. And even all lined up like ducks in a row in this narrow hall, Mecha woulda had a real hard time gunning down a hundred armed soldiers without getting shot to swiss cheese himself. He has RPG's and grenades, but there's no signs of explosions, and those would be the best way to take down a lot of soldiers in a narrow space."

"Their facial expressions and body locations are weird too." Marie noted, standing up and looking around uneasily after carefully studying a different pile of corpses. "Some of them were obviously picked up and thrown around by the force of a blow... we know Mecha can do that... but they all got expression of terror on their faces... at least, those with faces do. And the ones who weren't tossed around got wounds mostly in their backs and sides and legs... they were trying to retreat and got cut down from behind. Mecha's a pretty scary guy when he gets going... I wouldn't want to get in his way certainly, but he's not scary enough to rout a hundred sec-troopers all by himself."

"Much less kill them all before any of them could get away." Finn pointed out, pointing with a shaking finger at the far end of the hall. "There's no blood trails or even bloody footprints. No way Mecha could have killed a hundred dudes without letting any escape, especially ones wounded by ricochets or shrapnel."

"Well they didn't kill themselves!" Trey protested, getting angry to hide his fear. "SOMEONE had to have come by and chopped these poor fools up like they were sausage in a blender. And from the feel of the blood, they couldn't have done it too much longer ago than when we were rescuing Stella. You think maybe something got loose from Mother's labs?"

"By Father's grace, I hope not..." Kylie shuddered. "I've seen some of those misbegotten monsters before... I got forced to do some labwork as a punishment detail once, and I had to feed some of em. Nearly lost every finger on my hand doing it." She looked at the gory vista doubtfully. "But even those things couldn't do THIS good a job at killing armed soldiers. Not without leaving a body or two behind of their own anyway."

"Well, we don't have time to play detective. We need to get to the hangers as soon as possible." Sting said, noting Stella's aura of impatience. "Everyone keep triple alert... we can't assume whoever or whatever did this is friendly. Watch all sides... these poor fools got taken unawares, let's not follow the mistakes of norms." Despite... or perhaps because of... this heightened state of alertness, none of them saw or heard anything suspicious for most of the rest of their trip, though the very silence of the tunnels was actually quite unnerving. They'd expected to have to fight their way through this section of the base, they'd been ready for it, even eager for it... but the place was a ghost town, save for a violently dismembered body every so often, most wearing the coveralls of hanger maintenance crew, and that was disconcerting to their hyped up battle mindsets. What was loose in here with them? And then, just as their senses felt like they were being strained to the breaking point, the sounds of heavy machinegun fire and grenade explosives echoed down the passageways from the hall leading to the Omega Panzer hanger.

Recognizing the stattaco bark of Mecha's right arm mounted autogun, the seven Extended picked up their pace, looted weapons held tightly in their hands, and before another fifteen seconds had passed... almost every one of them punctuated by loud bursts from Mecha's gun... they had reached the crew access door to the massive hanger space where FEAR's last purely mechanical Gundam was stored. The place was a charnel house, dozens of mechanics and technicians lying sprawled out on the hard concrete floor, some of them ripped apart by close range flurries of heavy bullets, others showing the cauterized slash wounds caused by a plasma blade, but the greater majority of them were slashed and ripped apart just like the sec-force in the access hall had been. A high pitched squealing noise, like fingernails on a chalkboard but a hundred times more bothersome, was now audible over the repeated bursts from Mechael's arm gun, as the Extended rushed forward to support their cousin Supersoldier, expecting to find him in pitched combat with a squadron or two of dug in sec-force troopers.

Part of the hanger roof was on fire from a hit by Mecha's shoulder socket mounted mini-RPG's, and something big and heavy had ripped a hole in one of the hanger doors big enough to drive a small forklift through, letting flurries of snow and ice chips gust into the hanger, the Antarctic environment rapidly causing the blood slicked floor to start turning icy. The Omega Panzer itself towered against one wall, its pilot loading gantry still in the ground floor position, Mecha obviously not having had an opportunity to break away from his opponents to board his machine just yet. Sprinting around a pile of munitions crates... thankfully empty, or most of the hanger would probably be a crater, judging by the bullet holes in their sides... the seven Extended managed to come into sight of Mechael, standing in front of the stairway that led up to the second and third and fourth story gantries and catwalks that allowed for servicing of Mobile Suits at various levels. He was looking upwards and away from them, though no doubt his sensors detected their presence, as he loosed a final volley from his arm gun before the autoloaders started to click hungrily, denoting he was out of ammo.

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" Mechael bellowed at them, turning and beginning to sprint towards them, his bright yellow beam saber still ignited and protruding from beneath his left wrist. "RUN, YOU FOOLS! GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE WHILE YOU STILL CA..." Mechael was in full shout when something incredibly fast, so quick it was nothing more than a dark blue even to the Extended, slammed into the Augmented from the right side, the force of the impact resonating around the hanger with the scrunch of armor grade metal denting inwards as the six foot tall, 300 pound Augmented was knocked flying, feet actually leaving the ground on a sideways and upwards arc before his flight was comprehensively terminated by a bank of diagnostic computers, which crumpled under the impact, shooting sparks, licks of flame and dirty smoke into the air. Mechael thrashed, trying to extricate himself from the wreckage, but it was obvious his systems had been damaged by the incredible hit, because his movements were slow and jerky, and his right arm was just plain GONE from just above the elbow, a massive dent in his right side showing where he'd been hit.

"Where the fuck did his arm..." Auel commented, before seeing it lying about a dozen feet away, and in the opposite direction from where Mechael had been thrown, the biomechanical skin, muscles and armored bones cut through like they were made of marshmallow, the edge of the cut so fine it looked cauterized smooth, even though there was no heat damage to the arm itself. You'd need a laser to make a cut like that, even a mono-edged weapon wouldn't slice through Gundam grade armor plate, which was what Mechael's skeleton was mostly made of, so cleanly! A laser or...

"Shame on you, Tin-man, for trying to hog me all to yourself..." The tall, lanky man with wild brown hair, dressed all in black and dark blue, his clothing a bit ragged and bullet chewed in spots, dark with bloodstains in others, said in an admonishing tone to the struggling Augmented. There was something about the cadence of his words that chilled the blood, made one instinctively want to recoil, kind of like how the sight of a large arachnid made most people instinctively flinch, even if they weren't truly afraid of spiders. There was just something WRONG with it! The man was turned away from the seven Extended, but they all instinctively knew he was fully aware of them, and every tiny motion they might make. He held an enormous polearm in his hands, a long shaft of darkly glitterly crystal material, with a long, wide, tapering blade of the same red and black crystal curving downwards from the top of the haft. A scythe, but a scythe like nothing any of them had ever seen before, the thing just radiated menace and bloodthirsty intent!

Whenever it moved, the blade edge shrieked like a scalded baby, this was the noise they had heard while Mecha was shooting his arm gun, and the noise struck through to the soul of anyone who heard it, like knives in their brainstem, both painful and almost paralyzing with a nameless emotion that was so much more than just fear. Largely immune to psychic attack as they were, at least in a directed sense, and highly resistant in all other senses, the sound of Deathshriek's wails still affected the Extended just fine, as it was a purely sonic attack, directed at the long buried primal instincts and genetic memory of humanity, harkening back to a time when fire was a new invention, and large carnivores haunted the nights outside the cave-hovels of young humanity. That terrible blade keened again, the sound of a ghost being peeled to its ethereal marrow by the impossibly fine edge echoing around the hanger, as the terrible wielder of the weapon turned his gold within violet eyes upon the seven newcomers. Sparks of red hell-light gleamed in the shadowed pits of his eye sockets as he allowed his brown bangs to fall forward across his face, a blood smeared grin stretching across his chillingly handsome features.

"Don't worry, boys and girls, there's plenty of me to go around." Zacharis Frost, once a BCPU level 6 and now so much more than that, assured his dumbstruck cousin Supersoldiers. He lifted his hand, slowly, carelessly even, and stroked his chin as he eyed the seven Extendeds as one might eye flavors of ice cream in a supermarket... wanting them all, but not sure which to try first. Toothy grin streching even more, the vision of death pointed a blood smeared finger at the shaking Finn, Cutless assault rifle clutched in nerveless hands and pointed at the floor. "You. Scream for me." Frost ordered, his voice quiet, yet managing to carry all the moreso because of it.

"FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!" Auel hollered, snapping out of the terror-daze with pure, fiery indignation fuelling him, bringing a Cutlass up with either hand and cutting loose with dual full auto fire at the deathly apparation. A norm would have been spraying firepower all over the hanger, but Auel actually trained to use a full size assault weapon in either hand, and while his accuracy was diminished, he still kept both weapons more or less on target. Or at least he tried to, but Frost had never been an easy target to shoot, especially not with a wide open space like a hanger to maneuver around in, and while several bullets did bounce and shatter off Deathshriek's edge, not a single round even pinked the Executor's skin as he rushed forward, howling with pleasure, his eyes wide and spittle flying from his jaws like a rabid beast.

Seeing that Auel wasn't going to be able to get out of the way in time, and galvanized by the blue-head's sudden defiance, Sting darted forward and tackled his brother to the ground, just instants ahead of the pants-wetting screech that heralded Deathshriek slicing through the spot where Auel had just been. 5mm rounds sparked and richocheted from the hanger floor before Auel could let off the triggers, but fortunately all the ammo bounced away from the Extended. Likewise jerked from their near stupor states by the sudden attack of their fellow, the other five Extendeds began to spread out to surround their assailant, but not so much that they would cross each other's fire lines.

Trey fired with his shotgun, racking the pump-slide so fast that his shots seemed to have one continuous sound, rather than multiple booms. He was cheered to see blood fly from some sort of impact on the scythe wielding madman, but somehow the scattergun hit didn't stagger the bastard, much less slow him down. Between blinks of Trey's startled eyes, the madman was suddenly only an arms length away, and he instinctively flinched when he heard the dying-child scream of the scythe blade in motion, a black and red blur in the cold firelight from the roof blaze. Trey felt no impact, and smirked at the close call, before he saw the scythe blade embedded in the ground between his feet... and his body fell neatly in twain, cut from crown to crotch into even halves, organs tumbling out in wet splatter, arterial blood exploding in all directions from a dozen severed arteries, both halves of his heart still trying to beat, both eyes rolling madly in their sockets for several seconds after the bifurcated skull hit the ground and scattered firm brain sections across the concrete...

Finn gave Frost his scream then, as high pitched and frightened as any monster could have wished for, but Finn was an Extended, and even scared to the tips of his toes, he did not turn and flee, but rather raised his rifle and tried to blow Frost's head off, using semi-auto fire and doing his best to aim right between Frost's eyes. But each and every shell was swatted from the air by a deft movement of the scythe's blade, the "ping" of deflections not even half as un-nerving as the mournful, almost taunting wails of the blade's movements. Frost took a single step towards the terrified Finn, and was suddenly in his face, actually standing with the muzzle of the Cutlass nudging the bridge of his nose. "Try again." Frost suggested with a sneer. Finn's finger convulsed on the trigger, but even as he twitched, the Executor had flicked his head to the side, the round whistling by his head close enough to pinken his ear. "Too slow." Frost chided the effeminate Extended, before his free hand came around in a backfist sweep at full power.

This time it was Marie and Kylie's turns to scream, as Finn's detached and crushed in head bounced off the wall of the hanger after flying almost thirty feet, his decapitated body still standing, blood geysering from the ragged edged wound where his neck should have been, before slowly, almost gracefully toppling over to the side, hands still clenched tight around the Cutlass. "DON'T TRY TO FIGHT HIM!" Mechael yelled in frustration and fury, finally extricating himself from the diagnostic computers, his internal systems rerouted and self repaired enough to get him combat ready, if not optimal, again. "RUN AWAY, MORONS! I'LL KEEP HIM BU..." Mechael was forced to cut off in mid yell again, spinning himself sideways and down to his knees to avoid a backhand blow from Frost like what had just eliminated poor Finn, the bastard Executor had movement speed like no one else Mechael had ever fought, able to cross ten meters of open ground in an eyeblink!

Turning the momentum of his dodge into an attack, Mechael lashed out at where his sensors told him his enemy was, using the bright yellow beam saber on his left forearm, a bisecting blow aimed at his midsection with all the weight and force of Mechael's cyborg body behind it. The guy's scythe was an incredible weapon, but it couldn't block a plasma blade, though it couldn't be harmed by one either. However, it was the back of Mechael's forearm that slammed into the unyielding crystalline shaft of the scythe, planted butt-down like a flagpole in the hanger floor, jaring his stroke to a halt, and Mechael braced himself for the counterattack. Even braced, he was kind of surprised to find himself facedown on the concrete an unknown number of feet away from his starting point, without any coherent sensor-memories of how he got there. He was blind, his entire visual sensor system short circuited by a thrust kick to his spine that had come within a few ergs of shattering it, and a timer counting down from fifteen was all he could see, telling him the time to system reboot.

"You can run..." Frost cooed, leaving Deathshriek planted in the floor, a void dark abyssal portal forming behind him, between where Auel and Sting were trying to hose him down with bullets, each shell or shotgun pellet striking the quantum interface boundary and disappearing from the solar system entirely. Frost stepped backwards into the portal, and reappeared from a second gate directly behind Kylie, who was trying to edge around to get a different firing angle on him. "But you can't escape." Frost whispered in her ear, an instant before his hand, fingers bent like claws, slammed into her back and punched her heart and lungs out through her breasts, a eight inch long section of spine still gripped in his gory fist. "Cousins are such delicate creatures..." Frost noted abstractly, shaking the flopping corpse off his hand and tossing aside the stick of vertebrae as a man would discard a burnt out cigarette.

"How the hell did he get over THERE?" Auel complained, his heart clenching as he say Kylie all but ripped in half from behind, her expresson shocked and uncomprehending, having thought herself safe with almost twenty meters seperating her from the combat. Auel had never really formed any lasting bonds with any of his sisters, at least in the romantic sense, but at the same time he valued all of them a bit more highly than usual, as any one of the unattached Extended might end up being his "special friend" on any given day. It hurt to see them even get wounded, and seeing them be killed, no, murdered like norm trash? Forget being afraid, he was so pissed off he'd charge a Titan tank with a salad fork right now!

Sting blinked, the section of darker than darkness that had obscured his view of the monstrous opponent gone before he'd really even noticed it was there. "I don't know." He admitted uncertainly, looking over at where Frost was now. "Maybe Mecha has a point. I don't think we can beat this guy." He said, blasting away with his shotgun, and then a pair of pistols when the shotgun ran out.

"We can't abandon Mecha. He wouldn't abandon us." Stella said stoically, balancing a combat knife in one hand as she waited for an opportunity to hurl the blade, especially now that the brown haired attacker had left his weapon behind. Marie had noticed that too, and after emptying her cutlass in the general direction of the enemy, she hurled herself low and fast across the hanger towards the planted scythe, planning on using it against the bastard, or at least denying it to him. She was all of twenty feet away from the weapon, while Frost was over sixty, and under fire from Sting and Auel to boot. And yet the moment Marie's clutching hand fastened on the haft of Deathshriek, she found herself staring at the black boots of the malevolent Executor, as he reached down and almost gently pried her hand off the crystalline shaft of his weapon, while she stared up at him from her knees in unabashed horror.

"It's not for the likes of you to play with." Frost admonished her, lips curling in amusement as he saw her mouth work in incomprehension, and he broke out laughing when he heard the constrenation of the two male cousins, the green head and blue head, who'd been trying to keep him pinned down on the other side of the hanger, as they noticed he'd switched positions faster than they could see. Mr. Abyss sure was fun. Even if they could make out the abyssal gates, they were only open for a second or so at most, and usually far less, so they would probably only see them as looming shadows where no shadows should be, there and gone again before any real detail could be made out. Hand still vice tight on Marie's wrist, Frost picked her up, lifting her so she dangled in front of him, blocking the line of fire from the others. Tin-Man was getting up again behind him, but Frost estimated the cyborg cousin would be out of the fight for another few seconds yet.

Marie twisted her body violently, dislocating her gripped wrist in exchange for landing a half spin kick against the side of Frost's body, just over his hip. Her eyes got even wider than they already were when he didn't even grunt at the impact, which should have compressed his kidney and even his liver, two very sensitive organs that when hit often caused crippling pain for even the toughest humans. Straightening out her free hand into a bladelike shape, Marie slammed it as hard as she could into the base of his throat. Again, next to no reaction, besides a slight widening of his smirk. His windpipe should have been crushed flat by the blow, but all she'd done was put hairline fractures in her fingertips! But then Marie smiled through her pain, as she could no longer hear the bastard breathing, and saw that his throat WAS dented in where she'd hit. She'd see how scary he was when he was writhing on the ground unable to breathe!

But his grip on her dislocated wrist didn't falter, as he reached up with his own free hand and squeezed his neck in a certain way, crushing in the sides a little to force his collapsed windpipe to straighten out again, like snapping a joint back into its socket or wrenching a kink out of a hose. Marie's jaw fell open, her body starting to tremble, hot fluid suddenly running down her thighs as she lost control of her bladder, her wide brown eyes all but sucked into the maddening chaos that gleamed in the depths of the Eddie's gold pupiled eyes, unable to look away, like a mouse confronted with a cobra. She wanted to scream when she felt his fingers caress the underside of her jaw, wanted to bite down when she felt his thumb enter her mouth and press down under her tongue, but she could accomplish neither, all control of her body lost the moment she'd met his impossibly deep gaze, like staring into an endless pit that could somehow stare back.

Life returned to Marie, if only involuntarily, when Frost yanked backwards with his hand, and almost casually pulled her entire lower jaw entirely off her face, leaving her tongue flapping obscenely in the gory ruin that remained, her wail of agony coming out as a strangulated gurgle of spraying, bubbly blood. Dropping the still very much alive but entirely disabled Extended to one side, her hands clasped urgently but ineffectively to her mutilated mouth, Frost turned his maniac gaze upon the three cousins he'd already decided were the true challenge, such as any cousin could be. They looked older, and acted wiser, staying together where they could watch each other's backs rather than trying to attack him from all sides. Sweeping Deathshriek up and around in a full circle, Frost idly bisected the gargling girl lying to his side, cutting her in half just below her sternum, not quite instantly killing her as blood began to squirt out on all sides of the microscopic thin slash wound, before pointing the warhead of his scythe at the three Extended.

He was about to say something truly terrifying, something that would galvanize all three into either panicked flight or headlong charges, when the hanger wall nearest to Frost suddenly blew inwards in a storm of fire and jagged metal shards, the gigantic humanoid form of a Mobile Suit crashing through the reinforced shell of the building like a man would tumble through the wall of a life size gingerbread house. The noise was enormous, the shockwave even moreso, throwing all of the people inside the hanger around like ragdolls as the Solar Knight Vindicator slammed down on its posterior in the middle of the hanger, a giant, smoking crater punched into the armor of its left upper torso, legacy of an almost direct strike from a Legacy's shoulder mounted 105mm Beam cannon. The Vindicator's shoulder mounted 45mm LAW gun was blasted to smithereens, and though that was the worst damage, there were many more nicks and melted spots and small craters in the battered war machines armor, showing where it had come under heavy fire multiple times in the recent past.

xxxx

"MotherFUCKER!" Lain raged, working his controls, forcing his damaged machine to sit upright and begin lurching back to its feet, as to remain down in a fight, be it a Mobile Suit battle or a bar brawl, was a damn good way to get hurt or killed! It would be so much easier if he had a newfangled NIC system to help him maneuver in the tight quarters of the base, but only the Excalibers had been equipped with them, and there was no way he was ever going to get assigned one of those, not with Rey's goddamned hate boner for him! He glanced at his cockpit chronometer and scowled even more heavily. 11:56 am. There was no fucking way in heaven or hell that he'd be able to break from combat and reach the rendevous point in time now. He'd gotten reports that the majority of the Extended had escaped and were on their way to the pickup point just as planned, but that was about all that was going right currently.

The Cerberus combi-weapon that his Vindicator carried as a primary ranged weapon, a hand-me-down from Stella's old Panzerwulf, meant that Lain had a lot more firepower than his machine would normally have, even if it meant waddling around like he had a bazooka in his arms, the twinned 350mm hyper-impulse cannons and ungodly powerful Mjolnir 3P cannon giving him incredible punch and penetrating power at both long and short ranges. Blowing up Nifelheim's main comm center, and the security command bunker, had been simple, as had been using his Supercharged beam forearm blades to peel open the Extended's prison-barracks like a sardine can. But after that, everything got complicated.

Spotty communications with Mecha told him that Dostanya was still alive and kicking, Mechael having failed to achieve his half of the mission because of an act of god, when Rey himself had unexpectedly showed up on the base, looking for some sinful delights with his squeeze, the Director herself. Unable to get into Dostanya's presence without blowing up Rey first and thus blowing his chance to kill her, Mecha had been unable to find out where Stella was being kept on the base, and she wasn't being held with the other Extendeds. Fortunately, Sting and Auel did know where she was, and had taken a strike team of the more senior Extended to rescue her while Lain ran interference for Mechael's sprint to the Omega Panzer. He'd taken the time to find and blow the shit out of Rey's Excaliber in the process, both as a "fuck you" to the Paladin-Commander and because even if Rey had never been more than a better than average pilot by Solar Knight standards, in a NIC and FPR equipped machine, he would still wreak holy hell on a nuclear powered, regularly controlled Vindicator.

However, Mechael had run into something else while almost to his Gundam, and had been caught in an extremely nasty sounding firefight ever since, while Lain had been jumped by a fast reacting unit of RI pilots in Strikers, plus one in a Legacy. The Vindicator completely outclassed the Strikers, and edged out a Legacy in most combat rating tests, but with five Strikers and the Legacy acting as fire support, things were dicey. Lain had managed to shoot down two of the Strikers, both of them armed with anti-armor shotguns that his PS armor was proof against, as they tried to herd him into a crossfire with their beam rifle armed companions. But then he'd taken that good hit from the Legacy, and almost gotten the hanger where Mechael's Gundam was stored blown the hell up! By some more benevolent act of god, the Omega Panzer was still upright and seemingly undamaged by the hail of rubble that had sprayed through the hanger when Lain crashed into it, but there were no signs of the FEAR Gundam powering up, and no sign of Mechael either.

Seeing that the Cerberus was charged again, Lain fired a sweeping shot with the twinned hyper-impulse cannons, cutting through another nearby hanger, blasting apart a half dozen pilotless Panzerwulfs stored within, and exposing a Striker that had been trying to use to cover to sneak forward to flank him. A squeeze of his secondary trigger later, and the purple-white lightning bolt of the Mjolnir cannon scattered fingernail sized chunks of RI machine across a half acre area, everything above the knees of the machine vaporized by the kinetic particle bolt impact. And he'd hit the bastard's shield! If only the Mjolnir's weren't so damned finicky and volatile, they'd be standard issue. But they had a tendency to overload when jarred, and took forever to charge even on a FPR system, so they were considered too dangerous for anyone but the Extended or the USN tank corps to use. Staggering upright, Lain cursed as a flight of four "Flanker" type missiles, close cousins of the VTP type system, came screaming at him, two from either side, fired from the Legacy.

Flankers, unlike most missiles, didn't come right at you, but in keeping with their name, circled around wide and came at you from the sides and back, making them easy to lose track of, as Lain had. And while their high explosive warheads wouldn't penetrate his PS armor, they might just rip his machine limb from limb through sheer impact anyway. Dropping the Cerberus, Lain unslung his Citadel tower shield and standard issue rifle, a 100mm Supercharged beam cannon with 350mm RPG attachment, turning his right shoulder LAW and beam CIWS on the missiles coming from that side, while hoping his shield would stop the other two. Bright yellow linear tracers mixed with lime green beam bolts to form a latticework of intercepting munitions, striking the two right-side Flankers from the sky, but one of the left side missiles sneaked under the bottom edge of his shield and struck his Vindicator in the knee. The armor held, but the limb joint did not, and his lower left leg went spinning off into the rubble of the destroyed Panzerwulf hanger, the Vindicator careening to the side until a touch of his thrusters righted his balance.

"FUCK! MECHA, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? I'M GETTING RAPED UP HERE!" Lain shouted into his comm system, his ECM buzzing urgently at him to tell him he was closed to getting locked onto by multiple enemy weapon sources. He fired several dark red supercharged beam bolts at where he estimated the Strikers were, trying to keep their heads down while keeping his shield interposed between him and the more heavily armed Legacy.

"As is above, so is below." Mechael's scratchy and static laced voice came back haggardly, as he slowly pushed himself free of a mound of broken armor plating and wall materials that would have crushed a norm into a bloody paste. He was about thirty meters away from Lain's Vindicator. "You're missing a leg, ya know?" Mecha pointed out with a grim wheeze.

"I'll be missing more than that in another minute or two at this rate!" Lain retorted tightly, using the half of a hoverthruster system he had left to jolt himself to the side, narrowly avoiding a hyper-impulse blast that would have melted his machine's head to vapor. "Get the fuck into your Gundam and help me!"

"I'd love to." Mechael answered, his voice lost in another buzz of static for a moment, his comm transmitter as beat up as the rest of him was. "But I've got bigger problems than you do, little buddy."

"Like hell! I'm half shot to shit and outnumbered three to one, with more enemies on the way!" Lain complained, firing as rapidly as he could as the Legacy began to move in on him, flanked by the two remaining Strikers, his dark red beam bolts curving away from the GP deflector unit mounted on the Legacy's shield.

"That's a real bitch." Mechael agreed drily. "I'm missing my right arm, three quarters of my internal organ systems are in emergency override mode, and somewhere close by, Executor Frost of the Edenites is prancing around killing Extendeds like they're turkeys. I've barely even laid a hand on him, and he's killed Marie, Kylie, Trey and Finn like he was stepping on ants. Now he's after Sting, Auel and Stella, and I don't know if I can even slow him down, much less stop him!"

"Stella's here?" Lain cried, his heart leaping into his throat with both gladness and horror, glancing at his rear mounted sensor display to see if he could locate her. The distraction was almost fatal, his rifle and right hand disappearing into molten gobbets of armor as he flinched aside from an opportunistic blast of the Legacy's 275mm hyper-impulse rifle. "FUCK!" Lain exclaimed, opening up with his LAW and beam CIWS, his only other weapon the supercharged beam blade on his shield side hand. "Get her out of here, Mecha! I'm not long for the world at this rate!"

"Don't be a fucking moron, little buddy. You know she won't leave you behind, same as you wouldn't her, or for that matter, like I wouldn't leave either of ya. If you can't save yourself, don't even try and save her!" Mecha spat back. He looked around, but couldn't see any of the three senior Extended, or more importantly, Frost. Though after what his sensors had recorded, he didn't know if that meant anything. He wasn't sure how, but the goddamned Eddie maniac seemed to somehow be teleporting around! It was the only way to explain his ability to disappear from one point and reappear instantly in another point dozens of meters away. It all happened so fast his visual sensors couldn't really follow it, but his radar and thermal sensors were getting an eyeful, so to speak, and nothing in his combat CPU could tell him what the fuck was going on.

Lain was about to reply when he saw the Legacy start to charge towards him, beam saber lit in its non-shield hand, before a bright green beam bolt exploded out through the front of the Legacy's chest, incinerating the entire cockpit region and sending the RI quasi-Gundam smashing to the icy ground in a poleaxed heap. "Wha...?" Lain commented, flabbergasted to see the smoking barrel of one of the Striker unit's 105mm beam canons aligned with the path of the beam shot. The other Striker seemed just as stunned, but nonetheless spun towards its treacherous companion, which stood still as a statue, as if horrified by what it had done. But then the second Striker stumbled in mid turn, and began to fire wildly and randomly with its rifle as the Mobile Suit reeled and staggered like a drunken sot, before tipping over with almost comical ill-grace and slamming into another hanger building on its front. It did not rise from the rubble. "Uhhh... okaaay..." Lain said, not sure if he should believe his eyes. "What just happened?"

Mechael was about to reply when his radar picked up Frost pulling his appearing act again, right by the remaining leg of Lain's Vindicator. It was like the bastard just stepped out of a hole in midair, as easily as anyone else would stride through an open doorway, one moment a blur of dark shadows obscured the air, the next, Frost was standing there, plain as day, his scythe held in both hands and already in motion, red-black blade screaming like a damned soul, or so Mechael surmised... he'd blocked his audio receptors on those frequencies of sound, to avoid its debilitating effects. The bastard's arms were wet with fresh blood, and that made Mechael wonder if he was somehow responsible for the erratic behavior of the Strikers. The crystalline blade sheared through the PS armor of the Vindicator's heel and ankle like it was made of thin paper, and the Mobile Suit began to topple over, hydraulic fluid spraying like black blood from the wound to what would be a human's achilles tendon. Mechael's radar pinged an error message to him again, denoting Frost disappearing out of range without seeming to move, and then there he was again, somehow standing on the still smouldering armor of the Vindicator's left shoulder!

Another sweep of the scythe and Lain's primary screen went to static, his Vindicator tottering and plunging backwards, leg unable to support its weight, and head missing from the "jawline" to the "scalp", sliced off by a blade with an edge smaller than a single electron. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" Lain screamed into his comm, his combat display empty of any enemies except those too far out of range to be sniping him. Besides, he hadn't felt any impacts, his foot and head had just... come apart for no reason his computer could discern! On the outside, Mecha watched with a dropped jaw as Frost literally took down a Mobile Suit, if a damaged one, using only his handheld melee weapon to do it! Well, and whatever it was that allowed him to teleport himself, something that the normal laws of physics said was impossible...

But then again, most of the normal laws of physics didn't really cover a lot of what Newtype powers could accomplish, that fell more into the realm of Fuzzy logic, Chaos theory and Quantum mechanics. And impossible or not, it was happening right in front of him! The Vindicator slammed into the icy ground on its back with bruising force, a small thunderclap of displaced air creating a small scale blizzard in the immediate area for a few seconds. The Mobile Suit's HiMat wings and back mounted thrusters had been crushed to smithereens in the fall, but Lain himself was only jarred about a bit... it hadn't been nearly as rough a fall as some he'd had before. Unable to move, and lacking effective ranged weapons and his primary sensors, Lain saw no reason to remain with his down machine, and was just about to pop his cockpit hatch when it was done for him, a screaming red and black blade carving through his hatch armor like it was butter, hacking out a rectangular doorway in a matter of a couple seconds, before someone outside grabbed the vivisected section of metal and hurled it aside like a frisbee.

Not all pilots wore a gun in the cockpit, but Lain was one of the hotshots that did, and he had his 9mm forty-three special held in hands that only shook a little with terror as the assailant who'd crippled his machine loomed in the hole he'd cut through his Vindicator's PS armor. Lain fired, but the guy freaking DUCKED the shot, even though there was barely five feet between them. Lain fired again, aiming lower, a small part of his mind extremely disconcerted to see himself firing at the face of Kira Yamato, but with that warped grin on his face, it was obvious this guy was not the real deal. His finger froze on the trigger before he could take a third shot though, as he saw the puff of blood gout from between the bastard's slightly red glowing eyes as the 9mm hollow point slug punched into his face. The guy's head barely even jerked, and his grin only grew as he wagged a finger at Lain like he was a naughty child.

"Ugh..." Lain grunted, not sure if he should believe his eyes. He'd shot him. In the head. Between his demonic eyes! The bullet hole was RIGHT THERE! And if the guy was bothered by an attack that should have sprayed his brains as far as the Vindicator's pelvis area, he didn't show it on his face or in his actions. He remembered the gun in his hands, but it was too late, the Not-Kira had reached in and ripped away his seat restraints like they were made of limp string, before grabbing Lain himself and dragging him from his chair like he weighed nothing at all.

"You'd be Lain Debora then?" Frost asked, eyeing the shocked Solar Knight pilot as he straightened up, standing on the downed Vindicator's chest, Deathshriek on one hand, pilot in the other. "You're the one who sent that message to Ashino, aren't you?"

"How do you know about that?" Lain sputtered, stunned that his top secret communication had been intercepted, and by an Eddie of all people!

"I hear voices. In my head. They tell me all sorts of things." Frost chuckled at the confused look on the pilot's face, unsure whether to believe him, yet afraid not to, given the evidence Frost had already presented. "Relax, I'm not going to kill you yet..." Frost assured the man, lowering him slightly so his tiptoes could touch the armored plating of his Mobile Suit's chest.

"It's the yet part of that statement which bothers me." Lain retorted, stunned at his own flippancy in the face of this extremely terrifying man. "So is it okay if I don't relax?"

"I won't kill you. Not until Ashino arrives anyway. I want to see the look on his face when he fails to rescue you. But I might amuse myself by chopping you up a little bit." Frost went on, cocking his head to the side and studying the Solar Knight through his helmet visor. "Are you not afraid of me?"

"You're the scariest motherfucker I've ever had the misfortune to encounter." Lain admitted freely. "But I have someone I need to protect at all costs, and so I can't let myself give in to terror just now."

"LEAVE LAIN ALONE!" Stella's strident and quite upset voice suddenly intruded on their little tete a tete, both men glancing a bit incredulously to one side, as the blond Extended stood on a nearby section of rubble, her short hair blowing in the wind, the fiercest look Lain had ever seen stamped on her beautiful face. Auel and Sting stood a little ways behind her, both of them looking extremely dinged up, Sting being supported by Auel, a long section of metal rebar sticking out through his gut, where he'd been impaled when the Vindicator crashed into the hanger and buried them in rubble. It wasn't a mortal wound, at least not immediately so, but it was in a dangerous spot near his spine, so he couldn't move quickly or fight anymore. They'd both thrown themselves over Stella to protect her from the flying debris, but Sting had definitely gotten the worse end of the deal.

"I see why you want to protect her." Frost said, voice suddenly distant, almost nostalgic in some ways. He looked down at Lain after a moment, and there was not even a trace of humanity left on his face, it was pure, one hundred percent evil staring down at him. "And were I a different sort of being, I might even allow you to protect her. But I can't forgive you for achieving so easily what I have suffered my entire life without. I can't forgive you for making me want to have what you possess in her. I can't forgive you for making me wish I was human, even for just a moment. So watch, Lain Debora, as I take from you that which you would give anything to protect." Frost intoned, carefully and deliberately stepping onto his ankles just hard enough to fracture the bone before letting the yowling pilot drop to a crumpled heap on the chest of his Mobile Suit. He smirked as he saw Stella's eyes blaze like molten rubies, and summoned another abyssal gate, stepping through it and reappearing directly behind the furious Extended girl.

Frost looked down in mild surprise, studying the combat knife where it was thrust to the hilt in his stomach, thick blood already trying to crust around the wound, which refused to seal closed with the knife blade still embedded in his guts. "How did you know I would appear behind you, little cousin?" Frost asked curiously. The sensation of the knife in his bowels was not pleasant, but he'd endured much worse in the past. Much, much worse, and it was more the novelty of being stabbed than the wound itself which stayed his hands.

"I watched you kill my friends long enough to discern your dominant personality trait." Stella answered coolly, not even bothering to turn and look at him, all traces of her usual slightly ditzy and withdrawn personality banished in the fires of her love fuelled rage. "You kill for fun, and you get off on startling and intimidating people. I don't know how you can transport yourself from place to place like that, but from the moment I challenged you, I knew you would get behind me and try to make me scream in fear. After that, it was merely a matter of waiting for me to lose track of you. You're too predictable." Stella yanked her right hand blade out of his stomach, twisting the blade to open a wider wound, and turned around to face him directly.

"And you're too calm." Frost retorted nastily, unhappy with being lectured by his prey. He'd gotten enough of that from Pink in the past. His guts were visible through the gash in his abdomen her knife had made, but then crusty, nanite infused blood scabbed over the hole, and he was already well on his way to being as good as new. "Let's see that icy exterior crack a little, shall we?" He added, feinting towards her head with Deathshriek and then hurling himself through another abyssal gate when she stepped back and dropped off the top of the rubble mound to dodge his attack. He reappeared behind the two male Extendeds, slamming his hand into the chunk of rebar sticking through the back of the green head, and swiping Deathshriek's edge through the neck of the startled blue head, a tiny twist of the blade flicking the wide eyed head up into the air, just as Stella climbed back into view. "Made you flinch..." Frost taunted her in a childish voice, as the dead bluehead and dying greenhead toppled over like a pair of mannequin dolls.

"AUEL! STING!" Stella screamed in horror and fury, watching as her oldest brother collapsed like a puppet without strings, and her younger brother's gaping head flew through the air like a lost kite, her keen vision able to make out Auel's mouth forming the words "Run, Stel..." before death slackened his muscles forevermore. "I'm going to kill you!" Stella promised the smirking Frost, forcing herself back under the limits of her control, knowing that to give in to raw hate would only hasten her own defeat against such a foe. He wanted her out of control, so she HAD to stay in control at any cost! She hurled her left hand blade at his face, and was not particularly shocked when he snagged the blade between two fingers before it could strike. She was a bit shocked to see him snap the tempered mono-steel blade like it was a plastic model, and reminded herself not to let him get his hands on her.

"Gimme your best shot, young cousin of mine." Frost answered tauntingly, hurling Deathshriek aside and holding his arms out to either side. "Gimme another tickle with your blades, girl."

"My name is Stella Loussier." Stella answered coldly, drawing another combat knife with her empty left hand. He was so bloody confident she couldn't kill him, she knew she couldn't just take him up on his offer. Even if she stabbed him in the face, or throat, or groin, she doubted that she'd kill him. And he knew it, that was why he'd offered to give her a free shot. She didn't have the ability to kill him, not with just her knives and just one attack anyway. She was tempted to try and stick her point in his eye or ear, or up his nasal cavity... no matte how tough he was, a foot of mono steel in his brain would have to bring him down. But those same points on her body were protected by internal armor sheathing, enough to shield against glancing blows anyway. The bullet hole Lain had put between his eyes seemed to laugh at her as she studied him... a shot between the eyes would kill an Extended easily, but it hadn't even given this Frost guy a headache!

What she needed was a incendiary grenade, or a beam cannon, or a flamethrower... something that dealt massive tissue damage over a wide area of the body. It might not kill him directly, but it ought to drop him and keep him focused more on recuperating than fighting. Unfortunately she had none of these things to hand. Mechael was nearby, and his beam saber would no doubt be able to inflict the sort of grievous bodily harm Stella needed, but she doubted the noble-hearted Augmented had the strength to keep fighting, after the beating he'd already taken. So she couldn't beat him, and might not even be able to truly hurt him. But she could occupy his attention, and pray for a miracle that might be a thousand to one chance. But it was better than nothing. Stella pointed her right hand knife imperiously at the maniac and did her best not to sound as scared as she was. "My name is Stella Loussier, and I challenge you to a duel..."


	67. In the Face of Death

Author Note: Well, I guess I'm breaking my rule about not double posting, aren't I? But I just couldn't fit all the events I needed to into Spur of Moment, much like "Plains of Blood" needed "City of Tears" to fully encompass what was originally planned to be one chapter. Spur of Moment would have been thirty or forty thousand words long at the rate I was going, and that's too much for a single chapter, even for me. Well, without further ado, let's jump back in to one of the most pivotal moments in the Reclamation War...

Start: Sept 28 4:00 PM; End: Sept 29, 5:00 AM (damn it...)

xxxx

**New Eden, High orbit over Antarctica, launching bay of Agamemnon class carrier **_**Justicar**_**, April 1st, 12:03 pm**

"Damn it, we HAVE to hurry! We're already late for the rendevous!" Ashino shouted across the hanger bay of the Retributor's refurbished flagship. Though the hull itself was close to twenty years old, pretty much the entire warship had been rebuilt from the inside out with modern technologies, like nuclear reactors for power, vastly increased thruster capability, and upgraded weapon and targeting systems. They could have done even more with a FPR as a power supply, but there was no way to shield the heat output of a Fusion Pulse Reactor, and as such power sources were not standard on the old Agamemnon's in the USN, the _Justicar_'s true ownership would have been instantly obvious on even a basic thermal scan of the ship. Well, the Eddies apparently had tech that could disguise or even eliminate the thermal signature of an FPR, but the Retributors sure didn't. So they'd gone with nuclear reactors, giving the ship greater speed and patrol longevity, while retaining the ability to go stealth mode when attempting to evade pursuers or slip blockades.

"Markov, this is crazy!" Tamara protested, hurrying to keep pace with her Commander as he strode towards where his Gundam was prepped for launch. "There's no way we can stop long enough to send you and our surface to orbit capable shuttle down to the planet and back! Not unless we want that picket fleet to catch up with us while we're at station keeping!" Tamara was referring to the reason why the Retributors were late in arriving to the South Pole orbit. They'd scouted around Earth for a few days already, discreetly blending in with the ever shifting patterns of USN supply and patrol vessels as they scanned for signs of the Kratos Gundam or major Eddie concentrations where it might be located. They'd come up dry, and were hustling over to meet the instructions from Lain Debora so as to rescue the Extended supersoldiers from their captivity, when their false ID code was discovered by a splinter fleet of USN Armstrong's and a Myrmidon.

The _Justicar_ could easily outrun all of those ships, and after a brief and inconclusive exchange of fire, had done just that, but with their stealth code compromised, their only good defense lay in their speed. The USN ships were pursuing them furiuously, picking up picket vessels to add to their fleet all the time, all of them desperate for the glory that would come with destroying or capturing the infamous terrorist vessel. Even the vast _Incarnate_, flagship of the USN fleets, stationed in geo-synch orbit over Carpentaria base, had broken grav anchor to boost for the South Pole, Fleet Admiral Icarus eager for another feather to stick in his cap. The original pusuit fleet was barely fifteen minutes out of maximum engagement range of the _Justicar_, while the _Incarnate_ and attendant fleet vessels were about an hour out, give or take a few minutes. Even with a perfect touch and go landing, the surface to orbit capable shuttle would have a round trip over over thirty minutes, and potentially much longer. And expending the fuel required to reach escape velocity, especially with a large cargo of passengers, would render the shuttle incapable of fleeing on its own for any significant distance, so the _Justicar_ would have to remain nearby for pickup.

"We can't leave them hanging, Captain." Ashino replied, his voice brooking no arguement. "We're the only hope they have of achieving freedom for the first time in their lives. I won't abandon them in their hour of need!"

"And what about OUR hour of need, Commander?" Tamara retorted, ignoring his tone. "I'm telling you, this is impossible! It was risky to begin with, but with a fleet in pursuit of us, its simply suicide! We only have the Retribution and two Punishers for mobile forces, and the _Justicar_'s armament would barely be enough to stand up to an Armstrong or two, much less five of them plus a Myrmidon! And if the _Incarnate _gets within range, then its game over! We can't win the battle that we will be embroiled in if we stop to save the Extended!"

"We don't have to win it, we just have to survive it long enough to retrieve them!" Ashino countered resolutely. He stopped and turned to her, reaching up to put his hands on her shoulders. "I understand the risks, Tammy. I know I'm asking you to do something I shouldn't. I'm probably asking some of you to die for this, there's no way around that. But I believe it is worth it, to the Retributors as a whole, that we do this. I can't abandon them, Tammy. They're the closest things I have to a real family, not counting you. I've been in their shoes, I know what its like to have no hope for an existence as anything more than a disposable piece of combat equipment. I won't deny them a chance for a life as real human beings. I won't do it. Maybe this means I'm not fit to be the Commander of the Retributors anymore, I've been taking things way too personally of late. But I have faith that we can do this, Tammy. I know we can pull this off. I know it!"

"I can give you forty minutes." Tamara replied after a long few seconds of consideration. "And try to take less, Markov, or you might not have much of anyone to come back to. Contact me the moment the Extendeds are loaded up and the shuttle is in the air... I'm going to pull a slingshot maneuver through the upper atmosphere. I'll probably melt half the hull off in the process, but it should cut down on your return flight by at least five minutes. But if it works, the USN fleets shouldn't be able to catch up to us before we can slip from their sensor network. We'll be a long time coming home, cause we'll be heading sunward, but we'll be safe at least."

"Thank you, Tamara." Ashino rose up on tiptoe and kissed her hard on the lips, forceful because he didn't have the time to be gentle and he wanted her to know how much her faith meant to him. "I love you, and I promise I'll stop taking so many risks in the future."

"Don't promise anything that would make you a liar, Markov." Tamara replied tenderly, as she hugged him. "I love you too. Come back soon, and safe. And don't worry, it's because you're willing to take these kind of risks for the people and causes you believe in that you will always be fit to be Commander of the Retributors."

xxxx

**New Eden, Antarctica, Nifelheim base, April 1st, 12:05 pm**

"A duel? You challenge me... to a duel? Is that what you said? AHAHAHAHA!" Frost burst out laughing, so hard he actually doubled over. "Pistols at dawn? Swords before breakfast? A duel! How wonderful! How beautiful! If I didn't already have the Mouse, I think I'd adopt you as my pet, Stella Loussier! You make me smile with gladness! The world needs people like you, who can say such absurdities with a perfectly straight face and a serious heart! A duel... FINE, I ACCEPT, WHAT ARE YOUR TERMS, MY LITTLE FIERCE ROSEY EYED STAR?" He recovered from his laughter between heartbeats, a ferocious sneer taking over his face as the Whetstone of Humanity took over from the Dark Soul.

"Single combat." Stella replied, stone faced. "Knives and fists only. You can't attack anyone but me and I can't attack anyone but you until one of us is dead. And no teleporting, or whatever it is that you do. If you can't beat me face to face, you're no true monster at all, you're just a bully with a magic trick."

"A duel to the death is it? You that eager to leave behind all you love and cherish in this world, Rosey Star?" Frost cocked his head like a falcon eyeing a juicy rabbit. "I'll let you reconsider, we can go to first blood from the chest or face instead?"

"No." Stella retorted firmly. "I have no wish to or intention of dying, Cousin Frost. Yes, I know who you are, there's only one person you could be. But if it comes down to it, I'd rather I, and all those I care about, be dead than end up your captive. I've been made a pet before, and I'll never let it happen to me again!"

"Are you sure you're not related to the Mouse? I tell you, the similarities are uncanny..." Frost shook his head and shrugged, displaying his palms in a "what can you do" gesture.

"I have no idea who you speak of, though if she IS anything like me, I pity her. No one should be shackled to a beast like you. Any death, no matter how horrible, would be preferrable to spending a single instant as your property!" Stella answered, spitting in disgust. She would need Red EDEN treatment in a few hours, or else she'd begin to convert to an Edenite... or more likely, just die, as Antarctica was hardly a place easy for a debilitated person to survive even without a nonexistant immune system. But at the moment, she had to survive the next couple of minutes, and the odds of that weren't particularly high, so Edenization was not high on her list of concerns. For the first time, her words actually seemed to strike through Frost's veneer of jovial evil, and Stella watched his face contort into an expression of fury that made her own anger seem a child's tantrum in comparison.

"You pity her? HOW DARE YOU PITY HER! YOU, WHO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HER? THE MOUSE DOESN'T NEED YOUR PITY, ROSEY STAR!" Frost roared, his eyes flashing, tendons standing out on his face as he took a long step towards Stella, seeming to loom over her like a giant despite being well out of arm's reach. He looked like nothing human in that moment, like his flesh and blood was only a mask for the true being that dwelt within and was even now clawing its way out to get her. "DON'T TALK ABOUT THE MOUSE TO ME! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT HER, OR HOW SHE IS! THERE IS NO ONE IN ALL THE WORLD LESS SHACKLED TO ME THAN SHE IS, AND NO ONE MORE INEXTRICABLY ENTWINED WITH ME EITHER!"

_Hmm, I wonder if I struck a raw nerve?_ Stella thought to herself, with nervous humor, swallowing heavily as the very warp and weft of the world seemed to shy away from the fury of Zacharis Frost, like a haze of darkness slowly spreading out around him. The sensible side of herself told her to leave well enough alone. He was bad enough when he was being jovial evil, seeing the true incarnation of madness, hatred and rage peek out from behind that "polite" veneer was by far the most terrifying experience of her entire life! He was like the embodiment of every dark, evil and negative emotion or thought she'd ever had or heard of. Yet at the same time, her coldly logical and intellectual side told her that he wouldn't be sensitive about this topic for no reason, and that no one who was a complete embodiment of darkness and evil would be provoked by someone ragging on the qualities of someone dear to them. For that matter, no one who was pure evil would even HAVE someone dear to them to be sensitive about.

"Is that the lie she told you, or the lie you tell yourself?" Stella prodded, amazed at her own temerity, yet realizing that maybe provoking him into an insane rage might be the best strategy for keeping him occupied long enough for her hoped for salvation to come from the heavens. "You're the last person I would have expected to be self deceptive, Cousin Frost. Can it be that you've actually convinced yourself that she loves you? That ANYONE could love you, the dark beast of humanity? I guess its MY turn to laugh..." Stella forced herself to make a weak chuckle. It was enough though. Was it ever enough. She couldn't have struck a more telling blow if she'd stabbed him through the heart with a solid QC lance! His face drained of color, his eyes bulging, veins standing out under his skin, thick, almost maroon colored blood dripping from his kuckles where his fingers were biting through the skin of his palms as he balled his hands into fists.

"You... know... NOTHING..." He stated, each word coming from his lips as if dragged out kicking and screaming to its execution. "The... Mouse... is..."

"Your pet, not your lover." Stella interrupted him, rubbing salt into the wound. "You said it yourself, that you would have made me your pet if you didn't have her already. You can be fond of a pet. You can show them affection, be kind and gentle to them, lavish them with gifts even. But it isn't love, Frost. No one that you regard as your eternal lesser and property can be the subject of your love. To truly love someone is to value them at the very least equal to yourself, and usually far more. It is to trust them with your deepest feelings and most painful memories, and be trusted by them in turn. It is to willingly share the burdens of life together with them. It is to be scared for them when they are in danger, even as you trust that they can take care of themselves. It is to be there for them when they need you, regardless of how inconvenient it is for you. To truly love is to live for the purpose of ensuring you can be together with who you love, regardless of what you have to sacrifice to achieve it. Anything else is just a lie, told to salve an empty and lonely heart."

She turned, feeling him tense as if to spring, but she ignored him, recognizing that for the moment, she was invulnerable to him, as long as she continued to be right about what she was talking about. Or at least right enough to make him realize he was wrong. She pointed at the figure of Lain, who was in the process of dragging himself down to the hips of the Vindicator, looking for a way down onto the ground so he could come to her side. "That is a man who knows what love is, Cousin Frost. Who knows that he stands no chance of victory, can't even contest in the slightest with you. Who is already in horrible pain, and unable to walk, or even stand upright, thanks to what you did to his ankles. He's bleeding, and crying, and screaming inside with how much it hurts. And it doesn't stop him. He comes on anyway, and would even if I told him to stay away. He would crawl naked through hellfire to be with me, and step in front of even your rage if it meant protecting my life. I don't know who the Mouse is, or the slightest thing about her. But I know you, Cousin Frost. And you aren't capable of giving... or recieving... love. You never will be. You've already lost that part of yourself. It's gone. You are alone. And you always will be."

"You talk..." Frost's voice was like steel teeth biting through stone. "... too much, Rosey Star..."

"Only when I have something important to say, Cousin Frost." Stella turned back to him and eyed him steadily, avoiding actually meeting his gaze. She didn't want to see what was in his eyes right now. She'd hurt him, and far worse than any physical damage she could have possibly inflicted. She'd forced him to confront and shatter what was apparently a dearly held illusion. And Stella could imagine how that had to feel. It was the dream of every Supersoldier to find someone who would love them for who they were, not what they could do. That was the one thing they would normally never be allowed to have, living a life as war machines and disposable combat equipment. To have someone who cared about you, unreservedly, even knowing what you were, and how different you were, and loving you all the same... there were no words in any language to describe how incredible that was for a Supersoldier. And to think you'd found someone like that, only to realize that because of your own nature it was impossible... death was a thousand times more merciful a fate than that!

"Shut... up..." Frost's voice was getting less and less human.

"I won't." Stella replied resolutely, perhaps even fatalistically. "No matter what you do to me, it won't make my words any less true. She doesn't love you. You don't love her. You can't. You don't know how, and lack the ability to learn. You're hopeless, Zacharis Frost. Perhaps I should congratulate you? Haven't you always wanted to be Humanity's Monster? No true monster could be capable of love, so I guess you've succeeded in your goal. You have become unique, a single star in an otherwise infinite void."

"Shut up..." Frost ordered her again, his words bitten off like hunks of raw meat from a fresh kill.

Stella ignored him. It was her death warrant, but that meant it was hers to sign. "Speaking from the point of view of a Father or Mother figure, you're the perfect Supersoldier, Cousin Frost. No one can stand up to you in battle, but at the same time, no one wants to be with you outside of it. You have no value other than in how well you can kill and destroy. All they need do is feed you, water you, give you a plaything for your bed every now and again, and give you plenty of people to kill. That's all you need. That's the sum total of your requirements to be happy. You don't need respect. You don't care about glory. You actively loathe approval from others. You get off on your own suffering. You tell yourself that you are the ultimate victimizer, but only because you're afraid to remember that you've already become the ultimate victim, and you'd never want it to be any other way."

"You will shut up..." Frost rasped, suddenly towering over her, right in her face, his bloodstained hands inching towards her neck from both sides. His eyes were totally washed out and metallic... he was using the Seed. She could hear both Mechael and Lain screaming at her to get away, but she forced herself to tune them out. This was the only thing she could do now. There was no way back to safety. She had crossed over the event horizon of this situation.

"I will die, and in so doing, be proven irrefutably correct." Stella countered, making no move to defend herself. She couldn't hurt him with her knives, but her words were cutting his soul to ribbons. "Kill me, and take solace in hiding from what you are afraid to face. Its the only escape you'll ever have, and it will never be enough to give you true peace. I am not scared of you anymore. You're the most pathetic human being I've ever met, so lost to his own pain and so high on the arrogance of his own suffering that he can't even accept himself for himself. You're a liar, Cousin Frost... everything you are is a lie, and you are too scared to admit it. You're right, I shouldn't pity Ms. Mouse. You're the one who needs my pity the most." Stella felt his fingers, like gauntlets of steel wrapped in flesh, close around the base of her throat and begin to squeeze, slowly cutting off her air. She lifted her chin and closed her eyes, a peaceful expression on her face. "I win... and you lost... before you... even... star...ted...fig...ti...gghhhg..."

"STELLA! STELLA, DON'T JUST STAND THERE, FIGHT BACK!" Lain screamed frantically, unable to believe that Stella was just going to stand there and let herself be strangled, her hands folded behind her back, her head slightly tilted back, her body up on tiptoes as Frost slowly began lifting her off the ground, his face twisted into an expression of malice no human face should be able to make. "STELLA!"

"Pipe down, little buddy. Don't ruin what she did by making her cry now..." Mechael said softly, moving to stand by the hip of the Vindicator, reaching up and pulling Lain down from the machine before he fell down, and supporting him with his arm under the Solar Knight's armpits, so as to not put pressure on his two fractured ankles. "She already fought him. And she kicked his ass, in a way I or a hundred thousand like me never could have. She couldn't have hurt him worse if she'd set off a anti-personnel mine inside his ribcage. No, even worse than that... he probably wishes she'd killed him. It would have gentler than what she did do to him. The truth can be the most horrible weapon of them all, when it's used properly."

"But I can't let her die! Not now! Not when we're so close to being free, finally!" Lain struggled against the cyborg's grip, his ears scalded by the sounds of Stella choking and gagging, her hands white knuckled behind her back as she forced herself not to strike out in futile blows against the Executor, her toes jerking and dangling several inches from the rubble beneath her. He didn't understand, couldn't even begin to comprehend how she wasn't fighting back... slow death by strangulation was one of the most painful ways to die, its very barbarity why death by hanging had been outlawed for all crimes except high treason! "Stop him! STOP HIM, PLEASE! SOMEBODY STOP HIM! ANYBODY! **PLEASE!**" Lain succeeded in jerking his way out of Mechael's supporting grip, and began to haul himself over the rubble towards Stella and Frost. His ankles screamed at him, his boots sloshing with blood, but it didn't matter to him. The only thing that mattered was saving Stella. Even if he had to break his helmet open and chew the bastard's feet off to get him to stop!

The gagging sounds began growing weaker and less frequent, the stiffness in Stella's arms and legs slowly turning to limpness as the lack of oxygen started becoming terminal, and Lain pushed himself on as if he was being lashed by demons wielding whips of fire, tearing his helmet off with one hand, the sudden chill almost freezing his eyes in their sockets, daggers of ice plunging into his lungs... he'd forgotten about the temperature. But even with hoarfrost forming in his eyebrows and ice crackling on his tearstained cheeks, Lain dragged himself forward, even over jagged sections of armor palte that gouged through his flight suit and gashed his skin. "LET HER GO! LET... LET HER GO! YOU BASTARD! LET STELLA GO! PLEASE! I'M BEGGING YOU, LET HER GO!" Lain screamed at the black clad figure, who seemed unaware of anything and everything that didn't have to do with throttling the life out of the blond haired Extended, whose eyes were now open, pink pupils dull and rolling up, her tights suddenly hissing and steaming with urine from a released bladder, bloody foam gathering at the edges of her lips and in her nostrils.

Lain reached his hand out for Frost's leg, determined to somehow tip the monster-man over and break his grip, but even as his hand grabbed the Executor's ankle, Stella's hands fell limp to her sides, her toes jerking a final time before hanging loose, and no futher gagging sounds were to be heard. Lain screamed again, in incoherent rage and despair, but the sound was lost in the sudden overwhelming howl of high powered thrusters closing in on the location, as a Gundam, armored from head to toe in shimmering green energy scales, and holding a large halberd in its hands, came storming down the gravity well and hurtled towards them with reckless abandon. "Feh. I let her distract me too long." Frost said hoarsely, his first coherent sentence since Stella had started her tirade. He seemed to notice his hands were still wrapped around the Extended's throat, and he hurled her away as if she was the most disgusting thing he'd ever touched. Stella landed on her back, limp as a ragdoll, about a dozen feet away, bright blood splashing as her head encountered a solid piece of metal plate, leaving a streak of gore down the surface as she lay in an unmoving heap.

Frost was suddenly gone, whisked away between heartbeats by whatever arcane super-science or magic he used to accomplish his teleportation, and Lain hurled himself across the rubble once more, grabbing on to Stella, trying to cry, to speak, but his tears were freezing his eyeballs solid, and his throat was full of ice crystals. She wasn't breathing. She didn't have a heartbeat. Her throat looked crushed, and the back of her head was bleeding furiously from the impact with the armor plate. Ice was forming on her legs where she'd lost her bladder control. Her skin was turning rapidly colder. Lain attempted to give her CPR, but the cold was killing him, he was already going blind, his face feeling like it was petrifying, and every time he bent to give her mouth to mouth, her ended up choking and coughing, having no air in his lungs to breathe into hers.

His helmet was suddenly shoved roughly back onto his head, and if it didn't exactly alleviate his problems, it did at least prevent them from getting any worse. "Goddamn idiot, what were you thinking? You trying to kill yourself? It's -70 out here, you'll be lucky if you don't lose half your face to frostbite!" Mechael chided him as he knelt by Stella's side, checking her for life signs, and finding the same lack Lain already had. Unlike Lain, Mechael didn't let it panic him. Lack of breathing and lack of heartbeat, as well as rapidly dropping body temperature... these were all bad signs, but in truth the very cold that had come close to killing Lain might actually be a blessing in disguise. It was putting Stella on ice now that her blood wasn't pumping around her body, which would greatly slow the dieoff of her organs and internal cells from oxygen deprivation. Too much cold would kill the cells entirely, but for the time being, the ambient temperature was actually preserving what life she might still have, to a degree.

Mechael was far from a trauma surgeon or critical care doctor, but all Supersoldiers were well acquainted with biology, especially their own, and combat first aid was a skill every soldier learned out of necessity. "Don't give up hope just yet, little buddy. I swore I'd see myself dead before either of you croaked after all." Mechael told Lain, steeling himself as he punched his own right hand into the side of his body, ripping away a large chunk of biomechanical flesh and internal plating so he could sift around inside the more delicate cybernetics inside. He turned off his pain receptors, one advantage of an almost entirely cybernetic body, and began literally pulling sections of his guts out. Of course he didn't really have guts, not in the way a biological being would. This was going to be the crudest damn thing ever, but hopefully it would work. In essence what Mechael was going to do was turn his own mechanical lungs and heart mechanisms into impromptu life support devices.

Stella's throat was crushed, CPR wouldn't work even if Lain could perform it without choking to death on frozen lungs. But by disconnecting his right lung tubing, Mechael was able to force the stiff plastic tube down Stella's abused layrnx, and by splitting his oxygen circulation functions from his left lung, he could forcibly inflate and deflate Stella's empty lungs, which he began doing. Careful not to move too suddenly so as to not jerk the breathing tube around inside her, Mechael next attached electrical leads from his mechanical heart to Stella's left breast and center chest, turning up the voltage so as to give her a solid jolt to get the old muscle beating again, before relying on the lower level electric pulses to keep her heartbeat regular and sustained. Breathing restored, heartbeat restored. There was nothing he could do to warm her up, but again, keeping her cold actually helped reduce the amount of oxygen and blood her body needed to keep functioning, which was good in the short term. It also helped stem the bleeding from the back of her head.

It was a skull fracture... he'd known that the moment he saw the impact... but there was no telling how bad the damage was, and he wasn't about to lift her head up to check, as her neck could very well be broken too, either from the landing or Frost's crushing grip. The difference of a few degrees of inclination could sever her spinal cord entirely, and then she really would be doomed, regardless of modern medical science or his own crude efforts. Seeing that Lain had gotten at least a little de-thawed, enough that he could see again anyway, Mechael nodded towards the prone Sting, a few meters away. "I've got her stabilized, buddy. Find something to plug Sting up with before he goes strawberry slushy over the entire rubble pile." He assured and ordered the Solar Knight, though he refused to elaborate on Stella's chances of actual recovery. She was in a bad way, even for a Supersoldier... head and neck injuries were nothing to laugh about, regardless of how tough you were designed to be.

He wasn't sure how long he could keep up the whole human life-support machine gig... he wasn't designed to give this kind of support to someone else, and especially as beat up as he already was, he could already feel himself starting to get lightheaded, his breathing and heartbeat both considerably weaker than normal because of the effort he was channeling to Stella, meaning less nutrients and oxygen going to his own brain, pretty much the only truly biological part he had left. But he'd meant what he'd said, and Stella's performance against Frost had only convinced him the more. She was special. She HAD to live through this, and if he had to stop his own heart and lungs to keeps hers moving, then so be it! He was dimly aware of strobing lights and explosions in the distance, as the Retribution Gundam handily took care of the remaining RI Legacy's and Striker units, as well as the base defenses. Mechael wished he could have watched... the BCPU's battle performance was a work of fine art to a fellow Supersoldier. But he was channeling all his reserves, including discretionary sensor power, to his life support functions, to keep both himself and Stella in the world of the living for as long as possible.

_Just keep breathing... just keep beating... just keep living..._

xxxx

**Nifelheim, 12:20 pm**

"Yes, you heard me right! I took care of the anti-air defenses, so land the shuttle at the coordinates I gave you! And have anyone with medical experience standing by, we have some very badly wounded people in urgent need of life-saving medical treatment!" Ashino ordered the pilot of the Retributor's surface to orbit shuttle, as he stood watching over the half frozen group of survivors, a third of his attention on the slowly fading life signs of the Augmented and Stella Loussier as the cyborg's battered internal systems slowly edged towards total shutdown for the both of them; another third devoted to keeping watch on the surrounding area for FEAR defenders moving in on them, and the last near third on listening to the bridge traffic from the _Justicar_, which had only minutes ago begun long range combat against the pursuing USN picket fleet, now consisting of almost fifteen light capital ships, one heavy cruiser, and scores of Mobile Armors. Against a souped up, twenty year old carrier and two nuclear powered Punisher Mobile Suits.

And then the last remaining sliver of his mind and attention was pouring over the half seen figure that had been strangling Stella when Markov first came into visual range of Nifelheim, who had looked up at the approaching Retribution and then somehow contrived to completely and utterly vanish from both vision and other sensors in a heartbeat, as if he'd been devoured alive by a passing shadow. Who WAS that? Was he the one responsible for the slain Extendeds scattered throughout the wreckage. Did he own the malicious looking black and red crystal scythe that was lying casually embedded in a pile of rubble a dozen meters away from where Stella was slowly dying? Could it POSSIBLY be him? But who ELSE would carry around a scythe as a weapon? But what was HE doing here? And how had he just disappeared like that? Too many questions. No good answers. It wasn't helping his mood in the slightest.

Shifting his Gundam's position, Ashino half crouched over the ragged band of survivors, powering his thrusters up to well below 1 percent normal power, just enough to exude some heat from their nozzles, enough to provide some relief against the ambient temperatures, which were particularly deadly to Lain Debora, whose flight suit had gotten ripped and pierced in several locations, compromising its ability to keep his body temperature insulated. It was an awkward position, and if he took sudden enemy fire, the backwash could fry or roast all four of the survivors in an instant, but then again, the whole situation had become awkward and impromptu anyway. The minutes ticked by like hours, and far too many of them, before the surface to orbit shuttle finally came into view, flying low and quick, just in case Ashino had missed any defense turrets.

Leaving off his space heating position, Ashino used his palm mounted CUSA-D's to clear a wide space of rubble, turning it to powder and metallic dust, which blew away in the sub-zero winds, allowing the shuttle to VTOL its way down. Seeing his soldiers rush out in environment armor to collect the four survivors, along with the deadly looking scythe, Ashino took off, and began slowly circling the area, deliberately making himself a target, daring the base defenders to open fire on him, so that he could ferret out any hidden threats before the unarmed and almost unarmored shuttle took off. But the base seemed almost deserted, or at the very least, the defenders didn't seem interested in contesting his presence. Most of the surface layer of the base was in flames or in ruins, but bases like this always stretched deep underground, so Ashino doubted that he'd really "destroyed" the base, despite his best efforts. He lacked the weapons to actually destroy this horrid place.

He checked the time, cursing when his chrono read 12:35 pm. He couldn't believe it had taken the shuttle fifteen minutes to reach his position and collect the survivors. But then again, it had never been intended to operate in these climate conditions, and the pilots had to take very roundabout courses to avoid enemy radar and potential defenses. And moving the critically injured Stella and the green haired Extended couldn't be done rapidly without killing them. They'd gone as fast as they could, but they were cutting it down to the very edge of the wire. "Captain Logan, the shuttle is taking off as I speak." Ashino commed up to the _Justicar_. He was greeted only with static for a heart clenching few seconds, before Tamara's tight and strained voice came on the line.

"Copy that, Commander. You do like to test me, don't you?" She scolded him. "We're beginning slingshot maneuvers now. Be at the provided coordinates at the indicated time. We're only going to get one shot at this, Markov, you miss this bus, we can't come back for you or the shuttle. And you'd better tell those poor bastards on the shuttle to strap in tight... it's going to be like catching a baseball while sticking your arm out of a flying fighter jet... the landing's gonna be rough for everybody..." A glowing red countdown clock with less than seven minutes on it began to tick down on the bottom corner of his vision, even as he saw in his mind's eye the position in the sky he and the shuttle had to be at by the given time. It was going to be close, for the shuttle anyway. It wasn't just a matter of pointing the nose up and boosting for space... the loaded shuttle didn't have the power for that. They had to circle up and boost at the last second, where the gravity was the weakest.

Paying so much attention to potential threats from the ground, Ashino was startled when a fast moving UFO appeared on his piped in "threat display", his vision flashing orange for a second as the Retribution warned him that the object was moving on an intercept course at several thousand miles per hour. Too fast to be a regular Mobile Suit, too big to be a missile, Ashino turned to bring the object into his sights properly, and had to jam on his thrusters to avoid being mowed down by the zooming blur as it hurtled thru and past his prior position, the sonic displacement of the object knocking the Retribution flipping head over heels for almost a half kilometer before Ashino regained equilibrium. His vision blinked red, and he automatically dodged in a random direction, as the same large object reappeared to his rear flank, and swung a long, glittering polearm at the back of the Retribution.

"You've gotten faster..." A voice that was both uncannily familiar and entirely unfamiliar commented across an old Brotherhood comm channel Ashino had never gotten around to purging from the Retribution's comm bank. The sound of the voice was unmistakably that of Kira Yamato, but the way the words were emphasized, and the bloodthirsty tone behind them... that was pure Frost!

"So it IS you, elder brother..." Ashino retorted, his heart feeling like it was simultaneously encased in molten metal and liquid nitrogen. He spun the Retribution around, and came face to face with the enormous, scythe wielding Kratos, hovering barely two hundred meters away. The Retribution was medium sized, for a Gundam, a bit large for a Mobile Suit in general, but the Kratos towered head and shoulders over him, and massed over twice as much, though it was so well distributed the other Gundam actually managed to look sleeker and more dynamic than the Retribution did. "And that fool actually DID reincarnate you in the body of the Ultimate Coordinator... I didn't want to believe it..."

"It doesn't exactly tickle my funny bone either, little brother." Frost retorted, his tone harsh and hoarse, as if he'd recently been gargling hot coals or acid of some sort. "You think I enjoy looking like... like THIS? Like my worst enemy? Like the man who killed me, or at least caused me to die? I'd rather inhabit a rotting donkey corpse! I'll admit it has its uses from time to time, but I loathe every instant I spend in the Boytoy's image! Mr. Machine had quite the disgusting sense of humor."

Ashino took note of the past tense way Frost referred to Noah, plainly not realizing that "Mr. Machine" was still alive, if not exactly well. A perverse part of him wanted to tell Frost that Noah was still kicking around... having his own "failsafe" come after him did have the ring of poetic justice to it. But this was Frost, he wouldn't just go after Noah, he'd kill everyone on Ronin City in the process! "What are you doing here? Was that you I saw strangling Stella?" Ashino demanded, wondering if he might have caught his most hated sibling in a talkative mood.

"Rosey Star said things to me that no one should ever say. She crossed a line. She made things personal. She dared to..." Frost trailed off, so angry he actually couldn't remember how to form words.

For his part, Ashino was stunned... Frost sounded almost, well, HURT or even offended! He'd never known his brother to experience such emotions... he'd never cared what anyone said or thought about him, in fact he'd always seemed to enjoy provoking the very worst impression in others! However, he didn't let his shock distract him from his own feelings of hatred and rage either. "Well good, it's about time someone got you to sit up and take notice. I don't know what she said to you, but I wish I'd been there to hear it, because I'm sure I'd agree with it one hundred percent." Ashino tossed away his halberd... he didn't want to get close to Frost if he could help it, that scythe and those claws looked extremely unpleasant... while taking his "Glaive Wurm" EMC's from his back mounted weapon holsters. The mono-edged explosive discs the weapons fired, cloaked or uncloaked by Mirage Colloid, would be extremely effective against the LCR armor of the Kratos, and while their range was only medium, there was no way he'd be able to pull back to long range given Frost's speed, so better medium range and extreme rate of fire than the reverse, which was what the Rapidfire FRALA had.

"I was really looking forward to this, you know?" Frost commented, almost rhetorically, his voice drained of emotion, perhaps even tired. "To tormenting you again, seeing you squirm and curse as I trampled over you, just like I always have and always will. Hearing you yell with despair and hatred, as I took from you whatever it was you most wanted at the moment. But I'm just not feeling it anymore, Little Ashino. I'm too angry to enjoy playing with you right now. I've got too much on my mind. I might break you before I'm ready. But I can't just let you go unscathed either. Not now that you've agreed with Rosey Star..." Frost's voice turned postively bestial on the last sentence. Ashino REALLY wished he'd been there to hear what Stella had said. He'd never imagined his brother was capable of getting as worked up about someone else's opinion as he was right now. This was not hate-rage, this was hurt-rage, and what could she have said that would HURT Zacharis Frost?

Ashino didn't exactly need a written sign telling him what to expect... the tone of Frost's last sentence might as well have been a shouted announcement of "I'm going to attack"... but even so, he was caught a bit flatfooted by the speed of the Kratos. One moment it was a fifth of a kilometer away, the next it was right up in his face, and it took everything Ashino hand to avoid the sweeping chop of the QC scythe blade. It was faster than the Pulsar. A LOT faster, but perhaps that was only to be expected. Ashino cut loose with both EMCs, but the Kratos dodged effortlessly, reappearing almost a thousand meters away in the time it would take a human to take a single step while jogging. True high speed movement and maneuvering was beyond most pilots, even though FPR and GRS equipped machines allowed for it to occur. Most human minds could only process coherently so fast, and precision control at five or six times the speed of sound was far beyond most people's limits.

He kept firing, more to keep Frost dodging than because he expected to hit him, keeping his attention focused upon the Retribution, and not the distant shuttlecraft, which Ashino knew Frost would destroy just to spite him... especially if he learned Stella was aboard and not quite dead! "Is this all you've got?" Ashino found the breath to taunt his hated brother. If he was already fragile, emotionally speaking, maybe he could unbalance him yet further? It had never worked in the past, but he'd never encountered Frost in his current glum mood either! "You say I've gotten faster? I think its you that's gotten slower, Frost. In the Pulsar, I'd already be missing a limb or two!"

"I was immature then. I didn't know anything about anything." Frost retorted, pausing his dodging, and blocking the next volley of EMC discs with a pinkish Positron shield projected from the top of his scythe's shaft. "Things aren't so simple for me anymore, Little Ashino. I have bigger things in mind than simply building the tallest mountain of corpses in universal history. I'm so much more than just the End of All now..."

"You're still crazy enough to deserve an asylum all to yourself!" Ashino replied bitterly. "And from what I've seen, you still enjoy tormenting and torturing those weaker than you. Could Stella have even hurt you at all? You're still a bully, and a psychopath. You'll never be anything else!"

"Never. Everyone's so stuck on "NEVER"!" Frost answered, that wounded note back in his voice full force. "So everyone else can mature, but just because I'm insane, I'm forever condemend to be stuck a child? Just because I kill the weak, and the stupid, and those as crazy as I but in a more palatable way? Just because I endorse conflict over stagnation, chaos over stifling order, survival of the fittest over the meek inheriting the Earth? It's not fair. I go out of my way to change, and all you can do is tell me how I'll always BE THE SAME?" It took Ashino an indescribable moment to recognize the quaver in Frost's voice as signifying his evilest brother was actually choked up and on the verge of tears. He didn't know how to react... he would have sooner expected pigs to grow gossamer wings and dance a ballroom waltz in midair than hear Frost on the very of tears of sadness! This reunion wasn't going at all like he'd expected!

The Kratos was in his face again in the next instant, and Ashino jerked backwards to try and get room to fire his EMCs However, the Kratos lashed out with its oversized left hand, QC sword-claws deploying over the massive fingers, and snipped the Retribution's entire left arm off at the shoulder like a gardener pruning a rosebush. The Citadel Scales barely even put up as much resistance as wet rags, such was the scissoring force behind the blow! Dropping his other EMC to hang on its bracing strut, Ashino thrust his right palm, and the CUSA-D it contained, at the Kratos's chest, the air vibrating as the sonic blaster charged up. Suddenly the Kratos's shoulders came alive, over a half dozen thick metallic tentacles unfurling from where they were wrapped around the pauldrons and upper arms of the dark grey and crimson Gundam, a hydra's nest of writhing tendrils that swiftly entangled the Retribution, pinning its arm against its side, the CUSA-D's auto saftey rengaging to prevent the sonic blast from blowing the Gundam's own legs off.

Dark crimson supercharged beam blades, curved like scythes, sprouted from the tips of the Kratos's knife edged cooling wings, slamming down beneath the Gundam's armpits and goring the Retribution in the belly, golden sparks spilling in waterfalls from the points of impact before the strain grew too great and they shorted out, allowing the dark red beams to punch deep into the vitals of the Retribution, sending its FPR into emergency shutdown, and leaving the Gundam helpless in midair, only the Kratos's tentacles keeping it aloft. And then the Kratos grabbed and crushed the Retribution's head with its powerful left hand, as the larger Gundam carried its helpless captive back down to the frozen wastelands below. Once on the ground, black nanite clouds began dispersing like legions of flies from the Kratos, hungrily going to work on the exposed materials of the Retribution, breaking them down into inert silicate grit, like fine sand, that slowly eroded away in the howling arctic winds.

His cockpit hatch sealed closed by a tentacle, bathed only in the red emergency lights of his cockpit interior, Ashino stood, listening to himself breathe. It had all been over so quickly! He hadn't even had time to react properly! The Retribution, despite being beyond state of the art eight years ago, was just too greatly outmatched by the Kratos. And Ashino himself was more like a decade and a half out of date compared to the reborn Frost. Against an Extended, like Stella, his higher baseline abilities made up for the technology gap, and against an callow Augmented, his vast experience made all the difference. But against someone with higher baseline abilities, and arguably greater experience, in a more advanced machine... he'd never had a chance. He'd been foolish to even try. He hadn't been able to do more than damage Frost in the Pulsar the last time around, had he really thought his experience in the years afterward would have helped him improve that much? He'd had too many easy fights, at least of the personal variety... he'd forgotten what it was like to be totally outclassed!

And now he was helpless at the nonexistant mercies of the man who'd once sworn to end all human life in the solar system, just because he could. "Just get it over with." Ashino said softly, his comm system one of the few things his auxiliary battery supply would keep functioning for a while.

"Why should I?" Frost replied, his voice seeming to come from all around Ashino, now that there was only the sound of his breathing to fill the near darkness of his cockpit. "That's what the old me would have done. But I'm not that Frost anymore... not entirely. I'm sure you don't believe me, and there's probably no reason you should. But it's the truth. For the moment." Frost heaved what sounded like a sigh of discontentment. "Do you have someone you would do anything to protect, Little Ashino?"

"Why do you care?" Ashino retorted, instantly on guard, knowing how much his brother loved to attack the friends and family of his enemies just to rile them up.

"Because I'm different now." Frost answered, his voice back to being drained and tired.

"Like hell you are. I know what you did to Jean, and Wrenn, and Cyrpus!" Ashino said bitterly. "It would have been better if you HAD killed them. Different? The only thing that's different is that you've become even more sadistic than you used to be!"

"Maybe so." Frost allowed, with a hint of his usual devil-may-care snarl. "But answer the question. Do you have someone you would do anything to protect? Is it that Jean girl, the brain damaged cripple I gave memories back to? You haven't done such a good job of taking care of her... I wasn't even alive when she was hurt..."

"You want the truth?" Ashino didn't see any reason to lie, not with his own death assured at this point in time. Besides, it would feel good to get it off his chest. "I do love Jean. She's very important to me, and I can never repay her for the help she gave me in finding my humanity. I don't expect you to understand how important that is to me... love and humanity are two concepts you've never bothered trying to comprehend. I would sacrifice my life for her if need be... but I wouldn't do anything for her. In fact, the best thing I can do for her now is just staying as far away from her as I can. I'm the second most wanted man in the USN, and she was hurt in the assassination attempt that helped me earn that status. I love Jean, but that love is a familial sort not, not a romantic sort. I will never forgive you for what you've done to her, not that I would have ever forgive you for everything you've done to me and those I care about. But you don't care about forgiveness anyway."

"That much has certainly not changed about me." Frost agreed. "But did I detect more to your little solioquy?"

"You're the one who asked, should you be surprised I have something to say?" Ashino said scathingly. "Not all of us enjoy being alone like you do. Some of us want more than just an existence of being the most hated and reviled creature alive. Some of us really want to be human again. But you can't underst..."

"I don't enjoy being alone." Frost cut him off, his words sharp and intent. "I've NEVER enjoyed being alone..."

"Coulda fooled me. Indeed, you did... and everyone else too." Ashino retorted with an unseen shake of his head. "But whatever. You wanted an answer? Yes, there is someone for whom I would do anything to protect. Her name is Tamara Logan. She's my second in command, and my lover, and my best friend, and my confidante. Had I the opportunity and time, I would have asked her to be my wife. Yes, me, a BCPU, with a wife. Maybe even children with the proper medical treatments. She makes me happy... she understands me, and even when she doesn't, she accepts me anyway. She accepts my nature without trying to change it... she doesn't care if I'm a human or a BCPU, she loves me either way. Jean could never have done that, which is why I cannot muster more than familial fondness for her anymore. She is the most important thing in the entire world to me, even more important than killing Durandel for what he's done to me and to the USN. Even more important than killing YOU, though I realize that only now that I can't..."

"Is she the captain of that ship about to make a suicide dive through the upper atmosphere to rescue the shuttle full of our cousins?" Frost inquired, his voice a interested purr.

Ashino did not answer. Frost would know if he lied, his brother had always been able to practically taste dishonesty or evasion in the words of others. The only way he could protect Tammy now was to ensure Frost never learned what she looked like or where she was. Any further words on the subject would only endanger her... Frost was crazy, but he was also brilliant, and could put together whole ideas from the most minute of clues in record time. He'd figured out who Noah was and what his goals were through a single tiny conversation, when the entire world hadn't been able to figure out who the mastermind behind the Brotherhood was until after he publicly tried to assassinate Durandel! He'd gotten his true feelings about Jean and Tammy out and off his chest, and even if his confessor had been the man he despised most in all of existence, it felt good to have spoken to someone. And maybe Frost did understand, in some infestisimal way... he was a Supersoldier too, after all...

Suddenly, impossibly, Ashino wasn't alone in his cramped cockpit space anymore. The darkness made it impossible to discern who the other person was, he'd suddenly appeared, as if by magic, behind where Ashino stood in the middle of the cockpit hollow, and grabbed Ashino around the sides and waist before he knew what was happening. The fact that he couldn't burst out of the other's grip though told him all he needed to know. "How did you DO that?" Ashino hissed, truly shocked at this impossible ability to teleport.

"Tell me about Tamara and I'll be glad to tell you about Mr. Abyss. An equal exchange of knowledge..." Frost hissed back, his eyes glowing like hot coals in the mostly dark cockpit. Ashino said nothing, willing to die in whatever pain filled manner his bother chose rather than betray the woman he loved. "Fine, we'll do it the fun way then, Little Ashino." Frost snapped, pinning Ashino against one wall of the cockpit space with both of his long, lanky Boytoy legs, his back braced against the far wall of the cockpit as he leaned forward and ripped open the zipped up back of Ashino's flight suit. Scooping away handfuls of aerated GRS ooze that filled the suit's interior, Frost finally reached bare skin. Smirking at the way his little brother was tensed as if to resist a blow or endure pain, Frost simply laid his palm against Ashino's back. He couldn't touch or even see Ashino's mind normally, but with skin to skin contact, he could still pillage his memories just fine, with the training the Mouse had helped him learn.

"What are you doing...?" Ashino suddenly went stiff, the unpleasant and unfamiliar feeling of his thoughts being shuffled through resonating throughout his mind. It was like a tide of filthy ooze was slowly pouring into his skull, and sticking to every part of his brain. "STOP! DAMN YOU, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

"So she is the Captain of the ship. _Justicar_, is it? And people call me pretentious. She's quite the looker, for a norm. And quite a firebrand in the sack. Useful too... she handles all those boring chores of command for you. Looks like you've found yourself a Mouse too, little brother. I approve." Frost commented, fiddling around inside his brother's head a bit longer, hoping for something interesting to turn up, but aside from Tamara Logan, there wasn't much in Markov's memories that interested Frost. Except... "You're fucking KIDDING me!" Frost exclaimed, truly stunned by some of Markov's more recent memories. "Mr. Machine still lives? Charon assured me he'd been executed! Imagine that... but it doesn't really change anything. I'll have time to deal with him later... I have more important matters to attend to for the meanwhile." He took his hand off Ashino's back, and didn't even bother taking any of the memories with him. Unlike Grey's or the Mouse's, they didn't hold any voyeuristic allure for him.

"Damn you, Frost, if you lay a hand on Tammy, I'll..." Ashino growled, spinning around as best he could in the cockpit. But it was just him again, Frost having used his trick to vanish into thin air once more.

"You'll what? Sit there in your cockpit and scream and cry at me?" Frost growled in reply, either back in the Kratos or somehow connected to it's comm network. Frost paused for a long few seconds, obviously getting some sort of tactical update from his machine. "Don't go anywhere, little brother. I'll be right back..."

"FROST! ZACHARIS! BROTHER! DON'T DO THIS! LEAVE HER ALONE! PLEASE! I'M BEGGING YOU! DON'T TAKE TAMMY AWAY FROM ME! PLEASE... PLEASE!" Ashino collapsed to his hands and knees in the cockpit, beating his fists against the sealed closed hatch. "Please... I can't let it happen again... I can't fail to protect the person I love again! Please..." His shouts became whispers, and finally, a small sob...

xxxx

**Aboard the **_**Justicar**_**, High orbit, 1 minute prior**

_Damn it, Markov, where the HELL are you?_ Tamara thought savagely to herself, her hands white knuckled on the arms of her hard metal captain's chair. Like all the crew, she wore her space suit and helmet while at battle stations, though with the bubble vizor flipped up for ease of talk and so as to not strain the life support systems of the suit. The situation was beyond dire, the space all around the Retributors warship was swarming with beam fire, missile contrails and shell tracers! Impact warnings from damage control centers were nearly constant, and over half the warship's exterior armaments were blown away or not responding to bridge fire control. Both Punisher Mobile Suits had been blown away a few minutes ago, swarmed by a horde of Moebius Sigma mobile armors that had been launched from the rapidly encroaching _Incarnate_ and its fleet, who had used a gravity slingshot maneuver of their own to close with her position faster than she'd calculated. Damn that Icarus for only being an incompetent fool when it came to combined arms warfare...!

They were tracking the surface to orbit shuttle cleanly, and it was almost in position for the hail mary rescue dip into the atmosphere... one of very few "edges" of space that a warship commander usually wanted to avoid like the plague. But the Retribution was down on the ground somewhere, out of range of their radars, and Markov wasn't answering his comm. If push came to shove, collecting the shuttle alone would be fine... the Retribution was surface to orbit capable and even long range space flight capable... Markov could always catch up to them on his own. But she hated the idea of leaving him behind with such a swarm of USN warships overhead, despite not being able to do much against those warships even if she stayed.

"Captain, if we don't start our maneuver now, we won't ever start it!" A man called from the engineering station to her right. "They've started trying to target our thrusters, I think they want to take us alive!"

_Fuck, we've got no choice... forgive me, Markov, I'm gonna have to trust you to handle yourself for a day or two..._ "Okay, redline the reactors and point us into the atmosphere at the indicated angle! All crew brace for repeated impacts and..."

"_Incarnate_ has crossed into maximum engagment range! Detecting massive powerup in enemy main FRALA batteries!" Her defense officer suddenly screamed in dismay.

"HOW THE FUCK DID THAT FAT BASTARD GET SO CLOSE ALREADY?" Tamara yelled back, her heart in her throat and her stomach fleeing to her toes.

"Enemy flagship thermal readings are shooting off the scale, ma'am. He most have battleshorted his reactors, pushed up to 110 or 120 percent power! The man's a fucking lunatic!" The sensor operator called back.

"Only if he blows himself up doing it. Otherwise he's a goddamned genius!" Tamara said through gritted teeth. "Vizor's down people, and hang on for..." She didn't get to finish her order, as the distant obelisk shape of the _Incarnate_, visible as a shape even at several thousand kilometers range when most ships were just a light or a symbol on a data display, suddenly flared bright blue white as it discharged it's 125cm FRALA batteries at the _Justicar_. Whether through good luck, or superlative skill... the _Incarnate_'s gunnery crews were supposed to be the best in the entire USN... the long range attack was a direct hit, cutting a five meter, white rimmed molten hole through the back fourth of the Agamemnon carrier, literally cutting away the engineering department, the aft reactor, and every thruster system in a single white hot instant!

The entire ship whiplashed in protest, flipping end over end as atmosphere explosively vented from the bifurcated vessel's many decks, fortunately kicking the front three quarters of the ship upwards and back into high orbit, while the severed back quarter plunged uncontrollably into the atmosphere, breaking up and eventually melting into a rain of fingernail sized meteors that plunged into the Antarctic ice, blowing out craters in the ice many meters wide and deep, but otherwise not doing much. As for the main section of the ship, the violent flipping maneuver hurled anyone and everyone that was in the ship, even those who were nominally strapped down, around like beans in a can. The stress on the ship's frame was incredible, metal bulkheads warped and twisted and pulled apart like saltwater taffey, explosively decompressing dozens of compartments throughout the ship.

One of which was the command bridge, the armored glass portals fronting the nerve center of the ship popping out of their frames or else shattering into a billion pieces as the hull flexed and contorted around their frames. Atmosphere gushed from the wide open holes, armored emergency shutters trying and failing to fall to block the hull breahc, their tracks warped by the hull distortion as well, so they only fell halfway down. Flailing, yelling crewmembers in bright white space suits were sucked out of the bridge along with the air, many of them frightened but otherwise okay because of their sealed helmets. Others hadn't gotten their helmets sealed in time, and suffered agonizing but relatively rapid deaths from decompression and freezing. Tamara tried to hang onto her chair, but the air suction of decompression was like a hurricane, and she was dragged from her perch just as the armored shutters tried to slam down and failed halfway. Flailing, she tried to twist away from the armored panel, but was caught in the air currents and instead got smashed face first into the plating, busting her nose and splitting her scalp against the interior of her helmet.

And more pressingly, spiderwebbing her entire armored vizor with cracks and splits. Dazedly, Tamara was aware of the sound of air whistling and shrieking around her ears, and unbearable could pouring against her face, but she was too disoriented by the heavy impact to do much besides stare in horror as the crack-crazed bubble vizor broke apart, its structural itnegrity compromised by the smashing impact, all her suit's atmosphere rushing out past her gasping mouth as she was exposed to bare vacuum. Her eyes starting to fill with blood, her eardrums bursting and her chest feeling like it was about to burst as the nitrogen and other gases in her blood started to disassociate, causing the blood to boil and foam in her veins. Diver's called it the "Bends", because of the way it left you convulsing in agony in a fetal position, in those times when it didn't just kill you outright!

People always said, with grim humor, that when in space, no one can hear you scream. Tamara found out this was not quite true. When in space, and exposed to it without protection, you can hear yourself scream just fine, within the air pockets trapped within your skull! Or maybe that was just her hallucination, as darkness began to steal over her vision, and blessed oblivion subsumed the agony of being simultaneously exploded inside and frozen outside...

xxxx

He could see why they liked to call it "death pressure". Step out into it, without protective gear and preferably an sealed environment of your own, and you were immediately surrounded by and immersed within pure death. Toxic amounts of radiation, total lack of breathable atmosphere, cold so great it would freeze ice, and all the air and gases in your body trying desperately to fart, boil and wheeze their way out of your lungs, bloodstream and internal spaces. The pain was intense, enough so that even he found it a little more than just bracing after the first few seconds. Frost felt his eyeballs trying to freeze or else pop out of his skull, but a few blinks coated them with a temporary nanite sheathe that warded them from direct contact with the vacuum, while not compromising his own vision. Tough as he was, he didn't want to spend more than a minute or two out here.

Fortunately, his mental senses were of great use in this particular situation, and it didn't take him too long at all, maybe ten or fifteen seconds, to locate the mind belonging to Tamara Logan, Ashino's paramour. She was dying, and a rather horrible death at that, her body racing to explode her guts out her nostrils and anus, melt her brain out her ears, or freeze her into a humansicle. Her eyes were filled with frozen blood, and sparkling crystals of crimson floated around her like a miniature galaxy of formerly vital fluid. She was unconscious and rapidly expiring, the only thing that had kept her alive this long was that she hadn't tried to hold her breath, which would have exploded her lungs had she tried. Frost floated next to her for a second or two, fascinated by watching inexorable death work his masterful arts, before reminding himself why he'd come.

_Never, huh? I think that word is a curse now._ Frost thought, half ruefully, half furiously. _The only Never that should apply to me is that I will Never be what people expect me to be!_ He raised his arm, summoning an abyssal gate to his side, reaching out with his other hand and grabbing the half dead Captain Logan, shoving her into the quantum dispersal field before following himself, easier said than done with nothing to push off of. The transition from vacuum to permafrost was a bit jarring, causing Frost to fall to one knee as his body remembered how to breathe again. Captain Logan was coughing and retching fit to die, and already start to turn blue from the cold, but a quick glance at her face told him that she would live, assuming hypothermia didn't get her. She'd be hurting for a while, but she'd live. Stepping into another of Mr. Abyss's gateways, Frost put himself back into the cockpit of the Kratos, seeing that his Dissolution Aura nanites had comprehensively eaten away the Retribution's inside, especially its nano-repair centers, meaning that without external repair facilities, the older Gundam would never fly again.

"You still awake, little brother?" Frost asked over the still open comm.

"You monster, what did you DO?" Ashino's voice was nigh as terrible as Frost's own.

_I saved her life, just to prove I could._ Frost retorted snappily, within his own thoughts only. Ashino wouldn't understand. He couldn't. He accused Frost of being unchangable, but in truth it was the BCPU 4 who couldn't accept change when it was right before his eyes. "I did what I wanted to do, just like I always do." Frost replied diffidently, as he retracted the Kratos's shoulder tentacles that had been pinioning the Retribution. "I'm not going to kill you, Little Ashino. Like Scarface, that just wouldn't be efficient. You're so sharp, like so few people truly are. Feel free to come after me whenever you feel you're strong enough. I'll be looking forward to it." Frost paused and let his smile drip into his words. "I left you a present between your Gundam's feet. If you're going to unwrap it, I'd hurry up about it... she's rather sensitive to the cold."

He looked up, seeing the myriad lights that were the USN fleets coverging over the continent. That was just fine with him, none of them would be able to catch or even follow him if didn't want them to. But as sharp as Ashino was, him being a bit player in this Reclamation War just wouldn't do. Frost took off with the Kratos, and rapidly put himself high over Nifelheim base. Whatever differences Ashino had with the USN leadership, it was time for them to be put aside, in the interest of uniting against a greater foe... Frost himself, of course. Quite how one of the most wanted terrorists in the USN would manage to reconcile his enemies to giving him something other than a short rope and long drop, Frost did not know. But he trusted Ashino would find a way. His little brother was Sharp, after all. And just to make sure he didn't get lost amidst the great white desert of Antarctica...

Frost sent power to a rarely used system in the left gauntlet of the Kratos, power sucking and flowing into the high tech compression chambers as a torus of pure anti-lithium almost 20mm in diameter was forcibly created and then constrained within a magnetic wrapper. A few seconds later the outer port of the 20mm AMP cannon irised open, and a linear accelerator field hurled the donut shaped chunk of anti-matter groundwards at five times the speed of sound, the thumbnail sized projectile giving off enough light and hard radiation to be easily detected from orbit! It touched down in the rough center of Nifelheim and initiated a energetic chain reaction a million times more powerful than nuclear fission. A five kilometer wide, kilometer deep section of Antarctic permafrost just plain ceased to exist as anything other than randomly scattered radiation and pure energy in less than a heartbeat.

The light flash was visible from orbit, and the shockwave was audible thru most of the Southern hemisphere, though it took some hours for it to reach every ear. And Nifelheim was no more than a bad memory in less time than it took to blink, only a steaming, glowing hot, radioactive crater remaining where FEAR's greatest terrestrial holding had once been. The radiation was so bad in the depths of the crater that not even the Kratos's sensors could pierce it to see the bottom, at least not for a few hours, and Frost was already headed back to the Citadel to brood over the day's events. Rosey Star had given him an unpleasant amount to think about. And so Nifelheim was written off the books by both sides of the war... and almost everyone forgot about the place called Hel, buried over 2 kilometers beneath the deepest levels of Nifelheim...


	68. The Meaning of Triage

Author Note: Well I hope the last arc was exciting for you all, as I know I certainly had fun. However, its time to stop concentrating so much on the Big Two of the Eddies, and spread out my attention a bit, especially to some characters I've been sorely neglecting, so we won't be seeing very much of Frost or Kira in this arc, and not from their own perspectives. If last arc was intended as an interlude, then this one is intended to set up the major battles to come, though as ever with me, there's going to be events of all kinds mixed into things... I'm trying to avoid creating "filler" type chapters where nothing important to the plot happens. Though since I have so many different plots, I guess its just making sure they all get the proper nurturing that's the problem. Anyhow, you all came here to read, not listen to me ruminate, so on to the chapter itself, which has major tie ins to "In the Face of Death". Oh, and I put my reasoning behind why Stella's comments managed to injure Frost so up onto the Forum. Take it or leave it.

xxxx

**Space, Luna, Copernicus Lunar City, Basilica of the Militant Saints armed forces chapel, April 5th, 10:03 am**

The funerary proceedings were over and done with, the gathered guests, well wishers and politicians hungry for a chance to appear on camera having dispersed now that the media had pulled up stakes and moved on to other events. Gilbert wondered just how many of the congregation would have shown up if he'd insisted on having it be a media free event... and the more he thought about it, the more depressing the answer got. His adopted son had not been the most popular of people in his last months among the living, he had made many poor choices that had largely alienated a huge number of people, many of whom had at one point revered or even idolized him, and far more who had merely respected his accomplishments and talents.

But then that demonic woman had appeared, and led his guillible and good intentioned son astray, forcing him down a dark path of anguish and betrayal, and stripped from him ever vestige of honor and respectability he'd once possessed! There had been many tears shed during the funeral proceedings, and the commerative speeches... but Gil felt that almost all of them were stage tears, or worse, crocodile tears of those who were secretly glad to see Rey gone, and had shown up more to gloat at seeing Gil himself so broken hearted than because they intended to pay their respects to the departed!

Well, perhaps it was his own fault... he hadn't exactly gone out of his way to make friends with many people of late. It just wasn't politically expedient, since he was already at the top of the dog pile, so to speak, was already the one at the center of the spider's web, he had allowed his social abilities to lapse, getting by on reputation and positional authority alone. He'd had no need of friends, with Talia and Rey by his side, he'd been content to regard everyone else as catspaws, obstacles, or outright enemies. But now Talia was missing, and might even be dead, while Rey was gone forever, his body blasted into its component subatomic particles by the Kratos Gundam's AMP cannon, along with most of Nifelheim Base, FEAR's terrestrial stronghold!

There wasn't even enough left to put in a cremation urn, his son had been reduced to nothing more than stray particles of radiation, and his gravesite was at the bottom of a crater filled with deadly radiation that had defied all attempts at surveys in the four days since the disaster! And so Gil found himself well and truly alone, in a way he'd never before experienced in his life... he'd always been good at making friends and alliances, else he never would have become a politician.

But now it was just him, standing alone on top of what felt less like a dog pile, and more like a volcano in the process of erupting! Were it not for his aide, the redoubtable Martin Dicosta of Section Nine, he would have no one at all to rely on... and while Martin was a fine young man, and a trustworthy aide, he was not a personal confidante, he could not be the ear that Gil poured out his private worries and grief and rage to. Fortunately, at the moment, now that the grand hall of the church had been cleared of the congregation, Durandel was alone except for the memoriam stand containing Rey's picture amid the bed of white roses, so he was free to let his emotions spill out as he sat on the stairs of the pulpit and held his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with the force of his sobs. Rey might not have been his son by blood, but he was far from just a convenient and utterly loyal lackey, which Gil was now ashamed to admit had been what he'd considered Rey at first, back all those years ago, when Gil was still just leaving his career as a Geneticist, having worked under the brilliant Dr. Nicholas Borander, who himself was a protege of the esteemed Dr. Ulen Hibiki!

Gil had been heavily involved with one of Dr. Borander's personal pet projects, a top secret venture into the challenge of workable human cloning, not just of individual organs or limbs, but of an entire human being, a carbon copy of the physical blueprint of a human! The project had been commissioned by the obscenely wealthy Albert la Flaga, industrial and commerical transport tycoon, because he was dissatisfied with what he saw as the flawed nature of his own biological son, Mu. Desperate for an heir "worthy" of his vast inheritance, Albert sank much of that selfsame incredible sum of money and assets into funding genetic research to produce a viable human clone, using his own genes as the source material, so that he could in essence achieve a sort of immortality by passing on his own nature to a body that was genetically identical to him in all ways. And as with most technological problems, it was found that if you were willing to throw enough time and money at the issue, it could be solved... and was!

Combining the scientific genius of Dr. Borander and Dr. Hibiki, and maybe even a contribution or two from Gil himself, he wasn't too humble to admit, and given almost unlimited resources to work with by Albert la Flaga's backing, a living human clone was born only a year after the project was commenced. The name of this groudbreaking advancement in short circuiting the human reproductive cycle was Rau... Rau le Creuset. Unlike Mu, Albert's biological son, Rau was born a Coordinator, in fact it was deemed impossible for clones to be born any other way, as without the exacting genetic manipulation of the Coordinator process, extant flaws in the basic gene code of an adult human prevented any chance of achieving a full gestational period of a cloned embryo. However, while the project had been a wild success, that wasn't to say it had been entirely perfect, as Rau had evidenced signs of a condition called "Short Telemeres" shortly after birth. In essence, it meant that Rey's biological clock was set on permanent fast forward, and that he aged roughly three years for every one year of actual time.

While at first this aging process was seen as an unexpected bonus... as it allowed Rau to rapidly catch up in developmental progress with Mu despite being born when the other boy was already three years old... it rapidly turned into a fiasco when not even the vaunted Dr. Hibiki could find a way of bringing the condition to a halt once the desired state of growth was achieved. Medication was developed that could retard the aging process, but once started, there was no way to cure the pervasive genetic condition, at least none at that time. Squabbles between Albert and Dr. Hibiki soon brought the project's funding crashing down in ruins, and it was quietly canceled and swept under the rug, almost a decade's advancements in cloning science discarded in the name of privacy and security. However, before the project was shut down, a second clone was born, named Rey, Rey ze Burrel. Just an infant at the time the project was being dismantled, Rey would have been "disposed of" with the other failed projects, as no one had need of a flawed clone who would barely live to see thirty, and would be in a wheelchair before he was twenty five because of organ failure issues.

However, Gil had intervened, having just broken up with Talia, amiably if somewhat bitterly, in the wake of her decision to have a child. At the time, the PLANTs had been experiencing a major population bloom, and couples were allowed to have children only if their genes were proven to be highly compatible, and the board had decreed that Gil and Talia were not compatible, so she'd had to look elsewhere for a male gene donor. Feeling quite dispirited and disillusioned with the Population Board... who had ironically used a program devised by Gil himself to judge genetic compatibility of couples desiring children... Gil had adopted Rey as his own son, and pet project as well, as he continued to work on the problem of the short telemeres, hoping that if he could solve that, he could get around the Board's decision that his genes were incompatible for breeding by creating his own children.

It was during this period that he'd first started laying the groundwork for his Destiny Plan. After extensive research, Gil had come to the conclusion that it wasn't so much that HE was incompatible with women, it was they were incompatible with him. His genetics were a cut above the rest, destined for greatness as it were, and so they just won't productively combine with others. It wasn't ICD... he was able to fertilize ovum in a labratory environment... but the resulting gene combinations were always "sub-optimal", with far decreased levels of the genes he'd identified as being related to intelligence and leadership aptitudes, compared to his own, uncombined samples. However, Gil's scientific efforts kept running into unassailable technological problems... problems only a truly massive amount of funding would allow him to surmount. And so he diverted himself into politics, vowing to reach the very top levels of governmental authority, so that he could be in a position to fund as much of his research as he wanted, and institute a sweeping change in humanity's socio-political structure at the same time, where a person's gene aptitudes would best decide how they would serve society... i.e. the Destiny Plan!

Progress had been slow at first, even after meeting up with an by then adult Rau, who had become heavily involved with the nascent ZAFT organization, and become a close friend and ally of the esteemed Patrick Zala. Gil had the knowledge to create more of the anti-aging pills that Rau needed to give himself a chance at any sort of normal lifestyle, and so he managed to attain a degree of political backing by making himself indirectly useful to Zala as he began militarizing ZAFT, a process that Rau was instrumental to. Gil was content to remain in the shadows, letting Zala and Clyne do the time and effort intensive task of laying the groundwork for a new government, which Gil would then climb to the top from the inside of... a mark of a good leader was knowing when to leave some tasks to subordinates, even if they were unsuspecting ones, after all.

Around this time was when Gil had begun to note a troubling tendency for emotional instability in the clones, pronounced with Rau, and much more subtle with Rey, who was still a preteen, though he was only about eight, chronologically speaking. Rau was prone to fits of something like mania, where he would rail for hours against the injustice of this "flawed" world that had birthed him, and what he saw as the basic failings of human nature. In short, he felt irrecoverably victimized by the mere fact of his own truncated existence, and gradually, his dissatisfaction began turning into resentment, directed at all of humanity, and from resentment it began migrating into outright loathing, as Rau grew more and more distant with Gil and with Zala himself, throwing himself into his military duties with a devotion that bordered on fanatical. Gil put it down to a lack of a strong paternal figure during Rau's brief upbringing, as barely two years after Rau was born, both Albert la Flaga and his mistress... his original wife and son had been divorced and disinherited after he brought Rau home... were burned to death when his opulent mansion inexplicably caught fire, leaving Rau in the not so tender care of a successive series of Aunts, Uncles, and distant Cousins, who basically left the boy to grow up on his own without substantive guidance.

Determined not to let Rey fall victim to the same malady, especially because the younger clone idolized his elder "brother", Gil had instituted a strict regime of guidance and tutoring with Rey. But though this process was designed to turn Rey into the perfect assistant and right hand man, somehow during it all, Gil had managed to fall in love with his adopted son, and came to value him for his own sake, not just for what he might one day do for Gil's plans. This reawakening of his own human side had led to him re-connecting with Talia, and a general upswing in his own contentedness with life, and for a while, Gil had started to think he'd finally found that most elusive thing they called a "family"... he had never known his own biological parents, having been brought up in foster care. But good times never last long, not when you're the sort of world bestriding figure Gil knew he would one day become, and soon enough came the bloody chaos of the Valentine Wars, and the disconcerting revelation of Rau's attempt to destroy the human race through endless warfare, thankfully averted by the progeny of another project Gil had briefly worked on... Dr. Hibiki's own "Ultimate Coordinator"!

During this time, young Rey had met and befriended the child Noah Borander, distant relative of Nicholas Borander, Gil's own mentor and former employer, since deceased in the Bloody Valentine tragedy. Gil had been greatly pleased with this friendship at first... not just because it meant he had an in with the incredibly powerful and wealthy Borander family, but because it was the first real friend Rey had ever had that wasn't a member or product of some sort of top secret research project. It meant his adopted son was capable of valuing humans, despite the unfairness of his own existence... a major step forward from Rau's maniacal loathing of all life!

If only he could have known what a monster he'd invited into his bosom by allowing Rey his friendship with Noah! From day one, that violet eyed, platinum blond haired child had disturbed Gil on a soul deep level, though he'd swallowed his distaste for Rey's sake, and for the sake of political expediency. In retrospect, he should have listened to his instincts, and pushed the bastard off the top of the main PLANT spire when he had the chance...

The Valentine Wars... First and Second, and the abomination that was the attempted Isolation... came and went, and Rey had grown into a fine young man, everything Gil could have hoped for in a son of his own blood even! He was the top of all his classes at school, and consistently outperformed his peers in physical pursuits and sports as well, and these qualities, along with a bit of quiet influence on Gil's part, assured Rey's admittance to the prestiguous ZAFT Academy, where all the best and brightest young soldiers were trained to be the military leaders of the future. Remembering the overjoyed expression on Rey's face when he'd gotten the admission acceptance message was a memory gold enough to almost dry Gil's tears in the here and now, his son had never wanted anything more than the chance to become a Redcoat and eventually a storied military hero, like his still idolized "brother" Rau. The Hero of the First Lunar Assault, where he'd been awarded the Order of the Nebula, ZAFT's highest award for bravery. And Rey had excelled at the Academy as well, far outshining his peers in all categories, save for finishing second in Mobile Suit combat apititude, behind a stormy young veteran named Shinn Asuka, who also happened to be Rey's roommate and friend.

It was while Rey was away at the Academy that Gil had become heavily involved with Noah Borander, once he got over the strangeness of conversing on a near equal level with someone still in his early teens. For a long time, their relationship was the epitome of mutual benefice, even as Gil gradually became aware that Noah's own goals were of a rather more grand and sinister bent than he'd first anticipated, but he remained confident that he would be able to outmaneuver the young cad when the going got rough. Perhaps he'd been a little overconfident, looking back on it, but how was he supposed to know that Borander was an Ultimate Coordinator, engineered in secret by the Borander family, using data stolen from Hibiki's project by Nicholas! Then again, he really should have discerned that there was something abnormal about the ability of a child, even a Coordinator child of the Borander family, to put together an organization like the Brotherhood in secret. He'd asked Rey to keep tabs on Noah, just in case, but even that precaution had been turned around on him by Noah's psychic wiles, and Rey had been forced to become an unwitting double agent!

But in the end, and with no small amount of help from Rey, Noah had been defeated, though the cost was immense, and had set back Gil's own plans by a decade or more, despite his vast increase in authority from becoming Solar President! It was here that Gil realized that he had failed Rey, and allowed him to start on the path that would lead to his eventual self destruction. He'd loosed his tight grip on Rey's life, and let his son fend for himself while Gil attended to the chaos of rebuilding society in the wake of the Eden Disaster, even while Rey himself was out of sorts from the birth and near instantaneous collapse of his first romantic endeavor, a liason of mutual comfort and pleasure with the Solar Knight Lunamaria Hawke. A nice girl... not really worthy of the greatness that was his son, but after seeing how Rey looked at her when they were together, Gil had been content to let the boy have his fun for a while... he wouldn't be young and in love in this way forever after all. But then had come the messy breakup after Shinn was revealed to be alive and under Noah's psychic enslavement, and Rey had gone from the peaks of young love to the pits of young love rejected and spurned!

And it was in this state that he came to the attention of FEAR's director, the notorious Dr. Natalia Dostanya, who was only too glad to worm her way into the vulnerable and inexperienced young man's heart through seduction, nesting like a viper in his affections, poisoning him and twisting him to her own ends. She used his own emotional instability against him, rather than being strict and enforcing rigid discipline with him, she encouraged him to cut loose and act as he saw fit, for his own pleasure only, spoiling him with treats and her own lascivious body until he was quite out of control and entirely wrapped around her fingers to play with as she saw fit. And Gil had been at first too busy, and then too confident and respectful of Rey's privacy, to step in when he'd had the chance! And now look where he was! Rey was dead, vaporized, and the last thing Gil had ever said to him had been hateful and emasculating, as he publicly stripped his son of his authority as Supreme Commander, and had accused him of betrayal, cowardice and worse!

"Rey... I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to drive you away like that. I didn't want you to be afraid of me..." Gil mumbled, slowly taking his face out of his hands as he leaned back, bracing his hands behind him as he stared up at the richly adorned ceiling and stained glass windows of the chapel. "I was angry, Rey, I let it get ahold of me like I was always afraid it would. And I said those awful things to you, right out in front of everyone... please, Rey, forgive me for that... I never wanted to hurt you..." Gil leaned forward again, letting his long, dark hair fall forward over his leonine amber eyes, his attention catching on the pile of condolence wreaths and bouquets that had been laid at the foot of the dias by the mourners. Most of them were nothing more than halfhearted storebought tokens, given by those who had no care for the deceased, and might even be glad to see him gone, observing a pro forma social requirement.

But here and there, were some that had been arranged and sent with true sympathy, and many of those had come from some rather unexpected sources. Such as a tasteful bouquet of white, yellow and black roses... the Solar Knight colors... with accompanying card from none other than the Queen of Orb! Definitely a magnaminous gesture, considering the rather unpleasant working relationship Rey had with Orb. Gil was almost tempted to regard the gift as a taunt, a quid pro quo retaliation for his own somewhat sarcastic visit to the bedside of a then gravely wounded Athrun Zala during the latter stages of the Eden Disaster, but his conscience wouldn't let him take offence. Queen Zala-Attha was an eminently good person, it wasn't in her character to taunt a man over the death of his son... she might be his enemy, but she was also one he could count on to be sincere in her commiseration all the same.

Another surprise had come from the Knight-Champions, Shinn and Lunamaria... the same Lunamaria that Rey had once loved and lost, and who had seemed to despise him with a passion ever since. Shinn had ever been a friend to Rey, even in the wake of the romantic disaster involving Lunamaria, so his presence and condolences were not unexpected, but the red headed Knight had all but publicly scorned and despised Rey far before the events of Victoria had turned the bulk of the Solar Knights against their commander. That she would chose to leave flowers and grasp his hand tightly for a moment, with tears in her eyes, was quite surprising... and very welcome. Maybe it meant she'd forgiven his son, posthumously, for whatever angst lay between them. Maybe it just meant that for all her scorn, she'd never wanted to see his life cut short so brutally. In any case, Gil had been touched by her presence.

The absence of certain other people had also been a blessing he'd been glad to accept. Gil didn't think he could have choked down his hatred if Djibril had decided to put in an appearance, as there was simply no way that blue blooded freak of a Natural Supremacist was in any way sorry that Rey was dead. The purple lipped eunuch had probably raised a toast when he heard the news! Getting crocodile tears from the Solar Knight brass, or others that Rey had given real cause to hate him, was one thing... but Djibril's cocky smugness was something that made Gil want to commit physical violence just thinking about it! And Dr. Dostanya hadn't been heard from in real time in weeks, nobody knew where she was, not even her closest flunkies, Dr.'s Roanoke and Magnus. It was thought that she'd been at Nifelheim base... now Nifelheim Crater... but Gil somehow doubted his luck was that good. Though to be honest, his luck had taken a sharp upturn of late, despite Rey's death.

The sound of a door opening brought Gil's head up, his eyes dry and face composed... he'd shown the media and his administration plenty of the bereaved father already, he was not going to let them see him weakened any more than he had to... but it was only Martin, his face tight and neutral, sparing Gil's dignity the ordeal of having to accept yet another set of condolences, heartfelt or otherwise. Gil glanced at his watch, amazed how time flew by sometimes... he'd been in the chapel alone for an hour already, and now his time was up. It was a sad fact of the current world situation, and his own personal situation, that despite his grief, he could afford no more than a few hours to pay his respects to his slain son, because to do otherwise would leave him open to further attack by his political enemies... not even mentioning what the blasted Eddies might be up to! He had to get back in the game and come out with guns blazing, to take back total control of his administration and get the war back on course, before he was drowned in a deluge of public dissatisfaction stirred up by his competitors!

"It's that time, Martin?" Durandel asked with a self deprecating tug of his lips.

"I'm afraid so, Mr. President." Dicosta said smartly, handing over a briefing packet he'd been carrying in one hand. "The details on the incident involving Nifelheim, as far as we understand it anyway, for your perusal."

"Thank you, Martin. I don't think I pay you enough, you're always on top of things for me." Durandel replied with another slight grin, as he began skim reading the documents, while Martin walked at his side as they headed out of the chapel and towards the heavily escorted motorcade that would convey him to his next point of business.

"Serving the people of the USN through you is payment enough, Mr. President." Dicosta answered with a smile of his own. _And collecting all the data on you and your activities that will see you put away for the next gazillion years when it comes time to depose you after the war is a nice bonus too, I have to admit._ He thought to himself, as he hurried to get the door to the limo for his "boss". _In the memory of Mrs. Lacus, I swear I won't let you remain in power one instant longer than I have to, you conniving old snake..._

Caught up in their individual thoughts and plans, neither man noticed the shadowy outline of a humanoid figure that appeared momentarily in one of the upper archways of the Basilica's high windows, looking down on the motorcade with an intensity that could have been spine chilling, were anyone to have witnessed it. But the time to strike was not now... it was too wide open a place, and too many guards were around. It would wait for a better opportunity. With a flick of its dark cloak, the figure disappeared, to resume its stalking of the target...

xxxx

**Galileo Lunar Fleet Base, Maximum Security Detention Complex, April 5th, 12:46 pm**

"I want my fucking lawyer!" Lain shouted, as the floor level slot in the solid armor plate that was his cell door scraped open and the midday meal was pushed through on a plastic tray. "I want my goddamn Ambassador! I'm an Orb citizen, you motherfuckers, you can't just keep me locked up like this forever!" Despite knowing damn well the guards outside could hear him... he'd gotten them to engage in a shouting match before... no response was forthcoming, and the food delivery slot was scraped closed again. Oh well. It wasn't like he'd expected his demands to be in any way heeded, it was more just his way of showing that he wasn't going to let spending the last four days in solitary confinement break his spirit, despite how worried he was about his friends. Grabbing the wall, Lain heaved himself upright and cautiously walked around the circumference of the cell, keeping one hand on the wall to catch himself just in case, grimacing as he put weight on his ankles and pain shot up both legs in turn.

The medical treatement he'd recieved since the Retributor's shuttle was escorted into the launching bay of a Myrmidon heavy cruiser four days and some hours prior hadn't exactly been what he'd call first rate. The Retributor medics had already set and splinted his injuries during the ascent towards orbit, and aside from putting his feet into large casts, the USN forces... his own side, technically... hadn't even given him painkillers, or a crutch to help him walk or anything! Assholes. Then again, he had been captured amongst terrorists while trying to abandon his post, so he really didn't expect them to put him up in a five star hotel or anything. In truth he was kinda surprised he hadn't been black bagged and tossed out an airlock right away... there was no question of his guilt after all. Somebody must think there was something he could still tell them, and Lain hoped he could figure out what it was before they got sick of him not bending under their psychological torture.

Easing himself down by the plastic meal tray, Lain lifted the plastic spork and began to unenthusiastically pick at the stew-like presentation that was the meal. It didn't really taste terrible, but the consistency was gluey and it was barely lukewarm. At first he'd been afraid that it was drugged, but then remembered where he was and what condition he was in. With two broken ankles, he wasn't going to be making a sprint for the outer wall... if there even was a wall... any time soon. And everyone knew that Section Nine had torture devices that were way more effective than drugs, for when they really wanted to make a person talk. And finally, he just wasn't that important, probably. A junior Solar Knight officer caught defecting. Big whoop. The trial would be short, the execution would be right after, open and shut sort of deal. Then again, depending on how much the Extended or Retributors were convinced to talk, it might get out that he'd masterminded the whole scheme, and tried to abscond with the ENTIRE roster of USN supersoldiers in tow... that trial would probably take a little longer, if only because the judge would have to admire his massive set of balls...

Finishing his meal, Lain hurled the empty tray across the room, so that the guards would have to come into the cell if they wanted to get it back. It was extremely childish, but it was the only form of active resistance he had against them right now. And it wasn't like being an uncooperative dick was going to make his situation any worse! In truth there wasn't any torture they could subject him to that would be worse than what he was already suffering, not knowing the condition or fate of his friends, all of whom had been hurt far worse than he during the abortive defection attempt. He didn't even know if Stella and Sting were alive or dead, or what had been done to Mechael... the Augmented had bittely joked about having one foot in the scrapheap more than once in the past, and depending on how badly damaged he was, they might well decide that repairing him just wasn't worth the effort anymore! And though both Sting and Stella had been alive... more or less... the last time he saw them, their injuries were no less severe than Mechael's, and providing life sustaining care to soldiers who'd attempted defection wasn't always at the top of the military's priority list...

And that wasn't even going into Ashino! And while the Retributor Commander was not really a friend of Lain's, more like an ally in a time of need, Lain still couldn't help but wince when he thought about what the man might be going through. Stella had liked him, and that meant something to Lain. Section Nine had been trying to get their mitts on Public Enemy number 1 for years now, that was one execution that was going to be anything but quick and painless. The other Retributors... both the ones on the shuttle's away team, and the few survivors from their destroyed warship... probably couldn't expect much besides harsh imprisonment, harsher torture, confession and an unmarked grave or just being burned to ash and turned to fertilizer.

Damn that Executor Frost for showing up for no damned good reason at all and blowing the whole gig! If not for that crazy bastard, things would have been a bit dicey maybe, but they would have all worked out in the end, Lain was confident of that! But he had showed up, and everything had gone straight down the toilet and right to Hell... Auel was dead, the Omega Panzer was destroyed, the Retributors were captured, and the Extended's taste of true freedom had been ripped from their mouths before they could even enjoy it! Just about the only upside to it all was that the Super Bitch Dostanya and Asshole Prime Rey had been flashed to vapor when Executor Frost had wiped Nifelheim off the map... the explosion had been clearly visible from orbit, there was no way anyone in the base or its immediate surroundings could have survived! And truth be told, if given a choice between killing them and being a captive, and letting them live while being home free, Lain would have chosen option B every time! Their deaths were satisfying, but didn't make up for failing to be free from tyranny and enslavement.

A banging on his cell door brought Lain out of his reverie, and recognizing the sound, he did his best to scoot back to avoid having the door slammed into him as the guards swung open the armored portal and came in to get him. The two that entered the cell wore plain blue jumpsuits with pistols and batons and restraint cuffs at their belts, hauling him to his feet, which made him wince and hiss a curse at them that they ignored. They cuffed his hands behind his back and half escorted, half carried him out into the hall... he literally could not do more than hobble by himself. That handicap aside, he'd still thought about making a show of resistance... what did he have to lose after all... but that thought was crushed when he saw the massive armored form of a USN army trooper, wearing some kind of upgraded environment armor that made him damn near eight feet tall, carrying a rifle taller than Lain was, waiting for them. "How do you go to the bathroom in something like that?" Lain quipped, to disguise his trepidation.

"I shit down the throat of piddly losers with big mouths, just like you." The trooper retorted, his voice deep and menacing when played through the speakers of the armor, half gesturing with his massive rifle. "Now move, or I'll show you firsthand how it's accomplished." Lain conceded defeat in this particular bout of banter, though even with a healthy fear of the giant armored trooper, his broken ankles just couldn't move him very fast, and he was soon sweating and gasping and red in the face from the exertion and the pain, and had to lean almost all his weight onto the shoulders of the two plainclothes guards in order to make any progress at all. By the time they reached their destination, about five minutes later, it was all Lain could do to allow himself to be dragged along, his legs just wouldn't take his weight. They hadn't even interrogated him yet, and he was already starting to feel willing to give them a few answers, just so they'd do something about the pain in his legs! He'd never trained to endure torture after all, he'd trained to avoid capture in the first place, fat lot of good it had done him...

Another heavy metal door was slammed open, and Lain carried through the doorway before being half dropped down into a hard plastic chair with an impact that made him fear he'd broken his ass for a moment, while the guards fastened his wrist restraints to a piton built into the back of the chair, ensuring he couldn't rise or fall off the chair. "Motherfucking OWW, guys..." Lain protested weakly, blinking tears of real pain out of his eyes as he slowly regained his pain wracked senses enough to look around the room, and see that he was far from alone.

"Yo, little buddy." Mechael commented dourly, from where he sat on a pedastel to Lain's right. And it was a pedastel, not a chair, like something you might expect to see a statue mounted on, but in this case braced and supported Mechael's broad, muscular torso and head. The rents in his skin and under-armor had been patched up, but all his limbs had been removed, making him quite helpless to do more than sit there on the pedastel like an arming dummy. Well, that was certainly one way of making sure the Augmented wasn't going to be a threat of escaping, and unlike with a normal human, you could put his limbs back on easily enough, if they decided to keep him around later. "Welcome to the party, such as it is." Mechael added, turning his head to regard the four Vanguard armored USN troopers standing like statues of war gods at the four corners of the interrogation room. "These guys aren't much for conversation."

"Really? Mine was a regular comedic wit, if a bit on the violent side." Lain answered, straightening up in the chair and trying to find a comfortable position for his sore ass, as he turned his head to the left and met gazes with the short, burly red-head restrained to his left. Lain was rather surprised to see that Ashino was only wearing a overlarge set of manacles on his ankles and feet, and didn't even seem to be bound to the chair he was sitting on, like Lain was. "Why are you tied up less than I am?" Lain blurted out before he could stop himself.

"Because I gave my word I would not try to escape, with the lives of all my subordinates forfeit if I do." Ashino replied coldly.

"And they believed you?" Lain sputtered in shock.

"I wasn't lying." Ashino's answer almost made Lain feel like his eyeballs were freezing over again, it was so frosty.

"No, no, no, I wasn't implying that you were, I was just surprised that they believed you. I mean, you are the Public Enemy number 1, right? I'm surprised they didn't just encase you in cement from the neck down..." Lain explained hurriedly. "Or the neck up, for that matter..."

"You do realize they're going to kill all your suboridinates anyway, right? That's what they do to terrorists and subversives... summary execution." Mechael pointed out, perhaps a tad roughly, but he too was not lying.

"Perhaps." Ashino answered, somewhat mysteriously. "But all the same, I'd rather not see them all killed RIGHT NOW, if possible. There may be room to negotiate. Besides, I've always been known as an honorable man... even when my opponents are not themselves honorable."

"And you have some sort of leverage on them, don't you?" Lain guessed, as that was the only legitimate reason he could think of for Ashino being given even a chance to negotiate at all.

"Perhaps." Ashino repeated, clearly not willing to tip his hand too soon. "You'll find out soon enough, if who I think is coming to see us is actually coming..."

xxxx

**Interrogation observation chamber, same time**

"Ahh, Mr. President, it's wonderful to see you!" Dr. Roanoke commented, his voice bouncy as he tore himself away from his latest object of fascination for a few moments to greet his patron. "How has your day been? Was the ride from Copernicus pleasant?"

"I came here directly from my son's funeral, Doctor." Durandel replied with a smouldering chill, his cat like eyes skewering the old cyberneticists like he was contemplating having him hauled outside and shot then and there. "Perhaps such a concept is hard for one such as you to understand, but I can assure you, the LAST thing I was worried about was a pleasant ride from Copernicus..."

"R-Right... I meant no disrespect, I just... I... I'll give you the report!" Dr. Roanoke swallowed heavily, damning himself for letting his excitment over the "artifact" that had been recovered from the Retributor shuttle gain hold over his tongue and common sense. But it was just hard... he'd never seen anything like it before! And then there was the data he'd downloaded from Mechael's sensor logs! What a TROVE that was proving to be! He'd have research material for years based on just those two things alone! "We managed to recover almost all of the Extended class Supersoldiers, and in a week or two I should be able to reprogram the majority of them and have them ready for active duty service once more. The damage to their psychological conditioning was severe, but I am the projector creator after all. However, there will be some turnover, especially with regards to the eldest Extendeds... their psychological conditioning is so degraded as to be irrecoverable from this point on."

"So what would you recommend we do with them, Doctor?" Durandel asked, while his eyes strayed to the same object that had so excited Dr. Roanoke before his arrival, laid out flat on the table in the middle of the room. "I've no use for Supersoldiers who can't be trusted... but at the same time, our Supersoldiers are a precious resource, and we've already lost too many of them, and the capability of creating more quickly, due to Dr. Dostanya's meddling."

"Their original psychological programming is now useless. But I think there may be other avenues of persuasion available to us that could garauntee their trustworthiness." Roanoke hedged, unwilling to drop the axe on his eldest children... Stella and Sting... so easily. For that matter, disposing of them now could lead to shattering effects upon the morale of the rest of the Extended, and that was something they could not afford. "I will prepare a detailed summation of my idea for you before the end of the day, Mr. President." Roanoke said, for the time being.

"I suppose that will be acceptable." Durandel hedged, moving to stand by the center table, looking down at the object upon it with a mixture of intrigue, disturbance and covetousness... the same mixture of emotions everyone who'd beheld it seemed to feel. It had a way of calling out to you in a way that no inanimate object should be able to achieve, attacting both fascination and revulsion in equal measure. "Tell me about this thing. What IS this?" He gestured at the confiscated crystalline polearm of black and red coloration that had been found aboard the Retributor shuttle.

"It is a scythe-like polearm, sized for human use, grown from what my measurements indicate is pure quantum crystal, shaped via means and technology I can't quite understand. According to collated reports, it is likely the personal weapon of the man known as Executor Frost, and goes by the charming moniker of "Deathshriek", though how it came to be abandoned upon the field of Nifelheim for the Retributors to pillage, no one can adequately say. But it's more than just an exquisite weapon... according to some of my measurements, this crystalline construct actually possesses a measure of psychic resonance ability... exactly like what we've come to see many Latent Newtypes possess." Roanoke explained with bright eyes.

"So it's alive?" Dicosta asked, with a grimace of distaste as he looked at the deadly weapon like he was afraid it was going to stand up on its own ad atatck them then and there.

"No, and that's the interesting thing. We've never encountered an inanimate psychic before, it should be impossible, a contradiction in terms! It is my theory that this weapon would serve to amplify the inherent powers of any Newtype that held it... much like a megaphone amplifies the voice of one who talks through it. And in amplifying the psychic power of this Executor Frost, it seems to have somehow absorbed some of his "psychic residue", which accounts for the odd effect it has upon our emotions. It feels evil, I'm sure you agree, like it possesses a malignant will of its own. It's quite fascinating, I really must figure out how they achieved this effect... it could revolutionize our BALOR armament systems! In addition to the boosting effect though, the scythe blade itself is scored with thousands of microscopic channels and air fissures, which is what causes the blade to seem to "scream" when it is swung through the air, generating sonic effects pitched at a level that naturally induces fear and disorientation in the human brain. It goes against my grain, but I really have to say I'm impressed by whoever made this. I don't think I could have done so well myself." Roanoke was all but rubbing his hands together with glee as he contemplated analyzing Deathshriek more completely in the days to come.

"We should destroy it." Dicosta opined. "No good can come of keeping something like this around."

"NO! We can't destroy it until I understand it!" Roanoke hissed venomously. "It's distasteful, I agree, but we can learn so MUCH from it, I'm sure of it!"

"We'll study it for now. But I don't want it distracting you from your work with the BALOR program, Doctor. If you can't stay focused, I will have it tossed into a fusion reactor and melted down." Durandel decided, figuring he could use it as a carrot for the carrot and stick method of ensuring results from the good Doctor. "Continue your report."

"Very well." Roanoke sighed, forcing himself to turn away from gazing at the black and crimson weapon with a near pout. "Upon breakdown of the ICMS Augmented's sensor logs, I discovered a very disturbing thing. In his encounter with a dismounted Executor Frost, Mechael observed the Executor doing things that are impossible by any normal interpretation of physics. To whit, instantaneous movement from one point in space to another without crossing the intervening distance in a physical manner. To use a more banal term, Teleportation." Roanoke called up the sensor logs on the wall screen and showed the relavent bits to the President and his aide, where the radar image of Frost would suddenly vanish and then reappear at the same time dozens of meters away. "The theory of teleportation has existed for centuries, but making it practical has proven, shall we say, all but impossible. We use a form of it in our quantum data communication systems, but I think you'll agree there is a universe of difference between teleporting electronic signals and a full mammlian body! Whatever technology allows him to do such a thing... its more like magic, its so advanced. I've never seen anything like it. I recommend capturing him at any cost... I need to study him!"

"If he can teleport, capturing him is going to be difficult." Dicosta pointed out with a shake of his head. "Much less keeping him captured."

"Where there is a will, there is a way, young man, I assure you. People never thought I would be able to create a whole new race of Supersoldiers either, but look at me now!" Roanoke chided him.

"I'd prefer it if he died. He killed my son." Durandel cut in. "If we can capture him, well and good... but given how dangerous he appears to be, I won't have my soldiers sacrifice themselves for the possibility of capture, if eliminating him is easier."

"He's killed a LOT of people's sons, Mr. President. You shouldn't let it become personal." Roanoke pointed out. The glare he recieved in reply told him all he needed to know about the wisdom of appealing to sense on this matter. "Well, that's the end of my findings for the time being. I have been focused on the BALOR project after all, this is just my side job. But with Nifelheim gone, we really don't have a chance of recouping our lost Meisters... we're in quite the bind, I must admit..."

"Perhaps." Durandel said, somewhat mysteriously. He turned and looked through the one way glass at the interrogation room proper, where the three ringleaders of the defection plot his soldiers had interrupted were gathered. "I guess its time I got this over with... Doctor, you come with me. Dicosta, I'm sorry but I must ask you and the soldiers to wait in the hall until we are done. It's not that I don't trust you, but this conversation I'm about to have can not be allowed to exist officially, you must understand. I don't want you to have to be burdened with the need to lie about what you haven't heard."

"Yes, Mr. President." Dicosta answered with studied neutrality, his face giving away no hint of disappointment in being excluded from matters. "Are you sure it's wise to have the soldiers removed as well? The last thing we need is a hostage situation... those men are desperate after all."

"Those men are a quadrapalegic Supersoldier who can barely roll his eyes, a broken down Solar Knight with two bum legs, and a man we have by the short hairs, literally." Durandel replied with an easy shrug. "I'll be perfectly fine, trust me." He left out the fact that in a way, Ashino had HIM by the short hairs too. That was something the fewer people knew, the better. He turned back to the one way glass, and stared at the three men in question. Well, in truth he hardly spared a glance for the Solar Knight or the Augmented, it was the short, redheaded fireplug of a man that drew his attention. He'd never have thought, upon first meeting the man, back during his inauguration as Secretary of Defense, that he'd become such a damned thorn in his side! Truly, he was a bad penny that just kept turning up! And now... now that he had the chance to rid himself of the annoyance once and for all, circumstances conspired to make that perhaps the one path he could NOT tread! It was exasperating in the extreme...

xxxx

**Prison waste disposal facility, five minutes later**

Gaining access to the prison interior would have taken a normal human being a lot of time, effort, planning and probably help from the inside. The entity which rode in stuffed into a barrel of potent solvent fluid was fortunately not as limited as a normal human being. The cleaning solvent did no particular good to the entity's outer skin and biological sensor organs, but they were mostly redundant by now anyway, after the successive rounds of surgeries in the bowels of FEAR's secret cybernetics laboratories. Following his primary operational directives, the Vamp unit known only as "Four", designated by the numerical symbol branded on his face and chest, killed all the trustees and guards he encountered after extricating his contorted cybernetic body from the barrel of lye. It was easy, the last thing they were expecting while tossing bags of garbage into the incinerators and material recyclers was to be pounced upon from behind by an eerily silent cyber-enhanced killing machine with glowing red hot mono-sabers protruding from either arm.

In the 3.27 seconds it took to dispose of the eleven guards and trustees, Four calculated his next move, now that the target had done him the service of trapping itself in an enclosed environment where rapid escape would be almost impossible. Scent sensors that would have put a bloodhound to shame sampled the air being recycled through the prison, picking up the pheromone trace of the primary target, in close conjunction with that of a secondary target as well. Knowing that he could not evade the prison internal sensors forever, and that it would only be a matter of minutes at most before the butchered garbage detail as discovered and the alert called, Four made no further effort at stealth, trusting to his olfactory sensors to guide him to the target location, he began a headlong charge through the halls of the prison, blood charring and smoking on his vibrating blades.

It was a suicide mission, but that didn't matter to Four. All instincts for self preservation, as well as most of his sense of individual identity, had been surgically removed from him during the Revamping process. It wasn't quite accurate to say he was completely emotionless, but he was the next best thing, a near perfect killing machine with one purpose and one purpose only... to ensure his target's destruction at any cost. Four was one of several such "suicide bombers" secreted about the USN, put in place as a plan of revenge should ever his creator be betrayed by her confederates. He had gotten his activtion signal only a few days prior, and had spent that time... a significant portion of his designed operational lifespan... getting close to the target, and learning his habits and schedule as best he might. A regular assassination would be impossible, especially in the limited amount of time Four had before his implants began to fail. It had to be done in person, and there would be no walking away from it for him.

The thought of the death to come... both of the target and his own... would have made Four smile, had he possessed mouthparts capable of such contortions anymore. As it was he had to content himself with a brief flourish of his smoking orange saber blades as he pounced on a security patrol, seperating the head of one guard from his shoulders before the man even realized he was under attack, and bisecting the second vertically, crotch to crown, spilling steaming organs everywhere. Alarms began to blare, and security grates tried to lower to block him off, before being cut through in turn. The hunt was on. Four was on the prowl...

xxxx

**Interrogation room, several minutes earlier**

To say Lain was startled when the four Vanguard armored soldiers suddenly marched out of the room, leaving the three prisoners alone, would be a bit of an understatement. Two of the three of them might be damn near helpless, but Ashino was actually in pretty good shape, and if he had a mind to try and escape, this would have been a perfect opportunity! "Uhh... what gives?" Lain asked, seeing how Ashino was just sort of sitting in his chair, looking almost relaxed, a small smile threatening to play along his lips. "Come on, man, spill... what's going on?"

"Yeah! Don't make me, well, bite you or something. This doesn't make any sense..." Mechael complained dolefully from his pedastel.

"It does. He simply doesn't want any more people hearing this conversation than absolutely necessary. He's more afraid of a potential information leak than he is of us potentially trying to kill him or take him hostage." Ashino replied with a smirk, actually seeming to gain in confidence, as if the recent action had confirmed a suspicion of his.

"Kill him? Take WHO hostage?" Lain demanded, even as he got his answer, when the door to the interrogation room swung back open and admitted two men. One was someone he knew fairly well, though didn't particularly like... Dr. Sammual Roanoke, the "Father" of the Extendeds. The other was someone he knew on sight, and also didn't particularly like, but on a much more personal level. And was also the exact LAST person he ever expected to see come into a prison interrogation room, especially unguarded. Solar President Durandel! "Oh." Lain managed, in a stunned tone, his mind whirling... despite the answer to one question, thousands more had just sprung up. Why was the SOLAR PRESIDENT himself, the man at the very top of the USN, and the man Ashino had personally sworn to kill or depose at any cost, putting himself across a table from Ashino? Why was he even within a dozen MILES of Ashino? What kind of information was at stake here?

"Hey dad... care to tell me when you're going to fix me? This no arms, no legs business is for the birds." Mechael commented with a hard glare at his creator. "It's almost like you don't trust me not to try and kill you or something..."

"Given that your loyalty control program was deleted... don't ask me how... I figured I should take a few extra precautions, my boy." Roanoke replied with a dark glare at both Mechael and Lain, a look which promised dire things if either of them mentioned Roanoke's own part in the attempted defection. Lain was tempted to hang the dirty old prune out to dry, but depending on how things went, Roanoke might be the only one even slightly interested in speaking out on his behalf... he couldn't risk alienating the bastard!

Ignoring the banter, Durandel took a seat behind the table, his eyes never once strying from the lime green gaze of Ashino. Becoming aware of the tension, Roanoke, Lain and Mechael turned their attention on the two adversaries, wondering who would snap first, and what form such a snap would take. At length, Durandel heaved a sigh, templing his hands on the table, and leaning back in his chair. "I'll be blunt. I'm here to negotiate, just like your message suggested."

"Really? I love negotiations... yep, talking things out and finding mutually beneficial solutions, that's the best way to do things!" Lain piped up, perhaps a trifle feverishly. He quailed when Durandel's leonine orbs flicked in his direction for a moment... no doubt about it, the man had some serious presence when he wanted to. Lain was accustomed to feeling looked down on... he was pretty short. But Durandel's flicker gaze made him feel about two inches tall, and his mouth slammed shut before he could draw any more lightning his way. Damn him for having a motor mouth when he got nervous...

"I'm here to negotiate with HIM." Durandel clarified, as if to an imbecile. "You two are ancillary at best. If you're half as smart as you'll need to be, you won't speak until spoken to. And you will forget everything you hear in this room."

"I'll give him to you." Ashino cut in, snapping Durandel's attention back to him immediately. Ashino's grin was gone, now there was only the mask of the Retributor to see. "Yes, you heard that right." Ashino assured the man who had cost him the first girl he'd ever loved, and who had trampled upon and defiled all that Ashino considered to be good and sacred. "I'll give him to you."

"Just like that? In exchange for your lives?" Durandel cocked an eyebrow, trying not to give away a sense of excitement.

"Hardly, though our lives... and the lives of all my people you have in custody... are part of the deal. As well as their freedom." Ashino answered shortly.

"I'm here. You're here. This situation cannot last, nor will it be repeated. Why don't we stop beating around the bush?" Durandel suggested, leaning forward. "Tell me what you're looking for, and I'll tell you what is possible. You know the value of your bargaining chip, so I imagine you already have a fairly good idea of what I'm prepared to accept. But lay it out for me anyway."

"Very well. I want freedom, for everyone in the Retributors you have in custody, and a nonagression pact between your people and mine until the end of the Reclamation War. I want political freedom for the citizens of the USN, and I want Section Nine disbanded and its chief officers tried for their crimes against the people. I want reparations made to the families of those who were victimized by your secret police, and I want those who have been jailed for so called "subversive tendencies" released and compensated. I want you to abdicate power within six months of the war ending, and retire forevermore from the public eye and politics." Ashino rattled off, as if he were reciting his grocery list, ignoring the boggling eyes of Lain and Mechael. "I want you to fire every corrupt official in your administration, and bring those I name up on charges for their crimes. I want political independence for Ronin City, and procedures put in place for granting legal political independence to other states and stations if they should ever feel victimized by the USN's policies in the future."

"Do you want my firstborn son, too?" Durandel retorted with a frown.

"From what I understand, you already lost him." Ashino replied, earning him a glare that would have wilted most lesser men. "And that brings me to another point actually, Gilbert. We both know the real reason for the animosity between us, I don't need to reiterate it for uninformed ears. You know, and I know, and that's good enough for me. You made a mistake. I would have been glad to be a Solar Knight. All I've ever wanted to do was serve the people of the USN in whatever way I can. I don't know why you did what you did, and it doesn't matter now. It was a mistake, one of the worst you've ever made. But my desire to serve the people of the USN has not dimmed despite what you did to me. And now, I'm offering to serve them again, in their time of need, in this Reclamation War, and this offer is in addition to my other bargaining chip."

"You think I'd let you into my military, after all you've done to tear it down these past seven years? I know you want me dead, there's no way you can pretend otherwise. I'd be a fool to trust you with a salad fork, much less a Mobile Suit!" Durandel pointed out sharply.

"I do want you dead. You took from me something that is irreplacable, and you've done far worse things to the people of your own nation, the same people who rely on you to protect and serve them! You've been a false idol all your life, Gilbert, and you've led the world astray for your own purposes. There is no forgiveness for such crimes as that. No, I won't pretend that up until a few days ago, I'd already have strangled you or snapped your neck, promise of parole or not. Trading my life, and the lives of a hundred Retributors, for ending your reign of corruption and self interest would be a fair trade, in the balance of things. But things are different now, and like it or not, I've found that I need you around a bit longer, because we're both of us confronted with a much greater threat to humanity itself, a threat that transcends our animosity, or at least it better, if you've half a wit about you..." Ashino retorted, equally sharply.

"I'm not quite sure what you mean." Durandel admitted, sitting back once more.

"Executor Frost!" Ashino snapped, leaning forward and slamming his palms on the table hard enough to make it creak. "Though his name is Zacharis Frost, and he is what I would call my "older brother", in a manner your scientist there should understand."

"That's impossible." Roanoke protested, furrowing his brow. "You are the last BCPU. Of course I know of whom you speak... BCPU level 6 #13z, Zacharis Quentin Frost... the greatest achievement and greatest failure of my so called peer, Dr. Franklin Borander of Blue Cosmos! But Zacharis Frost was confirmed to be destroyed at the Battle of Denver, at the climax of the Second Valentine War! His body was atomized in the heart of a thermonuclear fireball! No living being could have survived such a thing! Furthermore, Executor Frost looks nothing like him! You aren't saying he came back from the dead in a different body, like some sort of pagan reincarnation?"

"Literally speaking, that is what happened. Though I suppose he wasn't ever really dead, not completely. It's the fault of that other dead guy who's not dead." Ashino replied softly. He didn't want to mention Noah's name if at all possible. That kind of knowledge would not be conducive to a long lifespan for Lain or Mechael. "I don't understand the science of it myself, but I assure you, it was done. A cloned body was created, and the mind, memories and personalities of my devilish brother were downloaded into it, giving us Executor Frost. And now he's loose out there, fighting on the opposite side of the war, with a Gundam capable of wiping out an entire space colony with the flick of a trigger! You'd better believe I'm interested in opposing him, even before I am you! You only misuse your power to control others for your own benefit... you don't intend to destroy humanity forever! He does. That's what he lives for. That's why he's a bigger threat than you."

"Say I take that at face value." Durandel said slowly. "What kind of help would you be willing to give me?"

"What do you think? I'd fight him for you. You don't have anyone else who can. Perhaps the Orb Gundams, but I imagine they're rather tied up dealing with Kira. I'm the only one who stands even a sliver of a chance standing up against Frost... your so called Ruby and Crystal knights wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against him. They couldn't even beat ME, there's NO WAY they can fight him and be anything but victims! Besides, its personal between him and I... personal in a way my hatred for you could not be even in a thousand years of you sinning against me! He'll fight me, but he won't destroy me out of hand, because he wants to savor my anguish as much as possible. That means he won't use the AMP when I'm around, or at least not as much." Ashino told him, easing back into his own chair. "Of course I can't do it in some machine designed for a norm, or even an Extended. I'll need a Gundam if I'm to stand even a whisper of a prayer. Preferably your best Gundam... I doubt the Vengeance will cut it against the Kratos. The Retribution sure didn't."

"And you would also fight against the Edenites for me, not just your personal demon?" Durandel pressed. "A soldier is no good if he'll only engage one target, no matter how powerful that target might be. If I was going to invest in a Gundam for you, I'd expect you to use it to help win the war, not just conclude your personal feud. You would have to serve at my command, or the command of my officers, and you would not be free to pursue your own agenda on a battlefield. And of course, making you an officer yourself is completely out of the question... you will never have authority over even a janitor in my army."

"Supersoldiers are used to such strictures." Ashino shrugged, though his eyes were narrowed with dislike all the same. "But I won't stand for being treated as disposable equipment. I've been there before, and I'm never going back. I know how much I'm worth, and there's people I have to live for if at all possible. Nor will I stand for my kin being treated as disposable objects either." Ashino turned a steel hard gaze on Dr. Roanoke. "My Father never had anything good to say about you, or your project. But I find the Extendeds to be excellent Supersoldiers and worthy comrades, and I would not hesitate to consider them family. I will not allow my family to be yoked or enslaved, any moreso than I would myself. You Father's are always so stuck on your absolute control of your subjects, it makes you blind to how they really feel about you... I think it's because you usually don't have biological children of your own. You can't understand the love a child has for their parent, as long as that parent doesn't abuse that trust. Has it never occured to you that the Extended would serve you willingly, if you gave them the choice? We're Supersoldiers. We accept this. We glory in it. We don't need to be treated like rabid animals... give us some trust, and I think you'll be amazed at what we can do in return."

"He's not as bad as that." Lain spoke up, drawing surprised stares from everyone but Mechael. "He's not anywhere close to being a good man, and he doesn't deserve the title of Father in the slightest. But he's not entirely bad either. He does care. I've seen it."

"Well then he should accept this without arguing." Ashino went on remorselessly, turning his gaze back to Durandel. "I'm sure the Extended would be glad to fight for the USN once more. It's what they were designed and raised to do. They were running from Mother, not from you. Prove you're not the same as her, and you will have nothing but love and respect from them. But give them the choice, I think you'll find they choose what they know how to do. And him..." Ashino nodded at Roanoke. "He's finished with them. He's lost his right to have anything to do with them. No contact at all, preferably... he's done enough to them for a dozen lifetimes. That's not negotiable."

"But who will command and lead them then?" Roanoke protested. "The Extended aren't designed for independent training and operation! They would be lost without proper care and leadership, care and leadership only I and my team can provide!"

"Bullshit." Mechael was the one to counter this time. "We're more grown up than you think, dad. Mother was a sobering experiencing, you might say. And WE ran from her... it was OUR choice! We decided it... Lain just provided the means. We did it all without a single iota of help or leadership from you or your team. We did it once, we can do it again. You'll never have the same amount of control over us that you once did. It's done. Over with. In the past. You'd have to unmake us down the level of babes and retrain us all to stand even a chance of negating what we've come to learn recently. But my Cousin is right... we DON'T WANT to leave! We don't know how to live normal lives, and we have no desire to do so! We don't even need the same level of individual freedoms as your other soldiers... just the freedom to socialize, decorate our rooms how we like, maybe eat out in a resteraunt once in a while, things norms would take for granted. And if you let us stomp on some goddamn Eddies in the process, we'll have a blast!"

"You think they need leadership?" Lain added fiercely. "Sting can do it. They all look up to him and trust him, and best of all he's an Extended too... he understands them better than you could ever hope to! And if Sting needs help, I'll step up, and Mechael too. They accept us. Certainly enough to trust us to get them out of Dostanya's grip, which means they trusted us with their lives, and the lives of the people they care about. If you think about it, its a compliment, Doctor. Your children have all grown up. They don't need you anymore, not to guide them, not to protect them, not to care for them. You did a good job. You succeeded. You created self sustaining, independently loyal, free willed Supersoldiers... and now its time you to move on and let them do the same."

"This is all very interesting, but we've gotten sidetracked." Durandel stepped in once more. "Back to the prime order of business. You'll give me the man in question, and not attempt to free him or otherwise disseminate whatever knowledge he may have told you? And you'll also remand yourself into the custody of my military, as a Gundam pilot, and help us win the Reclamation War, and defeat your nemesis in the process. In return, I will spare your lives and pardon the Retributors, and allow them to return to your base of operations unharmed, and a nonaggression pact between your organization and my administration will come into effect for the duration of the war. Ronin City will be allowed its independence, and I will clean house, politically speaking, and disband Section Nine, and make provision for accomodation for those imprisoned or persecuted by Section Nine or other shadow groups under my purview. The Extended will be treated like regular soldiers, though under the command of their own officers, as chosen by them, and Dr. Roanoke and FEAR will no longer interfere in their lives."

"You left out abdicating from your position once the war was over." Ashino reminded him tersely.

"Did I? It's probably because its not going to happen. I've worked my whole life to get where I am right now, I'm not giving it up just because you don't like what I'm doing. I've given you plenty, more than I probably should, but truth be told, I want that bastard Frost dead myself, and you do seem to be the best hope I have for that. Once the war is over, my term will be up in a few more years... you can try and get me voted out of office then, just like everyone else."

"Fine." Ashino said darkly. "But don't think I won't come after you if it looks like you're not going to abdicate power when you get voted out, or if you're manipulating events to keep yourself in power by denying a free election. I know your tricks, after all. But if you won't promise to abdicate, and put it in triplicate on file, then I'm going to have to ask for another form of insurance. I want Queen Zala-Attha, or her direct representative, put on your circle of advisors, and made aware of your end of our bargain. They'll keep you honest even if I don't. And they'll keep you honest even if something "unfortunate" happens to me."

"Are you saying I'd try to have you assassinated?" Durandel attempted to look wounded, and earned a glare every bit the equal of the one he'd leveled at Ashino for bringing up Rey's death. He heaved a sigh... but since he'd already privately decided he had to get Orb more involved in the war's top levels... if for no other reason as to make them easier to use as scapegoats if things kept going badly... this was not quite the concession it might appear. "Very well, I'll find a way to tolerate that crusading harpy on my staff. I'm sure you understand that I can't exactly commit this agreement to paper, so a handshake will have to suffice."

"It'll suffice. You'd be a fool to betray me when I'm your best shot at getting Frost, and winning the war. It's in your own best interest to play nice... just as its in mine to do the same. Despite our personal feelings for each other. You're a lot of things, Gilbert. Many of them things I wouldn't say around children. But you're not a fool. And besides, if you don't play nice, you'll never get him... now that he's loose, only I can reliably get him to you without him scampering and hiding where no one will find him. You need me if you want him." Ashino answered, leaning forward to consumate the deal.

"Well, you're the one to blame for letting him loose in the first place, so its the least you could do." Durandel countered, rising and extending his hand. "Rest assured, I won't be making the same mistake again. You and he have given me enough grey hairs already, I think its time he took a permanent vacation from this world."

"I wouldn't recommend doing that." Ashino answered with a grimace, as took Durandel's hand in both of his own. "He's the one who created Executor Frost, remember? We might need his help to find a good way to beat him. If you're going to kill him... I won't argue the decision, I've often thought about killing him myself, and he deserves nothing less... I'd advise you to do it after the war is won."

"I'll take your opinion under advisement, Markov... I do call you Markov, right?" Durandel said, shaking their hands up, somewhat surprised at how gentle the BCPU's grip was.

"Yes, Mr. President, you call me Marko..." Ashino began to reply through gritted teeth, wishing he didn't feel like he'd just sold his soul... AGAIN... but before he could finish either sentence or handshake, the blare of an alert siren in midwail suddenly intruded upon the room, as a glowing orange sword blade ripped through the soundproof wall of the interrogation chamber near the doorway. The roar of heavy gunfire and the screams of those who were wounded or dying poured through the thin slit as well, the sounds of a pitched battle raging right out in the hall! It caught all of them completely off guard, even the normally unflappable Durandel and Ashino, and they could but stare as the vibrationally heated mono sword carved its way in a rough rectangle through the wall and the door, as the gunfire in the hall began to die off.

Without even pausing to think about it, Ashino grabbed Durandel's hand more tightly and yanked the Solar President towards him, away from the doorway, slamming his legs into the side of the table as he pulled his new "ally" out of direct line of danger, as a tremendous force struck the center of the section of wall that had been cut open, sending ragged blocks of concrete and soundproofing material shattering inward like a miniature landslide! Further away from the door than Durandel had been, Roanoke was nonetheless felled by a chunk of concrete smacking the eldery scientist against the collarbone, snapping the bone and laying him out in a semi-conscious daze, half buried by the rubble of the impromptu doorway. A billow of dust from the pulverized wall obscured the view of the five people inside the room for a moment, before there was a suggestion of rapid movement in the cloud, like the wake of a torpedo traveling through silty water... headed directly for where the shaken Solar President was hunched against the back wall of the interrogation room!

Unable to see any more than the norms, Ashino's ears and other trained and enhanced senses were more than up to the task of telling him where the incoming threat was. There was no choice... if he lost Durandel now, he would lose any chance of negotiating, as without Durandel, Noah's secrets were of no consequence. He and the captured Retributors would be tried in kangaroo court and summarily executed, and the Extendeds would either be enslaved or dispoased of by a paranoid high command. As much as Durandel needed him to counter Frost, Ashino needed Durandel around to make sure the terms of their deal were heeded! So he threw himself bodily into the path of the assassin, whatever it was, ignoring Mechael's squawk of dismay as his pedastel was toppled over, and Lain's shout of pain as the Solar Knight tried to rise and twisted his still only half healed ankles. The dimly glimpsed figue tried to twist and avoid Ashino's clumsy charge, but the speed was too great, and the distance between them too small, and they collided almost like actors in a slapstick comedy routine!

To Ashino's surprise and discomfort, he was the one who ended up getting bowled over, despite the fact that his center of balance was lower and his mass greater than that of the assassin. It felt like he'd stepped out in front of a motrocycle going 80 mph down the freeway! His opponent was a good head taller than him, and built like an emaciated spider... all long limbs attached to a wiry, almost sunken torso, and there was something very wrong in how the skin and flesh of the assassin felt... it was more like plastic and metal than muscle and bone! The assassin scrabbled atop him, limbs twisting like a nest of serpents, feet clawing deep gouges in the concrete floor as the creature... or perhaps construct was a better word... struggled to regain its feet and lunge at Durandel, now only a scant ten feet distant and apparently frozen in shock or horror.

Moving fast, ignoring the pain of his cracked ribs and compressed lungs, Ashino grabbed one ankle of the assassin in both hands and jerked as hard as he could, dragging the bastard back just as it tried to make a lunge for the Solar President, curved mono-sabers deploying from its forearms, and a rising shriek of vibrating metal filled the air as the vibro-motors buried in the base of the blades used friction motion to heat the blades to a dull orange glow. Rising to his knees, Ashino first negated the forward momentum of the assassin and then lifted him... or rather it... up into the air and slammed it sideways into the table with a convulsive jerk of his shoulders. The doughty plastic and metal table crumpled like a cushed beer can, before being sliced to smoking ribbons as the eeriely silent creation bounced back to its feet a moment later, florishing its blades, plainly not harmed in the least by the stunning impact.

The dust was largely settled by now, granting Ashino a clear look at his opponent for the first time. The assassin was humanoid in appearance, and may even have been a human being at one point in time, before some very twisted scientists and engineers had gotten hold of him and rebuilt him from the inside out. In some ways, it was similar to how a Supersoldier was created, but that process took years of careful surgeries and training, where it was obvious to Ashino that this poor soul had been transformed from norm status to killing machine in one fell swoop, without any consideration given to his mental or physical stability after the process was completed. Almost all human features had been edited out of his body... genitals, facial features... he didn't even possess a mouth, which accounted for his eerie silence. His stomach and torso were shrunken, little more than synth-flesh stretched tightly over the metallic frame of his ribs and spine, jam packed with not only the organs necessary to keep him alive, but drug dispensors and various arcane cybernetic mechanisms Ashino could make neither head nor tails of.

A large numeral "4" was branded or tattooed on the sternum and forehead of the assassin-cyborg, while it's only article of clothing was a tattered and fluid drenched black cloak of some sort of camouflage material that drape down its back and fluttered near its heels as it cocked it's ravaged and sensor pocked head to one side, obviously analyzing Ashino even as Ashino analyzed it. In a coughing, pain choked voice, Dr. Roanoke suddenly called out a string of numerical codes and nonsense words, which Ashino recognized as some form of failsafe or remote deactivation program, a common tactic used by Father's to control their wilder creations, but the assassin-cyborg barely even twitched... apparently someone else had already thought to remove its vulnerability to the normal safe words that were used to control it. In the next instant, he had no more time for considerations, as the assassin leapt for him, plainly deciding that his presence was of sufficient threat to warrant removal before it proceeded to its primary target, Durandel.

With wrists and ankles fettered by heavy chains, there was no possibility of dodging or outmaneuvering the thing called 4, so Ashino had to meet the construct head on on, and hope he got inside it's reach before it seperated his head from his shoulders with one of its swords. It was a close run thing, as one mono-saber scored a blackened line down the side of his temple, shriveled curls of red hair floating away on the breeze of the near miss, the graze quickly scabbing over, though the heat of the burn throbbed unpleasantly against the side of his skull. Lowering his shoulder, Ashino barged the assassin backwards a step, its metallic, clawlike feet kicking up sparks from the concrete floor as they struggled for purchase and traction. Its ribcage was singularly unyielding, the impact did more to bruise and nearly dislocate Ashino's shoulder than actually harm 4.

Grabbing 4's thigh... it was a construction of rods and pistons under a tough meshweave of steel fabric... which was thin enough for Ashino to easily fit his hands around, Ashino pushed off with his legs once more and took the Vamp to the floor beneath him. Again, it seemed immune to the trauma of the impact, even though the back of its cranium gouged a divot from the floor when it struck, and Ashino began to suspect that he lacked the means to truly harm 4, at least with his bare hands. However, the main purpose of bringing the creation down wasn't to harm it so much as it was to put one of its arms in easy reach, and even as the blade swiped for his face, Ashino rolled onto the forearm, accepting a burning slice in his side for being able to pin that arm to the ground for a moment... more than long enough to pass his ankle chains across the glowing orange blade, seperating the chain like it was made from warm butter, and finally giving him the freedom to maneuver!

Pouncing to his feet, Ashino dived away into a shoulder roll, just bare instants ahead of the other arm-saber, which passed close enough to the back of his head for him to smell burning hair in the wake of its passing! Coming up with a chunk of wall in his still bound hands, Ashino hurled the piece of rubble at 4, like a caveman stoning an attacking sabertooth tiger. There was still a trace of humanity within the cyber-construct apparently, as 4 deigned to use one arm to swat aside the chunk of concrete, crumbling it to gravel in the process, rather than letting it strike the assassin in what remained of its face, despite the fact that Ashino doubted a mere stone could hurt the construct. He tensed when 4 took a long step towards him, then cursed himself for a fool as the assassin smoothly pivoted away and hurled itself towards the back of the room once more, towards its real target, which Ashino had let himself become seperated from in the melee!

Perhaps Frost could have covered the distance in time to make a difference, but Ashino had never been quite that "super", and though he hurled himself forward nonetheless, it was with the certain knowledge that he would be too late to make a difference... 4 would not need much more than half a second to kill the still stunned and immobile Durandel! However, in the confusion of the melee, Ashino had forgotten that he wasn't the only one interested in preserving the life of the Solar President, and the few seconds delay he'd managed to cause the assassin had allowed the guard detail in the hall outside to regroup from their shock at being assaulted by the cyborg, and now they were bursting into the room with almost as much violence as 4 had, the heavy Vanguard armor allowing them to bash through the damaged wall like children smashing through a sand castle!

An unarmored human with short cropped read hair, clad in a dark business suit and tie, led the way with a ZAFT issue handgun clasped in both hands, loosing a trio of well aimed shots even as he dived to the side to clear the line of fire for the heavier weapons of the actual guard detail. The small caliber pistol fire failed to penetrate the armored hide of 4, but it did give the creature pause for a moment as it tried to calibrate its protocols for this new threat, caught roughly in the middle of the room, halfway between it's target and the target's protective detail. Many bodyguards would have hesitated, unwilling to risk accomplishing the assassin's purpose by exposing their principal to potential friendly fire, but these men were combat veterans, and they made the decision to shoot, trusting to their aim and knowing that hesitation could only lead to death and failure!

Only two soldiers could fire at once in the cramped confines of the interrogation room, but their heavy 15mm Flamberge type linear assault rifles were far more devastating than Dicosta's sidearm, and 4 seemed to realize it could not rely on its armored skin to protect it from this level of firepower. Had 4 been able, it might have released a keening cry of frustration, as the assassin was forced to dodge to the side rather than be cut down just inches out of reach of its prime target, but instead it was forced to maintain its eerie silence, heavy bullets punching holes in its fluttering black cape as the cyborg threw itself to one side and down onto all fours like a beast, as the soldiers were shooting high, aiming for the head and shoulders, which put the crouching Durandel out of the line of fire as much as possible.

Hurling itself forward under the soldier's rain of firepower, which was gnawing away at the walls of the interrogation room like rats at swiss cheese, 4 speared one arm forward and impaled the closest soldier right through the center of his breastplate, the glowing mono-saber piercing all the way through both sides of the Vanguard armor like it was made of silk, before the open palm of the Vamp slammed into the breastplate, denting an impression into the armor and actually hurling the six hundred pound soldier backwards like he'd been struck with a wrecking ball! The Flamberge fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers as bright blood exploded from the rent torn in his chest, leaking like tomato sauce from a punctured can down the front and back of his armor as he swayed and keeled over backwards, falling off 4's sword blade like meat torn from a skewer!

The swinging butt of the second soldier's Flamberge smashed into the side of 4's head, jittering the assassin a half step sideways, and tearing off some of the sensors clustered on the remains of its face, but the cyborg was far from stunned or disabled by the hit, and turned with a flourish of glowing blades on the somewhat surprised bodyguard. Before 4 could cut down this soldier too though, Ashino tackled 4 low, sweeping its legs out from under it and dumping it to the floor. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the second soldier stamped down on 4's stomach with one heavy boot, pinning the assassin in place for a crucial moment as he fired a two round burst of armor piercing firefly shells into the cyborg's chest from point blank range, the 15mm shells easily penetrating 4's skin and blasting fist sized holes right through the assassin and into the concrete floor!

Despite being shot in what would be the heart and right lung on a human being, 4 was not dead nor even disabled by the damage, though it was nonetheless a severe blow to the assassin. Redundant and emergency systems took over for the damaged and destroyed life support and other systems, and 4 retaliated in the next instant, scissoring its blades together through the soldier's knee, cleanly snipping off the leg he'd been using to pin the assassin, blood fountaining from the truncated limb as the soldier fell back and to the side with a unconstrained howl of agony reverberating from his armor speakers. Clambering to its feet, 4 was blindsided by Ashino once more, who wrapped his wrist chain entirely around 4's mechanical throat, like a garrote! Though it was more for grip than to strangle, assuming the construct even needed to breathe, which its lack of mouth made doubtful, and Ashino used his hip to help him toss the gangly assassin over his shoulder and through the air... into and then entirely through the reinforced plexiglass of the one way window linking the interrogation room to the adjacent observation room!

A third Vanguard armored soldier, her armor already deeply gouged and scored with a series of cuts and abrasions from an encounter with 4 out in the hall, stepped into the room, even as her fourth comrade pulled the injured soldier with the severed leg out of the room for triage purposes. The Vanguard armor's internal medical suite had already used internal pressure on the soldier's bodysuit to clamp off the blood vessels in the truncated limb, and was administering drugs to dull the pain and treat shock, which was about all that could be done until an actual doctor or medic arrived. Bringing her Flamberge to her shoulder, she blink selected explosive mode for her firefly shells and then loosed a rattling burst of full automatic fire through the broken obersvation window, her shells fused to detonate within inches of passing over the divide between rooms, superheated shrapnel shredding all the equipment and furniture in the room... and hopefully the assassin as well!

Dicosta had braved the chaos of the fight to reach Durandel's side, and was now half escorting, half dragging the still dazed Solar President... who'd never really had an experience of this kind of front line's combat before... out of the room and into the relative safety of the hallway. Somewhat to Ashino's surprise, after half carrying and half rolling Mechael's limbless torso out into the hall, Lain, after being freed from his chair by Dicosta, had returned, crawling on his hands and knees as he was unable to walk, to drag Dr. Roanoke out of harms way as well. The muzzle flare of the Flamberge strobed like a thousand camera flashes in the small room, as the female trooper emptied her entire clip in one long burst, before dropping the spent magazine and slamming home a new one with a practiced motion of her bracing hand, the muzzle of her weapon dropping not even a quarter inch during the reloading process, maintaining eyes on the target, as it were.

Without confirmation the target was dead or disabled though, the soldier was in no mood for making assumptions, as she switched to armor piercing round mode and began firing probing three round bursts through the wall beneath the observation window, trying to flush the Vamp from any possible hiding place it might have found from the shrapnel storm. Sooner rather than later, she got her reply, but it wasn't the Vamp that came hurtling out of the darkened observation room, but rather a whirling blur of black and crimson that crossed the space between them in an eyeblink. Making a choked sound of shock and dismay, the female soldier half turned, to look at the QC scythe embedded in the wall directly behind her, before the motion cause her upper body to fall cleanly off the towers of her armored legs, her torso shorn neatly in twain by the impossibly sharp crystalline blade, without her even feeling the injury! Organs and viscera plopped out of her opened chest cavity like apples from a dropped shopping basket, as her legs remained standing in place.

Even Ashino's eyes were drawn by this gruesome sight for a moment, as he heard Durandel puking in the background, and when he sensed motion in his peripheral vision, 4 was already back in the interrogation room. The Vamp was much the worse for the wear... besides the gaping holes in its chest, one arm had been completely blown away, as had part of the side of it's head, and its remaining arm had the blade of the saber broken about two thirds of the way down its length, and it was no longer vibrating, its glow fading from orange into a dull pink as heat bled off the metal. The cyborg moved with a heavy, lurching limp... but it was still moving, and its determination to finish its lethal mission seemed not in the least diminished. Raising its broken sword menacingly, the still deathly silent assassin gathered itself to spring at the one remaining threat in the room... Ashino, who was still staring at the construct with bemused amazement.

Before 4 could pounce though, its head exploded right off it's shoulders, courtesy of the 4th Vanguard trooper, the witty one that had collected Lain from his cell. He had left off tending to his badly injured comrade in order to save the day, as it were, with an exploding round fired from out in the hall, through the hole in the wall the assassin had made. He'd aimed at the side of the Vamp's head that had already been partly blown off, where it's sensors were blind to the gunshot until after it had occured, when it was far too late. For a long second, the cyborg-assassin swayed on its feet, head gone from the shoulders up, blown to techno-scrap by the exploding Firefly round detonating in the midst of the cranial cavity, and Ashino was half sure the creature would continue on as if nothing had happened! But the moment passed, and 4 collapsed to the floor with a muted clatter, landing on its side and then rolling onto its front, still and inert, its limbs twitching slightly for a few seconds before the last vestiges of neural activity faded away from the circuitry which passed for its nervous system.

Ashino turned to compliment the trooper on his timely marksmanship, only to find himself staring down the barrel of the Flamberge instead. He sighed, remembering that he WAS still technically a prisoner and a known terrorist, as far as this soldier knew. Carefully, moving slowly and in as nonthreatening a manner as possible, Ashino raised his hands... still bound by the manacles... over his head. A rattling noise and a puff of acrid smoke from 4's corpse... or perhaps wreckage was a better term... drew both of their eyes and attentions, but though a thin sheet of flame had licked out from some hidden compartment within 4's organs, all it did was send up a foul stench of burning rubber and melting plastic. The Vamp's thermobaric self destruct device had been blasted into inoperability by the shrapnel storm from the female trooper, the cyborg's final means of attack denied by nothing more than ill luck and random chance... two constant companions on any battlefield. Stepping out into the hallway, still covered by the Flamberge at every motion, Ashino cast his gaze down to the shellshocked Durandel, sitting a few meters away, Dicosta wiping his chin free of bile for him.

"Consider that a token of my desire to play nice, Mr. President." Ashino said dourly, reminding Durandel that it had barely been two minutes since they'd made their deal, and he'd already saved the bastard's life at least once. "Now get this gun out of my face. We have work to do..."

xxxx

**Galileo Lunar Fleet Base, Maximum Security Detention Complex, Hospital Wing Critical Care Ward, April 5th, 6:30 pm**

"Outta my way, jerkholes!" Lain clamored, as the two plainclothes prison guards standing watch at the entrance to the critical care ward of the prison's hospital moved to bar his progress into the ward. The way they blanched and backed off was satisfying, but probably had less to do with Lain and more to do with the party following after him, which included the commanding officer of the prison, with a stormy look on his face as he walked side by side with Ashino, both of them trailed by the hulking form of Mechael, his arms and legs freshly re-attached a few hours prior. The Solar President had left a while ago, after being checked out and declared free of serious injuries by the emergency medical staff that had responded to the scene of the attempted assassination, but before he'd scampered off to whatever safe house or whatnot that was prepared for him in eventualities like this, he had kept the first part of his end of the deal, somewhat to Lain's surprise. Apparently Frost was that big a deal to the President... along with this mysterious "other guy" Ashino kept talking around.

Starting the day as a prisoner slated for summary execution, Lain found himself not only restored to his previous rank, but actually imbued with extra authority he hadn't had before, as Durandel had more or less left him in charge of determining the dispositions of the Extendeds and coordinating their desire to continue functioning as Supersoldiers for the USN. It kind of put him in a grey area, his authority over his fellow knights was still at the squadron level, but he had total authority over the entire USN Supersoldier project now, something that had formerly been the purview of people on the President's top level advisory staff, Minister of Defense type level! A Solar Knight uniform had been found for him that fit reasonably well, and his ankles had finally been given proper medical care... a few hours in a Curaga bath and he was all but good as new!

However, Lain was far less concerned about his own hurts than he was about the status of Stella and Sting and the other Extendeds, and so as soon as he could pry himself away from the doctors, he'd gone to find Ashino, who was closeted with the prison commander, working out the details of releasing the remaining captured Retributors with the obviously disgruntled man, who was not used to mass releasing prisoners... especially terrorists. Lain had been told, by Roanoke, that both Stella and Sting were still alive, though the way the scientist was hazy on the exact state of their condition made Lain feel decidedly nervous. The Extended were extremely tough, able to take punishment that would kill a normal person twice over and remain functioning, but a chunk of rebar through the chest was still a chunk of rebar through the chest, in Sting's case, and he'd lost a lot of blood too. As for Stella... well, Lain did his best not to think about what had happened to his love, it was simply too painful to recollect her defiant stand against the monster that was Frost!

Getting the nod from the Warden, the two guards stepped fully aside and let Lain hobble into the ward. His ankles might technically be fixed, but the bones were still tender and vulnerable to extra stress, so he'd been given a crutch to use to take most of his weight off them for the next few days while the bone finished fully knitting together on its own. Barely managing to remember to stay polite, Lain refrained from yelling at the top of his lungs to find out where Stella was being treated when he entered the ward, impatiently waiting for Ashino, Mechael and the Warden to catch up to him instead. A brief conversation with the doctors on staff directed them to a series of high security recuperation chambers placed in one wall of the ward, the cubicles were every bit as secure as the prison cell Lain had languished in that morning, the only major difference being the slightly more comfortable bed and the medical machinery, encased in wire cages for the most part for security purposes, that stood next to each bed.

The first stop... the Warden not wanting to let any one of them out of his sight for longer than a few seconds, still not trusting them in the slightest despite direct orders from the Solar President... was a woman named Tamara Logan, who Lain did not know. Apparently she was Ashino's second in command, and the captain of the Retributor warship that had been destroyed by the _Incarnate_ during the abortive rescue/defection attempt. And judging by the quickly veiled expression on Ashino's face as he looked in on her, that Lain caught out of the corner of his eye, the injured woman was plainly a great deal more than just a trusted subordinate to the Retributor. She was in pretty rough shape, being kept in a medically induced coma for the time being, to spare her the constant pain from her vacuum burned and then frostbitten skin, and the wracking agony that came from damage to the circulatory system when her blood started to boil away when she was exposed to naked space. Another ten seconds of exposure to death pressure and she'd have been a goner, and the subsequent exposure to the Antarctic climate had not helped matters any. She was a very lucky woman...

It was nothing that modern medical science couldn't cure, with time, though Lain learned that there would likely be scarring on her face from the frostbite, where the flesh had died from being flash frozen all the way down to the muscle layer. Plastic surgery could take care of some of it, but without a full facial reclone... something that was about as illegal as illegal got in the USN... she'd bear the marks of her near death experience for the rest of her life. In the balance of things, it was probably a fair price to pay, considering! Not many people could say they'd survived having their spacesuit faceplate shatter while EVA, that tended to be a one way street straight to the afterlife! And that was after she got sucked out of her shot to shit warship bridge! Using even the word "miracle" to describe her survival was inadequate... but for the unknowable reasons behind Frost's intervention, she would have surely been a goner. And Lain could tell that the BCPU was more than a little distrubed by the fact that he owed the life of the woman he loved to his own worst enemy...

The next room held Sting, who was actually awake, if not exactly mobile... both because of his condition and the restraint straps that confined his wrists and ankles and waist to the bed. Being strapped down like a lunatic didn't seem to overly offend or bother the eldest Extended, but Lain was nonetheless glad to be able to see his friend freed from the restraints by Ashino's command. A massive bandage covered Sting's chest and abdomen, from just below his sternum to just below his belly button, legacy of the massive gash that had been ripped through his body when Frost twisted the impaling chunk of rebar. A half inch of lateral motion to the side and Sting's spinal cord would have snapped like a twig, but fortunately all the motion of the impaling chunk of metal had been vertical. As things were, big chunks had been gouged out of his insides, especially around his stomach and intestines, and Sting was going to have to get a good deal of plastic and metal... in the form of replacement organs and organ patches... shoved inside him before he'd be able to leave the bed he was lying in.

"Didn't they teach you bastards how to fall properly when you were growing up?" Mechael teased the supine Extended with a shake of his head. "Don't you know you're supposed to dive AWAY from the sharp bits of rubble, not UNDER them? You couldn't have stuck yourself any more neatly if you'd laid down on the ground and let me do it myself..."

"Not my fault. Auel was hogging all the open space." Sting retorted with a weak chuckle that died rapidly. Not because laughing especially hurt... his body was numbed up good and proper after all... but because mentioning his younger brother reminded them all that Auel would never hog anything ever again. However, it wasn't in the nature of Supersoldiers to overly dwell on death, even that of beloved friends and "family", not for long anyway, and Sting reached out a clumsy arm to punch Lain lightly on the arm. "What's this I hear about you ripping off your helmet in -90 degree windchill to try and kiss Stella? Were you that horny, that you couldn't even wait to reach an environment where your eyeballs wouldn't freeze solid in the midst of a makeout session?"

"I wanted to give her mouth to mouth resuiscitation!" Lain growled in reply, flushing as his cheeks heated up, in a small way reminding him of the burning he'd felt when his skin started to frost over, just like Tamara's had done. If Mechael hadn't shoved his helmet back on, he'd probably have gone blind, or ended up with an icicle for a face for the rest of his life! "I wasn't thinking clearly! I never do, when it's about Stella..."

"Well thank you." Sting's soft and heartfelt words caught Lain a bit off guard. "Even if it was a stupid thing to do, the fact that you did it without even a hint of hesitation or regard for your own safety... thank you, Lain. I won't forget that, and neither will any of the other Extendeds. We've never encountered a norm that would risk his own life and limb for our sake like you do. You're a pretty special guy, you know?"

"Dammit Sting, don't spring that kinda crap on a guy in public, okay?" Lain flushed further, even as he passed his arm across his eyes to make sure he wasn't crying. The back of his sleeve was a little wet when he looked at it. _Damn it, why'd he have to go and do something like that? I was saving my breakdown for Stella..._ Lain thought with a self decrepitating chuckle inside his head. "Besides, you really owe your thanks to Mechael. He's the one who turned himself into an iron lung and actually kept her alive long enough for medical care to arrive..."

"Oh, Mecha's gonna be getting a just reward for his heroics, don't you worry." Sting smiled conspiratorally. "Let's just say, his stock has risen very high amongst the unattached female Extended who idolize Stella. There may not be a titty bar in his future like we originally planned, but he'll have to be an even bigger idiot than we know he is if he doesn't find SOME way to have a little fun during his off duty hours..." He turned his attention to Ashino, who was standing back while they had their reunion. "It's an honor to meet you, Cousin. I'm sorry we couldn't be doing it under the circumstances we originally planned. Stella's told me a lot about you, and if even a tenth of it isn't hyperbole, then I'm lucky to be on the same side as you."

"I just hope I can live up to your expectations, Cousin." Ashino bowed his head slightly. "My erstwhile Brother down on Earth may be beyond even my capabilities to defeat... I may have to rely on you and the Extended quite a bit, I'm afraid."

"It's what we're made to do, fighting the battles the norms can't, for whatever reason. I look forward to going into battle at your side." Sting's smile grew broad and hard. He turned a look that was more than half glare on Lain. "My personal thankfulness aside, I have to say, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING, putting ME in charge of the Extendeds? I don't know the first thing about being an officer! I thought we were friends! Why would you intentionally set me up for a job I can't do?"

"Because you can do it. You already have been doing it, dumbass." Lain retorted with a snort. "Besides, I didn't say you had to do it alone... I'll be there to give some advice from time to time. And you can always talk to Ashino, I imagine... he's living proof that Supersoldiers can be leaders just as good as anything Norms have..."

Ashino coughed and looked a little embarrassed at that statement. "Truth be told, I'd be totally lost without my adjutants, especially Captain Logan." Ashino admitted when they all glanced at him. "I can lead on the field just fine, but paperwork is a battle even I can't win..." He braced up a bit, and fixed Sting with a gaze from his lime green eyes. "But Mr. Debora is correct in a way. We may be Supersoldiers, but just because we were designed to be weapons doesn't mean we can't be leaders as well. Your kin look up to you and admire you, all that's needed now is for you to gain the confidence to accept responsibility for them. You're fighting by your own wills now, not because you have no other choice... no one can guide you better than yourselves now."

Leaving Sting behind to mull that over, Lain eagerly headed to the last of the three high security ward-rooms. Upon opening the door, he almost broke both his ankles charging forward once more, his crutch forgotten as he bulled into the room and grabbed the white coated lapels of the eldery man standing by the side of Stella's bed, and shoving the other man hard up against the wall of the cell. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?" Lain demanded hotly, not at all pleased to find Dr. Roanoke alone with Stella, for any reason at all! Especially because the President had decreed that Roanoke couldn't have anything more to do with the Extended, officially or unofficially, and was in fact supposed to be barred from their very presence forevermore! "I oughta break your other arm and toss you out on your wrinkled old ass, you bastard!" Lain continued, jostling Roanoke's slung left arm, where his collarbone had just recently been fixed, like Lain's ankles.

"Do as you will, young man. I knew the risks when I came here in contravention of Durandel's decree." Roanoke replied quietly. They were alone in the room, Mechael and Ashino somehow managing to convince the Warden to allow Lain some privacy with his injured girlfriend. "You saved my life... or at least spared me potential serious injury... once today already. If you want to undo your hard work, that is your perogative. But I haven't come here to cause Stella any distress. Believe it or not, I came because I wanted to express an apology to her."

"You're right, I don't believe that!" Lain hissed, rattling the older man against the wall once more. "I know damn well you don't have a shred of conscience left in that withered old skull of yours!"

"Conscience? Perhaps not." Roanoke agreed breathlessly. "But you said it yourself, barely seven hours ago. I do care for my Extended. I am not totally heartless. I do care... and for Stella most of all. She has always been the apple of my eye, the star of my program, my most brilliant success. It does not please me to see her distraught, and even less to see her injured. Hate me as much as you want... I imagine I deserve it. But don't you dare doubt that, when all is said and done, the only thing I want for Stella is for her to be happy!" Roanoke all but spat the last bit into Lain's face, displaying a surprising surge of strength as he stepped away from the wall. "For almost all my life, I thought I was the only one who knew best how to make my most precious daughter happy, and so I'm sure you can imagine how much I resented your intrusion into our world! But though I may be blinkered, I am not blind, Lain Debora. Nor am I a fool with no grasp on human emotion. I have been in love before, long ago. I knew the signs when they appeared in front of me, as much as I didn't want to believe it was possible!"

He brushed Lain's hands free of his labcoat lapels and did his best to straighten his garments, turning his back on the bed in which Stella lay, still and quiet. Lain wasn't even sure if she was awake or asleep, though her lack of reaction to his presence seemed to indicate the latter. "I came to say goodbye, Mr. Debora, to my most favored child. Permit a withered old man that much at least."

"Why should I?" Lain countered, his anger drawing back, but far from appeased. "You've done nothing to deserve such a privilege. You say you want Stella to be happy, yet in all the time I've known you, all I've ever seen you do is try and make her feel the way you want her to, regardless of what she wants. You define Stella's happiness as making you happy and proud, and that is something I just can't stand. I'll admit, you're better than Dostanya, but I'm never going to forgive you for what you've done to Stella and the others... you've stolen their entire lives! Maybe they don't mind, because they don't know anything else, but I have to wonder, old man Roanoke, if fifty years down the line, when the Extended have fully re-integrated themselves in normal society, if they could come back to this moment right now... you think they'd forgive you for what you've done to them in the pursuit of your own goals? I don't think they would. You're an awful person, a monster, and no amount of justification will ever change that!"

"Did I not send you to save Stella?" Roanoke argued. "Did I not make your attempted defection possible in the first place?"

"No you, didn't send me to save Stella. You sent me to disrupt Dostanya's plans, and get back at her for stealing the Extended from you! Your pride was hurt, and I was the convenient instrument of vengeance, that's all! And again, you gave me the ability to remove Mechael's program blocks not because you cared about Mechael or the Extended... but because you wanted Dostanya to die! You don't know how to be selfless, Sammual. You forgot that emotion a long time ago." Lain countered with a sneer. "So what's your selfish reason for being here, Doctor? Come on, be honest with me for once... what did you think you were going to get away with this time?"

"I did come to say goodbye, Mr. Debora." Roanoke replied heavily. "I fully intended to leave you and Stella alone to live out your lives as you saw fit. Such as they might be considered "lives" anyway."

"And what the FUCK does that mean?" Lain grabbed the FEAR scientist by the collar again, fury shining in his mismatched blue and green eyes, as he yanked Roanoke down to his eye level, cocking his fist back as he prepared to detoothify the grinning old prune entirely!

"Stella's condition." Roanoke answered softly. "Has anyone explained it to you?"

"You're about to, or I'll feed you your own asshole..." Lain growled, though there was a definite sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach nonetheless.

"I'll use short words then, so you won't misunderstand." Roanoke sneered at him. "She's paralyzed, Mr. Debora. She suffered a fracture at the base of her skull that partially severed the very top portion of her spinal cord during her encounter with Executor Frost. It's not life threatening, the autonomic bodily systems still function normally, but it has removed all ability to feel or move anything below her chin. Coupled with her crushed throat, she cannot speak nor move, and without life support, she would die in a matter of minutes. It's a wonder Mechael managed to keep her breathing in the manner he did... sometimes my own engineering really impresses me."

"But we can FIX that, can't we?" Lain asked pleadingly, letting go of the Doctor's collar as he turned dreading eyes on Stella for the first time since entering the room. She was awake after all, her pink eyes filled with tears as she looked over at him accosting Roanoke, unable to even twitch a finger or make a gurgle to tell him she was aware of his presence. "STELLA!" Lain cried, half throwing himself on her, careful not to dislodge the clear plastic tube and oxygen mask that snaked over her mouth and down her throat, which kept her lungs oxygenated. He hugged her, but then remembered that she couldn't feel anything below the neck, so instead he touched his hands to her cheeks and rested his forehead against hers. "Stella... I love you, you know?" Lain said through a throat that felt nearly as crushed in as hers was. She blinked at him, which he knew was an acknowledgement and reply... all the reply she would be able to make. "Damn it, we can fix this though!" Lain turned to Roanoke furiously. "We have the medical science to fix these kinds of injuries!"

"A delicate operation of that sort? It would be risky to trust to anyone who was not intimately familiar with the biology of an Extended. They are very humanlike, but they are not quite the same, and especially their nervous systems. Any normal surgeon would stand a much higher chance of making the damage worse than they would making it better. I would say the odds are well above sixty percent that any such operation would kill her, and most of the rest of the percentile range would have her remain as she is. Fixing the damaged throat would be easier, so at least you'll be able to communicate with her, as she lies forever in bed or an automated chair, dependent on your care for the most basic needs..." Roanoke replied with helplessly spread arms.

"YOU COULD FIX HER THOUGH!" Lain blurted, rising and advancing towards the suddenly much more confident looking old scientist. "No one knows the biology of the Extended better than you, you're their creator! What would the chances be of you being able to fix her?"

"Oh, I could probably give her an easy eighty five percent chance of full recovery. But alas, through Presidential order, I cannot have any contact, official or unofficial, with the Extended anymore. So I'm afraid my hands are tied." Roanoke replied with a shrug. "Thus I came to bid Stella farewell. I certainly have no more use for a paralyzed Supersoldier. She's all yours, Mr. Debora, I hope you find much happiness together. I will of course provide you with the stored ovum of hers that I promised in return for your help in disposing of Dr. Dostanya, so progeny should be possible, despite her condition. Of course, Stella will never get to hold your children, which is rather sad but..." Roanoke got no further before Lain's furious punch took him across the jaw and sent him relling backward, spitting outh blood and tooth fragments, before hitting the wall and sliding down onto his butt, dazed and disoriented by the blow.

"YOU MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD!" Lain roared, taking one more step forward, fully prepared to bury his foot so deep in Roanoke's sternum that he'd be able to feel concrete under his toes! However, before he could attempt to murder the slimy bastard, the door to the room opened behind him, as Ashino, Mechael and several prison guards came hustling in, Mechael grabbing Lain around the torso and physically lifting him off the ground so he couldn't go anywhere. "DAMN IT, MECHA! LET ME GO! I'M GONNA KILL THAT SON OF A BITCH!"

"Can't let you do that, little buddy. Our you'll sour the deal for all of us. Dear old dad's got protection from the Solar President. We need him alive for the war effort." Mechael replied dispassionately, even as he shot Roanoke a killing look of his own. Even through the closed door, Mechael's cybernetic sensors had been more than good enough to keep track of what was being said between the two men, which was what had led them to bursting in just before Lain could commit what Mechael felt was an entirely justified act of murder.

"There is... another avenue though..." Roanoke managed to say, through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, as two of the prison guards helped him to his feet and supported his weight. "If Stella's status... were to change from... that of an Extended... then I would be free to provide... the aid she needs..."

"What are you talking about?" Lain demanded suspiciously, still squirming in Mechael's grip, mostly because he knew it was useless, and thus a good outlet for his emotions without causing any more harm to what might be a delicately balanced situation.

"There is a certain program..." Roanoke spat out some more bloody saliva, but seemed to be able to speak normally again at last. "That we desperately need pilot candidates for. Stella is a nearly perfect match for this program. BCPU 4 Ashino is also a prime candidate, and as this program is the only way by which he may gain access to a Gundam sufficiently powerful to allow him to contest with Executor Frost, I imagine he will be happy to enter the program. As for the third of three candidates, I was thinking Sting... he has the right level of emotional stability..."

"No." Lain interrupted him. "I don't know what this special program is, and I don't care. You're not getting another Extended back under your thumb. Stella might be a special case, but the Extended as a whole need Sting to stay as he is. Otherwise they have no one to lead them. If you need a third candidate, I'll be your man. I'm not going to EVER let you have Stella without me there to watch over her. That's final."

"You?" Roanoke seemed surprised by the offer. "I must warn you, that there will be several, shall we say, "invasive" procedures required in order to properly outfit you to be a Meister candidate. It's no big deal for a Supersoldier, but you're just a normal Natural... you could very well lose your life in the process, even if everything goes perfectly. I'm not saying you're not a good candidate... you possess all the qualities I need, I can definitely see that now. But the risks are high, and not stacked in your favor."

"I don't care." Lain repeated fiercely. "If you want Stella for this program, then you'll need to take me too. I don't want her to spend the rest of her life as an invalid, but I will take that option if it means keeping her out of your clutches without me to look after her. I've let her be almost stolen from me before by you people, and she nearly ended up as a sex slave and execution victim. Never again, I tell you! Stella doesn't leave my sight without my permission! Not so long as she's a soldier for you people. I'll take the risks, whatever they are. Stella's worth it to me. I'll just trust you to try EXTRA HARD to make sure I make it through, old man. Cause I'm pretty sure I can think of at least three or four people who would be glad to see that you don't outlive me by very many hours, Presidential protection or not..."

"Very well." Roanoke said, perhaps a trifle sourly, though that could have just been cause of the broken teeth. "I shall make the arrangements. I hope you can live up to your determination, Mr. Debora, For both our sakes..."

"Live up to it? I live and breath it, Roanoke. I'm a Solar Knight, descended from a proud line of Orb clerical assistants, accepted as a member of the Extended family... you'd be hard pressed to find a living being more determined than I...


	69. The Meaning of Trauma

Author Note: New technology is always good. I went pretty heavy into things on the USN side... Vanguard armor and all that jazz, but now we'll get to see what BEGET's been doing all this time, other than sitting on their thumbs and spinning. Uh, not to give away that there will be combat in this chapter or anything. Well, its me, I generally find a way to work action scenes in where I can, because I'm good at them, and they're fun. And I neglected infantry combat too much in Eden Disaster. Double and, it lets me showcase characters who have been starved of the spotlight more, which is one of my primary goals in this arc. In any case, I look forward to hearing your opinions on whatever new things you might see in this chapter.

Well, holy crap, this took me a long time to write, didn't it? Sorry for that, especially considering the content of the chapter, its not usually what I get hung up on. Oh well, its done now, and I think I found a solution to the problem of double posting and only getting reviews for one chapter, or combined reviews. Namely, I'll just make chapters twice as long as normal instead when needs be. Like this one. 41000 words people. That's practically NaNoWriMo in a chapter. I did a few calculations too... if TGA was printed out in novels of standard paperback size, each story would be about 1900 pages long, and of course RW is barely half done as it is. So pat yourself on the back for getting this far, and enjoy!

xxxx

**New Eden, Airspace over old England, Approaching Reclaimer Initiative "Rehabilitation Center" #2, 7:49 am**

Normally the deep thrum of the drop shuttle's engines would be the sort of thing that would lull Athrun to sleep... or at least into a relaxed state somewhat like it. He'd had a hard time truly falling asleep while on a transport craft, especially of the airborne variety, ever since his first run in with Cagalli during the First Valentine War. Something about getting shot out of the sky over the middle of an ocean tended to make a guy a little paranoid in the future. Especially because this time he didn't have his Gundam along to bail out in. Fortunately there wasn't much Edenite activity in this part of the world, they were actually within the long range patrol zone of Heaven's Base, the primary staging point for the entire European Theatre of the war, so the odds of running into an Eddie task force were perishingly slim. Especially because the Eddies didn't seem to own much in the way of airborne craft other than their Mobile Suits, and a few transport and personnel type shuttles.

However, despite it being just after dawn, and the fact that they'd been flying for several hours already after launching from the _Endymion,_ which was moving to the European Theatre in preparation of escorting a large supply convoy leaving from the base in the next few weeks, Athrun found sleep or even a doze to be painfully far beyond his grasp. Every time he closed his eyes he saw those pictures again, and the documents that explained them. And not to mention his slimeball cousin, Arnold, sitting across from him in the dimly lit confines of an old and mostly abandoned warehouse in the hills of Orb, which the Stormhounds had converted into a combination impromptu training center and secret interrogation complex. It was a private place far removed from the city, and the eyes of authority. The sort of place where three men could come in dragging a fourth, and no one would comment when only the three men came back out again a few hours later. The Stormhounds held themselves to a very high code of honor and duty, but they were also extremely pragmatic people, and possessed the ability to set aside their normal codes of conduct when they deemed it necessary. As easily as other people might change out a pair of shoes.

It had all started when Athrun's ear for detail had caught a slip of the tongue by First Sergeant Kurtz two days ago, during the morning briefing of internal security concerns given to him and Cagalli by the Stormhound representative of the day. In the wake of Kira's attack, almost all of the Edenite prisoners of war had been liberated or lost, which had left the Stormhounds without much in the way of intelligence gathering to do, yet Kurtz had mentioned Ramierez being very busy of late dealing an "unexpected source of intel that might bear great fruit". Just an offhand comment, not something normally worth pursuing or even remembering. It wasn't Athrun's job or intent to monitor every little thing the Stormhounds did after all. However there was something in the way Kurtz had said it that had piqued Athrun's interest... and when Kurtz got evasive when pressed for details, Athrun knew his suspicions were right.

He'd always had a fairly good relationship with Kurtz though, ever since the incident at Orb's Parliament when Kurtz lost his eye trying to defend Athrun and Cagalli from the attacking Brotherhood Harbingers, and so it didn't take long for Athrun to back the roguish Stormhound into a corner and get him to admit the Stormhounds were keeping someone in "unofficial detention", at one of the semi-off-the-books Stormhound facilities. This someone had arrived in Orb a few days prior, after a long and convoluted passage that Kurtz refused to be specific about. All he would say was "the poor bastard got shipped to us like he was air mail". Apparently this person had also come packaged with a great deal of documentation and pictures that had immediately garnered a lot of interest in Ramierez, who had taken personal charge of the situation, keeping it all hush-hush and moving both prisoner and documents to one of the secondary facilities to keep things out of official notice.

Again, this would normally be the end of things... it wasn't like Athrun didn't trust Ramierez, not after all they'd gone through together. It was a bit irritating that Ramierez would try to go behind his and Cagalli's backs like this, but it wasn't exactly out of character for the Stormhounds. They always had a tendency to act first and worry about getting permission later. It was one of many legacies from Lieutenant Finch, and for that matter, it was something Colonel Jones actively seemed to encourage. But once he'd gotten Kurtz talking, the Stormhound seemed almost eager to get the whole thing off his chest, as if it had been bothering his conscience. Apparently Kurtz was worried that Ramierez might be taking things a little personally this time around, because of some past history with the prisoner in question. And somewhere in there a name had slipped out. Arnold Zala.

Now, Athrun had NEVER liked his cousin, not since the chance encounter they had at Club Ambrosia during the Isolation Era, when he'd found out the dirty bastard was stealing his identity in order to get laid and sleaze his way through life. It was certainly among the worst first impressions he'd ever had made upon him. But really, Athrun was above getting upset over such pettiness, with all the other things he had on his mind at the time. Several years later, Athrun had heard the Stormhounds had encountered his cousin again while investigating the Brotherhood up in the PLANTs, where Arnold had become some sort of minor drug kingpin! However, from that low ebb, Arnold seemed to have pulled himself up by his bootstraps, so to speak, becoming an actor and public representative of the Reclaimer Initiative, and a manager of one of their terrestrial rehabilitation and reintegration centers for the Edenites. Athrun in no way agreed with that organization's policies, but he was at least a little glad to see Arnold finding some sort of honest work, for once!

However, it seemed even that had been a cover for what Arnold... or "Hazy" as he preferred to be called... had really been up to, according to the information that had been sent along with the man himself, in what amount to a shipping crate fitted out with very basic life support systems. These had kept Hazy in a medically induced stupor for most of the week it had taken him to work his way through the USN's wartime mail service and get to Orb. Quite what that was, Kurtz didn't know, but since Ramierez had been working on the poor bastard for most of a day by that point in time... an inordinately long time for such an accomplished interrogator... he was beginning to worry about exactly what was going on. When put like that, Athrun was a little worried too, and so he and Kurtz had paid a visit to the unofficial facility. Hazy deserved a lot of things for all the wrong he'd done in his life. But Athrun wasn't going to just stand by while a member of his family... no matter how much a black sheep... was tortured for information!

And unfortunately, torture was what it was. They'd come in on the interrogation just when Ramierez had his cousin... stripped bare ass naked, his skin covered with welts and scabs from several very professional looking beatings... suspended by his wrists over an industrial grade wood pulping machine, his dangling toes just a few inches above the madly grinding and whirring blades designed to render an entire sapling tree trunk into mushy paste in a matter of seconds! Ramierez hadn't even been asking any questions, nor could Hazy have answered if he had been, being as he was securely gagged at the time. Athrun had been horrified by the proceedings... he'd always known the Stormhounds sometimes had a dark side to their character, but this was beyond any remit of decency! It was like something he'd expect from Blue Cosmos, and he'd said as much as he got in Ramierez's face.

Which had almost gotten him roughed up, actually... the normally laid back and friendly Stormhound recon specialist was nearly out of his tree with rage, and Athrun had found himself lifted up by the collar and slammed up against the side of the mulcher hard enough to rattle his teeth in his skull. And the really unpleasant part about it was that he couldn't have stopped Ramierez from doing it, he'd been having a pretty bad morning, as far as his body's aches and pains went, and though he'd been able to see the grab coming just fine, his body had responded like it was arthritic, and he'd been grabbed and bashed anyway. Not exactly a prideful moment, given Ramierez had at least a decade and change on him, and Athrun was or had been a Redcoat of ZAFT. Athrun didn't know what might have happened next, if Kurtz hadn't been there to talk some sense into the nigh berserk Ramierez.

It was the sort of situation that could have turned really bad for Ramierez, striking a superior officer, not to mention being caught in the midst of toturing a civilian, but Athrun prided himself on being a reasonable sort... there had to be an explanation for this uncharacteristic behavior from Ramierez, normally the most lighthearted and openminded of the Stormhounds. And unfortunately, there was an explanation. Leaving the frantic Hazy suspended, if not quite as directly over the mulcher as before, Ramierez had taken Athrun and Kurtz into one of the adjoining clerical rooms, which he'd turned into his impromptu interrogation headquarters over the past day. Athrun did his best not to look at the metal chair with the restraints attached to it, in one corner of the room, or the spatters of blood and other bodily fluids that decorated it. It brought up some pretty bad flashbacks from when Frost had him to himself down in that basement on Halloween.

But then Ramierez had drawn his attention to the documents and pictures spread out across several folding tables, and Athrun had forgotten all about painful flashbacks as he found out the ugly truth about what exactly the Reclaimer Initiative "Rehabilitation Centers" were about. Apparently Hazy had turned his camp into his own personal feifdom, using the occupants... many of whom were brought to the camp by force... as little more than slaves in a vast exotic drug harvesting scheme! Men and children as young as Allister... or even younger... were forced to work ten or twelve hour shifts amidst extremely dangerous and toxic plants, with little to no protective gear, harvesting the parts that would be used for making drugs or medicines that Hazy could sell on the side to help fund RI operations! And to keep the prisoners in line despite the harsh treatments, their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters were held hostage, and forced to work as whores for the base guards and even rich USN citizens affiliated with the RI!

It was all there in the black and white... manifests, reports, harvesting schedules, payment plans for wealthy customers to "rent" the use of the prettier Edenite girls for specified times, with a "break and buy" policy attached! Many of them with Hazy's signature on them, or even written in his hand! And the pictures... taken of the camp after it had been sacked by the Retributors... they didn't even bear thinking about! Athrun had seen many things in his life that had bothered him, offended him, or gotten him riled up. The conditions of Hazy's slave camp were among the worst, and especially striking was the children... again, many of them around Allister's age! And given Ramierez's rabid hatred of illegal drugs and drug dealers... something that stemmed from his own childhood on the streets of Los Angeles Sprawl... he began to see why the normally unflappable Stormhound had gone off the deep end! It made Athrun physically ill to think that his name... the Zala name, that he took so much pride in, would forever be associated with this exploitation camp and its horrors!

But killing Hazy, no matter how satisfying it might be, wouldn't solve the problem of what had already been done. Especially because after getting his cousin literally "off the hook" that had suspended him, Athrun was able to get Hazy to talk quite profusely under the threat of turning him back over to Ramierez in a more permanent fashion. And that was when they'd found out the really bad news. As awful as Hazy's exploitation and debauchery was, his camp was actually the lesser of two evils. Hazy was focused on making a profit and lining his own pockets, while having a grand old time in the process... Edenites died during the work he forced them to do, but death wasn't profitable for him, so there was some effort made to minimize the number of Eddies that suffered fatal injuries. This unfortunately could not be said of Camp #2, which was run by none other than Orb extradite, Yuna Roma Seiran, Hazy's good friend and fellow RI spokesman.

If even a FRACTION of what Hazy said Yuna was up to at Camp 2 was right, then they were were looking at a human rights catastrophe as great as any of the most famous concentration camps or gulags of ancient history! A systematic and purposeful elimination system, designed for one purpose and one purpose only... to kill as many Edenites as possible in as short a time as possible. Yuna had no interest in making a profit, all he was apparently interested in was getting his "revenge" against the Edenites for the death of his father, during the Brotherhood attack on Orb's Parliament. Quite how Edenite civilians were connected to that, Athrun could not figure, but Yuna was apparently glad to murder them in wholesale lots regardless of how crazy it was. And it was all being covered up by the RI, with tacit approval of the USN administration, who accepted large bribes and political favors to turn their attentions away from the atrocity.

However, Hazy's word alone... especially since it was gained under legally questionable circumstances... would never hold up in a court of law, especially not ones controlled by the USN. They needed more, and especially hard evidence, if they were going to put a stop to this horror... and sock it to the people truly responsible, the Durandel Administration and the upper echelons of the Reclaimer Initiative! Fortunately, arranging a solution wasn't hard... and even less so when he'd brought Cagalli into the loop. He'd really feared, for a long moment, that his wife was going to order an execution sentence put out on Hazy after she saw the reports and pictures that Athrun had. It was technically within her power to do such a thing, though no Orb monarch had in almost a hundred years. He'd especially feared it because at that moment, Athrun had realized that if she did, he wouldn't have spoken up in his cousin's defense! But in the end, Cagalli had decided that... as was usual with Hazy... it just wasn't worth it. He'd stand trial with the rest of the RI once they blew this thing open, and he'd spend the rest of his life locked away where he couldn't hurt anyone. Or, if the courts decided, he'd lose his life. Either way was fine with them.

With no "proper authority" for them to report the situation too... at least no authority they could be sure wasn't in some way involved with the hideous conspiracy... Cagalli and Athrun had decided that they had to take matters into their own hands. Which brought Athrun full circle, to where he was right now, sitting in the passenger compartment of one of the Stormhound's insertion shuttles, listening to the drone of the engines and wishing he could get some rest, even though it was too late. They were only a few minutes away from Camp #2 now, and the Stormhound pilot was already in contact with Camp #2's long range defense commander, declaring their intent to conduct a "surprise inspection" of the Camp. It wasn't technically within their authority to inspect RI property, but given Cagalli herself was the one demanding landing clearance, they doubted the RI commander would have the guts to order them to turn around.

And if he did, well, things would get, as Ramierez put it, "complicated". The inspection request was just a pretext after all. None of them doubted that what Hazy had said about Yuna was true, since in his condition, he had been incapable of lying to them. In addition to a sizable detachment from the Stormhounds, including Ramierez, Kurtz, and a freshly recovered and certified fit for active duty Glory and Raven, there was a platoon of Orb marines numbering twenty in all. Backing them up was none other than Mu la Flaga, with his Mobile Armor, the Firebird, flying in sub orbit overhead with the Nova Condor tactical transport/bomber equipment attached, and a cargo of four PUMA-1 Hellhounds, piloted by Alkire, Raine, Carome and a Stormhound who went by the callsign of Fish, a product of his background in a amphibious warfare unit prior to joining the Stormhounds.

The sound of a footstep on the metal decking nearby, followed by a slight grunt as a male presence leaned against the bulkhead opposite where Athrun was sitting, caused him to open his eyes, and looked up at the man some might call his close friend, and would describe himself only as his chief rival. Yzak was very studiously not looking in Athrun's direction, half leaning-half slouching against the bulkhead. He had his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of the basic camouflage fatigues in the Stormhound's colors he had been loaned for the trip. Athrun himself, like Cagalli, was dressed more formally, in the puce shirt and maroon jacket with trousers of Orb's parlimentary uniform, since this was theoretically an "official" visit and inspection after all, but Yzak and Katie had seen no reason to have to dress up for the occassion.

Athrun wasn't quite clear on what Yzak and Katie's reasons were for wanting to come along on this trip, but he wasn't about to question them either. Any gesture of goodwill from Yzak was a gift, as far as Athrun was concerned, given how strained things had gotten over the Kira Problem. And having the two Newtypes around could come in real handy, if it came down to having to clandestinely ferret out where Yuna was hiding his skeletons and dirty laundry, as Athrun strongly doubted that they would be given a chance to inspect the "real" facility. Yuna wasn't a total idiot after all, he'd no doubt have a clean area prepared just for these kinds of offical inspections... despite popular opinion, you couldn't buy off EVERYONE in the USN Administration. Just most everyone. Of course, the Stormhounds were masters of getting where people didn't want them to go, but having Yzak and Katie around to point the way to any concentrations of psychic misery or death-echoes would be a real boon.

"It's not something you get over." Yzak said suddenly, still not looking in Athrun's directions. Startled, Athrun looked at his pale haired comrade questioningly for a moment, not quite sure what Yzak was getting at. "Don't give me that look, Zala. It was plain as day what you were just agonizing about. You've been doing it the entire trip, and it's started getting on my nerves." Yzak expounded, not letting Athrun see his face, so he wouldn't be accused of showing any sympathy for the annoying bastard. "Trust me. I know what it's like to have your name associated with stuff you aren't proud of, stuff that makes you loathe yourself... that shuttle of civilians at the 8th fleet battle... the Massacre at Porta Panama after Spit Break. Yeah, I know all about it, Zala. There's nothing you can do to atone for that kind of thing. It's a permanent smear. You just have to do your best to not let it happen again."

"Yzak..." Athrun said, not quite sure how to respond. Yzak didn't go out of his way to try and reassure him very often, he preferred to keep their relationship on the friendly antagonistic level. If Yzak was worried enough about how he was acting to go so far as to commiserate with him and attempt to give him some advice, then Athrun knew he had to shape up pretty soon, because he was no doubt causing Cagalli and the others considerably more distress. "You're right." Athrun allowed with a bitter little smile, looking down at the floor. "I'm being a fool, I know that. I didn't even do it, it's my goddamn lowlife slime of a cousin... but I feel responsible nonetheless. Just when I thought I might finally be getting out from under the shadows of what my father did, and tried to do, I get this mess dropped in my lap! I'm beginning to think the Zala name is cursed..."

"I certainly swear by it enough." Yzak countered, with a snort of disdain. "It's only gonna get harder, you know? I have nightmares about it... some kid at school coming up to Mina or Jamie, and asking them "Isn't your dad the one who blew up that shuttle full of civilians with his Gundam during the First Valentine War?" What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to explain that? I was angry? I was an immature asshole who was out of his mind with need for pointless revenge? Like that's an excuse!" Yzak sighed and shook his head, barely visible in Athrun's peripheral vision.

Yzak went on, almost as if unburdening himself. "I could have stopped what happened at Porta Panama after Spit Break, you know? I was a senior Redcoat at the time, if I'd stepped up and ordered people to stop shooting up the surrendering soldiers, people would have listened, would have come to their senses. But I didn't do anything. I just stood there and watched, letting good soldiers turn into murderers just because of my own goddamn hatred... it makes me sick sometimes. But there's nothing that can be done to change it. I just have to make sure it never happens again, and that the balance of my life is weighted towards the things I want to be proud to remember."

"Gee, thanks, Yzak." Athrun commented with dry sarcasm. "I hadn't even thought about it that way. Never even occured to me that Allister might get hassled at school for what his grandfather did. You really know how to lighten my burden, don't you?"

"Better burdened than caught unawares." Yzak answered, equally drily. "But I wouldn't worry about it too much. He's got good friends who'll watch out for him, just as I know he'd watch out for my girls. If teasing ever started happening, you can rest assured it would never get back to your or my ears... they'd take care of it on their own. They're our children after all. They don't need a reason to stand up for their friends and family. It's just what they do."

"Careful. You almost sounded like you were giving my son some approval there for a moment." Athrun pointed out with a hidden smirk. "I'd hate to think you actually admired him or anything..."

Yzak coughed and grumbled something inaudible but definitely uncomplimentary. "He's not a full Zala, that gives him some leeway. But I'll be keeping a very close eye on him, don't you doubt it. If I ever catch him sneaking out of my girl's rooms, you'll need more than just Orb's military to save his ass..."

"I'd be more worried about them sneaking out of his room, given how much like their mother they are." Athrun retorted, raising his head and sharing a wintry look with Yzak. "I'll be looking forward to the time when you and I can spend all day arguing about whose children are seducing whose. Thanks, Yzak."

"I could swear I've warned you about thanking me in the past, haven't I, Zala? It makes me uncomfortable. I didn't do it for your sake. I just can't stand to have a pathetic, moping rival, got it? It reflects badly on me..."

"Yeah, you're right..."

"Of course I am. It's just part of being a Joule..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Northern England, Reclaimer Initiative Rehabilitation Center #2, Warden's Compound, same time**

The loud buzz from the door intercom unit snapped Yuna's delicate concentration almost as easily as his suddenly unfocused hands snapped the thin fingerbones of the young male subject he was currently working out his fury on. Yuna grimaced, as the Edenite... a male somewhere in his twenties... let out a thin, keening gasp of agony through the ruins of his mouth. Unsatisfactory... he'd become quite a connisseur of screams in the past few months, since being assigned control over this camp by Djibril, and that one had been quite pitiful by any standard of measure. He so hated being distracted or interrupted when he was on personal time. Sighing loudly, Yuna turned away from the wracked and ravaged body of his latest project, hung upside down from a hook through his ankles exactly like a butcher's side of meat... which was more or less how Yuna saw his subjects, both before and after he got done playing with them. Just meat... bleeding, writhing, squirming, screaming meat... just like his father, Unato, had been turned into by the knives of those Brotherhood bastards!

The Edenites were the dream of the Brotherhood, and so by tearing them apart, plucking their nerves and muscles like harpstrings and listening to the chorus of despair and anguish this produced... it was the only solace Yuna could reliably find for the black flames of hatred that had been fanned into life those years ago in Orb's parliament building. The acting, the debauched orgies, the drugs... all of these things had been minor balms at best... in the end, only working out his killing hate on the unresisting and fully aware flesh of an Edenite could bring even a hint of relief to his scarred soul. He waved a hand, gloved in white almost entirely occluded by fluid crimson, at the tri-wheeled mannequin mount tucked away in the corner of this "playroom", causing the motion detection systems to recognize the come hither motion.

Mounted upon the wheeled conveyance was what looked like an emaciated human corpse, like someone who had died of starvation and been left out to rot and blacken in the sun for a few weeks, with a myriad of gently pulsing tubes and curling wires stuck into various parts of its body. It's skin had a metallic sheen in spots, while its face was eyeless and almost entirely blank of features, save for a wide gash of a mouth filled with teeth that had more in common with industrial chippers and drills than any human denture. A bright blue #2 was stenciled on the otherwise blank face, and repeated again on the sunken sternum of the creation, one of the Revamped of FEAR, a gift bestowed upon him by no lesser personage than Dr. Dostanya herself, as thanks for the large quantity of Edenite parts, especially brains, he supplied her from the leavings of his play sessions. Vamps weren't ordinarily bestowed with names, but Yuna affectionately called his "Kain". Kain was his bodyguard, kept in suspended animation most of the time to reduce wear on his implants, but the belt of shrunken heads and armor fragments, many of them highly stylized and decorated, slung about the Vamp's narrow hips showed that Kain had quite a field record too.

Yuna stripped off his surgeons mask, shower cap, gloves, and full body apron... all the articles of clothing heavily splashed with his most recent project's vital fluids... and tossed them carelessly to the side, leaving them crumpled on the bare concrete floor of the playroom. Little more than a box about fifteen feet on a side, the ceiling of this playroom was extensively rigged with pulleys and hoists and other equipment for the easy maneuvering of his playthings, while the walls were rife with tools and instruments, so that he was never forced to go far when a particular inspiration or need for a tool occurred to him. His contemplative, almost artistic mood of earlier ruined by the interruption, Yuna made note of where he'd last left the chainsaw.

Opening the code locked door, Yuna stepped out into a hallway that was startling in its cleanliness, it could have passed a white glove inspection by a head nurse at a major hospital, a far cry from the dingy and gory room he was leaving behind him. Yuna was not a clean freak or even overly fastidious himself, but since he rented out some of his playrooms to certain discerning, and very politically powerful, people, there were certain standards to maintain. It would not do to force his esteemed clients to walk down a waste filled gutter on the path to their individual pleasures after all.

Kain wheeled out after him, following a few feet behind him, just close enough to not run over his heels should he stop suddenly, as Yuna made his way down the hallway, passing locked doors leading to soundproofed playrooms on either side about every twenty feet. He reached the main portal leading to the playroom hall, and impatiently waited for it to be pulled open from the other side by a team of three GHOUL suited troopers from FEAR, after using his gene signature to unlock the massive portal.

It was a basic security precaution... though most of his playmates were in no physical condition to even crawl, much less make an escape attempt, there was no sense taking chances, and so the only way into or out of this hallway was through a door that weighed over 1200 pounds, and had no hydraulic systems attached, meaning that it required extreme brute strength to open or shut... only the three troopers in their powered armor, working together, stood a chance of doing so in a timely fashion. Like Kain, the GHOULs, ten in total, were a gift from FEAR in appreciation of his thoughtful allowance of their research teams to have free reign over the incoming Edenites sent to his camp, before they were packed into the extermination blocks. There, MAIDEN would be sifted down upon them until they all turned to carbonized ash, and the hinged floor would drop away, dumping the remains into large Red EDEN vats below, where the Eddies would be turned into more MAIDEN to be used on the next batch of "guests." A very neat and economical arrangement that Yuna was rather proud of. It was much better than those inefficient and messy gas chambers or the mass graves from a firing squad!

"This better be good. I was in the middle of someone." Yuna said, glaring at one of the Reclaimer Initiative flunkies who was by and large responsible for the day to day affairs of his camp. Yuna was no stranger to the art of delegation after all, his father had taught him well, in the anticipation that Yuna would one day marry the young Attha girl, Cagalli, and become King of Orb. The mousy haired man with the grey and brown mustache looked more like a grocery clerk than the administrator of a death camp, but then again, people's true personalities only rarely had anything to do with their physical appearance.

"Sorry to bother you, my lord." The administrator said with delicate courtesy, giving a tiny bob of the head that might have been mistaken for a bow. Though Yuna had extradited himself from Orb in the wake of the decimation of his family, he hadn't entirely given up all the perks of his upbringing, and, though it was antiquated, he insisted on his personal subordinates using the formal manner of address when speaking to him. He was the head and sole inheritor of the Seiran family estate after all, not just some common person off the street, his heritage stretched back across hundreds of years of Orb's nobility. At this point in life, he really ought to have been addressed as "Your Majesty", but things had gone inexplicably wrong somewhere... the pigheaded bitch of an Attha girl had gone off and gotten married to a goddamned Coordinator, a member of the arch-monstrous Zala family no less! It had ruined everything!

Yuna impatiently stared at his flunky, who seemed to be trying to figure out how best to break some bad news. "Spit it out, I can't stand it when you people bother me and then take ten minutes to figure out what you have to say." Yuna prompted the man with a sneer.

"Of course, my lord. My apologies." The mustache bristled a little as the main gained some of his spine back. "We've picked up an inbound shuttle, not one of our normal supply runs or special visitors. It's broadcasting an Orb identification code, and claims to be carrying an inspection team headed by Queen Zala-Attha herself. They are requesting landing clearance, and a meeting with you, as well as a comprehensive tour of the facility. They'll be in visual range in another ten minutes."

"Damn that bitch, hasn't she screwed up my life with her pigheadedness enough?" Yuna scowled as he muttered under his breath. She'd cost him his cushy future, his father's life, his family's good name, and now finally she was coming to take away his one solace in these dark times... all because she was too stubborn and thickheaded to know her place in the world! All she had to do was lie back and be a normal girl, and everything would have worked out great, but no, she had to become a crusading idealist and a hero of the people, and now she was completely out of control... certainly that fag of a Kurenai scion wasn't in any way keeping her in her proper place! She'd even had the ill grace to sire a brat with Zala, and now all of Orb's noble houses were locked out of the royal line for at least another few decades... and worst of all, nobody even seemed to be properly resentful of this fact!

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Yuna glared at his subordinate. "Do I have to spell it out for you? Prepare the propaganda center, and rush the next few batches of Eddies into the ovens, I want as many of them as possible incinerated before that shuttle arrives, and the rest of them should be moved into the overflow sheds beneath Barracks three and four. Put the defense forces on amber alert, and tell them to be ready to go to red alert at any time."

Yuna's face took on a darker cast as he went on. "If we're quick and good, we should be able to lead them around by the nose until they get bored and leave. But if they do happen to stumble upon something they ought not to see, we need to be ready to make sure they don't talk. I want our comm tower ready to jam their communications at the push of a button, and have all the GHOUL troops report to my office... I want them near at hand if things get dicey."

"B-but my lord... its the Queen of Orb! She's a head of state! We can't just make her disappear!" The administrator protested with wide eyes.

"Hopefully we won't need to." Yuna replied grimly, though even as he said it, he knew it was a slim hope at best. There was no good reason for the Queen herself to come out on a surprise inspection, she had to suspect something. Someone must have talked, in the wake of the destruction of Hazy's Camp 1. Well, Yuna was prepared to clean up the mess; it was just one more feather in his cap that he could present to Lord Djibril the next time he came into contact with that visionary man. "But this is a war zone, after all." Yuna added with a composed look at his flunky. "Have we not had increasing reports of possible Eddie activity around the outskirts of the defense perimeter of late? I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that an "Eddie raid" might happen to strike while the inspection team is here. And so many unfortunate things can happen in the chaos of battle..."

"A-as you say, my lord..." The flunky looked decidedly green in the gills, but at least he hurried away to take care of matters. Everyone knew that crossing Yuna Roma Seiren could get you a private tour of the playrooms... as a playmate. If the Roman wanted to be responsible for assassinating his own head of state, then that was no skin off the administrator's nose. His ass was covered, because he would be sure to sing long and loud at any court proceedings, about all the things he was "forced" to do for fear of his life.

"What do you think, Kain?" Yuna turned and contemplated his inert bodyguard. "Maybe you can play with Cagalli for me? I think I'd like a chance to see what you can do with my own eyes..."

xxxx

**Aboard the shuttle, 10 minutes later**

"I don't like this..." Sergeant Major Thomas Glory commented with a deep frown as he poked his enormous blunt fingers at some of the data the dropshuttle's sensor arrays were picking up. "They've got all their defensive emplacements and major vehicles on active standby..."

"Well, we are technically in a war zone." Cagalli pointed out, trying to peer at the readings in question, without much luck. Glory wasn't someone whom you could really look over his shoulder, or even around him... he was wide and tall enough to make three or four of her. "I think it'd be stranger if their defenses weren't on semi-permanent alert status."

"That's true, as far as it goes." Ramierez replied grimly. "But the fact of the matter is, their defenses were in inactive standby up until just a few minutes ago; right around the time we came into view on their sensors. And if they'd detected Eddies in the area, they should have warned us off by now."

"Are you saying they're powering up because of us?" Cagalli asked, perplexed by the thought. "I just can't see it." She said after a few moments consideration. "Yuna's been a cowardly rat, for as long as I've known him. I think it's a bluff. He wants us to think there's some sort of danger around, hoping we'll break off from our inspection and give him some time to clean up his act before we come back."

"I guess." Ramierez seemed doubtful still. "You'd think heading to full combat alert would do that a little better than just going to active standby though. If our sensors were a little less precise we might not even have noticed he was gearing up. I think he's trying to lure us in closer, not scare us away. I agree with your psychological estimation of the man, your Majesty, he is a cowardly rat who prefers to run from anything even approaching a fair fight or a conflict he isn't sure he'll come out on top of. But even a cowardly rat will bite if it feels cornered, and a death camp... if that's what this is... isn't something you can just flush down the toilet and run from when the authorities arrive."

"Well, we can't afford to just back off and come back later. It'll be three or four hours at least before we can rendezvous with the _Endymion_ and the other ships and return with sufficient Mobile Forces to defeat the base defenses. There's no telling what ex-Lord Seiran might get up to down there in that time span." Athrun said, moving about without the assistance of his support cane. This was thanks to a fairly powerful painkiller he'd taken shortly before, because he wanted to be close to peak physical fitness in case something did go wrong during the inspection. The Stormhounds were exceptional bodyguards, and the 20 Orb Marines back in the troop compartment were among the best in all of Orb's military, and each of them more than willing to lay down their lives for their Queen and Country if that was demanded of them, but all the same, Athrun felt best when he himself was capable of acting to protect Cagalli. He'd be regretting it in a few hours, when the painkiller's withdrawal effects messed up his guts and left him hunched over and puking for the rest of the day, but at least for now he was back up to snuff.

The Rehabilitation Center came into direct view through the cockpit windows, as they flew over a line of mist shrouded hills. England had always had a fairly wet climate, and in the wake of the temperature change caused by the Eden Disaster, the island nation had become tropical in many respects, with some of the thickest and wettest jungles of anywhere on New Eden, solid mats of ground growing vegetation obscuring the terrain across thousands of square miles, the forest so thick and the ground so muddy that traditional wheeled or tracked vehicles could not hope to progress through it, and even ground effect hover vehicles would be hard pressed to make useful progress through the near mire. The Rehab Center had been built on relatively high and well drained ground, around a series of hillocks in the middle of this broad valley, where the ground was firm enough to allow construction of prefabricated structures like barracks, dining halls and supply sheds.

The facility was laid out in a rough oval, with a cross shaped command bunker in the middle of the complex, and boxy barracks and living buildings spaced out in the quadrants defined by the spokes of the cross. Defense turrets and watchposts studded the ten meter tall exterior wall at regular intervals, with hardened weapon emplacements built further inside the complex grounds for large scale anti-mobile suit or anti-vehicle purposes. At this distance it was hard to make out many details, but there looked to be several RI Mobile Suits on the base, as well as plenty of large construction vehicles, probably used for maintaining the 200 meter wide free fire zone of cleared ground around the edges of the complex walls. Tall comm tower aerials and sensor masts projected from a bunker half buried in a hillside within a short walk of the main command bunker, which Athrun correctly identified as the primary communications center.

He turned to get Yzak and Katie's opinion, where they stood behind him in the fairly expansive shuttle cockpit area, just barely in time to see Katie's eyes all but roll up into the back of her head as she staggered and fell sideways in a near faint. Only Yzak's quick reactions managing to put his body between her and the hard deckplates befoe she hit. Yzak himself didn't look particularly good all of a sudden either, his face was pale and clammy with sweat, and his breath was foreshortened, as if he'd just gotten kicked in stomach.

"Yzak! Katie!" Athrun called anxiously, drawing the attention of the others to their friend's distress, as he went to his knees by Yzak's side, helping his friend lower his wife to the deckplates, her body seemingly locked up with some form of seizure or convulsions. "What's wrong with her?" He asked of Yzak, as he watched his scar faced friend take deep, calming breaths, shaking his head back and forth as if to clear it.

"Death-echo." Yzak managed to grind out, pressing one hand to his head as if he was afraid it would split open. "Big one... five, six hundred people all at once. They combusted from the inside out... men, women, children... whole families... it was over in seconds, but they didn't go peacefully. Katie was doing her best to probe the camp for Eddie populations... she was wide open..." Yzak gritted, looking at Athrun with pain-filled and furious eyes.

"LAND THIS THING!" Cagalli ordered in a half shriek, her jaw set and eyes blazing with a fury no less fierce than Yzak's. She looked ready to chew an armor plate and spit thumbtacks, and Athrun knew they were locked into an aggressive course of action now! Which was good. It would be a nice change of pace to do the right thing with no regrets for once. "We're shutting this place down before anyone else can be murdered!"

"Roger that, your Majesty!" Ramierez replied, managing to look both eager and slightly worried at the same time as he turned to the pilot of the shuttle. "Get us dirtside. And get in contact with Commander la Flaga and the Nova Condor! Tell him I want the Colonel and his PUMA team down here yesterday, with the FlareHawk as gunship support! Then get on the horn to Captain la Flaga and tell her to have the Dreadnaught prepped for launch... they may be an hour or two out of combat range, but I'd like them to be ready to bring the hurt all the same!" He turned back to the dignitaries and Gundam pilots, to see Yzak helping a shaken Katie back to her feet. "You two okay?" Ramierez asked, as the drop shuttle lurched and began a fast approach towards the walled in expanse of the Rehabilitation Center.

"No, but we're functional." Katie answered, a bit thickly because of where she'd bitten her tongue when she was assailed with the psychic impressions of hundreds of people being burned alive all at once. It wasn't quite as bad as that time when the USN had nuked the entire East coast of North America, but on the other hand, it was a lot closer and "fresher" for lack of a better word too, and especially with her mental guard down while searching, it had hit her like a tidal wave of molten steel. If not for Yzak's hand on hers, and the boosting effect on her powers this provided, she'd probably have fainted for real!

"Good." Ramierez replied, all business now that things were heating up. "Then point out for us where you felt the echo come from, so we know which places to secure first..."

xxxx

**Just inside the tree line near Camp 2 free fire zone**

"That's an Orb shuttle. One of their special forces models, if I'm not mistaken." Vaul commented neutrally, peering at the sleek looking craft through the eyes of the Tarantula's sensor nodules that were remotely linked to his helmet displays. "I wonder what it's doing here. There's no concentration of Orb forces in this theatre of the war..."

"It doesn't matter." Alexander retorted through clenched teeth, as he jammed the skull shaped helmet of his own armor onto his scowling head. "It's not big enough to carry more than a few dozen extra soldiers, it won't change the outcome of our raid in any perceptible fashion." He was in his own Tarantula, about fifty meters to the left of where Vaul's assault transport was bedded down in the thick vegetation of the forest fringe. "Though it seems to have thrown a scare into the camp administration nonetheless. We can't wait any longer... they're murdering our people in wholesale lots! I won't stand for it!"

"We should assess the situation further, Deathbringer." Vaul's calm voice suggested over their voice link. This close to the psychic charnel pit that was the death camp, none of them wanted to risk opening themselves to psychic communication, even of the Manifold sort, the same way they wouldn't want to open their mouths and noses were they walking through an abbattoir or open mass grave. "Unexpected variables, no matter how slight, must be accounted for before direct action is initiated. I want to save them as much as you do, but..."

"But nothing!" Ken, known as the Howling Tempest, one of Alexander's chief supporters and friends, cut in from where he was sitting across from the hulking mass of his commander and friend in the bowls of their Tarantula assault transport. "Every second we hesitate is one more second they have to herd another six hundred innocents into the maw of hellfire! To hell with the Orbites, if they get in our way, we'll cut them down like wheat before the scythe! It's that simple, Warsmith!"

"I pray that it is, Howling Tempest. However, it would be the height of foolishness to rush in to a changed situation without..." Vaul began to argue.

"No, he's right. We go now." Alex said firmly, stepping in as senior Praetorian and mission commander. It had been his decision to mount this mission in the first place after all, despite the risks and troubles it took getting even his small raiding force into position in the relatively little time he had before Kunai took the new fleet into orbit for the attack on the USN homeland. There were no Edenite fortresses within a thousand miles of this place, and they were perilously close to the defense lines of Heaven's Base, the Oosen's theatre base. They would have to be quick if they wanted to ensure that the relatively slow moving high capacity transport shuttles waiting for the pickup command were to have time to land, take on their cargo, and flee the area before help arrived from the large Oosen base. That was part of the reason why he'd elected to take only the bare minimum of troops and vehicles for the mission.

The other was that it would be a good opportunity to test the newest additions to the Custodian's ground armor and infantry weapons arsenal, designed and produced by BEGET, the primary technical research group of Garden City. They had been working on overdrive since the beginning of the war to come up with new weapons and war machines for the woefully outnumbered Custodians to use against the evil empire of the Oosen. Mass production of Dervishes was impossible due to the issues involved in manufacturing Borealite, but the same amount of materials it took to build one Dervish could be used to create two or three armored vehicles, and so BEGET had focused their efforts on producing a new wave of armored vehicles, to replace the mostly outdated, pre-Disaster relics that the Custodians had been using previously. While at the same time producing ever newer and more powerful weapons for the Custodian infantry units to utilize, weapons that made a single soldier as dangerous as a IFV of the Oosen!

Because much of New Eden's land area was covered by forests or other terrain that was not conducive to the use of wheeled or tracked vehicles, BEGET had decided to go a new route with the motive systems of the vehicles, and gave them legs; cantilevered, highly flexible legs like those of a water strider or insect, fitted with wide feet for maximum distribution of surface pressure when crossing unstable terrain such as mud or sand or silt, and capable of lifting the main hull several meters into the air so as to allow the vehicle to pass entirely over most of the thickest underbrush that would stymie a normal vehicle. The legs were also fitted with heavy duty shock abosrbers, gauranteeing a smooth ride and firing platform, even when moving at high speed across uneven terrain, and finally the legs cam equipped with climbing claws, allowing the vehicles to scale trees and even rock faces like insects might, giving them even more mobility in many of New Eden's most difficult environments.

The first new vehicles was called the Cicada, a recon/light infantry support model, with a angular hull somewhat similar in shape to a flattened pyramid with the prime tip pointed at a shallow angle groundwards. Possessing four legs that could carry the hull up to five meters off the ground, the vehicle seated two, a pilot and a gunner, protected by heavy duty Borealite plates similar to but much thicker than that of Custodian infanty armor. Powered by so called "nuclear batteries", which produced far more power over a much longer time than normal energy storage systems, the Cicada's could run and climb at speeds of up to 60 mph across all sorts of solid terrain, and even across snow, silt or mud! Their legs also possessed powerful jumpjets that could hurl the entire machine up to a half kilometer in a long arc, for even greater maneuverability in open spaces, and quick strike capability in combat. The Cicada's weapon systems were modular, and easily customizable in a matter of thirty minutes or so at a field camp, featuring a wide variety of missile, beam and linear type weaponry suited for anti-infantry and light anti-vehicle combat.

Next were Widowmakers, designed to fill the role of medium tanks. Widowmakers had a hull that looked like two Cicada hulls fused back to back, and possessed six legs, though both hulls and legs were considerably thicker and better armored than any Cicada. Possessing a crew of three, with the third member being a psychic warfare specialist cocooned in a purpose built LEMIM enhanced cockpit socket, Widowmakers were three times the mass of a Cicada, and possessed Borealite armor almost as thick as that of a Dervish. They shared the speed and climbing ability of their smaller kin, but lacked the jumpjets, trading maneuverability for extra weaponry, able to mount twice as many modular weapons as a Cicada, plus an underslung 120mm QC Harpoon launcher that functioned as a main cannon, with extremely long range and penetrating power against all armor types. Also, their legs were equipped with deployable mono-blades for obstruction clearing and anti-infantry usage. The psychic warfare specialist could add further customizable abilities to a Widowmaker, depending on each specialist's individual Active powers or Latent specialities, such as increased weapon accuracy, defensive reaction time, or various modes of Active defense and offense.

Finally there came Tarantula's, designed for the role of assault tansport and seige tank. Tarantula's appeared like gigantic Widowmakers, well over twice the size of the battle walkers, with eight powerful legs that could carry the war machine forward across all types of solid terrain and even vertical surfaces at close to 40 mph! Controlled by a crew of five, with a pilot, main gunner, two auxiliary gunners and a psychic specialist, each Tarantula also had room for up to 10 Custodian soldiers to ride in safety within the hull. Powered by small scale Fusion Pulse Reactors and armored in thin sections of warship grade Borealite over thicker sections of tank grade Borealite, the Tarantula's were extremely durable. They were offensively powerful as well, with six mounts for modular weapons, plus a main turret of a 50mm Ion Disintegrator mounted on the dorsal surface, and a pair of heavy duty nano-swarm projectors built into what would be the mandibles on a living creature, for close assault/seige work. Finally, the Tarantula's could project a Positron shield dome over themselves, protecting them against the majority of enemy fire while not blocking the line of effect for their own primary weapon system.

Alexander's raiding party consisted of 8 Cicada's, 5 Widowmakers and 2 Tarantula's, split into two groups, which would assault the RI camp from opposite sides. In one group were four of the Widowmakers and five of the Cicada's, who would attack first and draw away the majority of the defender's attention. Meanwhile the second group, with both Tarantula's, a Widowmaker guard and 3 Cicada infantry support models, would assault the complex where the greatest concentration of Edenite civilians was sensed, and free their people before they could be executed by the hated Oosen monsters. Once the civilian's safety was ensured, the dismounted raiding force... consisting of three Praetorians and two Manifolds of elite mechanized infantry soldiers from Legio Spider Wolf, for a total of 16 Custodians... would attempt to sabotage or destroy as much of the camp as possible while attempting to capture or kill the camp officers and administrators, before falling back to cover the civilians when the transport shuttles arrived for pickup.

Watching the Orb shuttle drop behind the wall of the RI compound through the sensors of his Tarantula, Alex reached up behind his left shoulder to grip the hilt of his folded up mono-great sword reassuringly, his brown eyes burning with fervor as he uttered a quick prayer, to Yggdrasil and to Yggdrasil's intermediary, the visionary Kunai, for guidance and protection in the melee to come.

"All forces, Attack!" Alex ordered in the next instant, feeling the Tarantula lurch around him as it sprang up from its combat crouch and began stalking towards the death camp, Positron dome blinking into existence as soon as it cleared the tree line. The time for waiting was past. Now it was time for the hated foe to meet their demise at the hands of the Deathbringer...

xxxx

**Shuttle Landing pad, Rehab Center 2, same time**

"See, I told you it was just a bluff. We're perfectly safe." Cagalli said, doing her best to control the volcanic fury bubbling in her heart by making small talk. She gestured at the anti-aircraft turrets and anti-vehicle linear cannon emplacements within easy view of the landing pad area, none of which had opened fire on them, or even made an attempt to track them, despite their sudden and rapid landing. "For all that he's made a career out of smut films, the man really doesn't have any balls..." She added, as she began stomping her way toward the not so distant command bunker with a gimlet scowl fixed on her face, Athrun at her side, Katie and Yzak just behind, surrounded by Ramierez, Glory, Kurtz and Raven, and followed by the two squads of Orb marines.

As if to put the lie to those very words, the chest thumping rumble of distant explosions and the sound of alert sirens suddenly resounded across the base, as some sort of ruckus started on the far side of the command bunker from where they'd landed. The nearby defense turrets immediately perked up and began swiveling around, looking for targets... and within seconds, two of them had opened fire on the Stormhound shuttle, rattling and pounding the well armored craft with volleys of linear cannon shells and rocket fire!

Cagalli was barely even aware of hostilities starting before she was grabbed none too gently by Glory and all but hurled off the side of the raised concrete platform of the landing pad. This put her out of direct line of fire or effect of the heavy caliber defense emplacements. Next, the Stormhound detail collapsed around her, shielding her with their bodies in case of ricochets until they were sure she was out of immediate danger.

Ramierez was roaring commands to the Orb marines, ordering them to spread out and secure the immediate area, while staying in cover as much as possible in case of ambush. Knowing the Queen well by this point in his life, Ramierez made no attempt to drag her back to the drop shuttle, and wouldn't have even if it weren't under attack. Yuna's treasonous actions would just be the final nail in his coffin, the final determiner of his guilt in the eyes of Cagalli, and she was definitely a woman who could get the behind the idea of summary judgment, in such extreme cases as this! Yuna had started this battle, now he'd learn just what it meant to pick a fight with a pissed off Zala-Attha! Retreat never even entered her mind, Ramierez knew without asking that she would order him and the other Stormhounds to escort them forward, into the command bunker where Yuna was hiding, to cut the head off the snake right then and there!

It wasn't exactly the smartest course of action, a battlefield was no place for a head of state, but all the same, it was something Ramierez could respect and understand. And at least Cagalli would fight back, unlike certain other legendary females he'd escorted across battlefields in the past! Even now, she had her handgun out and ready, a small vestige of the girl who'd once run away from home to join the Desert Dawn resistance group resurfacing in the time of crisis. Raven was rapidly re-assembling the various pieces of her beloved Warhawk heavy machine gun, while Glory already had his Shrike minicannon armed and ready, though he'd left his other heavy weapons in the shuttle, figuring he'd be more of an intimidator than a battler this time around. Besides, missile launchers and narrow hallways didn't mix well, for either side of a battle. Kurtz had one of Orb's new line of personal beam rifles, reverse engineered technology from a dropped Praetorian pistol found in the wake of the Eddie raid on Morganroete just before the war was declared.

As for Ramierez? He had his trusty MAAR-274 linear assault rifle and plenty of mono-sharp wits about him. Athrun, Katie, Yzak and Cagalli only had pistols, and lacked the heavier body armor of the Stormhounds or Orb marines, but two of the four were passably good shots, and Katie was a goddamn sharpshooter, just like her adopted mother. And even Cagalli could put rounds downrange with enough accuracy to at least force some people to keep their heads down. All the same, he'd be doing his best to make sure she stayed as out of combat as one could be, while in the middle of a hostile enemy base and surrounded on all sides by enemy troops. It was his job to keep her alive after all. Fortunately, they should have some heavy reinforcements inbound soon that would make the situation a little more tolerable.

"Colonel, ETA?" Ramierez questioned, automatically opening a channel to Alkire through his helmet.

"Falling as fast as I can, Corporal!" Alkire retorted tightly, securely wedged into the cramped confines of his Hellhound unit's cockpit, his biological body numbed and distant as the NIC-III system of the humanoid armored vehicle interfaced with his nervous system. The Nova Condor, one of two extra gear attachments for the Firebird Mobile Armor piloted by Commander la Flaga, which turned the interceptor craft into either a heavy gunship or a tactical bomber/transport, had room for up to 10 of the PUMA's, but at this time only had 4. The others were based in Orb or Carpentaria, with the majority of Orb's remaining ground forces. Having not anticipated a major battle breaking out in pursuit of this mission, 4 was thought by all to be more than enough. Ramierez was already wishing he had 40 of the things.

The Nova Condor had been dogging the dropshuttle's course, but at an altitude 60,000 feet higher, almost out of the atmosphere entirely, putting it far beyond the range of any earthbound sensor systems. After releasing the four Hellhounds from their docking clamps, Mu had then disengaged the connections between the massive, Delta wing shaped Nova Condor unit and the smaller but still quite large Flarehawk gunship, which was itself a modular add-on for the original Firebird Mobile Armor. The Nova Condor possessed weapons systems equivalent to some capital warships, and could probably wipe the entire Rehab Center off the face of the Earth in a single bombing run, but that would be overkill with friendly infantry in the combat area, not to mention the Eddie civilians held captive there. That meant precision fire support was needed, and that was the role that the Flarehawk equipment had been designed for. However, the gunship's heavy armor and many weapons limited the top speed of the craft, meaning Mu had a good minute or so of flight time before he reached the combat area. Which was still a good two or three minutes before any of the Hellhounds, which had only gravity to pull them earthwards.

The Stormhounds were top heavy, in terms of rank and experience in this battle zone, with both senior enlisted members on the ground, and both senior officers in the air, in Hellhounds, plus the surplus of experience from Kurtz and Raven on the ground, and Carome with the PUMA's. The fourth member of the PUMA squadron was Fish, a former Orb Marine who had only recently graduated up into full Stomhound status. But since they were escorting the Queen herself, it was worth the risk, indeed they could afford to do no less. And now it looked like it was going to come in handy, because things were going to hell in a hand-basket, and didn't look like they were going to get better anytime soon!

A squad of men and women wearing the white and grey uniform of the Reclaimer Initiative, with just a splash of blue where the organization's emblem was on the left breast, came hustling out of one of the annex buildings near the command bunker, right on the path to the landing pad. They held rifles and what looked like some sort of grenade launcher, though they plainly didn't expect the Stormhounds to be quite so close by, judging by the startled looks on most of their faces. They wore no appreciable armor, being well supplied with Red pills, unlike most USN forces, and a single second long blurt from Glory's minicannon was enough to turn them all into shredded piles of bloody pulp. Nobody flinched or protested, the common, unspoken consensus being that anyone who worked at this facility probably deserved to be shot without warning or mercy, especially if they were armed.

However, not everything was going to be easy street, as several other squads of RI troops exited the main bunker complex itself, and began setting up sandbag emplacements in front of the armored doors leading into the bunker, with crew served weapons to match... what looked like some sort of multiple rocket launcher and some sort of light autocannon. With the Orb Marines clearing out the various annex buildings around the landing pad, and keeping their rear flanks clean, and the phase shift armored drop shuttle blocking line of sight from the primary defense turrets, there was no choice but for the eight of them to attempt a frontal assault, especially before the heavy weapons could get fully set up and turn the area in front of the bunker gate into a killing zone!

Reaching the entryway where the squad of RI troops had rushed out of without checking for possible enemy forces, the four Stormhounds tucked themselves into what scant cover the area offered, while their four auxiliaries busied themselves salvaging what gear they could from the masticated remains of the enemy squad. Ramierez did so enjoy working with those who were professional enough to admit they weren't the experts in this kind of situation. Athrun and Yzak might have more front line combat experience than he did... maybe... but neither of them was specialized in infantry warfare, so they deferred to him as a matter of course. Cagalli was technically in command, but it was more a strategic thing. She set the goals and Ramierez was in charge of accomplishing them. Glory outranked him, but support troops always deferred to recon or grunt troops when it came to command. Scavenging three workable linear rifles and ammunition for the use of Athrun, Katie and Yzak, they gave most of their pistol ammunition to Cagalli, and the salvaged grenade launcher to Ramierez himself, giving their impromptu squad some greater ranged punch.

With Raven and Glory situated in positions where their arcs of fire could overlap, Ramierez detailed Cagalli and Katie to guard the heavy weapon troopers and provide sniper fire, while he and Kurtz, backed up by the Yzak-Athrun team, advanced on the Reclaimer positions and tried to get to a point where he could drop a few grenades behind the line of sandbags. Fairly basic tactics, but complicating matters was the openness of the ground between the starting position and the enemy emplacements. There wasn't much in the way of cover, and even less that would be worth a damn in stopping a linear round, much less a rocket! Basically it boiled down to, they had to suppress the enemy and destroy their positions BEFORE they got their heavy support emplaced, or they were well and truly fucked. The Orb Marines were tied down in room clearance operations, so they'd not be around to provide backup for at least another five minutes or so, and the air dropped reinforcements were also about a minute out at the closest. Too long to wait. They had to do it now, and they had to do it alone.

However, before they could even really get started on their fire and advancement pattern, a third party factor became involved. A buzzing shriek, like the sound of an impossibly large grasshopper taking flight, echoed from overhead, as the strangest darned contraption Ramierez had ever laid eyes on hurtled down out of the misty sky and landed with a bounce and a jounce, midway between his position and the bunker entrance. At first glance, he really thought it was some kind of strange Edenite animal, just because of its four legs and arrowhead shaped body. But then his helmet optics picked up the swiveling weapon systems mounted to either side of the main hull, and the cooling thrusters of powerful jump jets mounted to its underside, and he realized it was actually some kind of new Eddie vehicle! The Cicada straightened up to its normal five meter height, giving it a commanding view of the surrounding area, as it's crew recovered from their slightly overlong jump flight.

Tracer fire from the RI position by the doorway "spanged" and "pinged" off the side and rear flank of the angular vehicle's hull. This caused it to spin with surprising grace, slender legs moving like a cartographer's calipers, putting its front glacis armor in the path of the incoming small arms fire, as the Cicada's weapon systems... a dual mounted .50 caliber machine gun on the left side, and a 30mm linear cannon on the right... oriented upon the source of the threat. A moment later and the RI positions were shredded by a thunderous hail of heavy machinegun rounds and ripped fully asunder when a 30mm shell from the linear cannon struck and touched off the stacked rocket ammunition meant for the multiple tube launcher that was almost set up. The explosion sent a column of fire and smoke almost a dozen meters into the air, the shockwave sending the Stormhounds and their charges staggering backwards as clouds of dust and debris began to sweep past them.

The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend was a lesson learned by all Stormhounds during training, and this vehicle was plainly, by its construction, an Eddie war machine, so Raven and Glory did not hesitate in the slightest to open fire upon it, even though it had done them the favor of obliterating the RI defense squads. Especially because its back was currently turned their way, and almost all vehicles were more lightly armored on their rear flanks. The Shrike's torrent of 5mm bullets was largely deflected away in a spray of zinging orange tracer sparks, unable to find solid purchase on the thick Borealite plating of the Cicada. On the other hand, the heavier 13mm mercury tipped rounds from the Warhawk slammed into the Cicada's hindquarters like a deluge of sledgehammers, and the odd looking tank skittered forward as if goosed! Cracks and divots began appearing in its rear glacis plating, before the pilot managed to twist his hull out of the line of fire.

At least for a moment, and then Raven re-acquired the target, and sent one of her three inch anti-armor micro-rockets slamming into the front of the Cicada, right below the faint outline of the cockpit hatch. The angled plating deflected the rocket's course slightly, and though a large chunk of Borealite plating was blasted from the front armor glacis, the rocket failed to penetrate, and certainly didn't kill the vehicle! Other buzzing shrieks overhead announced the imminent arrival of more of the ungainly looking tanks, but the Stormhounds were rather more worried about the one in front of them, as it began walking its twin .50 caliber machinegun's fire towards their rather too exposed position, with the 30mm linear cannon still pointed back towards the bunker entrance.

A thin green plasma bolt from Kurtz's rifle streaked out and smacked the Cicada right on the same spot that Raven's rocket had struck, but failed to do more than make the plating smoulder a bit. A two round burst from Katie, using a looted 5mm Cutlass assault rifle, struck one of the knee joints of the Cicada's left front leg. This forced the machine to break off its attack, favoring the damaged leg as it redistributed its weight to the other three limbs and granted them a few more precious seconds to withdraw. Ramierez ordered everyone into the annex building behind them, which would at least grant them some visual cover from the war machine and give them a time to plan out a strategy to deal with it!

The screech of treads revolving through dirt echoed around the area as RI fast response teams reached the area, riding in Chariot APC's, which had been retired in droves from front line service now that the Gladiator IFV production lines were in full operation. Three APC's roared into view, spitting a lot of suppression fire from the 20mm autocannons mounted on their front turrets, but it did do a pretty good job of drawing the Cicada's attention away from the withdrawing Stormhounds, as they pounded up the interior stairwells of the annex building. A few well placed HE grenades blew out large chunks of wall, giving them windows and firing positions without exposing them too much, plus a slightly elevated viewpoint for a better tactical understanding of the situation.

The Cicada was in the process of being cornered by the three APC's, and soon came under even more fire as Ramierez ordered the Stormhound drop shuttle away for the time being, not wanting their best ticket out to be potentially destroyed or damaged in the crossfire. This freed up the wall emplacements to add their firepower against the Eddie recon tank as well, and it soon began to look quite hard pressed, skittering back and forth to present a difficult target, but still favoring the leg Katie's incredible shooting had damaged. However, the Eddie machine soon had support of its own, as a Cicada that had landed on the roof of the very building the Stormhounds had taken cover in opened fire from the superior vantage, firing paired bolts of bright green plasma energy from the two 45mm beam cannons that were its weapons, one per side.

APC armor, proof against the drumming hail of .50 caliber bullets from the first Cicada, peeled open like wet cardboard under the caress of the beam cannons, and two of the Chariots were blown apart before they even realized they were under attack. Simultaneously, a third Cicada scaled the outer defense wall of the camp and launched a VTP missile from the three tube launcher on its right side, which streaked across a fifty meter gap in a lance of fire and blew the heavy linear cannon defense emplacement on the wall into so much armor scrap! The fireball blossomed like a flower before sucking back into itself as a small mushroom cloud of black smoke drifted into the sky. The third Cicada swayed back and forth on the wall top, its other weapon, a rocket propelled mortar, coughing several times as it launched explosive shells down at other targets beyond the Stormhound's line of sight.

A much louder grinding of tracks heralded the belated arrival of a Viking class Main Battle Tank, armed with the standard 125mm linear cannon turret and a bulldozer blade on the front for clearing mines and low obstructions, the boom of its main gun's first shot making those without helmets or ear protectors wince and clutch the sides of their heads as the overpressure wave arrived. The fire support Cicada on the wall top never knew what happened, its hull plucked away from the top of its legs in an instant of fire and ruin as the heavy linear cannon shell struck dead on, leaving all four legs to topple individually, like split straws. The Cicada on top of the building opened up vengefully with both beam cannons, but the Viking's armor had anti-beam coating, and the bright green bolts splattered with little damaging effect as they struck the MBT's front and sides.

"OH SHIT!" Kurtz called, as they all saw the Viking's turret spin their way, big gun elevating to try and take a shot at the vehicle on the roof above them. "Everybody get down!" Kurtz yelled, knowing that they could all be obliterated in an instant, if the shell happened to shoot low, or even if it was a perfect shot, depending on if the Eddie machine blew up or not!

Before the tank could fire though, a silvery flash glinted in the wan morning sunlight, a line of glimmery refraction passing faster than the eye could track, cleanly bisecting the Viking's turret and emerging from the other side without hardly slowing before disappearing into the distance. A long, incredulous second passed, and the tank did not fire, seemingly frozen in place, both commander and gunner slain by the QC harpoon. With a scream of woe, the driver kicked his machine into gear, attempting to back away and find the enemy that had sniped him, but it was too late.

A pair of VTP missiles shot into view, fired in a low arc over the wall, screaming down at the struggling Viking from above. The anti-missile auto shotcannons mounted on the tank's upper hull whirred into motion, but their clouds of tungsten ball bearings were of no use against the PS armored VTP missiles, and both warheads struck cleanly, at almost ninety degree angles, piercing through the tank's hull and turret and detonating their shaped charges within. The powerful explosions blew the entire tank into shredded smithereens of half melted frag! Moments later, two huge chunks of wall blew out as howling reddish-pink flares of light smashed through them with thunderous detonations, as the Tarantula's behind the wall opened up with their Ion Disintegrators, just prior to reaching the wall itself, crashing into it and knocking it down in a avalanche of rubble and dust clouds.

Plowing forward through the crumbling wall, the massive Tarantula walkers, each as big as a Titan superheavy tank, though only massing about two-thirds as much because of the Borealite construction, opened up with their own weapon systems as well, in an effort to pin down any enemy forces that might be lying in wait to attempt an ambush. The leading Tarantula, which bore the Deathbringer, the Howling Tempest, and their squad, was equipped with six double mounted .50 caliber machine guns, three per side of the hull, for maximum infantry support firepower. This Tarantula raced forward, speed slowly decreasing with each stride as hinged hatches opened up in the bottom of its rear hull. Sturdy drop lines unspooled from these hatches, allowing the waiting troops within the assault compartment to leap out while the hull was still several meters in the air, gliding down to a running landing as the Tarantula continued to walk forward, weapon systems hunting for any sign of threats.

Hanging back slightly, the second Tarantula re-ignited its Positron dome shield, sheathing the entire walker in bright pink energy fields, covering down to slightly over a meter from the ground on all sides, an umbrella of annihilating protection. This Tarantula, holding Vaul and his support squad, was armed with three 5mm FRALA's as its secondary weapons, mounted 2 to the left side and one on the right. This weapon selection allowed the Tarantula to engage heavily armored targets with great efficieny, and without even having to drop its own Positron shielding in the process, as both the FRALA's and the main Ion Disintegrator turret were easily capable of shooting out through the shield effect with no loss in weapon power. Slowing to a watchful halt atop the landing platform, this Tarantula crouched down to barely a meter and a half from ground level to disgorge its own troops, as their weapon systems were delicate and could even be dangerous if jarred or damaged during an unfortunate fall during an assault deployment.

"Nobody do ANYTHING..." Ramierez ordered in a near whisper, as they watched the near twenty Eddies form up after deploying from their transports. Though technically in a good position to deal with a clustered group of enemy infantry, being elevated and concealed with several heavy weapons, the infantry weren't the problem, it was the giant fucking walking-tanks that had Ramierex concerned. A third walker varient, midway in size between the colossal assault transports and the four legged recon models, skittered into the camp across the rubble of the demolished wall. While the recon walkers looked ungainly, and the transports were just massive, this type of walking tank managed to look both agile and solid without detracting from either. It had a long barreled cannon slung low and tight across its undercarriage, and four triple tubed missile launchers on the sides of its hull, from which two tubes still lightly smoked from firing the missiles that took out the Viking. This combat tank took up position where it could watch both Tarantula's, as well as a good portion of the rest of the camp, plainly assigned a guard or escort role.

Ramierez recognized two of the Eddies immediately, the two officers of the assault squad. Well, he recognized their armor anyway, as full plate mail made entirely from overlapping skull images was fairly distinctive, and the howling faces in a sea of clouds that graced the armor of the smaller man was one that had been seen several times in the Asian theatre as well. The first man, a giant almost as big as Glory, was the Deathbringer, one of the top four Praetorians, while the other guy was known as the Howling Tempest. The Deathbringer was armed with a massive two handed mono-sword, and had an automated flechette cannon perched on one gigantic shoulder, while the Howling Tempest bore a two handed mono-falchion and two distinctive "sawed off" linear shotguns in hip holsters. Both had reputations as extremely tough customers, especially in close quarters assault combat, and neither were known for their sense of mercy or fair play.

Six of eight Custodians of the assault team, looking to be members of Legio Spider Wolf by the arachnid engravings upon their bulky armor, were armed with an unfamiliar type of rifle, about fifty percent bigger than the standard Eddie longarm, with a fat barrel and multiple power lines running to large, back mounted energy storage units. Legio Spider Wolf was known to favor a heavy mechanized infantry combat approach to warfare, with a high ratio of vehicles amongst their forces compared to other Eddie line units, relying on fast medium to heavy armor units to break an enemy's line and then follow up with close range attacks by transported infantry forces to rout the enemy. As such, the soldiers of the unit favored one handed close combat weapons such as axes, maces and small swords, weapons that were easily swung in tight quarters. The final two Custodians of the squad carried only their melee weapons, their arms and hands filled with heavy looking metal frameworks, like tower shields with all the plating removed from the frame, while heavy backpack generators hunched on their shoulders.

There was a third Praetorian, his oversized suit of full plate mail making him almost as big as the Deathbringer, in command of the support team. Ramierez was not familiar with the markings of flaming hammers and anvils adorning the armor, so he logged the data in his helmet databank, and had both Kurtz and Glory do the same. Gathering information on the enemy whenever possible was a vital tool of warfare. An informed soldier was a deadly soldier, and an uninformed soldier was very often a dead soldier! This Praetorian acted with slow and purposeful movements, almost plodding though extremely fluid, his armor's crudity only on the surface, its pieces so well constructed and interlocked that they seemed to not affect his agility and dexterity, despite the huge size of the gauntlets and the apparent thickness of the armor's plates.

The unknown Praetorian was armed with some sort of heavy duty gatling cannon, and had what looked like a two handed warhammer sheathed across his upper back. His unit was evenly split between long and slender barreled rifles fitted with lots of spokes and spikes and insulating systems running down the barrels; and specially armored troops holding what looked like streamlined flamethrowers, with dozens of small fan systems built into their armor and the muzzle of the weapon, all pointing forward, their purpose beyond discernment at this stage. However, the Stormhounds soon got more than an eyeful of the new Eddie weapon systems, as an organized taskforce of determined RI troops suddenly assaulted the Edenites from both sides at once. Leading the task force was a pair of Striker type Mobile Suits, with 4 Vikings backing them up, and nearly two companies of APC mounted infantry, for a total of almost two hundred soldiers, with the vehicles and infantry coming from the left, and the Mobile Suits from the right. One hell of a battle was starting up, and the Orb forces were caught right in the middle of it!

xxxx

On the other end of the Rehabilitation Camp, Mu applied braking thrust to take the Flarehawk out of its steep dive, his tactical systems immediately bringing him up to date on the sudden cluster-fuck the battle for the fate of the camp had become. Eddie war machines of a type never before recorded in his logs were making a determined assault against a loosely organized group of RI vehicles, infantry forces, Mobile Suits and defensive emplacements on this northern wall section. Looking like nothing so much as large ants or spiders from his top down perspective, the Eddie walking tanks were wreaking havoc amongst the RI forces who possessed equipment fairly dated by the standards of the war's front line. Even as Mu approached, one of the RI Strikers went down hard, one knee compromised by a 120mm hole drilled right through the joint by a QC harpoon fired by one of the larger walking tank's underbelly cannon, before a VTP missile launched from a different tank blew the stumbling machine's torso to smoldering ruin, throwing the whole Mobile Suit back like a ragdoll, its remaining bulk taking down a large section of compound wall as it fell.

Flicking his Mobile Armor to one side brought Mu out of the line of fire of a FRALA system mounted on one of the Eddie tanks, barely half a second before it opened fire and carved a blue-white line through the airspace the Flarehawk had previously occupied, a reaction that had occurred almost without conscious recognition on his part. He might not be as powerful a Newtype as most of the Eddies, but Mu had a hell of a lot more experience trusting his instincts in combat than they did, and though he had only recently figured out the reasoning behind his sudden urges in combat, that just made him all the more determined to use them to his advantage and pay heed to them! It galled him to have to open fire on troops that were nominally on the same side as him, but Mu had seen those pictures from Camp 1 as well, so he stuffed his conscience down into a deep, dark hole and brought up his weapon's displays.

High explosive rockets screamed like vengeful ghosts as they hurtled from his quadruplet of underslung wing launchers, a rippling carpet of orange flame and black smoke rising from the ground as Mu tracked his point of aim across both the attacking walkers and the bunkered down positions of the RI. He saw one of the agile, four legged walkers go down hard as a half dozen 85mm rockets landed on its hull almost in concert, smashing it like a bug beneath a heel. Similarly, a hull down Viking got pasted by dozens of rockets, which left only a crumpled, blazing wreck in their wake once the mushrooming smoke clouds dissipated. However, the rocket barrage was merely his calling card, and even as the launcher auto-loaders clanked and ratcheted the next salvo of unguided missiles into place, Mu was already hunting for targets with his direct fire weapon systems.

The six legged walkers were made of much sterner stuff than their more agile counterparts, and had weathered the rocket barrage with only chips and cracks in their armor, and a dragging leg here or there. This was less of a handicap for them than it was for the Cicada's, the Widowmakers were fully capable of maintaining combat movement on only four legs, so they could afford to lose up to two. They tried canting their hulls back to put the Flarehawk into line of effect for the underbelly QC harpoon launchers, but Mu was having none of it, using the gunships VTOL maneuverability to slide backwards and sideways, staying always to the side and rear of the Eddie tanks when possible. He locked on to two of the Widowmakers, and tasked his underbelly turrets... each housing a 120mm gatling cannon... to engage until they were destroyed or the Flarehawk moved out of range.

That was one of the keys to managing the Flarehawk's vast array of weapons, using the advanced targeting computers to designate targets and letting the automated systems take care of the nitty-gritty, while Mu focused on just a few, trickier weapon systems, and in keeping the craft out of harms way as much as possible. The Flarehawk was armored like a tank, and was designed to take a beating... it was easily as tough as a Mobile Suit! But the best defense of all was to not get hit in the first place! Mu triggered the underbelly mounted 350mm anti-armor shotcannon, blowing a RI Striker that thought Mu was more distracted than he was back through the compound wall, its chest in flames, its head atomized by one of the shaped charges. Angling the diamond shaped hull of his Mobile Armor groundward, Mu strobed a few blasts from his dorsal turrets... each a 55cm High Energy Beam Cannon... at the RI positions, melting wall turrets like wax sculptures and baking the muddy ground in calcified glass as the beams passed overhead.

As if in unspoken accord, both RI and Eddie forces turned the focus of their attention on the Flarehawk, recognizing Mu and his Mobile Armor as the greater threat to both parties. Mu twisted and side-shifted as best he could, but there was no way he could avoid all the incoming fire, and the Flarehawk's heavy frame began to shudder and jerk as it's reinforced hull, covered with dark aqua Citadel Scales, took hit after hit from linear cannons and beam rifles. Mu didn't let those bother him so much... he wouldn't forget about them, but they weren't the chief threat. That distincion belonged to the Eddie QC harpoons, and to the VTP missiles both sides were now sending his way. The Firebird could, in a straight flight, actually outrun a VTP missile, one of the few piloted vehicles that could. Lacking that option in his current configuration, Mu elected not to rely on his automated CIWS turrets, five in all, to take care of the hunter-killer missiles.

No, the CIWS was fine and good, and could winnow down a hellstorm of regular missiles to little more than a few love taps, but VTP missiles were too fast, too heavily armored and much too deadly to risk trying and failing to take down with CIWS. So Mu launched counter-missiles instead, VTP missiles of his own hurtling from the launch tubes of the Firebird, snuggled into the midsection of the Flarehawk attachment, to intercept the incoming munitions. It was setting a fox to catch a fox, and the only real downside to such a strategy was the possibility of running out of missiles before the enemy did. Mu had 16 VTP's in his launchers. 10 now, after intercepting the first wave of enemy missiles, but he was fairly sure they had more than he did... he didn't have time to make a real count. A vibrant explosion from below and behind him made Mu start for a moment, the Flarehawk jittering in unconscious response, as one of his ventral turrets made a kill, the Widowmaker's armor finally crumbling under the relentless stream of 120mm cannon shells, the spider-like tank broken almost in half down the middle.

Even as he registered the kill though, Mu felt a faint burning sensation spread through his left side, a psycho-somatic response to the craft taking damage, as another Widowmaker finally got him lined up in its sights properly, and sent a QC spear hurtling into the left ling of the Flarehawk. At such close range, the momentum of the QC harpoon was incredible, and it punched right through the energy fields of the Citadel Scales like they weren't even there, fountains of golden sparks erupting from the disrupted scales on both sides of the wing, the harpoon having punched entirely through the Mobile Armor! Had it been an explosive round, things could have gotten very unpleasant for Mu, as the shot had slammed right through one of the ammo storage chambers for the 85mm rocket launchers on that wing, which were still mostly full. But QC rounds were almost entirely inert, and though he'd lost the ability to replenish ammo in his two portside rocket systems, there was no danger of subsequent internal explosions.

An instant later and the reloaded anti-armor shotcannon blew the offending Widowmaker away, legs flipping through the air like flaming twigs as the entire torso of the tank ceased to exist in a roiling fireball... clearly the Eddie tank's own ammunition supplies for its linear cannon secondary weapons had been touched off, precisely the fate the Flarehawk had narrowly avoided! The phantom ringing of lock on alerts in his ears... even hooked up to a NIC system, Mu had the tendency to envision himself as seated in a standard cockpit, like in his old Zero... warned him of another wave of VTP missiles headed his way, and he tasked his own launchers to fire in return. It would be nice to hang onto a missile or two, in case there was an Eddie MS in the area, but he wasn't so set on that plan that he'd chance getting blown out of the sky by an enemy missile first!

Renewed incoming firepower from the RI lines heralded the arrival of a Legacy, the top end weapon of the Reclaimers, based strongly upon the old Freedom chassis that the Kid had made justly famous for its overwhelming firepower and incredible agility. The boxy missile launchers mounted on either hip of the Legacy coughed smoke and flame, a pair of contrails streaking out to either side of the Mobile Suit before beginning a slow curve back in towards the Flarehawk. The Flanker missiles were strongly based upon the VTP's, but were slower and less armored, in exchange for packing even more of a kick, relying on their unconventional flight path and delayed time-to-target to score kills while the enemy was still tied up with the Legacy itself.

It was a good idea, but Mu quickly set the enemy's best laid plans to naught, as he cycled up the Pandemonium class ECM device the Flarehawk was equipped with. It was pretty much identical to the system put on the Warmaster back in the day, Morganroete had been able to extend the safe operating time somewhat, but inevitably the system would go out of control if allowed to operate for prolonged periods, and would start jamming everyone, allies and enemies alike. The new safe time limit was about fifteen minutes without a significant cooldown, and Mu made sure to watch the timer closely, as the Stormhound PUMA's would likely be more easily affected by the system than a more heavily shielded warship or Gundam would be.

Shooting off a few EMP flares... basically just large EMP type grenades attached to canisters that also dispensed chaff and thermal flares... to seal the deal, Mu watched as the firing accuracy of all enemy units on the battlefield suddenly experienced a drastic drop, all four fired Flanker missiles suddenly going haywire as they lost their target, one flying off into the distance, while the other three touched down at random on the ground, well wide of the main fight. The crackling blue-red plasma beam of a hyper-impulse cannon, the rifle weapon of the Legacy, missed the Flarehawk by a good six meters. However, the two shoulder mounted 105mm beam cannons were dead on... until Mu canted his nose skywards, allowing the Geischmedig-Panzer shields mounted on the Gunship's underbelly to deflect the emerald beams groundward, one of them impacting on a Cicada! The four legged light tank's hull burst into flames, having already been singed from several previous plasma blasts, and the walker went crazy, scuttling about like an ant on a hot plate, as its crew were cooked alive inside their own armor!

Discarding its rifle, obviously not trusting his ranged weapon's accuracy while under the influence of the Pandemonium, the Legacy's pilot took a chance in hurling his machine forward, into and through a volley of 85mm rockets from the Flarehawk's portside launchers, which emptied them, trusting to his Phase Shift armor to weather the hits. Which it did, but the repeated impacts nonetheless bounced the pilot around in his cockpit something fierce, and briefly occluded his sensors with explosions, so that when he emerged from the other side of the smoke cloud, the Flarehawk wasn't quite where he had thought it would be, so his beam saber slice, and stab with the mono-chainsaw pop-out blade in the tip of his shield both went a good five meters wide. Triggering his shotcannon at point blank range, Mu rocked the Legacy's whole world, the semi-Gundam's feet actually leaving the ground for a moment as it catapulted backwards and landed hard on its rear, limbs whiplashing hard enough to send both shield and saber clattering from its grip.

His foe open and stunned before him, Mu opened up with the nose-cone weapons of the Firebird, four 57mm gatling beam cannons. A single second burst was more than enough, almost a hundred beam blasts striking the Legacy in that short period, all but vaporizing the Mobile Suit from knees to chin! There wasn't even an explosion, it was like the Legacy had merely been a plastic model, to which he'd applied a blowtorch flame! _Sorry, sport... but you can't just rely on Phase Shift. It's damned handy, but you can't discount pure physical impact._ Mu chided the defeated enemy posthumously. He glanced at his screens, seeing that both the Eddie attackers and RI defender's had been cut more or less in half by his intervention, but still neither side showed any real signs of accepting defeat. It seemed like he had a little more work to do yet, before he could head over to where the Queen was. Mu hoped the PUMA's were having an easier time of things than he was...

xxxx

"Why do I feel like the guy who brought a pistol to a goddamn tank fight?" Alkire grumbled, as he did his best to tuck his Hellhound into the scant cover of some of the tumbled wall remnants. He and his three comrades had reached the ground barely twenty seconds prior, but had found themselves dropped right into the middle of a hellstorm, and had spent most of the time since scrambling for cover and trying to figure out who they hell they should even be shooting at! Switching his comm system back on, moment of griping over with, Alkire poked the very tips of his humanoid tank's ears over the edge of the rubble, which allowed his sensors to grab a bit more data while keeping him more or less safe. "Corporal, I hate to say this, but I think you might need to come up with another source of backup... we're kinda pinned down out here..."

"Roger that, Colonel." Ramierez's voice came back slightly laced with static. Little surprise, given how many conflicting sources of jamming and ECM were in operation on the battlefield. Commander la Flaga had even kicked on his Pandemonium system a little while back, which spoke volumes to Alkire about how nasty things were on that side of the compound as well. "If this base follows standard USN construction doctrine, there should be emergency escape tunnels built into the foundation leading back to the main bunker. We'll find those, and proceed to cut the head off the snake, you guys keep the enemy busy till we get back."

"Keep them busy, aye..." Alkire replied doubtfully, eyeing the fracas between the RI and Eddie forces he was loitering at the edge of. One of the eight legged transport walkers... he'd watched real time images of their capabilities while still free-falling, courtesy of a link to Ramierez and Kurtz's helmet sensors... was backed up right over the main entrance to the RI command bunker, its obscene number of twinned .50 caliber machine guns hosing down the bunker's aboveground structure with streams of bullets whenever there was even a hint of motion behind the armored windows or headed towards the roof, while the squad it had disgorged, which included two Pratorians, worked at gaining ingress to the bunker itself, through the sealed blast doors. The Eddies were blasting at the meter thick portals with some new kind of supercharged beam rifle, dark red plasma bolts slamming with explosive effect into the rolled armor plate at the rate of several per second, and already the blast doors were beginning to glow cherry red under the abuse.

Meanwhile the second squad of Eddies was embroiled in supporting their own Tarantula, which was taking fire from two Strikers and four Vikings, plus over a dozen Chariots and more dismounted infantry that Alkire could quickly count. However the assault walker was weathering the storm easily, as it was almost entirely protected by the bright pink dome of its Positron shield, which sparked and flashed as it gobbled up energy blasts and physical munitions with equal ease and aplomb. And when it in turn lashed out with its FRALA turrets or Ion Disintegrator, which it could do unhindered through its own shield because of the nature of those weapons, there was almost always some RI asset that was reduced to wrack and ruin. However it wasn't the walker that drew most of Alkire's attention, as he'd seen most of those technologies before, if not quite in that precise combination.

His eyes were more glued upon the second Eddie squad, and the unknown Praetorian that led them. A bright flash caused his sensors to automatically polarize, and Alkire muttered a curse under his breath as he watched one of those Eddie's aim and fire his spindly looking energy rifle, one of the ones with the spiky barrels. The deceptively fragile looking weapons hurled bolts of purple-white lightning, static electricity buildup shooting blue and white sparks from the tips of the barrel spokes for several seconds after discharge. It was a goddamned handheld Mjolnir system! And though it lacked a great deal of the punch of the larger systems mounted on vehicles and Mobile Suits, it's power was still far and above greater than any other handheld energy weapon system Alkire had ever seen... even the squad level hyper-impulse cannons would have a hard time matching up to these babies!

The particle bolt from this particular discharge struck a parked Chariot square on the front glacis, and melted the entire front section of the APC to glowing slag in the instant before the kinetic impact hurled the smoking remnants end over end through the air, like a toy kicked by a petulant toddler! Heat flash from the point of impact turned the sodden ground nearby into cracked and baked mud-brick, melting the faceplates of half a squad of RI troopers that had been unlucky enough to be too close, smothering them in molten plexi-glass. Alkire considered the combination 55mm linear cannon and 80mm grenade launcher his Hellhound toted as a primary weapon, wondering if he could have inflicted such damage with it. Maybe if he'd hit the ammo magazine for the Chariot's 20mm cannon with a grenade round, but it wouldn't have been a sure thing by any means!

_Well, enough sitting on my ass._ Alkire chided himself. Maybe they'd be able to salvage some of the Eddie weapons after they won the battle, and they weren't going to win if all he did was sneak around the edges of the fight and assess the situation. The RI had the numbers, but the Eddies were winning, so they were the bigger threat for the time being. Checking his tactical overlay, he updated himself on the positions of his three comrades. Raine was working her way into position in the burned out husk of one of the wall top defense turrets, where low burning fires and residual smoke would help mask her Hellhound from passive sensor sweeps. Meanwhile, Carome and Fish were sticking together, and trying to work around the edge of a couple annex buildings, where the Orb marines were entrenched in some nasty room to room fighting with some dogged RI fanatics who refused to accept they were outgunned and outmatched.

"Raine, I want you to focus on the six legged one for the time being. See if you can't limit its mobility, if you can't take it out completely." Alkire ordered his wife, marking the smaller tank that was guarding the flanks of the larger, shielded walker, its side mounted missile tubes serving as potent protection against any airborne reinforcements or other late arriving troops. As long as that thing was active in the area, even if Mu got done pacifying his section of the battleground, it would be too dangerous for the Flarehawk to come support them, so it had to be taken out! "Carome, Fish, see if you can't stop them from getting into the bunker. Try and get in close if you can, if you can get beneath its legs, that one shouldn't be able to turn its guns on you. As for me, I'll keep their infantry off your necks, and potshot where I can. If the RI gets in your way, you can blast em, but don't go looking for trouble just yet... they'll probably fold once we have Seiran in hand, so we can save em till later."

Orders given, Alkire did not hesitate to leap into immediate action, rolling out from behind his scant cover and bursting into a sprint, jump-jet thrusters burning at low intensity to add even more speed to his stride, so that he more than half floated. The Hellhound's feet were equipped with Scale-motors for use on loose terrain such as sand or mud, but they weren't as fast as an all out sprint, and right now Alkire needed speed more than agility and stability. Opening up with the two .50 caliber machineguns mounted in the collarbone, Alkire strafed a shocked squad of RI troops as he ran up behind them while they were deploying from their Chariot and trying to set up a portable missile launcher, the heavy bullets cutting right through their Survivor pattern armor, and hurling the bodies around like ragdolls. An 80mm grenade fired through the open deployment hatch of the Chariot caused the APC to shudder and vent fire and smoke from all its seams, but it still wasn't near as spectacular a detonation as the Eddie particle rifle had achieved.

Firing several times with the 55mm linear rifle, more or less in the direction of the Eddie support squad, Alkire quickly hurled himself prone behind the killed Chariot, using its thermal signature to mask his own as he belly crawled around to the opposite side of it. And none too soon, because a mauve particle beam lanced past where he'd fired his triplicate of harrassing shots from, at about human chest level, causing heat sensors to spike in warning on the left side of his Hellhound, the camouflage paint coating on that side singeing and turning reddish-brown, like a fresh scab. Water from the marshy ground made high pitched screaming noises as it was instantly superheated to steam, the ground left dry and cracked along a two meter wide swath in the wake of the beam. Combined with the piercing thundercrack of the weapon's discharge, the sonic effects of the weapon were quite intimidating, even if it hadn't struck him at all!

The particle rifles were not quick firing, just like the Mjolnir's they were based upon, and Alkire knew that unless more than one of them had turned his way, doubtful in the chaos of the battle, he would have several more seconds before the enemy could fire again. Opting to do the unexpected anyway, he actived the scale systems in his legs and body-surfed the Hellhound forward across the ground, mud and muck splashing away from his torso and hound like head as he squirted along the ground like a off road ATV. It was hard to aim while mud-surfing, especially as the ground was uneven and kept jostling his arms, even more than the Hellhound's stabilizers could correct for, but Alkire managed to lay down a barrage of grenades and linear shells that had the Eddie squad scattering for cover. Flexing his mechanical body, Alkire tucked a shoulder down into the ground, digging in and letting his momentum roll the Hellhound into a forward somersault, allowing him to kip up to his feet and keep running with almost no loss in momentum.

He had the unknown Praetorian right in his sights, and Alkire cut loose with his .50 caliber CIWS guns from about thirty meters distance. The Eddie elite turned to face the stream of heavy bullets, a indentation on the center of his breastplate glowing with faint aqua light before a no-shit Citadel Shield formed about two feet in front of the Praetorian's body, completely covering his frontal arc! Golden sparks cascaded from the energy barrier as the machinegun rounds struck it, but the barrier hardly seemed to warp at all under the fusilade. Alkire would have liked to test the shield with a linear round or better yet a grenade, but his threat sensors were screaming at him, and he had to throw himself into another mud-surfing dive to avoid getting chopped in half by one of the Tarantula's FRALA turrets in the next instant!

Cutting the scale system, Alkire bled his momentum through ground friction and rolled sideways to gain his feet, not wanting to become predictable. He got up just in time to see a beautiful shot from Raine... not that his wife ever made any other kind of shot... that sent a 75mm linear sniper cannon round through the top joint of the Widowmaker's left front leg, actually severing the bottom four fifths of the limb cleanly in a spray of wood chips and mechanical fragments. The walking tank tottered for a moment, as that leg had been in the process of moving, but to Alkire's disappointment, it failed to falter or fall. The Widowmaker tried to backtrack Raine, but got slammed side on by a 125mm linear round from a Viking in the next instant, the entire tank forced to scuttle three meters to the right in order to remain upright, as it spun to face a more immediate and potentially more deadly threat.

Rushing forward, the Widowmaker extended the 2 meter mono-blade attached to the bottom of its right front leg, rearing the limb up and then stabbing downward as precisely as a tailor's needle, puncturing the front glacis of the Viking right above the driver's compartment, executing her in her seat and rendering the Viking's attempts to maneuver away stillborn. The leg was positioned in such a way that the long barreled linear cannon was forced out of alignment with the Widowmaker, the retaliatory shot fired by reflex shooting wide by less than half a meter to the right. The Viking's turret mechanisms clanked as the commander began swinging the turret around counter clockwise to avoid the blocking limb, but before the tank could complete the rotation, 120mm QC harpoon launcher spoke its sibilant message, and hurled a gleaming crystal shard through the Viking's turret like it was made of mist.

Another 75mm round from Raine slammed into the top of the Widowmaker's hull, sending splinters flying, but the round failed to penetrate, and merely seemed to remind the Widowmaker that it had other attackers to worry about. Altering his own priorities, Alkire raced away from the Praetorian and the Tarantula, slinging his rifle and palming one of the blocky variable combat explosive charges from his Hellhound's waist. The VCE was basically a really big grenade, and Alkire switched it to command detonation mode as he hurled it in a high arc towards the damaged walker. Inert and unguided, the VCE spun end over end and just barely missed the Widowmaker's starboard side hull, undetected by the tank until it was too late, when Alkrie sent the detonation signal. A raging sphere of white hot plasma ignited just a meter below the Widowmaker's starboard hull, blackening the Borealite armor... and setting off two VTP warheads sitting in their tubes awaiting launch!

This was a MUCH more satisfying explosion than the spark of the VCE, as pretty much the entire right side of the Widowmaker seemed to turn to ash and flaming splinters in an instant, all three legs blowing apart as the remnant's of the tank's hull cartwheeled sideways for almost ten meters before coming to a halt, upside down and blazing merrily. At the moment of the Widowmaker's death, Alkire noticed both Tarantula's seemed to stumble and twitch slightly, obviously afflicted with psy-shock, but they seemed to ride it out fairly quickly... plainly they were veterans, and fairly inured to suffering the death echoes of their comrades. A part of him wondered if he'd caused his daughter and son-in-law to suffer thusly as well, but he couldn't afford time to worry about that, as the death of its escort had seriously pissed off the big Tarantula that had been engaging the RI Strikers primarily up till then.

Finishing one Striker off with a Ion Disintegrator shot that blew it clean in half, the Tarantula turned its main gun in Alkire's direction, forcing him to stay on the move, as there was no other defense the Hellhound had that could possibly weather such a powerful attack. The second Striker jumped forward, bodily tackling the Tarantula, or at least attempting to do so, but the two machines were of near equal mass, and the Tarantula far better braced on its eight legs, so it was the Striker that ended up jarred and rebounding from the Positron shield, while the Tarantula was merely pushed a half meter or so backwards through the mud by the blow. Just as the Widowmaker had done to the Viking a few moments earlier, the Tarantula deployed mono-blades from the tips of its four forwardmost limbs, disengaging its Positron dome for a moment as it pounced upon the staggering Striker, uncannily like its biological namesake attacking a bird or lizard. Bladed forelimbs stabbing through thigh and hip and groin, the Tarantula crippled the Striker's legs and dumped the Mobile Suit backwards onto the ground.

Not quite out of the fight yet, the Striker pilot recovered desperately, snatching up the 120mm shotcannon that was his primary ranged weapon, and unloading a shot directly into the "face" of the Tarantula. The heavy duty warship grade Borealite plating was up to the challenge though, and again the eight widely spaced legs helped the Tarantula weather the physical impact without jarring. A blue-white FRALA beam sliced the Striker's gun arm off midway between shoulder and elbow, as the assault transport scuttled forward once more. The Striker pilot hosed down the attacking tank with the heavy duty flamethrower mounted in the palm of his remaining hand, but even with hissing napalm coating its head section, the Tarantula was undeterred, all but pinning the Striker to the ground beneath its bulk as it activated the nano-swarm projecters built into its mandibles.

A dark reddish-purplish cloud billowed forth from the nano-swarm projectors, carefully steered clear of the Tarantula itself by high powered fans, pouring down over the torso and head of the Striker. The dripping napalm fires sent the nanites into a frenzy of activity. This particular colony was a newly created fusion of the utilitarian Red EDEN and the infamous Blue EDEN, called Maroon EDEN. Like Blue, Maroon consumed all sorts of matter and energy to produce more of itself... but only up to a certain predetermined amount. After that point, any extra material was converted to hydrogen gas, which would often combust, providing more heat energy to fuel a more rapid dissolution of a target, along with incidental explosion damage. Maroon EDEN was fairly short lived, with about a five minute active lifespan, but was far more energy efficient and quick acting than Blue was.

In any case, the Striker had been hit with enough Maroon EDEN to entirely dissolve its structure in about thirty seconds, fuelled by the blaze of heat from the napalm, as the Tarantula scurried off to a safer distance once its seige weapon had been successfully deployed, leaving the RI machine to dissolve away like a sugar cube in a cup of hot tea. The Striker wasn't the only thing in the process of being consumed by nanites though, after being scattered by Alkire's reckless assault earlier, several of the Eddie support squad had ended up getting rushed by gung ho squads of RI pioneer troops, wielding flamethrowers, chainsaws, and heavy duty mono-edged brush cutters. These Eddies were armed with "Scourge" type Nano-Swarm projectors, versus the "Blitz" Arc-Pulse Emitters Alkire had envied earlier. Armor mounted fans whirred into operation, preventing any accidental blowback as the Scourge's dispensed their deadly loads in wide clouds the color of old scabs, enveloping the charging pioneers in all consuming nanites against which there was little in the way of practical defenses.

Seeing the nanites eating flesh and steel like it was candy almost triggered a very unpleasant flashback for Alkire, his left leg itching like mad below the knee, where it was all steel prosthetic now, and he made damn sure not to go anywhere NEAR a nanite cloud, even if it meant exposing himself to more traditional dangers. He'd had his dose of shotgun triage from his life, thank you very much! Skirting the edge of the fight, still on the move to prevent the Tarantula's main gun from getting a lock on him, Alkire added his firepower to Raine's as they probed, without much success, at the assault walker, striking its legs and sides quite cleanly, but their weapons just weren't powerful enough to crack the armor. Not in the short term anyway.

Proving that whatever their moral qualities, the RI troops still had some serious guts, a detachment of pioneers piloting MOOSE suits... powered construction exoskeletons used for forest clearing and other combat engineering tasks... loped forwards, waving large circular saws and plasma torches, even as their infantry armored compatriots twisted and dissolved into formless puddles of maroon dust to either side. The MOOSE suits weren't designed for running in, meaning the charge was more like a staggering attempt to not trip and fall flat on their face, but they added several hundred pounds of steel plated mass to the pioneers, giving them considerable momentum. However, when confronted with this onrushing juggernaut line, the unknown Praetorian, the Warsmith, actually stepped forward rather than back.

Bright pink energy suddenly washed over his oversized gauntlets, clinging to the massive fingers like a second skin made of red hot plasma, as Vaul formed fists and launched a piledriver punch right at the centermost MOOSE suit, plasma sheathed fist exploding a swinging circular saw in a spray of molten metal droplets before powering on into and through the chestplate of the exoskeleton, all but ripping the pioneer in half and hurling him backwards in a smoking ruin. Blocking another whirring saw with his other plasma fist, Vaul grabbed the MOOSE's forearm and melted it clean off before a ponderous kick shattered both of the dumpy exoskeleton's legs. Having cleared a bit of space, Vaul disengaged his plasma gauntlets, smoke and steam rising from his armored fingers as he underslung the gatling beam cannon that was his primary ranged weapon and hosed bright green energy bolts in a short arc, gunning down a dozen MOOSE suits in the blink of an eye, their exterior plating no match for a military grade beam weapon.

Rushing in from the back, Alkire stowed his rifle and activated the bright yellow beam saber his Hellhound carried. No doubt the Praetorian sensed him coming, but by the time he turned around, Alkire was already on top of him, the beam saber already swinging. Vaul interposed the gatling gun, trading that for his life, with a deep scorch mark engraved along the pectorals of his seige-grade armor as he stumbled back a step, heavy boots churning in the mud, pink energy flaming to life around his gauntlets once more. Alkire feinted with his sword and rushed with his shield, intending to just run the bastard right over... he might be big and well armored, but the Hellhound was twice his size, and more like fifteen times the mass... but was forced to abort this at the last moment when Vaul's gauntlets burned right through the shield and would have done the same for his torso if he hadn't flinched away.

Ducking away from a roundhouse swing from the Praetorian, aimed at his hips, Alkire swung with the beam saber, and was stunned and disgruntled when Vaul deftly blocked the yellow blade with the back of one fist, the impact as the magnetic fields rebounded from each other sliding the Praetorian two meters sideways through the mud. Alkire opened up with his .50 caliber machineguns again, watching with narrowed eyes as several of the bullets averted themselves from the Praetorian of their own accord... steered aside by TK... but there were too many for the Praetorian to deflect them all, and he was hammered backwards by a dozen sledgehammer blows to his torso and shoulders, his singed armor starting to crack and fragment under the repeated impacts. But then Alkire had to leap away, just barely ahead of an interposing Blitz-gun particle beam that turned the front of his armor soot black and actually set the Praetorian's armor briefly alight, before Vaul smothered the flames by dashing himself facedown in the mud.

High in the sky, Alkire had a birds eye view of Carome and Fish... armed with a dual 30mm gatling cannon and 125mm missile launcher respectively, mounting their own assault on the second Tarantula. They were too late to prevent the Eddie assault squad from entering... the still cooling slag where the blast doors had been were evidence enough of this. But the Stormhounds were doggedly doing their best to take out the Eddie transport anyway, Carome raking the top of the hull with his gatling cannon, trying to distract the crew, while Fish launched all six of his missiles in one rush, aiming for the four legs on the starboard flank of the walker. Unfortunately, the psychic warfare specialist on that Tarantula was a strong telekinetic, and she managed to drag three of the missiles into the ground just before they could strike home, and the power of the other three was only sufficient to damage one of the legs, not disable it entirely.

A half dozen .50 caliber machineguns opened up on Fish simultaneously, while he was still discarding his spent missile launcher and switching to his own beam saber, and the Hellhound unit was forced backwards a step by the sheer volume of bullets striking it, unable to do more than dent and disfigure the armor plating, but doing a damned good job of that. A lucky few dozen bullets blew out the Hellhound's primary sensor cluster, and in the brief moment when the secondary systems activated, Fish was blind. He tried to move, but was only half successful... and even half a hit by an Ion Disintegrator was enough to turn the Hellhound and its pilot into so many stray atomic particles, the PUMA dissolving in a bright flash of light and thunderous explosion that left a deep crater in the ground, and a small mushroom cloud rising from the empty hole.

Alkire had not known Fish very well, in fact he'd barely had any contact with him at all, since he was one of the newest Stormhounds, but all the same, he felt a brief pang of regret as he saw what had happened, and all the moreso because he'd been completely helpless to do anything about it besides watch it happen. That was how war was... sometimes you just got unlucky, no matter how good you were. The chance of the battlefield, and one of the burdens of command. It had been by his order that Fish had been in a position to end up killed after all. Carome was bouncing away, his gatling cannons still spitting streams of orange tracers into the assault walker, but they were just too light to do more than scar the surface of the transport's armor. Had he known they were going to be going up against heavy armor units, Alkire would have loaded out with hyper-impulse cannons and other heavy duty weapons, but he'd expected an infantry support role at worst, and had armed accodingly.

Landing on the roof top of one of the annex buildings, Alkire looked down gravely at the battle raging below him. Still highly outnumbered, the Eddie forces were inexorably pushing the lightly armed and courageous but ill led RI troops back. He saw little in the way of true organization amongst the RI forces, they all seemed to be throwing themselves forward more or less on an individual unit level, and their lack of cohesion was really showing, as they could never gain enough momentum to set the Eddie's back, and were thus getting picked off piecemeal by the advanced Eddie weapons. It made Alkire wonder just what the hell was going on in that command bunker... what was the RI leadership, such as ex-Lord Seiran, doing down there? And more importantly, what had Cagalli and Ramierez and the others walked into...?

xxxx

"Alright, Mapquest, where the hell are we?" Ramierez quipped, though it was difficult to tell with his battle mask covering his wry grin as he looked at Yzak and Katie.

"Just for that, I'm so leading us into a blind corner." Katie shot back, managing a small smile of appreciation for Ramierez's attempt at levity, despite the tense situation. She was using her mental senses to detect the thoughts of the RI leadership, or so she hoped, and using that as a directional bearing to guide them through the maze of tunnels and corridors that stretched beneath the command bunker and its outlying annex buildings. It was tough getting a good read on them, they were Stumps after all, and there was so much concentrated psychic anguish and misery flooding this place... both residue from those who had already died, and the more pungent misama from those who were merely trapped and awaiting the same fate... that it was really hard to concentrate. It was giving her one hell of a killer headache, that was for sure, and without Yzak there to boost her powers, Katie doubted she could have done even as little as she was. This place was just toxic to the psychically sensitive... the sooner she got out of here, the better!

The underground levels were shockingly empty, they only rarely caught sight of any RI personnel, and they were administrative types cowering in storerooms or under desks for the most part. They'd tried to interrogate them, but other than getting a basic layout of the facility, there wasn't much to glean... they were just cogs in the machine, clerical assistants and data entry technicians for the most part. Most of them never even saw the Eddies that were "rehabilitated" at the camp, though they had heard plenty of dark rumors about the camp's leaders. Unwilling to devote time or resources to protecting or guarding these low level nothings, they had elected to just leave them behind for later recovery, if and when there was time after they dealt with Yuna.

"Any luck contacting Mu or Alkire?" Cagalli asked, as they waited for Kurtz and Raven to come back from scouting the next corridor or two along the direction Katie had tenatively pointed out as leading towards where she thought Yuna was. Not exactly precision guidance, but Cagalli understood that even this much was a real strain on her friend to provide, so she elected to be grateful for it.

"This deep underground, surrounded by this much metal and concrete..." Glory replied with an uneasy shrug. "It's just static, varying volumes of static. Hopefull it'll get better once we're in the bunker proper."

"I thought out comm systems were designed to work even deep underground?" Athrun pointed out, trying to stay as alert as possible, ears straining for any sounds of Kurtz and Raven returning, or enemies moving up on them from another angle. Probably wasted effort, given the helmet sensors of the Stormhounds were far more sensitive, but he couldn't exactly just relax either.

"And in optimal, or even mediocre conditions, they do." Glory answered. "However we're in the middle of an epic shitstorm. There's enough ECM in the air up there to fry a Haro like an egg. That much interference, combined with the attunating effects of the building, and we have our current situation. Don't worry about Leadfoot though, he always does his best when everything's coming unglued, you know that. As for Commander la Flaga... well, just repeat his motto to yourself a few times."

"Hold that thought." Ramierez said, as he got a signal from Kurtz. "Looks like we aren't as lost as I was afraid we were. Conrad's found a sealed hatch, and its good odds it leads to the basement of the command bunker." Without further ado, the six of them moved up another thirty meters or so to where Kurtz and Raven were waiting for them by the locked portal that should lead them up towards their goal. Yzak had to help Katie along after a little bit, as the closer the got to the bunker, the more "pungent" the taste of the layers upon layers of tormented death echos got as well, from the tortured deaths of more Edenites than either of them wanted to count that had been inflicted in one wing of the bunker. Not to mention the far sharper feel of Edenites still living and undergoing tortures, even now while the camp was under attack! It wasn't pleasant for him either, but Katie had to immerse herself in it in order to guide them towards Yuna, and it was taking all she had to do it!

Seeing that the Joules were doing good just to stay upright and active, Ramierez turned to Athrun when they reached the sealed door. Kurtz had already pried off the cover of the keypad system that controlled the lock, but none of the gathered Stormhounds was an information warfare specialist. Certainly nowhere near as good as Athrun or Yzak was. Their equipment included disposable hacking chips and other devices that would override most common electronic security systems, but a bunker hatchway was a bit above that weight class. And if you had Athrun Zala, you might as well use him. Especially because blowing the door open with explosives, or melting it to slag via Kurtz's beam rifle, might set off all sorts of alarms upstairs. And while those upstairs were probably fairly occupied as it was, there was no sense advertising their presence until there was no other choice.

"So are we trying to capture Seiran or are we just putting him down?" Glory asked Cagalli, while they watched Athrun tangle with the bunker's security software.

"I want him alive if possible." Cagalli answered, after a few moments of thought. She frowned and clenched her fists. "He deserves to die for what he's done, but it would be best if he did so after a court judgment, and after he's spilled his guts about the RI to the public. However, I won't be blaming anyone if we have to end up shooting him here and now."

A sudden gasp from Katie drew everyone's eyes to her, save Athrun, who kept focused on hacking the door open. "What's wrong?" Raven asked, concerned by how pale and clammy Katie's skin was looking. She looked like she'd just lost a whole lot of blood, or was going into shock or something. Yzak didn't look too much better, and Raven gave quiet thanks to whatever divine beings there might be that she hadn't been born a Newtype herself. Some of the psychic powers were pretty fucking awesome... but the vulnerabilities seemed to suck just as bad, if not worse!

"The Eddies." Yzak replied tightly, speaking for his wife. "They're in the building. And they're after Yuna too..."

xxxx

The brush of an unfamiliar mind on the edges of his mental perceptions brought a grimace of distaste to Alexander's lips, even as he shook the limp corpse of another RI menial off the mono-spike protruding from the cuff of his vambrace, the eighteen inch blade snapping back into its semi-hidden compartment with a muted click. The contact had been brief, but it had taken Alex slightly off his guard to be probed. Coming under psychic attack or inquisition was just about the last danger he had anticipated encountering, especially in this hellpit! He wasn't sure whether he ought to admire the dedication of the Oosen Newtype, to so extend their senses in this toxic environment, or whether to consider this foolhardy action just further proof of their insanity and depravity. In either case, he was aware that the mind probe had gotten through his defenses to a certain extent before he became aware of it and brushed it aside... they lacked true strength, but they were subtle enough to be meagrely impressive. And that meant things might get a little more complicated here soon.

Alex's grimace inverted itself and became a hard edged smile at the thought. He was not averse to adding a bit more challenge to the equation, not even slightly. So far he and Ken and the assault team of Spider Wolves had been plowing their way through a disorganized and chaotic series of piecemeal RI defense troops, and he'd been forced to resort to taking things up to hand to hand combat range in order to find even a little excitment! Succumbing entirely to seeking thrills would be a gross misuse of his efforts, but it wasn't in his nature to enjoy easy tasks or easy fights. He found himself briefly envying Vaul, who was embroiled in quite the hectic and hard fought battle against overwhelming odds outside... now that was the kind of conflict a Praetorian lived to fight! However, Alex had more important things to do than just indulge his own desires at the moment, as he and his squad were drawing nearer to the main underground holding area for transient prisoners, where hundreds of Edenite civilians and their families were packed in like cattle, waiting to be taken to slaughter.

Just the thought of the atrocities perpetuated upon his helpless fellows in this hellhole was enough to make Alex grind his teeth, a red rage burning up behind his eyes that made his whole body tense and tremble with pent up fury, but with a great effort of will, he mastered himself. Barely a second or two had passed since he'd shaken the corpse of his last opponent off his gauntlet, but the pause had nonetheless been long enough to draw a glance of mild concern from Ken, as the Howling Tempest finished picking through the pile of shredded and half incinerated Oosen troopers that had thought to hold this common room as some sort of chokepoint. Ken had his two handed falchion, a heavy curve bladed sword that struck as much like an axe as a straight blade, propped negligently over across his shoulderplates, as he stirred the corpses with one armored boot, checking for any signs of life.

Not that such was likely, as the Helblaster supercharged beam rifles the Praetorians and Spider Wolves carried, fresh from the armories of BEGET, were considerably overpowered against the light Survivor pattern armor these soldiers wore for protection. Even a glancing hit from one of the dense red energy bolts was enough to not only flash roast a human being like a pig dropped into a blast furnace, but the explosive shock was often enough to dismember the charred body in the process! In the crowded quarters of the hallways and small rooms of the bunker, a single shot often killed two or even three Oosen soldiers, blowing entirely through one man and taking out his comrades behind or beside him with splatter and explosion effects. "Something the matter?" Ken asked, his tone eager and informal, his friend plainly chomping at the bit, all but overcome by the excitement of combat.

"Enemy reinforcements, coming up from the emergency tunnels below the bunker." Alex replied somberly.

"Most excellent." Ken replied with an audible smirk. "I was getting rather bored. Do you want them, or may I have the pleasure?"

"Neither." Alex said, a bit regretfully. "We have more important things to do than massacre these peons right now. However, their presence means we no longer have time to be leisurely about this. I'm going to go secure the civilians, they're our priority right now. You take two Wolfs and find the administrator for this blasted place. I want their head on a spit, Howling Tempest."

"Then you shall have what you desire, Deathbringer." Ken twirled his falchion meaningfully, before gesturing at two of the Spider Wolves and disappearing back the way they had come, towards the central part of the bunker where the command station was likely to be buried. The original plan had been for the full squad to secure the civilians and escort them out to the shuttles, which Vaul would call in as soon as he was satisfied with the suppression of enemy forces outside the bunker, and then link up with both squads to head-hunt the monsters responsible for this hellhole down and exact terrible bloody vengeance upon them. But with an enemy Newtype on the field, leading an unknown number of likely more elite forces in towards his flank, Alex risked letting the enemy recover from the shock and awe portion of the Edenite attack if they stuck with the plan as it was, which would allow them to more properly lock down and secure the bunker, or even allow the mastermind of the camp to escape somehow, which was simply unacceptable!

He'd wanted to end the life of the man or woman responsible for the atrocity this place was with his own two hands, preferably slowly and painfully, but he would settle for Ken throwing their decapitated head triumphantly down at his feet and the feet of those who had formerly been condemned to execution for no crime other than being alive in the first place. But first he had to secure the safety of those condemned people, that was paramount above all else. A subtle shift in his posture signaled to his six remaining Wolfs that it was time to move on, and they took up after him as he squared his shoulders and marched purposefully forward, down the middle of the hallway, Helblaster held in his massive gauntlets, looking more like a toy carbine than a cutting edge plasma rifle.

Automated defense turrets started to deploy from the walls and ceiling of the hallway, gun platforms and flamer emplacements that would fill the hall with fire and bullets, enough to shred even his Praetorian war plate if he wasn't careful. Dark red supercharged plasma bolts from his Helblaster turned two of the turrets into hissing slag before they could protrude more than a quarter from their armored recesses, and a pair of bolts from the Spider Wolves watching his back took care of the third mount a quarter second later. The door at the far end of the hall was more like an armored hatchway than a true door, and came complete with a ocular scanner and multi-digit keypad lock on it. A few volleys from the Helblasters would no doubt suffice to render it into slag as well, but Alex was worried about overpenetration by the powerful rifles. The psychic mass of the confined civilians was perilously close to this secured portal, he would never forgive himself if he even singed some of the prisoners with friendly fire in the process of rescuing them!

Fortunately, Helblasters weren't the only new things to come about from BEGET of late, and without breaking stride, Alex slung his Helblaster across his back and unhooked a chunky cylindrical grenade from a cluster of several clipped to his belt. "Deluge pattern." Alex ordered his subordinates, indicating that they were about to perform an all out close range assault, without recourse to ranged weapons or suppresive fire, like a flash flood of pure vengeance pouring through the doorway. Helblasters were slung, to be replaced with flanged maces, spiked warhammers, needle tipped short words, and crescent bladed battleaxes, sometimes with a buckler or target shield of solid Borealite held in the off hand, as much bludgeoning tool as protective device in a close quarters brawl. Bowling the grenade forward, Alex slowly picked up his pace, from a walk into a slow trot, from a slow trot into a jog, and from a jog into a headlong power sprint, as he barreled down the hallway close on the trail of his grenade.

With the charging Praetorian barely ten paces away from the portal, Alex's grenade rolled to a halt against the foot of the hatch, a blinking green diode on the top suddenly turning a solid, hellish red as the device detonated with a muted "crack", like the sound of a boot heel coming down on a thin plane of ice, and certainly not much louder than that. There was no explosion, no spray of shrapnel or fumes of smoke or wash of liquid flame, nor even a flash of light and sound. There was no visible effect of the grenade's detonation at all, not even a ripple in the air, any Oosen soldier that had been nearby could have been forgiven for thinking the thing was a dud. But it was not a dud, because it was no ordinary grenade, not a frag or smoke or incendiary or flash-bang.

It was a Neutron grenade, called a "Petrifier", which released a very short range but very massively concentrated burst of Neutron radiation. This radiation was in itself moderately harmful to living beings, over the medium to long term, that is to say, weeks to months or years, not any sort of battlefield timeframe. But the chief purpose of the Petrifier was not to kill people, but rather had to do with a certain property of almost all solid, inanimate materials, that is to say, something called "hardness". When exposed to a great deal of neutron radiation, most metals and other crystalline substances actually increase in hardness as their atomic structure absorbs the neutrons, making the molecules denser. However, at the same time as the material becomes harder and more inured to damage by slow stress or tension, it also becomes far more brittle, and prone to shattering under sharp impacts or sudden stress. This process is called Neutron Embrittlement, and is one of many factors that limits the operational lifespan of nuclear reactors.

Though the Petrifier only had a "damaging" radius of about five feet, within that radius enough Neutron radiation was released to affect solid materials as if they had suffered several decades worth of the embrittlement process, causing armor plate to become almost as hard as diamond... and almost as brittle as glass! Thus, when a half second or so later Alex's seven foot, several hundred pound armored bulk slammed shoulder first into the center of the portal, which was made of several inch thick composite steel, he didn't break his shoulder nor rebound from the hatch like he would have under any other circumstance, but just smashed right through the suddenly frail armor like a mailed gauntlet through a stained glass window! Shards of fragmented hatchway scattered like falling icicles as Alex powered into the room, catching the anxious guard detail in the room on the other side quite off guard, having been expecting to have some warning before the hatchway was compromised!

Bits and pieces of shattered armor plate were still tinkling and crackling as they shattered into small piles of metallic dust on the walls and floor when Alex ripped the greatsword from his back, the three sections unfolding in mid swing as he brought the blade around in a terrific roundhouse blow that bisected three Oosen guards in an eyeblink, seperating heads from torsos and torsos from waists along a sharp descending diagonal. Blood misted from the truncated bodies, splashing back in slightly pressurized streams into the faceplates of their friends behind them, as Alex allowed the momentum of his swing to pull him around, lifting one leg and turning into a perfect side snap kick that crushed the sternum of a fourth soldier, hurling the wrecked body backwards like he'd been shot from a cannon! Stunned and stumbling, the remainder of the detail scrambled to regain their senses, several of them triggering wild rounds from pistols and linear rifles that bounced and ricocheted from floor and ceiling ineffectually as they tried to bring their weapons to bear on Alex.

However, Alex's charge had just been the opening act, and he allowed himself to fall backwards into a reverse somersault to clear the doorway, as his six Spider Wolf companions burst through the breached hatchway in a furious scrum, voicing nary a single battle cry among them, as spider wolves were not vocal creatures by nature, save perhaps for hissing and spitting amongst members of the pack. The murderous silence was if anything even more unnerving to the scattered and disoriented Oosen soldiers, as they were barely even aware there were more enemies to deal with than Alex by the time the Spider Wolves were falling upon them in a furor, smashing spines, slashing bellies and splitting skulls with focused abandon! It was over in a matter of seconds, just as all good storm assaults were.

The guard room was an antechamber, with yet another locked door between it and the main prison area. This close to the frightened and traumatized mass of civilians, several hundred strong, the intensity of the psychic miasma from their misery was like a constant pressure on all sides of Alex's skull at once, and he felt a pounding headache start to throb behind his eyes from the exposure. One of the Spider Wolves put his hand to the side of his helmet, showing that Alex wasn't the only one affected by the psy-trauma. Shaking off the worst of it, or at least sublimating it to the point where he could worry about suffering through it another time, Alex turned to consider the problem of the next doorway, which was every bit as protected as the one he'd just destroyed. He had several more Petrifiers, as did some of the Spider Wolves, but the door was angled wrong for another breakthrough charge, there wasn't room to get up enough momentum.

He could always just cut through it with his sword, but he was a bit leery of risking his weapon in that manner, mindful of how that kid had broken the blade with a mere revolver during the storming of Morganroete! He couldn't feel the mental presence of any Oosen troops on the far side of the door, but this close to the frantic civilians, he probably couldn't have felt a Tree-be-damned Chimera if it was on the other side of the doors! Fortunately, there was another gadget Vaul had provided him with, from the labs of BEGET. It was called, rather unimaginatively, a "Smasher" breaching mine. Whereas a Petrifier was designed to be used against vehicle armor or various minor to moderate battlefield obstructions, a Smasher was for dealing with the really heavy duty stuff. Smashers used concentrated gravity fields, based very distantly off the systems that bent light around the Spectres and Wraiths of the Praetorian's Mobile Suits, to massively increase the weight of objects within a small radius, causing them to often break apart under the sudden stress of their own increased mass.

Smashers came in various sizes, the ones Vaul had given him were about the size of a personal pan pizza dish, and were rated for a gravity field 20x Eden normal in a ten foot diameter. The gravity field only lasted for a fraction of a second, but the sudden increase in weight was enough to tear apart most any structure or piece thereof the breaching mine was attached to. And for that matter, violently disrupt any biological matter that was unfortunate enough to be within the area of effect at the time of activation. Twenty times normal gravity probably wouldn't kill a human being, not in such a short dose anyway, but it could potentially cause an organ to burst or bones to shatter under the sudden strain! Taking one of the Smashers from the satchel strapped to the back of his belt, Alex was about to step forward to slap it onto the doorway, where the micro-barbs on the back would cause it to adhere until he detonated it from a safe distance, when the problem of the doorway was taken out of his hands.

A bright red beam of solid light, hot as a pure sunbeam, lanced through the armored door like a needle through paper, carving a molten scar through the guard antechamber at about waist height. The FRALA beam lasted almost two seconds, and managed to traverse almost the entire chamber in that time! One of the Spider Wolves, the one who had been afflicted with the civilian's psy-pressure trauma, didn't even have time to scream before the FRALA beam cut him in half, the heat shock vaporizing all the moisture in his chest cavity, flash broiling his heart and lungs, and causing his skull to explode inside his helmet as the steam-flash superheating the brain. Another managed to half dodge, more like a lucky fall that brought him mostly out of the line of attack, but he still lost his right arm just above the elbow, fire licking from the edges of the wound as the oxygen in his blood and fat in his flesh ignited from the extreme heat of the laser's caress.

Pain shock almost instantly put the Spider Wolf into cardiac arrest, the psy-shock of the ghastly wound hammering into the other members of the Manifold harder than a roundhouse punch to the temple, but they were veterans one and all, and they shook off the disorienting phantom pain in their right arms almost at once, one of them dropping to the side of his wounded friend, patting furiously at the smouldering stump to put out the flesh fires, before beginning to administer first aid to try and restart his friend's stopped heart. Alex didn't have time to more than briefly note this happenstance though, as there were more pressing concerns for him to deal with. Namely, the two massive clawed gauntlets that smashed through the laser weakened doorway and were now ripping apart the burn scarred armor plates like they were saltwater taffy, as a hulking figure, every bit as big as Alex if not larger still, began to force his way through the armored portal.

It was a GHOUL suit... Alex had heard about them from some reports of Legion Ironhide, who had encountered the FEAR shock troops during the battle of Neo-Miami, when the Caller was targeted by the Oosen fleets! Captured fragments of the suits had been studied by BEGET and Vaul, though all had been badly damaged enough in the fighting that they had been able to glean relatively little about the armor's capabilities. What was known was that the armor was definitely powered, enhancing the wearer's strength by several orders of magnitude, just like some styles of Praetorian armor, though at some significant cost to the wearer's agility and dexterity, flaws that Praetorian armor did not suffer. There was also some system integral to the armor that rendered the wearer's mind invisible to Newtype senses, and made the GHOUL troops all but impossible to affect with telepathy or other non-physical mental attacks.

Alex sought to test that theory, gathering his rage and hatred into a tight mental bundle and then hurling the pulsating ball of emotional force at where he figured the GHOUL's mind should be, a mind blast that should have scattered the Oosen's senses and maybe even snuffed out his consciousness like a karate chop to the base of the skull. Several of the Spider Wolves winced and flinched, feeling the psychic backlash of the blast, even though it wasn't aimed at them. The GHOUL suit seemed to falter for a moment, but maybe it was just assessing the situation, as the Oosen assault trooper ripped away another section of doorway and bulled his way into the room. A second hulking shape loomed in the shadows behind the first, this one carrying a truly gargantuam weapon system in her arms, but was unable to fire it without also striking her companion.

Hefting his axe, one of the Spider Wolves stepped in smoothly to engage the GHOUL, swinging the wide blade of his axe towards the trooper's knee area, one of relatively few possible strike zones, given the massive overlapping protective plating that made up the power armor. Unable to dodge the blow, the GHOUL just stepped into it, the mono-axe biting deeply into the thigh plates of the suit, and wedging in place as the shifting plates ground together on either side of it. The Spider Wolf realized his predicament and abandoned the axe, but an instant too late, as he was hurled back by a forehand swipe of the GHOUL's mono-taloned gauntlet, his Borealite chestplate in shards, the chest beneath reduced to bloody tatters by the blow. The GHOUL ripped the axe from his thigh with his other hand, thin trickles of blood and lube fluids escaping from the slice in the plating, but it did not appear to overly slow or deter the bastard! He took a step forward, captured axe raised high, turning towards the crippled Wolf and his aiding companion.

Interposing himself in the blink of an eye, Alex blocked the downward chop of the axe with his greatsword, knees flexing and teeth gritting as he was almost smashed flat beneath the power of the blow! By the Tree, this powered armor was certainly nothing to jest at! Alex's own armor possessed a certain degree of power enhancing properties, but nothing like the full internal exoskeleton the GHOUL apparently had! Any other man, save perhaps Ullric the Garm-Breaker, would have been dashed from his feet by such a blow! The GHOUL's free hand swept in, another forehand swipe, taloned fingers like the paw of a mighty Ursi, the reclusive Chimera's of the deep arctic, more fable than fact. Though the GHOUL's paw was rather smaller than even the runtiest Ursi was supposed to be... Alex had never seen one of the great neo-Grizzly's before, and he knew of no one who had. All anyone still living had ever seen were the tracks in the snow, and the not-at-all crude scratch markings in the solid stone boulders and cliffs that formed pictographic warnings of the dire fate that awaited anyone who progressed further into Ursi territory.

Alex's gritted teeth turned into a smile, as he braced himself and shoved the GHOUL back a step, keeping the heavily armored trooper in the doorway, blocking the line of fire for his companion. It had been a good test, but strength was not Alex's only quality, and while the GHOUL was still recovering his balance and his poise at being unexpectedly stymied, Alex's greatsword swept around again in a humming blur and bisected the GHOUL's left forearm, dropping both gauntlet and axe to the floor with a resounding clang! Blood and hydraulic fluids spurted from the truncated limb, and the GHOUL howled through his armor speakers, the volume ear splitting in the enclosed chamber... but not a patch on the stentorian bellowing of an enraged Ironhide boar, or the warning trumpeting of a watchful Gargantua bull, both of which Alex had experienced at perilously close distance in the past.

Deflecting a backhand sweep of the GHOUL's remaining arm with his sword, sparks flying from the mono-talons and sword blade as they kissed only briefly, and at a very shallow angle, imparting the bare minimum of rerouting force to the blow, just enough to guide it past him, Alex spun, going down to one knee as he thrust his sword forward and upward with both hands. He slammed the point of the sword directly into the middle of the GHOUL's breastplate, punching through the thickest part of the powered armor and impaling the man inside the suit right through the sternum! The man must have been on some serious adrenaline boosting drugs or painkillers, because even with a six foot long greatsword through his entire body, he still snarled and raised his remaining hand once more, reaching for Alex's helm like he planned to pluck it... and the head beneath... clean off his shoulders!

The flechette launcher on Alex's shoulder coughed once... twice... and on the third time it hurled its silver packet of toxin laden armor piercing needles into the faceplate of the GHOUL at point blank range, the faceplate gave way in a glittering hail of reflective armorglass splinters, shredding the leering, doped up convict's face right off his skull, and lacerating the skull and brain with over a hundred poisoned needles. The GHOUL swayed on his feet, armor systems attempting to automatically counterbalance now that the guiding force of the convict's balance was gone, but with one arm truncated, the armor was not symmetrical anymore, and so it toppled slowly over, with the sound of an entire dishwasher's worth of silverware falling down a flight of stairs. Alex's greatsword came sliding out of the chestplate, red from tip to hilt with dark vital fluids, which splattered onto the wall in a long streak as he flicked his wrists and brought the blade up into a front guard position in the same motion.

The second GHOUL pointed her massive Inferno combi-weapon at the victorious Praetorian from only a dozen or so feet away, the massive twinned heavy flamer barrels looking like the nostrils of an angry dragon, glowing with blue-orange pilot flames in their depths as coughing gurgles came from the large canisters on the GHOULs back, napalm being forcefully pumped into the weapon's pressurized expelling chambers. There was no time to dodge, and Alex's war plate, unlike that of some of his contemporaries, lacked any special cooling systems or full environmental sealing systems, leaving him vulnerable to a heat based, enveloping attack like a flamethrower. Were he by himself, this predicament would have almost certainly been his downfall. But he was not alone, and though half of his remaining squad was either dead or incapcitated, half still remained, and they had not been standing idly by while the Praetorian did his brief battle with the first GHOUL.

Interposing himself between Praetorian and GHOUL, one of the Spider Wolves braced himself as he brought around the empty metal framework of a tower-shield like form that he had been carrying, the special system fully integrated into his modified armor, extra power generators taking up so much room on his back that he was unable to carry any weapons other than a single short sword for melee defense. A flex of his gauntlet sent power pouring into the projection emitters spaced around the stabilization frame, and the final new technology of BEGET's infantry division was brought into action, as a vibrant pink energy barrier formed in front of and slightly protruding from the metal framework. It was called a "Void-Rift" assault shield, and unlike the system built into the armor of the Warsmith, it projected a Positron shield to protect the soldier who carried it, proof against almost all forms of attack with little to no impact suffered by the wielder!

Certainly, the system had no trouble absorbing the hellfire of the Inferno's flamers, blazing orange-red napalm washing across the bubblegum pink outer surface of the Void-Rift shield and vanishing into oblivion in flashes of pearlescent white light as the contained anti-matter particles in the Positron barrier annihilated anything that came into contact with them. Tiny licks of flame crept around the sides, top and bottom of the shield, such was the volume of liquid fire the Inferno weapon was coughing out, but without the momentum of the pressurized chambers propelling them, the streams of fire posed little true threat to the Custodian or the Praetorian. On the other side of the shield, the Custodian began to sweat, but held firm, knowing that to falter even a slight bit was to consign himself and the rest of his Manifold to the most agonizing death imaginable. For that matter, knowing he held the life of the Arboreal Praetorian himself in his hands did wonders for stiffening his spine and bolstering his resolve... he would stand here, inches away from hellfire, for as long as it took, to show the Deathbringer what sort of quality Legio Spider Wolf still possessed!

At last, the fiery wash from the Inferno combi-weapon spluttered and died away, the weapon beginning to overheat, its barrels glowing cherry red with all the fire passed through them, needing time to cool down before the firing chambers distorted or warped and caused a catastrophic misfire! Feeling a powerful spike on the mental plane behind him, the Custodian reacted without thought, deactivating his assault shield to spare his generator systems any further burden, and spinning to almost flatten himself against the doorway to allow the Deathbringer passage before the enemy could fire again, probably with the underslung laser cannon that had initially breached the doorway and claimed the life and arm of his Manifold-mates! He watched with wide eyes as the Deathbringer hurtled forward and shoulder barged the hulking GHOUL backwards, armored boot treads kicking up sparks from the metal grate flooring, as she struggled to bring her weapon clubbing down atop him.

However, while the Inferno Combi-Weapon was a close quarters assault system par excellence, it lacked somewhat when fighting at the ultimate close quarters, hand to hand, being so large, bulky and heavy that even a GHOUL trooper moved ponderously while bearing one... it wasn't something you could just flip about like a stick, more like trying to swing an entire section of tree trunk as thick as a man's torso. She brought the glowing hot barrels of the weapon down on Alex's back and shoulder, hard enough to snap the spine of an unarmored man, but the Deathbringer was only lightly jarred by the impact. Mindful of the many cattle-pen like cells that were stuffed to bursting with civilians, the closest only a few feet away from the entryway where he did battle, Alex knew he could not let the GHOUL fire her weapon again... the chance for collateral damage was all but certain, even if she did not intentionally aim at the civilians, which would be far from beyond the capabilities of any member of FEAR!

He brought his greatsword up in a huge uppercut swipe, aiming not for the GHOUL herself but for the stock of her weapon, blue sparks spitting like brief lived meteors as his silvery blade sheared seamlessly through the singe blackened metal of the Inferno weapon, thick, tarry brown napalm gel-fluid gushing from the sundered pressurizing chambers. The sparks fell into the gel, but lacked even a fraction of the heat needed to ignite the volatile mixture... for safety's sake, it wasn't the sort of thing you could generally light with a match or stray spark, only the super-hot propane burners of the pilot lights could do the trick. Sword raised, he started the downswing, intending to cleave the GHOUL as he had cleaved her weapon, but this one was determined not to go so easily, discarding her ruined weapon with a sound midway between a snarl and a sob, blocking his chop with one forearm, accepting a deep gash in her forearm and left shoulder in order to heavily claw Alex's own shoulder and chest with her other gauntlet.

Mono-talons bit through intricately carved Borealite skulls as if they were made from true bone, rather than an armor material every bit as strong as forged steel, and Alex grunted unhappily as he felt the hot burn of blades tearing into his skin and surface musculature. It was a nasty hit, very bloody, a lot of skin torn and blood vessels ruptured. Shards of armor clattered to the floor like detrius from a woodchipper, followed by runnels of blood that ran down his armor's front, until it appeared like all the skulls of his chestplate had spontaneously started weeping blood. Ribs had cracked, but nothing was broken and his lungs and other major organs remained unruptured... he'd been lucky! Staggering back a pace, hands death clenched on the hilt of his greatsword, Alex remained on guard. The blood loss would be debilitating in less than a minute, and even going into a Seed rage might not help, as he could very easily further aggravate the wound if he was not careful.

However, Alex was a Praetorian, and not just a Praetorian, but one of the four greatest members of the Order, and one didn't get to that kind of position without learning a few neat tricks for desperate situations like this one. Though his telekinetic power was nothing special, by the standards of the Order anyway, and thus not something he relied upon for offense or defensive enhancement, he did possess a fine tuned skill with the ability, honed under many hours of careful practice and instruction by Kunai himself. Reaching down within the gashes in his armor, and the flesh beneath, Alex scouted out the worst sections of bleeding and then clamped down on the severed arteries and blood vessels with his mind, forcing them shut, slowing the bleeding from a gush to a trickle in a heartbeat. It wasn't anywhere near as good as actual medical treatment of course, and he would get tired long before the wounds healed to the point where he could safely release his grip, but it let him keep operating in a combat situation without getting too lightheaded or passing out from blood loss!

This technique had saved his life in the past, most notably when facing off with a marauding pack of spider wolves, whose saliva was a powerful anti-coagulent, in addition to their neuro-toxic venom of course. Antidotes for the venom were possessed by the Order, and any smart hunter knew to inject himself with a dose beforehand, but there wasn't any medical compound to counteract the hyper-bleeding effects of the saliva if it got into your bite wounds, as it invariably would. But by pinching the blood vessels around a wound shut, Alex could prevent himself from bleeding too badly until he was able to put more conventional pressures and bandages on the wounds. Alex eyed the second GHOUL, seeing that she too remained a combat threat, due to the drugs her armor was pumping her full of, rendering her into a nigh berserk state where she probably didn't even feel pain at all. She came for him with arms spread wide, like she wanted to hug him to death, utterly without a thought for her own defense.

And then she stopped, staggered in mid lumber, back twisting as she sought to turn around, a gurgling shriek echoing from her speakers, before collapsing forward onto her face, the hilt of a short sword protuding from her backpack, just to the left of center, where the rest of the blade was sheathed within her armor and flesh, and had split her heart in two. Just to be sure, the Custodian who had stabbed her in the back after maneuvering around while Alex distracted her stepped away, clearing room for his companion, the third of the three active Spider Wolves, who bore a heavy spiked warhammer in both hands. Which he promptly brought down on the back of the GHOUL's prone head, cratering the armor and shattering her faceplate. A second blow completely stove in the back of the helmet, and pulped the head within... just to be sure.

A part of Alex regretted not finishing off the GHOUL himself... he was certain he could have prevailed unaided, but he chided himself that it wasn't the point. This was no honor hunt for trophies and peer acclaim, this was war... and war was not fair or honorable, when prosecuted correctly. War was about efficiency, and stabbing a powerful foe in the back while they were distracted was just common sense... especially with civilian lives hanging in the balance! He nodded in acknowledgement to the three Spider Wolves, and set about divesting himself of his damaged chestplate so he could render himself some first aid. He'd just gotten the chestplate loose when a ugly piercing sensation ripped through his chest just before blinding light exploded in his head, as he felt the phantom pain of his friend echoing through their mental bond... Ken was in trouble!

xxxx

"Hooooly shiiiit..." Ramierez commented in a low tone, as they gingerly picked their way along a passageway that should shortly lead them to the command bunker beneath the main bunker. Athrun had hacked the emergency door with both speed and aplomb, proving that whatever physical handicaps he might have, his mind was as sharp and diligent a weapon as ever. And Yzak and Katie had been able to pick up more of the slack, as their path took them further and further away from both the execution chambers and the prisoner storage levels of the bunker, lessening the psychic trauma they were forced to endure. All things considered, things were looking up... at least until they'd reached this final hallway, which should, by Ramierez's best estimation, lead to a secure stairway that would descend to the command bunker where ex-Lord Seiran was holed up, according to Katie.

The reason they were gingerly picking their way forward was not because they were worried about coming into contact with defensive forces or the marauding Eddies that Katie had sensed earlier. Well, they were worried about coming into contact, but for the most part, it was the kind of contact that you had to get out with bleach and a heavy wash cycle, not something that required gunfire. The hallway was just LITTERED with bodies, pieces of bodies and things that belonged in bodies! They weren't quite wading through pools of blood... but it was a pretty damn near thing. Ramierez was really glad for his helmet's breathing filters, he could see a lot of opened guts and ruptured organs on the floor, and he knew from long, hard experience just how nasty that sort of thing stunk. Plainly Seiran had set up some fairly serious defenses, at least in terms of raw numbers, in this important hallway, but numbers were only of help when properly directed, and this did not have the look of properly directed in any way... it was like he'd just thrown together a bunch of guys with guns in no particular order and told them to fight as hard as they could.

Which might have worked, say in an open field or someplace where they could spread out to bring their numbers and weight of fire to bear, but in an enclosed hallway, only a few of them could really engage a foe at a time, while the rest just stood around waiting for their turn... their turn to die, because in any sort of matchup where numbers were close to even, the Eddies were going to have massive advantages against USN troops. And thus the hallway was an abbatoir, a goddamned fucking slaughterhouse like nothing outside a cheap action-horror flick Ramierez had seen in a long time! Soldiers had just been hacked apart like training dummies, some of them packed so close together in the hall they probably couldn't even have lifted their arms to defend themselves, such was the press of panic once the fighting got started and they realized how fucked they were.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say we were looking at some of Frost's handiwork." Athrun agreed in a nasal tone, one hand with a handkerchief pressed firmly to his hose and lips to try and block out the sewer-landfill stench of spilled guts and explosively voided bowels. He shot a not so casual glance over at Katie, an almost instinctive gesture of aversion, like spitting to avoid bad luck.

"He's not here." Katie confirmed, seeing the glance and knowing the intent behind it. "I would DEFINITELY know if Frost was here. There's no hiding that mind of his, I could feel him from a half mile away regardless of what was between us. Even in a place like this."

"I guess we'll have to wait to get our payback then, eh Mel?" Glory said in a private channel to his wife, as they brought up the rear of the group, watching as much behind them as they did in front, treading relatively carelessly over the carpet of formerly living beings... if anything dangerous was still lurking about amongst the detrius, they would be the last ones to encounter it.

"Don't even joke about it." Raven replied tersely, her entire body tensing up as she fought down a wave of angst brought up by her husbands oblique reminder of what Frost had done to him. "If I never see him again in my life, it'll be too soon. And if I do have to encounter him, I wanna be in a PUMA. Or better yet, the _Endymion_, with all its guns turned on him with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. If you weren't so stupidly big and tough, you'd have been..." She trailed off and shuddered. "Don't even joke about it." She repeated softly.

"Sorry." Glory mumbled, contriving to not so casually bump his petite wife's shoulder with his elbow, in a manner of reassurance. "But I owe that bastard, and for more than just me..."

"There's some people that are just not worth seeking out for vengeance, Thom. It will only end in tears. Probably mine." Raven shot back fiercely. "If we get a good chance, that's one thing... but seeking him out... that's just crazy. Hell, that's what he wants." Raven gestured subtly with the barrel of her Warhawk, indicating Yzak and Katie. "Just look at him. He hasn't been right since the war fucking started, because of what that monster did to his mother. And he's so fucking torn up and obsessed over it, it bleeds through to everything else he does, and now he gets in shouting matches with his own best friends and shit. I mean, he's always been a cantankerous SOB, but I liked that about him... but now he's just getting a little too hot under the collar, ya know? I don't wanna see you start being stupid too..."

"No stupidity then." Glory agreed with a tight smile, knowing an argument that he could not win when he was in one. _But I'm sorry, Mel, I can't let sleeping dogs lie on this one. After what he did to Cyprus, I just can't be right either... not until I give him a good, hard goodbye! And for Violet's sake too... I'm not gonna let that girl throw her life away in the pursuit of vengeance... one Finch going down that path is one too many..._

Before his thoughts could go down too dark a path though, Glory came on alert, seeing Ramierez's body language shift in his peripheral vision, and their long decades of association prompting him to do likewise. It was practically instinct by now. They'd reached the end of the hallway, edging past a particularly large heap of piled bodies, where a scrum of RI soldiers had all tried to get through the doorway to the stairs at once, and gotten jammed in place, easy pickings for the Eddies attacking them. Aural sensors in Glory's helm vibrated, picking up the faint sounds of conflict echoing up the staircase from deeper underground... it seemed they weren't too late after all!

Slinking their way down the stairs with as much caution and stealth as they could muster, the group listened to the sounds of one hell of a nasty brawl raging somewhere close by, though curiously there was little in the way of gunfire, just the screech of metal on metal that heralded the tangle of blades and bodies in melee. At the bottom of the stairway they ran into evidence of stiffening RI resistance, in the form of two crumpled bodies in massive power armor, surrounded by massive spillages of blood, the stairs and walls dented, chipped, cratered and singed in various spots where the two GHOULs had put up a terrific close quarters fight before being overwhelmed. A huge rifle, almost as long as Raven was tall, lay half underneath one of the bodies, a Flamberge class linear assault rifle, with an emptied clip.

Just beyond the two hulking GHOULs was an Eddie, clad in the spider motif armor of Legio Spider Wolf, marking him as definitely one of the assault team they'd seen enter the bunker earlier. He'd been chopped in half by something that had burned a slagged scar deep into the walls of the stair landing, cleanly bisecting him just below the armpits, cutting through flesh, armor and the weird metal framework in the shape of a tower shield attached to his right arm with equal ease. Whatever defensive purpose the framework had been intended to serve, apparently and unsurprisingly, it was not proof against a close range attack by a FRALA beam. Very little was, at least that an infantryperson was capable of carrying.

There was something odd about the bulkiness of the Custodian's armor, but they didn't have time to conduct a thorough investigation, as the sounds of combat were just up ahead, through another short hall that had two more GHOULs laid out, chopped up, in it. One of them had the bisected remains of an Inferno combi-weapon laying just outside the reach of his taloned gauntlets. Half the hallway was burned a sooty, charred black, where the flamers of the Inferno had been temporarily discharged, pointing upwards for some reason, because most of the fire damage was on the ceiling and upper part of the walls, with burn patterns indicating the fire had slithered down from above, raining down upon the combatants at some point in time in a spotty fashion. There was some really weird damage to the GHOUL's armor, parts of it looked like it had just shattered and turned to gritty dust, which was not something composite armor plate generally did, but again, there was no time for a forensic inspection, not now anyway.

The armored doors at the end of this short hall had seemingly been ripped right off their hinges, but there was no blast signs or heat damage on them, which was again passing strange... they looked like they'd just torn themselves right off their hinges and fallen off their mounting tracks, somehow. The doors themselves didn't even seem to be damaged, it was just where they connected to the walls and motive systems that raised and lowered them that things were all ripped up and twisted apart... and most of those parts were actually INSIDE the walls, where they couldn't be directly affected or tampered with! Ramierez had never seen anything like it, and consultation with the other Stormhounds, and their charges, made him none the wiser... nobody had any fucking clue what had been done to the doors to make them end up that way. It was like they'd just gotten much too heavy to stay upright and had fallen down... but that was crazy! He resolved to ask the Eddies, should they manage to take one alive... in fact, Ramierez decided to make that a secondary priority, if possible... there were a lot of questions about the new Eddie tech he really wanted good answers for!

Motioning for the others to back up and take up defensive positions in the hallway, using the GHOUL suits for cover actually, he crawled forward on his belly, and poked the tip of his mask around the corner where the blast doors had been and peered into the command situation room. It was a messy insert, he really should have used a fiber optic camera to check around the corner... he'd lost friends to sniper fire doing things like this... but given the sounds of combat coming from within the room, he doubted anyone had much of a shot lined up for the doorway. This gut instinct was born out almost at once, as he saw the shambles the room was in, and the chaos of the fight raging within, and he knew nobody who could do anything had a single second to spare for the doorway and who might be looking through it. There were a lot more bodies strewn about the chamber, many of them bearing wounds consistent with plasma fire, clad in the grey bodysuits of the RI, no doubt bunker staff who'd been at their stations trying to direct the combat outside when the Eddie force breached the room.

A second Eddie was sprawled out in the middle of the chamber, well, more like lying in a dismembered slurry, his body crushed almost flat by a storm of pounding blows before being sliced to ribbons... a real messy way to go. He was clad in Spider Wolf accessories as well, though it was a bit difficult to tell, given how destroyed the body and equipment were. But the dead only gabbed a smidgeon of Ramierez's attention, as he saw someone who his armor recognition data identified as the Howling Tempest, a Praetorian, going at it hammer and tongs with some sort of emaciated... Thing... in a acrobatic, athletic battle raging all over the bunker spaces in a fashion that might have been called "swashbuckling", if it weren't so damned fucking SCARY! The Praetorian, clad in armor engraved with raging clouds holding screaming faces within them, had his two handed mono-falchion out and was desperately parrying a relentless onslaught of blows from his assailant, the curved sword looking considerably the worse for the wear, dented, notched and even a little cracked in spots!

It was hard to get a clear look at the Praetorian's opponent, and had Ramierez been relying on his eyes alone, he probably would have stayed more or less clueless about the Thing, but his helmet cameras were more than up to the task of capturing some images and playing them back for him in slower motion so he could figure out what the hell was what. It was roughly human sized, though built like a skeleton, with clearly enunciated bones, especially in the limbs and ribcage area, and seemingly covered in metal mesh instead of skin. It didn't have a face either, as in no eyes, nose or other distinguishing features, except a maw of teeth that looked more like the whirring blades of a gargabe disposal from hell! A bright blue number 2 was emblazoned on its featureless face area. It was anything but blind and senseless though, as it was plainly pressuring the Howling Tempest something hardcore, and it was all the Eddie could do to keep the cyborg monstrosity away from him!

One of the cyborg's arms ended in a straight longsword blade with a wickedly serrated double edge, the hand split apart to form a sort of macabre hilt for the blade sheathed within the arm structure. The other arm was some sort of spiked club or mace, with finger length conical spikes studding the head and shaft of the weapon like a goth's nightmare. The cyborg wore nothing in the way of clothing, and had nothing in the way of distinguishing gender features, but it did have a belt of some sort, almost a bandoleer actually, strung across its shoulder and hips, upon which were threaded trophies of the most grim sort... skulls, sections of bones, and bloodied fragments of armor torn from the corpses of Praetorians and Custodians alike. It was one nasty looking customer, that was for sure, and the way it was plainly on the verge of kicking the Praetorian's ass did nothing to make Ramierez particularly happy.

Sure, the Praetorian was an enemy soldier, and a high value target... but he was still a human being, at the end of the day, and Ramierez had a lot of experience dealing with and usually killing human beings. Number 2, whatever it was... some FEAR monster most likely... was decidedly not very human, other than in its very general shape. And it was beating a Praetorian like a toy drum, in fact Ramierez was almost sure the thing was just playing with the Howling Tempest. Certainly it was not even marked by a scratch, while the Praetorian was hanging on by the skin of his teeth, his armor cracked, his sword about to break, blood running down his hip from a chop in the plating there... it wasn't looking good for the Eddie. And if a Praetorian couldn't beat the thing, or even lay a stroke on it, that didn't speak too well for Ramierez's own odds in any sort of straight fight.

Of course he had no intention of fighting straight if he could help it. Leaving a fibre optic camera in place, Ramierez crawled back out of the doorway and reported his findings to the rest of his group, wincing as he heard the sound of splintering wood and metal ringing off concrete from within the room. Plainly Mr. Howling Tempest had just taken a big hit and gone down hard. Hopefully not for good though, otherwise things were going to get a bit dicey. Ramierez needed the Praetorian to hold on for another minute or two, then he could kick the bucket. It was too bad the Eddie had destroyed the Inferno combi-weapon out in the hall... filling the whole bunker with fire would have made things much easier. Hopefully.

"Did you see any sign of Yuna?" Cagalli asked with a frown, getting right to the point.

"I did not." Ramierez admitted. "But there was another doorway like this one on the other side of the bunker, so I imagine he's back that way somewhere. Probably skeddadled when the Praetorian burst in and his bodyguard turned the place into a war zone. Hell, it's what I woulda done. That thing is no joke, but I wouldn't hang around to watch it either... I get the feeling it ain't quite right in what remains of its head. No sense taking chances with it going psycho while I was around."

"So what are we gonna do about it?" Kurtz asked, sounding almost bored, as if he was discussing the weather report.

"I'm thinking grenades." Glory spoke up, stating the obvious solution.

"Yes. Lots of grenades. And a overlapped field of fire covering the doorway." Ramierez agreed. He looked pointedly at the "civilians". "Three of you can throw grenades well enough to bounce them into that room. Your Majesty, you just sit tight. Preferrably completely out of harms way. Don't do anything, nobody needs a distraction."

"If we're at the end of the hall, couldn't she be backup grenades for when it comes out after us?" Katie asked, as Cagalli looked a bit crestfallen. "Hopefully it won't, but we all know it probably will."

"I know how to throw grenades." Cagalli added, a bit ruffled by being told to basically hide. It made sense of course, she knew how important she was, but she didn't have to like it, did she? Besides, Katie was right, it was good to have a backup in case of the the worse case... which was all too likely to be the case here. "It's kind of too late for me to duck and cover anyway, don't you think?."

"We don't have time to argue about it." Athrun said tightly. "Not if the sudden silence is any indication. Sounds like things are about to wrap up in there..."

There was nothing further to say, and Ramierez was just about to hand over his stock of throwable explosives to Athrun when a wrenching scream of tortured metal followed by a resounding boom of a very heavy object falling a short distance preceded a bellow of incoherent rage that came from within the bunker, a deep, bass voice that definitely didn't come from either the emaciated Number 2 or the battle worn Howling Tempest. You'd have to have a barrel for a chest to make that kind of noise, the kind of barrel chest that the Sarge-Major was equipped with. Or that other Praetorian that had gone into the bunker. The Deathbringer, aka one of the top four biggest badasses of the Eddie's most badass unit. And he did NOT sound happy. A quick check of the camera link showed why.

The Praetorian had come in through the far doorway that Ramierez had thought concealed ex-Lord Seiran... apparently not the case... after twisting it off its hinges just like their door had been. And frustratingly, all the camera showed was the door falling off its hinges, like it had suddenly become too heavy for them to hold up. Before the doors had even fully fallen, the Deathbringer charged through the doorway, looking more than a little worse for the wear, with deep gouges in his left pauldron and upper left torso armor, looking like he'd been mauled by a huge bear... or more likely, a lucky GHOUL... and partially dried blood painting the skulls that made up his armor motif. However the wounds didn't appear to be slowing or even noticed by the enraged Praetorian, as he stormed into the command room with two handed greatsword held cocked over his shoulder, like a star slugger stepping up to bat.

He was about five seconds too late, because Number 2 had just finished battering the Howling Tempest to a defenseless heap with its mace-arm, breaking his limbs, shattering his falchion into a thousand jagged edged pieces, and then sweeping with the sword-arm right at the neck line, cleanly decapitating the disabled Praetorian, sending his helmet and head flipping up into the air. Sword-arm morphing back into just an arm, sword blade sliding back into the interior of the skeletal arm, hand clicking back together from hilt to functioning manipulators, Number 2 caught the flipping helmet in midair by the decorative artwork on the crown. A quick shake dislodged the pale faced Eddie head from the interior, an expression of shock, dismay and anguish locked upon the features, gold pupiled eyes shining like coins even in the grainy picture of the camera optic. Number 2 was in the process of lowering the captured helmet onto its own head, trying its trophy on for size, or something of that sort, when the Deathbringer had burst in and beheld the scene.

The helmet was hurled directly at the Deathbringer, who allowed it to strike his undamaged pauldron and deflect away in a small shower of splinters, rolling away onto its side on the floor, undeterred as he powered in towards the killer of his comrade. If he'd been affected by psy-shock, it was not immediately apparent to Ramierez, but then, the level of bonding amongst the Praetorian Order was poorly understood at best, so no one knew if they were truly susceptible to psy-shock like the Custodian Manifolds were. The greatsword came around in a swing that could have bisected a PUMA, only to be stopped DEAD in midair by the interposed and redeployed arm-sword of Number 2. Which was especially shocking because the Deathbringer, in full armor, had to mass at least five or six times as much as the skeletal cyborg, yet he'd been stopped in mid charge by just a single interposed limb weapon! Fat orange sparks showered from where the two mono-blades ground their incredibly sharp edges against each other, and Ramierez could see that the greatsword was actually being notched or melted where it came into contact with the serrated longsword, which wasn't just a mono-blade, it was a vibro blade that did damage through friction heat as well!

Spinning with a grace and speed someone that big had no business possessing, the Deathbringer turned a complete 360 and came around with another roundhouse swing of the greatsword, leading with the undamaged second edge, swinging up on a diagonal versus the original downstroke, only to be stymied once more by the interposition of the mace-limb, more sparks scattering from the point of impact, where the mace was apparently Phase Shift armored, judging by the lack of penetration by the sword. Still, the blow jolted the cyborg backward a half step, which actually seemed to faintly surprise the creature, for the first time. It opened its mouth, filled with revolving, whirring blade-teeth, and gargled an incoherent challenge to the Deathbringer, brandishing both mace and butcher's blade in a manner that was almost a salute of some sort.

The Deathbringer was having none of it though, and came on in a relentless attack series that had the cyborg on the defensive, just as it had been pressing the Howling Tempest, forced to interpose a limb-weapon constantly to avoid being cleaved in half by a single brutal swipe of the greatsword. The racket was enormous, each blocked blow sounded like a chuchbell tossed from a tower onto a solid steel plate, and spat harsh sparks as far as the walls of the command room, even when they were in the middle of the floor! As before, Praetorian and FEAR monstrosity were so caught up in their duel that they had no time or eyes... or sensors, whatever... to spare for what was going on in the doorway to the room. Which allowed the four Stormhounds to get set up in relative peace, with Ramierez and Raven crouching down to either side of the doorframe, and Kurtz and Glory standing behind and above them. The Gundam Pilots waited in the hall behind them, ready to step forward and add their own suppressive fire when the Stormhounds needed to reload.

With both combatants locked together in their death match, in was no situation for precision fire... even if they'd had Raine along with them, it just wasn't cost effective to try and snipe the one rather than the other. Better to hose them both down with bullets and munitions until they both were little more than tatters and bloody scraps. Ramierez and Kurtz bowled a pair of explosive grenades into the melee, which finally got the attention of the cyborg and Praetorian, as grenades tend to do. It grabbed a little more of the Deathbringer's attention than it did Number 2's though, and the cyborg dropped a powered thrust kick into the Praetorian's gut plates in the half instant where the big guy was distracted, knocking him skidding and staggering back almost a dozen feet, until his broad back crunched into a CIC console and brought him to a jarring halt amid a shower of plastic and glass fragments.

The grenades exploded, twin globes of fire and concussion, but both cyborg and Praetorian were well out of the area of main effect by that time. Which was all right, if not optimal... none of the Storhounds had really expected to take out either enemy with the first attack, that was just to announce their entrance. They opened up with all four guns, and concentrated their fire on the cyborg, spitting linear rounds, green plasma bolts and hypervelocity 5mm and 13mm rounds at it in a blistering fury. Most of which were ineffective for much beyond keeping the cyborg from having the time to orient upon them and attack, which was actually a perfectly acceptable outcome. They had plenty of ammo, having not had to fight through most of the bunker like Ramierez had initially planned on doing. He was prepared to waste a thousand or so rounds on this one boss monster, so to speak.

However, with such a weight of fire on him, three rapidfire weapons and one semi-auto, there was no way for the cyborg to dodge or avoid everything coming its way, and it seemed to be prioritizing dodging the green plasma bolts from Kurtz, which only made sense as they were the single most damaging anti-personnel attack the Stormhounds had. Raven hissed happily as a quartet of mercury tipped 13mm rounds slammed into the pectorals of the cyborg, her hiss turning displeased in the next instant as the cyborg rocked back by otherwise did not fall, and certainly didn't blast backwards in a spray of blood and organs, like a human being would have. Fortunately the cyborg seemed to possess no ranged weapons of its own, so it was limited in its... Ramierez watched as the mace head, roughly the top third of the weapon, where most of the spikes were, suddenly detached from the shaft, remaining connected by a thin spool of macro cable as the mace transformed into a flail, which the cyborg began to whip around until the mace head blurred too fast for even his camera's to reliably detect!

And then, with a snap of its arm, like fly fisherman with his rod, the cyborg cast its flail-mace directly at the four Stormhounds, and only a sudden grab and yank on his collar by Yzak, standing behind him waiting for his turn to provide cover fire, saved Ramierez from getting his head pulped by the winging semi-projectile! The wicked spikes of the mace passed so close by the front of his mask he swore he could have counted them had he more than a fraction of a second with which to do so, but then it was past, gouging a crater the size of his head in the reinforced wall of the passageway, concrete fragments and chalky dust gouting from the point of impact as the mace head ripped free from the wall and retracted back to mace form in the blink of an eye. Breaking free of suppression now that the Stormhounds were reacting to its own attack, the cyborg turned its attention back onto what it still considered the primary threat, the Deathbringer.

Who stood waiting for the cyborg to come at him, sword raised in challenge, body almost achingly open to attack, clearly willing to gamble all or nothing on his next attack, relying on Seed boosted strength and speed to overwhelm the defense of Number 2 before it could eviscerate him and smash his skull. It was a challenge that Number 2 had been issued several times before by Praetorians, and had conquered handily each time. Though not possessed of the longevity or retaining the personality and intelligence of the Master rank Vamps, Number 2's customized implants were of the same combative quality as theirs. The string of trophies belted around its body was grim proof of its ability to meet even the Eddie elites head on and emerge victorious from the melee. No mere human, no matter how gene-enhanced, could hope to stand up against Number 2 in a close quarters battle!

So Number 2 charged forward, mace raised to knock aside the greatsword, serrated longsword held low, to impale the Deathbringer through the navel and tear apart his intestinal tract in the next instant... not an instantly fatal blow, but a disabling one all the same, even to someone in a Seed rage. With the Praetorian debilitated, then Number 2 could turn its attention on the secondary targets, the bodyguard of Lord Seiran's enemy. Number 2 was looking forward to hanging a hound helmet from its belt alongside the Howling Tempest and Deathbringer. The path of its charge brought it over the discarded helmet of the Howling Tempest, which lay upright on the debris strewn bunker floor. This detail jiggled an alarm within Number 2's cybernetic brain, as it recalled sensor data showing that the helmet had ended up on its side after it had hurled the piece of wargear at the Deathbringer a short time ago. Danger warnings caused Number 2 to automatically attempt to veer off course, but it was too late, and the Smasher gravity mine positioned beneath the righted helmet activated in that moment, instantly increasing the mass of Number 2 by twenty times!

For all its emaciated stature, the Vamp actually weighed close to three hundred pounds because of the materials that made up its enhanced body. In the gravity field of the Smasher, that became a little less than 6000 pounds, or about three tons! Number 2 was strong, but not quite that strong, certainly not when unbraced, and the cyborg stumbled and slammed into the floor hard enough to etch out a body shaped imprint in the reinforced concrete, splintering the Howling Tempest's helm to a hundred pieces in the process. The gravity field's effect was very short lived, less than a second, but with the Deathbringer already set and waiting for just this sort of thing to happen, that was far too long a time. The greatsword came sweeping down like a pendulum blade and neatly snipped the Vamp's head from its shoulders. There was almost no blood spray at all, Number 2 having little enough of such biological fluids remaining within its body. The Vamp was nominally equipped with a self destruct device, like most of its ilk, but that feature had been disabled as a cautionary measure when it was assigned bodyguard duty.

Number 2's gyrating teeth continued to gnash and grind for several seconds after being seperated from its body, and had it the capability, the Vamp would have given a howl of outrage and despair, but vocal functions were not a capability it had been alloted, and so it could only gargle in frustration. It retained awareness as its head was picked up and inspected by the dour Deathbringer, and even remained "alive" long enough to register the total indignity of being mounted upon a hook protruding from the hip of the Praetorian's armor, where his helm would be carried when not on his head. The trophy taker had become a trophy!

Vengeance taken, honor satisfied, Alexander turned towards the doorway where the Orb elites had ducked into cover after their near escape. He really wasn't in the mood to tangle with them, Oosen or not, right now. Even with the Seed active, the clawing from the GHOUL hurt like blazes, and the kick that cyborg monster had landed on him had bruised his liver and kidney's something fierce... he'd no doubt be pissing blood for the next day or so, and that was nothing to look forward to! This close, he could feel the cautious, tightly controlled mental presence of not just one but two Oosen Newtypes, one Active and one Latent, intimately bonded by their feel. The Active was nothing special in terms of raw power, but with her Latent right there, that was less of an issue. And Alex wasn't exactly at his best, physically or psychically. But he wasn't about to retreat either, not and leave Ken's body and wargear for these scavengers to pick over, and for that matter, he still had a mission to complete!

"Orbites..." Alex growled in their general direction, loud enough they could not mistake that he was addressing them. "I have no quarrel with you today. Turn around and leave this place, and you may keep your lives and your limbs intact. Stay, and you will find only death at my hands and the edge of my sword."

"That's mighty generous of you, Mr. Deathbringer." A disingenuous voice called from around the corner, and for some reason it felt faintly familiar to Alex. "But there's eight of us and one of you, and you're beat to hell. I don't especially dislike those odds. We didn't come here to fight Eddies either, but I'm an opportunistic man, and sometimes you just have to take what luck serves up to you. So how about you lay down your sword, disarm all your other hidden weapons and unpleasant surprises, and get down on the floor with your hands behind your head, and we won't turn you into melty swiss cheese, okay?"

"You actually think I would surrender myself to you?" Alex was startled by the temerity, and offended as well. "In THIS place, of all places, you DARE to ask for my surrender? Unlike most of my people, I am no lamb to be led to slaughter, unable to raise a hand in my defense. I will resist your tyranny and genocide to the last drop of blood in my body, until all my bones are broken and scattered to dust, and I will crawl back from the pits of Hell itself if required to defend my people from your depravities! I am Alexander, the Deathbringer of Yggdrasil, and the only thing I have to give the Oosen is that which you have given my people, a horrible, agonizing death..."

"We didn't do ANYTHING to your people... in fact, some of us went out of our way to help!" A new voice, female and full of indignation and fire, retorted. There was a brief commotion out of sight around the doorway, and then a woman to match the voice stepped around the corner. She had a pistol, but it was holstered, and wore not a scrap of armor or protective gear that Alex could discern, clad instead in a pale cream shirt under a maroon tunic, with maroon trousers. She possessed a unruly shock of brilliant blond hair, and eyes like that of a lioness, tawny amber and fierce as could be. An impressive woman, for all that she was a good two and a half heads shorter than him, and about a fourth the mass. "I am Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha, of Orb, and I'm asking you to stand down, Alexander. Master Sergeant Ramierez is correct, we didn't come here to fight the Edenites. We're here in pursuit of a criminal of Orb descent, the man responsible for this atrocious place!"

"So you HAVE done things to my people, if an Orbite is the adminsitrator of this camp." Alex countered grimly. "You speak of the TCF mercy missions to the South Pacific islands. The Wind spoke of them... but the Wind also spoke that it was by the grace of Kira Yamato and Lacus Clyne that such missions came about... not because of official Orb involvement. Edenites, acting for the benefit of other Edenites, is not something to which you Oosen bastards should try to lay claim."

"We're not part of the USN because we want to be." Cagalli answered darkly. "An Lord Seiran... the man we came after, is an extradite. He has disowned all prior connections to Orb."

"Spare me your sob story, Queen. Whatever persecution you may or may not have faced, it pales in comparison to the least of what my people have endured at Oosen hands. And it seems to me that Lord Seiran has not lost all ties to Orb, if the Orbite's much beloved spiritual leader has come herself to apprehend him for his sins against my people. Assuming I even believe such a thing... more like you've come to rescue him, am I right?" Alex retorted with a shake of his skull helm.

"I don't intend to kill him here and now, if that's what you mean." Cagalli told him steadily. "Yuna has much to answer for, and I would see him give those answers, before a court of peers and the public media. I would expose this place to the eyes of the greater USN populace, and I would see him pay for his crimes against humanity in the fullest. Believe what you want, but I and Orb never wanted conflict with the Edenites. Like you, we just want to be left alone to prosper and live in peace. It was by your actions... your sneak attack upon Orb, that brought us into this war. You're the one who killed Dr. Simmons and her son, aren't you? You're the sick bastard who hung Ryuta's head from the signpost!"

"I do not know those names, but I was the assault leader for the Morganroete operation, and I did mount the head of a boy upon a sign." Alex acknowledged stonily. "But you have some gall, Queen, to question my morality while we stand here, beneath the grounds of an extermination center operated by an Orbite and funded by the Oosen government. I am only paying back in kind what your people have inflicted upon mine for years upon years, ever since our creation by Noah. It's not so enjoyable, finding the shoe on the other foot, is it? You ask me if I killed your friends? If I made a display of their remains? Yes, I did so, and proudly, and would do so again, as many times as needed for your people to understand what it is they do to mine. You say you would not be in this war if not for us, but this war has been raging ever since the first Edenite opened their eyes, whether or not you were aware or chose to acknowledge it. But then, you are Oosen, so why am I wasting my breath on trying to convince you of the monsters you are?" 

"I'm not saying we're completely righteous." Cagalli admitted with a sigh. "There's a lot that's happened that I and Orb should have made a stand against that we either didn't know about, or just didn't prioritize like we should have. We've made mistakes, and the Edenites have ended up paying for most of them. For what its worth, I'm sorry, I didn't intend for your people to be made scapegoats and labeled as subhuman. Had I been part of the true USN government, such things would have never been allowed to come to pass... my own brother is an Edenite, as was his wife and children. I'm sure you know him... Executor Yamato, as he apparently prefers to be called now? Please believe me, I never want to see people die, and I would never condone a war if I had any choice in the matter. Killing people never solves anything. I learned that a long time ago."

"Hn. That does sound like the sort of wishy-washy drivel that Kira likes to spout." Alex agreed with a grimace. "Sometimes killing people is the only way to solve things... such as when dealing with those who would set up death camps. You claim Lord Seiran for your own justice, but it is my people he has sinned against most grievously, so I deny your claim and submit my own, and as a Praetorian of Garden City, and an Arboreal of Yggdrasil, I will carry out judgement and sentence with the utmost vehemence, as my rank allows me."

"And what about those among the Edenites who have sinned against the USN? Such as the persons behind the Blue Monday attacks, or Executor Frost in particular?" A new voice, male and hard edged with subsumed pain, asked, as a man dressed in a suit identical to Queen Zala-Attha came around the edge of the door with a resigned sigh. He had emerald green eyes with a weary tint to them, and hair of purple-blue, shot through with silver at the temples and scattered throughout the scalp. "Would you accept our claims upon them in turn? You are a soldier, Alexander, you fight because you must and because it is your duty. You seem to take no joy in slaughtering our people, other than a certain degree of vindication I can't quite find it in myself to disdain you for. But those who massacred over four hundred million civilians on New Year's day deserve to pay for their crimes against humanity. As for Frost..."

"As for Frost, were it within my power to do so, I would gladly deposit him naked and chained before you this very instant." Alex cut in with a slump of his shoulders. "I do not in any way accept the legitimacy of our so called second Executor, and I frankly wish he would crawl in a hole and die this instant. The man is a cancer, a malignant tumor in the flesh of our people that must be cut out as soon as possible! There could be no worse example of an Edenite living... it is little wonder your people fear to become mine, if he is what they see as an example! And his toxic influence upon some of my friends is truly worrisome. The sooner he is dead and gone, the better. Kunai agrees with me on this, but the problem is in the doing..."

"He'll figure something out." A hound helmed man commented, leaning casually against the doorframe, now that it was apparent that bloody death wasn't in the immediate cards. "If he's half the man he used to be, he'll figure something out, don't you worry. I'm just not sure he's even half that man though..."

"Underestimate Kunai at your own peril. Regardless of who he used to be, or what relationship you had with the man he was then, he is now the undisputed master of the Praetorian order, and many consider him the founder of civilized society on New Eden. Of all people, all the millions of Edenites, he alone was chosen to receive Yggdrasil's visions and guidance. He is the greatest of all Edenites." Alex replied firmly. "From what I understand of his past, he's led the world once, it seems fitting that he should do so again."

"Nearly led it into ruin and devastation, sure." Cagalli said caustically. "The Isolation was raving lunacy."

"So you say, but can you think of any better solution to this war we are in now?" Alex countered with a shake of his head. "The Oosen has proved they cannot accept the existence of the Edenites, any attempt at peaceful reintegration... that would be true lunacy! This war cannot and will not end until either all Edenites are wiped out, or all Oosen have been wiped out or converted to Edenites, which would be what I would prefer. Join us. Ascend and become more than you were... you would be welcome by our side."

"Joining with you is to join with the perpetrators of Blue Monday, and to rub shoulders with Frost." Yet another male, this one with glaring blue eyes, silver hair and a fearsome scar bisecting his face from right cheek to left brow, said as he joined the discussion. His eyes lacked silver pupils, but he was definitely the Latent Alex had sensed earlier. It was a bit jarring, actually, that minor physical difference. "And for that matter, Kira's not exactly our best friend anymore himself."

"And not joining me is to condone, or at least rub shoulders with, those would construct death and exploitation camps." Alex answered coldly. "I'm no friend of the Executor either, and you know how I feel about Frost. But I would not wish to meekly lay down and become a lab animal or be consigned to death by fire in these ovens, and those are the fates that await me and mine should we not fight this war. I think I would enjoy having a deeper discussion on these matters with you another time... I do not mind having my beliefs challenged in this manner, for it can only strengthen my faith in my own righteousness in the long run. But we have digressed... I am here for the head of this Lord Seiran, and nothing will prevent me from having it. Either take up your weapons and prepare to die, or stand aside and return home in peace, for today at least. I have eight hundred traumatized and malnourished civilians to evacuate before the SPF fleets can scramble interdiction forces into orbit, and I don't have any further time to dally."

"How about option three." Cagalli suggested with a grim smile. "We find Seiran together, and I'll have my forces outside stand down as long as you are truly evacuating civilians. I have no desire to endanger your people if they pose no immediate threat to my nation... I came here to stop this atrocity, and I mean to do so. I would like to bring Lord Seiran back to Orb for trial, but I'm prepared to compromise, though don't tell Parliament that, they'd have a stroke. Given his crimes against humanity... and I do think of Edenites as human beings... there can be only one realistic sentence for him, and only one possible verdict. In this particular special circumstance, I think it's okay for me to draw on my authority and declare a summary judgment. To be carried out by an appropriate Edenite representative, in proper fashion. You can kill him, Alex... but make it quick. I don't believe in torture, not even of the deserving."

"An alliance...?" Alex didn't know what to think of that. He wanted to suspect a trick, but he could sense no deception in this Queen Zala-Attha, nor did she seem to be making any effort to disguise her emotions... quite strange in a politician.

"Of convenience." The green eyed politician said firmly. "Nothing more, and certainly nothing binding or permanent. But Lord Seiran has committed crimes against all of humanity, regardless of genetics. It's only fitting that all humanity come looking for justice together."

It only took Alex a moment to decide. Perhaps things would be different if there were not the civilians to consider, but with their lives hanging in the balance, there really was no choice. "So be it then. Stand down your troops, and Vaul will do likewise. You will not interfere with our evacuation, or attempt to confiscate any of our technology, and we will not kill you."

"Our shuttle has medical supplies too, and the Stormhounds are all field medic qualified, and we have a trauma surgeon amongst our Marine contingent." Cagalli offered. "It's no real recompense, but it's the least we could do to..."

"No. Your people will not approach my civilians. Any that try, regardless of intention, will be slain without warning. I do not like you, or trust you. Even when dispensing mercy, you Oosen are not my friends and you never will be. We will manage without you." Alex paused and let out a sigh. "On a less idealogical note, think of how the civilians would react to being approached by Oosen troops bearing needles and surgical tools, given what has already happened to them, and what we know goes on up in space. I will not allow them to be traumatized any further by you people, not even if you mean only to help, it will do more harm than good."

"You say that..." Ramierez pointed out, a bit snidely. "But you realize you've torn open your shoulder wound, right? And that you're bleeding all over the place? What good will you do anyone if you pass out from blood loss?"

"This is just a flesh wound. She didn't even puncture a lung. It will take far more than this to bring down the Deathbringer. I've hurt myself worse than this wrestling with Ullric. If I must bleed to keep my civilians safe from Oosen grasp, then bleed I shall... and proudly!"

"Yeesh..." Kurtz commented across the Stormhound comm lines. "Just when you start to admire the bastard, he goes and reminds you what a fucking fanatic he is..."

"Yeah." Raven said, a bit worriedly. "And its the fanatics you find yourself admiring that scare me the most of all living beings..."

xxxx

"SHIT! FUCK! GODDAMN PIECE OF JUNK!" Yuna raged, ripping open his desk drawers and tearing out all the paperwork and data disks stored within, sending them to the floor in piles and heaps. He was referring to Kain of course, his final line of defense that was supposed to be the equal of any Edenite ever born, and who had been dismantled neat as you please by that hulking monster with the skulls and the sword! Yuna had been watching the fight from his office, via a direct tap in to Kain's sensor systems, cheering his bodyguard on as the Vamp decimated the initial Praetorian and Custodian assault force that had burst into the command bunker and come screaming for his head. Yuna still remembered the pants wetting terror that had come from seeing that Howling Tempest character point his too large sword at him and declare his imminent demise to all and sundry.

He also still remembered, much more happily, the shock and more than a little fear that assailed the dramatic Praetorian when Kain came tearing out of suspended animation and proceeded to wipe the floor with both the Custodian and then the Howling Tempest, while Yuna exited stage center, up the hidden elevator that connected his office suite to the command bunker. But all good things apparently did come to ends, and Kain had not fared so well against the second Praetorian. Of course, the interference from Cagalli and her lackeys didn't help matters any, but it was plain that the Vamp had been more or less defeated by the Deathbringer alone, using some manner of Eddie techno-sorcery! Which was supposed to be impossible... Dr. Dostanya had personally assured him that Kain could handle ANY Edenite without breaking a sweat! That lying bitch was now on his short list! All the research materials and specimens he'd given her, and in return she'd equipped him with a faulty bodyguard! What a dastardly whore!

Well, things were bad, but Yuna had been in some tough situations before. Admittedly, he'd not done so well in them, such as when he'd become all but catatonic after watching his father be skinned alive in front of Cagalli by those Brotherhood fanatics, but he'd been in them at least. Enough so to have built up a little endurance to them now. So instead of freezing up like a mouse before the cat, Yuna found himself all but bursting with frantic energy, as he did his best to do damage control on the situation. His paranoia would serve him well, he'd had a secret safe room built into his play wing, for just this sort of hopeless situation. Once he got there, they'd need a tactical nuke to dig him out of his reinforced hole. He could hide down there for the few hours it would take for USN army forces to arrive and relieve the camp. But though the terror was rising up in him like a tide of molten bile, Yuna knew that surviving alone was not enough.

If he didn't make at least a good attempt at destroying as much evidence of the connections between his activities and various senior politicians and political contributors to the Durandal administration, even surviving the Eddies would do no more than prolong his death sentence. Lord Djibril was not a forgiving man when it came to failures on this level. Losing the camp to the Edenites was one thing... this was war after all. But to have the documentation and data confiscated by Orb... that would be a true catastrophe! And true catastrophes needed scapegoats in order to be pushed under the rug, and he was the perfect scapegoat for this problem. No, the only path forward for him now was to ensure there were no tangible connections between Camp 2 and the shadowy sponsers of the RI and Durandal's inner circle. He would probably have to live in hiding for a while, perhaps get facial transformative surgery and a false identity before he could rejoin society, but at least he would be allowed to live, and might even prosper!

Finishing his unloading of his desk, Yuna began doing the same thing to his file cabinets. He was appalled with how much paper documentation he had on his activities, his original intention being that data committed only to paper could not be hacked or noticed by the wider USN data network. Convenient for security purposes, but very inconvenient for being hastily gotten rid of in an emergency. After emptying the cabinets, Yuna crossed to his office minibar and began pulling down the bottles and flasks of bourbons, vodkas, whiskeys and other potent alcholics, which were there for his own pleasure, and the pleasure of the important guests that came to partake of his unique services. He smashed each bottle over different piles of paperwork and data discs, not having time to evenly cover the evidence with the flammable liquid. It was a sacrilege against the alcohol... he was destroying several tens of thousands of dollars worth of the best booze around in doing this... but he had no other options!

After covering the desk itself with plenty more alcohol, Yuna placed the centerpiece upon the desk... a cylindrical grenade with red stripes on top and bottom, and a twist cap for a timing mechanism. The incendiary within... at least that's what he assumed it was, red for fire, just like the movie props he'd used... would do a good job of destroying his desk computer, and the heat would ignite the alcohol, burning the rest of the most incriminating evidence into ashes. He set the timer for two minutes and hurried out the door. There was only one type of evidence left to destroy... the biological evidence within the play wing. Dead men tell no tales, and that sort of thing. His resident guests were in a civilian shelter and should be safe until the USN army arrived, at which point in time they would be on their own to explain their presence at the facility, but Yuna had confidence things would be taken care of quietly. Nobody important wanted this to become a major news item, it was bad business even for those not directly involved.

A warning chime from his secret elevator got Yuna moving even faster, as the system alerted him to the fact that it had been found and was in the process of being hacked into... no doubt by Athrun or the detestable Commander Joule. His data security software was good, but they were fucking Redcoats, and he did not doubt they would get through sooner rather than later! It would be nice to rig an unpleasant surprise for them at the top of the elevator shaft, but he had neither the time nor the expertise to do so. And no more grenades either, that one had been something he'd snatched more or less on impulse from one of his security guards upon entering the command bunker. The man had tried to protest, but a single cold glare had sufficed to shut him up good and proper. It was too late to go back and change the timer on the grenade, so Yuna just had to hope his security software would keep the bastards out for another ninety seconds or so, and by the time they arrived, there would be only smoke and ashes to greet them.

Hurying down the short passage that led to both his living quarters, and the access to the play wing, Yuna stumbled and almost fell as he felt the undeniable touch of a foreign female mind upon his own. Working with the RI, and especially in Camp 2, Yuna had learned how to deal with the occasional psychic accident, and so the attempt to lock down his nervous system was easily defeated, but the fact that his enemies were close enough to even attempt such a thing lent wings of panic to his feet! Getting the two on duty GHOULs, who had not left their posts even to protect him in the bunker, as was proper, to open the secure door took rather more time than Yuna was comfortable with, but at last the vaulted portal was open enough for him to slip through, and order shut behind him. No doubt the enemy had explosives, or whatever it was they'd used to break down the doors of the bunker, but by the time they got them deployed, his dirty work would be done and he would be safe in the secret hide hole!

Or so Yuna thought, but before the vault door could fully swing shut, a dark red plasma bolt splattered against the edge of the door, melting a fist sized divot in the armor plate and splashing plasma through the narrow gap, just barely missing the backs of his legs, coming so close his clothing smoldered! Shrieking in dismay and terror, Yuna took off down the hall, steam rising from the back of his pant legs, the sounds of furious combat on the other side of the doors urging him on. The sentry GHOULs were armed only with their talons and light sidearms, their main purpose was to serve as door openers, not fend off heavy assaults, so they would no doubt be able to hold off the enemy for only a short time. Bursting into the room he had been using for his amusement prior to getting the news about the bitch-Queen coming to ruin his life, Yuna leaped for his wall of tools and grabbed a straight razor off the rack.

Not a tool well suited for self defense, but for throat slashing and murder of helpless victims, it was quite sufficient. The blade was sharp enough that most victims didn't even feel the cut until they noticed the blood, and Yuna had often amused himself with seeing how much he could cut one of his playmates before they noticed what he was doing. Without ceremony or ado, Yuna slashed the jugular of his most recent playmate, letting the dark blood gout out across the floor without a second look, as he left that Eddie to expire and headed across the hall to the next room. He killed that playmate as well, easy to do as she was tied across a whipping rack, her back more bloody bones than skin, and close to expiring anyway, but he slashed her throat to be sure. There were an easy two dozen rooms in the play wing, but not all of them were occupied.

Upon exiting the fifth occupied room, Yuna noticed with a shiver that there no longer any sounds of combat coming from the narrowly opened vault door. The GHOULs were down, and he wasn't even half done with this final phase! But he simply couldn't work any faster... hopefully the problem of the door itself would give him the grace period he needed. Without the powered suits of the GHOULs, it would be quite a challenge for any normal people to open that massive vault door. However, even as he thought this, Yuna noticed the door start to creep open! It was impossible... what kind of monsters must be out there who could force open his secure door on the power of only their own muscles? They must be mutants of some sort, half giants!

Distracted, Yuna ran face first into the next door he tried to open, and ended up gashing himself quite deeply on the hip with his jarred straight razor. The sight of his own blood soaking into his shirt made him feel decidedly queasy, but he set it aside through necessity as he fumbled open the door and found the next playmate, all trussed up and ready for some serial dunkings in a tank of ice water, with the option to heat the water to boiling point as well. Opening his throat was the work of a moment, but even a moment was getting to be too long a time, as Yuna spun on his heels, leaving the boy gargling and choking as his life fluid poured down across his inverted face and ran into the water, staining it like oil in the dim room's light. He made it into the hall, and screamed in agony when a bullet fired from the door... who didn't see who by... caught him high on the shouder and took a thumb sized chunk of flesh out near his collarbone!

It wasn't anything at all like being shot with the rubber bullets they sometimes used in movies, when they really wanted that touch of realism, it hurt a thousand times more! The bullet's impact spun him around and almost down to his knees, but the fanatical determination to survive drove Yuna onwards, and he staggered against the door of the room across the hall, all but falling through it, and cutting himself on the straight razor again, damn it all! Yuna realized he was going into shock, but had nothing to do about it. He could hear pounding footfalls coming down the hall towards him, and knew he had to hurry. The occupant of this room was a woman of middle age, with dirty blond hair that hung down in lank strings from where she'd been enduring some dunking of her own prior to the emergency being called. She was naked, as per usual for a playmate or either gender, and showed some signs of recent sexual abuse to go with the mild beating, more a warm up than anything else, that she had been dealt.

Yuna's lip curled a bit at that... his taste for sadism rarely ran into the sexual, he considered it plebian and in a way demeaning to the purity of his hate for these monsters. Hazy was the one who was all enamored of fucking the creatures, Yuna just wanted to fuck them up and listen to them die screaming. Though he belatedly realized who this particular playmate was, and remembered that he'd made an exception to his usual rules when she was admitted to his care. There was just something about abusing this particular subject that had even more delicious than usual, because of who she had been. Which was also why she was still alive, even after several play sessions with both him and several other VIP's... she was a big draw. Many, many people wanted to have the opportunity to have some unrestrained fun with this particular item... sort of revenge by proxy, as it were.

Pulling out her eyes with pliers had merely been a formality, a way of getting their relationship off on the right note. The eyes were the most disconcerting part of the Eddies, those metallic pupils were disturbing, which was why Yuna generally preferred to keep his playmates blindfolded during sessions. She was hooked up to a modified electric chair system, which would send jolts ranging from mere tingles all the way up into cardiac arrest inducing voltage through her body at various points... fingers, nose, toes, privates, etc. She seemed rather alert, disfigured face turning in his direction with a moan of fear escaping her scarred lips, her limbs jerking in their restraint straps as she tried in futility for escape. Well, it went against his wishes, but he was about to offer her a final and far too quick end to her torments. Scrambling off the ground, Yuna lunged for Talia Gladys, straight razor extended to give her a second mouth below the chin.

Before he could complete the motion however, someone grabbed him by the back of the neck and hurled him across the room like a ragdoll. Yuna impacted the wall upside down and face first, the stunning impact shattering his nose and jarring loose the straight razor from his grip. He slumped to the floor, semiconscious and coughing thickly, suddenly hurting all over as his adrenaline rush faded and he became aware of the pain of his gashes, gunshot wound, and broken nose. He wanted to scream, but all he could manage was a low whine, like a kicked dog hiding in the corner, as he curled up in a fetal ball and closed his eyes fearfully. Damn it, why did he have to die like this? It wasn't fair!

But death was not instantaneous, and Yuna slowly lifted his head from under his arms to see that the person who had thrown him... none other than the grotesque Praetorian known as the Deathbringer... was in the process of gently unhooking Talia from her torture device, whispering some sort of drivel, reassurance no doubt, into her ears, as if that could possibly matter to her after what Yuna had gleefully done to her in the past. Perhaps the Eddie thought Yuna had been killed by the toss... maybe playing dead would be a good idea? He was an actor after all, he had some experience with faking things very well. He was just about to give it his best shot when he noticed he was under scrutiny by other people in the doorway, the dim light in the room and their backs to the bright light of the hall making them hard to distinguish.

"Lord Yuna Roma Seiran..." A blazing feminine voice declared, trembling with some sort of extreme emotive effort. It was a voice Yuna instantly recognized, after all, it was one he'd been once told he would have to endure waking up next to for the rest of his life. Cagalli. The bitch-Queen of Orb. The cause of all his woes. "No, you're no lord anymore, even if you hadn't extradited yourself, you've long since lost any trace of nobility you may once have had. I'll make it formal later, don't you worry... you can die knowing that because of you, the great and powerful Seiran family will be forever expunged from the houses of Orb."

Yuna was willing to endure her disdain, her presence here actually suddenly becoming something of a boon. He'd studied the bitch after all, he knew just what her weaknesses were. "Mercy! Please, my Queen, I'm begging you... let justice be done! I surrender! Let me contact my lawyers and I will gladly be your prisoner, and I'm sure we can work out some sort of plea bargain that..."

"There's not enough justice in all of Orb, sadly, to make up for what you've done, Yuna." Cagalli answered in a dead tone.

"You can't just kill me in cold blood!" Yuna protested fearfully. "That would be murder! You'd be just as bad as me! I surrender, you hear? I give up! I'm helpless and at your mercy... you have an obligation to take me prisoner!"

"If this was Orb territory, you might have a leg to stand on, as unfortunate as that would be." Cagalli acknowledged. "But this is not Orb territory, and I have no sovereignity here. If I'm not mistaken, now that you've officially surrendered, this is Edenite territory. That means they are the ones who are tasked with dispensing justice, not me." Cagalli glanced meaningfully at the Deathbringer, and the blood soaked greatsword slung across his back, where he was still cradling Talia, after wrapping her in some sort of foil emergency blanket taken from a pouch on his armor.

"Besides, we really don't need you anymore." A hound faced soldier commented from behind the Queen's shoulder. "Since you so politely left us all your documentation and records for us to confiscate. No confession you could ever give would possibly any more complete and damning than those records are. See, that's a downside of keeping everything on paper... in this day and age, that actually makes things much harder to forge. Data, anyone can manipulate data. But it takes a specialist or a hobbyist to convincingly falsify paper documents. So convincing the public of the veracity of your records should be much easier than it otherwise might be. Quite convenient of you, I must say."

"That's impossible!" Yuna shouted despairingly. "I destroyed it all myself!"

"You tried certainly. And did well enough, for an actor, I guess. But you made a few critical errors." The Stormhound retorted, the mocking smugness in his tone worse than a blow to the face. "Namely that you tried to use a smoke grenade as an ignition source... and with the smoke dispensing part several inches out of the liquid to be ignited."

"But... but it was red!" Yuna protested, disbelievingly.

"Smoke grenades do happen to come in various colors, red being a popular one, as it is highly visible in most environments." "The Stormhound lectured with a shake of his head. "Furthermore, while you correctly activated the grenade's timing device, you failed to actually arm the grenade. Seriously, have you NEVER seen an action movie? Oh wait, you're an action ACTOR, aren't you? That's just sad. Everyone knows you have to pull the firing pin on a grenade before it will do anything! Even a child knows that! I don't know what kind of props they use on a movie set, but real grenades have safety features... and the pulling of the pin to activate is a major part of those. I thought you were making some sort of convoluted apology... now I see you really do just suck that bad. Well, at least I got another story to tell all the kids back home..."

"This can't be happening..." Yuna sobbed.

"It has happened." The bass rumble of the Praetorian cut in, as the Eddie left off tending Talia and now stood over the trembling Yuna like the very avatar of death. His sword was in his hands, and he had Kain's head mounted on his belt! "For what you have done, and ordered done, to more of my people than I may ever know, I deliver their vengeance upon you, far quicker and more mercifully than you deserve, creature. Let those who deal in extermination be themselves exterminated! That is the determination of Alexander, the Deathbringer of Yggdrasil." The sword went up, point down, like a spike.

"Don't do this! Please, don't let him do this! Cagalli... CAGALLI! HELP M..." The sword came down. Twice.

"So did killing him make it better? Did it solve anything?" Cagalli challenged the Praetorian bitterly, drawing her eyes away from the bloody mess that had once been Yuna, a childhood peer, if not exactly a friend.

"I'm not the one you should ask that of." Alex rumbled, his unnerving skull helm glaring over his shoulder at her. He took one hand from his sword hilt and pointed a single finger at the blanket wrapped Talia. "Inquire of her whether the death of that slime was worth anything, why don't you? I am just the hand of vengeance for those who lack the power to take it themselves. I don't burden myself with questions of whether things become better or worse afterwards... I merely bring the death to those who deserve it." He turned around, sheathing the sword across his back, and gently picked Talia up in his arms, holding her protectively to his chest. "Now go, and show yourselves not before me again, or I will do to you what I did to him. He was the cause, but you are not blameless for this place by any means. Should we meet again, it will be your deaths I bring..."

"Nice working with you too." Kurtz commented sarcastically.

"Leave it." Athrun said softly, as they watched the Praetorian take his charge down the hall, before beginning to open the various doors one by one, looking for other survivors. "He's got good reason to feel how he does. He may not be completely right about things, but he's not completely wrong either. We should get out of here before what code of honor he does hold to snaps under the pressure of this place. He may believe in some of the same things we do, but he's not going to be our friend, not ever. And Kira... Kira's the same way, now, I realize..."

"Sucks when you find out you're fighting against the sort of people you'd normally be buying drinks for at a bar, huh." Glory observed with a painful chuckle.

"Yeah... that's one word for it..." Cagalli admitted.

xxxx

Author Note 2: Now for some fan involvement. What kind of Newtype should Talia be, do you think? I really can't make up my mind, so bring on the discussion and recommendations, if you would?


	70. The Meaning of Hurt

Author Note: I'm glad to see Meaning of Trauma so well recieved. Most chapters are of course, at least by those of you who keep in regular contact with me, but its nice to see the work is appreciated all the same. I was worried it would feel a little too drawn out, the spotlight stretched a little too thin as it were, fitting all those characters meaningfully into the events, but that doesn't seem to be the impression. Good. I originally debated with one of my close confidantes about having Yuna get killed by another falling Mobile Suit, as a homage to Destiny, but she talked me out of it, and I have to say, I think I managed to at least get into the same ballpark, in terms of a pathetic end for him. Something about smoke grenades are just not good luck for our RI spokespeople, nothing good has ever happened to Yuna or Hazy when a smoke grenade and Stormhounds were involved. I must admit to being somewhat surprised that so many people are indicating that a Talia-Alexander relationship might be in the cards. It's not that I'm against the idea, it just feels kinda sudden... I mean up until Trauma, Alex was pretty generally considered a douche. I want to confuse the issue on him a bit, which is why I wrote what I did, but I didn't expect quite that much redemption...

Well, in any case, this chapter probably won't be quite as long as Trauma. Though now that I've comfortably breached my previous limits on chapter length... much like Kira breaching his limits with regard to the Seed... you might find more and more chapters exceeding the 25k mark. That's how it happened in CC, when I went from 1000 to 5000 word chapters up to 10 to 15 thousand word chapters, and have gradually been adding wordcount from there. I worry that it drags on, like I said, but if it doesn't, then there's no reason for me to hold back, right? It makes it easier for me, certainly, less worrying about where I'm going to find a good cliffhanger or break in the action to serve as a divide between chapters, and less adding extra chapters into the arc after the planning stage. It just means each chapter is more like an OVA rather than a single episode of a series, I guess.

But on to the, if not exactly action, at least some events that should get you talking and speculating something fierce, and the answers to questions and quibbles you've raised in the end of last arc. And one damned powerful emotional scene, or so I hope!

xxxx

**Space, Second Earth Colony 5, St. Sabbat's Home for Disabled Veterans, April 6th, 5:30 pm**

"Jack, could you check in on Birdie before you head home? Nancy is his normal nurse, but I'm sure you know how flighty she gets when dealing with some of the more needy Vets. Honestly, why that girl thinks she'll make a career out of Caretaking Medicine when she can't stand to be around the mentally disabled I don't know..." His supervisor asked, seeing Jack with his day pack slung over one shoulder and about to head for the door. Indeed, his hand had been in the middle of reaching out for the keypad that would open the door... a security precaution to keep some of the still mobile but not altogether "there" Vets from wandering out of the facility and getting hurt... when the grizzled head nurse, himself a disabled Vet of the First Valentine War, had made the request. Well, calling it a request was to dignify it with a rather higher degree of choice than it actually entailed.

Jack was, like most of the staff of St. Sabbat's, a nurse, specializing in the field of Caretaking, providing living assistance for those who were crippled or otherwise unable to normally care for themselves, such as the very sick, the very old, or the very badly injured. His shift ended at 5 pm, though he usually ended up staying a bit later finishing up his paperwork and making sure his relief was fully up to date on the conditions of the patients they were responsible for. But while he might no longer be technically on the clock, he was, like many medical professionals, sort of on constant call anyway. And having the head nurse owe him another favor couldn't hurt for the next time Jack put in for a three day weekend or needed a sudden day off for his own life... it got pretty wearying, waiting on the patients hand and foot for 8 hours a day, five to six days a week!

But the pay was pretty good, and the side benefits, such as the insurance discounts, were nice as well, and it gave him an opportunity to do something productive with the associates degree he'd gotten. It paid the bills anyway, with enough left over to fund his major hobby, and that was good enough for the time being. Jack was only 19 after all, and a Natural to the bone... many of his school peers were still bagging groceries or waiting tables to make ends meet! He wasn't planning on spending his whole life wiping the butts of old people or the terminally ill, but it wasn't so onerous, with modern medical facilities, that he was eager for a change either. And if it meant he could pay back some of the people that had sacrificed their limbs, their bodies, and even their minds and personalities so that he could have a safe childhood, more or less, growing up, then that was definitely something Jack Fedor could get behind!

So he shrugged, nodded and turned for the secure wing where the patient in question... Captain Brendon "Birdman" Stork, better known to the staff of St. Sabbat's in an affectionate manner as "Birdie"... had his living quarters. It wasn't quite as nice as a hotel room, but it was a far cry from a hospital suite. The Super had just asked him to check in on him, not actually provide any care, so Jack felt no need to go back to the locker room to change back into his scrubs. Of course if something was significantly wrong, he'd step in... there was no telling with Nancy, she really wasn't cut out for Caretaking, at least of those people who weren't whole of mind... but on the other hand, all the patients rooms were passively monitered by Namara, so if anything was really wrong, they'd have already known about it. Birdie was kept in the secure wing both because of his former job, which had something to do with a top level Army Intelligence project, and because while he was basically a vegetable most of the time, he had a habit of wandering around.

Had the Captain not suffered near terminal brain damage, and was thus incapable of forming long term thoughts or plans, Jack might have almost thought Birdie was actively trying to escape St. Sabbat's, such were the frequency of his wanderings. Reaching the doors leading to the secure wing, Jack let Namara's automated facial recognition and optical scanning technology take its measure of him. There really wasn't much exceptional to Jack, nothing that made him stand out in most crowds. A little on the tall side, a little lanky, browny-blond hair, hazel eyes, medium-pale skin, as normal for someone who lived most of his life in space. Average, that was Jack. Handsome enough to appeal to a certain subset of slightly more desperate or intellectual girls, but not so hot that the truly pretty and stuck up ones felt obliged to pay him any mind. Once Nam was assured that he was who he was, he stepped forward and entered the five digit passcode to open the door proper.

There was a security guard on detachment from the Colony Reserve Militia on duty on the other side of the door, kind of like the old National Guard back when there were lots of independent nations, not a front line soldier, but trained in basic military duties, and given more intensive training every month or so for a few days, in exchange for an extra paycheck and a few side benefits, such as military insurance rates. The guard was mostly a formality, and Jack exchanged friendly nods with the guy, barely even noticing the holstered 43 Special on the guard's hip. He'd gotten to look at it once before, during a graveyard shift when the guard was feeling particularly mellow, and Jack had been surprised at how heavy the pistol actually was. He couldn't imagine how the people in movies were able to fire them one handed, much less two at once! "Jack Fedor, to see Captain Stork for checkup." Jack declared, for the formal verbal day log that Namara automatically kept, and waved his laminated ID badge at the guard, who gestured him onward, the head nurse having already sent ahead a notice that someone was coming to check up on Birdie.

It was only a short walk to Birdie's room from there, and a further 5 digit password to open it up. Not all the patient's rooms had locks on them, just those who were ambulatory risks like Birdie. But for once, Birdie was just where he was supposed to be, lying upright in his recliner-bed, staring slack jawed at the TV screen that had been set up at the foot of his bed, showing a random assortment of daytime shows, and the occasional movie. It was the movies that actually got the most brain function to show on the Captain's medical sensors, the more action and blood involved, the more he seemed to respond. The one time some goof had managed to smuggle in a cheap slasher-horror flick for the player, more or less on a dare, the brainwave monitor had gone completely insane, and they'd had to forcibly sedate the Captain to keep him from hurting himself, apparently attempting to emulate the actions he saw in the movie. That nurse was no longer working at St. Sabbat's.

Birdie's mocha dark skin made a clear contrast against the pale cream sheets of his bed, his feet very nearly hanging off the end of the bed... in those times when he stood up, Birdie was just shy of six and a half feet tall, more than a head taller than Jack. It was a little intimidating actually, even though Birdie was almost stick thin, both from the aftermath of his tragic accident during the presumed Eddie data attack on Namara, and from a diet that largely consisted of IV nutrients... he just wasn't "there" enough to eat solid food most of the time, even when hand fed. The massive burn scars on Birdie's face, concentrated around his empty eye socket, where he'd formerly had some sort of augmentic data connection, for direct linkage straight to Namara's mainframe, made the man seem artificially severe and antagonistic, which might be another reason why Nancy was so leery of being around him.

"Yo, Birdie, how's it hanging?" Jack called, not really expecting an answer, but he believed that it couldn't hurt to talk to his patients, even the brain damaged ones. Maybe they couldn't understand him, but then again maybe they could... science still was pretty grey on that issue. And if he was in their situation, God forbid, Jack felt that he'd want his caretakers to treat him like a person, not a slowly dying piece of meat. So he tried to be as personable as possible with the Vets, even those who had never even blinked an eye to indicate they were aware of his presence. Somewhat to his surprise, Birdie's head came up, a trickle of drool dribbling down his chin as the single pale brown eye in its deeply sunken socket turned in his direction.

"I can see you..." Birdie lisped wetly, his mouth trying to twist into something like a smile, but the damage his brain had taken from the overloading AI mainframe had left him with extensive nervous system damage as well, and his muscles really didn't respond like they used to. Jack couldn't quite put his finger on why, but it suddenly creeped him the hell out!

"Oh. Good. I can see you too, Birdie. And you seem well enough." Jack accessed the monitor display built into the wall by the door, which let him assess Birdie's vital signs without having to directly approach him, say if he was sleeping or God forbid, agitated. He kept a wary eye on the patient all the same though, something about that attempted smile had not sat well with him. Birdie's heart rate was slightly elevated, and his brainwaves were fairly active, but in really odd patterns, like water gushing from a kinked hose... there'd be a spurt of electric activity and then a dead period, then a spurt, without any detectable pattern Jack could discern. It was abnormal, but not necessarily alarming, especially because he didn't seem to be in distress, either to eyes or sensors. Jack nonetheless put a note into the system for more frequent observation of Birdie during the next few shifts, better to be safe than sorry.

"I can see again..." Birdie went on, his mouth still twitching as he fumbled his attempts at a grin.

"I'm happy for you." Jack replied with a shrug to dismiss a shiver. "But I gotta get home, I got a big night ahead of me. You keep hanging in there, Birdie." He logged out of the monitor and closed the door, making sure he heard it relock behind him. _Well, that was creepy. Maybe Nancy's not completely off her rocker about him. Oh well, job hazard..._ Jack shrugged as he resumed his usual after shift routine, trudging out of the secure wing, then past the main desk with a final nod at the head nurse. It wasn't that he was particularly exhausted, in a physical sense, but staying on point mentally for a full shift could get really tough sometimes. And when you were taking care of those who couldn't take care of themselves, you couldn't exactly drift off into la-la land, you had to stay totally focused and alert for the slightest sign that something might be wrong. After all, most of his patients couldn't themselves tell him that something wasn't right with them, he had to be the one to notice for them.

The streets outside the Home were crowded, but that was normal for a Second Earth Colony, where tens or even hundreds of millions of people were packed together in a manner that was more like bees in a hive than anything else. If you had issues about personal space and privacy, a SEC was probably hell for you, because there wasn't much of either outside the really high class districts. Jack let himself drift with the crowds, feet carrying hime homewards more or less on autopilot, steering subconsciously clear of the darker alley mouths and avoiding taking any tempting shortcuts through the back alleys, a skill most longtime residents of the mass population districts of a SEC picked up sooner rather than later. Crime rates on a SEC, especially in the mass hab districts, were a dozen times higher than anywhere else in the USN, just because of all the population pressure. And while Jack didn't look wealthy, nor stand out from the crowd, there was always the possibility of random violence from the desperate or the truly destitute. He'd had friends get mugged for little more than the pocket change in their pockets, and end up in the hospital with stab wounds when that wasn't enough to satisfy their assailants.

This trip home was thankfully uneventful, and Jack found his Hab, as the massive "skyscrapers" that served as apartment/living complexes for the vast majority of the SEC's populace were called. Several hundred stories tall, three blocks wide on a side, each Hab held hundreds of thousands of people, as well as resteraunts, clinics, stores and other functions of modern civilized society. Many people never even had to leave their Hab except when taking a vacation, such was their self containment. He stopped by a hallway stand selling compressed meat dogs and bought one... nobody knew what meat it actually was, probably leavings from the clone-factory floors... which actually tasted pretty good, especially when slathered with condiments. A packet of slightly greasy waffle fries doused liberally with seasoned salt, and a bottle of fizzy flavored water completed his dinner. Not the healthiest of meals by any means, but he still had the youthful metabolism to get away with it.

Eating on the go... his apartment wasn't big enough to have more than a microwave and a fridge that would have made a good lunchbox, and his table was usually his computer desk as well... Jack proceeded up through the escalator-ways and mass transit elevators to center-west quadrent, level 235, room number 235CW700. It was buried near the heart of the Hab, which was actually a fairly prime position, since it wasn't like there was a view outside or anything anyway. The closer you were to the central areas of the Hab, the closer the transit ways, social activities and utility services were. So unlike some of the outermost hab rooms, Jack's apartment always had heat or air conditioning, hot water, and unimpeded data flow... the last being the most important to him. Wiping his greasy and condiment stained fingers off on a napkin, fastiduous with his hand hygiene thru more classes about it than he ever wanted to remember, Jack opened the door to his apartment and gratefully stepped inside.

Closing the door behind him didn't exactly shut out the rest of the world... the walls were barely as thick as his hand, and the soundproofing only of mediocre quality, but you got used to tuning out the sounds of the people living around you. Even when they were having fights, or loud sex, or crying babies, or any of the hundred other ways people have of making disturbing noises at inconvenient times. The apartment consisted of two rooms, the living/sleeping area, with the fold up couch-bed that could recess into the floor, as well as his computer station/desk, with the microwave and fridge built into the wall next to it; and then the bathroom/washroom beyond, with a cramped toilet, shower and wall mounted clothes cleaning unit. All in all, both rooms together gave him about 180 square feet of living space. And this luxury... he was a single male just out of community college after all... cost him a good 2/3 of his paycheck every month. But Jack had done the dorm-mates thing in college, and that wasn't a hell he was prepared to live in full time if he had any choice at all!

Pretty much the rest of his money went into his food and living expenses, and the remainder into his true love and hobby... computer gaming. In specific, Jack was head over heels enamoured with WoGB, to the point where playing the game was actually his most social activity outside of work. Sure, he'd go out with a few friends from work every now and again, troll a bar or a cafe looking for a chick as horny and desperate as he was for some fun in one of those rent by the half hour sort of motels, but other than such infrequent escapades, he really didn't get out much. And he was fine with that. There wasn't much in a SEC to get out to, at least that he could possibly afford. And besides, while Jack Fedor may just be a face in a crowd that nobody would remember, in WoGB, he could be someone that people recognized, even talked about and admired. And in point of fact, he was.

Jack wasn't much of a team player, despite his unassuming appearances in real life, when it came to the game, he had an ego nearly as big as his Hab complex, but it was only because he really WAS that good, most of the time. Not for him the banding together into Regiments or Squadrons to accomplish missions or scenarios... he'd do it, when he really had nothing else to do, or when he absolutely had to acquire a piece of equipment that he couldn't obtain otherwise... but he preferred being a lone wolf. It was the Player vs Player aspect of the game that Jack, under the legendary pseudonym "Ownage", dedicated most of his free time and energy too. Free-for-all matches, team arena and most of all, one vs one Deathmatch, that was his realm and his dominion! Ownage had the best wins to losses record of any Deathmatch player in the history of WoGB, with well over four thousand wins and less than fifty losses in his entire career. He wasn't quite untouchable, but he was within spitting distance of it!

And just recently, with the insitution of the Patriot Plus program, Jack had found a way to marry his real life personality and game life personality in a way he'd never imagined would ever be possible! The opportunity to actually serve the USN people in a support role to the USN military, the people he admired most of all, against the Eddies, and get paid to do so from the safety and security of his own hab-room was simply perfection! And all the moreso because that would mean Ownage might become even more of a household name... millions of people played WoGB, but they were still only a fraction of the total populace. If he could perform in the Patriot Plus program like he did in regular Deathmatches, Ownage might very well appear in major military reports and even on the public media stations! And Jack had always wondered if the in-game skillsets for the NPC Gundam pilots had any real basis in factual abilities... the Patriot Plus program gave him the ability to see for himself, on real battlegrounds, just what it meant to be a Gundam pilot! What could be cooler than that?

He was still completing the training beta for the program, but Namara's tracking service told him he was a good three levels ahead of the next closest Patriot, and Jack was eager to increase that lead as much as possible. He cracked his knuckles like a maestro about to sit down before a piano, settling into his expensive and very comfortable desk chair, and bringing up the systems he sometimes spent enough money buying that he had to subsist on ramen packets for weeks at a time to afford! A top of the line PvPer could not afford to have system lag, which was also why he'd been glad to get the hab-room so close to the Hab-core. "Goodbye Jack." Jack muttered, as he settled the upgraded VR equipment onto his head, feeling the twitches in his scalp as the NIC-like system began syncronizing with his brainwaves to bring him more fully into the game. "Everyone, say hello to Ownage..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Northern Europe, old Iceland, Heaven's Base, Solar Knight quarters, April 6th, 7:45 pm**

"Thanks, Luna." Shinn said, accepting a mug of hot chocolate from his lover as she came back from the sparse kitchenette that thier quarters contained. The place wasn't a patch on the frankly palatial dwellings they enjoyed up in space, but even on the hellhole of New Eden, the rank of Knight-Champion opened doors that would normally be inaccessible to front line pilots. Such as this General's suite they'd been allocated, in the theatre HQ's slowly growing habitation district, buried almost a hundred meters beneath the surface levels of the base. The suite had a common/sitting room, a bedroom with seperate bath, a utility room with washing and cleaning equipment, and the kitchenette, for about 1500 square feet all told. Screens on the walls could mimic windows, but most of the time they had them set to display reports from the base sensors. The area around Heaven's Base was actually pretty picturesque, but a good soldier never let themselves get lost in aesthetics when on duty.

Whether or not Shinn was still sure he was a good soldier was a bit of a sticky issue, but he wanted to be one anyway. He just wasn't sure if being one for the USN was what he ought to be doing. Luna took a seat next to him on the couch, instinctively curling up against his side as she cupped her own steaming mug of instant cocoa, both of them enjoying the quiet intimacy of the moment. After a moment, the lights began to dim, as they detected no more overt motion within the suit, and in accordance with pre-programmed instructions to do so. It wasn't quite mood lighting, but eventually the lights would go out, which would prompt them to go get some sleep, even if they didn't feel tired. Which was a problem for both of them, working without adequate rest that is. Especially with the Solar Knights as fractured as they had been since Victoria.

Someone had to step up and make an example of themselves for the grunts to follow, after their loss of faith in Paladin-Commander ze Burrel, because otherwise the Solar Knights were unable to fufill their purpose in providing heavy support and combat zone superiority to the USN regular army, which only further strained already tense relations between the two organizations. Individual, both military branches were incredibly powerful, but it was a plain fact that together they were far stronger. Without Vindicators and Excalibers to fend off Eddie Dervishes and Spectres, the USN ground armor corps always took severe casualties in any engagement, and the mess even a single Mobile Suit could make of unsupported infantry formations didn't even bear thinking about! On the other hand, without the USN infantry and armor tying up the majority of the Custodial forces, the Eddie's superior level of technology and especially the prevalance of their powerful beam weapons would lead to the Solar Knights being cut off and surrounded and taken down like bears attacked by a wolf pack!

But after having their Supreme Commander run out on just under half of his most elite and loyal subordinates, in full view of half the goddamn army, leaving them to die while he made his escape, morale in the Solar Knights had been at a fever pitch. The kind of fever that ends up with a filled grave. If the top brass, in their customized Excalibers, weren't going to stick out a tough battle, why should the mainline Knights in thier much less poweful Vindicators do it? This attitude had led to many Solar Knight detachments retreating from combat at the first sign that the Eddies might be attacking in force, often leaving their assigned detachments of USN army forces in the lurch, with resultant high casualties. And you could forget them even deploying to a combat zone when it was even RUMORED that an Executor might be present on the field... even if it meant suffering a court martial for insubordination!

Of course, not all Knights gave in to their broken morale, but enough of them did for the problem to be seen as endemic, and relations with the regular army had grown fairly hostile in the meantime. And Shinn couldn't blame them... the Solar Knights were not accomplishing their duty, and it was the regular army forces that generally paid for it in lives and material and lost ground. You knew you were in a bad position when the grunts were more apt to buy drinks for sailors from the SPF on shore duty than they were for the Knights that ostensibly marched into battle alongside them. And though Shinn did his best to step up as a leader and an example to the rank and file Knights, he just wasn't sure he was actually putting his heart into it like he needed to be. Because he wasn't sure himself if the USN leadership was still deserving of his loyalty and sacrifice.

Shinn had seen... and done... many things in his time with the Solar Knights that had shaken his faith in Rey and in President Durandel, but he'd always been able to convince himself that because they were willing to sacrifice themselves as well, that their motives were pure, even if their methods were not. But he no longer had that surety. He'd seen with his own eyes what Rey had done, and indeed, Shinn and Luna themselves had been left more or less unsupported on the field by that action, the two of them alone against that Praetorian with the huge sword. The fight had been inconclusive, but Shinn was sure it would have been a victory for him and Luna if the USN forces had kept up their offensive momentum in the meanwhile. Instead, the fight had dragged on, tying them up when they could have been coming to the aid of the army forces, and might even have been able to disrupt or at least delay the Lucifer during it's battle winning counterattack!

He shook his head, still in awe at that terrifying spectacle of almost supernatural piloting skill. He'd always striven to stand up on the same plateau of skill that people like Athrun Zala or Kira Yamato or Yzak Joule occupied, and had for much of his career, especially in the Solar Knights, felt that he accomplished that goal. But then he saw what Kira could apparently REALLY do, when he was truly fired up, and that certainty... like his faith in Rey and Gil... had come tumbling down in ruins. Not even mentioning what he'd seen Frost do against fifty Paladins! It had barely even been a fight, more of a protracted field-dismantlement! He'd been playing with them... like they were dolls! Shinn shivered, just recollecting it, and took a sip of cocoa to warm himself. Luna stirred from her own thoughts, roused by his shiver, attuned and attentive, as ever, to his moods.

She didn't say anything, but then, she didn't always need to, as she laid her cheek against his shoulder, her magenta hair rustling against his chin and ear as she slipped her arm around his and hugged that limb slightly. Warmth spread through him, but it had relatively little to do with the hot cocoa. Feeling more relaxed already, Shinn leaned his head against the top of hers, pressing a kiss into the top of her hair, where that one strand was always poking up at weird and wild angles, despite how much Luna combed it down. He wondered if she would ask him to take her to bed, and found himself torn between his ever present desire to enjoy such intimacy, and his contentment with the way things were at that very instant. Shinn decided to leave it up to Luna... if she was feeling frisky, he'd be glad to frisk, but otherwise he was just going to sit here with her in quietude, until they fell asleep together even, such was the peace he felt.

But in spending so much time contemplating his loyalty to the USN of late, Shinn's deep thoughts had knocked loose a few other considerations he'd not had time to worry about until a quiet moment like this one. Hesitant to break the comfortable silence, but determined to relieve the nagging itch, such as it was, Shinn opened his mouth. "Luna, who is Mayu?" He asked her softly. Luna must have been in half a doze, because the sound of his voice startled her, her entire body going tense, as she almost spilled her cup of cocoa all over her lap. He brushed another kiss against the top of her head, but it seemed to do little to diminish her sudden tension.

"Uhm... what did you say?" Luna asked, after a moment, outwardly calm and quiet. Shinn could feel her heart racing in her chest, and as if she realized this too, she drew herself away slightly.

"Who is Mayu?" Shinn asked again, wondering at her strange behavior, but not too much. It was a pretty out of the blue question after all, and all the moreso because he didn't even really know why he cared. He couldn't remember anyone named Mayu. But then, after what Noah had put him through during his brief "enlistment" in the Brotherhood, Shinn was sometimes glad just to remember his own name, and recognize Luna's face. "I've been having these weird dreams lately, where it's like I'm listening to a recorded phone message or something, like an answering machine. And this girl who is talking is apparently named Mayu. I just wanted to know if you had any idea why or who she is?"

"I..." Luna hesitated, and Shinn heard her licking her lips, as if nervous. "I don't know her..." She said at last.

"Is she an old girlfriend of mine or something?" Shinn guessed the reason for her hesitance to discuss the matter. Luna wasn't usually the jealous sort, but girls could be funny about things like that, all guys knew that.

"No!" Luna replied shortly and firmly. "I just never knew her, okay? I think she was... was some friend or acquaintance or something. From before the Knights, before Noah did... what he did to you."

"Okay, no big deal..." Shinn backed off, wondering why Luna was so touchy about the subject. "In the dreams, she sounds a bit too young to be a girlfriend anyway."

"They're just dreams, Shinn." Luna advised him, sounding both wistful and worried somehow. "You shouldn't put too much stock in them. A mind's apt to dwell in some pretty odd places, when its been through as much as yours has."

"Yeah, that's true." Shinn admitted, and moved his arm that she had been hugging to nestle around her shoulders, pulling her close again. Her heart was still fluttering a bit, and he could hear her chewing on her lip a bit, but at length she laid her head back down on his shoulder, and things returned to how they'd been. Shinn finished his cocoa, and decided that maybe he would be a little forward instead of just letting things glide. Nothing like a bout of relatively uninhibited sex to get both him and Luna to loosen up and forget about what was apparently an uncomfortable topic, even if he didn't know why. And the bedroom was nice enough that not taking advantage of it would be simply a waste, especially given what most soldiers had to deal with on Earth in terms of sleeping arrangements. Most of the infantry had to literally live in their armor for days at a time, because there wasn't enough space in the sealed environment sections of the base to provide them all quarters!

"Hey, Luna..." He began, his hand slowly drifting down towards her hips in a suggestive manner. He felt her shift and felt her breathing increase as she immediately divined his intent. However, before he could ask her if she wanted to head into the bedroom, something else occured to Shinn, that had been nagging at him. "Where's my phone?" He asked her, more like blurted out. Luna reacted like he'd jabbed her with a live wire, this time her cocoa, the dregs of it anyway, did go spilling into her lap, and she pounced to her feet with a hiss of displeasure, wiping furiously at her skirt and thighs. "Sorry, sorry!" Shinn apologized profusely, as he saw the furious and dirty look she was giving him, completely forgetting about his question in the heat of the moment.

In the end, she did forgive him for miscuing her and startling her, and it wasn't like the uniform would be hard to clean. And the sex that followed her stripping out of her dirtied uniform was every bit as distracting and relaxing as either of them could have hoped for. If Shinn had been able to pay attention, he might have noticed that Luna was being extra attentive and determined to wear him out, but then again, what kind of guy has the time to notice that sort of detail when making love with the most important person in his life? Exhausted and simultaneously refreshed after their congress, Shinn dropped off into a light doze, just barely feeling the bed shift as Luna got up and went into the bathroom to clean up and take a shower. The shower stayed on for a long time, so long that it wasn't until the automatic water conservation systems activated that it ended.

Shinn felt the bed shift again, waking from his half slumber, as Luna climbed back into it with him. A part of him was aroused at the feel of her naked body against his, but he wasn't quite the lusty young ace he'd once been. Once was enough for most nights. Luna moulded herself to his back and side, clinging almost tightly to him as she buried her face in the back of his head, her still slightly damp hair ticklish against the nape of his neck. "Luv you, Luna..." Shinn mumbled, as he lazily grabbed her hand where it was draped over his side, and squeezed gently.

"I love you too, Shinn." Luna replied in a whisper, her voice sounding a bit choked for some reason. "Do you ever doubt that, okay? I love you more than anything or anyone. Everything I've done... its because I love you and I want you to be happy, okay?"

"Yeah." Shinn smiled contentedly. "You make me very happy, Luna. G'night."

xxxx

**New Eden, South American Andes, Charon's Citadel, Prophet's Apartments, April 7th, Morning**

Standing in the dimly lit hallway outside the series of rooms that had been hollowed out of the mountain's core for the purpose of providing living habitations for the master and commander of the buried fortress... originally Noah Borander, but now used by Zach, though only infrequently... Lilia took a steadying breath as she looked at the innocuous doorway hatch in front of her. Zach had left very specific instructions that he didn't want to be bothered while training, he'd even gone so far as to ask her to please stay away in the recorded message he'd left. Politeness indicated utmost seriousness with Zach, he was NEVER polite, not to ANYONE or ANYTHING, so that he would go so far as to make it a request instead of an order showed just how dead set he was on achieving his next goals by himself!

And Lilia had accepted that, was even gladdened to see Zach taking his self improvement so seriously, in the face of the renewed threat from the Oosen BALOR units, despite how powerful he already was. So the LAST thing she had ever expected was to get woken in the middle of the night by Charon, the semi-AI as close to panic as it's programming allowed, begging her to come to the Citadel as quickly as possible because there was something wrong with Frost.

"There's always something wrong with Zach. He makes a lifestyle out of being a "wrong" sort of person." Lilia had half joked, still sleepy and tired from a long day spent working with the Mori and ambushing Oosen scout forces in the foothills. "His wrongness is part of his charm, but don't tell him I said that."

"This is no time for humor." Charon had retorted tersely. "Something is seriously wrong with Master Frost. His biorythyms have gone completely off my charts, and his mood is simultaneously self destructive and, for lack of a better word, depressed. I would not contact you lightly, Lady Frost, I've let this go on for almost a week before I decided to alter my order database slightly. Please, you must come... no one else can even get close to him, and he's destroyed all my comm units within his quarters. He refuses to come out, hasn't eaten anything in all this time, and his internal diagnostics unit is overloaded with trauma reports, many of them self inflicted. I never thought I would say this, but I find myself fearing for his continued living existence at this rate. This sort of situation was not included in my programming expectations... I simply don't know what to do. Please help him, you are the only one who can."

Needless to say, THAT had gotten her awake and moving rather quickly. She knew Zach was extremely careless with his health at times... such as when he'd challenged Erk to a hand to hand pissing contest... but she'd never known him to deliberately harm himself! Indeed, he'd openly derided the thought of inflicting physical harm upon himself as a means of pleasure in one of their earliest conversations. He was not a masochist, he was a Sufferer. If he was suddenly indulging in purposeful self mutiliation, then Charon was right, something was BADLY WRONG! Nothing came to Lilia's mind as a credible cause for such behavior, not then and not during the few hours supersonic flight that seperated the Mori forward camp from Charon's Citadel... her Wraith's Photo-refractor cloak meant she could fly right over Carpentaria base and even Orb at high altitude without drawing fire or attention from Oosen patrols. Even as she landed in the Citadel's main hanger, the retractable gates built into the valley floor swinging shut over her head, Lilia had no idea what could possibly drive Zach into such an apparent frenzied state.

She checked out the Kratos while leaving her cockpit, but Zach's Gundam didn't seem to be damaged, and when she called up a technical log for the hanger, she didn't see any reports of major repairs or maintenance being performed on the machine since it had come back from a short excursion six days prior. The destination of the trip was not logged, and so Lilia called upon Charon as she made her way through the underground tunnels connecting the Citadel's factory and hanger sections from the command and living quarters. "Where did he go?" Lilia inquired, her voice collected and calm, more a facade than truth. She was worried as hell... Zach had always been so self possessed, it boggled her mind to think of what he might have encountered that would upset him so much. Yes, his type of self possession was usually homicidal and violent in the extreme, but that just made it more disconcerting that he'd start sulking and hiding and cutting himself, or whatever it was that he was doing. If something pissed him off, Zach killed it, no questions asked or second thoughts given. His ego was, simply put, INSANE! Nothing she or anyone else had ever said to him had EVER put him off his stride for even a moment... what the HELL had happened?

"I intercepted an outbound message originating on the Antarctic continent, using an old Brotherhood comm code. Mentioned by the message was a certain man, Markov Ashino, the commander of a USN splinter group that opposes the Durandel Administration, calling themselves the Retributors. Data on Commander Ashino indicates he was once an Apostle of the Brotherhood, and that his militia group is named for his Gundam, the Retribution, a Vengeance Chassis machine. However, he went missing in action shortly after the Battle of Cape York, and appears to have severed all past ties to the Brotherhood and Master Borander. Of more concern to Master Frost, Markov Ashino is a BCPU level 4, a member of the same generation and program of Supersoldiers that Master Frost himself originally hails from. I do not gather that they were friends, but Master Frost did seem quite excited at the prospect of encountering his "little brother"." Charon answered, as usual a bit verbose on the facts, but she was used to it's loquacity by now.

"Knowing Zach, I doubt any reunion with this Ashino guy would be a happy one. He's never once mentioned anything having to do with his life as a BCPU in a fond or even neutral tone, just straight up loathing and hatred. Though also knowing Zach, I think that as bad as things were for him, things were probably worse for everyone else, Ashino included." Lilia replied, knowing that when Zach got "excited" about meeting someone, it was because he was planning on tormenting them or killing them in a heated battle. "The Kratos wasn't damaged though, so he couldn't have lost a fight or anything..." Lilia mused, trying to think of what sort of encounter could answer for Zach's apparent current mood.

"Insufficient data to say. Though the AMP cannon did show signs of being fired, and my long range sensors did pick up a significant radiation release on the polar continent a short time before Master Frost returned in his current mood." If Charon could have shrugged, his voice said he would have.

"He used the AMP on something?" Lilia actually stopped and gaped for a second, before shaking her head and getting moving again, faster than before. Though the Kratos did possess several normal ranged weapon systems, including supercharged beam cannons and a QC spike driver, it's primary and most destructive ranged weapon system was the 20mm AMP cannon mounted within the palm of the oversized left gauntlet. It was a weapon of mass destruction in every sense of the word, and yet Lilia had only ever seen Zach use it once before, and that time in a "non-destructive" way, to force a hole in Orb's Glasshouse. Zach loathed using ranged weapons, though he wasn't so disdainful of them as to not equip himself with any. They weren't "fun" though, so he never used them, or at least, she'd never seen him get into a state that required he use them, not even in the midst of a pitched fight against multiple enemy Gundams!

For him to have unleashed the AMP on someone meant either he'd been pushed to the very edge of life and death... in which case the Kratos would have been torn to bits before he resorted to it... or he'd encountered someone or something that got under his skin so much that he didn't even care about having fun with them, he just wanted to eradicate them at any cost! But even the Caller hadn't pissed him off that badly, not even when the Grand Chimera forcefully chose him to be his Champion! Even Kira or Kunai didn't piss him off that much! Zach was easy to anger, indeed he ENJOYED getting angry, but evoking true, unreasoning, overwhelming hatred from him was beyond the pale of mere difficulty! And so Lilia found herself simultaneously hurrying to get to him, and wanting to drag her feet, because she wasn't sure what sort of Zach she was going to find in his rooms. She'd met the End of All once before, and had only survived because his focus wasn't on her. And that Zach had been merely offended and embarrassed... not even close to "AMP the hell out of someone" type rage!

Swallowing heavily, Lilia stiffened her spine and steeled her resolve. Charon was right about one thing. She was the only one who could possibly hope to approach an out of sorts Zach and have any sort of positive impact on his condition. Anyone else would be killed in an instant if they walked in on him without asking or warning. Hell, she might end up thrown across the room and beaten half to death herself, it was far from out of the realm of possibility if the End of All had taken him over again. Frowning, Lilia decided to divest herself of her weapons before entering his rooms. It wasn't like they'd be of any use to her against him anyway, assuming she could force herself to lift a hand to him, even in self defense, and better to remove temptation of having a lot of very sharp instruments around if he was in a self mutilating mood. "Hold all my calls, Charon." Lilia said, with strained humor. "Tell them I've lost my marbles, and have gone to find new ones..." And then, before she could balk any further, she pressed her hand to the door activation plate and caused the door to whoosh open.

A tide of stale, humid air, positively rank with the stench of a human being confined to a more or less enclosed space for a week, rolled out to greet her, causing her to recoil a half step... not in disgust, but in half benumbed flashback. This was how the inside of her prison cell had smelled after her first few weeks of being kidnapped and used as a sex slave during her teenagerhood. Though instead of smelling of piss, shit and semen, this stank overwhelmingly of sweat and gore, both old and fresh... and not just blood. There was the smell of decaying chunks of flesh and meat too... Zach had literally removed entire sections of his skin and muscle and maybe even bits of his organs and left them to rot while his body regenerated itself! The room was pitch black, and the temperature control systems must have been broken or turned off, because it was sweltering, even hotter than the jungle outside, causing her skin to break out in sweat on those parts of her not covered by her armor, mostly her face and neck at the moment.

Clenching her jaw, Lilia shoved down the awful memories of the past, using them and the feelings they evoked as fuel to push herself forward. She'd been in places like this before, there was no reason for her to flinch now. And she'd been saved from places like this before too, so maybe it was her turn to be the one to bring light into the dismal dark and guide out the lost soul within. She stepped into the room, and tried not to jump when the door whooshed shut behind her heels, shutting her into the miasmic darkness. _Okay, just stay calm, girl. There's nothing to fear but fear itself. And Zach. But they're almost the same thing anyway. And you've been in dark places with him before, and even have some not so bad memories of those times. Not many, but some..._ Lilia told herself, closing her eyes and reaching out with her other senses to locate her troubled boyfriend as she took a tenative step or two into what should have been the apartment's antechamber.

She was reasonably familiar with the layout of these apartments, as this is where she stayed whenever she was at the Citadel for any length of time, with or without Zach. However, in the total darkness, and assaulted by the vile smell, debilitating temperature, and compounded with her worry for Zach's condition, even a slightly familiar place suddenly seemed a veritable cave of hidden horrors waiting to leap out at her! Her psychic probing didn't turn up any trace of his mental presence, but with the recuperating Caller only a few hundred meters away, in the Citadel's waste pit... something Charon had warned her about roughly halfway through her trip over, and which had almost caused her to crash into the ocean in shock... there was so much overflow on the psychic plane that Lilia was shocked she could hear herself think, much less feel anyone else!

Smelling his presence was impossible given the stench, even though she had become quite attuned to his scent, and vice versa, as was normal between Edenites having a long term intimate relationship. She'd left her helmet out in the hall with her guns, wanting him able to see her face and not have him think she was hiding behind a mask to conceal her fear, so that meant she was functionally blind until she found a way to turn on the lights, if that was even still possible in this area. That left hearing and touch... she didn't even want to think about taste... as a means of locating him. Trying to redraw a map of the apartment interior in her head, Lilia slowly shuffled forward, hands groping to either side, head slowly swiveling as her ears strained for the sound of breathing or the movement of someone else, but the damn place seemed as quiet as a tomb!

At least until she tripped over what had once been a metal table of some sort, and was now little more than a smashed and tangled ruin of bent and twisted struts and punctured tabletop sheeting. She was in her armor, so it didn't hurt, but it did startle the bejeezus out of her, as the table remains had been nowhere near where she remembered the small table as being located in this room! It was all she could do to swallow a scream of shock, though in retrospect she almost wished she had cried out. Zach would have come to laugh at her, or so she hoped. Kicking aside the ruined piece of furniture petulantly, Lilia opened one of her waist utility compartments and pulled out a chemical flare. "Hey, Zach, I'm igniting a flare." Lilia called out, her voice a bit dry as it echoed back to her. She'd spoken more in hope of getting an answer, even a dismissive one, than because she was worried about blinding or startling him. However, it was only her own nervousness that answered her call... the apartment seemed deserted.

But Charon wouldn't have called her all the way out here if Zach wasn't here... Charon wasn't independent enough to play practical jokes, and didn't have the personality for them anyway. Smacking the flare against her armored thigh, Lilia blinked as harsh blue-white light banished the gloom, counting to ten slowly before opening her eyes more fully after letting them adjust to the sudden change in luminosity. "Igh..." Lilia clapped her other hand over her mouth, swallowing a gush of bile, as she saw the state of the room. Every bit of furniture was torn to pieces and smashed, looking like it had been run through a garbage compacter a few times, while dents and scratches had been pounded and torn into walls, ripping away plaster and drywall, revealing the bare guts of the support system beyonds, and sometimes even bare rock of the mountain's core. The lights were all smashed out, the air circulation grates crumpled and torn apart, and the floor and walls were splashed with so much dried blood that an abbatoir would have looked clean by comparison!

Insects didn't exist this far down in the Citadel, but bacteria and mould had formed on the unidentifiable lumps and chunks of decaying meat that were scattered around like the scraps of a huge feast, Zach's internal nanites having turned nonfunctional once removed from his bodily surface and interior for more than a few seconds. There was no sign of Zach in the antechamber, well, no recent sign anyway. The same held true of the entertainment and lounging room beyond it, which was in a similar state of disarray. Zach had been tearing more than just himself up during his week on the verge of... whatever he was on the verge of. It looked like he'd tried to disassemble the entire apartment suite from the inside out using only his bare hands! "Zach? It's your little blue Mouse, come to make sure you're alright..." Lilia called again, trying to be both humorous and annoying, hoping one or the other would provoke some sort of reaction. Nothing. Still dead as a tomb. Time to pull out the big guns.

"Zach, I want to have sex. Please come out and fuck me." Lilia announced, louder than how she'd spoken before, loud enough for her to be heard throughout the entire apartment suite. And it wasn't even a lie... she'd much rather let him fuck his stress out into her than stay in this frenzied and self disruptive state he was in now. It'd be safer for both of them... even the End of All wouldn't cause her real harm during sex, other than contusions and bruising from overzealous efforts anyway. But even this provocative announcement failed to stir a whisper from her boyfriend, and Lilia knew that meant she was alone in the rooms. Zach would never turn down such an invitation, or even if he did, he'd let her know he wasn't interested in carnality at the moment. Even if he was furious with her for disobeying his polite request, he would bend her over and fuck her into a sweaty, half insensate pile before kicking her ass or tossing her out like yesterday's garbage without a second's hesitation, if given even a hint of a suggestion that she was looking for sex.

Just about ready to go back out to the hallway and give Charon a piece of her mind, Lilia decided to peek into the bedroom, just to see if for some reason Zach had decided to spare any part of the apartment. No such luck, if anything the bedroom was torn up worse than everyplace else, and the bed itself was particularly ruined, the sheets and covers so stiff with dried leathery scabs that when Lilia forced herself to touch the edge of the beadspread, it was like poking her finger against a wooden board. "This is so gross..." Lilia commented under her breath, hoping that sounding indignant would disguise how freaked out and worried she was. Zach was tougher than any fifty humans had a right to be, but it really looked like he'd been doing his best to exsanguinate himself on the bed! The thought of Zach attempting suicide was completely ludicrous, but even if that hadn't been his intention, it looked like he'd almost achieved it anyway! Especially if he hadn't been eating all week long... the nanites could only do so much reconstruction without new nutrients to replace that which were lost.

Well, actually, looking around, Lilia knew Zach must have been eating SOMETHING, because there was just too much blood everywhere. He'd have bled himself dry a half dozen times over if he hadn't found something to replenish his fluids with. Though with the way the nanites functioned in symbiosis with his metabolism, Lilia wouldn't have been surprised if Zach could live off taking bites out of the furniture and walls... with internal nano-deconstruction and reconstruction, he didn't necessarily require bio-matter in order to replenish his stock of repair materials. He'd lived off nothing but plain seawater in the past, when he'd first gone to Orb, before the Kratos was completed and provided him with a personal transport, days upon days of drifting across ocean currents on an open topped rowboat. A human, even an Edenite, would have died of dehydration in two or three days, but Zach had not only survived, he'd fought a Wyrm-Chimera and won during the trip... barehanded!

Lilia avoided the bathroom. The place already looked too much like a bad gore-fest horror flick, she wasn't going to tempt fate by poking her pretty female head into the restroom. Nothing good ever came of showering or going to the bathroom alone in a horror flick. And this place really was creeping her out something hardcore. She was fond of being surrounded by Zach, but not quite this literally or this liberally! She'd sponged more blood off his body, most of it that of other beings, than she was really comfortable remembering, but she'd NEVER seen this much of his blood, not even when Erk had come within two hairsbreadths of killing him! She was glad she had been woken up in the middle of the night, it meant she was a good while past her last meal... if she'd eaten recently, she would have a stench of her own to contribute to the place. "Where are you, Zach..." Lilia muttered, her heart clenched in her chest as she took one final look around the room. "What's wrong...?"

Someone bumped her from behind, less a shove and more a hard nudge, but considering that she hadn't heard or felt or sensed anyone else in the room with her, and none of the Kindred would dare enter this place, Lilia was definitely caught off guard, to put it mildly. "YAAAHHHHHG!" She shrieked, jumping almost up onto the charnel pit of a bed in her shock, spinning around and adopting a combat pose, instantly regretting leaving all her weaponry outside. The flare, starting to sputter as it ran out of combustion material, rolled on the floor, sending up curls of smoke from where it incinerated streaks of gore on the floor, flooding the room with the unappetizing stench of burning BCPU blood, which did not smell ANYTHING like pork juices, as human blood did. "WHATTHEFUCK?" Lilia shouted, as her eyes almost bugged out of her head, her heart pounding fit to burst out of her chest. _I was totally alone in here... I know that for a fact... so how... HOW..._

However her indignation and shock was replaced almost at once with a sort of relief, as she recognized Zach's disconcertingly boyishly handsome face... given his personality, one would expect him to be rugged and maybe even hardbitten... but he was blessed, or in his opinion cursed, with the features of Kira Yamato, and barely looked twenty one when Kira was actually just past thirty. However, the instant after she recognized her boyfriend, Lilia's eye for detail caught up with the rest of his condition, and all sense of gladness withered inside her. He looked horrible, not only was he matted in his own dried on gore... and butt naked to boot... but he was noticably thinner and gaunter than the last time she'd seen him, his nanites eating away muscle mass and flesh in order to preserve his life functions. His eyes, normally so dark and fierce, were almost cloudy, and he didn't seem to see her, or recognize who she was, as he actually started swaying back and forth like he was going to topple over! She'd never even imagined he could look so drained and weakened, he looked half a zombie!

"Zach..." Lilia started to say, her heart still pounding, but for quite different reasons. But before she could ask him if he was okay, or what the hell was going on, or how he'd managed to sneak up on her in his current state, his swaying actually did overwhelm his center of balance, and he collapsed forward, only barely catching himself on one knee and both hands. He made the most awful retching noise she'd ever heard, worse even than Hector coughing up a wedged hairball, and literally vomited his dark crimson blood all over the floor and his chest, bringing it up like he'd been swilling it like booze. And it was more than just blood too, it was thicker and grainier, and there were chunks of stuff in amongst it that looked like bits of lung and stomach lining. And he wasn't just vomiting it out, his inner thighs were running wetly too, all the way down to his knees like a spilled black cherry slurpee, not even diarreha, just pure bleeding from the ass. The only way that could possibly happen was from major internal injuries, but his skin didn't seem to be torn, ripped or otherwise pierced, or bruised from impacts!

"HOLY SHIT, ZACH, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?" Lilia screamed, even louder than her cry of surprise had been, standing frozen by the bed, not sure whether she should rush to support him, or keep her distance to prevent trampling on whatever shreds of dignity he might still think he possessed. Had he been anyone else, she would have been giving him medical aid already, but he was Zach, and he'd only get pissed at her if she started fussing over him. But this was more than just an impalement or a bad clawing... he was bleeding out the ass and the mouth! Fortunately, the bleeding was quick as ever to start to clot, but Lilia still felt dizzy looking at his bloodsoaked thighs and groin, and she had to lean on the bedspread, which cracked and crinkled beneath her weight, in order to stay upright. Her shout had brought his head up, and his eyes were looking in her direction, but they weren't focused, and he seemed to be more looking past her than truly at her.

"It's still not working properly." Zach muttered, utterly ignoring her words, his voice almost unidentifiable with all the clotting gore in his mouth and throat, his tongue almost gluing itself to his lips as the blood scabbed over. "So much for mastering it... I've barely taken the first step..." Zach continued to berate himself, only slowly seeming to realize he wasn't alone. He looked at her, and Lilia... who had been inching forward to see if she might help him stand again... flinched backwards involuntarily. Not because his expression had been frightening or threatening, but because for the first time, he actually looked sad. Not weepy sad, but the tired and weary sad of a man who had given up on something important to him. "Is that really you, Mouse?" He asked softly, and the uncertainty in his voice felt like he'd slipped Deathshriek up between her ribs. "I guess I'll find out in a moment if you're a mirage or not." Zach continued, still looking more past her than at her.

"Zac..." Lilia reached for him, her heart aching to see him so debilitated that he couldn't even tell if she was really in front of him. But before she could touch him and assure him that she was truly real, he asserted it for himself. By forming the fingers of his right hand into a spearhead shape... and ramming his fingertips directly into his abdomen, just above the belly button, punching right into the soft part of his gut, easily able to tear through his own leathery skin, his fingers embedded almost to the second knuckle in his abdominal cavity, his entire body jerking under the impact, the breath momentarily leaving his half functioning lungs as he retched another, much thinner streamer of blood. "AGH! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? STOP THAT THIS INSTANT, YOU IDIOT! YOU'RE HURTING YOURSELF!" Lilia yelled at him, scrambling forward, forgetting even to be polite to him for her own sake in her panic at seeing him inflict such a brutal wound on himself at seeming random. She grabbed his right wrist and tugged until his fingers slid free of the gory wound, briefly showing more of his insides than she'd ever wanted to see, before thankfully clotting over into another leathery scab. But not as quickly as she was used to seeing his wounds close...

"Yes." Zach acknowledged, his eyes a bit clearer and more focused, as he glanced down at her gauntleted fingers on his wrist. "It does hurt. I must be awake after all. You're really here with me, aren't you, Mouse? I couldn't tell for sure until just now..."

"Well damn it, next time let me pinch your damn cheek or something, okay? No more shoving your hand into your chest just to see if you're awake! My heart can't take it!" Lilia scolded him, heaving a huge sigh of relief, smearing some of his gore onto her chestplate as she patted her left breast evocatively, her heart still feeling like it was trying to rip itself free and come galloping out under its own power. "What the HELL is up with you? I've never seen you like this before! Have you gone INSA... okay, back up... HAVE YOU GONE EVEN MORE INSANE?"

"You that worried about me?" Zach asked, cocking his head to one side and studying her through eyes that were almost back to their usual state of coherence, if not exactly stability.

"Of course I'm worried about you! Charon wakes me up in the middle of the night, say's you're practically on the verge of death with self inflicted injuries, I fly halfway across the world without telling a damn soul where I'm going, find you've invited the Caller in as a houseguest but I don't even fucking care because I can't find you in your own room, which is trashed and damn near ankle deep in your dried blood and body bits, and then when you do appear, out of thin air or so it seems, you puke and shit blood all over yourself and actually FALL THE FUCK OVER, THEN STAB YOUR HAND INTO YOUR CHEST AS A WAKEUP CALL?" Lilia yelled at him so hard she barely even realized that she was crying. "And you don't think I'd be worried about you? You've always been crazy, Zach, but this is the first time you've ever been STUPID!" She collapsed to her knees in front of him and without even thinking about it, threw her arms around him and hugged him. "What happened to you? This isn't the Zach I know! This isn't the Zach I lo..." Lilia caught herself at the last moment, knowing Zach was touchy on that subject.

"What happened to me?" Zach answered with a painful sounding chuckle, that almost froze the blood in her veins. She'd never heard him sound so... lost. Disillusioned. Depressed even. Hadn't even realized he possessed the capability of feeling such emotions, much less being overwhelmed by them! "I had a family reunion, and you know how it is. Kids these days, they say the darndest things and make you look at yourself in ways you'd really rather not, and they just won't shut up no matter how much you choke them and wring their throats and..." Zach trailed off, and actually sighed. "And I came to realize I was lying to myself. Maybe not intentionally, but I'd allowed a happy illusion to take over part of my life. It's happened before... even I'm not immune to an escapist dream every now and again. I guess dying and swimming about in the after-aether, listening to the Black Ghosts churn and yearn, did unhinge me a little more than I initially felt. And so, when I returned to the world of the living, and found that all the people I most wanted to see again were irrecoverably gone, I think I may have snapped, just a little, and indulged myself with a happy fantasy..."

"Zach, what are you saying..." Lilia asked in a voice that was smaller than she liked. She didn't like where he was going with this, not even a little bit. She'd always enjoyed listening to his unique brand of insight on the inner workings of humanity and human souls and the nature of being a Sufferer, but this was different. This almost felt like a confession, and she'd never thought Zach would be anything but revolted by the thought of actually explaining the reasoning behind his actions to someone, even to her. His reasons were obvious. He acted because he felt like it. That was the sort of man he was. And he acted to protect his own interests, even if it meant going against them in the short term, by fighting alongside the Edenites during this war, rather than focusing on creating a conflict that would temper humanity for the eventual conflict against those he called the Black Ghosts.

"Don't taunt me, Mouse." The cold hate in those four simple words felt like a quadruplet of icicles stabbing into her heart and brain, and Lilia slowly drew back from her hug to look him in the eyes. "You were fun while it lasted, but I'm awake now, and I have no time for indulging an old dream. Perhaps especially one as fanciful as you. The subconscious is truly an incredible manipulator. It even had me believing the impossible, for a while there..." Zach pulled free of her suddenly limp embrace and stood looking down at her, his eyes flashing redly as the light from the flare began to fade and sputter out. It wasn't the End of All looking down at her. Nor the Whetstone, or the Dark Soul, or Humanity's Monster, or even the Eyes in the Abyss. It wasn't any of the facets of Zach she knew. It was someone new, and it was someone that could look at her like she was nothing at all... not friend, nor foe, nor plaything, nor assistant, nor even food... nothing at all.

"Don't." Lilia managed to choke out, through trembling lips, all but petrified by the emptiness in that stare, as red began to take over the eyes more and more, her flare on the very edge of guttering out. "Don't say these things. I don't know what's wrong, Zach, I don't know what happened to you..." She swallowed heavily, feeling like she was trying to swallow a small neutron star, her heart was so heavy with shock, and fear, and more than a little hurt. "You can't do this... not now. It's too late... you made your choice... I made my choice... you can't just... just call it a dream and..." She sagged forward, her hands on her knees, head hanging down, unable to bear looking into that gaze, empty of anything she associated with Zach. "You're not serious..." She half sobbed. "You're doing this to punish me for coming here against your request, right? I'm sorry, Zach. I'm sorry for worrying about you too much. Please... forgive me... I won't do it again... so please... you're not serious...?" Lilia began to shake, not sure if she was crying, begging or negotiating with him, and willing to do any of the three as long as he wasn't really being serious...

"I should punish you for that, you're right. But I just don't care anymore, Mouse." The flare went out, and when Lilia looked up, the faint glow from the bioluminesence in his eyes was starting to fade as well. He was walking away, or at least stepping back. "You're free to go. I release you from any debt of servitude you feel you owe to me. Go, and don't come back. I don't have time for dreams anymore..."

"You can't do this to me..." Lilia protested thinly, back in pitch darkness. He was still in the room with her, she could hear the throatiness of his strained breathing, but he wasn't nearby, and he might well be leaving. "Zach, I don't care what you do to me. Break my limbs, rip off my clothes, rape me any way you like, split me open and mount me on your wall if you want... but don't abandon me for no reason at all! You've given me myself! You can't just walk away now! We've come too far together! I won't accept it!"

"It's not for you or me to accept or deny, Mouse. It merely is. Go, or stay, it doesn't matter to me, but you have no more value to me..."

"You're lying..." Lilia accused him in a fractured voice.

"No, I'm certain that I'm just now starting to be truthful, Mouse. They say the truth hurts, and they're right. It was impossible from the very beginning. Ever since I put level 4 behind me, its been impossible, I can see that now. I just don't have the ability anymore. Doc burned it out of me, he well and truly burned it out of me. I just wish he'd done a more thorough job, and not left behind this aching shadow inside me where it used to be. I guess it figures that I killed him too soon. I should have let him attempt to go to level 7 first. Maybe then I would have been free of the need to dream..." Zach's voice kept getting quieter, though it didn't feel like he was walking away. But he was on the verge of it, Lilia knew that as sure as she did that fire was hot and ice cold. And if he walked away now, he wouldn't be back.

"I won't let you do this." Lilia told the darkness around her, her voice growing stronger and more resolute as she made up her mind. She'd sworn she was going to guide him on the path back to humanity, or die trying. Well, now he'd stepped off even the path of inhumanity, so it seemed like she would have to help him find it again before they could make any more forward progress towards the other path! "I don't know what happened... most of what you said made no sense to me at all. But somehow, someway, something's made you lose faith in you and me, and I won't let that happen..."

"I've already done it, Mouse. You're becoming bothersome. I released you from your servitude. I've forgiven your transgressions. Its a clean slate between us now. I suggest you take it. Or I'll kill you, twist your head right off your neck and leave your body to rot in this bedroom. Unmourned. Unremembered." Frost told her, half glancing around towards her as he heard her scuffle at her side for a moment.

"You won't kill me, Zach." Lilia refuted calmly, feeling her tears start to dry on her cheeks.

"I can't stand it when people assume they're somehow beyond my reach..." Zach's voice was closer now, moving in on her from the side, a switch to predator mode. Maybe he really did intend to rip her head off... this Empty Zach was probably capable of just about anything. But Lilia wasn't going to be dealing with Empty Zach for much longer. One way or another.

"I'm not making any assumptions. I know for a fact that you won't kill me, Zach." Lilia went on, her voice building in confidence and volume.

"And why is that, little Mouse?" His voice was almost a lover's whisper, right in her ear, and she could feel him start to bend down to get a grip on her neck.

"Because..." Lilia tapped the second of her flares, the plain white colored one, on the floor beside her, blasting back the shadows with a torrent of sodium white light, casting them both into stark relief as she turned her head slightly and looked into his narrowed, gold inside violet pupiled eyes. "I trust you, Zach. And I love you. I love you, Zacharis Frost, and I know you love me, even if you don't associate that word with the feeling. I LOVE YOU, Zach! That's the full and absolute truth."

"It's impossible." He half hissed, shying away, whether from the bright light or her emotion drenched words, she could not say. "I don't possess the ability to love, or be loved in turn. I'm a monster, have you forgotten?"

"Not even for an instant. I don't care. According to the Oosen, I'm a monster too. I love you, Zach. That means I accept you, exactly as you are. Yes, I would be happy if you changed, and became more human-like in your actions. But my love is not conditional. I've just now realized this." Lilia felt her eyes water again, and she smiled just a bit, knowing it had to be the most disconcerting thing he'd ever seen. "I did lie to myself, and to you, in a way, and for that, I'm sorry. I told us both that I was doing this just because it was the only way to redeem you. That at some point in the future, I'd be able to declare myself done, job accomplished, and find you restored to "normality", whatever that is. I told myself I was willing to put up with anything... the cruelties, the abuse, the rape, the stolen memories, the loss of my friend's trust... but I was wrong. I didn't put up with that because I want you to change. That would be impossible." Lilia kept his stunned eyes skewered on her own. "I put up with it... I even seek it out... because I love you enough to recognize you don't know how to show affection, and to accept you as you are. You're already normal, Zach, as normal as you can be, and the only thing that's really impossible is that I ever thought you should be forced to change to meet my definition of redemption."

Lilia stood up, facing him, maintaining about an forearms seperation between them, the flare blazing beside them on the floor. He looked wary, but at least he wasn't lashing out at her, or perhaps even worse, walking away. "Did you actually doubt that I loved you, Zach? Did you really let someone else tell you how I feel, and how you should feel about me? Someone who doesn't know me? Someone who doesn't know YOU?" Lilia shook her head, and let herself smile at him, which obviously caught him off guard. "How can you be so good at figuring out other people, when you can't even figure out yourself? You really are a handful sometimes, you know? But that too, is a part of you I love, even if you do seem bound and determined to make everything harder than it has to be."

"I don't understand." Zach admitted, staring at her like she'd suddenly transformed into some sort of bug eyed alien. "How can you love me? No one... NO ONE... has ever loved me. Not ever. Don't you get it? It's impossible! There is no way that someone like you could be in love with someone like me! You are a GOOD person... kind, gentle, willing to sacrifice yourself for others, selfless, peaceful, beautiful, smart, sexy and strong and obedient and attentive! I am an EVIL person... I hurt and kill people, not because I have to, but because I LIKE IT! Others are MY sacrifices for my ambitions and desires! Conflict is the natural state of my being! I have rebelled against every authority that has ever tried to impose themselves on me, and cast them down laughing in blood and ruin! You HAVE to be a hallucination, a dream! It's the only way to explain this... don't you get it? CAN'T YOU SEE? You're EVERYTHING I WANTED, EVERYTHING I'M NOT, SO THERE'S NO WAY YOU COULD BE IN LOVE WITH ME!"

"You think I'm too good to be true?" Lilia arched an eyebrow at him.

"Lacus Clyne herself said I was irredeemable, and should be exterminated as quickly as possible, as I was too dangerous and disruptive to the balance of the world to be allowed to live." Zach countered, half smugly, and half furiously.

"Why are you so hung up on what Lacus would have said or thought?" Lilia challenged, reaching up to her gorget and beginning to unclasp her armor. "I thought you said I was eveything you wanted in a girl? So why do you value the opinion of a dead girl over the one of a living girl standing in front of you? She's not infallible, you know. Or she wouldn't be dead in a fire." Lilia let her armor fall carelessly off her, piece by piece, clattering to the bloodstained floor, where she then kicked the shucked pieces to the sides of the room. "I don't understand why I love you either, Zach. Not really, I can't just point to one or even a dozen things and say "this is why I want to be with you for the rest of my life at any cost". We aren't very much alike at all, except for our addiction to Suffering. And I don't have the words to express my feelings, other than to repeat that I love you, which you plainly have trouble accepting. Not that I blame you, I wouldn't trust words very easily either if I was you."

"However..." Lilia was down to her Praetorian uniform now. She knelt down by the waist section of her armor, the only piece she hadn't kicked to one side, and rooted in another utility compartment for a moment, before withdrawing a section of macro-cable that she used for climbing and utility rope. It was about as thick as her pinky, dark brown in color, and was coated in a synthetic polymer that made it easy to grip while at the same time prevented it from sawing into your skin if you climbed barefisted. Remembering that she'd left her blades outside, Lilia sighed and focused her attention on the cable, using a trick she'd been taught by Kunai, scraping away molecules from a thin cross section of the cable, which when combined with the pressure put on it by her hands eventually caused it to snap apart, more or less cleanly.

"However, what?" Zach asked her, warily eyeing the six foot length of cable, which was strong enough to suspend an armored fighting vehicle, assuming you could find a place to anchor it to.

"However, actions speak louder than words. So forget the words of Lacus, and the words of the Doc, and the words of whoever you met in Antarctica, and anyone else EXCEPT FOR ME, that made you forget the reality in front of you. If you want to consider something a dream, then consider anything you can't see or touch right now to be a dream." Lilia reached up and took off her uniform jacket, almost ripping it in half as she did so A similar yank at her belt line sent her trousers scurrying down her legs, to be kicked off and discarded, leaving her in her underwear. Another couple shimmies and she was as naked as he was, though considerably cleaner, the filthy floor grimy against her footsoles, but she forced herself to pay it no heed. She saw him move as if to reach for her body, and held up a hand. "Not yet. You can have me, Zach, in whatever way you want. I'm happy to make that sacrifice for you. But let me really prove my point. You could get sex from almost any woman, depending on your scruples... and you have little enough of those. I want to give you something only I can give, something I wouldn't give to ANYONE else."

She pointed with one finger to her neck, just below her adam's apple, where a pale band of pinkish scar tissue completely encircled her neck, front and back. "When you were browsing through the memories of mine that you stole from me, I'm sure you didn't fail to recognize the significance of this scar, the only one on my entire body from my time in captivity that I haven't gotten rid of." Lilia met his almost puzzled gaze and managed a tight lipped smile. "It's the mark left by the dog collar they put on me so they could chain me up after they were through raping me, or to tie me down while they were having their fun and games. It's the symbol of the absolute control they had over my body and my mind. They trained me like an animal, to respond to the slightest jerk on that collar. They even taught me doggy tricks... sit up, roll over, shake, speak... all the things a good little pet ought to know how to do, along with the more complicated maneuvers like swallow, choke, pose, beg, cry and hump. I was a slave, and that collar was what made me a slave, so I kept the mark afterwards, to remind me of where I had ONCE been."

Before she could stop herself or even really think about what she was doing, Lilia flipped the cable up and over her head, looping it twice around her throat, right over the scar, and pulling it tight, tying it off with shivering fingers so that it was nice and snug, just tight enough to cause pain if the lead line was pulled on, yet not enough to otherwise hamper her breathing. She was very familiar with the precise level of tightness that gave the best control after all. Her eyes were blurry, and her entire body was shaking like a leaf, but Lilia force herself to hold out the other end of the macro-cable line, about five feet long. "This is yours." She said softly, and put the line into his hand, before letting go of it and put her hands at her sides. "And now, more than ever before, so am I." Lilia couldn't stop herself from gulping heavily, her entire body feeling both numb and hot, all the weight of her memories, nightmares and the old conditioning she'd endured trying to rise up and crush her all at once. "This is how much I trust you, Zach. For you... and you alone... I'm willing to wear this again, if you want me to... now tell me again, if you can, that I'm just a dream..."

For a long, long time, Lilia was truly afraid that nothing she'd said had really gotten through to him. He just kept staring at the rope in his hand like he wasn't sure if it was going to sprout fangs and bite him, or turn into a butterfly and flit away, like he couldn't even tell if it was real or fake. "I've never been good with animals..." Zach said, at long last, his words slow and soft. "But I never had a chance to own one either, so I never got attached to them like norms did. I used to kill them in droves, just to fuck with Mr. Machine's head. He's got a real soft spot for animals, did you know?" He brought his gaze up to look at Lilia, standing there looking like she was either constipated or about to have the finest orgasm of her life. "I do have a lot of experience with being a slave though, not in control of my mind or my body, though nobody was ever stupid enough to try and train me into obedience with a simple animal collar."

A different man, a better man, even a normal man, probably would have dropped the rope lead, or cut the impromptu collar off the throat of the traumatized girl standing there in front of him. Frost tightened his grip on the line and gave it a little tug, choking off a whimper from the Mouse with alacrity, her knees all but buckling as the cable rubbed against her scar band, just like the collar had used to eat into the soft skin of her neck. "You're real." Frost announced. "I still don't understand. But you're real, and apparently you do love me, or at least something like it. I hope you don't expect me to suddenly throw myself to one knee, or sweep you off your feet."

"Didn't I already say that while I may want you to change, I'm not making it a condition?" Lilia answered, once the pressure on the line had eased enough for her to breath again. It was taking just about everything she had to stay standing, especially after he'd tested her. But she wouldn't have given him the control if she wasn't ready for him to use it. "You control the collar now, Zach. Whether you want me to be your slave, or your pet, or servant or whatever, you decide. As long as I'm yours."

"I've already said, I'm no good with pets, I just don't know how to treat them. And slaves are too inconvenient, I know how unreliable they can be. We've tried the servant gig, and it worked out pretty good... but what kind of servant ignores directions from her employer, especially polite directions? Much less calls him a liar and an idiot to his face! You're just not suited for servitude, Mouse." Frost grinned, and it was the sort of look that could make a girl's heart leap and shudder at the same time. "All the same, I'm not the sort of being that just LETS someone go after they put themselves in my power. No, you've given yourself to me, Mouse, and I'll never let you go now that you have. You're with me forever now, until your dying day and beyond as well. But this cable is hard for me to grip... my hands are too bloody. I guess there's just no helping it..." Frost looped the cable up over his own head, and jerked it into a noose around his throat, emulating Lilia's maneuver.

"There we go. Now you can't go anywhere without me, and I'll always be able to tell you're real by the pressure you put on my neck, and I still have both hands free to do what I want to you. Win-win solution." Frost began to move in on her, putting some slack in their line.

"You really are crazy..." Lilia murmured, struggling very hard not to cry, knowing he would think they were tears of weakness, not happiness. _I think he just proposed to me... in a Zach way..._

"Definitely so." Zach's grin grew so wide it seemed to collapse in on itself like a black hole when it disappeared. "But not so crazy that I'm going to take my woman while I'm all covered in my blood and half my insides still more pasty than solid. So now that you've helped me regain my usual level of madness, why don't you escort me to the medical lab? I need to figure out why not every bit of me comes through Mr. Abyss's portals, because if I don't, one of these days enough of me won't come through to make even me a bit rocky. And I'm certainly not going to let you go through them until I figure it out. I want to focus on putting stuff into you, not taking stuff out..."

xxxx

**Three hours later, Citadel Medical center**

"Why did you cut your hair?" Zach suddenly asked her, causing Lilia to start. He was sitting, or actually reclining on the diagnostic bed that dominated the center of this medical suite, hooked up to an array of sensors and other equipment. Most of it was probably extraneous, he certainly didn't need life support, or rather when he did, his body's augmentations could provide it perfectly fine on their own. But the IV's pumping his body full of fluid nutrients at least were doing him some visible good, as he didn't look nearly so wasted and withered as he had when he'd appeared... teleported actually... into his ruined chambers elsewhere in the Citadel. Lilia was still trying to wrap her mind around THAT particular detail.

She'd sponged off the dried blood, and slapped on bandages over those parts of him that had holes or gashes, more in an effort to make herself feel better than because he truly needed bandaging. Now that his internal nanites had raw materials other than his flesh and blood to work with again, they were rapidly restoring him to full health. By the next morning, she'd probably never be able to tell he'd even been scratched. If she'd thought it would do any good, she would have shot him with a sedative, glare or no glare, but the plain fact was, it wouldn't affect him, even the dosages and chemicals designed for use on Edenites. So, as usual, there was nothing to do but clean him up, try not to show how worried she was, and try to keep up with his rambling, when he started more or less at random explaining what he'd been up to since standing her up for their concert date.

But that normality... such as it was... came as something of a relief, after the scare she'd had in his chambers. It wasn't usual for Zach to be talky, especially about his own business that he had kept her out of in the past, but then again, things were different now, even if neither of them would admit it out loud. Him because of his pride, her because she didn't want to needle that pride unnessecarily. She'd won a major victory, though it had taken some extreme measures to do it, she wasn't going to risk losing it all just to gain a trifle bit more vindication in the short term. She turned back towards him, her hand unconsciously going up to the macro-cord still tied around her throat. The noose was still in place, but the cord connecting it to Zach's noose had been cut a while back, to give her the freedom of motion needed to tend to him in the medical suite. All the same, that connection they'd made was still very real and tangible.

Several times during her tending, she'd seen Zach make a gesture in midair, like he was tugging on some phantom rope, and every time he did so, she dropped what she was doing and came over to him, reaching out her hand, palm up, in much the same way one might approach a ferocious or injured dog, exposing her weakness and her pulse point to his inspection. He would press his cheek or his nose to her wrist, and give her what passed for a smile on Zach, and that would be that until the next time his mood dipped and he needed reassurance. She'd done the "tug" gesture once herself, to see what he would do, and though he'd given her a glare that made goosebumps stand out all over her skin, when she'd approached, it had been his arm which had come up, his hand which caressed her cheek and his thumb which rubbed almost playfully across her lips. Yes, things were definitely different now. Better in many ways, but all the more precarious for that. The closer one got to a fire, the warmer you became... but so too did the danger of suffering a bad burn increase exponentially...

"Why did you cut your hair, Mouse." Zach repeated, a bit of a growl creeping into his tone, and Lilia flushed, realizing that she'd zoned out a bit, her hand still fingering the cord noose around her throat scar. "I do not recall giving you permission to modify your appearance that way."

"Not your servant, Zach." Lilia reminded him, both coyly and firmly.

"You were at the time." He countered, which for him was probably perfect logic.

"Whatever." Lilia rolled her eyes, enjoying the delicious thrill of being a bit snarky with him... and getting away with it! "I didn't cut it, actually. There was a little... incident. I had the Mori out on ambush maneuvers, I've been training them while you've been training you."

"I should hope with more success." Zach interrupted, his tone frustrated and even bitter. Lilia wasn't quite sure what to say to that, so she just shrugged.

"I've been making some progress." She hedged. "But like I was saying, we were out ambushing Oosen patrols, and I was on overwatch on a hilltop. I came under attack by an Oosen assassin, or at least I surmise that's who made the thing. It was some sort of combat cyborg, and it was a nasty one too." She omitted the part where it had almost killed her with its first shot. Why ruin a good story? "The long and short of it is, I won, but I did a good bit of jumping around with my Wings, and I didn't have my helmet at the time, so most of my hair below my shoulders got kinda, well, burned off. I wasn't very happy about it, let me assure you." Lilia brushed her fingers through her still shoulder length hair, which was still a bit frazzled from the incident, and frowned.

"I do not like the short hair. You remind me too much of Fiery Zala-Attha. I do not like associating you with someone that pathetic." Zach told her. He studied her closely, his head slightly cocked, and Lilia forced herself to meet the gaze squarely, wondering what he was looking at, or what he was considering. "The supersoldier did not injure you, Mouse?" He asked, and Lilia couldn't decide if he sounded curious... or satisfied.

"Eh..." She wriggled her hand in a "kinda-sorta" motion. "It was a fairly rough fight, but I wasn't hurt so bad it's worth commenting on. Obviously I'm well enough to come rushing to your side like I have."

"Yes, I'm wondering if you perhaps were struck repeatedly or violently upon the head, as you seem to have lost what wits you had..." Zach countered, and since she was fairly sure that was a joke, Lilia smiled at him, which he seemed to accept.

"That brings up another point though, Zach." Lilia said, her hand moving from her shortened hair to her cheek, where the burn blisters from the MAIDEN infused spittle had been. They'd barely lasted a day, but even with the burn ointment she'd put on, they should have lasted a lot longer. Just as the burns themselves should have been a lot deeper and bloodier than they were. "What HAVE you been doing to me?" She asked him, perhaps a trifle more forcefully than entirely wise. It was okay though, he burst out chuckling instead of sneering.

"The list is too long to enumerate, Mouse." Zach said cheerfully.

"Yes, I realize that was a bad question. I meant specifically... what HAVE you done to me that lets me recover from injuries WAY faster than I should be able to? I thought your nanites died whenever they left your body for more than a few seconds at a time?" Lilia pressed.

"I did say I liked putting things into you much better than taking them out, Mouse." Zach reminded her.

"And aside from the obvious sexual connotations, that means WHAT EXACTLY?" Lilia glared at him, as his grin just kept on growing. "Zach..." She growled warningly, before cutting off with a sigh as he winked at her... the gall... and made the rope tugging motion once more. Cursing herself for being a Sufferer for once, Lilia stepped over to him and began lifting her arm again. Before she could complete the motion however, Zach's hand snatched out, grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled her bodily into his lap as if she weighed no more than a feather. She'd gotten dressed again, after the whole point was made and it became obvious Zach was in no condition for play, and he wore medical briefs himself for the moment, but suddenly finding herself in his lap, on a more or less bedlike surface, did make Lilia's heart flutter a bit.

"Harken, Mouse." He said, voice coming from above her, as his chin pressed lightly against the top of her head, her back against his chest, his arms around her, holding her both securely and dominantly. "Let me tell you a story. Know you how the then Boytoy managed to go through his Second Puberty so drastically early?"

"He was badly injured, wasn't he? Something about the Pulsar, I think. There's not much detail on the incident in public record." Lilia asked, somewhat questioningly.

"Perhaps that was the base of it." Zach allowed with a shrug she could feel with her whole body. "But the catalyst was something else. I was there, you know, in my original body. Dear Asmodeus had just committed the most beautiful suicide attack, and I had just lost my precious Fury to those Clyne Faction spoilsports. Well, to be fair, I was on the verge of victory against Scarface, Blond Weeny and chick, Loser Zala-Attha and Fiery Zala-Attha. I'd taken some harm, certainly, but they were on their last legs and I was in fine form. But then of course the Boytoy had to stick his nose in, in that most beautiful of all Gundams, the Pulsar. It was my second time encountering that God-Machine, and it went appreciably worse for me than the first. The Fury was blown apart around me in a matter of seconds. But the effort of so doing pushed the Boytoy far past his limits, and the Pulsar crash landed shortly after I did."

"Well you know me..." Zach continued smugly. "Merely losing a few pints of blood, and suffering a few broken bones and perhaps a missing eye isn't going to slow me down, and so I dragged myself out of the surf and lo and behold, what was waiting for me on that shale beach? None other than the Boytoy himself, unconscious and entirely helpless, with not an ally in sight. I was flummoxed, I tell you, I didn't know what to do. Fate has always conspired against me, to deny me those things I want the most in the world." Zach's arms tightened around her, and Lilia smiled, realizing that Zach was saying, unconsciously or otherwise, that she was one of those things. "Of course I was going to kill him. There could be no other course of action, not when it comes down to the Boytoy and me... attempting to kill each other is our only natural reaction when encountering each other. But I wanted it to be special. I wanted to send a message to Pink. Just killing him wasn't enough. I wanted to corrupt him first!"

"You're saying YOU'RE responsible for Kira going into Second Puberty early?" Lilia gasped, unsure what to make of the incredible claim.

"Well that wasn't my INTENTION, but yes, I'm the culprit. I slit open my wrist and poured his unconscious throat full of my BCPU's blood, filled chock full of drugs and chemicals and poisons and whatnot. I don't know the exact formula, I never cared to. All I knew was that it would have SEVERE effects upon a normal human. Severe DETRIMENTAL effects, or so I surmised. In that I was mistaken. Mr. Machine said it best, actually. I did nothing more than make my worst enemy more powerful than the me of then could have ever imagined. And I still almost beat him to a pulp before he got me." Zach chuckled fondly at the memory. "But the Boytoy isn't the only one I've shared my blood with in that manner." He continued, his voice going soft and contemplative as he did so.

Lilia started, remembering the time when his bloodied palm had closed over her mouth and he'd bade her drink, not all that far from where they were right now. The violent sexual assault he'd been inflicting on her at the time certainly helped the memory stand out even more. Her lips and tongue worked, unconsciously, remembering the strange, metallic, gritty taste of the blood passing her lips and going down her throat. "Yesss..." Zach whispered in her ear. "I tried to emulate the earlier experiment, this time with full knowledge of what would likely occur. But it didn't work. Perhaps because the blood of this new body isn't quite the same mixture as my old body. Or perhaps it was the inherent antipathy between the Boytoy and I that caused such a phenomenal alchemical reaction the first time, who can say. But my Mouse did not go into Second Puberty, alas."

"You could have killed me..." Lilia pointed out, eyes wide. "Kira's Second Puberty almost killed him, and you..."

"You would not have died, Mouse." Zach admonished her. "You are stronger than that. With the failure of my primary plan, I was forced to fall back onto the secondary. It is true that my nanites are customized for my body alone, and cannot survive outside it. But therein lies the rub... they are customized. And customizable. Unlike my original body, I have a measure of control over these augmentations, in the same way I can exert control over the Kratos from a distance. Some chip Mr. Machine built into my brain, I don't care about the specifics. But it allows me a great deal of fine control over many types of nanomachines... and not just those that inhabit my body. I believe Mr. Abyss talks to me through such a connection."

"And you've been injecting me with these modified nanites, how?" Lilia squirmed a bit, perhaps understandably not best pleased to realize she'd been a medical experiment for who knew how long now! Zach's had slid down her side, across her upper thigh, and dived between her legs before she could stop him, and when he touched her down there, Lilia wasn't sure if her shaking had to do with anger or desire.

"It was easier this way." Zach muttered in her ear. "And quite enjoyable. And easy for the transferred nanites to enter the bloodstream through that area. Unfortunately my customization only goes so far, and while they can survive in you, they have to adapt to thrive on their own, and doing so involves defeating your immune system. Which apparently is near defeat, if you've started to notice the effects. But worry not, the nanites will keep you safer than your body ever could. Though I'm sure they could always use reinforcements from the source..." His hands began to move more aggressively at her clothing.

"Zach, I am not happy with you! You could have ASKED me before you started making me like you!" Lilia told him, trying to squirm away from his hands. She might as well have been trying to swim through quicksand with a wrecking ball tied to her feet, but she tried all the same.

"When have I EVER asked you before I did anything to you?" Zach pointed out with a chuckle, plainly enjoying her struggles, and likely her anger as well.

"Then ask me!" Lilia butted his collarbone with the back of her head, trying to eel out of his grip, to no avail. "Ask me now!"

"Its pointless to do so. The process is almost complete, and entirely unreversible, Mouse..."

"FUCKING ASK ME, DAMN YOU!" Lilia shouted at him, seeming to startle him with her vehemence.

"May I share my power with you, Mouse?" Zach replied at length, after the echoes of her shout had finished echoing from the walls. "May I give you health and resilience and endurance beyond that of your fellows and peers? May I make you like me, in what small ways I can?"

"Yes." Lilia told him, subsiding in her efforts to get free. "Yes, you can, Zach. Was that so fucking hard to do?"

"I wouldn't have done it for anyone else." He answered cooly, his hands working between her legs with no protests now. "And only you because you caught me at a vulnerable moment. Taking advantage of the vulnerable for your own gain... there's hope for you yet, Mouse..."

"Hope? For me?" Lilia barked a short laugh. "No, Zach, the only hope I have is for you." She reached up behind her and clamped her hand in his wild mane of brown hair, so unlike Kira's, for all that it grew from an identical scalp, grinding herself against both his body and his hands. Just before she was ready to toss aside all thoughts besides that of the moment though, something occured to her, a niggling detail that had been out of place for quite some time now. "Zach... don't stop what you're doing... but tell me... where's Deathshriek? I haven't seen it out of your reach since I gave it to you..."

"Mouse..." Zach's voice was troubled, his head starting to bend down to capture her lips, even as he kept his hands doing what they were good at doing. "It pains me to admit it... but I haven't the slightest clue..."

"YOU LOST MY PRESENMMMPH?"


	71. The Meaning of Comfort

Author Note: Sorry about that. I meant to have this out on or around Christmas, but I guess it will have to be a New Year's present instead. I was at my parents house for the holidays, and try as I might, there's just no way to ignore all the good food and other things to do there, so I kinda let other stuff lapse. I imagine you might too, if you were treated to the smorgasboard I was... Fondue (oil and chocolate, with elk and scallions and shrimp), Mesquite Smoked Brined Turkey, Chile wrapped Beef Tenderloin, Pumpkin Pie Spice Bread Pudding... and that was just right around Christmas. I love that my family loves to cook. Not to mention the twenty plus pounds of assorted fudges (milk, dark, with crystalized ginger, cherries, almonds, etc...). But enough side notes, eh? I want you to be hungry, but for my writing, not my parent's food.

This chapter actually would have been a great holiday chapter, because its definitely a relaxation type chapter, with plenty of humor and cuteness. Ahh well, just imagine its still Christmas, I guess.

xxxx

**Orb, Morganville Island, Morganroete Armories Subterranean Drydock #2, April 10th, 10:00 am**

Scowling in a manner that most of his friends would have been surprised to know he was capable of, Mu silently cursed the fool of an engineer who'd designed the Firebird's cockpit systems maintenance access hatches to be located behind the control area itself. He could do this with no ill feelings, because he himself had contributed plenty of input on the design of his Mobile Armor, including such minutae as the location of maintenance access hatches. There were good structural and space constraint reasons for the hatches being where they were, but it didn't make it any less annoying trying to get to them. His arms needed to be about six inches longer, and only half as broad... he didn't remember specifying that his maintenance crew should be composed entirely of anorexic monkey's, but that seemed to be the only sort of being that would be able to comfortably reach into the hatches, much less fiddle about with the insanely complex circuit connections and electrical wiring conduits beyond. Or even the relatively simple mechanical connections and hydraulic control lines.

Of course, since they were in port, and weren't expecting to leave again for a week or so at the earliest, he could have just had the deck crew disassemble the NIC system coccoon area, which would free up a lot more room in the cockpit, but Mu really didn't like mucking about with his "command chair". It wasn't really a chair... they called it a coccoon for a reason, because he was held inside in a supine position, very much like a butterfly still in the pupal stage. But it was where he controlled the machine from, and so to Mu it would always be the "command chair". Like most pilots, he liked to tweak and personalize many of the settings of his controls, and disassembling the coccoon would return all the settings to factory default, which would then require him to spend hours recalibrating them again. That aside, now that he'd wasted a good thirty mintues scraping his arm raw trying to reach the hatch that would access the secondary flight surface control hydraulics, which governed the left wing on the Flarehawk Module when it was connected to the Firebird, even the hassle of recalibration was starting to seem like a fair tradeoff.

It was the sort of mundane procedure he really should have just ordered the deck crew to take care of, he just needed to check a few seals and make sure all the wires were connected properly, but Mu liked to stay as hands on as possible with his machine. One of his flight instructors, decades ago when he'd still be a cadet at the Alliance Mobile Armor acadamey, had said that a pilot who didn't know his machine better than he knew the body of his own girlfriend wasn't long for the world, and Mu had taken that advice to heart. By all means, rely on your mechanics, but at the same time, it never hurt to triple check things yourself. Especially when dealing with sometimes finicky and highly complex prototype technologies. Taken individually, the three modules of his Mobile Armor were pretty complex, as complex as three different Mobile Armors really, but since they were all made to fit together and break apart in combat real time, that made them even more prone to suffering if everything wasn't aligned just perfect. It was somewhat like how the original Strike had been... those Striker packs were the handiest things, but damn, did they take a lot of maintenance to stay in proper working order!

Grumbling to himself, Mu stretched his arm and cracked his knuckles, eying the narrow space between cocoon and inner fuselage armor that was his only good route to the maintenance hatch. "One more time, la Flaga..." He muttered. "It seems impossible, so just make it possible... twentieth time has GOT to be the charm..." He cajoled himself, shoving his arm into the gap, bending his head awkwardly to one side as he squinted down the gap, spying the hatch cover and aiming his groping hand towards it. His fingers were just barely brushing the hatch cover when his shoulder bumped against the too narrow gap, just like all the other times before. Snarling, Mu tried to squeeze a bit more of his arm into the narrow space, but he just wouldn't fit. Not without possibly dislocating his shoulder, or worse, getting his shoulder wedged into the gap, potentially trapping him there until a crew could disassemble the coccoon. Which would just be humiliating.

"Hey, Dad, whatcha doing?" A curious, youthful voice asked from behind and slightly above him, where the disembarking stairway was rolled up next to the Firebird's cockpit area. Mu jumped slightly in surprise, having not heard his son come up those stairs, too focused on the problem of the hatch. The sudden movement caused him to pinch a nerve in his upper arm, and it was all he could do to swallow an outburst of language that would have had Murrue smacking him for exposing Lewis to. His entire arm felt alternately numb and like it was being jabbed with hundreds of hot needles as he recovered it from the gap and rubbed it ruefully, sitting back against the entrance to the cockpit and looking up at his son. As ever, Mu felt his heart leap a little, in pride and wonder, as he beheld his son, looking so very much like him, save for the dark brown hair he'd inherited from his mother. The bright blue eyes, mirror images of his own, seemed to be ever twinkling with inner mischeviousness, though Lewis was actually fairly well behaved, for his age.

"Making the possible, impossible." Mu answered with a self deprecating shake of his head. He kept rubbing his arm, phantom pins and needles still jabbing into his flesh as his nerve protested its prior rough treatment. "Did mom send you to remind me of something?" He asked his son, wracking his brain, trying to think of what he might have forgotten. His day was actually booked up pretty solid, with the morning devoted to maintenance, then some paperwork to fill out after lunch, then he had to go over the battle footage from England with the Stormhounds again, searching for weaknessess in the new Eddie walking tanks.

And then there was the big party that night, at the Pacifica, to celebrate Andrew's full recovery from the injuries he'd been dealt by Frost several months prior, as well as the shocking but far from undeserved news that Solar President Durandel had asked Andrew to become the new Supreme Commander for the USN! Mu had no idea what Durandel was up to, offering a man who'd never been a fan or friend of his such a position of power within his government, but he doubted it was out of a sudden desire for camraderie with Orb!

All the same, it was too good an opportunity to pass up, and Andrew had accepted the position after only the briefest of consulations with his friends, Mu included. With Waltfeld as Supreme Commander, and the reams of incriminating documents from Seiran's Death Camp in their possession, Cagalli and the other leaders were now in a very strong position indeed all of a sudden. Perhaps even strong enough to break Durandel's death grip on the reigns of power in the USN, for once and all! Of course there was still the pesky matter of the war, but with a competent commander calling the shots from on high, the fighting might be ending far sooner than anyone expected.

Andrew was far more than just a competent commander after all, his tactics were commonly studied at the ZAFT Acadamy and many other military schools, and he was reckoned one of the best regional commanders ZAFT had ever fielded. Mu had seen the preliminary plans his friend had already drawn up for re-organization of the USN military command and operations doctrines, and he had to admit, he was impressed. But that was all still in the future, as Andrew's acceptance of the offer was still not public knowledge, though of course that hardly stopped his friends from holding a celebratory feast in the meanwhile. Truth be told, after the depressing events in England, they needed an excuse to cut loose and revel a bit, to restore their spirits and get them pumped up again.

"Nope." Lewis replied, dragging Mu out of his brief introspection. "I just got bored on the bridge. Nothing to do up there but sit around in a corner and watch Mom tell people to do stuff they're already doing. I can get that at home..."

"Hey, your mom works her butt off up there. The crew may know their jobs, but having her around makes them work harder and better. Besides, someone's gotta do the boring stuff." Mu answered with a smile. Though truth be told, given Murrue's often confrontational and even sometimes reckless style of battlefield command, he doubted she was ever bored when performing her duties. And much as Mu had put considerable time and effort into helping design the Firebird, so too had his wife been in on the design and construction of the _Endymion_ from the blueprint stage to final completion. Nobody knew the ship better than she did. She'd practically assembled the original bridge by hand, all by herself, and whenever a new piece of equipment was put in, she was always either helping with the installation or watching from close by the entire time. Her original speciality had been in Engineering after all, she'd only taken command of the Archangel because she was the only one who could at the time.

Lewis had inherited this predisposition from his mother, and he was never happier than when he had something to take apart or put back together again. He'd started using erector sets even before he could properly walk, and he'd been helping Murrue with her nearly incessant home improvement projects ever since he was old enough to be trusted not to hurt himself with a hammer. Since both Mu and Murrue often worked long hours at Morganroete even during peacetime, they often chose to have one or the other of them keep Lewis around while they worked, so that their son wouldn't get lonely or be forced to stay over with friends all the time. Lewis preferred being with his father, not because he loved him any more than his mother, but because he liked the hanger better than the bridge, especially when the mechanics would let him watch or even help out with minor tasks on the ship's shuttles and equipment.

"Yeah, I know." Lewis shrugged, and peered at the place where his dad had put his arm earlier. "Trying to get at the secondary hydraulic control systems?" He asked brightly.

Mu stared at his son, jaw slightly agape. "Uhm... yeah, I was. How'd you guess?" He asked, a trifle warily.

"Well, if you were going for the primary hydraulics, you'd have been reaching under the coccoon, not over it. And the other two access hatches on the top part of the back of the cockpit are pure circuitry, the secondary Fire Control computer and the Navigation System, and you don't have any voltmeters or other diagnostic equipment with you, so that kinda narrowed it down too." Lewis answered, matter of factly. He stood up on tiptoe, his armpits just at the level of the cockpit canopy rim, and peered down into the gap Mu had been fighting to get his arm into for a half hour now. He looked up, and smiled a trifle uncertainly when he saw his father staring at him in obvious disbelief.

"How the he... heck... do you know that stuff, sport?" Mu asked, editing himself in mid exclamation. Letting Lewis play with the mechanics while they were doing basic maintenance on the warship's transport shuttles was one thing, but the maintenance records and schematics for the Firebird were top secret level material. It wasn't like just anyone was allowed to dig into the guts of Orb's newest and most powerful Mobile Armor!

"It's on mom's computer at home." Lewis replied, looking a little furtive and a little sheepish. And with good reason... that computer was connected directly to the MA mainframe, and was password protected out the wazoo. Mu knew for a fact that his wife never left the machine unlocked except when she was directly working on it, and she never had Lewis in the room when she was. Confidentiality was more than just a buzzword after all, and even if Lewis didn't understand what he'd seen, who knew what he might talk about at school, in innocent bragging. And judging by what his son had just said, it seemed he DID understand what he'd seen.

"And how did you get into mom's study computer, Lewis?" Mu pressed, wondering if they were going to have to have a family sit down talk about computer privacy or something. God, he hadn't thought he'd need to worry about what his son was doing with computers until after puberty hit...

"I didn't." His son protested. A moment or two of steady looks from his father crumpled what resistance he'd managed to muster. "Okay, okay, so I was in the room. But it was Roy who unlocked it, I swear."

"And why was Roy Elsman hacking your mother's computer?" Mu was starting to dread dragging this story out into the open. It had "Incident Report" stamped all over it. Murrue was going to shit a thorny brick.

"We weren't TRYING to hack it. We were just playing around." Lewis looked positively dismayed. "I said that there was no way he'd be able to even get the thing to turn on, and he kinda sorta took that as a dare. But one thing led to another and we sorta managed to call up some schematics and..." He trailed off as he saw some look pass across his father's face. "We just wanted to help." He said sullenly.

This last statement derailed the stern talking to Mu had been planning on administering, and he carefully studied his son instead. "Let me get this straight..." Mu said slowly. "You and Roy hacked into one of the most secure computers in Orb, played around with some of our most top secret war machine schematics, and you did it because you wanted to help?"

"Yeah." Lewis found some backbone and stared at his father directly. "You don't know what its like, sitting around at home after school every day, wondering when you and mom are gonna come home again... or even IF you and mom are gonna come home again! You're both out there saving people and fighting battles and protecting everyone, and I just sit at home and play computer games. Its not fair... I wanna help protect people too! Not by fighting, I'm way too young for that, and I'm not really fond of guns and such anyway... but I can help put stuff together and maintain stuff! Roy too, he'd love to help do diagnostics and stuff, all the things that are boring and time consuming, we don't care... we just can't stand it, sitting around and just waiting for you to do everything..."

"Well, we're adults, Sport, its kind of our job to do everything. You're still a kid, you should enjoy it while you can." Mu replied, a bit nonplussed.

"How are any of us supposed to enjoy anything when you could die at any time?" Lewis countered fiercely. "You want me to go play outside while you're fighting for your life? I don't know how to do that dad, I just can't! I wanna HELP! Please..."

_How do I get myself into these situations?_ Mu asked himself, as he saw that his son was all but in tears with his determination to do something, anything, to help his parents out. On one hand, Mu couldn't have been prouder, that his son wanted to help others so badly, but at the same time, he didn't want to get him involved in the war even peripherally if he could help it. And breaking into Murrue's computer was still a major no-no, no matter why he'd done it. Sighing, kicking himself internally as he prepared for a major ass chewing by his wife sometime in the future, Mu made a decision. "Okay, Sport, this is how we'll play this. No use locking the barn door after the horses have been stolen, you can't just unlearn those schematics. If you're that bothered by it, you can help me work on the Firebird..." Mu held up a warning finger when he saw his son's eyes go big and luminous with glee.

"However, you can only help out when I'm around. If I catch you messing about with any system without my sayso, you'll be grounded from Morganroete until you're fifteen, you get me? And you're going to tell your mother what you did to her computer, and you'll take whatever censure she hands out without a word of complaint. If I hear about you hacking another system, no matter the reason, then you can forget about any privileges of ANY sort until you turn fifteen. I'm dead serious, Lewis, it really is a matter of national security. People go to jail for doing things like what you and Roy did." Mu added firmly.

"I understand." Lewis said quietly, his enthusiasm dampened a bit. At least for a moment, before his energy came cascading back as he looked over his shoulder at something below and behind him. "Hey, Roy, he said we can help out on the maintenance! Is my dad the best or what? This is gonna be SO SWEET!" Lewis clambered over the edge of the cockpit without waiting for a reply, squirming down between his father and the coccoon. "Wow, it's really back in there, isn't it?" He muttered, half to himself. "Didn't look that far on the schematics. Roy, how do I get to the secondary hydraulic control node?" He added, speaking louder, directing the last bit over the side of the cockpit.

The boarding stairway clattered with the tread of small feet, and then a blond head with light violet eyes peered over the lip of the cockpit, glancing at and then dismissing Mu entirely, as Roy Elsman studied the interior of the cockpit diligently. "There should be a conduit space beneath the control coccoon, where the primary energy feeds run from the reactor to the nosecone gatling cannons. You should be able to wriggle through and access the maintenance hatch from there. Hold on, let me check that." Roy lifted his hands over the edge of the cockpit, holding a data slate. He unspooled a connection filament from the bottom of the slate and peered around the cockpit once more. "Mr. la Flaga, I think there's a diagnostics port behind you. Could you plug this in?" He asked, proferring the cord.

"Uh, sure. And call me Mu, Mr. la Flaga just make me feel old." Mu chuckled and plugged the slate in as directed, shaking his head in bemusement. They seemed so joyous and playful, yet at the same time, so utterly serious, it was impossible not to let them have their fun.

"You are old, dad." Lewis's voice came from beneath the control coccoon, where he'd already wriggled, following the cramped passage floored with thick rubberized power cables that fed the nose mounted beam gatling cannons. "You have a kid, don't you?"

"Belay that kind of talk, junior." Mu shot back. "Or your mom and I might be tempted to prove just how young we are and have another one! Maybe a girl this time..."

"You don't want that." Roy interjected, scrolling through data on the slate. "Trust me. Little sisters suck..."

"We'll see if you still feel that way in a decade, kid." Mu smiled at Roy's sniff of disdain. He saw his son's arm pop into view behind the coccoon, waving back and forth to get their attention.

"Gimme wrench." Lewis demanded imperiously.

"What's the magic word, Sport?" Mu prompted, easing past Roy to reach for the bag of tools on the top stair of the boarding platform.

"Hurry." Lewis retorted, sounding as dreadfully serious as a seven year old could. "One of the seals looks damaged. If you connected the Flarehawk module now, you'd have a broken left wing..."

"Seriously?" Mu craned his head down to the gap, trying to see what his son was talking about, but the curve of the coccoon was in the way. "How bad is it?"

"Could be worse. Gimme a wrench, 5/8 and 7/16 should do it. And a regulation O-ring, high pressure type. Doesn't look like the pipe is damaged, just the seal. Though there's a lot of metal fatigue stress on the components, and the bulkhead too... what do you do with this poor machine, dad? It looks like it's been flying for decades already..." Lewis sounded mildly distressed by the wear and tear he could see.

"Murdoch used to say that to me too." Mu reflected, with a fond smile of remembrance for the irascible old Chief Mechanic. He rummaged through the toolkit and passed his son the items he'd requested. "I wasn't quite as hard on the gear as Kira was... that kid could break stuff like nobody's business... but I do have a tendency to push my equipment to the edge of destruction sometimes..."

"Enough to make a mechanic wanna cry." Lewis muttered, running his hand over the stressed sections of metal. The actual repair didn't take much time or effort, it really was a simple procedure, just unscrewing the hydraulic line, taking out the damage O-ring, replacing the new one, and screwing the line back into place. There were a few splurts of oil, but that was actually a good sign, because that meant the line was not leaking or compromised in other, harder to reach locations. Lewis mopped the oil up with his shirt cuff, getting some smeared on his face in the process, which he ignored. Sports and computer games were plenty of fun, but there was nothing like getting dirty in a cramped space while fixing stuff for real good times! The fact that it was his dad's Mobile Armor that he was fixing was just icing on the cake.

"Oookay, the secondary hydralics check out." Roy said, a little bit later, after Lewis had completed the repair. He studied his portable data slate, flipping through the schematics displayed thereon as he ran autodiagnostics of the repaired system to make sure it was in full working order. Setting aside the slate, he wriggled down the conduit-way himself, half climbing over Lewis to share the space at the far edge of the cockpit area with his best friend. "Hand me a voltmeter and tilt the slate so I can see it, Mr. la Flaga." He ordered, as he unlocked the hatches over the Fire Control and Navigation systems. "Might as well make sure they aren't out of alignment while we're here. Especially given all the metal fatigue, there's no telling how things may have shifted around."

"Good idea, Roy. I'll check the primary hydraulics too." Lewis said enthusiastically, worming his way down and around, curled almost like a dog around Roy's feet as he pried open the hatch in the floor and stuck his head and arms down into the cubby beneath. "Hey dad, I need a flashlight, and a bigger wrench, 3/4 maybe, and the 1 inch as well. And a rag, there's gonna be some spill."

_How did I go from being in charge to being the gofer?\_ Mu asked himself with a helpless shrug, as he rooted through the tool bag for the items the kids had asked for, and passed them forward along the top of the coccoon. _Well, it beats scraping my arm raw for no good results._ He reminded himself. _Chief, wherever you are, I hope you're looking down at this and getting as much of a kick out of it as I am..._

"Dad, stop daydreaming, this is serious business! I need more rags, oil's going everywhere! This is gonna be impossible if you don't help out!"

"On it, Sport..."

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Ruins of the Harbor district, April 10th, 11:50 am**

"Step right up, there's plenty for everyone!" Allister called out, waving the shiny stainless steel soup ladle cheerfully at the next group of approaching citizens, relief workers and self defense force soldiers. The impromptu soup kitchen had been set up to provide for those who were working to salvage the remains of the city's formerly expansive harbor district, as well as for displaced citizens who had lost homes and businesses to the tsunami the Eddie's had used to attack Orb with. Food supplies had been tight in Orb ever since the Glasshouse had gone up, and even moreso in the wake of the attack, with many of the major underwater cities rendered too dangerous to inhabit until major repairs were completed, denying Orb access to large amounts of its hydroponic farming. However, there were plenty of emergency rations stockpiled in some of the military storehouses that had not been drowned by the wave, and with the addition of some spices donated by families from across Orb, in less damaged areas of the country, cooking up batches of flavorful stew wasn't too hard.

Allister focused on ladling out the stew to the eager line of people shuffling by his row of cauldrons, perched atop a plastic camp stool with its legs sunk firmly into the churned up silt and sand that now formed most of the beach in this area, deposited sediment from the original harbor bottom, brought up by the wave. He was incognito, or at least he was trying to be, having snuck out of the Pacifica earlier that morning, with Lexi's help, before hitching a ride with a truck carrying the emergency rations a few miles down the road. In most nations of the old world, and in almost all of space, save for the PLANTs, a seven year old boy wandering around on his own would be cause for concern, but Orb had always been one of the safest and most law abiding nations. So Allister was sometimes given concerned looks, but since he didn't appear to be lost or unhappy, nobody really pestered him. And when people did inevitably ask where his parents were, he told them that they were busy in town, which was nothing but the truth. If people wanted to assume that he meant busy helping with salvage efforts, then he wasn't going to correct them.

And besides, it wasn't like he was really alone... Lexi knew precisely where he was, and with his earphone comm bud in place, he was in constant contact with her, so he couldn't get lost. He'd been sick and tired of sitting around at home, even WoGB had grown stale, especially in the wake of the attack, and the reports he'd seen about the fighting afterwards, playing Gundam pilot no longer seemed quite so cool. Allister realized he was still a kid, and that he really couldn't do much of anything to actually help his parents out, other than being calm and understanding when they were gone and always tired. But he was also the Crown Prince of Orb, and so if he couldn't help his parents out, then he ought to see what he could do to help out his people. Or at least, that was the carefully rehearsed excuse he was preparing to use, if and when he got caught playing hookey.

In reality, he'd just wanted to get out and away from the too familiar confines of the Pacifica for a little bit. It seemed more like a prison than a home sometimes, even as expansive as it was. And he wanted to see for himself how people were dealing with the aftermath of the attack, and take in for himself just what the true cost of war was. Games didn't really bring the scale of the destruction across, even post-apocalyptic games weren't even close to as scary as the real thing, seeing buildings he knew toppled over, and landscapes rearranged, and landmarks erased... not to mention the crashed war machines and beached ships! Thankfully all the dead bodies had been cleaned up, except for the ones buried under rubble or sand, but there were still patches of roadway or shoreline that were stained dark red, and not with mud!

So he'd carefully selected an outfit that would hopefully disguise his royal heritage. Unlike most of his friends, Allister couldn't bring himself to just grab random articles of clothing from his closet to throw together into an outfit. Even if that probably would have been the best way to blend as just another kid. But a lifetime, even a short lifetime like his, spent amongst the highest levels of Orb's power base had impressed upon Allister an awareness of how perception shaped people's opinions of you that was quite sensitive. If you dressed like a slob, even if you were a Prince, people would always get the impression you were a slob, or at least not very good at taking care of yourself. And if they didn't think you were any good at something that simple, how could they trust you to take care of the entire country?

As a result, he was probably an even fussier dresser than Akira had been, and his dead Cousin had inherited his fashion sense from his mother! Allister wore high collared shirts and dress slacks constantly because it was expected of him... Akira seemed to truly ENJOY it, he had almost nothing in the way of "normal" clothes in his closets at all. A smile tried to fight its way onto his face at the memories, but couldn't quite get there before the hurt in his chest brought sparkles of moisture to the corners of his eyes. He'd thought he'd come to terms with the fact that Aki was dead, and Aoi too, and Aunt Lacus... but every time he thought about them, the hurt and the anger and the question of "why?" came back to haunt him, just as fresh and and nearly disabling as the first time he'd heard the news! Grimacing, Allister scrubbed the back of his bare arm across his eyes... he was determined not to be caught crying like a little kid, perhaps especially because he was a little kid!

It was autumn in Orb, headed towards winter, existing as it did in the southern hemisphere, but since it was at the edges of the tropics, and covered by the Glasshouse to boot, things rarely got to the point where short sleeves and shorts were uncomfortable to wear. His current selection was an undershirt for the scaled down representative's uniform he sometimes wore when attending state functions, which he had tye-dyed at Alice's birthday party the year before. Or rather, Mina and Jamie had tye-dyed it and almost all of its companions in his wardrobe without telling him, and it was the only one he hadn't ended up donating to charity. He felt the bright colors made him look like a fruit, but it was at close to what so called "normal" kids his age sometimes wore. Especially once he'd overstretched the collar a bit, and left it half untucked. Plain khaki shorts and sandals completed the hopefully good camouflage ensemble. Certainly no one had looked twice at him, other than for his age, and not often then... most were happy to get the bowl of stew, and didn't really care who handed it out.

Well, there was a certain amount of simpering by the women workers, but that was to be expected. Moms were all alike that way, and for that matter, pretty much any girl more than about twice his age was apt to make at least a comment or two about how cute he apparently was, or some other compliment, upon seeing him. Sometimes this was just blatant sucking up, such as what happened at state dinners, but other times, well, Allister had just come to the conclusion that girls were suckers for small kids. Well, most girls... he had trouble imagining Violet, even a grown up Violet, fawning over him, no matter how cute he might be. And Alice was a hellion who seemed to actively enjoy acting more like a boy than Roy often did, so she probably wasn't a simperer either.

There was still plenty of soup left after the last of the relief workers had gotten a full bowl, which was by design. Now that the workers themselves were fed, the displaced citizens and dependents of those workers would be given a share as well... no one would go hungry in Orb, not if there was a bit of food to be shared around. The portion might not be as big, and might not be as filled with chunks of meat and vegetables as those given to the people who were actually doing work, but that was only common sense. Allister's arm felt like it was made of lead, after spooning out several hundred bowls worth of stew, so he hopped down from his stool, grabbed a bowl of his own, and filled it with a healthy portion of his own. No one protested, as one of the other charity workers stepped up to take his place, with an overfond ruffle of his hair that Allister permitted only because he was incognito.

Like his father, Allister was a little bit OCD about his hair and its neatness, and as soon as he found a convenient chunk of broken building upon which to sit and enjoy his own lunch, Allister picked a folding comb out of his back pocket at fastidiuously straightened his ruffled locks back into his preferred hairstyle, almost identical to that of his dad, with longer bangs on the sides of his head. Mom always picked on him and his dad both by ruffling their carefully combed hair up, but she was mom... she was allowed to do it, no matter how annoying it was. Fix complete, Allister folded his emergency comb back up and stuffed it into his pocket, clambering up onto the chunk of building that sat like a boulder in one of those sand gardens some people liked, though it was actually resting in the middle of what had once been a street, before the wave. He lifted the bowl of stew into his lap and began to dig in.

His earbud was filled with quiet electronic buzz, the background noise mixing pleasantly with the sound of the not so distant surf, as Lexi channeled her near omnipresent attentions elsewhere for the time being, busy with a million and one tasks supporting the relief efforts and the other government processes. Allister breathed deep of the fresh sea air, tainted just a bit with the ever present taste of ozone from the Glasshouse field, and reveled in being on his own for what felt like the first time in ages! Or at least, on his own of his own will, not because his mom and dad were both tied up in important work and unable to come home. Barely had two or three spoonfuls of stew passed his lips though than Allister found, to his brief annoyance, that he had company.

His annoyance passed quickly though, as he watched with interest as the couple... an older man, with swarthy skin and dark hair, accompanied by a younger woman, maybe in her late teens or early twenties, with bronzed skin and the palest white-blond hair Allister had ever seen... approached his lunch spot. Actually, the young woman, perhaps the man's daughter or other relative, was leading him by the hand, guiding him around treacherous spots of ground, while he helped probe the way with a walking pole of some sort. That and the opague black glasses on the man's face told Allister that he was blind, or else extremely sensitive to light, but probably the former. It didn't seem to be the result of injury, the man seemed to almost be able to sense where he was going, and probably didn't even need to be helped along, obviously he'd dealt with his condition for a long time.

Allister knew that treatments existed that could partially or even fully restore sight to those who could not see, even if they'd been born that way, but he also was aware that many people couldn't afford that kind of thing. His perception of wealth was pretty skewed, actually, even the people who were not as "well off" as his family was, such as the Elsman's, were still pretty wealthy compared to most citizens. Before the wave, the Elsman's had owned their own ship after all, and the _Dawn's Light_ hadn't exactly been small or old either. A lot of what he took for granted was stuff that would take months of saving for most families to afford. Allister didn't feel guilty about this... his family had a very hard and involved job to do, often thankless even when they succeeded completely, and it was a job they didn't have a choice but to do, his mom... and Allister himself... had been born into the position. A few privileges and wealth weren't too much to ask for in return, at least in his opinion.

That said, a twinge of something like shame crossed his mind when he saw that neither the young woman nor her father, or uncle, or whatever, had a bowl of stew, despite the young woman shooting several obvious glances in the direction of the soup kitchen area. "If you don't get in line soon, it'll all be gone, and you'll have to wait another six hours for the next round." He called out to them, from his perch on the rubble, about shoulder height for the man. Who was, on second and closer inspection, actually pretty well built, almost in the same sort of shape some of the Stormhounds were in... obviously he didn't let his handicap get in the way of physical fitness. Next to him, the woman was almost elfin, but she too was actually in very good shape, exceptional even by the standards of Orb, which had one of the healthiest and least obese populations outside the PLANTs.

"Would that we could, young man, but I'm afraid we can't." The blind man said, turning his head more or less in the direction of Allister's voice, as the pair drew closer.

"Why not? It's free." Allister pointed out.

"We..." The young woman started, before casting a glance aside at her comapnion, as if seeking reassurance. "We're not from here, kid. We got... stranded, during the attack. And our hotel was washed away by the wave, or destroyed in the fighting... we really don't know. But we lost all our bags, and our travel papers and IDs... pretty much everything actually..." The woman still sounded dazed, with long pauses between each bit of info.

"Oh, I see." Allister replied, and he did. The food was free, but you had to prove you were a citizen before you could qualify for it, which meant showing some form of ID, or having an official uniform or something. There were foreign aid workers from the wider USN present in Orb as well, but they were provided for by the USN army and navy, they didn't rely on the locals for support. But things were still pretty confused, so it wasn't strange that a few people, tourists without papers especially, might slip through the cracks. It didn't take Allister long to decide what to do next. "Here." He said, holding out his bowl of stew towards the young woman.

"Thank you, kid, but we can't take your food, you're a growing boy, you need it more than us." The blind man said with a smile, as he took a seat at the base of the rubble and stretched out with a sigh of contentment. The woman stood next to him, still looking both nervous and a bit confused, as if she wasn't sure they were supposed to be where they were. "We'll just wait until everyone else gets served, and we'll take what's left.

"No, it's fine. I'm a volunteer, I don't really need it." Allister quelled his stomach's protests to the contrary with a reminder that he and his friends were going to be cooking a veritable feast for Tiger Man's celebration party that night. He could skip lunch and it wouldn't hurt him any.

"Volunteering at your age? You don't sound old enough to order food at a resteraunt, much less volunteer at a soup kitchen all by yourself." The blind man pointed out, not unkindly.

"I'm mature for my age. Most of the time." Allister declared proudly. "Besides, I want to help... its torture, staying at home all the time and waiting for adults to fix everything."

"A man of action, is it?" The blind man chuckled. "Well, normally I couldn't take food from a kid, but to be honest, its been a few days since my daughter and I had a real meal, so my pride's not what it used to be. If it really is no burden to you, I'd be honored to accept your help. Just this once, you understand."

"Sure, no problem. I'll be right back with another bowl." Allister answered, hopping down from his perch, after handing off his barely touched bowl to the young woman. For a moment, in mid jump, Allister found himself peering into her brilliant blue eyes, like the sea off the beach back home, and he paused, blinking a few times. For just a moment there, he could have sworn he saw some silvery sparkles in her eyes, but when he looked again from the ground, they were just normal eyes. Stupid sun reflection. He recovered his poise and headed for the cauldrons without a second thought.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Khala asked Haman, watching the boisterous young boy race off, with an expression of misgiving. Not to mention wariness, as she uneasily watched the kid approach several hundred Oosenites, any number of whom might be military personnel only too happy to take her and Haman into custody... as illegal vagrants even if not enemy infiltrators! She was privately amazed that they hadn't been found out yet, as her disguise was only a pair of concealing contact lenses that made her silver pupils appear black, a special item that Haman sadly only had one of, since he'd only been expecting to need to provide for himself in a worst case scenario of being trapped behind enemy lines. But the Arboreal was nothing if not creative and good at improvising, so they'd appropriated the sunglasses and made a walking stick from a piece of piping, and he played a convincing blind man.

"It's no worse than any other idea, and better than most. We need to eat, Khala, to keep up our strength. And I prefer begging to stealing, its much less dangerous than trying to break into a supply storehouse, or robbing people's homes. Preferably we'd have false ID's and other support documents for this kind of work, but we're kind of winging things here." Haman replied, as calm and relaxed as if he was seated on the divan in his own quarters back in Everest. He had a beam pistol concealed in his ragged backpack, another souvenier from the city wreckage, but that was only a measure of absolute last resort... they were two against a country right now, if it came down to firearms, they were good as dead.

"Taking advantage of a kid's kindness though?" Khala grumbled. "I feel dirty..."

"Try not to think of it that way. He offered first after all. And I don't think that's just some lucky urchin either, I think I recognized him. Or at least, he bears a strong resemblence to people I've seen before. If he's who I think he might be, he can afford to miss a lunch for our sake. Just try to relax, the more nervous you look, the more likely someone else is to notice, and wonder about us." Haman replied with a smile.

"Who do you think he is?" Khala asked, wondering how Haman might be able to recognize some random kid they met on a street in Orb. Before he could answer though, the kid in question returned, carrying another bowl of stew for Haman, as well as pockets stuffed full of flatbread crackers with which to sop up the broth. He looked up at her, seemingly perfectly comfortable in doing this sort of favor for two strange adults, and not at all wary or frightened of being near them, despite a obvious lack of any parental supervision in the area. Khala had heard how dangerous and dirty the streets of the USN were, but this child put the lie to most of those rumors! Or maybe again, it was just Orb, but still...

"I'm Allister." Allister introduced himself, after they'd had time to eat a bit of the stew. He left out his last name, not wanting to create a scene, even if they were just tourists, they would certainly know what the Zala-Attha name entailed... that was one of the downsides to having world famous parents.

"Very nice to meet you, Allister." Haman replied, glad for his bowl of stew, which occupied his hands and gave him an excuse not to shake hands with the kid. The level of Green EDEN in his cells was so low there was almost no chance any would rub off onto the child, but all the same, he preferred not to risk it... if the kid came down with Green EDEN "poisoning" all of sudden, the authorities would know for certain that there were Edenites behind their lines, and things would get a lot tougher for the two of them. "I'm Haman. This is my daughter, Khala. Thank you very much for your help, you're a godsend."

"And an awfully cute one too." Khala managed to say through dry lips, trying to recall how she was supposed to act around young children. It wasn't really an issue amongst Edenites, but there were major differences in emotional levels between Oosen kids and Edenites of the same age. Or so she assumed, based on the lack of psychic abilities in most Oosenites. The eye rolls Allister gave her at this compliment gave her a few more butterflies of anxiety, but the kid didn't seem interested in making a point of things either, thankfully.

"So why'd you come to Orb? Most people from the USN prefer to vacation in the PLANTs, don't they?" Allister asked, to make conversation as the two ate with gusto that said to him they hadn't eaten much at all for quite some time. Coming all the way down to Earth was way more expensive than a flight to the PLANTs, and with the E-PLANTs in operation, there weren't many environments in Orb that couldn't be emulated almost as well up in space.

"We had some friends who were staying here that we wanted to visit." Haman replied cheerfully, though his daughter looked a little grim, making Allister wonder if maybe she didn't really like some of her father's friends. That made sense to him, he wasn't overfond of every person who professed to be "friendly" with his parents either. Even the people he knew really were their friends, like Mr. Joule, sometimes scared the crap out of him! And some of the Stormhounds too... such as Violet's dad, before he died, had always made him feel kinda uneasy when they were around. "Funnily enough, our friends made it back home just as the attack was wrapping up, and we ended up stranded here in turn. I'm sure they'll come back for us eventually, but until then, we're kind of at loose ends. Though there's certainly worse places to be at loose ends in than Orb."

"Eh." Allister shrugged... since he lived here, Orb wasn't nearly so exotic to him as most people seemed to think it was. "So what do you do when you're not on vacation?"

"Oh, lots of things, I'm kind of a jack of all trades. I've done all sorts of stuff, before the accident." Haman gestured expressively at his dark glasses. "Khala works in civil security, she makes me very proud."

"You do look like a soldier, kinda." Allister acknowledged, studying the nervous young woman, and comparing her to the female Stormhounds he knew. He kept getting distracted by her white-blond hair, he'd never seen such a shade before, it was somehow even brighter and whiter than the hair of the Joule twins! Maybe it was just Khala's much darker skin that made it stand out more.

"What about your parents, what do they do?" Khala asked, uncomfortable with the way she was being studied. She was still half sure the kid had figured out that they weren't just simple tourists, he seemed uncommonly bright and inquisitive, even for someone of his age. He'd looked her in the eyes for a lot longer than she found easy to bear, wondering if the contacts were slipping or something. But she couldn't check, not right in front of him anyway.

"Umm, well..." Allister looked away, nervous himself as he tried to think of the best way to reply. The easiest and most truthful response, that they ruled and ran the country, would be trouble. "I guess they... supervise people. At Morganroete." Allister added the last bit as sudden inspiration struck him. It was true after all, and his dad said that while lying wasn't a good thing, sometimes using only partial truths was the only way to move forward on uncomfortable topics. The Attha family owned a controlling interest in Morganroete, it was the source of their wealth and power before they had become the royal family, his mom owned well over seventy percent of the stock, so they were free to "supervise" plenty of stuff at Morganroete. Allister himself even had a few shares, given as birthday gifts, though of the sort he wouldn't be able to really appreciate for quite a few more years.

"Sounds important." Haman said, his bowl of stew held up to his face as he used crackers to sop up the broth. Still, for some reason, Allister got the feeling the blind man was smiling at him, and wondered if the man knew who he was. But that couldn't be right, there was no way this blind stranger, a foreign stranger at that, could recognize him just by his voice and first name alone!

Still, he couldn't help but agree, with pride. "Yes, they are." Allister told them, before another sudden thought occured to him, as he remembered his earbud comm. "Hey, I know... there's someone I'm friends with who might be able to get you some ID's made. She'll call the USN mainframe and pull your citizenship data, and I'll get it printed out. What's your family name?"

"It's Ibraham. But before you go to any extra effort, could I ask you to grab me a bottle of water? These crackers are drier than I was expecting." Haman answered smoothly, setting aside his bowl and getting to his feet.

"Sure, I'll be right back!" Allister scampered off back towards the soup kitchen area. hardly was he out of earshot than Haman grabbed up his faux cane and tugged on Khala's arm.

"We're leaving, now." He ordered her firmly. "Before the kid gets back, we need to be gone."

"But weren't you just saying how much some ID's would help us out?" Khala pointed out. "If he knows someone who can get into the Oosen Mainframes, getting some false ID's made shouldn't be too hard to do, right?"

"He didn't say he knew someone who could access the mainframe, he said "She'll call the mainframe". As in, the AI itself." Haman replied, half pulling Khala along behind him, as she reluctantly set down her own bowl of stew.

"Pardon me for saying so, but I think you're being paranoid. He's a little boy, I think he just has an older sister or something, whose good at computer work." Khala answered, following the Arboreal as they vacated the area. "It's been two days since we had a meal as good as that one, false ID's would really make things less painful..."

"You'll get three squares a day back in prison, which is where we'll both end up if that kid asks the AI's to pull up citizenship data on both of us." Haman retorted over his shoulder, as they rounded the corner of the street, putting them out of line of sight of their lunch stop. "You won't appear in their system at all, and if I do, it'll come up declaring me MIA, presumed dead, at the Battle of Cape York. Ibraham certainly isn't my patrynomic, so that will send up a red flag too. And he doesn't have sisters. That's Allister Zala-Attha!"

"Who?" Khala asked, confused by the emphasis on the name, which sounded faintly familiar, but not so much that she recognized it. She felt Haman staring at her, incredulously.

"I forget sometimes that you spent most of your formative years growing up in the wilds of New Eden, Khala. Let me put it another way then." Haman said, shaking his head. "That was Executor Yamato's nephew..." He saw her eyes go wide, or at least he'd perceived it an instant before. "So yes, it is all too likely such an exceptional young man has a direct link to the Orb AI, and from there to the USN mainframe, and it would only take a matter of seconds for them to inform him that we are anything but stranded tourists. Even if he himself didn't sound the alarm, the AI's would. And I'd really prefer not to take a child hostage to ensure our own safety... especially the child of people I respect highly in a personal sense. And he did give us lunch too."

"You actually considered taking him hostage?" Khala frowned at the thought.

"That you didn't think of the eventuality, even without knowing who he was, is one reason you're a better person than I am, Khala." Haman sighed, and slowed their gait to more like the daughter leading the blind father pace. "I would never willingly choose taking a hostage, especially a child, as my course of action, but if forced to choose between my life and doing so... well, let's just say I'm glad it didn't come up. I cannot afford to let myself fall into enemy hands, Khala, I know far too much about the state of affairs amongst high command. Regardless of damage to my own honor, I cannot be captured. If it looks like I will be, you have to kill me before it can happen, assuming I'm not capable of doing it myself. Fortunately, the same doesn't apply to you."

"Since I'd do so much better on my own, without you to mentor me." Khala groused, flinching from the distasteful topic.

"Try not to dwell on it. I've been in contact with my fellows through the Wind, and they are aware of our situation. Heine himself has assured me that as soon as the Shark Party finishes its latest military operation, aimed at the European Theatre if I'm not mistaken, a plan which has been in the works for some time... I'll spare you the details and dates, you understand... that the Executor himself will turn his full attention to recovering us from this situation we are in!" Haman informed her.

"Rescued by the Executor himself..." Khala sighed. "It's like something out of a romantic fantasy. Too bad it's for you that they're coming, not little old me."

"I wouldn't discount the value of even a single Edenite life to the Executor. Agreed, they come for me mostly, but had he nothing more pressing to do, I promise you, Kira would gladly save you alone if that were the situation. He enjoys protecting people, and will go to great pains to do so. One of his great strengths... and maybe his worst weakness." Haman said heavily.

"How could a desire to protect people be a weakness?" Khala asked, puzzled.

"Pray you never have to find out..."

xxxx

**Villa Pacifica, April 10th, 4:45 pm**

"... and then dad and I had to pull him out of the overflow gutter by his legs, can you believe it? I didn't even know it was possible to get that dirty and I was really trying sometimes!" Lewis commented in a rising squeal to Alice, speaking about one of several incidents that occured while he and her older brother had been helping with the Firebird's maintenance. For her part, Alice listened with half raptness and half jealousy, having made a similar appeal to her own parents to help with the Dreadnaught. But Alice wasn't a technical or mechanical sort, she wanted to pilot the thing, and neither of her parents would let her do that, not even in a simulation. She was listening with such raptness that she actually forgot to keep doing what she was doing, which was watching one of several pots boiling on the nearby stovetop, which contained the rice that would become part of the base of one of the dishes they were making for the celebratory feast.

Or at least helping to make, since even at their most permissive, there was no way their parents would trust a full meal's preparation to a bunch of seven year olds, and especially not for a big celebration. Exceptional seven year olds they might be, but they were very prone to getting distracted, especially when doing things like watching to make sure pots didn't boil over, which wasn't exactly the most exciting of jobs. But nobody felt like trusting Alice with a knife, to chop up greenery for salads, like the Joule twins, or vegetables for side dishes, like Violet was doing. Her impulse control was just too low, she'd end up playing with it, and would either stab herself or more likely someone else with it. Accidentally of course, but that wouldn't make it hurt any less, and a trip to the emergency room would not be the best way to spend the party.

Having Lexi assigned to the supervision maybe wasn't the best of ideas though. For all that she knew more about cooking and meal preparation than a hundred human chefs ever would, and was in full control of every appliance within the expansive kitchen, she was still just an AI projection, so she couldn't actually physically do anything to the food. Which is why the children were doing all the prep work and mixing ingredients together at her orders. Having the adults, or even some servant staff, doing the work would have made it happen a lot faster and with many fewer near accidents, but the children were ferocious in their determination to help out while their parents relaxed, for a change. Watching Violet stare down Mr. Joule when he'd come to keep an eye on things would be a story that the kids would be telling each other for years!

Lewis and Alice were watching the pots to make sure they didn't boil over, but for the most part it was just Lewis telling stories... more like bragging... about how he and Roy had helped fix this, or adjusted that, or gotten stuck there, etc. To Alice's jealous ears, it sounded like her brother had been playing more than working, and she resolved to break in on that action the next chance she got. So what if she didn't know the first thing about repair work... she could still help out! Maybe Mr. la Flaga would let her fly a few simulations to test out the system after Roy got done tinkering with it? It wouldn't be quite as good as a Mobile Suit, but right now, a cargo shuttle would be a step up from nothing!

Roy himself had gotten tired of hearing about all the times he'd needed to be rescued from the innards of the Firebird by his friend, and was unable to talk over Lewis enough to get to the parts of the story where Lewis had been the one to get trapped in weird places or weird positions. So he'd broken off to watch the oven and the grill, as the meat was pre-cooked. The centerpiece of the feast was to be a roasted pig, which would actually be done in an open pit that had been dug onto the Villa's beachfront area, but since there were so many people, there were plenty of side dishes as well. And for that matter, no one wanted to wait for several hours while the firepit slow cooked the pig, so they were pre-cooking most of it now, would merely sear it later. Roy had written down all the steps, just as if he were preparing a checkoff list for a diagnostic procedure, it was his favorite way of keeping track of things.

Allister was mostly running around supervising, or more often, just annoying people by telling them how to do things they were already doing. He came up behind the stools Lewis and Alice were sitting on, next to the stovetop, and put his hands on his hips. He'd snuck back home several hours ago, and covered his tracks as best he might, with Lexi's help. His street clothes went into the wash, and he logged out of the WoGB session Lexi had been playing for him as a cover. He couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the blind man, Haman, and his daughter, Khala, since they'd been gone when he got back with the water bottle, even though he hadn't been gone for more than a few minutes. Still, he had other things to think about, such as getting home unnoticed and changing into his Prince attire once more, so the thoughts had been shoved to the back of his mind thus far.

"Aren't you supposed to be doing something?" Allister reminded the two of them, glancing pointedly at the stovetop, which was just about at his eye level. His two compatriots looked down at him, one abashed, the other disdainful.

"Who made you the boss'a me?" Alice asked archly, irritated at being caught neglecting her assigned duty. "Go bother the Joule's, at least they think it's cute."

Allister had actually just come from the sink, where Mina and Jamie were washing and cutting up broccoli and other greens, and recalled the way Jamie had waved the knife not quite under his nose when she'd gotten tired of him telling her that she wasn't cutting the veggies up right. She'd told him that if he didn't find somewhere useful to be, she'd be glad to get in some cutting practice on his nearest part! "One, this is my house. Two, I'm older than you. Three, I'm the Prince. Those all make me the boss of you." He retorted tartly. Alice scowled at him, which told him that at least one of those points mattered to her, despite herself. He was too afraid to know which one it was, but he was fairly sure it wasn't the last one. "If you can't watch pots, you can refill water glasses outside. With the adults." He pronounced the last bit as if he was condemning her to an eternity of torments.

"Sure, I'll go right outside." Alice said sullenly. "And I'll be sure to tell Mr. Joule about how you're harassing Mina and Jamie. Won't that be fun?"

Allister was going to reply, but saw the twisted look on Lewis's face, which drew his interest. "What's wrong?"

"If all little sisters are this bratty, I'd die if mom and dad ever had one..." Lewis replied, in a horrified tone. Allister wasn't quite sure where that had come from, though he agreed in principle... so far as he'd seen, there were no advantages to younger sisters, and many, many drawbacks. Lewis's comment sufficed to draw Alice's gimlet gaze onto him, and Allister decided that he might as well move on, before Alice remembered he was there. For all that it was his house, and he was older, and her Prince, she could be really unpleasant to be around when she thought she was being picked on. At least Lewis was able to push back when she started getting pushy, Allister just wasn't that good at getting into arguments with her... he kept trying to be reasonable, and she kept refusing to be anything near that, and it never worked out well for him.

Roy seemed to be doing just fine with the oven and grill... he at least was reliable, as long as they kept him away from the spice cabinet. He was just a little too curious, and none of them were in a mood to have him experimenting with the spices, especially not on food the rest of them had to eat! He'd already been warned off by the Joule's, which meant he really must have been prety annoying, because they were usually only too happy to hang out with him. That left only one person to check up on. And that was the person Allister really, really didn't want to check up on. Who he was sure didn't need any advice, helpful or otherwise. Who had nearly drowned him in the garden fountain not too long ago, and was still a bit uptight about the whole sword and mud thing. Nonetheless, every other station seemed about as potentially hostile anyway, so what did he have to lose?

Violet was actually in the storeroom next to the kitchen, about as far removed as she could be from the rest of them without compromising her access to the piles of potatoes, onions, turnips, celery root and mushrooms she was dicing and mincing for side dishes and sauces. The scent of fresh cut onions was strong enough in the room to make Allister tear up almost immediately, and only after he wiped the blur from his eyes did he make out what Violet was doing that required her to have so much room to herself. And for once, the answer wasn't because of her solitary nature... once he saw what she was doing, Allister was glad she'd had the foresight to do it in seclusion... any adult that saw what she was doing would have freaked out! For that matter, Allister was debating whether he should do so as well, when Violet deigned to notice his presence.

"Don't be creepy, Alli." She scolded him, before turning back to the mechanism she'd contrived out of a small block of wood with a longer plank of wood laid atop it, a simple lever. At one end of the plank was a notch she'd cut into the wood, where she placed a freshly washed potato. Standing back, she put one hand down near her waist, closed her eyes, breathed in... and stamped down on the other end of the board with one foot. The lever snapped up, and catapulted the tuber into the air. Before it could touch the ground, her scaled down katan whispered out of the sheath at her side, and she made two rapid cuts, one vertical, the other horizontal. Four neatly sliced potato quarters hit the ground a second later. "It's impolite to stare." She reminded her future leige, as she scooped the pieces up after wiping off and sheathing her blade. She washed them off again, and put them in a basket more than half full of similar pieces, then reached for another potato.

"You call ME creepy, and you're the one using a sword to dice potatoes?" Allister protested, maintaining a safe distance.

"I used to use tomatoes, they splatter better." Violet retorted, deadpan, and Allister shuddered as he realized he couldn't tell if she was joking or not. He had a vision of bright red tomato juice running down the blade, and was suddenly glad he had skipped lunch. "Of course, there's nothing like a good cantalope melon for approximating a human head, so..." She continued, as if sharing one of her deepest training secrets with him.

"Please, Vio... just... just be careful, okay?" Allister was stumped as to what advice he could give. Other than to use a fricking knife, which would be about three times faster and ten times more efficient. But then again, that would just make too much sense, for Violet anyway. Why do something normal when she could be a Stormhound about it?

"I'm always careful. Besides, it's not like it fights back." Violet replied with a shrug, stamping down and launching her next tuber. Perhaps she was more annoyed by his presence and unspoken questions than she was letting on though, because the potatowent considerably higher than the last one hand, and though she swiped at it all the same, she barely managed to nick it, imparting a wobble to its flight path, and before she could recover, it plopped down. Right on top of her head. From which it bounced with a soft "thump" that almost... but not quite... drowned out the strangled chortle Allister made. She was not particularly slow to turn to glare at him, but even so, by the time she did, he was long gone from the doorway. "His speed is improving." She noted to herself, trying not to focus on her embarassing miss. It was no problem though... even the fastest opponent couldn't escape when you sprung a good ambush on them later...

xxxx

**Several Hours later**

"I'm warning you, la Flaga, you don't wanna do this." Andrew Waltfeld cautioned his friend. "I know from experience that it isn't something you can just fake and have it turn out well."

"If a one eyed, one armed gimp like you can do it, it can't be that hard." Mu said bravely, though privately he was wondering if perhaps he ought to ditch the "impossible, possible" mantra in this instance. They were both standing on the shoreline near the Villa, clutching long, flexiplas boards shaped vaugely like flattened torpedos under one arm. At the non-pointed end of the board, a pair of fins curved out from the underside of the board. Mu's surfboard was bright, fire engine red, while Andrew's was, perhaps predictably, striped in orange and black. Mu wore plain black swim tunks, while Waltfeld had his technicolor stripes on again. It wasn't even a dare, or a bet, that had coaxed him out here with the Desert Tiger, he was just too stubborn to let the man show off without trying to match it. Maybe there was some residual anxiety over all those years Andrew and Murrue had been an item after all.

"Fine, but don't blame me when you come back half drowned and your face abraded away by the sand. Cause you WILL fall, la Flaga. I fell my first time, and that was in the PLANTs, where the waves were..." Andrew considered the ten to twelve foot breakers off in the near distance. "... not nearly as big and violent as these, actually."

"It won't work, Tiger. I don't psyche." Mu answered, gathering the dregs of his courage as he stepped into the surf.

"Whatever you say, Hawk. Whatever you say..." Andrew could not help but grin broadly. Mu wasn't perhaps aware of it, but his legs were trembling... and not from the chill sea spray. Behind them, on the beach proper, the party was still going in full swing, pretty much the entire Royalist faction, gathered in one place and one time. And all to honor him, well, at least that was the excuse, though amongst this crowd, Andrew had little need of being feted. He still couldn't believe Durandel had come to him and asked him... even humbly... to become the new Supreme Commander for the USN forces. It just didn't stack up with his prior experiences with the man at all. Perhaps losing his foster son had been a bigger blow to the man than anyone had thought...

"I still say he won't do it." Murrue commented, sipping another in a long line of wine glasses. Probably too long, by her usual standards, but this might be the last chance any of them had to cut loose for a while... certainly Andrew wouldn't have the Orb forces on back burners in his plans, far from it even... so she was okay with getting a little tipsy. Or even outright drunk... the Pacifica and its outbuildings had enough room for the whole party to sleep things off comfortably after all. She waved her wineglass at the figures of her husband and her best friend, standing in the surf. "Mu's got more sense than to get himself into trouble proving something that doesn't need proving."

"That's probably the first time the word "sense" has ever been attached to the la Flaga name in a complimentary fashion." Raine countered, sipping from her own cocktail on the chair nearby. "He'll deinitely do it. Hell, Robert would do it if he didn't risk having to walk back along the sea floor every time he fell off the board. Just you wait and see, I bet after Mu makes a fool of himself a time or two, we'll get a steady parade of idiots out there trying to prove their manliness. I personally can't wait to see my son-in-law make a total fool of himself for once."

"I'm all for that." Cagalli said, wandering over to join their conversation. The Queen wore a bathing suit like the rest of them, though with a decorative ribbon around her neck that oh so coincindentally covered the nearly invisible scar on her throat where it had been slashed by Frost. Raine wasn't quite sure why that scar in particular was bothersome to the young Queen... she had plenty more that the orange bikini did little to nothing to conceal, but maybe it was just the freshness of it. Or the fact that it had been a nearly mortal wound. Raine didn't bother to conceal her own scars, she simply had too many of them for almost any amount of clothing to conceal. Though perhaps the worst ones she did hide, since they were on her heart, she reflected in a bitter moment.

Cagalli's steps were unsteady, and not just because of the uneven sand. She held a beer bottle in one hand, her fourth or fifth of the night, and it was mostly empty. Given her personality, Raine would have never expected the Queen to be such a lightweight when it came to alcohol... she'd tried one of the beers herself, just to be sure, and it was just a standard high quality microbrew, nothing particularly potent, but after only four or five, Cagalli was starting to weave, and even slur a bit when talking. She could have sworn she'd heard Athrun tell stories about a club where Cagalli had drunk several shots of nearly pure vodka when they were younger, and been fine afterwards, but that was over a decade... and one pregnancy... in the past. It was kind of funny actually, especially because Cagalli seemed to be the sort of drunk that didn't notice that she was becoming impaired.

"All for what now?" She baited the tipsy Queen.

"For... for whatever you were talking about. Something about our men being idiots." Cagalli shook her head and stared distrustfully at her beer bottle, before turning gimlet eyes on Raine. "Don't screw with me when I'm drinking, I might exile you by mistake."

"I just can't believe you're this wasted on five beers. A teenager has more tolerance..." Raine chuckled as she took a healthy sip of her own, far more potent drink.

"Shut up." Cagalli eased herself to a sitting position on the sand nearby. "It's been a decade since I last had time to have more than a glass or two of wine at a time, I lost all my tolerance. Not that there weren't times when I wanted to just drown myself, of course, but just didn't have the time. Being Queen really sucks sometimes."

"But that's why you're so good at it." Murrue pointed out, turning her head to keep an eye on Mu and Andrew as they began wading further out into the surf. No matter what happened, it promised to be quite entertaining. She was just glad they got on so well together the rest of the time, she well remembered the... awkwardness... that had ensued back during the Isolation, when Andrew and Ledonir had engaged in similar games for her attention. Part of her still wondered at the fact that so many powerful, attractive, and successful men apparently found her so irresistable.

"Ten bucks says la Flaga wipes out before he gets halfway to shore. Those are some mean breakers out there." Dearka said cheerfully, from where he, Yzak, Athrun, Ramierez and Alkire were sitting on the Pacifica's back lawn, keeping an eye both on the beach and the children playing nearby.

"Pansy." Alkire smirked at him. "If you're gonna bet, bet something real. Hundred bucks says la Flaga wipes out before halfway."

"Not really a fair bet, Colonel." Ramierez pointed out. "Nobody in their right mind is going to bet on la Flaga. Hawks aren't known for being waterfowl."

"I wonder about that." Athrun said, with a crafty smile in Yzak's direction. "Hey, Yzak, I'm betting five hundred dollars and a public ass kissing that la Flaga doesn't make it halfway to shore, you want to play?"

"I'm not that stupid, Zala." Yzak sniffed disdainfully. "Make it a thousand, and public endorsement of my clothing line, in addition to the ass kissing."

"But, Yzak... you make wedding wear, mostly bridal stuff..." Dearka reminded him. "I think Athrun Zala recommending a dress would be..." He trailed off and thought about it for a bit, as Yzak patiently waited with a smug expression on his face. "Oh, yeah, Athrun Zala, right, what was I thinking?"

"It must be tough, being so popular with women." Ramierez said, half dryly, half wistfully. "You should teach me your secret, I'd be glad to take them off your hands."

"His secret?" Yzak snorted and took a swallow of his drink. "Just screw up your face like you're feeling constipated and get all angsty whenever anyone mentions the necessities of war. That's all he did during the First Valentine War, and panties spontaneously evaporated in a ten mile radius."

"Sound's to me like someone's still a little jealous, son-in-law." Alkire said with a sneer. "Still haven't gotten over getting passed over for promotion that one time, eh?"

"And I never will!" Yzak said with a glare. "It was an obvious case of nepotism triumphing over raw merit! Not one operation Athrun led us on went according to plan! Every time I lead my team into battle, we were totally victorious! The difference is obvious!"

"I shot down the Strike. How many times did you do that exactly?" Athrun countered. "Oh wait, sorry, it was him that shot you down, pretty much every time..."

"All I needed was ONE more chance, and I would have, but you had to interfere... like you always do, Zala!"

"Can't you just feel the love?" Dearka cut in with a smirk. "I can't wait until your kids get married, seeing you guys at the wedding will be simply priceless."

"As if that would ever come to pass! My girls have better taste than that!"

"And Allister has better things to do with his time than cater to the whimsical demands of your spoiled daughters!"

"Its funny how they think they can decide this." Alkire commented to Ramierez on the sly. "I remember being totally against Katie and Chanel being into Yzak, at least at first, but now... he still frustrates me sometimes actually."

"Wouldn't be a good son-in-law otherwise. Or so I hear." Ramierez turned a little morose at the end, having no remaining family, other than the Stormhounds, and no long term romantic prospects, he actually had very little experience in the relationships of those who were wedded. He turned his head and suppressed a sudden chuckle, drawing glances from the other four men. Wordlessly, he pointed in the direction of his gaze, out on the lawn, where Glory was roughhousing... very carefully... with several of the children in question. It was a two sided competition, the massive Sergeant Major on one side, and everyone but Violet on the other, children hanging like limpets and small dogs from Glory's legs and waist, trying to drag him down, and having next to no success at it. They all burst into chuckles when, at the apparent urging of Allister and the Joule twins, Glory reached out and snagged Violet around the waist, lifting her up and back unexpectedly. The expression on her face, half wrathful and half stunned, was simply priceless. Even if Glory might have been missing an arm had not Wrenn forced her daughter to leave her sword inside before coming to dinner.

"Won't be long before he'll be playing with his own kids like that." Alkire said with a certain nod of his head. "Melissa's been shooting him meaningful gazes pretty often of late."

"The mechanics behind them still screw with my head." Dearka admitted. "Such a big man... such a small woman... how does it work?"

"Like any others... just more carefully." The woman in question answered, having come over when she saw the group of guys watching her husband have fun. Or at least, play with the children while poorly hiding how nearly petrified he was of doing anything to upset or damage them. It was like Thom had forgotten how resilient kids could be. Though to be fair, the death glare Violet was giving him while he twirled her about in the air would have done a good job of stipping paint off a battle helm, honestly, the girl seemed like she actively hated fun sometimes. Maybe it was too soon, but Raven wondered if perhaps Violet would learn to lighten up a bit, now that Cyprus was gone. She could count on just her hands alone the number of times she'd seen that man smile, and she'd worked for him for almost a decade! She didn't want Violet to turn out the same way.

"It's so nice to see Violet playing well with others." Wrenn commented, having followed Raven over, after they had broken up their own conversation about what Raven and Glory were going to do when the war ended. After his brush with death at Frost's hands, and with the passing of Cyprus, Glory suddenly had a lot to think about regarding his place in the Stormhounds. He hadn't become or stayed a Stormhound just for Cyprus's sake, but at the same time he'd always gone where Cyprus went, and did what Cyprus did, they were as much like brothers as any two blood siblings could be, and probably a good deal closer. And for that matter, they were all getting older, which wasn't exactly such a big deal for the Gundam pilots, but for the Stormhounds, there were definite limits on how long they could stay at the peak fitness their job required. Especially considering how often they got beat up in pursuit of their duties, and the fact that the greater majority of them were Naturals.

By most special forces standards, the senior Stormhounds were positively ancient, especially for field capable operatives! Ramierez, Glory, Alkire, Raine... all of them had been fighting for longer than many of the junior Stormhounds had even been alive! Even Raven had been an active duty soldier for more than ten years by this point in time, which was an eternity for special forces types. They lived and breathed their jobs, but that wasn't to say they couldn't see the writing on the wall either, and after seeing how happy a child had made his best friend, Glory had realized he wanted nothing less for himself... but there was no way he and Raven could start a family while they both still served in the Hounds. They hadn't really decided on anything yet, but the unspoken consensus was that Glory would be retiring once the Reclamation War was over, and maybe Raven too, shortly thereafter. Assuming they both lived to see the end of the War of course, which was far from something to be taken for granted!

"You call that playing well with others?" Athrun said wryly. "If she had a stick, she looks like she'd have broken it over his head already. He had to physically grab her to get her to join in the play."

"But she was in reach to be grabbed, rather than disappearing off by herself, something she's perfectly capable of doing." Wrenn countered with a smile. "And if she really hated it as much as she'd like you to believe, Thom would have put her down already. He'd also have a few broken fingers, for his trouble. She's an awkward girl at the best of times, but she's better than she used to be." Her smile faltered a bit. "Though I doubt she'll ever be as unreserved as she was with Akira. That boy was something special, he reached Violet in a way neither I nor Cy ever did."

"Just like his mother... he had the knack for touching people's hearts." Athrun agreed with a bittersweet smile. He raised his glass in a toast. "In memory of the Clyne-Yamato's... the best of us, that they may rest in peace, and watch over us from Hameya's side."

"To the Clyne-Yamato's." The rest chorused, even Yzak, who at first looked like he wanted to add something about Kira, but managed to swallow it. Even at his most cantankerous, Yzak wasn't willing to tarnish the names of the deceased... he'd always had a soft spot for those claimed by war or tragedy. He even surprised everyone by being the next to think of a toast.

"And to Andrew Waltfeld, the Desert Tiger. That he may lead us to victory despite our internal schisms, and cast down the evils which assail us from within... and without." He declared, eying Athrun in particular, daring him to protest the unspoken but all too clear inclusion of Kira within those "evils" without.

"To Andrew Waltfeld." Athrun failed to rise to Yzak's subtle provocation. It was neither the time nor the place for them to rehash their argument on the issue. This was a time of relaxation, a place of celebration. Besides, he was simply tired of it, realized it might be one of those irreconcilable differences in opinion. He'd almost lost faith in Kira once before, but their friendship had come back stronger than ever despite that, and now they were bound by blood, by law and by their friendship. He might never understand why Kira had become the person he was today, but at the same time, he could never bring himself to repudiate his ties with Kira, as Yzak all but had. Enemies they certainly now were, but at least on Athrun's end, there was no hatred.

Things threatened to become morose for a moment, before a piercing shriek of mingled fright and glee that could have come from either a boy or a girl rang out from where the children were playing, and as the adults turned, some of them flinching in reflex, to see what was up, the kids broke away from Glory en mass, and stampeded for the beach. At first it made no sense, even for excitable children, until they saw that Glory had finally gotten tired of hefting Violet around like a doll, and had set her down onto the lawn once more, whereupon she had turned upon her peers, the architects of her undignified forced playtime. Chuckling again, dark moment fogotten, the adults decided that their children had the right idea, so they followed them down to the beach, to get some ring side seats of the competition between Hawk and Tiger...

xxxx

**Offshore**

For the first time in his relatively lengthy existence, Gorefin really wished he wasn't a Megaladon, but rather a member of a non-edenite shark species. He was simply too large to have the kind of fun he now found himself desiring. Perhaps it was just the corrupting influence of those false-memory projections the humans apparently adored, he had been consuming the sense-memories of far too many of the things lately, after getting hooked... no pun intended... on them during his recuperation from the attack on the giant shellfish mother-beast. Like many high level Chimera, he possessed near perfect recall, and so could rewatch the films any time he pleased, once he'd "seen" them once, but even so there seemed to be an infinite variety of new genres and variations upon the same theme to consume, from defunct documentaries to make believe monster scenarios that were fantasicaly unbelievable even by the standards of New Eden.

Resting on the sea floor off the relatively desolate coast of this part of the seamount the humans called "Orb", Gorefin watched the small group of humans playing the shallows with mingled bemusement and hunger. Well, he was always hungry, it was part of his nature, an instinct bred into him from the moment of his birth. But the need for fresh, bloody hot food had been growing stronger of late... more or less trapped within the unpleasant electrical field barrier the humans had erected around their island as he was, there was relatively little in the way of food to sustain himself on. Certainly there were no whales or other large sea organisms, merely schools of fish that were frustratingly resistant to psychic compulsion or just plain too stupid, and unable to heed his demands that they come feed him. As a result, he spent most of his time in a ttitude that in a human would be like reclining on a couch, and thus to keep from being bored, he ended up watching a lot of sense-memories.

Though his eyesight was poor, as was common for sharks, even in the relatively clear water of only a few hundred feet depth, Gorefin had no need of his eyes to monitor his surroundings, and indeed the greater part of the ocean within the human's electrical bowl field. His nostrils could scent a single particle of blood in a billion gallons of seawater, and his electrically sensitive nerves, or lorenzi sensors, as the humans called them, were capable of feeling the electric current generated by the heartbeat of a tuna from thirty miles away. Certainly it was no difficult task keeping track of the movements of the human inedible shellfish, as they shoaled and schooled about the shores of the island, information that was dutifully relayed to the Ocean Mother in near real time. The merest exertion of his telekinetic might was sufficient to half bury himself in the sediment on the ocean floor, making him appear as little more than an outcrop of the undersea mountain to most casual scans.

Another, nearly unconscious exertion of his powers sufficed to push seawater past his gills, allowing him to breath comfortably despite having no forward motion. The lack of constant motion he normally relied on to provide himself with oxygen also meant his energy consumption was far lower, allowing him to effectively hibernate for the time being. His body temperature had lowered to near ambient, and was further cloaked by the covering of sediment... he was as close to invisible as any nearly five hundred foot long shark could be. And also extremely bored, even with the sense-memories for entertainment. Thus his abnormal level of interest in the school of humans playing in the shallows less a mile from his position of repose. They were certainly ungainly creatures, making a terrible racket as they splashed and squirmed around in the surf, their bodies plainly incapable of any but the most rudimentary water locomotion.

It seemed passing odd to Gorefin, that any such creatures could have evolved to being a dominate lifeform on a world that was primarily water, without in turn having aquadynamic capability bred into them, but here the humans were, existing despite all reason. Then again, they also apparently lived in the sky, beyond the outermost edges of the blue sea above, like the flocks of migratory birds he sometimes observed while patrolling the very upper regions of his domain. He marveled quietly at such a thing, if the humans could achieve such an unthinkable concept, perhaps they weren't such useless aberrations of the natural order after all. It was a troubling thought, for an apex predator like him, to consider beings that were tiny enough to pass down his throat without him even noticing he'd swallowed them might still be a superior lifeform. Or if not superior then at least equal.

He wondered what it would be like to be small, so small that there wasn't any conceivable way you could defend yourself through your own strength. In the oceans of New Eden, size did matter... the bigger you were, the larger your brain, the greater your psychic powers, and the greater chance you had of evolving into a Chimera and joining the ranks of the ocean's nobility. But in the oceans, creatures could also afford to grow to sizes that would be impossible for any land based organism, supported by the water they lived in as they were. It was a quandry, to be sure... if size equaled power, then what did lack of size indicate? A lack of power? But the humans did not seem to lack power, their metal shellfish and crustaceans that they built for themselves were dangerous, even threatening to the most powerful of Chimera, such as himself and Charbydis! Gorefin wondered what he and his kind might eventually create were they to have the need to artificially augment their own capabilities, like the humans did?

He desire to experience life in a smaller form was as whimiscally curious as it was philosophical. Because of the constraints of his size, there were actually parts of his domain he could never visit... pretty much anything with less than fifty feet of depth between sea floor and sea surface was too shallow for him to traverse comfortably. Theoretically he could beach himself and push or drag himself along the seabed with his telekinesis, but that would be both tiring and painful, not to mention very hard on the exact environment he wished to observe. Because it was in such shallow depths that the greatest profusion of sea life bloomed, in the reefs and tidal shallows of the oceans. It was also where the humans were to be found in their greatest multitudes, and he enjoyed the wistful fantasy of swimming up the them without them being any the wiser until he happened to brush by their temptingly dangling feet... or just swallowed their legs and ripped them in half, like in his favorite sense-memories.

Such things were impossible as he was, even if the depth wasn't an issue, his great size displaced so much water that even dullards like humans would be able to feel his presence well before he actually arrived, by the change in water pressure which would swirl them around like driftwood. He could have easily reached out with his mind and dragged the school of humans down into his maw, like certain species of lesser fish used vacuum pressure to suck in sediment and the creatures living in it from several feet away, but there was no fun in that. And little enough filling... even were a human to be somehow big enough to provide a noticable meal for him, their bodies were not well adapted for feeding other creatures, probably by some evolutionary need. Except in rare cases, their bodies were simply too lean... it was in fats that most nutrients were found, muscle meat was tasty, but it provided relatively little energy for its mass. He would eat them if the opportunity arose, as he would pretty much anything, but there was no reason to seek them out until literally every other fish in the sea was exhausted.

So he contented himself with merely observing, and trying to puzzle out their mysterious actions. Two of the humans periodically left the water, clambering onto pieces of some sort of not-wood, which were pushed about by the waves for reasons that were totally incomprehensible to him. If the water was truly so objectionable to them, the shoreline was not so far away, but instead they climbed onto the boards, then promptly fell off again, then climbed back onto the boards, and fell off, and so forth and so on. It was totally mystifing. Meanwhile, a school of even humans even smaller than normal... obviously young of some sort... cavorted like a den of sea otters in the very shallowest parts of his domain, where the crashing of the surf interfered with his senses so as to make them fade in and out of his perceptions regularly. Despite careful analysis of their movements, Gorefin could detect absolutely no pattern to their actions, it was just random noise, purposeless as far as he could tell. The behavior was somewhat like otters diving for shellfish, but there were no rock beds in the area to host such things. Truly strange... burning energy for no gain at all? How did humans survive past this stage of their lives if they were so wasteful?

Perhaps the Ocean Mother would be able to enquire of such details from her human vassal sometime? Gorefin wasn't too sure about Leviathan's apparent attachment to this single, simple human... such emotional concepts were very distant and poorly evolved in sharks. Even when mating, many sharks would kill and consume each other if they were given the opportunity, and the mere idea of valuing someone so much that you would sacrifice your own energy for their sake was just... weird. Of course, the Ocean Mother herself was a different case, but to establish such a relationship with a land dweller? If it were anyone else, he'd have taken it as a sign of mental illness and thus weakness, and promptly devored the poor creature. As things were, Gorefin was being forced to more closely examine such unfamilar concepts, thinking outside the box, as humans might put it. If Leviathan herself found something to value in this human called Kira, then obviously there must be even more to the human race than Gorefin had ever imagined.

If that was the case, maybe he ought to consider adopting a human vassal of his own, though quite how he'd go about selecting such a being, Gorefin could not figure. Most humans wanted nothing to do with him, having a deeply rooted atavistic fear of him at first sight, something that was ordinarily pleasing to him. He'd heard through discussions with the Ocean Mother that there did exist a human whose attitudes were apparently very shark-like... since Leviathan had seen fit to portray the human in question as a shark-like image in their shared dream... but apparently that human was already claimed by the cave-dwelling Crabpus. And while Gorefin would never admit to being intimidated, much less frightened of the Caller, he was all the same not particulary eager to end up in a personal conflict with the creature either. He knew on which side the balance of power rested in that scenario, and for all that he could probably break the Caller into pieces without much strain, Gorefin knew he'd never get close enough to actually do any harm to the Crabpus.

If only he was smaller, how would the world be different? Might he come to understand the humans more? In that case, Gorefin was actually glad to be as big as he was. For all that it was fun to ruminate about certain possibilities, as far as he was concerned, humans were all insane. Understanding them could only lead to his own mental decay. With a mental equivalent of a bored sigh, Gorefin flicked a pulse of telekinesis along his side, soothing an itch on his skin where some sediment had begun to work its way into his sensitive skin. Perhaps it was time for another sense-memory. He'd already watched the ones called "Jaws" to death, but there was one called Deep Blue Sea, about super-intelligent sharks, that he'd been saving for just such a moment as this. Though he found exception with the title... as he well knew, most of the sea was black and lightless, there was little that was blue about it. Those humans just had everything wrong...


	72. The Meaning of Worry

Author Note: An odd thing I've noticed. RW has just exceeded ED in terms of hits, and is now as of last chapter the longest of my fics. Yet Chaotic Cosmos, the shortest of my fics, and definitely the prototype amongst them, has more hits than both of the other stories combined (220k vs 88 and 89k). Maybe its just time elapsed since Gundam Seed was airing on TV. It's probably meaningless, but nonetheless I'm proud to have RW be longer, with fewer chapters, and more hits and reviews than the last story. Heck, at this rate, it'll have more reviews than both previous stories put together. That'll be another nice benchmark. Anyway, I hope the fluff of last chapter agreed with you all, and this chapter will address some issues set up earlier in the arc. And will feature some detailed reveals of some secrets people have been asking about pretty much since Global Cooling.

xxxx

**Far Space Expansion Zone, Outer Edge of Asteroid Belt, Ronin City ISSA, Quarantined Refugee Quarters, April 10th, 7:03 PM**

"Are you set up yet, Noah?" Meyin prodded her lover, watching as he fiddled around with some of the spaghetti bowls worth of wires and data conduits he'd pulled from various bits and pieces of equipment during the course of the day. They'd made a joint request for computer equipment of the rebel colony's leadership that morning, but it was around lunchtime that they'd been alloted the gear... a significant fraction of the council had not been altogether pleased with the idea of letting someone like Noah have access to their data network. Which was actually not too unreasonable a thing to feel, in Meyrin's opinion, given what Noah had proven himself able to do in the past with computers. However, they'd given the council plenty of assurances... and honest ones at that... that they only desired the gear so that they might prove of use to the Retributors, as they'd previously promised to do, so she was also annoyed with their childish reluctance to cooperate.

And of course, when the gear did arrive, it was all out of date, cast off, and second hand models plainly scrounged from whatever quarters of the ship no longer needed them. Advanced by the standards of ten years ago perhaps, but woefully inadequate for the sort of work Noah tended to do. It was such a deliberate snub that Meyrin couldn't even feel offended about it, it was almost humorous in its petulance. Listening to Noah mutter to himself as he cannabilized the pitiful offering for parts had amused her for the rest of the day, as she chimed in now and then with a helpful suggestion she was sure her lover had already taken into account, but it had been so long since she'd had a chance to playfully tease him, she couldn't help herself. And so, over the course of an afternoon, a dozen different computers had been broken down, rewired, reprogrammed and even entirely rebuilt, combining into one frankenstein monster of a mainframe that Noah was at least provisonally satisfied with, and probably exceeded the wildest dreams of any other computer engineer.

The task was made more difficult than it might have otherwise been because Noah had to work blind, literally using only his sense of touch and the descriptions of the equipment that Meyin provided in the process. Ronin City did possess technology... actually stolen or derived from Brotherhood tech... that could heal the injuries Noah's face had sustained by her foolish older sister's fists, and could have even restored his eyes entirely. Assuming the city council gave them permission to use the facilities that is, which given their petulance over a simple request for computers, might have been a tricky issue. But they had not even asked about it, because Noah had decided that he wasn't going to restore his sight, or heal his face. This was not out of a sense of guilt or regret for his actions, as Noah didn't feel those emotions regarding his past work, but actually as something of a badge of honor, proof of what he was willing to endure to achieve his most dearly held goals.

And it was a object warning to anyone who might think to one day follow in his footsteps, a stark reminder of the steep price even the greatest and smartest of innovaters might have to pay in order to realize their dreams. A lesson to those who might come later, to never assume their victories would be flawless or without personal suffering, and that even in the greatest of triumph, personal sacrifice was necessary. Noah had literally changed the world for all time, yet he would never be able to behold his completed work with his own two eyes, and his formerly nigh perfect face was a cratered ruin of scars and welts, fit to make children cry when they saw it. A steep price to pay indeed, especially for such a visionary man, one of the first Ultimate Coordinators, but one he had paid willingly, and wasn't about to merely gloss over after the fact.

And if other people found his appearance to be disturbing or bothersome, then that was just icing on the cake as far as Noah was concerned. Let them gawk, let them flinch and whisper and grimace, it just showed how truly shallow they all were, that they could not see past the ruined beauty of his appearance to behold the true beauty of his soul. It was the same with Meyrin and the scars branded into her skin by the RI torturers. She wasn't about to heal them over, or hide them beneath excessive clothing... as much as she was able to be, she was proud of them, because they showed the evils she had endured and defeated through her own willpower. So long as humans could hate and hurt each other simply because of how they were born or what their genetics were, she would never get rid of her scars, to show people just what that kind of hate could lead them to do. A living portrait of the dangers of humanity's own depravity. Let them stare, she hoped they engraved the sight into their memories, and for those who whispered or commented behind their hands, well, they proved what their opinions were worth when they chose to keep them to themselves!

She did mourn for Noah's eyes, which had always entranced her, even from the moment they'd first met, back when she still believed him to be the worst nusiance she'd ever encountered. Of all his alluring features, and there were many and more of those, his eyes had nonetheless been the ones to enthrall her the most, and now not even a single picture of them remained. But she would not do him the disservice of undermining his own display of determination and willpower merely for the sake of her aesthetic tastes, just as he forbore commenting on the travesty done to her soft skin, which he so loved to touch and stroke whenever he had the chance. Neither of them was any less beautiful in the perceptions of the other, and no amount of injury or scarring, no matter how horrible or debilitating, could ever change that!

"No thanks to these primitive conditions, but yes, it should be enough for a start." Noah replied, prickliness dripping off every word as he carefully felt around his contraption, checking all the connections to make sure they were successful. He found the primary output cord, which was plugged into a pair of VR goggles obviously taken from some gaming system, but with a few tweaks and software updates he'd improvised on the spot, they should suffice for his needs, until he could procure better. Which wouldn't take long, now that he'd established a starting point. The city council was so confident in their security measures, but what they failed to realize in their conceit was that the vast majority of the very technology they took for granted was either heavily derived or even outright stolen from his own work that had gone into equipping the Brotherhood!

Their most advanced security protocols were rife with programming holes and backdoors he'd engineered into his technology just in case any of it ever was hijacked or stolen from him. He could have taken control of the entire city mainframe with a cell phone if he'd wanted, but he chose to allow them their conceits for the time being, in the interest of mutual cooperation. Though that superlicious, self righteous twit of an Elsman was seriously pushing his buttons, he was of half a mind to lock her in her bathroom and leave her there until she either mellowed out or died of starvation, either one would be acceptable! He didn't have much time for her brother either... it was that bastard who'd crippled the Great Endeavor and broken Meyrin's back after all... but at least Dearka was open and forthright in his hatred, not this sniping pettiness and passive-aggressive whining! Ronin City wasn't exactly Noah's first choice of a place of refuge either, but at least he was willing to work with the situation, rather than just bitch about it!

He handed the goggles to Meyrin, and set about inputting the baseline data she'd requested via a pair of keyboards he'd repurposed for the task. The improvised system did have voice activated controls, as he was used to working hands free most of the time, but for sheer rapidity of volume data input, typing was still faster, so he built the programs he was going to be using via hand, before switching to voice once the foundations were laid. "I can't promise this will be perfectly accurate." He told Meyrin as his fingers flew across the keyboards, each independent of the other, typing by feel faster than most people could type with both hands and eyes on the task. "When I designed the failsafe, it was more like a set of guidelines, I expected a reasonable degree of extrapolation and technological innovation from the systems I left behind to govern the hideout. I'll do the best I can, but..."

"I'm sure that will be sufficient, Noah. I just want to have the baselines set out for Markov when he gets back. If Frost is anywhere near as bad as you both seem to feel he is, Markov's gonna need all the help we can give him in order to come out on top. So break it down for me... what sort of monster did you create?" Meyrin directed him imperiously, as she settled the goggles onto her face, blinking as they activated and projected a nearly perfect simaculrum of their room onto her eyes, save that this room could be manipulated by Noah's voice commands.

"I wish you wouldn't put it that way. I never wanted to have to use the failsafe, and I never would have had one if you hadn't forced me to..." Noah protested.

"Don't try to lay this on me. I told you to find a place to sequester the technology you were afraid you might misuse one day. I did NOT say anything about reincarnating a mass murdering psychopath in a cloned body of Kira Yamato, regardless of the reasoning!" Meyin overrode him mercilessly. "If I MUST be that specific, for future reference... DON'T do that, okay? In fact, just write off reincarnation at all, it's too dangerous for humans to mess about with stuff like that..."

"Everyone's a critic after the fact." Noah grumbled. "And he was never truly dead, at least as far as his mind goes." He sighed and held up his hands in a placating gesture. "But I get it... I won't make this mistake again, and I'll fix this one too, just you watch me. We'll start with the skeletal structure." He continued, calling up a ghostly 3D skeleton of a man in Meyrin's simulated view. "His bones are engineered to be roughly twice as dense as is normal for a human being, and there is noticable thickening around obvious weak spots, such as the skull and the ribs. However, that's just the beginning, as all his bones are threaded with microscopic veins of pure Quantum Crystal, and the seperate bones themselves are in essence wired together by these strands, making his skeletal structure all but unbreakable. He could fall off a fifty story building onto concrete and his skeleton would remain perfectly intact."

"Additionally, this nearly indestructible skeletal structure is required to provide sufficent anchoring points for his enhanced musculature, which would, in other circumstances, break his own bones when he utilized his full strength." Noah began sculpting on layers as he described them, slowly fleshing out the ephermal body of his creation for Meyrin's study. "Though the body is made from genetic material from my cousin Kira, it is also mixed with some of my own DNA, and genetically tampered with to the point where calling it "human" at all is something of a misnomer. His muscles are denser and stronger than a similar volume of coiled titanium. His grip pressure is sufficient to crush a brick to powder, and bend steel. His skin functions as a suit of leathery armor proof against most indirect strikes, even a graze from a bullet is unlikely to breach the skin exterior. This skin also provides a high degree of protection against environmental damage, including normal extremes of cold and heat, and even to a limited extent the debilitations of very high or very low pressure environments, such as deep underwater or even outer space."

"So he's basically wearing a environment suit all the time?" Meyrin couched it in simpler terms. "Coupled with the unbreakable bones and more raw strength than an industrial lifter harness, I begin to see why he's so scary..."

"We're still scratching the surface, I'm afraid. Venturing back inside the body, we have the circulatory system and other organs, all of which are covered with flexible armor plating somewhat similar to that used in ballistic vests, but far stronger. Even a direct bullet strike is unlikely to penetrate as far as the body cavity through the dense flesh and muscle, and even if it does, it will merely bruise or jostle an organ rather than damaging it outright. The blood is teeming with dozens of different colonies of bio-assistance tasked nanomachines. Some of which cause the blood to clot in case of injuies, in many cases even when directly wounded, the skin will be scabbed over before the blood has a chance to hit the ground. These tough scabs also provide a sealed environment for more precise regenerative treatments to take place in safety, as outside matter is broken down and repurposed to regrowing damaged tissue at a highly accelerated rate..." Noah explained.

"How accelerated are we talking here, Noah?" Meyrin prodded him for detail.

"A simple blade or gunshot wound would probably close up in minutes, and be entirely healed within hours. More severe damage, such as burns caused by open flame or near misses with plasma weaponry might take as much as a day to fully disappear. A direct hit with plasma or explosive type weapons could take multiple days to heal completely, but depending on where the attack struck, bodily performance could be resotred in as little as a minute or less. Wounds caused by projectiles, especially when those projectiles remain within the wound, heal faster than otherwise, as the internal nanites break down the foreign object and use it as raw materials for the repairs." He clarified for her, wincing as he felt her leveled stare. Was it his fault if he didn't skimp when he was designing his failsafes? Well, put that way, perhaps it was...

"Other nanocolonies provide oxygenating and toxin cleansing support to the musculature and bloodstream, and the entire system can function independently of the heart for several hours at a time, so even in the case of massive organ damage, he should be able to self repair enough to reach a survivable state, if given the opportunity. Additionally, he can survive without an air supply for an extended time, especially if he isn't active. Make that indefinitely if he is in a fluid environment, as the nanites should be able to process the water in his lungs and turn it into oxygen for his bloodstream. The blood cleansing effects protect against posions and diseases, breaking them down and putting the raw materials to work protecting and reinforcing the body instead, and any lactic acids or other fatigue poisons are broken down as soon as they are produced... in other words, he doesn't get tired from physical exertion, and has little physical need for rest. Even radiation damage should be correctable within certain doses by these internal guardians." Noah kept on extolling the virtues of his monster, trying not to sound proud of himself, knowing it wouldnt be appreciated.

"Tell me he's at least vulnerable to crosses, or garlic, or something..." Meyrin protested with a weak smile.

"I don't design my failsafes to have obvious weaknesses, Meyrin. His purpose was to unite everyone against him, no normal being could do that alone, not even an Ultimate Coordinator. And Frost really isn't the joining or leading type, he has no patience and no sense of subtlty. He's a wild beast, a rabid monstrosity, who kills anyone who gets near him without hesitation or remorse. It's him against the entire world, anything less than a perfect killing machine simply wouldn't have been enough for the task at hand." Noah replied with a heavy sigh. "The obvious solution would be an EMP wave, but his skin protects against anything but an extremely close range or all immersive EMP type attack. You'd have to literally get him to walk through a concentrated EMP field in order to damage the function of the nanites, and even then it would be temporary at best. No, the nanites just have to be worked around, I'm afraid."

"So how WOULD you kill him, if you had to?" Meyrin pressed. "Since we kinda DO have to..."

"Well, pure physical damage will do the trick, if you pile on enough and keep doing it. A fusillade of bullets could rip him to shreds and destroy his internal organs to the point where the internal nanites would have to take over, and they would eventually falter for lack of raw materials or power source, without his body heat and tissues to work with. Simply crushing him, such as with a tank or Mobile Suit, wouldn't be enough, the body would be too intact, he really needs to be shot to pieces and made to bleed out as much as possible. High explosives would do the trick nicely, more like a satchel charge than a mere grenade though. Alternately, incendiaries would be good for shutting him down into a comatose repair state, at which point he would be easy to kill by other means. Burning him alive would take take, but could also work." Noah mused, considering.

"What about beam weapons?" Meyrin prompted him.

"Vehicle class weapons would cinderize him just fine, that kind of massive damage is beyond anything anyone even remotely human could withstand. Personal weapons on the other hand... it would depend. A headshot, certainly. The heat would melt or vaporize his brain even if the skull remained intact, and brain damage is one of the few things the nanites can't fix. Sheer impact wouldn't do it, the brain is cushioned with its own series of gel like nanites within the skull, I took extra special care to make sure a simple knock on the head wouldn't undo all the other work, given how reckless a fighter he is. But a beam shot to the head will kill him. The chest or limbs might disable him, but it wouldn't kill him and might not even put him down." Noah continued thoughtfully.

"Not even with shock? Massive tissue damage should knock him out with pain response, right?"

"He doesn't feel shock, and if he feels pain, its not the same way you or I do. That's actually not any of my doing, he's always been that way. I've tinkered with his nervous system a little, but mostly just streamlining it to improve reflexes and sensory perception abilities. If anything he should be more sensitive to pain than a normal person, but like I said, he just doesn't perceive the sensation at all like normal people do. I imagine he still feels pain, but it invigorates him rather than debilitates him. Its not even like endorphins, like an adrenaline rush will sometimes do for regular people, his brain chemistry is so messed up he just... feels differently... than we do." Noah shrugged as he struggled to find the right words to express it.

"But the body is a clone of Kira's, right? Shouldn't the brain chemistry be the same as Kira's?" Meyrin asked with a frown.

"It's only about 98 percent Kira, the other 2 percent is mine, but close enough. And there's more to brain chemistry than just the original DNA, the BIIC imprinting process that downloaded his memories and personality into the empty host body is still as much guesswork as it was sound theories. The point is, he should have managed to inherit his resistance to pain, as that was more of a personality quirk than a true biological effect... mind over matter, if you will. It made him all but unstoppable in his original body, and that was certainly a trait I wanted for the new model. Anything less than an instant kill shot won't bring him down, and only the most direct and traumatic of hits will even give him pause. And only repeated, intense damage stands a chance of keeping him down, unless you use massive overkill. Add in the fact that he's a strong as he is tough, and as fast as he is strong, and you have the making of a true threat to humanity..." Noah paused and shuddered briefly. "Meyrin... what have I done?"

"What you felt you had to do. A mistake in all likelihood... but one you still can correct, my love. I have faith in you. Come on, I know that's not all... let's have the full picture now..." She cajoled him supportively.

"I gave him my Newtype powers. Or at least he's an Active that shares my DNA... I still don't really understand the relationship between DNA, personality, and psychic ability... it may be the case that his abilities are entirely different from mine. I doubt he's put much work into mastering them though, he just doesn't have the patience for that kind of cerebral work. He probably would have been happier as a Latent, though quite who he would have Boosted with is beyond me." Noah shrugged again. "There's a NIC V version chip embedded between the hemispheres of his brain, allowing him wireless, hands free control over his Gundam, whatever it turned out to be... there was a lot of leeway in its design. Its similar to but better than the NIC IV helmet I used to control the Brotherhood, and should allow him to control his Gundam at ranges of over a thousand miles, as well as giving him a constant internal connection to the computer in control of the hideout, which I named Charon. Depending on how far Charon took the theories, he might even be able to interface with his own internal nanites via that chip, and control their activities to certain extents, though to what use I'm not sure."

"That brings up the next point, I guess." Meyrin said with a sigh. "What exactly did you leave behind at his disposal, in terms of technology...?"

"That's actually two questions... what did I leave behind, and of that selection, what is he willing to use?" Noah corrected her. "He's completely insane, remember, and has quite a few idiosyncrasies and other quirks of personality, there's a very good chance he would entirely ignore some of the most dangerous and powerful technologies simply because they didn't match up with his warped sense of aesthetics. He prefers melee combat to the near exclusion of anything else, and hardly ever uses ranged weapons even when provided with them, and he considers weapons of mass destruction to be "unfun", because he likes to kill people up close and personal. He gets off on the pain, terror and hatred his actions invoke in his foes, wiping them out with a WMD is an offensive thought to him. So that rules out almost all of the nanological weapons from the getgo, and possibly the AMP weapons as well. He may have armed himself soley with melee weaponry, it would not be out of character for him. Unfortunately..."

"Unfortunately?" Meyrin enquired with a fluttering gut.

"Yes. He may well be the most talented Gundam pilot to ever live... even better than Kira. Kira is an Ultimate Coordinator after all, in his original body, Frost was a Natural, and they still fought on even footing most of the time, and Kira even found himself outmatched by Frost in close range combat and sheer agility. He was the only one who actually mastered the Pulsar, something Kira and my own Uncle Jeremiah singularly failed to do. And Jeremiah helped design and build the Pulsar! As far as utilizing NIC, FPR and GRS equipped machines go, there is no one better and more experienced than Frost. He is one of the only people who can utilize the full speed and agility of such a machine without loss of accuracy when attacking... most NIC and FPR equipped machines can move faster than their pilots can properly react, but Frost's effective reaction ceiling is far and above higher than anyone else I've ever seen. When he gets going, he's practically invisible, he's so fast. And he can't be predicted, his thoughts are so inherently chaotic that even the most experienced of soldiers is utterly unable to predict his movements. If he gets within arm's reach of you, unless you're Kira, you're pretty much dead." Noah frowned heavily.

"And worse yet, he's not just a stupid brute, as convenient as that would be. He's definitely insane, the craziest man alive probably, but he possesses stunning amounts of intuitive reasoning ability, animal cunning if you will, and a grasp on human psychology that is frankly nightmarish! He figured out who I was based on a simple conversation, most of which I spent lying and insulting him, something the rest of the world, including many of my own subordinates couldn't do in years of knowing and working for me! If you value being able to sleep at night, NEVER talk to him alone, not even if its over a comm! I guess I could chalk some of it down to wild guesses and the obsessive attention for details he possesses, but he pulls it off so often I just can't write it off as total coincidence. There's a very smart man buried under all that madness and vitriol, and his unique mental condition seems to provide him with an unexpectedly useful perspective on most matters... he doesn't just think outside the box, to him, the box is a globe!" Noah shuddered again, remembering the terrifying conversation he'd had with Frost that one time, which still gave him nightmares sometimes.

"Calm down, he can't hurt you anymore, he doesn't even know you're still alive." Meyrin pointed out, trying to be reassuring.

"That is my one saving grace." Noah acknowledged. "Because he's promised to kill me, and in ways I won't even begin to describe to you. Worse, he'd be only too happy to torture you to death first, just to mess with me. And as we are now, there's not much you or I could to do to stop him. Even if I had a rebuilt Brotherhood Gundam, I wouldn't give myself better odds than maybe ten percent chance of beating him. Probably a lot less actually, since its been so long since I last piloted anything. In fact, even at my best, I don't think I could beat him. I'm too scared of him to fight him effectively..."

"So what other technology did you leave behind at the hideout?" Meyrin asked, trying to distract his attention from his terror of his own creation. "We need to be as complete as possible, especially if he's as smart as you say, the possibility exists he might have found new ways to use your stuff, even if he probably hasn't actually improved upon it."

"Well, besides the nanological weaponry, and the AMP technology, there's of the course the BIIC technology I used to create him in the first place. And since he does have my Newtype abilities, he should be able to create his own BIIC lifeforms if he wanted to, though I doubt he would, its a time and energy intensive process he would have little patience for. And I doubt he could possibly brainwash anyone into loving him or even willingly tolerating his presence. There's the LCR armor technology, which I assume he utilized for his Gundam, its defensive properties are right up his alley. Of course the standard gamut of FPR, NIC and GRS type technologies that went into the Vengeance, Retribution and Brotherhood, and all the technology I used to outfit my Harbingers, though again, he wouldn't use body armor or rifle weapons unless he had absolutely no other choice. And..." Noah trailed off and shrugged. "There's the Black EDEN."

"Hold on a sec... BLACK EDEN? What the HELL is that?" Meyrin rounded on him. "I'm intimately familiar with Green, I think Red may be the greatest invention in human history, Blue is absolutely despicable and never should have been made... now what the FUCK is Black? Another superweapon?"

"Not precisely." Noah answered, a bit tenatively. "Oh, it certainly could be used for destructive purposes, but it's more of a doomsday device in that case... once unleashed, nothing could stop it. It was the first nanite I ever created, back when I was still pioneering most of the science, and I have to conclude it was more of a fluke than a true discovery. Certainly I've never been able to recreate it... the closest I ever got was Blue, and Blue is inferior by far. As far as my experiments could determine, Black EDEN converts energy and mass into its own mass on as close to a 100 percent efficiency level as I've ever seen. Stab it with a pencil and the pencil would be instantly devoured and the nanite... there's only one... would somehow GROW in all dimensions to add an amount of relative mass equal to that absorbed. It would even absorb the air around it if it was not isolated from all outside stimuli by a powerful magnetic field."

"And what happens if someone disabled that field?" Meyrin wondered, already dreading the answer.

"The nanite would grow at an exponentially increasing rate, until it was either isolated once more or..." Noah trailed off and swallowed hard. "... or there was nothing left to absorb. I really don't understand it, its perhaps the only thing I've created I don't understand, so there may be a limit to its absorption ability, but it wasn't a limit I found during my initial studies of it, and its theoretically possible it doesn't have such a limit at all. If dropped on the ground, it could devour the entire Earth in a day or so."

"YOU PUT SOMETHING LIKE THAT DOWN ON EARTH?" Meyrin all but screamed at him. "WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST SHOOT IT INTO THE SUN AND GET RID OF IT?"

"Because that wouldn't get rid of it. It would consume the sun, and then we'd all be really screwed. I could have just launched it randomly into space, but there's no telling what it might have hit and consumed, and could conceivably grow into an interstellar threat to navigation. Its too dangerous to attempt to destroy it, without understanding it... somewhat the same reasoning for why I didn't simply destroy Frost in BIIC form. I had no idea what might happen next, it might have been as bad as suffering "possession" by his ego." Noah shivered all over at the horrid thought. "Much better to lock it down and wait for a time of peace so that I could devote proper time and energy into figuring them out, and deciding from there whether to utilize them or destroy them."

"Much as I love you, Noah, sometimes I think I can understand why so many people are afraid of you. Even without intending to, you cause a lot of problems." Meyrin said, reigning herself in. The world was still around after all, it hadn't turned into a giant black ball of death, so plainly this Black EDEN was still quiescent and not a true threat. Still, it was a gun pointed at the head of humanity's birthplace, and she resolved to have Noah remove the item to deep space as soon as possible. Perhaps they could find a black hole somewhere, and shoot it into that!

"Sorry." Noah answered with a downcast expression. "I was only ten at the time, I wasn't perhaps thinking as clearly as I should have been. On the plus side of things though, Black EDEN is definitely something that could kill Frost without a problem. I never tested it with QC, but there's no reason to suspect it would be unable to consume that as quickly as it does any other physical matter. If only it was shapeable, it could be the ultimate weapon... no defense of matter or energy could ward against it. There could be some intriguing possibilities here..."

"No. Simple NO, Noah. I'm putting my foot down on this one. You're meddling with something that could destroy the entire human race, and that's not okay. Bad enough that this Frost guy might bring it about if we can't find a way to stop it, there's no way I'm letting you open another pandora's box, even and perhaps especially when you built that box in the first place! You're the smartest person I know, Noah, the smartest person ANYONE knows... but learn some restraint. Some things just shouldn't be investigated. Humanity's just not ready for some knowledge. You need to be able to know when enough is enough!" Meyrin scolded him firmly.

"If I could do that, I wouldn't be half the man I am today, Meyrin. I wouldn't..." Noah began to protest, before they were both interrupted by a knocking on their door. They'd been so involved in their discussion that neither of them had felt the wave of agitation sweeping through the Edenites who lived around them, which had heralded the arrival of their visitors. Shooting each other cautious glances, and again at the cobbled together computer in the middle of the room... more of a habit in Noah's case, since he couldn't see anything... they composed themselves to present a united front against whoever might have come to see them so late in the day, and without calling ahead first.

The door unlocked without them keying in the code to do so, and Noah made a note to hack their door at least, to garauntee future privacy from unwarranted official nosiness. He might indeed have things to hide from their hosts, as he didn't know whether Ashino had brought the wider council in on who exactly was responsible for the re-advent of Zacharis Frost, but most of what he wanted to hide was locked up in his brain, and so wasn't subject to random search and seizure methods. The door open and a squad of serious looking civil police, wearing riot gear and bearing arms, marched into the room. Even had he eyes, Noah would not have been impressed with them... many of them looked like they'd really rather not be bearding the most infamous terrorist of history in his den. As things were, the emotional stench of their discomfort and fear was almost choking, even before they'd intruded on him.

Only slightly less distrubed, and doing a poor job of hiding it with indignation and fury, was the person in charge of the squad and the driving force behind their presence in the Edenite quarter. "City Council Chairwoman, to what do we owe the pleasure of this sudden visit?" Noah asked caustically, directing his sightless gaze at Marionne Elsman, as she attempted to look imperious while half hiding behind two riot police. She flinched, her emotional aura flickering deeper towards fear and discomfort, as she found his unmasked facial scars to be deeply bothersome, and even more so when he looked directly at her and followed her movements despite being blind. Which was half the reason why he did it, Noah wasn't above some pettiness of his own after all.

"You know damn well why we're here, you bastard!" Marionne declared firmly, further increasing the discomfort levels of her bodyguard, who plainly wished their boss would be less antagonistic of the most powerful psychic for several hundred million miles in any direction.

"For once, I don't actually. Though I could rip the info from your brain if you're really set on not explaining yourself." Noah offered with an intentionally exaggerated leer. Meyrin smacked him on the back of the head, but it was worth it, for the horror that had rippled through Marionne's aura, as she remembered that he was perfectly capable of doing such a thing, and far more besides.

"Don't mind him, Ms. Elsman, he's more bark than bite, I promise. Now, if you would please get your men to lower their weapons, you're making my people very nervous." Meyrin cut in, stepping in front of Noah, not so much protectively as to cut him out of the conversation. Diplomacy was not one of her love's strong suits, and never had been. "We've had rather enough of being coerced via the use of force by the USN proper, it would be very disappointing if we found things were done the same way here, of all places. We're all allies here, after all, our fates are entertwined."

For a long moment, Marionne seemed caught between the desire to flee and the knowledge that she would completely compromise what respect she had left amongst the Edenites if she allowed herself to be browbeaten so simply by Noah. After several seconds of twisted looks, she seemed to find her spine and her anger once more, and she made a curt gesture at her bodyguad, who appeared only too glad to lower their weapons and move things into a less tense state. Struggling to regain her composure, Marionne's eyes fell on the frankenstein computer and narrowed with suspicion. "What the hell is THAT thing?" She asked fiercely, pointing at it.

"A supercomputer, though its a bastard poor one by any standard." Noah retorted laconically. "Its slow, finicky, rife with flaws, and ugly as hell... I was thinking about nicknaming it "Mari", what do you think?"

"Noah!" Meyrin frowned at him. She could understand his touchiness, but he wasn't helping matters any, and they were guests after all. "Honestly, it's like he's still a little boy sometimes, you know?" She said commiseratingly to Marionne.

"Nobody authorized you to build a supercomputer!" Marionne protested, going a bit white, as if they were talking about a nuclear bomb instead. Though to be fair, Noah with a supercomputer at his disposal could be about as dangerous as a nuclear weapon, if not moreso.

"Nobody said we couldn't either." Meyrin retorted, her own temper boiling over a bit. "We requested the materials through you, Ms. Elsman. What did you think we needed computers for, a LAN party?" She shook her head and took a deep breath to calm herself. "We're working on a project for Markov, compiling data on one of the Edenite commanders whom he has a grudge against. We needed some computing power for the job, and regular computers just weren't enough for the job. But we didn't want to just hack into your colony mainframe... something which both Noah and I are perfectly capable of doing, without you noticing at all. We're trying to be cooperative, Ms. Elsman. Please remember that. So if you could, please enlighten us as to what's gone wrong, so we can address the problem together, as allies and adults, rather than skipping straight to accusations, which help nobody."

"The problem? The problem is we've all been BETRAYED!" Marionne all but screeched. "We recently recieved reports of a USN fleet engagement in near Earth orbit, and our intelligence agents have just recently managed to discover that the _Justicar_, our flagship, was attacked and destroyed by elements of the SPF while attempting some sort of orbit-to-surface engagement over the south pole! Many of our best are dead, and many more captured by the USN, the cream of the Retributors, gone in one swoop! Including Captain Logan and Commander Ashino! That's calamity enough, but less than an hour ago we got communication from a incoming transport vessel, which contains both USN troops and our captive comrades. They're headed here, with orders from Commander Ashino! He's sold us out to save his own hide, that little freak!"

"Please try to calm down, Ms. Elsman, I fear you're letting your emotions cloud your judgement." Meyrin said with a frown. "That doesn't sound like something Markov would do. You and he might not see eye to eye on some important issues, but he would never betray the Retributors, not even for his own life. Not unless you betrayed him first, in which case all bets are off, and I really wouldn't like to be you..."

"You don't even deserve the honor of being betrayed by that cropped off bastard." Noah interrupted, half turned away. "You place far too much importance on yourself, Elsman. I find your lack of faith in him to be disturbing and insulting. There's no love lost between him and I, but even I can see that he values you and your people, and this place of so called refuge you call home. He would sooner be tortured to death than be responsible for taking away your hard won freedoms. You haven't been betrayed at all. I have been."

"What?" Meyrin asked, her frown deepening as she tried to see what Noah was talking about.

"It's painfully obvious, Meyrin. I am his best... and really his only... bargaining chip with Durandel. Ordinarily speaking, he'd have been put on show trial and promptly executed, as a boost to Durandel's public approval rating... Ronin City is such a small threat without his leadership that I doubt Durandel even cares what you do here, if not for Ashino. But now that he has me, suddenly he has a foot to stand on at the bargaining table, because only he knows exactly where I am, and only he could possibly stand a chance of delivering me up to Durandel without blowing the secret of my existence wide open in the process. So they made a deal, and having been on the receiving end of Ashino's bargaining skills while he held a trump card myself, I truly doubt he came away with only his life and those of his men in exchange for me. Your position probably just became stronger than it ever was before, if you'd bother to stop and think about it, Elsman. Betrayed you? He SAVED you, and made you significant again... you ought to kiss his feet the next time you see him!" Noah explained with a savage glare in Marionne's direction.

"But to collude with the USN..." Marionne put the same emphasis on the national title as a devoutly religious person would the word "devil". "It's counter to every principle we believe in!"

"Hyperbole." Noah said dismissively. "You don't want to dismantle the USN, your fight is with Durandel, and if you can't even tell the difference between the two, then you certainly don't deserve to be a leader of this faction. And even so, he never would have considered it, because he's far more a patriot than you ever will be, in any normal circumstance. But there's greater threats than just Durandel out there, Ms. Elsman. Threats like me. Or that Edenite Commander Meyrin spoke of. Yes... one of our own people, one of my "children" you could say. Someone who wishes not to control the world... but to destroy it altogether. In the face of such a threat, I think mere idealogical and political differences need to take a back seat to species survival, and obviously Ashino understands that. Are you capable of doing the same?"

"Well... that is... I... we..." Marionne stammered, plainly caught wrongfooted by her own inexperience in such matters. She acted like the sauve and confident leader, but in truth she had far less true high level political experience than most of the people on the council. She was an engineer, first and foremost, the primary designer of the ISSA type colonies, and without her help, Ronin City could not exist like it did, which is what she'd parlyed into a seat on the governing council. "We'll need to discuss things, of course." She managed to say, regaining a slight bit of composure.

"By all means, debate the pros and cons." Noah said grimly. "But do bear in mind, Ms. Elsman, that while you dither and argue, a madman with the power to destroy continents walks on Earth, and neither the USN alone nor the Retributors alone have the strength to confront and defeat him, even with my expert advice. If you don't work together on this at least you won't have a chance to institute your reforms in the future. Corpses have no need of civil liberties after all, and corpses are all that will be left if Frost has his way..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Praetorian Enclave Relaxation Facilities, Private Hot Springs, April 10th, 9:23 PM**

There was nothing like a good, piping hot bath to wash away tension and stress, Lilia reflected to herself as she lowered herself slowing into the bubbling mineral water. It wasn't a natural hot spring of course, even if the bathing facility was carved out of the naked rock of the mountain interior, but it was practically indistinguishable from the real thing in most respects. Even down to the slightly sulpherous smell to the air, from all the mineral additives that were dissolved into the water, which helped promote healing of stressed and damaged skin and muscle, and helped revitalize the skin as well. A Praetorian was always hard on their body in the pursuit of their training or duties, the hot springs went a long way towards blunting the discomfort of the small scale aches and pains many of them were afflicted with. In fact there was a nearly complete spa like facility for their use alone, though it was used more in the way professional athletes did a spa than beauty mavens, with attentive medical staff on hand to help with any injury or suspected problem that might arise in body conditioning.

And she had a good bit of tension and stress to wash away. She was still coming down off the emotional rollercoaster that she'd suffered during her brief visit to the Citadel, at Charon's urging, three days ago. It had ended on a high note of course, but the path to that point had been rocky and rough as hell, and she felt squeezed dry from all the stress. This made her all the more aware of her body's small aches and pains, which she'd been holding at bay while working with the Mori in the foothills, and as a sort of celebration for the breakthrough with Zach, Lilia decided to allow herself a night of rest and relaxation before rejoining the Mori in the morning. Revv should be able to handle anything that came up in the meanwhile, and if not him, then Espadon, the leader of the Kindred detachment, could be relied on to take care of things.

She submerged herself almost up to the nostrils with a loud sigh of enjoyment, her foreshortened hair already noticably longer than it had been only a few days ago, probably as a consequence of the "nano-treatments" Zach was subjecting her to. It spread out around her like kelp on the ocean's surface, before slowly sinking to her sides as it grew waterlogged. It would still be weeks before it was back at its usual length, but since Zach was still bound and determined to finish up his personal training regime, that actually worked out well. By the time they met up again, barring any further emergencies, it should be back to the normal, waist length he apparently found so sexy. Lilia smiled at herself, brushing a hand through her locks, marveling that she'd actually reached a point where she cared what a man thought about the style and length of her hair... even six months ago, she'd have snorted in disdain at the mere idea!

And since she and Zach had agreed, even if not in some many words, that he wasn't to use the teleportation powers of Mr. Abyss until he had better control over the process, she shouldn't need to go rushing to his side anymore. He and Charon had tried to explain how it worked to her, but as neither of them completely understood it either, that was a mixed bag. As far as she could tell, when transporting himself or other objects, Zach had to know what they were built like, in order for Mr. Abyss to properly reconstruct them at the other end of the teleport. If the information wasn't transmitted perfectly, then small defects would appear in the object as it was rebuilt from quantum data, which could lead to structural weaknesses and internal damage, and the puking of blood and even death from internal bleeding, for a normal person. Zach's body was considerably tougher of course, but repeated use, especially in rapid succession, could overwhelm even his resilience.

Perfectly transmitting said information took both knowledge of how things were built... which Zach had... and concentration to make sure that knowledge was properly "explained" to Mr. Abyss, which Zach had trouble with. He was just too driven by instinct and emotion, he rushed his teleports and thus he ended up coming through imperfectly, with the aforementioned negative effects. It didn't really matter so much when he used the abyssal portals as shields, since it hardly mattered what state the matter that was teleported end up in thusly, but when transporting people, having bits missing at the other end, even if it was only microscopic bits... that could be very problematic. Lilia certainly had no intention of letting Zach take her through such a portal until he showed he could do it without damaging himself, and despite several hours of trying under Charon's careful examination, he hadn't done that even once yet.

Motion from the doorway to the private bath brought her head up and around, not precisely in alarm, but more in a wary curiosity. The baths were divided into public and private areas, and while the private baths were big enough for multiple people to enjoy, usually when the door was closed to one of them, people took it as a sign to stay out unless previously invited. And she hadn't invited anyone. She relaxed again though a moment later, when she beheld the very familiar forms of Heine and Panner standing in the doorway. Even with the steam from the springs in her eyes, the orange hair something of a giveaway, especially when paired up. As was customary for the baths, both were unclothed, as was Lilia herself... group bathing was the norm across much of New Eden, in both social and hygenic manners.

"Sorry to intrude, but we were wondering if you might have some time, Lilia?" Panner asked, with almost exaggerated care.

Lilia snorted and turned around once again. "You should know better than to ask, Panner. I've always got time for you and Heine, come on in." Though she aped indifference, Lilia could not help but narrow her eyes a little bit. It was difficult to tell for sure above the mineral scents of the water, but neither Panner nor Heine smelled especially sweaty or dirty, and from her quick glance, neither of them appeared to be suffering sprains or other minor injuries for the baths to help with. She supposed it was possible that they were just here socially... if anyone would keep up a blase social life during wartime, it would be Heine and Panner... but if so, they would probably be holding court in the public baths, not wandering the halls of private baths, searching for one with a closed door. That just happened to have her behind it, despite them not contacting her through the Wind first, which was just basic politeness.

In fact, Lilia had noticed a real reluctance amongst most members of the Order to contact her psychically as of late. She could feel them communicating with others through their group bond, but none of those communications were directed at her, even when that would be more convenient than using a technological comm. She wasn't stupid of course, she knew what it was, the equivalent of social stigmata given her choice of companions, but she was irritated that the Praetorians of all people would be so childish. She'd thought Kunai had trained them to be better than that! But then again, maybe she should cut them a little slack... they might somehow believe that she was connected to the Caller too, just as Zach was, and in that case, she could readily understand their hesitance to want to connect with her. It was utterly wrong of course, thank the Tree, but she could see how they might come to such a conclusion.

No, Lilia could see the writing on the wall, it was perfectly obvious that Heine and Panner had come to see her specifically, and that they had wanted to catch her off guard, as much as possible. She watched them clamber into the water opposite her, holding hands and whispering to each other, and she sighed, wondering if she should just puncture the bubble right here and now. If they wanted to talk, they didn't have to go through this production first. They were her best friends, she would always listen to them if they had concerns. Proving once more that he was still one of the sharpest observers around, despite his lackadaisical airs, Heine seemed to pick up on her thoughts at once, and he gave her a sheepish look as he gave up pretending to cuddle with Panner.

"Okay, you figured us out." He sighed, throwing one arm over Panner's shoulder, and tapping the fingers of his other hand against the rim of the tub. "We're worried about you, Lilia."

"You've been distant lately. Are you avoiding us?" Panner added with a piercing look.

She couldn't help herself, Lilia had to chuckle at that. It was like they thought they were her parents, and she a misbehaving teenager. "Avoiding you? Why would I do that? I've been busy with the Mori lately, is all. I've always had a knack for working together with Chimera, but its slow going sometimes. The Wendigo really are alien sometimes, and backwards too. Bunch of sexist gorilla's at the best of times. And the Kindred, well, they've got their own set of circumstances which make things difficult..." Lilia shook her head and leaned forward. "Let me ask in turn... are you avoiding me? Because the Order seems to be giving me something of a wide berth of late. Even Kunai doesn't contact me with missions anymore."

"Well..." Panner hedged, looking deeply uncomfortable.

"Okay fine, lets get this out in the open." Lilia sighed in mild disgust. "It's about Zach, right?"

"Well, if we're going to be blunt, yes, yes it is." Heine said, looking uncomfortable as well. "Nobody trusts him, Lilia. He's given us no reason to think he's really on our side at all. And even if you're not purposefully avoiding the rest of us in the Order, you spend almost all your time with him, or with the Memento Mori. We're just worried about..."

"Where my loyalties lie?" Lilia finished for him, taking him aback. But he didn't deny it either.

"And we're worried about you personally, Lilia." Panner added earnestly. "I love you like a sister, girl, and I see you headed for some very bad experiences, I want to spare you that. He's dangerous, Lilia... he's going to get you hurt, or killed, sooner rather than later. I understand the allure of a bad boy... Heine can be very bad when the mood strikes him... but if you keep playing with fire, you're going to get burned... and maybe set the whole house on fire in the process!"

"I'm touched by your concern, really, guys, I am." Lilia assured them. "But its way more complex than just a case of fatal attraction. I love him. I really love him. And in his way, he loves me too. I'm the most important person in the entire world to him, nothing matters to him more than my feelings for him. I know that's hard to believe... up until a few days ago I wouldn't have believed it myself. But recent events have conspired to show me the true depths of how important I am to him. I'm the only person he's ever let into his heart, the only person whose opinion he's ever allowed to even slightly matter to him. I'm not saying I've reformed him... I've come to realize that's impossible, and furthermore, I wouldn't want to. But he can change... he HAS changed, and I don't believe he's the world ending threat Kira is so convinced he is. In fact, I'm sure it's just the opposite."

"So, don't keep it to yourself... we want to understand, Lilia! You know me, I never judge people based on rumors alone, but all my personal experiences with the man have told me he IS a threat to peace and order as long as he lives, that he enjoys killing and hurting people, and that he will see the world burn with never ending conflict if he gets even half a chance to do it!" Heine replied with a sigh. "Maybe I don't ascribe to the idea of him being some pure evil monster, but I do believe he is a profoundly disturbed man who needs professional clinical help, not someone who should be allowed to run around with a Gundam and weapons of mass destruction..."

"Caging him would be the worst possible decision." Lilia said flatly. "People just don't understand him, and worse, they don't even try. He wasn't born like this, Heine. He was MADE, by people... by evil people... into the person he is today. They took a perfectly innocent baby and warped him, twisted him, engineered him into a killing machine, and you expect him not to be messed up by that sort of thing? I'm not entirely sure I'm sane, given what happened to me, and what happened to Zach was a thousand times worse than anything I ever suffered! And despite everything he's suffered, despite all the reasons he should have to want to destroy everyone... he doesn't. Maybe he did at one point in time, but just like Kira did, he's changed his mind about his attitude. I just don't see why that's so hard for everyone to get... why can't Zach change too? Why do you all insist on labeling him with everything he's done in the past? Isn't he fighting for us right now?"

"There's debate on that point." Panner replied humorlessly. "He as much as said he only wants the war to end so he can start his own. So I don't really think you can say he's fighting for us... he's fighting, but its for his own sake, and helping us is just accidental. If you get mugged on the street, and a rabid dog attacks the bastard, does that mean the rabid dog is defending you? I don't think so. But say he IS fighting for us... what happens when the war is over, Lilia. What will he do then, tell me? Is he going to keep protecting us? Or is he going to ignite another conflict as soon as he can?"

"Both." Lilia replied resolutely, ignoring the incredulous expressions on their faces. She just hoped they would keep listening, rather than succumbing to Kira's ingrained opinions.

"The options are kind of mutually exclusive, Lilia." Heine pointed out with exaggerated gentleness. "Either he protects us or he fights us, one or the other..."

"Things aren't that simple, and you know it, Heine." Lilia scolded him. "Think about Praetorian training, did Kunai coddle us and shield us from hardship and danger, or did he throw us into the midst of it, and practically make us hate his guts as we feared for our very lives? Which method made us learn faster and better? That's what Zach means when he talks about being Humanity's Whetstone... he wants to make us STRONGER through conflict. Far from wanting to destroy us, he wants us to better ourselves, to become strong and powerful, and he knows that peace only leads to relaxation and eventual stagnation. I hate war. I hate fighting. You know that. If I never had to kill anyone ever again, I would be very happy. But I can acknowlegde, as a species, humanity THRIVES on conflict, technologically, economically and politically! It's an unpleasant truth, but that's the kind of truth Zach understands best about us."

"Okay, that does make a certain amount of sense. It chills my blood, but it makes a certain amount of sense." Panner allowed. "But here's the big stumbling point... WHY does he want to do this to us? For what purpose must we rush into such strength and power, rather than slowly growing into it over centuries or even millenia. I can but see one reason... to feed his own ego, and slake his thirst for blood and death. And that's not a good enough reason. It's as bad as Noah Borander deciding to force us to evolve into Edenites. Maybe I don't mind, so much, in retrospect... but it WASN'T HIS DECISION TO MAKE!"

"Strength and power with no over-arching purpose will only lead to tragedy and ruin. History has taught us this time and time again." Heine confirmed. "I've nothing against the basic idea of humanity becoming stronger and more advanced as quickly as possible. But without some greater purpose to turn such strength and power to... we'll only end up turning it upon ourselves. No, I'm sorry, Lilia, I just can't accept Frost's plan, it doesn't hold water..." Heine cupped his palm and took a scoop from the tub, letting it fall through his fingers to display his point.

"But there IS a purpose." Lilia countered, setting them aback once more. "I'll admit, I still don't know all the details, but I know a few things. We're not alone, humanity. We need to be ready to deal with threats from without. Something Zach calls the Black Ghosts. He's heard them, and their hunger frightens even him. They're out there... and they're coming... and we need to be ready..." Lilia said in a low voice.

"Aliens?" Heine's voice was caught between a strangled chuckle and a snort. "Aliens is his reason? Bug eyed men from Mars? I can't believe you said that with a straight face!"

"There's absolutely nothing funny about this, Heine." Lilia scowled at him. "We know extraterrestrial life exists. Evidence 01, remember?"

"A fossil tens of millions of years old isn't exactly a good harbinger of flying saucers with death rays." Panner replied with a snort of her own. "I didn't take you for a conspiracy theorist, Lilia..."

"Mock me if you want, but Zach has heard them, and they're definitely coming." Lilia frowned at her friends.

"Heard them, has he? With what? Where? When? How? Why hasn't ANYONE else heard anything about this supposed invasion fleet headed our way? Surely Yggdrasil would have noticed something like that! Or the Mar's colonization effort by the PLANTs, or the USN's deep space observatory stations... nothing from any of them, but because Frost, an admitted madman with delusions of grandeur, has "heard" them coming, we should just buckle down to his endless conflict? Come on, Lilia, wake up. Love him or not, you have to admit this is nuts..." Heine retorted with a shake of his head.

"Yggdrasil doesn't tell us everything." Lilia replied acidly. "Neither does Kunai. I assume you've heard rumors about something called Blue Monday, right?" She asked them, getting tenative nods in turn. Lilia swallowed hard, fighting down her own revulsion and disillusionment... all it had taken was asking Charon, and she'd learned everything about what had happened in space on New Year's Day, and she still wasn't sure what she was supposed to do! "New Year's Day, this year. A select group of Praetorians... including Alex and Kunai... launched a sneak attack on the Second Earth Colonies. They hit Second Earth 2 and Aeon City of the PLANTs... with Blue EDEN! Nearly five hundred million USN civilians, innocent or otherwise, were killed in this attack. We wondered why the pace of the war picked up so suddenly this year? That's why. Because now we're mass murderers too."

"You have proof of this?" Heine asked, his voice strained taut with rage.

"Nothing that would stand up against Kunai's popularity. Zach has video proof, but I can tell most people aren't interested in the sort of painful truths Zach has to offer us. I can give you the data, but what good would it do? Would Kira attack Kunai? Kind of hard now that Kunai has conveniently launched a public attack on the USN homelands, using warships NONE of us knew he was building, eh? Should I attempt to destroy everyone's faith in Kunai and Yggdrasil? Why don't I just send the coordinates of Garden City straight to Durandel, if I wanted to undermine us that badly!" Lilia replied thinly. "Whatever else he is, whatever else he does, at least Zach doesn't lie about what he's doing or why. He does horrible things, things which appall and sicken me... but he doesn't hide behind a cloak of innocence while he does them, and he doesn't insult us all by thinking we won't find out what he's done!"

"I don't know. Far be it from me to condone the Clave way of thinking, but if Yggdrasil Itself was behind this plan... horrible as it was..." Panner said doubtfully.

"Faith shouldn't be blind, Panner." Lilia cut her off. "Killing civilians is killing civilians... there's no way to justify something like that. It's beyond all humanity."

"Yggdrasil isn't human." Heine pointed out.

"Correct. And maybe we ought to think about that very closely, don't you agree?" Lilia said savagely. "I don't care if you believe me about what Zach's plans are... he's convinced me, and I have faith he'll eventually convince the rest of you too. He may be far removed from all standards of normality, but he's still a human being. And I think we need to start trusting humans before outsiders, no matter how benevolent they are proclaimed to be. If Yggdrasil has lied to us once, who knows how many times It's lied to us in the past? And if you want to really trouble yourself... ask WHY? Why should something like a Grand Chimera, especially something like Yggdrasil, even CARE about decieving us? What purpose could such deception serve? What is Yggdrasil planning that we don't know about?"

"Well, if it comes down to choosing between trusting a manipulative, mass murdering tree or a psychotic human with delusions of grandeur, I know which way I'm going." Heine said with a faint smile.

"So you do accept Zach after all! I'm so glad..." Lilia gushed happily.

"He didn't say that, Lilia." Panner interrupted her. "What Heine was going to say is that we're both going to place our faith in Kira Yamato, who you seem to somehow have forgotten about. Someone who is neither crazy nor manipulative. Who doesn't hear alien voices from space, and who doesn't blindly trust everything Yggdrasil says as being literal truth. Someone who fights to protect us, both from our enemies and from ourselves. A man with honor, principles and a deep seated desire to help people empower themselves without hurting others to do so."

"Kira is... a special person." Lilia answered softly. "I admired him more than anyone. But I've come to see he's not as special as I once thought. He can be petty, and closeminded, just like anyone else. He's not the savior I thought he was... not without Lacus Clyne by his side. I don't care if he can't forgive Zach... there's things about Zach I can't forgive either. But his outright refusal to even ATTEMPT to understand Zach, that I cannot accept. Peace and love for everyone... but not for Zach or other broken, damaged sorts that never had a choice but to become who they are. Mercy isn't something that should be measured out only to the ignorant and vulnerable. And in this particular case, with the Black Ghosts bearing down upon us, Kira's way is wrong, and will end up getting far more people killed than Zach's conflict ever would."

"That whole theory rests on the question of whether these so called Black Ghosts are real... or the fever dreams of a raging lunatic." Heine said with a shrug. "I get that you believe him, Lilia... but I don't. I've seen nothing about the man that makes me believe he is trustworthy, and I've seen zero evidence to back up even the slightest bit of this wild claim of his. If they really did exist, why hasn't he come forward and told everyone about them? If they're such an obvious threat, raising public awareness of them would just be common sense. But instead he keeps it to himself and his closest confidante? If it looks like a fox, and acts like a fox, then you'll have a hard time convincing anyone it's actually a chicken..."

"And if he did step out into the public squares and start telling everyone about the Black Ghosts, what do you think would happen? Humans have been predicting aliens and doomsdays for millenia, and none of it has yet come to pass. He'd be laughed at, people would just ignore him." Lilia returned bitterly.

"You're making our arguement for us, dear." Panner said sympathetically. "What makes Frost right when everyone before him has been wrong? They claimed to hear and see things as well. Many of them claimed to have been personally told something would happen by God himself. We're all still here... the closest anyone has come to destroying the world was Noah Borander, and NOBODY saw that one coming!"

"I agree, its a quandry. But Zach is right. He doesn't lie. And what other reason could matter to someone like him, other than a real and present danger to all of humanity? What else could make Zach change that much? I certainly couldn't... he merely loves me more than anything, he would never change his entire purpose just for me. Seeing what it takes to make him change even a minute fraction as I have... no, there's something out there that has him freaked out, even if he'd never admit it. He may be chaotic, but he's not random, he always has a purpose for what he does. Kira may be able to protect us from the dangers we can see in front of us... but only Zach can possibly save us from the dangers we refuse to accept exist..." Lilia said passionately.

"That's all a little too mystical for me." Heine grunted, rising from the tub. "I'm glad to see you've found someone to believe in, Lilia. I think you've made a mistake, but I'll respect your choice all the same. And both Panner and I will be there for you, if you should ever need us."

"Stay in touch, dear." Panner added, rising with her lover. "Don't let yourself get lost running around with your boyfriend. It makes people talk, and worry about things they shouldn't. No one doubts your loyalties... but some do doubt your resolve if certain events come to pass. Nobody wants to see what would happen if it came down to Frost being our enemy. If you want my advice, you should spend more time around the Order, and away from Frost. It would help people relax a little, and might even help them believe in your objectivity when it comes to what you say he wants to do."

"It's not that simple." Lilia stood as well, the bath suddenly not as relaxing as it had been. "We're at a delicate point, right now. I don't dare distance myself from him, not even a little. It would undo everything I've worked for already. Worse, it would break his heart. Believe it or not, he's pretty fragile, when it comes to love. He's just started to learn to trust that my feelings are real... if I started avoiding him now, no matter the good it would do my reputation, it would be like slapping an abused dog when it licks your hand. He's not a destroyer anymore... but there is a destroyer in him, and should he lose faith in what we've built together... he might just decide its worth it to go back to being that destroyer. Three days ago, that very nearly happened. And then all of your worst fears about him would be realized. I am the only one who can save us all from that catastrophe."

"Do what you must." Heine said, a bit tightly, as he turned for the door.

"I always will..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Antarctica, below Nifelheim Crater, Top Secret FEAR laboratory complex "Hel", April 11th, 1:34 AM**

"Well, so much for your vaunted "failsafe", Doctor!" Djibril said with barely concealed disdain as he stood at one end of the vast underground hanger space that dominated the center of the Hel complex. If he was at all bothered by the fact that barely two hundred meters overhead, the ground was radioactive enough to boil an egg in a matter of minutes, he did his best not to show it. He was quietly surprised that the entire complex hadn't collapsed in the seismic aftershocks of the AMP blast that had leveled Nifelheim, and notched up his estimation of FEAR's engineering prowess once more. Even building such a labyrithine secret base beneath a scarcely less secret base was a feat of misdirection and engineering that had rarely if ever been equaled. But as good as they were at building things, FEAR was proving rather less adept at following through on their other important promises!

"Not only did Durandel escape the assassin unharmed, but he's actually increased his strength by forming an alliance with that rouge BCPU! Its so convenient it really makes me wonder who's side you're actually on..." He continued, studiously avoiding looking directly at the woman he was talking to. Dr. Natalia Dostanya had always been able to unduly influence many of her rivals due to her charming good looks, but sex appeal held little sway over Djibril, due to his genetic "blessings", which included a high degree of impotence. However, it wasn't to avoid tempting himself that he was directing his attention elsewhere, but rather to keep his stomach contents in their proper place. Somehow, Dostanya had been gravely injured during the abortive attempt by the Extened to escape their rightful masters. Her face and body had been burned or melted, almost as if by some sort of acid.

He felt no pity for her, in his opinion anyone stupid enough to hang around in a spot where personal injury might occur simply deserved whatever happened, but the grotesque scarring and damage to her flesh was impossible for him to look at without feeling ill. Her face looked like she'd been washing it with battery acid for several hours, one of her eyes was missing, and not even covered by a bandage or a patch, and her lips had been all but burned away to nothing. He could see into her mouth, where her tongue was a blistered mess, through a hole in her cheek. And the damage continued down her neck and disappeared under her shirt with no sign of stopping. He was surprised she'd survived such damage... plainly there was more to her than met the eye. Certainly, the injuries seemed to be affecting her not at all, she moved and spoke without trouble or any sign of being on pain numbing medications... and if anything, that was rather frightening. No sane person had that kind of self control...

"It's rather late to be questioning my loyalties, don't you think?" Natalia replied thickly, her voice bubbling like her throat was full of phlegm. "Now that you've come all the way down to Hel, that is. Almost everyone in the outside world thinks I'm dead, and this base never existed in the first place. It would be very easy for you to... disappear... here."

"Perhaps. But on the other hand, no one would look too closely if the RI happened to accidentally drop a few nuclear bombs into this crater either... what's a little more radiation in that hell-pit above us anyway? Of course since this base doesn't exist, it could collapse entirely and no one would know the difference. All your work, buried and gone, unmourned and unsalvaged for all time... that would be a pity, don't you think?" Djibril countered, refusing to be upset by the woman's puerile threats. If he'd really thought she posed a threat to his person, he never would have come here. He didn't get to be where he was by needlessly risking his life.

"So we've re-established the fact that fighting between ourselves would be pointless and counterproductive?" Natalia asked sardonically. "I'm willing to listen to you bitch and whine to a certain point, Atticus... I'm rather disappointed in the Vamp's performance myself, but I assure you, its nothing more than coincidence. Number 4 activated of its own accord, upon observing the destruction of Nifelheim, and presuming me killed in the destruction. I was too debilitated by my injuries to countermand its actions until after the fact. Rest assured, I will upgrade the operations protocols on the other units before this sort of thing can happen again."

"Other units?" Djibril asked casually, making a note to significantly upgrade his home security detachment and infastructure. It would be just like the bitch to have failsafes in place to go after everyone she considered an enemy, in case of her death. And while they were ostensibly allies, neither of them was stupid enough to believe there was any love lost between them. The enemy of my enemy is my friend... but only to a certain point.

"I didn't ask you here to talk about Vamps." Natalia ignored his question. "We're both on the back foot all of a sudden... Gilbert had more strength left in him than my calculations indicated he would. And now he's nationalized FEAR, taken my direct subordinates hostage, assuming those worms didn't just turn traitor anyway, and he's slashed the funding of your Initiative down to the quick. Not to mention the rather embarassing loss of Camp 2, that's going to sting a little, don't you agree? Especially with Orb on the premises at the time. Not exactly a good time to be publicly associated with the Initiative, is it?"

"I don't deny that things will be rough for a while. The public is ever eager for the next scandal, and now that Rey is dead, I'm afraid I'm stuck on the bullseye. I can't prove that Space Monster planned this, but it has all the hallmarks of a truly twisted set up!" Djibril clenched his fist, eyes blazing with fury at the thought. "And now he's gone so far as to appoint Andrew Waltfeld as Supreme Commander? What is that man THINKING? It's like he doesn't care about losing control of his own goverment! Has he gone MAD?"

"Mad? No, Gilbert isn't crazy, he's truly gifted. A worthy mate indeed." Natalia replied, with a high pitched giggle that set Djibril's hair on end. He'd long been aware that Dostanya intended to sleep her way into the top position of power in the USN, but he'd never expected her to so bald facedly admit it! He forced himself to study the woman more carefully... perhaps her injuries had disfigured more than just her appearance. "His deal with the BCPU required that he bring Orb more fully into his councils, by appointing such a well known Orb supporter as his military leader, Gilbert will be dragging Orb directly into the spotlight. If the Desert Tiger proves victorious, Gilbert will be applauded for his foresight and direct action... if the Tiger stumbles, then he will have reason to exclude Orb from his councils once more. He wins either way."

"Hmm... I see." Djibril gritted his teeth at the ploy. He loathed feeling a sense of admiration for that smug bastard, but he couldn't help it. While having Orb on the council would leave the buck stopped at Durandel himself in case of further screwups, by making an Orbite supporter the Supreme Commander, Durandel effectively passed the buck if anything went bad with the war, while still setting himself up for reflected glory in case things went well. And with Orb now hounding the Initiative and Djibril himself over Seiran's Camp 2, Durandel had effectively neutralized all his shadow cabinet! A political masterstroke... and this set up in the wake of his only son's death? What sort of monster was he dealing with here?

A sudden potential flaw appeared to him though. "Won't discord on the council make things difficult for him though? Queen Zala-Attha is well known for her rancor for Durandel. They will never agee on any policy of substance." Djibril half asked, half pondered.

"Wasn't it Orb that asked for this war in the first place?" Natalia countered. "And especially with Waltfeld in command, I see Gilbert washing his hands of direct control over the Military. A sacrifice, to be sure, but at this point in time, it's better to cut yourself loose from the anchor dragging you down, even if it is made from solid gold. It will mean adjustments to the timing of his grander goals, but Gilbert has proven he can be patient as well as ruthless. And he's used Orb in this manner before, when taking down the Great Endeavor. If he can regain the full confidence of the public, his position will be as strong as ever... stronger even, as he now has control over much of FEAR, and has finally managed to all but eliminate you, Atticus, the last of his true political rivals. As for Icarus, he's a nonentity, content to follow the path of least resistance... he'll now be firmly in Gilbert's camp once more."

"I refuse to accept defeat... I'll see space itself burn to ashes before I accept Gilbert Durandel as my better!" Djibril declared tightly.

"That's just what I was hoping you'd say, Atticus." False sympathy dripped from every word of Natalia's statement, like posion from hollow fangs. "It was Rey who did this to me..." She waved a hand casually at her disfigured features. "No doubt he was trying to impress his father, or something equally pointless. Gilbert is a very impressive man... but I've found something much better. I don't need him anymore, now that my baby is awake. Soon I will control a power beyond anything ever experienced before by mankind... and all will bow down before my baby and I!"

Djibril seriously considered drawing his pistol and ventilating the daft woman's head then and there... plainly she'd gone off the deep end. He normally disdained taking such direct action, but she was seriously starting to creep him out. However, the certain fact that he would not escape the complex alive should he do so stayed his hand, for the time being. But he resolved to dealing with Dostanya even before he took on Durandel... it was best not to leave any threats, no matter how deluded, operating in the background. Mounting a raid on Hel shouldn't be too hard... as far as he;d seen, the place had little in the way of defenses, now that Nifelheim was gone. A couple squadrons of Strikers and Legacy's, and maybe an infantry battalion, would mop this mess up in short order. And perhaps net Djibril with some esoteric technologies or other unpleasant surprises that Dostanya might have squirreled away in her hideout.

"So what did you call me here for, if not to talk about how useless your Vamps are as assassins?" Djibril asked scornfully. "I'm a busy man, Doctor, and all the moreso of late. I don't have time to listen to you wax grandiloquent."

"You think I'm exaggerating?" Dostanya hissed, drawing herself up like a cobra rising from its coiled body. "Fine then... bear witness, Atticus, to the absolute power I now possess! Dr. Fredricks, now is the time!" She called, and Djibril stepped back with alarm as a section of the hanger floor slid away, and something began to rise up from the production levels beneath it. It appeared to be some sort of scaffolding or cage, draped all over with white canvas tarps that hid whatever was inside. If it was a Mobile Suit of some sort, as its size and placement seemed to suggest, then it wasn't a particularly impressive model... about average height and size, by his estimation of its enclosure. However, when the tarps fell away, Djibril's jaw fell open despite his earnest desire to remain passive. And it wasn't awe that filled him, but rather instinctive repulsion and disgust. He actually took two staggering steps back in mindless horror before he got ahold of himself.

"By all that's HOLY, what the HELL is that?" He exclaimed, looking upon the gigantic androgynous figure of Typhon, looking for all the world like a gigantic sculpture of an angel, complete with bronzed skin, toned muscles and bright white wings. The... creature... was held upright in a nearly crucified position, arms and wings held wide by thick chains mounted to stout beams, while its ankles were chained to another series of posts... he couldn't tell if the chains were meant to support or restrain the thing! The downy white hair that hung thickly from the BALOR's scalp only made the thing look more humanlike... and more repulsive for that. Taken individually, it was beautiful, a masterpiece of flesh engineering... taken as a whole, it was a crime against the human form, an aberration of nature a million times worse than any Coordinator could be! Djibril could literally imagine nothing more perverse than the creation he saw in front of him right then.

Without even realizing it, he found his gun was in his hand, his knuckles white and sweaty on the grip. Cackling like a halloween witch, Dostanya stepped closer to the abomination, spreading her arms like a mother welcoming a favorite child home from school. In that instant, Djibril knew what he had to do. No one could have ever accused him of being a good person, and he himself considered notions of morality to be a pointless waste of time. But in this case, this thing that Dostanya had created... it was simply WRONG! It was not meant to exist, it was an insult against all humanity! Even if this creation did represent ultimate power... and given how slackly it hung in its chains, it looked more dead than alive... Djibril wanted none of it. He would cleanse the world, and purify humanity's genepool for once and all... and he would do it without relying on a monstrosity like this! Indeed, to utilize this monstrosity would make a mockery of every principle he held dear!

"Isn't my baby magnificent Atticus?" Dostanya crowed, looking up with adoration in her eye at the quiescent BALOR. "Have you ever seen something so powerful, so awesome, so divine? And there's still so much to do before my baby truly awakens! But soon... soon it will walk... will live... and then... AND THEN..." Dostanya was interrupted by a gunshot, which rang throughout the hangar from behind her. She turned slowly to face Djibril, who stood about ten feet behind her, pistol in one hand, smoke drifting from the barrel. The muzzle was pointed directly at the back of Dostanya's head. For a long moment, nothing happened. And then, Natalia's acid melted face split in a wide smile, as she wagged an admonishing finger at the trembling Lord Djibril. "That wasn't very smart, Atticus..." She reprimanded him, casually reaching up to pluck the bullet out of the air.

This was not due to any superhuman reflexes on her part, as even at her best, with all her augmentics and enhancements functioning at their peak, Natalia could never have dodged a bullet, much less caught one. But her step forward earlier had placed her within the reach of Typhon's subconsciously generated "luck" field, where physics was more a set of guidelines that Typhon could re-write as it saw fit. Whereas Kira might be able to tack a few extra tenths of a second onto each second for his own actions, Typhon could turn a second into minutes or even hours within a certain proximity of it's body. A sound like a billion bees dipped into boiling acid began to throb around the hanger, as the world outside the field protested the interaction point where physics was contested. Gradiations in the field ensured time flowed normally for Dostanya, standing only inches away from where the bullet had hung apparently motionless in midair, trapped in a pocket where it's velocity was basically zero to outside observers.

Natalia held the time-twisted bullet between two fingers, like a young girl might hold a bug while flicking it away from her body, turning it around so that its tip faced back towards the shocked Djibril. Natalia released the bullet, and at the same time, Typhon relaxed the probablity field around it, returning the bullet's sense of time to normal, thuse instantly restoring its velocity and momentum, simply in a new direction. Djibril screamed in agony as the bullet tore through his own kneecap, spilling him to the ground as dark red began to spread across his immacuately tailored yellow and mauve suit pants. "You should never tamper with something you don't understand, Atticus." Natalia scolded the moaning man. "And threatening a mother in the presence of her baby... not smart. Not smart at all." She looked up adoringly at Typhon, which had slitted open one solid silver eye. The BALOR was not truly awake, it was merely responding as the subconscious brainwashing of the two Latent Meisters was prompting it, to defend Natalia.

Stepping out of her creation's protective field, Natalia contemptuously kicked Djibril's pistol out of his hand, grinding her heel down onto his wrist to break the bones therein, which snapped easily... fragile bones being another one of Djibril's many genetic conditions that he was so proud of. He was also slightly hemophiliac, meaning that without medical care, that bullet wound would be the end of him. But Natalia had no intention of letting the man pour out his life on the middle of her hangar floor... that would be simply a waste. "Is baby hungry?" She cooed up at Typhon.

"You wouldn't dare!" Djibril moaned through foam flecked lips, as she continued to lean her weight on his shattered wrist. "You bitch, you wouldn't dare do that to me!"

"Relax Atticus, Typhon doesn't need to eat meat to survive. Your body will remain undigested." Natalia replied with mock soothingness. "My baby feeds on rather more rarified sustenance... you see, Typhon eats MINDS..." She gestured upward, where the feathers on Typhon's wings were stirring and rustling. Djibril's moans turned into high pitched screams of terror and disbelief, as the tendrils deployed themselves from their sacs within the flesh of the BALOR's wings. Each was a segmented tentacle like construct, half flesh, half biomechanical plastics, of a dull brownish red color, like a dried scab. At the business end, there was a lampry-like mouthpart, a circular orifice studded with rows of gripping teeth, able to open to well over three times the circumference of the tentacle itself, like a snake's jaw could unhinge to swallow a rabbit. They were about as thick as Natalia's leg, on average, and reached easily to the floor with some slack, and there were dozens of them.

Giggling proudly, Natalia grabbed the struggling Djibril by the jacket and dragged him within range of Typhon's Embrace, skipping back out of range as some of the tentacles made grasping motions in her direction, even as others swarmed over the wriggling man. Her baby could be a little on the voracious side when it came time to feed, even the brainwashing of the Meisters couldn't block out all of Typhon's instincts. "You bitch! You crazy bitch, we'll wipe you out! My men will wipe this place out if you kill me!" Djibril threatened her hysterically, as he was lifted into the air by two tendrils, while a third began moving in on him from above, all the tentacle moving with lethargy, more on instinct than because of conscious control. Typhon was basically doing the equivalent of a human swallowing a spider in their sleep.

"No, no I'm afraid they won't Atticus. Because you're going to send an all clear signal, and your shuttle will suffer a tragic accident on its way out of the atmosphere." Natalia smiled at him, baring acid etched teeth. He stared at her in incomprehension, until the tentacle mouth closed over his head, distending its flesh to the point of near translucence as it cut off the man's frantic last pleas. Digestive fluids poured down the interior channel of the tentacle, flooding around Djibril's head, the high potency acids dissolving away his flesh and face in a matter of seconds, before the mouthparts crunched down forcefully, pulverizing the spine where it met the base of the skull. His body jerked and twitched in reflex as his skull, and the hunk of brain matter within, came loose from his shoulders, along with the shattered remains of the top two or three vertebrae.

Muscular action carried the dissolving skull up the tentacle, like a pea being sucked up a straw, as the still technically living matter was stored in sustainive fluids within a blister sac buried within the flesh of Typhon's wing. Within the sac, the brain would actually continue to live, its memories slowly being digested and rewritten into Typhon's own neural matter over the course of a few weeks. Whether or not the mind contained within the brain retained awareness of its situation during this time, Natalia had not yet been able to determine. But judging by the high state of electrical activity Embraced brains often manifested, she was fairly sure Djibril would have quite a bit of time to reflect on his mistakes before his final release. In the meanwhile, all that he knew, all that he was, would now become part of Typhon, and thus accessible to her in turn.

She wondered what sort of skills her baby might learn from the former leader of Blue Cosmos? His bloody body flopped down onto the floor with a wet "crump", Typhon no longer interested in the dead matter. "Dr. Fredricks! Cleanup in the hangar!" Natalia called for her assistant, as Typhon's cradle began recessing back into the floor. "My baby... my precious, wonderful baby... soon... soon you'll be able to eat as much as you want, and you'll grow to become the true absolute, and I will have my kingdom of eternity, YES!" She threw back her head and laughed joyously at the thought of it all...


	73. The Meaning of Confusion

Author Note: I actually can't think of much of anything to spout off about. Enjoy.

xxxx

**Space, High Earth Orbit, Edenite Fleet Rendevous Point, April 12th, 8:26 AM**

_Space. The so called final frontier._ Kunai found a smile growing across his scarred features. It felt good to be back, memories of times long past dredged up by the microgravity... happier times, more innocent and carefree times. Unlike most of his crew, who were zero-G virgins, he'd adapted to the lack of gravity with the ease of old familiarity, and even kept his quarters in micro-G, while the rest of the ship kept the GRS system operating to provide aritificial gravity until the crew could adapt to the lack of it. Indeed, in micro-G, he was actually more comfortable than on the planet's surface, as he no longer needed to expend effort to hold himself upright, and could pull himself about at speed using only minor exertions of his telekinetic powers. He floated, cross legged and upside down, in his quarters aboard the _Norn_, the flagship of his nascent fleet, pondering his plans, and searching for any flaws in them.

He'd never directly commanded a spacecraft before, much less an entire fleet, he'd either been a subordinate or had highly qualified subordinates to delegate such tasks to. But there were very few space combat experts amongst the Edenite forces, as most such people had been among the first to be evacuated from Earth during the Disaster, to help prepare the way for the hordes of refugees to follow. Ullric and some of the other Strategos might have more theoretical expertise, but only Kunai had any degree of hands on experience with void warfare, so he was given little choice but to take direct command of the fleet. Which he didn't mind, Yggdrasil had warned him that the New Year's Day operation was going to become public knowledge soon, and it was thus best for him to be out of immediate reach until people had a chance to calm down some. So he'd done his best to plan for most eventualities, but he knew that he was still an amateur by the standards of even the mediocre officers on board the ships of the USN.

The fleet had launched from their secret hanger near Garden City several days ago, each vessel proceeding independently to the rendevous point, many of them taking very roundabout and erratic courses, just on the off chance they were somehow detected, so that the enemy could not easily backtrace their paths to find Garden City. For the Loki class vessels, this was fairly easy, as they had access to Photo-Refraction cloaks, and could become almost perfectly invisible when the need arose. They probably could have ascended right through the middle of a USN fleet without a single one of the Oosen ships being the wiser. However, the _Norn_ lacked such capability, and so they had to be much more circumspect, utilizing a disposable Mirage Colloid cloaking shroud to breach the atmosphere before taking several days to catch up with the remainder of the fleet, which should hopefully have given the crews of the Loki's time to acclimate, as theirs was to be the opening offensive in Kunai's plan.

A foreign stirring in his thoughts brought his attention out of the state of repose. _Yes, what is it?_ He enquired of the psychic contact. The Wind of Words did not extend beyond the upper reaches of New Eden's atmosphere, so psychic communication was a bit more onerous, but that was an eventuality he'd planned for, as most of the ship's crews were manifold bonded to one extent or other. Kunai and the few Mobile Suit pilots he'd taken with him were the only exceptions to this rule.

_We've arrived at the rendevous point, sir._ The thought-voice of the _Norn_'s senior deck officer, a Tacticus Magnus formerly of the Legio Kraken, informed him. _No sign of enemies within our engagement zone. Phase 1 of the plan seems to be a complete success._

_Very well, I shall be there shortly. Stay vigilant however, we cannot afford to be noticed so early on._ Kunai instructed the man. The unique hull material of the warships should make them all but impervious to sensor scans, including radar and all sorts of thermal sensors, but there was no telling what a sharp eyed lookout might accidentally notice if a enemy ship got too close to the rendevous point. Flipping himself around with a light brush of his TK against the wall, Kunai snagged the Twig of the World Tree, his LEMIM staff, from where it drifted near the door to his small sleeping cell. Interior space was at a premium aboard the warships, carving out large rooms was both time and labor intensive, so most of the crew quarters were little bigger than the beds and storage cubicles needed to provide the occupant with a place to store their uniforms... and that included the commander's quarters. There was to be nothing luxurious about space combat.

Checking the tell-tale display near the door, to discern which way was currently "down" according to the ship's artificial gravity, Kunai oriented himself accordingly as he pushed himself through the hatch, stepping smoothly down and stumbling only slightly as his dead legs dragged on his mind until he adjusted for the accustomed weight. No one was around, so he permitted himself the use of his staff as a bracing point, at least until he'd regained his balance. He didn't have to bend his head as he walked down the passageway towards the bridge, but it was a near thing in spots. Although he'd never openly complain about it, Kunai knew Alex found the cramped quarters aboard the ship quite uncomfortable, pretty much the only places his second in command could stand and move freely were the bridge and the galley.

The ship was very quiet, the material of the hull absorbing stray sound waves just as it did most other forms of low level energy, muting what few conversations and mechanical sounds were necessary to the operation of the ship, almost all data was conveyed psychically or through the interlinked NIC systems of the ship. At first he'd found it somewhat unnerving, he was used to a constant background noise, from generators and engines and fluids moving about the ship's secondary systems, as had been the case aboard the Archangel, but now he found it almost soothing, keeping him focused on the here and now. He stepped onto the bridge without fanfare, the crew secured into their stations, NIC IV helmets snugged tight over their scalps, the Deck Officer sitting on a raised platform in the center of the space, surrounded by a superfulous holographic display system for the use of people like Kunai, who weren't directly linked into the ship like the on duty crew were.

The officer noticed him at once, and made as if to rise, before Kunai waved him back down into the command chair. He appreciated the courtesy, but if for some crazy reason they did suddenly come under attack, it would be the Deck Officer controlling the ship, not Kunai, and he could best do that from the command chair. The holographic system activated as Kunai climbed onto the observation platform, projecting a 3D view of the surrounding space onto the interior of the bridge, the crew stations fading into near obscurity beyond the display. There was nothing to see in their immediate area, other than the empty void and the distant stars. Kunai smiled in satisfaction, even as the holographic overlay was updated with computer generated representations of the 7 Loki classes vessels hovering in escort formation around the _Norn_, invisible except to the crew's psychic senses. Everyone had made it to the rendevous unhindered, which was actually more than he'd been hoping for in the case of some of the Loki's.

Of course the crew for every warship were handpicked for their aptitude and their loyalty, their ability to keep the nature of their new jobs a secret even from close family and friends if need be, but Kunai had actually selected his crews based on politics as well. The _Norn_ and two of the Loki's, the _Raven _and the _Trickster_, were crewed almost entirely by staunch members of the Conclave, people he could rely on to act as the Greater Good dictated, regardless of personal feelings. They would form the core of the fleet, proceeding towards the main objective of the USN heartland. Meanwhile, the other 5 Loki's... _Loki, Mime, Jester, Coyote _and_ Hermes_... were crewed by mostly GreenCo adherents vetted by Alex. Kunai was relying on their belligerence and martial natures to help them sow confusion and dismay through the USN fleets in a series of rapid hit-and-run attacks, to keep the enemy distracted. Those ships would also fight to the death unquestioningly to allow the core fleet to escape, if things turned sour, though Kunai didn't want to sacrifice even a single ship if it could be helped.

Each of the Loki's had a Dervish or two clamped to the underbelly of the ship, each pilot taken on an individual basis as determined by Kunai and Alex, but mostly from the ranks of GreenCo, as the Mobile Suits were far more disposable than any of the ships. Which was a harsh way of thinking about things, but extreme times called for extreme measures sometimes. As for the _Norn_, it had the Exemplar and Alex's Wraith clamped to its rear decks, where a quick EVA trip would allow them to board their Mobile Suits as needs demanded. It would of course have been more convenient if they had a Mobile Suit carrier vessel, but they lacked the time and resources to cost effectively make such a vessel. They could have had one carrier, or the seven Loki's and one Norn, and while Kunai was intimately familiar with just how much a single good carrier ship could accomplish, for the strategy he had in mind, he needed to be able to strike multiple different locations at once, and only a fleet of fast attack ships could do that.

Calling up more data from the ship's sensor network, Kunai zoomed in on the upper edge of New Eden's atmosphere, several thousand kilometers "below" his fleet's position, watching with tightening lips as the swarming shoals of the Solar Protection Fleet's many sub-groups criss-crossed and hovered in a stately precision dance. The greatest concentration of vessels was of course in geostationary orbit over the theatre bases, dozens of cruisers, escort frigates and older mobile suit carriers clustered around the gargantuan flying obelisk of an Incarnate class dreadnaught at each location. But there were plenty of free roaming splinter fleets, sometimes following ground force deployments to provide orbital fire support, other times just patrolling, hoping to catch an Edenite attack force in mid deployment. There was a disproportionate number of such splinter fleets flying over South Asia, carefully combing the landscape with orbital sensors as they slowly but inexorably closed in on the location of Garden City.

Well, Kunai wished them luck, as no amount of orbital scrying would pierce the combination of psychic interference and technological cloaking that hid Yggdrasil and It's chosen people from overhead view. The mountains themselves protected the city from easy ground or aerial survellience, to pierce the cloaking shroud, an aircraft would have to actually fly beneath the peaks of the mountains, which was extremely dangerous given the high winds present at such altitudes. More active psychic interference on the part of Yggdrasil and some of It's subordinate Chimera created an expansive compulsion zone around the city, blurring the memories of those dispatched to scout the area, assuring them that they'd already searched in those spots that might actually allow them to discover the city. But effective as these measures were, they were still only stopgaps, and it was only a matter of time... maybe even only months or less... before the capital was discovered and besieged with the Oosen's full force.

Though hopefully Kunai's own efforts would buy more time, for a more permanent defensive solution to be put into place. Yggdrasil had indicated that they need only hang on for another six months at most before a solution would present itself that would end the war in a flash. Quite what that solution was, the Grand Chimera had declined to clarify, but what choice did Kunai have but to believe in his patron's power and certitude? Anything else was pure madness, at this point in time! But still, the nagging doubts refused to stop assailing Kunai, in his darker moments. He'd been so sure that Cyprus would be by his side now, just like in old times, but instead his most loyal old friend was dead, and Yggdrasil seemed hardly as perturbed by that turn of events as Kunai expected. It did make even him wonder sometimes, just what the Grand Chimera of Air was up to...

_Stage one preparations confirmed complete, Kunai._ The Deck Officer sent, after a brief manifold conference with the commanding officers of the Loki's. _Now moving to stage 2, with your permission._

_Permission granted. Wish them luck and good hunting for me._ Kunai replied warmly, changing around the holoprojection again, bringing up a strategic overlay of the entire Earth Expansion Zone, which included Luna and the various Lagrange points. L5 was occupied with the PLANTs and their bigger cousins, the E-PLANTs, but most of the other points were largely empty, except for a few scattered SPF supply and refit bases. These would be the first targets of the GreenCo Loki's, stinging attacks which would really only inconvenience the SPF slightly, but the mere fact of a hostile fleet presence so far beyond the front lines of the orbital fleets would provoke constrenation amongst the USN forces, and they would be forced to detail fleets to patrol and guard their backcountry, draining resources from the front lines.

The Loki's would then proceed into individual action, striking targets of opportunity, especially troop transports and supply ships, and also laying mines in the hope of damaging or destroying any investigating capital ships, operating somewhat like the old German U-boats of World War 2, a war Kunai had studied intensively during his history classes in Switzerland, so long ago. This would further disrupt the USN fleets, and have them chasing ghosts all over the Expansion Zone, as well as forcing them to provide heavy escorts for any future supply fleets, one more drain of manpower and resources that might be otherwise put to use in front line duty. The Loki's were under orders to engage only targets they were sure of defeating with a minimum of fight, but Kunai was expecting to lose a ship or two in this phase, due to the choleric natures of the GreenCo crews.

Meanwhile, the _Norn_ and its two escorts would stealthily approach the Second Earth colonies in Lunar orbit, using the Loki's holoshrouds and plethora of sensor misdirecting technologies to get right in under the noses of the USN's homeland defense forces. There, the _Norn _would come into it's own, as the crew would Resonate-Harmonize Amplify with the Ship's LEMIM enhancements, directing large scale psychic attacks upon the civilian populations of the Second Earth Colonies and Lunar Cities, to demoralize the populace and sow confusion and chaos amongst the USN's foundations. With any luck, the unrest on the home front would spread to the orbital fleets, and they might even force a regime change due to public dissatisfaction with events, which could set the USN war effort back for months as politicians vied to replace Gilbert Durandel and grab as much power as possible. However, Kunai did not expect to be that successful, but he did expect to cause massive disruption to the USN's war momentum as they scrambled to defend their homeland against the attacks, withdrawing much of the constant pressure of the SPF from New Eden.

Once the probability of being discovered grew too high, the _Norn_'s escorts and any remaining GreenCo Loki's would stage a diversionary attack upon the main Lunar Fleet yards, allowing the flagship time to get well clear of the enemy defenses, before the fleet met up again and returned to Garden City to resupply and rotate crews, as well as re-engage with the wider war effort. Kunai expected the entire campaign to last anywhere from a few weeks to a month or more, depending on the reactions of the Oosen forces. A month was about the maxmimum operation time for the fleet in a war capacity, after that point they would be so low on supplies that any combat might tax them almost to destruction. The trick would be knowing when to break off the attacks, no matter how successful they were... trying to do too much at once could prove as disasterous as not doing enough.

_What's the status of the fleets of Orb and ZAFT?_ Kunai asked the deck officer. If any force was going to throw a wrench into his plans, it would almost certainly be Orb. Kunai knew he was a very smart and capable man, but if it came down to matching wits against Captain Ramius in a void-battle scenario, then he was going to lose, and that was that. ZAFT could also be problematic, though they'd cut down their fleet size considerably since joining the USN, they still had a sizable force, much of which was assigned to the USN homeland defense group, including the supercarrier _Remembrance_, which served as a mobile base for well over two hundred Primal class Mobile Suits. Somewhat dated by modern standards, they were still fairly dangerous, especially as they were piloted by many veterans from the Valentine Wars, people judged unfit in body, mind or politics for the Solar Knights, but with a wealth of combat experience.

_We have no new reports of movements amongst Orb's fleets. They have a small geostationary presence, but most of their warship capacity appears to still be planetside._ The officer replied after a short consultation with the long range sensor stations. _The Remembrance is docked at Epoch 2 for supplies at the moment, along with a sizable escort, but it could conceivably mobilize in a matter of hours should they have need._

_Let's just try to avoid them as much as possible._ Kunai answered grimly. A carrier at dock was a tempting target, but they'd have to brave a nasty tangle of defensive stations and escort fleets to get in range, and might sustain enough damage to render the primary mission unfeasible even if they were victorious. Better to play it safe. _Let's move out. But not too quickly, we need to let the Loki's have their fun first..._

_Moving out slowly, aye, sir. Feel free to retire, you will be contacted if any problems develop._

_No, I think I'll stay for a little longer, if you please. It's been so long since I was last on the bridge of a starship, I'd like to soak in the moment a while more..._

xxxx

**Space, Lagrange 3, Fleet Supply Station **_**Athena**_**, April 12th, 6:30 PM**

_Man, what did I ever do to deserve this shit?_ Ensign Ami Kerk, duty officer for the swing shift crew of the station's defense controls remarked to herself bitterly. Maybe she hadn't graduated at the top of her class at the USN Naval Academy... okay, so she'd scraped by on a technicality, but she'd still passed, right? And maybe her discipline record wasn't exactly perfect, but really, fraternization laws were so old fashioned, weren't they? ZAFT had been getting by just fine on inter-crew relationships on board ships for years, why did the fuddy-duddy's in charge of the SPF have to be such killjoys? Was that really a good enough reason to assign her to this bunghole of a posting? Lagrange 3? SERIOUSLY? There was NOTHING at Lagrange 3, it was on the far side of the Earth from Luna and the center of society... and _Athena _station was widely acknowledged as the place naval careers went to die. And that was her FIRST duty assignment? She was doomed.

Which wasn't to say that _Athena_ station was a complete backwater, with the advent of the Reclamation War anyway, the hollowed out asteroid based on a similar schematic to the ancient _Artemis_ base of the long dead Eurasian Federation actually saw a good bit of traffic, outfitting and refitting ships for the SPF's orbital duty roster. Even if the Eddies didn't have a fleet presence, ships broke down all the time, or got hit by remnants of the debris belt, or suffered equipment malfunctions or a host of other problems, and if they were geosynched on the far side of the planet from wherever Luna was at the time, it only made sense to head to Lagrange 3 instead of waiting a full day or going all the way around the planet. They also served as a major supply distribution waypoint for the SPF operations, with regular convoys of bulk conveyance ships arriving from Luna and the PLANTs, before heading out to the orbital fleets once they'd refueled and rested and made whatever repairs were necessary.

The vast internal drydocks of the station, some of the largest in the solar system, other than the gargantuan shipyard facilities on Luna proper, were also kept busy retrofitting a lot of older ships to improve the SPF's transport capacity. With more and more Myrmidon cruisers and Armstrong frigates rolling off the production lines, older vessels like Nelson destroyers and Drake frigates were being consigned to the merchant marine fleets to serve as cargo haulers and troop transports. Rip out most of the weapons on those old ships, and they actually had room for a fair bit of cargo, or full regiments of troops, and in a reasonably fast and durable package, and for a fraction of the cost of building a new ship, even with modern nanotech construction methods. Most of the old Agammemnon carriers had been requistioned by the Solar Knights to serve as Mobile Suit platforms, and refitting those was also something _Athena _did.

But none of that meant any less crushing boredom for Ensign Kerk, trained as a weapons control officer, riding herd over a bunch of slovenly dullard rejects from the dregs of the SPF's enlisted training schools, controlling the station's pittance of defensive weapons against simulated foes that would never appear. They weren't even inspected by the higher ups anymore, the possibility of any threats actually materializing at Lagrange 3 was just that low. And the crew knew it too, so they spent most of their on duty time fucking around, reading thrill-mags, chatting, even surfing the net. Some of the other duty officers, usually the ones that came here after a long or even middling career in the actual fleet, were horrified by this sort of thing, but Ensign Kerk couldn't give less of a shit. She was bored as fuck too after all. Though not quite bored enough to fuck, despite some sallies from the least repulsive of her subordinates. Apparently someone had opened her personnel files and found out she wasn't exactly averse to "improving" officer-enlisted relations during off duty hours.

But she wasn't that desperate for entertainment just yet, though after another few months of this soul crushing boredom, she might be in the mood to go for anything with two legs, it was just that bad! If only she could figure out who she had to sleep with to get rotated off this junkheap, surely once she was assigned to the real fleet she could find some of that glory and excitement the recruiting posters were always blabbing about! Leaning back in her chair, feet propped up on her station console, Ensign Kerk idly flipped through one of the porno-mags she'd borrowed from one of her admirers. It was terrible shit, third rate knockoffs of name brand stuff, but it beat staring at the walls, and sometimes the crappy articles contained a few nuggets of humor. She tried not to watch the chron, it would only depress her. She'd gone on duty shortly before 3 pm, and wouldn't get off until just before midnight, so that mean she had well over half the shift to go still.

A sudden and vaguely familiar blurt of noise resounding throughout the defense station made her jerk upright in shock, dirty mag floating out of her lap and sailing across the room as she turned gimlet eyes on her subordinates, trying to figure out which one of the greasy fucks had tripped an alarm while screwing around. They all looked as startled as her though, looking around and even checking their control consoles, and it dawned on Ensign Kerk that maybe, just maybe, this wasn't a case of a false alarm. A slap at her console brought up a display of the space immediately around the station, and holy shit, highlighted upon it were over a dozen flashing icons, inbound on the station at high speed! "SHARKS IN THE VOID!" Kerk screamed at her slower to react subordinates, spacer slang for incoming missiles. "WHERE THE FUCK DID THOSE COME FROM?" She added a moment later, checking the long and short range sensor arrays.

But there were no ships out there, nor Mobile Suits or Mobile Armors... no platforms for the missiles to have come from. As far as her instruments could detect, the missiles had just appeared from nowhere! Belatedly, Kerk slammed her palm onto the station wide alert button and snatched for the PA switch. "This is Defense Control, we have incoming enemy missiles, unknown provenance! All hands, this is not a drill!" She bellowed, hazily remembering snatches of proper comm procedure as she struggled to remember what sort of countermeasures she had at her disposal. It had been so long since she'd given a damn, she wasn't even sure they were still performing scheduled maintenance on the surface blister guns. A few pulses of green plasma and lines of yellow and orange tracers began to rise into the infinite void from some of the surface defense ports, but it was far too little, too late.

VTP missiles rained down upon the "top" and "sides" of the hollow asteroid base, many of them targeting the slow to respond weapon blisters, atomizing them before they could even orient and fire upon the incoming munitions. Other missiles targeted sensor clusters and the launch bays for the asteroid's complement of Moebius class Mobile Armors, relics even the Reclaimer Initiative had passed over as too old to want to use. Still others streaked for the vast open pit in the heart of the asteroid that allowed access to the docking bays and drydocks within the station, striking targets of opportunity, including several supply vessels that had just been in the process of disembarking when the attack struck. Designed to take out high performance Mobile Suits in a single hit, the VTP missiles hit the lightly armored transport vessels like sledgehammers on eggs, and that wasn't even the ones hauling munitions or other volatile cargo!

An ammunition carrier went off like a small nuclear bomb, peeling back docking gantries like limp string in a hundred meter radius, and sending a roiling ball of flame expanding to consume and destroy several othe ships docked nearby. Fires raged suddenly out of control over a good twenty percent of the dock's interior surface, and hundreds of off duty ship crew and station personnel were down, killed by flying debris or concussion shock. Surprise was total. Shock was crippling. Another flight of missiles came screaming in from points unknown, this one almost fully targeted at the dock, several of the missiles releasing clouds of dark reddish mist that ate into metal and flesh alike like acid, and spread like a nightmare, especially in proximity to the fires already burning from the previous strike. People were dissolved alive, and ships corroded into pieces by the Maroon EDEN, and nothing the station crew had on hand could even slow it down a trifle.

Ensign Kerk stared out the observation windows facing the dock with horror, seeing chaos and death running amuck in the normally staid and boring station. A lean shape, like a elongated diamond or throwing blade, materialized in the entrance tunnel to the dock, almost directly opposite her position high up on one of the interior walls. The sensors refused to accept its existence, despite it being right there in plain view, the radar was completely empty of its presence. She remembered some of her schooling, and thought that it might be a hologram, some sort of decoy, but then the turret on the dorsal surface of the rakish looking vessel swung around and spat a glowing pink flare of light into the side of a converted Nelson class destroyer moored near the entrance of the dock. The energy flare, whatever it was, punched through the destroyer's armor plate like it was cheesecloth, and the ship broke in half as a massive cone of explosive gases vented from the far side of the ship, eating into the dock structure like a giant mouth taking a bite out of it.

Kerk was just fumbling to find the controls that would activated the defensive turrets situated inside the dock as a measure against just this sort of invasion scenario, when the enemy ship deployed Mobile Suits... well over two dozen of them, far more than could possibly fit onto a ship that size, Dervish pattern suits, standard issue for the Eddie Custodians! One of them headed directly for the defense control station, and the last thing Ensign Kerk ever saw was the blocky shape of a Mobile Suit grenade tossed almost flippantly in her direction. She died as she lived, a mostly faceless cog within the greater machine of the USN. She was far from the only one, as the three Loki class ships that had attacked the station did not cease their assault until every docked ship was a burning wreck, and the damage to the dock itself was beginning to affect the structural integrity of the asteroid. No Edenite casualties were suffered, and no evidence, other than destruction, was left behind.

xxxx

**Space, en route to Geosynch orbit over Heaven's Base, USNS **_**Patton,**_** Armstrong class frigate, April 15th, 2:15 AM**

Ensconced deep within the heart of the ship, surrounded by dozens of meters of phase shifted armor plating, with enough firepower to atomize an entire ground armor regiment at his fingertips, Commander Howard "Dusty" Speck felt a feeling of invincibility swell up inside him. He crushed it ruthlessly a moment later, gripping the armrests of his bare metal command chair and leaning forward slightly, as if afraid of even the mere appearance of relaxation. His face was a creation of severe planes and harsh angles, his short black hair seemingly painted onto his scalp so neatly was it arranged, and his dark eyes held little in the way of warmth or jocularity. He was a hard son of bitch, but his crew loved him for it all the same, because he was also a fair son of a bitch, and never asked anyone to do something he wasn't willing to do himself.

First in his class at the USN Naval Academy, he'd gone on to serve with distinction in a variety of posts, including even a brief stint as gunnery control officer for one of the tertiary weapon systems of the SPF flagship, the _Incarnate_, during the dreadnaught's space trials prior to christening. He'd also served as Engineer on board one of the prototype Armstrong Escort Frigates, and XO of one of the first Myrmidon cruisers off the production line, before being granted his current command. He was definitely a man the higher ups had their eyes very closely upon, and if he continued as he had done so far, he might even cap his career with a captaincy of the next Incarnate class to roll out of the Lunar yards, or so his jealous rivals were apt to complain over their drinks at the officer's cantina. Though some in the fleets looked down upon the Armstrong frigates as mere support vessels, lacking the massive firepower and combat zone control of the Myrmidon ships of the line.

Commander Speck knew differently however. Though an Armstrong frigate was lightly armed by the standards of Myrmidons and of course the Incarnates, they filled a vital gap in the defense networks of the more powerful capital ships. Big guns were all well and good for fleet engagements, but targeting small, maneuverable attack craft, such as Mobile Armors or especially Mobile Suits, was much more difficult. And history had proved time and again that even the heaviest of warships was vulnerable to precision attacks from such maneuverable attack craft, and could be easily crippled or destroyed if the Mobile forces were left unchecked. The squadrons of Moebius Sigma Mobile Armors the capital ships carried could provide some cover, but the Armstrongs excelled at it, with high speed and maneuverability for their size, and an arsenal of rapidfire and area of affect type weapons for clearing whole swathes of space in seconds.

Speck could imagine no greater honor than to be tasked with defending the vulnerable backsides of the larger capital ships... it was the most vital role of any fleet asset, for all that it was usually unnoticed as long as it was done properly. Without ships like his doing their duty, the ships of the line would be unable to fufill their own duties, and might even be destroyed. So he treated his duties with the pride and respect they deserved, and made sure that his crew did the same. He did not tolerate slowness, ineptitude or laziness amongst his crew, any who did not measure up to his exacting high standards in both their duties and their other military responsibilities were rapidly demoted and transferred to less desirable postings. As far as Commander Speck was concerned, there was no more foul word in all existence than "failure".

He looked around his bridge, his lips twisted into a thin line that would have been a scowl on any other man, but for him was an expression of contentment. Nothing was out of place, everyone was performing admirably, despite him having put the entire ship on orange alert ever since they'd gotten the report two days prior of an attack upon a fleet supply base at Lagrange 3 by an unknown enemy force. Commander Speck's first thought was that the Retributor terrorists were growing excessively bold while the majority of the SPF was busy in Earth orbit, but high command believed differently, for reasons not adequately explained to him. That really only left a few options... either another terrorist faction was trying to flex its muscles, or the Edenites had finally managed to expand the war into space. Commander Speck was betting on the former, but true to form, was preparing for the latter.

He was just about to request a situation report, a process he repeated every fifteen minutes exactly, as he liked to keep his fingers tightly on the pulse of all shipboard operations, when the bridge suddenly flooded with red light and alarm sirens, as the threat display showed incoming missile contacts from nowhere! The bridge instantly burst into pandemonium... but it was the controlled chaos of a crew who had been drilled in proper response procedures to just this kind of emergency until they could practically do it in their sleep! Like a finely oiled machine, the various sections of the crew moved smoothly and quietly together to confront the unexpected threat, engineering feeding full power to the ship from its three nuclear reactors, while off duty crew swarmed from their bunks and suited up for damage control parties without even waiting for orders to do so. Everyone knew their place and their duty, down to the last kitchen assistant.

"Backtrace the paths of those missiles." Speck ordered, hardly even raising his voice, the crew communicating in murmurs around him. "DefWeps, intercept as they come into range. Speed and thermal emissions indicate VTP missiles, so fire for effect. OffWeps, power up the Gottfrieds and linear turrets and prepare to fire on my mark. Load anti-ship missile tubes with specialty warhead version 3 and fire at will, set missile controls to telepresence and route to the auxiliary fire control station. Prime all VTP missile tubes for independent target acquisition mode. Countermeasures, prepare to deploy anti-beam depth charges and chaff canisters on my mark. Shields to standby. FlightOps to standby." The orders spat from his lips like bullets from a machinegun, but not a single crewmember needed them to be repeated all the same.

As the volley of VTP missiles came arrowing towards the cruising frigate, it's arsenal of CIWS guns, of both solid round and plasma beam varieties, opened up, showering the space immediately around the frigate with thousands of rounds of 20mm tungsten cored AP shells, and 15mm beam bolts. A quarter second later and the 150mm rapidfire "flak" cannons opened up as well, each firing dozens of fragmention shells that exploded shortly after being launched, spraying white hot pieces of mono-shrapnel in 360 degree spheres. Had the _Patton_ erected a solid wall of force between it and the incoming missiles, it could not have stopped them any more efficiently than the massed barrage of the CIWS guns. And even so, the guns did not fire for a single second longer than needed to take out the last missile, conserving ammunition and reducing stress on the weapon's cooling systems. Short, hard and entirely to the point... a hallmark of Speck's command.

Consulting his tactical overlay screen of the surrounding thousand kilometers of space, Commander Speck frowned, eyes following the ghostly lines that his sensor experts had sent him indicating the path of the missiles. They truly had come from nowhere, from empty space. Or at least that was the impression a novice commander might get, but it didn't take an officer of Speck's caliber to deduce the enemy was utilizing a cloaking field of some sort. Such technology was not used aboard USN vessels, as they had little reason to hide from anyone, but certain terrorist cells might have access to the tech required, and it was certain that the Edenites possessed a great deal of it, judging by the reports from ground commanders. The _Patton_ was equipped with Vari-Camera's of course, which could strip away most types of cloaking tech within a hundred kilometer radius of the ship, but Speck disliked using them, as they reduced the efficiency of his fire control systems and limited the range of his other sensors while in operation.

However, there was more than one way to catch a cat, and Commander Speck had more than earned his nickname of "Dusty" for a reason. Invisible the enemy might well be, but they were far from intangible. At his command, the telepresence controlled anti ship missiles his forward tubes had been launching since almost the moment the attack began curved around towards a broad swathe of space that he figured the enemy ship was likely in. The missile warheads were duds, filled with marking paint used for wargames and training shots, but a slight modification to the warhead's dispersal systems that Speck had authorized allowed the paint to be distributed by the missiles while in flight, forming clouds of sticky red paint particles. He wasn't the only one to use such a trick, the Orb forces defending their mass driver had deployed similar measures to good effect, and Speck fully expected to achieve similar results with his own ploy.

He was not disappointed, as a red steaked shape suddenly appeared on his cameras, making its way towards the "underside" of his ship. The enemy seemed to realize their invisibility had been compromised almost as soon as it had occured, the enemy crew reacting with admirable speed as they disengaged their cloak and funneled the extra energy into their thrusters, kicking the enemy ship forward just ahead of the blazing emerald beams of the _Patton_'s dual 220cm Gottfried turret, on its dorsal hull. The enemy ship twisted around almost 180 degrees in a second, throwing off the tracking turret. A slight rise of one of Commander Speck's eyebrows was his only visible sign of reaction, but inwardly he was goggling in shock. The entire crew of the enemy ship had to have pulled well over 50 G's with that maneuver, enough to kill most people instantly, yet the enemy ship continued to maneuver as if unaffected! He crossed terrorists off his list... such technology was beyond even the USN navy!

"Begin real time sensor log transmission to Lunar Headquarters and to USNS _Solaris_." Speck ordered crisply, now that he was sure he was indeed facing off with some Edenite attack vessel never before seen by the USN. "Send additional message... engaging unknown enemy ship, suspected Edenite origin. Request immediate support. Will attempt to disable, but may be forced to destroy. Data logs enclosed. End message." He narrowed his eyes as he consulted his screens. "Sensors, why haven't you locked on to the enemy ship yet?"

"Sensors appear to be malfunctioning or jammed, Captain." The sensor officer reported immediately. "We are attempting to recalibrate now, but the enemy vessels seems to have some sort of countermeasure in place. Radar, Thermal, Magnetic... we're not getting anything on them, sir."

"Weps, switch to optical targeting modes. Launch a spread of VTP missiles, see if they can't acquire independently. Reload anti-ship missile tubes with standard high explosive warheads. Engineering, give me 120 percent on reactor one, 100 percent on reactors 2 and 3. Divert all discretionary power to the engines. Helm, don't let them get behind us" Speck ordered, adapting instantly. Opticaly targeting was ineffficent, but it was better than pure guesswork. The view on his screens swung, G forces pressing everyone on the ship down into their chairs on the decks and bulkheads as the _Patton_ swung about, a hair sharper than the specs said she was capable of, though not a patch on the "on a dime" turn the Edenite ship had pulled.

"Enemy ship is circling us, sir. They're going for our engines." The sensor officer informed him.

"Yes." Speck agreed curtly, having already seen the obvious tactic. And unfortunately it was one that was damned hard to prevent, because the Edenite vessel was considerably faster than his own ship, it was nearly as fast as some older types of Mobile Armors, which was simply insane for something that size! Though considerably smaller than his own ship, about the size of an old Drake class frigate from the Valentine era, the blade shaped Eddie warship handled like at atmospheric fighter jet, and in a contest of turning radius, Speck knew there could be only one winner. It would be mere seconds before the enemy got behind him and had a clear shot at his thruster banks, which could cripple or even destroy his ship in one cataclysmic explosion. "Engineering, 120 percent, all reactors, now! Helm, straighten us out, maximum down thrust! All forward ventral attitude thrusters, maximum vertical thrust now!"

Speck was dimly aware of his flight of VTP missiles shooting uselessly off into the void, even their sophisticated target acquistion software unable to lock onto the enemy ship. Even as he noted that, his ship groaned in protest at the stress put onto her frame, as the rear half of the ship powered straight "downwards" while the underbelly attitude thrusters on the fore part of the ship brought the nose shooting upwards, in essence flipping the entire ship around 180 degrees and turning her upside down, though that meant little in zero gravity. Suddenly the Edenite ship found itself facing the blunt, bullet like prow of the _Patton_, rather than the vulnerable engine banks on her hindquarters. Blood rushing from his skull, his face going white as chalk from the stress of the maneuver, Commander Speck's lips turned upwards, just a fraction of an inch. "All weapons, volley fire forward arc, at will!" He ordered coolly.

To their credit, the Edenites attempted evasive maneuvers almost the instant he began his own sudden reversal, but they'd come in too close in pursuit of out turning him, and even without being able to find target lock on the enemy vessel, the _Patton_ was perfectly capable of filling the space around it with munitions and beams, indeed that was its purpose, and at such short ranges not even the insanely agile Edenite Loki could dodge all that firepower. The Loki managed to boost out of the cone of fire after less than a second of immersion, but even so, its hull was pitted and smoking when it did so, and its turns seemed neither so sharp nor so quick as they had previously, so Speck figured the vessel's steering or reactor had been damaged by the jarring impacts. "Switch all missile weapons to thermal target acquisition and launch immediately." He commanded brusquely.

Over a dozen VTP missiles and two anti-ship missiles launched a moment later, arrows of fire cutting through space towards the Edenite ship. The weapons might not be able to lock on to the enemy hull itself, for whatever reason, but after the close range pasting the _Patton_ had just dished out, there was plenty of residual thermal effects from beam impacts and fragments of white hot flak embedded in the armor, which was more than enough for the missiles to pick up on. It wouldn't last for long, space would could the enemy hull in a matter of seconds, but in a snap shot timeframe, it was plenty of time. With missiles incoming on all quarters, the Edenites were in deep trouble... on a ship that size, even a single VTP impact could cause critical damage, and a full size anti-ship missile might blown the craft to smithereens on a direct hit.

Cones of pinkish light erupted from the flanks of the Edenite ship, setting off radiation alarms on board the _Patton_ despite the widening distance between the two ships, as the cones began to swivel back and forth like spotlights, sweeping into the paths of the incoming missiles and detonating them an instant later, several hundred meters short of the enemy hull. Thermal exciters, employed as CIWS... a novel concept. Speck made a note to discuss the feasibility of copying such an idea with his engineer later. The enemy ship twisted around again, pointing its prow towards the prow of the _Patton_, and Speck could make out a barbed, lance like protrusion from the very tip of the enemy hull. It took him a second, but he finally realized it was some form of ram, a ship to ship weapon that hadn't been used since the last throes of the age of sail!

He was about to order all hands to brace for collision, when two muted flashes of light spat from the enemy's prow instead, obviously muzzle flares of some sort. It wasn't until damage reports started flooding onto his screens from all down the length of his ship that Speck realized they'd actually been struck by the enemy attack, as he'd felt no impact, not even a tremor! "Outer hull breached! Inner hull breached from bulkheads 1 to 200..." The damage control officer reported in shocked dismay. "Captain... they shot right through us! Getting reports of structural damage and crew casualties. Reactor 1 going supercritical and leaking steam, engineering is shutting it down and isolating that compartment. We've lost thruster bank 3. Minor loss of atmosphere in bow and stern sections of ship, contained. Auxiliary bridge reports large, perfectly circular holes punched in bulkheads, passing through space."

"Shields up!" Speck ordered grimly. It would limit his own firepower somewhat, but obviously physical armor was no defense against whatever those weapons were. Glittering aqua energy coalesced around the _Patton_'s hull as the Citadel shield projectors came online. And none too soon, as two shimmering crystalline spears struck the energy barrier mere seconds after it formed, golden sparks showering in hundred meter fountains from the points of impact as the QC harpoons were deflected away. His CIWS weapons were useless with the shield deployed, but Speck still had access to the dorsal gottfrieds and the three triple 40cm linear cannon turrets on the flanks and ventral surfaces of his ship, and the enemy ship had come to a near standstill to launch its own sniping attacks. Dark green beams and bright yellow tracers spat from the _Patton_'s main weapon batteries, and blasted into... and straight through the enemy ship. Which deresolved, showing itself to be nothing more than a hologram.

Another enemy ship appeared, behind and slightly above the illusion it had projected, just out of the line of effect of the _Patton_'s attack. The moment after that, the ship turned sharply, and suddenly there were FIVE enemy ships all moving in concert, each visually identical to the others, at least at the distance the enemy was currently at. And with sensors still unable to pick up on the enemy ship, that made it all but impossible to determine which was a hologram and which the real threat. Things became even more complicated when swarms of Edenite Dervish Mobile Suits appeared from the enemy formation, far too many to have possibly come from within the enemy ship. More holographic decoys.

Or so Speck assumed, before impact tremors from beam and linear rifle rounds fired from somewhere within the whirling mass of images rumbled through his ship. The shields had stopped the attack, but there was at least one real enemy Mobile Suit out there, which meant he couldn't just ignore the swarm of images entirely. He possessed the firepower to blast apart the holographic drones, or whatever they were, but to do so would require dropping the shield, leaving him open to sniping attacks from the enemy ship. Alternately, he could raise the full shield, which would cover 99 percent of his vessel, protecting him from the Mobile Suit that would be even now going after his engines again. However, with the full shield up, he had no mobility, meaning he'd be a sitting duck for the enemy to pound on to their heart's content. Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. In that sort of scenario, Commander Speck fully believed it was better to do, and trust to the crew and the ship to pull through regardless of the risks.

"Disengage shield. CIWS weapons to barrage fire. Any remaining VTP tubes, wait for barrage plus ten, then launch in pursuit of enemy MS. Once enemy MS confirmed destroyed, launch MA team to attack enemy ship, and determine which is a hologram and which is real." Speck directed, remaining calm. "All crew, brace for repeated impacts and battle damage."

"Enemy is approaching rapidly!" The sensor officer declared, trying to emulate his CO's glacial calm. Barely had the words left his mouth than the Loki closed to within firing range of its main gun, and the 300mm Ion Disintegrator spat a bright pink flare of exotic particles across the intervening space. The _Patton_'s helmsman had predicated the attack though, and was already turning the ship to try and glance the shot, so it did not strike directly. However, it still pierced the hull armor with ease, and blew a thirty meter hole in the prow of the USN ship, the nucleonic explosion effect penetrating deep within the hull, and almost out the other side of the prow.

"Critical damage to bow! All emergency bulkheads forward of number 20 are compromised, large scale atmospheric loss... primary sensor node lost..." The damage reports scolled up on his screen faster than the officer could announce them.

"RETURN FIRE!" Speck spat, showing emotion for the first time. The gottfrieds lanced out, but had chosen the wrong target, and passed harmlessly away into space. The ventral and starboard linear turret also fired, the port being out of line of effect of the enemy, and a crewmember cheered briefly as a definite hit was recorded by one of the 40cm shells, but the enemy pressed on regardless, their hull armor clearly far from compromised. Roaring up to within three hundred meters of the USN ship, practically touching by void war standards, the Loki opened up with its left flank Thermal Exciters, pink cones of superheating radiation stabbing outward to probe the side of the _Patton_ as the Loki whizzed by. The exposure was too brief to melt the PS armored hull, but crew inside the hull were less fortunate, and over a hundred crewmembers were boiled alive in their own juices in the brief moment they were exposed to the concentrated rad-field, which had penetrated over a third of the ship!

Commander Speck stared numbly at the remains of his damage control officer, who had popped like a balloon filled with superheated blood, spraying wet red goo over half the bridge, including his commanding officer, as he caught the very edge of the radiation field. His helmet was closed, keeping the blood off his face, but the suit was not yet fully sealed, so the scent of charred meat and burnt blood rose up to almost choke him nonetheless. A second pinkish flare from the Loki's main gun spat at the _Patton_ from the rear, but in responding to the gruesome death of the DC officer, the helmsman had jerked the ship wildly, causing the shot to go wide by over a hundred meters. To their everlasting credit, the bridge crew did not panic, even as many looked profoundly sick, the weapons officers getting the ship's turrets turned about and firing after the receeding Edenite ship, even as the helmsman steered them on a withdrawal course aimed towards Earth orbit.

"All ahead emergency." Speck declared through clenched teeth. "We're withdrawing. Sensors, make sure that bastard doesn't try and circle around again. Another pass like that and we're dead in space. Forward another message to the _Solaris._ Tell them to have emergency crews standing by. And send out an advisory to all ships en route to or from planetary orbit... tell them to beware of sudden ambushes and hit-and-run attacks. The Edenites are in space now..."

xxxx

**Space, Lunar Orbit, Admiral's quarters aboard ONS **_**Dawnblade**_**, Dawnblade class Battlecruiser, April 20th, 10:00 AM**

"Remind me again why I accepted this bullshit position?" Andrew Waltfeld, the famed Desert Tiger of ZAFT's African force during the First Valentine War, and newly ordained Supreme Commander of the USN's military, complained with a tired shake of his head. He was seated behind his desk in the somewhat cramped study of his admiral's suite, which could also double as a tertiary bridge if both the primary and auxiliary bridges were compromised by battle damage. He wore Orb's uniform, white trousers and tunic, with periwinkle accents and enough gold braid to choke a horse, but he wore it proudly all the same, as up until very recently, such uniforms had not been seen amongst USN high command. Not that he spent much time at the designated high command, down in Copernicus City, since Waltfeld had always been a hands on commander whenever possible, and he saw no reason to change that habit now, despite the enormity of the forces under his control, thousands of times more men and machines than he'd led in Africa.

"Because you're a meddlesome bastard and an overachiever sir, and always have been." Martin Dicosta, his longtime best friend, confidante and former XO, replied with mocking cheerfullness. He was seated across from his old boss, slouched comfortably in one of the folding chairs that Waltfeld kept for any guests, with the mindset that either they were close enough to him not to mind the lack of comfort, or in enough trouble that the comfort of their ass should be the last thing they were worried about. His own chair was basically the same thing, with a removable pad... the last thing he wanted to do was grow comfortable behind a desk, but at the same time, needs must, and he'd prefer not to break his tailbone with marathon sessions spent doing paperwork and politics either. Waltfeld smiled to see his old second-in-command so at ease, Matin had always been an exceptional officer, but he'd been ever so stiff and formal during their time in Africa, it was nice that he'd apparently gotten past the need for starch.

"Perhaps that's true." Waltfeld admitted with a half sneer. "But really, what the hell is going on? I barely have time to accept a handshake of congratualtion from that snake in office... you'll notice I used the fake arm to touch him... and I find myself nostrils deep in an epic shitstorm like this! Where the HELL did the Eddies get warships, and why did they wait until NOW to use them? Is it some sort of personal vendetta against me? It just figures that the very moment I step up to take over the job, it has to get harder and more complicated!"

"Well, I'd hate for you to be bored sir. Perhaps they've realized just how close you are to unlocking the age old secrets of the Perfect Coffee, and this is their last ditch attempt to prevent you from attaining that ultimate power?" Dicosta answered cheekily. His position as personal aide to the Solar President wasn't one that gave him a lot of time for a personal life or expression of humor, especially since he had his other life as a double agent for the Clyne Faction... he stubbornly refused to consider it anything else, even with Lacus gone... on top of it. He was glad for the chance to unwind with his old boss, and even more glad that he could do so under the pretense of work, now that Waltfeld was Supreme Commander, they'd be sure to be seeing a lot more of each other in the future. Fortunately, Durandel was too wrapped up in his own political problems to pry into why his aide got on so well with his new military leader.

It hadn't been easy, burying his past as Waltfeld's XO during the First Valentine War, but he could never have survived the purges of Section 9 intelligence that occured after the Eden Disaster if he'd had such an obvious connection to a well known supporter of Orb. Now the only people that knew were the ones he could trust not to betray things, though Dicosta was geatly looking forward to the day when he could throw off his so called "white cloak" that protected him from the filth he waded through in everyday life, and use the reams of data he'd gathered to put Durandel away forever, or even better yet, send him straight to the gallows!

"Yes, that would be just like those dastardly Edenites." Waltfeld agreed, with a wide smile, before he got serious. "Honestly, Martin, these attacks really aren't that bad. It's obviously a harrasment tactic of some sort, striking at our shipping lanes and forcing us to divert manpower to escort duties... all fairly basic tactics. Any college age kid with an interest in RTS games could come up with a similar strategy. We've had what, a dozen different attacks now, mostly involving a single Eddie ship attacking a target of opportunity, and fleeing at the first sign of reinforcements or determined resistance? Only the _Patton_ had anything even approaching a full on engagement with an attacker, and that came out more or less a draw... it's not enough. There has to be more than just this."

"I agree, sir." Dicosta replied thoughtfully. It had been a long while since he'd last had to think military tactics, but those lessons he'd learned from his commander in Africa weren't exactly easy to forget either. "Given the capabilities of the enemy craft, they should be able to inflict far more damage than they have. For all that they're barely the size of an old Drake class, they pack quite a punch with their missiles, QC harpoon launchers, and exotic particle cannons. Especially coupled with their cloaking and sensor invulnerability, two or three of them working together should be able to cripple or destroy a patrol fleet, even a Myrmidon, without too much trouble. But so far the only group action they seem to have taken was _Athena_ station at Lagrange 3. It's like they want us to have to chase them all over creation."

"I suspect they do." Waltfeld agreed with a hard edged smile. "They obviously don't have very many of these craft, maybe even less than a half dozen. They're fast, maneuverable as hell, and damn near impossible to detect until they're firing on you... the very definition of raiders. But for all that, the firepower of the SPF's capital ships would still probably be able to swat them out of the void, unless the ship was really caught off guard or suffered critical damage in the first enemy attack. They can't afford to attack us head on, so they need to get us strung out, tired, annoyed... just like Desert Dawn used to try to do to us. Sadly I don't think there's a Tassil in this case, nowhere we can hit to flush them out and get them thinking with their hearts, not their heads. I think the best strategy might just be to ignore them."

"Sir?" Dicosta sat a bit upright, surprised at such a callous plan.

"Not entirely, Martin." Waltfeld assured his friend. "Of course we'll step up escorts, especially for troop ships and other vital supplies. But sending splinter fleets to proactively pursue and attempt to engage the bastards would be a waste of time and resources, they're simply too fast and sneaky. We need to make them come to us. Give them a reason to gather in force, and draw them in until its too late for them to pull back. In short, we need bait. A nice fat sheep for the wolves to slaver over."

"You're thinking of the _Remembrance_, sir?" Dicosta surmised, quietly pleased to see his friend's single eye widen slightly.

"Am I becoming that predictable, Martin?" Waltfeld asked, slightly worried. Predictablity was fine in some situations, but not in a strategic commander.

"Only to those who have served under you in the past, sir." Dicosta assured him. "It's the flagship of the homeland defense forces, its captain has recently been replaced, and it represents a significant fraction of the homeland defense force combat strength. Under the pretense of exercises to acclimate the crew with their new captain, you would send the _Remembrance_ out, probably to the L4 cluster where there are lots of defunct colony ruins, with a minimal escort. It'll be too good to pass up, losing that carrier would be a huge blow to morale and would shake public confidence in the administration even more. The trick is going to be getting the ambush force into place without the Eddies finding out about it. I presume you mean to use the _Endymion_? It has Mirage Colloid, right?"

"Top marks, Martin. You can be my XO anytime." Waltfeld smiled tightly. "But I have no intention of calling upon the _Endymion_. It would require the reordering of too many of my other plans. It's our Gundam carrier after all, and the only ship that can transition from orbit to surface in stealth and surface to orbit without the aid of the mass driver. That's going to be my hole card in the next stage of the war, able to deploy to any emergency hotspot in a matter of an hour or less, wherever the Eddies are gathering, that ship will be. Taking it all the way out to L4 would leave our ground and orbit forces horribly exposed to the Eddie elites for far too long. Kira alone proved he could take down an Incarnate class while it was without proper Mobile Force support, and despite my reoganization, the Solar Knights are still on the unreliable side."

"Their top brass is still howling about that." Dicosta said with an unsympathic grin. "Breaking their units up to individual squadrons and integrating them with the USN regular army forces on a battalion level was a work of genius sir."

"Wish I could claim credit for it, but I stole the idea from the Isolationist CAD's." Waltfeld admitted. "The Solar Knights are, by and large, definitely elite troops. But the policy of keeping them seperate in terms of responsibility and command structure from the rest of the military was stupid. It led only to distrust and envy between the two branches, and you can't have that between troops fighting side by side. Borderline permissible in a peacetime force, but definitely counterproductive in wartime. Now every army unit will have its own Mobile Suit support under its command and working together day by day with its other soldiers. I expect some friction at first, but in the long run, we should see an increase in morale for both groups, and hopefully a marked decrease in incidences of Solar Knights withdrawing their support from regular army units in the middle of battle. It's so much harder to turn your back on people once you've met them personally, and worked with them towards common goals."

"What about the Paladins and Knight-Champions?" Discosta asked, for the sake of completeness. "I know you reduced their remit for individual action, but I don't see them scattered throughout the forces like the rank and file Knights."

"Combined arms forces are good for general flexibility, especially in a fluid combat situation, and even moreso now that I've given freedom of decision to the theatre base commanders. Them having to relay all major decisions up to High Command was really slowing things down... I'm hands on, but I don't breath down my subordinate's necks either, if they don't force me to that is. As long as they don't go initiating a major offensive behind my back, I don't really care how they handle the day to day pursuit of their mission objectives, as long as they achieve them by my timetables. Indeed, they're the on-site experts, not me, they should know what needs doing to surmount the unique problems they face... if they don't, then I'll replace them with someone who does. I'm the Supreme Commander, but that doesn't mean I want to bog myself down in the deployment of individual regiments, just the opposite in fact. I have to stay on top of the big picture." Waltfeld explained with a tired sigh. Getting all these policy changes through the USN beaucracy was the cause of his worst daily headaches. So much had been screwed up by his predecessor, they'd be weeks just undoing all the fucked up policies that had been in place, nevermind actually making progress on new ones!

"However, ever since we first developed them, a pure Mobile Suit force has proven to be a great asset for assault situations. No other formation can deploy to as many different environments, against as many adverse factors, with as positive a damage given vs damage taken coefficient as a pure MS blitz. The Solar Knight Paladins, and the Transcendance, as well as the Extended Supersoldiers... they're going to be my hammer. When I eventually do decide the time is right for a major offensive, they'll be the ones clearing the way for the combined arms divisions to mop up and consolidate. I intend to greatly expand their ranks as well, selecting from ZAFT redcoats and Orb's pilots as well... its high time the USN had a truly multinational Mobile Force to rely on for the heavy lifting. They'll also contribute to my ready reserve, along with the Orb Gundams, ready to go wherever things are most difficult, to ease the pressure on the rank and file." Waltfeld continued expansively. "Of course this is all just set-up work, laying foundations for the next stages of my grand strategy. We have to be methodical about this, Martin, we can't just go swaggering down to Earth and expect them to fall to our brute force."

"What about the BALORs?" Dicosta asked, a sudden chill invading the room. It wasn't surprising, given what had happened the last time the BALORs had been deployed.

"They're still finding pilots for them, as I understand it." Waltfeld said quietly. "Once they do, and once I am PERSONALLY satisified we won't have a repeat of the Battle of Nara-Attha City, I'll start worrying about how I'm going to fit them into my plans. For the time being, they're on the back burner." He took a sip from the ubiquitous coffe mug sitting on his desk. "To answer your earlier question though, I'm planning on taking the _Dawnblade_ and its escorts to be the ambush force. It'll require a bit of misdirection, but I'm sure you remember how good we are at moving warships around so that even our own governments aren't sure where they are. I've also laid in a bit of extra insurance. In fact, they should be knocking on the door any minute now."

In point of fact, they didn't knock, but only because they knew they were expected, and one of them had done a bit of discreet prying on the way up from the hangar, and knew that Waltfeld was far from in a formal setting. Still, the other one couldn't help but announce their presence formally, a lifetime of stiff backed military service wasn't just casually discarded, even amongst friends. "Commander Yzak Joule, and copilot, entering." Yzak said, as he opened the door to the study and strode in.

"And copilot? That's all the title you're willing to give me?" Katie commented in mock pique, as she followed her husband into the suddenly somewhat crowded room. "Just you wait, buster, I'll start announcing you as "and husband" when we next go visit Alkire and Raine at work!"

"Well, if you'd bother to accept an actual military rank, it would be easier." Yzak retorted with a roll of his eyes.

"And tie myself down? I like being free-lance, its liberating." Katie nodded greetings at Waltfeld and Dicosta both. "Isn't that right, Martin? Don't you feel so much freer now that you're not in the military proper?" She looked to the redhead for support. "All those stiff rules and reguluations... it's not good for you."

"I wouldn't know. My commander spent most of his time flouting the rules to one degree or another while I was in the military. I'd say he wasn't a good role model, but somehow, he was..." Dicosta said with a smirk.

"Yeah, just you try and follow in my footsteps. There's only one Desert Tiger. I'm the only one capable of pulling off that much cool at any one time." Waltfeld retorted. "I'm glad you two could make it. Your special abilities will be pivotal to the operation I have planned. Having the Balmung along too won't hurt."

"We are at your disposal, Supreme Commander." Yzak answered, with stress on the rank. "You needn't phrase it like we're doing you a personal favor. But, for what its worth, you're welcome. I don't think we can obfuscate the entire ship, but we should be able to block the psychic signals of the majority of the crew, at least for a short time. If they detect us, they'll think we're just a cargo shuttle or a junkhunter's barge. Of coure, that all goes out the window if they spot the ship itself. But that's your problem."

"And you think you can spot them even while they're cloaked? It won't do if they can just turn on the invisibility mode and flee once they realize they've been trapped." Waltfeld asked.

"Shouldn't be a problem." Katie said laconically. "Detection is way easier than obfuscation, especially because they won't be expecting us to use psychic means to detect them. They'll probably stand out like neon signs, especially if the crew is Manifold bonded, which would explain the degree of handling we've seen them display, despite their lack of warship experience."

"Good, then I just have one more concern." Waltfeld replied, keeping his tone jovial as he turned back to Yzak. This was going to be distasteful, but it was long overdue in his opinion. He just hoped Katie didn't give the game away too early with an accidental probe of his thoughts. "You trust me, don't you, Yzak?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't. I still have my permit for individual operation under ZAFT's homeland defense code after all. I am at your disposal... but its because I choose to be."

"And we're friends, aren't we?" Waltfeld pressed. Yzak gave him a puzzled look, but nodded.

"And you value my opinions?" Waltfeld continued, playing out the line a bit more.

"Does this have a point?" Yzak countered, a bit wary now.

"I just wanted to know. I was planning on asking Ezalia to marry me, you know. That would have made you my stepson. Could you have accepted that?"

"If you're asking me if I see you as a father figure, then no. If you mean did I consider you an acceptable match for my mother, then yes. You made her happy, I've never seen anyone make her smile like you did. I would have welcomed you as a permanent part of her life, and by extension, mine." Yzak was frowning now. "This seems an odd time to come out and..."

"And do you in any way doubt that I loved Ezalia as much as you do?" Waltfeld cut him off. There was a long moment of silence. "I'm asking you all this because don't you think enough is enough? We all know how much you miss her, and how angry you are at what happened to her. I was THERE, Yzak. I walked into the house barely a minute too late to save her life, or at least attempt to. You think I don't feel guilt? You think I'm not enraged by the thought of what happened? But do you see me, shoving away my friends and projecting my own sense of inadequacy onto others? You don't, do you? So my real question is... why do you think its okay for YOU to do that, huh?"

"I don't know what you mean..." Yzak said tightly, his scar looking unusually livid across his face as some of the color drained from his cheeks.

"You wanna make this hard? Okay, I can do that." Waltfeld challenged him. "You've let yourself become a disruptive influence in the Clyne Faction. Or the Royalists, whatever we call ourselves now. Dearka and Athrun are still seeing eye to eye on most things, and I know Murrue, Mu and the others aren't out of whack. You're the only rogue element. You're the only one going off on your own, in your obsession to defeat Frost. Telling your friends, people who've fought at your side and your back for decades, that you don't want their help anymore. That you suddenly don't trust them to fight as your allies. You're being consumed by your obsession, drowning in your hate, and letting it blind you to the reality of your situation. You couldn't protect your mother. You couldn't defeat Frost. You couldn't convince Kira he was in the wrong. But no one blames you for these things... so why are you so quick to go to ill considered and extreme risks to try and correct them? You're just making things worse, for everyone."

"You're going to take me to task for my battlefield decisions now?" Yzak said icily.

"No, that's not it at all. I'm taking you to task for letting yourself be in the emotional state that leads to BAD battlefield decisions in the first place! That's not how the Joule's operate, and you know it. You're always the one in control of the rage, not the rage in control of you. If you had let Athrun fight alongside you in Nara-Attha City... if you'd trusted him to have your back, like he always has before, even if his heart is conflicted about Kira, then you never would have had to rely on a frankly desperate measure like playing on Kira's emotive wounds and sense of grief to gain an advantage. I understand that for you and Katie alone, there was no other good choice... but my point is, you never should have BEEN alone in the first place! You don't have to do everything yourself, Yzak... even Kira didn't beat Frost alone the first time, don't you remember that?" Waltfeld sighed heavily. "So just when was it that salving your own sense of guilt and inadequacy became more important to you than actually solving the problems at hand? When did you throw away that stiff necked Joule pride in the face of adversity I fell in love with so much? Just when did you start acting like Kira has been?" There was another very long silence.

"You've always annoyed me, from the very first day I met you." Yzak said softly, lips barely moving. "I never would have called you "father"." He added, turning around and walking out of the room without another word. Katie lingered behind, sensing that he needed time to himself to work things out, now that he'd finally admitted to himself there was a problem. It wasn't that he was soley in the wrong, but at the same time, he had been becoming more a part of the problem than the solution of late.

"Thanks for doing that. I couldn't figure out how." She admitted quietly.

"I had to get him to see what everyone else aleady had. If he has to despise me for that to happen, I'll take what I can get." Waltfeld said wearily.

"Yzak doesn't despise you, Mr. Waltfeld, not before and definitely not now. He respects you so much he's just not comfortable showing it. Just like how he never acts friendly with Athrun... when it comes to guys, the nastier and more dismissive Yzak acts to you, the more he values you... he's just afraid to show it. Probably because he didn't have his dad when growing up, he never really learned how to be affectionate with guys." Katie refuted with a smile. "He's definitely a handful... but then again, that's how the Joule's are, as you well know."

Waltfeld was about to reply, in the affirmative, when they were interrupted by a chime from his desk, and Lexi manifested a pint sized avatar in the next moment, a six inch tall figure standing next to his coffee mug. "Sorry to intrude on such a lovely moment." She said, having been passively monitoring the room as a matter of course. "But we've got problems. Well, more specifically, Namara's got problems, but they're the sort of problems that are going to be your problems really soon, Andrew." Without waiting for anyone to react, the AI brought up a live news feed from Second Earth 1, only a few hundred thousand kilometers from where the _Dawnblade_ hung in low orbit over the Moon. A wall of incoherent white noise washed into the office like a tidal wave, making all the fleshies flinch before she toned down the volume, having left it on high deliberately to better illustrate the problem.

Because it wasn't white noise, it was merely tens of millions of people all shouting, screaming, yelling and crying at once, the streets of well over half the colony flooded with rioting populace, a free for all orgy of confusion, violence and civil unrest. It had no beginning, no ending and no apparent leadership or organization, just people tearing out of their habs in the middle of the colony's night, and taking to the streets en masse without any clear purpose or goal. It was like nearly fifty million citizens had all just gone crazy at the same time, and the phenomenon was spreading, more and more quarters of the colony erupting into spontaneous chaos, like an invisible event horizon was sweeping through the streets. Civil authorities were trying to respond, but even with Namara's help, containing the riots was proving impossible, no sooner than was one hab block locked down than another would go berserk, and even many of the responding riot control units were succumbing to the craze, melting into the mobs like pebbles dropped into the ocean.

"WHAT IN ALL THE NAMES OF HELL IS GOING ON?" Waltfeld demanded, finding his voice even as the hologram showed a group of riot police opening fire into the crowd using live ammunition... though whether in a desperate attempt to keep the stampeding horde of civilians at bay, or out of random mad impulse, he could not tell. Dicosta had produced a handheld quantum comm device and was speaking into it intently, investigating events from within the civilian side of things.

"We don't know." Lexi replied, speaking jointly for the AI's, even as Namara manifested her own avatar on the desk, facing Dicosta.

"I've sampled the air in a thousand different locations, and there is no sign of outside contaminants." The USN AI reported tersely. "The colony has suffered no external damage, though there is extensive superficial damage to the interior caused by the rioting. This is an unexpected phenemonon, no data exists from which to draw conclusions." Her image frowned heavily. "Why is this happening to MY people?" She asked, a rhetorical question.

"Can you examine their mental states?" Katie asked.

"I think it's fairly obvious what their mental states are." Lexi replied thinly. "They're suffering from acute terror, unfocused hatred, and mass confusion. Each and every one of them is lashing out blindly at anything that comes close to them."

"Yes." Katie agreed shortly. "But can you actually scan any of their brainwaves? There must be some stimulus that's causing this state of panic, I want to know if they're reacting to what's going on around them, or if they're reacting to something else. Something external."

"She has a point." Namara said at once. "I cannot do brainwave analysis in such conditions, there are too many people and too many excaberating factors at play. But studying the progression of the riot shows that sometimes the phenemenon skips past barriers that should preclude the next victims from having any idea such unrest is coming their way."

"Which means what?" Dicosta and Waltfeld asked almost at the same time.

"Which means its a psychic attack." Katie said dourly. "Just like what happened at Cape York, when Noah and Meyrin almost wiped out the entire attack force with their fear-storm. Most of those pilots had no way of knowing what has happening to their friends, no real reason to be that afraid... the fear just came from nowhere, like a waking nightmare."

"On such a scale?" Waltfeld's voice was filled with dread. "Affecting tens of millions of people millions of kilometers away?"

"Porta Panama." Dicosta pointed out grimly. "Hundreds of thousands of USN soldiers were compelled to abandon their posts and disappeared into the wilderness due to the influence of the Grand Chimera known as the Caller, who was situated thousands of miles away. And as far as we can tell, the creature wasn't exactly exerting itself in so doing, they just naturally fell within it's mental reach, much as I would reach out and pick up the Commander's coffee mug by simply leaning forward."

"Even so, if the Caller could have reached into space with its compulsion, we'd have seen it before now." Katie refuted. "We sure as hell wouldn't have orbital superiority over Earth if that was the case."

"So they put it on a ship? I thought the creature was supposed to be enormous..." Waltfeld protested.

"Maps of the subterranean tunnel system beneath the ruins of Neo-Miami, postulated to be the lair of this Grand Chimera, indicate it would overfill the interior capacity of even an Incarnate class dreadnaught." Namara reported. "Such a ship would be extremely noticable, I should think."

"It could be cloaked." Lexi pointed out. "Their Photo-Refraction cloaks are near perfect, we still have no reliable way of detecting them other than using debris fields of some sort."

"It doesn't necessarily have to be a Grand Chimera." Katie mused. "Or even a Chimera at all. A group of talented humans, Latents and Actives working together, could generate some pretty powerful effects. Noah and Meyrin alone almost killed thousands of soldiers with their attack, and this seems much less intense than that... a raging panic, not a heart-stopping terror. Once you got people started with it, you could trust to confusion and emotional inertia to keep it going, you wouldn't have to keep the focus on every single person, just those who weren't yet panicking already. That would also explain why it jumps like it does, and doesn't just affect the whole colony simultaneously." She shook her head, half in admiration, half in disgust. "Such incredible effort... but such a twisted usage..." She commented to herself under her breath. Though she wasn't one to talk... she'd twisted a few brains herself, in the past, after all. But she liked to think she would never employ her powers on such a scale, even if it were possible.

"I need to go." Dicosta announced, after checking a message on his comm. "The Administration is scrambling to restore order, and the President has requested my presence. May I quote your diagnosis of the situation to him?" He asked Katie.

"Just don't name any names. The last thing I need to do is remind more powerful people that I'm kind of an expert myself on fucking with people's heads." Katie said with grim flippancy.

"Namara, scan the surroundings of SE1 and report any anomalies." Waltfeld ordered, waving his hand in dismissal towards Dicosta, shifting into command mode, with no time for social niceties.

"I've been doing that nonstop since the riots first started. No anomalies detected, Supreme Commander." The dark haired AI reported, a bit stiffly. "But if this is an Edenite ship, that would not be strange, even without their cloak in effect, their hulls are sensor immune, for reasons I am unable to rationally explain."

"Then scan visually!" Waltfeld barked. "We know what they look like, just tell me if you see anything that doesn't look like a standard USN ship!"

"Enemy ships have displayed holoshroud and holoprojection capabilities similar to that used by Brotherhood terrorist units in the past." Lexi reminded him. "Especially if the vessels are at rest, a purely visual examination would not necessarily suffice to determine identity with certainty."

"Couldn't you just look for holes though?" Katie asked thoughtfully. "Use visual scopes to locate a ship, then bombard that location with sensors, and look for a ship you can see but not detect?"

"Commencing." Namara said immediately. "Operation will take some time though. There are thousands of vessels in constant motion around SE1, even my computational speed will take some time to perform this procedure satisfactorily on all of them. If I could narrow down the proximity of the enemy ship, that would be one thing, but they could be within touching distance of the outer hull, or tens of thousands of kilometers away... we don't have sufficient data to tell."

"Can't help you on that one." Katie said regretfully. "It varies hugely. Noah and Meyrin could only affect a few miles radius around the Great Endeavor. Lacus alone reached everyone who could hear her voice, regardless of whether they were on Earth or in space. I would suspect they're fairly close though, especially if it's a direct mental attack, rather than one using another sensory media, like Lacus's singing." She suddenly smacked her palm into her forehead. "DUH! Give me and Yzak permission to launch. If we can get there before they stop their attack, we should be able to pick them out fairly easily. That much psychic effort would be like they were shooting off flares. We could at least give you the general quadrant to search through!"

"Do it." Waltfeld ordered without having to think twice. He turned to Lexi. "Get us under way, right now, and the fleet too. We can't let them get away with this sort of thing!"

xxxx

**Space, approaching Second Earth 4, aboard **_**Norn**_**, April 25th, 3:00 PM**

_We are nearly in position to commence the next round of psychic assaults._ The deck officer reported to Kunai telepathically, his mental voice sounding just a bit weary. They were all getting tired, two weeks out from launching from New Eden, and almost all of that time spent in high tension environments, wondering when the Oosen would finally wise up to their true strategy. So far it hadn't happened yet, though at the same time, the other phases of the plan hadn't shown nearly the results Kunai had been hoping for. The GreenCo Loki's had made many successful attacks on USN shipping units, and fought at least one inconclusive engagement with SPF warships, but the enemy had hardly stepped up their fleet activity at all in response, and certainly hadn't withdrawn many warships from planetary orbit to conduct search and destroy missions. Kunai still wasn't sure whether this was apathy on the part of the Oosen commanders, or a carefully calculated response to his desire to string out their forces.

At least the massed psychic assaults were going well. Second Earth 1 was still suffering fitful spats of unrest, though it had been five days since the _Norn_ had stopped inciting panic in the minds of its populace. Fear was a self propogating emotion, so that every minor scare or incident of rioting or looting that occured on the colony brought everyone to the brink of collapse once more, as their traumatized minds gave extra weight to otherwise unexceptional threats. They'd hit other colonies as well, using different tactics on each one, striving to find the assault mode that was the most devastating. The raw fear used on SE1 was powerful, but very draining on the psychic choir the crew formed. Second Earth 3 had been hit with surgical strikes at random, using Bodily System Control to paralyze groups of ten to twenty citizens at a time, suffocating them in their homes and streets and places of business. This took relatively little effort, but provided suboptimal results... plenty of fear, but people hunkered down rather than gave in to panic.

They'd broken the pattern to strike at Aprilius in the PLANTs, using a variation on the surgical strike to literally mind control a detachment of USN military police, and send them rampaging through the colony in their armored vehicles, attacking their own populace. This had worked out fairly well, especially as many of the mind controlled soldiers had survived the fray, and tensions between the military and civilians in the PLANTs were on the rise, as none of the soldiers were left with memories of what they'd done while being puppeteered. They'd even swept low over the Lunar surface, coasting over Armstrong City with a two part assault, first mind control to cause the operators of the city power plants to manually shut down the reactors that provided the city with heat and light, then starting mass panic attacks like on SE1 one as the lunar metropolis plunged into cold darkness. Casualties from that were still being discovered, but the numbers were in the hundreds of thousands.

Now they would be trying the same thing again at SE4. They would mind control the operators of the colony's spaceport, and get them to manually jam open the massive cargo airlocks that serviced the city, opening it to the void. The actual threat would be relatively minimal, even such large hatches would depressurize the colony very slowly, it was just so massive, but the mere fact that the colony was losing air would make generating the mass panic later much easier. This time they would also attempt to implant false memories in the minds of the spaceport personnel, of getting orders from the USN military to purge the colony's atmosphere. It should help create even more distrust and confusion between the Oosen civilians and their military.

Kunai's lips twisted into a feral grin as he headed for the bridge. He knew he shouldn't enjoy this as much as he was, that this was a horrible, scarring thing he was doing, that would rupture lives and shatter dreams, but at the same time, it was hard not to feel a sense of righteous vengeance. Because the emotional seeds they used to gestate the fear effect were taken from Alexander, who had in turn sifted them from the recollections of the Edenites he'd rescued from the Oosen's death camp in England. They were literally inflicting the Oosen's own torments upon them, sharing the depravities their own soldiers had inflicted upon innocent Edenites with the Oosen population. See if they found it so unremarkable when it was them feeling the knives cutting into skin, or watching their loved ones burn to ash, even if it was only in the figments of their imagination!

Stepping onto the bridge, he took his accustomed place on the command pulpit, closing his eyes as he felt the ambient psychic energy on board the ship swell, as the crew who weren't responsible for critical operations work gathered in the LEMIM chambers in preparation for the attack to come. Alex was with them, serving as the focus for the choir, all but entombed in a LEMIM apparatus of his own at the heart of the ship. It was only through the cooperation of Yggdrasil that they could mass produce LEMIM items like this, though the mass produced items were nowhere near as potent as the individually crafted masterpieces of Vaul and a rare few other artisans. In large part, this equipment only qualified as LEMIM because it was carved from the "flesh" of Yggdrasil itself, it took only the merest fraction of effort on the part of the artisans to imprint Latent resonation abilities into the highly psychoactive wood.

A twinge of disorder brought his eyes snapping open, as he oriented upon a sudden contact picked up by the _Norn_'s sensor arrays. It was a Mobile Suit, which had been launched from somewhere on the opposite side of Second Earth 4. A moment later and the unit identification codes found a match. It was the Balmung, one of Orb's Gundams. Kunai felt an automatic frissure of concern, before reminding himself that the _Norn_ was disguised by the holoprojectors of its escorts, so that it appeared to be just another bulk transport and attendant cargo barges idling along the shipping lanes between the massive spherical colonies. This same disguise had seen them sail right by many warships of the home defense force, some so close they could have opened fire upon them with the _Norn_'s Ion Disintegrators if they'd wanted to.

The appearance of the Orb Gundam in this specific area was a troubling anomaly though. Gundams weren't exactly best suited for use as personal transports after all. They could certainly get the job done, especially those with FPR's, which could travel unaided from orbit to surface and surface to orbit in return, something which few ships could do, but long distance travel in Gundams or other Mobile Suits was excrutiatingly dull and uncomfortable. Three moments later, when Kunai saw that the Balmung was on a more or less direct course for the _Norn_, and was in fact accelerating, he realized the jig was up. He berated himself for not remembering sooner that Yzak and Katie were Newtypes as well. It was so easy to forget that, since they willingly worked with the Oosen, but they could no doubt sense the psychic energies the _Norn_ was starting to put off, at least at such comparatively short range.

_Abort psychic assault preparations!_ Kunai sent urgently into the crew's manifold link. _All hands to battle stations, prepare for anti-Mobile Suit combat. Alex, get to your Wraith, I'll join you in the Exemplar. We've got the Balmung barreling down on us!_

_Just one Gundam?_ Alexander's reply was sharp with anticipation. _We'll rip them apart..._

xxxx

**Balmung**

_They've seen us. The psychic buildup is breaking down, and I sense agitation all of a sudden._ Katie reported, her "voice" distant and distracted, the majority of her attention on the task of probing as much data out of the Eddie warship as she could. Also, she was funneling those psychic impressions both to Yzak and back to the _Dawnblade_ in the form of simulated computer data, through the Divine Eye system built into the Balmung's cockpit. The technology to turn mental signals into "physical" pictures or data... it was amazing how far they'd come since the days when the mere word "Gundam" was enough to send the world into chaos.

_Agitation, is it? That'll do for the moment, but I intend to do much better than that soon._ Yzak replied wolfishly. He felt the tug of indignant rage on the levers of his emotional controls... these people, these psychics, just like him and Katie, had been causing havoc amongst innocent civilians, for most of a week now! Hundreds of thousands were dead, and millions more injured, displaced or traumatized by the chaos unleashed by the mass psychic assaults. Soldiers, police, nurses, teachers, schoolkids, babes in arms, the elderly... all were affected by the indiscriminate attacks equally! It gave new meaning to the word "terrorism", and it ignited a burning need in Yzak to do far more than simply put a stop to the attacks. Now it was personal... ever since that shuttle of civilians at the 8th Fleet battle, Yzak had a sore point about soldiers turning on noncombatants!

He considered this rage for a moment, before balling it up and shoving it back down deep inside himself. Now wasn't the time to let feeling overrule duty, no matter how satisfying it might feel. Indignation he allowed to remain, he couldn't shut himself off from his feelings entirely, and indignation was a fairly bland and controllable emotion. Let the anger burn deep down inside, like the cherry red embers at the base of a fire, let it infuse his body with warmth and direction... but he couldn't let it burst into flame and consume him. He just wasn't strong enough to contain himself once he got going down that path, if not for the help of others, dousing the flames by pricking his pride, he'd have continued on forever into that degenerate spiral of self destruction. Just thinking about it made him twitch with shame.

Especially because it wasn't like it was the first time, or anything. He'd acted almost the exact same way when Chanel had died, he'd thrust everyone away from him, and headed out to Porta Panama alone to take his mad vengeance on Asmodeus. And had nearly gotten himself killed to no good result for his trouble. He just couldn't handle loss of his loved ones, whenever it happened, he went temporarily insane, that was all he could think of to explain it. And only near death experience or the slap on the face from someone he deeply respected could snap him out of it. He hadn't realized he'd felt so strongly about Andrew Waltfeld, but perhaps seeing him make his mother so happy these past few years had allowed the overly relaxed bastard to creep his way into Yzak's heart through the back door while he wasn't looking!

Whenever he lost control, he always ended up putting himself, and often a lot of other people he cared about, into life threatening danger, for less than adequate reasons. What Frost had done to Cagalli and Athrun was much worse than the relatively quick and clean death he'd inflicted on his mother, especially because the aftermath had directly contributed to Cagalli losing the love and respect of the only biological family she'd ever had. But neither of them had abandoned all other sense in a rabid pursuit of vengeance for what had been done to them. How was it possible that Athrun could STILL be more mature than him like that? It was beyond shameful, it was mortifying! Was that what the senior officers had seen, so long ago, when they promoted Athrun over him to team command? If so, he couldn't blame them, he wouldn't have promoted the Yzak he'd recently been either.

_Two other ships moving in on us._ Katie's report broke him out of his introspection, and he chided himself again. Losing control of himself was bad enough, getting distracted by his own shame was just plain unworthy. He'd have plenty of time to wallow in angst later, when it was just him and Katie, or maybe just him and Waltfeld, right now, everyone needed Commander Yzak Joule, Gundam Ace of ZAFT, to be at his peak. _Size and movements match the profile for the raider ships attacking shipping. They're moving to cut us off from the bigger ship._ She informed him, even as the Balmung warned him of targeting sensors starting to lock on to them, like hot beams of phantom light crawling across his skin.

_Let them._ Yzak answered with deliberate coldness. He lifted the Caladabolg hyperthermal rifle and snapped a power cartridge into the breech with a flick of his shield hand. The Eddie ships were fast and maneuverable, far moreso than any USN, ZAFT or Orb ships of similar size could ever be. But compared to a Mobile Suit, much less a masterpiece Gundam from Orb, they were still just warships, clunky, clumsy and lethargic. The closer they got, they easier it would be to shoot them down. Someone on one of the Eddie ships seemed to remember this truth right about then, because they suddenly cut in reverse thrust and began trying to pull away from him, even as they launched a half dozen VTP missiles apiece to buy some time.

Yzak ignored the missiles, even though each warhead was strong enough to seriously damage the Balmung, and two or three together could turn the machine into kibble sized bits of wreckage. It wasn't because the missiles were illusions, though the enemy certainly had the capability to launch such decoys at him, and it wasn't because he was confident in his ability to dodge them. Normal missiles maybe, but VTP missiles were too fast, too smart, to be reliably dodged even by top notch pilots like him. But he didn't have to dodge, because as soon as the streaking munitions got within about 90 feet of the Balmung, all their much hyped guidance software got instantly fried, even the electronic triggers for the explosive warheads were shorted out in an instant, causing them to detonate prematurely, courtesy of the constantly pulsing invisible waves of the "Storm Aegis" Electromagnetic Protection Field his machine used as CIWS.

Through Katie, he could all but taste the shock and constrenation of the Eddie ship crews as their attack was so effortlessly negated, a simple waste of ammunition, as each missile burst into a brief lived globe of flame upon reaching the other edge of the Storm Aegis, as if striking an invisible wall. He raised the Caladbolg, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger. A dark blue beam of focused x-ray radiation, more or less a nuclear blast forced into the shape of a beam, escaped from the weapon's muzzle, almost instantly expanding to a dozen times wider than the barrel's constricting caliber. Caught napping while they were waiting for their missiles to buy time, one of the Loki's was caught dead in the path of the beam, which slammed into and through the Borealite hull in an instant. Bright yellow flames burst into being across the dagger shaped hull, the crew's psychic signatures blinking out in a pain filled instant as they were roasted alive at their stations.

The ship failed to explode, at least at first, beginning an uncontrolled tumble through space that would have taken it to the lunar surface sooner or later, perhaps intact enough to be studied by the USN scientists. That is, until its sister ship trained its primary armament onto the dead ship, and blew apart its reactor core with a single precise shot of the 300mm Ion Disintegrator, turning it into just so much rapidly expanding plasmatic gas. Yzak was almost impressed by the cold, calculating certitude of the action. But from a commander who could unleash mass psychic assaults upon noncombatants, such split second triage actions were only to be expected, he didn't doubt for a moment that the same thing would have happened if there had still been survivors aboard the derelict vessel. That's the kind of icy intellect they were up against here.

But taking the time to blow up the evidence had delayed the second Loki's retreat maneuver, and though his rifle was spent for the time being, smoking power core ejecting from the breech to spin away into the void, the Balmung was close enough that there was no way for the ship to maneuver away in time. Stowing the rifle across his back under his cloak, Yzak drew one of his Fafnir OMMB's and readied his shield for close quarters combat maneuvers. He could feel fear start to radiate from the remaining escort ship, through Katie's probing senses, as he closed implacably upon them. _Not so brave, when it's a straight fight against someone who can see through your deceptions, are you?_ Yzak thought with grim satisfaction. _Don't worry, unlike what you've done to our civilians, I won't let you suffer long..._

The Loki deployed its Phantasm holographic drones in the next instant, 24 Dervishes popping up on his visual displays, the drones even managed to put out reasonable facimilies of thruster heat for the pictued Mobile Suits. But thanks to Katie, Yzak could easily see the single actual Dervish the ship had been able to deploy. A twitch of his eyebrow, and all the false images disappeared from his sight, the Balmung's camera eyes editing them out after he'd target painted the real one. Truly, if there was one Gundam that was best suited for confronting foes who relied upon illusion and misdirection, it was the Balmung. The old saying was set a fox to catch a fox, in this case it was set psychics to catch psychics. And he felt no guilt about it... not when going up against those who employed what were basically psychic WMD's on civilians. He didn't agree with what the USN did to Edenites, especially after seeing Camp 2... but this sort of action wasn't a justifiable response either, in his opinion. It would just make everything worse in the long run!

The Eddie came rushing straight up to him, relying on the Phantasms to disguise his actions as he deployed his QC fighting claws from his machine's forearms, as the beam cannons or linear rifles would not easily penetrate the Citadel scales of the Balmung's armor. Yzak didn't have to imagine the Custodian's surprise when the Balmung effortlessly batted away one sweeping forearm with its Bulwark tactical shield, golden sparks spitting from where the QC edges bit only partway through the Citadel field covering of the shield. _Don't rely so much on the advantages of deception._ Yzak informed th pilot passionately, speaking within his own skull only as he simply stabbed his Fafnir forward, the glowing blue blade punching through the Dervish's cockpit in a heartbeat, imapling the pilot and killing the reactor in one thrust. _Someday, you'll encounter someone who's not fooled._

_Getting your mystic on, Yzak-y?_ Katie observed, half cautiously, half cheerfully.

_As furious as I am right now, it's the only way for me to respond to these bastards without losing control. Indignation is the key to breaking the grip of rage._ Yzak replied with a thin smile, as he shook the dead Dervish off his blade..

_And philosophical too. It's good to have this version of my Yzak-y back._ She commented, closing her arms slightly tighter around him in the fluid filled confines of the cockpit. _They've started shielding their thoughts more._ _And incoming trap, switch on the Vari-Cams. _She added in a more serious tone, the image of the Loki suddenly turning translucent and shimmery in his vision as the ship engaged its photo-refractor cloak and tried to slip away while invisible. Objects began to spill from the hindquarters of the ship, invisible to normal eyes and sensors, but not against Vari-Cameras, revealing them to be some sort of guided bomb or mine, the Eddies plainly trying to lay a trap for him as they fled. He opened up with the twinned monodisc launcher on his left shoulder, 75mm explosive discs spitting rapidly from the flat barrels.

Two of the mines blew apart under the barrage, spilling dark purple-reddish dust in all directions, and Yzak didn't need to feel a flash of alarm from Katie in order to pull well away from the drifting stuff, even if it was probably inert at the moment. They'd seen that very stuff in action before, at Camp 2, even if only after the fact when watching Alkire's mission recorder. Maroon EDEN, or something like that... a more controlled successor to the ultimate nanoscourge that was Blue EDEN. But just because it wouldn't endlessly consume all matter it came into contact with like Blue didn't make Maroon any less of a horrible weapon. Yzak had seen people devored alive by nanoscourges before, it was one of the worst possible ways to die... painful, prolonged and utterly incurable! And these Edenites, who were so glad to preach about how they were wronged and mistreated, had damned 500 million people to such a death, only a few months ago! Maybe even these very Edenites here were the perpatrators!

Yzak pulled out of his pursuit of the Eddie ship, both to avoid the Maroon EDEN clouds, and to discourage the enemy from feeling like they had to keep deploying the awful mines. The fewer of those things that were floating about near the Second Earth colonies, the better. Yzak didn't want to condemn any more civilians to that horror, just to pursue a fleeing enemy. A pull on his thoughts from Katie brought his attention round to the Eddie flagship, which had just then stood down from its preparations for psychic mass assault, and was now turning on him in warship mode. Two Mobile Suits had been deployed from the ship, which either had no remote drones or had figured they were useless anyway. Yzak didn't have to wait for Katie's exclamations, he recognized both suits instantly, based on pure appearance alone!

One was the Eddie Gundam which had dumped Blue EDEN on Dearka's family during Blue Monday, the spare framed Exemplar piloted by none other than Sai Argyle, that deranged relic from the Isolation era, though he apparently went by the name Kunai now. A delusion madman was still a delusional madman though, regardless of what he wanted his name to be! And the other was the Praetorian they'd run into at Camp 2, the giant, surly son of a bitch with the greatsword, who'd been all high and mighty about how horrible the USN was to abuse the Eddies. Which was true enough, it was horrible... but for him to turn around and do THIS? How did that make him any more righteous than the RI exterminators? It was still preying on the helpless, no matter how you tried to justify it!

_I wish I could still hate you._ Yzak sent to the two incoming Edenites. _But by now, all I can feel is deep sadness. You're only making everything worse for everybody, in the long run..._

_So we should just roll over and let ourselves be exterminated, is that what we should do, lickspittle?_ A deep, growling mental voice spat back, words like hammerblows against Yzak's brain, even though it wasn't meant as an attack, he was just that forceful in communicating. _Not all of us can be so successful at sucking up to the Oosen bastards as you and your wife are. One day they'll turn on you, lapdog... I just wish I could be there to watch as you learn the truth of the Oosen's value for psychics!_

_Of course you should fight back against the prospect of extermination!_ Yzak retorted with a scowl of disdain. Why did this guy take so much delight in twisting his words to mean the most ridiculous of things? Was he just naturally a belligerent asshole who enjoyed picking fights? He brought sword and shield to bear, bracing himself as the Praetorian rocketed in with a banzai charge, tilting his shield to deflect the zweihander slightly so it didn't strike dead on. The force of the blow still shook every structural bone in the Balmung's body, and forced the Gundam back as golden sparks flew for a hundred meters from the action of the QC blade slicing off most of the face of the Citadel shield, like scraping ice from a windshield. It would reform shortly, but for the next few seconds, that field effect was compromised.

Yzak cursed himself for getting distracted with talking, switching the field effect to a Positron barrier without waiting for the Citadel field to recover. If he'd only done that a few moments sooner, Alex would be short one sword right about now! _You should fight back..._ Yzak hissed, swinging with Fafnir and being deflected by a flick of the zweihander in turn. _But going so far as to emulate the very genocidal actions of those who attack you? To go even further than they, in scale if not scope? That doesn't make you righteous, that just makes you vindictive. Worse, it just escalates the hatred on both sides!_

_You sound like Executor Yamato._ Alex answered with a grunt of disgust, as he feinted with his sword before kicking out with a leg, rebounding ineffectually from the Balmung's interposed shield.

_A week ago, that comment would have made my blood boil._ Yzak admitted ruefully. _I still don't appreciate it... if I ever start getting half as idealistic as Kira is, I want someone to slap me, hard, until I sober up. But in this case, he's right. It's only common sense after all. If your allies AND your enemies are telling you the same thing, maybe you ought to consider listening..._ He activated the 40mm "Guillotine" FRALA on his right shoulder, the short range, constant beam laser slicing a small section off the top of the left shoulder of Alex's machine as he dodged away, the big human skull image there looking like it had just been trepanned. Yzak kicked the chainsaw edge of his shield into motion and swung for the doging Wraith's hip, just barely missing and being forced to dodge in turn as a wild flailing motion of Alex's sword almost took off his head. They both backed out of extreme close range to reasses a bit.

A wordless screech of warning from Katie was the only warning Yzak got, other than a momentary twinge of "oh crap" down in his subconscious, as another reason for Alex suddenly clearing out became apparent. A glittering swarm of QC shards came whirling out of the void towards the Balmung, the Exemplar having finished maneuvering to pin the Orb Gundam between the two Edenites, as much as possible in space anyway. A frantic wave of his shield disintegrated a half dozen of the shards in bursts of bright light, as they struck the Positron field, before the remainder instantly switched direction and spun around the shield, like deadly homing frisbees. There was no way to block them all, so Yzak just concentrated on keeping them away from the cockpit as much as possible. Phantom pain and sudden lethargy assailed him as the rectangular QC shards slammed into and through his Gundam in a dozen different spots.

Both shoulder mounted weapons went spinning off in showers of actinic blue and glowing golden sparks, his head lost an eye and got split through the middle of the forehead, his sword arm was half severed at the elbow, and he took three different shards through the pelvis area, all at slightly converging angles. Reactor output dropped precipitously to compensate for damage to the cooling systems, and the Balmung entered a slow drift as the thrusters powered down to emergency mode. And still, despite all that, Yzak was actually somewhat surprised to be alive. It had been a well sprung ambush, and the TK controlled QC shards were fiendishly agile, far moreso than any technological armaments could be at such ranges and speeds.

_Wondering why you're still alive?_ A second psychic voice enquired smugly. It didn't sound much like the Sai Arglye Yzak remembered, though he could admit he'd never really known the guy well. _You're both powerful, for non-Edenites, and what's more, you're creative. We could use people like you in the Praetorians. Though only after you learned to control your impetuosity. One Gundam, against three warships and multiple Mobile Suits? You always were the most reckless of the Clyne Faction, Mr. Joule. You have an awfully high opinion of yourself._

_Save it, you egomaniac._ Katie interrupted him. _We're not like Kira, we're not going to let our emotions overwhelm our good sense, no matter how much we might want to sometimes. Not anymore. We don't agree with the USN's actions either, but we're not going to stoop to siding with genocidal maniacs to fix it, that's completely counterproductive. Something like that can only be truly brought to a halt through internal change, not external force._

_We'll see if you still feel the same way after we expose you to Green EDEN and you become kill-on-sight to the USN as well._ Kunai answered with dreadful calm. The _Norn _was drawing closer, its weapon systems oriented towards the mostly disabled Balmung, which began to drift against its momentum and towards the cruiser as Kunai exerted a TK push against it. _And if you're still not convinced of the righteousness of our stance, maybe I'll give you a chance to settle your vendetta against Frost. I'll be sure to get rid of at least ONE annoyance that way._

_And to think I was pissed at Kira for willingly siding with Frost._ Yzak said scathingly. _When all this time he was allying himself with someone completely despicable, like you! At least Frost has the balls to not try to justify his insanity! And as for me being reckless and having an overly high opinion of myself... perhaps you ought not to cast stones there. One Gundam against three ships, a Gundam, a Praetorian and other Mobile Suits, and you actually thought I was seriously trying to destroy you all by myself? You give yourself too much credit, you're not worth that kind of effort on my behalf._

_What do you mean...?_ Yzak could all but feel the bottom dropping out of Kunai's guts, and it was a sweet sensation. He didn't have to tell Katie to do anything, she was already a half step ahead of him, as usual. The plan hadn't exactly gone according to plan... he'd certainly never choose to put himself and Katie into a situation where death was likely, or preventabke only through an enemy's twisted sense of emrcy, but he'd underestimated the enemy force a bit, not expecting the Exemplar Gundam. But his luck was in, and Kunai had gotten greedy, tempted into inattention by his gloating over how he would make Yzak and Katie his minions, or send them to a horrible death if they failed to suddenly throw away all their old beliefs just because they were Edenites. He sometimes wondered if the Edenites truly understood what becoming a Edenite did to a person. It certainly gave you a new perspective on some things, but he didn't see himself suddenly forgetting his entire life and starting from scratch either.

Noah had been the same way though, expecting with childish faith that the genetic change he'd forced on people would automatically lead to changes in their morals and cultural beliefs. If only things were really that simple. It was the collapse of society during the Disaster that brought on moral and cultural changes, not the actual transformation itself. But that was neither here nor there, asnew contact icons began appearing on the Balmung's sensors, as FPR's kicked into gear and brought power flooding through the systems of five Panzerdragoons that had been floating unpowered into the area while Yzak and Katie occupied the attention of the Edenite fleet. They weren't the only ones who could make themselves invisible to the psychic senses of the Eddies after all, and with the massive machines powered down to inactivity, they appeared like space debris or metallic asteroids to most sensors, especially with the sensor baffling tarps they were wrapped in.

They still could have been spotted with visual sensors, but all of those were focused on the immediate threat of the Balmung, especially after he blew away the escort ship with his first shot. The crews of the ships were bonded more deeply than most Manifolds, especially on the _Norn_, which was optomized for psychic combat. A mass die off of an allied vessel sent out a lot of psy-shock in a short time, and they were very open to it. To their credit they weren't crippled, but they were sure as hell distracted, and that was almost as bad. Figuring out which target the Eddies would hit next had been the hardest part of the plan, but with both Lexi and Namara working on studying the attack patterns, such as they were, they figured the last remaining untouched Second Earth colony was a fairly obvious choice, that the Eddies would get around to sooner rather than later.

They'd been lying in wait for more than a day, forcing themselves to ignore the attack on Armstrong City in favor of actually having a chance to trap the enemy. The Eddies weren't the only ones capable of making hard choices about triage when it came to war after all. Nobody was happy about it, especially as the Armstrong City attack was one of the most destructive of them all, but succumbing to emotion and running off in a fury would only leave more people vulnerable in the long run. The ambush was their best chance of stopping the Eddies. Yzak's hard edged grin grew as he felt even more constrenation ripple out from the Eddie warship. With the Panzerdragoon's powering up, the _Dawnblade_ and its battle group were now approaching from the other side of SE4, while the _Remembrance_ and its fleet was making a rapid course change and swinging around wide to come in from the Earthward side, and would close the door to the trap shortly.

_This is the point in time when you surrender quietly, you sons of bitches._ Katie said savagely, as the five Extendeds brought their Ragnarok Mega-Mjolnir's online, crackling sparks of purple-white spitting from the long, shoulder mounted cannons as they juiced up. _Cloak if you want, I can still see you well enough to direct their firepower. And if you stick around long enough to kill us, our fleets will cut you off and barrage you out of existence. Either way, you lose._

xxxx

_... way, you lose._ The smugness of the woman was all but unbearable as she made her pronouncement of doom... perhaps all the moreso because she looked to be correct! Kunai realized he'd allowed himself to be baited into a trap. He should have just ripped the Balmung to pieces in a QC shard storm, but he had to grow a strand of conscience and show mercy, in the hopes of finding another powerful pair of converts to Garden City's forces. They were already Newtypes, they should be naturally inclined to standing with their brethren against the genocidal oppression of the Oosen! He should have known better... not a single person he and Yggdrasil had tried to convert from the Clyne Faction and their hangers on had worked out as planned, it was sheer folly for him to keep trying and expecting different results! Kira had allied himself with Frost, and gone more or less rogue of Yggdrasil's plans. Cyprus had chosen to commit suicide of a sort instead of joining him. And now Yzak and Katie were telling him to be reasonable about fighting a war of genocide, and laughing in his face as he held their lives in the palms of his mind!

_You should flee._ Alex sent to him abruptly, orienting his Wraith towards the closest of the Supersoldiers. _I'll draw their fire long enough for you and the Norn to escape. You're both too vital to the war effort to be lost here._

_I appreciate the gesture, Alex._ Kunai replied with feeling. Good old Alex, willing to die for the cause at the drop of a hat. There was no more perfect member of GreenCo, in his eyes, from the perspective of the Conclave. _But we'll all have to fight if we want to get out of this alive._ A blue and gold seed fell through the vastness of his mind, detonating and sending phantom thrills of energy raging through his whole body. For a brief, transcendental moment, Kunai almost imagined he could feel his toes again, but then the illusion was past, and numbness once more reigned below the waist. It was always thus when he activated his Seed, enough to make him wonder sometimes, just how permanent his crippling really was. His followes didn't need to be told twice, if he was going to use the Seed, then they figured they should do so as well.

Even boosted, things were going to be closer than he'd like. Sacrifices would indeed have to be made. All reasonable avenues of escape had been expertly blocked off by the pincering fleets. That meant they'd need to do something unreasonable in order to get outside the plan of the enemy. Fortunately, he had some experience with that sort of thing... every member of the Archangel's original crew did. He hurled the Exemplar through space, reaching out with his TK to snag the brutal purple-white bolts of the Ragnaroks as they vomited towards the maneuvering _Norn_. One set he could have returned to its source. Maybe even two sets. Five sets of lightning bolts on the other hand, he could only deflect, even Seed boosted. They were slippery things, those chained particles, much moreso than beams or bullets. A sweeping gesture of his hand sent half of his QC shards spinning through the nether towards the massive Panzerdragoons, punching through them in many different spots, but the machines were so massive they could afford to take the damage, especially as he hadn't the time to aim for the cockpits.

But then again, killing them would be counterproductive for his current goals. A imperative mental order sent Alex, the _Norn_ and the remaining Loki class hurtling towards the oncoming Orb fleet, heading towards the Moon, where the "walls" of the trap were thinnest. If they could get past the Orb ships, they'd be able to disappear into the clutter of the Moon's low orbital traffic before the Oosen could get turned around, and furthermore, with them between the Oosen and the Moon, any missed bombardments would chance striking the Moon, or civilian traffic in low orbit, so the Orbites at least would probably hold back. The problem was getting past the Orb fleet in the first place. Because that was the largest concentration of firepower in the whole trap, and one that was primed and ready to engage the oncoming Edenite fleet.

VTP missiles, unguided rockets, gatling cannon shells, and beam blasts hurtled his way in droves, and Kunai had to borrow a page from Kira to stay whole, diverting the missiles and rockets into the path of the beams, since they couldn't hurt him anyway, winnowing down the enemy barrage with their own firepower as he waited for them to get fed up with it. And then one did, raising the massive machine's right arm, pointing the 220cm Positron cannon at the Exemplar. In point of fact, that probably wouldn't hurt the LCR armor either, but it was still the thing he'd been waiting for. A huge spear of crackling red-blue energy vomited forth from the cannon, and Kunai eagerly snatched at it with his mind, curving its path around sharply, and sending it back at the group of Panzerdragoons. Their ablative armor was thick and strong... but not that thick, or that strong, and they were forced to dive in all directions to avoid the unfriendly friendly fire.

Keeping his control over the beam, knowing it would only maintain itself for a short time without constant power input, Kunai sent it curving back at the Panzerdragoons twice more, pushing them further and further out of position, and keeping them too occupied to shoot at him or his ships until the ships at least were too far out of range to effectively target. Surrounding himself with his QC shards in a shroud like shield, Kunai sent the Exemplar after his fleet, which was starting to come under extremely heavy fire from the Orbite ships as they continued their apparently suicidal maneuver. And it was a suicidal maneuver, just not to the degree the Orbites no doubt believed.

The _Dawnblade_ had turned its broadside to the approaching Edenite vessels, so that all three of its gunnery turrets could focus their firepower on the enemy, the Baron Lohengrin rapidfire positron cannons mounted in each turret spitting man thick beams of atomizing energy every couple of seconds. VTP missiles launched in near constant volleys from its missile tubes, and those of its escorts, mostly to intercept the flights of similar missiles the _Norn_ was sending their way from its own launchers. The two Defender class destroyers were moving closer, above and below the fire lane of the battlecruiser, to put their CIWS barrage weapons into better position to deal with the hail of missiles. Linear cannon shells spat through the void, their trajectories criss-crossed by the flickering glimmer of QC harpoons headed the other way, 150mm from the Loki, and 750mm from the _Norn_'s prow launcher.

Deploying pods from the Defenders, similar to the Fractal Feathers of the Lucifer, interposed between the two 150mm harpoons and deflected them in bursts of golden sparks. The 750mm harpoon had much more force behind it though, blowing right through a triplet of pods to hammer into and through the Defender behind them without losing momentum. It didn't hit a vital spot, but a nearly meter wide hole entirely through the spaceship wasn't exactly a minor injury either, and the lower Defender began to withdraw from the line of combat, its weapons falling silent as the crew devoted themselves to damage control tasks.

Flames plumed from the hull of the _Norn_, where several near misses from positron blasts, and direct strikes from linear shells, had overwhelmed the abilities of the other telekinetics amongst the crew to keep the ship safe. The Edenite ships lacked the heavy defenses and energy shields of the Orb or Oosen ships, speed and deception were their primary defenses, and neither of those was of much help in a thunder run right into the teeth of a prepared fleet. The linear shells were just too big and heavy for most telekinetics, even in Seed mode, to handle, and while the positron beams had next to no mass, their high speed made them difficult to deflect as well. The Latent luck field generated by the hull had kept the damage from being critical just yet, but it was clear to Kunai that barring extraordinary circumstance, the _Norn _wasn't going to make it.

And that was when, acting exactly as he'd ordered a short time before, the Loki class swooped down at maximum acceleration and hurled itself like a war dart at the closest Orb ship, the apex Defender class. The QC harpoon launchers spat again, but were deflected once more by the Cherub pods. Those pods were blown apart a second later by a pink flare from the Ion Disintegrator turret, as the Loki powered through, actually increasing its speed, pinkish cones of radiation from the Thermal Exciters mounted on its sides shooting out to both flanks. All guns blazing, as much as was possible for a ship lacking rapidfire weapons, the Loki rammed straight into the Defender at maximum speed, QC tipped ram first. The Loki's were designed for ramming attacks to a certain extent, but not at full emergency speeds, and not while the hull was already stressed from other battle damage.

The nuclear charge contained within the anti-ship lance was entirely extraneous, as a 15,000 ton object moving at a speed of well over 12,000 mph crashed into a 80,000 ton object that was effectively stationary by relative speed. Two warships, in a prow to prow collision at maximum speed. The fireball was, to say the least, extremely impressive. Both ships were more or less vaporized in an instant, the brilliant flash of the conjoined detonation temporarily blinding anything who happened to be looking anywhere near it. And since it was hanging above and slightly in front of the _Dawnblade_, which had all its primary weapons mounted on the dorsal surface of the ship, that including the optical targetic sensors controlling its turrets. The sensors compensated in less than a second, but that was still long enough to lose tenative target lock on the _Norn_'s sensor immune hull.

Forewarned of their escort's suicidal intent, since Kunai had indeed ordered the Loki's crew to do exactly what they had, in the service of the Greater Good, the _Norn_ juked downwards at the same time, diving below the _Dawnblade_'s arc of fire, firing the Gugnir Cannon mounted in the prow of the ship as they did so. Only the very edge of the EMP cone struck the Orb flagship, because of the _Norn_'s downward angle of maneuver, but it was enough to disable the ventral mounted weapon systems of the battlecruiser nonetheless. The _Dawnblade_ began to maneuver at once, turrets swinging around to point foreward and rear again, as the ship heeled about to point its prow towards the path of the _Norn_ as the Edenite ship flashed by beneath the Orb ship. A rolling twist to the ship put it on it's side, allowing both Ion Disintegrator cannons to fire at the Orb ship in a passing snapshot.

One missed, but the other pink flare hammered into the stern of the battlecruiser, a lucky hit perhaps achieved by a Latent crewmember taking manual control of the turret, because it severed the power conduits between the battlecruiser's reactors and the thruster banks. It still had attitude control, but primary thrust was gone until fairly major repairs were initiated. Kunai and Alex followed the course of the _Norn_ a few moments behind, strafing the bottom of the Battlecruiser's hull with QC spikes and QC shards as they passed, by their Mobile Suit weapons were too small of caliber to inflict any real damage on the warship, at least in such a passing manner. They probably killed a few crewmembers, decompressed a few compartments, but not even close to enough to adversely affect the operation of the ship. But even past the Orb blockade, they weren't home free just yet.

The _Dawnblade_ turned its own nose mounted weapon on the fleeing Edenites, and Kunai held his breath in tense concern. The main gun of the Orb flagship was a greatly scaled up version of the hyperthermal cannon used by the Balmung. Blocking the 105mm version on the Gundam would have taken all his power and concentration, and would have still caused him to suffer great collateral damage. Blocking the 735mm version on the Warship was simply out of the question. If it fired, they were dead, that was the basic sequence of events. But WOULD it fire, since it would be sure to pass through them all, and might strike the Moon or even Second Earth 4? Would the Orbite's risk that level of collateral damage to take them out? Tense seconds ticked by, with no response, and Kunai finally allowed himself a smile. Of course they wouldn't. You could always trust Orb to put the swine before the pearls...

In that, Kunai was mistaken. It wasn't morality or a fear of collateral damage that had prevented the _Dawnblade_ from firing its main gun. As much damage as the _Norn_ had already done to civil order in the USN, grazing a colony or digging a scar into the Moon was the last thing Andrew Waltfeld was worried about. He simply couldn't fire, the EMP blast from the Gugnir cannon had scrambled the complex systems that connected the ship's reactors to the hyperthermal cannon. Had it been a disposable core system like the Balmung's rifle, it wouldn't have been an issue, but it was a direct feed system, and without the ability to link the reactors to the weapon, there could be no direct feed.

Additionally, the _Dawnblade _had just been contacted by the _Solaris,_ the Incarnate class dreadnaught in geosynch over Heaven's Base. A cry for assistance was being broadcast. Heaven's Base was under seige. The Lucifer had been seen leading the attack, and Leviathan had been spotted off the coast. All available USN forces were ordered to respond as able. It would be the first major test of the new Supreme Commander's revised strategy for the war...


	74. The Meaning of Alliances

Author Note: Anyone who's read Kaleb's latest signed review (not the one talking about Levi, the one about Kunai) will see that he's stumbled upon an intriguing and frankly awesome bit of plot twist/foreplanning, in that Kunai is being set up to take the blame for all the Edenites war crimes by Yggdrasil, so that by his removal at the end of the war, peace can be relatively easily attained. Now, I'm not saying all is going to go according to that plan, but as far as the plan itself goes, its insightful and creative and altogether unintentional. I wish I was that good, to have things like that pop in via planning, but this time its Kaleb that saw order in chaos, and by pointing it out, may have just generated yet another plot element/story thread.

It's been a while since I really left on a cliffhanger, but since I'm on fire for some reason... 3 updates in one week last week, and here I am working on another at the beginning of this week (23 Jan)... you shouldn't have to stew in your antsy juices for too long. I'm eager to get this arc over with, so I can get to the next arc, which will focus around the 2nd Gen BALORs, and then the arc after that is all about the attack on Garden City itself, and the start of the climax. Though given who you're reading, the climax is going to be another two or three arcs in itself, but I don't hear many complaints about having more TGA to read.

I saw "The Grey" a few days ago. I hadn't realized it was as much thriller-horror as it was wilderness survival. Those goddamned wolves... anyone else maybe get a flashback of Mike team in New York, back in ED? They were so freaking persistent, and just brutal! Well, I picked up some good ideas for Garms out of the deal, and I'll have to try that cestus made of glass bottles on a character sometime. On another note, I think I'm going to split this chapter in two. Super long chapters are fun for me, but I'm feeling generous, so I'll give you this now, and the second half later. Need to get back into the swing of multiple chapter battles anyway, for next Arc.

xxxx

**New Eden, 10 miles South, offshore of Iceland, Heaven's Base defense zone, depth 1.5 miles, April 25th, 3:00 PM**

Kira was glad he'd thought to tell his troops to bring extra layers of clothing, as well as heat retentive survival blankets, nuggets of wisdom garnered from his previous experiences touring the depths of the ocean with his gigantic friend. Keeping the crushing waters at bay was one thing, and fairly easy for someone of Leviathan's power to accomplish, even to the point of providing breathable atmosphere for the hundreds of soldiers and Chimera camped upon her mighty back. But controlling heat by generating friction between molecules was a lot harder, requiring a much finer degree of control, and fine control wasn't one of the things Leviathan was best at. She could heat the ocean around her, but generally skipped the "warm currents" phase and went straight into boiling several cubic kilometers of seawater, such was the power she tended to pour into it. And too much heat would be as problematic, if not more so, than not enough heat. Far easier to warm up than cool down. Plus such an abnormal change in ocean temperature would be easy for the Oosen sensor networks to spot.

He reflected a moment, bittersweetly, on how all the important females in his life seemed to lack a soft touch with their psychic abilities, despite having some of the gentlest and most caring personalities around. Lacus had never wanted to hurt anyone, and yet Noah had compared getting hit by her psychic anger to being run over by a semi-trailer! And Leviathan, who only wanted to be left to live her life in peace, could lift a warship half a kilometer into the air before snapping it like a twig, but couldn't manage to ONLY heat a few hundred cubic meters of water a few degrees in direct proximity to her body! Even Aoi had been showing signs of following in Lacus's footsteps in this way, broadcasting emotions and thoughts into the mind of everyone around her at "squeal of delight" volume, before they'd finally taught her how to keep it to herself, or at least down to a dull roar!

Shaking off the moment of melancholy, Kira glanced up at the dome of suspended water a few dozen meters over his head, the fluid darker than night, practically pitch dark, like traveling through an endless cave. Faint spots of pale violet, crimson and green showed off in the depths, like false stars in the liquid night, but those were simply patches of bioluminesence, either free floating or attached to the other oceangoing Chimera that swam around their Queen like escort ships around a mighty dreadnaught. The strike force had to get by with lanterns and flashlights, which made moving over the craggy surface of Leviathan's skin somewhat treacherous. It had been a long twenty four hours since they'd "boarded" the Grand Chimera off the coast of what was once Portugal, but the long, cold wait in darkness was finally over.

It was Kira's intention to fully wipe Heaven's Base off the surface of New Eden. With three distinct theatres in operation, each with dozens of times more troops than the entire Edenite military at their disposal, there was simply no way the Custodians could be everywhere at once. When the USN decided to get back on the offensive, something that was going to happen soon, according to Gorefin's reports of the construction around Orb's Mass Driver, they would be able to strike in force in three different regions of the world simultaneously. Unless the Edenites split up their Gundams and military forces evenly, they couldn't possibly respond to such a widespread offensive... and if they did split up, they might not have the force to defend against such onslaughts, even if they did respond! No, it was well past time that they narrowed the list of potential targets for the USN to strike at.

He'd commited almost the full Shark Party to this operation with that in mind. The only unit he hadn't been able to take with him was Daveron and his Free Militia forces, which were both the largest and the least well equipped of the forces that swore to follow his guidance. The Militia had numbers, and they had heart, but numbers and heart wouldn't be enough to keep them and their outdated gear alive through an offensive operation against such a large base and its defenses. Furthermore, there simply wasn't room to hold that many soldiers and Mobile Suits on Leviathan's back, they were practically sliding off her sides as they were, to fit all the war machines they'd brought with them in addition to the soldiers.

The full force of Legio's Direcat and Ironhide were there, almost 3000 Custodians, nearly 50 Dervishes, Heine's Wraith and the Lucifer of course. They'd also brought along Legio Spider Wolf, the Legio in charge of operations in the European theatre, which was another 2000 Custodians, a dozen Dervishes, 2 Spectres and scores of the new walking tanks, in all three size categories. Direcat and Spider Wolf were both specialists in fast assault maneuvers, which well suited his operation plan of getting the majority of his force onto the actual base grounds themselves as rapidly as possible, to minimize the time any orbital defenders could fire upon them with impunity. Ironhide wasn't quite so quick, but they put together a lot of momentum when they did get going, like a stampede of their namesakes, which would be useful for overrunning any gathered defenders or strongpoints.

Of course, even five thousand Custodians and 70ish Mobile Suits and a hundred or so tanks wasn't going to be enough to take out an entire Theatre HQ. Not even with the upgraded Lucifer did Kira think they could do it, not quickly enough. There were simply too many enemies, and the more the base was destroyed, the more likely the orbital forces would fire upon them anyway. He couldn't be everywhere at once... if he provided cover from orbital fire, he couldn't be on the ground, and if he was on the ground contributing to the base destruction, he couldn't be blockading the orbital firepower. He cursed Kunai's selfishness for taking the entire Edenite fleet with him on whatever his secret mission was, Kira could have really used some warship forces of his own to run harassment operations overhead! Well, that wasn't all he cursed about Kunai, but he didn't have time to dwell on that now.

Fortunately, there were other resources he could call upon as well, to augment his forces. He'd already used the legions of the oceans to good effect before, in the attack on Orb, but he couldn't rely on them quite so much this time around. While Leviathan could deflect most types of modern weapons with her TK, she was vulnerable to FRALA's, and there was definitely an Incarnate in orbit over Heaven's Base, and this time she wouldn't be in a city harbor for protection. Thus, he was only going to use her for transport, since she could move at speeds and depths no technological vehicle could manage, and use her TK to confuse sonar returns by mimicking changes in deep ocean current patterns so that the Oosen wouldn't see them coming until it was too late. Some of the other large Chimera would still move up to provide close support from the base harbor, but they did so knowing they were likely to die in so doing.

But the oceangoing Chimera could only affect so much on land, being confined to the water with very few exceptions, so Kira had decided to draw upon other concerned parties... they were all supposed to be allies after all. So he'd asked Leviathan to ask Yggdrasil for the use of the Tree's Chimera minions... he'd tried to speak with the Tree itself, but Yggdrasil had refused to respond directly, and Kira sure as hell wasn't going to eat any Wisdom Fruits... there was no telling what the bastard thing might try and do to him in the process! But while a Grand Chimera could ignore a Human, even an Executor, ignoring a fellow Grand Chimera wasn't quite so easy. And fortunately, the Chimera in question were much less reluctant to cooperate, perhaps because many of them had home territories in the European region of the world.

He had the Forest Prince, reckoned to be Yggdrasil's chief lieutenant amongst the Chimera of Air, along with a herd of non-Chimera Rex Elk stags, and a few does belonging the Forest Prince himself. The stags were Actives, while the does were uniformerly Latent, and all of them were completely fearless. Well, it was actually more complex than that, apparently the Forest Prince could control his kin-creature's minds to an extent that was frightening, to the point where he could completely override every thought and instinct they had, and make them do what he felt best. None of the Rex Elks had been happy to be under the water, but with a touch of the massive Chimera's mind, they literally couldn't even notice the issue anymore! Kira had heard many stories about the Forest Prince, and how the creature was amongst the friendliest of Chimera, at least in regards to humanity, but the Rex Elk lord seemed to be somewhat withdrawn and indifferent to him. Either that or the Chimera was just avoiding Kira in particular for some reason, though he was damned if he could figure out why that might be.

There was Old Grouch, a Latent Rhinobeast of hulking size and equal bad temper, who was left well alone by any and everyone. The creature was as big as a Titan tank, well over five times the size of the Forest Prince, but as far as Kira could discern, the Grouch hadn't spoken to anyone, not even the other Chimera, in all the time he'd been with them. The Forest Prince assued him that the dour creature knew what Kira expected of him, but all the same, it was bothersome. Though not as bothersome as the one called Sphinx, a Direcat Queen of exceptionally nasty temperment who had always hated and even actively hunted humans for sport and sustenance. Only Yggdrasil's command could have gotten her to work with humans in any way, and even so, she was rude, disruptive and altogether threatening. Especially to the members of Legio Direcat, and to their Direcat cavalry mounts. Hector had briefly approached the Chimera, acting as Alpha male of his pride and investigating a potential new member, only to be bowled over in a heap by a single swat of the white and black striped Chimera's paw. She was not interested in being friends, even with her own kind, and especially not to one that let himself be ridden by a HUMAN!

Finally there was Chuul, another vassal of Leviathan, whom Kira had not met before. Chuul was a Trench Crab, of the same general species as the crabs who lived in the Marianas Trench with Charbidys, and whose clawmeat he was still trying to finish off. Their chitin was a dark purple-blue color well suited to camouflage in the lightless depths, and they were the size of a APC on the small end, and could grow to the size of a house or even bigger on the large end. Chuul was actually on the smaller end, marking him as quite young, with bright red markings on his claws. Trench Crabs were Actives, and powerful Telekinetics like many oceangoing creatures, using their mental powers to grab prey from a distance and reel them in to be crushed by the pincers into bite sized pieces. Their carapaces were almost as hard as PS armor, in fact, the only way most other creatures could even prey on a Trench Crab was to use TK to break apart their bodies from the inside out, external blows just wouldn't do the trick.

Thousands of the crabs accompanied Chuul, clinging doggedly to Leviathan's underbelly and the backs and bellies of the escorting whale Chimera. They were the perfect shock troops, big, strong, tough, able to operate outside the water for several hours at a time, and almost immune to pain. The average Trench Crab's brain was the size of Kira's thumb, they could be bitten almost entirely in half before they even registered they'd been hurt. Unfortunately this resistance to pain came at the cost of intelligence, they were actually Low Order organisms, on the level of insects and even some varieties of plants. Chuul and Leviathan could control them, but complex plans, even things as simple as NOT attacking literally everything that crossed their paths, were simply beyond them. Even without being controlled, they had no sense of self preservation, if they didn't breed in batches of several thousand at a time, their species would have died out long ago.

The waters around Heaven's Base were quite deep, only within about a mile of the shoreline did the water grow shallower than a few thousand feet, which allowed the strike force to get quite close to their objective without being detected. However, they could only rise to a certain depth before Leviathan's TK screening of the sonar would either be compromised or else noticed to be there in the first place. As temperature changed in the ocean, the water's density changed as well, the colder it got, the denser it was, which made it more "solid" at least to a sonar return, so below a mile or so, there was enough interference from the water temperature to easily cloak their presence, along with Leviathan's help. But much above a thousand feet in depth and the warmer waters would make their presence, or the massive disruption of the TK screen, much more obvious.

Leviathan slowed to a halt, Chuul and the Trench Crabs dropping from her belly and those of the Chimera, half swimming, half tumbling though the water to latch onto the rocky ground that formed the seabed in this part of the world. As one, the Crabs began the slow trek upwards, being herded towards Heaven's Base by Chuul and Leviathan, guided by thoughts of food somewhere in "that direction". Kira gave them a few minutes to get started, as they were moving a great deal slower than Leviathan shortly would be, and he wanted to coordinate the arrival on the surface to the greatest degree possible. He climbed aboard the Lucifer, the Wind rustling around him as the rest of his forces moved to the final stage of preparations, boarding Tarantula walkers, powering up Cicada's and Widowmakers, settling into Dervishes, tightening armor, loading weapons, and mounting Direcats.

Just after everyone was nearly ready, Leviathan's sonorous murmur resounded in his thoughts. **CHUUL AND THE CRABS HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE LIGHT IS VISIBLE.** She reported, with a note of jealousy in her voice. She would have no direct part to play in the battle after all, besides sitting in the depths off shore and intercepting any oceangoing ships that might arrive, which was hardly the sort of thing she felt a Grand Chimera should be regulated to doing. But she trusted her friend's expertise in these matters all the same. The way these humans fought was strange and frightening to her, they were so small, yet they were capable of such widespread destruction. Of course, they were capable of more than just destruction as well, as Kira had proved to her everlasting gratitude.

_I'm sorry. It's just not safe for you. You're too important... to me, and to the world, Levi. Please understand, without you, we never could have gotten this far, nor would we be able to get away after we're done. The entire plan hinges on you... just not on your ability to destroy._ Kira replied with the equivalent of placing his hand on her shoulder comfortingly.

**I UNDERSTAND, FRIEND KIRA. BUT THANK YOU, I DO FEEL BETTER NOW.** She answered with a tinge of embarassment. **SHALL I BRING US TO THE DEPLOYMENT POINT NOW?** She very carefully included the human terms for the location they'd agreed on, about two hundred feet below the surface of the ocean, which was as close as Kira was willing to bring her to danger. She was trying to expand her vocabulary, and her understanding of the humans she gained through that.

_Make it so..._ Kira replied with a fond smile, before his face smoothed into the icy mask that he always wore into battle these days.

xxxx

**Heaven's Base, Heavy Armor Staging Ground 10, April 25th, 3:25 PM**

"You daydreaming again, BP?" Sergeant Cammy Gune, better known to crew and compatriots as "Big Guns" or just "BG", because she was highly muscular, with a hell of a chest, and operated the primary weapon systems of their tank, asked pointedly. Some people wondered if Cammy loaded the guns on the Titan manually, she seemed big enough to do so, even out of her Survivor pattern armor. At the moment she was clambering around on the side of their tank's hull, which put her nearly four meters off the ground, repacking some of the equipment lockers that were bolted to the hull in various spots. Though they rarely left the confines of their tank when on duty, there was no telling when they might get stuck in the field for an extended length of time, so it behooved them to have survival shelters, basic weapons and other gear standing by to be used at need.

Gunnery Sergeant Rachel "Bullet-Proof" Glass, more commonly shortened to just "BP", was leaning against the tracks of her tank just below where Cammy was working, staring off across the wide and flat expanse of reinforced concrete that formed the tarmac. HASG 10 was situated on a rise slightly above the rest of the base, about a mile inland from the shoreline, giving them a fairly panoramic view of a lot of concrete, hangars, and low, bunker-like hab quarter. At least in the foreground, in the greater distance to one direction was the vast blue sea, in the other direction were forested mountains that eventually became snowcapped near the horizon. At one point in time, this whole area was pretty much always covered in snow and ice, except for a very short summer season, but after the Eden Disaster, you hardly ever saw snow except in the very highest altitudes, or the most polar climes.

She might have actually preferred snow and ice, which while not the best of terrain for heavy tracked vehicles, at least usually meant the ground itself was rock hard beneath it, which made for good traction for super-heavies like her tank. Instead, the modern Heaven's Base was one bigass mudpit for most of the year, especically in the spring, when torrential rainfall hammered the base area at least once a day for several hours. Take a step off the tarmac, and you'd sink to your knees in the muck that the ground was made out of, and sometimes you had to be pulled out by your friends, such was the suction! Even something as beastly as a Titan tank could get mired in that crap if you weren't careful! Thankfully the environment armor kept the pestiliential humidity out, but that was just about the only thing it was truly good for. And that only if you were near fanatical in your maintenance and resupply of the suit's equipment.

"BP?" Cammy cajoled her again, startling Rachel from her introspection. She looked up, into the dark skinned face of her friend and subordinate, just barely visible through the faceplate of the blue survivor pattern armor, two and a half meters above her head. "You got it bad, don't ya?" Cammy observed, with a mixture of reproach and admiration. "You think about axel-grease that much, you're liable to become axel-grease yourself..."

"Don't call him axel-grease. Only I get to do that." Rachel retorted, feeling a slight flush come onto her cheeks all the same. She hadn't solely been thinking about Ryan, but he hadn't been far from her thoughts either.

"And the claws come out." Cammy noted with a sad shake of her head. "I thought you were just good fuck-buddies, BP? What the hell is going on with you?"

"That's what I thought too, BG." Rachel admitted candidly. "But I find myself missing him, and wondering how he's doing, all the same. He ain't like any of the others I've had."

"You sure it ain't just that shiny thing the brass pinned on his chest?" Cammy asked with a snort.

"Maybe it was at first. They don't hand out Silver Stars for showing up to work on time, BG." Rachel countered, a trifle defensively. "I dunno what it is. He's just different, 'kay? What about you and Spyro?" She sought to change the subject a bit.

"Bill's a great guy to party with, and even better to fuck." Cammy replied with an exaggerated shrug. "But I don't dream about him none. If I see him again, I'll be glad to go have a great night out with him, but that's all. You can't let yourself get so involved, BP, they're fucking Infantry, highest casualty rates in all the military. You're only gonna end up hurting yourself this way."

"Well, if I do, that's my fucking choice, okay?" Rachel answered, more harshly than she'd intended, but she didn't retract it either. There was a moment of silence between them. "You need any help with that stuff, or should I go help the Elf recalibrate the Pain's sponson targeting software?" Rachel added, as a peace offering. The name of their Titan was the _Infinite Pain_, referring both to what it could dish out to the enemy, and what its own crew had to suffer through maintaining it in peak performance shape, though they usually just shortened that to "Pain" when referring to it. Titans were well built machines, amongst the best pieces of military engineering in the USN, but they were also complex as hell, with lots of tiny moving parts, especially in the turret traverse system, which burned out frequently under combat stress, and replacing them could be a real bitch.

Not to mention the software was still in the debugging stage. Titans had been hot-shit new when the war kicked off, not even really out of post-production trials, so most of their "field proving" had indeed been done on the field of battle. It could have been a real disaster, but the contractor had, for once, lived up to most of their promsies about their quality control and design considerations. The only consistent problem was in the targeting software for the sponson turrets, which protruded from the sides of the tank, actually between the drive-tread mechanisms. It tended to glitch and "stick", causing the sponsons to slave to the primary turret's firing protocols if you ever aimed all the weapons at the same target, so that afterwards the sponsons would only fire when the main turret weapons did, and only if they had a clear shot at the same target.

Depending on the enemies you faced, that could be anything from annoying to "fucked-up-our-butts deadly". The beam gatlings in each sponson were rated to bring down MS type targets, but they and the dual flamethrowers mounted beneath them were primarily anti-infantry and anti-light vehicle weaponry, designed to keep the Titan from being swarmed from all sides by hordes of smaller, faster foes. If there were no enemy infantry, it was no biggie, but if there were, and your sponsons got slave-stuck, you could be in real deep shit. You could avoid the problem simply by never firing the sponsons at the same target as the primary turret, but sometimes you just wanted to concentrate your firepower, to pin or suppress a foe, so Titan crews were always trying to jury rig software fixes while they waited for the manufacturer to get off its ass and admit the flaw existed, then send down a comprehensive software patch for it!

Fortunately for the crew of the Pain, Corporal Elizabeth Black, better known as "Elf" amongst her compatriots because of her waifish stature and looks, and distinctly pointed ears, was a Coordinator who'd failed out of the placement tests for ZAFT's Combat Information Coordinator program before taking the Blue of the USN instead. She had the technical skills for the job, but not the people skills, and she didn't do so well in high stress environments... at least, not the sort where others were depending on her actions for their own survival, she had no problems staying cool when her own survival was at stake. The close camraderie of the Titan crews was a haven for her, allowing her to focus on doing her duty without overwhelming pressure of responsibility for the lives of dozens of MS pilots and warship crews.

Disdaining the notches forged into the Pain's flank armor to serve as a ladderway, Rachel clambered up the side of the tank directly, as only Nubs straight out of Titan school didn't know their rides well enough to move across them like a spider. She and her crew had literally been all over their tank, inside and out, upside and down, until it's adamant surfaces were as familiar to her as the curves of her own body. That was the only way to be, when you relied on something to preserve your life in battle. It was a form of love, mixed with obsession and pride. If you didn't love your tank, then your tank wouldn't love you, and the last place you wanted to have a messy breakup was on a battlefield!

Scrambling over to the crew compartment cupola, situated just forward of the main turret, Rachel poked her head and shoulders down into the cramped compartment where she and her two friends spent the majority of their time. Titan's were fucking beastly machines, almost more like the old combat Mobile Armors the Alliance had once had in production for terrestrial battles than true tanks. They were every bit as big as a Mobile Suit, but had more crew and many more weapons, which meant less space for said crew on the inside. Their three seats were placed back to back in triangular formation, machinery and computers crowding in on all sides, without even enough room to crouch upright, but they hardly ever noticed, since Titans used NIC type operation systems for enhanced fluidity and reaction speed. The running gag among Titan crews was, the only place you'd ever been in that was more cramped than a Titan was your mother's womb.

"You whip this bastard back into shape yet, Elf?" Rachel asked, lightly patting the underside of the hull to tell the Pain she meant it affectionately. He WAS a bastard, these was no doubt about that, a mighty, hard, belligerent, magnificent bastard. Most crews tended to think of their machines as female, a legacy of times when almost all soldiers were men, but despite the womb comparison, Rachel and her crew were sure the Pain was a male. Certainly they didn't know any girls that growled and rumbled and roared like that, or who hit that hard when they were pissed off.

"Just about." Elizabeth replied with a brief grin, amusement dancing in her dark purple eyes, a few strands of lighter purple hair falling across her forehead. She craned her head back to look BP in the eyes, her fingers continuing to dance across the system maintenance keyboards that folded out from beneath some of the equipment at her station despite her apparent lack of concentration on the task at hand. "He was getting uppity, so I had to smack him around some, but he should be purring here soon. I'm starting to feel it's not a software glitch at all, I think there may be a fault in the electrical system that causes a temporary short in the system when you fire-link everything to one trigger. It would explain why he keeps having the same problem over and over again."

"Well, isolate it if you can, I'm sick and tired of him going functionally retarded in the middle of a fight. It's gonna get us prison-fucked one of these days." Rachel answered with a sigh.

"And you only wanna get fucked by the axel-grease, right BP?" Elizabeth remarked with a smirk at the nasty look her commander shot her.

"I swear, you two are asking for a beatdown of epic proportions..." Rachel said darkly. Before she could go on in that vein though, the Pain warbled at them, red alert lights pulsing across the cockpit, bathing them both in crimson, making their armor look purple for a few moments. "What the fuck?" Rachel exclaimed, jerking herself up from her half upside down position and looking around in confusion. They were in the middle of fucking Heaven's Base, surrounded on all sides by square kilometers of weapons emplacements, sensor towers, barracks complexes, hangars and staging grounds. Where the FUCK were they getting a "enemy detected" alert from? "You better not have been screwing with our IFF, Elf!" She hollered over their suit commlinks.

"This ain't just us, it's a base wide alert!" Elizabeth hollered back. "Perimeter sonar picked up something fucking HUGE off the coast, coming this way and coming fast!"

"Oh fuck me..." Cammy interjected, having mounted the top of the Pain's primary turret a second earlier, standing tall as she peered in the direction of the ocean. It was tough to see much detail at this distance, even with her faceplate magnifiers at maximum, but she could instantly see at least which one thing which made her blood run cold. The ocean... it had stopped! Well, the waves had... the constantly battering waves were all gone, as far as she could see, for what looked like miles in both direction, the ocean had suddenly and incomprehensivly gone as flat as a day old beer. The ocean almost looked like a dark blue mirror it was so still. But what in all the names of unholy fuck could stop the goddamned WAVES from forming? That was fucking tidal forces between the Earth and the Moon at play, what could just override THAT?

xxxx

**On the sea cliffs above primary protected military harbor, slightly earlier**

Shinn let the weight of the QC zweihander swing the Transcendance forward a bit, turning the forward momentum into a spin of his torso, wings lifting up, sweeping his forequarter with Positron reflector shields to clear away enemy fire before taking his left hand off the hilt of the zweihander and deploying the orange hot links of his heat whip from the forearm holster, lashing the close combat weapon at the area the shield sweep had just cleared. He finished letting out his breath, and brought himself back to the ready stance, heat whip retracting fluidly, sword hilt in both hands, massive blade raised at a slight angle in front of him. That had been all right, but he would keep working on it. It was unlikely he'd ever truly use any of the maneuvers he practiced during these sessions in a battle, as the one sure thing about battle was that nothing was sure, and all the best laid plans never survived contact with the enemy.

But just the mere act of practicing with the blade, and shields, and claws and whips made it easier for him to draw upon muscle memory and instinctive reactions during those clinch moments during battle, when there was no time to think, no way to plan, only stroke, counter, and counter-counter at speeds that could defy the blinking of a human eye! He also found practicing with his weapons, both in and out of the Gundam, to be relaxing and a good way of focusing his mind, which had been increasingly clouded of late, and not just when he was sleeping. He was starting to hear... voices, voices that were achingly familiar even though he didn't recognize any of them. An older man and woman, and especially a younger girl. It was always the same message from the girl too, something that sounded almost like a recording, like you'd put on a comm system when you weren't around to take a call. But it still wasn't clear enough for him to make sense of it, or identify names or anything.

It was frustrating, and no less so because it came at the same time that he and Luna were having a few difficulties, though Shinn was in truth puzzled as to why Luna had grown cool and distant, almost wary, of late. He couldn't think of anything he'd done to upset her, but she was acting like there was a problem of some sort, even though she denied there being one. Shinn wasn't the most girl savvy guy around, but even he knew that when a girl acted like there was an issue, it didn't matter how many times she denied it, there was definitely an issue. Indeed, the more vehement her denials, the more likely it was she was just getting more pissed at you, even though she probably knew that wasn't helping the situation at all. It was almost like she was watching him, afraid he'd lash out at her or something, but that was perposterous. He'd never intentionally raised his hand to Luna in his life, and he never would. She was his savior, he owed her everything, including his life and sanity.

Sighing, Shinn broke from his ready stance, turning to look out at the ocean, planting his sword tip gently into the soil at his Gundam's feet, careful to keep one hand on the hilt to prevent the blade from simply slicing into the ground... he'd done that once, and it had taken several hours with excavation equipment to dig down deep enough for him to grab the hilt and draw it out of the bedrock. There was something calming about looking out at the ocean for him, somethig familiar about it, as if it was an old habit of his he hadn't indulged in a long time. Though there was something subtly off about it as well, the water was perhaps a bit too dark a blue, almost a dark grey at times, compared to what his vague thoughts insisted it ought to be. The afternoon sun shone down from above his shoulders, striking at just enough of an angle to refract through the LCR armor rather than reflect off of it, so that a hazy shimmer of gold and rainbow shades danced across the clifftop in front of him, other rainbows splitting off from the edge of his sword's crystalline edge.

It was quite the lightshow at times, especially during dawn or dusk, if he positioned the Gundam correctly, but at the moment, Shinn's posture was unintentional. "You seem tense." Luna's off hand comment startled Shinn enough that he almost dropped the sword, as he turned his Gundam's head to see her ruby colored custom Excaliber making its way up the slope of the cliffs towards him, Gram Superpenetrating rocket launcher slung across her shoulders like a man hefting a log. The Excalibers were actually bigger and bulkier than the Transcendance, which was slender and very graceful for a Mobile Suit, as much a work of art as it was a war machine, as expected of Noah's personal craftsmanship. Shinn thought it was an amusing switch, since he was considerably bigger and more muscular than Luna, but in their machines, she was the bruiser, not him.

Shinn considered her comment carefully, trying to discern if he was indeed tense, and whether that was what was putting Luna at a distance. He didn't feel tense, well, other than because she was distant and he didn't know why. "A little." He allowed at length. Luna seemed disinclined to follow through on that conversation though, as she marched up next to him and looked out at the ocean as he'd been doing. He was just working up the nerve to ask her, straight out, what was bothering her recently when his vision flashed amber as the Transcendance was updated with an alert from the base perimeter sensor network, specifically the portion responsible for monitoring the ocean access to the base. A large mass had been detected on sonar, several hundred meters down and rapidly rising, about a kilometer offshore!

His breath caught in his throat as he stared out in that direction, seeing the ocean's surface bulge upwards for a moment in a dome hundreds of meters across, like someone pressing their hand against a latex sheet and pushing it out of shape, but instead of all that water flooding forwards in a destructive rush, like what had happened at Orb, the bulge flattened out shortly after appearing. And that was when things got really creepy, because when the bulge flattened out, so too did the ocean's surface for a large distance, extending even up to shore. The tide stopped coming in, the waves grew still and then subsided entirely, like ripples on the surface of a bathtub. Farther out to sea, the water was behaving perfectly normally, but within about a kilometer of the shoreline, the ocean was still as a plane of glass! From his position up high on the cliffs, Shinn could actually suddenly see into the depths as if he were looking through a vast window.

Large, blurry shapes moved in the deep, deceptively slowly, their size and distance lending them an appearance of sloth that was undeserved. The water window suddenly warped and distorted, fracturing in its depths as what Shinn could only describe as TUNNELS appeared, squirming their way upwards like invisible worms gnawing burrows in an apple made from translucent blue crystal. The tunnels linked the dark shapes to the surface, as gaping pits opened up in the sea floor, water falling away as if sucked down a straw, but the sides of the tunnel remained open and stable, and didn't even spin, unlike a whirlpool. It was like the water was being pushed aside somehow, held open like curtains by invisible hands.

Stunned by this incredible sight, he and Luna were caught napping when more easily recognizable shapes came soaring out of the tunnels, like bats fleeing a cave, Dervish after Dervish in the iconography of Spider Wolf, Direcat and Ironhide ascending from the depths of the ocean on pillars of cyan thruster flames, dozens of them pouring up and out and towards the harbor proper. It was almost like they'd been launched from a submarine carrier, but no terrestrial carrier ever built could launch so many suits at once, and certainly not from hundreds of meters below the surface! Most Mobile Suits couldn't even survive at that depth without being crushed by water pressure!

More and more glassy tunnels began opening up in the unnaturally still water, and other Edenite forces began to sally forth from within them. Agile Cicada's, skittering Widowmakers, and lumbering Tarantula battle walkers crawled out of some tunnels, like bugs being washed out of a drainpipe but in reverse, and cohorts of Custodians resplendent in the distinctive armor of their Legios followed them from smaller tunnels that were appearing closer to shore, soldiers just RUNNING up out of the depths, as if ascending a set of stairs, and pounding across several hundred meters of open water like they were crossing a football field! Shinn felt a bit of gibbering start to come on, as he saw a detachment of Custodians riding Direcats come from one of the tunnels, the massive tiger-like beasts sprinting across the ocean's surface like it was a regular savanaa! It was BEYOND surreal! "Luna, am I ...?"

"No, you're not crazy, unless we both are." Luna cut him off, just as disconcerted and disbelieving as her lover was. There was no frame of reference for this scenario in her mind, it violated several laws of physics as far as she could remember. There were creatures that could move across the surface of water without sinking, using surface tension, but they were usually insects or small lizards... and emphatically NOT tigers and humans and TANKS! Added to that, the ocean didn't just go still like that, not on Earth and not even in the PLANTs, without a lot of time passing. The rest of the Heaven's base defenders within view of this unprecedent amphibious assault were likewise frozen in shock and disbelief, even as the Eddie Mobile Suits and tanks began opening fire on the warships and defensive emplacements in the harbor, comprehensively proving that this was not a mass hallucination of some sort!

Shaking his head and closing his eyes, Shinn snapped himself out of the state of shock at last, as explosions began to blossom in the harbor, smoke rising into the bright and clear afternoon air. It didn't matter how the Eddies were doing it, the fact was, they were, and if someone didn't do something soon, Heaven's Base could find itself overrun from the inside out! They had to create a buffer, give the base at large time to react and re-organize to the blitzkrieg assault. He blinked as he saw what looked like a rhino the size of a tank, and something that appeared to be a hillock with antlers leading a herd of deer, go charging across the ocean's surface towards the shoreline as well, but didn't let it distract him too much. Forget what was happening on the ground, they had to stymie the Dervishes before they got to the Solar Knight's scrambling to deploy from their hangers, or the battle might be over before it was begun!

He sensed Luna moving in tandem with him, her mind figuring out his intentions instantly, through ease of long familiarity, any awkwardness between them forgotten in the heat of battle, as he hurled himself into the sky, sword sheathed across his back, drawing the two 100mm Supercharged beam carbines he'd equipped the Transcendance with for ranged firepower while the AMP rifle was still in sequestered lockdown. Luna was right behind him, Gram swinging into carry position across her hips, weighing down both her arms with its mass and size, though she hefted it with aplomb all the same, having spent thousands of hours practicing with the weapon, both on the field and in simulations. The Gram's rockets had warheads containing a tenth of an ounce of anti-lithium in magnetic suspension, and were warded with particle deflecting shields to help pierce energy shields and deflect beam interdiction fire... Shinn knew he'd be relying on the killing power of his beautiful sniper's gun a lot in this battle.

All across the base, converted fog machines were spooling up as the base defense command finally got back on the stick, the fog machines emitting plumes of water vapor mixed with reactive dyes that began drifting across the base like low lying clouds. The effect wasn't thick enough to occlude even normal vision, and the dyes had no effect upon metals or stone or plastic, but reacted strongly with Borealite and other Green EDEN infused materials, staining them bright red and turning red in proximity to them. This was a measure designed to negate the total cloaking effects of the Eddie elite Mobile Suits, which were still beyond the abilities of the USN sensor systems to pierce. The fog machines were too bulky to be field deployed, and indeed would be largely ineffective in an environment where there was lots of residual Green EDEN, but on a Theatre Base, there was enough open space for the fog to work without interference from other environmental factors.

It also made the rest of the Eddie's more visible, and easily identifiable at a distance, compared to the blue armor of most USN soldiers and vehicles, which would likely be of help during the chaos of intermingling troops in a blitzkrieg base assault. Another new defensive measure, actually thought up by the garrison of Heaven's Base, and okayed for implementation by the new Supreme Commander, and indeed it was to become standard issue equipment for all other terrestrial bases from now on. Diving foward, Shinn unleashed a torret of crimson red supercharged beam bolts in a curtain of suppression fire between two Dervishes that were making towards a mustering ground for a platoon of Viking MBT's. The two Eddies, their armor proclaiming them to be from Spider Wolf, long time adversaries of Heaven's Base, drew up short and twisted to face the more immediate threat.

And in so doing, left themselves completely open to Lunamaria, who had ascended several thousand feet higher while Shinn went low, providing overwatch for her partner as was their usual battle strategy. She fired the Gram at the one on the right, a burst of searing orange-yellow fire curled from the experimental weapon's muzzle as the rocket projectile accelerated to over 15000 miles per hour, so fast the air literally ignited as it was shoved out of the path of the weapon, in the same manner as a meteor entering the planet's atmosphere! At such close range, less than a mile, the Edenite had no way of reacting as the streaking rocket plowed into the side of the Dervish, anti-matter core coming into contact with a sliver of Borealite plating almost instantly. An eye searing flash of annihilating particles later, and the Dervish was just plain GONE, not even smoke remaining to mark its former position.

The second Dervish instinctively turned to follow the slowly fading path of fire up through the sky to find Lunamaria, but in so doing left himself wide open to a bisecting cut from Shinn's zweihander as the Transcendance blurred past the disoriented Eddie, who was not only confused by the one-two punch, but psy-shocked as well by the sudden death of his compatriot. It was a well practiced strategy on the part of the Knight-Champions, simple yet effective. Shinn would distract the foe, setting them up for Luna, and when they reacted to Luna's sniping attack, they would be open shortly thereafter for a sudden melee blitz by Shinn. One, two, three and dead. He would move on to the next group of targets, and Luna would Mirage Colloid and displace, as the Gram was pretty noticable when it fired.

The airspace over Heaven's Base was starting to fill up, both with responding defenders and the weight of firepower going both ways, so Shinn took himself to the ground, transitioning from flying to sprinting with the ease of long practice, dodging past a file of Gladiators rumbling towards the dock area, hurdling them as a man might jump over a snake crawling through his lawn, the sturdy vehicles rocking only slightly in the wake of his passing. He clotheslined another Dervish, this one from Ironhide, the Eddie interposing her arms and the QC forearm blades mounted thereon, but while the QC could not be pierced, the mountings of the claws did fail, a hail of glittering crystalline shards bigger than two men standing on each other's shoulders falling to to and through the tarmac as the Dervish was catapulted backwards off it's feet, arms shattered from wrist to elbow.

Turning, he swept his wings up high, Positron shields activated, sweeping away a volley of linear rifle shots from another pair of Dervishes not far off, and wiping out a hurtling spear of QC fired at him by a six legged tank he hadn't even noticed until then with a flash of disintegrating matter. His right arm came off the hilt of the Zweihander and he lashed the fallen Dervish with the heat whip mounted on that forearm, caving in the Eddie's head and torso area, crushing the cockpit and pilot in one blow. The Dervish went limp on its back, and Shinn pounced over the wreckage, lashing out again with the whip, smacking the Widowmaker hard enough to lift the tank into the air and hurl it sideways a dozen meters, smashing in the weapon mounts on the left side of its hull. Linear rifle rounds deflected from the broad side of his sword in showers of spark and judders of impact, as the Dervishes began to spread out to come at him from both sides.

Luna was busy providing support fire to another section of the base, but Shinn did not panic... he'd faced much longer odds than this before. He did take a step back though, when a third Edenite machine hurtled down from the sky like a thunderbolt and landed between the other two. This one wasn't a Dervish though, the armor was carved in an eye tangling squiggle of entwined snakes, some of which seemed to have fur for some reason, and it hefted a double ended QC glaive in both hands, twirling it with a staff-fighter's flourish as the Spectre confidently moved in on him from the front while the Custodians moved to pincer him.

A moment later and one of the Dervishes went staggering back, smoke and sparks billowing from a crater punched into its thigh armor, as a squadron of three Gladiators, equipped with 105mm linear canons in their primary turrets, raced across the tarmac towards the Mobile Suits, firing all the while. 75mm Anti-armor rockets raced from their mounting tubes on either side of the turrets, mostly unaimed, but there were three dozen of them inbound, which forced the Eddies to divert to avoid or interdict them. This was accomplished with almost contemptuous ease, as the Praetorian merely swept her glaive around in a neat swipe, activating one of the thermal exciters mounted on either end of the polearm to project a cone of pink-hot radiation into the sky, superheating the rockets and blowing them to smithereens in an instant.

The Gladiators burst through the sudden cloud of smoke and shrapnel undeterred, only for one of them to be crushed under the stamping foot of a Dervish, and a second to be riddled with holes by a burst from the QC spike driver on the Spectre's right arm, careening off course and gradually rolling to a stop several hundred meters later, crew perforated as much as machine. The third fired again with its turret cannon, missing the wild shot, but then Shinn was there, using a palm thrust from his left hand Positron shield to smash the second Dervish away from the last Gladiator, giving the IFV time to accelerate out of the suddenly very dangerous battlezone. A sweep of his zweihander forced the other two Eddies back as well, at least for a moment, but even with the one Eddie having a damaged leg, the odds were still three on one.

The Praetorian tried to fry him with her thermal exciter, but Shinn was ready for it, his wingtips sliding fluidly up beneath his armpits, Positron shields interposing themselves between him and the source of the radiation, annihilating the harmful particles before they could boil his tissues to vapor. Shinn disengaged backwards, knowing thermal exciters tended to have fairly limited ranges, and this was no exception. He felt a tickle on the bottom of his mind, an involuntary shiver slithering up his spine and trying to nest in his brainstem, but by now he was an old hand at resisting psychic influence and he gritted his teeth to ward off the alien temptation to go take a nap right then and there. However, even if the Praetorian couldn't take control of his body, she could still distract him, and that was what she did, as the two Dervishes moved in on the Oosen Gundam.

His primary nervous system and voluntary reflexes were too slippery for her to hang onto, at least at this range, but he wasn't guarded so well on some of his involuntary reflexes, and with a grim sneer, she twisted a few false impulses down those pathways. It was nothing painful, more just embarassing, as she overrode his intestinal fortitude and kidney control, prompting a very severe case of sudden onset incontinence as his bodily wastes evacuated from his body. But it was very hard to concentrate when you were suffering explosive diarrehea and pissing yourself uncontrollably. The Gundam's footing wavered, just for a moment, but it was there, and both the Custodians, hardened veterans alike, needed no further encouraging as they pounced forward.

A hail of orange tracers walked across the tarmac, rippling explosions following in a close wake, as a Solar Knight Vindicator hosed firepower from a 120mm gatling cannon held in its right hand, advancing behind it's shield in classic stance as it barraged one of the Dervishes, knocking it backwards, Borealite splinters flying from its armor as the shells relentlessly pounded into it. A second Vindicator appeared behind the first, spitting dark crimson supercharged beam bolts from its rifle, and launching the underslung rocket grenade towards the Praetorian, giving Shinn time to recover from the unpleasant psychic assault. Viking MBT's and other Vindicators were approaching in the near distance, the base defenders on the offensive, having absorbed the rush of the much smaller Edenite force. Shinn smiled grimly, flourishing his own sword and pointing it at the Praetorian meaningfully. He was going to make her pay for that low blow she'd just given him.

A familiar thrill ran across the top of his scalp, as the Transcendance detected a familiar and most welcome presence in the airspace above him, and Shinn didn't even need to look to know Luna had returned to overwatch duties now that she'd taken care of whatever other emergency had gotten her attention. He took a purposeful step forward, to draw the attention of the Eddies for another crucial moment so she could settle herself and draw a firm bead on them... at the approach of the USN reinforcements, they'd huddled together for defensive reinforcement, which meant she could probably take all three with just one shot! There was a blur of motion overhead, and a sudden flash of all but blinding light from where the three Eddies were, and Shinn grinned ferally. Not as satisfying as taking his own vengeance, but it'd do, that it certainly...

His thought trailed off with shock as the blinding light of the anti-matter explosion faded, to show the three Eddie machines were unharmed, if looking just as shocked as Shinn felt at this turn of events. They were surrounded in a cocoon of pinkish light, a Positron barrier projected by a series of small, feather shaped pods, which disengaged and dissipated even as Shinn stared, tiny blue thruster flames propelling the feather-like pods into a protective orbit around the three Edenite machines. A moment later, a dark blur slammed into the tarmac between the Edenites and the oncoming USN forces, resolving into a distinctive and utterly unwelcome sight, a bewinged Gundam, the color of darkest night, with eyes of luminous purple. It's hands were empty, swords and rifles alike still sheathed at its hips, but that in no way lowered the aura of ominous threat this Gundam projected.

It was the Lucifer. Kira Yamato had taken the field in person...

xxxx

**Across the base, 10 minutes since start of attack**

"Suck ion particles, asshole!" Cammy remarked triumphantly, as the purple-white flare of the main turret's paired Mjolnir cannons firing faded from the sensor images that served as their eyes while they were within the Pain. Cammy was of course referring to the formerly existing Dervish that had landed about a hundred meters off to their right rear flank a few seconds ago, clearly considering a lone Titan tank to be a juicy and easy target. Obviously, the Eddie was not particularly experienced with Titans, which could be forgiven, since they were rarely deployed except during major offensive campaigns. Because they had in no way compensated for the blinding, almost demonic speed at which the Titan's primary turret could spin and target... so fast they couldn't put crew inside it, simply because they would suffer whiplash and even spinal trauma injuries from the sudden shifts, even while strapped down in accleration couches.

Literally, as soon as the Eddie touched down, they found themselves staring down the crackling barrels of the Mjolnirs, and an instant later there were two bolts of purple-white man made lightning spearing at them. The Eddie may have had time to interpose their forearm mounted Citadel shields, but even if they had, it wouldn't have made a difference at that range. At less than a half kilometer range, the only thing more destructive than a Mjolnir shot in the USN arsenal was pure anti-matter or a strategic radiation weapon. Floating scraps of ash and embers were all that remained of that particular Dervish. Well, those and the kill marking they would stencil onto the hull after the battle, in the second row of such markings the Pain sported. Though it was only the sixth Mobile Suit they'd bagged, the rest were tanks of various sorts, but still, six Dervishes was more than most Solar Knights could lay claim to... more than some Solar Knight squadrons could lay claim to even! They weren't considered tanker aces because of their stunning good looks, after all.

Rachel willed the Pain forward, frowning as the treads spluttered and whined, sending unpleasant vibrations up through her command couch as the treads slipped and spun uneasily through the morass of mud and muck that formed the ground off the tarmac. Titan's had scale systems on their undersides for moving through crappy soft terrain, but they were slow as hell while using them, slower even than the treads normally were, so she preferred not to use that method of locomotion if she had any choice at all. Finally, the tracks caught on something solid enough and they lurched forward, Cammy muttering in the background as she tried to coax the Mjolnir capacitors to give up another shot sooner rather than later, which was as much art form as anything, with the unpredictable things. Elizabeth concentrated on building up a picture of the battle at large, and the Pain's place within it, so she could tell Rachel where to bring their special brand of Pain to do the most good.

Titans were such massive assets that there were only ten of them assigned to any one Combined Arms Division, which numbered in the tens of thousands of infantry and thousands of lesser vehicles, so Rachel was used to operating more or less on her own, with minimal support from Vikings, Glads, and maybe Solar Knights if the gods were feeling gracious. The only time she'd ever even heard of a multiple Titan deployment was during the attack on Victoria spaceport. The smaller tanks were sticking to the tarmac as much as possible for the moment though, their drive systems not powerful enough to plow through the muck like the Pain could, so they were a little exposed, which is probably what had lured that Dervish out after them. After another few seconds of lurching through the mud, rocking back and forth as the treads caught and slipped, Rachel had suffered enough.

"Disengaging treads. Activating scale system." She warned her crew as she switched drive modes.

"Disengaging treads, scale system active, roger." Elizabeth repeated, as the tank's ride suddenly grew smoother. Not smooth, but smoother. She trigged the CUSA-D built into the underhull of the tank, sending sonic vibrations pulsing out into the ground for a hundred meters in every direction. The CUSA-D was primarily designed for mine-sweeping duty, setting off buried explosives well before the Titan risked driving over them, but she'd figured out that they could also use the system to destabilize soft terrain even further, making it easier for the scale system to push them around, and at higher speeds.

"Mjolnir 60 percent and charging." Cammy reported tersely from behind them both, though with them all NIC interconnected, it hardly mattered which way they faced.

"Detecting passive targeting sensor sweep. Backtracing now." Elizabeth said a moment later, shivering as she imagined she could feel the crawling sensation of laser lights roaming across the Pain's hull. "Enemy possible, 4:15 o'clock." She advised Rachel, prompting the commander to turn the Pain to the right to point the glacis and their heaviest armor towards the threat. They used clock face directions for ease of communication, with 12 o'clock always being the front of the tank, 6 o'clock the rear, 1 thru 5 o'clock being the right side and 7 thru 11 o'clock the left side. The free revolving turret helped, since they didn't have to be at all facing a target to shoot at it, but all the same, a tank was always at its best with front on to the enemy.

"Enemy Widow..." Elizabeth exclaimed, as she identified a trio of battle walkers rising from hull down positions in the mud a few hundred meters away, where they had been lying in wait or trying to sneak off to the flanks of the base. Rachel had seen them as soon as her sensor operator had though, and she instinctively cut power to the secondary glacis turret, the FRALA mount, and diverted it to forming an energy shield across the front of the tank. "...makers identified. They're orienting on us and powering up main weapons." Elizabeth finished. Though not much bigger than a Viking, and considerably less bulky, the six legged battle walkers were armed with 120mm QC harpoon launchers, which could punch through any armor known to man in a heartbeat, killing the crew of a vehicle even if it might not destroy the vehicle itself. Such hyper-penetrating weapons were the bane of heavy armor units everywhere, since they generally relied on being able to "tank" enemy fire rather than dodge it.

Fortunately, they'd spotted the Widowmakers before they were ready to engage, indicating to Elizabeth that they had indeed been a flanking force trying to slip by unnoticed, taking advantage of their ability to move across the mudflats like a waterstrider, while the tracked USN vehicles were forced to stay on their base tarmac or risk getting mired. The crew of the Pain had never encountered battle walkers in the field before, in fact no USN heavy armor crews had, and they were simultaneously nervous and eager to test the mettle of these new Eddie machines. By the time the Widowmakers had turned their hulls to face the Pain... a potential flaw in their design was that their primary gun was forward facing only, more like a tank destroyer than a true tank, so the entire walker had to turn to fire the harpoon launcher... the Pain had managed to activate it's energy shield fully.

The Pain had only recently been retrofitted with the new type of energy shield, based upon the old Citadel pattern pioneered by the Isolation, and used ad nauseum by military forces since. They were called Redoubt shields, and operated on the same basic principle as their Citadel forebears, using distilled uranium plasma sandwhiched between two strong magnetic fields to form a "solid" energy barrier between you and incoming firepower. Redoubt shields were far thicker than Citadel shields though, and the plasma itself was "stirred" into constant motion by trawling magnetic fields, meaning that even if the outer bits of the shield were penetrated, incoming fire, especially from constant beam weapons like FRALA, would be diffused and lessened in impact. Weak magnetic fields protruding through the actual abrrier diffused more traditional beams slightly just before impact, lessening their striking power.

However, the most important new feature, at least in the eyes of Rachel and other tank commanders, was that the outer surface of the Redoubt shields was to a degree shapable. So rather than a flat plane of energy, you could create a concave barrier, or a faceted barrier with multiple angled surfaces, much better suited to deflecting the full force of an attack rather than just trying to resist it straight on. Flat armor was the easiest sort of armor to penetrate, regardless of its strength, and the same held true for energy shields, and so the ability to angle the shield surface could reduce penetration power of even QC weapons by as much as 25 percent! Redoubt shields were also called "Shimmer shields" amongst nontechnical crew, because when activated they looked like a mirror with oil smeared thinly across it, a rainbow sheen of metallic hues constantly shifting, rather than the dull aqua field of a Citadel Shield.

However, the special features of the Redoubts took some time to kick in, so you had to prepare them a few seconds in advance to get their full effect, and if the shield was somehow broken, then it took another few seconds to reform, about three times as long as a regular Citadel shield took, so you could be left vulnerable in a bad situation. The idea being, of course, not to get into that kind of situation in the first place. All the technology in the world couldn't save you from some situations, if you got isolated and were being attacked by a very numerically superior force for instance. However, Rachel didn't think the equivalent of three MBT's should count as too numerically superior, compared to a Titan. She'd already declared weapons free to Cammy a while ago, allowing her subordinate to fire the Pain's guns on her own discretion, without needing to wait for confirmation from Rachel.

Geysers of muck and glassified dirt exploded from the ground near one of the Widowmakers, sending the walker stumbling to its knees, as the two 375mm artillery cannons mounted atop the Pain's main turret fired. They were inaccurate at such relatively close range and in direct fire mode, but even a close miss with such a large shell could stun and disorient enemy crews. Multicolored sparks spat from the Redoubt barrier as it glanced away two QC harpoons from the other Widowmakers, the Pain not even shuddering under the impacts. Red-blue bursts of compressed plasma energy splattered from the shimmery barrier as well, courtesy of the lead Widowmaker's twin 90mm hyper-impulse cannons it mounted as secondary weapons, one per side of the hull.

As potentially bad a decision as making a fixed forward mounted main gun was, Rachel had to admit, she envied the Eddie tanks their modular secondary weapons, which allowed them to be kitted out according to the personal preferences of their commanders, or tailored to each individual mission profile. The lead enemy walker was plainly meant to be an armor killer, while another had four 45mm beam cannons for high rapid fire capability, and the last, the one Cammy had stunned, was a missile walker, with a dozen VTP tubes arrayed along its sides. One of those tubes spat fire and smoke, and a "missile incoming" alert blared into all of their heads through the NIC system, but Elizabeth was already on top of it, the sponson turrets swinging up and spitting a blizzard of emerald green beam bolts into the path of the missile, even as the automatic 20mm shotcannons mounted on top of the hull fired cones of tungsten ball bearings into the path of the missile as well.

Rachel marked that target as the primary threat, even as she sent the Pain skating sideways across the mud, something she could only do in scale mode. The armor-killer was marked as the secondary, and the rapidfire-beamer as tertiary, as its low caliber beam weapons would have trouble penetrating even just the Pain's PS armored hull at less than point blank range, and they had Geischmedig-Panzer shield blisters covering their flanks to boot! The incoming missile blew to shreds overhead, Rachel barely noticing as she maneuvered to keep the Redoubt shield between them and the Widowmaker's fronts, Elizabeth walking the sponson fire onto the secondary and tertiary targets, smacking them with beam bolt after beam bolt, which made their Borealite armor smoulder but that was about all. Eventually they'd burn through, but not in the next twenty seconds or so, not at that caliber of beam.

More VTP missiles launched from the missile-carrier, and this time Rachel launched her own volley of VTP missiles from the vertical launch tubes built into the rear section of the Pain, setting the missiles to counter-missile mode. The Eddies had more missiles than she did, at least if they hadn't used any when coming ashore, but unless they launched them all right now, that wasn't going to be an issue. Because the Mjolnirs were finally at capacity again, the main turret whipping around like a snake spotting a tasty mouse, purple-white arcs of power spitting from the blunt nosed muzzles of the Mjolnir cannons before they vomited forth the blinding, jagged bolts of kinetic particles. Mud turned to baked brick in a thirty meter radius around the point of impact, the Eddie missile-tank all but vaporized at the heart of the impact.

Turret twitching to the side like a hyped up drug-addict, Cammy unleashed the Pain's artillery cannons once more, missing with one, but striking a direct hit on the front glacis of the secondary target with the other. Maybe it was luck, but then again, that kind of luck was what they relied on Cammy for. The Widowmaker was smashed to the ground like a crushed bug, sliding backwards a few meters as its legs sunk deep into the muck and lodged there, pinning the machine in place like a fly stuck to flypaper, with its main gun buried in the mud. The tertiary target charged foward suddenly, moving on four legs with the front two raised threateningly, long mono-blades sliding into attack position from the tips, but Rachel coolly focused the sponson turrets on it, and flamed it well before it covered the distance to them, sending it crashing onto its side in a heap.

Another pair of artillery shots on the trapped Eddie tank put it out of their misery, cracking open the hull like a lobster shell in those super swanky resteraunts they'd gone to on leave, because why the hell not? Rachel disengaged the Redoubt barrier as she swerved the Pain around and made for the tarmac again, eager to be back on solid ground. Their elation at their bloodless... at least on their end... victory was short lived though, as the Edenites were pushing back hard against the scrambling base defenders now, a firestorm of epic proportions raging off near the docks, where most of the Edenite Mobile Suits were located, tying up a similar majority of the Solar Knights in a no holds barred brawl.

"Look, kitties!" Elizabeth exclaimed, a bit inanely, but they were all a bit shocked to see a mixed armor company was indeed under attack by cats, though calling them "kitties" was to triviliaze something that was really quite scary. They were the size of horses, even bigger in some cases, nearly the size of cars, and they had riders in Custodian armor wielding beam rifles, mono-lances, grenade launchers and even a handheld hyper-impulse system in one case! They worked in groups of three and four, sprinting across the tarmac in leaps and bounds, avoiding the majority of defensive firepower through sheer speed and their rolling, unpredictable movement paths, getting in close to the flanks of Viking's and Gladiators before unleashing their firepower or using pinpoint strkes from mono-lances to pierce the armor and target the crew directly, leaving burning and still hulls in their wake.

Rachel opened up at maximum range with the sponson and glacis mounted .50 caliber machineguns, spraying bullets in that general direction, the firepower too light to hurt friendly tanks, but enough to un-cat several riders, and even send one of the cats skidding down onto its side in bloody ruin. There was a grinding lurch as the Pain butted up against the tarmac, and she shifted back to tread locomotion, sparks flying from the underhull as the drive systems dragged them out of the muck and back onto solid ground. "Give me maximum CUSA." Rachel directed, as several of the cat-cavalry fearlessly headed in their direction, beam bolts splattering harmlessly away from the GP shield blisters on their glacis. They kept their mounts towards the front of the Titan as much as possible, in a narrow field where the two sponson turrets couldn't cross their field of fire within a certain range.

Elizabeth did as ordered, and a powerful, pulsating thrum spilled out across the tarmac, which cracked and even rippled in spots as the focused sonic bombardment tore through it. This had little effect on the overall integrity of the tarmac, and less on the traction of the Pain, but the vibrations were painful to the paws of the Direcats, the sonic backwash disorienting to them, and they slowed and staggered as they tried to back away from the oncoming Titan. One was immolated by beam fire from the right sponson as he strayed out of the safe zone, causing the rest to veer back into a position directly in front of the Titan. Seeing that their mounts could not run or properly fight while within the influence of the sonic disruption, the rest defiantly turned their weapons on the oncoming juggernaut and fired as rapidly as they could.

It did them no good... Rachel didn't even bother to activate the mono-molecular brushcutters built into the front of the Pain, used for clearing terrain obstacles or fortifications for following infantry to take advantage of. She just drove the Pain into and over the cavalry, direcats and riders alike, like a car would drive over a squirrel. They didn't even feel a single bump as the Titan ground the hapless Custodians into greasy smears on its undercarriage. This was the reason why they referred to infantry as "axel-grease". Seeing this gruesome fate befall their fellows, the rest of the cat-cavalry were quick to begin withdrawing from the area, easily outpacing the Titan as long as they didn't fall within the hundred meter or so range of the sonic disruption effect. However, they didn't go far, as new allies moved to provide cover for them.

"Is... is that a CRAB?" Cammy stammered in disbelief, as a house sized, four legged, chitinous organism with huge pincer claws scuttled sideways out of a gap between two hangars. It was the color of a week old bruise, with milky pale eyes on short stalks protruding from its facial region.

"I'm never eating shellfish again now." Elizabeth added in a strangulated whisper, as she tried to call up a scan of the creature.

Rachel had no banter to exchange, she just targeted the thing and opened up with the .50 caliber guns again, spitting hudnreds of rounds into it. If it noticed it was being shot at, the crustacean gave no outward signs of it, as it continued to amble its way across the tarmac towards them, and the other remaining tanks. Zooming in, Rachel could see sparks flying from the shell as the bullets just bounced off... the thing was armored as well as a tank! Perhaps better, because when one of the Vikings behind her tagged it with a round from its 125mm linear cannon, the crab just shrugged it off without a single scratch! Even in a Titan, a direct hit from a Viking's main gun would at least shake her up a little, but the crab seemed totally oblivious to the fact that it had been hit at all!

Elizabeth walked a two second burst of sponson beam fire into the creature, and at least the beams seemed capable of damaging it, biting crisply into the dark carapace, turning it bright red around the points of impact as body tissues vaporized and cooked the flesh around the impact points. But despite taking a dozen hits from tank caliber beam weapons, the crab did not die... if anything it just seemed to be finally pissed off, turning to face them fully and clacking its claws menacingly in their direction. Giggling lightly in a mixture of disbelief and dismay, Cammy lit the crab up with the artillery cannons, both shots striking directly, which ripped off one of the pincers and flipped the entire crab over onto its back from the impact, even though the carapace itself was only lightly dented. Its wildly kicking legs instantly indicated that while it might be down, it sure as hell wasn't out!

It wasn't until Rachel hosed the bastard thing down with a five second burst of beam fire from both sponsons together that the crab... now more red than dark... finally seemed to accept what any other creature would have realized ten seconds earlier, and died. "Could that have been any more FUCKED UP?" Rachel breathed at last, shaking her head at the crustacean's gently steaming remains.

"Well, I hate to answer that, but..." Elizabeth trailed off with a whispery chuckle of dismay. it didn't take the other two long to see what the problem was. There were more crabs coming their way. MANY more crabs. Dozens of them... maybe hundreds! And behind them, there was something even bigger, as big as the Pain, if not larger, also lumbering in their direction. Rachel reminded herself of the first rule of Titan command, assigned because of their low maneuverability and pitiful top speed... you can only go forward. If you cannot advance, you die. She started up the brushcutters, and hit the switch that would electrify the hull. It was time to get stuck in somewhere nasty...

xxxx

**Near the docks, 15 minutes after the start of the attack**

The Transcendance hit the tarmac hard, right shoulder digging a gouge into the mostly unyielding material, throwing off sparks and splatters of liquid crystal armor as friction ate up the last of Shinn's momentum. A moment or two more of brightness, and then the sky got dark again, or at least returned to its normal levels of illumination, as the crosshatching grid of interlocked FRALA beams the Lucifer used as one of its primary... and most devastating... attacks faded away again. It had been no forceful push or battle damage that sent Shinn careening to the ground in such an undignified manner, no, that had been merely because there was no other way for him to get out of the way of that damned laser net without being cubed like a deli ham! Which was something he'd already seen happen to more than a dozen Solar Knights and more USN tanks than he wanted to remember!

FRALA's were one of the few weapons against which the Transcendance had very little in the way of defense, other than pure avoidance, and the laser net attack hit a cone shaped area several kilometers long and several hundred meters wide at its widest point... it was hard as HELL to dodge! How the Eddies had managed to come up with technology that let them split laser beams like that, Shinn did not know, but it made him simultaneously shake with fright and burn with anger. The only upside to the attack was that the Lucifer couldn't do it very often, about once every thirty seconds at the most, and only then when the Gundam apparently had free time and attention to devote to creating the special field-prisms that refracted the four large FRALA beams from its chest emitters into the smaller net-weave. Of course, the Lucifer had plenty of other ways to make Shinn's life hell even without the laser net.

"This is simply ridiculous." Shinn grumbled under his breath, as he pushed the Transcendance upright and looked back towards the Lucifer. He could barely even see the Gundam itself, at least as more than a dark, blurry, humanoid shape in the heart of the insanely complex storm of orbiting feather pods that projected a bewildering array of Citadel, GP and Positron shield effects. There were even a few solid QC shields of some sort, Shinn had seen whirling around in the depths of the defensive matrix Kira had woven not just around his ow Gundam, but encompassing an area almost four hundred meters in diameter surrounding him! Within which sheltered dozens of Eddie Mobile Suits and tanks, and hundreds of infantry, as safe and secure there as they would have been hundreds of miles away buried in subterranean bunkers!

Nothing got in or out of that matrix without Kira's permission, not Mobile Suits, not munitions, not even FRALA beams. It was as close to a perfect defense as Shinn had ever seen. It was a true work of art, in real time, and he only wished he had time to admire it fully, and from a vantage point where it wasn't turned against him! He made sure to record his sensor captures all the same, so he could have something to point to the next time he taught a class of young Solar Knight hopefuls, and the inevitable jackass asked "What's so special about Gundams anyway" or "Yeah, Kira Yamato was the best ten years ago, but now he's old, isn't he?". That was assuming he lived long enough to show up said class of course!

"Don't shoot at him!" Luna was admonishing some newly arriving Solar Knight forces, who had been trying to batter their way through the interlocking fields with raw firepower. The warning was too late for two of them, as crimson red supercharged beam bolts and purple-blue accelerated impulse cannon blasts came ricocheting back through the Lucifer's fields towards them, cutting them down unerringly with their own expended firepower, and that of their friends. Shinn had learned early on in the confrontation that Kira was a better shot with Shinn's ranged attacks than Shinn himself was! It did not pay to engage him with plasma type weapons of any description, you'd only fuel the flames of your own destruction, as your shots were rebounded a dozen times and then returned to you, sometimes as much as ten seconds after you first fired them, and usually from an unexpected angle.

Munition based weapons were a little better, cannons and railguns and missiles and such, as while the Lucifer could deflect and even redirect these projectiles to a certain extent, he couldn't straight up rebound them like he did plasma beams, so most of those weapons just went wide, or fell amongst troops foolish enough to try and attack the Gundam's zone of control from the flanks. FRALA beams were again just feeding the fires of hell, if you were lucky they'd just refract down into the ground or away into the sky. If you weren't lucky, he'd split them into a dozen smaller beams and send them back at you in a mini-net, carving red hot lines of death through you and maybe several people next to you too. It was extremely disheartening, especially when the machines just... fell apart, like a plastic model, without exploding, and you got a view of some of the gory details in the process.

"What are we supposed to do then?" One of the Solar Knights retorted bitterly. "Fart angrily at him and hope he goes away?"

"Panic doesn't help anyone." Luna answered with a snarl of irritation. She more than anyone there had bad flashbacks whenever someone got cut down by a FRALA attack, but she was keeping her cool, so she expected the same of them. "We're working on a solution, just be patient." She switch to a private channel between her and Shinn. "What are we going to do? We don't have the means to break... THAT!" She waved the Gram expressively at the slowly advancing defensive matrix. Kira couldn't move quickly while doing this, but apparently advancing at a walking pace was well within his limits.

"We could call in a munitions only orbital strike. The 600cm bombardment cannons on the _Solaris_ would be more than even Kira Yamato could deflect!" Shinn rejoined, knowing as he spoke it that such a strike would decimate Heaven's Base as well. If only he had the AMP rifle, he could ruin Kira's whole day, and at a minimum of collateral damage. Alas, Rey and Durandel had not particularly trusted him with that particular power, so the rifle was kept stored up at Galileo LFB, under coded lock and key that only the Solar President could unseal. Even if he could get it unlocked right now, flying there and back would take hours, even in the Transcendance, and the battle would be well over, one way or another.

"The area denial means of defense?" Luna said with forced levity. "Are we already at that point? That's practically suicide, Shinn... if all our forces suddenly moved off, he'd know an orbital attack was coming, and he'd just move his forces out of the way... we'd have to stay within the blast radius just to make sure we got him!"

"Moved off..." Shinn repeated slowly, the kernel of an idea forming in his mind. "Luna, you're brilliant!"

"Uhh... Yes?" She replied, clearly not seeing what he had.

"He can't move while he keeps that matrix up!" Shinn explain excitedly. "Well, he can walk, but that's not tactical movement... he's stuck at the center of the defensive matrix, orchestrating it. Which is great for the troops he's protecting, and because people will naturally gravitate towards trying to take out an enemy leader and a Gundam, it ties up our forces as well. What we need to do is start splitting up, and hitting some of their other forces, to make him choose between maintaining his perfect defense or being fast enough to help his other forces... we need to make him go on the offensive! He's at his weakest when he's attacking outright!"

"That's a little convoluted, but I think I have the gist of what you mean." Luna replied, the light dawning in her mind too. And she had just the idea to make it work, too. She didn't wait to explain it to Shinn, trusting that he'd be ready to act when his greater plan hopefully bore fruit. She launched herself high, checking the load of the Gram and frowning. She'd used up more shots than she really should have against Kira's defensive matrix, but morale would have fractured if the Knight-Champions hadn't been seen to be at least trying to attack, even if it was ultimately pointless. The Gram's munitions were time and effort intensive to produce, so she normally didn't sortie with more than twenty of them at a time, and she was down to her last six now.

But she only needed one or two, hopefully. Flying up higher and higher, Luna moved out over the harbor area, and beyond to the ocean itself, where several large, cetacous shapes lurked just below the water's surface, Chimera whales that had served as transport "ships" for the Eddie attack force, and also as close support for attacks on the harbor proper. Most sea-going Chimera were strong in telekinesis, according to the FEAR reports she'd seen on them after the battle of Orb, but as fast as the Gram's projectiles were, and as limited as most sea-going creature's perceptions were of what went on in the skies above, she felt she had a reasonably good chance of hitting one before it knew it was under attack. All the same, she made sure to target one that seemed otherwise engaged in sinking an aircraft carrier, hopefully its mind would be "occupied".

Whether or not it was distracted by its own attacks, or just caught unawares, Luna could never know, but the humpback Chimera she targeted did not block the Gram missile with TK. Anti-matter reacted even more virulently underwater than it did in atmosphere, and a towering geyser of crimson stained water mixed with scorched blobs of blubber shot almost two hundred feet into the air as the projectile detonated inside the Chimera's body, vaporizing everything but the head and tip of the tail in a moment. Every other Chimera in view reacted as if stabbed in the brain with a red hot poker, and many of the Eddies she could see on land also went into paroxysms of pain, as the psy-shock of a Chimera rolled over them. The sudden deaths were, if anything, worse than the painfully slow ones, as they gave no warning or time for the Edenite to brace themselves against what was coming.

Seeing no immediate reaction from the Lucifer's matrix, Luna fired again, at a different target. The Chimera weren't stupid though, far from it, and after having one of their number atomised from above, the rest were diving deeper and warding their upper flanks with TK barriers, so her rocket was knocked off course and struck the water off to the side of the intended target, annihilating a clutch of the gargantuan crabs that had been piling out of the shallows in a seemingly endless horde for the past several minutes. The gap in the clicking morass of chitinous bodies was closed over almost immediately, but Luna's point had been made. Shinn must have also been in contact with people in orbit, because plasma bolts and FRALA beams began hurtling down out of the sky, all aimed further out to sea, boiling away millions of gallons of seawater and making things "hot" for the Eddie's seaborne allies.

The Eddies hadn't come ashore with enough force to be planning to take and hold ground, and the Chimera were the only good way for most of the force to leave the area as well, so if they were pinned down or cut off by orbital firepower, the Eddies were good as trapped and then finished. Oh, the Lucifer and the Mobile Suits might get away, but not the tanks and infantry, and losing that many infantry all at once would be a critical blow to the Eddie war machine. If they hadn't been so caught up in the terror and awe Kira Yamato in a Gundam automatically inspired in people, they might have seen the flaw in the Eddie plan earlier... the Executor could only be in one spot at a time... either in the sky, protecting the transports, or on the ground, protecting the soldiers. Or preferably neither, because knowing Shinn, the moment Kira broke down his barrier to move at speed, her lover would be all over the Executor.

Down below, she saw the overlapping fields of the defensive matrix waver and shudder, as the Lucifer began recalling its fractal feathers to prepare for striking camp. Shinn didn't even wait for the Lucifer to fully decamp, he charged in howling, channeling his infamous rage to access the Seed and his full capability, zweihander cocked back over his shoulders, while his wings projected a Positron barrier in front of him, which he used to bulldoze aside the weakened matrix fields, clearing a path for him to charge through, into the sanctum zone at the core of the defensive zone. A blazing pink flare of light punched through the Positron barrier and blew the Transcendance's left wing right off its mount, but Shinn remained undeterred, throwing himself forward and swinging with all his momentum at the Lucifer, forcing the Gundam to take a step back and lift the hand not holding its ion disintegrator rifle over its head.

Luna hit the trigger for the Garm, having a wide open shot at the Lucifer's back from this angle, but in the moment she did so, she realized she'd made a mistake. The Lucifer's raised free hand generated a gravity field that only slightly altered the trajectory of the incoming Garm, but it was enough to send it skimming over the Lucifer's shoulder and slamming directly into the weakened Positron barrier protecting the Transcendance. The flare of the explosion was painfully bright, even with special filters, and Luna was too scared to even scream, petrified by the thought that her attack had killed her beloved, however unintentionally! She tried to scream again when her proximity sensors went off and she realized the Lucifer was now above her, moving during her moment of inattention, a sword flying from its side to smack comfortably into its formerly free hand. A quick slash sent her left arm and half the Gram spinning away to the ground below, and then the rifle in his right hand started to come up to point at her cockpit, point blank!

Before the motion could be finished, the Executor attempted to reverse it, as an enraged Shinn, stunned but not destroyed by Luna's deflected shot, both wings now missing, puple-blue coolant fluid splurting from the stumps on his Gundam's back, came zooming up from the ground and slashed with his zweihander, forcing Kira to shift backwards. "You even THINK about hurting Luna, and I'll destroy you!" Shinn spat thickly across an open comm channel.

"You haven't changed much." Kira's voice seemed distant, as if he wasn't really paying attention to what was going on around him. "Though I can't tell now whether that's a good thing or bad."

Luna didn't wait for the repartee to continue. With Shinn alive and... alive... she could focus on other things again. She launched her full complement of VTP missiles at the Lucifer, all twelve of them from her back and hip mounted launchers, reckoning that even Kira might have trouble with twelve of the missiles at once! Before half of them had even ignited their primary booster system, precision shots from the ion disintegrators, now gripped in either of the Lucifer's hands, blew them to smoking fragments. Luna blinked, her sensor's decrying the Lucifer's reaction time... he'd drawn his second rifle in less than a quarter second! How the hell did he react that fast? No, he HAD to have been moving before she'd launched... but he was a Latent, he couldn't be reading her mind! The other six missiles went down moments later, shot from the sky like they were mounted on museum display posts.

"So it's okay for her to hit me, but I can't hit her, huh?" Kira commented dryly. "Noah told me that once too. And the entire USN seems to believe it holds true for them. I don't care who started this war or why, all I want is to end it. And I'll hit whoever I have to in order to do that."

"You've always been a self righteous bastard. Always thinking you know best for everyone. The only thing that makes Noah worse than you is that Noah actually had the balls to do more than preach! Up until now!" Shinn snarled back. He thrust with his sword at the end of that sentence, but the attack was sidestepped as if he'd sent prior notice of it before the conversation even started. The Lucifer kicked the flat of the zweihander so hard in passing that it jarred loose from Shinn's hands, and tumbled away towards the ground.

"I'll forgive that one based on your impetuous nature." Kira's voice was cold as a long abandoned grave. "But don't compare me to Noah again."

"You're always so FUCKING SMUG, YOU BASTARD! I HATE THAT!" Shinn declared, popping out his finger claws and swiping at the Lucifer, undeterred by the disarming. Each rending sweep of the Transcendance's clawed hands went wide, just ever so slightly. To Luna, it barely even looked like Kira was dodging the attacks... more like he simply knew where not to be so that they missed him anyway. She narrowed her eyes, and then widened them exponentially, as she saw it! The Lucifer moved BEFORE Shinn's next attack even started! She'd thought it was just station keeping maneuvers, but Kira was actually anticipating Shinn's attacks! And that was impossible... when he was this mad, not even SHINN knew where he was going to attack next... his unpredictability when enraged was one of his greatest strengths!

"Always with the unreasoning hate. I looked you up, you know? After the Eden Disaster. I wanted to know what made you hate Orb so much, that you would willingly work with Durandel to destroy the Gundams after we brought down the Great Endeavor. At the time, I didn't understand... and I suppose I still don't, though now I can empathize at least. I know what its like to lose your family to an apparently meaningless act of violence." Kira's voice was quiet, and no longer angry. Or at least not angry at Shinn. "But retreating into the rage isn't the solution. Giving in to the pain, lashing out at others... these won't help you, in the long run. You think Mayu and your parents are looking down on you from heaven, seeing you like this, consumed with hate and fear and blaming it on everyone else, and smiling? Killing in their name, and betraying the country they loved and lived in? That's your way of honoring them?"

"I don't know what you're talking about! I've never heard those names before in my life!" Shinn growled, though Luna knew that last bit wasn't exactly true, as he'd asked her about Mayu not too long ago. Her heart clenched, and she opened her mouth to back Shinn up on that point. She couldn't let him get hurt by his past again... could she? It was true, it ate at her to willingly decieve him like this, but it was for his own good, wasn't it? He was happier now, wasn't he? But the words wouldn't come... she couldn't even grunt in denial! With a supreme effort of will, she began forcing words out, words that would call Kira a liar and a manipulator, just like all the other Edenites who'd wronged Shinn in the past.

"Stay out of this." Kira cut her off before she could finish making the first word. "If anyone is a manipulator here, I suspect its you, Lunamaria. But its not my place to judge that."

"H-how... how did... how did you know that I was...?" Luna stammered, shocked and frightened by his accuracy in pre-empting her.

"It's my Burden to know things others do not." Kira answered with cryptic weariness. "And I know I really don't have time for this, but..." He broke off to slap away a clawing grasp from the Transcendance, and actually grabbed the next slash by the wrist and held it off, while scanning the ground below. "Stop struggling, I'm not going to kill you. Either of you. Unless you force me. I don't know what's up with you, Shinn Asuka... all the research I've done on you, and I've done plenty of it, indicates your strong hatred for Orb stems from the loss of your family during the battle of Onogoro during the First Valentine War. Some sources even indicate that you blamed me for what happened, because I was fighting in the area at the time. Blame me as much as you like, but blaming Orb is beneath you and a disservice to your family, who were proud Orbites."

"I don't hate Orb. I don't know what you're talking about!" Shinn insisted, trying to rip off Kira's restraining hand on his wrist. It was trying to grab mist... the Lucifer was ever where his hands just barely couldn't reach!

"Denial helps nobody. Or have you given up even having reasons for your hate?" Kira's voice acquired a snarl of its own. "In that case, you're a mad dog, just like a certain other monster of my unfortunate acquiantance, and I'd be doing everyone a service but putting you out of your misery as soon as possible. This is your last chance, Shinn Asuka. Why don't you flip open your sister's cellphone and listen to her voice one more time? That's all you have left of her, right, besides your memories? If only I had that much left of my children and Lacus... I envy you that treasure, and it offends me more than I have words to express to find that you may have cast it aside like trash! Listen to Mayu, Shinn... she's your little sister, and she's your last hope of redemption. Wake up and stop hating everyone for your own tragic past! You aren't the only one suffering that way, and you never have been!"

"I DON'T HAVE A SISTER, YOU BASTARD! JUST SHUT UP AND DIE!" Shinn aimed his right palm at the Lucifer, and called forth the Positron reflector shield, trying to knock the black Gundam away from him, something, anything to land a solid hit. Before he could even fully complete the motion, Kira had matched him with a similar motion from the Lucifer's palm mounted shield generator, and the attack was stymied and then rebounded, the Transcendance's reactor limited by the lack of cooling wings, while the Lucifer's was still at full capacity. The Transcendance hurtled backwards like a fly swatted in midair, out of control and unable to regain it. Not for the next few seconds anyway.

Luna gulped when the Lucifer turned her way, violet crystal eye lenses glowing dimly in a manner that seemed definitely threatening, in a personal sense. "I don't know what you've done to him, but you'd better undo it. There is NOTHING more heinous than manipulating someone through their love for their family, or lack of it." Kira told her coldly. "I don't care about your reasons, or your rationale. Maybe you even thought you were helping him, I don't care. You've broken him, and he doesn't even know it. His chance for redemption has been stolen, along with his memories, and it's by your hands. That means he's your responsibility. So either fix him, and accept the consequences of what you've done, or I swear to you, I will put him out of his misery without a single regret. I know one man who hates without reasons for why already... its one too many for the world to handle as it is."

She felt like he was going to say more, perhaps make a more personal reprimand to her, but blazing streaks of light in the heavens announced the arrival of a series of large drop pods being deployed from the fleet overhead. "I've wasted too much time, I see. It's time to face the horde." Kira commented, his voice distant again. The Lucifer was suddenly gone, headed for higher altitude, the sonic boom in its wake rocking her half disabled Excaliber roughly. Though the physical danger had somewhat passed, Luna still felt like she was about to die. How could she explain to Shinn what she'd done? How could she...


	75. The Meaning of War

Author Note: Sorry for the delay, especially in the midst of a battle. Time to get back into the fray.

xxxx

**Heaven's Base, April 25th, 3:45 PM**

Custodian Magnus Lazlo had never been the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, the toughest or the most beautiful, before becoming an Edenite or afterwards either. He'd never really stood out of a crowd, with short, plain brown hair and mossy green eyes that certainly inspired no poetics, and even less stirring in most feminine hearts. A bit on the short side, a bit on the thin side, often as pale as a dead fish, he'd grown up the sort of kid who wasn't pushed around by others just because they hardly ever even noticed he was there in the first place. There was nothing exceptional about him, or so he'd thought, but then had come the Eden Disaster, and it was invisible, wall hanging Lazlo who emerged alive from the transformative experience, and not the majority of his classmates and peers, so perhaps there was more to him than he'd suspected.

And, as he'd discovered, with a little effort, there certainly was more to him than just a nondescript and commonplace appearance, as he'd been caught up in the messianic travels of Kunai as that visionary man led the way to the promised land, at the trunk of Yggdrasil, at the roof of the world. Lazlo, then barely eighteen, had been one of the first to join up to the organization that would eventually become the Custodian Legios of Garden City, the chosen few protectors of the rest of the Edenite race. For a while there, things had been pretty heady... he'd even got to sit next to Lilia, the Valkyrie, HERSELF once, and she even SPOKE to him! Had he been a little braver and more confident in himself, maybe he could have even spoken back, but Lazlo had never been good with girls, and becoming an Edenite hadn't changed that. Not even Latent powers could tell him how to stop making verbal missteps apparently. And so his brief brush with destiny passed him by, no doubt Lilia didn't even remember him, and while she ascended to the heights of legendary prowess, Lazlo became just another Custodian.

He didn't resent this, in fact he was grateful for his annonyminity, as he felt far more comfortable as just one face amongst many than singled out for attention from the high and mighty. As a result, he had next to zero sense of ambition, and after achieving his current rank of Custodian Magnus several years ago, he had proceeded no further up the hierarchy of the military, despite repeated opportunities to do so, and even pressure from his superiors. Pressure which had only grown more fierce as the Reclamation War moved into the open, and long serving veteran soldiers suddenly became a premium commodity. But Lazlo, by then one of the longest serving soldiers in Legio Direcat, stubbornly refused to become a Manifold leader, or move up into the command ranks of the Tacitus. He was responsibile for himself, and that was as far as his comfort zone reached.

Well, not quite just himself, as an elite veteran of Legio Direcat, he was part of the Legio's famed raiding cavalry unit, the "Alpha Pride" as they were known in inter-unit slang. The rough and often forested terrain of New Eden was not conducive to the free use of large armored vehicles, so raiding units had turned back the clock of warfare a few centuries, and revived the ancient roots of the cavalry tradition with biological mounts. Horses had not survived the Disaster and its immediate evolutionary arms-race aftermath amongst the flora and fauna of the new world, perhaps suffering from too many generations of being bred into luxury items for humans rather than useful beasts of burden or companionship. Thus the Custodians had to look elsewhere for mounts.

The qualities of a good mount were speed, agility, endurance, and intelligence. It didn't matter how fast or far your mount could run, if it couldn't be trained to work with its rider, it would be useless as a cavalry mount. Surprisingly, considering their roots, Direcats had proven to be exceptional subjects, though "taming" them could be very dangerous if you didn't raise them from the cub stage. Direcats were bigger than most horses, and far stronger, able to climb trees and pounce well over five body lengths in a single bound, even while carrying a rider, not to mention they were ferocious close quarter combatants with sabre-toothed fangs and claws. As pack hunters, they had an instinctive sense for working as a team with others, which could be trained to allow a mount and rider to act almost as one, similar to though not quite like the way two bonded humans could share emotions, thoughts and ideas in anear seamless fashion on the battlefield.

Lazlo's comapnion-mount was named Aeneas, as it was custom in Alpha Pride for the mounts to be named after mythological figures of some stripe, and many found inspirations in the Hellenic war period of ancient Greece. Aeneas was not the biggest Direcat by any means... Hector, the pride alpha, outstripped him in size by half as much again in all dimensions, despite them being roughly the same age... nor the showiest, with tawny brown fur that Lazlo often dyed with camouflage pigments depending on what kind of environment they were deployed to. At the moment, Aeneas was a patchwork of greys, whites and blacks, along with splotches of unpainted light tan, to break up his visual outline. It wasn't so useful in a balls out raid like the raid on Heaven's Base, but given how large and sprawled out the Oosen base was, Lazlo wasn't about to deny himself an advantage if it did come to a chance for prowling rather than pouncing.

It was the job of Alpha Pride, led by the Strategos herself astride the mighty Hector, to disrupt the enemy heavy armor deployment as much as possible, to give the Mobile Suit units and the Executor time to defeat the Solar Knights and other Oosen elites before they could get a combined arms strategy together. With the Oosen always having the advantage of numbers, the only way they were going to be able to beat the defenses of Heaven's Base was to destroy them piecemeal, without giving them time to consolidate into a solid defensive formation. Alpha Pride had quickly outstripped the more heavily armed battle walkers of Legio Spider Wolf which were escorting the massed infantry formations of Direcat, Ironhide and Spider Wolf, plunging ahead into the parking lots and crew barracks where the Oosen's vehicles were lined up, awaiting deployment at various fronts throughout Europe.

Alpha Pride had quickly gotten seperated amongst the maze-like sprawl of parked vehicles and the chaos of scrambling Oosen armor crews and infantry defenders, though even with his comrades for the most part out of line of sight, Lazlo could keep track of their movements through the Manifold link, almost as if he rode beside them in spirit! Because of how Direcats were built, a saddle like a horse rider would use wasn't the most comfortable of equipment for them... Lazlo sat just behind Aeneas's foreshoulders, where a horse-rider sat further back along his mount's spine, so a regular saddle would chafe Aeneas's shoulderblades and even limit the flex of his forelimbs. Instead, Direcat Cavalry relied on stirrup like straps that were laced up and down the cat's body like a corsage, to distribute the weight of the rider, as they held onto other straps that crossed the cat's back. It was more like riding a rodeo bull bareback, than a horse. Except Aeneas wasn't trying to throw him off, and with training and experience, they moved almost like one creature.

Claws skittering on the reinforced concrete tarmac of the base, Aeneas cornered around a file of parked Chariot APC's, Lazlo rising higher in the stirups to a half crouching position, one hand locked tight around his grip strap, centerline between Aeneas's shoulderblades, while his other hand hefted the telescoping titanium shaft of his vibro-lance, the primary weapon of the Alpha Pride. An eight foot length of segmented metal, with a eighteen inch warhead as broad as Lazlo's palm which used oscillitaing vibrations to heat its mono-edge to white hot temperatures to pierce armor like butter, the lance was anti-armor and anti-infantry tool in one, if you knew how to use it. It could pierce the side of a Gladiator IFV and take out the driver in their chair if you got enough momentum on your charge, but a better use was targeting the wheels or treads, and drive system of an armored vehicle. Once those were compromised, a tank was basically just an armored box with guns, which could be taken out at range or with grenades at leisure later.

Hardly breaking stride, Aeneas gathered his legs and leapt easily atop one of the Chariots in the next file over, a vertical leap of over three meters, taken like a man stepping up onto a curb. Having anticipated his mount's action a moment earlier, Lazlo's half standing position let him use his legs like shock absorbers to soften the impact of the landing, an almost instinctual response that he hardly even noticed himself doing anymore. He wasn't interested in taking out Chariots, they were pieces of crap on the way to being phased out by the Gladiators anyway, destroying them would almost be doing the Oosen a favor! A flash of blue from several files over caught his eye, and an instant later Aeneas was in motion, leaping from one Chariot to another, and from there to the ground, over a dozen meters away from their starting point a second prior.

Lazlo had just enough time to build up a few strides worth of momentum, before the flash of blue he'd noticed earlier resolved into a six man squad of Oosen troopers, wearing their armored environment suits and bearing Cutlasses and other light weapons, probably vehicle crewmen, hustling down the file of vehicles towards a group of three Gladiators parked at the end, hatches open and awaiting the racing drivers. Aeneas snarled with bone rattling force, snapping his tusklike fangs around one trooper's arm, ripping it off its socket like a doll's arm, armor and all, even as the impact of the cat's shoulder hurled the maimed soldier backwards a half dozen feet. Blood jetted wetly across Aeneas's flank and Lazlo's left leg, but he was too busy burying the head of his lance through the sternum of a second soldier to notice. The vibro-lance pierced armor and flesh like steel through silk, the crossbar mounted just beyond the warhead to prevent overpenetration slamming into the soldier's breastplate, denting it inwards and bowling the corpse over in a heap.

The lance shaft auto-scoped, shortening its length as Lazlo rode past the body, allowing him to pluck the weapon from its gory sheath without warping the shaft or chancing getting it caught and pushing him off his mount, a flick of his wrist scattered smoking blood droplets from the edge and lengthened the shaft once more as soon as the warhead was clear of the corpse. Sparks from panicked Cutlass shots sparked from armor plate and sent chips of concrete pattering along the ground as the remaining four soldiers tried to chase Aeneas with their rifle fire. However the Direcat was much too fast, dodging into the space between parked APC's before leaping up and over the entire vehicle to land atop one of the soldiers, crushing him into the tarmac beneath claws and fangs, while Lazlo skewered another on the lance.

Releasing his grip on the weapon's shaft, he left it planted like a flagpole in its newest victim, reaching down to where a beam carbine... the bastard offspring of a pistol and a rifle, larger and more powerful than than the former, smaller and shorter ranged than the latter... was sheathed in a holster just forward of his left thigh. Cavalry weapons and armor were generally lighter than similar weapons carried by infantry, especially for light cavalry, who relied on agility and speed rather than armor for protection, so the Alpha Pride had to forgo most of the new weapons being issued to their comrades, which required heavy external powerpacks and other secondary systems to be utilized. But even a old model beam gun was more than powerful enough to blast right through Survivor pattern armor like it was swiss cheese, and two quick snapshots put down the last two Oosen drivers before they could recover their wits from the sudden reappearance of Aeneas in their midst.

The booming sound of cannonfire, mixed with the ripping chatter of heavy automatic weapons, sounded from the near distance, along with feelings of frustration and dismay from the Manifold, prompting Lazlo to retrieve his lance and send Aeneas loping in that direction. A half minute of unimpeded progress led him to a wide open staging area between a half dozen large maintenance hangers, where damaged or broken tanks were repaired by dedicated crews, which was currently host to a raging brawl between four fellow members of Alpha Pride and a quartet of Oosen vehicles, the largest of which was a Viking MBT with one tread derailed, stuck in the middle of the staging area, trying to track and blow apart the circling Direcats with its 125mm linear main cannon, without much success. The tank might have been on its last legs... and causing more damage to the base environment than the Direcats themselves could hope to do alone in the process... but its three allies were of rather more concern.

They were all-terrain jeeps, commonly known as "Bisons", because of their overbuilt exteriors, especially their ram-like front ends, which they used to batter themselves through undergrowth and terrain obstacles through brute force alone... a very Oosen approach to a problem. Though heavily armored, and excessively overpowered for their weight, they were lightly armed, with a single heavy linear machinegun on a pintle mount atop the vehicle, and room for four soldiers inside, with firing ports for their personnel weapons. The Bisons were trying to pin the Direcats between them and the Viking, firing indiscriminate bursts with their machineguns and rifles, since their light weapons couldn't hurt the tank. A blue armored form slumped atop the Viking's turret cupola, the twin barrels of the tank's .50 caliber machineguns pointed at the sky, drenched in the tank commander's blood.

Bursting onto the scene from the flank, Lazlo hurled his lance like a spear... it wasn't really designed for such use, but at such comparatively close range the unbalanced weapon wouldn't affect his accuracy. The white-hot blade carved through the rear tire armor of one Bison, melting through the wire stuffed tire interior and slagging the actual drive wheel itself, before the lance was splintered apart by the weight of the jeep grinding it against the tarmac. Caught in mid turn, the Bison spun out of control and then flipped onto one side, rolling a half dozen times before slamming into the wall of one of the hangers, crumpling the building's wall. The Bison lay at rest on its roof, wheels still spinning, bodywork more or less intact for all the battering of the crash, though the crew inside weren't so lucky... with restraints unbuckled so they could shoot their personal weapons, they'd been whiplashed violently around the interior, and were crippled or dead from multiple broken bones.

A moment later, Lazlo flinched as phantom hammerblows marched up his chest, as one of the other Bison immediately took revenge, getting a good or lucky line of fire on one of the other Direcats, walking a burst of 20mm linear rounds into and through both cat and rider, the light Borealite and leather armor of the cavalryman being little defense against the heavy, mono-tipped rounds. Shaking off the psy-shock, and the sensation of ribs shattering and organs bursting, Lazlo pointed Aeneas towards the Viking, which had almost drawn a bead on him with its main gun. Even if he'd still had his lance, it would have been little practical use against the Viking's heavy armor, and his carbine was likewise useless, so instead Lazlo grabbed a set of three intertwined cords from where they were looped at his belt. No one remembered who'd first come up with the idea, but the bolo-grenades were popular amongst Alpha Pride, both because of the skill needed to use them effectively, and the damage they could do when so used.

Charging almost directly at the tank, Aeneas turned aside at the last moment, as Lazlo whirled the three grenades-on-cords over his head a few times to build up force, then let fly, the spinning cords wrapping neatly around the base of the Viking's cannon, right near the turret. Pressure from his heels urged Aeneas into a graceful leap away from proximity to the tank, as barely a second later the three grenades detonated in sequence. The first was a Neutron grenade, which turned the Viking's thick armor into so much brittle metal crystals. The second was a Smasher gravity mine, which used a gravitational fluctuation to shatter that weakened armor. And the last was a high explosive grenade, which took out the crew and touched off the internal magazine of the tank, sending the turret jetting skyward on a plume of fire as tall as a Mobile Suit!

Forewarned through the Manifold link, the Direcats had moved away from the tank, taking cover behind the scurrying Bisons just before the detonation, so they were spared the worst effects of the blastwave and flying debris, which stunned and disoriented the crews of the ATJ's long enough for the Direcats to approach and fill the vehicles with beam fire through the weapon ports, or drop grenades through the firing windows, incinerating or blowing apart the Oosen soldiers in their seats. Somewhat incredibly, the Bisons themselves remained mostly intact, even with a high explosive grenade detonating within their interior... a definite testament to the ruggedness of their engineering!

However, there was no time to sit around and marvel at the view, as the Oosen defenders were gowing ever more numerous and better organized, and the four members of Alpha Pride, Lazlo included, hurried off at the sprint, to reinforce several manifolds of mixed Ironhides and Spider Wolves that were being hard pressed by an advancing Oosen heavy infantry platoon, several hundred meters to their southwest. With the main infantry forces on both sides now entering the fray, things were becoming jumbled up and fighting, even with guns, took place at nearly point blank range, which was not the best environment for light cavalry to fight in, but they didn't have much choice in the matter. At least Direcats were far more deadly in melee than any warhorse ever born.

But the Oosen infantry were wearing a new form of armor, one that made every man a hulking brute, two heads taller than Lazlo if he'd been standing on the ground, and damn near as tall as he was while mounted! Ironhide had seen similar suits during the attack on the Caller's lair, but these were more streamlined and smoother in motion, and the soldiers wearing them were armed with weapons that would normally be mounted atop light armored vehicles! 20mm Linear Assault rifles barked thunderous retorts that blasted head sized holes entirely through men and women; and automatic 25mm Linear Shotguns spat tongues of death as long as a man's forearm from their muzzles, throwing fully armored Custodians back in pieces and bloody mists! The new armor suits, some of which sported door sized plates of extra shielding on one arm, absorbed beam blast after beam blast from the Direcat's carbines, armor slagging and glowing orange in fist sized patches, but the Oosen troopers stubbornly refused to be blasted down!

At least until the Helblasters of the Spider Wolves got into the action, the denser and hotter bright crimson supercharged beam bolts slamming into Oosen armor like small wrecking balls, penetrating where regular beam weaponry failed or required multiple hits, though those Oosen who managed to interpose their armor shields sometimes warded off even direct strikes from Helblasters! And in response, the Oosen brought their own heavier weapons into the action, gouts of plasma fire hissing from twinned flamethrower units to immolate a half dozen soldiers in a breath, or bright pink-red laser beams slicing like guillotine blades, cutting through armor and flesh alike as if they were no more substantial than steam. More distant troopers sent Custodians and even Cicada scout walkers crashing backwards in disordered pieces, with whickering shots from man portable railguns that were nearly as big as the soldiers carrying them!

Other troopers flailed in panic, as they were hosed down with dark maroon streams of weaponized EDEN, their armor dissolving into even more infectious nano-plagues that attacked their flesh instants later, entire squads denaturing into virulent piles of reddish-purple dust, which whipped away on the artificial winds created by the fan equipped armor of the Scourge carrying Custodians. A plasma grenade detonated, setting the actual armor of an Oosen trooper alight, the metal figure burning magnesium bright for a handful of seconds before something inside the armor, perhaps the power plant, ruptured and incinerated everything within a two meter radius. A second later, an Ironhide equipped with a Crackler Arc-Pulse Emission rifle was struck by a volley of Firefly rounds just as his 3P rifle was reaching critical charge, and and explosion of man-made purple-white lightning bolts whiplashed indiscriminately through Custodians and Oosen alike for a half dozen meters in every direction, the tarmac turning glossy and brittle as it was fused to glass by the escaping energies.

Lazlo had never seen a more brutal slugfest, not in the entire war to date, the premier infantry forces of both sides were unloading the most powerful and deadly weapons at their commands into the enemy at ranges sometimes close enough to literally spit into each other's faces, if the Oosen hadn't had their helmets sealed tight. Beam weapons designed to be deadly to light armored vehicles at ranges of a kilometer or more were discharged with their muzzles almost touching the armor of their targets. Grenades flew overhead like coconuts dislodged by hurricane winds, globes of frag, fire, plasma and more exotic detonations ripping holes indiscriminately through both sides. His beam carbine whined and hissed, barrel glowing orange hot as the powerpack finally ran dry, and he had no time to reload it, shoving it back into it's holster and unslinging his close quarters weapon... the press of bodies was too close for the lance.

Consisting of a baseball sized hunk of solid steel, studden with inch long spikes and connected to a short handle by a two foot length of chain, Lazlo's flail didn't look all that impressive when at rest, but when the ball was swung with the full force of his arm and the momentum of Aeneas's speed behind it, it could crush skulls, even through armored helmets, like empty eggshells! Which he proved, braining a towering Oosen trooper as Aeneas rushed past from behind, the lines of Custodian and Oosen becoming snarled and confused as both sides pressed forward to melee range... at least those who'd survived the carnage of the point blank weapons exchange did. Aeneas slammed paws first into another hulking trooper... they were all hulking troopers, the new armor made giants out of even the smallest men and women... and Lazlo was stunned when the enemy soldier was merely pushed back and unbalanced, rather than bowled over entirely!

His mount's claws scrabbled furiously but fruitlessly at the bonded ceramic and metal of the trooper's armor, and his flail clanged from an interposed shoulderpad an instant later, at least denting the armor, but failing to cripple the soldier within. The soldier's heavy Linear rifle blasted a triple round burst of 20mm shells into the tarmac, arm knocked askew by Aeneas's attempts to maul the bastard, and finally Lazlo got in another swing with the flail, which warped the Flamberge's barrel and rendered the weapon useless. He barely had time to feel a rush of triumph before the troopers other hand, an immense gauntlet with oversized fingers, suddenly deployed a screaming tangle of chainsaw tracks built right into the backs of the fingers in question, as the trooper formed a fist and swung a roundhouse blow at Lazlo, which had no way to avoid with Aeneas still tangled up with the enemy's lower body!

In that instant, Lazlo regretted his Latent powers as never before, as he glimpsed the bloody ruin that would be made of his body when the chainfist connected with his entirely inadequately armored torso in the next second. However, though he could see no way for him to dodge the deadly punch, his sense of prediction could in no way cover the vagaries of the chaotic melee erupting around him, and salvation struck with bone-grinding force. A powerfully built and extensively armored Ironhide, sporting a full face helm festooned with real Ironhide horns and tusks jutting from brow and jowls, and hefting a two handed warhammer with a blocky warhead as big as two men's heads put together, leveled the Oosen trooper with a two handed swing to their side, crushing armor like tinfoil! The pulverized trooper physically flew backwards several feet, knocking down two of his former allies in the process.

Strategos Gregory didn't even seem to notice that he'd just saved Lazlo's life, as he raised his gravity-assisted warhammer for another swing, stepping past the shocked Direcat to pound another Oosen soldier into bloody ruin, the head of his hammer using gravitic technology similar to a Smasher mine to increase its weight several times over at the moment of impact, thus allowing strikes of truly superhuman force with a regular swinging action. A Vanguard's assault shield buckled and folded almost entirely in half around the striking hammerhead, the arm behind broken in a dozen places, and the ribcage beyond that shattered and displaced, all in one hit! Lazlo and Aeneas pressed forward, trying to cover the Strategos's back, along with a wedge of Ironhide veterans struggling to keep up with their commander in the press of bodies, hefting smaller hammers and war-picks and other anti-armor weaponry.

Blood and wood chips sprayed across Lazlo's body as one of the Ironhides met a grisly end on the end of a chainfist, the howling weapon excavating the Custodian's entire body cavity in fury of torn flesh and pulped organs, and even though he was from another Legio entirely, Lazlo flinched as the close range psy-shock ripped into his own guts with an echo of that same agony. One of the other Ironhides went down as if poleaxed, shocked into instant cardiac arrest by the stunning psychic impact, a danger even the most veteran and mind-scarred Custodian was susecptible to, if they were unfortunate or especially connected to a certain member of their Manifold at the instant of death. Another psychic cry pounded into Lazlo's temples, this one more like the undifferentiated screaming of a dozen minds dying in fire all at once, and as he slumped drunkenly over Aeneas's back, he belatedly realized it was some sort of new Oosen weapon, a grenade, which had detonated a few meters away from him!

Less debilitated than his rider, but still discomfited and disoriented by the Lobo grenade's effects, Aeneas roared in anger and dislike, lashing out with paws and fangs in a frenzy, hitting allies as well as enemies, trying to break free of the morass of bodies, but in their pursuit of the Strategos, they'd gotten too deep into the heart of the scrum, and there was no room to build up any momentum for a leap to freer space! A blue, gauntleted hand, thankfully without chainblades, closed on Lazlo's forearm, squeezing down with the force of an industrial vice, and he heard more than felt the splinter of armor and the crack of his forearm as it shattered under the powered grip! Shocking numbness racing up his limb as he was almost yanked from his stirrups by a Oosen trooper who had been knocked to her knees and was scrabbling blindly for a way to regain her footing.

Striking cross-body with his flail was awkward, and she was out of reach of Aeneas's paws and mouth, leaving Lazlo with precious few options. His stomach lurched sickeningly as the pain from his broken arm finally began to materialize, even as he felt himself inexorably dragged down and off his Direcat's back by the massive weight of the Vanguard armored soldier. Weight that was suddenly truncated, causing Lazlo to reel back upright and nearly fall off in the opposite direction as he yanked himself upright, the gauntleted fist still viced around his arm. However, there was no arm attached to the fist any longer, someone unseen in the melee had lashed out with a bladed weapon, or perhaps it had been a backswing and entirely unintentional, but it had been in the nick of time nonetheless, and Lazlo began to wonder if maybe his psychic powers were stronger than he'd previously imagined... that was a hell of a lucky streak, all things considered!

The next thing he knew, he was kissing pavement, his entire body feeling numb and disconnected and oddly light. There was a roaring, ringing noise pounding through his ears and resonating though his body, and a tiny part of Lazlo realized he'd been caught in the radius of some kind of explosion. He tried to get up, knowing that to stay on the ground was to be trampled to death, but his limbs wouldn't respond. He managed to raise his head just enough to see that blue gauntlet still incogrously locked around his forearm, before darkness whirled up to claim him. He never even realized he and Aeneas had been blown almost in half by a pair of frag grenades which had been dropped by another soldier nearby in their own death throes, the storm of shrapnel slicing apart his spine and organs before he realized he'd been hit at all.

Two seconds later, Gregoy stumbled and almost fell when his back-stepping foot trod on a pile of broken borealite and smoking fur mixed into a morass of blood and pulped flesh, his knee skidding into the mess as he barely caught himself, too distracted by the business of staying alive to even care that he'd slipped on the body of a Direcat rider and was now splashed from thighs to toes with the scattered viscera of the other Custodian. He forced himself to rally, calling upon the determined endurance that was the hallmark of his Legio, who pridefully named themselves after one of New Eden's ugliest and most lumbering inhabitents, seeing in the plodding perserverance of the Ironhide the true spirit of what it meant to be an Edenite... pressing on in the face of any adversity! A rising uppercut with his new hammer, presented to him by Vaul not a week prior, ripped the head and shoulders off a closing Oosen trooper in a spray of bloodied metal shards.

It was a well struck blow, but there were simply too many of the new, heavy armored soldiers, and their armor was too thick and too powerful for most normal weapons to strike enough telling blows... the plain fact of the matter was, they were being pushed back, and would soon be overwhelmed by the steady weight of numbers. Chips of ivory and borealite flew from his right shoudlerpad as a chainfist glanced off his pauldron, shaking Gregory's entire frame even with such minor contact, impressing him once again with the quality of this new power armor the Oosen was sporting. Though nominally stronger than their counterparts, the Custodians were nonetheless being manhandled by the augmented soldiers with their powered exoskeletons, sometimes to the point where Custodians were physically knocked down even when they otherwise blocked or mitigated the strike of a Vanguard trooper.

He swept his hammer in a low arc, scything the legs out from under another trooper, who had been menacing a Spider Wolf with a heated mono-blade in either hand, the force of the hit literally ripping the trooper's legs off at the knee and sending them clattering away like bowling pins. Unable to recover in time, he blocked a swing of another mono-blade with the haft of the warhammer, and drove the butt into the chest of his attacker, but achieved little more than a dull "clang" of impact, the armor absorbing the blow with strength to spare. A backfisted punch to his helmet snapped off a decorative tusk and spun the heavyset Strategos halfway around, skidding on the tips of his toes in the blood and viscera slicking the tarmac, staggering to reclaim his balance.

He was just turning back around to address the threat once more, when furrows were suddenly ripped in the flanks of the Oosen soldiers pressing in towards the heart of the melee towards the wavering Custodians, entire troopers suddenly hurled through the air, some whole, some in pieces, and others crushed like stepped on soda cans, as invisible force struck them with the crushing pressure of the deep ocean. Chuul and a contingent of Trench Crabs had broken through the line of the Oosen's heaviest armor units, slipping past while the Titans and Vikings were bogged down in a living sea of other Trench Crabs, to succor the flagging flank force of infantry.

The crustacean Chimera clacked his pincers menacingly, symptiomatic twitching of his nerves as he projected telekinetic force in a similar manner, invisible vices clenching around the bodies of a half dozen of the blue-shelled land-shrimp, snipping them in half neat as you please, titanium armor plate no match for someone used to overcoming carapaces evolved to deal with the pressure of several miles of water pressing down upon it. Several of his subordinate crabs also lashed out with telekinetic pincers, sometimes crushing, sometimes grabbing and reeling in, as they did when hunting for food, to finish the job with physical pincers and masticating palp flaps in their mouths. Most, however, already hyped on what passed for adrenaline in their simple nervous systems, charged headlong into the fray, pincers sweeping from side to side, bowling land-shrimp aside in heaps, and ripping bloodied tears in armor and tarmac alike in their frenzy.

Gregory watched in awe as a struggling Oosen trooper was lifted into the air by a huge blue-black pincer, blood pouring down from where their waist was being inexorably crushed by the clawed limb, who managed to stuff a grenade straight down the Trench Crab's mouthparts with one hand...getting the entire forearm chewed off in the process... before their body was cut in twain by the pincer. A long second later and a large section of the crab's face was blown off from the inside out, including both eyestalks and all its mandible palps, gouts of dark bluish blood spurting from the gaping ruin of its head. But the cab did not fall, and barely even flinched, its primary nerve cluster reacting with glacial slowness to the massive injury. Though blind and lacking much of anything above what would be in a human the "neck", the crab continued to function, and even attacked, trampling and pincering several more Oosen troops before a sustained volley of Flamberge shots fully eviscerated the crustacean.

The Oosen began to pull back in disarray, overwhelmed by the enormous and nearly unkillable crustacean allies of the Edenites, and harried by the TK sniping attacks of Chuul, giving the Custodians time to regroup and reorganize themselves, opening up on the melee of men and crabs with their ranged weapons without hesitation. There was simply no way to extricate the crabs from the melee, even for Chuul, once he sent them forward, they were pretty much locked into that course until they died, such was the limitations of their primitive nervous system. Blue-black carapace flashed to bright red under the caress of beam blasts, and a crab exploded like a steam powered fragmentation bomb when a Crackler bolt vaporized almost its entire chest cavity in a single instant, sending flash-cooked legs hurtling like bony spears in myriad directions.

When the Widowmakers and Tarantulas of Spider Wolf finally caught up to their infantry forces about a minute later, the Oosen forces were quickly massacred, even the new armor unable to stand under the fusillade of vehicle mounted weapons on the battle walkers. But there was no time to relax, and even less to celebrate. Because, as usual, the Oosen forces, though defeated in this particular pocket of the battlefield, were surging elsewhere. Enemy reinforcements were starting to pour down from the geosynchronous battlefleet high overhead, a mixture of Solar Knights and gargantuan new drop pods of an unfamiliar design, with all the aerodynamic characteristics of huge bricks. These new pods split open amidst firecracker strings of detonating explosive bolts, revealing their cargo at a height of perhaps five hundred meters from ground level. They were Mobile Suits. Scores of them...

xxxx

**Space, Second Earth 5, Fedor Apartment, 3:53 PM**

"Login accepted." The melodious voice of Namara announced softly, in the dimness of the apartment's primary room. "Queing for Patriot Plus Program, priority que. Connection to Patriot established. Please stand by for activation." A timer display appeared in one corner of his VR goggle's field of view, and Jack felt his stomach clench as he watched the seconds count down like they were seemingly mired in syrup. He wasn't prone to nervousness, at least not when it came to gaming, but the Patriot program was more than just a game, however much it might be advertised as one. Even though he was tens of millions of miles away from the combat zone, Jack felt his palms start to sweat as the activation timer countinued to count towards zero. There was a mustering channel for his block of Patriots, which was randomly assigned every time you logged in, but he had it muted for the moment... he felt like he might throw up if he had to listen to some of his peers going on about how cool this was, that they were going to help fight a real, live battle!

It wasn't that he didn't think it was cool... it was fucking awesome, no doubt about it... but Jack just couldn't find it in him to emotionally divide himself from the reality of what he was doing. Maybe it was because he worked at the Veterans Home, but he was pretty damned well aware, for a civilian kid his age, just what real battles did to the people in them. There were people dying and being horrible injured right this very moment, and in another seventy seconds, he would be doing his best to kill or maim other people in turn. He'd known from the start, from the moment that he'd volunteered for the Patriot Plus program, that this was what he would be doing... but with the activation timer in his display field, it was all suddenly much more immediately real than he'd ever imagined it would be! This was really happening... he was really about to take control of a telepresence war machine, in the midst of a battlefield!

The timer reached sixty seconds, and a new block of text began floating through his field of VR vision, a condensed briefing detailing the situation they were being literally dropped into the middle of in another minute. As far as military briefings went, it was probably sparse to the point of being skeletal, no more a few lines telling them where they would be fighting... Heaven's Base... and how many enemy forces there were, as well as basic goals for each block of Patriots, such as securing and defending a certain point or attacking the enemy in support of live assets on the ground. Jack's group, which consisted of those Patriot pilots with the highest test aptitude scores in the beta-test simulation missions, was assigned to directly support the main Solar Knight battle line, which was engaged with the primary enemy Mobile suit corps near the center of the base.

But then again, they were civilians, or at best auxiliary troops, there was no need to keep them appraised of the whole situation, just their individual piece of it. For that matter, the military was probably relcutant to trust overmuch in the speed reading and comprehending skills of the hardcore gamers that made up the majority of Patriot Plus, people known for their butchering of any and all languages into near incomprehensible internet gobblygook. Or perhaps they just didn't want people to worry or panic, as they might if they told they were being deployed into a hopeless situation as suicide troops. For his part, Jack studied the briefing, and did his best to call to mind the various specs and visual recognition patterns for the major allied and enemy Mobile Suit designs, so he didn't end up accidentally shooting friendlies in the back. Unlike computer games, there was no automatic interruption of friendly fire attempts here, he could damage his own side with ill aimed shots. Or more likely, they could damage him if he got in their way.

Patriots were designed with minimal armor and armaments in mind, with an eye towards mass producibility in a cheap and time efficient manner, rather than true battlefield effectiveness. At least on a modern battlefield, as the Patriots were actually stronger and better armed than the original Ginns and Strike Daggers of First Valentine War. Each Patriot was equipped with a 105m linear rifle, with an underslung flamethrower for anti-infantry and anti-flora work. A 55mm machinegun and a five tubed 120mm rocket launcher graced the shoulders, with a single mono-sword at the waist for melee combat. An armor shield rounded out the Suit's capabilities. A simple hydrogen fuel cell provided about an hours worth of combat time, without powered armor or energy weapons to worry about premature diminishment. The Patriots couldn't fly in atmosphere, but they could jump fairly well, though landing on your feet was as much art as science... it wasn't automatic, like in a game.

A warning tone sounded in his ear, as the timer reached fifteen seconds, and Jack sat straighter upright in his chair, licking his lips. He suddenly wished he had time to take another swig of his coke, but he didn't dare take his hands and attention away from his virtual controls. He enabled the muster channel with a flick of a holographic switch, coming in on the tail end of someone's fond impression of a war whoop, and which sounded more like a cat being stepped on to him. His vision blurred, as the time hit zero, and then, between blinks of his eyes, he was suddenly bathed in afternoon sunlight, freefalling towards the ground, which was wreathed in fire and smoke, weapon blasts and energy beams crisscrossing the environment in all directions. It was like jumping straight into the middle of an war movie's climactic battle scene!

Jack's viewpoint suddenly buffeted and spun sickeningly, muted explosions ringing against his ears, as several of the Patriots near his were smashed out of the sky in flashes of actinic light and dark smoke... though Jack was new to the battlefield, the enemy had had the Patriots in view for most of a minute already, and were already focusing efforts to shooting them down, before they could even make an impact on the battle! Many of the other Patriots were shooting back, firing wildly at the ground below, but Jack held off on the impulse, since in the confusion he couldn't tell which side was enemy, and which was allies! The Patriots had Identification, Friend or Foe, aka IFF sensors, which should have colored friendly forces Blue and enemy Red, but it was apparently being jammed, and neither side was showing up colored at all! Yet another thing that gaming didn't prepare you for...

Tapping his thrusters to correct his buffeting induced spin, Jack saw a massive dome of some sort of pinkish energy field off to one side, where the greatest concentration of firepower seemed to be both directed to and emanating from. He altered his course towards that area, seeing the ground rush up at an almost alarming rate. The brief moment of distraction that sight inflicted on him was interrupted by a brilliant purplish flash, so bright that even with Namara automatically dampening his sensor returns, Jack was suddenly blinking spots out of his eyes as his Patriot went into an uncontrolled tumble. He just had enough time to see what looked like arms and legs flying off in different directions, before his VR screen went dark. "Patriot unit lost." Namara announced neutrally. "Re-entering priority que. Standby for activation."

For his part, Jack was stunned. He, perhaps the premier PvPer of WoGB, and one of the highest scoring beta testers of the Patriot Plus program, had just been shot down in his first battle, less than ten seconds after activation. And it happened before he could even fire his weapon ONCE, much less damage or kill an enemy! If he'd been a Solar Knight, he'd be dead right now! He hadn't even touched the ground! And he didn't even know what killed him, he'd never even seen it coming! To put it into WoGB terms, he'd just been "uberganked" or "roflstomped", beaten without even being able to lift a hand in his own defense! It was humiliating and humbling in equal measure. But Jack didn't have time to dwell on his ignominous defeat, because the warning tone sounded in his ear once more, and a few seconds later, he was back in sunlight, in a different part of the base.

It was less hectic here, though gunfire was still streaking around every which way, and the ground periodically shook under the power of explosions in the near distance. Jack glanced at his new mission objective, which was to relieve pressure on a unit of army Titan tanks so they could regroup and move to support yet another unit somewhere else. His chat line squealed as it autoshifted channels to his new muster block, as he took full control over another Patriot that was already on the ground, its previous operator having either disconnected or otherwise lost the ability to control the machine, such as suffering too much latency or lag. Fortunately, Jack would never have that problem, unless his entire hab block's net went down, since he was positioned right next to the main datalines.

"GIANT ENEMY CRABS!" A half panicked, half hysterical voice screamed across his chat channel, making Jack instinctively flinch and turn down the volume, as he cast about for the other members of his unit. The enemy jamming was less powerful here, and even though smoke occluded much of his view, blue outlines of other Patriots and USN armored vehicles showed through, guiding him towards where the action was. Jack rounded a maintenance hanger of some sort, which had been blocking his view, and his steps faltered as he slowed almost to a stop, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Somehow, despite the shout, he'd been expecting something other than, well... giant enemy crabs. He'd heard some reports on the news that the Eddies sometimes had animals in their military units, but he'd thought that was just propoganda tying in with the hype about the Eddies being spear chucking barbarians.

Not the case, or perhaps it was just a matter of truth being stranger than fiction. There were crabs EVERYWHERE, and the smallest of them was big enough to fit his entire apartment inside the main shell, with room to spare, and some of the bigger ones stood almost waist high to his Patriot, with pincer claws bigger than minivans! They were an ugly, bruised blue-black color, and moved with horrible alacrity, as if hyped up on some kind of nerve boosting drug... Jack felt instinctive revulsion well up inside him, as he'd never been fond of crawly things, and the crabs were just a little too spider-like for his comfort. He raised his 105mm rifle and fired into the mass of crabs, which were engaged in trying to open up a Titan tank like a giant can of soup, without much effect, even though the tank was effective pinned and its weapons blocked by the sheer mass of chitin crowded around it.

Jack smirked as he saw his rounds strike chitin, knocking one of the smaller crabs sideways into a stumble, but his grin quickly lost its force as he saw the crustacean struggle upright once more, apparently little the worse for the wear, thick bluish blood dribbling from cracked craters knocked into its carapace by the explosive rounds. The damn thing just shook off three hits that would have crippled a medium tank! Belatedly, Jack saw several other Patriots and Viking tanks firing their own cannons to similar ineffectual results, and even using the 120mm rockets wasn't a surefire means of bringing a crab down! One of the other Patriots stepped forward and turned the underslung flamethrower on a nearby crab, covering the creature in flaming napalm jelly, which rapidly began cooking its shell to a tasty bright red color.

Doused in liquid fire, the crab incredibly turned and began clawing at the Patriot in question, iron hard pincers knocking scratches and small dents into the Patriot's legs before a volley of linear rounds from other members of the unit blasted the crab down, and blew off several of its legs. And even then, Jack wasn't sure the thing was truly dead, as it continued to twitch and shiver even while flipped over, in a burning heap on its back! Still, the flames had proven more effective than gunfire had, and several other Patriots stepped forward to turn their own flame weapons upon the mass of crabs still energentically trying to rip open the trapped Titan. The super-heavy tank had electrified its hull, jolting crabs that touched its armor with enough juice to fry fifty men to charred husks, but the crabs just seemed to find it annoying, jerking back like a kid who'd shocked his finger with a static spark.

Monomolecular chainsaw attachments on the front sponsons of the tank, placed there for obstacle clearance, chopped through the forest of legs crowding around the front of the tank, severing dozens of them in bursts of bright blue gore, but as each crab had eight legs, they could all stand to lose several before balancing and standing became an issue. One of the Patriots was just about to release its flamethrower onto the horde, when its arms suddenly and inexplicably seperated from the shoulders of the machine, ripped away like it was a paper cutout, not a giant war machine! A second later and the Patriot itself split down the center along a hair fine line, as if it'd been hit with a FRALA beam, but without the energy discharge. Jack and the other Patriots stared in disbelief as the machine slumped to either side before sparks ignited the hydrogen fuel cell and blew the wreckage to pieces.

While they were still stunned, another Patriot to Jack's left got hit by whatever was attacking them, torso seperating from waist as if scythed by the largest and sharpest blade imaginable, only a few racing ripples in the smoke fogging the atmosphere heralding the arrival of the attack. His sensors couldn't make heads nor tails of the situation, as far as his Patriot could tell him, there were no projectiles nor energy effects being shot at them. It was like the air itself had been formed into a weapon, or an invisible and intangible force was being used to break them apart. Gamer instincts cutting in belatedly, Jack began to juke around, trying to break target lock or at least confuse whatever was attacking them, and none too soon... another racing wave of invisible force clipped the edge of his left arm shield, snicking off about a third of the armor plate along a line so clean it sparkled in the sunlight!

Finally, during his mad evasions, Jack got a glimpse of the attackers. It was another group of crabs, even larger than the ones still attacking the Titan, all clustered together in a tight knot, practically shell to shell, forming a living platform atop which another crab, this one smaller and sporting vivid bands of reddish-ornage along its pincers and legs, stood with regal bearing. The smaller, colorful crab clicked one of its pincers menacingly in the direction of the Patriot unit, its cluster of minions aping the motion in unison a moment later, and another line of invisible rending force slashed out and bisected a Patriot facing the other way along a long diagonal line, from hip to shoulder. Crying out in shock and wonder, Jack loosed a burst from his shoulder mounted machinegun at the head crab, but the bright orange tracers were detonated in midair, several meters short of its carapace, each bullet crushing inwards and exploding as if suddenly subject to immense pressure changes on all sides.

Realizing that his weapons were ineffective against whatever abilities the crabs... psychic crabs, and possible even Chimera, Jack remembered... were using, he hurled himself in a long leap towards the Titan ad its attacks, landing bodily atop several of the crabs, crushing them into the tarmac in gushes of cobalt hued blood, breaking their bodies enough to incapacitate them even if they didn't die outright. He drew his monomolecular sword and lashed out wildly, gratified to see its edge part through shells with only slight hints of resistance. He loosed his entire cluster of rockets from the right shoulder launcher, the point blank explosions rattling his Patriot almost as hard as it did the Trench Crabs, though in the end, they, being lighter, were thrown back instead of him.

With Jack's Patriot guarding one flank, the Titan finally had the opportunity to begin to pull away from the mob of crustaceans hammering at it. The superheavy tank had suffered greatly during its time amongst the horde, all its sponson weapons ripped away, the large artillery cannons mounted atop the turret had their barrels warped and bent, and the Phase Shifted hull was gouged and dented across almost the entire surface area of the tank, where sections of interior bracing had given way, even though the armor plating itself was undamaged. But the twin Mjolnir cannons in the primary turret were still operational, and once the Titan had a few meters of breathing space in which to fire, it unleashed twin thunderbolts of purple-white kinetic particles. The results were extremely gratifying, to say the least.

Inured against physical impact by their lives living in an environment where the ambient pressure would crush a human into a package small enough to fit into a paper throwaway cup, and blessed with nervous systems so primitive they could be almost literally cut in half without going into shock, the crabs were proof against many human weapons. But they were not proof against Mjolnirs, not by a long shot, and three dozen of the beasts exploded in a trice, all but vaporized by the whiplashing caress of focused kinetic particles, with no time nor room to evade given how packed together they were. Chunks of charred and smoking chitin pattered down in a brief hailstorm across a several hundred meter area in front of the Titan, the tarmac glazed to a glassy sheen by proximity to the weapon discharge.

A geyser of fire leapt from the Titan's rear, and for a terrifying moment, Jack thought the vehicle he'd worked hard to save had taken a bad hit, before he realized it was just a missile being fired from the launchers built into the tank's flank hull. The VTP missile arced down in a sharp curve,headed towards the head crab and its living platform, which were still engaged in mopping up the remnants of the other Patriots, who had all focused on taking out the "boss" as soon as they were aware of it. To uniformly poor results, as their weapons couldn't reach the Chimera, and their armor and shields were no defense at all against its own attacks. Jack held his breath as he watched the missile streak towards the Chimera from high to one side, and let out his breath in a curse a moment later as the armored anti-Mobile Suit missile was smacked out of the air as if by an invisible hand, landing a hundred meters to the left of the living platform, and blowing a jagged crater in the tarmac there.

The Chimera was quick to retaliate, clicking its pincers in unison at the Titan, which had turned to point its front glacis directly at the living platform, prismatically shimmering energy shield roiling across the armor there, likc oil against water suspended millimeters above the hull. The Redoubt barrier shield glowed incandescent as the TK pressure wave sliced into its surface, golden and azure sparks fountaining from all sides of the energy shield as it absorbed the cutting pressure of several hundred tons per square meter, bundled to a point less than a millimeter across. But the Redoubt shield held firm, and when the sparks died away, the Titan was still in one piece, or as much as it had been before the attack anyway! Prudently deciding to take cover behind the only thing around capable of weathering the psychic assaults of the Chimera, Jack knelt his Patriot behind the Titan, extending his rifle over the top of the turret and firing away at the Chimera, trying to at least distract it, if not force it to focus on defending itself rather than attacking.

His shells detonated in midair as soon as they got close to Chuul, just like before, but perhaps they did force the Chimera to stay on the defensive, because the Titan had its Mjolnirs charged again before the crab could command its living platform to move to a better line of fire against the Titan's flanks. The Titan's main guns fired again, and Jack blinked wriggling streaks of glowing purple out of his vision as the flare of the gun's firing at close range actually damaged his Patriot's visual sensors. But not to the point where he missed the bolts fraying apart in midair as they struck Chuul's TK barrier, purple-white lightning splintering and shattering against an invisible wall, two bolts becoming two hundred electric arcs scattering across a cone shaped area several hundred meters in length. Chuul was blown off the backs of his kin by the clashing forces, which actually saved the Chimera's life, as Mjolnir sparks rained down across the living platform, melting through shells like they were made from thin ice.

Jack saw the crab Chimera scuttling away between several hangers, clearly deciding discretion was the better part of valor, but when he tried to shoot the creature, to at least draw attention to it... the Patriots didn't have access to regular comm channels to prevent the civil volunteers from distracting their professional counterparts during battle... Jack discovered that the entire barrel of his rifle had fused into a piece of slag, as he'd held it too close to the Mjolnir's as they were being fired. His shoulder mounted machinegun was almost out of rounds, and all his rockets were spent, and glancing at his mission timer, Jack was stunned to realize he'd only been fighting for about five minutes. It had seemed so much longer than that. He couldn't imagine how the professional soldiers dealt with this kind of thing... he was already worn out, and he was safe in the comfort of his own home!

"Hey, kid..." An unfamiliar female voice suddenly sounded in his headset, and Jack started, as he realized the Titan commander must have asked Namara to connect them directly. "Don't just sit there stroking off. Fight's not over yet." There was a short pause. "But thanks for the assistance." The channel closed before Jack could think of a reply, witty or otherwise. The Titan rumbled away across the tarmac, and not having any better options or ideas, Jack drew his sword once more, and set out after it, eventually joining a general advance of reinforcing troops, including a unit of Solar Knight Vindicators led by a Paladin in an Excalibur. Nobody commented on the presence of the lone Patriot, or at least, no one told him to get lost or to go play somewhere else. For a moment, Jack actually felt he might understand what soldiers were talking about when they mentioned that camraderie thing...

xxxx

Some Chimera were of the opinion that humans were amusing creatures, prone to getting excited over everything, and turning even the simplest matters of everyday survival into a drawn out ritual of incomprehensible complexity. Other Chimera felt that humans were already relics, leftovers from a time when the world could only support a single sentient race, and would soon die out, whether due to their own inexplicable follies, or as a simple matter of natural selection. Humans did not possess great strength or endurance, or thick coats of fur, or horns, fangs, claws, or much of any natural weapons or defenses at all. They did not possess natural camouflage, and were almost unbelievably sensitive to environmental toxins. They were not durable, and they did not heal quickly when injured. They didn't even breed especially quickly, and their young remained young and largely helpless to fend for themselves for an insane amount of time... often longer than multiple generations of better adapted organisms!

They had numbers, but so did most insect swarms... and at least those were generally poisonous and quick breeding. On an evolutionary scale, compared to even non-Chimeric organisms of New Eden, humans were a joke. The main difference between most Chimera's opinions was whether that joke was tragically funny or annoyingly tragic. As for the Forest Prince, he belonged to a much smaller minority opinion, one that generally did not venture forth their opinion in what passed for public conversation, rare as that was, amongst Chimera. The Forest Prince was amongst the most noble and powerful of Chimera, even those of the Caller's fold had respect for his power, if not his person. But to him, humans were no joke. In fact, they terrified him. Perhaps his perspective came from his relatively frequent contact with them, or his attempts to co-exist with them peacefully, or at least as peacefully as nature ever was... he wasn't going to start hunting down hunters in his woods, unless it wasn't for food they were killing.

Or perhaps other Chimera were just willfully blinding themselves to the pertinent facts. Regardless of their individual weakness, humanity had been the dominate lifeform on the planet for hundreds of thousand of generations of other animal's lives. Obviously they had something going for them that others didn't, something even better than sharp claws or thick hides or magnificent antlers. In his attempts to come to a greater understanding of humans, so that he might better co-exist with them, the Forest Prince had found himself treading a steep path down the slippery slopes of horror and fear. The more he came to know about humans and humanity in general, the more terrified he became of them. There were exceptions to the general trend... the Blue Fawn, for instance... but for the most part, he found humans to be endlessly short sighted and extremely prone to violence, even against each other, killing each other in droves... even when they weren't in need of food, or during a rutting season!

They weren't generally as smart as a Chimera was, but they were much more inventive and clever, always taking things apart and putting them back together again, and experimenting with new ways to do old things, finding better and faster paths through the metaphorical woods every time they passed through. And even if they weren't smart, and were probably all insane, they also weren't stupid, and knew of their own weaknesses... and took steps to compensate for them. They had no fangs or claws, so they built false ones of metal and wood and crystal. They had no stinger, or venomous spittle, so they built tubes that shot fire and lightning across great distances. They had no thick hides, so they built carapaces of rocks and metal, and tall walls, and gigantic models of themselves, which moved and fired bigger tubes of fire and lightning at other gigantic metal humans. Some even flew through the sky, faster and higher than birds, even those without wings!

No, humans were not a joke, in poor taste or otherwise. To believe so was to deny reality in favor of a pleasant fantasy. The Forest Prince could scent the spoor on the wind... if Chimera didn't learn to work with humans, the humans would eventually destroy the Chimera, perhaps even without meaning to, during one of their inexplicable inter-racial conflicts that seemed to riddle their history like maggots in a old corpse. That was what humans were best at, in his conclusion... destroying things, even things better adapted and evolved than themselves, surviving through pre-emptive and genocidal violence against any species that ever threatened them. A human expression... and they had many he'd learned... ran to "if you can't beat them, then join them", and the Forest Prince found that quite compelling.

Even as he composed his philosophical lamentations and thoughts, the Forest Prince's instincts kept him and his herd safe from the chaos around them. It was like trotting headon into the largest and loudest forest fire he'd ever encountered, this assault on Heaven's Base, and though every particle of his animal instincts was telling him to flee as fast as he could in any direction that took him away from this madness of the humans, instead he forged on, deeper into its heart, his does and stags following behind meekly, firmly ensnared within his web of concentration. Several had been crushed by falling buildings, or vaporized by human weapon impacts, giving him an unpleasant education in just what "vaporize" actually meant when applied to a fellow Rex Elk. He had seen death almost every day since as far back as he could remember... Rex Elk were herbivores, their ecological niche was to provide prey for predators, and he had no problem with that, it was the way life was... but he had never seen a mature Stag turn from solid flesh to blood-mist in a blink of an eye. He never wanted to see it again, either.

The Forest Prince marshalled the fear he felt, and the primal fear instincts of his herd, imagining it like a stench, a miasma on the wind which he cast out before him, as he would his own pheromones during mating season, to attract the does and warn off any uppity Stags from his territory. Humans this psychic stench passed over found themselves part of the herd-mind, seized with the overwhelming panic urge of the Rex Elk. Though equipped with doughty hooves and wickedly sharp antlers, a Rex Elk's first... and usually last... response to discovering danger was always to flee, fast and far, directly away from whatever danger source they'd perceived. It was a heedless, blind sort of urge, one that could send you tumbling into even worse danger while in retreat from a minor threat, such as fleeing off a cliffside when confronted with a single Direcat. The Forest Prince had never claimed his kind to be the brainiest of creatures.

But while he clamped down upon the minds of his herd-chattel, holding them in place meekly despite their abject terror and confusion, the Forest Prince exercised no such control over the humans he'd drenched in the herd-fear musk. Some collapsed on the spot, cardiac systems unable to bear the sudden overflow of adrenaline. Most, however, turned and fled, along the path he directed them, following the false promise of safety, always just ahead of them now. As with Rex Elk, some humans moved faster than others. Especially those in vehicles. Unlike Rex Elk, they showed no instinctive ability to avoid running into or over each other when in flight. Especially those in vehicles, when overtaking those not in vehicles. Dozens of running humans weren't so much trampled by their vehicle borne comrades as they were reduced to pulpy smears on the ground.

And then those vehicle borne humans found themselves stampeding over the edge of the sea-side cliffs that had suddenly appeared in their path of flight. Most of an armored regiment of Oosen troops went spilling haplessly over the cliffs in a torrent of tanks and APC's, falling dozens of meters into the cold surf below, like a metallic avalanche. A few seconds after the last vehicle took its fatal plunge, the battered and dazed survivors of the infantry regiment the tanks had plowed through on their way to the cliff staggered up and ran off into open air as well, like lemmings, many of them screaming as they saw the cliffside approaching, but were unable to halt the motion of their legs, their higher minds disconnected from their animal impulses. Several thousand humans had died in his "attack", but the Forest Prince took no satisfaction in it. It hardly made a dent in the ant-like swarm of enemies that seethed across the base. He feared that even if he spent the rest of the day sending humans running off cliffs or into burning buildings, it still wouldn't make a visible mark amongst their hordes.

His Chimeric comrades were faring no better, though they took it with greater good humor than the Forest Prince did. The Sphinx, Queen of Direcats, hated humans, seeing them as little more than vermin, not even good for eating. Even killing them was boring, as she employed her mind to deceive their senses, conjuring dangers where none existed, or turning their friends into visions of monstrous foes, so they tore each other apart in a frenzy of violence. Others were trapped in mental mazes of illogic, attempting to solve riddles with no answers, or pondering fundamental truths with no basis, standing around dumbly staring into nothing while she slaughtered them with sweeps of her paws and tosses of her saber-toothed jaws. Still, bored or not, she killed them anyway, because she hated them.

Old Grouch, the Rhinobeast... a nightmare conglomeration of warthog, rhino and wildebeest, with massive curling brow horns like a bull, augmented with two huge nasal horns like a rhino, and a mouthful of boar-like tusks... charged headlong through ranks of Oosen, infantry and vehicles alike. Nearly the size of a Titan tank, Old Grouch simply ran right through or over anything smaller or less massive, his horns red to the root with blood and guts. Wrenches of his neck sent Viking tanks hurtling through the air like kickballs, armor peeled back by goring horns like tinfoil, and he crushed a Bison jeep under his hind foot without even noticing he'd stepped on it. Tank shells and small arms fire gouged bloody craters in the flesh of his legs and sides, but the blood flowed sluggishly, and the pain only lent further strength and fury to his charges. Even if his heart were to stop beating, Old Grouch's natural resilience would keep him moving forward for entire minutes after he was technically dead.

Rhinobeasts were omniverous creatures, though generally they only ate carrion meat, as pretty much anything still alive had the wits and speed to avoid a Rhinobeast herd when they felt or smelled one coming... which since they ate carrion, and rolled in their own feces to ward off insect stings and parasites, wasn't hard. The Oosen soldiers must not have learned that particular lesson though, and many stood their ground as the gigantic Chimera bore down upon them, and entire squads were swallowed whole and crushed by the gnashing tusks and stone-hard throat muscles. A pair of Vikings drove purposefully in front of Grouch's line of charge, trying to deflect him from a hanger full of mustering transport vehicles. One Viking was smashed flat across its entire front glacis, pounded into a hoof-shaped crater in the tarmac, while the other was actually impaled and lifted upon Grouch's primary nose horn, tracks still spinning frantically, turret lolling like a head on a broken neck. Grouch plowed into the hanger, tank still stuck onto his face.

There must have been something very volatile inside the hanger, because a moment later, the entire hanger vanished in a ball of fire which leveled three other nearby hangers in sheer blast-shock, throwing humans and vehicles through the air for a hundred meters in every direction, a boiling mushroom cloud of dark smoke rising into the sky from the site of the hanger's former location. Grouch stormed out the far side of the fireball, one half of his face scorched to the bone, denuded of flesh, his primary nasal horn shattered about midway up its length, his hide on fire from neck to midback. He kept going, half blind and burning like a torch, his stride not even faltering. Indeed, his berserk rage was propelling him along faster than before, banishing any thoughts of self preservation or pain. And even as bad as the damage was, it wasn't enough to kill him... now or even later, if there was a later.

A searing beam, brighter than the sun, brighter even than the fireball that had just rocked this section of the base, cut through the flames and smoke from on high. Thick as a man's thigh, it swept along the tarmac in an eyeblink, leaving a molten trench behind to mark its passage. A molten trench that passed through the middle of Old Grouch's body, just ahead of his hindlegs. The entire back half of the Chimera tripped and fell, seperating along a charred black line from the front half of the Rhinobeast. Cauterized guts spilled out of both halves like an entire meat-packing plant being pushed through a sausage grinder all at once. Grouch's front legs kept running regardless of the fact that he didn't have half his body anymore, and the fact that his innards were dragging themselves out of his body as if fleeing of their own will. But even a Rhinobeast's endurance could only carry him so far in such condition, and just before he reached the side of another hanger, Grouch tripped and fell forward onto his half cooked snout. The sheer momentum of his corpse still punched him through the reinforced concrete hanger wall, through the deserted interior, and out the other side, like a hollow point bullet through a target dummy.

The Forest Prince looked up at the sky, where something's shadow was approaching from overhead. It was shaped like nothing he'd ever seen before, more like a fish than anything that belonged in the air. What new devilry of the humans was this? He had the unpleasant feeling he would find out all too soon...

xxxx

**ONS **_**Endymion**_**, approaching Heaven's Base from low orbital decceleration, bridge**

"Scratch one giant rampaging pig-beast-thing." Her weapon's officer reported, his tone half amused, half disbelieving, as if he still hadn't quite come to terms with the idea of being ordered to fire on an animal the size of a small apartment block. Murrue gave the officer a tight nod of acknolwedgement, most of her attention still fixed on the holographic situation plot rotating in front of her, trying to match the data within with the reality of the situation below. Engaging the obscenely oversized Rhinobeast had been nothing more than a potshot of opportunity, as the _Endymion _continued to deccelerate from the rapid-assault de-orbiting maneuver they'd commenced a few minutes prior. It was almost hard to believe that less than an hour earlier, the ship had been a thousand miles away, headed back towards Orb after a round of convoy escort duty.

Back in the day, that would have put her days, if not weeks hard sail from the battlezone. And by back in the day, Murrue meant about eight years ago... not all that long, by most standards. But with FPR's now common issue amongst capital warships, they finally had the power to achieve orbital velocities without recourse to mass drivers, allowing her ship to bypass huge sections of otherwise tricky terrain simply by flying into the upper atmosphere and coming down somewhere else in a long, steep parabola. Of course, most capital warships couldn't enter the Earth's atmosphere without breaking up, or remaining aloft within the reach of gravity, but Orb had always gone the extra mile with their warship designs, just as with their Gundams, and the _Endymion_ was a truly multi-purpse ship, at home in space, in the air or even under the water.

Though they had no plans for going diving any time soon, not while Leviathan and other enormous oceangoing lifeforms still ruled the oceans of Earth. Just because they could submerge didn't mean they were designed for underwater combat on THAT scale! Though it seemed the denizens of the seas weren't content to stay in their own yards anymore either, if the infestation of giant crabs overrunning parts of Heaven's Base was any indication. The waters of the protected military harbor were also thrashed into foam by the half hidden, lurking shadows of Chimeric whales, sharks and other alpha lifeforms of the oceans. But as amazing as such sights were, they weren't what had most of Murrue's attention. That was focused on the shimmering and roiling zone of interlocking shield pods and weapons fire that half covered the central portion of Heaven's Base. She only had eyes for the Lucifer.

"Gundams are ready for launch at your discretion, Ma'am." Her CIC officer said brightly. Rather too brightly, and cheerfully, for military personnel in a battlefield situation, but Murrue was prepared to make allowances, especially since her CIC wasn't physically present on the bridge... or anywhere else... at all. Lexi's avatar wore an Orb naval uniform without rank markings or other insignia, but the red-headed AI was still instantly recognizable to anyone from Orb, and differentiated from an actual human by the slight luminosity of her skin and clothing, a side effect of being a hologram. It had taken Murrue quite a while to get used to addressing Lexi as a person, not a program, and even longer to get used to adressing her as a subordinate as she would any of her flesh and blood crew, but now she found herself relying on the AI's steadfastness and lack of human fear responses.

No matter how hectic things got, Lexi never got excited, or forgot things, or got distracted, even though she was doing a thousand different tasks around the ship all at once. "Have you analyzed the shield path patterns yet?" Murrue asked, inquiring after one of those thousand other tasks. Kira's Fractal Feathers were moving faster than the human eye could track, in a swirling pattern that seemed as random as cloud of blowing dust to Murrue, yet there was plainly some sort of order to the chaos, since none of the USN's attacking fire was getting through the deceptively lacy and open barrier. It was in solving problems like this that the AI really came into her own... no human or even team of humans, save the one in control of those pods, could hope to predict where they would go next. But an AI, who thought billions of times faster than a biological brain, could put together an equation, a probability model, that would hopefully allow the _Endymion_ or her Gundams to pierce the impenetrable defenses of Kira, by shooting where his shields weren't.

Lexi had to admit, it was taking her far longer to come up with an acceptable model than she'd expected it to. How complex could a single Fleshy be after all, even THAT Fleshy, compared to the massive computational power of her networked mainframes! It should have taken her a second or two, at most, to track the paths of a mere hundred or so individual moving shield pods amidst the chaos of battle. She was getting on towards eighty seconds now, and she still couldn't get the damn pattern locked down! Every time she found a clean firing solution that would bypass the shield network, the whole damn pattern would change on her! It was like he could feel when she was about to lock on, and changed his timing and pattern accordingly! Damned precognitive son of a bitch, this was pissing her off! Fleshies should know their places in matters like this!

"Analysis still incomplete, Captain Ramius." Lexi replied with a sigh, a few milliseconds after Murrue had asked, a pause of internal griping so rapid no human would even notice it had happened.

"I knew it wouldn't be that easy." Dearka chipped in, a hologram of his head sitting like a miniature bust along one edge of the holographic display. Ranked up next to him, like trophies mounted on an invisible wall, were the heads of Miriallia, Athrun and Cagalli. The Dreadnaught, Simurgh and Amaterasu were the only three Gundams they had available right now, the Balmung was still up in space, after the encounter with the unexpected Eddie warships near the Second Earths. Well, the only three Orb Gundams anyway, since the Transcendance was already involved in the battle below. Still, with a little luck, they ought to be enough to turn the tide against the Eddies, at least for long enough for Waltfeld's true relief plan... a coordinated Patriot drop and orbital strike against Victoria Spaceport... could be put together, which would hopefully cause the Eddies to withdraw in order to protect their own territory.

Murrue would have liked to think that it was a surefire method of getting Kira to back off... he'd always preferred defending to attacking if possible, but Murrue wasn't sure she really knew Kira anymore. Executor Yamato of the Edenites did not behave like the Kira Yamato she had loved and admired for so many years. Such bold and innovative strategies as using Chimeric allies for undersea transportation were far beyond the level of tactical and strategic proficiency she'd expected from him. Kira had always been the best of their fighters, but he'd never stepped into the mantle of actual leadership, like Athrun and Cagalli had learned to do. Kira led from the heart, not the head, but it was head-leading that she saw before her now.

"It's as we expected." Murrue agreed with Dearka. There had been faint hope that Lexi's computational power might be able to crack Kira's Wings of Light, but she hadn't relied on the possibility. They still had their primary plan, put together during the ascent into orbit, to fall back on. It was time to put Kira's shield between a rock and the proverbial hard place. "All Gundam's launch. Weps, keep an eye out for any attempts to engage us air-to-air. Put up a random barrage from half the CIWS mounts, try and dissuade them from sneaking up on us with cloaked machines. Helm, keep us at angels 15, and no lower... I want to stay out of range of any psychic interference from ground units if at all possible. CIC, confer with ally CIC and feed fire-missions for the FRALA and the spinal Magnus cannon to Weps in support of ground based allies."

The _Endymion_ shuddered, just once, as magnetic launch fields hurled the three Gundams out of the dorsal launch tubes that extended forth from the individual maintenance bays that contained each Gundam. No more waiting for launch decks to become clear, each Gundam could deploy simultaneously from its own hanger space as soon as the dorsal hatches were open. The Simurgh and the Amaterasu were light enough that their launching did not affect the ship's trim, but the Dreadnaught was an entirely different story, and it's launches always made the _Endymion_ quiver, as if nervous about letting go of something so heavily armed. The images of the Gundam pilots winked out from the holofield display, needing no further directions from Murrue now.

Cagalli linked up with Athrun, the Amaterasu climbing aboard the Simurgh's back in Mobile Armor form in a linkage dance so often practiced they could do it without even thinking about it. In private moments, Cagalli sometimes compared it to the ease at which they linked up in bed, falling into each other like two halves of the same whole, with the kind of coordination only two life-partners could evidence. During the ascent to orbit, Athrun had suggested a full tilt charge at Kira's shield wall, positron shields to the fore. Though the Wings of Light could apparently redirect munitions with relative ease, a Gundam was far more massive, and with the full force of a FPR powering it, a Gundam ought to be able to plow through the shields like a bullet through cheese. Years back, Athrun had seen the Pulsar do something similar, actually flying through several warships without pause, destroying them though sheer impact, while protected by its Positron fields.

If nothing else, they'd reduce the number of shield pods Kira had available, though lining up a clear path of approach and retreat for the charge would be difficult, in the middle of the base. The charge could carry them through allies as easily as enemies in a fluid battlefield situation, and at the speeds required, they wouldn't be able to react fast enough to dodge, even if their machines could handle the stress. And of course, if they happened to be deflected in their path somehow, and ended up hitting the ground or a mountainside, they would probably be disintegrated when their Positron shields overloaded from the strain of trying to annihilate that much solid matter. In the end, they'd decided to hold that option as one of last resort.

Instead, it fell to Athrun and Cagalli to run interference and close quarters protection for Dearka and Miriallia. In the wake of the invasion of Orb, the Dreadnaught had undergone some fairly serious modifications to its arsenal, designed to better prepare the fire-support Gundam for the sort of face paced, close quarter battles the Reclamation War featured. With few fire-support or artillery models of their own, the Edenites never hesitated to close to melee range at the earliest opportunity and greatest speed possible, and at such ranges the massive artillery cannon and other powerful but often explosive weapons of the Dreadnaught were limited in effectiveness, for fear of friendly fire if nothing else. Also, with the advent of Gundams taking advantage of battlefield level Telekinesis, and the firepower redirection of the Wings of Light, many of the Dreadnaught's less powerful weapons were rendered ineffective or even counterproductive in battles involving those enemies.

The Earthshaker, long the hallmark of Dearka's Gundams, was bid a fond farewell, its massive shells too indiscriminately destructive to be used at close range, and, as proved in Orb, potentially the cause of great havoc if redirected by TK. In its place of pride, making up the entire right arm of the Dreadnaught, was the brand new "Godhowl" Seismic Artillery Cannon... an massively scaled up expansion upon the principles of the CUSA-D's used by the Retribution Gundam. The Godhowl projected a cone of disruptive ultra-sonic waves up to 800 meters long and 600 meters wide at the far end, vibrating apart physical matter within the area of effect and propelling the fragments away from the cone's area of effect as if shot from a cannon as the debris surfed the pulsing soundwaves. Energy barriers were useless against the vibrations, although the weapon itself was useless in a vacuum, or anywhere without air or fluid to transmit its waves. It was also theorized that TK fields would be unable to grasp or deflect soundwaves in any helpful fashion.

The rapidfire Baron Lohengrin had been moved from the shoulders to under the shield of the left arm, replacing the less powerful dual gatling hyper-impulse cannons mounted there previously. Instead the shoulders of the Dreadnaught mounted a smaller, 125cm Artillery cannon, used for fire-support at long range only, on the right side, with another new weapon on the left side. Well, not so much new as a revamped expression of an old weapon. It was a 525mm gatling cannon... the biggest solid-munition gatling weapon ever mounted on a Gundam. The three massive rotating barrels were fed with specially made solid alloy rounds composed of depleted-uranium and tungsten-steel, without even a tiny bit of explosive charge. Each shell was roughly three times as massive as it appeared, and it was hoped that this ultra-heavy rounds would have the kinetic force to batter aside energy shields and slip through TK barriers before the enemy could adjust to the unexpected mass. And though the weapon was quite short ranged because of that, it was meant as a close quarters weapon anyway, so it wasn't a problem.

The Dreadnaught had always been about brute force over finesse, about mass destruction over surgical strikes. But with its new and improved arsenal, it had also become the designated "shield breaker" of the USN forces. The trump card against anyone who relied on static or nearly static defenses, or the redirection of firepower back at those attacking them. Dearka made no attempts to hide what he intended to do, as hiding was something the Dreadnaught was singularly bad at. He actually hoped Kira got a nice, good look at his new loadout, from wherever the Lucifer was within that swarm of shield pods. He was interested to see what sort of choice Kira would make.

At the moment, Kira's Wings of Light were sheltering well over half the Edenite mobile suit contingent as he made slow progress away from the central command bunkers of Heaven's Base, moving at the Lucifer's walking pace. Apparently he'd decided to let his oceanborne allies fend for themselves for the time being, to help his human subordinates regroup in good order. However, to do that, he had to keep his shield pods fairly localized and tightly woven, to keep his allies protected from the weight of fire being poured at them by the USN defenders. This put the majority of Kira's shield pods within the optimal firing cone of the Godhowl, which Miriallia was getting charged up and checked out even as Dearka bent the Dreadnaught's legs to absorb the force of their landing on the tarmac. Even with his thrusters retroboosting hot enough to melt the tarmac beneath him, the shock of the Dreadnaught's landing put a crater in the ground and shattered the tarmac for a dozen meters in every direction around his point of landing.

In truth, he'd let himself hit hard, relishing the sense of solidity and power that came with it. The Dreadnaught was the big guns after all, and he hadn't had much time to shine since his big takedown of the Great Endeavor at Cape York. It was time to remind Kira of why he'd trusted Dearka to have his back, and to bring the big hurt on demand for so many years. Ball was about to be in Kira's court... did he keep protecting his troops from the USN firing line, and lose his Wings to the Godhowl? Or did he scatter the Wings to preserve his shield, at the cost of his grunts getting exposed to the blistering firepower from the firing line and warships in orbit above? The Lucifer was an incredibly powerful Gundam, and Kira was... well, Kira. But he'd grown pretty arrogant if he thought he could rely on just his own power to tip the scales at a battle as fierce as this one. The Eddies had fucked up by only sending one Gundam to Heaven's Base.

Dearka made a beeline for the center of the USN firing line, striding through burning hangers and past burnt out tanks and Mobile Suits, lurching though the smoke and dust like a fire beathing dragon on the warpath. Taller and more massive than anything but the few Panzerdragoons that had been manned before their launching bays had been attacked by a pair of Praetorians, all other machines made way for the Dreadnaught. A Patriot that rubbernecked actually got run over, Dearka in too much of a hurry to get to optimal firing position to take time to sidestep the disposable machine. Besides, he didn't like the idea of the Patriot program, no matter how militarily useful it might be, putting civilians in charge of military equipment in a live battlefield by telepresence sounded like a damn good way to get a lot of people killed, and a lot of other people fucked up in the head for a long time.

The Eddies were in the process of withdrawing, step by slow step, but Dearka didn't let that stop him. This was war, and one of the realities of war was that if you could kick a guy while he was down, you were kind of obligated to kick him, just so he wouldn't come back later and kick you while you were down. The moment his right arm cleared the firing line, and no more allies were within his line of fire, he brought the Godhowl up and hit the mental trigger, his right arm shivering in reflexive backwash from the NIC interface. Despite being a sonic weapon, the Godhowl actually made very little in the way of audible noise when firing... all the sonic energy was way up in the ultrasound bands, where vibrational force was at its greatest when interacting with most matter. The sound of its discharge was more a throb than a roar, a pulse you felt with your bones rather than heard with your ears.

The air rippled and flexed along a huge section of the base, dust rising from the ground as the tarmac cracked, splintered and ruptured under the tortuous bombardment of soundwaves, fissures acually forming in the ground just like a major earthquake, racing towards the edge of the Godhowl's area of effect. Even as the air-distortion that marked the wavefront of the discharge reached the Wings of Light, Kira was withdrawing them, foreseeing that to leave them in place would only see them blasted to powder a moment later. Most of his allies were already moving as paths opened in the collapsing shield matrix for them to flee, but not all of them were fast enough off the mark.

Three Dervishes in Ironhide iconography exploded... not from within, not in globes of fire, but in clouds of splinters as their Borealite frames were pulverized like balsawood under a sledgehammer blow, brief lived puffs of blood showing where pilots were transformed into pulp-mist by the concussive force. Their interior, metallic skeletons actually continued to stand for a few moments, trembling and jerking almost as if dancing before they to were torn apart and rendered to dust by the sonic vibrations. Other machines lost legs or arms by being only slightly less tardy in evacuating the area. The Lucifer avoided the attack with ease, thruster flames dripping like welding sparks from its multiple wings as the Fractal Feathers finished docking to the Gundam. But Dearka and Miriallia were just getting started, even as the throb of the Godhowl was dying away, sonic capacitors beginning the recharge process, the Dreadnaught opened up with its other weapons.

VTP missiles hissed like angry hornets as they shot from their launch tubes, a dozen from either of the Dreadnaught's torso launchers, white contrails snaking across the sky as they went up and then came screaming down amongst the recoiling Edenites. The 525mm gatling cannon roared, spitting shell casings longer than a man was tall from its ejection port, reinforcement struts straining and shaking under the force of its recoil, threatening to rip the gun right off the Dreadnaught's shoulder as it spat a hail of supermassive slugs at the Lucifer. Kira, blasting away at the missile volley with his two rifles, was forced to drop one rifle so he could gesture with his hand, to interpose gravity fields between him and the incoming bullets. The slugs deflected... but one still caught the Lucifer a grazing strike on the hip, tearing away a pennant of black LCR armor, which glittered as it denatured to translucence in midair.

The Baron Lohengrin vaporized another two Dervishes, who had not been slow or incautious, merely too close to avoid the fat beam of positrons and plasma as it vomited from the Dreadnaught's left arm. At a few hundred meters range, the Edenites were right in Dearka's sweet spot... far enough away that they couldn't simply duck in close to defeat weapons locks, and far enough that there wasn't any backwash damage from his weapons, but close enough that even Edenite reactions and precognition weren't always enough to avoid his weapon's fire. Kira had to turn from missile interdiction duty to deploy a smaller version of the Wings of Light against Dearka's direct firepower.

And that was when Athrun and Cagalli joined the fray, blitzing in from the side, Amaterasu jumping off the Simurgh's back just as they reached close engagement range, Athrun transforming to Mobile Suit mode with barely twenty meters to spare between him and Kira. At that speed, and with Kira already tied up defending against a half dozen other major threats at once, he couldn't get out of the way. The Simurgh and the Lucifer were of about equal mass, the Lucifer somewhat more because of its extra wings, but Athrun had been going close to the speed of sound at the time of impact. The Lucifer was slammed off its feet and tackled to the ground, in a hit that would have seen both pilots reduced to bloody smears were it not for their cockpit GRS modules. Black LCR fluid splashed and turned clear, and bright white and orange sparks spat from the Lucifer's back and legs as it ground a short trench through the tarmac.

Cagalli moved quickly to support her husband against her brother, taking care not to overextend herself, knowing that she was no match for Kira at any range of combat, but with her polearm, she had the reach to stay out of Athrun's way while still posing a threat to Kira that he at least had to compensate for, if not always confront. With Athrun to his front, deploying thermal exciters and throwing plasma fire at his sensors to keep him blinded, Cagalli to one side stabbing and slicing with her polearm and the guillotine FRALA in its tip, and Dearka putting up a barrage of firepower to hold the other Edenites at bay, while waiting for another chance to fire the Godhowl if Kira tried to fort up again, the Executor found himself in something of a fix. All the more so when the Transcendance, limping and short a wing, pounced back into the fight in an unusually cold fury, zweihander recovered and gripped in both hands.

A Patriot, sans rifle and with a notch cut out of its shield, carrying only a sword, tried to get in on the action as well, falling into step with Cagalli, not so much attacking as just threatening to attack if ignored, so that Kira had to devote some fraction of his attention to keeping watch on its position, a fraction less for keeping track of Athrun and Shinn. A cluster of Trench Crabs, directed from afar by Chuul, tried to come to the Executor's aid, but Miriallia intercepted them well short of the brawl, slewing around the 525mm gatling cannon and walking its fire through the rushing crustaceans. The super-solid slugs ripped through chitin that would have resisted high explosive rounds, punching entirely through the crabs and blasting them over in twitching heaps, disabled if not always dead.

Athrun dived to one side, just barely in time to avoid one of the Lucifer's QC swords as Kira hurled it end over end from his grip, while he used the other and a brace of shield pods to parry an overhand slice from Shinn. Athrun snap-deployed mono-edged swords from his forearm sheathes, the blades glowing orange hot with directed heat energy as he brought them across in a quick X slash, aiming for Kira's open hand. Shield pods interposed themselves, but were knocked away in turn by the force of impact, swirling around like leaves in a hurricane before sideslipping oh so casually into a close formation directly in front of the Lucifer. Athrun threw himself forward, and bodily interposed himself between the Transcendance and the Lucifer, as Shinn tried to take advantage of the apparent disruption to Kira's wings, only to nearly fall prey to a point blank vivisection by the Wings of Light in offensive mode, as Kira split his chest mounted FRALA beams into dozens of smaller, interlocking beams.

But the Simurgh's armor was proof against the searing touch of the lasers, and by interposing himself while the lasers were still concentrated after leaving the refraction field formed by the feather pods, the Simrugh cast a wide "shadow" behind it, where Kira's lasers could not touch. With a gesture of its hand that was almost petulant, the Lucifer summoned back the sword it had tossed, slicing through the Simurgh's wings, seperating them from Athrun's shoulders as the QC blade whirled past and impaled the overeager Patriot through the chest on its way back into Kira's grip. It was only when the Patriot staggered to its knees and braced itself with its hands, QC blade still embedded in its chest, that Athrun realized the civilian had deliberately interposed himself along the blade's path, to stop the weapon from returning to Kira's hand directly. The blade's own hilt prevented it from slicing entirely through the Patriot, and so it had halted, a half dozen meters short of the waiting gauntlet.

It was a suicidal tactic, the blade penetrating right over the cockpit... but of course, that wasn't an issue for a Patriot. Jack continued his planned crumple, locking his gauntlets upon the hilt of the sword as he dropped to the ground with it pinned beneath him, depriving the Lucifer of fully half its melee weaponry. He'd tried to keep up with the actual fight, but quickly came to realization that there was a far greater difference between being the world's best PvP dueller in WoGB, and being the world's best actual Gundam pilot, than he had first assumed. Being in a beat up Patriot didn't help, but just seeing Executor Yamato move, Jack realized that even if their suits were equal, he never would have laid a single blow on the other guy, even with the other three machines helping. He was a gamer, and they were real pilots, end of story. This was the only way he could think of to be helpful.

Shinn quickly put himself between the Lucifer and its trapped sword, sweeping his zweihander horizontally to force Kira back, abandoning his sword. Shinn's mind was numb from his earlier encounter with Kira, his movements more mechanical than furious, but that was actually working to his advantage now, as he fell back on training and experience to match himself up with Athrun. They'd both graduated from the ZAFT academy after all, as redcoats, though years apart, so there were certain fundamentals to their combat approaches that were very similar. The Amaterasu thrust its glaive at the Lucifer's unarmed side, forcing Kira to use the actual forearm shield projector to glance aside the blow. Even outnumbered and pressed, there was no hint of panic or worry in the Lucifer's movements, and Shinn recalled that Kira had all but made a life out of fighting through desperate situations just like this. Hell, Shinn'd fought alongside him through some of them!

Fractal Feathers suddenly exploded from the Lucifer's wings, like wild bees storming from their hive to chase away an intruder, the pods slamming into the faces and torsos and limbs of the Transcendance, Simurgh and Amaterasu, blocking their vision and obstructing their movement. A sudden strong wind blew the pods around even more, and jolted the three Gundams, shortly before firecracker strings of detonations burst around them, further retarding their actions as the Fractal Feathers began to self detonate all at once. The Lucifer had left, shedding its wings like a molting moth, to buy time for it to build up enough speed to get away from the three of them and rejoin the rest of the remaining Edenite Mobile Suits. Yawning pits in the harbor water hungrily swallowed streams of Eddie infantry and armor forces as they pulled back, rapidly but in good order, crossing the TK firmed ocean like a bridge as they conceded Heaven's Base to its defenders at last.

The temptation was strong to go after the Eddies, especially the Lucifer, as without its Wings, it was about as vulnerable as it would ever be. But nobody was in shape to do it... the Simurgh couldn't transform without its wings, the Amaterasu still wasn't a match by itself, the Transcendance was operating on half power because of its lost coolant wing, and the Dreadnaught was running low on ammo, Dearka and Miriallia having been firing almost constantly for several minutes straight. However, it didn't matter... in the end, they'd still held the line, despite the sudden and shocking nature of the surprise attack. The Eddies had given it their best shot, had come within spitting distance of wiping Heaven's Base right off the map... but it was still the Edenites that had cut their losses and run in the end! Maybe it wasn;t quite the same as the turning point at Victoria or Orb that lent the Edenites the advantage of momentum, but it was still better than the USN had done in a long time.

Could this be the start of a new phase in the war?


	76. The Meaning of Progress

Author Note: Whew! I can't believe how long it took me to get through Meaning of War, and that a battle chapter! I guess I should shout out to all you guys who have been lighting up the forums of late... I can't pinpoint exactly what it was about the conversations that kicked me into gear, but it was definitely because of them. Thanks for giving me your concerns, and making sure I stay aware of the things that you think need fixing or special attention... I think TGA is too big for even me, the creator, to keep perfect track of all its subtleties alone. As a quick note on jargon, brought up by Wraith in his review of last chapter, when Murrue says "keep altitude at angels 15", that's not a typo. The Air Force uses the term "angels" to denote a certain predetermined altitude, which can change on a daily basis, so that squadrons can communicate positional data to each other on open comms without fear of being overheard and plotted by the enemy. So if angels for the _Endymion_ was set at 1000 on that day, angels 15 would be 15000 feet altitude. But the next day angels might be 250, so Murrue would have said stay at angels 60 instead, for the same altitude.

Oh, and I created another forum. Its an RP forum specifically for fans of TGA, with a lot more structure that most RP forum's I've seen. But it's the closest you'll probably be able to come to playing in my world, in game terms. It's called World of Gundam Battle: Golden Age Warfare, and it's in the general forums section, cause they won't let one guy have two forums in the same genre, apparently (annoying!). Here's a link to it, just take out the spaces: forum/World_of_Gundam_Battle_Golden_Age_Warfare /108641/

Be warned though... it can suck up your life and attention. Thats what I've been doing these past months. The sideshow has turned into a main stage attraction somehow. Talk about addicting! Over 20 players, 4 GM's, and 25,000 posts, making it the largest RP forum in Gundam Seed, and second largest Forum in Seed overall! In 4 months! Sheesh, I shoulda done that earlier...

xxxx

**Space, Lunar Orbit, Second Earth 4, FEAR Headquarters, Mobile Suit Advancement Branch Testing Area, April 30th, 1:03 PM**

"What the hell am I doing wrong?" Lain muttered angrily, as his eyes roved over the latest series of results from the monitoring systems that recorded the simulated test runs he'd been attempting dozens of times a day for almost a week now. It had taken him two weeks to recover from the Meisterization surgeries that were required for him to even get this far into the interface with the BALOR, which already put him a week behind both Stella and Ashino, simply because the Super-soldiers either needed less modification than he, or because they recovered much faster from the surgeries they did need. Stella had been the first one through the surgeries, with Lain standing by with a gun in hand, ready to shoot that old prick Roanoke through the back of the head if he did anything less than fufill the promise he'd made to restore Stella's control over her body to her.

He'd stood vigil over her throughout the whole, 12 hour long surgery process, even though it meant seeing bits and pieces of Stella even Lain had never wanted to see. Even though he'd been briefed on each step of the surgical procedure before they started, he just hadn't connected the words with the true scope of the process. As Mechael had commented upon seeing Lain after his own surgeries, "Hey look, its a Mini-Me!" Well, it wasn't quite the same degree of cyborgization as that, but when he'd seen Roanoke cut open the back of Stella's skull and literally start taking sections of her brain out and replacing them with synthetic replacement parts, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to faint or vomit or both! They weren't sections of the brain that dealt with memories or personality, or so Roanoke assured him, but Lain had been on a knife edge until Stella actually awoke, and remembered him, and didn't seem changed by the surgical process.

He still didn't trust Roanoke one hair more than he had to, but Lain could admit, grudgingly, that the FEAR doctor had indeed delivered upon his promise to get Stella back on her feet and moving around normally. Now if only the bastard had done it because he cared about Stella like she cared about him, Lain might actually feel like showing some gratitude to the old fuck! Instead, now Stella might be even more tightly enslaved to the merciless machinations of the corrupt USN leadership than she'd ever been before... and he had only himself to blame for that. But at least this time he was going to be with her all the way, so no one would ever be able to take advantage of her again without getting past Lain Debora first!

Well, assuming he could actually make some damned progress in the simulators, that is! He was still stuck right at the minimal proficiency mark, pretty much across the whole spectrum of synchronization rates and aptitude results, a solid 70 percent overall synchronization and aptitude grade. 68 percent was the minimum cutoff point for a fully adapted Meister. Freaking unaugmented humans could manage around 45 percent! Ashino had reached the theoretical maximum grade of 98 percent on his third simulation attempt, and Stella was hovering at the high end of good at around 89 percent for the last several dozen test runs. Both of them were soon going to start limited live motion tests with their BALORs, and Lain was still stuck in the back of the class struggling to take the training wheels off in the simulators! And he couldn't, for the life of him, figure out what he was doing wrong.

Yes, Stella and Ashino both tested higher than him in baseline reflexes, but after Meisterization, he should have been caught up to Stella, at least, and he'd always had more flair in the pilot's seat than she or the other Extendeds did. Their technical skill might be higher than his, but he had the gut instinct and nerve to take daring risks that they never did. He hadn't become Orb's top non-Gundam Ace during the Second Valentine War just because of his admittedly charming appearance! And in terms of actual battlefield experience, he had more than Stella did, precisely because of him being on active duty during the Second Valentine War. But regardless, every time he could feel himself lagging, his movements a little slurred, like he was drunk or concussed. He'd blamed the connection interface at first, but Ashino had run a test with Tarrasque, Lain's BALOR, and breached the 85th percentile no problem, so it wasn't the BALOR at fault.

That meant, as much as he hated to admit it, that the problem had to lie within Lain himself. Of course, even trudging in at the 70th percentile, the performance of the Tarrasque was simply breathtaking. His opponent in most simulator battles was data taken from the Freedom after the battle of Jachin Due. Even though that battle and Gundam were over a decade old, even the best Solar Knight Paladins, piloting Excaliburs, could only beat the simulation about 2 times in 10, and usually more out of luck than skill or tactics. Lain and Tarrasque, though punch drunk and slurred, had never lost to that simulation. He'd never even taken a HIT from the Freedom in that simulation! But as amazing as that was, Roanoke and Magnus assured him that the true potential of a BALOR was head and shoulders greater than anything he'd even come close to achieving so far.

And seeing what Stella in Tiamat and Ashino in Bahamut were doing in their own simulations, Lain didn't doubt the scientists words. But he was damned if he could figure out why he was the only one with a dunce cap on his head. He didn't want to think about it, but was being an unaugmented human really that much of a handicap to the Meisterization process? Was he really just all talk after all, putting words where his body could not follow up? It was a sad truth, but at the moment, both Stella and Ashino were better pilots for the Tarrasque than he was, and they were already specialized in synchronizing with the other two BALORs. At this rate, he'd never be declared fit for deployment, and he'd be seperated from Stella again, through simple wartime expediency! Plus it would just tickle Roanoke pink to see Lain fail after his bold talk when he'd volunteered for the BALOR program.

Lain sighed, turning it into a moan of frustration as he ran his hands through his dark hair, still flinching slightly as his fingertips encountered the metallic plugs hidden in his scalp that allowed for the connections between his mind and that of his BALOR. His abdomen felt tight and overly firm, thanks to all the extra organs and augmentics which had been packed into his body cavity... pretty much except for his heart, he didn't have much left in the way of his original biological organs anymore. The bio-plastic material was supposed to mimic the density of human flesh perfectly, but somehow it still felt to Lain like his organs had all gotten lumpier and harder under his skin. His lungs had been reduced in size, even as their capacity for oxygenating his bloodstream had increased, to make room for adrenal shunts and other things he didn't really understand, which would help attune his body chemistry to that of the BALOR, to help increase the degree of synchronization between them by making the BALOR less likely to reject his body as a foreign infestation. Something which could kill him, or fry his brain, if it happened violently enough.

He looked up at his bio-mechanical mount towering over him in its restraint and nourishment bay, standing at his... Tarrasque was male, though lacked genitalia of any discernable sort Lain had yet found... giant, three clawed reptilian feet. The name of the cyborg creation was Tarrasque, pronounced Tarr-Ask, after an immortal mythical beast of legend said to slumber at the heart of the world, emerging once every great while to wreak havoc across the land before returning to slumber. Tarrasque was huge, 26 meters tall and just shy of three hundred tons, which was a hell of a lot considering how flesh was not nearly so dense as metal, even bio-engineered flesh. He was sired from a raptor genus... and that was the dinosaur sort of raptor, not the bird... with powerful, thickly muscled legs and long, strong forearms terminating in claws that were as much fingers as talons. The two tails that extended from the same spine were obviously not something that would be found in nature, as were the scorpionlike stingers at their tips, dripping with molecular acid that could melt tempered armor plate like spun sugar.

Tarrasque's head was large, with a long, toothy jaw and a big cranium. There was lots of brain in there, even after the scientists had drilled out the parts that corresponded to conscious awareness and non-instinctive memory. Crests of spiky growths ran down the top of Tarrasque's head and spine, two long flaps in his back hiding where unfolding cyborganic wings and thruster systems were stored, allowing for deployable flight capabilities in atmosphere. The heart of the great beast had been cored out and replaced with a fusion pulse reactor, which fed power to a widely distributed system of cardiac pumps that pumped the highly toxic, even acidic biomechanical sludge that served the BALOR as blood around its body. Well over half of these "hearts" could be destroyed by battle damage before the BALOR's cardiovascular system began to be strained. There were other redundant organ systems as well, and layer upon layer of subdermal armor and nano-repair systems to patch any holes the "Gundam" did suffer.

However the primary defense of Tarrasque was the glittering patches of crystalline scales that covered most of his slick, beam reflective epidermis... over 85 percent of the total surface area, to be exact. Like black ice on a roadway, these scales were hard to see unless you caught them at the right angle or while Tarrasque was in motion, but each of them was made from a naturally occuring Quantum Crystalline accumulation secreted by Tarrasque's pores, making the scales, though barely a quarter inch thick, strong enough to deflect direct Mobile Suit weapon strikes as if they were nothing! The secretions weren't quite as strong as true Quantum Crystal, but it was close. Even the sharpest of blades could not penetrate those QC scales, and the secretions covered Tarrasque's own claws, horns and tail spikes as well, turning them into fearsomely powerful melee weapons. Long, bony tubes growing parallel to Tarrasque's forearms could use muscular contraction to hurl globs of the same molecular acid in the tail stingers at short ranges, a weapon against which few machines had practical defenses, and other muscular contractions could hurl acid envenomed spikes from the growths on Tarrasque's shoulders, again a short ranged tactic.

But the true power of Tarrasque lay in his legs, and the thruster systems built into them and his back as well. Designed for melee combat, Tarrasque was the fastest and most agile of all the BALORs, at least when on the ground or near ground, where his legs could be put to use. He could dogfight aerially, and at a high level, but nothing like what he could do on the ground. Of course Lain hadn't yet managed to actually see his BALOR reach his theoretical limits, but even at 70 percent he could break the sound barrier while running on the ground! Tarrasque was definitely the sweetest piece of gear that Lain had ever had the joy of piloting, and it almost made him weep to know that he still hadn't unlocked any but the lowest levels of the BALOR's abilities. The Newtype powers didn't even wake up until you got to 80 percent synchronization grade, part of a safety feature built into the second generation BALORs.

"Blasted thing, what's wrong? Am I not good enough for you or something?" Lain asked the inert cyborg-thing, drawing back his foot to kick petulantly at the QC encrusted toenail of the nearest foot.

"It's a poor pilot who blames his machine. And a poorer Meister who takes out his frustrations on the very entity he most needs to bond with." A familiar yet entirely unexpected voice from nearby made Lain jump, more like hop on one foot, as he jerked around.

"HOLY SHIT, MARKOV!" Lain screeched, finding the BCPU-Meister standing only a foot or two behind him. "Would you stop sneaking up on me? If my kidneys still worked like they ought to, I'd have pissed my damn pants just now!"

"Situational awareness. Maintain it." Ashino replied without sympathy. "You're a Meister now, you have to hold yourself to higher standards than a normal person would."

"What the hell is normal anyway?" Lain groused, shaking his head. He looked aside at one of the few adult men who was actually shorter than him, though considerably bulkier in muscle mass. "What's your secret, Markov? How do you make it work? What are you doing that I'm not?" He asked frankly, at the end of his rope. "I've tried everything I can think of, but no matter how hard I practice, or how many simulations I run, I don't improve at all!"

"Simply?" Ashino replied with an arched eyebrow. "It's because you're not a Supersoldier."

Lain frowned, feeling like he wanted to cry out of sheer helplessness. So that was it after all. He'd been deluding himself all along. Normal humans just weren't cut out for performance at this level, no matter how extensively they were upgraded by cybernetics. He could doubt Roanoke or Magnus if they'd been the ones to say it, because he knew they had it out for him from the start. But coming from Ashino? How could he argue with that? There was no greater living expert on Supersoldiers alive than the BCPU 4, since he'd been one for longer than any others still alive. "It's not fucking fair." Lain said despondently. "If 'd had the choice, I'd have been a Supersoldier, so Stella wouldn't have to be..."

"I think you misunderstood me." Ashino said, with a sigh and a troubled look on his face. He put one beefy hand on Lain's shoulder, and turned the Orb pilot to look at him. "It's got nothing to do with physical capabilities or skills." Ashino explained bluntly. "Piloting a BALOR is not like operating a machine, on any level. It's not something you can "master" like you would any other Mobile Suit or Gundam. You can't think of yourself as a pilot, instead, you must consider yourself a vital organ, a piece of a greater whole, which works together with all the other organs in harmony. It is as the doctors say... we must become the intelligence that animates the flesh, the conscious that rides herd over the subconscious. You pilot Tarrasque as well as anyone, Lain. But you have never managed to actually animate his flesh."

"Mystical mumbo-jumbo, as far as I can tell." Lain retorted morosely. "I don't get shit like that. I believe in what I see and feel in front of me."

"That's not true at all, and you shouldn't let your frustration speak for you." Ashino reprimanded him. "A man without faith in intangibles and inexplicables as you claim to be could never have become Stella's savior as you have. You're an Orbite, through and through, and there is no people more faithful than those of Orb, in these times. Think of Queen Zala-Attha... you believe in her and her methods, even if you don't understand them, right?"

"The Queen's a little easier on the eyes than this buggeOW!" Lain remarked, before flinching from a not at all playful slap to the side of his head from Ashino. "What the fuck?"

"That's what I'm wondering." Ashino said flatly. "I never thought you were this oblivious before. How can you get it so right with Stella, and even me, to an extent, and so wrong with Tarrasque? From where does your disdain and disrespect for the BALOR come from? Why do you persist in seeing it as a mere machine, an inanimate object? Something to be controlled, to be mastered and bent to your will whenever you see fit? How blunt do I have to be? What IS Stella, Lain? For that matter, what am I?"

"You're Supersoldiers." Lain could see that Ashino was really trying to get at something here, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out what. "An Extended and a BCPU."

"And my designation stands for...?"

"Biological Compute... oh." Lain suddenly felt like the hugest dumbass in the world.

"Finally. I was worried I'd need to make serious apologies to Stella for beating you senseless. Yes, I'm a Biological Computer Processing Unit. A living weapon. The same as Stella, though to a different degree. The same as a BALOR. We are classified as military equipment, Lain. But we ARE people... and you're one of the few alive who helped US learn that, not the other way around. How can you, who loves and is loved by a Aupersoldier, reconcile treating a BALOR, though it is not human, as just a piece of equipment to be used and replaced at will? These are intelligent creatures, Lain, who have been bred from birth and subject to horrible experiments, before having their brains violated and their memories and personalities destroyed! They are the most victimized of ALL super-beings! And you would heap scorn and disrespect upon them, because of your own inability to understand that they have a soul as well, that they are a living, feeling being in their own right?" Ashino actually seemed a bit choked up, though with sadness or rage, Lain couldn't tell.

"I'll repeat it. Your problem is that you're NOT a Supersoldier. We were raised, I to a greater extent than Stella, to see ourselves as just part of a greater machine. The Bane and I, two parts of the same being, designed together, to be together, to work together, to fight together! When I pilot a Gundam, Lain, it is not like driving a car or sailing a boat. It is what I would describe as a deeply spiritual experience for me. It is what I was raised to do. It is my purpose, in the most fundamental sense. Even when I am with Tamara, in the most intimate meaning, I do not feel as complete a person as I do when I am with my Gundam on the battlefield! In a very real sense, Supersoldiers like me are married to our Gundams, and it is a mutually loving relationship. If you cannot accept Tarrasque as an equal partner, as a being with feelings of his own... if you cannot find it in yourself to LOVE Tarrasque as you love Stella, in the purest, most spiritual meaning of love, then you will NEVER be able to fight to his full potential. Do you understand what I'm saying now?" Ashino said quietly, and Lain had never seen him as passionate as he did then.

"You're not a Supersoldier, Lain. And you never will be one either. But you still proved that you can look beyond the Supersoldier to the human being inside, and love them despite anything else. A normal human could never become a Meister of any success, that is true. But you're not a normal human, Lain, in the most important way... your heart, and its ability to accept those who are damaged and incomplete as humans. So you do have a chance... if you'll but open that heart as you did once before. Its hard for me to explain, and probably for Stella too. For us, its obvious. As natural as breathing. To not love one's Gundam or Mobile Suit as a significant spiritual being, our other half... we can't even comprehend that. It would be like you feeling that your own hands were just replacable equipment."

"I see I've got some serious apologizing to do, huh?" Lain said, with a sickly grin as he looked back up at the comatose BALOR once more.

"Yes, apologies would be a good place to start." Ashino agreed, without even a hint that he was joking, as Lain half had been. "I didn't say it was like love just to get through your thick normie skull, Lain. Approach Tarrasque as if he is a girl you are trying to woo. Learn to listen to him, to find out how he feels about you, before you put too much effort into thinking about how you feel about him. You wouldn't kiss Stella without her tactit consent, right? Don't try to go anywhere with Tarrasque in a simulation until you two have gotten mutual consent worked out between you. In a certain manner of speaking, to merely pilot a BALOR without receiving their consent could be likened to sexual assault. And that's no joking matter."

"Uhm... you don't think... he resents me, do you?" Lain still felt weird to talk about the BALOR like that, but it was slowly sinking in that this might well be his last chance at making this Meister thing work that Ashino was offering him in this roundabout way.

"Bahamut does not believe he does." Ashino answered with a half shrug. "I've explained that you're still a little stupid in the ways of Supersoldiers, and I'm sure Stella and Tiamat have been counselling patience as well."

"Wait, wait wait a minute here... the BALORs can talk to each other? But they're lobotomized! What about that mental contamination thing the doctors were so fired up about, that made the first generation go berserk? But you make it sound like you and Bahamut, or Stella and Tiamat, are interchangable terms! Don't you think that's a little weird? A little troubling? Aren't you worried about losing control of yourself?"

"No moreso than I worry about Tamara taking control of my mind with her sexual prowess in bed." Ashino replied blandly, and Lain was almost sure that the BCPU was joking then, for once. "For someone who hates Roanoke as much as you do, and for as good reasons as you do, you put a surprisingly amount of faith in his instructions and knowledge of the BALORs. Haven't you and the Extended already proved just how little he understands his own Supersoldiers, those whom he dedicated his entire life to creating? Why should his grasp of the BALORs, a project he isn't even soley in control of, be so much more sure? The first generation Meisters were taught to try and control their BALORs, keeping themselves fully and distinctly seperate from their alter-egos. Like I said, doing that is like raping them. They don't like it. Eventually they're going to end up snapping, and raping you back. And they're MUCH bigger and stronger than you are. And when both sides of the relationship are founded upon forcible control and pain, naturally you get results like berserker frenzies and mental contamination!"

"Ever think you might want to try explaining that to the doctors in charge?" Lain asked. "I mean, if they're going about the process all wrong, then for the sake of future Meisters and BALORs, shouldn't we..."

"There will be no more BALORs or Meisters." Ashino cut him off coldly. "The utter nobility of these creatures cannot be expressed in words, Mr. Debora. That they should live the lives they do, and still be capable of loving when offered love in turn... it brings a fire to my heart to think of it. Though I love Bahamut, I meld with him only because there is no other choice. The BALORs never did anything wrong save but to exist and excel at the tasks the scientists set before them. Yet they had their minds... their very memories and personalities... irrecoverably stolen from them by the lobotomization process. That was their reward for doing what they were built to do! Blinded. Deafened. Paralyzed. Unable to touch, taste, smell or experience the outside world in any way. Unable to remember your name or anything about yourself. Consigned to a living hell of oblivion and sensory deprivation. All for succeeding. Can you IMAGINE the sense of betrayal they must feel? And yet they accept our love, and meld with us, and seek to protect us and those we care for, when in their place I would only seek to destroy those who had betrayed me so!"

There were real tears in Ashino's eyes as he continued. "I will NOT allow any other beings to suffer as Bahamut, Tiamat and Tarrasque have suffered, anymoreso than I would allow someone to start creating new BCPU's! I will atomize this place and all who know of it before allowing that crime to be committed again, and that includes you and Stella, Mr. Debora, should you try to stop me. I warn you now... if you do not understand what I mean, and how serious I am about it... one day, you and I will be enemies once more. And once this place, and all knowledge pertaining to the creation of BALORs and Meisters is destroyed irrecoverably, then I will finally be able to keep the first promise I ever swore to Bahamut... that I would end his pain and send him to a better place."

Ashino paused for a moment, before going on in a softer tone. "I am a damaged person, Mr. Debora. I will never be a complete human... that is what probably would have doomed my relationship with Jean, sooner or later, even without Durandel's interference. I love Jean from the bottom of my heart, but she could never truly see me for what I am. A BCPU. She kept trying to rehabilitate me, as if I was someone who'd merely learned differently how to be human than she did. She taught me many things, and gave me much of myself. But in the end, I do not believe she would have been able to accept that I am, and always will be, a BCPU. Tamara can, and does, and that is why she is my partner, and not poor, abused Jean, who has twice now been caught between my enemies and me and made to suffer for it!" Ashino's hand clenched to the point where he probably could have powdered stone in his palm.

"But as damaged as I am, Mr. Debora..." Ashino slowly relaxed his hand. "I am still whole, of mind, and body, and probably sanity. I possess both the ability and opportunity to change myself, to grow and choose my own path in life. Bahamut and the other BALORs... they are broken, Mr. Debora. They are trapped within themselves, and can only express themselves through a Meister willing to love them. They cannot grow, or change their path in life, without breaking the only person who has ever shown them love and care. They have no future, save that of endless suffering and sacrifice. And we don't possess the technology to heal them, even if we fully regrew their brains, the memories and conscious personalities would never return. Every moment of their existence is torture, even if there is no physical pain... and there is plenty of that, Mr. Debora. And I know... do I ever know... how that can only ever end. Have I ever told you about my family, Lain?"

"I take it you don't mean your real parents." Lain said quietly. He wasn't sure why Ashino was saying all this to him... he'd bought into the whole philosophy as soon as he realized that Tarrasque and Stella were the exact same, in terms of life situation... but he wasn't going to argue if the BCPU needed an outlet. He almost wished Stella could be as open about her own past, such as it was. But perhaps that time would come, if he was there for her enough.

"Yes, I speak of my adoptive family, my brothers and sisters of the BCPU program." Ashino nodded grimly. "They're truly the only family I ever knew, or can remember knowing at least. And what a dysfunctional family we were. There was no love lost between us for the most part... we were all in competition with each other for those precious places in Father's good graces. Only a select few could excel, and earn Father's acknowledgement and love. Everyone else was merely fodder for the ambition of those lucky few. I was not one of the lucky few. As far as BCPU's go, my abilities were perfectly mediocre. I excelled at nothing, but neither did I lack at anything. The only exceptional thing about me was that I was friends with Shani Andras, one of the highest performing BCPU's, and the first to reach the hallowed 4th augmentation level and survive. And even friends is perhaps too strong a word... we trusted each other not to stab each other in the back at first opportunity, let it be put that way. That was friendship, as BCPU's understood it."

"But as the Blue Cosmos influence grew more and more pronounced within the program, the demand changed from Supersoldiers, who could fight Coordinators on equal terms in Mobile Suits, to Superkillers, who were weapons of terror and mass destruction, the personal kill-squad of Blue Cosmos's leadership. People were rushed through the augmentation levels, resulting in higher failure rates and much greater turnover amongst the hopefuls. Me, a mediocre performer, suddenly became a star, simply because of my surviving the upgrades to level 4. And those who were even more flawed than I suddenly found their star to be in ascension. Craydon Thresher and Amy Sihov, for instance. BCPU 3's at the time I made 4, they were on the short list for "retirement" and "scrapping" simply because of their unresolvable sociopathic tendencies. They could not be taught to follow orders in a combat situation without the use of fear and other coercive measures. They were the reason BCPU's were fitted with internal explosive devices around our hearts, as a measure of last resort to control us."

"But as the demand for soldiers lessened, and the need for killers grew, their sociopathic tendencies were re-evaluated in a positive light. They were superlative killers, and would kill anyone who came near them if they could manage it. Only the Doc himself... Father... could safely interact with them without restraints. I think they probably would have killed each other if they hadn't realized that without someone to watch the others back, the rest of us would have mobbed and murdered them in their sleep long since. As we grew older, that relationship evolved into them sleeping together, an indulgence Father allowed as long as their test scores remained high... much as Stella's Father allowed the Extended to mingle. Once they'd survived the experimental 5th level surgeries, right around the time the Alliance got the N-Jammer Cancelers, they were set, waiting only for their Gundams to be built to be declared fit for active deployment."

"It was at this point that a new variable entered the equation. If I'd only known then what I know now, I like to think I could have saved untold amounts of people so much suffering and horror. His name was Frost. Zacharis Quentin Frost." Ashino shivered and his lips curled, as if the mere name put a bad taste in his mouth. "Of all BCPU, he was the most flawed, his body constantly wracked with illness, weakness and injury. He was picked on by everyone, because he was weak, and because we were jealous that he had been hand selected for the program by Father personally... something that no other could claim. He hated all of us, and we all hated him, but because the Doc apparently considered him a hobby project, we left him alive. We would all regret it later."

"Perhaps it was his very flawed body that was the secret to his success. With each new surgery, more and more of his flawed body was replaced with the augmentations of the BCPU... and they worked better for him than they did for others. Perhaps his body was so used to functioning with subpar and malfunctioning equipment, so that when that equipment was replaced with experimental and untested augmentations that would kill anyone else through bodily rejection imbalances, his body didn't even really notice a difference until it slowly acclimatized to the implants. Either that or he was just a demon from the beginning, and possessed of a secret well of unnatural vitality that allowed to him to live through pain and torment that killed dozens of ostensibly stronger BCPU's. I'm still not sure which makes more sense to me."

"He breezed from level 2, the lowest of the low, to level 5, the apex of our existence at the time, in a matter of months. He shattered the Cray-Amy dynamic, the ruling king and queen of our little society, within five minutes of recovering from the level 5 surgeries. Cray was in a near coma for a week afterwards, proof that not all level 5's were created equal after all, and Amy... Amy never recovered from Frost forcing himself upon her, I don't think. It may have been the first true time in her life that she was victimized by someone stronger than her. Other than her inclusion in the program at all, of course. She was still as sociopathic as ever, but she became cowed, even sycophantic, whenever Frost was around. Two years, spent back to back with Cray, and after that day in the martial arts gym when Frost nearly killed Cray and pinned her down in front of us all, they never slept together again. They barely even talked, except when it was the three of them together. It's not like they were in love, or ever had been... we didn't know what that was, except for in our adoration of Father. But still, they had something, and Frost shattered it beyond repair just to prove he could."

"I think that was when I first started to fear my brother, rather than just hate him. And he scented that fear almost immediately. I became his new playtoy, and he played rough. I nearly died at his hands more times than I can remember. I couldn't fight him... by then, I was the best of the 4's, but even the best 4 couldn't stand up to a 5 for more than a few minutes in a serious fight. And even while a 5, Frost somehow managed to surpass the usual limitations. Other 5's were created, but they all ended up dying during their first few nights amongst their new brothers and sister. Training accidents. Roughhousing gone bad. No one could out and out point and say that Frost was murdering them, but we all knew the score, even if the scientists wouldn't admit it. He made the message loud and clear... survive to be a 5, and you signed your own death warrant. He must have been afraid someone else would come out even more powerful than he had. Or was worried Cray and Amy might find their spines with a few extra brothers and sisters to back them up."

Ashino's eyes turned hollow and cold as he went on. "Then came the level 6 surgeries. Nothing anywhere close to as radical as that had ever been attempted before. Even the Doc was against trying it, and he'd come up with the process! Cervantes didn't give him a choice. Frost was already a monster as a 5. Surviving to reach 6 pushed him beyond the brink of human comprehension. It was a fluke, an aberration... it never should have worked, but it did. Nobody knew what to expect. Nobody knew what sort of evil had been unleashed. And he was evil. Pure evil. Even the Doc couldn't control him reliably, and to us, that was like saying God was unable to control one of his own creations. I don't need to explain to you what he's like. You've met him. You might even think you can imagine what it was like to live with him around, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Or you can save your sanity and not think about it."

"Here's something you might not know about Frost though." Ashino said with a bitter frown. "The level 6 surgery had a side effect. Constant, unending pain, like being slowly flayed alive across every inch of your skin simultaneously. Frost spent every moment, awake or asleep, being tortured like a damned soul in hell, by his own body. It wasn't long before he could only tell if he was awake or asleep by how bad that pain was. If it was tolerable, then he was asleep. Frost didn't so much come to enjoy or tolerate pain as he did fail to realize there was anything to life BUT pain and suffering. And seeing others live without pain and suffering drove him into demonic rages of jealousy and vindictive vengeance. He immersed himself in the causing of terror, death and hatred, until he forgot what other emotions there even were. It was only after encountering Lacus Clyne that he realized there was more to the world than his own suffering. He immediately set out to change that at all costs. And the rest, as they say, is history."

Ashino took a long, deep breath. "Lain, Bahamut and the other BALORs... they are tortured every moment of their lives, not with pain, but with an utter absence of all feeling that might even be worse. Madness or worse is the only fate that awaits them, and the longer they stay alive, the closer they come to tipping over the edge into that abyss. You've seen what Bahamut can do when we get going. Imagine that sort of power at the control of something that lived only to destroy and kill! Imagine that power at the behest of something that saw no sanctity in life of any form! It would be a catastrophe! An apocalypse! Millions would die before he was stopped. If anyone could even stop him at all. And if this happened in space, inside a Second Earth? Death tolls like Blue Monday's would be the least of the damage..."

"We're playing with fire, aren't we?" Lain said with a nervous swallow.

"With breached fusion cores, more like." Ashino confirmed with a grimace. "We need the strength of the BALORs to defeat the Edenites and Frost. But at the same time, if those noble creatures we rely on cannot hang on to their sanity, trapped forever in ultimate darkness and sensory deprivation, due to the very tortures we inflicted on them so that we might make use of them, then they could easily become a threat greater than anything the human race has yet encountered. That's the responsibility we bear as their Meisters, Lain. We are the key to their salvation. And the means by which they might be damned forevermore. That is why we must love them, as partners, as soul-mates even. Because only in the depthless strength of such relationships can we anchor them, and work together with them to save us, not only from our chosen enemies, but the future enemies that we've built ourselves as present allies..."

xxxx

**Galileo Lunar Fleet Base, USN Military Headquarters Complex, Strategic Planning Theatre, April 30th, 5:35 PM**

"... and that concludes the progress report on the BALORs and other special projects." The papery voice of Dr. Roanoke wound down from his fifteen minute long presentation on the USN's cutting edge military technology development. There were dozens of different projects under development and in prototyping, though few besides the main BALOR project were anywhere close to actual completion or field readiness. There was a lot of potential strength to be found in the efforts of FEAR, even after the programs with the most egregious violations of human rights and moral decency had been sequestered and countermanded, by one of the earliest joint War Council planning meetings, after Orb had been brought fully onto the Council. But unfotunately it was still just that... potential strength. Vey little in the way of solid, usable strength.

"So we're still right back where we started then?" Cagalli spoke up quickly and loudly, her speaking voice always raised a few decibles during these meetings so as to make sure it carried to all ears in the room, seated at the table or standing behind it. She wanted no one to doubt the conviction of her proclamations or to claim they hadn't heard the resolutions she ramrodded into agreement through the Council. It made her sound even more fiercely irritated than she actually was, and she was plenty irritated. Having bought her and his other worst domestic enemies into his war council deliberations, Durandal had progressed to becomming a passive-aggressive impediment to their process, staying frustratingly away from making any real commitments while Cagalli and the others grappled with the beauracatic inertia of the previous Supreme Commander's inept policies.

Just went to show that even when you had the man by the balls, politically speaking, he wasn't apt to give an inch or even appear flustered, annoyingly enough. If it were any other man, it would be an impressive show of self control and political aplomb. Since it was Durandal, it was nothing short of aggravating in the extreme. Cagalli usually ended up chomping down mild sedatives like dime store candy after each meeting, just to help deal with the pounding urge to strangle the Solar President barehanded the very next time they met. He had the sword of Damocles hanging over his head and yet he still had the gall to act like he was in complete control of everything, and was just allowing their participation for his own amusement! It was like he'd somehow won, even though Cagalli had enough political dirt on him now through his connections to the Reclaimer Initiative Death Camps to sink a hundred career politicians!

"I'm sure the good Doctor is working as hard as he can, your Majesty." Durandal cut in smoothly. "We wouldn't want a repeat of Nara-Attha City after all. Wasn't it you who required that we be absolutely sure the next generation BALORs would not go berserk before we deployed them to the field? Which do you want more... BALORs on the field or reliable BALORs?"

"We want both." Waltfeld cut in, knowing that to leave Durandel and Cagalli alone would only degenerate into yet another interminable arguement that would drag on for the entire session. Worse than cats and dogs they were, though obviously not without reason. "We NEED a counter to the Executor's as soon as possible. It took over half our available Gundams to merely drive Kira away from Heaven's Base. If Frost or Kunai had been there, we'd have been dealt a crushing defeat. As things are, Heaven's Base is out of commission on an operational standpoint for at least a month. So far we've just been lucky that the Eddies are as divided as we are, in terms of their high command, and at least they have the excuse that one of their leaders is a frothing mad homicidal maniac..." Waltfeld looked disapprovingly around the table, with Cagalli at least having the grace to look abashed at the unspoken admonishment.

"We stand on the cusp of pushing the war into its terminal stages here, but we can't move forward with any major attacks until we have a counter for their Gundams. End of story. I'm not going to preside over another folly like Victoria. Until those BALORs are up and running, we're stalemated, so I suggest the Doctor redoubles his efforts and those of his team, because we're just waiting on them now. You've made a lot of big promises and shown some exciting data, Dr. Roanoke. Its time to make good on your intent." Waltfeld continued, staring hard at the old prune of a scientist with his single eye, before moving on with his own presentation. "Without our anti-Executor tools, our options are limited. Our main strategic goal remains discovering the precise location of the enemy Capital, Garden City. We know that it resides somewhere in the Himalayan Mountains, probably in what used to be northern India or Nepal before the Reconstruction War. But that's a big area with some very hostile and treacherous terrain, and none of our orbital scans have picked up any sign of major habitation in that sector."

Waltfeld heaved a heavy sigh. "And with technology to pierce the new photo-refraction cloaks of the Eddies still in its utmost infancy, and our nonconventional means of piercing their stealth systems extremely limited, as Commander Joule and his wife cannot be everywhere at once, I don't think we'll ever be able to pinpoint the location of the city without reliable intel from a high level Edenite source. Thus I've made it our main tactical objective to capture an Eddie general rank officer or one of their elite champions, a Praetorian, alive for questioning. The problem with that being most of the time we have no idea where the Eddie military formations are, and especially the Praetorians seem to move around as they see fit, somewhat like the FAITH agents of ZAFT. Planning an ambush for them won't be easy. Yes, Mr. Dicosta?" He acknowledged his former aide, who was standing by Durandel's shoulder, formally, playing up the fact that they did not know each other well in public.

"We've received consistent reports of a Praetorian leading guerilla warfare specialists in the foothills of the southern Himalaya's. If reports are to be believed, it is one of their top four fighters... I believe the term is "Arboreal Praetorian"... one of the ceremonial if not actual leaders of the Praetorian Order. This woman, known as Yggdrasil's Valkyrie, has been a regional thorn in Carpentaria's side for several weeks now, and her activities have prevented us from gaining any solid ground level intel on that sector of the Himalaya's. We have surmised that she's been baiting us, trying to draw a heavy response force into a trap, so we have avoided making any major commitments in that area. But that might still be our best chance of capturing a high level warleader, even if it is a trap." Dicosta reported to them all.

"And the Edenites aren't the only ones who can set traps." Waltfeld smiled thinly. "I've cut orders to begin the construction of a large expeditionary base in southern China, just outside the foothills of the Himalaya's in that region. Once that base is up and running, it will take over primary charge of operations control in the Asian theatre, while Carpentaria serves as our fallback position and primary logistics reserve. The Eddies can't afford to have such a base in their backyard, as it will serve as an ideal stepping off point for the eventual push into the mountains to besiege their capital. And with the majority of the SPF reserve forces either protecting shipping lanes, or running air cover over the re-establishment of Porta Panama now that we've confirmed the area beyond the reach of psychic interference on a grand scale, the base will be vulnerable to an attack with concentrated force."

"When the Eddies show up to trash the base, we're gonna hit them with everything we've currently got. I've got Two Archangel class Mobile Assault Carriers, the _Endymion_, and 4 Defender Class Destroyers prepped for high speed orbit to surface transition near the area, ostensibly running patrols between Carpentaria and Panama voidspace in case of another theater HQ assault. They'll make it quite hot if the Eddies come looking for trouble. And if they suspect a trap and hold off, then we'll have a brand new base to launch probes of the mountains with, so we win either way."

"And the USNS _Monarch_, the 5th Incarnate class vessel, is about 30 percent complete at last evaluation." Fleet Admiral Icarus spoke up proudly. "While the keel-laying ceremonies for the USNS _Shogun_, the 6th in the class, are due to begin in the next few days. By the end of this year we should have at least one more fully operational SPF Theatre Fleet and be a good way started on another beyond that. We're rolling out Myrmidon's at the rate of three per month, and new shipyard facilities are coming online as we speak... I intend to reach a goal of ten Myrmidons per month before the end of the year. With fully trained crews and support vessels as well. The Eddies may have void-war capability now, but there's no way they can match our manufacturing base. With enough ships in our fleets, they won't dare leave the atmosphere or try to attack ou homelands again!"

"Numbers alone won't stop Frost. If anything, the greater your strength grows, the more likely he is to attack." Cagalli warned the smug Admiral. "And as Kira showed with the _Monolith_ over Victoria, the truism that even the mightiest Warship is vulnerable to precision attacks from a Mobile Suit has been comprehensively proven. Just because we CAN smother the enemy with ships and soldiers, does that mean we should? Every Myrmidon has a crew of over ten thousand people, and how many Myrmidons do we stand to lose in a major fleet engagement with the Edenites? I don't know what Namara's been telling you, but Lexi's been telling me our casualties would be catastrophic. And there is no "acceptable loss ratio" when its your own life on the line, Admiral." She glared molten daggers at the pudgy Fleet Admiral, well recalling his inconsiderate words during the battle of Nara-Attha City.

"Her Majesty brings up a good point." Jiro Kurenai, Chief Representative of Orb, spoke up firmly. "Our forces have always outmatched the enemy military force. But you don't put out a fire by smothering it with corpses or drowning it in your own blood. There must be better methods to resolving this conflict than grinding attrition. I was the one, in conjunction with Her Majesty, to first call for war against the Edenites. But I know things now that I did not back then, and I find myself questioning whether war is really the answer to our problems with the Edenites. They HAVE legitimate grievances against the USN and the Durandel Administration. All here know this to be true. I cannot forgive them for what they've done to Orb while lashing out against the USN, but I also cannot, in good conscience, support this war when it only got this bad because of our treating them as subhuman creatures not worthy of life or free will."

"Jiro's right." Cagalli said instantly, though it took effort to do so. "I admit, I'm probably much at fault for how things have become, both in calling for this war, and in the actions that led up to the sneak attack on Orb. It's my fault alone that Kira even got to the point where defecting to the Edenites was a reasonable course of action, much less his only course of action. I've created our own worst enemy through my own lack of faith in my family."

"Maybe you should resign your position and retire then?" Durandel commented, unable to resist prodding the ferocious Queen in an admission of weakness.

"You say that like you think I won't, Gilbert." Cagalli retorted tiredly. "I've never sought or enjoyed power for its own sake, unlike some at this council. I'm sick and tired of this. Of the responsibility. Of sending people to die for what I know is right. Of enduring the criticism and political backstabbing for every choice I make, perhaps especially the most necessary ones. Of being the place where the buck stops, and the face on TV that people point to and say "she's the one who screwed up". I've tried to retire in the past, but each time I do, something worse seems to happen that requires my taking up the reigns of leadership once more. The burden of success just seems to be more expectations and responsibility than ever before. And I'm tired of it, beyond words. But I can't stop until I make things right. For Orb. With the Edenites. And with my Brother."

"So what should we do then?" Icarus half sneered. "Send them a card, apologizing for fighting a war?"

"If I thought it would help, I'd write it and deliver it myself." Cagalli snapped back. "On hands and knees if need be. The Edenites are just like Orb after all. They never sought a conflict, but they couldn't turn from one that was brought to them. There's a lot to admire about them. A lot we have in common. Its the greatest tragedy that we're at odds with them all because of one man's ambition." She stared over at Durandel, sitting exactly opposite her at the table, as far from her physically as it was possible to be. "Why do you hate them so much, Gilbert?" She asked one of the questions she'd been pondering for ages now.

"I don't hate them, Your Majesty." Durandel replied coolly. "Hate is a personal thing, and I don't know any of them personally. I will admit that... oversights and mistakes... did occur, largely without my notice or by underlings creatively interpreting the jurisdiction and authority I had granted them, but as ever, I have only acted with the best interests of the USN in mind."

"How can you sit there and say that when your people were establishing SLAVERY AND EXTERMINATION CAMPS for Edenite civilians and prisoners of war?" Cagalli hissed venomously, hands gripping the table until her knuckles were white from exertion. "I've seen with my own eyes what your goons have been doing to the Edenites. Oversights and mistakes, Gilbert? Don't make me laugh. You can play the careless bumbler if you want, but we're not going to laugh this off as a case of political ineptitude and minions gone bad. If you were prone to those sorts of mistakes in governance, you'd never have become Solar President in the first place. You were talking out both sides of your mouth, Gilbert, and you got caught. Just admit it. Its not like we can impeach you, now of all times, despite how much you deserve it."

"Apportion blame however you see fit, Your Majesty. I stand by my assertation that anything and everything I have done is for the greater good of the USN, and the future of humanity as a whole." Durandel replied with an aloof shrug. "I hardly think you'll find much public support for any assertation that the Edenites are not a danger or a threat to the safety and peace of the USN. We've seen all too recently what sort of havoc they can cause when they put their minds to it, and havoc of that sort is not something we can defend ourselves against, as we do not have their psychic abilities. They are like us, Your Majesty, but they CANNOT be part of us. How long do you think it would take before all positions of power were held by Edenites in any sort of mixed society, given their genetic aptitudes and abilities? Would you consign us all to a system of genetic castes, where Naturals and Coordinators labor as menial underlings to the Edenites simply because they are not equipped with the same genetic gifts as them?"

"As ever, you seem to confuse yourself with average, ordinary people, Gilbert. Few are as ambitious and power driven as you are. Most people don't WANT to be in a position of power over their fellows, or if they do, they don't want the actual responsibility that comes with the office. Fewer still put in the time and effort required to getting enough of their fellows to like and support them so as to be elected to office, and then abuse that power for their own ends, precisely because they know what will happen if the people withdraw their support. You sound like a conspiracy theorist, suspecting some mass Eddie takeover plot or something." Cagalli snorted and shook her head in contempt. "You seem to forget that I've lived with two Eddies as part of my family for years and years. For all genetic purposes, my brother and his family are and always were Edenites. And while they may not be common folks either, they're actually all the more apt, because they had the power to rule just as you're afraid of... and they never took it."

"At the very least, we should send emissaries to the Edenite civil government and try to begin talks about the treatment of civilians within active warzones." Jiro said, trying to get the discussion back on track. "Meet on neutral ground somewhere, since I rather doubt they'll let us come to their capital. This war is too terrible as it is, we cannot let it continue to degenerate into these genocidal tit-for-tat reprisals we've seen recently."

"I would support such a measure." Waltfeld added quickly. "I don't think we'd ever get a cease fire agreement with them, much less broker peace diplomatically... not at this uncertain stage of the game anyway. But I've never willingly waged war on civilians who only wanted to be left alone to live their own lives, and I don't intend to start now. And getting talks started now will make things easier for everyone once we've put the Eddies in an untenable position, militarily speaking. There's no reason this has to even come to an invasion of their capital, if we can but prove to them that they have no chance of resisting us from making the attempt. Once we have Garden City's location, and have subdued Victoria, I will draw up a final draft of a conditional surrender plan to be presented to the Edenites."

"Let us hope that they're as reasonable as you all are." Durandel countered drily. "Though I personally have seen little in the way of reasonableness from any of the Edenite commanders as of yet. One wages a personal war of vendetta against me and the USN because he thinks we murdered his family, as if I would ever do something so foolish. Another is a omnicidal madman who seeks only to perpetuate an eternal conflict throughout humanity. The last is a revenant of bad days gone by, somehow reawoken to plague the world once more. You're telling me you think Sai Argyle, the man behind the Isolation, is a REASONABLE sort?" He shook his head sadly.

"Regardless of who started this war or why, its not something that will be stopped by words or sorrowful lamentations of guilt and responsibility. And nothing you or I can say or do will change that. There is only way to achieve peace now, and thats to utterly destroy their ability to fight us in any way. If there was any other way, you all wouldn't even be here with me now, you'd be taking the other path already. So spare me your righteousness, it helps no one. Do whatever you like to salve your consciences, it won't change what needs be done in the end."

"Maybe it won't." Cagalli agreed, obviously taking Durandel aback a bit. "But I still want to try. The Edenites deserve that much. Kira deserves that much. However belated, however inadequate, they still deserve our apologies. To know that they didn't do anything wrong, and that we know that they didn't do anything wrong either. It can't... it won't... stop us from fighting them. For the sake of Blue Monday, or other reasons, we can't just surrender to them, or stop fighting. But I want them to know we don't WANT to be fighting them, and that as soon as they're willing to call it quits, so will we, and gladly. And then we can all apportion blame together, on both sides. There's more than enough to go around after all."

xxxx

**Somewhere Cold, Sometime Soon, Somehow Possible...**

His breath foamed in the air as he panted from his most recent exertions, sparkling runnels of bubbles flowing out of his mouth with each exhalation and rising away into the clear, endless, cold sky above. It was an odd sight, one which had greatly troubled him upon first waking up in This Place, but by now there were so many worse things in This Place to occupy his attention that he hardly even noticed anymore. Bubbles or not, he still breathed, the air frosty and harsh on his lips and tongue, making his throat and chest ache and throb constantly, and leaving him constantly tired from the effort of simply inhaling and exhaling. Sometimes it was all he could do to simply lift his head and get up from where he sat against the Rock, knees curled to chest and wrapped round with his arms. Of course, even when he could muster the strength to rise from his position, there was no where to go.

Except for the Rock, This Place was empty, featureless, almost a void, full of silvery light that pulsed dimly at an interval he'd tried to keep track of before it started making his head hurt even worse than it already did. It was somewhere between a heart throb and clock tick. There was ground, fluffy and white, like feathers in a picture book he'd once been shown by Near-Mother, she with hair of red and eyes of steel, back in the Other Place before This Place. Or like clouds, in those half remembered dreams of his very earliest memories, of looking up at blue sky and clouds, in the arms of Real-Mother, with her hair of red and eyes of gold. But as fluffy as the ground looked, it felt cold and slimy and raspy to his bare feet and buttocks whenever he stood or sat upon it. It was like sitting on a giant tongue of some sort.

The Rock, the only feature of note, rose behind him, sprouting from the ground like a giant hair springing from a bald head. It was dark grey and shot through with blackness and shadows in random patterns, like light glinting off a tub of sloshing water, except in reverse. So tall he couldn't see the top of it, and wide enough that he could only walk around a little bit of it before the Chains brought him up short. He called it a Rock, but only because he wasn't sure what else to call it... it seemed "natural", as far as anything in This Place was, and it looked kind of like a rock in texture, but in those few times he'd willingly touched it, the Rock had felt anything but solid. More like a thin rubber sheet, like the ones they'd laid over the operating table he'd spent so much time lying on back in the Other, Other Place, before he met the Near-Mother. It felt like if he pushed hard enough, he could step right through the Rock to whatever was on the other side. He sometimes wanted to give it a try, if solely because there was nothing else to do besides wait for something to happen.

But the Chains came from the Rock, keeping him confined to it, and the Chains hurt even more than breathing hurt, and sometimes they falred red hot with even more pain and he would spend hours screaming until he was hoarse as Stuff was put Inside him that didn't belong there. Bad Stuff. Like what had happened to Near-Mother just before they came to This Place by the Mean Man. He still remembered the Mean Man pushing Near-Mother down and... doing things... to her. Putting parts of himself into her that made her scream and cry. He had no words for the actions he'd seen, other than that they were upsetting to him, because he'd never heard Near-Mother scream like that. She was always quiet, unlike most of the people in the Other Place. He wondered what had happened to her. All he could say for sure was that she hadn't come to This Place with him and the Twin. He wasn't sure if he was glad or sad for that.

He stretched his arms, feeling the Chains clink and drag on his motion. He tried not to look at them, but it was hard. They were right there after all. Attached to him. Growing out of the back of his wrists like they were a natural part of his body. They weren't like the plastic operating table restraints he'd grown used to in the Other, Other Place. They didn't circle his wrists, they actually came OUT of his wrists, seamlessly growing out of his skin. There was no cuff to slip off, pulling on the chains was like pulling on his own bones! Other Chains were attached to his ankles the same way, and at several points on his spine, and more growing out of the back of his head, like hair made of metal. Some were thick, some were thin... all were cold and unpleasant, except when they were full of Bad Stuff, in which case they became hot and painful.

The Twin was chained too. He'd heard her screaming, just as he had screamed, trying to pull off the Chains back when they first got to This Place. His heart ached for not being able to see her. She was on the other side of the Rock from him. Out of sight. But they could still talk to each other, with some amount of effort, if they both pulled their Chains to the utmost in the same direction. But they'd run out of things to talk about before long. Or things he wanted to talk about anyway. Now the only thing to talk about was how much he hated This Place, and wanted Near-Mother to come and hold him and speak in her quiet voice again. And he knew that the Twin felt the same way. Even bound out of sight from each other, he could still feel her feelings, just as he always had, since the Green Rainstorm.

Recently... he had no idea of exact time in This Place, and every time he tried to count seconds, his count somehow came up different anyway... someone else had been brought to This Place. He wasn't sure how or when the New Person arrived, but suddenly there was Someone Else with Them. Well, not really "with" them, as the New Person was trapped inside the Rock. If he turned and looked up, he could easily see them, like a handprint in wet sand, except in reverse. He tried not to look. As unhappy as he was to be in This Place, the New Person was even less happy. He'd made the mistake of touching the New Person's leg the first time he saw them. The screaming inside his skull had taken hours to fade afterwards, and he still saw flashes of dreams and feelings that belonged to some pale haired boy that wasn't him. Wordless, pointless, mindless howling of anger and fear. Like the sound of a dying animal, stretched out across a thousand years for every single second.

It appeared that the Rock was slowly absorbing the New Person, breaking them down and making them part of the Rock itself, which only heightened his resolve not to touch the Rock in the future. This Place was bad, but inside the Rock seemed a lot worse. He sat back down and huddled up for warmth, and tried to count the seconds once more. There was nothing else to do but wait. He thought about the New Person in the Rock. Maybe waiting wasn't such a bad thing after all, if that was what happene when Not Waiting...


	77. Aria of the Anguished

Author Note: Sorry about the wait. I know it can be hard to bear, especially for some of you more casual readers. But I do still intend to finish this story, never fear. I've come too far to stop now. If you're worried about when the next update will be coming, you can always come to the RP forum based around The Golden Age, called World of Gundam Battle: Golden Age Warfare, found in the Gundam Seed forums. It's #2. I can frequently be found there, along with many other fans and reviewers of the story. PMs will also reach me. In any case, enjoy the start of a new arc...

xxxx

**New Eden, Iceland, Heaven's Base, Seaward Cliffs, May 1st**

"So you hate me now, don't you?" Luna's words were almost lost to the breeze coming in off the North Atlantic, as she stood near the top of the promitory that formed the natural safe harbor wall for Heaven's Base primary harbor. She was clad in her Ruby Knight custom flightsuit, sans helmet, her face slightly sheened with sweat from a punishing simulator regime she'd been keeping to in the days since the attack on the base by Executor Yamato and his forces. She'd barely left one of the few intact training halls since the end of the battle, only to sleep in catnaps and eat frugal meals at the cafeteria. She hadn't been back to their shared quarters since the end of the battle, and she looked like she'd been sleeping in her flight suit at times. And not very well or very much, judging by the hollow look on her face and her red veined, dark rimmed eyes.

Shinn didn't reply, as he swallowed his own Red EDEN pill after laying aside his own flight suit helmet near to where Luna's lay, discarded almost carelessly on the ground. In truth he didn't know what to think, either about the revelations in the battle or Luna's reaction to them afterwards. It wasn't like his memories had come flooding back in a sudden rush or anything. He was still the same as he had been for years now. Every now and then he'd get a strange feeling like he was missing something he ought to have, or hear some voices in his dreams he didn't recognize, but those times were always ephermal, and he rarely remembered much of anything beyond snatches of them when waking up. A name here. An emotion there. Hardly any sort of revelations. Noah's mental scouring was far too complete for Shinn to recover naturally. And that had long since ceased to bother him.

"I lied to you. For years. About not knowing anything about your past." Luna rambled on, refusing to look back at him as he stood a step or two behind her. Her shoulders hunched, as if expecting a shove or a blow. "Your family... all your memories before joining the Solar Knights... all the stuff that was so important to you back then... I knew about all of it. And I didn't tell you. I actively hid it from you even! Your little sisters cellphone... your last memento of her, your lucky charm and personal talisman... you gave it to me because you thought it was mine. Because it was pink and girly. And I... I... I didn't say anything. I took it. And I destroyed it..." Luna trailed off with a shuddering intake of breath. "I crushed it under my heel until there was nothing left of it." She half sobbed after a few moment's pause.

"Every time you started having flashbacks, I would distract you. Lie to you. Feed you some line about it being old girlfriends or something, and had some especially raunchy sex until you forgot all about anything but what was happening in the moment. I didn't want you to remember how you used to be. I selfishly decided that you were better off the way you were, with no memories of what happened to your family, or all the hatred and angst you had built up inside you because of it. You trusted me to take care of you and I... I just made sure you'd never be the Shinn I fell in love with first ever again! It was too painful for me. I wasn't... I'm not strong enough to deal with the issues you had back then. The way you hated and mistrusted anyone from Orb... your own homeland... just because of your family being killed in the First Valentine War." Luna continued, tilting her head back and holding her heads steady by her sides, but Shinn could see she was trembling violently all the same.

"You loved your little sister... Mayu... so much, it was heartrending to see you tied down to her memory, to her keepsake, that damned phone! Every time you flipped it open to listen to her last voicemail, when you thought no one else was around to hear it, it was like a knife in my chest. Because I knew as long as you had that phone, you'd never get over your grief and loss. You'd never stop hating the Zala-Attha's and by extension, Orb, and anyone allied with Orb. You'd never stop thinking it was Kira Yamato's fault that your family was killed. You'd stay bitter, and mean, and rebellious and reckless... so damned reckless on the battlefield, like you didn't care if you lived or died! You showed me such kindness at times that it hurt so much more when you changed in battle, and became a coldhearted, rage driven berserker... it was like you were a totally different person!" Luna's voice caught and hitched.

"I couldn't stand it anymore. After Noah scrambled your memories to make you his pawn, and after Rey seduced me while making me think you were dead... with Meyrin gone, and enslaved by that bastard Noah... and you miraculously came back, and broke free of the brainwashing, just for me... and I saw how happy you were, how you could work together with all the people you used to keep at arms length, how you could laugh and joke around with anyone and everyone... and how happy you made me, when we were together. How safe and comfortable and wanted and LOVED you made me feel, in that time when everyone else I'd ever trusted or valued seemed to have turned their back on me... I just couldn't take the thought of you going back to the way you were. So I lied. And destroyed the only link you'd ever had to your family. Because I couldn't stand being alone anymore. That was my only reason. I loved you too much, I couldn't stand losing you. Not even to your original state of mind..."

Luna finally turned, but stared at the ground, rather than at her lover. She didn't dare see the look on his face, now of all times. "And look where it's gotten me, that selfishness so long ago. Years of happiness, but only while living a lie every day, maintaining constant vigilance against any of your memories coming back. My love for you became a prison for you, even though you never knew it, and I made sure as its jailer that you would never have the kind of contact with the outside... with your past... that you unconsciously craved. I controlled you as wholly as Noah ever did, and much more effectively. You became the perfect man in my eyes, everything I could have ever wanted in a lover and a partner. But its not you, Shinn. Its not Shinn Asuka, of Orb. I don't deserve your love, because I'm not sure you ever really cared for me the same way I care for you. Do what you want to me. Anything. I don't deserve anything but loathing after what I've done..."

"You really want me to punish you that badly, Luna?" Shinn replied at length, his voice neutral and composed. She still didn't look up to meet his gaze. "You want me to scream at you, and revile you, and even lash out at you with all my might? Would that make you feel better?" He took a heavy step forward, heaving a loud sigh. She tried not to move, but Luna couldn't constrain an instinctive flinch all the same, knowing that she'd had the man of her dreams... and lost him through her own selfish needs. Being decked by him, much as she'd decked him in the past when he'd so worried her with his conduct on the battlefield, seemed to be the least of what she should suffer for her crimes against him! She heard him reach out towards her and steeled herself... but she wasn't ready for him all the same.

"I'm sorry then. You'll have to keep feeling miserable for a little while longer." Shinn muttered, encircling her with his arms and pulling her into a tight hug. She got so stiff from shock he could not help but laugh out loud. "Oh, come on, Lunamaria, did you actually think I'd hit you? YOU? I could never hit you. Ever. Never of my own volition." He pulled back slightly and reached up one hand to rest on the top of her head, slowly tilting her face up towards his. "So you lied to me. About all sorts of things. Do you think I've been completely truthful with you in turn, somehow? Do you honestly think I'm that perfect? That I haven't been keeping you from some hard truths in turn, because I love you and don't want to see you hurting if I can help it? You dummy. You moron. You damned fool... you actually think I'd stop loving you just because you knew about my past and didn't tell me about it?"

"B-But I did it without even asking you if you wanted..." Luna protested in a stutterring tone.

"And how could I have decided what I wanted, back then, when I had no memories at all?" Shinn countered quickly with a shake or his head. "You don't ask someone who is brain damaged if they want to be treated at the hospital or not, do you? Because they're not mentally capable of being responsible for themselves. Would I have chosen, back then, to leave my old life behind? I don't know. I can't say. I wasn't in a position to be able to decide. So you decided for me. You acted as my guardian, and acted in what you felt was my best interest. Out of love for me. How could I hate you for that? How could I hate you for the life we've shared since then? Regardless of whether you lied to me about my past, Luna, you haven't lied about our love. That's only lie from you I couldn't forgive..."

"You're being FAR too reasonable about this. Not at all like the old you would have." Luna complained. "Damn you, I was so worried about this, I could hardly sleep for days! Do you really not hate me? Even for breaking Mayu's phone?"

"From your description of how I used to be, I think I'm better off the way I am right now, as a pilot and a person. I sounded like I used to be a totally immature brat all the time. Grieving for a lost family is one thing... stoking that grief and keeping the emotional wounds festering, so much so that it affected how I interacted with people just based on where they were born? I don't really like imagining myself acting like that. I'm just glad someone had the nerve to step up and SAVE ME from a life like that when the opportunity presented itself!" Shinn sighed and pushed her back a few inches so she could properly look up at him. "If it matters to you so much... don't lie to me about my past again. Tell me all about what a dick I used to be. Spare nothing. Okay? But I'm not gonna punish you for acting in what you felt was my best interest, even for what you think is a selfish reason. I don't know if the old me loved you or not, Luna. But I love you, and I cannot imagine ever not loving you. I am GRATEFUL to you for the life you've given me, more than I can ever express. I could NEVER hate you, of all people."

"Shinn..." Luna's voice was small, and her eyes moist.

"And if I lend you another cellphone sometime, try to resist the urge to shatter it into a thousand pieces." He admonished her with a small grin. "There's only one regret I can think of about that cellphone. I just wish you'd let me destroy it myself. Hurling it into the sea right now would be awfully symbolic, don't you think? I don't think any sister of mine would have wanted me tied down to such a painful memory anyway. It's important to miss the people you've lost... but not to the point where it makes you neglect the people still alive. I think Mayu would be proud of you, Luna. You had the strength to do what I could not, and you did it because you loved me so much. So thank you. Once again, you've really saved me."

"We've saved each other, how about that?" Luna answered softly, leaning up for the kiss they both really needed at that point. But something occured to her just before their lips met. "What did you mean, you've been keeping some hard truths from me...?"

"I don't remember saying that... maybe my memory is faulty..."

"Hah hah ha..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Himalayan Foothills, old Nepal territory, May 1st, early afternoon**

"I dearly hope this isn't the sort of thing you consider "staying occupied" while I was off trying to better myself, Mouse." Zach pronounced disdainfully, as he stood in the midst of their latest ambush zone, amidst a tangle of fresh corpses, all wearing the distinctive environmental armor of the USN, even if it was painted in forest camouflage colors rather than the ceruelean blue normally associated with the Oosen infantry. A scouting detachment, versus the mainline infantry units, who always came in such numbers that there was little point in trying to blend into the background. They'd been getting more and more of the scouting forces of late, as the enemy had declined sending too many more major elements into the area, since they all kept disappearing regardless of size and disposition anyway. The Oosen recon forces were among the elite of their infantry forces, each wearing stripped down and even somewhat customized armor, and many of the soldiers were old enough to have fought on Earth before it became New Eden, so they were hardly unfamiliar with stealthy infiltration methods.

But against the Kindred and Wendigo that served as the point men and scouts for the Mori, it hardly mattered what sort of woodcraft the Oosen brought to the field. The Wendigo possessed senses keener than any but the most advanced technological sensors, and the Kindred might even be better than that. They were used to outhunting Cold Hunters after all, which could become all but invisible even while in motion due to their chameleonic skins. Soldiers in armor, no matter how sound cushioned or camouflage painted, just didn't compare. Several times, the entire scouting force had been wiped out by only a handful of Kindred, often without even being able to fire a shot, as the dimunitive Supersoldiers fell upon them from the treetops above, or rose up from the underbrush beneath their feet. Having fought the Kindred at close range herself, Lilia knew all too well how deadly they could be once they were within arms reach of you.

She glanced over at her boyfriend with a frown. This was very much the sort of thing she'd been doing while he'd been off half killing himself with his so called training, and she was quite proud of it too. In a matter of weeks, she'd managed to forge together the disparate branches of the Memento Mori... the Kindred, the Wendigo and the Custodian/Militia forces... into a seamless combat machine. All of them had started out working great with others... as long as those others were of the same culture and race as them. None of them got on well with outsiders at all. But through unstinting efforts on her part, she'd gotten all three groups to consider the Memento Mori as a whole their "group" and so they worked together with almost the same efficiency as they did in their usual cultural groups. Maybe it wasn't the biggest deal, since the Mori were only a few hundred strong all told, but it gave her hope for the future. If she could do it with the Mori components, eventually she hoped to do it with the Mori, the Shark party and the Clave as a whole too...

"I barely even had to draw a blade, Mouse." Zach continued to complain, stalking over from the mound of ruin he'd created when he'd exploded into the midst of the scouting group like a Direcat Alpha into Rex Elk fawns. Regardless of whether he'd mastered any new abilities or not from his aborted training, Zach's power compared to ordinary men and women was as overwhelming as ever. A half dozen had been dead within seconds, and the Kindred and Wendigo following Zach into the assault had massacred the others in short order, each striving harder than the next, trying to distinguish themselves in the eyes of their chosen lord and master by emulating his bloodlust and disdain for safety to the best of their abilities. Lilia made a note to drill better discipline into them in the future. She knew they worshipped Zach, but trying to emulate him was not something she wanted to encourage. It would only end in allied casualties sooner rather than later.

"Tactically speaking, that's a good thing. If we defeated them that quickly, they probably didn't have time to call in to their main formation that they were under attack." Lilia answered, unspoken tinges of resentment making her words snap as if coated with a thin layer of ice. She was still VERY irritated with Zach for "misplacing" Deathshriek somewhere. She'd gone to a LOT of effort to have it made for him, and she knew Vaul and his daughters would be quite upset if they learned one of their masterpiece items had been so casually lost, given that they'd risked their lives and sanity to make it in the first place! "Just make sure you put it back in its scabbard. Wouldn't want you losing that too. It belongs to Espadon after all, I'm sure he'd like it back one day."

The blade in question, more a long knife than any sort of sword, was carved in a single piece from the canine fang of a Megahunter, making it just shy of twenty inches long. The workmanship was both crude and yet oddly fitting, as the blade wasn't designed for ceremonial purposes, but rather for utility and combat work. Strips of dried hide from the same beast that had provided the tooth formed a simple grip, and there was nothing in the way of handguard... just a hilt and blade, with a single blood groove running from just below the triangular tip down to just above the hilt wrapping. It was sharper than a mono-saber, and a good bit more resilient, with a degree of elastic flex in the bone that no metal could completely emulate. Despite its unadorned nature, it was a highly regarded weapon amongst the Kindred, part of Espadaon's status as Chieftan, though he had surrendered it to Zach only too willingly upon finding that his Messiah had no personal weapon to hand.

Zach's eyes blazed for a moment at her tone, but he ended up letting it slide. If only because he was still upset with himself for misplacing the weapon during his sortie to Antarctica. It was the first real gift anyone had given him, and it had come from the Mouse on top of that. He would vigorously deny such sentiments as reasons for his self irritation, but all the same, he did feel as if a small part of him was missing. The same way he felt when he hadn't piloted the Kratos in a while. Let her snip at him then. It was a good sign even... after being freshly exposed to the fawning awe most of the Mori held for him, he was glad to have at least once person who would stand up to him. Fear was one thing, but admiration... he had no experience dealing with the admiration of those around him.

"Sevan Sveid." Espadon, leader of the Kindred tribe, said and nodded deeply, almost a bow, in Frost's direction as he came back from the observational perimeter he and his detachment had made around the battlezone, part of the new standard procedures Lilia had taught them. Well and good to spring an ambush, but not if the enemy force was only the bait in a cunning trap, so after the combat ended, the Kindred always melted back into the trees to keep a sharp eye out for any attempted interdiction or reinforcement from the Oosen.

The top of Espadon's head came up to about Lilia's mid upper arm, and the chief shared the wiry build of most of his tribe, making him seem weaker than he really was. His dark hair was dyed in patterns of red and white, like blood on bone, and trailed down his back almost to his belt in twin braids, a burgeoning sign of status amongst his people, as it predicated that a person had time away from matters of survival and duty to spend on their personal appearance. He looked up at Lilia, and nodded again in greeting. "Sevan Aveis."

"Sidevrab." Lilia nodded back respectfully. Learning Kindred cant had been difficult, since it was like no other language she'd ever had experience with, but she was glad she had, because it made talking with the Kindred infinitely easier, even though many of them were learning English and other common languages as well. They were the Kindred after all, those who shared a common origin with Zach, and thus the closest he had to a living family, even if neither the Kindred nor Zach saw things that way, or at least not in those words. They fascinated Lilia in those times when they didn't have her pulling out her hair in frustration. And by coming to understand them and their often alien mindset, Lilia sometimes fancied she grew closer to understanding Zach as well. "Umujoniz sajicautis?" She enquired politely. Cant had little in the way of small talk, though the Kindred were experts at inflection, so that the same words could convey very different meanings depending on how they were said.

Her words, a request for information on battlefield conditions in literal terms, could also be construed as asking after his personal health, sort of a "how are you?", which is how she'd meant it, and also as a general sort of question, a "how are things going with you guys?" sort of thing. "Alamron ajicautis. Legun smujidem." Espandon replied with a shrug that combined nonchalance with a measure of excitement. Lilia had grown used to the body language cues of the Kindred by now, and though they were a reserved people when it came to words, as Espadon's bland reply to her query showed, she could see that something had the Chief's blood roused, in a probably good way. "Ilizd karap legun..." Espadon went on, baring his filed, razor edged teeth in a grin of gruesome pleasure. "Itkan sak ijatorev..."

"Satskirdzu sruk?" Zach demanded, with a mixture of disdain and pleasure. He was still itching for a real fight after the disappointment of the ambush, and anything that the Kindred would bother to report as strange rather than just taking care of themselves might actually be enough to enjoy killing. It might suit the Mouse's needs to have the fighting over and done with in such an efficient manner, but he was Zacharis Frost, the Whetstone of Humanity, and he craved nothing more than a good conflict every now and then. Or as often as he could find or make them really. "Teitsatsen tidarap!" He forestalled any explanation from Espadon with a rare direct order, commanding the Chief to take them to the area in question.

"Udnamok suj ka, Sevan Sveid." Espandon bobbed his head and shared a bloodthirsty grin with the man he all but worshipped as a god.

"Teidiagap!" Lilia cut in with a snarl that became a sigh as she saw the look on Zach's face. "Sakitap cep iav, udos saduan. Karap sajovatag umse se."

Resignedly, she followed the two of them as Espadon led Zach towards the outer perimeter, to allow the Master of the Mori, or Sevan Sveid... literally "God of Death" in Kindred Cant... to investigate for himself the sensation of being covertly watched that had been bothering the Kindred scouts ever since the end of the brief ambush. Lilia wasn't so much frustrated that the Kindred had sensed something to be alarmed of, that was the whole point of perimeter sentries after all. But Zach, of course, was never going to just sit back and let underlings do what underlings were supposed to do, and handle the situation themselves, without sticking his nose in personally. She might almost accuse him of being a micromanager, if she didn't know full well that it was simply his aggressive spirit... if there was another fight on the offering, Zach would simply hate to miss it.

The terrain they'd ambushed the patrol in was typical of the area, thickly jungled hills, which would be mountains in their own right in country less rugged than the Himalayan foothills. The ground was often steeply sloped, and broken with detrius of long ago rockfalls and landslides, as well as upthrusted rocky ridges fomed by the same tectonic forces that were still slowly raising the whole of the Himalayan Plateau a few centimeters per year. It was not easy terrain for moving large quantities of troops, but it was perfectly suited for the close quarters, cloak and dagger warfare of the Mori, which was one reason they had prevailed so thoroughly against even large companies of Oosen infantry in the past. Broken ground or thick forests with poor sightlines always favored small, mobile bands of irregular troops over even numerically superior and well equipped regular troops.

Espadon came to a sudden halt, standing beside two trees that looked like any of thousands of other Yggdrasilwood trees that coated the area like a green and brown carpet. The Chief crouched down and if Lilia hadn't had long experience in keeping track of her charges in field conditions, she could have easily mistaken him for a small grassy hummock at the base of the trees, even looking directly at him. It was amazing how well the Kindred could go to ground, even when they sported dyed hair as eye catching as Espadon's... dye was easy to hide with daubs of mud and woven ferns after all. Lilia, who still wore her Praetorian helmet from the recent skirmish, scanned the surrounding under and over-growth, and thus had a small bit of warning before a figure dropped down to the loam almost at her side... a Kindred sentry, who'd been keeping watch on the surrounding area from the lower branches of the nearest tree.

It was still a good eight meter drop from those branches to the ground, but the Kindred, like Zach, were pretty blase about physical feats that would have probably broken Lilia's legs or worse, and the Kindred landed in a crouch with only the very softest of thumps. Lilia recognized him instantly, as he was nearly as tall as she was, almost five feet at the crown... a veritable giant amongst the pygmies, though of exceptionally lean build as well. He held a shaft of wood tipped with a fang, a crude spear almost as tall as he, and from which he derived his codename, Lance. Lance was one of the chief Hunters of the Kindred Tribe, one of Espadon's lieutenants, and even amongst the Kindred, Lance was reknowned for his ability to track targets and his sense for his surroundings. As ever, Lilia had to constrain an instinctive flinch, as her eyes and helmet sensors beheld the Kindred, while her Praetorian trained mental senses stubbornly insisted that there was nobody there at all. If Lance and Espadon had been literally translucent, it wouldn't have been any more discomfiting than their psychic invisibility was to her.

Zach of course, didn't seem to even notice, staring down at the newly arrived Kindred with his usual mixture of barely checked ferocity. His face and clothing was still dripping wet with the lifeblood of the recon team he'd slaughtered, and his posture was that of an animal about to pounce... coiled energy seem to pour off him into his surroundings. Again Lilia was struck by the sheer intensity Zach exuded during his every living moment, and especially so on the battlefield. It was frightening and exciting in equal measue, a hot metal adrenaline tang on the back of her tongue whenever she witnessed it. She dragged herself out of her micro-introspection as Lance gave his report.

"We're definitely being watched." The huntsman told his three superiors, practicing his command of other languages. His intonation and accent closely resembled that of Lilia, as she was the one who'd instructed most of the Kindred in the basics of English and other common languages. As a hunter, it was important to learn everything possible about potential prey, and since Kindred found absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of hunting other humans, for sport or sustenance, it was only natural for Lance to want to expand his command of languages spoken by other subsets of humanity. "Whoever they are, they're good. Much better than the ones we've been hunting before. I'm not entirely sure they didn't want me to notice them... they might have been watching us for some time before then. But then, why?"

"I don't care about Why's." Zach replied tersely. "Can you find them, or can't you? The How of killing them is the only thing that should concern you."

"Why's are important too, sometimes, Zach. You have to think of the bigger picture." Lilia protested. She'd gone to a lot of hard work to make the Kindred see the wisdom of military tactics and strategic assessment of battlefield intel, she didn't appreciate her boyfriend just telling them to charge ahead recklessly, regardless of circumstances. "This could be a trap of some sort after all."

"And?" Zach replied with an expressive shrug of his shoulders to show just how little that idea mattered to him. "Trap or not, its still a fight. Better even, if they think they have the upper hand, they won't be so quick to run away once it gets started."

"I know you don't care, Zach, but it still bothers me. If they have been watching us, then they MUST know what you're capable of. The fact that they're still trying to draw us in, as Lance said they might be... doesn't that warrant a second thought? That they know what you can do, and they're still trying to pick a fight?" Lilia pointed out, reasonably.

"So they overestimate their own abilities. A common failing in those who find themselves on a battlefield with me. It's nothing new or different, Mouse."

"You're not invincible Zach." Lilia saw fit to remind him.

"I never said I was, in fact I know better than anyone just how defeatable I am. But this is not my How. That's reserved for the Boytoy, should he ever be resurrected."

"Well, that's fine for you, but what about the rest of us?" Lilia snapped in exasperation. "You may be fully confident that you can get yourself out of any situation you find yourself in, but what about me and the Mori? Where you go, we follow, Zach. And we're..." The rest of her admonishment was drowned out by a rustle of branches in the near distance. It wasn't a loud noise, nor a particular strange one for the environment... any sort of animal could have made the noise in a clumsy moment. But all four of them knew that it was no animal. Somebody was out there, and moreso, they wanted them to come after them. It was blatant psychological taunting, the sort that even the rawest recruit should have been able to pick up on and reject. But Lilia wasn't dealing with raw recruits... she was dealing with Zach and the Kindred. And where prey turned and ran, they tended to follow their basest instincts, to chase and kill, even if they knew it wasn't a sensible idea.

"This one is mine." Zach purred to the two Kindred, as he drew the ceremonial knife Espadon had loaned to him, holding it low at his side. With no further warning or instructions, he bounded off into the undergrowth, towards the source of the noise, making no attempt to hide the sounds of his pursuit.

Lilia sighed to herself, inside the confines of her helmet where only she could hear. "Espadon, rally the unit and get them prepared to vacate the area. We've got to stay on the patrol. That can't have been the only recon team dispatched to this area. Find the others. Zach and I will be back once he gets this out of his system."

"As Sevan Aveis commands." Espadon bobbed his head in acknowledgement and flashed a grin full of chiseled and artificially sharpened fangs, before he and Lance disappeared into the forest background like phantoms. Taking firmer hold of her 17mm linear assault rifle, Lilia stalked off into the jungle on Zach's trail, tense and wary, and making at least an attempt at stealth, though the enemy would of course know that the prey had taken the bait. Now all that remained to be found out was who was the prey, and who the hunter. To Lilia's great surprise, she managed to catch up to Zach in a matter of minutes, having covered barely a few hundred meters from the perimeter point. She found him standing near a jumble of large boulders that jutted forth from the hillside, forming the entryway to some sort of delve or nook. There was nobody else around, much less signs of a bloody brawl, so Lilia was extra wary as she ghosted up near her boyfriend, every sense alert for the slightest hint of whatever it was that had given Zach even a moment's pause!

As she got to his side, she saw that the boulders marked the entrance to an actual cave of some sort, which wound back into the hillside farther than her helmet's light amplification systems could penetrate. She didn't need to ask if the antagonist who'd taunted them before had gone into the cave, there was simply no other place to hide. She thought about re-iterating that this was not the best of ideas, but she knew her opinion would have no more traction than the first time. Zach's blood was up, and his interest piqued. It would take a full on Mobile Suit offensive to divert him from his current pursuit now. Maybe she could put her foot down totally and bring them both up short, but she'd pay for it later, since he'd be sure to be sulky and uncooperative for days afterwards. No, better to let him have his way for the time being... she could clamp down the reins after he'd hunted down their watchers. And it wasn't like there was no military sense in hunting down enemy spies after all...

So it was with only slight misgiving that Lilia toggled her helmet sensors to thermal and low-light vision and stalked after her lover as he strode, confidently, even arrogantly, making no attempt at stealth or subterfuge, into the cave mouth, and the darkness that beckoned there. Looked like she was going to be spending some more time alone in the dark with Zach. She found the thought quite comforting, actually. Maybe he was just rubbing off on her, but with the two of them together, Lilia felt pretty sure there wasn't anyone that could present too great a threat for them to overcome...

xxxx

**Inside the Cave**

"This is almost stupidly easy. I'm disappointed." Lexia Rymir complained, as she rejoined her roosting "comrade" in the depths of the cavern system that chewed its way through the guts of the ridgeline like maggot chewed flesh. The Revamped assassin would have pouted, had her facial muscles retained that particular contortion, but after the innumerable enhancement surgeries, the best her mutilated and augmented face could manage was a grimace. There was little of the feminine grace and beauty she had once enjoyed, before being enrolled into FEAR's cyber-assassin program and elevated to its highest ranks, that remained about her now, but at least in exchange her abilities as a killing machine had been elevated to heights that were quite literally superhuman! Lexia considered herself the truest exemplar of what it meant to be a Revamped... she was no hideaway sniper, nor a butchering brute like her companions... she was agile, quick, stealthy and utterly efficient, the ultimate in killing from the shadows and stabbing in the back.

"Our target is not known for his sense of subtlety in combat." Gerard Larkyn, the sniper specialized Master Vamp, replied, both of them speaking in subvocal whispers across a secure and very short ranged comm network. Their bodies were implanted with so much hardware and software that there was little of them that could truly be called human any more, save for a few scraps of internal meat. For Lexia, that meant she had no life signs for most sensor systems to detect, no thermal emissions, breath, sweat or other trace giveaways that might tip off an alert target to her presence. For Gerard, that meant no respiration or heartbeat to throw off his aim with his trusted rifle even the minutest fraction, he was absolutely as still as the rock around him when he desired to be, the perfect shooting platform.

"Perhaps not, but I had still expected some sort of craft or low cunning. He's no better than Pyotr, like a puppy on a string. I could have jumped off a cliff at this rate, and he'd have leapt blithly off after me, even if the gorge was filled with spikes or mines!" Lexia continued to carp.

"That is his craft, stupid slut." Pyotr, the close combat assault modified Master Vamp, cut into their communication, his voice managing to sound surly even though it was electronically generated. The hulking, gladiator like cyber-assassin was waiting in minimal concealment on the open floor of the largish cavern they had chosen as the site for their execution, while Gerard lurked at the top of a cluster of stalagmites that rose to meet one of the far walls of the cave, an Lexia would be flitting around the edges of the room, always searching for the unprotected back or unwary moment from their target. Each of them had been a killer of great accomplishment for years before coming to the attention of FEAR and being made into Revamps, and in normal situations, each of them would have been more than capable of taking on any single target, even a Praetorian, with little real difficulty. But their target was no simple Praetorian, not in the slightest.

"He knows." Pyotr continued, his surliness fading to become a sort of grudging sullen acknowledgement. "He knows full well that you are leading him on into a trap. He knows and does not care. And he wants us to know he does not care. That is how little he thinks of us. He's willing to fight us on our prepared ground, outnumbered, from a position of disadvantage. Because he doesn't think its going to make any difference. That is the surety of our target. That is the poise of a truly great monster. Were we normal people, it might even be intimidating."

"I will be glad to put an end to his arrogance." Lexia promised darkly, hand caressing the hilt of her vibro-katana, sheathed across her upper back. Mono sharp edges and a ultrasonic impeller that would heat the blade to near a thousand degrees celsius through air friction, enough to carve through even PS armored military plating like it was silk, all it would take would be a single good hit and Lexia was sure the entire ordeal would be over. It rankled to have to share a kill with the other two, even a kill of such supposed difficulty. Once Frost was over and done with, she could go back to operating on her own, just like she had always been meant to do.

"Not if I get to him first." Pyotr retorted. "I have never chopped up such a poised monster before. My blades ache for his meat and bone... I've simply GOT to get my knives into him!"

"His head will be bloody mist before either of you even breaks his skin with your crude blades." Gerard sniffed, thinking of the smart bullet currently chambered into his 17mm sniper rifle. The depleted uranium tipped, mono-fragment wire filled bullet could punch through a meter of solid granite before releasing its payload of fragmenting wire with an effect like that of a full sized fragmentation grenade, just confined within the skull of his target. A single hit to the upper body could virtually vaporize a human target, but Gerard disdained such pedestrian methods. He eliminated his targets via single headshot, or not at all. That was his calling card. And the bullet in his chamber right now was already stenciled with the name Zacharis Frost, hand engraved by Gerard some time ago, when he'd first learned the identity of his newest trophy. With that bullet loaded, the esteemed monster Frost was already as good as buried... it had just yet to happen!

Whether by frenzied hacking, surgical sniping or elegant bladework, Zacharis Frost was sure to die at the hands of the Master Vamps, the three most deadly cyborg-assassins FEAR had in its arsenal. His life was one measured in minutes... minutes that were rapidly ticking by as he followed the deliberate trail Lexia had left behind, coaxing him towards the place that would be his doom. Or at least it would if the Master Vamps had any say in the matter...

xxxx

The faint echo of distant moisture dripping down from the higher reaches of the cavern system was the only sound to be heard, other than the excited thumping of his own heart within his chest, but Frost knew the prey was close. A more reasonable man might have wondered why the foe, who'd gone to so much trouble to keep just out of his clutches until now, would suddenly halt their headlong flight and turn at bay here at this spot, but Frost deplored the strictures of reason. The Mouse was almost certainly correct with her nattering about this whole scenario being an ambush or trap of some sort, but what mattered that? Frost didn't care how the enemy decided to come to grips with him, as long as they did so in an amusing and direct fashion. Playing chase was fun for a bit, at least when the prey was fleeing in abject terror, but being deliberately and calmly led for more than a few minutes rapidly grew boring.

Not to mention the sheer arrogance of his prey was simply staggering, thinking they could just run away from him and string him along like some fool. Yes, he would fall into their trap, but he would do so knowing full well what he was doing. Let them spring their surprises, let them mould the battlefield to their liking. Such things were the tools and recourses of those without true confidence in their own strength and power. It revealed, if only subliminally, just how scared they really were of him, despite their likely bravado. It would be his chore... and his pleasure... to drag out that subliminal fear and hoist it up high for them to behold in all its terrible glory, in the final, agonizing seconds before he extinguished them with his own hands.

He narrowed his eyes to crimson slits, the bioluminescent nanites in his eyes providing all the light he needed to see and more, the pitch dark cavern system as brightly illuminated to him as if they were under the noonday sun. The narrow tunnel was rapidly widening out into a much larger cavern, which was lousy with cave formations, stalagmites thrusting from the floor like abbatoir spikes, stalactites dripping from the ceiling like pillars of frozen blood falling down a stairway... everything was tinged haemologically pink by the nanites in his eyes. Even the deep and jagged crevasses that ripped through sections of the cavern floor looked like raw wounds, pink at the edges and fading to a red-back crust of scab as they fell away into the depths. Frost skidded to a halt, falling down into a predators crouch, one hand splayed to touch the cavern floor, feeling the rough stone, damp and cold beneath his fingers, like the rigor mortised hide of a drowned corpse.

Another rapid heartbeat approached from his rear, beating in stattaco counterpoint to his own more langorous but still powerful thumps. It still felt odd to have the Mouse with him like this, to have someone covering his back, ready and even willing to support him... even if he didn't really want her to. But whatever... the Mouse had more than earned her place at his side, or his back, if she preferred. He would adjust. He would change. He would evolve. That, more than anything, was his true nature, the ability to change to defeat any obstacle, to slay any threat. That was the true freedom of insanity, the ability to cut yourself loose from all the attachments of your life, all the anchors of your prior being, in order to metamorphize into whatever new being you needed to become to grow ever stronger, ever sharper! Yet could he now call himself truly insane? The Mouse was an anchor he did not wish to cut loose, did not wish to go without... even if it meant remaining weaker, duller. His original selfish desires for her company... for her affection... they'd become a double bladed sword that was plunged as deeply into his emotional flesh as it was into hers, before he'd even realized he'd been stabbed at all...

Frost ground his teeth in annoyance. This was hardly the time for such introspection. He did not enjoy the niggling feelings rattling around the back of his skull, the hormonal urges that stampeded through his mind whenever he had a single moment's pause. The desire... no, the NEED to ensure that no lasting harm came to the Mouse while he had any power to prevent it... it was like a rusted knife shoved into the back of his cranium and wriggling around whenever he was about to have fun in the simpleness of slaughter and carnage. It did not hurt... or rather, as always, the hurt was good, a sign of his continued existence, but it was distracting in the most frustrating way. He didn't see how Yamato, as the Boytoy, or Scarface, could have stood the nagging itch, the dare it be said WORRY, the constant toothache pang that came from the woman you were attached to being in danger, even if you were right there with her, and regardless of her own abilities, no matter how considerable they might be!

If this was what it felt like to be in love, Frost was glad he had not been forced to endure it until now. In the depths of his own mind, he could even admit that he found it a tad bit unnerving, this worrying about someone else's welfare thing. But perhaps it wasn't entirely bad either. After all, he was sure that this emotional ache was the true source of the Boytoy's power, the power that had slain him him all those years ago, when by rights the Boytoy should have already been defeated totally by that time. If he could but harness this ache, worry at it, like a dog gnawing at its own wounded leg, rip and tear and grind and scratch and shred at the ache until it became a full fledged agony, hot and throbbing to the slightest touch... if he could do that, then Frost had the strong suspicion that he would finally be able to tap into the depths of the Boytoy's own power. And from that point, he would be unstoppable! Even those alien Ghosts would be within his ability to crush and silence for good!

But he wasn't ready yet. He wasn't even sure HOW to be ready for that sort of thing, and to be unable to answer a HOW question was very nearly enough to drive him to depression! His imperatives were conflicting. He could not allow the Mouse to come to harm, other than the playful toughening up he subjected to her on a daily basis of course. Yet without her coming to harm, his progress at widening this emotional wound he'd found was glacially slow. He needed her to be endangered, her life to be hanging from fragile threads, in order to grow stronger while maintaining his current emotional and sanitary state. Yet the thought of her being in danger was... upsetting. Bothersome. Enough so that sometimes he actually felt himself holding back in the midst of battle, just to be sure he could step to her side in a moment if need be. Perhaps the Boytoy was even less the bastion of so called sanity than he'd once thought, if he put up with this sort of internal conflict all the time while Pink was still around! It was enough to drive a crazy man crazier!

The Mouse seemed to have interpreted his moment of introspection as wariness, and though her armor insulated everything but her heartbeat from his senses, and muted even that, Frost could well imagine her small sigh of relief. Perhaps it was this "Bond" thing she was starting to go on about lately when they were alone. A intimate psychic connection between them, a literal melding of minds, which would allow them to send thoughts and feelings directly to each other, almost regardless of distance. Frost did not like the sound of that, not one bit. He had quite enough problems just dealing with his innermost thoughts and feelings himself, the idea of sharing those moments of inner trial with someone else... even the Mouse, ESPECIALLY the Mouse, was unpleasant. Not to mention, what with the Bog-Monster already crawling around in his subconscious somewhere, Frost did not particularly want to open himself to anyone else... he supposed, in a manner of speaking, he might have been "traumatized" by being made the proxy of the Caller via force.

Additionally, while the Mouse certainly HAD survived direct contact with his memories and unfiltered mind in the past, in all such occassions it had been quite hard on her, physically and mentally. And while he definitely trusted the Mouse to survive pretty much anything he threw at her... he wouldn't be in this "relationship" with her if he wasn't sure she could do that... he still found himself assailed by that damned worry for her welfare. What if this time was the time she snapped, and broke for good? What if this Bond eroded her mind and soul away like acid, and left nothing behind in its wake? He did not WANT to lose her. He could not STAND to lose her. As she'd said back in the Citadel... they'd come too far together for that to be the How of their ending. May whatever God existed damn his soul for it, but Frost was actually AFRAID of what he might do to the Mouse's mind if they were to Bond as she desired. He loathed that sensation as much as he loathed anything... even the Boytoy himself!

And when he loathed something, the only response possible for him was anger. The desire to kill, maim, rend flesh and bone asunder... to ruin lives and massacre the hopes and dreams of those foolishly sane enough to oppose him and the necessary sharpening of Humanity's Blade. His nano-enhanced muscles tensed like high tension wires. The prey was close. Just ahead. Hardly even concealed, all but daring him to come forth with their nonchalant attempt at camouflage. He realized the Mouse was saying something, whispering in his ear. "...let's not just walk into their ambush, okay, Zach? Just give me a few seconds to triangulate their likely position and then we can..." She counseled, thinking with the sane, tactical part of her mind. The old part of her mind. The part of her that had once been so infatuated with the Boytoy himself.

Just that thought was enough to bring a snarl of fury vibrating up from his diaphragm, his lips twisting away from his teeth like a rabid wolf sighting a rival. Frost marveled at his own condition, at the hot and bitter taste of unreasonable jealousy. He knew beyond every possible definition of doubt that the Mouse was HIS, and his alone, forever. She had convinced him of that beyond anything else. It was crazy to be jealous of her past affections for the Boytoy, or anyone else. Frost found himself comforted by that irrational feeling. He wasn't going sane after all, at least not totally. A savage chuckle escaped his lips, as the snarl melted into a more familiar maniacal sneer. "Walk into their ambush, Mouse?" He interrupted her stream of tactical doggrel, not even bothering to whisper. "I never walk into battle when I can sprint headlong!"

Word became intent, intent became action, in that seamless transition that had long been the true mark of his superiority over others, the complete lack of hesitation between desire and implementation of that desire that only those who had willingly discarded their reason and sanity, and thrown themselves headlong into the abyss which swallowed all sense and logic could truly access. And even then, it was worthless without an enhanced body to fully implement the desires in question. That was the real expression of his power... neither his unique body alone, nor his unique mind alone, but only them both together... that was what made him the true Monster of Humanity! That was what made him Zacharis Frost!

He was a dozen yards into the large caven before the Mouse had even finished yelling at him to "Wait", as if he would ever have heeded that foul word, even from her. He'd told her before, several times, that he did not recognize that word in the slightest, ever, in any context or situation. To her credit though, even as she voiced her pro forma protest, she was in motion as well, bounding after him, heading for a piece of cover from which she could guard his headlong advance. She might not like his impetuous approach to combat, but she was learning to integrate herself into it anyway. But Frost had no more time for the Mouse's antics, as the enemy had at last revealed themselves, exploding up from behind a pile of stalagmites like a warped jack-in-the-box. His opponent was barely human at all, at least physically speaking, more robotic metal than flesh.

The assassin was huge, easily head and shoulders taller than Frost, and almost twice as thick across the shoulders as his lean Boytoy frame, arms and legs corded with synthetic muscles wrapped around armored titanium bones and covered in thick plates of ceramic and metal armor. His arms and legs were double jointed, his calves ending in taloned feet more apt for a Cold Hunter than a human, which dug cracked divots in the granite floor with each thundering stride the cyborg made. There was little left of the face, other than a mishmash of augmetic sensors and reinfoce armor plating, overhanging a steel-trap of a jaw that looked more like something used to chip wood than a human mouth. It was an ugly bastard by any measure of human aesthetics. And thus, it was beautiful to his eyes, a man-machine designed soley for brutal close quarters murder. There was not a single pretense about its purpose at all, unlike that new "super-soldier", the Tin Man.

Its taloned paws, each equipped with several more finger-extensions than any human hand could claim, were filled with enormous pistols, one each. Though Frost could not know it, and would not have cared if he did, these were LAP-86 'Stiletto' 15mm pistols, the same weapons designated as sidearms for the USN's new Vanguard troopers. They were designed to only be operable by those in heavy power armor, such was their recoil. Of course, a Master Vamp was far stronger than even a Vanguard trooper, so Pyotr had not the slightest difficulty in aiming and firing both weapons at the same time. Though the assault Vamp was primarily a melee combatant, his targeting software was no less precise than any other Vamp's, and even while moving at speeds that would be blurring to most veteran soldiers, against a target moving, if anything, faster still, every last one of his shots was precisely on target.

Pyotr's pistol munitions were tungsten-steel tipped armor penetrating rounds, designed for use at close range against heavy power armor or vehicle armor, most would blow right through an unarmored human frame without even slowing down. But not a single one of the shots managed to hit Frost, not even as he charged directly at Pyotr, without making even a single concession at dodging. As each bullet got within a few feet of Frost, its trajectory was altered, just slightly, but enough to cause them to zip around or above the charging Executor, missing by millimeters in some cases. As a Praetorian, Lilia had been tutored in the use of telekinetics by Kunai himself, and though nowhere near as strong as her mentor, she was more than capable of deflecting even close ranged pistol fire, at least for a short time. The heavy rounds of the Stiletto were more difficult than the much smaller Cutlass and 9mm rounds she was used to handling though. Inevitably, the strain was too much, and one round managed to slip through her TK shield.

Frost jerked and stumbled, an explosion of flesh scraps and gritty blood erupting from his left collarbone as the Stiletto bullet just barely slapped into the meat of his shoulder, before ricocheting to no effect off the quantum-crystalline structure of his skeleton. The force of the hit still would have been enough to rip the arm off a normal human, but Frost's bones were bound together by QC thread wires, and were functionally unseverable and unbreakable. A raw pulse of tightly controlled fear and anger from the Mouse oozed into his awareness and thrust him up and onwards with renewed vigor. He hadn't even considered that his concern for her... that troubling feeling... would be reciprocated by her for him. On one hand, it was annoying... she, more than anyone, should know that such a minor hit would NEVER bring him down, so there was no cause for her reaction. On the other, it was an IRRATIONAL reaction, and that was a good thing. The more irrational she became, the further along the path he'd created for her she would travel.

The wound scabbed and began to regenerate almost instantly, and the pain was merely a stimulant, a whetting of the appetite for the feast to come. The Vamp had emptied his clips and then tossed his pistols aside gladly, having hoped that the handgun barrage, however potent, would not truly harm his most desired opponent. Pyotr's mechanical hands folded aside and split down the middle, as heavily reinforced, curved falchion blades deployed from within his forearms, the thirty inch blades quickly glowing orange hot from air friction as their vibrational motors whetted the mono-edges to killing intensity. The swords were single edged, more like overlarge machetes or butcher's cleavers than real swords, meant more for chopping apart bone and splitting skulls than neat bladework. They were the brute tools of a serial murderer, not the weapons of a soldier.

Armed with only a ceremonial bone knife carved from the fang of an alpha predator, Frost met the behemoth Vamp's attack head on, strength for strength, speed for speed. He made no attempts at evasion or strategy... it had been ages, more than ages, since he'd last faced an opponent as brutally single minded about their killing as this cyborg was. It was almost endearing, this attitude. Frost knew exactly where he was with this enemy, and knew that neither of them would ever quit until they had reduced their target to a wet stain on the floor. It was... refreshing. Usually he had to taunt his foes to get them into this mindset, but no such extraneous effort was required here.

Bone skidded off implanted Transphase Shift armored plates, drawing sparks from the force of the deflection, and the scent of seared flesh and burnt blood bloomed into the cavern air, as one of Pyotr's blades skimmed along the side of Frost's chest, scorching a brief lived burn there, while the other hacked into his other shoulder, stopping against the impenetrable bone, the shock of impact almost buckling Frost's legs from the sheer power. Nanomachines went instantly to work, knitting severed muscle fibers back together, and re-routing nervous system impulses around the wound location, so that Frost's arm continued to function at full strength, despite the damage to his deltoid musculature. His bunched left fist slammed into Pyotr's gut, denting the armor plating in half an inch, forming knuckle impressions in the molecularly bonded metal, but the Vamp hardly even trembled under the impact, which would have punched right through a human and thrown them across a small room, probably in pieces. Frost's sneer grew into a full fledged grin of appreciation.

Sparks ignited around him as thunder roared through the cave, as the Mouse opened up with her heavy linear rifle, firing into the melee between Frost and the Vamp without even the slightest of hesitations. There was no need for caution, as one of the lead Praetorians, the Mouse was of course an exceptional shot, and even should she place a round wrong, it wasn't like she was going to accidentally kill him or anything. But the mono-tipped rounds from her .70 caliber rifle could find little purchase on Pyotr's TPS armored body, and the cyborg's mass was more than enough to take the sledgehammer blows of kinetic impact without breaking stride. Still, external augmentations cracked and splintered, sensory systems forced to reroute to more heavily reinforced and slightly less effective internal modules, and for a fighter of Frost's level, even a microsecond's laxity in reaction times could be entirely deadly.

Shouting with furious enjoyment, Frost brought up his right forearm to block the next downward stroke of Pyotr's chopping blades, QC reinforced skeletal structure meeting cybernetically enhanced limb with bone snapping force. But Frost's bones were categorically incapable of being snapped by raw force, and though the strength of the Master Vamp's blow was enough to slam Frost's own forearm back into his skull like a jackhammer, no real harm was done. Pyotr's other arm came pounding down from on high, only for the wrist to be caught by Frost's other hand, elbow locked out to full extension, transmitting the force of the swing downward through Frost's entire spine and down into his thighs and feet. Granite powdered beneath his heels and the rubberized soles of his boots popped like thin balloons under the impact, but Frost himself remained unbowed and unbroken.

"Is that all you have? I almost felt that one!" Frost leered at the cyborg killer he was at grips with. "But if all you have is brute speed and power, you've selected the wrong opponent. Or rather, you're a decade or so too late for THAT grudge match! Come on, ditch this warmup routine and..." Frost was cut off when Pyotr's clawlike foot punted him thirty feet back across the cavern floor into a stalagmite, blood slapping sluggishly against the stone in a rought outline of the Executor's body as the skin on his back briefly ruptured under the collision with the stone. Sparks hissed and spat from Pyotr's raised foot, where razor edged toes had been ripped free from their mountings, after being caught between Frost's ribs when he was propelled backwards by the thrust-kick. "Almost." Frost stepped out of the small impression he'd made in the stone, empty hand reaching up to his lower chest and ripping free the three toes embedded just above his stomach, holding them between his fingers as an improvised cestus. "That was almost enough to make me yawn... I've fought MONKEY's that hit harder than that!"

Howling like a hundred frieght trains headed towards the same mutual train wreck, an eardrum shattering blurt of scrap noise emitted from his vocal augmentations, Pyotr hurled himself at the still infuriatingly calm monster of a man he'd sworn to chop into little pieces like stew meat! His war scream had been specifically constructed to not only inspire terror in those who heard it, but it could even maim and kill at close range, by shattering bones and bursting interior organs by sheer sonic vibrations. Amplified inside the cave, dust and rock chips rained down across a three hundred meter radius, and even some of the larger stalactites began to crack and dismount from their aeons old perches on the ceiling.

Ducking under an eviscerating slash of Pyotr's left hand blade, Frost kicked out with the ball of his right foot, more gritty blood splashing the floor as the flesh of his foot ruptured and liquified under the force of the hit, as he kicked one of the Vamp's several leg joints sideways, shards of crushed metal and twisted armor plate spraying like fragmentation shrapnel, and hydraulic fluid and sparks burst from the damaged joint. Pivoting on his planted foot, Frost rose in a spiralling maneuver, toe-claw cestus raised in an uppercut pose, ramming them against the descending elbow of the Master Vamp. The armor piecing tips fractured and splintered, but when placed between the nearly unstoppable force of Pyotr's decending arm, and the actually impenetrable surfaces of Frost's hand bones, there was only one way for them to go... into Pyotr's arm! A second joint exploded in fragments and a rain of sparks in less than a second, and the bottom fourth of Pyotr's right arm flopped loose and limp, vibro blade already starting to cool to a hot pink from the bright orange of before.

A millisecond later and Pyotr's charging body, its momentum not checked in the slightest, blitzed into Frost's back and side and crushed him back into the stalagmite he'd struck only moments before. The upthrusted rock pinnacle, as thick as a horse was long and the height of a three story house, was riven with cracks from top to bottom as the cyborg dug out another impact crater, with Frost on the inside. Machine assisted logic circuits flickered in Pyotr's few remnants of human brain, and his left arm blade hacked off his dysfunctional right forearm at once, and the massive cyborg deliberatly stepped on the severed limb as he repositioned himself, grinding the blade and the limb itself into several useless pieces, to prevent Frost from trying to use the lost blade against him. A long rod of metal deployed from the stump of Pyotr's right arm, an extension of the internal skeletal structure, a combination club and electrical prod, capable of conducting over three million volts! It began to coruscate with blue-white arcs and sparks hungrily.

As hard as the impact had been, the actual crater was no more than an inch or two deep, though much deeper cracks radiated out from its edges. Having just been faceplanted into solid rock with the force of a small car moving at well over 120 miles per hour, Frost pushed off from the rock, spitting clots of bloody dust and chunks of rock cystal from his mouth from where he'd unintentionally taken a bite out of the stalagmite when his half open jaw was forced against it. He was probably the only human being ever to get brutally curb stomped, and have it come out worse for the curb! He was definitely hurt though, most of his skin abraded down to the upper muscle along his face and chest, nose smeared almost flat, cheeks ripped open, half his scalp hanging down the side of his neck, his clothing torn to shreds and hanging off him by threads... he looked like a zombie that had just been dropped off a roof. And he was laughing like a ten year old at a surprise birthday party, snorting and giggling as thick, gruel-like blood ran down from his erased nose and out the gaping holes in his cheeks to ooze down the rest of his torso.

He'd lost his grip on Espadon's ceremonial knife somewhere after the shoulder-barge-stomp, but he was past caring about such trivialities. Spreading the fingers of his left hand into a claw with five tines, Frost stepped into close range of Pyotr, avoiding another massive roundhouse sweep of butcher blade in the process, this time a decapitating strike that he flicked his head just barely enough to dodge, the glowing hot vibro-sword actually slicing off the flap of scalp and hair that had been hanging like a dejected flag from the side of his face. Fingers met TPS armored plates along the Vamp's abdomen, and once more, flesh proved weak, as Frost's fingertips and fingernails shredded away like a bullet's sabot as the QC impregnated bone tips of his fingers punched through the molecularly bonded armor plate like nails into soft wood, right down to the quick of the fingernails!

Snarling like some of the Cold Hunter's he'd disembowled with a trick similar to this, Frost heaved and scraped his improvised armor piercing hand-claw downwards, ripping jagged tracks edged with bloody smears in the torso plating of the Master Vamp, until after a half second his fingerbones caught on the inner edges where one of the main plates of armor met its neighbor. With a convulsive heave of his arm, Frost gripped the edge of the plate from the inside and tore it outwards and away, with an effect somewhat like a man punching his hand through a manhole cover and then ripping away the entire top of a storm drain when he withdrew it. "Hard candy shell always means soft chewy center..." Frost mused as he cast aside the chunk of armor plating "skin", and drove his balled right fist into the guts of the Master Vamp in the same motion, almost the exact same punch he'd used to nearly kill Thomas Glory all those months ago in Orb.

Before his fist could penetrate more than wrist deep into the gurgling cables and circuit boards that made up most of Pyotr's guts, the Master Vamp brought around his shock-mace and slammed it into Frot's neck, just below his right ear. The blow was delievered with such maniac force that the solid titanium rod bent like it was made of thin copper wire, forming a near "L" shape where it had met Frost's spinal column. Lightning flashed and the scent of burned flesh and cooked blood once more filled the cavern, as Frost's twitching, spark covered body was sent rolling and tumbling a half dozen meters sideways, even the mighty End of All stunned and disoriented for a moment by the impact and the electrical shock combined!

Limping on his already damaged leg, Pyotr took a pair of long strides towards the dazed Executor before jerking to a surprised halt, having forgotten in his homicidal rage that the target was not actually alone. Lilia reminded the Master Vamp of her presence by burning a trio of orange rimmed holes through the cyborg's upper back and torso, right around where the heart might be on a normal human, with her beam pistol sidearm, her linear rifle cast aside, empty and mostly worthless anyway against such a heavily armored target. With pistol braced in both hands, Lilia stood about ten meters behind the Master Vamp, having been waiting for Zach to get knocked clear of the bastard, so she could shoot unimpeded... unlike the linear rounds, plasma beams could actually hurt her boyfriend pretty bad, even if he wouldn't admit it. And they had a tendency to overpenetrate on infantry targets, perhaps all the morso heavily mechanized ones, as metal was less likely to vaporize and diffuse the heat of the shot than flesh was.

Having fought a regular Vamp before, Lilia didn't expect her attacks to actually kill the freak beating on Zach, but they did distract him for long enough for her indomitable boyfriend to regain his bearings and rise from his knees. Lilia did her best not to look at her lover... she knew better than anyone that he could survive enough punishment to kill a hundred ordinary people outright, and still be laughing, but it made her heart clench nevertheless to see him so ripped up and tattered looking. He looked like he already had one and a half feet in the grave, with huge sections of skin missing, or charred black by electrical discharge, his face all but unrecognizable, not just as Zach, but as human at all, save for the glowing red pinpricks of his eyes!

However, she could not look away when Zach took a step towards the conflicted Pyotr, who could not decide whether to pounce upon the apparently tottering Executor or turn to deal with the Praetorian ally. A single step was all her love managed before he jerked to a halt, looking down at himself in what might have been shock, had he much in the way of face to show expressions with. A long, curved, single edged katana blade, glowing white hot from vibrational friction, was suddenly protruding from his chest, just left of center, high up near the armpit. Blood welled up and drooled down from between Frost's clenched teeth as he stared at the blade that had cleanly transfixed his heart. A shadow seemed to detach itself from the deeper darkness of the cave behind him, as a second Master Vamp, this one much smaller, more lithe and discernably female, made her presence on the battlefield known.

Frost slowly reached up his right hand towards the blade impaling his chest, as if fascinated by its sudden appearance in its current location, as the blade itself twitched and scraped loudly against his ribcage as Lexia did her best to twist the sword to rip the wound wider. But her assassin's strike was stymied by the same nearly indestructible bones that had been frustrating Pyotr, and the blade refused to twist more than a degree or two in either direction before jarring to a halt against the ribs above and below. Augmetic eyes aglow with disdain and disgust, Lexia ripped her katana out of Frost's chest, slicing the blade through his left lung on the way out of his torso cavity, slapping a fan of dark crimson blood against the cavern wall in the process, pink smoke fuming off the flat of her blade as the vibrations vaporized the gore it was coated with.

"ZACH!" Lilia could not stop herself from shouting in dismay, her grip on her beam pistol wavering ever so slightly as her heart leapt into her throat upon witnesing the horrific injury. It was just the sort of momentary hesitation that Pyotr had been waiting for, his aggression fuelled brain inherently pouncing upon even the slightest perceived weakness. It would be sweet to let the damned Executor hear his girlfriend being chopped into dogmeat just before that bitch Lexia snuffed him out for once and all... Pyotr had grown sick of the uncuttable bones in the main target... he wanted to see some limbs flying apart again! Slightly hampered by his damaged leg, the brutal Master Vamp known as "The Cossack" still moved as quickly and dexterously as a regular Vamp at peak prowess, and in a bare second he was looming over the Praetorian known as Yggdrasil's Valkyrie, bent shock-mace held low to deflect or guard, butcher's saber raised for dismemberment proceedings.

But Lilia had no interest in engaging a foe with such a blatant advantage in close quarters combat and strength on his own terms... a single blow from the Master Vamp would surely rupture internal organs and pulverize her bones even if she blocked successfully, armor or no armor! A mental impulse ignited her back mounted jump jets, and, resisting the temptation to land a rocket powered knee thrust to the Vamp's head as she passed, having learned from dislocating her knee doing so the last time she'd fought a cyber-assassin, Lilia soared into the air mere inches ahead of the enraged hacking blows of the Cossack. The evasion barely bought her a second's breathing room, as the Cossack hurled himself at a nearby stalagmite, mechanized limbs digging in and leaving divots in the rock as he scrabbled his way upwards nearly fifteen meters in the blink of an eye, before pouncing off and upwards with hydraulic piston powered legs, hissing saber drawn back to cleave Lilia from shoulder to hip in passing.

However, Lilia had been quick to draw one of her own blades even as she dodged, and though her strength was nowhere near that of the Vamp, in midair she was able to deflect his strike, as the cyborg lacked the leverage to truly beat down her guard. The deflection still spat blue and white sparks like a busting firework, a millimeter notch carved into the edge of her mono-sword, and the force of the blow catapulted her sideways almost a half a dozen meters before a flaring of her back moutned jump jets stabilized her. Lilia blasted at the plummeting Cossack as he twisted and contorted to try to avoid her retaliation, but there was only so much the cyborg could accomplish in midair, and by the time he hit the ground in a thundercrack of shattering stone, he had several moe orange rimmed holes bored through his back and sides by her beam pistol.

The Cossack threw himself into one of the crevices that ran in jagged lines through the floor of the main cavern, vanishing into the stygian gloom befoe Lilia could finish drawing a proper bead on the assassin. She sent a barrage of emerald green plasma bolts into the crevice anyway, draining the remains of her pistol's power pack, but the shots struck only stone, and revealed nothing within the depths of the pit. Keeping a solid grip on her sword, held defensively in front of her, Lilia reached out with a flick of her mental abilities, telekinetically unlocking a hidden compartment along the beltline of her armor, and withdrawing a new powercell for her beam pistol. A flick of her thumb dropped the spent powercell from the pistol's handgrip, and then she slammed how the fresh one with another flick of her concentration. Hand's free reloading was one of the first skills taught to any Praetorian with a lick of TK talents.

Cautiously, Lilia lowered her thrusters output, dropping herself groundwards like a feather on the breeze, pistol raised and ready to be trained on even the slightest hint of movement. She knew the big cyborg wasn't gone. She'd hurt it, and Zach had hurt it too. But not anywhere near to the degree to take it down for good. It had merely recognized that she held the advantage of maneuverability in the open space of the main cavern. It wanted her to follow it, down into the tight spaces below the main floor, where it could back her into a corner and hammer her into the rock walls with its superior strength. She wasn't having any of that nonsense. A pair of grenades unclipped themselves from her armor's external harness points and dropped in parabolic arcs into two of the jagged cracks, before etonating with shrieking BANGS and geysers of flame and rock chips as they exploded upon touching the bottom.

The twinned explosions failed to flush her foe from hiding, but Lilia hadn't really expected them to anyway. She just wanted to give him something to think about for the next few seconds, as she turned towards her real goal. Zach. Who was currently engaged with the second cyber-assassin, the female armed with the long vibro-katana. Much smaller than the giant butcher-thing that Lilia had just inconclusively dueled with, this one was also much quicker, and fought with great skill and honed training rather than raw ferocity and brute force. However, though badly wounded, Zach was still holding strong... there was far more to him than simple brute strength and ferocity as well. Being a monster takes almost as much practice as being hero, Zach had once wryly commented to her. It was just a lot more fun.

The female cyborg used the walls and other outcroppings to continuously strike at Zach from higher ground or unexpected angles, sometimes even flipping completely over him and striking down from above as she whirled by, her mono-keen sword glowing lambent orange from air friction, carving smoking lines in the flesh of Zach's shoulders, sides and arms. The cauterized wounds barely even needed to scab over, given how shallow they were, but each and every slice was that much more of a burden upon Zach's nano-healing machines, and he was already relying on them pretty heavily to stay upright. Even as Lilia looked on, the female killer swung two handed in a diagonal downstroke aimed at the base of Zach's neck, only to have the blow turned aside by an interposed forearm, a strip of muscle and skin almost three inches long being carved away from his indestructible skeleton, dark crimson gore splattering from the raw wound, before cystallizing even before it could hit the ground, darkening to a gritty powder that began to dissolve away at once. A leathery scab of the same material was already forming over the wound at the same time.

Sidestepping Zach's counterpunch, the female assassin leaped straight up and whirled around like a top, sword held out and aimed for Zach's neck once more, clearly trying to either sever his jugular or damage his windpipe... both of which would be crippling if not fatal against a normal person. It was just the sort of blow one would strike if they favored a quick and efficient style of killing. It was the attack of a cold and calculating murderer, who killed as some sort of personal test or in pursuit of some personal goal, not merely for the joy of the bloodletting itself. Lilia wondered if perhaps hanging out with Zach so much had made her a sort of connisseur of killers... able to dissect their motivations and quirks by just watching them fight for a short time. Well, if so, then all the better.

Lilia struck the leaping assassin before she could even really begin her graceful strike, using her thrusters to barge the female right out of the air, with a flying tackle that jarred every bone in Lilia's shoulder and ribcage. Smaller the female cyborg might be, but she was every bit as solid as her larger companion, and Lilia knew she couldn't afford to turn the battle into a contest of trading blows. The other woman... though the term applied only very loosely... reacted even faster than Lilia had expected her to, and before Lilia could even ram her into a nearby rock outcropping, the cyborg had brought the hilt of her blade down on Lilia's back. Her Praetorian armor saved her from a shattered spine, but even so the blow cracked the borealite plating like a dropped plate, and drove every scrap of air from her lungs in the process.

Gritting her teeth, Lilia rode out the blow, and the following impact with the outcropping, even though it felt like she'd stepped headlong in front of a racing APC. Even with the Vamp acting as a sort of cushion, she rattled every bone in her body and almost bit off the tip of her tongue as well. Out of breath, head ringing and body aching, Lilia dropped to the rocky floor and rolled desperately. She couldn't aford to stay still for even a heartbeat, regardless of her injuries. Skidding up to one knee, Lilia just barely managed to raise her drawn sword in time to parry a downwards cut from the displeased female Vamp. But the Vamp was capable of a power and a precision with her strikes that even a Praetorian had to envy, and the glowing edge of the vibro-katana came down exactly on the notch that the Cossack had already carved out of the blade half a minute earlier. The mono-sword snapped in half, the katana barely slowing, and descended towards Lilia's head!

She could only escape by allowing herself to fall backwards into a somersault, her chest aching with the need to draw in a full breath, which would require a moment's space, a moment she did not have. The vamp was right on her however, the katana already thrusting forward to spit her through the heart, the same strike that the assassin had unleashed upon Zach upon entering the fight. A bright blue seed, veined with pulsing gold, ropped through the frozen void inside Lilia's mind and soul, before shattering aginst an invisible plane of ice that was her determination to survive. Actnic light flared in the darkness, not dispelling it, but rather enhancing its depth all the greater through contrast.

There was no time to draw her other sword, so Lilia simply slapped at the sword blade with her open hand. Zach probably could have snapped the blade in half with such a blow, but Lilia lacke her boyfriend's power, even when enhanced by the Seed. However, she was almost infinitely more skilled when it came to the application of Newtype powers, and so when she closed her hand around the spearing blae, she did not immediately lose all her fingers, having created a "glove" of telekinetic force around her gauntlet, protecting her from direct contact with the white hot mono-molecular edge. She had not the strength to stop the blow cold, so instead she put all her effort into diverting the blow slightly, just a centimeter or two to the left. The armor piercing tip of the vibro-katana rammed into her battle armor just shy of her shoulder, and about level with the bottom of her armpit. With a loud CRUNCH-SNAP it pierced through the angled Borealite without slowing, and carved through the much softer flesh and muscle beneath, before bursting out through the back of her armor as well, almost a foot of blade extending out behind her.

Lilia gritted her teeth so hard to choke down a scream of agony that blood flowed thick and wet down her lips and chin from where she'd bitten the sides of both cheeks. The female cyborg had barely anything resembling a human face at all anymore, yet Lilia was all but sure the bitch had a smug look on at the moment, as the Praetorian staggered under the force of the impaling thrust, blood already pouring down the front and back of her armor. The Vamp's claw like hands tensed on the hilt of the katana, preparing to twist it and rip it out of the Praetorian to carve a fatal wound. Eyes blazing and washed out with the power of the Seed, Lilia tightened her TK warded grip on the sword, resisting the twist, before forcing her other arm, beam pistol still clenched in her fist despite the rivulets of gore streaming down her limb, to lift and point steadily at the female Vamp.

Cybernetic reflexes made the only possible choice, as a double kill scenario was not a favorable outcome with the main target still active, and so Lexia Rymyr, known as the Eclipse killer, let go of her sword and hurled herelf backwards just microseconds ahead of the searing green plasma bolts aimed at her head and torso. Tiny adjustments in her balance and footing so her duck and weave through the volley of shots that followed, leaping with the agility of a gazelle from rock to rock, across outcroppings and over crevasses, as the Praetorian slut emptied her powercell in a fruitless gesture. Some of the shots came close, certainly, but the only thing they ever actually melted holes in were the dark stone walls of the cavern. Now seperated by about two dozen meters, the Vamp watched as the stricken Praetorian staggered and slumped, her willpower buoying her up but her body dragging her down, as the still activated vibro-katana continued to sear the insides of the Praetorian's flesh.

Eclipse flinched instinctively as she saw a shadowy form pounce at her from her right flank, her 360 degree cybernetic vision meant that she could not be snuck up on, but the sheer speed of the prime target had still allowed him to catch her slightly off guard, while she was focused on evading the praetorian's beam attacks. She hadn't even seen him MOVE, which was actually a bit troubling. One moment he was somewhere else, the next he was almost within arm's reach of her, his face twisted with an expression that showed that he was no longer having nearly so much fun with their little encounter as he had been previously. Had she a lip, Eclipse's would have curled in disdain. Men of all stripes were such simple, arrogant creatures. You could strike at them as much as you wanted and they would only laugh and fight harder, but when you threatened someone they cared about, then their feelings were hurt. THEN they felt the need to become enraged.

Before she could engage the primary target however, The Cossack made his reappearance, popping out of the crevasse that the Executor was just then leaping over, like a giant mechanical killer gopher. One fist reached up and snagged Frost by the ankle, piston driven fingers immeiately clenching tight enough to pulp flesh and grind against QC infused bone, a grip that would have shamed an industrial vice. With that hold, the Cossack whiplashed the Executor backwards and slammed him into the lip of the crevasse hard enough to break off chunks of the rock and send them clattering into the depths. Eclipse spared her "comrade" barely a glance as she bounded past him and the still struggling Executor. She'd let Pyotr distract the target for the time being, until she could retrieve her sword and then throw the bloodied scalp of the target's beloved Praetorian to the floor in front of him. If that didn't discommode him into a vulnerable fury, then nothing would...

Lilia had one hand on the sword hilt and was on one knee as she slowly pulled the long curved blade out of her body, trying to minimize any secondary damage in the process. Her right arm, her pistol hand, were both completely numb, though thankfully the blood loss was less severe than she'd initially feared. The white hot vibrations of the sword had seared the wound mostly closed. With a final choked off sob of effort, Lilia ripped the sword out of her body and collapsed forward, only barely catching herself with her extended fist holding the sword. She did what she could to block off the pain of the injury, but no amount of nerve massaging was going to get her right arm working again this side of a hospital. She was just staggering upright when a tremendous force struck her on her right shoulder, splintering the pauldron and gashing open the puncture wound beneath as she was hurled sidelong across the floor. Something snapped wetly in her right shoulder bones, not that it mattered much at this point.

Trusting to instinct, Lilia hit her back mounted jump jets, sending her skidding and bouncing across the rough stone floor in a cloud of grit, just a moment ahead of Eclipse as she came down from a pouncing leap with both feet where Lilia's pelvis and hips had just been, smashing a pair of inch deep divots in the stone. Even as she skidded along, lilia used TK to detach another pair of grenades from her harness, leaving them bouncing along in her wake, to detonate with a concussive roar and magnesium bright flash, and then a second one that sent up billowing purple smoke in a cloud between her and the cyborg. There was a third detonation in the distance, oddly muted, which seemed to make the whole cavern vibrate as it resonated through her, but Lilia had neither the time nor opportunity to see what that was as she rose to a guard position once more. Barely even distracted by the flash-bang and smoke grenade, Eclipse came stalking out of the smoke, metallic toe talons clicking coldly on the stone, before blurring forward in a straight on charge.

Lilia hacked at the cyborg with her own katana, only to have the blade slapped away just as she'd tried to do earlier, but with a lot more success, as the hilt was torn from her grip despite her best efforts and the follow up punch to her abdomen lifted her off her feet and sent even more cracks running across her much abused armor. At this rate, it wouldn't provide functional protection much longer. And even robbing most of the force from the blow, Lilia still coughed up a gobbet of bloody phlegm as she came back down on unsteady feet almost a meter back from where she'd been. She wasn't down yet though, and her hand flicked to her thigh and came up with a long combat knife from a concealed sheath therein. The Vamp came for her head on again, plainly confident that Lilia was on her last legs. Seed enhanced reflexes allowed her to duck the first punch, and even ram the blade of her knife to the hilt into the Vamp's stomach, but she must not have anything particularly vital there, because Eclipse ignored the hit entirely and backhanded Lilia across the cheek in turn.

Lilia wasn't even conscious of hitting the ground until after the back of her skull had rebounded from the stone, the front of her battle helmet smashed to pieces and the rest of it knocked clean off her head by the blow. Her head was ringing like a churchbell, and her vision was almost blocked by black and purple spots. Oddly, the thought that she was probably about to die held little terror for Lilia right then, despite all the things and people she had to live for. The pain and ache and agony of her many wounds just reminded her of just how very alive she was right then. Blinking the concussion distortion fom her vision, Lilia threw up a hand as the Vamp pounced on her again, this time holding a long dagger with a wavy edged blade, which she plunged down aimed right between Lilia's eyes. Instead of punching though her orbital bone into her brain though, the kriss instead slammed into and through her upraised palm with enough force to break her remaining functional wrist!

Smoke began to rise from where the Borealite of her gauntlet was punctured by the knife almost at once, and a spreading burning sensation began to consume Lilia's palm from the inside. The blade of the kriss had a pearly white sheen to it, and she realized the entire thing was coated with MAIDEN nanites, even as some dripped from the tip of the dagger to burn a lesion on the side of her nose, just missing her left eye. The other Vamp she'd fought had had MAIDEN laced spittle, so she should have expected these ones to use the anti-Edenite nanites as well! Bones grinding in her broken wrist, Lilia clenched her impaled hand into a fist and lashed out with the last of her telekinetic strength, striking the blade along its weakest angle, right where the tang met the hilt, and snapped the dagger's blade. Most of the kriss was still embeded through her palm, but Lilia just used that to drive the blade into the Vamp's side with a backfisted punch.

Eclipse looked down in annoyance at her own dagger sticking out of her side, with the praetorian's fist all but nailed to her. This one just didn't know when to die. Reaching down, Eclipse grabbed Lilia around the throat... carefully, so as not to crush the windpipe or spine... and lifted the obstinate Edenite up, holding her just off the ground. "I don't understand what he sees in you." The Vamp spoke for the first time, her voice an electronic simulation of the one she used to have, before the Revamping surgeries. "There's nothing special about you. You're just another filthy meatbag eddie witch. I could kill a dozen like you without working up a sweat. You're so weak you make me sick that I have to waste time murdering you..."

"Too late for that." Frost growled savagely, as he stepped out of the shadows behind Eclipse, his features ruined almost beyond recognition, his clothing ripped to tatters and the skin beneath not much better, his entire body cocooned in criss crossing layers of leathery nanite scabs. The Cossack's fist was still clenched around his left ankle, the cybrog's arm severed with surgical cleaness about three inches up the limb. His eyes glowed like the fires of hell themselves, washed out metallic violet pupils just barely visible within. That hadn't been a third grenade detonation Lilia had felt earlier. It had been Zach activating his Seed. "No one murders the Mouse except me!" Frost explained, as he lashed out with his hand... the one with the flesh abraded away fro his fignertip bones to leave them as improvised QC claws.

Eclipse was still stunned, her internal processors trying to figure out how the primary target could have moved across the entire width of the cavern so quickly that she hadn't been able to track him, so she failed to react in time to avoid having her cranium snared within the Executor's outstretched fingers like a man palming a basketball. A nanosecond later and the sound of shattering metal and glass filled the cavern, as Frost rammed the Vamp's head into the cavern wall with all his considerable strength. Not done there, he then ground the offending Vamp's head against the wall for a full meter, abrading away over half of her skull and all its contents in the process, before allowing the cyborg to drop to the floor like a collection of junk. Lilia fell along with the vamp, as Eclipse's fingers had not loosened their grip on her throat, but a second later and Zach had pried the hand loose and tossed it aside like a piece of scrap.

"The pain is life, Mouse. Treasure it. Hold it close. Bathe in it." Zach advised sibilantly, as he looked down at her consideringly. She was beaten to hell and back, that was for sure, but he was proud of her nonetheless. She hadn't given up even once, despite being outclassed by her opponents. It was resignation that killed most strong people, when they came up against someone that was inevitably stronger than them, they tended to give in to self doubt and self pity. But a weak person with the will to live... they could survive just about anything. He also was happy to feel a certain boiling unhappiness brooding within him, as he took stock of the Mouse's hurts and injuries. Snarling, he kicked the inert remains of the female cyborg, punting them into the nearest crevasse, with a sound like a dumpster full of glass falling off a ten story building.

Howing like a runaway train, the huge Vamp came barreling across the cavern floor towards the two of them, vibro-saber raised in homicidal fury, other arm ending in nothing but a shiny metallic stump, where the limb had been cut through by the quantum nanite when Frost had portaled across the room to intervene on the Mouse's behalf. "I'm not interested in you anymore." Frost informed the enraged berserker, looking down at the mostly helpless but still perservering Mouse. Her bloodied lips and battered and broken body did a lot to prompt a stirring in him... she just looked so good while she was all but writhing in agony. The good sort of agony, the kind that came from surviving a battle against tough odds. She was even slowly attempting to rise to her knees, eyes squinted in concentration and teeth grinding like millstones, loud enough to be heard, while sticky blood oozed from the rents in her armor. It was beautiful.

Too beautiful to be interrupted certainly, so Frost turned to the Cossack just as the huge bastard brought his sword down aimed at his skull. He reached up almost casually and stopped the blade cold, gripping it so hard the blade broke into a dozen shards which went whining off into the dark like white hot shrapnel. Everyone's Seed was different. Some were balanced, like the Mouse's, affecting mind and body equally. Some were more like Yamato's enhacing his mind and reflexes alone. Or the late Pink, with her Newtype powers alone being enhanced. In Frost's case, there was little to enhance about his mind or reflexes, and his newtype powers were hardly developed at all. No, all the boost from his Seed went straight into his physical strength, speed and power. Even the nanites that filled his body were driven into overdrive by the change, wounds that would have taken him hours to heal normally were already beginning to close over, open wounds becoming scabs, scabs becoming meat and scarred skin, scars fading into imperceptibility. Even his cloven heart started to beat once more, slowly and erratically, after knitting itself back together.

The Cossack drew back its stump of a sword in a manner that might almost have been surprise or alarm, if such emotions could have existed within the berserk cauldron of his mind. Instead, he merely drove the jagged stump down like a speartip at the Executor. Frost sidestepped the attack with brutal indifference, before reaching up with both hands and grabbing the extended arm by the nearest of several elbows. A quick twist and a grunt of effort saw the forearm torn off its mounting like a man plucking the leg off a chicken carcass. Rolling his captured arm around his wrists like a drum major twirling a baton, Frost brought the blade stump around and rammed it up and through the jawline of the Cossack, and into the inside of his skull cavity. Undeterred, the Master Vamp kicked out with a clawed foot, only to have the shin caught once more by the simply far faster Seed Boosted Frost.

Yanking hard on the leg in his grip, Frost pulled the Vamp off balance, lifting him up and then whipcracking him back down, just as the Cossack had done to him earlier, pancaking him into the cavern floor with a thunderous BOOM! "I'm getting very bored of this foolishness. You were diverting for a while, but you must know you can't beat me. You are not my How, and you never will be. It takes a man to beat a monster, and you are no man. You're not even a monster... you're just a broken THING!" Frost chided the cyborg as he grabbed him by thigh and shoulder, and lifted the hulking thing above his head. A moment's pause to let the enemy savor his last moment and then Frost brought the bastard down, right onto his upraised knee. Flesh shredded off his crystalline bone, but the bone itself perservered, and shattered the Cossack's reinforced spine like it was made of spun sugar, powering up and up through its innards as Frost continued to press down with both hands, until he'd literally snapped the Vamp in half over his knee! Frost discarded the two sparking and twitching halves to either side contemptuously.

He turned back to the Mouse, who had managed to rise to her knees, and broke out in a wide grin. He liked her on her knees in front of him. It soothed an ego that was ever easily bruised, even when she did it out of simple neccesity rather than subservience. It was too bad they were far from the Citadel, and he still didn't trust himself to portal her as well as him, especially in her damaged state. He would have to choke back his rising lust until she'd had a chance to recover some strength. He reached out a tattered hand, to stroke her bloodied hair, and his contented smirk grew wider as he saw her looking up at him with wide eyes. So innocent, those eyes, despite everything he'd put her through. The euphoria of his Seed was already fading, and so it took him a moment to realize that the Mouse wasn't looking AT him, she was looking PAST him! Frost turned to look at what had caught her attention over him!

Gerad Larkyn, known as the Headhunter hitman, for his habit of only taking headshots during his hits before being "recruited" into the Revamped program, had not been idle during the battle raging below his hidden blind. After witnessing the prime target's unbelievable resilience, he had realized that the round he had loaded in his .75 caliber laser guided anti-material rifle, a mono-tipped bullet filled with atomic wire shrapnel, would be of little use against someone with a skeleton reinforced with QC. The bullet was designed to penetrate the body or skull cavity and then detonate, all but vaporizing all the matter within half a meter. But that would be of little practical use if it detonated outside the target's body, especially this particular target!

So he'd had to switch rounds, something he'd never done in the field before, to a blunt tipped plasma charge round, something like a very small grenade more than anything. He couldn't get through the skull physically, but if he raised the temperature around the skull high enough, he could still flash fry the matter within, and get the killshot he desired. However, before he could fire the round, the Headhunter's OCD and sense of pride required that he etch the name of the target into the side of the bullet, which took concentration and time. The fact that Eclipse and Cossack had been defeated while he was engrossed in the engraving process didn't bother the Headhunter much... he'd never liked them anyway. And now he didn't have to share the credit for the kill either.

The target was beginning to turn towards his position, but it was too late. The Headhunter had already loaded the round, pulled the slide and engaged the action, and then pulled the trigger. By the time Frost had begun to turn, the supersonic round was already three fourths of the way to him, and moving fast enough to be a blur even to his eyes. Perhaps, had he still been fully in the Seed mode, he could have dodged it, or portaled away, but he had begun to relax after defeating the two Master Vamps, and the Mouse's state of vulnerability had distracted him further. For him, there was no option for escape. He'd been caught, dead to rights, for perhaps the first time since his first demise.

But Frost wasn't alone either, as also for the first time since his first demise, he had an ally willing to do anything to protect him. Lilia had seen the sniper move and take aim, and was already reacting when the shot was fired. No words could warn Zach fast enough, not even a burst of emotion through their nascent bond could have accomplished anything in time. The only thing she could do was reach out, with every scrap of her love, her fear and her pain. Her invisible telekinetic grip snagged the plasma bullet less than a foot from Zach's head, and it took her six more inches to bring it to a proper halt. Agony lanced her skull like an ice picked shoved through from ear to ear, and blood vessels popped in her right eye, staining the schelera as red as Zach's biolume eyes, as bloody tear tracks began to dribble down her cheek from that eye. Her balance, so recently regained, deserted her, and she collapsed forward onto her face in a semiconscious daze, breaking her nose on impact with the ground.

Frost howled beastially, spittle flying from his open jaw, as he reached up and grabbed the bullet out of the air just as the Mouse's TK grip faded, along with the rest of her consciousness. He felt it start to vibrate in his grip, so he spun towards the wall and drove his fist into the stone up to the wrist. There was a flash of heat and ruby light, and the stone around his fist turned a ruddy orange color and sloughed around his wrist, turning into taffy like strings of lava as he ripped his charred and blackened fist, denuded down to the very bones by the contained plasma blast, out of the safe pocket he'd created. And he'd just barely regenerated that hand too! How annoying!

He looked from the prone figure of the Mouse, blood pooling around her downturned face as it trickled from her ears and nose and eyes... she'd ruptured something in there while protecting him. PROTECTING HIM! HIM, Zacharis Frost! Being protected! He wasn't sure whether to be appalled, furious or madly in love. She'd hurt herself for his sake. Without question. Without hesitation. Without even thinking about the consequences. And that was IT, of course. The key. The secret he'd been looking for. It seemed so obvious, but perhaps it was just the kind of lesson that could only be learned by having it happen right next to you first. He smiled down at his lover as she lay bleeding and hurt and unconscious and helpless on the ground. A beautiful person, the Mouse. His Mouse. HIS MOUSE. And she was hurt. Someone had damaged her. Someone other than him. Someone other than him had dared lay hands on this beautiful person, his Mouse, and had damaged her. Someone else had dared try to take her away from him!

"Hehehehehehe..." Frost began to chuckle. Softly at first, but it grew darker and sharper as it went on, and on. No one was allowed to take the Mouse from him. They were connected. She was his. His alone. She was his in a way that no one and nothing else had been, or would be. She was his because she CHOSE to be his. Because she WANTED to be his. And they had tried to take her away from him. It was maddening, such a thought. Offensive. Bothersome. Perhaps even a little upsetting. It was not to be borne. "Little sniper man..." Frost intoned with bladed words. "Shoot at the Mouse. One more time. Put her in danger. Threaten to end her life..." Frost lifted a palm and stared at it, as motes of inky blackness began to accumulate within it. Within the chaotic pandemonium of his thoughts, an icy void began to propogate, darker than dark, a shadow of a shadow, through which a spot of absolute black, visible only through the faintest shimmery of golden veining across its surface, began a slow fall through the murk.

"Go on. Do it! Shoot at her! Shoot. Now! Hurry. I'm so close... I just need a little more push. Try to hurt her. Try to kill her! Try to blow her pretty little head off! Hurry! HURRY UP AND SHOOT HER! UNLEASH ME! DARE TO HURT THE MOUSE AND LET ME LOOSE! DO IT!" Frost cajoled the last remaining Vamp. And then he saw it. The tiniest shift in the sniper's posture. Little more than a flinch, but it still put the barrel of the rifle out of alignment with Frost, and edged towards the Mouse. It was enough. It was more than enough. He clenched his fist, mentally and physically, snatching the Seed out of the void, before it could detonate. It thrummed against him, wanting to explode, needing to release itself. But he denied it the easy route, confined it, controlled it! As he had once been confined, as he had once been controlled, as he had once been turned to the purposes of others, so too did he confine, control and turn to his purpose the energy of his Seed.

He was just about to thrust his Seed down into the dark soil that had apepared at his feet in his mind's eye, when the paradigm changed. The Headhunter, having exhausted his bullet, had realized that without his two compatriots around to distract the Executor long enough for him to reload, he was as good as defeated. None of his other armaments had a chance of stopping the Executor, especially not in his current, amped up state. He was not as fast or agile as Eclipse was, there was no way for him to hide or outrun his former prey. He was not as tough or as strong as the Cossack, he could not go toe to toe with the Executor either. However, his imperative was still the death of the target. So he only had one choice... he took the last resort available to every Revamped, and willingly detonated the area denial plasma charge built into his core systems.

The Headhunter blew up with almost the same amount of force as a 120mm cannon shell, a blast of sound and light and fire and concussion that ripped open the ceiling of the cavern and dislodged the small forest of stalactites that were arranged thereon! Almost a thousand tons of granite and marble came cascading down in blocks and chunks as big as a main battle tank as the cavern started to collapse. Jolted from his concentration, Frost screamed in outrage as his Seed slipped from his mental fingers, just shy of the soil in which he was to plant it, and thus bobbled the Ascended Seed activation. He'd let thoughts of his own survival intrude when the ceiling started to come down. Even a fraction of hesitation was too much to allow in such a delicate process, especially the first time he'd gotten so close.

He dived for the Mouse, tenting himself over her, locking his unbreakable bones into place as chunks of rock and cave formations piledrived down atop him. Even the smaller pieces were enough to almost pound him flat, and Frost quickly realized that he could not protect the Mouse from the cave in by such methods. He himself would survive... he could not be crushed nor suffocated under the rubble, but nothing even notionally human had the strength to hold up the tons of stone that were currently falling towards him, not high enough to avoid crushing someone else beneath him. He would be fine... as fine as he ever was anyway, but his own unbreakable skeleton would crush the Mouse as surely as the stones themselves would. There was no choice... he would have to risk it... he'd never portaled someone ELSE with Mr. Abyss before, but it had to be possible. He could not accept the thought that it wasn't. Mr. Abyss was his partner... it would understand his need here.

And then, as if answering his wish, the Mouse was blanketed in darkness more total than the cave itself could manage, and then she was gone. Taken instantly elsewhere by the quantum nanite, to the closest open space on the surface big enough to hold her. He hadn't had time to be more specific than that. And then the rocks came tumbling down atop him, and buried him in darkness and crushing weight. Frost could not breathe with such weight upon him, so there was no way to laugh. But he was definitely smiling...


	78. Serenade of the Sinful

Author Note: Sorry this took so long. Evil RP forum, it just sucks away the time sometimes. Oftentimes. Hope you enjoy the events, especially you Revan, since you specifically asked for them. Archangel, if you're still reading this, I'll have that grave scene you asked for next chapter. So look forward to it.

Oh yes, for those of you who may be confused, Kindred Cant is merely Latvian from Google translate, with both the order of letters and order of words reversed, and all the little special accents taken off. I'll usually try to make it kind of obvious what is being said by the context of the situation, but if you care to take the time to parse out a translation of your own, you may find some amusing or interesting comments now and again.

xxxx

**New Eden, Himalayan Foothills, old Nepal territory, May 1st, early afternoon**

It felt good, getting back in the field, Ryan mused to himself. Good to get away from the politics back home, the false smiles and the propoganda events that he'd been invited to constantly, as a celebrity war hero... at least of the momentary variety. His slog out of the deep green along with the other survivors of that recon expedition was getting to be pretty old news nowadays, especially with the big fracas at Heaven's Base eating up the public's attention. Not every day that the Eddies made a balls out effort to destroy a base, and were kicked out on their butts, after all. Of course, it wasn't nearly so clean cut as that. He'd gotten the skinny on the real battle from Rachel, after a unexpectedly emotional email asking if she was all right. She was fine, and her unit mostly intact as well, but it had still sounded like absolute hell, a near run thing rather than the sound thrashing the official news made it out to be.

But what else was new? After all, one of the Eddie Executors... Kira Yamato himself... had been leading the surprise attack. Ryan hardly knew anything about Mobile Suit combat, but he still knew the name Kira Yamato. Who didn't? And everything he'd ever heard about Kira Yamato, even before he'd become an Executor, had suggested that fighting on the opposite side of a battle from him was a quick and easy way to get your ass royally stomped into a bloody pancake! It made him glad he'd never been tempted to take the glory boy route of Mobile Suit training. The Eddies were bad enough on foot, but at least their super elites were generally so tied up in the biggest battles that they didn't have time to muck around in the infantry war. Generally so, anyway. A icy shiver ran down Ryan's spine, despite his environmentally controlled armor. He'd met the other Executor face to face in an infantry setting after all. And he still carried the emotional scars of that encounter. He probably always would.

That was probably why his thoughts had lingered on Rachel... Gunnery Sergeant Glass... he tried to remind himself sternly. Commander of a Titan class super-heavy Tank, serving in the European theatre, out of Heaven's base. One of the greatest tank aces currently serving the USN. Someone who went into combat inside the most powerful non-warship ground vehicle in the USN's vast arsenal. Who was more than capable of taking care of herself in almost any conceivable situation. Who was also his girlfriend. Or his lover. Or something more complicated than either of those things, somehow. He liked her. He more than liked her, even though they'd barely had a few weeks together up in the SECs while on shore leave rotation. And she seemed pretty fond of him too. And that was a problem. Because he couldn't stop thinking about her. Couldn't stop worrying about whether she was in trouble or not, even though there wasn't a damn thing he could do to help her, most likely, even if they were serving together. He had it bad... and for a tin-can jockey, of all people...

"Gunny?" A voice across his tactical comm snapped him out of his half miserable, half rosy contemplations of how badly he'd falled for a girl who would probably sock him in the jaw if she ever learned he was zoned out while worrying about her on active duty. It brought him back to the here and now. He was in the troop compartment of one of the new Hunter class Gunship-Transports, along with Dud and Spyro and two FUNs... FUcking Noobs... fresh outta Boot Camp. The other 5 guys in the new Forlorn Hopers squad, a mix of mostly veterans from other squads that had been decimated by combat casualties below the point of viability, rode in a second Hunter Gunship off to their right rear flank. Another six Hunters, with 3 more full strength squads from his new Company, Kappa Company of the 502nd Mechanized Infantry Assault Regiment, completed the rapid response flight.

A pair of Goliath heavy transports were trailing them several klicks back, the massive dropships each capable of carrying three platoons of infantry or a single platoon of armored vehicles, under escort by another six Hunters. The two types of VTOL transports were becoming very popular, especially in the Asian theatre, which was choked with jungles that were impassable to even the hardiest ground vehicles in many spots. Both were built along similar lines, a boxy fuselage ending in a blunt nose, like the tip of a shoe, with the two main thruster/VTOL engines mounted just aft of the cockpit, with a second pair mounted at the base of the tail boom, and a swivel mounted thruster-rotor at the end of the tail. Hunter's were about 10 meters long by 4 wide and tall, and had enough room for 4 crew and a half squad of Vanguard armored infantry, in addition to substantial armaments. The Goliaths were about five times the size of a Hunter, and much slower and less well armed.

They weren't the fastest things in the air by any means, especially compared to the new Eddie Aerospace Superiority Mobile Armors, the Freyrs, but they were durable and agile, able to land in even the roughest terrain and provide accurate fire support against most types of Eddie ground vehicles and support emplacements. The ones in Ryan's Fast Response Team were equipped with dual rocket pods mounted on the forward thrust-wings, a chin mounted gatling beam cannon, and a pair of side door mounted dual 15mm Flamberge mounts with huge drum magazines for long term fire support and suppression tactics when deploying infantry. The half squad of infantry could even contribute their own firepower, as long as they were careful about shooting over or around the door gunners.

"This is Rico. What can I do for you, sir?" Ryan replied, shrugging his shoulders to settle himself, a nearly tectonic action in the new Vanguard powered armor. Lieutenant Johann "Crackers" Knackers was a guy Ryan had plenty of time for. Though not as experienced as Ryan himself, the Lieutenant was definitely keyed in to the needs of his troopers, and had privately given Ryan permission to keep both Spyro and Dud in his squad, despite orders from Regimental Command to split up the veterans among as many squads as possible, to dilute their experience amongst the many FUNs that made up the majority of the rebuilt Regiment. That made good strategic sense, but tactically speaking, splitting up the well greased killing machine that the three of them were together would only heighten the chances that they wouldn't survive the hairy combat to come. Nothing personal, but fuck the FUNs... maybe once they survived a battle on their own, then they'd be worth getting to know and mentor for the future.

"Recon 8 has disappeared from the monitors. No distress calls given, but we're vectoring to check it out regardless. Snap to, Gunny, we may find ourselves in the shit here soon." Knackers answered tersely.

"Roger that, LT." Ryan replied, his mouth suddenly feeling a bit dry, and his bowels a bit loose. Being a veteran meant you weren't supposed to feel intimidated by the thought of going into battle, but so far, Ryan hadn't felt any particular lessening in his pre battle apprehension, despite his experience. If anything, the repeated encounters with the Eddies and other weird shit had just shown him how fucked up things were likely to get, and any sane man would be shaking in his powered armored boots! Perhaps it was just this theatre... and not even this theatre, this operation area. This was the Himalayan Foothills, and High Command was pretty damned sure the Eddies had at least a major base somewhere up in the mountains, if not a whole fucking city. THE fucking city, if the rumors were right. The one that would end the war if they could take it.

So they'd been funneling in Recon teams and scouting expeditions to search the area for quite some time. Ryan had made himself briefly famous during one such expedition's tragic loss. And that FUBAR Mission was far from out of the ordinary. Fully 78% of all recon teams sent to explore the foothills never returned. Most never even reported contact with enemy forces... they just fucking disappeared into the deep green, and were never heard from again. Those who did come back were invariably the ones who were working zones already confirmed to be clear of enemy forces, checking for infiltrators, near the base of the foothills, where they merged into the jungle plains that led out to the ocean a few hundred miles away. But being deployed to scout out anything more than about 1000 meters above sea level was considered to be a death sentence in the Himalayan Operation zone.

The Fast Response Teams, like the one Ryan was in right now, were High Command's response to this demoralizing state of affairs. Loitering a few klicks back of the leading edge of the contested zone in their VTOL formations, the FRTs were linked to specific recon groups by constant comms and vital sign monitors. If the recon team got into trouble, the FRT was to charge forward and come to their rescue. Unfortunately, the Eddies generally killed the Recon teams before the calvary could come riding over the hill. Not only that, but they often killed the recon team, and dragged their bodies away, and fucking VANISHED as well! Even with less than 120 seconds of lag time between distress call and FRT arrival. Usually all they found was a bunch of bloodstains and a few jacked up pieces of weapons and armor. Which was pretty demoralizing as well.

Especially to Rico, Spyro and Dud. They all knew who was out there, cockblocking the recon efforts of several entire CADs. It was the insano-monster freak of an Executor and his private goon squad of cannibal pygmies and psychotic apes and zealot guerillas. And that chainsaw-flamer asshole. And the Blue Haired Praetorian. It was absolutely no surprise to any of them that most of the Recon teams never even got off a single cry for help, or anything beyond a few hoarse screams as they were butchered like sheep in a pen. The last thing any of them wanted to do was encounter that bunch of maniacs and psychopaths again, since it was very unlikely they would escape with their lives twice. But duty called, and there was no way to avoid it... they'd all practically begged to be returned to the front line after their tour as demonstration soldiers up in the SECs. Karma was a real bitch though, getting them redeployed to this fucking hell-hole of a Zone...

"All right, listen up." Ryan said across the all squads channel. As a Gunnery Sergeant, he was the senior NCO for the entire Platoon in this FRT. His voice was dry and tight, and left absolutely zero room for doubt about how serious he was. "We're about to drop into the deep green. Recon 8 has fucking vanished. Officially MIA, but we all know they're fucking wormfood, so let's not sugar coat this. We're going into a hot LZ against an unknown number of extreme capable of enemies. Trust nothing but the buddy next to you. Watch the trees, the bushes, behind you and in front of you. If it ain't wearing blue, shoot first, throw a grenade second, and call in an airstrike third. Then ask questions if need be. Or more appropriately, if those 3 things didn't work, get down on your knees and pray, cause you'll be in the afterlife real soon. Keep it tight, boys and girls. Whatever took out Recon 8 is probably still in the area."

"We are so fucked." Spyro commented over a private channel between the 3 of them. "That scythe toting lunatic is down there and we're just gonna go merrily tromping into a fresh ambush zone? This is a job for Mobile Suits, not soldiers! Or preferably tactical nukes!"

"Makes me wish I'd chosen a safer career path." Dud agreed in a deadpan tone. "Like taste testing vials of radioactive nuclear waste."

"What I just said to everyboy goes triple for you guys." Ryan replied grimly. "Spyro, I want you to burn the entire fucking forest down if a leaf even twitches the wrong way. And if you chuck a grenade or three into every suspicious shadow, Dud, I won't be bitching at all. And remember to keep eyes up on the fucking trees. Those black eyed pygmies just LOVE dropping down from above. I ain't ending my day as a extra rare stake at some Cannibal's victory party!"

And then there was no more time for pep talks or grim joking, as the Hunter formation reached the general grid location where Recon 8 had disappeared. Like almost all of the operation zone, it was hilly terrain carpeted with dense Edenite jungle, the foliage thick enough to deflect even most squad level weapon fire over more than ten or twenty meters. You could spend an hour emptying ordnance at a section of the treetops and barely clear enough away to see to the forest floor, or the sky, depending on which side of it you were on. The Deep Green, as it was called with grim forboding by most veterans, was even worse than the ocean in terms of hiding what went on below its surface. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your personal level of courage and sense of duty, there were many ridgelines and rock outcroppings in the area as well, the distant relatives of the massive line of peaks that dominated the horizon to landward.

These upthrusts of granite and limestone blocks formed breaks in the treeline, like deep pits in green turf, and gave the Hunters a place to deploy them so they could investigate the area on foot. Which was practically horror movie logic in the eyes of most veterans. In the Deep Green, the Eddies owned the land, and wandering around looking for trouble, even in Vanguard power armor, was a good way to shorten your life expectancy. However, it was also your duty, and duty could not be reasoned with, by logic or otherwise. Procedure dictated using Sky-Hooks, macro-cables that could lock to the back of your Vanguard suit to lower you to the ground at a safe rate, for deployment into zones like this, but that was horror movie logic too. Nobody worth their salt wanted to be dangling like a big blue fruit from a cable while being lowered into a potentially hot LZ!

In Ryan's opinion and those of most veterans, what was the point of Power Armor if you didn't make use of the Power as well as the Armor? Their Hunter swooped into a clearing made by a wavecrest-like ridge of granite, gently sloped with broken ground and boulders on one side, and sheer like a cliff for over thirty meters on the other side. VTOL engines howling and raising up a small cloud of dust and debris, the Hunter settled into a more or less steady platform about 5 meters from the ground. Ryan stepped out the side door and plummeted towards an area of what he hoped was flat ground, Combat Shield raised and Pulverizer auto shotgun already sweeping for targets. The impact was heavy, metal crunching against crumbling and powdering stone, but the Vanguard armor handled the drop like it was little more than stepping off a high curb.

Hydraulics and shock absorbers hissing, Ryan displaced and found cover behind a nearby boulder, as Dud and Spyro crunched down behind him, followed by the other troops in their Hunter, befoe the Gunship pulled up and away to provide perimeter cover so the other could swoop in to disgorge its own troops. Crouching down behind his boulder, Ryan kept his eyes and sensors sweeping the treeline, since the Hunters weren't exactly stealth baffled, if the enemy was in the area, they'd have heard them coming. Whether they would stick around for dessert after the banquet of Recon 8 was another story. And Ryan so dearly wished he hadn't meant those terms literally, but this wasn't his first time coming to back up a recon team. And coming too late.

After Lt. Crackers and the others had all gotten down safely, with only a few FUNs managing to trip and fall on landing, and nothing came howling out of the woods to massacre them, Ryan made his way over to the Lt for consult on what they should do next. Once again, doctrine called for them to split up into squads to canvas the area in the most efficient manner possible, but in the Deep Green, splitting your unit for less than dire necessity was just like offering yourself on a plate for the Eddies if they were in the area. "So how do we play this, Lt?" Ryan asked bluntly, falling into the devil's advocate role expected of most senior NCOs when working with junior level officers, however likable. It was odd how he found himself adopting the attitude he'd always wondered at when a line trooper. "Recon 8 is deader than doornails by now. Do we still pretend like this is a rescue mission?"

"Lets not upset the FUNs until we have no other choice, Rico. Until we know for sure, we act like we're here to be the white knights coming over the hill. Though that doesn't mean we throw caution away either." Snacker replied thoughtfully. "The general pattern of the enemy in this area is to strike and fade. But from what you've told me about them from your prior experience, trusting them to hold to a pattern would be stupid. You and your Squad on point. If you can think of a way for the FUN's to get some experience on point, do it. But survival is always our highest priority, so don't be afraid to sideline them if you get that nasty feeling down your spine."

"Sir, I've had that nasty feeling down my spine since we took off from the FOB. This is the Deep Green. Everything is an enemy here." Ryan replied darkly.

"True words, but they don't change what has to be done, do they?"

"No sir, they don't. Alright, let's get this done." Ryan acknowledged with a grimace. In a matter of seconds he had his squad moving out, with 3 meter seperation between each of them, on all axes, left-right and front-back. The Eddies were famous for their ambushes, and he'd prefer to have as few of his squad caught in the killzone as possible. He considered putting FUN 1 on point to give him some seasoning, but in the end he had Spyro do it instead. If they found Recon 8 and no bad guys showed up, he'd put the FUN's on point on their way to the evac point, because hopefully then the danger would be lessened to merely "extreme".

Entering the jungle was stepping into another planet. Pictures, even 3D simulations, never seemed able to do it justice. Light levels dropped precipitously, until even at midday the jungle floor was like dusk, and in some spots, black as a cave. Creepers and vines and foliage and bushes of all sorts blocked your path and hung down from above like cobwebs in a dusty old attic. Except these cobwebs might be full of acid, or studded with mono-sharp thorns coated in 2 step poison, so named because of how long it took to kill you. And that wasn't even counting the plants that tried to wrap round your arm or throat like a python and crush you to death. Or the ones that might shriek like a dying child, and reveal your position to every predator in a five klick radius. Or the ones that slowly mindfucked you, made you feel sleepy or relaxed or itchy, and made you wanna get out of your suit... just for a little bit.

The ground was mushy underfoot, and soggy branches snapped and clung like dying fingers with every step, his armored greaves sinking almost ankle deep into the loam with each stride. Moving silently was impossible, and the royal blue paintjob applied to most Vanguard suits made stealth all but impossible anyway, so Ryan concentrated more on not putting his foot into a sinkhole, and keeping sight of his squadmates, rather than evading notice. He was no expert on the jungle noises, despite several excursions into the Deep Green, he still had no idea what 90 percent of the creatures making noises were, and figured he was probably happier that way. Not all the Fauna of New Eden was monstrous and homicidal, but enough of it WAS that it generally wasn't worth your time to do anything but shoot first.

Despite the tension making the seconds feel like hours, in a relatively short span of minutes, Spyro exclaimed in disgust over the comm, holding up one hand to indicate a stop to investigate, and Ryan was pleased to see the FUNs, as well as the rest of the squad, quickly hunkered down into defensive positions to watch all angle, even above and behind. Clearly the FUNs had picked up on the veteran's taut mood, and figured that if even the Gunny and the old boys were on tiptoe, then they ought to be doubly so. It was a good attitude. It might even keep some of them alive, if the Eddies were still around. Ryan moved up to stand beside Spyro, surveying what his buddy had seen and making a similarly disgusted grunt in response. They'd found Recon 8. What was left of it.

The Recon team hadn't even had a chance. Most of them had died without even getting off a shot. Most had died within a few seconds of combat starting, probably before they even got a good look at their attackers. Most had died instantly, with fang-tipped arrows through their helmets or hearts, or crushed to tinfoil and paste under the blow of a Were-Ape powered PS mace, or with plasma blast holes in their chestplates. Most died quickly. But not all. A few had been ripped limb from limb, or had their heart's torn from their chests by a human sized hand. One had been flung through the air by a backhand fist who's imprint was molded into the abdominals of the Survivor armor, striking a low hanging branch about four meters up and being impaled there. At least one more had been hamstrung from behind and then carved upon like a pit roasted boar, ribs hacked through from the back as the chest cavity and abdomen were plundered of their contents in a gory mess. It was difficult to tell if it was just one, with how dismembered and... gnawed upon... the piles of armor and limbs were.

Ryan could hear several of the FUNs throwing up into their armor, a nasty process considering they would be sealed in that armor and vomit for at least another thirty six hours, but after a while you got used to it. You could get used to anything. Even horror like this. This wasn't a fight, it wasn't even a massacre. This was humans being hunted like beasts, for fun, for sport. For food. Spryo kept up a constant low stream of bitter cursing as he slowly went around and started pulling the corpses into a pile, looking for Ident tags to be taken back for the families. And because he wasn't about to leave the bodies for the animals. Cremation was all the dignity that they could offer the poor bastards now.

"Jesus H. Christ..." Lt. Snackers hissed as he picked through the pitiful battlesite alongside Ryan. "This isn't war, this is just murder! It evil, what this is! What sort of monsters..."

"The worst kind." Ryan cut his superior off grimly, picking up a fragment of armor that had been chewed up by what looked like a chainsaw. He knew who'd done that. "Human ones." Ryan tried not to look at the ones who'd been ripped apart or punched through. He knew who'd done that too. And the less he thought about him, the better.

"Bloody cowards, hitting and then running away..." One of the FUNs growled through a throat raw from vomiting.

"This is not the face of cowardice." Ryan corrected the man sternly. "Hate them for what they do, but don't belittle them for how they do it. They set a good ambush, Recon 8 walked right into the killzone, and that was all she wrote. These men and women were killed face to face, hand to hand... bare hand to hand in some cases. This is not cowardice. This is psycopathy. This is bloodlust."

"Gunny's right. This is awful shit, but it ain't like they planted a booby and blew them all up, then preyed on the survivors." Lt. Snackers pointed out gruffly. "These assholes ain't afraid of nothing, least of all us. They ain't strike and fading at all. They're prowling. Marking a territory. Hunting for the next warm meal. They left because they were done and wanted to find the next fight, not because they were scared of us. I mean, look at that guy up in the tree. Poor bastard. But he was PUNCHED up there. And not by no Were-Ape either. Man who can do that, barehanded, to a soldier in Survivor armor? That's a man I never wanna meet, cause he sure ain't scared of nothing human. Nothing human at all. All right ladies and gents, we've found Recon 8. Once we flame the bodies, we do one last sweep and then we head for evac."

It was during the last sweep, while the piled boies and bits of bodies were slowly congealing into a melted, ashy-lump under the caress of Spyro's Inferno Combi-weapons double flamers, when one of the FUNs called out. "EDDIES IN THE TREES!" The young woman shrieked across the comms, almost ear burstingly loud with her pitch, and everybody hit the dirt and scrambled for cover. Luckily, most Edddie trees were about as solid a firestop as one could ask for, able to take even a heavy plasma burst without burning through, as long as you were sure there was't anything lurking in the branches waiting to eat your face off. Power armor or not, a soldier's best friend and defense on any battleground was always a solid piece of good cover.

Ryan swept the foliage above their heads with his sensors, several other veterans, Lt. Snackers included, doing the same, but it seemed in this case the warning was meant in the general case, rather than the specific. "Eddies in the Trees" was shorthand for enemy contact, simply because in the Deep Green, the Eddies often WERE in the trees, at least to start out with. Especially the nimble little pygmy bastards and Were-Apes. After ten to fifteen seconds, when no bursts of plasma beams or flights of fang tipped arrows came sailing out of the gloomy jungle, Ryan edged out of his chosen tree stump cover and low crawled across the loam to the soldier who'd called the warning, intending to chew her out for the false alarm. Nerves were tight for everyone, but calling out enemy contact with no enemies to be had was a bad habit to get into.

However, upon reaching her position, Ryan found himself instead patting the young woman on the shoulder in admiration, both of her senses and her restraint. There was someone... and in the Deep Green, there was generally only us and them... slumped against a tree about five meters away from their outer perimeter. They hadn't been there a minute ago, when Ryan had swept this section of the perimeter himself. The person wasn't quite in view, being halfway around the bole of a tree, but their wooden armor was plain to see, as were the hints of intricate detail on their surfaces under his low-light high magnification lenses. Given how on edge they all were, he wouldn't have been surprised if the FUN had put a burst of Flamberge rounds through the Eddie, rather than just calling contact, but maybe this FUN had a head on her shoulders.

If the Eddie was a scout or a lookout, then firing at them would just alert the rest of the group that had to be waiting nearby. Though it boggled Ryan's mind that they could be this close to an Eddie troop without the natives knowing about them and being all over them like sweet on honey. After a tense few moments of study though, in which the Eddie didn't seem to stir at all, and Ryan began to think that something definitely wasn't right about this. "Sir, I've got a confirmed enemy outside the perimeter. Stationary. Inactive. May be hurt or incapacitated. Decorated armor, might be someone with some rank. Call the play?"

There was a long silence over the comm net, a good two or three seconds as Lt. Snackers obviously warred between his duty as an officer, which was to collect as much intel as possible on the enemy, and his instincts as a front line trooper, which told him to shoot first and worry about intel later. Of course, he was an officer, and that meant suborning your better instincts at times, in the name of orders. It didn't SEEM like a trap, but then again, the good ones never did until it was too late. "Play is recovery. But stay sharp." Snackers finally answered.

"Like a razor, sir." Ryan assured his Lt. "Dud, with me. Spyro, FUNs, overwatch. If anything even twitches towards us, shoot first, but don't shoot me in the back. I'll fucking haunt you if you friendly fire my ass." With that warning given, and a moment to gather his nerve and clench his bowels, Ryan stepped out of cover, Combat Shield to the fore, his whole body braced behind it in anticipation of drawing fire. Dud move out behind him, grenade launcher twitchy in his fists, loaded with smoke and lobo grenades to throw shock and awe into any planned eddie ambush team. The lobo anti-Newtype grenades were rare and expensive, and not normally issued, but there were some benefits to having had 15 minutes of fame, and Ryan had a few contacts in the supply corp, and could usually get his guys the stuff THEY needed, not just the stuff high command SAID they needed.

Nobody shot at him, no ululating Were-Apes dropped out of the boughs above, no shark-faced pygmies with eyes like black marbles popped out of the underbrush to hamstring and eviscerate him, and no screaming crystal scythes turned his marrow to water before completing the thin scar that traced the front of his neck. It was almost an anti-climax, and Ryan cursed the way his limbs almost trembled with relief inside his armor. Just cause the Eddies hadn't ambushed him yet, didn't mean they wouldn't soon. Or that something else nasty might just decide to try to have him for lunch anyway. In the Deep Green, everything was an enemy. Learning and accepting that truism was the first step to becoming a veteran in the Asian theatre.

After what felt like hours of slow step by step progress, shoulders hunched and legs braced at every second in anticipation of an attack that never came, Ryan reached the slumped over shape of the Eddie. "Oh fuck me..." Dud gasped from behind him, putting voice to what was screaming through Ryan's thoughts. He knew that armor. He'd seen it up close before, draped across his own back. he'd seen that blue hair before, though the face half covered by it was so badly beaten up it was almost impossible to recognize the female Praetorian who'd saved his life from the madman Executor. Her features were caked in blood and bruises, and she was plainly unconscious, perhaps even dying. Her armor was beaten to hell and back too, the Borealite plates cracked and splintered under impacts that Ryan didn't want to even contemplate.

"We need to get out of here, right NOW!" Dud grated, barely keeping his nerve as he swung his grenade launcher around jerkily, expecting a confrontation with the man from his nightmares at any second.

"Not without her." Ryan found himself saying.

"Fuck the intelligence, man, that's HIS fucking girlfriend! We take her, we're ALL FUCKED." Dud snapped back, panic making him testy.

"This ain't about the intelligence. This is about honoring a debt." Ryan snapped back, as he knelt down and began checking the limp Praetorian, first for signs of life, and after finding those, for signs that she could be safely moved. "She wouldn't be out here like this if HE was anywhere nearby and in condition to do something about it. And if we just leave her, the animals will get to her a couple minutes after we leave the area. This much blood on her, gotta have predators coming from miles around. She saved us, Dud. She saved as all, and she didn't have to either. We can't just ditch her and run, no matter what kind of trouble it brings. I ain't that kinda man, and neither are you. Now go find some stuff to make a stretcher. She needs real medical help, soon..."

xxxx

**New Eden, Himalayan Foothills, old Nepal territory, Memento Mori camp, May 1st, Late evening**

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'GONE'?" Frost bellowed, his enraged scream seeming to shake the very limbs of the trees above and around the biovac area until it sounded like the trees themselves were shaking in fear of his wrath. Before the diminuitive figure standing in front of him could elaborate on his unfortunate news, Frost swung a fist around and punched the Kindred in the side of the head. Bone crunched like eggshell under a bootheel, and blood and mashed brains gouted in the flickering light of the victory bonfire that had been dug in a pit in the center of the camp. All but decapitated, the Kindred's small body toppled sideways, spraying the assembled ranks of Mori standing a few feet away with dark red gore.

His body still clothed only in the merest tatters of his clothing, and his flesh lean and spare because of the vast energy expenditure regenerating from his Vamp caused wounds had caused, Frost paced back and forth like a starving ghoul, his eyes aglow with red light from the biolume cells drinking in the flickering light of the fire. None of the Mori would meet his hellish gaze, not even One Tusk or Espadon. Those Mori with the sense to recognize a dangerous situation, and the sanity to want to avoid it, including most of the Wendigo, had skulked into the treeline as soon as Frost had strode out of the gloom, after reviving in his crushing tomb of rock and portaling free a few minutes prior. Only the Kindred had stayed en mass, and not because most of them wanted to either. They were as terrified of Sevan Sveid's homicidal wrath as any, perhaps even moreso than most, for to them, his anger was an expression of divine fury, the displeasure of the GUM, the God Under the Mountain, made manifest!

Espandon hadn't become tribal chief just because he was tougher, meaner and stronger than most of his kin, but also because he was wilier and more cunning as well. He knew that Sevan Sveid... the God of Death... would not take well the news that Sevan Aveis... the Woman of Death... had gone missing, and might even potentially be dead or captured by the Oosen. So he had made sure it was not him who made this report, but one of the more junior Kindred from the ranks of the Hunters. A sensible precaution, in the scope of things, Espadon thought to himself, as he licked the arterial spray from his chin absentmindedly. Not that Sevan Sveid's bloodlust and maniac anger seemed to be particularly sated by the sacrifice, but then, placating the emissary of the GUM was not an exact science. Only Sevan Aveis could do it reliably, and she was unfortunately gone, and that was the root of the problem.

The tattooed man known as Revv, one of the other Praetorians that had joined the Mori, and the senior "human" now that Sevan Aveis was missing, opened his mouth to try and reason with the irate Executor and took a step forward, reverence obvious in every motion. Espadon approved of Revv, almost as much as he approved of Sevan Aveis. Few of the normal humans properly regarded Sevan Sveid with the awe he deserved, at least until it was too late, but Revv, like the Kindred, could obviously see that Sevan Sveid was far more than just a man, he was the hand of a God upon the world, shaping it according to the whims of a power beyond mortal ken. Espadon approved of Revv, but he didn't have much respect for the man's sense of timing or prudence. Trying to speak sense to Sevan Sveid was a dangerous proposition at the best of times, and right now it was...

Revv's body flew halfway across the camp, his heavy Borealite assault armor breastblate cracked clean in half around the crater-like imprint of Sevan Sveid's fist, as an ear battering, wordless shriek of fury silenced every predatory beast for miles around. The Praetorian hit the ground hard and bounced, tumbled, and finally rolled, limbs flopping bonelessly, and lay still. Espadon's keen senses could hear the man grunting for breath through at least two or three broken ribs, and the taste of blood on the air grew pleasantly stronger. The sizzle of meat and the smell of roasting pork from the victory bonfire, where the day's harvest of steaks and chops and legs, along with the lesser cuts of meat from four legged beasts were slow roasting, all but made Espadon's stomach growl with hunger. He met the eyes of Lance and several others, and inclined his head just ever so slightly towards the downed Praetorian. Espadon approved of Revv, but that just meant he would be proud to honor him with the process of ceremonial ingestion, should the Praetorian be terminally weakened by his error in judgement.

A moment later though, and Espadon had no more time for gastronomic considerations, as he found himself heaved dizzingly into the air, Sevan Sveid's fingers digging into the ropy muscle of his left shoulder, the thumb hooking under the shoulderblade and punching into the meat and muscle beneath. Espadon grinned through the pain, but let his fear show in his eyes, not wanting to taunt or dishonor the Sevan Sveid in what might be his last few moments as chief... or alive. "HOW IS SHE GONE?" Frost demanded, bringing Espadon face to face with him, the Kindred's legs swinging almost three feet off the ground, biting off each word with a ferocity that almost made Espadon want to check his nose to make sure it hadn't been gnawed off somewhere during the question. "The Mouse is MINE! She cannot be GONE! I put her somewhere safe! So where IS SHE?"

Espadon did not attempt to reply in any way. Sevan Sveid didn't want excuses or explanations, nor even answers, despite his questions. He wanted to vent, and any attempt at conversation would merely be seen as an attempt at resistance. And one did not resist Sevan Sveid's fury unless one wished to court death. It was like dealing with certain types of wild beast. When they were infuriated and attacked, if you played dead, they might chew on you a bit, but ultimately they would lose interest after a while and move on. But try to fight back, and they'd maul you long past the point of survival. Blood ran down the Kindred Chief's side, as Frost shook his unresisting form like a ragdoll, thumb punched into the Kindred's shoulder almost to the webbing. "What good are the LOT of you if you can't even keep the Mouse safe when I let her out of my sight?" Sevan Sveid growled, his voice lowering in volume but not threat.

Suddenly the ground and sky inverted, and Espadon realized he'd been tossed aside, as casually as he might flick a scrap of bone from the tip of a finger. His muscles tensed, and he could have flipped and caught himself, bled away the momentum of the landing or otherwise cushioned the impact. He forced himself to go limp instead. No resistance meant no resistance. If the GUM saw fit to claim his life with this fall, then so be it, as it had come at the hands of Sevan Sveid, it was a great an honorable death. The ground was hard, and he landed badly, on one outstretched arm, the forearm splintering and folding back towards the elbow, the backs of his fingers almost touching the joint. Innumerable scrapes and buises and contusions followed as he rolled and skidded through the underbrush before slamming into the trunk of a tree hard enough to leave even a Kindred breathless. The pain was intense, but also revitalizing. He was alive. Not many could suffer the grasp of an enraged Sevan Sveid and say the same.

"FIND HER! FIND THE MOUSE! If any of you come back without knowing where she is, I'll tear you limb from limb and drown you in your own spilled blood and viscera!" Frost roared at the assembled Mori, as he stalked to the victory bonfire and grabbed a roasting leg barehanded from the coals, tearing into the feminine thigh with brutal gnashes of his teeth as he wolfed down the half raw meat with no regard for flavor. He needed to replenish his reserves, or he'd be out looking for the Mouse right then and there. First Deathshriek, now the Mouse herself. He was too careless with the things precious to him! He would never admit it, but much of his anger and fury was directed at himself, not the Mori. He knew she was alive... he could feel it, in the same way he could feel Mr. Abyss thrumming through his veins or Charon in the base of his skull. But that was all he could feel. His anger imploded into sullen brooding as he tore and gnawed at the leg haunch, as the Mori crashed off into the bushes, many of them running full tilt in desperate need to fufill his command. And not just the human ones either.

They would find her. Or at least, they would find where she had been, and where she'd gone to. And then... Frost's mood grew darker. He realized he had no idea how to rescue someone. He'd never needed to in the past. Generally it was others trying to rescue people from him. His fist clenched around the shin of the leg he was eating, pulping flesh and pulverzing bone, dropping most of the ankle and foot into the dirt. It didn't seem like he had any choices left on this one. He'd have to consult with an expert on rescues. He'd have to talk to Yamato...

xxxx

**New Eden, Orb Airspace, en route to Nara-Attha City, May 3rd, afternoon**

"This isn't... this isn't how I wanted to thank you for saving my life and my friends lives." Ryan said slowly, as he sat across the cargo bay of the armored shuttle from the blue haired Praetorian. He was in full Vanguard armor, every plate polished and scrubbed and even repainted, even though the suit was almost brand new. Even the slice mark from where an Eddie mono-sword had notched his abdominal plating but failed to penetrate had been smoothed over and polished out. He was going to be meeting Brass, with a definite capital B, and so he'd been told to make himself spic and span as much as possible. It was bullshit, the usual political farce and propoganda, but it had been a requirement of being selected for close escort detail of the prisoner. And Ryan felt responsible for her, and wanted to give her at least one face that wasn't entirely hostile to look at. It was the least he could do, given what he owed her.

The Praetorian... her name was Lilia, he'd learned during the intelligence debrief flurries that had followed the monumental act of capturing a living Praetorian, one of the top ranked Edenite warriors... did not respond. She couldn't, actually. She was secured to the bench at the opposite side of the shuttle with enough chains and metal mesh weave straightjackets and buckles and mil-grade plastic straps to restrain a man in full Vanguard armor. A eyeshield visor covered her eyes, blocking her ability to see, while a psy-monitor had been sutured to the side of her head, above her left ear and a shock-collar array hooked up to it, which would jolt her into unconsciousness if she ever used her Newtype powers in any way. A large muffle raised from the collar of her straitjacket kept her from speaking aloud. She could barely even turn her head or twitch a fingertip, just about all she could freely do was listen.

It kind of disgusted him, to see her treated like that, especially since she was still recovering from the wounds she'd had when he'd first found her. Sure, she'd made an amazing recovery in only a few days, healing far faster than she had any biological right to do, but he still felt the full body restraints and sensory deprivation was a bit inhumane. With the psy-monitor and shock collar on, it wasn't like she could use mind powers on anyone, and a simple pair of titanium-steel wirst and ankle cufs would limit her mobility surely. Now if it was her boyfriend, then Ryan himself wouldn't have been satisfied until the guy was encased in a meter of solid ablative plating on all sides... but she wasn't her boyfriend. And that was kind of the point. She was a good and honorable woman, and she didn't deserve to be treated like some psychopathic criminal-monster like this.

But Ryan obviously wasn't the one who got to make the call on that, despite efforts to do so. It was all he could do to leverage his way onto close escort detail, and that only because of his prior fame and orders from Lt. Knackers. The top brass wanted to interview the prisoner themselves, before the formal interrogation got underway. It was irregular, but that was one of the benefits of being the top brass... you got to throw procedure out the window when it suited you. They'd already be doing the interview, except the shuttle had been put into a holding pattern due to some ruckus taking place in the Nara-Attha City harbor, something about a rogue Mobile Armor going on the lam or something... he'd only caught snatches of it over his helmet comm. Apparently some third string Mobile Suit aces had been called in to handle the situation, and made a right bloody mess of things.

"I just want you to know that I'm grateful for how you saved my life. You didn't have to do it, but you stood up for what was right, and faced down death incarnate to do it. I don't know how much I can do to protect you in turn... unlike you, I'm just a grunt. Nobody particularly important. I do got an Uncle in the Stormhounds, so when you're in Orb custody you should be taken care of all right. But I'll do what I can. I owe you, and I don't care if you're an Eddie. You saved me, and thats all that matters, off the battlefield." Ryan felt the shift in the shuttles flight pattern as the wing tilted and they began a curve back towards the city. "I just want you to know, I'm sorry things are turning out like this." Ryan added in a hurry, knowing that any further conversation, even one sided, would be impossible soon.

He hefted the somewhat unfamiliar matte black shape of a 15mm Flamberge LAR, his issue weapon for the escort detail. If anything did go wrong with the prisoner or an escape attempt, it would be better to have a more precise weapon than the firepower hose of his Pulverizer. Especially with Brass around. Still, he felt a little naked without the snug weight of the automatic combat shotgun under his right forearm, and without the reassuring weight of the assault shield hanging off his left bicep and shoulder armor. Time to put the game face on. His faceshield slid down and around from his helmet hood, closing him off from the piped in fresh Orb air. It had also felt odd being in full armor with the faceshield open, and Ryan didn't know whether to feel dismayed or gratified that as soon as his own environment systems kicked in and sealed off his armor, that he felt about twenty percent safer and more in control than before.

"Better get ready." He said through the external comm, as if she could do anything about it. "We'll be landing soon."

xxxx

**Orb, Nara-Attha City, Orb Defene Force Command Bunker, main strategium, 1 hour later**

Cagalli wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, exactly, when she'd been informed that the USN had managed to capture a senior Edenite warrior-commander, and that this particular warrior-commander happened to be the second-in-command and rumored lover of Frost himself! She'd never imagine Frost as capable of having a lover or an executive officer, or even seeing the need for them. The bastard just took whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, whether it was sex, lives, or materials, regardless of how willing or unwilling other people were. What did someone like that, a monster like that, need of administrative and command assistance? What did a loathesome BEAST like him need a steady and loving relationship for? It didn't make sense to her. It flew in the face of everything she knew of Frost, everything she'd experienced of him. And who... or what kind of person... could possibly LOVE Frost?

So maybe she'd been expecting another Frost, a female Frost, frothing mad and cloaked in an aura of bone chilling malevolence, someone who could identify with the twisted urges and psychopathic ideals of the most evil person she'd ever had the misfortune of encountering. In that expectation, the blue haired young woman, maybe five years younger than Cagalli herself, that sat chained and straitjacketed, strapped and buckled to a sturdy metal chair where the briefing lectern usually stood, flanked on either side by Vanguard armored troopers with weapons at the ready, failed to satisfy. There was definitely something striking about her, and not just her physical beauty, which was considerable even with the faint markings of her injuries, and even slightly reminiscent of Lacus's slender, almost elfin grace in the lines of her forehead and jaw and nose.

But she didn't make Cagalli shiver or convulse involuntarily just by being in the same room, and though there was a challenging fire in the blue haired woman's eyes, it didn't burn like hellfire and promise damnation to all who met her gaze. Cagalli wasn't sure whether she should feel relieved, disappointed, or confused. Of all the people she would have pictured as Frost's second... of all the woman that she might have envisioned as Frost's lover, abhorrent as that idea was... this blue haired Praetorian fit neither image in any way. Cagalli realized she had stopped to stare when Athrun gently nudged her from behind. However unlikely her first impressions of the Praetorian were, they couldn't argue with hard military intelligence, which pegged this young woman as the de facto commander of the Edenite group known as the Memento Mori, and one of the senior commanders of the Edenite war effort in the Asian Theatre.

Durandel had already arrived a short time before, along with a train of aides and advisors, and Cagalli avoided looking at the man she detested with only slightly less force than she did Frost. Things were even more strained than usual between them because of the recent events in the Harbor, where the Vulcanis, a new Orb Mobile Armor, had been destroyed just an hour or so previously by USN sanctioned pilots, though not without causing great damage to the harbor facilities and ships within the harbor. Damage that could have been avoided, in Cagalli's estimation, since the pilot of the rogue mobile armor, its primary developer, one of Morganroete's brilliant young engineers, had been close to surrendering on her own due to Cagalli's diplomatic efforts, before Gil's goon squad charged in and ruined everything. Now her city, or at least a part of it, was in flames once again, and all so Gil could throw his weight around and show the "decisiveness" of the USN.

Even meeting the honorable Solar Knight, Roland Beckett, who had strugged even during the battle to take the Vulcanis and its pilot alive, doing his best to talk her down despite the risk in doing so, couldn't buoy Cagalli's spirits much. There was so much that was good and admirable about the USN, things exemplified by Knight Beckett, but still, the core of the USN was rotten and broken, and as long as Gil stood as Solar President, nothing would change that. But there were more pressing concerns to deal with right now as well. When Gil had revealed that he was planning a informal interview of their prized captive before turning her over for thorough interrogation, Cagalli had been quick to muscle a space for her and her advisors on the interview panel, and had also brought in the Stormhounds to be the primary interrogators. Even Gil couldn't argue with their qualifications for such a job, and she didn't want the Praetorian disappearing up into space where only Gil would ever know what secrets they pried out of her.

Or for that matter, Cagalli at least had a measure of control over how the Stormhounds persecuted their interrogations, and was generally confident in their ability to balance the need for information with the need to preserve human dignity and respect human rights. The Stormhounds would ask hard questions, and they might even ask them forcefully, using modern psychological and medical based interrogation methods, such as sedative drugs to put the captive in a receptive state of mind, but the young woman's life and health would never be in danger. With FEAR's butchers at his command, and who knew what sort of other shadowy organizations at his beck and call yet, Gil would assuredly stop at nothing to pry open the secrets of the Praetorian's mind, and wouldn't care what sort of mess was made of her body and spirit in the process.

The Edenites were Cagalli's enemies, there was no doubt of that. This woman, this Praetorian in particular, was her enemy twice over, by being an Eddie warleader and by being the proxy of Frost. But Cagalli had turned a blind eye to atrocity and abuse too much in the course of this war, and though her resolution now could never heal the scars of the past, at least it might prevent new injuries in the future. She was determined to do right by this woman, however much personally she might not want to. Her imprisonment and interrogation would be conducted with full respect for all conventions of war, as would the imprisonment and interrogation of all future Edenite prisoners of war, if Cagalli had any say in the matter, and she intended to have EVERY say in the matter. Nothing less would suffice for Cagalli's conscience.

The interview panel was relatively small, just her, Athrun, Ramierez as her chosen advisor, with Gil, Martin Dicosta, and a withered old prune of a man she thought was one of the top directors of FEAR, along with of course plenty of secondary aides, assistants, guards and assorted command staff that no political or military leader could really do without. Once everyone was in place, and briefing documents listing what they knew of this woman, her activities and history, and any other pertinent info their intelligence services had thought prudent, the interview was ready to begin. At a nod from Gil, one of the Vanguard troopers standing at port arms behind the Praetorian stepped forward and released the muffle-collar that had been restricting her ability to speak. A small chill raced down Cagalli's spine when she saw the sneer of contempt and disdain on the young woman's face. Next to her, she heard Athrun's hand tighten on his cane in identical reflexive response. That was definitely a look she'd learned from Frost, and even the echo of it was enough to be uncomfortable for those who knew the man himself.

"This is an informal interview of the Arboreal Praetorian Lilia, known as Yggdrasil's Valkyrie." Durandel announced, his lion-like eyes focused on the captive, drinking in every particular, studying her as he might an exotic beast that could potentially be dangerous to him. "You will not be under any duress." He glanced aside at Cagalli before continuing. "Neither will you be punished later for refusing to cooperate now. However, if you do cooperate now, we may be able to make things better for you during your time in our care. You must realize that the end of the war is close, and that your people stand no chance of victory. Your information could spare many lives by allowing us to focus on defeating you militarily, rather than simply crushing your entire nation beneath our bootheels. Something we are quite capable of doing."

"Better yet." Athrun cut in levelly. "We might be able to negotiate a conditional surrender once we know better how your forces stand in comparison to ours. Prolonging the war will only lead to tragedy and loss for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, on both sides. Why fight a war that cannot be won, if offered agreeable terms?"

"Smuj sanasaj, saskei edni!" Lilia snapped back with a glottal snarl at Durandel, a simple curse, though a severe one by their standards, as the Kindred could eat just about anything, and so something truly inedible and toxic was pretty damned disgusting, and she enjoyed his confusion at being unable to understand Kindred idiom. "And you too, Athrun Zala." She added, looking at the man she'd named. "The Edenites are far from beaten, and surrender has never been an option for my people. Not as long as the USN exists as it does now. We've hurt you more than you've hurt us... if our numbers were equal, it'd be you people begging to not be crushed by us."

"But the numbers are not equal, or even close to it." Ramierez pointed out diffidently. "The Edenites are the strongest fighters I've ever faced in battle. I'm scared shitless every time I step into the field against you guys. But however much I might fear for my life, I don't fear for our victory. We have you in a vise, a vise called being surrounded and outnumbered, and we're going to crush you in it, regardless of how spirited you are and how unpalatable the thought may be. You can hurt us. But you'll never beat us. And what's the point of causing pain when victory is impossible? Surely it would be better to negotiate and save lives in a conditional surrender. Or do you just revel in the slaughter, like your boyfriend?"

"It depends on who I'm slaughtering." Lilia retorted with a glare over at Durandel. "The Praetorians and Custodians have nothing bad to say about the forces of Orb, and few truly bad things to say about most of the USN forces for that matter. We understand that your populace has been decieved and misled by corrupt and evil leadership. Few of us take any joy in killing you people. But people like him, and that horrid scientist next to him..." Lilia tossed her head at Durandel and Roanoke. "I'd tear out their throats with my teeth and fill their living bellies with hot coals, and laugh while doing it. You've seen what they've done to us. You know what they think of us. Surrendering to them, conditionally or otherwise, is to lay our necks on a chopping block. I do not revel in slaughter, much as Zach might wish me to. I do revel in bringing justice to the evil and distorted, those who would use the world, and all the people in and of it, for their own gain and amusement."

"Then how can you justify not killing Frost when you have the chance? You share his bed don't you?" Cagalli spat, her face twisted with disgust at the thought. "As far as evil and distorted go, there is no one worse than him in all existence!"

"His bed and far more than just that, Queen Cagalli Zala-Attha. Zach is a far more complex being than you are capable of understanding." Lilia snapped back, uncowed and unashamed of her association with him. "I am his, and he is mine. Whatever you may think of him, and whatever you may think of me for being with him, our relationship is no less close and absolute then yours and Athruns. Why do you feel no guilt for loving a man who's father almost destroyed the world?"

"Because blaming Athrun for the sin of his father is stupid. He had no control over his father's actions. He couldn't have stopped him, even though he tried his best! Patrick Zala had already gone mad and been warped to the point where only genocide would suffice for him." Cagalli answered tightly, laying her hand on Athrun's knee below the level of the desk and squeezing slightly in assurance.

"Exactly." Lilia agreed, surpising Cagalli. "Blaming a son for the sins of his parent is stupid and pointless and bigoted. So why do you feel its okay to do so to Zach, who was twisted and corrupted, against his will, by his own 'Father', Doctor Borander? It wasn't like Zach... or any other BCPU... volunteered for that horror of a life! I don't deny that Zach does horrible things, and has commited many crimes, including the most base of atrocities which sicken me to think about them. And he has no remorse for his actions. He enjoys them. I know that. I acknowledge it. I don't like it. But I also understand... I DARE to understand... that Zach was MADE the way he is, by the sins of his parent. So why does Athrun get to shake off the sins of his father, while Zach, who even KILLED his own father for what he did, is condemned to be seen as an eternal monster with no possibility of redemption?"

"We're getting off topic here." Durandel pointed out somberly. "The details of your personal life, and private relationship with the Executor Frost, do not particularly interest me or my military. In terms of crimes, I am more interested in those behind the Blue Monday attack, of which you must surely know. Destroying a civilian colony, with hundreds of millions of innocent men, women and children aboard... how can you call me and my administration corrupt and evil without tarring your own leadership with the same brush?"

"We haven't gotten off topic at all." Lilia answered with a sneer. "Zach and I do not acknowledge the 'leadership' you speak of. Kunai's actions are as horrible to me as they are to you. More horrible still is the actions of Yggdrasil, who must have known that the attack was aimed at the wrong colony, and gave no warnings. Blaming us for the sins of those we cannot control and do not approve of... for all that he was my first mentor and friend after the Disaster... is not justified. When Zach learned of Blue Monday, he attacked and hospitalized Kunai and Alex. When Kira learns of it... as he must have by now... I almost shudder to think about what will occur."

"So are you saying that you are not under the authority of Garden City?" Dicosta piped up, arrowing in on an interesting tidbit of Lilia's answer. "That you do not acknowledge them and vice versa?"

"I am a Praetorian. Our Order is based in Garden City, but our responsibility is all of New Eden, and all Edenites who live upon it. We acknowledge no authority other than our own morals and the leadership we personally choose. Most of the Order has chosen to fight for Garden City against the tyranny and genocide of the Oosen. But that was an individual choice, not an order from on high. I've renounced any claim to authority over me Garden City may think it has, I serve a higher and purer calling now."

"Frost's enternal conflict is a higher and purer calling?" Cagalli retorted sarcastically. "What justice is there in promoting war for war's own sake?"

"Zach's vision of the future is brighter and purer than any of you could understand. War is coming, a war beyond anything humanity has ever fought amongst itself. If we're not prepared for that war to the utmost, then humanity itself is doomed. The Black Ghosts are coming, from the deep abyss. A divided, peaceful humanity has no chance of suvival. Only a united humanity forged in conflict stands any chance at all. In that at least, I can find no fault with Zach's plan. His execution is certain to be flawed... he's been so badly warped by his life that its easy for him to lose sight of the future in the pleasures of the now. But that's what I believe I'm here for. At first I wanted to redeem him. To fix him. To cure him of his tortured existence." Lilia answered darkly, before her voice lightened into a sort of fond wistfulness.

"I realize that such selfish goals are impossible now. He cannot be redeemed. He cannot be saved. Zach is evil. His actions are reprehensible. Remorse is a foreign concept to him. Pity and compassion, at least in the ways most people would define them, are beyond his ability to feel. Zach is evil, but he is also necessary, humanity's best hope for the future. He is also the man I love, and the man who loves me. I cannot cure him... but I can treat his illnesses. I can calm his rages. I can curb his excesses. I can balm his hurts, the ones which drive him to hate and kill and glory in bloodshed. I can suffer, with him and for him, in a way no one else can. My calling is not in support of his eternal conflict. My calling is Zach himself, and forging from his eternal conflict the bright future for humanity that he wants but cannot express through his madness. Nothing could be higher and purer than that."

"This woman is quite mad. What point is there in future discussions?" Roanoke intejected with a raspy snort of disdain. "She will seek any justification to canonize her personal feelings for a man we all know is a plague upon humanity. Raving about monsters from the abyss, hell spawned demons of imagination coming to destroy us all... she is plainly unhinged, probably by association with the object of her devotion. Suffering from megalomania, delusions of grandeur and sociopathy."

"I'm just crazy enough to be able to look at the truth when it presents itself to me without clouding my judgement with my own desires." Lilia shot back contemptuously. "I've stared into the abyss, and it's stared into me. Maybe I am contaminated by the experience. Maybe I'm becoming sick and twisted myself. My friends sure seem to think so. Kira sure seems to think so. But I can't let that bother me or hol me back. I NEED to do this. If I don't, no one else will. Believe me or ignore me, make up your own minds. But if Zach's future doesn't come to pass, then NO future will come to pass."

"So are you saying that there is no possibility of surrender? That you will do eveything possible to prolong this war indefinitely, until we're all so bogged down in destruction and hatred that we only care about fighting the war for the war's sake?" Ramierez challenged fiercely.

"Something you learn early on with Zach is that there's ALWAYS a possibility for ANYTHING. He's chaotic far more than he is evil, and he never fails to surprise me each time I see him. Let's entertain the possibility then. What kind of terms would you offer? What kind of future do the Edenites have under a USN victory?" Lilia responded with equal fervor. "And don't forget, I've seen your labor camps and death camps, and how you treat captured Edenites before..."

"So have I, and I am horrified by them. Those responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. In all likelihood they will be executed for crimes against humanity, if I have anything to say in the matter." Cagalli answered resolutely, looking pointedly at Durandel as she did so. He failed to rise to her bait, as usual, so she went on. "Orb never had a quarrel with New Eden. Admittedly, we could have reached out to you more, and more officially, but we never had an issue with you being our neighbors I am to blame for these failings, as is the Kurenai administration. We allowed internal USN politics to occupy too much of our time and attention, and lost sight of our duty to the Edenites as fellow humans with an identity of their own. As a result, we helped, inadvertantly, to escalate matters until war was the only option. For that I can only apologize, though I know it will never be enough."

"As you say, its not the USN itself that is your enemy." Athrun picked up from his wife. "With the proper change in leadership and administration, and a campaign to bring the public to terms with the reality of the Edenite nation and Edenites themselves, I see no reason why we could not live in harmony with each other. At least as much harmony as was enjoyed by the nations of Earth and Space prior to the eden Disaster anyway, or prior to the construction of the PLANTs and the birth of Coordinators. The populace of the USN is by and large satisfied with living in space now, and with Red EDEN, we do not lack for the resources required to expand and comfortably exist in space indefinitely. We have only a psychological need for the Earth, New Eden, not a physical one. And that psychological need could easily be satiated through peacetime commerce and tourism."

"We have no designs on your sovereignity." Cagalli took the fore again. "We don't care how you govern yourselves, or what use you make of New Eden for your populace, as long as you are willing to consult with us on matters that may possibly concern us. We are not interested in war reparations, or indentured servitude, or economic and political restructuring and sanctions. We'd ask for mutual military treaties and limits on military technology and weaponry, especially things like nanoweapons and WMDs. We'd probably also need treaties, or at least public understanding and governable laws, on your Psychic abilities, especially when interacting with other nations."

"Sounds idyllic." Lilia replied with a faintly sad smile. "It sounds just like the sort of relationship we always wanted with the rest of humanity. Before you sent your clandestine forces to kidnap our citizens for experimental subjects, and declared all Edenites and those changed by Green EDEN to be non-human, with as much right to existence as toxic medical waste, that is! You paint a pretty picture, Cagalli. You describe an honorable world, Athrun. But you only speak for Orb. I want to know what the USN plans. I want to know what HE plans." Lilia nodded ferociously at Durandel.

"Once I imagined a world without Edenites, or tainted by Green EDEN." Durandel replied slowly, and carefully. "I realize now that such a world is an impossibility. So I must face reality. Wiping out the Edenites and repopulating the Earth is impossible. Earth cannot be redeemed from New Eden. What is done cannot be undone. Fighting to achieve the impossible is no better than fighting for fighting's sake. This planet is a pestilential hellhole, and an enormous money sink. You Edenites are welcome to it, as far as I care now. Still, I cannot in good conscience end this war without a formal settlement from your people. Blue Monday cannot be forgotten. Over five hundred million civilian casualties, cannot be forgotten. That's more than the entire population of New Eden, twice over."

"You want my terms, and plans? I will lay them out for you. I require the surrender and disarmament of the Edenite military forces, including the Praetorians and all affiliated militia units. You may keep whatever civilian security forces you may have. Your military and political leadership will be forced to step down, permanently retire to seclusion or be imprisoned, as judged on an individual basis. Some may be executed for their war crimes. Economic reparations will be negotiated in a fiar manner that will see your people out of debt in a decade or two, and will not impoverish them in doing so. There will be no forced labor or death camps, underoversight from Orb, or a USN agency of your chosing. New Eden will become a branch state of the USN, a protectorate at first, but with the future option of being a full member nation, alongside Orb, the PLANTs, Luna and the Second Earth Colonies."

"So we'd have to rely on the USN... who often hate and fear us... for protection from the Oosen that may hate and fear us?" Lilia laughed bitterly. "That sounds more like the sort of terms I was expecting. So we'd be a conquered nation, with a foot on our neck, reliant upon the good graces of people who do not live with us or near us, or understand us, and who may envy and fear us for our genetic differences, for protection from terrorists and criminals, while in economic and political bondage to them. Doesn't that sound familiar to anyone? You Coordinators especially? Anyone here a student of modern history? How long do you think it would take for an "unsanctioned" terror group like Blue Cosmos to show up and start causing trouble? One year? Six months? You must think we're idiots."

"I cast no aspersions on your intelligence. Merely your ability to win a war against us." Durandel answered coldly. "I acknowledge your parallel, but its the best I can reasonably offer, given the disparity in our military strengths. I see no reason to bow down and make a compromise when I have the upper hand. And regardless of your past momentum, we have ALWAYS had the upper hand in this war. With the lesson of the PLANTs and the Valentine Wars to teach us, I know we can avoid a repeat of history with New Eden. But even a harsh surrender surely must be better than taking this war to its bloody and inevitable conclusion? With my plan, you will eventually recover, and prosper. Without it, it will be centuries, if ever, before the Edenites even regain a national identity at all. We will purge the planet with MAIDEN and rebuild from the ashes, despite the hideous expense."

"Heh, well, this has been amusing and enlightening in equal measure." Lilia told them. "I'd say negotiations have broken down, but we were never really negotiating in the first place. Some of us were spouting golden ideals and papering over the cracks in the reality of the situation with hope and dreams... something I can respect at least. And others are showing that no matter what happens, they intend to see the Edenites crushed and broken and helpless. I don't know why I expected any different. You don't need to be a Latent, or Yggdrasil, to see how the USN will always be the Oosen, as long as Gilbert Durandel is around. So now what? Does the torture begin now? You'll have to try to pretty hard to impress me. A night in the sack with Zach is more gruelling than any torture I think you can bring to bear."

"Orb does NOT condone the torture of prisoners of war, and you are being held in Orb." Cagalli said with brittle clarity. "Especially we do not torture pregnant women. Even if they are pregnant with the child of a monster whom I hate more than any other living being." The look of shock on Lilia's face as Cagalli made that announcement, from data that had been collected on the Praetorian when she was being fixed up by USN doctors after being brought in by the USN fast response team, was almost enough to stir a vindictive streak of pleasure in Cagalli's mind, before she ruthlessly quashed it.

"Heh. Hehehehehe. HA! HAHAHAHA!" Lilia started to laugh uncontrollably, beginning with a low chuckle, before bursting out into peals of amusement that almost made Cagali flinch. It was just the sort of irrational, inexplicable laughter as Frost had. "Pregnant am I? With child? Zach's child! And that's whats holding your hand back from putting me through the wringer? Such cheap nobility. Such empty righteousness! But I'll take it nonetheless. I'm not too proud for that. So I carry within me the seed of the future, do I?" Lilia's cheeks were stained with tears, but Cagalli could not tell whether they were tears of joy, as expected of a new mother, or tears of madness.

"You realize what this means, don't you?" Lilia said softly, chewing back a giggle that sent a chill down the spine of everyone else present. "Zach is coming for me. He will find me. Nothing can stop him. So you'd better take good care of me, for your sakes. You don't want to him to discover that you've endangered his child. He's still getting used to being in love... to be a father and then have it snatched away? I shudder to think of what he would do to you. And you should shudder at what I would do to you..."

"Threats are pointless from a person in your position." Durandel said neutrally. "For as long as you remain in Orb, you need not fear for your maternity or health. But we will have the information we desire from you, one way or another, Praetorian. You will tell us where Garden City is, and why we cannot find it now, and all the military details my commanders desire. I'm willing to let Her Majesty's dogs have a go at you first, in the name of civility, but I am still Solar President by the will of the people. The knowledge in your head is critical to the peaceful future of humanity. I will have you broken open to get it, if you make me. And I don't care what parts of you have to be damaged, destroyed or removed to do it. So think about that while you deal with Orb. If you do not cooperate with them, you WILL cooperate with me."

"I look forward to the time when Zach has your heart in his hand, saskei edni." Lilia smiled sweetly, chillingly at him.

"This interview is concluded. Take her away..."


	79. Overture of the Obsessed

Author Note: Going through some difficulties in my life at the moment, a whole slew of heart issues (and not in the emotional sense). Please try to bear with me, especially those of us who frequent the forums. Oh, and Archangel, if you're still reading this... the last scene is for you.

xxxx

**New Eden, Garden City, Praetorian Enclave, May 1st, late evening**

"Are you doing all right, sir?" Alexander rumbled, looking back at his commander, as Kunai stumped up the stairs a few paces behind his giant lieutenant. As ever, Kunai walked with an extremely heavy gaint, as much stomping as truly walking, but that was only to be expected, given his somewhat unique method of locomotion. Still, there were plenty of clues for the discerning observing to notice that showed that Kunai was pretty beat. His sweat, which Alex could both smell and taste from this close range, even though Kunai was not prespirering, contained a high degree of salt and acid content, from strenuous exertions. His breathing was just a tiny bit labored, and his footfalls were slightly slower than usual, a few fractions of a second longer between stomps than Alex knew was usual for the Master of Praetorians. He kept his concern carefully well shielded, beyond the neutrally toned remark, as he was well aware that Kunai disdained any form of physical aid with his disability, no matter the circumstances.

"A little worn out, Alex." Kunai replied, with the ghost of a smile fleetingly on his lips. He knew better than to deny his state of being, at least in the relative private of just him and Alexander. Of course the Praetorian would take his word at face value no matter what he said, but all the same, it helped to let down his guard a little with his chief disciple, helped Alex feel more trusted and part of Kunai's intimate circle, if they shared a certain hard honesty at times like this. It was little manipulations like this which had helped him become so powerful while he was Sai Argyle, the small, almost deliberate indiscretions and "human moments", shared between him and the people whose confidence he needed to maintain. It was almost an instinct for him now, he was barely even aware he was doing it.

And he had plenty of things to be worn about, certainly. With Kira's latest bid to go on the offensive, the sneak attack on Heaven's Base, being fended off to no conclusive finish, the Edenites once moe found themselves stalemated and stalled. Which was not a good position to be in, with the USN gaining greater momentum with every passing hour. He'd known of course, from the beginning, that such trials would be ahead of them. The USN was strongly based in many respects upon his own Isolation after all, he was very well aware of the sort of resources such a collective nation could pour into a major war. Still, in the privacy of his own deepest mind, Kunai did wonder, sometimes, just where victory would eventually come from. Yggdrasil maintained, in Its way, that victory was not only possible, but inevitable, but nothing in the readiness reports and strategy meetings Kunai had seen contained much in the way of positive information of late.

The rate of attrition was just too steep an obstacle for them to surmount, and every failed attempt made each subsequent attempt that much harder. The USN could rebuild the units lost in a major battle within a month, and train up new crews in only a few weeks more. Garden City and the other city states had done a lot of hasty industrialization during the early parts of the war, and were just now hitting their stride, but all the same, they could barely produce a dozen Mobile Suits and twice as many Mobile Armors in that month, and a properly trained Custodian took at least three months to be ready for combat. Kunai shook his head, running absentminded fingers across his scar creased bald scalp. He wasn't covering any new ground with such thoughts, and there was no profit in dwelling on things he was already doing his best with.

He speeded up his TK assisted strides, catching up with his towering bodyguard and assistant just as they reached the outer doors to Kunai's combination of office and living quarters. Hardly a patch on the grand mansions he'd grown almost used to as President Argyle, but more than enough for a man of Kunai's rather more aesthetic tastes. As ever, reflecting on his former life only served to darken his emotions and fill his core with bitterness and regret. So much potential, so much hard work, such a bright future... all of it wasted. Crushed to ruin by the actions of a single madman. A single madman he now half relied on for hope in the current war. The world was certainly a more twisted place than he'd ever given it credit for!

_That will be all._ Kunai sent to Alex with a brusque underscore of gruffness to his thought tone. It almost amused him that speaking telepathically with someone, which was far more intimate than verbal speech in many ways, was yet considered the more formal type of speech in many Edenite conversations, while the spoken word was something more personal, shared between people who were closer. Such was the side effect of the Wind of Words, which, like the internet before it, made a newer form of communication far more prevalent and accepted, to the point where older standards of communication were beginning to be seen as rustic and awkward. Telepathy was the wave of the future, and merely speaking was inefficient in comparison, the same as phsyical mail was inefficient compared to e-mail.

_Of course, sir. Rest well. I will return in the morning._ Alex nodded, his back stiff in a pose of near attention that was about as close as any Praetorian could get to a form of saluting, before he stalked away along the passage, heading upwards to the training halls located above. Kunai had raised and mentored most of the Order himself, and had set out from day one to instill into them a strong independent spirit, which was already strong in most Edenites anyway, so he hardly expected rote formalities anyway. It was another throwback to his past. Sai Argyle had never been comfortable recieving salutes from people, not even when he was the President of the World, so he'd done what he could to ensure he wouldn't have to suffer such awkwardness as Kunai. Either that... and he was self conscious enough to admit this, if only to himself... or Kira had rubbed off on him yet again. His former friend had always flouted pretty much every military rule and regulation he'd ever encountered in their time aboard the Archangel, acting instead as he felt right in any given situation.

This time, Kunai did smile with grim amusement, as he considered how a somewhat starched and rule abiding person such as his much younger self had eventually evolved into someone who went out of his way to foster informality in his daily life, while Kira, the most informal man alive, had slowly become tangled in situations that demanded he put on a facade of formality and duty. Just one more indication that the world was a very twisted place indeed. Still smirking, Kunai stumped through the door into his office space, finally alone, and glad for the reprieve. Even the most accomplished manipulators and greatest of leaders needed a few moments to themselves every now and again. Even when he'd been married, he'd still treasured a moment alone every now and then.

"I don't see that there's anything to be smiling about right now." An entirely unexpected voice snarled from behind his desk, where the chair was turned about to face the section of wall that could slide aside to reveal a large viewscreen. Had he the ability, Kunai would have jumped in surprise, but his paralyzed legs remained firmly rooted to the ground. All the same, he swayed alarmingly, almost losing his balance, before a quick push of TK re-centered his stance. Even as his physical balance was restored, Kunai fought to do the same to his mental balance. This was TWICE now he'd been ambushed in his own office! Tired or not, this was not a good habit to get into! At least this time though, a trip to the hospital afterwards would hopefully not be necessary.

"Kira. What a pleasant surprise." Kunai answered, after a few fractions of a second's pause as he gathered himself. "I hadn't realized you'd returned to the city yet."

"There's a lot you haven't realized about me. Which is kind of strange, given that you've known me longer than just about anyone still alive." Kira replied coldly, as he slowly swiveled the office chair around to face his former friend. He was lounged almost comfortably in the chair, to help hide him from view of the doorway, but he straightened now that he saw that he and Kunai were truly alone. He kept his emotions carefully concealed beneath his mental shields, focused in such a way as to be almost undetectable to a passive mental scan, though Kunai knew that if he'd bothered to actively search his office out, he'd have known at least that someone was in there waiting for him. He resolved to make such checks a part of his daily routine from now on.

However, such resolutions were only occupying part of his mind. Most of the rest was focused on Kira's lap. Or rather, the bared, purple bladed, crystalline sword resting almost casually across it. Kira's right hand was loosely clenched around the hilt, while his other was almost absently stroking a single finger down the fuller of the blade, back and forth, back and forth. The Executor's Burden, Kira called it. A LEMIM artifact from Vaul's own hands. Kunai possessed several similar items of his own, but did not habitually carry them around, especially within the City and the Enclave. The Twig of the World Tree and his TK Shards were in his quarters, which might as well have been on the moon for all his ability to get them right now.

"People change." Kunai managed at last, after finding his throat unaccountably dry for a moment. He didn't think Kira was astute enough to read such a sign of anxiety, but then again, as he was so unpleasantly reminded right now, there was a lot about Kira that he still didn't know. "Neither of us is the person we used to be back then. A lot has happened. Some of it we did to ourselves. Some of it happened regardless of what we did to try and stop it." He leaned carefully back against the wall opposite his desk, adopting a posture of relaxation. Or at least it would be for someone who relied on their legs for mobility in a tough situation. Even someone trained to understand body language would probably be wrongfooted by Kunai, since what would be lowering a guard for most people only freed up more of his power for offensive uses if need be.

The office was dimly lit, the lights in repose mode. Clearly Kira had been in the room for some time, and had taken the opportunity to apply his entirely well earned computer skills to arranging the environment to his choosing. A gentle telekinetic tug at the door controls revealed that the door was locked shut, obviously to prevent interruptions, as Kunai was hardly able to run away. What light there was struck glittering rainbows from the edges of the Burden as it sat carefully on Kira's lap, ready for use in a heartbeat, the threat open and obvious, as only a bared sword which can cut through solid stone could be. Both of them could see well enough, Edenite's eyes being well adapted towards using what little available light there was. Still, Kira's dark Praetorian garments seemed to meld into the black chair, and served to draw attention to both the sword, and to his face, which was set in a hard frown, eyes like frozen amethyst's glaring at Kunai, silver pupils reflecting the rainbow glimmer from the sword's edge.

It could have been quite intimidating, but Kunai had stared down hostile Chimera before. For that matter, he'd been far closer to Frost's face during the first office ambush, and nothing about Kira could hold a candle to the demonic illumination of that monster's red bioluminescent stare. Perhaps sensing this, Kira spoke up again. "People do change. Some of us for the better. Some of us for the worse."

"And you think I'm worse, huh? What a shock." Kunai deadpanned drolly. "Not like you haven't made it obvious before now though, so why these theatrics now? And besides, you're hardly one to throw stones, Kira. You've changed a lot too recently, and I don't think its all to the good either. And don't go on about only doing what you have to do... its the same for me, even if you don't want to recognize it."

"Listening to you try and justify yourself and who you've become isn't why I came here." Kira retorted grimly, his grip tightening on the Burden's hilt. "Remember when you first made me an Executor? I told you then that if you were going to give me that kind of power, that I WAS going to use it. That I would use it to punish evil and injustice and misdeed, whenever and wherever I found them. On the battlefield, and off. Against the USN... and amongst the Edenites themselves." Kira let that hang in the air for a few moments. He was getting better at this sort of thing, Kunai noted. And then his thoughts were scattered to the winds by what Kira said next. "I know what you've done now." Kira declared in condemning tones. "You hid it well, but now I know all about it."

Well, it obviously wasn't the REAL secret Kunai was keeping from his former friend, because if Kira knew about THAT, Kunai figured that he'd have been met with the edge of the sword, not bladed words. So there was really only one or two other things for Executor Yamato to be steamed about. "The New Years Day attack." Kunai supplied, abandoning any pretence at cordiality as he stared flatly back at Kira. "What the Oosen calls "Blue Monday", right? It was an operation conceived by me, under strict advisement from Yggdrasil Itself. A bid to take out the USN TIAMAT program which had been causing us such concern in the early stages of the war. The idea was to show the USN that if they were going to use nanites on our population, then we weren't afraid to do the same in return..."

"I said I wasn't here to listen to your justifications. You appointed me as an Executor. Its time for me to live up to that duty." Kira snapped back, rising from the chair, sword in hand. "You killed over five hundred MILLION people. Civilians. During a holiday. With Blue EDEN. Including Dearka's whole family. Deliberately. Coldly. It's mass murder by any name, and its exactly the sort of evil I won't tolerate. It did nothing to bring the war to a close, it sent no message other than raw hatred. And all because Yggdrasil said so? Do you trust the Tree so much? So blindly, that you'd do ANYTHING for it?"

"Almost anything." Kunai replied frostily. He distinctly recalled carrying away Kira's daughter from the flames of Rex Lodge, even though Yggdrasil's plan only called for the extraction of Lacus and her son. Leaving the little girl to burn to death in order to provide full authenticity for the plan had been beyond even his ability to justify. They'd just have to make do with the severed arm, and as it turned out, that had been more than enough anyway. He wasn't soulless, regardless of what Kira might want to believe.

"And that's why you're so dangerous. Too dangerous. Even moreso than Frost, at least in the immediate sense, though it pains me to say it. You can do almost anything, to anyone, if it means you can justify it as part of Yggdrasil's grand plan. Doing evil acts with a clean conscience from such simpleminded justification is worse than committing them because you have no conscience at all!" Kira edged out from around the desk, taking his sword in both hands as he slipped into a front guard position. Kunai absently noted that his former friend made the transition look pretty natural, which was all more unnatural given who he had once been, refusing to even carry a knife for self defense, and throwing guns rather than shooting them.

"And how does that make us different, anyway?" Kunai riposted cruelly. "How are my justifications for following Yggdrasil any different than yours are for allying with Frost? We need their power in order to survive. No matter the fallout, survival must trump conscience. Every innocent person Frost kills from now until he finally dies has their blood on your hands, because you've sanctioned him, and let him grow in power as part of our forces. Even your friends lives may be be painted on your hands because of that, and you try to take ME to task for Blue Monday? Hypocrite! You always were one though..."

"They're not my friends anymore." Kira hissed, his sword point wavering downwards for a moment, before he straightened his guard and took a cautious step towards the lounging Kunai. "No more than you are now. They've made their choices, and I've made mine. It does not please me, but if their blood must stain my hands, then I'll dip them in to the elbow. That's what being an Executor of the Edenites means. And as an Executor, I am pronouncing you as an enemy of the Edenite people and..."

Kunai didn't wait for his friend to finish the formal pronouncement, such as it was. He saw in Kira's eyes that his former friend was all too serious about this, and wasn't going to just be satisfied with breaking his hands, like Frost had. Focusing his mind, and fuelling it with his own indignation, Kunai paused only a moment to appreciate the irony of Kira trying to kill him, while Kunai could not return the favor. The Edenites needed Kira, now more than ever. So he had to fight to subdue an opponent who was desperately trying to kill him for real. Just as Kira used to fight all those years ago. Of course, subdue didn't mean he had to be gentle about it...

His telekinetic pulse hit Kira, still in the act of raising his sword for the deathblow, and mouthing off his formal judgement, in the sternum with the power of a sledgehammer, only slightly diffused so as to not break the ribs themselves. Of course, with his Latent abilities, Kira saw the blow coming, such as it was, and was already twisting, so the pulled blow landed only indirectly. It was still enough to send him staggering backwards a couple steps though, and Kunai kept up the pressure, launching a barrage of telekinetic thrusts, jabs and shoves at Kira, targeting his arms and legs for the most part, bruising flesh, wrenching muscles and, more than anything, trying to yank the Burden out of his grip, preferably without slicing open or impaling either of them.

"You dodn't really think I was just going to let you walk up to me and cut me down, now did you?" Kunai shook his head sadly, as he slowly let himself drop to the floor, freeing up his full concentration for the fight, such as it was anyway. There was a reason he was the undisputed Master of Praetorians, and why even while crippled physically, he was undefeated in combat against other members of the order. He was simply the strongest human telekinetic alive, and a single man, even a single Executor, was not a threat to him when he had time to focus and prepare. "Now put that damn thing down before you hurt yourself with it, or break something in my office."

"I came here to kill you, not talk with you!" Kira snorted out in reply, taking a hand off his sword and drawing a pistol from his right thigh holster. A regulation pattern plasma beam pistol, a standard sidearm for most Custodian officers, Kunai recognized it instantly, even as Kira snapped it up and fired right at his face from less than five meters away. Green light strobed in the dim office, and the harsh smell of melting stone filled the air, as the emerald colored beam spat from the pistol and almost instantly veered to one side and upwards, expending itself harmlessly in the ceiling.

"Then you should have done THAT the moment I walked through the door." Kunai berated him. "You might have had a chance to hit then. A small one, but a chance." He deflected another couple of beam shots, which was child's play for him, as plasma had next to no mass itself, and then lashed out at the pistol itself, crumpling its barrel like tinfoil, and causing Kira to cast it aside in disgust. "Now give it up, and I'll forget this ever happened. I understand you don't agree with Blue Monday, I never thought you would. But its done now, and killing me won't change anything. You can't beat me, Kira. Its not gonna be like with Flay out in the desert night that time. Here and now, you're the one who CAN'T beat me. At long, long last, I'm the stronger one now."

"Stronger maybe. But you're still stupider." Kira retorted, getting shoved back almost to the wall behind the desk by the insistent and invisible pressure from Kunai's TK pulses. "You think I came here to do this on a whim? That I haven't researched TK powers, and trained against them? And not just against human opponents either. You're strong, Sai. But you've still got a limit to what you can LIFT!" Kira called upon the Seed, even as he let the Burden slip from his fingers and embed itself safely in the floor. The bright purple seed, veing with silver, dropped through his mind, feeling slower than usual, as if it was waiting for him to reach out and grab it. He certainly could have, he was acting out of rage for all those murdered innocents in the Second Earth colony, but he forbore using the Ascended Seed just then. Activating it would draw attention from half the Enclave, and if possible, he wanted this deed done before they had an audience. Not least because he still didn't know which way most of the Praetorians would side on the issue.

The regular Seed was more than enough though, giving him the resilience to shrug aside another wave of TK pulses, the speed to dive behind and beneath Sai's desk, and the strength to push upwards on said desk, lifting it and hurling it upwards and forwards towards his supine target. He felt Sai's shock through the wind, intense and bright, as his planned strategem clearly took the TK master off guard. Sai's desk had been carved right out of the solid granite of the mountain, and was a part of the floor itself, not a moveable object of furniture. But that was easily, and near invisibly, remedied with a few cuts from the Burden. Then it had just been a matter of luring Sai close enough to the desk to make it feasible, which the conversation had managed nicely enough.

A nearly solid granite desk, with inbuilt computer and storage shelves, still massed almost eight hundred pounds. Kira felt like he'd torn muscles in his back and shoulders as he used his whole body, Seed boosted or not, to hurl it even a few feet, much less halfway across the room. The effort cost him more than pain, it all but exhausted his Seed as well, expending in moments what he would normally use over minutes. But he had no other choice, no other viable stratagem. Personal attack on Kunai was almost impossible, man to man. His TK was too strong, too prevalent and too well controlled. You'd need heavy weapons to have any chance of getting through his defenses, and even then you'd probably have to catch him off his guard.

For his part, Kunai knew that he didn't have it in him, even with Seed, to catch his entire desk, which Kira had cunningly detached from the floor to use as a tool of execution, probably his plan from the getgo. He could probably take six hundred pounds of mass off the falling object, but the other two hundred would still crush his bones to powder and his organs to pulp, falling from that height. A bright blue Seed, veined with gold, cascaded through the darkness of his willpower, before exploding with cerulean light, and he felt lighter all over as the full flush of his potential rippled through him. There was not much of him for his Seed to physically enhance, so it all channeled straight into his Newtype abilities. And there was more to the rush of power than just boosting his mass limit.

Catching the desk was impossible, so instead, Kunai hurled his next thrust into the top of desk as it fell towards him, imagining his power as a lance... and then as a bomb, exploding from within the confines of the desk itself. after he'd punched through the outer shell and cracked its largest side. It didn't QUITE blow the desk to fragments, but it did break it up from one looming mass into a bunch of chunks of fifty or sixty pounds each, many of which were no longer falling directly towards him. Debris waterfalled over him, not just the peices of desk, but the things within the desk, not least being the cartons of Refined Deathstalker Venom. Hopefully Kira would be too busy trying to murder him to think about why Kunai might have so much of the substance so close at hand.

Despite his best efforts, there was no way he could deflect all the wreckage, and Kunai grimaced as his body was pelted and bruised and gashed all over, as he focused his attention on protecting his head, using his arms as well to shield himself. One chunk of granite bouncing off his skull might not kill him, but it would certainly daze him and make focusing much harder, or even knock him out entirely, and then he'd wake up without a head. Half buried in the rubble and detrius, Kunai forced himself to go on, randomly grabbing and hurling chunks of rock and office supplies towards where Kira had been. If Kira wanted tomake a serious effort at this, then it was only fair to reciprocate. He'd worry about fixing up the Executor with a hospital stay, rather than talking him down with the futility of it all!

Rock split and sheared into glassy surfaces as the Burden, once more in Kira's hands, cleaved them apart and batted them aside, protecting his own face as much as possible. It didn't quite work so well as people in some movies made it look, most of the things were cut so cleanly that it barely even slowed their momentum, and plowed on to be deflected with Kira's arm or dodged entirely. Seeing that Kunai was runnning out of things to chuck at him, Kira took a step towards him, before throwing himself to the floor and rolling to the side, as several chunks of rock he'd already dodged came zooming at him from behind, forewarned only by his Latent senses. Breaking the desk into pieces had done more than just save Kunai's life, it had given plenty of weapons to use against Kira, and TK pulses could manipulate from any direction, not just hurling objects linearly.

"I wanted to be nice about this, Kira, but you've given me little choice." Kunai gritted out angrily. A broad sweep of one arm hurled an arc of debris at the Executor, before a looping twist of TK power yanked Kira's feet out from under him at the same time. A chunk of rock hammered down on Kira's wrist, just shy of breaking the bones there, and a simultaneous yank on the blade of the Burden sent it skimming from Kira's involunatarily loosened grip. A straight on TK punch blackened Kira's eye and puffed blood from his nose as he tried to rise, knocking him back to the floor. "I could have ripped that eye right out of your head, or crushed your throat like a straw, if I'd wanted to." Kunai informed him pointedly. "This outcome was never in doubt. It was a good try, Kira, but doomed from the start." Kunai lifted a piece of granite about the size of a baseball, and massing about twenty pounds, lining it up for a piledriver throw at Kira's forehead. Maybe a fractured skull would get the lesson across!

"I came into this expecting to get trashed." Kira grunted in return, sounding winded but still more than game. "I've noticed something about powerful Actives, you know? First with Noah, now with you... you all tend to underestimate just what a Latent who knows what they're doing can do..." Kira reached into a pocket and withdrew a small transmitter device, the button upon which he promptly pressed. A dull "WHUMPH" sounded from the ceiling, which was more solid granite, hacked from the heart of the mountain. Kira had done some hacking of his own earlier, using the Burden to carve out a large, pyramidal chunk of ceiling, leaving it attached by only a small spur, onto which he'd moulded some plastic explosive. A little spackle and dust had disguised the cut lines from casual view, and the dim lighting had further concealed the sabotage.

Close on to three quarters of a ton of SOLID granite block detached from the ceiling, directly over where Kunai helplessly lay. Exactly where Kira's Deep Sight had told him the target would be. He couldn't say that EVERY event had happened as his foresight had predicted, but he never expected it would. The future was just that, and could never be predicted with complete accuracy, no matter what Yggdrasil might like people to believe. But if you knew your opponent, and had an hour or so alone to prepare the ambush, and meditate on the possible scenarios, then a little precognitive fortunetelling could go a long way. There was nothing Kunai could do against such a solid block of material. Funny how TK was so effective against modern weapons like a beam pistol, but pretty much useless against one of the oldest weapons imaginable... a very large rock.

The execution block slammed to the ground, grinding everything beneath it to powder and sending cracks rippling across the floor for almost a meter in every direction, landing like a stone from a catapult. But it did not land on Kunai. Something had blurred through the air even as the block fell, a shadow seperating from the deeper shadows of the wall, and colliding with the falling bock, redirecting it, physically shoving it aside with a stength beyond any other human. Glowing red eyes burned with exertions that had little to do with the most recent one, as Frost glared at both of the other two stunned figures, since the door was still quite firmly locked, and any help or investigation for Kunai several minutes away. "Yamato. Tree Bitch. Now's not the time for fooling around with deathtraps." Frost snapped at them both savagely.

"What the hell?" Kira and Kunai coroused, almost in unison, blinking away shock, since Frost had literally, as far as either could tell, just stepped out of thin air! As bad as that shock was... and for Kunai, having his life saved by the very man who'd crippled his body and murdered his family was about as big a shock as could be imagined... what came next almost sent Kira to the floor and made Kunai question whether he'd really blocked all the rocks raining down on his head after all. Frost moved to stand between them, and then bowed his head to Kira. Literally bowed his head, and held out his hands beseechingly.

"The Mouse! I've lost the Mouse! So help me get her back, Yamato! You're good with things like that, right?" Frost demanded, his tone frantic.

"W-What?" Kira stuttered, unable to make sense of the sudden change of events.

"The... Mouse... has... gone... missing." Frost enunciated, slowly and loudly, with a disgruntled expression stealing its way across his face. "I... don't... know... where... she..."

"I got that part." Kira interrupted irritably. "But did you just save Kunai's life? And then ask me for HELP? ME?"

"Goes against my grain too, don't worry. But this is desperation speaking, Yamato!" Frost retorted with no less asperity. "I didn't think I'd have to explain this to you, of all people. The Mouse is MISSING! GONE! NOT HERE! NOT WITH ME! Someone TOOK HER! She wasn't where I LEFT HER! Do you not SEE the PROBLEM?"

"You mean she finally escaped your clutches, you deviant monster? Sounds like a cause for celebration." Kunai said, still shaking from his close call and inexplicable rescue. But just because Frost had saved his life, didn't mean he felt any gratitude towards him. Frost never saved anyone's life except when he meant to torment them even worse in the future. It was less a rescue and more just a stay of punishment. A brief stay, as it turned out, as hardly had he put his oar in, than Frost had pounced on him, howling with beastial fury, punching through a frantic TK shield like it wasn't even there, to latch one hand around his throat with the power of an industrial vice. Gagging, Kunai flailed his arms and tried to work up the focus to blast aside his attacker, but it was a little hard with his throat being crushed like a tin can.

"YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE?" Frost screamed, lifting Kunai until he was dangling almost a foot off the floor, and then hammering him back into the wall. "THE MOUSE IS MINE! MINE! **MINE!** No one else may have her, no one else may take her!" He shook the Master of Praetorians like a ragdoll, before letting him drop, just shy of ripping his head off his shoulders. He might still need the Tree Bitch for the rescue after all. He looked over his shoulder at Yamato, who had his pretty little sword back in his hands and held between them, clearly caught between the urge to attack Frost while he was lost in his frenzy against a helpless victim, and the cold logic of the fact that he'd been trying to kill Kunai anyway, so why not let Frost do the dirty work? Frost let his hands drop to his sides as he took a deep breath. It didn't actually calm him down any, but it gave Yamato a second to make his choice, and grudgingly back off. This was not their How, apparently.

"The Mouse is mine, Yamato. You know that. You don't like it, but it's the truth. The Mouse is mine. And I am the Mouse's. Don't you see that? Don't you understand? You, of all people..." Frost said, almost conversationally, the closest he could come to a whisper in his current state. Before Yamato could answer, and Frost saw in his eyes that he did understand, now, finally, the door to the office was all but blasted off its hinges, as Alexander, in full armor, rushed into the room, backed by a half a dozen other Praetorians, armed to the teeth. "And there's the Turkey, late to the party as usual. Warble, warble. But maybe it's for the best. Yamato. Tree Bitch. We need to talk. Right now... it is, what do you call it, oh... it's a matter of national security, you might say..."

xxxx

**Earth, Orb Archipalego, Orphan Island, May 4th, Late Morning**

"If I hadn't just seen it with my own eyes, I'd never have believed it." Haman Al'jib, the Djinn, said for about the tenth time in as many minutes, as he finished fitting his recovered Praetorian armor around his body and ran a quick systems test to make sure its stay buried in the soil of Orb's mainland hadn't adversely affected it. The man next to him, helping him with the armoring, smiled and shook his head, also for about the tenth time, and replied with a degree of forced levity.

"Hell, I walked THROUGH it, but I'm still not sure I should believe it." Heine Westenfluss, the Shooting Star, said. "Where the FUCK did Zacharis Frost get the ability to teleport people, is what I want to know! And why has he waited until NOW to show us this? This could have been SO USEFUL so many times before now!"

"Divining the thoughts of a madman will only land you in the same situation." Haman answered with a diffident shrug. "I wonder how it works. Can we replicate this technology? This could turn the whole war around for us. Those Oosen fleets would be useless if you could deploy strike teams directly into their heartlands from our bases, and vice versa. Its the ultimate raiding tool."

"Mr. Abyss would never work for the likes of you." Frost announced, striding up behind them, carrying one of the inflatable speedboats they'd brought with them through the abyss portal as part of their support gear. The large box was almost three hundred pounds, but he carried it lightly on one shoulder, with a cheerful bounce in his stride. Both Praetorians jerked, having not heard him approach... no one could accuse the mad Executor of lacking stealth ability, when he wanted to anyway. "He, like the Mouse, is Mine. Mine alone." Frost informed them with a sneer, as he set the box down on the beach and turned on his heel, stalking back up the gentle slope towards where the abandoned house was situated, near the equally abandoned chapel-dormitory structure that formed the two largest buildings on the small island.

Heine looked over at Haman, once he was sure the Executor was far out of hearing range. "Did that just send a chill down your spine like it did mine?"

"He didn't even insult us, much less threaten us." Haman agreed, his jaw agape inside his helmet. "It was almost conversational. Perhaps even informative."

"I'll be damned, but he really DOES have it bad for her, doesn't he?" Heine thought about smirking, but really wasn't sure if it was anything to smile about. Frost by himself was cause for concern. Frost driven to the edge of his limits and out of his normal behavior patterns because the girl he loved was in danger... who knew what might happen next! By the Tree and the Shark, he'd been almost NICE to them just then. Overhearing their conversation and butting in with a comment that was certainly arrogant, but far from confrontational or demeaning. And he'd been doing grunt work for the team while doing so, lifting and carrying under the advice, if not direction, of Executor Yamato!

"Time for another hallucination test, I think." Haman said, all but reading his friend's mind, as they turned to each other and soundly slugged each other on the shoulder. Armored fists clunked off equally armored pauldrons resoundingly, and they both felt it. "Damn..."

"Love makes you do funny things. Even if you're a mass murdering psychopath who wants to either destroy or rule the world, or both. I guess." Heine shook his head once more. "I hope to God she knows what she's doing, getting him in a family mindset like this."

"Maybe we should put her in life threatening danger more often, is this is the sort of cooperation we get as a result." Haman postulated, only half jestingly. "I wonder how many times we could "kidnap" her, before he caught on and destroyed us all..."

"Kidnap who?" A different voice asked, coming up from behind them, though this time neither of them jumped, having heard her footsteps from quite a ways away. "I'm warning you, Haman, I've had enough of wandering around an island paradise with you for the next decade at least. Any attempt to take me off the front lines again is going to meet a lot of resistance." Khala jested, trying to cover up her awe of being near not one but two Arboreal Praetorians. Well, since she'd been stranded behind enemy lines with Haman for weeks, she'd gotten over her awe of him, but now there was the Shooting Star as well, and far more besides! She'd actually come down to the beach to get away from the main huddle, the pure awe power of the gathered team sending her senses reeling. Two Executors, the Master of Praetorians, three Arboreal Praetorians, and five more regular Praetorians. Plus one short pygmy with black eyes that creeped her right the hell out. And her, the very junior Custodian from Legio Megaladon. Nothing to be intimidated about there.

"And do you have someone who would gleefully destroy us were we to kidnap you?" Heine replied with a smile.

"The Executor, maybe?" Khala answered, clarifying after a moment. "The good one, I mean. Kira Yamato. From what I hear, the other one's already involved with the person we're supposed to be rescuing. And generally isn't the rescuing type himself, from what I hear."

"To put it mildly. Generally speaking, he's the one who the girl needs to be rescued FROM." Haman told her with a shudder.

"He doesn't seem that bad to me. It's kinda cute actually. He's obviously devoted to her. Its rare to see such a childish concept of love in a man that age. He'd do anything for her, its obvious."

"Including murdering every last one of us with his bare hands if he thought it would help. Or even if he thought it wouldn't hurt." Heine pointed out, reasonably enough. "He's just childish enough to place absolutely no value on anyone except the person he cares about. And even then, his concept of "caring" is more what the rest of us call heinous abuse. I have no doubt he'd charge headlong through enemy fire to save her... that much has been made clear to me by now. The issue is, he'd leave the rest of us pinned down at the same time to do it. Do NOT rely on him, for anything. This is a temporary attitude of cooperation only, I assure you."

"So I keep hearing." Khala shrugged. "Though since I also hear that Executor Yamato recently tried to murder the Master of Praetorians in his own office, I'm beginning to wonder if ANY of the high commanders are safe to rely on anymore... don't they know there's a war for survival we're fighting right now?"

"That's unfortunately not the worst point you've ever had, Khala." Haman admitted. He turned to Heine. "What could have possessed him to do such a thing? I mean, I know they've had their differences in the past, but... but trying to KILL him?"

"Don't look at me, I didn't condone it. But he's an Executor. He doesn't need our permission to act as he sees fit. That's the whole point of the position. That's the responsibility and the power of the office. Though I imagine something about the 500 million dead civilians using a nanite-bomb flipped a switch with Kira that ought not to be flipped. To be entirely honest, I'm not all that happy about it myself. Its a smear on the honor of all Praetorians, to be associated with such a senseless massacre. But to straight up try to kill Kunai? Summarily? I think that may be going a little far." Heine replied seriously. "Though he MUST have gotten pretty damned close with his attempt. I haven't seen Alex out of sight of Kunai for the last two days, and he's the last guy you'd expect to tolerate that kind of hovering."

"And now we're relying on them to work together to save Lilia. That's great. Alongside Frost. Lovesick Frost. This keeps getting better and better. Our three most powerful fighters... and they all hate each other with a passion, and now, have all attempted to kill each other at least once, and often a lot more. How did we get into this position? Even the Oosen government isn't this fucked up. Entirely." Haman groaned.

"Must be a pretty special girl." Khala said, half enviously. "To get both Executors and the Master of Praetorians to set aside their personal conflicts in order to come rescue her. And to get the Executor everyone seems scared shitless of to fall in love with her."

"She's the best of us." Heine said, unabashedly. "Not the strongest, or the quickest, not the smartest or toughest or even the most powerful... but she's the best of us all the same. Lilia embodies what it means to be a Praetorian. The unquestioning service to the people of New Eden, not just for the Greater Good, but for the Good of All. When Kunai created the order to police and patrol New Eden, Lilia was the only one who actually conformed to that ideal fully. The rest of us were old warhorses like me and Haman, who could never get past the idea of being soldiers in an army waiting to happen, or many others who viewed it as a path to personal power, or as joining a private force under Kunai's command. Though oddly enough, in his way, Alex is almost the same as Lilia, despite his political leanings. He serves for the good of all Edenites, regardless of their relation to him, or even opinion of him."

"Though I'll admit, I never expected Frost to actually fall in love with her. I didn't believe he had the capacity." Haman added. "I guess she was right about no one being beyond redemption."

"Its a long way from falling in love with her to being redeemed." Heine cautioned him strongly. "He may value her, but thats all. He'd do anything for her. For HER. The rest of us are still very much out in the cold. And very probably next on the chopping block too, once he gets this war sorted out. He's as much as said so himself."

"Yet we're all still here, helping him and relying on him." Khala pointed out. "And from what I understand, its because he came to Kira and Kunai for HELP. Because he couldn't do this by himself. I don't know about his redemption or otherwise, but it sounds to me like he's not quite the same as he used to be. And its because of Lilia, one way or another. The first time doing something is always the hardest, it gets easier with every subsequent attempt, until it can become like second nature."

"A certain sense of optimism isn't a bad thing." Haman agreed with her. "We'll certainly need as much hope as we can get for this crazy scheme to get pulled off."

"It's not THAT crazy." Heine said breezily. "Sure, there's only thirteen of us. And we are going to try to break into, in broad daylight more or less, one of Orb's most secure and fortified prisons. The blueprints of which we do not know. To free our comrade, whose location and physical condition we also do not know. We'll be outnumbered a dozen to one at best, hundreds to one at worst. The enemy will likely have heavy weaponry, vehicles and even Mobile Suits, all of which we lack. Our three leaders hate each other's guts, and may try to kill each other during the confusion of battle. And, lest I forget, we have a tagalong cannibal pygmy, who thoroughly creeps me the fuck out. What's so crazy about all this?"

"The fact that we're relying on Frost for our extraction plan?" Haman replied morosely. "The man for whom retreat is a foul word is in charge of our escape plan? And through a method he alone can control? And that our two chief tactical advantages are, hopefully, surprise and sheer balls out audacity? Neither of which can stop a bullet? And of those thirteen participants, one is the cannibal pygmy, one is dear Khala, who really isn't trained for this sort of mission, and one of which cannot move faster than a walking pace without being carried."

The two Arboreals looked at each other one more time. "No, not particularly crazy." They agreed. "I've done worse before." Heine added.

"Like that drop on the Great Endeavor at Cape York, over the open ocean, using Mobile Suits that could neither fly forever nor swim." Haman recollected.

"Or attacking the Brotherhood Gundam head on, using Mobile Suits that were about four generations behind its least advanced systems." Heine trumped.

"All that proves is that both of you are completely insane!" Khala bemoaned. "And far luckier than any two men have any right to be!"

"But successfully so, you must admit..." Haman countered with a smile.

xxxx

**Orb, Maximum Security Island Detention Center, Interrogation Room 2, 100 kilometers north of Orphan Island, May 4th, Late Morning**

"You're putting us into a difficult spot." The man with the demon-dog mask said woodenly as he sat across the bare metal table from Lilia, his voice rendered unidentifiable and barely human by the vocoder built into the battle helmet. It turned his words into a harsh rasp, like a file sawing through a metal bar, meant to be jarring and intimidating. His battle dress uniform, a camouflage mottling of white, grey, black and dark blue, was festooned with a full war load, everything but the primary small arm. Grenades. Knives. At least two side arms, one of which looked rather more like a beam pistol than Lilia had known the Oosen were capable of producing. The other three Stormhounds in the room, two flanking the seated interrogator, and the third, the massive brute every bit as big as Alexander, hovering behind Lilia's own chair, were even more heavily armed.

It was quite a showing for a unarmed woman who was chained hand and foot to a solid metal chair bolted to the floor, with a auto-taser brainwave monitor device surgically glued to the side of her temple, which would shock her unconscious if she even tried to use a Newtype power or access the Wind. A part of Lilia felt proud that they were so obviously frightened by her, even though she knew that it was only proper really. She was an Arboreal Praetorian after all, and more than that besides. She was every bit as dangerous as they feared, and likely moreso than they could imagine. Even without her weapons, armor, allies or Newtype abilities, she was a serious threat to anyone she felt the need to be. She'd already seen... and ignored... several opportunities to at least make a nuisance of herself to the guards. Not escape per se, but certainly batter them about and scare the crap out of them.

Because, like her interrogator, Lilia was in a difficult spot of her own. A new consideration had entered her life, and she had no idea how to handle it. Nothing in her training had ever prepared her for this kind of situation. She'd never even considered the possibility. Of being captured, certainly. Of needing to resist interrogation, even torture, of course. Of having to die for her beliefs, in the most undignified manner, if need be. But never... NEVER... while pregnant with the child of the man she loved more than anything. Her duty as a Praetorian demanded that she do everything possible to obstruct her enemies and deny them any information she possessed, no matter what they did to her in turn. Her duty as a mother demanded that she protect the new life inside her at all costs. The baby was blameless, completely innocent, not even truly sentient as yet... she could not allow it to suffer harm if she had the choice, could she?

"We're under something of a time crunch here." The Stormhound went on, his actinic blue camera eye lenses boring steadily into Lilia's own lilac around gold colored eyes. "The USN needs the information you possess, and is determined to get it, at any cost to you. Orb laws forbid the torture of prisoners, but Orb laws only apply in Orb. And if we can't get the information out of you in the next twenty four hours or so, the Solar President is going to force a change of custody. You'll be taken into orbit, probably to Galileo LFB, or some other secure location. Far from help. Far from rescue. Far from anyone who may care to aid you in even the slightest manner, or who would even treat you like a human being."

He let that sink in, for it was nothing but the truth. He didn't like it, but it was the truth. Ramierez was a Stormhound through and through, and more than that, he was a Hellhound. He'd done things in his life that he could never be proud of. Things which haunted his dreams nowadays. But he'd done them all the same, and even now, he wouldn't un-do them either. He'd interrogated many hardcase prisoners, and done whatever was necessary to crack them open. His methods weren't as refined as the Lieutenant's, he just wasn't able to get inside the person's head like his boss had. But he was a maestro when it came to the balance of inflicting grievous physical harm and the mere threat of inflicting grievous physical harm... something which he had employed to good effect on Athrun's cousin Hazy not that long ago. Still, it went pretty far against his grain to torture a pregnant woman, for all that she was the lover of one of the people he hated and feared more than anything.

"So we're not going to beat you up, or waterboard you, or put you in any physical distress, even though we could, despite it being against the law. Laws only apply when someone is there to enforce them after all. But looking at you, I'm sure you've been trained to resist such methods anyway. And given who your lover is, I'm not sure ANY application of mere physical pain could crack you. You'd laugh in my face as I twisted a knife in your guts. You'd die smirking before you let yourself be broken by torture. Its not something most people can do, even the people trained to resist. Every professional soldier knows that they have a limit, a breaking point, past which they'll crumble. That point can be pretty high, but we all have one. The only ones who don't... are the crazy fuckers. Like your boyfriend. And like you." Ramierez went on, glad his vocoder could conceal his loathing and disgust.

"I had a limit once. I was pushed to it. I broke." Lilia answered coldly. "But you're right. Zach has freed me from such limits now. I don't think there's much of anything you could do to me that would be seriously worse than a hardcore bout of angry sex with Zach. Not without killing me outright. I am a Sufferer. And proud of it."

"You're a stone cold crazy bitch, is what you are." One of the Stormhounds flanking the interrogator, the female who smelled strongly of the hulking brute standing behind Lilia, snapped out. "A fucking menace to humanity."

"Zach and I don't want to destroy humanity. Never that. The exact opposite even. I don't even enjoy conflict myself. Not even Zach can make me love battle. But I do recognize the need for it. Without conflict, humanity will stagnate. We will become weak. Rusted. Vulnerable. We will not stand against the trials to come. Which WILL destroy humanity. Unless we act now to prepare ourselves..." Lilia retorted.

"Yada, yada, aliens coming to lay eggs in our chests, etc, etc, yeah." The other flanking Stormhound, the one that had one red eye and one blue in his battle mask replied wearily. "We've heard that doomsday spiel from you before. Its no more creditable now than before. You're a crackpot, dear, get used to it."

"Getting back on track..." The interrogator said emphatically, clearing his throat with a harsh buzz of static. "We're not going to torture you, Lilia. It's pointless. And it turns my stomach, personally, the thought of torturing a pregnant woman. Regardless of who knocked her up. But just because we won't, doesn't mean it won't happen. The USN is going to torture you. They're going to cut you open, take out that embryo, and dip it in acid until it dies, unless you cough up all your secrets first. They'll do whatever it takes to violate your body and break your spirit. They'll chew you up and spit you out. You know it. I know it. And the only thing that can protect you from that is coming clean of your own accord. All we want is the location of Garden City. I don't care about anything else you know. Just tell us that, and we'll protect you. Keep you in Orb, under our watch. You'll miss the rest of the war, but you'll do so in good health, and with all the care your baby will need in the future. That's a promise from Her Majesty the Queen herself."

"I can't be the first person you've asked for that information. Garden City's location isn't that big of a secret. Pretty much any Custodian could tell you." Lilia answered flatly. "You expect me to believe that you only want that?"

"Funnily enough, you're right." The man mountain behind her rumbled, though he didn't sound all that amused. "We ask that question of every Eddie prisoner we've yet got our hands on. Some resisted, some didn't. And they all say the same damn thing. But when we GO to that spot, when we detail warship fleets to scan it and overfly it with our survellience jets, there's NOTHING there. Nothing at all. The only thing we haven't yet done is a ground level survey, because we can't get there on the ground just yet... thanks to your guerilla warfare efforts in the foothills, amongst other concerns. So maybe what the Master Sergeant means to say is we want to know why all you Eddies are saying its at the foot of Everest when it plainly goddamn ISN'T?"

"You're an Arboreal Praetorian. I realize that puts you outside the usual chain of Edenite command. If we had a Strategos in our custody, rest assured, we'd be asking them, not you. But we're fresh out of Stategos at the moment. And since you're outside the usual chain of command, I figure you may not be given the same bullshit story as the rest of the troops. You may even know the truth. I'll even go so far as to say its likely." The interrogator leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and his chin on his clasped hands. "I've been to Garden City, you know? I got captured in Borealis, during our first push there. Seeking this same information actually. I've seen the huge fricking tree. I'm still not sure I wasn't hallucinating it, cause we sure as hell can't find anything like that now. Given I was in Eddieland, its far from out of the question that I was being continually mindfucked the whole time I was there. It's what I would do in their place. But I've been there. So it does exist. So just tell me why we can't find it!"

Lilia stared at them. Of course she knew the answer. She couldn't explain the mechanics of it, but she definitely knew it was Yggdrasil's doing. She remembered the first time she'd ever seen Yggdrasil, how It had revealed itself from some form of cloaking that defied all sensors and senses. Just like the peace-field which allowed humans and non-humans, even predators, to live in harmony around Garden City. Nobody really knew what Yggdrasil was actually capable of. It was the same for all the Grand Chimera. Sure, they'd measured the radius of the Caller's usual area of mental influence, and had seen several examples of Leviathan's telekinetic might so far during the war. But nobody knew if those were the limit or the average for the Grand Chimera. And Yggdrasil was by far the most mysterious and enigmatic of the Grand Chimera. It was a manipulator, which never showed Its full hand. Which was why she no longer trusted Yggdrasil, or believed in Its goals, whatever those might be.

But all the same, she also knew that she could never reveal this answer to them. If Garden City was occupied or destroyed, if Yggdrasil was captured or killed, it would be the end for the Edenites. And potentially all life on New Eden, if a Grand Chimera's death echo was anywhere near as tramautic as she feared it would be. Especially since Yggdrasil was the nexus of the Wind of Words! If the Oosen could reliably pinpoint Garden City, or at least realize that they already had, then the war was over. It could be finished at any time with a sustained orbital bombardment from their massive fleets, if they were willing to pay the cost to all living things on the planet's surface. And knowing the USN, even if they did take into consideration the death echo, it would only be to evacuate their own troops before burning Yggdrasil down.

It was terrifying, beyond all words! The information she had could literally be the doom of all life on New Eden, and was certainly the final nail in the coffin for the Edenite war effort regardless. But she also knew that the Stormhound wasn't lying about what the USN would do to her, and her baby, Zach's child, to get this information from her. And that was what was really terrifying. It was her baby. Her and Zach's. It was the most special and amazing thing that had ever happened to her, for all that it was unintentional! She could not let anyone harm the life inside her. She could not. If she could die right then, in a way which wouldn't kill the baby, she'd do it in a heartbeat. But she couldn't do that.

And so she had to choose. Between giving up information that would kill thousands, maybe millions of people, and could end the entire world as she knew it. Or letting them take and destroy her own child, the unexpected but NOT unwanted fruit of her and Zach's union, the most amazing thing to ever happen to her. Either way it would be selling her soul. Selfishness, to keep her baby safe, knowing that it would be the heir to humanity's own salvation in the future, from the Black Ghosts who WERE coming, in exchange for killing potentially everyone else she had ever known or loved. Or sacrifice, to throw away her life, and that of the baby, to extinguish that hope of the future in exchange for preserving the state of the world as it was now, and leaving Zach alone and berefit of the only love he'd ever known or would know.

She sat in stony silence for many long minutes, with only the slight rasp of the Stormhound's breathing filling the room. It wasn't a choice she knew how to make. Become a traitor to her people. Or become a traitor to the man she loved above all others. Doom the world now... or potentially doom the world in the future. One person could make all the difference, if they were the right person. Where would the world be without Lacus Clyne? Without Noah Borander? Without Kira Yamato? Others might have stepped up to fill their places. Or they might be irreplacable, people without which the world and humanity would be lost to their own destructive impulses. Never before in all her life had Lilia so wished she could consult Yggdrasil for a clear vision on what the future might hold. But that was impossible. And even if she could, she no longer believed she could trust such a vision. Yggdrasil had Its own agenda. Nothing It showed them could be taken at face value, with that in mind.

"Well, you think it over." The interrogator Stormhound said at last, after almost twenty minutes of silence. "The clock is ticking, Lilia. Orb will do everything it can to prolong your stay within our borders and in our custody. We believe in giving you every chance to cooperate with us without the need for unpleasantry. But the Solar President himself is breathing down our necks on this. If we can't get the info we need by the 6th, thats a little over a day and a half from now... then we'll have no choice but to turn you over to them. And by them I mean FEAR. How long you'll last past that point, I can't say, but I wouldn't expect you to be recoverable after even five hours in their care. You'll break, Lilia. You will. They'll find a way. You should let us help you avoid that."

He got up, and turned for the door. "We'll be back in a few hours. The cameras will be watching and listening, so if you need anything... or feel like talking, just say the word and we'll be back as quick as a snap. We aren't your friends, Lilia. We're your enemies. But there's much worse enemies to have than us."

xxxx

**Orb, Orphan Island, the Yamato-Clyne residence, May 4th, slightly after Noon**

He started in the foyer, just inside the door that led to the front porch. The first place anyone entering the house from the front would see. The antechamber, with the coat closet and the warm and simple furnishings, some of which he'd made with his own hands, or at least reinforced to be child proof, as there always was a constant stream of children running and playing through this area, even before they'd had Akira and Aoi. Kira ran his thumb across one of the side tables, the one that held the ceramic dish that Lacus would always fill with candied treats or slices of fruit, for anyone coming in and out of the house to snag as they went. There was a dent on the side facing the door to the common area to the left. Aoi had left that dent with her head, running from a gaggle of the orphans in a simple game of chase that they really should have been playing outdoors.

There had been a lot of blood, or so it seemed at the time, though looking back on it, Kira knew that he and Lacus both had over-reacted. It had been more a gash than anything, and scalp wounds always bled freely. Aoi had been just fine. If Lacus hadn't seen it happen, the kids probably would have continued to play without much pause. Aoi would have just slapped some mud over the wound to staunch the bleeding, and gone on like nothing had happened. His daughter was just like that. Amazingly self sufficient and tough, even when she was barely old enough to walk upright. Kira's smile curdled on his face. His daughter had BEEN that way. But she never would be again. The jaws around his heart threatened to clamp shut and take him to his knees, but he managed to struggle away from the black pit of loss.

He'd come in here of his own choosing. No one had forced him to do so, other than himself. He'd known it would be painful. There were so many memories in this house. So many little things that only he would notice, things which would make him rueful o amused in happier times, and which now unceasingly stabbed daggers of remorse and anger into his chest. The outer grounds were no different. He'd walked over each and every inch of them so many times he could find his way around with his eyes closed. Or with Akira's hands clapped ove his eyes while giving a piggyback ride. Kira shook his head, almost able to feel the phantom hands clasping over his eyes as his giggling son encouraged him for another ride around the island, this time a little faster. It was ironic though, that the very memories which so pained him now, were actually the key that brought them here at all.

After getting the story out of Frost... which had been a serious undertaking all its own, at least to do so coherently... he and Kunai had set aside their "business" in order to set up rescue efforts. Not only was Lilia an important friend and student of theirs, but she was an Arboreal Praetorian, privy to all but the most secret of the Edenite's military information. There was little limit to the damage her knowledge could cause, if and when the USN got her to talk. Frost of course had sneered at the mere idea of anyone being able to torture information out of Lilia, other than himself of course, but Kira was less sanguine. She'd be in the care of the Stormhounds, and he knew firsthand how tricky, devious and outright frightening they could be. And most of them had an axe to grind against Frost, so he doubted they would be entirely as nice with Lilia as they would with any other prisoner.

And even if the Stormhounds didn't get her, the USN would. Durandel would stop at nothing to break her. It wouldn't be personal with him, but all same, he would doubtless condone any method necessary to break her spirit and acquire the information he desired. Even if the process didn't kill her outright, if they left her too long in the USN's hands, there might not be much left of Lilia herself, as a person, physically, emotionally or intellectually, to rescue. So if any rescue was to take place, it would have to be in Orb, the obvious place for Lilia to be taken after being recovered on the battlefield. Carpentaria base was closer, but lacked the facilities for a true deep interrogation of a valuable prisoner. Orb was still the most secure of all the USN's terrestrial holdings, the Glasshouse keeping away all but the most massive attack forces, which would be seen from a greater distance, giving them time to evacuate Lilia and prepare a defense.

And the Edenites could not afford yet another costly battle, not so soon after Heaven's Base, and not even for Lilia's sake. So that meant rescue would have to be a small force, somehow infiltrated into Orb in time. The Praetorians had an insertion shuttle, the same one they'd used to rescue Kira himself, but Orb was wise to that ploy after the first time, and especially after the attack on Nara-Attha City and the Hameya's Attlatl mass driver. The Glasshouse had been strengthened remarkably since then, and would not overload nor so easily be bypassed by EM shielding. That said, the shuttle had still seemed like the best bet, even if it meant most of them might be physically debilitated by the burnout of Green EDEN in their cells from the transition. A weak force was better than no force.

Of course, that was when Frost had butted in once more, deriding their foolishness, such as it was, and offering the use of something he called "Mr. Abyss" instead. After realizing just what Mr. Abyss could do... and getting over the terror-shakes at such power being in the hands of Frost of all people... some hasty modifications to their plan had been in order. Of course there was still a chance for physical debilitation, since a clean teleportation of even a single person required an exceptional amount of focus on Frost's part, or not all of that person would come through the portal, leading to internal bleeding or even death. And exceptional focus wasn't exactly the first thing that came to mind when he thought of Frost, at least not in the traditional sense. On the other hand, as Frost had proved, when he was obsessed over something, NOBODY had focus like he did.

But before Frost could teleport them anywhere, he had to know where to open the portal. Which was easy for line of sight transports, or when going to places he'd been before. But all the places that Frost had been to in Orb were places where transporting a heavily armed team of Praetorians, not to mention Frost himself, would be extremely obvious and detrimental to the pupose of their mission. Teleporting directly to the prison island was also an option, but since only Frost was at all used to the abyss portals, it was decided the risk of appearing debilitated and disoriented inside a heavily secured enemy perimeter was not the best of ideas. It would take longer, but was safer all around, if they could infiltrate Orb somewhere quiet and unnoticed, and then travel to the prison once they were inside Orb. That also gave them an opportunity to meet up with Haman and Khala, who had been operating behind enemy lines for quite some time by then, and were in need of rescuing of their own.

Of course, finding somewhere to serve as their infiltration point required detailed insider knowledge of Orb, and Kira was the only one present with that kind of knowledge. And nobody, least of all himself, wanted to risk merely describing the location in question to Frost, since who knew how accurate such a transport would be. No, there had been only one choice... he'd had to let Frost take the memory from his head directly. Just like Frost had done to Cyprus, and Lilia and who knew how many others! The process had not, however, been as awful as Kira had been dreading. If anything, Frost seemed to find it more distasteful than he did, and had completely avoided any extraneous rummaging around in Kira's thoughts and memories, despite having the opportunity to do so unimpeded.

"I already know all I need to know about how you think, Yamato, and I never want to understand how you feel. Bad enough I'm cursed to look like you, I could not palate knowing how you tick too..." His nemesis had retorted upon being questioned about it. "There's nothing about your memories that interest me in the slightest. And taking away your recollections of your spawn and Pink would only soothe your pain, so why would I ever do that?"

Kira had been somewhat concerned that one of his former friends might have put a watch on Orphan Island, where his and Lacus's house had been built, next to Reverend Malchio's orphanage. It was about as far from civilization as it as possible to get and remain within Orb's territorial waters after all, and thus would make a great infiltration rendevous point, assuming one could get through the Glasshouse unnoticed. But apparently the memories of that place were as bittersweet painful to his former friends as they were to Kira himself, and he'd come through the portal to find the place completely abandoned. It didn't look like anyone had set foot there since the Stormhounds had taken him into custody during Frost's rampage. He still wasn't sure whether to be disgusted or relieved about it though.

He passed from the foyer to the common and dining rooms, and the kitchen. Open, airy rooms that Lacus had rejoiced in redecorating every few months, often enliting the aid of Kira and later Akira for her makework projects. Nothing substantial was ever really changed about the room, other than its layout and perhaps the color of the walls, but all the same, it was the family moments of working together that were the important part of it. Aoi had usually preferred to play outside instead, though Kira had noted that his truculent daughter would tend to come wandering by to help whenever Lacus went out on an errand. It had always bemused him, the childish antipathy Aoi had for her mother, though he figured it was just a clash of personalities. If given the choice, he bet that Aoi would have chosen to be a boy, and did not seem to appreciate Lacus trying to interest her in girl things.

He avoided the stairs leading to the second story. He wasn't strong enough to face the memories he'd find up there, in the bedrooms. He didn't know if he ever would be. And certainly now, just before starting a mission to rescue a friend in need, was not the time to try and get caught up in those memories. But there was one thing he still had to do, something he'd put off for far too long. Something he had to face. He went out the kitchen door, the one leading to the garden where Lacus haphazardly grew a few vegetables whenever the mood struck her, being carful not to catch the relatively flimsy screen door on his sword sheath or the heavy combat shield slung across his shoulders.

Kira was attired for war, in heavy duty Custodian armor that covered his torso, shoulders, arms and legs with plates of Borealite, and sheathed his joints in a combination of oxiphant leather and metal scales. It was climate controlled, or else he'd have been sweating rivers in most New Eden climates, much less tropical Orb. The Burden was over his shoulders, beneath the shield. It felt comfortable there. He hadn't drawn it since his aborted attempt to pass judgment on Sai. He hadn't forgotten about that. Neither of them would, he was sure. Once this mission was over, once Lilia was safe, justice would still need to be done. Now that his first attempt had failed, it was time for his backup plan. Whatever Sai's personal power, there was still one arena in which he would never surpass Kira. Once it came down to the Lucifer vs the Exemplar, there could only be one outcome.

Sai knew that of course, and would do whatever he could to delay such a confrontation. He would gather allies, and connive to put himself in the best possible position. But it wouldn't help him. Five hundred million souls cried out for retribution, and Kira had no intention of letting them go unheeded, regardless of current circumstances. Evil was evil, and needed to be destroyed wherever it was found. And unlike Frost, Kira didn't believe that Sai's continued existence was a necessary part of the Edenite's war strategy. His old friend was still far more a politician than a warrior, and they had little need of politicians right now. Kira shook his head at himself. Not so long ago, thinking such thoughts would have appalled him with their coldness and venom. Then again, not long before that, he would have been appalled at himself for walking through his own home, his place of peace, armed for war and killing.

And now he barely thought twice of it. He had changed. Everything had changed. And there were more changes to come. More sacrifices to be made. More long held convictions to overturn perhaps. There was no telling what the war would demand of him next. All Kira knew was that he would pay whatever personal toll need be, in order to preserve the Edenite people, and uphold the standards of morality and justice that were his guiding lights now that his prior guide had been lost to him forever. He trudged through the garden, though his shoulders were straight and his back stiff. He'd come here because he knew he was ready for it. And because he had to. He set foot on the path leading out of the garden. More a faint track of beaten down weeds than a true path, but it was one he was intimately familiar with all the same.

It led to a small grove of palms and bushes, of no particular natural beauty or distinction of location. Nothing about it would appear special to the casual or unfamiliar eye. But all the same, it was the most special place on the whole island to him. Even more sacred than the bedchamber he'd shared for so many years with Lacus. Because it was here, at this unprepossing location, this normal grove, that the Reverend Malchio had prounced he and Lacus as man and wife, in their first and most private bonding ceremony, where it was just the two of them and the Reverend. It was the place where he and Lacus had formally begun their life together, even though they'd been fully intimate for quite a while before that. They'd consumated it again right afterwards, as soon as Malchio had gotten out of earshot. Oh, had they ever. He could still see the impressions they'd left in the sandy soil. Or at least he could picture it in his mind...

And as it was the formal beginning of his life with Lacus, Kira had felt it appropriate for it to also mark the formal ending of that golden age. It was here, far from prying eyes and well wishers, hidden by its very plainess and lack of ornament, that he had dug the three graves, after recovering enough from the Rex Lodge ordeal to contemplate doing such a thing. They were simple affairs, little more than large holes in the ground, not even fully uniform or life sized. He'd barely been in his right mind back then, he had neither the patience nor the will to make them perfect or beautiful. And now, he was glad of that. Perfect and beautiful were terms he would apply to Lacus and his children in life, but they were mockeries to try and apply them in death. Besides, it wasn't like Lacus, Akira or Aoi actually physically rested here anyway.

His children... wonderful Akira, vivacious Aoi... they had been burned to unrecognizable ashes in the flames of Rex Lodge. Even genetic testing of the chest of ashes the Edenites had returned with him to Orb had not been able to discern which clump of matter belonged to whom, only that his children's DNA was indeed mixed throughout it, probably from their hair. And as for Lacus's arm, deformed and disfigured from the heat, he'd wanted as little to do with it as possible after finding it in the ruins. His gorge rose at the mere thought of it. THAT was NOT Lacus, and he never wanted to be reminded of that when he thought of her. It had come as a relief when the Clyne Foundation had asked for the remains, such as they were, for interring in their planned memorial in the PLANTS. A place Kira planned to never, ever go. Out of sight, and hopefully out of mind.

It was quiet here, far from the beach, far from the house and orphanage. His comrades would no doubt be itching to get a move on, Frost especially, but they could wait. Kira slowly knelt down in front of the simple, hand crafted markers he'd placed in the sand, in the lee of a strong bush to ward them from wind and rain. They were unmarked and unadorned, but he didn't need nameplates to know which was for who. He'd never be able to forget. He could feel moisture in his eyes, on his cheeks, but strangely, he didn't feel the awkwardness or sadness he'd expected. He was crying, but it was tears of relief. He felt no judgement weighing down upon him. There was no sense of intrusion, not even in this place of utmost peace and happiness and loss and sadness. This was a place of Kira, but Executor Yamato felt no less welcome for all that.

Lacus, Akira, Aoi... were gone. Forever. Gone to a place he hoped was better than this chaotic and often twisted world. A place of endless peace and contentment, where they would be waiting for him when he eventually arrived, when his duty was finally done. They were gone, but he wanted to believe they were still aware of him. Still looking down at him, checking up on him in his dreams and unguarded moments. It wasn't quite faith, not in the way a truly religious person would mean it. But all the same, Kira took some measure of comfort from the idea that it wasn't an eternal seperation. And he took even more comfort that he could kneel here, as Executor Yamato, quite a different man from the Kira his family had known, though still recognizably him all the same, and feel no contrition or shame in so doing.

He wore armor. He carried weapons. He had killed many people, and would kill many more, though never as his first choice. He had raised his hands against former friends and even family with the intent to destroy. He had masterminded a devastating attack against the nation that was his homeland. He had allied with his own nemesis, and worked alongside an old friend-enemy re-invented, who was a mass murderer worse than any in human history to date, and apparently comfortable in that mantle. He had done things he'd never imagined he'd ever be capable of doing, and he'd done them of his own will. It was a long and bitter and hard road he'd walked, and there was still the majority of it to go.

But it wasn't a road he felt ashamed to walk. It wasn't a betrayal of who he was, despite what so many former friends seemed to think. And now, here, he knew that Lacus, Akira and Aoi agreed with him. They understood his burdens, in the way that only family could ever do. They did not judge him for his changes. They did not hate him for the sacrifices he'd made, or the battles he'd fought, or the choices he'd made. They didn't even rely on him for leadership and protection, not anymore. They merely assured him and supported him with their love and acceptance. They gave him the greatest gift of all... the certain knowledge that they would always love him, as a husband, father and person. As Kira Yamato.

He slumped forward, hands flat on the ground, eyes blurred to the point of near blindness, feeling the sand absorb his tears and slowly turn darker. But like him, no matter how dark it became... it was still bright colored sand at heart. "Thank you... Lacus... Akira... Aoi..." Kira sobbed. "Thank you..."

a


End file.
